Techspace: 2010

Viruses Smuggling Android Phones

A Trojan virus which has been developed for Android phones can create botnets(A botnet is a collection of software agents that run autonomously and automatically).

Trojan named Geinimi is the most sophisticated Android malware so far. Once it's installed on a user's phone, Geinimi can receive commands from a remote server that lets that server's owner control the smartphone. Geinimi is spreading through pirated versions of Android apps, games and is being distributed in third-party Android app stores in China.

When a smartphone user launches an infected application containing Geinimi, the Trojan collects information in the background. This information includes location coordinates and unique identifiers for the device and its SIM card. Every five minutes, the Trojan tries to connect to a remote server using one of 10 embedded domain names. These domain names include www.widifu.com; www.udaore.com; www.frijd.com; www.islpast.com and www.piajesj.com

Pirated applications that include the Trojan that are available in Chinese app stores include "Monkey Jump 2;" "Sex Positions;" "President vs. Aliens" "City Defense" and "Baseball Superstars 2010".

The original versions of these apps that are in the official Google Android Market have not been affected. So please download apps and games from Google official site :)

Hide your FRIENDS List on Facebook from others

As you have seen the most dominated social networking site(earlier) ORKUT gives the authority for the user to hide his/her scraps, photos and etc.. from others. FACEBOOK the most promising and undoubtedly the most users LOGGED-IN social networking site provides the user to hide his/her photos, messages and etc from others. Now, you can even hide your FRIEND's list from others so that your FRIEND's list can be seen only by you.

Procedure to hide your Friends List in Facebook:

First login to your Facebook account.

Once logged in, go to Privacy Settings.

You will see an option “Connecting on Facebook” in the next page. Click on “View Settings”.

Now scroll down the page and select “See your friend list”.

You can choose “Custom” to completely hide your friend’s list from everyone and make its visibility to “Only Me”.

Thank you for reading this post :) Do comment :)

Holograms on cell phones(IBM Next Five in Five)

IBM researchers say that, in another five years, cell phones will be able to produce holograms of friends and colleagues talking and moving in real time.

We will be able to see the 3D video projected from cell phone from which we can actually see the caller or called person's real time video as a hologram:) With a cell phone hologram, a user would be able to walk next to a hologram of a friend, or a worker and he/she could project an enlarged 3D image of a product needing repair to walk inside it and detect problems.

IBM is already working on the cell phone hologram concept in its labs. The cameras that are being used to create early versions of holograms still need to be miniaturized, and software needs to be written to for receiving input from those cameras.

Here, you can watch the featured video of IBM related to this post here.

Please do comment if you like this post :) :)

Thank you :)

Microsoft MIDORI, Cloud-Based Operating System

Windows is the operating system which is being used my most of the computer users. This operating system has ruled with millions of users from 1985 by PC-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows Xp, Windows Vista and currently running most awaited operating system Windows 7.

Now, MICROSOFT is working on a new generation of operating systems called Cloud-Based Operating System and rumors are there that MIDORI will be their first such operating system, which will replace Windows fully from computer map.

Features of MIDORI :-

MIDORI is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM).

MIDORI includes "Virtualization" as a mean to solving issues within contemporary computing.

MIDORI is to develop a lightweight portable OS which can be deployed easily to lots of various applications.

In the current working system, operating system is loaded onto a hard disk physically located on that machine. In this way, the operating system is tied very tightly to that hardware. As Windows is dependent on hardware, this will not be used by mobile people. Due to this trend installing different applications on a single computer may led to different compatibility issues whenever the machine require updating.

The new operating system will solve these problems by the concept of Virtualizing. This will solve problems such as widespread security vulnerabilities, unexpected interactions among different applications, failures caused by extensions, plug-ins, and drivers and many more.

Ubuntu manual and custom notifications

In UBUNTU, you will see notifications in the right top corner from the Audio/Video applications and also from the Update Manager, but what if you like to send notification for your computer(Individual computer) or to send notification from your computer to any LAN connected computer?

Before notification, you should install the library file. To do this, go to TERMINAL and type

[stextbox id="info" width="300"]sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin[/stextbox]

Now you can go ahead and start with notifications :)

1. Simple Notification

notify-send can be used to send simple notification as shown below.

[stextbox id="info" width="200"]$ notify-send 'Hi Srikanth' 'Welcome'[/stextbox]

2. Notification with an icon

notify-send can be used to send notification along with an icon using -i option.

[stextbox id="info"]$ notify-send -u critical -i "notification-message-IM" 'Boss !!' 'Am done with the execution'[/stextbox]

notification-message-IM is a type of icon that can be used in the notify-send program.

3. Notification with custom icon

You can use your own custom icon using the notify-send -i option as shown below.

[stextbox id="info"]$ notify-send -i /home/sathiya/deal.ico 'Deal success'[/stextbox]

4. Show output of any command

For example, you can display the last few lines of syslog as shown below.

[stextbox id="info"]$ notify-send syslog "`tail /var/log/syslog`"[/stextbox]

In the same way, you can use any command (for example, date) and display its output as desktop notification using notify-send.

Thanks for reading this article :) Do comment :) :)

1000 cores on a single processor

Our PCs have a processor with two, four or 16 cores to carry out tasks, but the central processing unit ( CPU ) developed by the researchers effectively have 1,000 cores on a single chip. That means our system will be 20 times faster than the current speed. This new SUPER computer uses less power and works with high speed w.r.t current computers.

Scientists used a chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which contains millions of transistors, But FPGAs can be configured into specific circuits by the user, rather than their function being set at a factory. This enabled the team to divide the transistors within the chip into small groups and make them to perform different tasks. By creating more than 1,000 mini-circuits within the FPGA chip , the researchers effectively turned the chip into a 1,000-core processor, each core working on its own instructions.

The chip is able to process around five gigabytes of data per second in testing, making it approximately 20 times faster than modern computers.

Grub customizer - Organise your GRUB

GRUB is the boot loader for your Ubuntu system.

By default, it looks something like this :

Boring and Black & White.

If you want to change the view of this GRUB, then the easiest way that i've found is the Grub Customizer. Grub Customizer is a graphical interface to manage your grub loader.

Here are some of the features of it :

Manages various entries to be displayed on the grub

Helps you reorder the grub menu entries

Allows you to set the timeout duration

Allows you to set the default menu selection

Can change the appearances of the grub. You can add background to your grub loader and as well change the various color schemes provided.

The screenshot of Grub Customizer is here :

Whenever you have a kernel update, there will be a new entry in the grub loader and in course of time, your grub gets messy. So you can use grub customizer to completely clean the list, re order it and manage it.

To install Grub Customizer go to your terminal and type the following

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

If you have any queries then please feel free to comment.

JotForm - Efficient Form building for email / web

JotForm is one of the best tools to create a form for your website or to mail some group and get responses.
Its features are -
1. Easy to use Interface
2. Drag and Drop form elements
3. Choose from the 40 form elements
4. Variety of themes
5. Customizable email responses
6. No registration required

All that you need to do is just log on to their site

http://www.jotform.com

And start building your new form.

You can add captcha, a rating scale, a grade scale, and many more survey tools. You can also apply validation rules to your fields. Most common fields like email and phone numbers are automatically validated.

When you save the form it asks for your email id to which responses of that form will be sent to. Best part is that you can completely customize the responses using another simple interface. You can get the URL of the form or the code that links to it so that you can then embed it into your website.

Following screenshots will help you understand it better.

Creating a form using JotForm. Add any tools from the side pane.

Saving your email id to which your form responses will be sent.

Customizing your email responses

Use the tools in top panel to edit Email Alerts, Thank you message, Share the form, Get Source Code or to set the preferences.

The finished form. Look at the URL. This is created for you.

Google Body Browser - An educational tool by google

Google has released the new Body Brow ser in its Lab website. It is an educational tool built to completely browse the various parts of a human body. Initially you find a woman dressed in a blue attire and on the left side are your controls that guide you to browse through her. You can rip her skin off(not the clothes) and see the organisation of various organs, bone structure, muscular tissues, nervous system and much more.

Google Body Browser gives you a variety of controls. You can control the depth of visibility of bones, organs, muscles and nerves either individually or in a chained way. Enabling the labeling option will label the various visible parts. Search option given in marvelous in giving instant result by animating the body.

Google Body Browser is yet another showcase of HTML5's beauty. The Body browser also needs WebGL support which is not implemented in most browsers other than Firefox and Chrome Beta. Download the beta version of the Chrome from here and try the Body Browser by logging in to bodybrowser.googlelabs.com or you can just check out the video on youtube here.

The Body browser is still in Google Labs and expected to have much more features in the times to come.

Get started with Google Chrome's Web Store

Chrome has come out with a new store for webapps called Chrome Web Store. Not probably a completely new concept if you look at Apple's AppStore and Android's 'Market', but definitely a new functionality for browsers. Chrome web store is probably a small step of Google's towards the Chrome OS which is in its beta testing side. Initially launched only for US users, it is now open to the world. So what exactly do you find in the Chrome Web Store?

After I logged on to their web store, I installed few and realized that they're only packaged bookmarks which doesn't do anything more than just redirecting to the website(the very first app I downloaded was the Blogger app which only redirected me to http://blogger.com). Disappointing? yes. But it doesn't end there. There are some exclusive apps that use HTML5, which is the latest major revision of HTML and still under development (see wiki). Some of them are mentioned later in this article. Consider Web apps as feature rich versions of their website.

Chrome Web Store provides a variety of categories to download from. Some free and some paid but helps any kind of users, be it shoppers, bloggers, students, gamers, developers etc.. Some of the best app that you can start off with could be Scribble, Aviary's Advanced Image Editor or NYTimes and you also have some games like the classic PacMan.

With the introduction of WebStore, Chrome has made available, the extensions and themes under one roof.

All you need to do is download Google Chrome stable version, access the Chrome Web Store and select an app and click Install as shown in the screenshot below.

Once you've installed a web app, you will find them when you open a new tab just before your Last Visited section.

With extensive work going on in HTML5, I'm sure Google's new Chrome Web Store is going to be a hit among the other browsers.

CCleaner - for a faster cleaner windows

If you're using Windows then this is probably a must-have application for you.

CCleaner is less than 3MB and a freeware privacy and cleaning software. It deletes all the unnecessary and unused files from your computer safely and frees considerable hard disk space from your computer. It cleans the temporary files from you IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and also some locations on your computer like the Recycle bin. It also supports cleaning some third party applications and is integrated with a fully featured registry cleaner. CCleaner has topped the Popular Downloads list of Filehippo.

Screenshot:

CCleaner

Download Link

You can download CCleaner from their website or from the filehippo which is my favorite.
Post your reviews on it.

How to Block Ads when you're browsing?

If website ads are really annoying you then here is a simple way to get rid of it.

Answer is AdBlock.

This is a simple extension available for Google Chrome and as well as Mozilla firefox. Install them and select your preferences to activate the AdBlock. Now just go to any page and see the ads disappeared.
You can configure AdBlock to display only text ads or allow ads on certain websites or just block everything.

Download links are given below.

Chrome users click here.

Firefox users click here.

Configuring AdBlock settings is very intuitive (Go to Tools -> Extensions -> Options of AdBlock), but if you still find it difficult somewhere, feel free to comment and we will be glad to help you.

Arista Transcoder - Video conversion tool for Ubuntu

Every now and then, you find it necessary to convert your video format to some other format to fit it into your mobile device, ipod or any other video player. If you're on windows you may use Videora, or Total Video converter. But when you're on Ubuntu, you may find it very difficult to find the right package. But here's one which's too good, very simple and very intuitive.

Arista Transcoder.

As its website says, it is the easiest way to convert your media. Arista comes with a whole lot of features.

Video formats it supports are : H.264, MPEG2, MPEG4/DivX, VP8, Theora, Flash Video.

And some of the audio formats are : AA3, Vorbis, OGG, FLAC, Speex and WAV.

If you're not sure of the format you want to convert it to, you can just right away select the device to which you're converting the file to. Just select any of the following device from the list: Android, Computer, DVD Player, iPhone/iPod/iPad, Nokia N Series or Web.

In addition to all this, you can create a video using your webcam directly and store it in any of the formats as said above. You can also create presets and store them and share them with others. You can visit the preset page of arista transcoder for more information.

Screenshots: http://www.transcoder.org/screenshots/

Installation Instruction

Arista Transcoder being Open-source, you can download the code from their website and compile it.

Or you can straight away download it from your Ubuntu Software Center.

Or in your terminal, you can just type in

sudo apt-get install arista

Hope that saves a lot of time for you.

Download email id's of FACEBOOK friends and add to GMAIL, YAHOO or any other Webmail service or Social Network

You might have tried to export email id's of your friends in FACEBOOK and you would have end up saying Man!! This is not possible, have to copy each email id and should add to GMAIL or YAHOO. But this process is very tedious :( I have a better solution to export your FACEBOOK friends email addresses to GMAIL or YAHOO. You can export all email address within 2mins :) Isn't this a great news? Then let's go ahead and start to export FACEBOOK friends addresses :)

To export, you should have YAHOO account or else it is not possible to export. If you do not have YAHOO account, then sign up now and get started :)

Now go to address.yahoo.com and click the FACEBOOK icon. A login dialog will pop-up. Just sign-in with your FACEBOOK email-id and password and within seconds, you entire FACEBOOK address book will be available inside your YAHOO account. Once the import is done, click this link to download a CSV file with the email addresses of all your FACEBOOK contacts to your desktop.

Now to import it to GMAIL, go to Contacts-->More Actions-->Import and then choose filename.csv or vcard which you downloaded :) Now all your FACEBOOK contacts will be saved in GMAIL address book.

You can follow the same procedure as mentioned above to import email addresses to other sites too :)

Thank you for reading this post :) Please do comment :)

Make your software PORTABLE using CAMEYO in WINDOWS

We all have installed softwares in WINDOWS but have you ever tried to make it PORTABLE? I guess not. So make changes from now onwards with pretty cool software CAMEYO which makes your software PORTABLE.

Why should YOU USE this software?

You will install WINDOWS once in a while and many times you will end up with VIRUS WINDOWS. Haha!! lol!! So, now you will have to re-install your WINDOWS and all the softwares which you had previously installed :( This is very tedious way :( Moreover, if you install more and more software in your system, your WINDOWS performance will slow down gradually and make hell lot of problems for you. Process of re-installing all the softwares will take more time and it's not an easy task. So to get rid from all these problems, here is the solution THE CAMEYO :) :)

Here is the steps to go ahead and create your own PORTABLE SOFTWARES.

Download CAMEYO software from here.

Install CAMEYO software.

Now open CAMEYO software and you will see the main interface as shown below.

Now click on Capture Installation and it will start Taking initial system snapshot before installation.

Once the above process is done, it will show a new window asking you toinstall the software you wish to package. At this point, you have to install software on your computer that you wish to make PORTABLE.

After installation of your software, click on INSTALL DONE. This will starttaking post-installation snapshot.

After the completion of above process, it will ask for the path/directory to save PORTABLE software and the name. Enter those fields and click ok :)

That's it. Your PORTABLE SOFTWARE is ready to use it anywhere and on any system. You can even copy your PORTABLE SOFTWARE to USB stick and share it with your friends :)

Thank you for reading this post and please do comment :)

Make sound quality better with PulseAudio equalizer in Ubuntu

Pulseaudio is the audio system which will be used by Ubuntu. You can go to hardware settings tab and select the output type for your system.[choose Surround or digital output] Here, you cannot change the output mode. To change the output mode, we will make use of PulseAudio equalizer.

Newer version of Ubuntu's will have Pulseaudio installed. If it is not installed, then go to terminal and type

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

To get equalizer, first download pulseaudio equalizer from here.

Download

Now go to Applications->Sound and Video->PulseAudio Equalizer.

Here you can see the snapshot of pulseaudio equalizer :)

You can select the mode of output and save presets :)

Enjoy with better quality sound from now on :)

Thank you for reading this article :)

Change Ubuntu 10.04 Log-in and Log-out sounds

Do you want to change your LOGIN and LOGOUT sounds in Ubuntu? If yes then, you just need to convert your music file to ogg format.

Now write the following command in terminal :)

sudo chmod -777 /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo

Browse to /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo folder and backup the desktop-login.ogg and desktop-logout.ogg. Copy and paste your .ogg format created music files into this folder and rename to desktop-login.ogg and desktop-logout.ogg.

You can follow above steps for all types of Ubuntu Sounds.

Thank you :)

Full stop for UNSOLICATED CALLS from Telemarketing companies(INDIA)

Fed up with unsolicited calls pushing one product or the other? You will soon get relief from such unsolicited calls as you will instantly recognise them to be from telemarketing companies.

From 2011, mobile numbers of telemarketing will be assigned 700 as the first three of eight-digit numbers, this makes customers to know that the call is from telemarketing people. Cellphone users would have the freedom to entertain as well as block such calls.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has adopted a method to avoid the above listed problem. TRAI will replace Customer Call Preference Regulation(CCPR) with the existing National Do Not Call(NDNC) directory. Under the new system, subscribers will have to register their numbers with their respective operators. Unsolicited marketing calls will activate within seven days of registration.

If the telemarketer violates the rule and makes calls from numbers other than those beginning with 700, the company will be liable to pay a heavy penalty. If they violate it for the first time, then they will have to pay penalty but sixth violation will lead to an automatic disconnection of that number.

Under the NCDC system, the penalty amount on telemarketers who call numbers listed on the directory was a mere Rs.500 and Rs.1000 but now it is Rs.2lakhs to Rs.10lakhs.

Thank you for reading this article :)

Google's URL Shortener Goo.gl goes public

Its a great news that goo.gl is now open for public. The much awaited goo.gl debuted in last december and was integrated in various google apps but was never out for public. Now Google has finally launched a website for people who're willing to shorten their URL.

The website goes by its name

goo.gl

and is going to compete with many other URL shorterners like bit.ly and TinyURL. Goo.gl promises security, stability and speed. It has an inbuilt spam detection and being a Google product, I'm sure the availability would be better than the others already in the market. Along comes the URL tracking feature which you can view if you're logged in to your google account. It gives you history of number of clicks, the browsers from where the clicks were made, the country and variety of details.

How to add Perl-CGI support to your apache web server in Ubuntu

So I assume you've installed Apache(if not then click here to see how) and now you want to run some CGI scripts written in Perl. What I'm going to describe here is only a simple way of executing CGI Scripts. This has some serious security flaws and a pro may just break it in seconds. So if you're a network administrator trying to implement something for your server then this is definitely not where you should be.

I assume you've installed apache using the command "sudo apt-get install apache2".

Next thing you got to install is this library module that links your webserver with the perl engine.

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-perl2

Now you're ready to go. You must use this in your browser :

http://localhost/cgi-bin/programname.cgi

The CGI file programname.cgi is present in directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin/.

It is convenient to have a symbolic link to the cgi-bin directory from your /var/www/ directory. You can create one using the following command.

ln -s /usr/lib/cgi-bin/

Make sure the program has all the required permission.

Run PHP and CGI programs in Ubuntu

You might have suffered from the problem of executing/running PHP or CGI programs in Ubuntu. For all your problems, here is the solution.

Steps to run php programs :--

Open terminal and type sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www

Now create a folder with the name php.

Place your html files in /var/www folder and php files in /var/www/php folder.

Steps to run CGI programs :--

Open terminal and type sudo chmod -R 777 /usr/lib/cgi-bin

Now place your .cgi or .pl files in cgi-bin folder.

Now open your browser and type http://localhost/cgi-bin/programname.cgi

Thank you :)

How to convert .deb packages to .rpm packages and vice versa

Two mostly used Linux distributions are Ubuntu and the other, Fedora. Ubuntu uses .deb packages for installation while Fedora uses packages with .rpm extension. Problem arises when a person using Fedora gets a .deb package or when a person who uses Ubuntu gets a .rpm package. Here's a simple way to convert them between .rpm and .deb. The solution is the 'alien' command. If you don't have it, use

sudo apt-get install alien

will install alien on to your Ubuntu machine.

Now to convert rpm to debian use

alien rpm-package.rpm

where rpm-package.rpm is your rpm file. A .deb file with same name will be created.

And to convert .deb to .rpm use

alien -r deb-package.deb

where deb-package.deb is your .deb file. A .rpm file with the same name but .rpm extension will be generated.

The same command can be used to convert many other formats. To know more just use the man pages of your Ubuntu machine.

How to convert PDF documents to JPG/PNG files in Ubuntu

PDFs are so famous that every document that we download now from the internet are in pdf formats. PDF readers are omnipresent that even most of the phones now come with. Whenever I have some document to send through mail I just send it as a pdf document. But there are times when you may want to put a pdf document on a website. The simplest way is to convert the pdf file into jpg/png file which can be easily uploaded to a website. Here's a simple way that converts pdf document to jpeg/png image files in less than 2 seconds.
You need to install imagemagick. On ubuntu, you can do it by typing this in your terminal.

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Then its just a cake's walk. Execute the following in terminal.
To convert it to jpg image -

convert example.pdf example.jpeg

and if you want to convert it to png -

convert example.pdf example.png

If there are multiple pages in your pdf document then the files will automatically renamed to file-0.jpg file-1.jpg file2-jpg and so on.
Hope that comes in handy next time you want to put a pdf file on your website.

Execute Perl programs from XAMPP in Windows

Perl means Practical Extraction and Reporting Language. Perl is flexible, powerful and widely used programming language.

To execute programs in Windows, follow these steps :-

First install and perform the tasks as provided in this link. http://srikanthgundaz.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/execute-php-and-mysql-programs-in-windows/

Then browse to folder C:\xampp\xampp\cgi-bin and paste/write your .cgi or .pl scripts :)

Generally, you run perl programs is executed in Linux Platform and since we are writing and executing perl program in Windows, we have to change shebang line i.e #!/usr/bin/perl

To do above task, delete/replace the line #!/usr/bin/perl by #!"C:\xampp\xampp\perl\bin\perl.exe" (This is as per my installation directory). If you find it difficult, then do not worry, open printenv.pl file where you can find cgi-bin directory and copy the first line of printenv.pl file and replace shebang line of your perl script.

Now open browser and type http://localhost/cgi-bin/program_name.cgi or http://localhost/cgi-bin/program_name.pl

Thank you for reading this post. Please do comments if you like this post. Any queries about this post is whole heartedly welcomed :) :)

Execute PHP and MYSQL programs in WINDOWS

You might have executed php and mysql programs in Linux platform but you can execute those programs in WINDOWS platform too :)

Steps to execute php and mysql programs in WINDOWS:-

Download XAMPP from here.

Now click on setup file and install XAMPP.

After installation, go to Start-->All programs-->XAMPP for Windows-->XAMPP Control Panel.

Left click on XAMPP tray icon next to the date(right bottom corner).

Now click on Start next to Apache and Mysql.

Place html files in htdocs folder(In my system, C:\xampp\xampp\htdocs).

Create folder with the name php in htdocs folder. Place your php files in php folder.

To create database, click on Shell(As you can see Shell Button in above snapshot) and type mysql -u root and other set of commands to create databases and tables as per your program.

Now go to browser and type http://localhost in address bar. Here, you can see XAMPP welcome page.

Now run your programs. For example http://localhost/example.html

Thank you for reading this article :) Please do comments if you like this post and also if you have any doubts, please post it in comments panel :) :)

Ubuntu Coloured - Wallpaper collection

One thing I love about Ubuntu is the huge support it gets for wallpapers. Open source Wallpapers, I call them. Here's one such a pack of beautiful coloured Wallpapers for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Coloured

Is it raining in your city?

What do you do when you want to see whether it's raining somewhere in some city? Don't go searching for weather reports and get yourself confused. Because here's a simple and straight forward site that helps you see whether its raining or not.

http://isitraining.in

Best part is the way it is used. Just append the city name after a slash (/) to the site. Like if you want to see if it is raining in bangalore? then just type the following in the URL bar.

http://isitraining.in/bangalore

Some more examples are

isitraining.in/dublin

isitraining.in/chennai

isitraining.in/hyderabad

isitraining.in/newyork

Answers are just one of the two. Yes or No. It also gives you some other weather conditions that you may find important. The website is inspired by is

GSpace - Use your gmail free space to store files

Gmail gives me around 7GB of free space and I've realized lately that I hardly use 40% of it. Now I've found a way to make best use of the free space by storing my personal files in my Gmail free space. The solution is GSpace. Its a firefox plugin that helps you store files into your Gmail. It still constraints on the file size which is around 10MB but that's fine.

Installation is very simple. You can just find your way to the extension in your firefox extension gallery and install it. Otherwise download it from the gspace website which is very simple and described here.

With your firefox browser go to GSpace website. Go to their download page. And select your operating system. Confirm your installation and you're done and free to use the Gmail free memory as your personal stash for storing files. If your firefox fails to recognize your firefox plugin then just go to the downloaded file and open with firefox web browser. That should do.

How to extend sudo's timeout in Ubuntu

If you're wondering what this is about, then here is the scenario.

You open your terminal and try to execute some privileged commands and you got to add sudo to it. Like, for example, when you have to change permissions you use 'sudo chmod 777 file.txt'. And then it asks for your password. But once you do it, it won't ask you for the password for the 'sudo' commands that you enter in the next 5 minutes. 5 minutes is the default timeout period for which time the terminal is going to remember your password. If you want to extend it then here's how.

You need to edit the sudoers.tmp file. For that, go to your terminal and type this :

gksudo gedit /etc/sudoers

Find the line that says :

Defaults evn_reset

Change it into

Defaults evn_reset , timestamp_timeout=x

where x is the timeout period in minutes.

If you want your terminal to remember your password for as long as you are not logged out or close window, then keep the value of x as -1.

Try Unity Desktop on Ubuntu 10.10 and 10.04

Ubuntu has finally announced that it is going to end GNOME as Ubuntu's Default desktop environment and has also said that Ubuntu 11.04 will have Unity Desktop Environment which was default for the Ubuntu Netbook editions. I'm not really happy with this change. Unity is light weight, yes. But still not a good choice for a desktop version. Ubuntu is working on a better Unity version for desktop. Hope that would be better. If you want to try Unity Desktop Environment in your Ubuntu 10.04/10.10, then just log in to terminal and type the following code :

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-netbook

Post your views on this change.

Play huge games in LINUX platform

Are you a LINUX user?

Are you fed up of searching games for LINUX platform?

Are you terribly frustrated by trying out some horrible steps to install good games in LINUX platform?

Then here is the solution for all your problems :)
You are only one click far from playing games in LINUX platform which you actually played in Microsoft Windows Platform.

Yes, we can play games which are specially built for Windows platform in LINUX platform too with a fabulous software named PlayOnLinux :)

PlayOnLinux is a piece of sofware which allows you to easily install and use numerous games and apps designed to run with Microsoft® Windows®.

What are the features of PlayOnLinux software?

You don't have to own a Windows® license to use PlayOnLinux.

PlayOnLinux is based on Wine, and so profits from all its features yet it keeps the user from having to deal with its complexity.

PlayOnLinux is free software.

PlayOnLinux uses Bash and Python.

Download this package from here.
Ubuntu users can download this package from here.

Thank you for read this post :) Please do comment :)

Booting up your computer faster than before

You might be in very urgent situation to go home, so you turn off your computer and get ready to go home but unfortunately, your boss may call you right at that moment and ask you to send mail to some one or ask you to do some small work. At this point of time, you will switch on your system. But this task takes much time and time really matters when you are in hurry. You start to scold your boss because he gave you some work when you are in hurry to go home :) The assigned task takes atleast 15-20mins. This is the situation where you get frustrated. But no need to worry about these things from now on because UEFI is being launched.

What exactly is UEFI?

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI is a replacement for the older BIOS firmware interface present in all IBM PC-compatible personal computers.

BIOS is being used nowadays but in another one year, all new systems will be having UEFI :) UEFI is working on reducing the boot-up time of the system. They are implementing to boot system within few seconds. UEFI will increase speed of computers, keyboards, hubs, networking :)

Thank you :) Please do comment :)

MNP(Mobile Number portability) in INDIA from Nov 8th Onwards

Frustrated by changing mobile numbers? Then here is the solution :)

Indian telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has announced that Mobile Number portability (MNP) will be implemented in all the telecom circles across India.

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) allows the Mobile service subscribers to retain their existing mobile number when they move from one Service Provider to another Service Provider.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has fixed Rs. 19 for the Mobile Number Portability Per Port Transaction Charge. The operators are free to charge any amount less than or equal to this charge.

List of Mobile Operators and Dates when it will be implemented :

Nov 8th -: Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Loop Mobile

Nov 11th –: Aircel, Uninor, Reliance GSM ( Rcom) and Tata Docomo

Nov 14th-: BSNL ,MTS, Idea Cellular and BSNL CDMA

Nov 17th-: Vodafone Essar, Reliance Mobile (CDMA) and Tata indicom.

Secure your system by USB DISK SECURITY

If you are a Microsoft Windows user then you must have suffered lot of problems with VIRUSES. VIRUS means VITAL INFORMATION RESOURCE UNDER SEIZE.

What exactly the viruses do to your system?

Viruses can be majorly classified into 3 groups

Harmful Viruses

Dangerous Viruses

Very Dangerous Viruses

Harmful viruses are the one which do not affect to a larger extent but they slow down the speed/performance of the system.

Dangerous Viruses are the one which can steal your data and also affects your system with a higher degree.

Very Dangerous Viruses are the one which can destruct your computer. These can cause failure of boot-sector and may make changes to tour computer to a greater extent.

Now you have a brief idea about viruses and what it can do. And most viruses come from portable devices like pen drives. To secure your system from viruses, the software which i prefer is USB DISK SECURITY :) :)

This is the most useful Anti-virus software for WINDOWS users. This will deactivate the AUTORUN of pen drives and secure your system from viruses.

Features of this software:--

USB shied. Protect your pen drive to get affect from your computer viruses

USB Scan. This will scan your pen drive right when you plug it to USB slot.

Memory Shield. This will protect your harddisk from viruses.

Repair System. This will repair the Windows Registry and cleans the harmful files and folders.

Auto Start. This provides easy modification of your computer startup programs.

Disable AUTORUN of pen drive.

Download This software from here.

Download location-1

Download location-1

Thank you :) Post your comments in comment panel :)

Change WINDOWS XP serial key with RockXP

You might have installed WINDOWS XP in your system and now you might be willing to change the serial key of your windows copy. To do this, you may think of reinstalling WINDOWS but i say NO for this. You can easily change the serial key of your WINDOWS and all MICROSOFT product keys too which you have installed in your computer with this small software named RockXP.

Steps to change the serial key of your WINDOWS XP:-

Download ROCKXP software from here..

Open RockXP software by double-clicking on it.

Click on I Agree option.

Now click on WINDOWS KEY tab.

Click on SCAN

Select WINDOWS XP from SOFTWARE menu.

Product key tab menu shows your current WINDOWS XP serial.

You can change your WINDOWS XP serial key by typing the key in CHANGE YOUR KEY tab menu. After entering the key, click on modify and you are done with this.

Now your copy of WINDOWS XP serial key is changed :)

RockXP features:-

Allow you to get all Microsoft Software Serials

Allow you to change your XP key

Allow you to save you XP activation

Allow you to retrieve you internet connection parameters (like passwords)

Allow you to retrieve MSN login and password

Allow you to retrieve XP login and HASH password

Allow you to display system password (LSA)

Allow you to generate random password

Thank you:) Please do comment on this post if you like and if you need help regarding this post, then comment in comments panel :) :)

Restore/Recover Original panels and Menu bar in Ubuntu

Worried about the panel deletion or the contents of the panel? Then why sit and cry? :) Just follow the steps as mentioned in this article and get back your original panel contents.

You might be exploring with UBUNTU and suddenly you might have right clicked on the panel and selected DELETE THIS PANEL option and the panel would have vanished. Because of this, you could have suffered from the problem of not opening the home folder, terminal and etc... For all these things, you have a simple solution. Just carry out the steps as mentioned below and get back the panels and menu bar.

Steps:-

Press Alt+f2. This opens up a Run application for you.

Now type gnome-terminal in the tab and hit ENTER.

Now type the following commands in terminal.
- gconftool-2 --shutdown
- rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel
- pkill gnome-panel

Now you should have got your original panel and menu bar without computer restart or logout :)

Thank you :) Please do comment if you need help regarding this article in comments panel :)

Install libreoffice in ubuntu

You might have used OPEN OFFICE in UBUNTU platform till today but there is another software LIBREOFFICE which is compatible with other major office suites. This software is available in other platforms too. This software can be downloaded for free :)

Installation steps:-

Go to terminal and type sudo apt-get remove --purge openoffice*.* [Optional]

Download the software of your choice from here

After downloading, extract the files to the folder with the name LibreOffice. Inside LibreOffice, create another folder with the name DEBS and move all the extracted files to DEBS folder or You can easily do all these tasks by a simple command. Type sudo dpkg -i ~/Desktop/en-US/DEBS/*.deb in terminal and you are done with this.

Finally you should install Desktop integration package. To do that, type the following in terminal. sudo dpkg -i ~/Desktop/en-US/DEBS/desktop-integration/libreoffice3.3-debian-menus_3.3-9526_all.deb

Installation complete and now you can use LibreOffice.

Thank you :) Please do comments in Comments panel :)

TeamViewer Remote Administration Software

Till now you have used your own system and many a times you might have thought of using others system(Not hacking) too by your system by sitting at your place i.e System inside a System. We call this process as Remote Administration or Remote Controlled System. This article gives you a clear knowledge of using others system(With approval by the owner of the system which you want to use).

TeamViewer is a software which helps you to get a remote access to others computers :) This is a software which is used for Remote control, desktop sharing and file transfer b/w computers. This works in Microsoft Windows, MAC PC, Linux operating systems.

To get remote access, both the systems should have TeamViewer software installed in it. When Teamviewer is started on a computer, it generates a partner ID and password. To establish a connection from a local client to a remote host machine, the local operator must communicate with the remote operator, request the ID and password, then enter these into the local TeamViewer.

Features of TeamViewer:-

Remote administration of unattended servers.

File transfer.

Highest security standard.

Online status display.

Remote support without installation.

Remote presentation of products, solutions and services.

Browser based access.

Thank you :)

Accessing Linux Partitions from Windows

It is very common to have dual boot systems with Windows on one side and Ubuntu/Linux being the other one. Just how Windows 7 supports file systems such as NTFS and FAT32, Ubuntu and most linux distributions support ext2, ext3 and ext4 (extended file systems). ext4 being the latest journaling file system. You might have noticed that you cannot access ext2/ext3/ext4 partitions from your Windows. Here's a simple way of doing it. All you need is a simple software ext2Read.

Download ext2Read from here.

Run the application in administrator mode. And then you can see all the disks with ext2/3/4 partitions. You can even copy files and folders(recursively). Here's a snapshot of it.

Comment your queries.

Microsoft WINDOWS Notepad Tricks

Make the Matrix

To make this, open notepad and type the following:
@echo off
color 2
:start
echo %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random% %random%
goto start

Save this file as Matrix.bat
Make sure the file type is kept as ALL FILES while saving it as a .bat file.

Single Character Matrix

Type in the following in notepad:

@echo off
color 0a
:A
echo 7 y x 3 W 8 G M P q 1 F 0 U v c i j O D s a E I j H 9 t 6 7 z C B 4 g 8 3 W 8 G
ping localhost -n 1 > nul
goto A

Save the file as Matrix2.bat and run the file.
The file type should be kept as ALL FILES while saving a .bat file.

Make a fake Virus POP UP
Type the following code in notepad:

@echo off
msg * WARNING
msg * VIRUS ENTERED YOUR PC

Save the file as pop.bat and run it. You should get two pop up messages. There has been an issue on some computers, but it should work on most computers.

Create a command prompt Virus message.

Type the following in notepad:

@ echo off
title Virus
echo Your system is affected by virus
PAUSE
echo:
echo Windows will now try to undo changes
PAUSE
echo:
echo FAILED !
PAUSE
echo:
echo Your system is corrupt
PAUSE

Save the file as virus.bat and run the file.

Procedure to hide your Friends List in Facebook:

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