Geek's Stuff!

Play on Linux

2011-05-15T17:01:00.003+05:30

"Linux is the world,Linux is freedom... blah blah blah". Everyone has heard such things and we keep hearing them. Even though linux has grown from a mere console to a user friendly interface in a short time frame, lets accept Linux is still in the growing phase. Its gonna take some time before the doors and windows are gonna shut and every house will have a penguin in their computers.

I agree when im talking about linux, initially its not for normal people. Its for science, using sophisticated tools, programming etc... But since the inception of Ubuntu, the attitude towards linux has changed. It has shown the world that linux is for everyone.

One of the most frustrating feature of linux is there are not many games that support the OS. Mostly because the windows has the market of household desktops still under its captivation and most of the games are developed considering windows in mind. I know we get many bundled up games with linux distros, but are they enough? What about the games like Counter strike, Need For Speed etc? Do linux have support for them? This is what i went on to explore... and thats when i stumbled upon this site... PlayonLinux

Its the software that can help you to install games and apps made for windows... Though it internally uses Wine.. it has a list of softwares and games that it supports and guarantee's that it can work on linux... I straight away installed this and yes.. it truly supports few of my favorite games which i was addicted on windows...

I'm yet to explore more on this.. Go ahead explore...PlayonLinux

Cracking the root password III

2011-05-15T14:27:00.003+05:30

Long time back I had written about how to change the root user password before on ubuntu

http://bit.ly/mP2x4m

But the method that i had described before is obsolete now... With ubuntu evolving, today that method in my previous post wont work.

I was trying to install windows 7 over the existing ubuntu and as you know the windows bootloader overwrites the boot sector and thus the grub got wiped out. Wanting to fix the grub, i logged in as a live user session after long time. But to my surprise.. i couldn't change the root user password as i mentioned in my previous post. Hence i went searching for the new way to change the root password because without the root password i wont be able to run install grub ...and other commands.

finally i found a more simpler way to crack this and reset the password.

if you run the command below from the terminal

:~$ sudo passwd root

it does the job, it asks for the new password and you can type in the key patterns you want and use it as the root user password. This should work on ubuntu 9.10 and the after flavors.

SystemCheckup without an Antivirus

2011-01-27T15:52:00.004+05:30

Last week, i was called to fix a machine which had XP installed in it. As usual, i tried to look into the symptoms. The behavior i observed was, whenever i tried to execute a shortcut( or Double click a short cut) to open an application, nothing happens. None of the applications opened.
Surely i figured out, that the system was affected with some kinda virus. And when i didn't want to continue looking at the symptoms of that virus and when i came to know that data backup was not needed, i just went ahead with a clean reinstall of the Windows.

But the cool part which i figured out later is, how to identify if our executable( ie .exe ) files are affected with a virus.Because some of the apps act weirdly sometimes.It could be a failure in the app code, that might cause the app to stop working or it could be the virus.And usually most of the viruses target the .exe files on your system.

Here is an easy way to find out, if your system is really affected with that kinda virus or not.
1. Open Start -> Run
2. Type in cmd and press 'Enter' ( go to the command prompt )
3. goto your windows folder.
Mostly this action need you to key in the following commands

- cd \ 'press enter'
- cd windows or cd winnt 'press enter'
- cd system32 'press enter'
- setup 'press enter'

If you get a popup window saying " Please go to Control Panel to install and configure system components" then your .exe files are not affected and you can be sure that your system is safely away from those harmful viruses.

If you get something else... or nothing pops up... then you better get your AntiVirus updated.
This method can also be used to check your computer, even without an antivirus available.

Cloud VS Restaurant

2010-09-11T23:43:00.004+05:30

Cloud Computing is a hot topic in todays IT forums, talks and research.I wanted to understand what a cloud can be from an outsiders point of view. So i went through few blogs and webpages to know what really is this Cloud. Even though i got few points, few were still inscrutable and undecipherable.
I would like to present here a small distinguishing or rather similarities between the Clouds and Restaurants here in India.

Turn Off Desktop Cleanup Warning in XP

2010-06-20T09:37:00.003+05:30

Windows xp always shows this ballon popup, which suggest you for a desktop cleanup. When you run this cleanup wizard, it removes your unused desktop shortcuts or files and places them into a unused folder.

But most of the times, this balloon is irritating and i want my desktop to be like the way it is..
I have a quick fix for this...
1.Right Click on the empty space on your desktop,
2.Goto> Properties
3. select the desktop tab
4. Click on the Customize Desktop button
5. Under General tab you will be able to see desktop cleanup
6. Uncheck the Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days checkbox...
7. Click ok>Apply>ok and you are done..
8. Your windows will not complain to you anymore about your desktop

Search Forums with Omgili, BoardReader and BoardTracker

2010-06-04T07:44:00.006+05:30

We all know that forums are a great place to get some awesome stuff; for FREE! We get softwares, games, OS - all cracked! We also get ebooks, music, videos, tv series and loads of things. However, almost all forums need registrations. And it's kinda bugging to register to many sites because of high chances of forgetting the passwords or even the sites sometimes. It's better to have a forum search engine.Omgili, BoardTracker and BoardReader are 3 forum search engines that I came across. These sites take your query and search over 40,000+ message boards to give you a consolidated result. Each of these results would take you directly to the corresponding post, so this would allow you to access the pages without registering.

Of the 3 sites, I find Omgili the most useful since the results are totally customizable as in you can set the criteria for timeframe as past month, past 3 months, and so on and you can also set the minimum number of replies, minimum number of discussing users as a criteria. It also shows you a buzz graph about the daily activity and a list of links referring to related forums. The other 2 sites have more or less the same feature.

Use keyboard to browse faster

2010-06-03T01:17:00.006+05:30

This post is for all those people who hate mice. Well, I'm talking about a computer mouse. Anyway, I HATE to use a mouse and I'm better off with keyboard. So if you are one of those who like using just a keyboard while browsing, then Surfkeys is for you. Surfkeys is a Firefox Addon which minimizes the use of mouse to a great extent. There are pre-defined shortcuts, which can be customized, for different functions like

scrolling a page, opening and closing of a tab, etc. This would be a great help for those who use a laptop. All the basic functions can be done easily without taking your hand off the keyboard, instead of holding a mouse and go pointing-and-clicking. Some of the shortcuts for performing such activities are:

j - scroll a page down
k - scroll a page up
p - page up
; - page down
u - previous tab
o - next tab
g - goto address bar
d - goto search bar
y - closes current tab
w - closes the window

These are some of the shortcuts. There are several others that come in handy. Give it a try.

Check invisible contacts on Yahoo!

2010-06-01T22:34:00.005+05:30

Ever wanted to check which of your friends are hiding from you on yahoo chat? Wanted to check if s/he is invisible? DetectInvisible does just that. Type the userid you want to check and the site gives you the status of the user - online, offline, invisible. You can send a message, call the ID, view profile or even save the avatar.

Know more about a website

2010-05-31T20:55:00.004+05:30

There's now an easier way to find information about a website. With QuarkBase, you can find everything about a website. Hit a search and you'll get details about it like it's founder/co-founder, internet traffic, company, location (with a Google Map), address, number of visitors, etc. You can also find stuff relating to pagerank, which countries the website is famous in, it's social popularity, list of similar sites and a screenshot of the website too. Well, screenshot sounds obvious when you're getting so much of info.

Use a disposable Email address to keep away the SPAM!

2010-05-29T18:38:00.004+05:30

We give our E-mail IDs to every website we register. This is given so that we receive a confirmation E-mail from the website which by clicking would complete the registration. As a return gift, our mailboxes are flooded with advertisements, offers and more such (junk)mails. This can be a pain in the neck.

Solution: Use a disposable E-mail ID.

10MinuteMail is a website where you can get a disposable E-mail ID which would last for 10 minutes. Along with generating email IDs, it also has an inbox wherein you can receive your confirmation mails. And still, if you feel that 10 minutes isn't sufficient, you can ask for 10 more minutes. You can use this time to complete your registrations. And you'll never be bothered by the site ever again!

Get Quick Facts from FacteryLabs

2010-05-27T00:02:00.002+05:30

If you're looking for quick facts about almost anything, then FacteryLabs would be it. Hit a search, you get the facts. These facts are fetched from various sites like Wikipedia, NYTimes, Amazon, etc. It has a big box on the left where you can do general searches. It also has 9 smaller boxes which are basically used to mark as favourites, so that you can track them. While you mark some as favourites, the other boxes refresh their contents with new topics. You can read the whole story of each of the results and you can also share this on Twitter and Facebook. FacteryLabs has different categories like Trends, Sports, Tech, etc. so you can check the stuff related to that category.

Convert a Webpage into a PDF

2010-05-25T23:18:00.006+05:30

As I browse through a lot of sites everyday I come across some very interesting articles, some of which I want to save for future use. Some articles like interviews, how-to's, etc. are always worth many reads. Or probably you don't have access to the internet all the time. Well, I rather like reading a PDF than a webpage. So I came across this site which converts a URL to a PDF. PdfMyUrl is a dead simple tool which converts a webpage into a pdf file and downloads it to your system with just a click of a button. You can also try a similar site called Pdfonfly. But I find PdfMyUrl much simpler.

Real-time Search from multiple websites with Soovle

2010-05-24T21:52:00.004+05:30

We all use search engines everyday. We use Google for almost everything. I don't know how many use Bing. I'm quite sure nobody uses Yahoo. We use Wikipedia for information regarding various topics, history, concepts, etc., Youtube for videos, movie clips and stuff. Some use Amazon for books and shopping. Now what if all these search engines combined to one and gave the results? And what if this search happens real-time? That's what Soovle does. Soovle is a search which has 7 different search engines clubbed together. The search engine logos reside around a central search box. As a search query is typed, a real-time search begins on each of these search engines and the results are displayed.

Set Beautiful Custom Google Homepages with Homeoogle and Favoorit

2010-05-22T18:42:00.010+05:30

Bored with the plain old white color Google Homepage? Now you can customize this page with some AWESOME backgrounds. Homeoogle is the site which lets you customize your google homepage. The site has some beautiful backgrounds and you can set them as your homepage. And in case you don't find what you are looking for, then you can request it. So choose your background and beautify your homepage.

While Homeoogle does this, Favoorit takes a step further. Favoorit not only offers you a wide variety of beautiful, elegant Google homepages like Homeoogle, but also lets you create custom themes. Along with this, you can also set a list of your favorite sites on your homepage.

Online Compilers

2010-05-21T00:44:00.016+05:30

Ever had a code but no compiler to compile it? Well, it may so happen that sometimes we get a piece of code which we want to try out but we don't have the respective compiler installed in our system. This may be because we are at workplace or browsing centre or any such place where we either have restricted access to install the compilers or we're too lazy to install.

Anyway, IdeOne is one such website that you can use for compiling a code. It supports a hell lot of languages and you can compile them online and view the output. No hassles; all you need to do is paste the piece of code in the text box and click on Run. You'll get the output. Codepad is another site with similar functionality, but the difference is that Codepad doesn't support as many languages as IdeOne does.

The Gates Notes

2010-05-20T00:06:00.009+05:30

Yes. As you rightly guessed, it's a website created by Bill Gates! After his retirement from Microsoft, Bill Gates thought of sharing with the world, his thoughts and ideas he was working on. And this, as he thought, could be effectively done through a website.

The Gates Notes talks about what Bill Gates is thinking about, what he is learning and other interesting conversations. It is a beautiful site, nicely designed with a lot of information. One of the things that caught my attention is the "Infrequently Asked Questions" section. Here, Bill talks about the Non-Microsoft topics and expresses his views. The best thing I like about this site is that you can mail Bill Gates regarding your queries and he answers. It may also be featured on the website. Never tried it though; but worth a shot.

FeedSquare for Google chrome

2010-05-08T07:53:00.008+05:30

These days i'm using more of google chrome than any other browser.

I'm a regular user of google Reader. Today i came across an extension in google chrome which provides you with a new artistic user interface for your google reader.
Once you install this your google reader can be viewed in a beautifully arranged colorful squares like the screen shot i have attached.Some of the feed posts will also have an image preview.The best feature of this, which i liked is the categories on your google reader are listed horizontally above all the squares.If you click on one of the category, only the feeds or squares belonging to the category will highlight itself.Once you click on the feeds that you wanna read. The feeds from that website will show up horizontally arranged below.You can choose to read anyone of them or there are options to mark them all read.
You can also read all your buddies shared items,tag them etc. You can share items, you can change the background look from the option on the below right corner of the page. Currently you can choose either light or dark background.
This gives you a new refreshing look for the old plain list like look of the google reader.The link is feedsquare. why dont you give it a try.

Read it Later with Instapaper

2010-04-22T00:11:00.011+05:30

We come across several articles as we browse through different sites everyday. Some of the articles may be interesting, but we may not find time to read it then and there. Saving the web pages is one option. But that would add to the clutter in your system. You can instead use Instapaper wherein you can store the links you want to view later. Once the links that you've stored here are visited, they're removed from the list of unread items. However, none of the links are lost, you can find them in the archive folder. There's also an option to view the articles in a plain text format. Instapaper has a dead simple interface and it helps you manage your unread articles in an easier and a much better way.

Embedded Translator in Chrome

2010-04-18T12:20:00.005+05:30

I'm starting to like Google Chrome these days...Today i discovered a new feature of Google chrome.. thats the embedded Google Translator which is available with the latest version of chrome browser.

Whenever you load a page which is not in the default language of the browser,a little bar will popup in the top of the browser just below the tab-bar in the window.

This will ask you for translating the current page in view to the default language.. it also shows to you, the language which the page is in.

Why dont you try it yourself .. http://www.desorganizadosanonimos.com/post/Organizacao-Total-Categorizacao-Pessoal.aspx. Click on the above link in your chrome browser.

If you are multilingual and you wanna read the text in its original scripts .. then you can disable the auto translator.

Disabling the translation bar:

Select the Tools menu
Select Options
Select Under the Hood tab
Uncheck the Offer to translate pages that aren't in the language i read checkbox

This will completely disable the autotranslate feature.

But there are other options. When you open other language pages.. from the options on the translate bar you can choose Never to translate the site or Never to translate the language. So next time you visit this site, the browser wont offer to translate the page.

6 Social Networking Extensions for Google Chrome

2010-04-13T22:25:00.010+05:30

Chrome is an open source browser released by the internet giant Google in 2008.From the Netscape to this day the browsers have always played a vital role in the way to access the web. Browser has mostly been the integral component or a gateway to the world of internet .

With IE, Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera and many more running in the race, the chrome has made its own mark in the user arena. With its most simplistic User interface and the minimal number of options and with my own experience i would like to say, chrome has evolved to be one of the fastest browsers today.

Social networking is an integral part of todays individual who are affiliated to the internet. It may be to keep in touch with your school friend or discussing the hot topics happening around or planning a new project or a party at your college its all happening on the networking sites.You decide which movie to go on the weekend, decide which book to read, discuss sports, current affairs etc... Social networks are the platform to express oneself and present it to the world in the way you want it to be.

Even though i'm a hardcore fan of Mozilla, i started using chrome. Mozilla has millions of plugins, which can be installed with the browser and with just a click, i can access all my friends updates on the social network sites..

Similarly in chrome there are extensions for few of my favorite networking sites...Let me start with the extension for

The extension called Facebook for chrome is just the thing i was looking for.I can directly access my wall, friends updates, other notifications.Just go to the link above and click on install and its done.. You dont have to restart the browser like in Mozilla which requires a restart after installing a plugin.

'Myspace-A place for friends' being the second in the race of social networks, the chrome extension alsois titled Myspace for chrome.This allows me to access to my profile, mail inbox, my pictures, friends status etc.

LinkedIn is the business social networking site. Here you can find the CEO's of biggest firms to the employee of a small organization. You can actually recommend people for a job, upload your education details, work experiences etc.The extension available for chrome doesn't allow you to do all of the above.. but it can help you to be updated with the news on linkedIn.You don't have to be logged in to check the updates..rather you just have to fill in the feed URL for your profile and it will get the feed whenever there is an update.

Orkut is similar to the social networking sites like facebook and myspace. you can add your friends and share your pictures etc.The chrome extension for ORKUT can give you access to your scraps, videos, pictures etc with just a click.

Even though Twitter cannot be claimed as a complete social networking site, but you can share you ideas with your followers in a message of just 180 characters.This is just the right place to share your links and other messages which you want your followers to know. With the name Chromed Bird the extension allows you to tweet, read your friends tweets, reply or share or retweet the same.

With all the Buzz happening around social networks, Google didn't wanna be left behind and hence they buzzed off with this new twitterlike application which comes with your gmail. This is again the place where you can actually send in messages to your Friends and share links.And with chrome buzz you can read the buzzing from your friends.. but i couldn't find a way to buzz back to my friends...The only disadvantage is you need to have a gmail account to get access to google buzz. So this one is only for the Google community.

With all the above extensions installed on my chrome browser, i can access my friends with just a single click and update them about anything i want to say or anything interesting happening around.The best thing i like about the extensions in chrome is that it doesn't require a browser restart unlike in Mozilla where it asks for the restart whenever you install a plugin.

Share like a Shareaholic

2010-04-11T10:14:00.008+05:30

The title says it all. Shareaholic is a browser addon that lets you share the sites/links you visit over a hundred different social networking and social bookmarking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Delicious, Reddit, Digg, Instapaper, etc. Sharing over so many networks with just a click of a button. You can customize the addon to get the button in the navigation toolbar, URL bar or in the context menu. It also has a Buzz button on the status bar which gives the current news, videos and blogs happening on the real time web that you can easily share on your favourite social networks.

The best part is: this addon basically designed for Firefox is also available for almost all browsers including Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera, Flock, etc.

So you think you've mastered Linux??

2010-04-06T23:58:00.003+05:30

Remember, in the movie Matrix, Neo says - "I know Kung Fu" and then Morpheus says - "Show Me"? This is kinda similar. You think you've mastered Linux? Prove it! This post goes as a challenge to all those Linux gurus and others as well. Download and install Suicide Linux and it'll really test your command line skills. Did you know that Bash corrects a wrongly typed command and continues with execution? Well, Suicide Linux is quite cruel in that terms. ANY TIME you make a mistake, ANY spelling, anything at all, this distro considers it as "rm -rf /" (which means kiss your data goodbye! cuz your entire hard disk is getting formatted). Try this distro and see how long you're going to last.

Download Youtube videos in mp3 format

2010-04-05T23:31:00.008+05:30

In my previous post, I talked about downloading videos from various video streaming sites including Youtube. Here's one way to download mp3 from Youtube videos. Like I said, you can prefix your Youtube URL with the word 'kick'. It takes you to a site where you'll have a lot of formats to download from. One of the formats is mp3. So you can download the mp3 of your favourite video.

There's another way to do this. Go to ListenToYoutube and paste the Youtube URL and the site converts the youtube video into corresponding mp3 and gives you the link.

Ways to download videos from Youtube and other video streaming sites

2010-04-04T19:38:00.010+05:30

There are lot of tools available to do the job mentioned above. You can use softwares, websites or addons to get the video. I would like to mention a few things to make it easier.

Softwares: Youtube Downloader or Vdownloader are some famous softwares that would help you download streaming videos. There are many other softwares, but I prefer not to use one.

Websites: Keepvid is a good website where you would paste the Youtube URL and you can choose between the mp4 or the flv format of the video to download.

You can also try this:

Prefix the youtube url with the word 'kick'
For example, this www.youtube.com/(something)
becomes, www.kickyoutube.com/(something)

and it'll take you to a page where you can download the video in several different formats like 3gp, mp4, avi, flv, etc.

The options are good, but it works only for Youtube.

Addons: Video DownloadHelper is what I would recommend to download videos from any video sharing site (I assume you're a Firefox user). It's a great addon with lot of options like 'quick download' and 'download and convert', to name a few.

Sites and softwares constrain to only some video streaming sites, not all. So there is still a traditional method of pulling out the videos from cache of your browser.

Windows users:

Goto C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\(something).default\Cache

You can sort the files in the Cache directory in the order of 'Date Modified' or 'Size' to get the video on top. Identify the video and rename it to (something).flv

Linux users:

It's a cakewalk. Allow the video to buffer and goto /tmp directory. You'll find the video there, with the thumbnail image (if the codecs are installed)

Creating Portable Apps

2010-03-18T10:30:00.015+05:30

An application.exe file is the self extractor file that will start the installer for the software. For your info this .exe files extracts the contents on to your harddrive.. usually your default ProgramFiles path and then runs the Actual .exe file which resides amidst the extracted files.

So installation of a software is a three step process comprising of extracting, executing and setting up the environment for execution of the program.

In the normal executing step, the software asks you to fill in the details about the user agreement, the path or directory to install and whether to add an entry into the start menu folder and provides you with many more options.

Portable apps are the softwares which wont bother you to fill up the details and will start directly with the program execution..Such as if you want to run realplayer, creating a portable app from the existing RealPlayer will help you to run it anywhere without installing.

Let me take you through the step of creating the portable apps, so that you can carry them on your thumb drive and execute it in your friends machine without installing the software.

For creating a portable app, we would require an extractor and an archiver..

So Universal Extractor and Winrar are best suited for our process.
Download both the softwares from the above links and install them.

Now let me illustrate the steps to create the portable app for the Application CCleaner.

The ccsetup224.exe file can be downloaded from the above link.

1. Lets extract the files in a subdirectory as shown below...

2. Now in the sub-directory extracted.. you search for the .exe file like the CCleaner.exe here.

(You can test whether the file works or not by running the .exe file in the extracted folder. If it works, then you can surely create a portable app for this application).Now select all the folders and files in the path and lets add them to an archive..As shown below.

3. The archive window of the winrar is shown below.. Rename the archive name as ccsetup.exe

4. In the advanced tab, click on the sfx options.

An advanced SFX window will pop up..

In the Run after extraction textbox.. fill in the name of the exe file to be executed

In this case its CCleaner.exe ( Be careful its case sensitive )

5. In the Modes tab select the Unpack to temporary folder and also select the radio button

"Hide all" as shown below .

6. Now in the Update tab select the radio button "Overwrite all files" as shown below and then click on OK on all the windows and allow the archive to complete.

7. After the archive is complete a file named ccsetup.exe appears in the directory.

This is your portable application.. You can copy this onto your pen drive or portable harddisk and run it directly.

8. Just open the file generated and the program runs.

While the portable app gives you freedom of not filling the forms. It will take the same amount of memory it takes to run when installed. It will be few seconds slower while opening, but it will sure reduce the work of installing .

Now you may try creating the portable application of the universal extractor and winrar.. so the whole process becomes portable.

Windows 8 makes it to the Microsoft Roadmap

2009-11-24T11:32:00.003+05:30

The Operating system gaint Microsoft has declared that it will release its next generation the successor of windows 7 by 2012. This Operating system named Windows 8 is rumored to be a 128 bit operating system. The company is co- working with Intel, AMD, HP and IBM for this 128bit machines which will be in markets by 2012.

Nothing much have been said about the features that its gonna have, but 3 years from now is a long way. And Microsoft having a hard time maintaining its timescale. Since Windows vista was delayed by 2 years, microsoft said that it wont have 5year gaps between its new launches. Then came windows 7 which is gaining market these days and in 3 more years lets hope windows 8 will have more to offer....

Google Chrome OS..."The Future has Arrived"

2009-11-23T10:46:00.003+05:30

The Wave of Google chrome is already setting sails in our minds. The Features that are being claimed by the new OS being developed by the Search giant Google, named after its browser chrome are just astonishing.

The announcement made 4 months back was to develop the Operating system that will enhance the way people surf and would allow to embrace the internet in a more easy way than the conventional operating systems. They have announced that chrome OS will have a faster booting ability. It predicts that the time taken for you to start browsing will be almost same as the time needed to switch on your TeleVision. Your internet reachability will be enhanced to this extent, you wont need to start all your programs to get to internet and it means you literally have a booting time of less than 5 seconds. It would be a milestone in the history of the operating systems.

Google said that "It's basically a Web browsing machine"and they added all data in Chrome OS will automatically be stored in the cloud, but also cached on the computer's internal hardware to boost performance. This OS will have to get rid of the usual desktop softwares such as the office suite of Microsoft for its faster performance and when google already have its google docs running online, it think it wont be a difficult task for them to host the applications on the servers and run them based on the requirements of an individual.

And with all the data synched on the cloud, its a winning move for google to conquer the search market and also increase its revenue. With the advent of Chrome OS it would mean that more google searches and more google ads tending to increased revenues and profits.

Google Fast Flip

2009-10-01T10:35:00.003+05:30

Everyone who knows to use internet is aware of the term epaper. This is the scanned version of everyday newspaper. Whether it is politics or the sports or a simple column giving a quote in the newspaper... every inch of it is scanned and then posted for online news readers.
The question is whats next after this epaper. This is where the Google fast flip comes handy.

The newspaper scans contain images and text which needs a lot of bandwidth to open up. As everyone knows, not every article in the newspaper is important to everyone. So This google apps called the fast flip, just gives a preview of each headline which actually loads faster.We can actually read the headlines and skip through non-interesting articles. This Apps has partnered with Newyork Times and other newspapers, intially and more details on the google blog.
Its accesible at fastflip.googlelabs.com

Mouse Tricks

2009-09-27T11:01:00.004+05:30

Everyone would be familiar with the most important user interface component of a computer... the mouse.

Now a days, its common for every mouse to have a wheel in it. The wheel as everyone know is used for scrolling up and down a document... This wheel has many other functions when it comes to a browser. Lets see what other functionality does this wheel has

1. Tabbed Browsing.

Every browser today supports tabbed browsing, whether its IE 8 , Mozilla , Opera or the google chrome... The wheel on your mouse can act as button. When you want a link to be open in a new tab, you just have to click on the wheel. The wheel is like a third button on your mouse.
Now you need not have to right click and then select the Open Link in New Tab option from now...Just go clicking the wheel.

2. The second trick is a cool one, just try holding the shift key on your keyboard and then try spinning your wheel( or scrolling) , you actually go forward and back depending on the direction you spun. This works in both IE and Mozilla.

3. One more trick with the wheel...In a situation where you have opened up multiple tabs say around 25 tabs open on your tab bar, you will have to go and click on the arrow button at the left or right end of the bar to scroll in correspondingly. Rather than doing this, you can actually move the mouse pointer on the tabs open and spin the wheel to scroll back and forth , This feature worked in mozilla firefox

Try it out... when you are bored to click on the back and forward button in a browser.

Few Tips to keep safe from Computer viruses

2009-05-27T15:11:00.012+05:30

Readers of this blog ...Today i wanna give you few tips to Safe keeping your desktops and laptops from all the viruses that are wildly waiting to attack your computer with their vulnerablities.

Good to know that these days the viruses don't get shipped with the Cd's or dvd's. And thus it leaves us only to the counter-attack the viruses that are in your pen drives, memory sticks or the memory cards.

I would like to present you the few basics at first and then proceed with the method to prevent viruses from attacking your PC.

Firstly as everyone suggests...install a good antivirus on your pc or laptop. Norton, McAfee, Avg, Eset Nod32 any one of them will be fine.

Keep updating your antivirus software regularly.

Before opening your pendrive do a scan of the pen drive with the antivirus scanner.

Delete all the files that would be shown as affected.

these are the few basic tips that you get from anyone who has an understanding of what the consequences a virus attack can have.

But as the days go by, and the technology grows... reducing the physical size but increasing the capacity of the pen drives. These days its common to have 2gb, 4gb, 8gb and 16gb pendrives.
Few years back we used to get hard disk of these sizes.
Scanning few mega bytes would not take much of the time, but these days when you have a 8 gb pen drive filled with your office files and you take to a cybercafe near your place for a print out and the guy there starts a scan on the whole pen drive... Believe me its gonna eat up lots of your minutes.
I experienced this when my friend brought the designs of our t-shirt in his 8gb pen drive to the shop where we had gone to give the order, and the guy there started scanning it.

We just required a single file from the pen drive. And in this age where impatience is the new life, its not agreeable to waste time scanning the whole pen drive.

So whats the alternative to scaning the whole pendrive.
Yeah I do have an alternative, But prior to it, let me take you on a walk through, of how the viruses from the pen drive affect the PC's on how so they spread.

When you insert your pendrive into the usb , the windows searches for the drivers and are automatically installed and it displays that the device is installed and ready to use

In the next step it searches for the 'autorun.exe' or "autorun.inf" file which lies inside every pendrive. This is a hidden file which will be in the pendrive by default from the device manufacturer .This file contains the various calls to other files. The windows by its default behaviour runs this autorun file.

So now if there are any virus scripts or any programs like trojan horse, malwares etc... they wil be inside your pendrive. The virus writter just need to edit this autorun file and put a line of code into it so that whenever autorun is called ,it automatically calls the virus script which runs in the background and thus it starts affecting all your files.
And this will happen everytime you plug this pendrive into your usb drive in any of the systems.

So my first tip is to disable the autorun in your windows.

My first action, is to prevented the windows to run the autorun file. And if this can be achieved, we would have stopped the pen drive to affect the system.
This is done by editing the groups policies. Go to start > run > type 'gpedit.msc' and press ok

A group policy editor window will popup. As shown below.
Now in this window there are two configurations the computer configuration and the user configurations.
When you click on these the right side partition will show various options which can be enabled and disabled.

Now we need to browse through the path computer configuration> Administrative templates > System . Now scroll down in the right partitions and you will find an option saying turn off autoplay. As shown below.
Double click on the Turn off Autoplay, you will get a popup window as shown below. here the default option would be selected saying its not configured. Change it to enabled and also select All drives in the drop down menu.

Now press Apply and Ok.
Now you need to change the settings in the user configuration. Its very similar to the above process . Go to the path user configuration > Administrative templates > System > Turn off Autoplay . enable it for all the drives.
as shown below.

Press ok and you are done with it. Close the window.

This also has a side effect. For example if you insert your favourite movie DVD. It now doesnot autorun with your DVD software. you need to browse the cd and manually select the files that you want to play.

2. The first one was good to prevent the virus from spreading.But the virus file is still in your pendrive. Usually the name of the virus file will be very similar to your folder names inside the pendrive. You open your pendrive and there is a virus file inside the pendrive ... something like 'New folder'. And you accidently doubleclick on this folder thinking it was your folder but it was actually 'New folder.exe' which runs the virus file.This again affects your computer.
So in this step we will change the folder options such that it shows all the hidden folders.

You go to start > control panel > folder options

In the Folder option window, scroll down and select 'Show hidden files and folders'

3. the third and the last step is to untick the check box saying 'hide the extensions of known files type'. It is just next option below the show hidden files option .This will display the extension of every file in the system. You will feel the difference when you open your mp3 folder where the name of the song is suffixed with .mp3

Now its easy to distinguish between the original 'New Folder' and the 'New Folder.exe'.

Thus after the step 2 and 3 the folder options should look similar to the image below.

Apply it and click on Ok and your are ready.
Thus now you need not be scared that you double clicked the drive as soon as you insert it into the usb drive and the virus will start to spread.
After opening the pendrive you just need to browse only the folders that you know are free of virus and now you dont accidently click into any of the unknown file. You can just delete the New folder.exe file now and similarly other hidden files.
Now you can put your pendrive anywhere , in a cybercafe and you don't need to worry that your pendrive is affected and you need to scan he whole memory now. Just right click and open the pendrive and only copy the files and folders that you created and the rest can be deleted.

Thus you dont need to waste time scanning , you need not waste time thinking that you opened the pendrive without scanning.

This method is safe only if there are few files.
And when every folder is affected in the pendrive, then you obviously need to have a good antivirus scanner to clean all your files or delete the virus.

Copy PICTURES from friends album on ORKUT

2009-05-18T18:27:00.002+05:30

Back again after a long time with some geeky stuff...

This was the time when i was viewing my friends albums on orkut....
And suddenly one day when i tried to copy the picture from his album... there was no menu opening on my right click....
So after that i was not able to copy my favorite pics from my friends albums...I started to think how to get the pic.. for those albums..
One of my friend suggested a breakthrough for this barrier....

I would like to share it here with you folks...
What you need here is just some work to your mouse and no extra software, neither any scripts running in the background..

Step 1: Just open a folder, may be your picture collection folder in your hard drive.

Step2: Just open a browser and login to your orkut account, browse to the picture that you wanna copy... open it in your friends profile....

Step 3: Just hold the left button of the mouse pressed on the picture and drag it to your folder on the task bar..( Just drag and drop the pic to your folder )and drop it into the folder...

Thats it... now the name of the file you just copied is a bit longer than you want..and also with some messy stuffs.. you will have to manually rename it.

Just go on copying all your favourite pics from your friends albums...and enjoy..!!

Get Emails Without Revealing Your Email Address

2009-04-06T15:22:00.005+05:30

We often come across situations wherein we want to receive a message by email but don't want to give out our email address; and think it would've been better if there was an alternate URL which can be shared in place of your email address. Well, whspr! is one such service where it creates a url from the email address that you provide. You just have to place the whspr! URL in place of your email address. This temporary URL would last for a minimum of one day and a maximum of 365 days (which means you can choose the number of days of its activity).

Shahi's online visual dicitionary

2009-04-04T00:28:00.005+05:30

Well.. all these days.. if i wanted to find out a meaning of the new word, i used the online web dictionaries available...
But few days before i came across this visual dictionary..

Its cool , since it combine's its meaning with the search from the web...

It combines wiktionary with the photos from Flickr, Google and yahoo images.. and provides you an extensive search... where you can click on the pictures and switch between the pictures from flickr or google.

Why dont you give it a try...@ Shahi's

Google to buy twitter

2009-04-03T23:51:00.006+05:30

After the talks of IBM buying SUN.... the next acquisition proposed by an unknown source is Google buying twitter....This could be a collaboration of the real time search engines, and the deal would go in the favour of both.

Twitter has a robust search engine that can pull out the information from their users profile.. efficiently,And google however are the leaders in the search industry. And if Twitter goes on increasing its popularity in this manner... it may be a threat to google...So Twitter's googlification might be a good option... when you can realize what will happen if twitter goes into the hands of google's rival yahoo or Microsoft....
And if twoogle would be the future of twitter, then the google's enormous computing power would be beneficial for twitter.

Well lets see what happens in the future....!!

Chat with a Stranger!

2009-04-01T00:10:00.005+05:30

You chat with your friends, relatives, loved ones every day. How would it be to chat with a complete stranger? Omegle is a new and innovative service for meeting new friends. Once you enter chat, you will be connected to a random user. You would know nothing about the other person (and vice versa, as you would be a stranger to him/her). No registration! No sign ups. Just chat, right away. Of course, chats are anonymous. Well, sometimes it is interesting and sometimes it is irritating. Its a nice way to kill time though.

Search anything with Everything

2009-03-26T22:09:00.007+05:30

I've tried a lot of desktop search applications like Google Desktop, Copernic and many others but nothing beats Everything! Well, I meant the software. Most of them slow down the system which is very irritating for me. And after a long search on the internet, I finally came across this software.

Everything is a light-weight desktop search tool (around 330kb). It's super-fast file indexing doesn't make you wait for long hours slowing down your system. It takes just a few seconds and it is done the first time you run the software. It has a very simple user interface, easy to install, minimal resource usage, real time updating and what not! It has both installable and portable versions. I strongly recommend this software to those who need a light-weight desktop search. Give it a try and I'm sure you'll love it.

Searching for Something?

2009-03-25T13:50:00.004+05:30

Everyday we search for something or the other on the internet. Stuff like ebooks, videos, pictures, etc. And for each of it, we goto different sites like Google, Youtube, Flickr, et al. This makes us quite uncomfortable sometimes. We may also forget some of the most useful sites and try to search in wrong and rather not-so-useful sites. Many of us wish that there's some site which has a collection of several different search engines so that we can choose the search engine we want and go ahead with the search.

Well, guess what? I came across a site called Joongel and I loved it. This site has around 200+ search engines grouped into different categories like images, videos, shopping, torrents and many more. Each group has 10 different sites; and there are 20+ groups. All you have to do is - give a keyword, select a category. You will be presented with the list of sites which you would like to search. Choose whichever site you want and Joongel will take you to that site with the desired results.

Maintianing your Privacy on Firefox...

2009-03-25T12:06:00.005+05:30

Being a firefox fan, i was searching for the addons... and i Stumbled upon these few security addons.. but i think they can be great help for all the geeks around to carry on with their peeky stuffs...

STEALTHER

The first one is the Stealther.... It allows you to browse the web in the stealth mode... It disables all the cookies, browsing history, cache files when you switch on the stealth mode.
This is similar to the Incognito mode in the Google Chrome. This allows you to browse the web safely without leaving any trace behind. I know this is already tickling your senses, Even i was insearch for such an addon from long time.
Distrust is a similar one that will help you browse in a private mode.

Close 'n' Forget

This one is a step ahead of Stealther... Suppose you forgot to switch on the private browsing mode and you come across a site and then it blinks to you that you forgot to switch on the private mode....What to do??? Close 'n' Forget comes to your rescue...!!
Just hit the special close button once you are finished and that site will be deleted from history and cookies cleared as if you had never visited the site.

If you want to Close the current tab and forget about the visit : suppress the related cookies and, if configured, the whole domain from the history.
Just install the close 'n' forget, find the new "close" button in the toolbar customization panel and drop it in your prefered place and just use it...

TabRenamizer

Do your tabs give you away? Why dont you change their names with TabRenamizer
This addon will let you play with the tab titles so that you can change them according to your will. With this you have 2 modes... The first one called the 'paranoid mode'.. which changes your tab names randomly... and the other 'custom mode' will allow you to rename the tabs with your custom names.

And thus with all these addons ...you can play safe.... in future with your mozilla....!!

De-Bugging the Web registrations!

2009-03-21T20:50:00.001+05:30

Many websites and most of the online forums require the user to have been registered and logged-in in order to read the individual posts completely. But many of us get irritated to register just to read a post in a forum which we might not even visit another time. So what is the work around?

Method 1 - BugMeNot

BugMeNot is a free online service where people share their login information of thousands of websites and online forums. All you have to do is, visit BugMeNot and search for the website / forum you want. You will get multiple login details, most of the times they will be valid. If the website you are looking for is not in the list or if none of the login information available is correct then read further for a more fool-proof method.
Method 2 - User Agent Switcher

Almost all the websites which mandates the user to register in order to view the hidden “exclusive” content blocks the Unregistered users, but NOT the Google Bot! Google Bot has the privilege to freely browse through the website without any restriction! We will just be exploiting this special privilege if Google Bot to our advantage ;)

We will be using a Firefox add-on called User-Agent Switcher.

1. Install this plugin and then go to Tools > User Agent Switcher > Options and then again to Options.

2. Select User Agent from the left sidebar and click Add. Now in the description field type, add:

crawl-66-249-66-1.googlebot.com

and in user agent field type:

Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)

3. Select Google Bot as your User Script by going to Tools > User Agent Switcher.

4. That’s it! Now browse any website or forum without registering!

Gmail's Undo Mail Innovation!

2009-03-21T20:48:00.001+05:30

Google Labs are at it again! The Official Gmail blog has revealed yet another new feature to their kitty. This time it’s Undo Send of the

Email you just sent. Say if you accidentally sent a ‘Love you’ mail to your ex or a Birthday wish which you intended to save as draft, no need to worry. You will now be allowed to Undo the action!

Mind you! this feature won’t recall an email that’s already gone; it just holds your message for five seconds so you have a chance to hit the panic button. The message will be sent even if the connection is lost or you closed the browser.

To enable the Undo Send feature, turn on Undo Send in Gmail Labs under Settings, and you’ll see a new “Undo” link on every sent mail confirmation. Click “Undo,” and your message will be caught before it’s sent and take you right back to compose.

This will surely one of the few really useful features from the labs off-late. What YOU think of it?

iPhone's New Firmware!

2009-03-21T20:42:00.003+05:30

On March 17th, Apple unveiled the much hyped new firmware version of iPhone - version 3.0 beta and since then the blogosphere and the twitterverse is abuzz with this news. The new firmware brings some exciting new features, like the Copy and Paste functionality, iPhone Tethering and Multimedia messaging.

But sadly, this beta version of the firmware is available only to the iPhone App developers and the final iPhone 3.0 firmware will be released during the summer for consumers and till then there is no direct way of accessing and testing out the features of this new firmware on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Now the good news is, here on TechPP you can download the iPhone 3.0 firmware beta for your iPhone (2G and 3G) or for your iPod Touch (1G and 2G), thanks to Saad Hamid. He will also provide you instructions on how to install and get it working on your device without any problems. Below you will find the download links for each of the device.

Cracking the Root Password Part II

2009-03-11T19:18:00.003+05:30

This is the sequel of my post hacking the ROOT

Here i would like to write about a new technique through which we can hack into the root.
This does not have limits... i mean to say this method can be used even if the grub of any system is locked down...
But both my methods the former one in the previous post and the one that i will present here all need physical access to the system...!!

This method requires the live cd.. preferably Ubuntu... since its simple

Insert the live cd and boot from the cd.

You can choose the option " Try ubuntu without any changes to your system"

- you need not have ubuntu installed on your harddrive.. u just need to boot it live.

let ubuntu boot up normally.... now go to System->Administration-> Users and Groups in the menu bar above.
you will have a "user settings" window poping up

just select root , click on properties and set the password by hand.Finally press ok

( sometimes you will also have to unlock , if you are not able to select root )

Now Shoot open the terminal.type su , it will ask for the password you just created.

Type fdisk -l in the terminal window. This will display the list of partitions on the harddrive. we are looking for a linux partition here.
next my linux drive here is /dev/sda2 or /dev/sda3 you will have to mount the partition. since i have two linux installed on my disk, let me work on my sda2 partition
lets create a folder to mount type mkdir /media/linuxpartition to create a directory.
now type mount /dev/sda2 /media/linuxpartition to mount the partition.
Now lets change the root type chroot /media/linuxpartition for my example here.
now you should have the command prompt symbol changed as shown below
Type passwd and enter the new password, and there you go... you have just changed the password for your linux root.
type reboot to restart the machine and login with your new password.. and enjoy...!!!

Waves of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic koala are out...

2009-03-03T21:23:00.003+05:30

Readers, Still the release of the jaunty is in April already the waves of the next release of ubuntu 9.10 code named Karmic Koala.. is scheduled for this october.
Ubuntu is sticking on to its six month release cycle...
With this Karmic Koala the plans are to introduce ubuntu series into cloud computing , the most happening topic today...

And with the desktop... and netbooks plans are to reduce the boot time from 25seconds to much lesser.... and i dont wanna take a guess this time.Also they are planning to improve the theme.. and the boot screen...

well there are lots to come..and lot more in reserve...

more you can read at Mark's post..Karmic Koala

Linux- Overrated?

2009-03-02T21:34:00.002+05:30

While those who disparage Linux might have a point with regard to its appearance or the lack of drivers, they fail to see the larger issue. Linux is a success because it represents an alternative in an environment that is designed to help the powerful eliminate alternatives.

So often, the defense of Linux involves a price argument. More important than the free price is the freedom Linux and other GPL software represent. Lately, I have noticed a lot of bloggers disparaging Linux-based operating systems for all kinds of reasons, from aesthetics to business strategies.
Of these, Linux Hater's blog stood above the rest, and though his criticisms are generally valid, he completely misses the mark. Though we should never avoid holding Linux-based operating systems to the same standards as proprietary platforms, we must recognize that any shortcomings are minor in the context of all of the successes of Linux and open sourcesoftware.
Just check the blog, they make some really valid points.

The new Graphene Technology for Data Storage!

2009-03-02T21:29:00.003+05:30

It seems that every few months, companies come up with ways to cram more memory into flash drives -- the memory technology that makes things like iPods tick. In a few years, however, flash drive memory development as we know it will hit a brick wall and new techniques will be needed to increase capacity. That's where graphene comes in.

A single layer of graphite, which is used in the common pencil, graphene is composed of carbon atoms and looks like tiny chicken wire. In this configuration, it is an exceptionally strong material that efficiently conducts electricity.

Its circuitry can also be built at much smaller sizes -- less than 10 nanometers compared with the current 34-nanometer circuitry of the smallest flash memory devices. And perhaps most importantly, graphene memory can be stacked in three dimensions rather than arrayed in two, allowing for considerably more memory to be crammed into a single chip.

Wow!, in such a case- a 1TB iPOD would be of the size of the present day iPOD nano 3G!

Safari 4- A Deep insight!

2009-03-02T21:19:00.004+05:30

Despite all the hyperbole over Apple's "world's fastest and most innovative browser" claim, there's a lot to genuinely like in the beta of Safari 4 -- along with a few minor quibbles.

Apple boasts that the Nitro JavaScript engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3, up to 30 times faster than Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, and more than 3 times faster than Mozilla's Firefox 3. It loads HTML pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.

While we're all hopped up on the speed-claim bandwagon, Apple says Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG Web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic Web applications. Cool. (But some other browser makers aren't particularly interested or concerned with the test.)

Amidst all these claims there's that element of thumbs down..
At first glance, Safari 4 for Mac OS X appears remarkably similar to Safari 3. Now, though, there's a little bug icon in the right side of the toolbar for reporting bugs, the reload button has disappeared (but is now at the end of the URL's address field), and the tabs are at the top -- above the address bar in the spot that used to be taken by a page's title. It's a little like Chrome, for those who've tried outGoogle's new browser.

At first, the new tabs are painful, so much so that I went looking for Safari 3 ... and realized my machine ditched it in favor of Safari 4. Sure, I could have snagged it via Time Machine or simply downloaded it, but I pressed on.

The net result of the new tabs, however, is that the typical toolbar area takes up about 25 percent less space. Now, instead of four rows of tabs, bookmarks, address, and title fields, there are just three rows. It gives you a bit of extra vertical space for Web page content. Handy.

(Is it all in preparation for a screen-constrained Mac netbook, perhaps?)

The Cover Flow and Top Sites

It didn't take long for Apple to get hammered with criticism over a couple of its eye-candy features, Cover Flow and Top Sites, but those critics just don't understand -- humans are a visually oriented species, and these two features have the power to make browsing better than ever before.

Here's something that you'd have met with. Sometimes when we accidentally close windows that we don't mean to -- or close a window that takes out a series of tabs -- and finding the page that we want to return to in a long history list can be hit or miss (mostly miss). Then we end up googling again until we eventually find my way back. Safari 4's Cover Flow history feature changes everything.

Unlike the not-so-useful Cover Flow in iTunes and on the iPhone, Cover Flow for history is amazing. It gives you a set of pictures of the Web pages you've visited in chronological order, making it surprisingly easy to recognize the page you want to return to.

Apple also has two additional features available from the History drop down menu: Reopen Last Closed Window and Reopen All Windows From Last Session. These options can help you return to the sites you want if you accidentally close a window (or make it easier to snoop on others).

In addition, Apple has improved the address field by making it smarter -- start typing an address and it automatically completes Web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history.

On the downside, Safari 4 doesn't boast the plug-in capabilities that come with Firefox 3, and Apple hasn't indicated much interest in fostering a plug-in community. PC users, though, might appreciate the new Windows-native look of their version of Safari, which uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars.

For previous Safari 3 users, Safari 4 is definitely a worthy upgrade. And so far, over a few days and gobs of pages, it hasn't crashed once.

Windows 7- Build 7022 Leaked?

2009-02-10T05:33:00.001+05:30

Microsoft are currently working hard towards the Release Candidate of Windows 7. Currently the only official build available to testers and the general public is build 7000 but we have learned that 7022 has leaked to the internet today.

According to a Russian torrent site it was leaked by "friendly" Microsoft Ukraine individuals.(Lol lol, no wonder why piracy rules the world :P ) It's not likely that the build contains any of the UAC changes Microsoft has recently promised. The build is Build 7022.winmain.090115-1850 which indicates it was built nearly a month ago. Some Microsoft employees have twittered recently that they were "installing build 7034" so the company is clearly pushing ahead with the builds ready for the upcoming Release Candidate.

Reinstall GRUB

2009-02-04T10:39:00.000+05:30

Grub, by default, resides in the Master Boot Record(MBR). When you try to install some other boot loader or try to install/reinstall Windows, the grub information in the MBR will be overwritten. So, Grub might have to be reinstalled.

When some/any part of partition information is changed, the grub configuration won’t be automatically notified of it and so, the grub configuration will remain as it is. There maybe many cases in which the partition information maybe changed like when you create an extra partition, which is something trivial and may or may not affect the grub boot loader. However, most of the times, changes in the partition information will result in errors when the grub boot loader is loaded. So, the grub configuration has to be updated and the easiest way is to reinstall Grub.

There are many such cases and in these cases, people tend to treat the effect, more than the cause. By this, I mean people tend to usually reinstall Ubuntu or Fedora or whichever GNU/Linux operating system they are using, through which Grub will be automatically reinstalled. But is it necessary? No, Grub can be reinstalled without reinstalling the entire operating system! In fact, Fedora CD/DVD does offer to reinstall Grub if you choose to upgrade your system. However, I have tried to use that option in many of my friends’ computers and it has never worked! I have no idea why it doesn’t work. So I resort to the easiest fool-proof method I know - COMMANDS @ TERMINAL

COMMANDS TO REINSTALL GRUB:

All you need to do is access the terminal using the installation CD/DVD of your GNU/Linux operating system. Ubuntu installation CD is a live CD and so, when it loads, you can run the terminal from there. Fedora installation CD/DVD offers options through which you will have to choose to upgrade the system using commands(rescue mode).

Once you are at the terminal, you will have to access the ‘grub’ shell to change the grub configuration. So, give this command at the terminal:

$ grub

If it says that you don’t have the permission, in which case you will not have logged in as root(as in Ubuntu), give this command at the terminal:

$ sudo grub

You will get the grub-shell prompt:

grub>

Now, you will have to find out in which partition Grub had been installed before, so that you reinstall in that partition only. Give this command at the terminal:

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

(returns value)

It returns the number of the partition in which Grub i.e your GNU/Linux had been installed.

e.g.,

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

(hd0,2)

NOTE:

Sometimes, when Grub has not been installed properly, the file “/boot/grub/stage1″ may not exist. So, the output will be “Error 15: File not found”. In such a case, come out of the grub-shell by pressing “Ctrl+c”. Then, at the shell prompt, give this command at the terminal:

$ fdisk -l

Again, if you are not logged in as root, give this command at the terminal:

$ sudo fdisk -l

The output will list all the partitions and it’s properties, including the file system type.

e.g.,

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1 1 654 5253223+ b W95 FAT32

/dev/sda2 * 655 1962 10506510 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda3 1963 3924 15759765 83 Linux

The “System” attribute of your GNU/Linux operating system will be “Linux”. So note down that partition number.

e.g., sda3

Since it’s array numbering, sdaN is mapped to (hd0,N-1).

Just (hd0) will be the Master Boot Record(MBR).

sda1 will be (hd0,0) and so on.

So, sda3 will be (hd0,2)

Now, log into the grub-shell prompt again.

Before reinstalling Grub, you will have to notify the partition that your Grub i.e. GNU/Linux is resided in. So, give this command at the terminal:

grub> root (returned value)

e.g.,

grub> root (hd0,2)

Now, reinstall grub in the MBR i.e. the returned value without number part.

e.g., (hd0)

So, give this command at the terminal:

grub> setup (returned value without number part)

e.g.,

grub> setup (hd0)

Exit the grub-shell prompt using “Ctrl+c”.

Exit the shell prompt using “Ctrl+d”.

PS:

You can also reinstall Grub in your GNU/Linux partition, only if this GNU/Linux partition is “primary” and you have another boot loader installed at the MBR(in case of more than one GNU/Linux operating systems) through which you can boot this primary partition. To do that, give this command at the terminal:

grub> setup (returned value)

e.g.,

grub> setup (hd0,2)

Phantom OS- A New Rvolution ?

2009-02-04T10:35:00.001+05:30

Russian programmer Dmitry Zavalishin is working on a revolutionary new concept for an operating system. In Zavalishin’s Phantom OS, snapshots of the entire system will be continually saved to disk, preserving state for running applications and active data. There are no files in the traditional sense, instead a file is merely an object with persistent state. Neat!

Phantom is new, but it can currently boot, execute applications, and continually save system state to disk. A GUI is planned, as are cross-development tools. The new OS is planning to support interpreted scripting languages like Ruby and Python, and virtual machine programming languages like C# and Java. What, no perl?!

The saved-state nature of Phantom makes it a real contender for both the mobile market, as well as servers. Switch off your phone running Phantom and then turn it back on with no loss of data or apparent interruption in what you were doing. For server environments, a power loss may no longer be a big deal.

It’s great to see real innovation in the OS space. Challenging the status quo may mean that Phantom has an uphill battle before it, but it’s refreshing to see people really thinking outside the box.

*Source -Crunchgear.

Intrepid- Flash Update Problem

2009-01-27T17:16:00.002+05:30

I usually run any updates on a my Ubuntu. For the Flash update in Intrepid Ibex I’ve made an exception: each page I opened that contained Flash (and in these days, which doesn’t?) pulled my CPU to 100%. That’s annoying.

If you have the same problem, just search for the flash update in your Update Manager and install it. Right click in the list, select “Uncheck all” and select only the flash update. After a restart of firefox you should be OK.

In my install the Update Manager started complaining that it wanted to do a Partial update. Don’t worry, just click “Close”.

Overall 8.10 is running extremely well. There are a few bugs that are annoying:

NetworkManager forgets the password if you use multiple wireless networks.
The dimming of the screen still doesn’t work right. If I plug in then it will dim to a fixed value, even if I selected it to be at a lower value. And plugging it in will select a higher value.
Suspend and Wakeup works very good on my Sony. But it seems that changing anything during sleep kills the stability. I mean stuff like: unplug, or plug, the AC or attached (yes, or detach) an external monitor. I understand that’s complicated stuff: you wake up and the world has changed. I have that every day.
I still had to do some tweaking to make the external monitor work. What’s good: at least it tried to adjust the Virtual setting in xorg.xonf.
Compiz still can’t handle more then 2048×2048. Is it just me, or is that a bit outdated?

What I miss in the release is the USP, the killer app, … Of course it’s faster, uses less memory, works better with the hardware, but what makes this release special? It should have been the theme, but that is too weak for me.

It’s going to be a good release. Probably it will bring Ubuntu up to the level where XP was after about 7 or 8 years: stable and just working. Let’s hope the next release will take that step extra that pulls it above M$(yea!, M$) and Apple.

Intrepid Ibex vs Windows 7

2009-01-27T17:08:00.003+05:30

I’ve downloaded the Windows 7 build 7000 beta, I wonder if it can match Ubuntu’s Performance, usability and feature set.

First the download itself: it took a long time since Microsoft didn’t expect so many people to download the beta..Is that naive or just plain stupid?

But after a full night downloading(yeah!,moreso, because of my internet plan :P) the ISO is in.

I had Vista before and I assume that Windows 7 should run on a machine with at least Vista’s settings: I have created a partition with 16Gb disk, 2Gb memory and 128Mb video memory, 3D enabled. Microsoft promised that Windows 7 would be more resource friendly.

It takes ages before Windows 7 has figured out what hardware the machine contains, but the installation itself runs smoothly. It requires 2 restarts, but thats normal with Windows(:P). After about 50 minutes I’m on a working desktop. But, darn!, Aero doesn’t work, that was to be expected. The install takes about 7Gb (!). So I ended up manually updating the drivers for the system and the video. Another restart required.

Ubuntu clearly wins here. The Ubuntu installation is easier, more logical and much faster.

Going over to the General performance issues. I feel thats its still slow. When I click anything it opens slow, very slow. The Card Deck application took about 50 seconds to open.

I have the feeling that Windows 7, as Vista, depends to much on Aero for the frontend that not being able to run Aero breaks the whole system. Also Windows 7 still starts a lot of services after it has already shown the desktop which causes it to be less responsive in the first minutes. After this is done the system response improves a lot. It’s not as fast as Windows XP , but it’s much better then Vista.

Memory usage after startup is 300Mb, that’s impressive!

Ubuntu is faster. That’s no surprise.

After playing with the monitor settings I managed to kill the resolution of the monitor, it now displays 800×600. So if you want to play with Windows 7: don’t fool around with the screen resolution!

I’m a Gnome addict, I never liked the Windows and KDE interface approach. The new taskbar which an act like a dock is pretty nice. It takes a lot of screen space though, which is a general problem with the Windows 7 visual design. The icon tray is still there, include the bizarre ‘hide icon when not active’ function.

Explorer (the file manager, not the browser) is very much the same as in Vista. The only difference I could find was that the ‘open folder’ triangles fade out when the pane is inactive. What’s strange is that the Folder Settings dialog is still the same as in windows XP, that dialog is 10 years old…

If I look at the default installation only, so no personalisation then Windows 7 is doing quite good. The Ubuntu default config with the awful orange/brown colors and the Gnome default layout is horrible. Windows 7 looks more clean and the start menu is fast and easy to use.

While configuring Windows 7 more to my liking I was reminded of why I prefer Ubuntu: Windows can’t be configured. You can can choose a predefined setup that matches your needs best, but you can’t tweak it completely. Windows is and stays what it is.

When you play around with Ubuntu it enables you to make it exactly as you want it. This takes time and effort, so not everybody will do that. If you stay with the default config I’d say Windows 7 is actually better then Ubuntu, but if you’re ready to think and do some tweaking Ubuntu is so much better than Windows 7.

On the ease of use I would say Ubuntu and Windows 7 are equal. Ubuntu is more configurable, but most people won’t use that, Windows is familiar and that’s working ok. On the visual level I like Ubuntu better (especially with the Shiki Colors scheme!), but that’s mainly taste. Windows 7 looks good, so I’d call this a draw.

There is a huge difference in the approach that Windows 7 and Ubuntu take the pre installed features here. Windows 7 is an operating system, with everything that an OS needs: kernel, GUI, utilities, even some end user applications like Notepad and Paint.It’s not a fully operation system after installation; you need to install your productivity tools yourself: mail, word processor, spreadsheet, etc. This makes sense: not everybody wants to use what your supplier offers you.

Ubuntu installs a lot more end user applications, it actually comes fully loaded. After installation you can start working. This is easier, but it also forces you to use the preinstalled tools or to deinstall them and install your own preferences.

When it comes to the preinstalled features Ubuntu is a clear winner. Windows delivers near to nothing when it comes to end user applications.

What Windows does deliver a complete stack of OS features. In that section it is a good competitor of Ubuntu. Please mind that I’m looking at this from the standpoint of the end user, and not a system administrator. Windows 7 even includes a decent command line tool, which supports some more Unix oriented commands like ‘ls’ and ‘cat’. A peculiar decision of Microsoft.

Windows 7 has a complete and understandable set of tools to manage the system. Ubuntu tends to get a bit hard to understand for newbies at some points, although this is improving fast.

Windows 7 has sufficient features to call it a good OS, but Ubuntu delivers a much more complete set of features. Ubuntu is the winner here.

Conclusion

Windows 7 is far better then Vista. It’s faster, looks a little better and takes yet another small step towards the future. But. I’ve downloaded 2.44Gb to be able to install a system that contains only an OS. Nothing more, just a kernel, a GUI and some utilities. It takes 7Gb on your harddisk after installation and it can’t run 3D graphics in a slower machine.

I have mixed feelings here. On the one side Windows 7 is really going somewhere, it’s good. But on the other side Ubuntu is so much better when you tweak it a bit. When Canonical would invest some more time in delivering a more tasty off the shelf install then it would easily defeat windows. But they don’t.

There is no winner in this competition. Windows 7 will be the next most used OS, there is no question about that. Ubuntu is trying to compete, but it will never be able to. In the end Ubuntu is a better OS, which a better GUI, but it should show that much better then it does now.

John's Background Switcher...

2009-01-19T23:32:00.003+05:30

Hi readers.. I'm in a mood for some fun these days... while i was browsing through the websites i came across this simple but useful tool...
Always people want to change the background in regular intervals... this software can do that for you...
The software automatically changes the desktop background , you can choose the background pics from a local folder on your hard drive or even from your picasa web albums or your Flickr collections...
This also have options to select pics by person, tags etc or just random and there are a many more options to select the pictures. You never know what you're going to get next!

And guess what.... its a freeware... free to download.. no keys no registration... for windows.

one of the snapshots looks like the one below. It just sits in your system tray and uses small amount of your ram but still works good.... the download link is given below...ENJOY!!

You can get the John's Background switcher here...Download

Ubuntu 9.04 [Jaunty Jackalope]- A peek-a-boo!

2009-01-19T20:35:00.007+05:30

Screenshot -Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3

Screenshot -Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3

Originally scheduled to be released on January 15th, the third alpha version of the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 (codename Jaunty Jackalope) was uploaded a few hours ago on the official mirrors and. As usual, we've downloaded a copy of it in order to keep you up-to-date with the latest changes in the Ubuntu 9.04 development. To please our readers, starting with this third alpha, we will also list the new features brought by the Kubuntu edition, as well as the screenshot tour.

OK, let's cut to the chase, and tell you what's new in Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3. Finally... the OpenOffice.org 2.4 packages were replaced with the OpenOffice.org 3.0 ones. Actually, the installed version in Alpha 3 is 3.0.1 RC1 . In other "good" news, the EXT4 filesystem was implemented in the Ubiquity installer, but it will not be the default filesystem for Ubuntu 9.04, and it's only available if you choose manual partitioning when installing Ubuntu. Using EXT4 as the default filesystem for an Ubuntu installation will reduce the boot times with 20% or even 30% on some systems. Another interesting thing implemented in the Ubiquity installer is the possibility to choose if you want to encrypt your home folder (see the last screenshot on the fifth row), an option that was already available in the text-mode installer.

Other than that, we've observed a new button on the system notifications, called "Don't show this message again" , a new entry in the Main Menu... System Tools -> File Browser and the brand new redesigned volume control The wallpaper and the theme are unchanged, the GNOME desktop environment has been updated to version 2.25.4 (latest development release), as well as most of its components. Among the applications that were updated in this third alpha of Ubuntu 9.04, we can notice: Pidgin 2.5.3, Brasero 0.9.0, Transmission 1.42, Ekiga 3.0.1, F-Spot 0.5.0.3 and... OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 RC1.

What's new in Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3? Well, as the developers said in the release announcement... everything! The third alpha version of Kubuntu 9.04 brings the newly released KDE 4.2 RC desktop environment (see below for screenshots), the latest version of the popular Amarok 2 media player, Quassel as the replacement for Konversation, Digikam 0.10.0 Beta 8, Kipi Plugins 0.2.0 Beta 6 and, last but not least, the developers decided to bring back the Kubuntu documentation. The final version of Kubuntu 9.04 will be powered by the amazing K Desktop Environment 4.2.

Once again, a Live CD is available for everyone who wants to see for themselves what's new in Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3 and Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha 3 , without installing anything on the hard drive. Also, with Alpha 3, the server edition of Ubuntu 9.04 is now offered as a separate download, while images for Ubuntu Studio and Edubuntu are available as well.

Windows 7 Beta on USB?!

2009-01-19T20:30:00.005+05:30

In addition to burning the ISO image of Windows 7 Beta on a DVD and installing the operating system from the media. Build 7000 can also be deployed via a USB stick. The Windows 7 Beta bootable USB created, the rest of the installation process is similar to the experience offered via DVD. However, the difference is that Windows 7 Beta can now easily be installed even on machines without a DVD drive. Both the 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows 7 Beta are available for download via this link provided below and you will have to burn the bits on a DVD in order to get started.

Of course, the critical step in installing Win 7 Beta from a thumb drive is actually building the bootable USB stick. A key detail is to use Windows Vista or even Windows 7 Beta in the process, and not earlier releases of Windows. Users will need to open up Command Prompt, just enter cmd into the search box under the Start Menu, then right click the highlighted result and choose “Run as administrator.”

In order to build the bootable USB, users will need to turn to the Diskpart tool. Simply run the “Diskpart” command, followed by “List Disk.” Next, the USB stick has to be selected. To do so, run “Select Disk X” (while making sure to replace X with the number associated with the USB drive). Wipe all data from the stick with the “clean” command, and then set up a partition via: create partition primary, making it “active” and format the USB with “format fs=fat32 quick” finishing up by assigning it a drive letter with the “assign” command. After all these steps are complete, you will have to copy Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 from the DVD you burned with the downloaded bits to the USB. The bootable USB will be ready to install Windows 7 Beta.

Windows 7 Beta is available for download here.

Download Vista SP1 and XP SP3!

2009-01-19T20:27:00.001+05:30

With the January 2009 release of security updates, Microsoft patched a total of three vulnerabilities in its Windows client and server operating systems. Last week, the Redmond company made available for download a single security bulletin designed to patch the vulnerabilities, and subsequently issued the January 2009 ISO. According to the software giant, the DVD5 ISO image file with the security patches for Windows are available for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP (including SP3), Windows Vista RTM/SP1, and Windows Server 2008.

In addition to MS09-001 (for the vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol), the January 2009 Security Release ISO Image also includes MS08-078 and MS08-076 released the past year, patching vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer and Windows Media Components. Microsoft explained that Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 was also impacted by the same vulnerabilities affecting Windows Vista SP1 and patched by MS09-001, but since the issues were rated only Moderate and the company's policy was to resolve only Critical flaws in its Beta software, Win 7 would get patched with the Release Candidate Build, and not via a standalone update.

January 2009 Security Release ISO Image is available for download here.

Update UBUNTU 8.04 without internet! (!)

2008-12-22T19:28:00.011+05:30

Darn!, I want to install ubuntu, but, unfortunately I have not an internet connection..:(

Is that you question?!..

Err!, Worry not..here's a simple solution to your question..And all that you require is a "genuine friend" who has a system with Ubuntu + packages installed on it..

Use a computer where they have installed basic utility packages or where they have updated ubuntu. The packages will be in the folder “/var/cache/apt/archives”. Copy it to a removable disc or write them on to a CD/DVD (which ever makes you happy(!))”

Assume that the media name is Pen_Drive

Now, give this command in the terminal of that system which is updated(i.e from the place where you intend to copy the packages.
sudo cp -R /var/cache/apt/archives /media/Pen_Drive

Once the copy process is complete.

Unmount the removable device..and then insert this device in you computer..

and follow it up with these commands on the terminal:

cd /media/Pen_Drive/archives sudo cp -R * /var/cache/apt/archives

Now, if you want to install all the packages that is on your removeable device, then, type this command:

sudo dpkg -i *

However, if you want to install just selected packages, give this command:

sudo apt-get update

Then, go to Synaptic Package Manager and install the packages you want.

Sticky Note as your homepage

2008-12-20T14:51:00.005+05:30

Sticky Screen is a simple Post-It note that you can set it as your browser homepage.

You just have to type something onto the sticky note and set it as your browser homepage. So, next time whenever you start your browser, the note shows up. There is no need to register nor any other procedures or navigations to get to the sticky note. The page directly takes you to the note and there you go!

Once the cookies are cleared, the sticky note will change to its default one. So no hassles. Very friendly.

ORacle ERRor ORA-27101

2008-12-16T08:08:00.004+05:30

This post is for the oracle users....

All these days my oracle was working fine... but suddenly today when i tried to connect to my database through JSP, it wasnt connecting.. What to do??

I then went to my sql command line then tried to connect to my database but then an error poped out, saying,

ORA- 01034 : ORACLE not available
ORA-27101 : shared memory realm does not exist

What to do...? Reinstall oracle!!.. but all my data will be gone...

Then started searching for the help... obvious through google... but in vain..

My suggestions were there, some said to log in through the oraDBA which was successful but it did not have the tables that i previusly created.

Some asked me to run some commands at the command line.. but no use..nothing helped...

In the end i tried few weird things... and finally got clicked with this one..

The solution to this problem is you need to restart the oracle service..and not

Restarting your system...

you need to go the control panel->Administrative Tools->Services

doubleclick the services a window will pop up.. In that go to OracleServiceOracle

Just stop the OracleServiceORACLE and then start it again..

Do the similar stopping and restarting to the other services such as OracleServiceORCL, OracleServiceXE, OracleStartORCL, OracleTNSlistner 80...

You are just restarting your oracle services and nothing else..

This should work for Oracle 9i and Oracle 10g working under windows XP ..

Hope this helps you to solve your problem!!! :-)

Rescue a "crashed linux" without re-installing...

2008-12-13T17:01:00.003+05:30

"Whilst attempting to boot Fedora from the NTLoader, I recieve the following "message': "GRUB _" (The underscore represents a blinking cursor thing)...

Is that you QUESTION?!!
If Yes,
Then with the grub cursor flashing it sounds like the system can't find grub you might want to do a reload of Fedora .. But DONT DO THAT!, Fixing is is much easier than what meets the eye..:)

You could actually try duel booting using XP boot manager (My Preference. I don't like third party boot managers.)

Run the command
dd if=/dev/hda5 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1

If hda5 is Not your boot partition, change it as appropriate. Type: df then determine which hda# is associated with your /boot partition. A file named boot.lnx should now have been created in the root's home directory or where ever you told it to be. Do an ls -l boot.lnx to confirm this.

Mount your pendrive drive use the command mcopy boot.lnx J: Or if your internet is up and running email it to yourself.
Now reboot and go to Windows XP.
J: Copy boot.lnx C:\ (It will land it in C:\ root.)
Double click your boot.ini file and add one line at the end it should read c:\boot.lnx="Fedora 7".
Then save it.
When you reboot your XP boot manager will come up when you chose Fedora it jumps to the Grub Boot manager on your second drive.
Reboot to Fedora and Enjoy!

Mac OS X Dashboard style on Ubuntu 8.04

2008-12-13T16:55:00.000+05:30

KDE 4, Windows, and Mac OS all have some sort of desktop widgets. Your Ubuntu desktop can also, using Screenlets. This post will guide you through installing and using Screenlets on Ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04.

Compiz’s Widget Layer plugin can be used with Screenlets to achieve an effect similar to the dashboard in Mac OS X. Your Screenlets will only be visible by activating a view that dims the desktop and displays the Screenlets on top of everything else.

In the Appearance Preferences dialog (System->Preferences->Appearance), open the Visual Effects tab and switch to the Custom effects level. If this option is not available, you need to install CompizConfig Settings Manager (CCSM) first:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Now, open CCSM by clicking the Preferences button. Find the Widget Layer plugin and select the box to turn it on.

For all the Screenlets you want on the Widget Layer, open their right-click menus and select Window->Widget. The Screenlet will disappear from your desktop. Press the default Widget Layer key, F9, to dim the desktop and display your widgets.

Installation

Installing Screenlets
You can keep up-to-date with the latest version of Screenlets by installing it through the repository.

Open your sources.list file to add the repository:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add this line to the end of the file (for Ubuntu 7.10):
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gilir/ubuntu gutsy main universe

Add this line to the end of the file (for Ubuntu 8.04):
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gilir/ubuntu hardy main universe

Save and close the text editor. Run this command to update apt:
sudo apt-get update

Install the Screenlets package:
sudo apt-get install screenlets

The package python-feedparser may also be required if it is not already installed:
sudo apt-get install python-feedparser

If starting the Screenlets Manager nags you that Gtkmozembed needs to be installed, some Screenlets may not work. Run this command to fix it:
sudo apt-get install python-gnome2-extras

How to take a System backup in Ubuntu!?

2008-12-13T16:50:00.002+05:30

It’s a good idea to ensure that you have a backup and restore system in place. Today we’ll see how in a few very easy steps you can setup system backup and restore in Ubuntu. The good part is that there’s no rocket science involved.

In order to achieve this we are going to need software called SBackup. This is not installed by default in Ubuntu and hence we need to install it. First, let’s see a little bit about this wonderful software.

Homepage: http://sbackup.wiki.sourceforge.net/

Description: SBackup is a simple backup solution for Linux. It is generally developed with a Gnome desktop in mind, but will also work in other desktop environments and also on the console.

Features of SBackup

Back up using GUI and hence avoid the terminal.
Restore using the GUI in simple steps.
You can easily setup automatic backup.
Custom choose the files to backup.
Exclude and include files using regular expressions.
Backup files depending on size and extension.
You can also use terminal to backup and restore.

Limitations of SBackup
As of now you can only backup data to local or remote machine. Backing up to DVD or CD is not available as of now. However, it’s not difficult to burn a backup to disk yourself manually.

Install SBackup
Install SBackup from the package sbackup (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install sbackup

Launching SBackup
In order to launch SBackup go to System->Administration->Simple Backup Config.

Configuring and setting up backups using SBackup
Once you launch SBackup it’ll open a configuration window for you to configure backup and restore.

If you notice, there are three options available for setting up the backup and they are self explanatory. I’d suggest Use recommended backup settings for most users.

However, you can also select Use Custom backup Settings and setup your backups based on various criteria like file size, file extension, etc. You can also add and remove folders from the ones which you want to backup and the ones you don’t. All this can be achieved by navigating to the Include and Exclude tabs and changing settings as per your requirements.

You can also change the destination where SBackup will backup your stuff. This can be achieved by going to Destination tab.

By default SBackup backs up your files to your local machine in /var/backup. You can custom choose the location and backup stuff to another machine using FTP or SSH.

Once you have selected the mode of backup, all you have to do is click Backup Now!. You should see a confirmation dialog.

Scheduling Backup
Scheduling backup is as easy as it can get. Just go to the Time tab and setup when you want to backup.

Purging old backups to avoid replication and excessive disk usage can also be setup using the Purge Tab. As I said, in most cases the Use recommended backup settings option is the best.

Restoring the data using SBackup
You can easily restore data from your backup using SBackup restore. You can do a directory-wide restore or just restore the files. To restore the data you’ll have to start the SBackup restore manager, go to System->Administration->Simple Backup restore.

Click on Available backups.
Choose the backup from which you want to restore files or directories.
Select the specific file or directory.
Click Restore.

You’ll be prompted if you are sure, click Yes and your files/directories will be restored.

I hope this guide will make backing up and restoring on Ubuntu a cake walk.

If you want more tutorials and technology articles like this one, you can subscribe to the TNerd RSS Feed.

SOURCE : TNerd.com

XBMC- Media beyond the ultimatum!

2008-12-13T16:45:00.002+05:30

XBMC, recursive acronym for “XBMC Media Center“, is an award winning free and open source software media-player and entertainment hub for all your digital media.

Multi-platform, Internationalized, and Localized

XBMC is a cross-platform software available for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard, Tiger, and Apple TV), Microsoft Windows operating-system, as well as the original Xbox game-console. With translations to over 30 languages for a worldwide audience. All versions of course completely free of any adware or spyware.

XBMC for Linux
XBMC for Mac
XBMC for Windows
XBMC for Xbox
XBMC Live

Community

Over 50 developers have contributed to XBMC, and over 100 translators have worked to expand its reach. XBMC was created by created by a group of like minded back in 2003. XBMC Community Forum today have over 30,000 registered members, nad XBMC had already an estimated userbase of over one million daily end-users when it was only running on the the Xbox platform, and now that XBMC runs nativly on several other platforms as well we estimate that that the userbase have growed exponentionally.

User-friendliness that is Next To Godliness

XBMC is easy to install and setup, and its many beautiful custom user interfaces offers simple very intuitive navigation which are very convenient and flexible, adding to great price verses performance ratio when installed on cheap hardware to this best in class software. With and experience surpases all retail media center systems.

Superb Format and Codec support

XBMC supports a very complete spectrum of of audio and video multimedia file formats and codecs right out-of-the-box, and include features such as playlist playback, audio visualizations, picture viewing, slideshows, and weather forecast functions, RSS feed scroller on your home screen, together with a ever expanding array of community driven third-party add-ons and plugins.

Endless playback capabilities for All Types of Media

XBMC can play most audio and video file formats as well as display images at resolutions up to 1080p and over from virtually any source, including your local harddrive, CD/DVDs, USB flash drives, the Internet, and network shares, upscaling any lower resolutions videos to the maximum of your displays capability. XBMC can also playback DVD-Video movies with menus from ISO/IMG-images on-the-fly, even when they are in an RAR or ZIP archive. For music playback XBMC offers gapless playback, crossfading, cue sheet, replay gain amplification, advanced smart playlists, and chapter support.

XBMC can download or stream Internet video and audio streams, and play Internet radio stations (such as Podcasts and SHOUTcast), and listen to your favorites and discover new music with free, streaming music from Last.fm, among others.

XBMC of course handles all common digital picture formats with the options of panning/zooming, and slideshow with “Ken Burns Effect“. XBMC also handles CBZ and CBR comic book archive files, this feature lets you view/read, browse and zoom the pictures of comics pages these contain without uncompressing them first.

Online Powered Media Management

XBMC has a database driven video and music library view modes which help organize and filter all of your media straight out-of-the-box in. The video library allow you to easily browse your video content by things like; genre, title, year, actors, and directors, as well as carry our extensive searches on casts and related information. Similarly, XBMC’s music library allows the organization of your music collection by information stored in your music file ID meta tags, like title, artist, album, genre and popularity, as well as having access to powerful search and Smart Playlists features, helping you find exactly what you want in a fast and simple way.

Album and Cover Art

XBMC takes full advantage of broadband Internet connection if available, Artwork is automatically fetched for posters, artwork, fanart, synopsis and reviews on movies, plot, cast and episode information for TV shows, also album covers and artist information for music.

Extendable and Flexible Add-ons

XBMC features a Python Scripts Engine and WindowXML application framework (a XML-based widget toolkit for creating a GUI for widgets) in a similar fashion to Apple Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets and Microsoft Gadgets in Windows Sidebar. Python widget scripts allow normal users to add-on ‘extensions’ with new functionality to XBMC themselves, using the easy to learn Python scripting language, without the need for knowledge of any complex programming languages or the inner workings of XBMC. Current plugins and scripts include a multitude of added functions like Internet TV and radio streams, podcasts, movie-trailer browsers, and cinema guides, e-mail clients, instant messaging, train-timetables, peer-to-peer file-sharing downloaders, IRC, also casual games (sometimes also referred to as mini-games or party-games) such as Tetris, Snake, Space Invaders, Sudoku, and much more.

Fully Skinnable and Customizable Interface

XBMC is noted and highly regarded as having a very flexible GUI toolkit and robust framework for its GUI, (now also proven by the fact that several other software projects have copied it). Users can create their own skins, or choose one of the many already available skins. XBMC uses a standard XML base, making theme-skinning and personal customization very accessible to everyone. Users themselves can create their own skin (or simply modify an existing skin) and share it with others via public websites dedicated for XBMC skins trading. Colors, controls, navigation, positioning of elements, animation, even adding additional functionality can be achieved with a skin. “Project Mayhem” is the official skin from Team-XBMC; which is now in its third version, commonly know as “PM3″. Many third-party skins exist and while many are of original and unique designs, a few skins are almost exact replicas of other multimedia software, with skins clones of Apple TV and Front Row, Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition (MCE), MediaPortal, Meedio/MeediOS, HDeeTV, Kaleidescape, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and others. Each skin provides a totally different and unique user experience, all showing just how flexible XBMC’s skinning engine really is.

FOSS (Free Open Source Software)

XBMC Media Center software is distributed as open source under the GNU General Public License, (with a few sub-libraries licensed under the LGPL), and as a non-profit project XBMC is run and developed by volunteers in their spare-time without any monetary gain. Team-XBMC encourage anyone to contribute to the project, submit their own source code patches for new features and functions, improve existing ones, or fix any bugs in XBMC that you might find.

Technical Summary

XBMC is written in the C++ program language (and some Assembly code), XBMC uses the SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) multimedia framework and OpenGL for graphics rendering the Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows based operating-system platforms, and the Xbox version of XBMC uses Microsoft DirectX multimedia framework and Direct3D for graphics rendering, (as the Xbox does not support OpenGL).

Installation
Open System->Administration->Software Sources and select the Third Party Software tab. Add the following software source:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-intrepid/ubuntu intrepid main

Close Software Sources and when prompted, choose to reload the repositories.

Install XBMC from the package xbmc (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install xbmc

Optionally you can also install:

additional skins
sudo apt-get install xbmc-skin-*
support for remote controls
sudo apt-get install xbmc-eventclients-*
a scripting example
sudo apt-get install xbmc-scripts-example

Starting and Running XBMC
All that is left now is to start XBMC. You can start XMBC by going to Applications->Sounds & Video->XBMC Media Center.

Compiz Earth

2008-12-13T16:38:00.002+05:30

Compiz 0.7.6 comes with new plugins that allow you do quite a lot. The best of the lot is getting the earth out of your desktop.
Check the video below--
"Awesome!" would perhaps be just an euphemism!

Click here to view the video

To install Compiz 0.7.6 just add the following repository

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu hardy main

The Worlds First SuperComputer PC

2008-12-08T00:28:00.002+05:30

The world's first personal supercomputer, which is 250 times faster than the average PC, has been unveiled on dec 6 2008 . With its £4,000- £8,000 price tag, the Tesla supercomputer is beyond the reach of most consumers, but is expected to revolutionise the way scientists and medical professionals carry out their work.
Until now, supercomputers were massive systems made up of thousands of machines taking up entire rooms, which cost millions of pounds to build and maintain.By contrast, Tesla personal supercomputers will cost between £4,000 and £8,000 and look much like an ordinary PC
David Kirk, chief scientist at NVIDIA, the American company which has designed the new technology, said: "Pretty much anything that you do on your PC that takes a lot of time can be accelerated with this.""These supercomputers can improve the time it takes to process information by 1,000 times."
The new computers make innovative use of graphics processing units - a technological breakthrough, which the company claims could bring lightning speeds to the next generation of home computers.They went on sale to British customers yesterday and will initially be sold to universities and to the scientific and research community.

The PC maker Dell, however, said that it would soon be mass producing them for the general consumer market.

Mount ISO images without burning..:)

2008-11-30T21:51:00.000+05:30

Some times you want to use iSO images without burning them.If you don’t want to waste your CD’s/DVD’s here is the simple possible solutions using these tips you can mount and unmount ISO images without burning them.

I know two possible solutions

1) Using Nautilus Scripts

2) Using kernel loop module

Now we will see each one in detailed

Using Nautilus Scripts

I am taking this tip from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=87369&page=3 first you need to download two scripts for mount iso images download from www.debianadmin.com/images/iso/mount.sh and to unmount iso images download from www.debianadmin.com/images/iso/mount.sh

Once you have these two scripts you need to change the permissions using the following commands

sudo chmod +x /home/username/mount.sh

sudo chmod +x /home/username/unmount.sh

Now you need to copy them nautilus scripts

sudo mv /home/username/mount.sh ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/

sudo mv /home/username/unmount.sh ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/

That’s it now you are ready for mounting and unmounting your ISO images.

Animate your Ubuntu!

2008-11-28T21:42:00.000+05:30

Have some spare CPU cycles to burn? Using a utility called XWinWrap you can use screensavers, videos, and other applications as your desktop wallpaper.

One drawback is that you will not be able to use desktop icons with XWinWrap due to a limitation in Nautilus. Compiz desktop effects are not required, but a fairly powerful computer if you don’t want reduced performance.

Install XWinWrap
XWinWrap is not available in the Ubuntu repositories, but an easily installable DEB package is available. Download and extract the zip archive, and then install the DEB package from the i386 or x86_64 folder depending on your CPU type.

XWinWrap only works properly for me once I’ve disabled desktop icons. Do so with the following command:
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop' --type bool false

Run this if you want to undo and enable desktop icons again:
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop' --type bool true

Using XWinWrap
Now you’re ready to run XWinWrap commands to create an animated wallpaper effect. You can start XWinWrap from a terminal or from the Run Application dialog (F2). To exit XWinWrap from the terminal, just press Ctrl-C. To exit XWinWrap when it’s started from the Run Application dialog, run the command below:
killall xwinwrap

While trying out different effects, remember to exit XWinWrap before starting it again.

Animated Wallpaper - Screensavers
This command will start the glmatrix Matrix screensaver as your wallpaper:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -root -window-id WID

Here a few other screensavers you can run as wallpaper for a neat effect:

Tunnel:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/atunnel -window-id WID
Toasters:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/flyingtoasters -window-id WID
Plasma (slow speed):
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/plasma -window-id WID -x 30 -s 1

Animated Wallpaper - Video
Using the MPlayer video player, you can use any video with XWinWrap.

Install MPlayer from the package mplayer (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install mplayer

This XWinWrap command will loop play the video file video.ogg:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- mplayer -wid WID -quiet -loop 0 video.ogg

Once you’ve found an effect you like, you can add the command to the startup programs in System->Preferences->Sessions to load it when you log in.

GOOGLE SMS!!

2008-11-25T12:57:00.004+05:30

As humans, we have many questions running in our mind! Every new minute poses a new problem and the quest to find the solution to the problem. In a bid to take off most of the burden of problems from our mind and provide answers to our questions Google has launched the newer version of Google SMS search!

The new version comes with new numbers and loads of features added to it. To use this users just need to SMS their query to 9773300000 which will cost them just the regular charge of a regular SMS, and they will get answers instantly.

So, if you are late at night without a ride home and you don’t know what to do? Need a number of a taxi service? Just SMS you query to 9773300000 from any GSM or CDMA mobile phone!

“Run out of cash in a new city and looking for an ATM? Power cut in between a nail biting cricket match. Need instant updates on the score? Long queues at the railway enquiry counter making you sweat? Wondering how many woollens to pack for your Delhi trip? Another collapse on BSE, want an update on your stock? Can’t understand the word your girlfriend just used?”

Yes, Google has all the answers for queries like these as well now.

Here is how users can use this service –

To receive instant Cricket Scoressimply type in “cri” or “cricket” or “cricket India” as an SMS to the aforementioned number.

For PNR enquiries in Indian Railways, send the PNR number to know the confirmed/RAC/current waitlist status.

Stock Quotes from BSE can be received by text messaging “Company name quote”, for example “reliance stock”.

To know your horoscope just send your sunsign e.g. “Virgo” for the day’s horoscope.

Local search on categories like “Restaurants Indira Nagar Bangalore” and businesses like “Pizza Hut Koramangala”, etc, too can be made across 34 cities which include Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkatta, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Vadodara, Surat, Kanpur, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Nagpur, Rajkot, Ernakulam, Cochin, Gaziabad, Bhuwneshwar, Aurangabad, Lucknow, Nashik, Indore, Panaji, Bhopal, Agra, Guntur, Visakhapatnam, Jalandhar, Amritsar, Coimbatore.

Get a dose of daily news by text messaging “news” and “business news” for current happenings in the business world.

If you think its time for 72 mm entertainment, just type in “movies city” e.g. “Golmaal Returns Delhi” for movie showtimes; you can also get movie ratings with this new feature.

Filght status for Jet, Kingfisher, Indigo & Spicejet can be known by simply sending “9w502″, “It 302″.

Definitions can be retrieved from the net by sending “define ” e.g. “define zenith”, “define inflation”.

Similarly Weather updates are available on sending “weather city” e.g. “weather Mumbai”.

Also calculations, currency conversions and facts are available by the service – for e.g. “1 kilo in pound”, “5000 INR in USD”, “GDP of India” or “population of Bangalore”.

Crack the .zip passwords using ubuntu!

2008-11-21T21:44:00.000+05:30

If you want to crack zip file passwords use fcrackzip.fcrackzip is a fast password cracker partly written in assembler. It is able to crack password protected zip files with brute force or dictionary based attacks, optionally testing with unzip its results.

Install fcrackzip in Ubuntu

sudo aptitude install fcrackzip

This will complete the installation.

Fcrack Syntax

fcrackzip [-bDBchVvplum2] [--brute-force] [--dictionary] [--benchmark] [--charset characterset] [--help] [--validate] [--verbose] [--init-password string/path] [--length min-max] [--use-unzip] [--method name] [--modulo r/m] file.

fcrack Options

-h, –help
Prints the version number and (hopefully) some helpful insights.
-v, –verbose
Each -v makes the program more verbose.
-b, –brute-force
Select brute force mode. This tries all possible combinations of the letters you specify.
-D, –dictionary
Select dictionary mode. In this mode, fcrackzip will read passwords from a file, which must contain one password per line and should be alphabetically sorted (e.g. using (1)).
-c, –charset characterset-specification
Select the characters to use in brute-force cracking. Must be one of

a include all lowercase characters [a-z]
A include all uppercase characters [A-Z]
1 include the digits [0-9]
! include [!:$%&/()=?[]+*~#]
: the following characters upto the end of the spe-
cification string are included in the character set.
This way you can include any character except binary
null (at least under unix).

For example, a1:$% selects lowercase characters, digits and the dollar and percent signs.

-p, –init-password string
Set initial (starting) password for brute-force searching to string, or use the file with the name string to supply passwords for dictionary searching.
-l, –length min[-max]
Use an initial password of length min, and check all passwords upto passwords of length max (including). You can omit the max parameter.
-u, –use-unzip
Try to decompress the first file by calling unzip with the guessed password. This weeds out false positives when not enough files have been given.
-m, –method name
Use method number “name” instead of the default cracking method. The switch –help will print a list of available methods. Use –benchmark to see which method does perform best on your machine. The name can also be the number of the method to use.
-2, –modulo r/m
Calculate only r/m of the password. Not yet supported.
-B, –benchmark
Make a small benchmark, the output is nearly meaningless.
-V, –validate
Make some basic checks wether the cracker works.

fcrackzip Examples

fcrackzip -c a -p aaaaaa sample.zip

checks the encrypted files in sample.zip for all lowercase 6 character passwords (aaaaaa … abaaba … ghfgrg … zzzzzz).

fcrackzip --method cpmask --charset A --init AAAA test.ppm

checks the obscured image test.ppm for all four character passwords. -TP fcrackzip -D -p passwords.txt sample.zip check for every password listed in the file passwords.txt.

Animate you Ubuntu!

2008-11-16T21:42:00.000+05:30

Have some spare CPU cycles to burn? Using a utility called XWinWrap you can use screensavers, videos, and other applications as your desktop wallpaper.

XWinWrap only works properly for me once I’ve disabled desktop icons. Do so with the following command:
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop' --type bool false

Run this if you want to undo and enable desktop icons again:
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop' --type bool true

While trying out different effects, remember to exit XWinWrap before starting it again.

Animated Wallpaper - Screensavers
This command will start the glmatrix Matrix screensaver as your wallpaper:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -root -window-id WID

Here a few other screensavers you can run as wallpaper for a neat effect:

Tunnel:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/atunnel -window-id WID
Toasters:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/flyingtoasters -window-id WID
Plasma (slow speed):
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/plasma -window-id WID -x 30 -s 1

Animated Wallpaper - Video
Using the MPlayer video player, you can use any video with XWinWrap.

Install MPlayer from the package mplayer (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install mplayer

This XWinWrap command will loop play the video file video.ogg:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- mplayer -wid WID -quiet -loop 0 video.ogg

Once you’ve found an effect you like, you can add the command to the startup programs in System->Preferences->Sessions to load it when you log in.

Intrepid Ibex- The Views and their Re-Views!

2008-11-11T07:26:00.000+05:30

One of the first things you would notice after booting into Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop , is the new improved Human theme which has got a tinge of Orange. Status bar,Buttons glow and few icons have been changed and made more friendly looking. Ubuntu 8.10 also includes a brand new theme "Dark Room".

with "Dark Room" theme applied

However , with "Dark Room" theme I noticed I was unable to read text in Menu Bar sometimes.

Improved Shutdown dialog box

Ubuntu 8.10 includes the latest stable version of Gnome - Gnome 2.24 . Gnome 2.24 is an extremely polished desktop environment and includes a host of feature addition. Nautilus the default File Manager in Gnome , now supports like Mozilla Firefox , Tab Browsing allowing you to browse number of different directory location inside a single nautilus window in separate tabs. Also Nautilus now supports encrypted private directory.

Furthermore , Ubuntu 8.10 includes improved Network Management tool allowing you to easily configure your DSL , Wireless , Wired , VPN etc networks.
Multiple tabs in Nautilus, also note new eject icons infront of mountable drives and encrypted folders

Gui tool for Managing Network connection

Ubuntu 8.10 supports "Guest Login" allowing anyone to log into Ubuntu machine without having an account ,however only catch is Guest users will not get access to any file of other users or be able to create files for security reason. This is especially useful where a single computer is used by a number of users , and you dont want others to peek into your files.

Hardware support has definitely improved with version of Ubuntu 8.10 , everything from Network Card , Bluetooth to Sound Card worked out of box on my cranky old Lenovo y410 laptop, In fact prior to version 8.10 I had hell lot of trouble configuring my sound card properly and even then headphone jack never worked properly. Inclusion of Alsa-1.0.17 in Ubuntu has definitely improved audio hardware support.Also there is improved support for NVidia graphics chipset/card. Proprietary drives can be easily downloaded and installed onto the system from (System -> Administration -> Hard Ware Drivers ). One reason why HardWare support is better in Ubuntu 8.10 is Ubuntu 8.10 is based on Linux kernel 2.6.27 which has significantly better hardware support.

Also , I am not sure whether it's me only or other people have also noticed that Intrepid Ibex runs a lot faster compared to earlier version of Ubuntu - "Hardy Heron" everything opens in a jiffy.

On the Software side , File-Roller now supports ALZ, RZIP, CAB, TAR.7Z file types , Ubuntu 8.10 includes updated version of X.Org - X.Org 7.4 which includes new much helpful failsafe X to diagnose cases where X Server fails to start. Ubuntu 8.10 also includes updated Samba 3.2 for browsing Windows Share on a network.

However , Ubuntu 8.10 includes older version of Open Office even though Stable 3.0 Version of Open Office is out. Though it will not be difficult for someone to update Open Office from repositories on a new Ubuntu 8.10 system.

Conclusion : Overall Ubuntu 8.10 is a well polished desktop Linux distribution , though not radically different from earlier version 8.04 of Ubuntu. Features like Tabbed Browsing in Nautilus , Encrypted Folders , better Hardware support ,being faster etc are reason compelling enough to Upgrade to the latest offering from Ubuntu team.

Re-installing grub; After "Windows wipes out Fedora"

2008-11-07T23:10:00.004+05:30

"I reinstalled my Windows XP and my grub was fully erased in my Windows’ MBR. I could not boot my Fedora 8 anymore."

Is that your question?!

This could be of big help to you. Just follow the simple instructions below.

Insert your Fedora 8 installer (CD1) and set your boot sequence to your CD.

When the CD is loaded, choose “Rescue installed system” from the menu.

Wait for it to be loaded and follow the wizard.

In the command, check first the name of your partitions,

fdisk -l

It says something like sda, sda1, sda2/hda, hda1, …

In my system, my Windows is installed on my first partition which is the sda.

Change the current directory to /mnt/systimage with a root privilege.

chroot /mnt/sysimage

Install grub to your MBR’s location device, which is the Windows partition

/sbin/grub-install /dev/sda

Perfect! Restart your system and set the boot to your hard drive. It will show you the menu listed your Windows and your Linux.

If these steps will not work, repeat again because this really works.

CCleaner..

2008-10-28T16:18:00.003+05:30

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool for windows. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your on
line activities such as your Internet history.

This was very useful to me.. since it deleted all the files with the dangling links....
These files exist in your system files, registry entries etc...
Whenever you install a software many files get created in your system folders. These files are created by the program that was installed and will be used by them, When you uninstall the program, some of these files doesn't get deleted and they remain forever in your system memory.We just cannot manually delete those files. They take up your harddisk space and sometimes they might also result in reducing the system's efficiency. Hence its always safe and good to get rid of them. This CCleaner does the same. Its a freeware with a size of about 2.82mb, just download the file and you go...

It has a simple and user firendly interface....
I have put some of the snapshots here...
In the main menu you have two options, first press on the analyze button, it will scan thru all your temporary files and list them for you. Then press Run Cleaner which cleans all the files listed....
In the registry tab... you have two options Scan Issues which scans for the issues and the second option to fix those issues....
It also has a tools tab which allows you to remove the unnecessary programs similar to your add or remove programs in the control panel....

It cleaned more than 400 Mb of space from my hardisk and my system now has faster at startup time...
use it

here is the link to download it

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

and enjoy...

The cons about Chrome!

2008-10-27T19:56:00.009+05:30

We've all used Google Chrome since its release(2nd September) and we appreciate its speed, stability, etc. But now I think its time to talk about its cons. Well, I am a fan of Chrome though, yet there are some things that I hate about it.

1. Installation. Chrome is quite peculiar compared to other softwares when it comes to installation. While other softwares install in the usual "program files" directory, Chrome will be installed in Root:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome. This means, it has to be installed separately by each user.

2. Tab-switching. I used Opera and I felt very comfortable with the tab navigation where tabs are cycled in recently used order. But Google Chrome doesn't provide that. I agree that Chrome has come up with a new idea of navigating where alt+number combination leads you to that particular tab. But I don't think anybody would be so patient to count tabs and then press the combination.

3. Lack of Plugins. Most users who use Firefox or Opera are kind of addicted to add-ons which have apparently made their browsing "better". However, Chrome lacks add-ons and the only one that I saw was the greasemetal script which is a userscript runtime built for Chrome. Anyway, lets hope for some add-ons and widgets.

4. BitTorrent Support. Chrome doesn't support Bit Torrent (well, Opera does!). Ah! I think I'm expecting too much from Chrome. Hmm.. Nevermind.

5. Ad Filtering. Chrome also fails to support ad filtering. So the eye-catching unwanted ads are always there in front of you.

6. Spatial Navigation. Another thing that I hate about Chrome is that it doesn't have spatial navigation(ability to navigate between focusable elements). So it makes me use my mouse more than the keyboard, while filling forms et al.

7. Mouse Gestures. Contradicting the previous point, mouse gestures(which are pretty useful) are far away from development. Hope some addons help Chrome fill this gap.

8. Where is RSS? Chrome lacks another important feature - RSS Feeds. I don't know why Google failed to include this facility in Chrome. Damn! I must resort to some other browser for this.

Well, despite all these limitations, Chrome still rocks!!

MultiTasking in UNIX

2008-10-27T11:54:00.007+05:30

Unix is a versatile system environment. If you are familiar with the shell scripting....then you should be familiar with the usage of the operator called pipe... A pipe is represented by a vertical line '|' . It is used to join two or more shell scripts... One way looking at it is when you want the output of one command to be the input of other then you pipe those two commands... Here is an illustration of the multitasking. Since there is no intermediate file created when pipe operator is used, this means that the two programs at each end of the pipe have to be running together at the same time so the output of the first program can be used as input for the second as it is created. Similarly when you run a 'shell', usually called a 'terminal' or the 'command prompt', we are actually running a process. When we execute some command such as like a 'gedit filename'. The shell uses the facility called 'fork' to split itself into two process. The shell becomes the parent process and the command e 'gedit filename' becomes a child process. The child process uses another Unix facility called 'exec' to execute the command and exit. The parent process uses a 'wait' command until the child process completes its execution and it terminates. By this method the Unix ensures that shell, executes the commands you enter as though they were subroutines.
diagramatically it can be shown as ->

Some times the child process might produce lots of output that the output is written onto a file. This means that you will have to wait for a long time before the parent wakes up and you can run your next command. So if you don't wish to wait and want the child process to run in the background... then you just need to append and ampersand '&' at the end of your command line. In this situation the 'fork' command creates the child and parent process as before, but the parent does not execute the 'wait' system call, but it returns to the next shell prompt immediately. Thus the child runs in the background and the parent in the foreground as shown here

HAcking THe RoOt....

2008-10-24T18:33:00.004+05:30

This was long awaited.. I have always wondered how to hack into the root user of the linux....
Windows password is crackable... you find many methods to hack into the windows administrator...

But linux being one of the most secure OS... i wondered how do we get access into it.. I have been trying to break thru the password in all the computers in my college labs... But i was never succesful... But this day I got the key to open the lock.. so I just wanna share it with you all.....

In this method.. we hack into the root password through the grub....
Being a linux user i assume that you know what a grub is... if you dont then.. in simple words its just a boot loader.. which appears on your screen as soon as you switch on your power button...
It has options to select the different operating Systems that has been installed on your system..
One of the sample grubs looks as shown here...

As soon as you switch on the computer you press one of the arrow keys( up or down ).. to access this grub..

In the grub options you press 'e' to enter the edit mode..

once you enter the edit mode.. you get some 3 lines of text..

select the line that starts with 'kernel'
and press 'e'..
Now you are in the edit mode..
just insert the number 1 at the end of the line....
and press 'b' to boot thru the kernel....

Now this takes you to the single user mode.... you actually get the root user rights... and you get a shell prompt.....
now you can easily change the password.... just type the passwd.. at the shell prompt...

Its asks you for the new password ... you just enter and proceed... It will ask you to enter the new password twice......
After the password is changed.. type exit to reboot the system.
And there you go.. you login into root using your new password.......and enjoy!!!

Upgrade hardy to intrepid!!

2008-10-16T20:42:00.004+05:30

Ubuntu 8.10 is the upcoming version of the Ubuntu operating system. The common name given to this release from the time of its early development was “Intrepid Ibex”.

Note: This is still a beta release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released in 30th October 2008.

Important Notes Before Upgrade

Take a complete Back up all your data. There is no guarantee that all will go well.

Remember that this software is still beta at this time. It is not for production machines.

Be sure that you have all updates applied to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS before you upgrade

Procedure to follow

To upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04, press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager -d” (without the quotes) into the command box.

---Update Manager should open up and tell you: New distribution release ‘8.10′ is available. Click Upgrade

---This will show you Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Release notes click on upgrade

---If you are using any third party sources in your /etc/apt/sources.list file it will be disabled at the time of upgrade process click close

---

Testing Your Upgrade

You can check the ubuntu version installed using the following command

sudo lsb_release -a

Output Looks like below

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu intrepid(development branch)
Release: 8.10
Codename: intrepid

Speed up your Comp- The Geek Way!

2008-10-14T19:58:00.000+05:30

Over time personal computers tend to slow down - particularly so with those running on Windows. I have heard stories of computers getting so slow that the owner just eventually gave up and bought a new computer instead.

But there are things you can do to speed up your computer.

There are a number of reasons why computers start to run slowly. Some of the most common are viruses and spyware working in the background of your computer, files scattered around your computer hard drive so your machine has to work harder to link them all together, and errors which gently build up on your hard drive.

There is a huge market of companies who make considerable profits sorting these issues out each year but instead I want to tell you about 3 free options that will help you do all of the above. I have been personally testing them for some time now and am really liking what I see so now I want to take a moment to show what I hope will be a few really helpful tips.

Antivirus

Personally I use Norton antivirus and swear by it but Norton *will* cost you some money. I pay for a multi-user license so I can have it installed on my 3 computers and have protection no matter which one I’m on.

However many people swear by AVG which is free. Personally I would only trust a tiny handful of brands as being truly useful. Plenty of people have old versions of antivirus or some other free application but its vital your antivirus is updated constantly. With new viruses being created daily, an antivirus program that doesn’t update online each time you log onto the Internet is probably failing to recognise some viruses and this can be dangerous.

Defragmenting

We download programs, delete files, uninstall software and so on. Over time this turns into a jumble of files and empty spaces on our hard drive and defragmenting hopes ot get rid of this fragmentation. This should therefore seepd up your computer.

Windows itself comes with a defragmentation application so you actually probably already have one right now. The problem is how slow it is. I have over 200,000 files on my main PC and a full defrag takes pretty much a whole night on my PC. That’s too slow for my liking.

However I recently discovered a really nifty tool called Smart Defrag that works cleverly when you’re not using your computer. So if you nip off to the loo, or watch TV, or even to check something in a book, the defrag software realises and jumps into action. As soon as you start using your computer again it goes into sleep mode.

In this way every time your computer is idle it defragments itself a little more, and as soon as you start using it, it goes into sleep mode. So you get the benefits of constant defragmenting (which means you don’t have to remember to do it!) but your PC doesn’t slow down while it’s working. What a great idea!

Registry Problems

There are loads of paid applications when it comes to sorting out registry problems but I have found a free one that works great. Called Advanced WindowsCare V2 this application will look at everything that goes on “under the hood” with your computer and then bring up a list of suggestions about what needs speeding up, improving or fixing. You select what you’d like it to do and it goes for it. I noticed a significant increase in speed personally when I used it and would strongly recommend it to you.

How to find and delete files-All at once..:)

2008-10-10T20:40:00.002+05:30

I was trying to delete a list of files with a character '-' in their filenames from a directory, containing lots of other files. Thanks to linux, you get everything you need here.

#find ./directorypath -regex '.*-.*'
lists all the files/directories containing '-' anywhere in the filename or directory name.
-regex allows to give any pattern to do powerful custom search.

To list only the files, add -type f
#find ./directorypath -type f -regex '.*-.*'

To delete all the files/directories with any pattern, just add command to the above line as shown below
#find ./directorypath -regex '.*-.*' -exec rm -rf {} \;

-exec rm -rf {} \;
executes rm -rf (remove forcefully and recursively in case of directory). The files/directories found by find command is passed to the rm -rf command via {}, which deletes them. \; marks the end of the command.

I suggest you first move all the files to some directory, before deleting them, just incase you don't accidentally delete some important files.

Appnr - A Simpler Synaptic

2008-10-10T01:01:00.017+05:30

I recently stumbled upon a website called www.appnr.com. Apparently, this happened to be one of the best sites that I have come across in a long time. Appnr has a reservoir of apps(1700+) exclusively for Ubuntu and provides a great way to find and install them. No more apt-gets, add/remove programs or even Synaptic Package Manager. Just click the button "install" and you're done. Leave the rest; your system will take care of it. Appnr is best suited for newbies who find it difficult to use command line or select packages. No more tears! With Appnr, software installation is just a click away. Another wonderful thing about this site is - its FREE! No registration required. You can install the applications straight from the site. With all these pros, I'm still struggling to find some cons for this site. Anyway, I do want to provide some screenshots of how things work.

1. Select a software that you want

2. Click Yes when it asks you to install

3. Downloads Relevant Packages

4. Installs Software

5. Finalizes Installation

6. Completes Installation

7. Installed Software - Works like a Charm!

As simple as that!

Command Line Package Management Utility

2008-10-08T00:26:00.003+05:30

Most of the Linux newbies say it is difficult to install softwares on Linux. Well, they are newbies! However, when it comes to installing softwares, a migration from Windows to Linux is always expected with an installation file and some "next" buttons which must be pressed for completing the formalities. Well, everyday cannot be a sunday. You can't expect the same thing to happen in every operating system. I am one of those people who take the shorter route. There is absolutely no need to worry about downloading the relevant packages and compiling them to make a software work. Linux uses a simple command line package management utility which makes the job unusually simple! Yes. One simple command can install a software without you having to monitor the process of installation. What good is an Operating System if it banks on us for something that we want it to do? Anyway, Linux uses this command line thingy to ease our work in installing stuff! Unfortunately, the commands differ with different distributions. But of course, each distribution uses its own package management system. Lets take a look,

yum - Yellowdog Updater Modified

This is used by RedHat Linux and its children Fedora-Cores. To install a software using the yum command, simply type

# yum install (package-name)

To make the whole process automated, add -y

# yum install -y (package-name)

(Wave goodbyes to the crappy "Next" buttons). Now the installation is much more easier than before. Just give the command and the package management system will take care of the rest.
OK! How the hell am I supposed to get rid of this software? Its as simple as you installed it. Just fire the following command and let yum do the talking!! Or cleaning, rather!

# yum remove -y (package-name)

With this, all the dependencies and packages would be removed and your Linux will be a lot cleaner now.

For Ubuntu, we have no dogs! But we do have something called Aptitude. Aptitude is a text-based front-end to the APT (Advanced Packaging Tool). There is hardly any difference between aptitude and apt-get. But people do prefer using aptitude. Both share the same repositories and install softwares. But the difference comes when a software is to be removed. Both aptitude and apt-get remove the dependencies. But aptitude removes those packages that are no longer in use. apt-get fails to take care of this simple, yet important, aspect. Anyway, I would like to introduce you one of the wonders of Ubuntu,

# sudo apt-get install (package-name)

# sudo aptitude install (package-name)

As said before, its easy to uninstall a software. Use remove in the place of install and you're done!

# sudo apt-get remove (package-name)

Of course, -y is always there!!

Okay now. What about SUSE?

SUSE has the famous Yast configuration tool. Yast, which actually stands for Yet Another Setup Tool, has been graded as one of the most efficient package management systems. Like other Linux distributions, Yast is also used for maintaining packages and installations in SUSE. It has various functions like installing software, configuring hardware, setting up networks, etc. Something I like about Yast is that it has a better GUI compared to other package management utilities which makes it easier to navigate and find things. However, the command line installation is done through zypper.

# zypper install (package-name)

# zypper update (package-name)

To uninstall a software, use

# zypper remove (package-name)

Google MILE-----Stones

2008-10-08T00:14:00.001+05:30

I found this piece of great compilation in one of the geeky blogs...

Who knew that google started their business in an garage...?
Who knew google is involved in harware products, including a supercomputing division..?
This piece is from some one who is intimately working in google...

Google Milestones

Our company has packed a lot in to a relatively young life. We’ve captured some of the key milestones in Google’s development.

1995-1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008

1995-1997

1995

Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. (Larry, 24, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 23, is assigned to show him around.) According to some accounts, they disagree about most everything during this first meeting.

1996

Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students, begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub.
BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year — eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.

1997

Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google — a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

1998

August

Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn’t exist yet: a company called Google Inc.

September

Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park.
Google files for incorporation in California on September 4. Shortly thereafter, Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company’s name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim’s check.
Larry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he’s a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.

December

“PC Magazine” reports that Google “has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results” and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

1999

February

We outgrow our garage office and move to new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just 8 employees.

May

Omid Kordestani joins to run sales — the first non-engineering hire.

June

Our first press release announces a $25 million round from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. The release quotes Moritz describing “Googlers” as “people who use Google.”

August

We move to our first Mountain View location: 2400 E. Bayshore. Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north of the older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose.

November

Charlie Ayers joins as Google’s first chef. He wins the job in a cook-off judged by the company’s 40 employees. Previous claim to fame: catering for the Grateful Dead.

2000

April

On April Fool’s Day, we announce the MentalPlex: Google’s ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. Thus begins our annual foray in the Silicon Valley tradition of April 1 hoaxes.

May

The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish.
We win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples’ Voice (voted by users).

June

We forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider.
We announce the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world’s largest search engine.

September

We start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, bringing our total number of supported languages to 15.

October

Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.

December

Google Toolbar is released. It’s a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

2001

January

We announce the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing as our first VP of engineering operations.

February

Our first public acquisition: Deja.com’s Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. We add search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups.

March

Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors.
Google.com is available in 26 languages.

April

Swedish Chef becomes a language preference.

July

Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.

August

We open our first international office, in Tokyo.
Eric Schmidt becomes our CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively.

October

A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans.

December

Keeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion web documents.

2002

February

Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces.
The first Google hardware is released: it’s a yellow box called the Google Search Appliance that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.
We release a major overhaul for AdWords, including new cost-per-click pricing.

April

For April Fool’s Day, we announce that pigeons power our search results.
We release a set of APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2 billion Web documents and program in their favorite environment, including Java, Perl and Visual Studio.

May

We announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.
We release Google Labs for users to try out beta technologies fresh from our R&D team.

September

Google News launches with 4000 news sources.

October

We open our first Australian office in Sydney.

December

Users can now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later called Google Product Search).

2003

January

American Dialect Society members vote “google” the “most useful” Word of the Year for 2002.

February

We acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.

March

We announce a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google’s vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, we acquired Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)

April

We launch Google Grants, our in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.

October

Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first-ever Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.

December

We launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results.

2004

January

orkut launches as a way for us to tap into the sphere of social networking.

February

Larry Page is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
Our search index hits a new milestone: 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion web pages and 880 million images.

March

We move to our new “Googleplex” at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment.
We formalize our enterprise unit with the hire of Dave Girouard as general manager; reporters begin reporting in April about our vision for the enterprise search business.
We introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps, and directions. (Later, Local is combined with Google Maps.)

April

For April Fool’s we announce plans to open the Googlunaplex, a new research facility on the Moon.

May

We announce the first winners of the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, awarded to outstanding women studying computer science. Today these scholarships are open to students in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.

August

Our Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock takes place on Wall Street on August 18. Opening price: $85 per share.

September

There are more than 100 Google domains (Norway and Kenya are #102 and #103). The list has since grown to more than 150.

October

We formally open our office in Dublin, Ireland, with 150 multilingual Googlers, a visit from Sergey and Larry, and recognition from the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mary Harney.
Google SMS (short message service) launches; send your text search queries to GOOGL or 466453 on your mobile device.
Larry and Sergey are named Fellows by the Marconi Society, which recognizes “lasting scientific contributions to human progress in the field of communications science and the Internet.”
We spotlight our new engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India with a visit from Sergey and Larry.
Google Desktop Search is introduced: users can now search for files and documents stored on their own hard drive using Google technology.
We launch the beta version of Google Scholar, a free service that helps users search scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports.
We acquire Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later become Google Earth.

November

Our index of web pages reaches 8 billion.

December

We open our Tokyo R&D (research & development) center to attract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers.
The Google Print Program (since renamed Google Book Search) expands through digital scanning partnerships with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, and Oxford plus the New York Public Library.

2005

February

We hit a milestone in Image Search: 1.1 billion images indexed.
Google Maps goes live.

March

We launch code.google.com, a new place for developer-oriented resources, including all of our APIs.
Some 14,000 programmers from six countries compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first coding competition in India, with top scores going to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo of Singapore.
We acquire Urchin, a web analytics company whose technology is used to create Google Analytics.

April

Our first Google Maps release in Europe is geared to U.K. users.
For April Fool’s, we announce a magical beverage that makes its imbibers more intelligent, and therefore better capable of properly using search results.
Google Maps now features satellite views and directions.
Google Local goes mobile, and includes SMS driving directions.
My Search History launches in Labs, allowing users to view all the web pages they’ve visited and Google searches they’ve made over time.
We release Site Targeting, an AdWords feature giving advertisers the ability to better target their ads to specific content sites.

May

We release Blogger Mobile, enabling bloggers to use their mobile phones to post and send photos to their blogs.
Google Scholar adds support for institutional access: searchers can now locate journal articles within their own libraries.
Personalized Homepage (now iGoogle ) is designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules they choose.

June

We hold our first Summer of Code, a 3-month $2 million program that aims to help computer science students contribute to open source software development.
Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones.
We unveil Google Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search.
We release Personalized Search in Labs: over time, your (opt-in) search history will closely reflect your interests.
API for Maps released; developers can embed Google Maps on many kinds of mapping services and sites.

August

Google scores well in the U.S. government’s 2005 machine translation evaluation. (We’ve done so in subsequent years as well.)
We launch Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application that enables Gmail users to talk or IM with friends quickly and easily talk using a computer microphone and speaker (no phone required) for free.

September

Overlays in Google Earth illuminate the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Some rescue teams use these tools to locate stranded victims.
DARPA veteran Vint Cerf joins Google to carry on his quest for a global open Internet.
Dr. Kai-Fu Lee begins work at our new Research and Development Center in China.
Google Blog Search goes live; it’s the way to find current and relevant blog postings on particular topics throughout the enormous blogosphere.

October

Feed aficionados rejoice as Google Reader, a feed reader, is introduced at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
Googlers volunteer to produce the first Mountain View book event with Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Blink” and “The Tipping Point.” Since then, the Authors@Google program has hosted more than 480 authors in 12 offices across the U.S., Europe and India.

November

We release Google Analytics, formerly known as Urchin, for measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns.
We announce the opening of our first offices in São Paulo and Mexico City.

December

Google Transit launches in Labs. People in the Portland, Oregon metro area can now plan their trips on public transportation at one site.
Gmail for mobile launches in the United States.

2006

January

Our first Code Jam in China concludes in Beijing. The winner, graduate student Chuan Xu, is one of more than 13,000 registrants.
We announce the acquisition of dMarc, a digital radio advertising company.
Google.cn, a local domain version of Google, goes live in China.
We introduce Picasa in 25 more languages, including Polish, Thai and Vietnamese.

February

We release Chat in Gmail, using the instant messaging tools from Google Talk.
Eric Schmidt is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
Dr. Larry Brilliant becomes the executive director of Google.org, our philanthropic arm.
Google News for mobile launches.

March

We announce the acquisition of Writely, a web-based word processing application that subsequently becomes the basis for Google Docs.
A team working from Mountain View, Bangalore and New York collaborates to create Google Finance, our approach to an improved search experience for financial information.

April

For April Fool’s we unveil a new product, Google Romance: “Dating is a search problem.”
We launch Google Calendar, complete with sharing and group features.
We release Maps for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

May

We release Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time.

June

We announce Picasa Web Albums, allowing Picasa users to upload and share their photos online
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds “Google” as a verb.
Gmail, Google News and iGoogle become available on mobile phones in eight more languages besides English: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Turkish.
Gmail launches in Arabic and Hebrew, bringing the number of interfaces up to 40.

July

At Google Code Jam Europe, nearly 10,000 programmers from 31 countries compete at Google Dublin for the top prizes; Tomasz Czajka from Poland wins the final round.

August

We launch free citywide WiFi in Mountain View.
More than 100 libraries on 10 campuses of the University of California join the Google Books Library Project.
Star Trek’s 40th Anniversary Convention in Las Vegas features a Google booth showcasing tools appropriate for intergalactic use.
Apps for Your Domain, a suite of applications designed for organizations of all sizes, and including including Gmail and Calendar, is released.
Google Book Search begins offering free PDF downloads of books in the public domain.

September

We add an archive search to Google News, with more than 200 years of historical articles.
Featured Content for Google Earth includes overlays from the UN Environmental Program, Discovery Networks, the Jane Goodall Institute, and the National Park Service.
The University Complutense of Madrid becomes the first Spanish-language library to join the Google Books Library Project.

October

Together with LitCam and UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning, we launch the Literacy Project, offering resources for teachers, literacy groups and anyone interested in reading promotion.
We announce our acquisition of YouTube.
We release web-based applications Docs & Spreadsheets: Word processor Docs is a reworking of Writely (acquired in March).
We acquire JotSpot, a collaborative wiki platform, which later becomes Google Sites.

November

The first nationwide Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.K. takes place with the theme My Britain. More than 15,000 kids in Britain enter, and 13-year old Katherine Chisnall is chosen to have her doodle displayed on www.google.co.uk. There have been Doodle 4 Google contests in several other years and countries since.

December

We release Patent Search in the U.S., indexing more than 7 million patents dating back to 1790.

2007

January

We announce a partnership with China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China.

February

We release Google Maps in Australia, complete with local business results and mobile capability.
Google Docs & Spreadsheets is available in eleven more languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian.
For Valentine’s Day, we open up Gmail to everyone. (Previously, it was available by invitation only).
Google Apps Premier Edition launches, bringing cloud computing to businesses.
The Candidates@Google series kicks off with Senator Hillary Clinton, the first of several 2008 Presidential candidates, including Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, to visit the Googleplex.
We introduce traffic information to Google Maps for more than 30 cities around the US.

March

Our first Latin American software coding contest ends with Fábio Dias Moreira of Brazil taking the grand prize. He scored more points than 5,000 other programmers from all over the continent.
We sign partnerships to give free access to Google Apps for Education to 70,000 university students in Kenya and Rwanda.

April

This April Fool’s Day is extra busy: not only do we introduce the Gmail Paper Archive and TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider) — we lose (and find) a real snake in our New York office!
We add eight more languages to Blogger, bringing the total to 19.

May

In partnership with the Growing Connection, we plant a vegetable garden in the middle of the Googleplex, the output of which is incorporated into our café offerings.
We move into permanent space in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Governor Jennifer Granholm helps us celebrate. The office is an AdWords support site.
At our Searchology event, we announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result.
Google Hot Trends launches, listing the current 100 most active queries, showing what people are searching for at the moment.
Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver.
On Developer Day, we announce Google Gears (now known just as Gears), an open source technology for creating offline web applications.

June

Google Maps gets prime placement on the original Apple iPhone.
YouTube becomes available in nine more domains: Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Ireland and the U.K.
We announce a partnership with Salesforce.com, combining that company’s on-demand CRM applications with AdWords.
We unveil several “green” initiatives: RechargeIT, aimed at accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the completion of our installation of solar panels at the Googleplex, in Mountain View, and our intention to be completely carbon-neutral by the end of 2007. We also announce the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, in collaboration with Intel, Dell, and more than 30 other companies.
Google Earth Outreach is introduced, designed to help nonprofit organizations use Google Earth to advocate their causes.

July

We announce the acquisition of Postini.
The first CNN/YouTube debate takes place between the eight U.S. Democratic Presidential candidates. (The Republicans get their turn in November 2007.)
Google Finance becomes available for non-U.S. markets for the first time, in Canada.
Google Apps is now available in 28 languages.

August

We ask users for their interpretation of how Gmail travels around the world, and get more than 1,100 video responses from more than 65 different countries.
To infinity and beyond! Sky launches inside Google Earth, including layers for constellation information and virtual tours of galaxies.

September

AdSense for Mobile is introduced, giving sites optimized for mobile browsers the ability to host the same ads as standard websites.
Together with the X PRIZE Foundation we announce the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon for a $30 million prize purse.
We add Presently, a new application for making slide presentations, to Google Docs.
Google Reader becomes available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, English (U.K.), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese and Korean.

October

We partner with IBM on a supercomputing initiative so that students can learn to work at Internet scale on computing challenges.

November

We announce OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for developers to build applications for social networks.
Android, the first open platform for mobile devices, and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance, is announced. Soon after, we introduce the $10 million Android Developer Challenge.
Google.org announces RE, an initiative designed to create electricity from renewable sources that are cheaper than coal. The initial focus is on support for solar thermal power and wind power technologies.

December

The Queen of England launches The Royal Channel on YouTube. She is the first monarch to establish a video presence this way.

2008

January

Google.org announces five key initiatives: in addition to the previously-announced RE
We bid in the 700 MHz spectrum auction to ensure that a more open wireless world becomes available to consumers.

February

For people searching in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left languages, we introduce a feature aimed at making searches easier by detecting the direction of a query.

Google Sites, a revamp of the acquisition JotSpot, debuts. Sites enables users to create collaborative websites with embedded videos, documents, and calendars.

March

We finally complete the acquisition deal for DoubleClick.
Together with Yahoo and MySpace, we announce the OpenSocial Foundation, an independent non-profit group designed to provide transparency and operational guidelines around the open software tools for social computing.

April

We feature 16 April Fool’s jokes from our offices around the world, including the new airline announced with Sir Richard Branson (Virgle), AdSense for Conversations, a Manpower Search (China), and the Google Wake-Up Kit. Bonus foolishness: all viewers linking to YouTube-featured videos are “Rickrolled.”
A new version of Google Earth launches, incorporating Street View and 12 more languages. At the same time, KML 2.2, which began as the Google Earth file format, is accepted as an official Open Geospacial Consortium standard.
Google Website Optimizer comes out of beta, expanding from an AdWords-only product. It’s a free website-testing tool with which users can continually test different combinations of their website content (such as images and text), to see which ones yield the most sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.
We launch Google Finance China allowing Chinese investors to get stock and mutual fund data as a result of this collaboration between our New York and Shanghai teams.
We introduce a collection of 70+ new themes (“skins”) for iGoogle, contributed by such artists and designers as Dale Chihuly, Oscar de la Renta, Kwon Ki-Soo and Philippe Starck.

May

Following both the Sichuan earthquake in China and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Google Earth adds new satellite information for the region(s) to help recovery efforts.
Reflecting our commitment to searchers worldwide, Google search now supports Unicode 5.1.
At a developer event, we preview Google FriendConnect, a set of functions and applications enabling website owners to easily make their sites social by adding registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, plus applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.
With IPv4 addresses (the numbers that computers use to connect to the Internet) running low, Google search becomes available over IPv6, a new IP address space large enough to assign almost three billion networks to every person on the planet. Vint Cerf is a key proponent of broad and immediate adoption of IPv6.
Google Translate adds 10 more languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish), bringing the total to 23.
We introduce a series of blog posts detailing the many aspects of good search results on the Official Google Blog.
California 6th grader Grace Moon wins the U.S. 2008 Doodle 4 Google competition for her doodle “Up In The Clouds.”

June

Real-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time.
A new version of Maps for Mobile debuts, putting Google Transit directions on phones in more than 50 cities worldwide.
For the first time, Google engineers create the problems for contestants to solve at the 7th Annual Code Jam competition.

July

We provide Street View for the entire 2008 Tour de France route — the first launch of Street View imagery in Europe.
Our first downloadable iPhone app, featuring My Location and word suggestions for quicker mobile searching, debuts with the launch of the Apple 3G iPhone.
We work with the band Radiohead to make a music video of their song “House of Cards,” using only data, and not cameras.
Our indexing system for processing links indicates that we now count 1 trillion unique URLs (and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day).

August

Street View is available in several cities in Japan and Australia - the first time it’s appeared outside of North America or Europe.
Google Suggest feature arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors, and reduce keystrokes.
Just in time for the U.S. political conventions, we launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections, with news, video and photos as well as tools for teachers and campaigners.

September

Word gets out about Chrome a bit ahead of schedule when the comic book that introduces our new open source browser is released earlier than planned on September 1. The browser officially becomes available for worldwide download a day later.
We get involved with the U.S. political process at the presidential nominating conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties.
We release an upgrade for Picasa, including new editing tools, a movie maker, and easier syncing with the web. At the same time, Picasa Web Albums is updated with a new feature allowing users to “name tag” people in photos.
Google News Archive helps to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.
Thanks to all of our users, Google celebrates 10 fast-paced years.

Residence of a Software

2008-10-08T00:02:00.001+05:30

Where did I install my software by the way?
Well, some of you may find it hard to locate the files of a software that you installed. Unlike windows where almost all the relevant files that are associated with the software go into the folder - Program files or whichever directory that you installed, there is a way to locate the hideouts of the softwares and packages by giving a simple command in the terminal.

# dpkg -L (package-name)

This command tells us where a package is installed (works for Debian based distros). However, the binary files (or executables as what we call it in the usual "windows lingo") are always stored in the folder:

/usr/bin/

This command may come in handy if in case you want to look for the files of the software that you installed.

Chromifox- Now whats that?!

2008-10-07T23:58:00.001+05:30

Hehe..

Now, this one's hilarious..Call it "an entwined fable" or call it a "shame of a game!". Firefox now has an all new interface!, a new theme for its browser has been designed by an unknown rip-off company!, and guess what's this theme fuss is all about?!.

Yeah, you guess it right..its a coat of Chrome on Firefox. Now, let's say "what's up!?" in unison to "Mr.Chromifox", a bright and soft blue theme for Firefox 3 on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, inspired by the appearance of the Google Chrome web browser.Lolz!

Chromifox, from the developer of Camifox, is another blatant rip-off of another default theme from another great open source web browser! This time, the target is Google Chrome, or more specifically Chromium, the open source project behind it. The clean lines, slick layout, and compact style of Chromium were the points of inspiration for this theme. Chromifox offers a coat of Chrome for Firefox.

Click here to download Chromifox!

Firefox 3.03 realeased!!

2008-10-07T23:40:00.003+05:30

O' Holy cow!..What a surprise!!.

Only two days after releasing Firefox 3.02 the Mozilla firefox team released the new version Firefox 3.03 (Woosh!, now, dont be astounded!- It aint a miracle..Instead its just a "sign of a serious bug in the previous version" lolz!. I heard that the bugs made it impossible for some users to retrieve saved passwords or to save new passwords. A serious problem for everyone who used the Firefox Password Manager to store passwords in the web browser.

The new version of Firefox is currently distributed to all official mirror servers. The process is currently still underway. Well, indian mirrors though have not under-gone the mirrior metamorphosis.[ Yeah, again..Better late than never..:)]

Click here to Download Firefox 3.03

Who's a GEEK anyways?!

2008-10-07T23:35:00.002+05:30

But just what is a geek? you ask. Well, I'll tell you. At least, I'll tell you my definition... which may be different from "general usage" of the term, dictionary definition, and even the definition used by other geeks.

A geek is someone who spends time being "social" on a computer. This could mean chatting on IRC or ICB, playing multi-user games, posting to alt.sex.bondage.particle.physics, or even writing shareware. Someone who just uses their computer for work, but doesn't spend their free time "on line" is not a geek. Most geeks are technically adept and have a great love of computers, but not all geeks are programming wizards. Some just know enough unix to read mail and telnet out to their favorite MUD.

Geeks are generally social outcasts from mainstream America. The ranks of geekdom are swelled with gamers, ravers, science fiction fans, punks, perverts, programmers, nerds, subgenii, and trekkies. These are people who did not go to their high school proms, and many would be offended by the suggestion that they should have even wanted to. Geeks prefer to socialize with other geeks, the self proclaimed weird. Therefore they go online to organize parties, food runs, drink runs, and movie nights, and be assured that their companions would rather talk about superheros as modern mythology than the latest football scores.

Geeks are their own society: a literate, hyperinformed underground. The community accepts people from all walks of life, assuming they have access to the net and the skill to use it. Geeks are rather openminded with regards to nonstandard lifestyles. Many geeks are queer, more practice non-monogamy, and the most common religion is neo-paganism. You can't tell if someone is a geek just by looking at them, there is no dress code. Some dress casual, some prefer silk - but few pay attention to current fashion. You are more likely to see a geek in a renaissance bodice than a dress from glamour magazine; or a tie-dye instead of suit and tie.

The unwritten geek credo states that originality and strangeness are good, and that blind conformity and stupidity are unforgivable.

Take care not to confuse the terms geek and nerd. A nerd is a person with no social skills, usually obsessed with science or technology (geek is more computer specific). Nerds are known for their pocket protectors, taped glasses, and plaid shirts. Many nerds are also geeks, using the net as a safe screen to hide behind while practicing their social skills. However they rarely come out to be seen in person at live geek events, so there is little reason to be concerned.

The term hacker tends to refer to the more programming intense set of the geek crowd. However the term is overused in the popular media, and therefore is no longer much used among "real geeks". Hacker also has negative connotations related to cracking, or illegally obtaining access to computers and accounts.

Geek can also be used as a verb. "To geek" is to sit online and read mail, news, chat, and otherwise waste time in front of a keyboard. This "geeking" often consumes many hours, even if the intention was to "just log in and check my mail." Some would say this time would be better spent being social in person or even just being curled up in a sunbeam.

Welcome to the world of GEEKS!

2008-10-07T23:21:00.001+05:30

Err!, here's the first post..
Sounds quite "oxymoron-like" doesnt it?!.
Ok!, Agreed that its a bit late [but, better late than never!], we're here to "blow-up" (I repeat, "Just Blow-up"- No puns intended!!] the world of tech reviews and techno-mania's!.

Arrgh!, if thats sounds boring..
Here's something for the taking..

This document has been created for those who do not have a clear definition of "today's geek". So if you are a geek, or think you may be a geek, sit back, relax, grab your bottle of Bawls and your Tux pillow and join us on this ride. For everyone else, please pay attention so we can embrace the geek in you.

Please set aside any and all existing notions and prejudices you may have about geeks. Put down your 1975 edition of Webster's Dictionary. We are not "carnival performers whose shows consist of bizarre acts..." Although the term "geek" originated from 19th century circus acts, "today's geek" is very different.

Webster's also defines geeks as people who are single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but are felt to be socially inept." Well, we've got news for Webster. We are not single-minded nor are we socially inept. We may be intensely focused and outrageously passionate about a single thing, like overclocking our pc's, or getting the most frags, but certainly not single-minded! It may seem at times that we are "socially inept", but in fact we are quite the opposite. We relate better through devices such as keyboards and gamepads, but this doesn't make us socially inept. We have our own culture. We relate to each other at gaming clubs, raves, and trek extravaganzas. But just because we take pleasure in these activities it does not mean we exile ourselves from the rest of society. All social beings have an intensity and passion about something.

Some may say "geeky" activities are strange. Well according to the unofficial geek credo, "Originality and strangeness are good, blind conformity and stupidity are unforgivable." While comfort can be tempting, be unique and gain comfort in your "strangeness."

So, what is a geek? Perhaps a little strange, perhaps unique, and yes, very intense. Today's geek is a person who is passionate and/or accomplished in his or her pursuits.

"We proliferate the world, connected by strands of telephone and network cable. We communicate wirelessly through cellular and satellite networks. We collect comics, sports cards, and figurines. We modify cars, build models and mix music. We are ravers, gamers, trekkies, programmers and techies. Do not fear us, but instead, embrace us. Listen to those who are passionate and accomplished in their pursuits no matter what they may be. Share your passions with them. There is a little geek in all of us. What are you geek for?"

Device	Boot	Start	End	Blocks	Id	System
/dev/sda1		1	654	5253223+	b	W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2	*	655	1962	10506510	7	HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3		1963	3924	15759765	83	Linux