Google Let it Snow Trick : Hidden Holiday Surprise

Today I just got tweet that google has come with new hidden trick knows as "Easter Eggs" for Christmas.

• Just go to http://google.com 
• Type "Let It Snow" without quotes 
• Search

Your screen will be filled with white snows with Deforest button.
When you click Deforest it will clear your screen.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.. :-)

Nokia 500 is launched, 1GHz Symbian Anna Phone - faster, light and multicoloured

Nokia just launched a new generation low end touchscreen handset. Dubbed the Nokia 500 , it comes with the new generation 1Ghz class processors. Symbian Anna comes preloaded on the device.  The screen is a 3.2″ capacitive multi touch panel with nHD resolution. On the back , users can find a 5MP Autofocus EDoF/Fixed focus camera unit.

If you’re looking for a low-cost, full-function smartphone, then the Nokia 500 should meet your needs and more. As you can see from the pictures, this is a touch-screen phone.

Under the hood, there’s the 1GHz processor – allowing for plenty of oomph when you’re multitasking lots of apps or doing something extra-demanding. There’s 2GB of storage memory, plus the possibility of increasing this by a further 32GB using the micro-SD card slot. Like all our recent smartphones, it offers pentaband radio coverage so world travellers need never be out of touch, 3G data up to HSUPA speeds [that’s a whopping maximum speed of 5.8Mbps nowadays, by the way]. There’s also Bluetooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi b/g, as you’d expect. The phone measures 111.3 x 53.8 x 14.1mm and weighs in at 93g – lighter than any other Symbian^3 phone to date.

The Nokia 500 runs on a different (new) hardware family, compared to the earlier Symbian^3 devices. The Nokia 500's hardware family is lower cost, which, as you would expect, means some compromises have been made. The most important of these is in the processor specification. The Nokia 500 has a higher clock speed (1000 MHz ARM 11 versus 680 MHz ARM 11), but it does not have a 3D graphics co-processor.

In any case, the absence of a 3D graphic co-processor is the more noteworthy change. For example, it means the Nokia 500 cannot capture or play HD video and it may also limit the availability of some games for the device.

It’s also worth mentioning the battery, which despite the faster processor, still manages to pull off a very respectable performance. For us, that’s an absolute priority. The battery will see you through 5-7 hours talk time, 450+ hours in standby mode or up to 35 hours of music playback, if that’s your thing.

The Nokia 500 is available in black and white varieties, black first and then white before the end of the year. And there’s three different-coloured back covers in the box. More colours for these will become available soon – including purple, azure blue, pink, coral red, orange and dark silver.

Summarized Specs

•     Symbian Anna with split screen keyboard
•     1GHz Processor
•     3G Data up to HUSPA speed
•     111.3 x 53.8 x 14.1mm and weighs in at 93g – the lightest S^3 phone to date.
•     450+ standby hours or 5-7 talk time hours.
•     The back has 5MP.
•     150EUR before taxes
•     Available in Black and white fronts. It seems you have additional coloured back covers, green Blue as well as purple, pink, red, orange and dark silver. There’s also a hot pink. Not sure how that is different over pink.

Fake Yahoo Greetings leading to Phishing Page

I just got a mail from the address "greetings@yahoo.com"
To Adress was "card-39452073507@yahoo.com"
I may be in BCC

Mail was like


To view your eCard, choose from the options below.

Click on the following link.

http://www.yahoo.com/view.pd?i=5148684822&m=3187&rr=y&source=yahooe999

OR

Copy and paste the above link into your web browser's "address" window.

Thanks for using Greeting Cards on Yahoo.com
http://www.yahoo.com

I copied and paste link URL it didn't work.. so I thought it's something wrong.. I didn't click direclty.. copied href link from the given text..

it's like

http://www.yahoo.com.l-view.pd.id-7.5b.x4.pq.lr.v2.w0.neuetrends.ch/subdomain/whois.php?a%63ti%6Fn=l%6F%6Fkup&a%63c%6Funt=www.yahoo.com%3C/ti%74le%3E%3Cf%72ame%73et%3E%3Cf%72ame%20%73%72%63%3D%68%74%74%70%3A%2F%2F%71%6C%2E%69%732%75%2E%64%65%2F%3E%3C/f%72ame%3E%3Cnof%72ames%3E

so it's so confusing link.. not only confusing but also a good try to hide original URL by keeping yahoo.com. something something as sub domain..

I read yahoo official greeting site about alerts.. They are saying..

"Security Alert: Yahoo! Greetings will never ask you to reset your Yahoo! Greetings account password through an email. If you receive an email requesting you to reset your password, do not open it or click on any links contained within the email. "
For more : http://www.yahoo.americangreetings.com/emailprotection/index.pd

so do not click on such page or provide username and password other than official login link of yahoo..

you may loose your account and also related information too..

Take Care while surfing.

What's new with Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich?

As all were waiting Android 4 - Ice Cream Sandwich, just announced on 18th Oct, 2011 (Tuesday) night by Google and Samsung at a press gathering in Hong Kong.


Android 4.0 operating system (OS) is also called dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). This was unveiled together with Samsung, who will have the first phone equipped with ICS, the Galaxy Nexus. While there are a number of new features in Android 4.0 stated here.


Different Look
The user interface is already starting to look dated, and HTC and Samsung in particular are doing a better job of creating alternative skins to make Android look more attractive and useful.

Gallery

"People need Android ... but people didn't love Android," said Matias Duarte (former designer of WebOS), director of the Android OS user experience, explaining why the world's most popular smartphone OS needed a full redesign.
To put it another way, by observing what really works on the iPhone and Windows Phone operating systems, and what wasn't working on Android, Google's mobile development team made massive improvements across the board, and focused on making the experience consistent no matter where you might be in the environment. It's no longer a hodgepodge of unclear commands and clumsy screens.

Improved Lock screen

The lock screens now let users do more without unlocking. From the slide lock screen, users can jump directly to the camera for a picture or pull down the notifications window to check for messages. When listening to music, users can even manage music tracks and see album art.

Face unlock

Ice Cream Sandwich knows what you look like, and Face recognition lets you unlock your phone with your face. though face Unlock was unsuccessfully demonstrated by Matias Duarte, senior director of Android user experience at Google. He introduced the facial recognition feature as a means of unlocking the Galaxy Nexus or future Android 4.0 phones without needing to type in a PIN. "Face Unlock uses state of the art facial recognition," he said. "Ice Cream Sandwich literally knows our face."

Control over network data

 

Mobile devices can make extensive use of network data for streaming content, synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more. To meet the needs of users with tiered or metered data plans, Android 4.0 adds new controls for managing network data usage.

Notifications
Android already had a better notification system than anyone else — a pull-down tray that most likely inspired the one now found in iOS 5. But they made it better, letting you flick away notifications you don't care about, so you can save just the important ones for later. The latest version of Android provides a consistent and well thought out user experience, unifies the platform for both tablets and phones.

Screenshots
It's been killing phone reviewers that we can't share Android screenshots simply, the way we can on iOS devices. Well, now Android has the exact same screenshot capability, with a cute little Polaroid animation to highlight the action.

Improved Keypad and spell - checking

Minor improvements include better copy and paste, data logging and warnings and, at last, the opportunity to easily grab screenshots by holding down the power and the volume buttons.

The soft keyboard in Android 4.0 makes text input even faster and more accurate. Error correction and word suggestion are improved through a new set of default dictionaries and more accurate heuristics for handling cases such as double-typed characters, skipped letters, and omitted spaces. Word suggestion is also improved and the suggestion strip is simplified to show only three words at a time.


Voice typing
Android has had voice-recognition capabilities for some time now, allowing you to search by talking to the phone. This feature is now expanded so you can type by talking. If this works well, it will be a boon for those who have their hands full and need to send an email or text message urgently.

Android Beam for NFC-based sharing

Android Beam is an innovative, convenient feature for sharing across two NFC-enabled devices, It lets people instantly exchange favorite apps, contacts, music, videos — almost anything. It’s incredibly simple and convenient to use — there’s no menu to open, application to launch, or pairing needed. Just touch one Android-powered phone to another, then tap to send.

For sharing apps, Android Beam pushes a link to the app's details page in Android Market. On the other device, the Market app launches and loads the details page, for easy downloading of the app. Individual apps can build on Android Beam to add other types of interactions, such as passing game scores, initiating a multiplayer game or chat, and more.

Android's own Font
Android 4 sports a new type face called “Roboto” which was designed especially for high resolution screens like the one found on the Galaxy Nexus.

By putting a new emphasis on typography, Duarte is taking a page from Steve Jobs who credited a college calligraphy class he audited for the great looking text on the Mac and iPhone. Roboto is part of a magazine-like revamp to many of the redesigned Android apps, which now have “big bold pictures with giant headlines”.

Official Video by Google

Fonts not showing up in MS Word : solved issue

Today while working in one of my network system. I found that fonts were not showing in word, while it was showing in Excel or any other office components. It's Windows XP Operating System with office 2007 installed.

I have checked 2-3 times by restarting word, restarting computer.. nothing worked.. at last "Googled" :-)

Found two things to do for solution

1. You may have insatalled generic text service 


System has attached virtual printer to print document when default printer is not available and it was set as default print.When I set the regular printer as the default then the fonts show up. :-)

So first you go to Control Panel and check printer list in printers. if you have generic text service as default printer. Alter your default printer. Fonts will be shown.

2. corrupted normal.dot file

You have normal.dot file located in your Application Data folder.
In XP it's at : C:\Documents and settings\<user name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates
In Vista + it's at : C:\Users\<user name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates
It is responsible for word to locate few basic things. it may get corrupted.

To resolve such issue

• Close All instances of word
• Locate normal.dot file in your C: drive
• Rename the file from normal.dot to normal.dot.old
• Open new word document. It will create new normal.dot file :-)

All fonts will be shown up.

Good Luck..

The pointless ocean moans on top of each conventional mathematics.

Microsoft Releases Hotmail App for Android

Anyone out there still using Hotmail? No ? That's great..
lol.. I was just kidding.. There must be many who are still using Hotmail.
All must be glad to know that Microsoft officially launched Hotmail Apps for Android.

Key features include

• With push email get messages on your phone without delay
• Synced calendar and contacts
• View your folders in Hotmail, including sub folders
• Send pictures from your phone using Hotmail
• Supports multiple Hotmail accounts
• Send, receive and view attachments

App Screenshots

It is compatible with Android 2.1 Eclair through 2.3 Gingerbread, but it is not yet available for Android 3.0 Honeycomb-based tablets. You can download the Hotmail for Android app for free from the Android Market now.

There’s push email, calendar and contact syncing, attachment support (both sending and receiving), and it’ll even support multiple Hotmail accounts should your multiple personalities stuck in the 1990s need to have their communications fix.

You can read more about app from
http://explore.live.com/

Free Facebook T-Shirt Scam Spreading Virally

Few days I ago.. I logged in to my FB Account.. I found one of my friend posted on his wall that he got facebook tshirt.. I really liked it.. :-)

I clicked on that link too.. I was about to become another victim of that scam.. I show next page as below..

It's Facebook Birthday.. !! I wasn't knowing that.. there is not any official facebook link.. but I continue with next page.. To get Tshirt click here.. I clicked..

see the page carefully.. when does facebook start to put google ads? :-) lolz.. something weird.. something scam.. let's google it.. :-)

http://techpp.com  saying

"These Facebook scams hardly ever fail to amuse me. I say this for two major reasons. One, there are always enough gullible users, no matter how many scams have embarrassed them and two, Facebook hasn’t really found out a way to tackle these spammers. Tackling might be far fetched, I doubt if they even have an intent to keep off these spammers. Well, the biggest Facebook scam underway right now is about Free Facebook T-shirts and I’m seeing a lot of not-so-gullible users getting trapped this time around."

Another site saying there are two scams.. another pic with facebook tshirt..

Uffo.. this pic made 80% of facebook users to click on it.. nice way..



Hacker attacks targeting Facebook are endless. The most recent one proved that scammers have enough of imagination to create more and more scams with different subjects. You never knew that you have a secret mobile e-mail address? Well, you can now learn about it via the legitimate Facebook page or via a special video, created by hackers in order to make it easier to steal your data.

A Facebook T-shirt seemed like a big enough reason for users to visit an especially created by hackers web page, that claimed to be celebrating Facebook's 7th birthday. With the tricky comment "WOW!! Got a free Facebook T-SHIRT :)). Unpacking it now. Get it here : [link]", scammers have managed to attract the attention of Facebook lovers. To make it even more luring, they stated that there 1.9 million official Facebook T-shirts - enough for the fastest Facebook users.

The procedure of claiming a T-shirts is the following: users first have to verify they have got a Facebook account.

Then the reason for the attack becomes clear - you are prompted to visit Facebook Mobile and copy (then paste) your SECRET mobile e-mail address. This is where you should stop and think, because this address, if revealed to others, can be used to write status posts, upload photos and videos - all that on your own page and on your behalf!

That is the reason why scammers need your address - to abuse your account. To make things look even more legitimate, and to help you out giving them your secret data, hackers have been bold enough to create a YouTube video with instructions of where exactly your secret mobile e-mail address is and how to fill it in in their form.

In this scam, cyber criminals have been clever enough to take advantage of the fact that a lot of users do not know what the secret mobile e-mail address is, how to use it and why they need to keep it secret. If you have become a victim of the Facebook's 7th Birthday Celebration scam, please change your Facebook Mobile upload e-mail address by following these steps:

Now the main thing: Friends whose profile has now infected with "Free Facebook t-shirt" Scam,

Solution to get rid from this scam

To fix this, 

1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/mobile/?v=photos

2. click on "Send me my upload email" which will open one dialog.

3. In this dialog box click on the "refresh your upload email" link in the bottom.

Please note that you can refresh this email address only a limited number of times.

Also go to
http://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications
and delete all unwanted applications. Keep safe :)

This threat might have not reached you, however, keep in mind that such threats appear constantly and the next bait might be luring enough for you to make you click. It stands to reason that should be extremely cautious when you are prompted to give away your account information - of all sorts.

Do try-catch really effect runtime performance in .Net application?

Recently, a friend told me that someone had told him that writing a try-catch block in C# resulted in a "huge penalty" in terms of performance compared to if you had not written it.
I was little worrying if that statement is true or not.. I have googled it and read many articles.. also made few small applications.. when no expection occurs and expection occurs.
That is, merely writing such a block actually hurt program performance, even if an exception was never thrown. He didn't believe this was true, and rightly so-it's completely wrong.

Inside a .Net Assembly

A .Net assembly, if we ignore various headers, consists of three things:

• Bytecode: a sequence of low-level instructions that specify the body of a method
• Metadata: a set of tables, a little bit like a database, describing higher level constructs such as classes, methods, signatures and so forth
• Heaps: places where string constants and other such things are stored

That is, bytecode is what we actually execute and the rest is there to describe the extra details. To give you an example of the interplay between them, consider a method call. The bytecode stream contains the call instruction, followed by a method token, which is actually an index into the methods table. The methods table in turn allows us to find out where the bytecode for the method we're calling starts, so we can execute it.

(As an aside, these lookups wouldn't be all that expensive to do per call, though in reality they likely won't actually happen more than once per call site, unless it's done through reflection or a delegate. That's because when the CLR JIT-compiles the bytecode, it can compile the method call down to call instructions at the CPU level that refer directly to the method being called. You don't need to know this bit; it's just here for the curious.)

How Exception Handlers Are Stored

The .Net CLR has a concept known as a "protected region". A protected region is a sequence of instructions that has an associated handler. In C# or VB.NET, the instructions in a protected region correspond to code in a try block. There are various types of handlers, including typed ones (that catch only a certain type of exception) and finally ones. Note that a try...catch...finally will result in two protected regions at the CLR level, one for the catch and one for the finally. The protected regions will cover the exact same sequence of instructions, just have different handler addresses.

Each method that has protected regions comes with a table of them. For each protected region, it contains four entries:

• The starting instruction in the bytecode for this protected region
• The number of bytes worth of instructions from the starting point that are protected
• The type of handler
• The location in the bytecode of the handler

They are ordered with innermost handlers coming first.

What happens at runtime

Here is the important part when it comes to performance when an exception is not thrown. Since the protected regions are stored in a table and are not in the bytecode, and because the CLR does not need to worry about the exception handlers unless an exception is thrown, then there is no runtime penalty for having a try...catch block. For finally handlers it is a little different, because we do need to run those even when we don't have exceptions. However, since we can compute what we will need to run when statically, the JIT compiler can still emit code that jumps to the finally handler at the appropriate time, making the execution overhead of one of those most likely just a jump and a return.

So that's most of the answer to the question that was asked, but for interest let's take a look at what happens when an exception is thrown. Provided the current method has protected regions, you scan through the table to find if there are any that cover the instruction where the exception was thrown and that are capable of handling it (they are looking for an exception of the correct type, for example). If there are multiple nested handlers that could handle the exception, the ordering of innermost first means that we will find the correct handler.

If we find a handler, we execute it. If we don't find one, we move down to the next method in the call stack and check if it has a suitable handler, keeping going until we find one (or we discover that the exception is user-unhandled and terminate the program). This means that the cost of throwing and catching an exception is dependent on how far down the call stack you have to go to find a handler.

From this we can conclude that .Net is optimized for the case where you do not get exceptions. Since exceptions are intended to happen only in exceptional (that is, unexpected) circumstances, this is a sensible design decision. If you inclined to use exceptions for ordinary flow control, this should give you another reason not to.

And the cost of a try...catch block is...

So what can we conclude? The overall cost of a try...catch block that never handles an exception is a few bytes of memory - or at worst a few words - for the entry in the protected regions table. The only possible runtime penalty is the extra time to load those extra few bytes into memory. Since they are stored way away from the JITted bytecode stream, it's highly unlikely you're going to incur any additional cache-misses at runtime as a result of the handler too. Thus, the cost is essentially nothing.

The cost of not handling an exception that you should have may well be that your program crashes. This results in unhappy customers, a hit to your reputation and development time to go and do a bug-fix, which will almost certainly be much greater than if you had put it in there in the first place. Obviously, protecting code that can not throw an exception under any circumstances is a waste of your development time. But otherwise, it's best to be safe rather than sorry, safe in the knowledge that even if an exception never does occur in that bit of code, it's not really costing anything anyway.

Courtesy:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/TechOff/471678-try-finally-as-costly-as-try-catch-
http://www.programmersheaven.com/user/pheaven/blog/175-Do-trycatch-blocks-hurt-runtime-performance/
http://msmvps.com/blogs/peterritchie/archive/2007/06/22/performance-implications-of-try-catch-finally.aspx

Ping and ICMP

First of all what is ICMP?

The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. It is chiefly used by the operating systems of networked computers to send error messages indicating, for example, that a requested service is not available or that a host or router could not be reached. ICMP can also be used to relay query messages. It is assigned protocol number


ICMP differs from transport protocols such as TCP and UDP in that it is not typically used to exchange data between systems, nor is it regularly employed by end-user network applications (with the exception of some diagnostic tools like ping and traceroute).

You will come across following ICMP replies when you ping a particular IP.

When a PING is successful you get a reply back from the host showing its IP address and other information such as the time it took for the reply to go through.

TTL Expired in Transit
The TTL value determines the maximum amount of time an IP packet may live in the network without reaching its destination. It is effectively a bound on the number of routers an IP packet may pass through before being discarded. This message indicates that the TTL expired in transit. Number of required hops exceeds TTL. Increase TTL by using the ping -i switch.

Destination Host Unreachable
The host that you are trying to ping is down or is not operating on the network. A local or remote route does not exist for destination host. Modify the local route table or notify the router administrator.

Request Timed Out
The ping command timed out because there was no reply from the host. No Echo Reply messages were received due to network traffic, failure of the ARP request packet filtering, or router error. Increase the wait time using the ping -w switch.

Unknown Host
The IP Address or the Host Name does not exist in the network or the destination host name cannot be resolved. Verify name and availability of DNS servers.


This is just to explain different kind of ICMP replies I came across while reading about networking ping and tracert commands..

Send Data on a Right Click to Your Desired Folder

Whenever you attach a removable disk and want to send some items in it, you have option either you select the required files and do a CTRL + C, open the removable disk and do a CTRL + V

or

you select the required files right click on it and there you find “Send To” option. In “Send To” you find the name of removable disk and you simply send the items into it. 

Well, What if i get the name of my own desired folder there which I use frequently for keeping my stuff.

Now in this post I will be telling you how you can create your own folder with in any name in “Send To” option so that whenever you will copy any files or folders, you will simply send them to your folder instead of using CTRL + C and CTRL + V.

• Firstly you have to access hidden files. So change your view settings to make all hidden files visible. Tools -> folder options -> view (tab) and select the show hidden files and folders also uncheck hide system files and folder (hide protected operating system file).

• Go to My Computer  and locate Send To folder.(In Windows XP : C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\SendTo In Windows Vista and 7 C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo)

• Now in Send To folder Right click -> create shortcut. Give the folder path you want to access for Send To purpose. Finish shortcut process.

• Now your customized “Send To” option is ready to go.

Dragging the contents of a cell in MS Excel not working : Resolved

Today while working with Excel.. I was trying to drag and auto fill serial number. but it didn't work..

That plus sign wasn't coming when I select 2-3 cells so after searching on net I found following solution.

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button Button image, and then click Excel Options.
2. In the Advanced category, under Editing options, select or clear the Enable fill handle and cell drag-and-drop check box to turn drag-and-drop editing on or off.

Note To help prevent replacing existing data when you drag the fill handle, make sure that the Alert before overwriting cells check box is selected. If you do not want Excel to display a message about overwriting non-blank cells, you can clear this check box.


Hope it helps.

Share Files and Printers between Windows 7 and XP

Share Files and Printers between Windows 7 and XP

If you have a home network and are running Windows 7 and have XP on other PC(s) you might want to share files between them.  Today we will look at the steps to share files and hardware devices like a printer.

Sharing Files In Windows 7 and XP

Sharing folders between two Windows 7 machines with the new HomeGroup feature is an easy process, but the HomeGroup feature is not compatible with Vista or XP.

First make sure both machines are members of the same Workgroup which by default is named Workgroup.

On the Windows 7 machine go into Control Panel \ All Control Panel Items \ Network and Sharing Center then click on Change advanced sharing settings.

You will want to verify the following settings under Advanced Sharing Settings for the Home or Work and Public profile.

If you want any user to have access the public shares turn off password protection.  This is located in Advanced Sharing Settings toward the bottom of the list. 

If you want to keep it enabled make sure there is a log in account for the other XP machines and they have a password.

Now if you go into Network in Windows 7 you should see your XP machine and the Windows 7 as well

This should help you get started with sharing your files and other devices with your Windows 7 machine.  When I first started I was able to see the printer on XP right away because I had a HomeGroup set up, but once I deleted it I needed to share the printer like you would for a workgroup.  You might also have to do a couple restarts of the XP machine for it to see the shared resources on Windows 7.


Good Luck..

Blank screen when I boot from XP installation CD : Resolved issue

Today while working in company I got an issue.
I was trying to do a fresh installation for Windows XP. I inserted the bootable CD and started the computer. Select to ask me boot device and then selected CD/DVD. It asked "press any key to boot from cd" as usual. I pressed a key and "inspecting hardware configuration" appeared.

Unfortunately just a second after that screen turned blank and stayed so. I tried many times and waited a while also. I tried by setting BIOS settings as default and all but nothing helped..
so I googled for almost an hour and got the the issue and fixed it..

It was like..

I had Cent OS 5.6 installed on the hard disk and XP was not able to identify ext4 partition and that partition has MBR. so it was getting hanged or what so ever but it was showing only blank screen when I was trying to install new operating system.

I found that it was working fine with Windows server 2008 or Windows Vista or Windows 7 so what I did, I boot my system from Windows Vista DVD and delete the partition which was containing MBR. and also format the rest of the drives too as I only need to install windows system over linux.. and after deletion.. I just open DVD drive and removed Windows Vista DVD and insert XP CD again.. now when I tried it worked fine..

so it may be issue that XP is too old to identify ext4 partition or any other issue I don't know.. but it got resolved any how.. :-)

Good Luck if anyone is facing the same.. :-)

Google's Answer to FaceBook - Google Plus

Google's Answer to FaceBook; The Google Plus Project. In a monumental announcement rivaling Microsoft’s release of its Office 365 cloud computing service, Google has announced today the launch of its answer to Facebook, a social networking service called Google Plus.

Google took its biggest leap yet onto Facebook's turf Tuesday, introducing a social networking service called the Google(PLUS) project, which happens to look very much like Facebook.

Google is betting that its approach to privacy and extensive controls over who you share information with on the network will set Google Plus apart.

The service revolves around a concept of “circles” You can create as many circles as you like, for whatever categories you want: for example family, co-workers or biking friends. Above the circles are a slew of thumbnail images of friends and contacts which Google suggests you might want in your social network. To add a person to one of your groups, drag the name into a circle.

If you decide to remove someone from a circle, you simply drag their image out of the circle, at which point the image will explode into a cloud of smoke – one of several whimsical touches in Google+.

To use Google+ you need to create a Google profile. At the very minimum, Google requires that you use your real name and include a photo. Beyond that, you can furnish the profile with as much, or as little, detail about yourself as you want.

You can control how much of your profile is visible to other folks on the network: your name and occupation for some folks; relationship status for others.  Type a person’s name into a box, and you can see what your profile looks like through their eyes.

In a sense, Google+ combines the Facebook and Twitter models of social networking: You can have friends in your social network with whom you share information, and you can also simply follow certain people, say a movie critic who you don’ t know personally, a la Twitter.

You can take demo of Google Plus from it's official site :

http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/+/demo/


Courtesy :
https://plus.google.com
http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2011/06/28/first-look-at-the-google-plus-social-network-the-top-secret-demo/
http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus/
http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Google-Plus-looks-a-lot-like-Facebook-1444698.php

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \system32\hal.dll

Today I was facing a problem in one of our network system. when I was trying to boot the system error was

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

This behavior can occur if any or some of the following conditions are true:

• Actual dll file is missing from your hard disk.   
• The Default value in the [Boot Loader] section of the Boot.ini file is missing or invalid.
• Windows XP is not installed in the location specified in the Boot.ini file.
• The partition path in the Boot.ini file is not set correctly.
• General hardware failure.

Resolution steps :

1. Use the Windows XP CD-ROM to start your computer.
2. When you receive the message to press R to repair Windows by using the Recovery Console, press the R key.
3. Select the Windows installation that you want, and then type the administrator password when prompted.
4. go to your <CD DRIVE>:i386 path. 
5. copy hal.dl_ to C:\windows\system32
6. for example E:\i386\copy hal.dl_ C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\   it will ask for confirmation to overwrite say it yes by pressing 'Y' and press Enter
7. Now Type bootcfg /rebuild, and then press ENTER.
8. When the Windows installation is located, the following instructions are displayed:
   Add installation to boot list? (Yes/No/All)
   [Type Y in response to this message.]
   
   Enter Load Identifier:
   [This is the name of the operating system. Type Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Home Edition.]
   
   Enter OS Load options:
   [Leave this field blank, and then press ENTER].
   After you perform the preceding steps, restart the computer, and then select the first item on the boot menu. This should allow Windows XP to start normally.
   
   
   After Windows XP has successfully loaded, the Boot.ini can be modified to remove the incorrect entry.

A new stable release of Chrome: Google Chrome 12

7th June, 2011.. new stable release of Chrome brings improvements in security, privacy, and graphics to Chrome’s users.

What else is new?

- Launch Apps by name from the Omnibox
- Integrated Sync into new settings pages
- New warning when hitting Command-Q on Mac
- Removal of Google Gears

However, improvements to the browser's graphics capabilities will be more noticeable to users. With added support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, Web applications using 3D effects will be "snazzier," Google says. So, what does that mean?


3D CSS

With 3D CSS, which is now available in Google Chrome, the browser has access to the computer's hardware to speed up the experience of viewing 3D effects. To see what this looks like in action, Google offers a link to a Chrome experiment called "Shaun of the Sheep." This cute cartoon (which works only in Chrome), demonstrates how 3D CSS lets you rotate a video, scale it up and down, turn the reflection on and off and activate a rotating carousel of videos.

In addition to 3D CSS Transforms, the experiment also takes advantage of hardware-accelerated HTML5 and the new audio-video format, WebM, open-sourced by Google last year.

More Security Tools

Also new in this release are enhancements to Google's Safe Browsing technology, which has now been improved to warn you before you download certain malicious files. Chrome has improved this detection process so that it can detected the malicious files without having ever seen what URL you visited. More details on that process are described here.

Bye-bye, Flash Cookies!

Google's close relationship with Adobe has allowed it to integrate Flash LSO (local shared objects) deletion right into the Web browser, so you can better manage your online privacy. These objects, often referred to as "Flash cookies" are similar to their "browser cookies" counterparts, in that they contain information used to customize your Web browsing experience, or hold data like your login info for a website. Unfortunately, Flash cookies are harder to delete than regular cookies - until now, Chrome users were only able to manage or delete cookies using this online tool. Now, you'll be able to delete the cookies from your browser Settings. Just click on the Wrench, go to Tools, Clear Browsing Data and select "Delete cookies and other site and plug-in data."

What's new in normal use?

One of the new features in Google Chrome 12 is called multi-tab select (Windows only). This feature allows you to select multiple tabs using the Ctrl button and perform actions on them like reloading all webpages or closing tabs among other things. I tried working with this feature but could not use it very well.

Another new feature available in this build is an experimental new tab page (through about:flags). The new experimental tab page adds a paged navigation for apps which will allow users to scroll through all the installed apps. It looks like it is more geared towards touch interfaces. However, this experimental new tab page is in its infancy stage and does not do much as of now.

Chrome 12 also has a new experimental feature called FPS counter which will display a page’s actual frame rate (FPS) when hardware acceleration is active. Other than that, the V8 engine has been updated to 3.2.3.1 in all versions of the browser.

Google Chrome 12 also reverts back the new logo that was introduced earlier and switches back to the older one.

Experiment 3D CSS

If you would like to experience the excitement of the 3D CSS,  In Chrome 12, 3D CSS gets some love, and if you're running Windows Vista or Mac OS X 10.6 or above, there is a special Google Experiment titled "Shaun the Sheep", which allows you to rotate and scale the video as well as enable the reflection.


http://google-chrome-browser.com
http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com
http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20069860-12.html

Different Ways to Lock Windows XP

• via the keyboard

The easiest way to lock Windows XP is by simply pressing the Windows logo key and the letter L (for Lock) on a Microsoft Natural Keyboard or any other compatible keyboard that includes the Window key. Doing so will pop up the Unlock Computer Password box.

---

• via a Shortcut.

If you don't have a keyboard with a Window key or simply don't like the keyboard method, then here's how you can make a desktop shortcut to lock your computer.

Right click an empty area of your desktop.
choose New/Shortcut
enter below line as the command line:

        rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation

Click Next. Name the shortcut whatever you prefer and click Finish.
That's it.

---

• via command line

Open the DOS Prompt or Command Prompt.
In Simple Way You can open can open it by Clicking on START –> RUN –> typing CMD.

 Type the Command line written below to lock your computer

      rundll32.exe User32.dll,LockWorkStation

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• via Batch file

Open Notepad

Copy and paste the Below Command line:

      rundll32.exe User32.dll,LockWorkStation

Then Save the file as "Lock.bat" (without quotes)

Top 10 Things Science Can't Explain

Science can’t explain all. But just because these things are yet to be explained, doesn’t mean science ‘cant’ explain them.

The WOW! signal
Wow, a secret message from outer space! Twenty years on and still no nearer an answer.

Pioneer’s Funky Voyage
The creators of these deviant probes are ripping their hair out trying to understand what went wrong.

Female Orgasms
After a whole lot of thinking, biology’s best minds are still confused.

Dark Energy
The universe is a dark, dark place, which makes it ruddy difficult to study.

The Speed of Light
Faster than a speeding photon: is it possible? Einstein stays no, but does everyone else?

The Placebo Effect
Take this pill and you’ll be cured, just as long as you believe me

Cold Fusion
Can atoms get together and let off some steam without the sauna?

Yawing
Open your mouth and notice the shockingly fascinating mystery of the yawn.

Dark Matter
Just because you can’t see the WIMPs and MACHOs doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

What Came Before, What Will Come After
Wouldn’t it be really boring if it was just blackness. However, anyone’s guess is as good as ours.

Facebook Applications Accidentally Leaking Access to Third Parties : Symantec

 Facebook users' personal information could have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past few years, according to Symantec Corp's official web blog.

Third-parties would have had access to personal information such as profiles, photographs and chat, and could have had the ability to post messages, Symantec's web blog said.

According to Symantec official blog

"Facebook applications are Web applications that are integrated onto the Facebook platform. According to Facebook, 20 million Facebook applications are installed every day.
Symantec has discovered that in certain cases, Facebook IFRAME applications inadvertently leaked access tokens to third parties like advertisers or analytic platforms. We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage. We estimate that over the years, hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties.
Access tokens are like ‘spare keys’ granted by you to the Facebook application. Applications can use these tokens or keys to perform certain actions on behalf of the user or to access the user’s profile. Each token or ‘spare key’ is associated with a select set of permissions, like reading your wall, accessing your friend’s profile, posting to your wall, etc."

The third-parties may not have realised their ability to access the information. The post also said they have already informed facebook about this leakage.


The blog also said Facebook, the world's largest social networking website, has taken steps to resolve the issue.

Facebook has recently announced an update to their Developer RoadMap. The details of this update can be found here: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/497 

You can read more about this from :
http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/facebook-applications-accidentally-leaking-access-third-parties
 

Internet Explorer 9 arrives, but not for XP - Microsoft Previews IE10 too

The final, consumer-ready Internet Explorer 9 is available for download at Microsoft’s official download site in 39 languages. With this set of browser releases, the best experience of the Web is on Windows.

The main issue with IE 9 is it runs on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2.

XP is officially out of the mainstream support phase and is not eligible for updates like this. Plus, many of the features are specifically tied to Windows features found only in later versions.

"Building a new browser for a 10-year-old OS that came with IE6 didn't make sense to us because of the limitations of its graphics and architectures. Building for the future of the web does make sense.” said by Dean Hachamovitch.

You can get it from Microsoft’s official download site. Choose your language, specify which Windows version you’re running (32-bit or 64-bit), and click Download.

you can read pros and cons of IE 9 from :

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/03/14/ie9-release-globally-available-for-consumers-and-businesses.aspx
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/ie9-faq-how-to-install-uninstall-and-tweak-the-final-release/3118?tag=content;selector-blogs

Also with IE 9.. The first look at IE10, however, runs only on Windows 7.
you can preview it from http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

Test your antivirus Auto Protection using EICAR test string

• Open a text editor such as Notepad.

Do not use a word processor, such as Microsoft Word or WordPad, to create the file. Word processors add extra header information to the file, which will cause it to not be detected.

• Copy the following text into your text editor.

---

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

---

• Save the Notepad file say "test.txt"

• Exit the Notepad

The first 68 characters is the known string. It may be optionally appended by any combination of whitespace characters with the total file length not exceeding 128 characters. The only whitespace characters allowed are the space character, tab, LF, CR, CTRL-Z. To keep things simple the file uses only upper case letters, digits and punctuation marks, and does not include spaces. The only thing to watch out for when typing in the test file is that the third character is the capital letter "O", not the digit zero. 

If your antivirus program warns you that it auto-protect your system by finding virus called "EICAR testing string virus", you will come to know that your antivirus software is installed correctly and working fine.. else you need to check your security settings. and also need not to worry much as EICAR string is most trust-able harmless virus (!!) :-)

To know more you can view :
http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm

Mozilla Firefox 4 - Just too quick launch by Mozilla..

It was a last month in the never-ending Internet browsers race. First, Firefox 4 was finally launched on 22nd March,2011  – last of the next generation browsers to hit the market,  trailing behind Chrome 10 and Internet Explorer 9.

I was using Firefox 3.6.16 and was prompted to upgrade to a newer version. I agreed to up-grade to 3.6.16 but when I went to download this I was fed Firefox 4. I have tried using 4 for for a weeks on my Sony VAIO laptop running 4GB of RAM and core 2 duo processor with OS Windows Vista x64..

It takes alot of memory in start up almost 240 MB.. which is a big amount to open just google.com.. also not supporting persona so well.. It seemed to be actually slower and didn't play well with the "persona" I wanted to use.. It also doesn't have "Save and Quit" option where you close multiple tabs..another issue is like open with new window and open with new tab are in different in the order.. I was used to click on second option and now it's too difficult to change my habit.. I had opened 6/10 links in new window while I was trying to open in new tab..

I have just uninstalled 4 and reinstalled 3.6.16. One can download 3.6.16 from FileHippo or similar source or you can directly go with official site
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-older.html

To make faster startup for firefox you need to disable add ons.. read more from
http://gigaom.com/collaboration/firefox-feeling-sluggish-disable-your-add-ons/



Hope to get some improvement from Mozilla.. I should say it's the worst firefox version till the date..

Hide a User from the Welcome Screen in Windows XP

 To hide a user's account from the welcome screen in Windows XP:

   1. Open Registry Editor.
   2. In Registry Editor, navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList

• Create the following entry:
• Username: REG_DWORD

(Where Username is the username of the user you want to hide from the Welcome Screen).

   1. Assign a value of 0.
   2. Close Registry Editor.
   3. Reboot.

This will prevent the user from showing up on the welcome screen.

How to get rid from too many advertise on website

Too many ad annoying you on any site? mostly websites are having ad banners which make you stuck in the web traffic.. specially when you connect your system with mobile and surfing the net.. ads take lots of time to load.. pop up blocker is the one way to block pop up window advertise but when you get advertises on the pages you have to do little work..

I personally don't like videos streaming automatically with page load.. which take huge amount of time.. to avoid such situation after few R & D on google.. I found few ways.

1. First of all install Mozilla firefox.. (Firefox is well known for addon support.) 

• Download Link : http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html 

2. Install Adblock Plus ( which stops ad displaying from google, adhitz, chitika and many more providers)

• Download Link : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

3. Install Flashblock add on (which doesn't allow flash to be loaded automatically)

• Download Link : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/  

4. Install TubeStop add on (Restrict videos to auto stream with page load)

• Download Link : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tubestop/

Now surf the websites which has lots of advertises on the page.. say way2sms, various blog sites. and check.. you won't find any ad display around.


Alternatively if you want to hide all the images or flash from all tabs.. you can do with image flash blocker...

• Download Link : https://addons.mozilla.org/af/firefox/addon/image-and-flash-blocker/

Mostly for those who likes to download from the net, finds issue that many embarrassing photos or videos  pop up in front and sometimes it's hard to open such site in a social environment..
This is also helpful when you are running with limited bandwidth internet connection or low speed internet connection..
Hope this is useful..

Google's Self-Driving Car

Google had announced in October, 2010 that it’s been building robotic cars that have been driving themselves around California.. — down curvy Lombard Street in San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, along the Pacific Coast Highway, around Lake Tahoe and from Google’s Mountain View headquarters to Santa Monica (a 350-mile trip).


With Google Software Engineer Sebastian Thrun as the driving force behind the effort to develop autonomous cars, commuters can look forward to this science fiction dream soon becoming a reality. Thrun is working with a team of engineers who gained successful results in the Pentagon’s DARPA Challenges, a competition which sought to “leverage American ingenuity to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technologies that can be applied to military requirements,”

 Sebastian Thrun said :


 "Our automated cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to “see” other traffic, as well as detailed maps (which we collect using manually driven vehicles) to navigate the road ahead. This is all made possible by Google’s data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain."

"Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard. They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe."

Google hasn’t really shown us much of what these cars are capable of on the road. Now, courtesy of Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand, we can see the system flexing its muscles, from both outside and inside a demo car. 

Here are few videos on youtube related to Google self-driving car.

---

You can read more from google official blog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/update-from-chairman.html

Other source :
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/thinking-tech/googles-self-driving-car-in-action/6422/

Is your computer Male or Female ???

Hi Friends. Well if you are wondering if there is any catch to the above line. I must say not. Basically every computer is given a gender along with other specifications. The inbuilt voice in the computer determines the gender of your computer.It is basically attributed with Microsoft Windows and I am not sure if you can find it out on other OS. So if you want to know what gender your computer is then here is a code for you...

•   Open Notepad.
•   Type or copy-paste: CreateObject("SAPI.SpVoice").Speak"I am Computer"
•   Save as saycomputer.vbs
•   Run the file.

Guess what...???!!
If you hear a male voice, you have a boy;
If you hear a female voice, you have a girl; 

lol..

it's really funny and new stuff.. 

now apart from fun let's see Technical Reason behind it..

it just use windows default speech to text converter voice. it's not about male or female..;-)
you can get settings from

Control Panel -> Speech

see the following image..

now one more interesting stuff..

------------------------------------------------------------------------------


strMessage =Inputbox("Enter your message","Input Required")
CreateObject("SAPI.SpVoice").Speak strMessage


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Save file as mycustommessage.vbs
Double click it to run.
when you run.. it ask for the input.. and will play according to input text of that message box.. 
it's just VB-Script fun.. 
Enjoy.. :-)

pfSense 2.0-RC1 Now Available!

Chris Buechler has announced the availability of the first release candidate for pfSense 2.0, a FreeBSD-based operating system for firewalls:

For those who don't know about pfsense.. Some description for you..

pfSense is a firewall/router distribution based on a fork of the m0n0wall (m0n0wall is an embedded firewall distribution of FreeBSD) project.

pfSense includes most all the features in expensive commercial firewalls, and more in many cases.  All of these things are possible in the web interface, without touching anything at the command line.


The official Announcement is :

Years and many thousands of hours in the making, pfSense 2.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available! Most of the mirrors are synced up and have it available now, with the remaining couple syncing within the next few hours.

This is considered a stable release suitable for production use, as we’ve already widely deployed it over the past several months in beta and upgraded numerous systems to RC1 over the weekend. This is the preferred version for new installations at this point.
For existing 1.2.x users, upgrading will be a smooth process for most if not all scenarios. Some portions of the configuration are considerably different now than in 1.2.x releases, and we suspect there may be some configuration upgrade problems remaining, though we aren’t aware of any specific issues at this time and have tested a wide variety of configurations. If you encounter any upgrade issues, please post to the 2.0 board on the forum with information.
Please report any problems, questions or comments to the 2.0 board on the forum.

Here is the Download Link..

New installs
Upgrades

How do I move a blog between accounts?

The short answer is that you can do this by making the blog in question a team blog, with two members, then removing the original team member.
In detail, the process goes like this:

1. Sign in to Blogger with Account 1, which we'll assume is the account containing the blog.
2. Go to the Settings | Permissions tab. 
3. Click the Add Authors button and send an invitation to the owner of Account 2, the account to which you'd like to move the blog.  
4. Wait for the owner of Account 2 to accept the invitation. If you're sharing a computer, you'll need to sign out of Account 1 first, or each use a different browser.
5. Once Account 2 has joined the blog, Account 1 can log in again and go back to the Settings | Permissions tab.
6. Click the grand admin privileges link next to Account 2. 

Notes:

• You'll still see any posts made on the blog by Account 1 with Account 1's display name. Account 2 can delete and repost these posts if they'd like to change the display name.
• Account 1 cannot be removed until Account 2 has admin rights, since every blog must have at least one admin member at all times.
• Photos uploaded with Account 1 will break if that account is deleted. If you want your old photos to display after adding Account 2, you'll have to leave Account 1 active.

For more you can see from official blog support  :
 How do I move a blog between accounts?