Passlet - a secure online password manager?

Passlet is an online password manager. Unlike other password managers, it does not require you to disclose your master password to anyone, including its own server.

Passlet is unique in its approach: it allows you to access your passwords from any browser in the world while at the same time making your information impossible to read outside that browser. It does this by performing all encryption and decryption operations within the browser itself, making sure that your password and derived encryption key never leave your computer. It is therefore imperative that you use a trusted computer to access Passlet.

Get an account

Nokia 6300 - the Compact Phone

Measures 13.1 mm and about 91 grams is a mid-ranged phone

Features include

- 2.0-megapixel camera, 8x digital zoom
- 2-inch QVGA screen
- USB / PC Synchronization
- In-box memory of 135 MB, with support for up to 2 GB microSD cards
- Voice dialing, voice commands and voice recording
- MP3 player, FM radio
- Integrated hands-free speaker

Nokia 6290 3G Smartphone

Nokia 6290 is based on S60 software

Other features include...

- 2.0-megapixel camera with 4X digital zoom
- 2.2-inch QVGA 16M colour internal screen
- Rich email functionality which supports attachments such as PPT, PDF, Word and Excel
- MP3 music player with excellent stereo surround sound
- Two way video calling

Expected to ship by Q1 2007

A survey of Linux PDF viewers

Portable Document Format, designed in the early 1990s by Adobe Systems, is slowly replacing PostScript as the preferred format for saving and viewing generic documents. Early on, only Adobe supplied programs that enabled users to view PDF files. But since the format's specification is open, Adobe Reader (formerly "Adobe Acrobat Reader") is now only one among an increasing set of PDF viewers. Here's a guide to the best alternatives for Linux users.

Read Via Linux.com

command-line calculations using bc

If like me, you do most of your work from the command-line, using vim to edit files, mutt for e-mails, cd/ls/mv/find/etc instead of a file manager, then you may get annoyed by having to fire up a GUI calculator to make (what may sometimes be) a single calculation.

One useful feature of calculating on the command-line is that you can see what you've typed. For instance, sometimes when I'm entering a long, complex calculation on a calculator (either the GUI or the solid, hold-in-your-hand type), I sometimes forget if I've actually typed in all those numbers or made the calculations in the right order. Maybe it's just me ...

Complete article: command-line calculations using bc

LaTeX for the nontechnical user

As a computer user, you almost undoubtedly use a word processor to create your documents. A word processor is a powerful tool that simplifies the creation of documents using a What You See Is What You Get approach. This means that the document you see in the editor as you are composing it is the same document that will be printed out when you press the ``print'' button.............

More on: LaTeX for the nontechnical user

A 10 min Temporary Email Address

Useful for signing up for those sites which ask for registration and your email address.

Get an email address for 10 min. Ofcourse if the site blocks 10 minute email, then you don't have a choice.

Get your 10 min email here

Windows Vista Wallpapers

Brajeshwar has collected the set of wallpapers apparently made for Vista.

Get them

Workrave - prevention and recovery of RSI

Workrave is a program available both on Linux & Windows which helps you prevent and recover from RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury). It's a neat piece of software which includes illustrations of the exercises that you can do during your breaks. Have a look at the feature list

Ubuntu users:

sudo apt-get install workrave

Others:

Get it here

Firefox Extension - User Agent Switcher

User Agent Switcher lets you change the User-Agent of your Firefox browser - useful for those pesky developers who think their html pages will work only on a particular browser

Get User Agent Switcher

The Six Biggest New Ideas In Chat

Nick Gonzalez of Techcrunch writes about the biggest ideas in the world of instant messaging

Read Via Techcrunch

A Smarter Computer to Pick Stocks

Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and new hedge fund manager, is describing the future of stock-picking, and it isn’t human.

“Artificial intelligence is becoming so deeply integrated into our economic ecostructure that some day computers will exceed human intelligence,” Mr. Kurzweil tells a room of investors who oversee enormous pools of capital. “Machines can observe billions of market transactions to see patterns we could never see.”

Read more Via NY Times

CSS Tab Designer - for those sweet menus!

CSS Tab Designer is a tool lets you design those gorgeous CSS based menus like the ones above.

It's free - Get it - Highly Recommended! Works only on Windows based systems

Netgear's new Skype Phone - SPH101

Netgear has unveiled the SPH101 - Skype Wi-Fi phone through which you can use Skype and talk without the need of a PC

Read Via the Aving Network

Another Digg Cheater

We had written about Spike the Vote sometime back.

Looks like Digg will have few more to handle .. the latest one called User/Submitter. UserSubmitter is where submitters pay the Diggers to promote their stories. The users get paid 0.5$ for every 3 diggs and the Submitters will have to pay 20$ + 1$ per each digg

AllAdvantage is BACK!

Yes ! You read it right! The world's first "Get Paid To Surf " program is back. And now its called AGLOCO

AllAdvantage was hugely popular during the dotcom bubble days and eventually closed shutters when the bubble burst. The good thing was that they actually paid their members :-)

Let's see how far this one goes!

Signup using my referral ID - BBBB5653

Or Click here to signup directly!

Visual Development on Linux

Many people are not aware that programming on Linux, if you are fond of your mouse, is very enjoyable. If you are fond of your command line, it is also very enjoyable as well. The _CHOICE_ is up to you. A lot of visual development IDEs are available. I have been noticing, posts on Digg and other places, that people think there is no Linux equivalent of tools like Visual Basic, Delphi, etc. Here, I list some of the tools that you can expect on a linux Desktop. I am using Kubuntu Edgy and all these nice eye-candy tools are available in the Ubuntu Repositories.

Stuff mentioned above and remaining everything on: Visual Development on Linux

Putting favicon on your Apache

Put a favicon.ico (icon file) into the desired directory /images/favicon.ico under ServerRoot

AddType image/x-icon .ico
<Files favicon.ico>
ErrorDocument 404 /images/favicon.ico
</Files>

favicon should be 16x16 image

AOL IMAP access instructions

This page lets you configure your client to use AOL's IMAP servers. Works both with AOL eAddress and normal AOL email addresses

Fight against Phishing!

PhishTank SiteChecker gives Firefox users a way to bring the community judgment of PhishTank into their favorite browser, for extra protection against phishing.

It sits on your Firefox status bar and tells you whether the site you are visiting is safe! Unsafe known sites are blocked and users are provided with an option to continue.

Get this useful extension

Ten Worst Internet Acquisitions Ever

As the market for acquiring fledgling Internet companies heats up, it's worth taking a look at all those acquisitions that didn't quite work out. For every Internet acquisition that's successful there seems to be dozens that die on the vine.

So what makes for a really bad Internet acquisition? First, it has to be expensive. No one's going to rake a company over the coals over a few blown $50 million acquisitions. That might sound like a lot of money to you and me, but that's a rounding error to Google.

Second, for an acquisition to be lousy it has to contribute little or no long term growth to the acquiring company. An acquisition that doesn't fit with a company's long term strategy and that is quickly forgotten - that's a bad buy.

So, here is my highly subjective list of the 10 worst Internet acquisitions of all time:

Read more Via SeekingAlpha

Samsung's thinnest LCD

Samsung has announced that they have developed the thinnest LCD which is about 0.07 mm. For comparison, a credit card is about 0.82 mm thick.

Dohop - plan your flights!

Dohop is a neat site - interms of functionality as well as the UI - I like the way AJAX has been used on this site. Apparently they directly search through the Airlines database and get you the best rates available out there.

Desktop Recording on Ubuntu

You want to do a video tutorial for and on Linux?

Install this utility called Istanbul

On Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install instanbul

Crashed quite frequently for me though. Recording is on ogg format.

Apple - Japanese Mac Ads

No comments...

Google Food - the photos

Brett clicks them before he eats - Yummy!

Check them out

PodTech - technology podcasts served daily!

PodTech.net is about technology podcasts - mostly has interviews. Do checkout the enterpreneurship area

Linux Documentation on your Ubuntu

Want to read more about how things work on Linux ?

Install these two packages on Ubuntu and you pretty much have almost all the HOWTO documentation out there!

HOWTO & FAQ

sudo apt-get install doc-linux-html

Non-Free HOWTOs

sudo apt-get install doc-linux-nonfree-html

IBM Shortcuts - Podcasts to increase your productivity

IBM has a weekly show in the form of a podcast to increase your digital productivity

Its called Shortcuts - Go there

Random Thoughts - Sun Opensources Java

Did anyone hear that at all ? Not anyone around me even talked about it - Looks like no one cares about it anyway.

But then, open sourcing of Java is good for the community - and I would like to believe that it will have the same effect that Netscape had when they open sourced their browser. Netscape had to be rewritten with a new Gecko Engine - and I hope Sun Java is too. Sun has been good to the open source community - OpenOffice, OpenSolaris and now OpenJava

For once I have no hesitation to say Go get JAVA!

Apache Tip - cgi-bin for every user

You want to give cgi-bin access to all the users on your webserver.

Add the following directive entries in your httpd conf file


<Directory /home/*/public_html/cgi-bin/>
Options ExecCGI
SetHandler cgi-script
</Directory>

Friendsabroad - use them to learn new languages

Friendsabroad is a community driven site where the participants get to interact with each other and learn new languages.

Google Desktop - with a new sidebar

Get the new Google Desktop 4.5 with a improved sidebar

Hitchsters - Sharing a Cab to the Airport!

Don't know what to say - Looks like you can share a cab too .. Hitchsters lets you share a cab when you want to do a to and fro to the airport.

Build a Web spider on Linux

A spider is a program that crawls the Internet in a specific way for a specific purpose. The purpose could be to gather information or to understand the structure and validity of a Web site. Spiders are the basis for modern search engines, such as Google and AltaVista. These spiders automatically retrieve data from the Web and pass it on to other applications that index the contents of the Web site for the best set of search terms.

Build a Web spider on Linux

Digg Torrents through Google!

Search for torrents or lyrics through Google's custom search engine API

Digg Torrents!

Read about Google Custom Search Engine

Firefox Extension - Download Status Bar

Hate that pesky Downloads window which takes eternity to comeup and disappear ? Get this neat Firefox extension which shows the status of your download on the status bar of your browser!

Get Download Statusbar

Qlock - another world clock

Qlock offers you a world clock to download and a AJAX based world clock to view which you can add to your site

Change your mac address!

Came here searching for changing your machine address ? What are you upto? Naughty Boy!

It's fairly simple though - Use a program called macchanger on Linux

On Ubuntu,

sudo apt-get install macchanger

You are ready!

Write a simple script like this

# --- Script Starts ---
#!/bin/bash
/etc/init.d/network stop
macchanger --mac=$1 eth0
/etc/init.d/network start
# --- Script Ends ---

After giving your script the execute permission, invoke your shellscript using

./script_name your_mac_address

Gotapi - the AJAX technical reference

Gotapi lets you search technical references of various languages through an AJAX interface.

Handy! Go here

Koolpool - share your car !

Hey! These guys stole my idea! And looks like they have stolen it well :)

Koolpool claims to be India's first organized car pooling system. Promoted by MESN (Mumbai Environmental Social Network), Koolpool makes use of the ubiquitous mobile phone to manage the system.

More on this initiative here

RooftopComedy - live comedy on the Internet!

RooftopComedy brings you comedians from around the country for your entertainment

Files Upload - another free file hosting service with FTP!

• Get to upload up to 1GB per file
• Upload your files through FTP
  
• Resume downloads
• Get a sub domain
• Password protect the files
  

Go here

Free cellphones for all - it's coming soon

Via Google IF You accept targeted advertising!

news Via CNN

Surf the web anonymously

No paid software here :).

We use something called Tor.

Tor is a Firefox extension that lets you do that! Tor works using a technology called Onion Routing

To start surfing the web completely anonymously - you will also need one more extension called Switchproxy

Install Tor on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install tor privoxy

Edit the file /etc/privoxy/config (you will require root/sudo) and add the following

forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .

Save and restart privoxy

sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart

Now, install SwitchProxy

Go to http://addons.mozilla.org and search for SwitchProxy and install the extension like any other

In the manual configuration for SwitchProxy, add a new proxy called Tor

For HTTP Proxy, SSL Proxy, FTP Proxy - fill in the below

Host : 127.0.0.1 Port : 8118

You are to ready to GO! If you face any issues surfing, just tell SwitchProxy not to use any proxy.

Visit the Official Website

Stickis - the social web annotator

Got an invite to test out Stickis - the social web annotator.

Stickis lets you add blog feeds, build a community based on your "notes" and read other's annotations.

What ?

• You add/subscribe blog feed(s) + you can showcase your own blog/site
  
• Add annotations/notes to whatever urls you like.
  
• Let others "subscribe" to your annotations/network/site and build a big community of readers! Your annotations could be on any site/url.
  
• In future, Stickis promises to restrict the notes subscription to whoever you wish to grant access to - Right now, whoever has subscribed to your network can read your notes.
  
• You can also get alerts whenever someone posts a note

Why ?

• As I understand it now, If you have a site, people get to read your site. You can read other's sites as well through the feeds.
  
• You get to hear opinions through annotations which might provide interesting insights of what people actually reading and commenting on - this could be an equivalent to the comments that you see on various sites - but, your subscribers will get to read all your comments at one place.. Ah... digg + comments ?
  

Implementation

• You can either add new notes through the website or through the extension that they provide only for Internet Explorer. That meant I had to reboot to Windows :(
• However, they plan to add a Firefox extension soon.
  

Overall experience was completely different and it took sometime for me to understand what exactly I had to do :).

Update (Dec 4)

Jean from Stickis has left a comment that they now have a Firefox extension. Will try it out! Thanks !

Try it out and see if you like it - for now, I am gonna skip this one - atleast I get a Firefox extension

Get your site TCed!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A truly open Linux phone with GPS debuts

THERE HAVE BEEN a lot of phones claiming to be 'Linux phones' and those that do run a Linux kernel, but they all miss the point of Linux: to be open. FIC is about to change that in a big way with a truly open phone, the OpenMoko.

This is the first phone in a long time to get us really interested in what it is, what it isn't, and the philosophy behind it. The philosophy is the thing that makes Linux great, and not in the sense of window-dressing or half-hearted openness, it is really open. It runs the latest kernel, 2.6.18 as of a few weeks ago, and you can get software from a repository with apt-get.

Websnapr - the web thumbnails

WebSnapr lets you capture screenshots of (almost) any web page. Let your visitors to instantly visualize any web page before clicking. Increase site traffic, click-through rate and site stickiness.

Skype 3.0 beta released

Windows-using Skype fans can now download beta 3 of the venerable VoIP application. Skype 3.0 sports a handful of new features, including Skypecasts, Public Chats, Click-to-call, and a redesigned user interface.

Public Chats allow Skype 3.0 users to create and join large text chatrooms that appear to operate much like IRC chatrooms. Moderators can direct conversation topics, kick users, and determine who can participate in chats and to what extent. Public Chat links can be included on web pages, allowing surfers to jump into conversations via Skype.

Passwordless logins with keychain

We had discussed ssh-agent to do passphraseless logins, but you still have to enter your passphrase when you logout and ssh-agent doesn't work with cron jobs as well

So, what you do is setup ssh-agent and then use keychain to keep your SSH passphrases alive till you reboot

Install keychain & add the following likes to your bash profile (.bash_profile)

keychain id_dsa
. ~/.keychain/$HOSTNAME-sh

Use the real name of your private key: id_rsa, my_key. Be sure to use the leading dot on the second line which tells your shell to read the file named on the line.

That's all you have to do. Now, when you log in, you get a keychain prompt, asking for the passphrase of your key.

You'll enter the passphrase for each one at system login. Then keychain will handle authentications even if you logout and login. You will have to redo it when you restart you system though.

What Vista should have been in 2003

Source: Digg/anog

Youtube - the TIME Invention of the Year

TIME says Youtube is the invention of the year 2006

More here

Samsung SPH-P9000 WiMax

Samsung is on a launching spree - SPH-P9000 is the latest which is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2007.

Here are the specifications

Samsung SPH-P9000 Specifications

- Standard: Mobile WiMax / CDMA 1x EV-DO
- Camera: 1.3-Megapixel Camera
- Display: 5-inch WVGA LCD
- 1 GHz (Transmeta) CPU
- QWERTY Keyboard
- Bluetooth (Class 1) with BT Messenger
- MiniUSB / 24 pin Connector
- Extended I/O Pack
- 2980 mAh / 7200 mAh Battery
- 30 GB Embedded
- Size: 143 x 92 x 29.7 mm
- Weight: 560 g

Bash - the fc command

fc is built-in shell command which you can use to check up on the most recent commands that you executed

So you do

fc -l -to list the last 16 commands that you entered

or

fc -l a -to list commands starting from any command starting with "a"

There are quite a few other options as well - try it out

Tab Mix Plus - the power user's extension

Tab Mix Plus - the Firefox extension has so many features that I can't describe over here. You will have to experience it!

Among other things - Tab Mix Plus does Link Management, Tab Management , Mouse Gestures, Session Restore(after crashes). Indeed one of the best extensions in there. Supports Firefox 2.0 as well.

Get it

OpenDNS - the free reliable DNS

OpenDNS is a DNS server that's free, fast, safe.

It's free - you don't have to pay anything

It's fast - runs a caching server that caches dns entries so that you don't have to resolve everytime

It's safe - prevents phishing attacks, autocorrects urls

To use, you just change your dns servers to

Change your DNS settings to the OpenDNS servers to

• 208.67.222.222
• 208.67.220.220

Go to the site here and to the FAQ

AJAX jukebox

Lshift has developed a AJAX based jukebox.

You will need Erlang, Yaws (the Erlang webserver), a modern browser, mpg123, ogg123 (from vorbis-tools) to install the application

Download and read more

Sticky Tag - the sticky notes online!

StickyTag is a web based app that allows you to create online sticky notes and save them for future use. The idea is to save them and retrieve them universally and not being restricted to any computer.

Other features include searching for stickies, mailing to contacts and the usual archive, delete features.

Useful although no earth-shattering.

Weebly - the online website creator

Deleting those cranky files

This one is a basic tip although I get to see many people struggling when it comes to handling these files.

File

"file like this"

Delete using

rm "file like this"

File

"-filelikethis"

Delete using

rm -- -filelikethis

or

rm ./-filelikethis

Internet Under Threat!

Sir Tim Berners-Lee the founder of the world wide web is of the opinion that the Internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Blogging to be one of the biggest perils of the Internet because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.

Read more on the Guardian

Free file hosting from Mediafire

Frustrated with those limited download and upload file sharing sites ? Mediafire is one site which doesn't believe in that.

Here are some of the features of Mediafire

- Free
- Unlimted upload
- Unlimited download
- Supports multiple downloads
- No filesize limitations

Sounds too good to be true. Hope they can sustain

Widgipedia - the widget resource

Widgipedia is a community driven site which hosts plenty of widgets for various platforms.

Best Cricket Sites

Am compiling the list of the best cricket sites. If you have something to add. Just leave a comment and I will add it here

BBC Cricket

This low profile site from the BBC has latest news and covers most international and county games

Cricmania.com

Latest news, real time cricket content and good stats

Cricketnext.com

This site - now acquired by TV18 has undergone a lot of makeover- this site is worth a watch with lot of news & videos which I guess is a brainchild of Rajdeep Sardesai. Doesn't have too much of stats though

cricket.indiatimes.com

Everything else from Indiatimes is BAD except their cricket portal. Good for India Cricket News.

Off topic, NEVER USE INDIATIMES SHOPPING

cricinfo.com

The home of cricket and certainly is. Gets a little slow when India plays :)

mahacricket.com

New kid on the block. Little slow though

Internet Explorer 7 - Install it bypassing WGA

No, this is not to encourage installing IE7 on a non genuine copy of Windows. But I don't understand the why Microsoft keeps making these lame attempts to prevent people from installing it. It's so unbelievably easy to get onto Google and search for "install IE7 skip bypass WGA" and get scores of articles giving step by step instructions on how to circumvent the WGA protection.

In my opinion, people who didn't pay for Windows will never ever pay for it come what may - especially in developing countries. Either they skip the installation or switch to alternatives like Firefox

Sorry for the folks who came in here for IE7 installation bypassing WGA crap.

Believe me, there is nothing special in IE7. Would you mind downloading Firefox - the IE7 Alternative

Samsung SGH-X830 Mini MP3 Phone

Samsung has launched the SGH-X830 Mini MP3 Phone. Is a swing-open phone, weighs 75 g, measures 84 x 30 x 20 mm and comes in black, pure white, oasis blue, candy pink, orange and lemon green colors

Here are the specifications

Samsung SGH-X830

- Standard: GSM / EDGE / GPRS Class 10
- Camera: 1.3-Megapixel Camera
- Display 128 x 220 px 262K-Color TFT
- Features: 1 GB (Nand flash) built in memory 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
- MP3 / AAC / AAC+ / eAAC+ / WMA
- MPEG4 / H.263
- Bluetooth / USB 2.0
- MMS / Java/ WAP 2.0
- Size: 84 x 30 x 20 mm
- Weight: 75 g

Read the press release

Listing Open Files in Linux

Did you ever try out finding what files are currently being used on your Linux system?

In Linux, you do that by using a command called lsof (means list open files)

But then, just using lsof would give you far too many results. lsof can be used with the following options

To list files open by the user

lsof -u techflock

List the users of a particular file

lsof /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon

List the processes of a particular program

lsof -c sshd

Ubuntu - cloning package installations

Right - you have a Ubuntu system in which you have used for quite a while and installed a lot of programs. You now want to install the same set of applications on another machine or maybe even save up in case you want to reformat.

Here are the steps

1. Export the list of applications using

dpkg --get-selections | grep '[[:space:]]install$' | awk '{print $1}' > list_of_packages

2. Copy your /etc/sources.list from the current machine and copy to your target machine

Now on your target machine

Do

1. sudo apt-get update

to update the sources list

2. cat list_of_packages | xargs sudo apt-get install

to install the packages!

The Zune Site

Zune is launching on Nov 14. Microsoft has launched the Zune site

You get to see the Zune photo gallery and the technical specifications, the accessories available for it and even a Zune Windows XP theme

Let's wait for Nov 14 to do some reality check

Cleaning your LCD Monitor

Have a LCD monitor and want to know how to clean it ?

Look here and here and here

The Digg Algorithm FAQ

A few days ago, Digg changed their ranking algorithm (I noticed this immediately since I am an active Digg member, but I didn’t wanted to blog about it), in such a way that now upcoming stories need even 100+ diggs to make it to the frontpage. And since Digg doesn’t offer an official FAQ (the reasons are the same why Google doesn’t offer an official algorithm FAQ - so people can’t abuse), I decided to write a few of my findings along the way. These are unofficial, unsupported points and are purely my personal ramblings. So if someone has any objections, please do comment.

This post wants to show you guys my findings about Digg’s ranking system as well as how many diggs you need to reach the frontpage, for each of Digg’s categories (please do note that this post doesn’t represent a method to let users know how they can trick Digg’s system, but a way to let users know about how the ranking system really works).

What will get you a frontpage:

Read more via Seopedia

Travel Weblog

Don't know how I missed discovering this blog from Weblogs Inc.

Gadling is a blog about travel and sure it does cover a lot of countries and a whole lot of activities that you can do in those countries. Has a lot of very useful information. I am already beginning to love this blog :)

Check it out!

More on Scrybe

DownloadSquad has got a chance to try Scrybe.

Read more

Quimble - Internet Polls

Quimble lets you add polls to your website/blog pretty quickly. You just have to add one line of Javascript and you are on! You can create a poll like the one you see below .

Google Adsense Biggest Earners

This includes just the individuals and not corporates


1: Markus Frind: PlentyOfFish.com - $300,000 per month

2: Kevin Rose: Digg.com - $250,000 per month

3: Jeremy Shoemaker - $140,000 per month

4: Jason Calacanis: Weblogs, Inc. - $120,000 per month

5: David Miles Jr. & Kato Leonard - $100,000 per month

6: Tim Carter: AskTheBuilder.com - $30,000 per month

7: Joel Comm - $24,000 per month

Via John Chow

Top 10 Best Wordpress Plugins

Sidebar Widget

AdSense Deluxe

Digg This

Feedburner Feed Replacement

Related Posts

Recent Comments

Optimal Title

Google Sitemap Generator

Akismet Comment Spam Killer

Wordpress Database Backup

Via JohnChow.com