The longest year..

Back then,an year didn't seem this long,
when I'd had left the house Quarreling,
running down the flight of stairs,
with nothing but my head held high.

Back then an year wasn't this long,
when i ran away from the mad-house,
alone,i was,in the midst of a milling crowd,
alone i am still,with nothing but my shadow along.

I ran,because i had to;
I ran,hoping to see the stars.
Alas,the stars never came,may be the night was cloudy;
the stars never came;maybe they never will.

Now I know,hope isn't a plan;
Now I know,this as the longest year.
But back then when the year didn't seem this long,
i never saw the days in the year,
the hours in the day.

now i know how long an year is
but back then,i never knew...

Google's holiday wishes

This is the mail I got from Google wishing me happy holidays. Its more focused on google.org , Google's philanthropy arm. Check out the greetings here - http://www.google.com/advertising/holiday2009/. Nice one.

Find (And Watch) Your Favorite TV Shows On The Internet

A good one from the Netted. This new site Clicker offers a precise way to locate and watch 400,000 episodes from about 7,000 TV shows. Clicker brings you only broadcast-quality TV shows and web originals .It makes it insanely easy to locate the studio-produced versions of the TV shows you want to see with none of the junk that comes up when you’re doing a broader search. (They also have movies and music videos).When you find something you want to watch Clicker either plays it on the site or takes you to one of the hubs where this content is shown, such as Hulu, CBS.com or Amazon Video on Demand.

One of the more useful features is the ability to make playlists, which essentially allows you to “subscribe” to a particular show. Clicker will send you an email notification when new episodes are available.

I haven't tried it out yet.

Domain woes - resolved

I found this site http://everydns.com where poor chaps like me who can't afford to rent a server can find solace. Just go there and you can add your domain name and configure the so called A name, CNAME , whatever whatever. Essentially, my point is , you need not own a server to point your domain name to your blog or for that matter even for creating a subdomain.

The step by step procedure on how to go about it is given in Google itself. https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=76049

P:S - my domain is http://autumn.co.in and the www is kept parked as of now and http://sarathainside.blogspot.com will automatically redirect to http://blog.autumn.co.in

Bing to index Twitter updates

Microsoft has a new weapon in its Internet search duel with Google - full access to Twitter’ tweets.Microsoft apparently outbid Google Inc. for the right to index and display the tweets almost as soon as they are posted.

But,recently i had also come across another article saying Google is coming up with a next generation search engine that indexes tweets real time. Also there are claims of Yahoo having access to twitter's data. Well, one thing that's certain is , that access to twitter , the one window to real time happenings is the apple pie that everyone wants.

And the most ironic thing is twitter is yet to make a profit.

Google to limit free news access ?

Well, apparently , the web giant found it difficult to take on the likes of Rupert Murdoch and is setting a limit on its users on the number of free articles they can read from a site.
Read original article

Google to limit free news access

Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced.

The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites.Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.

"Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free," Google senior business product manager

“ This may still be a significant moment in the battle between old and new media ”
Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC technology correspondent

"Now, we've updated the programme so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing."Google users may start seeing registration pages appear when they click for a sixth time on any given day at websites of publishers using the programme, according to Mr Cohen.

'Significant move'

The announcement is seen as a reaction to concerns in the newspaper industry that Google is using newspaper content unfairly.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of Newscorp, has accused firms such as Google of profiting from journalism by generating advertising revenue by linking readers to newspaper articles.

Some readers have discovered they can avoid paying subscription fees to newspaper websites by calling up their pages via Google. This is because Google searches frequently link directly to newspaper articles, bypassing some sites' subscription systems.

The Webby Awards

link I came across this award way back in 2000 and what caught my attention was their five word limit for the winner's speech. And the eye catcher was Al Gore's five word speech -
"Please don't recount this vote"
A reference to that year's presidential race fiasco . Al Gore was given the webby lifetime achievement award for three decades of contributions to the Internet .Article

The Webby Awards is an international paid-entry-exclusive award honoring excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile web sites, presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences since 1996.[Wiki]

2009 awards-http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/the-webby-awards-in-more-than-five-words/

News : Webby Awards Entries Deadline Is On DEC. 18TH!

The annual webby awards deadline for entries is on Dec 18th link.

I promise to write a detailed article on webby awards and their most interesting award winning speeches. My favourite one is Al gore's.

[The Webby 411]
WEBBY AWARDS ENTRIES DEADLINE IS DEC. 18TH!

The time to submit your entries for the 14th Annual Webby Awards is now. Never have there been more ways to be recognized for your amazing online content. With over 100 categories, this year promises to highlight the best of the best on the Web like never before. To acknowledge your innovative Mobile Web work, last year we introduced the much-requested Mobile Applications category. This includes apps for the iPhone, Android, Nokia devices, and all other mobile operating systems. We're getting some very exciting entries in this category already and we're sure there's more to come. In the meantime, go check out last year's winners. Enter now to get your work in front of the judges and part of the only award show CNN referred to as, "An online institution for more than a decade." Enter now before the Final Entry Deadline of Dec. 18th.

Netted - apologies , It's a good site :D

Well, seems my prejudiced mind has led you down the wrong road of prejudices once again. my post Netted? about the Netted site was wrong.

Sincere apologies to that.

Ever since that last post, The Netted has been sending me "netted" contents from all over the net to my inbox. The best part of which is , it doesn't spam your inbox.There is not more than 1 mail per day.

Spamming! Innovation abound

Who said the spammers are dead? Well if no one has, my apologies.. :D . They aren't.
And guess what, the new phishing people (the phish people) are capable of cheating even the mighty google and that too, at their own home turf -The Anti webmail spam technology.Here's a mail that cheated their most efficient spam filters(my gmail inbox is virtually spam free , so even occasional glitches get highlighted ;) . sorry google).And this time, its not the usual *****, its JOB OPENING .How they knew i was jobless is a different story altogether :P.

JOB OPENING
brenda flisher Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 8:38 AM
Reply-To: brenda_consult03@yahoo.com
Hello,


We are offering this position (Accounts Receivable Officer) interested applicants. Please carefully read through. We serve the entire United States and a growing export market, particularly in the supplies of selected products.

Superior products including Sofas & Love seats, Bedding Ensembles, Chairs & Ottomans...Your primarytask for now, as a representative of the company is to coordinate payments from customers and help us with the payments processing. You are not involved in any sales for now.

Once orders are received and sorted we deliver the product to a customer. After this has been done the customer has to pay for the products but in most cases we make our clients prepay for orders or items they ordered for.

About 90 percent of our customers prefer to pay through Cashiers Checks or Money Orders or Cash drawn from the United States. Because of the increasing number of clients, We have decided to open this new contract -to-hire job position for solving this problem.

Your First Primary task(Collection of Payments):
1. Receive payment from our Customers or Clients..
2. Cash Payment at your Bank or any cashing facilities near you.
3. Deduct 10% which will be your percentage/pay on Payment processed .
4. Forward balance after deduction of percentage/pay to any of the offices you will be contacted to send payment to.

You'll have a lot of free time doing another job because this job is part-time.. You'll receive good income. Get back to us with the below information so that we can add your mailing address to our regional database and forward it to our customers for them to send payments.

NAME:
HOME ADDRESS (NOT P.O BOX ADDRESS):
CITY:
STATE:
ZIP CODE:
COUNTRY:
PHONE NUMBER:
EMAIL ADDRESS:
PRESENT OCCUPATION:
AGE:

Human Resources Department,
Regional Manager,
GLASSGOW FURNITURE COMPANY
Email:brenda_consult03@yahoo.com


At GLASSGOW FURNITURE, We are proud of our past, encouraged for our future and genuinely excited to make furnitures for the most important people there are - you.

BRENDA FLISHER
FOR: GLASSGOW FURNITURE

I googled the name brenda flisher to no avail. Maybe time shall cast light upon this mysterious woman, whom i shall call hence forth - 'The Woman' .

Sherlock style

Best of Web - 1

http://ubersuper.com/ . As the name indicates, it indeed is a super site with ubundant creative photography skills displayed. And guess what? "it's all for free" !!!! .

Nice photos. You'll love it. Here's a glimpse to what awaits you at this beautiful site.

9/11 wikileaks

Wikileaks at http://911.wikileaks.org/ have given unprecedented access to the pager data of all the officials and individuals in and around the NewYork city about the time the 9/11 events were unfolding.

9/11 tragedy pager intercepts.

From 3AM on Wednesday November 25, 2009, until 3AM the following day (US
east coast time), WikiLeaks released half a million US national
text pager intercepts. The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the
September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

The messages were broadcasted "live" to the global community —
sychronized to the time of day they were sent. The first message was from 3AM
September 11, 2001, five hours before the first attack, and the last, 24
hours later.

Text pagers are usualy carried by persons operating in an official
capacity. Messages in the archive range from Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police
Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults at investment banks
inside the World Trade Center

The archive is a completely objective record of the defining moment of
our time. We hope that its entrance into the historical record will
lead to a nuanced understanding of how this event led to death, opportunism and war.

Twitter users may use the hashtag

#911txts. We will give status updates at twitter.com/wikileaks.

Observations may be

posted to reddit. Please vote for important material.

Please remember to

protect and support our work.

An index of messages released is available here.

All pager messages released can be downloaded here as a single compressed text file.

BSNL launches prepaid broadband

BSNL has come up with yet another innovative scheme. This time its broadband and guess what , it has gone prepaid.I recommend BSNL because i have been its subscriber since their plan 250 was introduced. Superior quality coupled with low prices with excellent customer care service. That's BSNL for you.

Check it up here. http://www.thehindu.com/2009/11/19/stories/2009111961780300.htm

Kerala KSRTC booking goes online

Kerala KSRTC a.k.a aana vandi has gone online (Late as USUAL).

Here is the link - http://keralartconline.com/

Finally our kerala govt has caught up with the rest of the states. Only thing to be seen is whether this will be a case of the classic "too little, too late". I got to know it from this obscure article in The Hindu.
The site offers booking for some 180 bus services including for intra state transportation.How many will avail of this service is something that remains to be seen.
The booking for inter state services seems to be good.With the fare far below than what is offered by other bus services. I have not tested how robust is the site with transactions. Or what are the means through which transactions can be done - net banking or credit/debit cards.

Netted?

Another of those beta sites that tell you what's interesting out there in the WWW.
I got this site from webby awards site. Since subscribing to it , i have received only two mails. http://www.netted.net/ Going there isn't much use to anyone. They have made registration mandatory to subscribe.

Tactics

;).

And their claim to send one GOOD mail everyday , Well, that ain't the case for me.

Be Inspired

Reset MYSQL/PHPMYADMIN Password in Linux

1) Stop mysql:

Quote:

$ /etc/init.d/mysql stop

2) Make sure that all of the MySQL processes are actually stopped or killed. You can check for running MySQL processes with this command:

Quote:

$ ps waux

3) If any MySQL processes are still running, they will look similar to the following:

Quote:

2102 32523 ... /bin/sh /usr/local/mysql/bin/safe_mysqld ... 2102 32557 ... /usr/local/mysql/libexec/mysqld --basedir= ...

You can kill the processes with the kill command(Note: The second column is the Process ID or PID):

Quote:

kill -9 32523

4) Restart mysql with --skip-grant-tables:

Quote:

$ /usr/bin/mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables

5) Open a new seesion, leave the other open as well, in the new session:

Quote:

$ /usr/bin/mysql

6) This should get you in, now:

Quote:

use mysql;

7) Once you are using the mysql database, run the following:

Quote:

UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE') WHERE Host='localhost' AND User='root';

now quit out with quit; and then restart mysql:

Quote:

$ /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Thats it, you should now be logged in.

RSS - Rich Site Summary

Or Really simple syndication. Whichever it is, the concept is really novel and useful for the average internet using public.But more than three-quarters of the experienced or amateur surfing population doesn't know WHAT it is and how useful this is.The ignorance levels are appalling that when we had decided on a mini project ,a simple "Desktop Feed Aggregator/Reader" many of them sat with a gaping mouth and bulging eyeballs.So what is this RSS ?and how is it useful ? Here I am going to touch upon RSS and how to go about making your own feeds.

WIKIPEDIA says RSS (formally "RDF Site Summary", known colloquially as "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of webfeeds formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel", contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.

Thats it! You can check for updates using a feed reader rather than going to a site.Imagine checking your college site for any updates,every hour. Subscribing to a feed is really simple if you are using FireFox.It has a simple enough RSS Reader thats inbuilt.Whenever you visit a site that's syndicated,a
bright orange tab can be seen at the right end of the address bar.Click on it, and choose your preferred reader.

Building personal RSS feed,
step by step

At start, this is just a simple text file, created with any text
editor. But an XML editor is more convenient. The name may be, for example: "feed.xml".
The overall structure is as that:

<?xml version="1.0" ?> <rss version="2.0"> <channel> </channel> </rss>

1) Define the source, by the channel tag

The channel will be the same for all your RSS feeds. These tags
are required:
- title: the title of your website, may be the one in the
title tag of the home page.
- link: the URL of your website: example: http://www.xul.fr
- description: description of your website, about 200 characters,
this may be the text assigned to the content attribute of the
description tag, in the head section of the home page.

<channel> <title>XUL and XML</title> <link>http://www.xul.fr/</link> <description>Xml graphical interface etc...</description> </channel>

2) Add an image

This is optional. Design a small image (88x31 for example) in a common format
(gif, jpg, png) and put in into the same directory that the RSS file.
The "image" tag is a sub-element of the channel tag
- url is the address of the image itself.
- link is the address of the page displayed when one clicks on the
image.

<channel> <title> </title> <link> </link> <image> <url>http://www.xul.fr/xul.gif</url> <link>http://www.xul.fr/index.html</link> </image> </channel>

3) Add a new item

Now, we will add a web page to display an information. This is
an "item" tag, a sub-element of channel, and this components
are required:
- title: the title of the article.
- link: the URL of the page.
- description: a summary of the article, about 200 characters.

<item> <title>News of today</title> <link>http://www.xul.fr/xml-rss.html</link> <description>All you need to know about RSS</description> </item>

4) Add more items

More items may be added to this channel.

5) Upload the file

Put the feed.xml file into your website, among other web pages.

6) Validate the file

You may use this online RSS
feed validator.

7) Make it available

This is accomplished by adding an RSS button on the home page. A click on

the button should display the XML file you have created.

<a href="http://www.xul.fr/feed.xml> <img src="rss.gif"> </a>

If the image is not displayed, use a complete URL, as http://www.xul.fr/rss.gif,
for example.

8) Updating the feed

To publish further articles, you have just to add items, and
remove older ones to keep the number of articles constant.

Passwords . A New Perspective

Text in itallics represent my views. The rest are quoted.

This article refers only to those Passwords that are used to login into online systems like email accounts, or services.Having been introduced to the backend and frontend of the virtual world simultaneously has helped me to gain that special insight into the working of the internet.Although i dont profess to be much of an expert to offer advice,i feel qualified enough to assess the present situation in these areas and write upon it.
A basic Login authentication system contains a database that keeps the information that users submit upon registration.i.e your passwords are indeed stored somewhere and can be seen by the system administrator.Most decent web service providers (eg: yahoo , gmail ... amazon...) do not store the passwords in plain text form rather they are encrypted.A simple one way encryption algorithm , that i have used is MD5.Its too big to write in one blog.Maybe I'll write upon MD5 and methods to decrypt in another post.maybe...
That they are encrypted , is the reason why you can never ask the providers to give you the password.One can only reset it.
So the point is , all information that is submitted is stored and is viewable by a human.
Whenever a user requests access to a login secured page, the password that is provided along with the username is checked with the ones in database and if it matches, the user is logged in.Basic hack attempt starts here.

Passwords Reveal Your Personality
A spontaneously-generated password may be more revealingthan you think.
The random catchphrase that accesses your e-mail account may unlock your psyche as well as your correspondence, say experts..
The study identified four password "genres." "Family-oriented" respondents numbered nearly half of those surveyed. These people select their own name or nickname, the name of a child, partner or pet, or a birth date. They tend to be occasional computer users and have strong family ties. "They choose passwords that symbolize people or events with emotional value," Indeed. One third of respondents were "fans," using the names of athletes, singers, movie stars, fictional characters or sports teams. Fans are young and want to ally themselves with the lifestyle represented by a celebrity. Two of the most popular names were Madonna and Homer Simpson. Eleven percent of responses were from "fantasists." Their interest in sex is evident in passwords such as "sexy," "stud" and "goddess." "Traditionally, these individuals are male, but 37 percent of fantasists identified themselves as female," . The final ten percent of participants are "cryptics," because they pick unintelligible passwords or a random string of letters, numerals and symbols, such as Jxa+157. Petrie says cryptics are the most security-conscious group. They tend to make the safest but least interesting choices.

Passwords are inadvertently revealing for two reasons. First, they are generated on the spot. "Since you're focused on getting into the system, you're likely to put down something that comes readily to mind," . "In this sense, passwords tap into things that are just below the surface of consciousness, much the way Rorschach and word-association tests do. Also, to remember your password you pick something that will stick in your mind. You may unconsciously choose something of particular emotional significance."

I personally vouch for all the four genres, i have seen people using all of the above mentioned four.
Additionally there's one more group of people who belongs to the category "stupid" for the zillions who use "Trustno1", "Swordfish", "Password","qwerty","123456","abc123"..... the only reason they're ever considered passwords are ,because they're 6 letters long.

Password psychology is a field of cryptography and psychology that studies how passwords are chosen and what determines users to choose a certain password. The discipline reveals several details about the way users remember and choose passwords, allowing system administrators to improve the safety of the passwords

Basic studies

It has been demonstrated that users usually remember passwords by associating them with something. This is done either mnemonically, where users associate letters and numbers with a certain meaning, or mechanically, learning the password by heart but associating it with a certain movement of their fingers on the keyboard. For example, a Pink Floyd fan may remember gbBs2u as "good bye Blue sky to you" (close to the lyrics of a Pink Floyd song). Other users may have no other alternative than learning the password by heart. However, it will be more difficult for them to remember it when using a different keyboard map, even when the keyboard map is only slightly different (for example, Eastern keyboard maps often interchange the location of the Y and Z keys on Western keyboard maps).

These studies were a stepping stone in discovering several yet unknown facts about password choices, allowing some cryptographic schemes to be developed separately, especially for people with disabilities, for example.

But the fact remains.The average internet users are dumb.And the remaining ones,well, they aren't

Eight most Essential FireFox Extensions(revisited)

Since the post in March 2007 [link], many a people have commented that as a good review of extensions.
As an add on, here are those extensions, plus two more , along with their current ratings and a downoad link, since that was a long standing demand.
For IE-6 users , its high time you see the web through Firefox and feel the difference.

• BugMeNot – Bypass compulsory web registration with www.bugmenot.com
  

[i don't use it any more.Long since i started knocking the right doors and totally ignoring the obscure ones.I don't wander around the labyrinth of websites anymore.]

• Del.icio.us – keep , share and discover all your favourite things Most well used.
  

The delicious top ten rocks... Comes up with a classic new site bookmarked by real people in every 1 or 2 hour or so.

• Flashblock – Replaces flash objects with a button you can click to view them
  

Still rocks....

• Google Toolbar FireFox-take the power of Google with you anywhere on the web!
  

I use it everyday without even giving it a thought.A word of caution:you'll be missing the google home page for a long time if you start using this :P

• IE tab

Obsolete

• Scrapbook – Helps you to save web pages and organize the collection

AS ever faithful thy serve...

• Webdeveloper – Adds a menu and a Toolbar with various webdeveloper tools

Occasionlly useful.Serious web-developing tool.

• Febe - Firefox Extensions Backup Extension

Well... How could have i come with this post with download links , but for this ever faithful fellow? FEBE now provides a complete profile backup!! Cool. The implication is that your scrapbook pages,bookmarks are all backed up . AMAZING

[FEBE interface, reduced for sake of readability]----------->