Lavanya Deepak

I can not compromise my wife!

2011-10-09T22:00:00.001-04:00

This is an offshoot of the post on a defunct organization which was actually trying to mis-behave with me. For me, ASP/ASP.NET have not been just breadwinners but I consider wedded to ASP.NET. On a personal gesture when some one even attempts to take a ride on my MVP recognition/benefits for a 'individual' gain this intimidates me to a significant extent and I get disturbed.

For a while a few of us would have observed and perceived I am shifting away from ASP.NET. Neither she had been against me anytime nor me. Because of a few 'wrong-doers' this was the mis-comprehension that got seeded. Sometime back too in 2001 I refused a paradigm shift from web technologies to windows based just because of this love. And this time though it was ASP.NET based product, the perceived malicious intent was simply un-tolerable.

I love you ASP/ASP.NET! I can not compromise on you for anyone including me! Ever since my wedding with her in 2000 in a humble setup, there had been a line of adorations and successful projects all along. Even the most (f)ailing project which when I take over turns successful thanks to her cherished love and my trust on her. I can not see her with a commercial eye (That becomes a different meaning!)

Getting hands wet with a Social Media Application with PHP

2011-09-14T16:38:00.000-04:00

As directed by my Todolist powered by Zoho Sheet, today I was making a small application in a non-profit non-governmental community page for 'National Do Not Call Registry'. The objectives of this application are below:

Collect the telemarketing incident details and their calling numbers, victim's name, email and phone number.
Prepare the report in a standard form.
Send the same to telephone operator and register in our database. Here there is a Catch-22 situation that I have described in the utility itself as a 'Data Handling Policy'. Hence I am not sending an email but just copying the standard format to your clipboard which you can send to your telephone operator.

Technical Details:

The utility contains two pages one that is hyperlinked from within Facebook Developer page. It does the preliminary handshake with the Facebook and then opens our reporting page.
The reporting page does all the hard-work like collecting the details and preparing the report and sending the same.
Please note that the canvas page in Facebook would require a SSL URL mandatory after October 1 2011. Currently the application does not use SSL URLs.

You can access the application in two ways:

Deepak Labs
On the left hand side of 'National Do Not Call Registry' community page you should see a link called 'Report Telemarketer' to invoke this utility.

Feel free to use the application and share with me your comments on the same.

PhpCredentials -- As a fork of Php Passmanager

2011-08-26T09:56:00.000-04:00

Today just uploaded the first draft of files for 'Php Credentials' to Sourceforge. You can have a sneak preview of the same here. Some of the salient features of this application are:

Built on the proven engine of Php Password Manager
No need to remember another separate master password and to key in every time you enter your passwords.
Does not depend on an external source of protection for the application and comes with its own login scheme. (Inspired by Keepass desktop tool). You only need to remember the login/password for the application and other authentication credentials are managed by the application for you.
Simple Technology: PHP 5.3.2, MySQL 5.1 and Apache 2.0 [Opensource Combination].
Whilst the application's own password is stored and hashed in the database your custom passwords are stored in a strong 3DES.

Check out the same and send me your views and comments for further improvements.

An appreciation from OpenDNS

2011-07-23T16:29:00.001-04:00

I would like to share the happiness of being featured in this week's interview with OpenDNS blogs -- 'Five Questions with Deepak Vasudevan'. I have also compiled the blog publication as a slideshow along with this note here:

A 'Gentle Touch' command in C#

2011-07-18T09:44:00.000-04:00

In Unix world we have a command called 'touch' which when invoked on the file updates the timestamp of the file to the current timestamp. I just thought would share a quick implementation of the same in C# for the benefit of beginners in .NET. Check out the source implementation here.

Currently this supports only a single file.

Things to do:

Recursive touch of files and folderswhen invoked on a directory. If you are interested to contribute let me know and I can add you as a co-member of the Sourceforge project.

My Desktop is Powered by LxDe

2011-07-03T12:51:00.000-04:00

The illustration of 'X' in LXDE becomes like a lightening making L and D to sparkle bright and make a colorful environment.

A Test Run of Opera Browser on my Ubuntu

2011-06-26T10:53:00.000-04:00

A few people could remember that way back my mobile used to powered by Opera Mini browser. Other than the Unicode limitation the normal websites have a powerful acceleration without giving a pressing load on my CPU.

Hot Summer and Hotter Award from Symantec

2011-06-24T17:46:00.001-04:00

24 Jun 2011

$15 US Amazon.com Certificate

shipped

24 Jun 2011

Fun with Java Update

2011-06-20T10:14:00.000-04:00

Oracle is trying to push some strange update for the past two months in the system which only meets this error. I am not sure why aren't they able to even correct this issue in the subsequent fixes. Big names but cheap products as there is a Hindi saying!

Windows Server 2008 R2 -- Another Vista (Pig with a lipstick?)

2011-06-20T10:12:00.000-04:00

For some reason, Windows Server 2008 R2 derives a sadistic pleasure in terminating non-MS applications when common Windows controls like File -> Open, File -> Save are being accessed. The most closest trace I found was the default location it was choosing like 'Favorites'. I reported this to Bugzilla (Mozilla) and they found out that the culprit was Windows and not Firefox. Reported this to MS through forums. No responsible fix till now.

Safer Browsing Practices -- Make Your Browser To Prompt Download Location

2011-06-14T15:41:00.000-04:00

I would prefer the recommended option in Download would be 'Always ask me where to save files' in Firefox instead of 'Save Files To'. That way I always know what is coming into my system and hence I can be sure that my system is not compromised with malware and/or hijacked by unknown persons.

It does take a couple of more clicks but it pays to pave a strong security for the computer. This screen is from Firefox 4.0.1.

Internet Clearing Houses

2011-06-05T01:55:00.000-04:00

I just thought would share a couple of words about a few Internet Clearing Houses which helps us to stay safe online.

Phishtank: (http://www.phishtank.com/) is a service from OpenDNS. It helps us to stay away from Phishing websites.

Norton SafeWeb: (http://safeweb.norton.com/) is a service from Symantec which helps us to identify bad websites so that we don't visit them infecting our computers.

Cloud-based security

2011-06-05T01:53:00.000-04:00

These days the most talked about term in every enterprise is cloud-computing and living on the clouds. However we need to ensure a few things in this cloud-era:

Safety
Security
Reliability

Do we have these three musketeers always with us when we dial-in to the Internet and go online? How many times we have installed a new Windows computer, been online for a few hours and then found with an installed version of Antivirus/Antispyware tool which complains that there have been a few privacy infringing third-party tracker cookies on the light end or an extreme case of financial information/identify theft to a rogue website.

Though we can have the right antivirus software loaded we also need to ensure its patterns are updated. One more level of good security is to have DNS level protection. There are a few services like OpenDNS, Norton DNS, ScrubIt which provides the following advantages:

Rogue sites are automatically blocked for you. Since your name server is the only which guides you a route to a website and if that blocks a harmful website without letting the address you are not in any way left the way to fall in burning fire of hell.
Unlike a few ISPs they have old DNS software that they do not update frequently and/or also have only a few DNS servers which are often overloaded at peak times, these expert specialised DNS services have name servers scattered across data centers throughout the globe.
If one name server fails in a data center the next one some where in other part of the world automatically assumes its roles and starts to protect you.

How to configure and use it?

Just set the DNS of your computer to the name servers given by that service and the next launch of the web browser would escort your journey in the internet superhighway with the security expertise of the experts.

Also read our Ubuntu/DNS-O-Matic script over here.

Blogdrive Downloader ...

2011-06-04T22:12:00.000-04:00

Blogdrive is a cool blog platform for novices and beginners. I have started to blog there around 2001 and then went ahead to diversify my blogs across Google Blogger and Wordpress. Whilst it endeavours to fulfil most of the bloggers' needs a few advanced features like 'Bulk Import', 'Bulk Export' when you want to backup the blog and restore it etc are amiss. This has been confirmed in a Wordpress forum too where people suggest to use Moveable Type format as an intermediate. I have also briefly explained about this my new travelog over here.

The other way what I could suggest though a bit rudimentary would be to use the archive URL and download the contents to your local storage. A quick lines of code for the same using PHP would be as below:

Please note that I am using a system command called 'wget' to download the remote file. This is a built-in command for (Ubuntu) Linux and also the path format is a typical Unix. This is just a startup idea. There are a lot of things to improve that you can do and help yourself:

If it is a 404 error page you can filter out the file from being preserved in the local path.

HINT: I think 404 page would not have the normal contents but 'Hello Mister' as one of the strings.
A nice GUI with a progress bar perhaps using PHP GTK :)

$blogdriveBaseURL = "http://yourblogdriveurl.blogdrive.com/";
$howmanyposts = 400; //You can get this from your dashboard
$localpathtosave = "/home/lavanyadeepak/Desktop/blogdrive/"; //Local Path where you want to save the contents

for ($j=0;$j<=$howmanyposts;$j++)
{
echo "Downloading post $j
";
$downloadcommand = "wget --quiet -O $localpathtosave$j.html $blogdriveBaseURL$j.html";
shell_exec($downloadcommand);
echo "Download of $j complete
";
}

echo "All downloads complete. Thank you for using Blogdrive Downloader
";
?>

A Sizzling Summer Reward from Symantec ...

2011-06-04T11:19:00.000-04:00

My humble passionate contributions to Symantec forums community has been awarded with yet another award in the form of Amazon Gift Certificate. I am delighted to share this glad news with everyone.

Perhaps it is a blissful gesture from Symantec and the Almighty to start a bright shiny rewarding jubilant, exhilarating and exciting Summer ahead!

Check out the status from Symantec Rewards Redemption Page here:

02 Jun 2011

$15 US Amazon.com Certificate

shipped

02 Jun 2011

Cloud-based Cross-Platform IP Address Updater for OpenDNS/DNS-O-Matic

2011-05-21T15:05:00.002-04:00

When I moved from Windows to Ubuntu one issue I was facing with OpenDNS lack of an automatic IP address updater for Unix platforms. They do point to a ddclient utility but I wasn't comfortably able to configure it on my box. Hence I sat down to wrote a few lines of PHP code which can be used in either of the following ways:

Through PHP_CLI commandline (and thus you can add it to the startup scripts in /etc/init.d)
Most of the Unix installations have Apache PHP built-in. You can have this scripts in one of the aliased directories, have them bookmarked as home page in your browser. So when you launch the web browser your IP address automatically gets committed to OpenDNS catalog through DNS-O-Matic.

Note: OpenDNS takes three minutes to propagate the changes to the account to all related caching servers. Hence in this period websites that do not fall within the context of your block settings may be browse-able on your system.
The PHP script to auto-update DNS-0-Matic (and hence OpenDNS) account (You only need to make changes in line numbers 2 and 3. You can download autoupdate.php from Sourceforge at this URL.

Maverick Meerkat to Natty Narwhal on my Virtualbox

2011-04-29T17:50:00.003-04:00

Just yesterday Ubuntu 11.04 (Codenamed as 'Natty Narwhal') got released. I had my Virtualbox upgraded to the same. See the screenshot below.

The upgrade is little heavy and it has its own desktop environment called Unity. But because of Virtualbox hardware Ubuntu automatically chose to boot with Classic Environment.

A Tamil New Year Gift from Symantec Connect

2011-04-26T11:12:00.000-04:00

The Kara Tamil New Year gift in the form of Amazon Gift Certificate seeded from my humble contributions to the Symantec community has just come in. You can find the update from Symantec Rewards Redemptions page over here:

26 Apr 2011

$15 US Amazon.com Certificate

shipped

26 Apr 2011

Ubuntu Terminal Server 'Auto-Connect' drives me crazy ...

2011-04-10T19:36:00.001-04:00

In Ubuntu tsclient when you disconnect from the terminal server and/or it is disconnected it again tries to connect by itself. This can be annoying at sometimes when you want to hangup the VPN connection. Whilst browsing the Ubuntu kb, I found that this had gathered a lot of interest amongst co-Ubuntu users too. Check out http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/1035/.

A quick and working workaround for the issue is open the appropriate .TSC file from your home folder and add the following line:

reconnect_policy: never

Now it should not bug you in auto-connecting till Ubuntu releases a patch for this bug.

Blogilo -- Another desktop blogging client

2011-04-09T11:20:00.001-04:00

This is the followup of Scribefire discussion. If your desktop session has KDE tools you should be having Blogilo too. Or you can quickly install it from your repository.

Scribefire -- Chrome Extension Desktop Blogging Client

2011-04-09T11:14:00.001-04:00

On a truly cloud computing spree when your web browser is the one stop window to the world, ScribeFire is a surestop resource that you would like to empower your Google Chrome with. It is a browser-based desktop blogging client. Originally for Firefox this is a new port for Google Chrome.

For those non-Windows users not able to use Live Writer, I think this is a very attractive proposal to blog from the comfort of their desktop without ALT+TABbing to another application.

Interesting Text Editor in XFCE Ubuntu

2011-03-27T07:41:00.000-04:00

Whilst playing around with my XFCE desktop environment of Ubuntu I just observed an interesting name called 'Mousepad' in the programs. When I started the same, it turned out to be a simple text editor like Notepad. Just thought would share this amusing finding with others too.

XFCE -- Smart Cute Light-weight Desktop in my Ubuntu

2011-03-26T11:53:00.000-04:00

Today I was doing a little maintenance on the system and set up XFCE in lieu of KDE which is fairly heavy with unneeded components. In the process I kicked off the KDE daemon which resulted in the system turning to commandline mode. Slowly groped through the dark and rebooted it to get XFCE to the fore-front.

Java complete in my Ubuntu ...

2011-03-09T21:20:00.000-05:00

After a lot of struggle got Java installed on my Ubuntu. The catch is that by default Java is not allowed directly in my Ubuntu. I need to enable partner repository in Ubuntu Software Center and only then Java was displayed to be installed besides Java plugin for all browsers.

From when Visual Studio started treating 200 OK as Http Errors?

2011-03-09T19:57:00.000-05:00

From when Visual Studio started treating 200 OK as Http Errors?

Recently I encountered a strange error dialog in Visual Studio TFS. All of a sudden it threw a messagebox that that it encountered a 200 OK from the server. :) See attachment. The other day I had fiddler open in my system and I could see web service requests carrying checkin/checkouts of the files from Visual Studio.

It is really excellent that Microsoft is extending patronage and embracing an Open XML format for Visual Studio too.

Gnome or KDE?

2011-03-09T17:24:00.000-05:00

After a lengthy debate and debacle with KDE I have reverted my system configuration to GNOME which seems to be practically good and productive for my purpose. KDE is all the more good but power-packed with services and utilities which I do not get to use at the moment.

And I also want to share one thing. One of my friend who is new to Linux but got inspired by the simplicity and elegance of it always gets confuses between Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I would like to clarify. Ubuntu and Kubuntu are two flavors of Debian Linuxes. GNome and KDE are the desktop environments. Trust this makes things clearer and cleaner.

A 'Segmentation Fault' with KDE...

2011-03-05T10:38:00.001-05:00

An interesting error message whilst removing the unnecessary packages in bulk from KPackageKit. Recalls my C Programming the college days. 'Segmentation fault. Core dumped'.

My new KDE Screenshot

2011-03-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

I had replaced my Ubuntu desktop with a KDE environment because that is more light-weight, cheerful, enticing and creatively productive. Just thought would share the screenshot of my KDE-powered desktop here:

Which city in India is best for hosting Tech.Ed

2011-02-25T18:34:00.000-05:00

This is a quick response to MSDN India's query on the Facebook campaigning for particular cities which are most best candidates to host the premier technology event of the year 'Tech-Ed'. Without doubts we would all like to vote 'Bangalore' (aka) 'Bengaluru'. Also dubbed as 'Silicon Valley of Asia Pacific' I am sure Bangalore has the best in store with respect to the events. A few good points on why Bangalore should be the most impressive candidate are the following:

International ports and good transportation system for ease of access.
Premier software houses in and around the city which thus would give a good helping hand for everyone to attend and get benefitted.
A better known geography for anyone to get adapted.

I hence thought just would share this view and polling to support Bangalore as a best candidate for Tech Ed 2011. Even for first time people who visit Bangalore for Tech-Ed it also offers a lot of general non-technical tourist attractions besides the ease of locating anything in the city.

Hence beyond doubts our votes for most admired and most coveted city for Tech-Ed would go to 'Bangalore.

My Ubuntu has a love for LavanyaDeepak (ld)...

2011-02-20T20:57:00.000-05:00

One cute thing I observed with my Ubuntu (and in general Linux) is that the most commonly used and significant program 'ld' and 'ldconfig'. Whenever you install/deploy a package you would get the message like

'ldconfig deferred processing now taking place'.

Today as part of my gcc (GNU C) explorations and trying to recall my college day C programming when I tried something I got the following error from the compiler:

lavanyadeepak@LavanyaDeepak:~/Downloads$ gcc a.c
/tmp/ccRQQLcH.o: In function `main':
a.c:(.text+0x11): undefined reference to `println'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

A beautiful Unix calendar 2011 in terminal

2011-02-20T20:50:00.000-05:00

I was playing around my Ubuntu terminal and just recalled my DEC Unix experience during my college days. Just thought of sharing the cute one line command that draws the calendar for any specific month of year.

A simple 'cal 2011' draws a calendar like the one illustrated in the screenshot attached in this post.

Auto-reconnect feature of Terminal Server Viewer in Ubuntu

2011-02-12T13:11:00.000-05:00

In Ubuntu if by error the terminal server disconnects it gives an elegant reconnection dialog giving a wait time dialog that normally counts up to thirty seconds as in the dialog below.

This should actually help typically when rebooting the remote box. Instead of we waiting for the other box to come up and periodically sending ICMP ping packets this takes care of the onus.

From CAD to CAE...

2011-02-11T17:27:00.000-05:00

My work desktop is Windows Server 2008 R2. My home desktop is Ubuntu Linux 10.04. When I connect via Openconnect and remote desktop to work, the frequent keys that I needed to use nowadays is CTRL+ALT+ENTER. This keystroke is a signal to Ubuntu Remote Desktop Viewer to toggle full screen options.

A variant of the third key (DELETE) is an indicative to Windows to signal the SAM Security Manager to attract its attention. By default, the RDP viewer does not have a maximize restore option to full screen in Ubuntu. You ought to use the CAE option to avail the same.

Fedora installation names and abbreviates my 'lavanyadeepak' very cute ...

2011-01-21T15:43:00.000-05:00

My installation of Fedora linux with the default system name as 'lavanyadeepak' seems to be creating interesting abbreviations. Just thought would share this along here.

SuSe Linux Installation reminds me of the new SQLServer 2008 Installation Screen

2011-01-21T15:40:00.000-05:00

The newer SuSE Linux installation screen with its left bar indicating the components and the right hand side the various actions reminds me of the SQL Server 2008's integrated installation screen of the various components. Just thought I would share this observation along.

The Three-Fingered Salute which starts a timer for me

2011-01-15T19:04:00.000-05:00

This is what appears in my system when I press CTRL+ALT+DELETE. Ubuntu seems to be helping the users to auto-shutdown in a minute if no action is chosen by the user within the stipulated period.

How to disable automatic screen locking in Ubuntu?

2011-01-04T17:58:00.002-05:00

My default operating system through Virtual Box is Ubuntu 10 LTS. The catch is that when I work on host Windows for a while and ALT+Tab to my Virtual Box it gets locked and I have to unlock. The simplest way of disabling the automatic locking is through the screensaver panel that is available from System -> Preferences Menu as illustrated in the screenshot below.

Locked out of OpenDNS

2010-12-31T18:34:00.000-05:00

I was just playing around with my OpenDNS and a few security settings that I was trying out rendered myself locked out of OpenDNS. Then slowly figured it out and then relaxed the security settings. Interestingly the high security settings block even webmail, facebook, twitter and blogger.

Windows 7 File Preview

2010-12-10T13:17:00.001-05:00

Not sure if this feature exists in other versions of Windows but I love the image being previewed of its thumbnail directly from within its file icon itself. See Windows 7 desktop of an image file below.

Way to go!

Whoa! No more PDF reader required

2010-12-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

Google Chrome seems to be shipping with a built-in native PDF reader. That means one hell with Adobe is ridden off. We invite reader's attention to our earlier Adobe quality review. You may also like to check out Chrome's official blog over here.

Smoking is injurious to health. And so is abnormal powering off the computer …

2010-12-06T09:54:00.001-05:00

Smoking causes irreparable damages to heart and lungs. There is a statutory warning that is printed in every cigarette packet indicating this. Furthermore there is also an age-restriction on who can purchase cigarettes. Even otherwise considering the amount of passive smoking we are subject to it is always better to have annual heart checks. Besides smoking restricting the amount of cholestrol and other fatty substances would ensure a hale and healthy heart.

Perhaps Windows adopts this custom. A few things for a hale and healthy Windows are:

Routine and Regular Updates
Non-Pirated Software. It just costs another buck a difference for the bona fide software but gives you peace of mind and a great sense of satisfaction that you helped another software developer to earn towards his daily bread.
Updated Antivirus Software
Clean habits of like graceful shutdown instead of just pulling the plug out. Windows does have corrective habits just in case you pull the plug out. See the screen from my Weven Virtual Box:

An Analysis of RememberMe.scr on my Virtual Box

2010-11-30T18:47:00.001-05:00

Remember the discussion of Virus Bomb on Kala-Astami? I was just wondering if I could a little analysis using that file on my Weven Virtual Box. See the race between Windows Defender, Windows Explorer and Microsoft Security Essentials to cleanup that sh*tty infection:

The Saturday Cleanup

2010-11-20T07:23:00.001-05:00

This Friday night was a scheduled maintenance day in my box. You would have observed from my recent posts that I also did some cleanup on Windows 7. Today I had to repeat this exercise from around 3 AM on my Windows XP box as well.

Junk File Storage: 12 Giga Bytes
Google Chrome Cache Size: 6 Giga Bytes (I wonder why Google Chrome does not ship with an option to regulate and control Cache Size like in other browsers)
I also periodically cleanup the Profile folder and refresh it because most of the junk applications cling to it. Again, Google Chrome has a bad habit of installing to the user data folder and got removed off. The Profile folder was around 1.3 Giga Bytes:
Unneeded Applications Removed. Significantly Windows Live Mail which was using 37 mega bytes.
The other day I was using ISORecorder which left a junk VirtualScsi Control and locked the ISO file. To remove it I had to navigate to DeviceManager and uninstall the Virtual SCSI clients and then remove the ISO file. Around 300 Mega Bytes junk ISO file was deleted in that process.
A heavy hitting registry cleaner resurrected the control panel of all the junk entries. Check out Eusing free registry cleaner.
Defragmentor detected a 47 per cent fragmentation of the drive causing an unusually slow system and gained it in another two hour maintainance operation. Check out AUSLogics Free Disk Defrag.

Around 7.30 AM Eastern now (as of this writing), All Systems Up and Go!

My Windows 7 speaks my language (Tamil)

2010-11-19T17:11:00.001-05:00

Being a Friday afternoon whilst casually playing with my Windows 7 stumbled upon a good language pack feature. Now my Windows 7 speaks Tamil. Check out the explorer interface below:

Bypass Heart Surgery on my Windows 7

2010-11-19T10:32:00.001-05:00

Today my Windows 7 had a few issues because of some critical system settings change that I was experimenting yesterday. Had to run through a few System Restoration checks and processes. Operation Success. My Windows 7 is now hale and healthy.

A Sneak Preview of my Windows 7 Explorer Just After Installation

2010-11-18T18:28:00.001-05:00

Just thought I would share an explorer view of my Windows 7 just after its installation.

The disks are cleaner only for a few moments after installation. Once you download stuff and install from other media you slowly venture into the wild jungles.

At least the navigation was a breeze and file searches were faster.

Simpler Timesheet for Personal and Business Records

2010-11-18T11:11:00.001-05:00

Businesses worldwide use their own indigenous set of timesheet software to clock the time spent on various activities. When it comes to our own time management the following tools come in handy. Whilst our beloved Todolist helps monitor our activities when it comes to a reporting stuff it would be better to have a timesheet system.

Check out this elegant opensource Timesheet system from TSheetX:

http://www.timesheetng.org/

Day-wise Tracking
Week-wise Tracking
Auto-clocking
Tracking Time-Off Activities and much more …

Woo Hoo! Found a good way to liberate my Chrome out of Flash Shackles

2010-11-12T14:55:00.001-05:00

Adobe Flash is the most abused and misused component these days on many websites. Particularly when you browse websites like http://www.timesofindia.com/ and http://www.dinakaran.com/ your web browser is strangulated and choked to death because of too many shocking shockwave movie files embedded and scattered throughout the website.

I just came across an innovative FlashBlock AddOn for Chrome which is installable from here. Here is a view of Times of India rendered on my Chrome liberated from the demonical possession of Flash.

This day; Next Year (‘Day One in Year One’)

2010-11-11T13:27:00.001-05:00

Today is 11/11/2010 (shortly written as 11/10/10). Next year the same date would be 11/11/2011 (shortly written as /11/11/11)

All one day. Let this all one also make us stand won over the evil forces and come out triumph in all quarters.
Let this all one also ensure peace and solidarity across the world.

Just writing a stored procedure with date parsing and thought of this unique combination that would happen next year and hence sharing it out.

Visual Studio keeps blocking work

2010-11-11T13:24:00.001-05:00

Not sure at least 4 out of 10 instances these days Visual Studio 2010 runs into the following messagebox:

Tried a complete reinstall
Wiped and clear VSWebCache
Run As –> Administrator was only used.
Only option left – Reinstall OS?

I need IIS Snapin to restrict to a single window

2010-11-10T14:18:00.001-05:00

In the ‘I need …’ feature request series, the next proposition that I would go about suggesting is to have the IIS Snapin (inetmgr.exe) to be having an option to restrict to a single window. This is because if one window is already and I open another one, I may inadvertently overwrite the settings between them.

There should be at least an option to monitor existing windows of it and disallow new windows (or seamlessly target the existing windows) like that in WinZip.

I need ACID Transactional Support for File Move/Copy …

2010-11-10T12:11:00.001-05:00

A while back we discussed about the merits of CTRL+C over CTRL+V. I just thought I would share another common and good feature request which could add value to the software.

Acid Transactional Support for File Move/Copy in Windows Explorer

ACID stands for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation and Durability and isolation the most commonly desired feature of transactions in RDBMS.

Just thought I would share this view too. I do admit that CTRL+X and CTRL+V has significantly improved with respect to file management in Windows Vista and higher where when a particular file is detected of sharing violation and/or access restriction then instead of throwing an error Windows offers a skip-ability of the file in error.

To Stop Ctrl+X in favor of CTRL+V

2010-11-10T12:06:00.001-05:00

I normally have the habit of moving files to Recycle Bin and never ever get carried over in using the dangerous Shift+Delete option (which bypasses Recycle Bin). The reason being is that in the event of any file that is required in recent future (if not far though) we always stand to get an option to resurrect it from the recycle bin.

However I do was having another paradoxical habit which long time back I have relinquished too. When some text or content or file need to be transitioned from one location to another I always resort to Ctrl+X instead of Ctrl+V. And many times including my during onsite system consultant experience at Sakshi (way back in 2001) this CTRL+X was bringing out a lot of issues in my software taking toll of about a day’s work rendered as a rework.

Particularly when moving files across the network devices if CTRL+X fails then the state of the devices participating in the move transaction would be left in a zombie state involving a complex manual perusal and herculean task of resurrecting them to normalcy.

Just thought would share this experience with others.

I need CTRL+Z for …

2010-11-10T11:59:00.001-05:00

CTRL+Z (keyboard accelerator for Undo) is by far the most commonly used feature in text editors of all breeds. Whilst the tab browsing environments have brought in ‘Undo Close Tabs’ as an option for some reason the specified menu item has not got attached the legendary CTRL+Z keyboard accelerator.

Some more CTRL+Zs that are being aspired for:

Windows desktop itself should have a more comprehensive CTRL+Z so that if we close any ([windows]explorer) window it can be resurrected with this option.
There used to be an evergreen dialogue of Late Writer ‘Sujatha’ Rangarajan in the box-office hit movie ‘Mudhalvan’ which goes as below “வாழ்க்கையிலும் VCR-ல இருக்கறது மாதிரி ஒரு rewind button இருந்தா எவ்வளவு நல்லா இருக்கும்”

The rewind button is something similar to CTRL+Z (Undo) option in desktops.

Whilst the first option is a feature request for Microsoft, the god of the software world, the second option is a feature request for Time and the Trinity, the universal lifeliners.

Habitual Crash-n-Start of Visual Studio 2008

2010-11-08T12:42:00.001-05:00

Ever since I have installed Visual Studio 2010, my VS 2008 had got into an habit of suiciding and starting after that. I keep receiving the following interesting message even as part of the splash screen:

Not sure whether it a Visual Studio team’s initiative in enforcing ‘no-use’ of older versions forthwith?
Or is it an easter’s egg of the VS 2008/VS 2010 splash screen itself?

Nevertheless using any of the buttons it resumes and restores on its journey.

How many toolbars clinging to the browser?

2010-11-08T10:12:00.001-05:00

Recently I had an opportunity to visit an Internet Kiosk. The number of toolbars that was loading in the web browser was really daunting. See the screenshot of the web browser display itself below:

I admit Internet Explorer is an extensible web browser but shouldn’t there be a tolerance limit instead of piggbybacking the browser with so much redundant features. For me, I have stopped using IE and FF long time back now.

Google Chrome is the default web browser in my system. With a builtin search from the addressbar, integrated security (accompanied by AVG Security Alerts) is the safest and secure cruise through the internet.

Whoa! AVG Rocks!

2010-11-07T21:56:00.001-05:00

I have been using AVG on my Virtual Box for a long time. Recently I came across the update AVG Antivirus 2011 which significantly updated and upgraded features.

The interface is very seamless and something similar to Symantec too more compact and compressed.

Some of the innovative features that I liked in this edition are:

Scan Priorities (User, Medium, Low and High (System))
Comprehensive Virus Vault
Feature-Rich Forums
Builtin Antispyware.

More efficient time calculation in Windows Server 2008 R2

2010-11-05T18:55:00.001-04:00

Unlike with versions till Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 R2 makes a major leapthrough in file download time calculations and recycle bin empty progress etc. Now it clearly shows how many items are remaining and how much time left to complete the task.

Another good feature of Windows Explorer is that when you operate something bulk on a large number of files in a folder and a few of them are only preventing the operation not all would fail. Windows now offers an elegant ‘Skip’ ability.

AOL Mail alternates to ‘An Error …’ on every refresh

2010-11-04T17:47:00.001-04:00

Interesting. AOL Mail and its suite of email services seems to be liking to have a user click ‘Try Again’ at least on each of its request. Navigate to Inbox and Sent Items. On every folder first load, you get a message like below:

“The Robot with Emotional Intelligence”–Chitti comes to reality

2010-11-04T17:19:00.001-04:00

Hello World.

I am ‘iTalk, the Robot’.I am created by a 17 year old Doon school student. I am powered by software from MIT. I am 2.5 feet tall.

Just had an opportunity to view the article on iTalk Robot in ‘The Hindu’. Check out a quick screenshot here:

In ‘Enthiran’ the only issue that was put on Chitti was that it was devoid of emotions. And this gap has been filled to some extent by iTalk Robot.

Paint.net can not transfer dynamic images but Paint can do!!!!

2010-11-04T17:01:00.001-04:00

Whilst publishing a birthday review post here, just realised that Copy from Paint.net does not seem to be any avail. But Copy from Paint.net to MsPaint (makes it clipboard friendly) and this target is gladly accepted by Windows Live Writer.

“Start” to search and Start to ‘Run’

2010-11-04T16:52:00.001-04:00

For those who are like me obsessed to Windows Key + Run rather than clinging to mouse to click on the appropriate program menu entries, Windows 7’s new menu system might be a little shock.

Even when you press the Start key a friendly menu like the one pops up. You can still persevere to press R to get your nostalgic ‘Run’ dialog. However, this new screen has more features. Say for example, you would need to launch ‘Live Writer’, in the earlier Start –> Run case you ought to remember the executable path of Live Writer to begin with. In the novel way you can just type ‘Live Writer’ and Windows would do some search and list over the blank space that is above ‘All Programs’.

Be Aware – If your system is running low on memory such fancy gimmicks might take a little toll on the CPU (and your patience too).

The New Way:

The Classic Way:

Ubuntu–An edge over Windows Time Icon

2010-11-04T16:40:00.001-04:00

If Windows Server 2008 gives us an edge of multiple times, Ubuntu gives an edge in showing the weather at these places too. Check out a screenshot from Ubuntu 10 LTS.

Effects of ‘War on Terror’

2010-11-03T20:51:00.001-04:00

Just thought I would share a few effects that the war on error still has on the system. Not sure if that is the cause or this was present before itself and just like there is a saying in Tamil காக்கா உட்கார பனம்பழம் விழுந்த கதை, I observed these. MMC snapins extended tab shows an Active Scripting disabled warning.

But the billion dollar question is that why does this throw the message two times always?

A Diwali Gift/An Early Birthday Gift from Symantec?

2010-11-03T11:07:00.000-04:00

The contributions to Symantec forums and thus the rewards has earned has come up to the redemption stage now. I am just thinking that this time it has come at the stage during Diwali and my birthday as a gift for these occasions.

03 Nov 2010

$15 US Amazon.com Certificate

shipped

03 Nov 2010

Thank you Symantec!

A Friendly Gesture Reminder regarding DST from my Windows Server 2008 R2

2010-11-03T10:10:00.001-04:00

With just a few days left to turn off daylight savings in the time, Windows Server 2008 R2 calendar throws up a friendly reminder as below in its time applet:

ThunderBird does not seem like to my obsession to ALT+FS

2010-11-02T11:22:00.001-04:00

I normally have an habit of heightened use of ALT+FS (even in preference to CTRL+S) so that the changes are captured instead of catapulting it. A few recent observation and response from Thunderbird to this habit are:

Not sure whether the save operation to the IMAP server was slow that my intervals between ALT+FS requests was overlapping?

FileZilla FTP Client plays Paramabada Shobanam game …

2010-11-01T11:26:00.001-04:00

Today my FileZilla FTP Client seems to be little naughty. Irrespective of its PASV transfer mode and the number of outbound connections reaching to one it still continues to embarrass the server, waiting for 10 seconds before the next connection.

For every sixth file, I see a failed file transfer being logged and I have to reset and enqueue the file back to the server. I have tried with the most newest version of FileZilla as described below:

FileZilla Client
----------------

Version: 3.3.4.1

Build information:
Compiled for:   i586-pc-mingw32msvc
Compiled on:    x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Build date:     2010-08-16
Compiled with: i586-mingw32msvc-gcc (GCC) 4.2.1-sjlj (mingw32-2)
Compiler flags: -g -O2 -Wall -g -fexceptions

Linked against:
wxWidgets: 2.8.11
GnuTLS: 2.8.3

Operating system:
Name:           Windows NT 6.1 (build 7600)
Version:        6.1
Platform:       64 bit system

Interesting anyway…

War on Terror :: Trojan Virus Killed

2010-10-31T12:57:00.001-04:00

Browsing some Media Convertor utility and ended up downloading Trojan.FakeAlert (sshnas11.dll). I smelt fishy since WinPatrol started to give alerts of suspicious Windows services being installed on the system.

A few minutes later PC Tools Spyware Doctor confirmed the infection and it wanted a reboot of the box to remove the infections. Nevertheless since I have not used Spyware Doctor comprehensively, I chose to reinstall Spyware Terminator from Crawler.com which bumped on a few more Trojans implanted in less than ten minutes of the infection.

Windows was rebooted and just after Windows XP screen, Spyware Terminator chipped in and killed all the Trojans.

The risks with ‘Handshake’

2010-10-30T21:55:00.001-04:00

In our earlier post we discussed about Handshake in a controversial way. A few people might have got confused on why is handshake being discussed in different ways. Though handshakes are accepted universally and predominantly western hemisphere, spiritually speaking, Handshakes carry negative vibrations.

When an handshake is exchanged there are risks of subtle negative black energy that has affected one person to infect and conquer the other person too. Check out the Spiritual Research case study over here.

Though we can not change the customs overnight let us make an endeavor to reduce the number of handshakes we are exposed to and support and encourage saatwik pranams that have been upheld in our scriptures.

This blogger personally discourages handshake and I feel that people misuse handshakes in a number of ways. Check out earlier discussion on this over here.

A few tips for Success in Interview…

2010-10-30T21:49:00.001-04:00

Fresh grads often express an emotion of lost confidence because of frequent ‘shown-the-door’ activity by interviewers. Since they haven’t been exposed to a professional working environment and amateur interviewers expecting a peer-exhibit from them consequently this look-out and look-ahead gap plays havoc between them in building a healthy rewarding relationship.

Here are a few tips for a rewarding interview (applicable to both interviewer and interviewee):

Punctuality: When a particular time is decided upon ensure the interview is scheduled and started exactly. Just because you are an interviewer you do not get any privilege with the time wheel. Also the interviewee should ensure he does not offer to quote lame excuses for delays.
Maintain a calm and composed decorum. It is not a war-field and you are not going to confront any AK47s or the guillotines of French Revolution.
Dress Code pays good and plays a significant role. In Tamil there is a saying “ஆள் பாதி ஆடை பாதி” indicating that the way you present gives an impression to the other party.
Depending upon the culture either have a formal (and firm) handshake or a complete and respectful pranams.
When conversing with the interviewer ensure you have your five senses inclined to it. A proper eye contact ensures confidence. A good listening ensures avoiding phrases like “Pardon me. Can you repeat again?”.
A straight forward honest session is also reflected from the body language.
Please respect your language and communication skills. Frequent ‘Eh…Uh…’ and dragging words irritate the other party.

Powerful network testing tools from within Chrome

2010-10-30T21:38:00.001-04:00

If you are ever wondering why a particular URL does not load and looking to see a a miniscule network diagnostics your Chrome addressbar can lend a valuable helping hand. Just type about:net-internals and you should be in a wild shock with the page that loads.

Chrome brings with it a host of very powerful network diagnostics tool right in its address bar.

Related Tool: about:dns (which gives you information on DNS prefetching etc)

Source Courtesy: Wiki page on Chrome

Another innovation in Cloud Computing …

2010-10-30T21:26:00.001-04:00

With a growing emphasis on Cloud Computing and storing on the clouds, the antivirus industry has caught this fever too. Panda Software has released a Cloud Antivirus solution with even a free version for home and not for profit organizations.

You can check out the Cloud Antivirus and download it from here. Panda claims that the collective intelligence deployed from the cloud provides more stringent and secure protection down to 6 minutes from 48 hours for every update. Besides the PC need not be burdened with heavy and bloated updates as with other vendors.

Smart Context Menu from Spyware Doctor

2010-10-30T21:23:00.001-04:00

Most of the current day antiviruses have a context menu option for the folders like ‘Scan with <AV Name>’. Even whilst a scan is in progress normally this menu option is not disturbed. However I just observed in the recent installation of Spyware Doctor that during a scan even this menu is updated to reflect its current state.

See snapshot below:

This is a way bit advantageous because even inadvertently you can not choose this option which might enqueue another unwarranted scanning job on the AV engine besides slowing down the PC performance.

Let us hope that other AV vendors emulate this in their products too.

A few things about Chrome Cache…

2010-10-30T21:14:00.001-04:00

Chrome is invariably and undoubtedly the fastest and the most secure browser of the planet. There are a few things about Chrome Cache which I found out:

The default interface of the browser does not have a provision to configure the folder for the cache.
The default interface of the browser does not also have a provision to regulate the amount of disk space for the Cache. Hence if you have been using Chrome for a significant time you might encounter that the disk space has come down significantly.

For me after a few months of Chrome my disk space stood at 6 Giga bytes of cache usage.
Your Chrome Cache is located in your use profile folder which would roughly correspond to C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\ (Instead of Users try ‘Documents and Settings’ on Windows XP systems.
Chrome Cache Viewer: Nirsoft has brought out a very good nifty little tool to manage and have a sneak preview of what is there in Chrome Cache. You can grab a copy of the tool from here.

Is my desktop always that clean?

2010-10-30T20:59:00.001-04:00

Someone asked me in response to this post whether my desktop is always this clean as illustrated in the post or did I clean it intentionally to capture the screenshot. My response was ‘It is always’.

I don’t encourage the habit of saving files onto desktop for varied reasons. A few of them are:

The desktop needs to be painted by Windows quite frequently and particularly during logon and hence is tedious and may be cumbersome.
The desktop is a special folder located in the User Profile. And if your domain profile is particularly configured as a Roaming Profile then the download might be particular PITA for the router and your system.
I normally encourage the habit of cleaning and resurrecting the profile folders in regular intervals. In those cases considering the safety of desktop folder, it is better not to save it there.
The folders in the desktop have an increased vulnerability to Shoulder Surfing.

Windows XP itself ships with a small utility that moves unneeded desktop files into a folder. This emphasizes an elevated advisory that not to treat and overburden desktop heavily.

My PC is now protected with PCTools Spyware Doctor

2010-10-30T20:54:00.001-04:00

The hellish bully Symantec is finally let scott free away from my system. Let those jokers now keep singing and swinging Tic-Tac Symantec on their own.

After another belligerent annoying session with it, I chose to uninstall completely and go for Google Pack driven PCTools Spyware Doctor.

Post installation when the application minimized to system tray it was indicating a status message as below.

XMLBar–A Nifty Little Video Downloader

2010-10-30T14:00:00.001-04:00

I came across another nifty little video downloader called ‘XMLBar’ recently.

Plus:

This is a very small download (less than one mega byte).
It previews the individual videos in the specified download URL and offers to download the segments.
Once downloaded it also assembles the FLVs into one monolithic video.
Has also provisions to control the bandwidth use and number of threads to use.
Has an ability to turn off computer once the assigned task is complete.
Has an ability to preview downloaded segments with its built-in FLV player either locally or online.
Less amount of CPU use.
Supports YouTube, YouKu, DailyMotion and a lot of more video websites.

Minus:

If the downloaded folder path has spaces it creates another directory path with spaces replaced with (+) When you particularly choose your desktop folder you can see one more directory structure created.

You can check out more about the same from here.

Windows 2011 Essentials and CPU Usage on Toast

2010-10-28T10:02:00.001-04:00

No doubt Windows 2011 Essentials is a giant leap in the IM revolution with support for FaceBook contacts. However when there is an IM update like a ‘FaceBook Contact signed in’, the CPU usage spikes up like crazy.

Hope Windows 2011 team takes a note of this and fixes it on priority.

Plethora of webmail services; Plenty of storage–A gamut of webmail services with diversified features

2010-10-26T18:47:00.001-04:00

Gone are the days when email services offered you peanut storage like 2 mega bytes etc. Now the minimum attachment size that is decently allowed itself is 10 mega bytes (almost five times the storage capacity once it was). With these there is a new revolution creeping in – rhyming names.

Yahoo has brought in a service called ‘YMail’ to rhyme with ‘GMail’. They have also rejuvenated their old ‘Rocketmail’ (which was the seed of Yahoo Mail) but then got shelved off in 1999.

Google Mail (alternatively called as GMail outside Europe) brings with it a power of search and innovation from the search giant at Mountain View, CA.

Windows Live Hotmail – though at times UI may make you look like drivels they are consistent in their offerings. Infinite storage with 10 mega byte attachments and 25 giga bytes from SkyDrive storage seems to be a good one for any individual. However a seamless interactivity of Skydrive and Webmail seems to be missing. Nevertheless Office Web Apps and Webmail has now got wedded.

Inbox.com has its own indigenous compiled JavaScript and smooth interface. Just 5 Gigs but a lot of services to try out for a starter to medium user.

There are also a few experimental jokers in the field:

IndiaTimes for example that loads a crap of advertisements into your mailbox and resembles like yet another desi p0rnography website with so much popups and popunders under the pretext of advertising.
Zoho – calling itself as SOHO (Small Office Home Office) provider claims to have innovative features and fanatic support. But they strictly fail on the privacy fronts. The simple programmer seems to have a complete access of the mailbox. Nevertheless the interface seems to be good so at least for ‘dirty’ emails, I use this.
Zapak an email website by a gaming portal – An email service by a non-webmail industry. So on the very first occasion of problem they may turn into a fly-by-night operator.
Gawab – promises a good storage however on a few litmus tests with discussion forums failed.

Microsoft Silverlight throws RedLight for over 20 mega bytes

2010-10-24T14:25:00.000-04:00

Tall claims of fancy uploader in Windows SkyDrive just have turned out to be another hollow screams from Skydrive team. I just was figuring out the upload capability of Silverlight Uploader (which claimed support upto 50 mega bytes). But no sooner the file limit crossed 20 mega byte, it started to show gestures of memory leak and crash the browser

When running within the context of Internet Explorer the system itself was coming to a standstill. Silverlight plugin in non-IEs were terminated by the said browser virtual machines.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Printer Mystery

2010-10-20T16:57:00.001-04:00

My Windows Server 2008 R2 seems to be having a unique syndrome. When I print an image directly from Microsoft Paint or other tool the printer would take close to the minute only to excuse with the message “Printer Memory is too low”.

Whereas when I take the document onto a BullZip PDF print driver or piggyback it on a Microsoft Word and print it it goes without any demur.

Who should I throw serve an allegation against?

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
HP All-In-One Printer
HP Universal Printer Driver
Gigabit Ethernet

Sometimes Microsoft instead of making the software friendly ensure that we end looking like crazy jackasses.

Save your blogger templates with Live Writer

2010-10-18T14:53:00.001-04:00

When you are trying to insert videos, flash movies or other active content into your blog, you should take particular care in ensuring that it does not jeopardize and/or break the template. This is particularly true when there are videos and it runs over the navigation bands.

With LiveWriter there is a quick and easy way to resize the control at ease and then push the post to the blog.

Why not open any post in Live Writer?

2010-10-18T14:51:00.001-04:00

Live Writer has a good new feature of opening published posts from the blog, making changes to the same and republishing it. However this retrieval and publishing allows only for the posts that were published from LiveWriter.

I was wondering that why not LiveWriter incorporate a feature to retrieve any post on the blog, make changes locally and publish it back to the blog. That should make it a still more fool-proof and full-fledged blog editing platform.

Ease of deep nesting in Live Writer to Blogger

2010-10-18T14:48:00.001-04:00

Try to have a deep nesting like below in Blogger editor and you would really observe it is a true PITA, unless you enter the HTML tab and tweak a few tags to get it.

One. One

One.One.One
One.One.Two

One.Two

Two.One

With Live Writer this shortcoming is overcome and you can elegantly type off the content and post it to blogger. Hopefully blogger addresses this issue with its HTML editor sooner.

Hello World from my Internet Explorer 9 Beta

2010-10-18T14:44:00.001-04:00

Just had an opportunity to upgrade my Internet Explorer to IE 9 on Windows 7 box.

Initial set of observations:

Good to have a seamless install after completing the updates.
But the long black screen indicating ‘Applying updates …’ which appears frozen for a few moments makes one feel scary.
A choice that is thrown to the user to allow disabling addOns alongwith indicating the time taken for addon looks positive and good.
Missing Pieces: WhatBrowser.org still does not recognize IE9:
Too much affinity to Bing is not advisable. I still prefer to use Google for its reliability and its safe-searching results.
I still don’t see a good spell checker integrated to IE 9.

Why is the step-motherly treatment to Google Blogger?

2010-10-15T13:29:00.001-04:00

Windows Live Writer has an easy to start wizard to help you identify the blog websites and create profiles locally. But for some reason Microsoft wanted to brand Blogger, Typepad as a miscellany section.

When sharepoint (intranet blogging) can be an individual attention, I am not sure what is causing world-famous and globe-preferred blogger to be put in the ‘Miscellany’ crowd.

Messenger Refuses; Writer Upholds

2010-10-15T13:24:00.001-04:00

For me, Google Chrome is the default browser. I prefer Google Chrome for the following reasons:

Speed of browsing
Faster loading of the browser
Lesser Memory Footprint
Enhanced Security

However when the Live Messenger needs to open any hyperlinks it always prefers to kill Chrome with an allegation that ‘Chrome is not responding’. However the new Live Writer has an elegant policy of opening browser after publishing the post and it does without any demur.

The Office Ribbon encompasses Live Writer too …

2010-10-15T13:20:00.001-04:00

The classic ‘Ribbon’ which had been encompassing all the Office Products (starting Office 2007) now seems to have infected Live Writer as well.

The top menu account of Live Writer now adopts a ribbon as below:

Hello World from WL Essentials 2011

2010-10-15T13:17:00.001-04:00

My Name is Windows Live Essentials 2011 (Live Writer)

Speed 1 Tera Hertz

Memory 1 Zeta Byte

Hello World

This is a quick introductory post from Live Writer. Windows Live Essentials 2011 is definitely a giant leap in a number of online products. Live Writer seems to have a good number of improvements too.

Anyways I love the improvements in Windows Live Messenger 2011. Without needing to be signed on in FaceBook, I can now get the updates and chat with friends in FaceBook.

Good luck to Windows Live team!

A Easy Spreadsheet for Community Credit Contribution Rewards Matrix

2010-10-01T17:41:00.003-04:00

A Easy Spreadsheet for Community Credit Contribution Rewards Matrix

For those regular users of Community Credit you would have observed this page enumerating the rewards matrix as little scrolling and cumbersome to locate particular action item and reward points applicable for the same. I have prepared a simple spreadsheet and hosted courtesy Zoho for the benefit of Community Credit users.

You can also view the same from here.

An easier resilient way to indicate errors and prepare tutorials

2010-08-24T23:57:00.000-04:00

An easier resilient way to indicate errors and prepare tutorials

We had a recent experience that we reported an error condition in the website it could not be reproduced. Check out our narration here. We can have these situations of re-work avoided quite easily. There is a freeware called 'BBFlashBack Express' which is downloadable from http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/bbflashbackexpress/download.aspx that helps record the screensession. It supports recording in a proprietary format (FBR) which is highly compressed. It does support export to SWF and AVI files too for portability (??) reasons but the filesizes may be little scary.

The interesting feature is that whilst your screen is being recorded you can also talk and the voice or video (from webcam) is captured. Remember to run it from a system equipped with good memory and exit all other applications other than the ones intended for recording.

Exiting other applications other than those participating in the recording is important because you may not want your private applications from being displayed in the video besides the fact that recording needs more memory.

Yahoo Session Restore Feature

2010-08-24T20:55:00.000-04:00

Yahoo Session Restore Feature

If you are Yahoo Mail user and have completed upgrade to the newer webmail interface then I would like to share with you there is a new feature that has been incorporated by Yahoo. If by an error, the tab or browser containing Yahoo sessions closes and the next logon shows up a session restore as below.

Interestingly the buttons don't work anyway for me either in Google Chrome or FF. I never use IE for security reasons. I am still not convinced with Internet Explorer 8 security architecture yet. As part of our VENS initiative this has been reported to Yahoo through their Help Central.

The watchdogs which hunt any illegitimate applications taking over your system

2010-08-24T20:49:00.000-04:00

The watchdogs which hunt any illegitimate applications taking over your system

Google Chrome comes with a more choosy, cheesy, choicy and spicy module called 'Task Manager'. This along with its big brother (Task Manager) from Windows effectively ensures that your browsing experience is seamless and smooth without much speed breaker bumps and hurdles. Google Chrome should be the choice browser of the planet now.

See sample task managers from Chrome and Windows below.

You may be surprised that the processes are masked within the Task Manager. That was done by me as part of the image editing. Common Baby. Why do you want to sniff the arse of others' system BTW?

The Advantage of Virtual Box

2010-08-16T11:47:00.000-04:00

The Advantage of Virtual Box

With VirtualBox, we can have more operating systems running within the same computer. One good utility in VirtualBox is that you can about six timezones configured and listed. My host box (Windows 7) has three timezones by default and the other VirtualBox could rope in three more.

Chrome even elegantly manages other applications' bugs

2010-08-07T19:59:00.002-04:00

Chrome even elegantly manages other applications' bugs

Google Chrome is an enthusiastic young browser with novel features to bring a radical new sense of secure and high-spirited internet browsing. Just came across an interesting feature today of upload progress status in Zoho Mail through Google Chrome. There is a bug that was reported to Zoho Mail on the progress bar but not yet fixed. Interestingly when you browse it through Google Chrome the issue is elegantly taken care of.

Oracle stuffing crap into Java Setup?

2010-08-03T18:04:00.003-04:00

Oracle stuffing crap into Java Setup?

Today my Windows 7 system tray prompted me that it had some updates for the Java that was installed. When I prompted yes, I had to encounter two dumb stuff from the Java setup. I hadn't had such bad experience with Java setup till it was with Sun.

Half way during the installation it bumped telling another installation was going and then it aborted. Not sure what caused it to prevent checking another installations in progress beforehand?
Java installation now has Yahoo Toolbar for the browsers packed with it. Not sure what is causing Oracle to pack browser toolbars along with a generic language runtime.

Winner of Symantec Connect Gift Certificate (August 2010)

2010-08-01T11:04:00.001-04:00

The quest for knowledge besides the passion to help the peers in Community forum besides the driving fire to excel helped another laurel for the month of August 2010 in the form of Gift Certificate from the Symantec security house. You can find the previous discussion over here and an update form Connect Rewards page here:

01 Aug 2010

$15 US Amazon.com Certificate

shipped

03 Aug 2010

More Easier Internet Filtering -- At the DNS Level

2010-07-29T23:02:00.003-04:00

More Easier Internet Filtering -- At the DNS Level

Sometime back we saw about 'Three Best Software' to filter out bad websites in our home networks. People who are wary about installing extra software can choose to use OpenDNS, a free DNS solution whilst accessing the Internet. The only thing required is to signup for an account and to route our system's nameserver requests through their nameservers. When a particular website is found to be a bad website their nameservers automatically routed to the blocked page. They even support customizing the blocked pages with our logo.

For businesses they have cost-effective and proven plans which could be explored too. An example block page is given below:

Now even if you type an incorrect URL their name servers would help you locate the correct URL.

Proud to share that a milestone reward in Symantec Connect

2010-07-07T19:01:00.000-04:00

Helping others in a technical discussion forums is a rewarding experience. Symantec Connect presents one more exhilarating rewarding experience. As you cross earning 100 points you stand to win a $15 Amazon Gift Certificate.

Just today crossed the first milestone and received the first gift certificate by email.