War on Terror :: Trojan Virus Killed

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’

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…

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):

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Depending upon the culture either have a formal (and firm) handshake or a complete and respectful pranams.
5. 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?”.
6. A straight forward honest session is also reflected from the body language.
7. Please respect your language and communication skills. Frequent ‘Eh…Uh…’ and dragging words irritate the other party.

Powerful network testing tools from within Chrome

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 …

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

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…

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:

1. The default interface of the browser does not have a provision to configure the folder for the cache.
2. 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.
   
3. 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.
4. 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?

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:

1. The desktop needs to be painted by Windows quite frequently and particularly during logon and hence is tedious and may be cumbersome.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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

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

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

Plus:

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

Minus:

1. 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

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

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Gawab – promises a good storage however on a few litmus tests with discussion forums failed.

Microsoft Silverlight throws RedLight for over 20 mega bytes

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

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?

1. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
2. HP All-In-One Printer
3. HP Universal Printer Driver
4. 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

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?

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

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.

1. One
1. One. One
1. One.One.One
2. One.One.Two
2. One.Two
2. Two
1. 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

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

Initial set of observations:

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

[Imported from Blogdrive]Deepak Travelog would no longer send notifications ...

My Travelog would no longer send email notifications. They stand disabled. Over the years my travelog had been supporting emailing a brief abstract of the post for the interested people. This needed to be dropped for a few reasons.

1) Volatile nature of public email addresses.
2) Unchecked subscription nature. Anyone was able to enter anyone's address out of personal vendetta and cause a bad name for my website.

The blog however empowers easy reading through FeedBurner Notifications. Check out the feed of the blog here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ldcruise<!--
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        Posted at 09:13 pm by Deepak Kumar Vasudevan
 

 

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  Original BlogDrive Post on Friday, December 17, 2010

Why is the step-motherly treatment to Google Blogger?

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

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

1. Speed of browsing
2. Faster loading of the browser
3. Lesser Memory Footprint
4. 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 …

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

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

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.