Posts Tagged ‘Technology/Internet’
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
On the web, people have absolutely no patience. Your link pops up in Google search, someone clicks it, and the stopwatch immediately starts ticking. If your company’s website doesn’t pop up in two to three ticks, I can guarantee that before the fourth tick visitors will click the back button and try the next links in the search results. Whether you are building your website or contracting it out, make sure your site loads quickly.
You can certainly use a stopwatch to time your site, but doing so is actually a bad idea. Your browser may store graphics and other items in its cache to decrease load times on subsequent visits, so a stopwatch may not provide an accurate indication of how long a page really takes to load for the first time visitors. Better tools are available. My favourite is Pingdom Tools at tools.pingdom.com, where you type the URL of the site or page you want to test and click the Test Now button. Pingdom Tool tests the page and displays the total time required for it to appear on the screen. Results also include a chart that displays the loading time for each object on the page, useful for identifying bandwidth hogs. If your site seems slow, it’s imortant to assess what is slowing it down. Fortunately, a couple of other free tools can help. To get started,you’ll need to install the following on your computer:
- Mozilla Firefox web browser
- Firebug
- Page Speed or YSlow
To test a page, open it in Firefox, click Tools Firebug, Open Firebug and then click the Page Speed or YSlow tab and click Analyze Performance (for Page Speed) or Grade(for YSlow). Both the tools list factors that contribute to site speed, flag areas that need improvement and provide recommendations for fixing problems.
BUILDING FOR SPEED
Both You can do a number of things right now to speed the performance of your website, including:
- Keep it simple. Don’t let window dressing slow your site.
- Combine Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) into a single file.
- Streamline your CSS by eliminating all unused styles.
- If your site is running on a blogging platform, install a caching plug-in.
- Trim images whenever possible.
- Specify image dimensions.
- Use CSS Sprites to combine background images into a single file.
- Avoid flash-based websites
- Move your website from shared to dedicated server or choose a more dependable, higher quality hosting service.
- Use a content delivery network such as Akamai Technologies to deploy contents across geographically distributed networks.
Tags: Clocks, Firebug, free tools, Google Inc., Horology, search results, Stopwatch, Technology/Internet, YSlow
Posted in Ajatus, OpenSource Software, SEO, Web Development, web | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Social networking is the latest buzzword in cellphone circles, and mobile manufacturers are scrambling to offer the service to the ‘young and connected’ crowd
 Social Networking Just when we thought cellphones have pretty much reached the end of their tether as far as functions go — cameras, mails, music, office suites, widgets, browsers, calls, texts, multimedia editing — they seem to have sprung a surprise. Cellphones are turning out to be devices facilitating social networking. And this, in turn, has spawned a new genre of cellphones — one that is designed to keep users connected not just to the mobile network and the odd website or e-mail account, but to all their social networks as well.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the era of the social network phone. Be it established players like LG, Sony Ericsson, HTC or Samsung, or relative newcomers like INQ and Micromax, this is a segment that is witnessing new product launches almost every other day, with high-profile ad campaigns — of the likes of LG Cookie Pep, the INQ Chat 3G and the Micromax Facebook phone — to boot.
Tech pundits will raise their eyebrows at this category of cellphones, claiming that users have been able to access their social networks on their handsets for a while now. Be it updates on Facebook accounts, new pics uploaded on Flickr or the latest video doing the rounds on YouTube, users have been able to keep track of it all on their handsets for a few years now. Most social networks have mobile versions, so you may well wonder what all the fuss is about.
BUILDING A NETWORK
Aircel COO Gurdeep Singh summed up the essence of social networking phones when he described the recently launched INQ chat phones as “devices which, are built with the internet at the core for a new generation with a different attitude to communication. That means a never-before, rich and authentic Facebook, Twitter and e-mail experience.”
And that is what makes this new breed of cellphones different from the routine “download a social networking app and run it” type of handset. Most of these newcomers have special features dedicated to social networks, be it a dedicated Facebook button as seen on the Micromax Q5 FB (‘FB’ standing for ‘Facebook’), special social network widgets on the LG Cookie Pep, a unified messaging and contacts option that lets you post to social networks as easily as you send an SMS, and keeps all your contacts (mobile and social networks) in one place as seen in the INQ Chat 3G, or a homescreen dedicated to fetch updates from your social networks on the Motorola Backflip. And in keeping with the largely young audience they are targeted at, these mobiles are attractively designed and come in dazzling colours. The INQ Chat 3G even comes with switchable backplates.
With the number of online social network users rising, there is a growing demand for phones with social networking features. Social networking has provided a platform for exchanging ideas without restriction on a global basis. Porting this characteristic to your mobile phone makes it easier and more convenient for people to be avid social networkers.
Samsung prefers to refer to social network-friendly phones as “messaging phones”, but its aim is the same — to keep the user connected to social networks. These phones provide users access to various networking sites, quick links to these sites through widgets, boast of fast connectivity and expandable memory space to store data and content. They offer users instant chat, messenger, and e-mail features and help them integrate and manage contacts easily. And to facilitate easy messaging, they have the Qwerty feature.
EASY ON THE POCKET
Another characteristic of many of these social networking phones is their relatively low price tag. Most of them offer features like touchscreens, Qwerty keypads and cameras without costing the earth. The Micromax Facebook phone comes for about Rs 4,000, the INQ Chat 3G for as little as Rs 7,300, the LG Cookie Zap for Rs 7,500, while the Corby Plus is just a touch over four figures — prices that are well below those of most smartphones. And yet these phones are able to hold their own against much more powerful and expensive smartphones when it comes to social networking. Suddenly, tech specs have been rendered largely irrelevant as users look for options to stay connected with minimum fuss.
It is becoming increasingly clear that what was perhaps once the privilege of those who could afford a top-end smartphone has now started making itself felt in the sub Rs 10,000 price band. The market is only going to get more competitive and only those that can provide a killer user experience will succeed. And that secret sauce is not in the hardware, but in the software.
HERE TO STAY
Although they have only recently started to make their presence felt in India, indications are that social network phones are going to be around for a while. With many organisations banning the use of social network sites on office computers, a large number of social network users are turning to their handsets to stay connected. While this would have necessitated using a high-end phone with an expensive data plan a few months ago, today this is possible at a fraction of the cost, thanks to the arrival of relatively inexpensive social network phones, coupled with data plans that are lower than Rs 100 a month for unlimited internet browsing on a handset (both Airtel and Aircel have such plans).
Peek’s Mangharam calls this trend “an acknowledgement by the mobile ecosystem, operators, device manufacturers, VAS providers etc, that social networking is now a mainstream activity and that there is a tremendous opportunity here”. And unlike some pundits, he feels that social networking apps on the cellphone actually discourages users. “Downloading an app, be it for social networking or for enabling e-mail, leads to a tremendous drop in adoption,” he explains. “Ease of setup and use is currently grossly underestimated as the killer app for phones and those companies that can offer a totally integrated experience on social networking or e-mail will stand the best chance of success.”
Samsung’s Yadav, however, feels that apps are going to be way ahead. “Consumers want more applications that they can download on their phones and customise. So newer versions of social networking phones are giving them these applications,” he points out.
Be it the app way or the integrated route, it seems social networking phones are here to stay.
Tags: 3G, Aircel, BUILDING A NETWORK, cellular telephone, COO, Electronics, Facebook, Facebook Inc, Gurdeep Singh, Health Tech Corporation Limited, Hutchison 3G, India, INQ, internet browsing, messenger, mobile and social networks, Mobile phone, Mobile telecommunications, Motorola Inc., online social network users rising, Online social networking, Samsung C&T, smartphone, Smartphones, SMS, Social network service, Social networking, social networking app, social networking apps, social networking features, social networking phones, social networks, Sony Ericsson, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Technology, Technology/Internet, Twitter Inc, Web 2.0, World Wide Web, YouTube Inc
Posted in web | 13 Comments »
Monday, March 8th, 2010
 Typing is sooo yesterday. Google Gesture Search, a freshman out of Google Labs, lets you find stuff on your Android phone by drawing letters on the touchscreen as if you were jotting on a notepad. In addition to Android’s existing search by voice, image, and barcode, Gesture Search is yet another keyboardless input method for your touchscreen phone. At the very least, Gesture Search is a fun proof-of-concept; at most, it will hook a few dedicated touch keyboard haters. Here’s how it works. With Gesture Search running, you write letters by swiping your fingertip on your touchscreen as if it were a whiteboard. With each character you input, Gesture Search live-searches your phone’s contacts, bookmarks, and music and displays the results on-screen. Tap an app, contact, bookmark, or song to launch it or view the contact. (For contacts, tap the green phone icon to start a call.)
When you start Gesture Search you get a plain black screen with a cursor-like pointer on the footer. You draw your first letter, and Gestures puts it at the bottom of the screen and displays matches in your phone’s application list, contacts, bookmarks, and if enabled, your music library. Then you draw the next letter to narrow your results further.
As you can see, a letter that can pass as either an H or an A will match both. You can’t be a slowpoke while you swipe, either: Gesture Search can recognize letters that involve more than one stroke–like a T–if they’re timed correctly. That is, don’t wait too long to cross your T, or Gesture Search will think it’s an I. (Hint: If you’re consistently not fast enough, in the app’s settings set “Writing Speed” to “Slow.”)
If you want to delete a letter, you can: to backspace, in the footer, just draw a line from right to left as if you were pushing the delete key back. Then you can re-enter the character.
Typing is sooo yesterday. Google Gesture Search, a freshman out of Google Labs, lets you find stuff on your Android phone by drawing letters on the touchscreen as if you were jotting on a notepad. In addition to Android’s existing search by voice, image, and barcode, Gesture Search is yet another keyboardless input method for your touchscreen phone. At the very least, Gesture Search is a fun proof-of-concept; at most, it will hook a few dedicated touch keyboard haters. Here’s how it works.With Gesture Search running, you write letters by swiping your fingertip on your touchscreen as if it were a whiteboard. With each character you input, Gesture Search live-searches your phone’s contacts, bookmarks, and music and displays the results on-screen. Tap an app, contact, bookmark, or song to launch it or view the contact. (For contacts, tap the green phone icon to start a call.)When you start
Gesture Search you get a plain black screen with a cursor-like pointer on the footer. You draw your first letter, and Gestures puts it at the bottom of the screen and displays matches in your phone’s application list, contacts, bookmarks, and if enabled, your music library. Then you draw the next letter to narrow your results further, as shown above.As you can see, a letter that can pass as either an H or an A will match both. You can’t be a slowpoke while you swipe, either: Gesture Search can recognize letters that involve more than one stroke–like a T–if they’re timed correctly. That is, don’t wait too long to cross your T, or Gesture Search will think it’s an I. (Hint: If you’re consistently not fast enough, in the app’s settings set “Writing Speed” to “Slow.”)If you want to delete a letter, you can: to backspace, in the footer, just draw a line from right to left as if you were pushing the delete key back. Then you can re-enter the character.
Gesture Search is available for Android 2.0+ only. Search for it in the Market, or scan the QR Code below with your Android device to install it.
Tags: Android, computing, Google Inc., Google Labs, Input/Output, Mobile software, Smartphones, Technology/Internet, Touchscreen
Posted in OpenSource Software, Web Development | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
The world of data storage is up for a massive shift. A whole new breed of scalable data stores is gaining popularity & that too the pace is too fast for traditional databases to recoil & grapple with. I am afraid to say, but they are starting to look like a thing of past. The whole data tier is being shaken up as Memcached appears right next to MySQL. While some might see it as a move away from MySQL and PostgreSQL, the traditional open source relational data stores, it’s actually a higher-level change. Much of this change is the result of a few revelations.
A relational database isn’t always the model or system for every piece of data. They are tricky to scale (especially if you start with a single monolithic configuration–they aren’t distributed by design), when it comes to performance normalization hurts.
The new data stores vary quite a bit in their specific features, but in general they draw from a similar set of high-level characteristics. Not all of them meet all of these, of course, but just looking at the list gives you a sense of what they’re trying to accomplish.
- de-normalized, often schema-free, document storage
- key/value based, supporting lookups by key
- horizontal scaling
- built in replication
- HTTP/REST or easy to program APIs
- support for MapReduce style programming
- Eventually Consistent
And I could probably list another half a dozen qualities that many of them share too. But to me, the first two are the biggest departure form the traditional RDBMS. Of course, you can stick with MySQL and go non-relational.
The movement to these distributed schema-free data stores has begun to use the name NoSQL. You can find the overview of some of the implementations by GeekTantra here.
Tags: Cross-platform software, Database, Database management systems, Databases, Memcached, MySQL, NoSQL, PostgreSQL, RDBMS, Relational database, SQL, Technology/Internet
Posted in Database | 5 Comments »
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
SQL injection a technique by which some code is injected to exploit the security vulnerability found in the application layer of the database. This is a common attack in login based website. This mostly occurs when the user input is incorrectly filtered or due to incorrect type handling.
» Incorrectly filtered user input
This attack is possible when user input is not checked for escape characters and passed into SQL statement. The statement therefore results in a complex statement to what the programmer had planned to, thereby revealing much more data or allowing access to the parts of the database which were not supposed to be exposed.
Eg: The following line of code takes user input as (username and password) check the entry and then do some query execution.
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| SELECT * from `users` WHERE `username`="+username+" AND `password`= "+password "; |
However this query can be vulnerable to SQL injection by setting the username variable as (a’ or ‘a’='a ) and password variable as (a’ or ‘a’='a).
This query allows the access because ‘a’ = ‘a’ part makes the statement always true.
While most SQL server implementations allow multiple statements to be executed with one call, some SQL APIs such as php’s mysql_query do not allow this for security reasons. This prevents hackers from injecting entirely separate queries, but doesn’t stop them from modifying queries.
Eg: The previous query can me modified and made more dangerous by changing it to
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| a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM data WHERE 'a' = 'a |
» Incorrect type handling
This server is vulnerable to this kind of attack when the user given input field is not strongly type checked.
Eg: In the statement
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| "SELECT * FROM data WHERE id = " + a_variable + ";" |
a_variable can be replaced by 1;DROP TABLE users there by deletion of the table.
» Preventing SQL injection
- Use Double Quotes: Replace all the single quotes that your users’ input contains with double quotes. This simple precaution will go a long way towards warding off SQL-injection attacks. Single quotes often terminate SQL expressions and give the input more power than is necessary. Replacing the single quotes with double quotes will cause many SQL-injection attacks to fail.
- Validate All Input: Before using user input data in the SQL query validate all the user input data i.e. numbers should be validated for numbers strings for strings character etc.This prevents the user from entering codes to database.
- Never Connect with the Administrator Account: The user which connects to the database in the script should have least privileges so that he should not be able to access all the functionalities of the database.
- Use of latest versions: Always use of the latest versions of your interpreters and softwares like PHP 5 and .NET 2 or 3(aspx), most SQL injection do not work because all single quotes and double quotes, which are given as the input by user are replaced by an escape characters followed by the quote ( i.e ‘ is replaced by \’ and ” is replaced by \”) preventing the SQL injection. However ASP and older version of PHP and JDBC API are vulnerable to it.
- Use parametrized platforms: Parametrized statements can be used that work in various platforms
- In JDBC:
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| APIPreparedStatement prep = conn.prepareStatement("SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE USERNAME=? AND PASSWORD=?");
prep.setString(1, username);
prep.setString(2, password); |
- In C#:
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| (SqlCommand myCommand = new SqlCommand("SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE USERNAME=@username AND PASSWORD=HASHBYTES('SHA1', @password)", myConnection))
{
myCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("@username", user);
myCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("@password", pass);
myConnection.Open();
SqlDataReader myReader = myCommand.ExecuteReader());
.....................
} |
- In PHP version 5 and above:
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| $db = new PDO('pgsql:dbname=database');
$stmt = $db->prepare("SELECT priv FROM testUsers WHERE username=:username AND password=:password");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $user);
$stmt->bindParam(':password', $pass);
$stmt->execute(); |
- In ColdFusion:
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| <cfquery name="Recordset1" datasource="cafetownsend">
SELECT *
FROM COMMENTS
WHERE COMMENT_ID =<cfqueryparam value="#URL.COMMENT_ID#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_numeric"></cfqueryparam>
</cfquery> |
- Enforcements at the coding level: Using object-relational mapping (ORMs) libraries avoids the need to write SQL code. The ORM library in effect will generate parametrized SQL statements from object-oriented code.
Tags: Best Practices, Code injection, Computer security, Data management, Databases, Microsoft SQL Server, php, Query languages, SQL, SQL injection, Technology/Internet
Posted in Database | 10 Comments »
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Two PCs that are both running on Ubuntu can share files in a number of ways. We use USB devices & swap them to synchronize files between two PCs in what was called a ‘sneaker network‘. One better way is to use an SSHFS or ‘Secure Shell File System’ network.
SSHFS uses OpenSSH to provide secure communication between PC’s/With the network connected the local PC user will be able to transfer,open as well as edit files on the remote PC as if they were on his own machine. The remote files will look and act just like the files on the local PC
To create an SSHFS network all you need are two PCs connected to the same router or gateway. Ubuntu comes with most of the software to make this work, but needs two applications available in the repositories to be initialized on both PCs. Here is how to set it up:
- From System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager install the following packages: sshfs and openssh-server
- Also in Synaptic, confirm that openssh-client is installed(usually comes with Ubuntu)
- Go to System Administration>Users and Groups>unlock>Manage Groups, confirm on Fuse group
- Create an empty folder in your home directory
That completes the installation of the networking tools. To activate the network from one PC to the other,you just have to invoke SSHFS and indicate where the files are coming from, and where they are going to be displayed (that the new folder you made)
Go to Applications>Accessories>Terminal & enter:
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| sshfs remoteusername@remotepc:/home/remoteusername ~/newfolder |
Once you supply the password for remote PC (their password, not yours) which indicates that you have permission to access it, and for the first time only, confirm the other PC, then the network will be established and an icon will be displayed on your desktop. You will be able to access the other user’s home directory by simply clicking on that ‘newfolder’ icon in your home director.You can then copy,move,edit and delete as if they were on your PC. Password protected documents will, of course remain password protected.
To disconnect your PC from the network, enter in the terminal:
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| fusermount -u ~/newfolder |
Tags: Cryptographic software, OpenSSH, same router, Secure Shell, sneaker network, SSHFS, Technology/Internet, Ubuntu
Posted in OpenSource Software | 18 Comments »
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Back in 2007 I got a shared hosting account from Hostmonster which claimed to offer me “300GB of space” which was later upgraded to “Unlimited“, “3000GB monthly bandwidth” which was later upgraded to “Unlimited“, “Unlimited MySQL databases“, “Unlimited mails“, etc. all for a meager amount of 5.95 USD/month. I felt as if I had all the power in the web but soon realized all the “Unlimiteds” were awfully limited. Although I had a shell access for the account, the best I could do with it was copy or move files. I couldn’t install anything onto it or modify anything I needed. What good was all the unlimited for when you had small limits on processor timings and memory usage. Especially when hundreds of shared hosted sites are hosted on the same server its only a matter of time when your site becomes listed as a malware website with Google and co just because some unscrupulous user setup a malware website on the same server as yours. Then I felt the need of having a dedicated server. Now we run Ajatus on a dedicated server which we got for a steal of a deal from Serverminds.
But, now times have changed, for a blogger of today what is the best option to host his websites along with the freedom of trying out his hands on the various components of his server? It can’t be shared hosting, and dedicated web servers are a tad bit too expensive for him. VPS (Virtual Private Servers) is another option where the hosting provider gives the user slices on servers shared over a visualization layer like that of XEN or VMWare. But, VPS are also not very recommended if you have a hunch that your site might need scaling because of a rise in traffic, as it limits the users scope for scaling without moving entire data and setup and their price are also not as reasonable. So what other option are we left with, Cloud Servers, for most of us it might sound something which would be extremely expensive and an enterprise solution. But the fact is its not at all expensive when it comes for a starting user with minimalistic requirements, provided that you choose the right hosting provider. I will provide a small price comparison of the most popular Cloud Server hosts later in this post. So, what is Cloud computing all about? Cloud Computing can be considered as an extended VPS which can be seamlessly scaled dynamically over the Internet. Amazon is one of the largest providers of Cloud computing infrastructures. But except for Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) all others seemed pretty much expensive to me especially the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). So, what can you do with a cloud server? Well on a cloud server you can do everything that you can do on a dedicated server with an added option of dynamic scalability. You can host your blogs, experiment with all sorts of fancy technologies and once you feel you are going out of resources ask your service provider to expand your Cloud Server in-terms of memory, storage or processor cycle limits. Having told all this lets have look at the pricing for a minimalistic Cloud Server configuration provided by some of the Industry leaders:
Amazon EC2: For the smallest Cloud Server they charge 0.10 USD/hour that makes it 0.1 x 24 x 30 = 72 USD/month. For the same price you could easily rent a dual Opteron Dedicated Server with 2GB memory for your self.
Aptana Cloud: Their pricing for 256 MB memory and 5 GB storage is 20 USD/month. This seems a bit more reasonable. Actually this would also be the price of an equivalent VPS.
RackspaceCloud or Mosso CloudFS: Their pricing seemed the best to me. For 256 MB memory and 10 GB storage they charge on 1.5 cents/hour or 10.95USD/month. Now that is extremely low. This is just a little bit more than what most of the shared hosting provider charge for their pseudo “Unlimited” hosting. What more whenever your site seems to soar up in traffic just dynamically add another Cloud Server and share your load.
GoGrid Cloud Hosting: Their minimum offering is half a Gig of Memory and 30 GB of storage at a price of 0.095 USD/hour = 68.4 USD/month. This also seems high for a beginer.
There are other Cloud Computing service providers also, but most of their offerings target the enterprise more than to the personal usage. One such example is RightScale, although they provide Developer free trials their pricing is simply too expensive for a beginner.
Tags: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Cloud, Cloud infrastructure, cloud server, Cloud storage, computing, Dedicated hosting service, dedicated web servers, File hosting, Technology/Internet, Virtual private server, Web hosting, Web services
Posted in Web Infrastructure | 45 Comments »
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
 Weave Mechanism Password as well as bookmark Synchronization is a thing of past. Welcome to Mozilla Weave, a Mozilla Labs project which is a tool designed to let you keep in synchronization with absolute ease & more importantly keep it secure. If you’re one of the many “road warriors” depending on Mozilla browsers, Weave is your ticket to a seamless Firefox experience across all your machines.If you only have one machine where you use Firefox to browse the Web, you probably don’t have much need for Weave. But if you’re using Firefox at home and at work, or any other scenario with multiple machines, you’ll definitely want to take a look at the latest iteration of Mozilla Weave. The project recently released Weave Sync 0.7 for Firefox 3.5 and later (including the 3.7a1 release)
Even though Weave is the answer to a lot of my problems, I haven’t been using it previously. I’d tried Weave before, but stopped using Weave pretty quickly because it seemed to make Firefox enormously sluggish. However, the most recent release seems quite snappy.
Using Weave is simple: Install the extension and restart Firefox. Then create a new account or enter your username, password, and passphrase if you already have an account.
One word of caution — you need to keep your passphrase handy. You apparently can’t recover the passphrase, only reset it and delete your data. This is a bit of a hassle if you (like me) have gone a longish interval between using your passphrase and have forgotten it. I have a number of “stock” strong passwords I use for services like Weave that I can cycle through, but passphrases aren’t terribly common — when I started looking at Weave 0.7, there was pretty much zero chance I’d remember what I used last time I set it up. I do know for certain what it wasn’t at this point, but that did me little good. Since I was only reviewing Weave and not depending on it previously, that wasn’t a big deal for me — but if you’re going to depend on Weave, make sure you have picked a passphrase you won’t forget!
What Weave Syncs
As mentioned, Weave does more than just sync passwords and bookmarks — though it does that. It also syncs history and tabs, and does so continuously. So, if you’re at home and logged into sync and surfing the Web at home, you should be able to pick up the same session at work after your commute.
Of course, you don’t have to sync all that. You can opt out of syncing certain things like history, tabs, passwords, etc. So if you want to sync history and bookmarks but don’t want to have your passwords backed up, it’s totally doable.
The data is also encrypted, so you shouldn’t have to worry about your data being exposed on Mozilla’s servers. If you’re truly paranoid, it gets even better. Individuals or organizations that would like to deploy Weave Sync without sending data to the Mozilla mothership can set up their own server. Yes, you can have your cake and sync it too!
The long term prospects for Weave are even better, though. Weave is actually being developed as a platform that will allow other extensions to sync data as well — so the possibilities for Weave are pretty exciting, if Mozilla can get the same kind of buy-in with Weave that they have with Firefox add-ons.
Finally, Weave also has a great story for mobile users. Weave also works with Fennec, the Mozilla Project’s mobile browser effort — so as users take up Fennec on mobile devices, they can sync with their desktop browser and mobile device. The most obvious advantage here is the ability to sync passwords with mobile devices to avoid retyping passwords on devices with tiny keyboards.
Overall, I was much more impressed with Weave this time around. Users who have a mobile lifestyle should definitely take the time to take it out for a road test. Some things remain unsynced (like extensions), but Weave Sync is a definite improvement over simpler tools like Xmarks.
Tags: Fennec, Google Browser Sync, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Labs, Password, simpler tools, Technology/Internet
Posted in Web Development, Web Infrastructure, web | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
 Sample Captcha Pictcha is an experiment designed to improve security over typical text-based CAPTCHAs and enhance image search.
CAPTCHA is an acronym for completely automated public turing test to tell computers and people apart. It ensures that an online transaction is being performed by a human rather than a computer.CAPTCHAs have been successfully used to distinguish people from computers by challenging users to decipher distorted text, a task that is relative easy for people but quite difficult for computers.
However, with the improvement of machine-learning algorithms, CAPTCHAs must be regularly updated to thwart would-be spammers.
 Sample Recaptcha Thus came the concept of ReCaptcha.About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that’s not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into “reading” books.
In the Pictcha experiment, users are shown a randomly selected Web image and challenge them to provide two descriptive labels.Passing the test requires that at least one of the user-provided labels matches a known tag for the image. The collection of known tags is generated by previous users who have tagged the same image.Pictcha is currently in experiment stage.
Try a Pictcha demo here
Tags: Anti-spam, CAPTCHA, Computer security, E-mail, E-mail spam, Human-based computation, image search, PICTCHA, Spamming, Technology/Internet, Web 2.0
Posted in Spams, Web Security | 9 Comments »
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
We partition our hard drive into sections & select one to install our favourite operating system. There is always a good chance that over time you find there is not much space left on it & reformating option comes into your mind to get rid of the unwanted data.I was in this situation myself with only 60MB space left on my C:Drive. And after using CCleaner I was left with 800MB! all it did was delete temporary files & stuff that has been cached.CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!  .
Cleans the following:
- Internet Explorer
- Firefox
- Google Chrome
- Opera
- Safari
- Windows – Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files.
- Registry cleaner
- Third-party applications
- 100% Spyware FREE
Using the program is really quite obvious too. Just tick or untick the options you want to delete and click Analyse to tell you how much space you will create.CCleaner doesn’t support the large number of extraneous programs that some competitors do, but it can erase traces from such popular programs as Spybot – Search & Destroy and WinZip. CCleaner now offers secure file erasing along with a Registry-cleaning utility that quickly scans for invalid entries before removing them. CCleaner can even back up your Registry before removal, in case it accidentally removes a crucial component, and the download includes a rudimentary feature for uninstalling any program on your machine.Since this free application handles the majority of PC-cleaning chores and offers a nice extra .
Do be aware that things like auto logins on websites you visit regularly are stored as cookies in your browser software, and deleting them will mean you have to enter your password again next time you visit – if you can remember it, that is!.I strongly recommend CCleaner to all users, except those who need robust tools to remove supersensitive data.
Tags: browser software, CCleaner, Internet history, Malware, Microsoft Windows, operating system, Registry cleaner, Spyware, Technology/Internet, Uninstaller, Utility software, WinZip
Posted in Windows | 13 Comments »
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