When did you installed Windows on the Computer? Know The Exact Time and Date

Do you remember the exact date or time when you installed windows operating system on the computer ? Here’s a simple DOS command to help you out:

systeminfo | find /i “install date”

This will show the time and date when you have installed windows on your the computer.
Apna Tip: Run systeminfo | find /i “boot time” to know the time when you last rebooted the computer.

Malaysian Township

Just look at the board to know new spelling of Malaysian. Is it male + asian ? The photo was taken at Hyderabad, India.

Appriasal Letter

Dear Manager (HR),

Johnson, my assistant programmer, can always be found
hard at work in his cubicle. Johnson works independently, without
wasting company time talking to colleagues. Johnson never
thinks twice about assisting fellow employees, and he always
finishes given assignments on time. Often Johnson takes extended
measures to complete his work, sometimes skipping coffee
breaks. Johnson is a dedicated individual who has absolutely no
vanity in spite of his high accomplishments and profound
knowledge in his field. I firmly believe that Johnson can be
classed as a high-caliber employee, the type which cannot be
dispensed with. Consequently, I duly recommend that Johnson be
promoted to executive management, and a proposal will be
sent away as soon as possible.

Signed - Project Leader…

NB: That stupid idiot was reading over my shoulder when I wrote the report sent to you earlier today. Kindly read only the odd lines (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13) for my true assessment of him.

Google Gears

Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline. Gears provides three key features:

* A local server, to cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) without needing to contact a server
* A database, to store and access data from within the browser
* A worker thread pool, to make web applications more responsive by performing expensive operations in the background

Google Gears is currently an early-access developers' release. It is not yet intended for use by real users in production applications at this time.

To take advantage of the offline features provided by Google Gears, you'll need to add or change code in your web application.

There are three core modules provided by Gears: a LocalServer for storing and accessing application pages offline, a Database for storing and accessing application data on the user's computer, and a WorkerPool for performing long-running tasks (such as the code that synchronizes data between your server and users' computers).

The Evolution of a Programmer

Would you like to know how different people write "Hello World" Program...Here are different programs to display "Hello World". I am in high school category.....Uh, yes....am to lazy........decide in which you are in....

High School/Jr.High

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 END

First year in College

program Hello(input, output)
begin
writeln('Hello World')
end.

Senior year in College

(defun hello
(print
(cons 'Hello (list 'World))))

New professional

#include
void main(void)
{
char *message[] = {"Hello ", "World"};
int i;

for(i = 0; i <>
printf("%s", message[i]);
printf("\n");
}

Seasoned professional

#include
#include

class string
{
private:
int size;
char *ptr;

string() : size(0), ptr(new char[1]) { ptr[0] = 0; }

string(const string &s) : size(s.size)
{
ptr = new char[size + 1];
strcpy(ptr, s.ptr);
}

~string()
{
delete [] ptr;
}

friend ostream &operator <<(ostream &, const string &);
string &operator=(const char *);
};

ostream &operator<<(ostream &stream, const string &s)
{
return(stream <<>
}

string &string::operator=(const char *chrs)
{
if (this != &chrs)
{
delete [] ptr;
size = strlen(chrs);
ptr = new char[size + 1];
strcpy(ptr, chrs);
}
return(*this);
}

int main()
{
string str;

str = "Hello World";
cout <<>

return(0);
}

Master Programmer

[
uuid(2573F8F4-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820)
]
library LHello
{
// bring in the master library
importlib("actimp.tlb");
importlib("actexp.tlb");

// bring in my interfaces
#include "pshlo.idl"

[
uuid(2573F8F5-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820)
]
cotype THello
{
interface IHello;
interface IPersistFile;
};
};

[
exe,
uuid(2573F890-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820)
]
module CHelloLib
{

// some code related header files
importheader();
importheader();
importheader();
importheader("pshlo.h");
importheader("shlo.hxx");
importheader("mycls.hxx");

// needed typelibs
importlib("actimp.tlb");
importlib("actexp.tlb");
importlib("thlo.tlb");

[
uuid(2573F891-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820),
aggregatable
]
coclass CHello
{
cotype THello;
};
};


#include "ipfix.hxx"

extern HANDLE hEvent;

class CHello : public CHelloBase
{
public:
IPFIX(CLSID_CHello);

CHello(IUnknown *pUnk);
~CHello();

HRESULT __stdcall PrintSz(LPWSTR pwszString);

private:
static int cObjRef;
};


#include
#include
#include
#include
#include "thlo.h"
#include "pshlo.h"
#include "shlo.hxx"
#include "mycls.hxx"

int CHello::cObjRef = 0;

CHello::CHello(IUnknown *pUnk) : CHelloBase(pUnk)
{
cObjRef++;
return;
}

HRESULT __stdcall CHello::PrintSz(LPWSTR pwszString)
{
printf("%ws
", pwszString);
return(ResultFromScode(S_OK));
}


CHello::~CHello(void)
{

// when the object count goes to zero, stop the server
cObjRef--;
if( cObjRef == 0 )
PulseEvent(hEvent);

return;
}

#include
#include
#include "pshlo.h"
#include "shlo.hxx"
#include "mycls.hxx"

HANDLE hEvent;

int _cdecl main(
int argc,
char * argv[]
) {
ULONG ulRef;
DWORD dwRegistration;
CHelloCF *pCF = new CHelloCF();

hEvent = CreateEvent(NULL, FALSE, FALSE, NULL);

// Initialize the OLE libraries
CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_MULTITHREADED);

CoRegisterClassObject(CLSID_CHello, pCF, CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER,
REGCLS_MULTIPLEUSE, &dwRegistration);

// wait on an event to stop
WaitForSingleObject(hEvent, INFINITE);

// revoke and release the class object
CoRevokeClassObject(dwRegistration);
ulRef = pCF->Release();

// Tell OLE we are going away.
CoUninitialize();

return(0); }

extern CLSID CLSID_CHello;
extern UUID LIBID_CHelloLib;

CLSID CLSID_CHello = { /* 2573F891-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820 */
0x2573F891,
0xCFEE,
0x101A,
{ 0x9A, 0x9F, 0x00, 0xAA, 0x00, 0x34, 0x28, 0x20 }
};

UUID LIBID_CHelloLib = { /* 2573F890-CFEE-101A-9A9F-00AA00342820 */
0x2573F890,
0xCFEE,
0x101A,
{ 0x9A, 0x9F, 0x00, 0xAA, 0x00, 0x34, 0x28, 0x20 }
};

#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include "pshlo.h"
#include "shlo.hxx"
#include "clsid.h"

int _cdecl main(
int argc,
char * argv[]
) {
HRESULT hRslt;
IHello *pHello;
ULONG ulCnt;
IMoniker * pmk;
WCHAR wcsT[_MAX_PATH];
WCHAR wcsPath[2 * _MAX_PATH];

// get object path
wcsPath[0] = '\0';
wcsT[0] = '\0';
if( argc > 1) {
mbstowcs(wcsPath, argv[1], strlen(argv[1]) + 1);
wcsupr(wcsPath);
}
else {
fprintf(stderr, "Object path must be specified\n");
return(1);
}

// get print string
if(argc > 2)
mbstowcs(wcsT, argv[2], strlen(argv[2]) + 1);
else
wcscpy(wcsT, L"Hello World");

printf("Linking to object %ws\n", wcsPath);
printf("Text String %ws\n", wcsT);

// Initialize the OLE libraries
hRslt = CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_MULTITHREADED);

if(SUCCEEDED(hRslt)) {


hRslt = CreateFileMoniker(wcsPath, &pmk);
if(SUCCEEDED(hRslt))
hRslt = BindMoniker(pmk, 0, IID_IHello, (void **)&pHello);

if(SUCCEEDED(hRslt)) {

// print a string out
pHello->PrintSz(wcsT);

Sleep(2000);
ulCnt = pHello->Release();
}
else
printf("Failure to connect, status: %lx", hRslt);

// Tell OLE we are going away.
CoUninitialize();
}

return(0);
}

Apprentice Hacker

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
$msg="Hello, world.\n";
if ($#ARGV >= 0) {
while(defined($arg=shift(@ARGV))) {
$outfilename = $arg;
open(FILE, ">" . $outfilename) || die "Can't write $arg: $!\n";
print (FILE $msg);
close(FILE) || die "Can't close $arg: $!\n";
}
} else {
print ($msg);
}
1;

Experienced Hacker

#include
#define S "Hello, World\n"
main(){exit(printf(S) == strlen(S) ? 0 : 1);}

Seasoned Hacker

% cc -o a.out ~/src/misc/hw/hw.c
% a.out

Guru Hacker

% echo "Hello, world."

New Manager

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 END

Middle Manager

mail -s "Hello, world." bob@b12
Bob, could you please write me a program that prints "Hello, world."?
I need it by tomorrow.
^D

Senior Manager

% zmail jim
I need a "Hello, world." program by this afternoon.

Chief Executive

% letter
letter: Command not found.
% mail
To: ^X ^F ^C
% help mail
help: Command not found.
% damn!
!: Event unrecognized
% logout

Apple Logos

Here is the Apple old Logo. I do not know under first logo mean.....any one help me?

Microsoft Surface Computer

Microsoft Surface,is a forthcoming Multi-touch product from Microsoft which is developed as a software and hardware combination technology that allows a user, or multiple users, to manipulate digital content by the use of natural motions, hand gestures,or physical objects. It was announced on May 29,2007 at D5 conference, and is expected to be released by commercial partners in March 2008.

Looks like you might have to check into a swanky hotel or think about switching your wireless service if you want to play with a Microsoft Surface computer…the company apparently considers the consumer market as merely “an option". Initial customers will be in the hospitality businesses, such as restaurants, hotels, retail, public entertainment venues and the military for tactical overviews.

The technology behind Surface is called Multi-touch. It has at least a 25-year history,beginning in 1982, with pioneering work being done at the University of Toronto (multi-touch tablets) and Bell Labs (multi-touch screens). The product idea for Surface was initially conceptualized in 2001 by Steven Bathiche of Microsoft Hardware and Andy Wilson of Microsoft Research. In October 2001, a virtual team was formed with Bathiche and Wilson as key members, to bring the idea to the next stage of development.

Specifications of MS Surface Computer
Surface is a 30-inch (76 cm) display in a table-like form factor, 22 inches (56 cm) high, 21 inches (53 cm) deep, and 42 inches (107 cm) wide. The Surface tabletop is acrylic, and its interior frame is powder-coated steel. The software platform runs on Windows Vista and has wired Ethernet 10/100, wireless 802.11 b/g, and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity.

You can watch the Surface presentation below

Here is another video for you guys. In this video, Bill Gates is checking the Surface Computer. With Surface Computer you can play with photos, wireless pulling photos off a camera, and ordering and paying for food using credit cards.

"It would be great if Microsoft Surface Computer is available for lessthan $500, but don't cross your fingers."

Acquistions by Yahoo, Google, Microsoft,...................

Now a days acquiring one company by another company is quite common and it is difficult to remember list. So I have decided to put a list of acquisitions on my blog. You can see below for complete acquisition history of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and other major giants.

Google also acquired Tusli(Google Blogger API Engineering Team), Zingku (Mobile social network and communication platform) in September, 2007 and Jaiku(An activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones (Helsinki)) in October, 2007.

Download MS excel sheet for detailed Google Acquisitions list. Click here to download Excel sheet.
http://freshblogspot.googlepages.com/GoogleAcquisitions.xls

Above JPEG's has been downloaded from Internet and I would like to say thanks to original list creator for the awesome job he/she has done. Please post your comments

Use Single mouse and keyboard with mutiple PC's at a time

Synergy is an open source software lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware.

It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk. If have a similar setup and struggling while switching between the desktop PC and the notebook. You could remote desktop to one of the computers, however you would loose out on using both the display units.

Here is easiest way to configure Synergy between 2 computers running Windows.

1. Install the software on all the computers that will share the keyboard and mouse. In this case I (actually not me, I got this article from the internet) installed the windows version of Synergy on both the desktop and notebook.
2. Configure the synergy server on the PC to which the keyboard and the mouse is connected.
   • Start Synergy and select “Share this computers keyboard and mouse(server)” option
   • Open the configuration dialog by clicking on “Configure"
   
3. Configure the “Screens” and the “Links“. For my above setup, I configured 2 screen and 2 links as shown below.

   Note that synergy recommends to input the computer name as the screen name. If you don’t have DNS configured, you can also input the IP addresses in the “Alias” box while configuring the screens.

   The links section tell synergy about the position of the configured screens. As you can see from the above image, its not enough to indicate that the laptop is on the left of the desktop. I also need to configure a link saying that the desktop is on the right of the laptop.

4. Click on “Start” to start the synergy server.

5. On the client side (i.e. on my laptop), I just need to instruct synergy to use another computer’s keyboard and mouse.

Once the client successfully connects to the Synergy server, you can easily switch between the 2 computers. When the mouse is moved to the leftmost part of the desktop screen, it automatically switches onto the laptop screen. All further keyboard strokes are also directed towards the laptop.

If you are a keyboard junkie like me, you might also want to configure the “Hotkeys” on the server as shown below

I have one key configured to bring the laptop to focus and another to bring the desktop into focus. You can also configure synergy as a service so that its started automatically when you log in.

*In this post I and my refers to actual author. Many thanks to original author.

PDF to TEXT file, HTML file

Send a PDF document to pdf2txt@adobe.com as an attachment and it will come back as a plain text file. Handy when your don’t have a PDF viewer to open the PDF document. Alternatively, you can send the PDF file to pdf2html@adobe.com for conversion to HTML format.

Here is the another good option to convert PDF files

pdf@koolwire.com - You have an Office document or a picture on your computer or mobile phone that you wish to convert into a PDF file. Just email that file an email attachment to the above address and it will soon return to your Inbox as a PDF file.

Websites restricted in your office ?

Send an email to www@web2mail.com with the URL of the web page in the Subject field (e.g. www.cnn.com) and you’ll soon find a copy of that web page(www.cnn.com) in your Inbox. A perfect option when there’s no Internet access in the area or access is restricted (for instance, you want to read the BBC homepage in China).

Another similar service is www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it - it will also fetch websites for you through email though in this case, the site address should go in the body of the email message.

These web-to-email services will come extremely handy for receiving on-demand Stock quotes (for the current Google stock price, type finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GOOG), weather updates, currency exchange rates (for USD to INR, type finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDINR=X) and more.

Bypass Censorship, Unblock All Restricted Websites With Opera Simulator

Internet filters are active everywhere - Flickr is banned in Iran & UAE, BBC & Wikipedia are blocked in China, Blogspot blogs are banned in Pakistan, YouTube & Photobucket are prohibited for US army overseas while social sites like Bebo, MySpace or Facebook may be banned in your office.

Some companies even block access to mail websites like Yahoo or GMail under the pretext of security.

Here's a new method for unblocking websites - you'll probably enjoy it more than the previous hacks you know because it takes the geekiness out of the whole process and make it extremely easy to access blocked URLs.

Opera provides a free online tool called Opera Mini Simulator that emulates the Opera mobile phone browser on your desktop computer. The tool is done in java and is quite popular among web designers for testing website layouts on mobile phone devices without actually using a mobile phone.

As you probably guessed it by now, this Opera Browser Simulator can also be used for accessing web pages that may be blocked on your computer. Since the requests are made via the Opera.com website, they would easily bypass the local filtering.

To open any site in Opera, just append that site address to the following URL and start browsing.

http://www.operamini.com/demo/?url=[URL]

The Opera Simulator can even be used for secure sites that require cookies - for instance, you can check your Hotmail emails via Opera. Though you are restricted to the tiny 200x200 screen of Opera simulator, it's still a very handy tool.

Opera recently launched version 4 of the Mini simulator that offers a better browsing experience than the previous version. You can access v4.0 of Mini simulator here. The above video demo was created in this version.

Make Free Conference Calls in India

The next venture of Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia is SabeseBolo - an Audio Conferencing service that lets you make conference calls through regular landline or mobile phones within India.

The service is completely free and all you need is an email address to get a unique conference number and pin. All the participants will then dial that number to set up a conference call.

You can have at most 10 people per teleconference session. There’s probably no direct way to record conference calls though you can refer to previous hacks.

Sounds simple and there’re no fees for using the conference service but the meeting participants may have to pay national calling charges (if some of them are outside Mumbai) because they are not dialing a toll-free number.

For more info visit : sabesebolo.com

Extremely Useful Firefox Extensions

I share ten extremely useful extensions that will definitely improve your browsing experience:

1. Aardvark - If you regularly print web pages, this is a must-have Firefox add-on. With a simple shortcut key, Aardvark lets you remove elements from a web page that you don’t want in the print version. This could include advertising banners, HTML tables, graphics, etc.

To use Aardvark in Firefox, hover your mouse cursor over areas of the web page that you don’t want to print and press E (erase).

2. BlogRovR - As you browse the web, this extension will quickly show you what your favorite bloggers have said about the web page that is currently open in your browser.

You just have to pass a list of your favorite blogs to BlogRovR and it will automatically fetch articles/commentary that link to whatever web page you’re viewing.

3. Morning Coffee - With Firefox, it is possible to set multiple homepages (separated by | ‘pipe’) so all your favorite sites will open in different tabs each time you launch Firefox.

But imagine a scenario where you want a different set of website to launch depending on the day. For instance, one of your favorite website may not be updated on weekends while another one (like PostSecret) posts new content only on Sunday. With Morning Coffee, you can organize websites by day and open them up simultaneously in tabs.

4. LinkAlert - - When you click an hyperlink on a web page, you normally expect it to point to another web page but that may not be the case always as links can point to PDFs, Office Documents, MP3 files, zips, email addresses, etc.

You know the frustration when you click a PDF and it starts to load Adobe Reader causing your browser to freeze for some time. Or you click an email address accidentally and Outlook opens up. With LinkAlert, such accidents may become a thing of the past as it appends a small visual icon next to links on web pages that are not HTML documents.

5. HyperWords - When you select any word or phrase on a web page, HyperWords lets you explore the web without leaving the current web page.

For instance, you view pictures on Flickr related to that selected word, read the Wikipedia entry (if there’s one), convert currency, translate text, view dictionary meanings and so much more right from the Firefox menu without having to click anything. Read “HyperWords Review”

6. IE Tab - Firefox is popular but we routinely encounter so many websites are designed for Internet Explorer only. A good example is the Microsoft Windows Update update.

IE Tab brings the Internet Explorer rendering engine inside Firefox so you don’t have to leave Firefox in order to view those IE only websites.

7. Scrapbook - This is like OneNote for Firefox as you can save clippings, images or even entire web pages to the local disk with a simple right click or a drag-n-drop. Scrapbook lets you search through the clippings and it also saves the original links incase you need to cite or revisit the original source.

8. FireBug - While this is primarily for web designers and developers, what I like about Firebug is inline image editing that lets you modify web pages while it is still loaded in the browser.

That means you can modify the HTML or even Javascript of the web page while maintaining all the links and CSS layouts. And with Firebug installed, you can also read Wall Street Journal online for free.

9. CustomizeGoogle - Google is the best search engine out there but it is not the only one. With CustomizeGoogle, you get to repeat the same search on other popular search engines from the Google website itself. I use this all the time.

10. PicLens - If you spend time on Flickr, Picasa or Facebook photo albums, PicLens will completely change the way your browse pictures on the web.

It adds a small icon near the pictures, you click it and the browser transforms into a full screen slideshow viewer. PicLens Also works with image search engines of Google, Yahoo!, etc.

Gmail Has a Daily Limit on Sending Email

Gmail imposes a limit on the attachment size (20 MB) and the overall storage space (6 GB and growing) but there’s also a daily quote on sending email. Break the rules and Google will disable you Gmail account temporarily without any warnings.

So while sending an email message to a large group of friends using Gmail, read the following rules to avoid temporary shut-down of Gmail:

Rule 1. If you access Gmail via POP or IMAP clients (like Microsoft Outlook), you can send an email message to a maximum of 100 people at a time. Cross the limit and your account will be disabled for a day with the error "550 5.4.5 Daily sending quota exceeded."

Rule 2. If you access Gmail from the browser, you may not address an email message to more than 500 people at a time. Try adding any more recipients in the To, CC or BCC field and your Gmail account will get probably disabled for 24-72 hours. Error: "Gmail Lockdown in Secton 4"

Rule 3. Always double check email addresses of recipients before hitting the Send button in Gmail. That’s because your account will get disabled if the email message contains a large number of non-existent or broken addresses that bounce back on failed delivery.

Rule 4: This is slightly unrelated but still important - Google will disable your Gmail account permanently if you don’t check your Gmail email for a period of nine months. All the stored messages will be deleted and you Gmail address (user name) may be released for others to grab it.

Google OS

Google OS Desktop



Google OS Favorties Window

Google OS Welcome Screen

Access Restricted Sites And Internet From Lan Office / School / college!!!

How to access the protected and so called phished out sites in a college subnetwork or office subnetwork....ALso access the GTALK and Yahoo and any messenger and chatting softwares....?

Lets say that ur behind a firewall in a lan subnet in which ur college school or office provides u internet but with restricted sites...that is u cant open any other site except those allowed....we use a software to access sites out of restriction by a software named ultrasurf...its completely automatic and actually works....Our company tried to stop us but failed to restrict this software as its coding is just like very hard to decrypt...anyways lets go!!!

Download a software from this site
http://www.wujie.net/downloads/ultrasurf/u.zip target="_blank"

See how it works... u just have to extract the exe file outta zip file....then run the exe file...it will automatically detect ur network and router or proxy server...there are 3 bars which will be flooded with connectivity indicators....now u r free to access anything.....just change ur browsers ip to 127.0.0.1 and port to 9666 and u can access anything....works for chat softwares too..like gtalk and yahoo.

our company had restricted our download limit to 1 mb...but using this we had been downloading one whole movie everyday...since am in lan but can access internet as my company provides me so basically all i do gets recorded in college server logs...but using ultra doesn't even leaves a piece of log behind u.....so start enjoying...

Google Health coming soon

Google’s entry into the online health records space. At the time of writing the site isn’t allowing logins, but it does include this text:

With Google Health, you can:
* Build online health profiles that belong to you
* Download medical records from doctors and pharmacies
* Get personalized health guidance and relevant news
* Find qualified doctors and connect to time-saving services
* Share selected information with family or caregivers

The other thing to note is the logo (we’ve included it in this post), it would appear that Google Health is going straight to Beta and not through Google Labs.

Google Health has been hampered by chronic fatigue syndrome in terms of its development, with the site being rumored to launch originally in May 2006. Microsoft even beat Google in the space, having launched its own online health product in October 2007.

Outlook Fix: Attach Zip Files to Outgoing E-Mail

The easy workarounds are, first, you can manually open the folder containing the Zip file, then drag it to the new e-mail window. That accomplishes the same thing as selecting a file with the attach tool. Second, you can do the following:

* In Windows XP, click Start > Run, then type Command and hit Enter. In Vista, click Start, type Command and hit Enter.
* Type regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll
* Wait for a confirmation box to appear. Click OK, then type Exit into the Command window to close it.

Now Outlook should show your Zip files like a good little e-mail client.

Improve Firefox's Responsiveness While a Page is Loading

If Firefox is too unresponsive for your tastes when it's loading a new web page, enter about:config into your address bar and then add the content.switch.threshold setting (which isn't there by default). Right-click the page and select New -> Integer, name it content.switch.threshold, and give it a value of 1000000. The catch is that Firefox will take slightly longer to load pages, but while it's loading you'll be able to scroll the already-loaded content more easily.

When Some Specific Websites Do Not Open On Your Computer

Your computer is connected to the Internet and you can reach most websites just fine but there’s a problem when you try to open some particular website(s).

Though that website is unreachable from your computer, it is definitely not down because you are able to access the same website from another computer at home.

Facing a similar problem ? Here’s how to diagnose and fix the issue:

Fix 1: Check your Windows HOSTS file - Make sure there’s no entry in the hosts file that maps the website’s address to localhost or an incorrect IP address like 127.0.0.1 - it is a possibility if you have imported some third-party hosts file.

cmd /k notepad c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Fix 2: Find Faults in the Pipeline - Paypal website may be up and running but it is possible that the real problem lies with a router that is between you and the computer hosting the Paypal website. Do a traceroute and check for messages like “Request Timed Out” - they will help you find the location of the breakdown.

Type the following command in the Run Window:

cmd /k tracert www.paypal.com - remember to replace Paypal with address of the website that is unreachable.

Fix 3: Clear DNS Cache - The DNS cache keeps a record of sites that you have recently visited on your computer. If that gets corrupted, you may have issues opening sites that were previously accessible without problems.

Type cmd /k ipconfig /displaydns in the Run window to see the cache entries. If that unreachable website is listed in the cache, type cmd /k ipconfig /flushdns to clear the cache.

Fix 4: Website May Be Blocked - The chances are rare but it is possible that access to some particular website may be have been restricted by the Office firewall. To test this, send an email to www@web2mail.com with the problematic website URL in the subject field. If the website is up, you will get a text copy of the web page in an email message.

Fix 5: Suspend the Anti-Virus and Firewall - If you are running an external software firewall or anti-virus program (like Norton, ZoneAlarm, etc), exit and restart the web browser. Is the problem solved now ?

When nothing works, open 192.168.1.1 and reboot the modem. If that fails, restart your computer and as a final step, call your ISP support.

Become a Celebrity: Put Your Face on Magazine Covers and CNN

Want to see yourself on CNN news, BoingBoing or the front cover of all top magazines like TIME, Wired, Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, etc.

Try these fake magazine cover creation tools:

1. MagMyPic - Just upload your picture and this service will instantly put that on the cover of TIME, Rolling Stone, Fortune, People, Maxim, Vogue and other popular magazines. The service is quick but you have no control over the text appearing on the magazine cover.

2. Condenet.com - This is an excellent service for creating a personalized Wired Magazine Cover - you can pick your own picture, tag lines and even control the placement of various elements using simple drag-n-drop. You also get a printable version of the Wired magazine cover.

3. U.R.Celeb - This is an excellent Windows software to create fake magazine cover image on the desktop. Unlike MagMyPic, this software offers you tons of control - you can change the magazine headlines, resize photos and the branding is non-obtrusive.

Supports CNN Breaking News, TIME, Vogue, PlayBoy and other popular magazines.

4. BoingBoing - It’s tough to get BoingBoing editors to link to your blog but with this post generator, you can create your own BoingBoing story. Stuff in a few words and your BoingBoing Story is ready.

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of 2007

Downloads on Mininova
1 Transformers (569.259)
2 Knocked Up (509.314)
3 Shooter (399.960)
4 Pirates Of The.Caribbean At World’s End (379.749)
5 Ratatouille (359.904)
6 300 (358.226)
7 Next (354.044)
8 Hot Fuzz (352.905)
9 The Bourne Ultimatum (336.326)
10 Zodiac (334.699)

Firefox & IE Prompt You To Remember Passwords - Do You Say Yes ?

When you type a password into any web form, both Internet Explorer and Firefox prompt whether you would like them to remember your password.

If that’s a personal computer, chances are high that you will click Yes and the password is then saved in the web browser.

This “Remember Me” option in web browsers is useful but it actually puts your login credentials at serious risk especially in Firefox.

View stored passwords in Internet Explorer:

Though IE stores your passwords in encrypted form in the Windows Registry database, anyone can easily view your passwords using a free 35kb tool called IE PassView.

The tool automatically displays a list all auto-complete entries saved inside IE. See screenshot.

View stored passwords in Firefox:

With Firefox, it gets much simpler and anyone who knows how to use a mouse can see all your passwords stored inside Firefox.

The route is Tools -> Options -> Security -> Show Passwords. And there you have all the passwords that you ever asked Firefox to remember for you.

Even that short visit to a nearby coffee vending machine could leak your identity as all it takes is few seconds for anyone to view your secret passwords.

To keep yourself safe, uncheck “Prompt me to save passwords” in Internet Explorer and “Set Master Password” in Firefox.

Windows Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft will release the first beta of Internet Explorer 8 in the first half of 2008 that will have full support for web standards. And the new browser will be known as “Windows Internet Explorer 8?. Website designers will be able to write websites based on standards, insert a flag that tells IE to render in IE8 standards mode, and IE will then switch its rendering engine to use this new mode. Thus IE8 won’t break the layout of existing websites coded for previous versions of IE (IE7 or IE6, for example). They’ll behave in exactly the same way in IE8 unless website designers opt-in to IE8 standards mode by placing a simple tag at the head of their HTML document. It is not immediately clear if Windows IE8 will be available for Windows 2000 and XP versions.

How to Open Password Protected PDF Documents

There are sometimes genuine reasons to unlock or crack a password protected PDF file. You have the legal right to open the encrypted PDF document but forgot the password like in the case below.

Say one of your former colleague created some critical sales reports in PDF format but he is not working with the company anymore. In his absence, you have no option but to crack the PDF password in order to open, read or print these PDF files.

There are basically two types of PDF protection - the original PDF creator can either restrict opening the PDF file itself or he can restrict others from modifying, printing or copying text and graphics from the PDF file. Here are a few possible workarounds:

When there are Copying or Printing Restrictions..

Say you want to print a couple of pages from the PDF document but the document settings won't let you do that.

Open the document in Acrobat Reader or Foxit and capture the PDF page as an image using any free screen capture software. If there are multiple pages, you may try SnagIt since it can autoscroll and capture multiple pages of the document in one-go.

If you want to copy just a portion of text from some PDF page, use a screen capture tool with OCR features (like Kleptomania, Capture Text discussed here)

Alternatively, you can invest in commercial solutions like Advanced PDF Password Recovery from ElcomSoft and PDF Password Remover from Very PDF.

(These utilities may not recover the password for you - they'll just remove the restrictions from the password protected file)

When there are Document Opening Restrictions..

This is a very tricky case and there's no straight-forward solution to read PDF documents that are password-protected at the Open level.

The software will use methods like Brute Force, Key Search and Dictionary Attack to guess the password. They will try to use all possible character combinations as the password and so the process might take hours or even days and would really depend on your computer's processing power.
Advanced PDF Password Recovery Professional edition from ElcomSoft is a recommended option. When (if) the password is found, the program shows it, as well as the number of passwords which have been tested, and the program speed.

Legal Issues: - you maybe surprised to learn that these PDF password cracking software are absolutely legal and Microsoft even awarded ElcomSoft a Gold Certified Partner status.