Sunday, July 31, 2011

Enhance your Computing Experience

Life without computers is hard to imagine - a universal truth. In this age of technological advancement perpetual efforts are been made to enhance the user experience at every stage. We need to keep up with all these advancements to make the best of what we get. Following points will help you in enhancing your computing experience along with developing good computing habits.

1. Douse the Lights

If you are a habitual computer user and worried about your eyes and sleeping habits then its probably the must have tweak for windows, mac and linux users. The cooler blue and white color emitted from the computer screen stimulates brain activity and makes it difficult for your brain to wind down, impairing your eyes and disturbing your sleep. This little software will automatically adjust your screen colors according to the time, shifting your monitor's color to warmer hues. It can be downloaded from http://stereopsis.com/flux/ and remember to adjust its settings according to your needs(as it might seem crappy sometimes).



2. Using On-Screen Keyboard - Fighting against viruses

Being unaware of the ongoing scenario of computer viruses, most people submit their personal credentials without taking much care of the outcomes thereafter. In spite of using a good anti-virus if you are still dubious about the level of protection of your computer (or any other computer on which you are about to submit your credentials), then its better to use the On-Screen keyboard while using Windows operating system(OS). Mac and Linux users have to worry less about it. On-Screen Keyboard is an in-built feature for Windows OS which can be accessed from the start menu.



3. Keep your Computer Safe and Clean

Your computer and your personal information can be compromised in many ways. So its better to keep your computer clean and secure. The best way to achieve this is by using anti-viruses and tune up tools. I'd rather recommend the use of free anti-virus such as Avast or Avira (subjected to change with time), as these are the best among any other available so far. And to keep your Windows registry clean and free from malwares, I'd recommend the use of Malwarebytes' (subjected to change with time). Remember that none of the anti-virus is good enough when you are about to be compromised, so prevention is better than cure.




4. Is your Computer Running slow


During the normal operation of your computer, Windows and your other programmes create an awful lot of temporary files. So over time their number builds up, and unless you clear them out they can slow down your computer noticeably.
In the case of your Browser, the problem can be worse. All browsers cache the web pages you visit. The original reason was to make loading pages faster. When everyone was on dial-up this was quite a good idea, but with modern fast connections it's mostly unnecessary now. However browsers still cache webpages, and unless cleaned out regularly they build up to a position where they can have some pretty dramatic effects on how your browser works.
So once a month, or once a week if you're a heavy user, it's a good idea to clean out your Temporary files. A good program that can be used for this purpose is CCleaner.



5. Make use of Multi-User interface

Multi-User interface is available in all the Operating Systems(OS) including Mac, Linux and Windows, there's nothing new about it but to make the most from this feature create at least two users - Administrator and a Standard user. Keeping the Administrator account password protected can help you in keeping your personal stuff away from others which otherwise can be misused in many ways.





A Battery You Can See Through



Transparent batteries could lead to designs for "transparent" cell phones and other gadgets.

Researchers at Stanford University have made fully transparent batteries, the last missing component needed to make transparent displays and other electronic devices.

Researchers have previously made transparent variations on other major classes of electronics, including transistors and the components used to control displays, but not yet batteries. "And if you can't make the battery transparent, you can't make the gadget transparent," says Cui (project lead, Stanford University).


Some battery components are easier to make using transparent materials than others. The electrodes are the tricky part, says Cui. One way to make a transparent electrode is to make it very thin, on the order of about 100 nanometers thick. But a thin electrode typically can't store enough energy to be useful.
Another approach is to make the electrode in the form of a pattern that has features smaller than the naked eye can see. As long as there is enough total electrode material in the battery, this type of electrode can still store a significant amount of energy. Cui designed a mesh electrode where all the lines of the mesh are on the order of 50 micrometers, effectively invisible, and the squares inside the mesh contain no battery materials.
Fabrication is also tricky, since the usual methods for making components at this resolution require harsh chemical processes that damage battery materials. The Stanford group instead used a relatively simple method to make the transparent mesh electrodes, which are held together inside a clear, squishy polymer called PDMS.


To make the complete battery, they sandwich a clear gel electrolyte between the two electrodes, and put it all inside a protective plastic wrapping. The Stanford researchers created prototypes, and used them to power an LED whose light can be seen through the battery itself.
Cui says these batteries should, in theory, be able to store about half as much energy as an equivalent-sized opaque battery, because there is a trade-off between energy density and transparency. They can lay down a thicker mesh of electrode materials to store more energy, but that means less light will get through.
So far, his lab's prototypes can store 20 watt-hours per liter, about as much energy as a nickel-cadmium battery, but Cui expects to improve this by an order of magnitude, in part by reducing the thickness of the polymer substrate, and by making the trenches that hold the electrode materials deeper.

So the day is not far when we will see our fingers busy in some sort of transparent gadgets...:)

Friday, July 29, 2011

Learn the Art of Solving Problems



Almost everyone in their life are stuck at times when they literally don't know what to do. Few of these points regarding "the Art of Solving Problems" will help you in overcoming your fears so that you can be well prepared for all the impending disasters you are about to face in your life.


1. Learn from catastrophe

There is no simple formula for innovation and as usual there are too many solutions for any success story. Whenever you're struck by any catastrophic problem always remember the saying:

Lord grant me strength to change the things I can, courage to accept
the things I can't and wisdom to know the difference between them.
Learn that success and failure are the different sides of the same coin, one is inspirational and the other is educational.



2. Inculcate creativity


Free your mind and eliminate your inner detractor. Make efforts to inculcate creativity in your juvenile mind and learn how to fly by the seat of your pants, remember its never too late to work on something new. Don't be afraid if the outcome is shoddy, try again with an alternate solution till you hit perfection. This will act as your mental dustbuster, sucking up all the negativity that might inhibit creativity later.



3. Divide your work

Don't be overwhelmed by humongous projects, visualize what is to be done, break it into small manageable chunks and try to figure out a way to work through the problem. Working on an isolated piece will help in improving the quality of every tiny bit and thus the entire work by accretion. A pragmatic approach will always increase your chances of success.



4. Admit you need help

At times you are stymied by things that can't be avoided, resulting in frustration which often repercusses as breakdown. There are certain things you can't do on your own or rather just need some sort of stimulation, and therefore should admit that it's time to get some help. It doesn't reflects your incompetence, it can be a sign of new a beginning which will leverage experience.



5. Guide your emotions

According to conventional wisdom, the righteous way to success is to check your emotions at the door. But putting an armor diminishes your ability to work at your best. All kind of emotional outbursts - anger, happiness, anxiousness, breakdown etc should be tackled strategically to pave the way to success. Remember muddling through emotional outbursts is a trait of a maladroit person. Try not to get mad, instead get prompted.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Top 10 Best Google Chrome Extensions


Google chrome is one of the best internet browser used all over the world. One of the many superb features of Google Chrome is its extensions.
These are few of the many Google Chrome Extensions I personally use which will greatly enhance your browsing experience.

Google Chrome Extensions can be handled from Tools - Extensions.








Features:

With this extension, you can: 
1) Double-click any word to view its definition in a small pop-up bubble. 
2) View the complete definition of any word or phrase using the toolbar dictionary.  Foreign words
are automatically translated to your language of choice.




Feaatures:

AdBlock for Chrome!  Block all advertisements on all web pages, even Facebook and Youtube.  Your browser is automatically updated with additions to the filter: just click Install, then visit your favorite website and see the ads disappear!







This extension can be used to connect to your Facebook account to show you what's happening with your friends including:
* Likes and comments on your posts
* Invitations to events
* Posts in your groups
* Friend requests
* New messages
* Other notifications you normally see when you're on Facebook


Features:

* Items pop up in a small window.  With one click you can read more * A red number in your bookmark bar lets you know how many unread notifications you have * Click on the Facebook icon to see a summary of all your recent notifications.




Proxy Switchy! is an advanced proxy manager for Google Chrome, it allows users to manage and switch between multiple proxy profiles quickly and easily.
Features:

     - Manage and switch between multiple proxy profiles.     
     - Change the proxy configuration of Chrome and IE in one click.     
     - URL based switch rules.     
     - Supports Socks v4 and v5.    
     - Change LAN and VPN/Dial-up proxy settings.    
     - Quickly add rules for currently active websites.    
     - Quick proxy switch between two profiles or cycle all profiles.    
     - Online rule list support (AutoProxy compatible).    
     - Export switch rules as PAC/RuleList file. 
     - Backup/Restore options. 
     - Proxy change monitoring. 
     - Colorful profiles and icons.
     - Supports Windows, Linux (32/64 bit) and Mac OS X.





5. Awesome Screenshots ( Simplest way to capture and edit screenshots )




Features:

 1. Capture or clip selected area, or all visible portion, or entire page
 2. Support  PNG format
 3  Support  horizontal scroll when capturing 

4. Annotate it with rectangles, circles, arrows, lines and text 
5. Crop and scroll & Show crop area dimension 
6. Use eraser to hide sensitive information 
7. Save to Local
8. One-click to upload to awesomescreenshot.com and get a shareable link 
9. Save very large image, by pass the 2M limit. No crash any more. 




6. Highlight to Search ( Best way to Search on Google)



Google Highlight to Search is a browser extension that helps you search keywords easily.
Features: After you highlight keywords within a web page, you'll see magnifying-glass icon appear below the highlighted keywords. By either clicking on the icon or the keywords itself, search-box with Autocomplete enabled appears for you to search quickly and easily.




7. Turn Off the Light ( Best way to Watch Videos on Web)


All it does is it gives focus to the video and darkens the screen elsewhere on the browser to give a cool effect and that too automatically. Otherwise to do it manually click on the lamp button, the page will fade to dark, and will automatically focus the video. Click again to turn back the page to normal.




8. Faebook Photo Zoom


FB Photo Zoom is a simple, light-weight extension that integrates directly into FB so you can see the larger images of photo albums, profile photos and more whenever you hover over a zoomable image!




9. Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer




By clicking on a link for a supported document format you'll be taken to the Google Docs Viewer.  No more downloading large files and launching another application just to view it.  The Google Docs Viewer does not work on files that require a log-in to view, but you can make it ignore specific domains in the options so you will still download the file.   On the options page you can also disable any file formats you don't want to use the Viewer for.




10. Smooth Gestures


This Mouse Gestures extension allows you to move the mouse while holding the right mouse button to trigger actions, such as page navigation or tab management. Supports click-and-drag (mouse gesture), click-and-scroll (scroll gesture), click-and-click (rocker gesture), and keyboard shortcuts!



Comments are always appreciated!!

Monday, July 25, 2011

Google Buys PittPatt Facial Recognition


Google has purchased Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition (as per the announcement made by pittpatt on their website), a technology that can be used to tab the photos and videos automatically.

In late March, Google denied plans for a dedicated facial-recognition app, although the company has said it could do so as far back as the launch of Google Goggles, which used object recognition to identify real-world objects.
"As we've said for more than a year, we will not add facial recognition to Goggles unless we have strong privacy protections in place," a spokesman told PCMag.com in March. "We're still working on them. We have nothing to announce at this time."

In June, Facebook turned on facial recongnition for U.S. accounts which is criticized by most of the security concerns and people as well, as it impairs the privacy of the concerning users.

PittPatt uses the same technology involving facial-recognition or smile-recognition used by some digital cameras, where the user's face is highlighted for focusing purposes.

According to documentation on the PittPatt Web site, the software looks for faces that are oriented on a plane facing the user, with an offset of a varying number of degrees. The software then automatically aligns the facial image to examine it for "landmarks," such as the width of the eyes, for example.

Do you think that google is going in the right direction by buying pittpatt for facial recognition? Or it will will put the users off as in the case of facebook? Nonetheless the facial war continues.

Beginners guide to Deep Web or Darknet


UPDATED on 12th May 2018

The "Deep Web" or "Darknet" is a collection of un-indexed pages, meaning you can't find all of them by searching. A recent estimation concluded that there are 600 terabytes of information in the darknet.
To Learn how to access Dark Net or Deep Web on Android, please read:
How To Use Tor On Android.
Any website that ends in ".onion", are hosted as Tor hidden services – a completely anonymous way to host websites. They’re part of the deep Web – an invisible part of the Web that’s not visible to search engines and normal users. It’s full of websites for users obsessed with privacy and anonymity online.

Some of the seedy underbellies of the Web is located here, too, although many of the websites are probably scams, hoaxes, or just traps designed to catch people buying illegal services. There are good uses for .onion sites, though– for example, a political activist in a repressive country or a whistleblower could use a .onion site to upload and share sensitive data or communicate anonymously.

This page is only accessible through the TOR browser (From the Browser bundle pack). The page can take up to 10 seconds to load (Possibly more), this page, is "The Hidden Wiki" A collection of links to other un-indexed pages that make up the deep web. Now some of the stuff on the deep web can be disturbing, it's not for the soft of heart, and another note is to block your webcam with tape, it's been known that hackers can view you while you browse.


Accessing Onion Sites
Firstly, you will need a special program called "Tor" which will allow you to view these pages, Tor, according to popular belief is just an anonymizer that helps keep you hidden, in contrast, it's a helpful tool to access these hidden web pages.
You can find the Tor here.

After downloading the Tor browser bundle, run the .exe file to extract it and double-click the “Start Tor Browser.exe” file in the extracted folder.


Tor will connect and launch its included browser.


Tor doesn’t introduce you to .onion sites when you start using it – it just provides an encrypted way to access the normal Web. To get started with .onion sites, you’ll have to be aware they exist and know their locations. One easy entry point is Core.onion, located at eqt5g4fuenphqinx.onion – remember, you’ll need a Tor-enabled browser to access these links.



The Tor Directory link will take you to a directory of .onion sites, which you can browse by category or search. There’s also a link to talk.Masked, an anonymous post board for anonymous discussions.





The Hidden Wiki
The Hidden Wiki is theoretically located at this address, although it’s down at the moment. If it’s still down for you, you can access a mirror of the hidden wiki instead.


The wiki is a sorted index of active .onion sites by category, but don’t believe everything you read on it. It’s likely full of scams, hoaxes, and other fiction. That said, you could access some very disturbing imagery from here, so be careful what you click.


TOR PM/Email

There’s also a link to TorPM, a popular email-like private messaging system for Tor users.

The deep web is also a flourishing market for various illegal and legal items, but they don't use USD to pay for the items, they use an internet currency called "Bitcoins" More on that here.

Some pages of the deep web are not listed on the wiki if you go to the tor2web.org site and click on the right "Google" link they'll show a few more sites, but most of the sites are only found if someone gives you the link.

Have fun and NEVER post your personal information to Deep Web!