So the answer to our prayers is a little application called Mobbler. Just let it run in background and listen to music on your phone and it will do what it says. You can either be online and post to Last.fm in realtime as you listen to the music or you can be offline and it will queue up your songs list and submit it when you go online. Very handy if you are listening to music in Offline profile.

I’ve been using it on my Nokia N73 for a more than a week now and I differed writing this post untill I was satisfied that it really does work. And now you can hear me say that. So if you have a compatible mobile phone, then just download and install it on your phone… And start mobbling ..

And now that the sermon is over, lemme write some tricks to bypass evil administrator’s evil policies to access what they think is bad for you .. :

1: The domain that you want to access is blocked ..? No problem .. most administrators block the domains by their domain names and they forget there is something called IP Address … .. Find out the IP address of the site that you want to visit and put it in the address bar and viola .. You can access it .. How to find out IP address of a website ..?? Just Whois it .. . .. You can use services like DomainTools or NetworkSolutions , Robtex… This works for websites which are on a dedicated server .. So sites like ICICIDirect can be accessed like this ..

2: First trick not working for you ..?? Try WorkFriendly .. It will let you surf the website you want in a Microsoft Word like interface to save you from your boss’s peering eyes .. Or try these language tools :

• BabelFish

• Google Language Tools

• FreeTranslation

One more site that I may recommend is Google Mobile Search .. This one is useful when you are dying to find out the score and all cricket sites are blocked ..

3: Second tip is useful for static pages but if you want to dynamic websites like Orkut, you need to use a proxy site… : These are proxy sites that I’ve used and liked :

• KProxy : This is the most famous and most used proxy website .. .. Goto KProxy and type in the address that you want to surf and click on Surf .. ..
   It wont be long before KProxy will be blocked .. So afterwards try their secure connection.. Most cocky administrators do not block secure sites as they do not know how to block them.. ..

• Y11: Y11 is another secure proxy which isnt blocked by many filters .. Use it while it lasts ..

• Fumo2 : Fumo2 is a nice and fast proxy .. And as its url doesnt contain word “proxy” it has less chance of getting blocked .. Fumo2 has some more aliases like BakaAdmin and IpSite.net which you can find on their home page itself ..

• IceKeeper : IceKeeper is another great proxy that used to help me surfing Blogspot when it was blocked in my office .. Very fast too ..

• LuckyCRM : Found this one searching for proxies online .. Turned out to be a nice one ….

• Melap : Recommended by one of my friend .. Nice and fast too ..

• CountryCodes : Another proxy that has a deceptive name so less prone to be blocked ..

There are many more .. Believe me, I’ll tell you how to find a new proxy .. .. First check the next tip :

4: Most of these proxy sites have aliases so you can use the alias in case the main domain is blocked.Here are the aliases to KProxy .. So if KProxy is blocked, try any of their aliases such as wpc1964.amenworld.com … To find alias of proxy sites, goto Robtex , type in the web site that you want to search alias for, click on Go .. In the results page, the address that are listed as ‘a’ are aliases to this domain .. So use these aliases ..

5: Actually this is combination of first and third trick .. Find out the IP address of the proxy website and then use it for surfing .. Simple ..

Now the last one .. How did I get all these proxy websites ..?? .. I used a simple query on Google which does not include any keywords that will make your system administrator think that you are searching for proxy sites .. .. But you will get a list of proxy sites that are using PHProxy which is the most common proxy software used on web servers .. and do not worry .. this list is huge .. and will keep on increasing .. ..

.. .. . . ..

Now that I’ve found a way to vent my anger on evil system administrators I feel relaxed .. I dont see logic behind blocking Hotmail or Gmail or Yahoo which are default email address for most people .. To my readers, I’ll like to request .. : If you are benefited by this write up and / or you know some more proxies or tricks that you use, please leave your comment so that others can benefit .. And book mark this page so that you can find out more updated content .. .. And if you are one of those evil administrators whose job I just made a bit more difficult, how about sharing some tips on how you are going to stop users from accessing blocked sites ..? This will improve both of us .. …

Over and all .. !

Some great things about Windows Live Mail:

Interface : First impression is the last(ing) impression .. And WLM scores huge here .. Right from its splash screen, the interface rocks. Outlook 2003 like interface combined with a Vista like look and feel makes it look very appealing. It seems like Microsoft have now understood the value of eye candy plus ease of use in their applications. Filters like Unread Mails, Unread Mails from my contacts makes life so easy.

Supports Hotmail: Now you can check Hotmail (ugh .. Windows Live Hotmail ) using Windows Live Mail. If you are like me who lost the email client support on your Hotmail account some years ago, here is a good news for you .. WLM lets you check your Hotmail account without any subscription involved. I think Microsoft has now changed the strategy and allowed httpmail access to WLH because every other email service is offering it. Before using WLM,I was logging into Hotmail account in three or four weeks .. Now I check it daily ..

Lightweight : Although it sports Outlook like looks and Thunderbird like spam catching capabilities, its very light weight on system. It boots in 2 3 seconds and doesnt put any load on memory.

Integrated Feed reader: This is another feature that hooked me onto this proggy .. I usually check my feeds after I check my email and my email client having RSS capabilities stopped me looking for another RSS clients. The feed reader fits seamlessly in the interface and have all the options that I look for : When I click on links, my default browser opens ( I hate those rss readers which show the link in their own integrated browser).

Security features: Microsoft have improved so much on this front. The spam filter works great and catches most of the spam that I receive. It also checks for phishing messages and alerts when a suspect phishing messages is received. WLM is better in catching phishing messages in comparison to Thunderbird which use to think every mail I receive is a phishing scam.

Integrated blogging and contacts : If you have Live Space account, you can directly post entries to your Live Space from inside WLM. The contacts are synchronized with your MSN / Live contacts and you can choose to receive contact updates (great feature) ..

No nagware : One thing I used to hate about Outlook express was it combined Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger with it . .. And whenever I check my mail, I am automatically signed in to messenger service. And you couldnt exit messenger when Outlook Express was running as it would say “Other programs are using it “. Windows Live Messenger is supported in WLM but it doesnt start by itself nor it is needed when you have to check your contacts. There are no advertisements in the client also .. and it wont add any signature in your outgoing mail like other free / adware email clients. It is reported that the final version will also be advertisement free ..

Some not so great things about Windows Live Mail :

Feed Management : Definitely needs improvement. When you click on Add a Feed, it doesnt automatically pastes the link from your clipboard to add link textbox. Another thing is I dont see any option to make this program my default rss reader.

Blogging : I cant change my blogging platform from Live Spaces to any other services .. So this blogging link is practically useless to me as I dont use Live Spaces…

Cant Import Export Contacts : Thats the worst of things I didnt like .. As contacts are stored on Live server, you cannot directly import or export them .. Too bad if you want to import your Outlook contacts to WLM ..

Cant Import Export Message rules : So if you are going to format your system, you are going to lose all your email filters as there is no option to import or export them .. Blah ..

Cant define my own Search Folders : There are some predefined Search Folders and you cannot edit them .. Either you create some filters and redirect your mails to a folder and then use Search Folders with them .. duh .. Improvement needed here too ..

Conclusion :

Windows Live Mails looks like a very promising application to me .. If they take care of some quirks here and there, and include support for other blogging platforms, this is going to become the best free email client over there..

     So necessity is the mother in law of plagiarism ( Heheh … that was a good one ) .. I wanted to goto Lamington road to get some computer parts .. But Lamington road is so far from here as Andaman n Nicobar are far from New Delhi .. Some desperate calls to my longtime friend Ashish yeilded some results but that included changing trains or taking train to CST and then coming back by bus .. So much for a lazy brat like me ..

   While this was happening I remembered about a link that was stored in my bookmarks since ages .. Some good guys at IIT Bombay had created a database of train and bus information on Mumbai .. Though it was outdated, I decided to give it a chance .. So I opened the page and while I was reading about the authors, I found that they’ve updated the software and added a map to it also ..

    So with Mumbai Navigator , you can need to put Origin and Destination, and it will tell you how to get there showing possible routes which included train and buses. The database has extensive data on locations across Mumbai. And in the new Navigator2, a map will be visible alongside the area you chose. The interface is very simple and easy to use.. So I put Nerul as origin and Grant road as destination and it gave me two routes to go through … Total time of journey : 1 hour 45 minutes .. sucks …

     Mumbai Navigator is very useful if you know that Lamington road is actually near Grant road .. but if you dont know where the you have to go .. then another site, may help you here .. It is Mumbai’s Worst Transport service .. (or is it BEST transport service .. whatever) .. Here you can search for area (here the location list is very detailed so you can find out easily) .. Or if you know the bus number, you can find out where it goes .. or whether it will go where you wanna go ..

    So using a combination of both these services, you can find out how to reach somewhere in Mumbai easily .. Both of these have helped me on several occasions and I hope they’ll be useful to you also .. Ciaoo ..

Mumbai Navigator 2

Best Undertaking

1: Multiple Profiles:
Did you know you can create as many as 6 profiles of your Yahoo Id ..? This is like having 6 aliases of your one Yahoo Id.. So, for different people, you can use different profiles for communication and nobody can find out your Yahoo email address if you use a different profile.
So, to create a new profile, you have to goto this link…Sign in if you arent already Signed in to Yahoo. ..Now click on Create New Public Proflie link and you’ll be taken to a profile creation page where you can enter the details .. You can create profiles of different genders too .. So if you wanna fool your friend, you can create a girl’s id and chat with him .. .. When you sign in to Yahoo Messenger, You’ll see a drop down list of your profiles with which you can send the messege ..

You can login with any of these profiles with your Yahoo password.. (helpful when using a webinterface like Ebuddy or Meebo ) .. Cool na .. ?

2: Extra Mail address:
You can add another email address to your default Yahoo email address.. Consider this case : you created a profile say shahrukh_khan and now if someone sends email to this profile, the email will bounce because there is no Inbox of that address. So if you want to receive email on this address, you can just create another email address within your default Yahoo email address. (You can create only one extra email address on one Yahoo ID) .. To do this, Click on this link
Or
-> Sign in to Yahoo Mail, Click on Options on the top right.
-> Under the Mail Management header, Click on Mail Addresses.
-> Now in the next screen, Click on Get Started link under Extra Email Address header.
-> Choose whatever address you want and click on Check availabilty.
-> If its available, you’ll be taken to an Image verification and then you will have another email address to your Yahoo Id.

You can send emails from this address… Whenever you compose a mail, you’ll get a dropdown list from where you can select the From address. .

3: AddressGuard:
Now this is one feature I love .. ! AddressGuard is a disposable email feature for you to combat spams .. Earlier I used Mailinator for this purpose but Mailinator can be checked by anyone so I stopped using it .. With AddressGuard you can create upto 500 disposable email addresses which you can use for signing up at sites that you consider suspicious .. When you start getting spam on a disposable email address,just delete it and thats the end of it .. .. You can even send messages through this disposable email address .. !
To create disposable address, login to Yahoo Mail and click on Options. Under the Spam header, click on AddressGuard link and then follow the simple procedure to create disposable email address ..
(!) AddressGuard feature isnt there in US version of Yahoo mail … so if you want to use this feature, change your Preferred Content to Yahoo India .. To do so:
Yahoo Mail > Options > Account Information { Enter password } > Under the Member Information header, click on Edit and select the Preferred Content to Yahoo India.. Sign out and then sign in again .. .. You should see AddressGuard in the mail options now .. so start using it .. !!

4: Yahoo Search:
Before Google, Yahoo was considered the best search engine .. (well . . atleast I considered it .. but anyways .. ) .. Although overshadowed by Google, Yahoo still provides some great searching options .. Apart from regular Yahoo Search, there is this Yahoo Mindset which is quite inituitive ..
The concept behind Yahoo Mindset is that it will show you results according to your mindset (cant find another word ) .. It will categorize the search results in two types: Shopping and Researching.. So if you search for Nokia and move the slider to Shopping, you’ll find links where you can buy Nokia cellphones .. and if you move the slider to Researching, you’ll get Wikipedia page on Nokia . .. If you move the slider to the center, you’ll get the normal Yahoo search result … Very innovative .. !
And when we are at it, There is another search utility by Yahoo .. Its AllTheWeb LiveSearch .. It will show search results as you type … very cool indeed .. !
Then there is MyWeb .. You can save your search and share it with your contacts .. I dont feel very comfortable using it .. But you might wanna try … ..

5: Flickr
Now this is for those who dont know what Flickr is .. Those using it must be knowing that you can login to Flickr with your Yahoo Id … Now to the others .. Flickr is one of the best photo sharing websites and it was taken over by Yahoo a while ago .. So now you can sign in to Flickr using your Yahoo Id and merge your Flickr account with your Yahoo id … Those who havent ever used Flickr should try it .. You’ll love it …

Now I am really tired writing all the stuff .. I hope it will be usefull to you ……. .. Keep visiting . !

The problem this guy had was this: He had an Airtel connection and Huawei MT880 Adsl router. His ISP username and password is saved on the router and it gets connected when he turn on the router. Now he forgot his password and wanted to change it. And couldn’t because it was saved in the router. Using those asterisk removing utilities didn’t work too. So he was stuck there. Now if you have the same story, you could try this too :

You will need your router password to reset your ISP password. This is different from your ISP acount’s password. On most routers, the default username / password combination is admin/admin or admin/1234 . If you have changed your router password and forgot it too, then I cant help you. You can though reset router password with Reset slot in your router.
I’ll be using HyperTerminal for Telnet as it has got some nice functions. You can use other telnet utils too… So lets start:

• Run HyperTerminal by Start > Programs > Accesories> Communications > HyperTerminal.
• Enter any name for the Connection. Click on OK.
• In the Connect Using combo box, select TCP/IP (WinSock) and enter 192.168.1.1 as Host address. (192.168.1.1 is usually your router’s address ). If you have customized your router’s ip address then enter the customized address. The Port Number 23 is fine, no need to change it. Click on Connect.
• You will get a login prompt. Enter your router username and password here. If all goes allright you will get a prompt saying “Login Successful”.
• Now on the console, type this:
•       console enable {Press Enter}
• You’ll get a prompt like this:
•       Quantum>
• Now on the prompt, type this:
•       Quantum> fm {Press Enter}
• The prompt will change to Quantum fm>.
• Now in HyperTerminal, click on Transfer > Capture Text. Enter a location to save the settings file. For example My Documents\mysettings.txt .
• Click on Start. You will be back to the router prompt.
• Now type this:
•       Quantum fm> cat im.conf {Press Enter}
• This is quite a big file and it will take a while to list. Just wait until the listing is complete and you get back to the prompt.
•       Click on Transfer > Capture Text > Stop.
• Now the tough part is over.
• Type these commands on the console to quit telnet:
•       Quantum fm>home {Press Enter}
•       Quantum>exit {Press Enter}
•       >user logout {Press Enter}
• Now you can quit HyperTerminal .

Now open the file we saved in Notepad and press Ctrl F.
Enter weLogin in the string to find.
And here you can see your ISP login details in clear text. …

I have tested this on Huawei MT880 and MT 882 routers. I cannot guarantee that they work on other routers too. But Atmos commands are usually same on all devices so they should work on other routers too.. And finally, you shouldn’t try it if you aren’t comfortable with command line usage. Don’t hold me accountable if you screwup doing things you shouldn’t be doing. Hope this helped… !

This is a long overdue post .. I was busy with CCNA and some other things so I could post it earlier.. Anyways, Here it is.

Being a Yahoo Messenger user for years, I am used to Yahoo Messenger emoticons. And after some of my friends decided to shift to MSN messenger, I had to become a regular on MSN Messenger too .. But I missed Yahoo’s emoticons. And add to it that MSN Messenger’s emoticon looks ugly to me. So I decided to utilize MSN Messenger’s Custom Emoticon feature to add Yahoo emoticons to MSN Messenger.
I have released it as a custom emoticon pack, and if you want to import Yahoo emoticons to MSN Messenger, you have two choices. The first is to manually copy and paste custom emoticons to your messenger folder OR Use MSN BackitUp. I’ll explain both methods one by one:

• Method 1: Manual Copy Paste:
• 1. Download and extract the archive. You will get a folder called CustomEmoticons with around 80 .dat files. Right Click on the folder and select Copy.
  2. Now in your Windows drive ( C: on most systems), navigate to Application Data folder. For ex: C:\Document & Settings \ YourUsernameOnTheComputer \Application Data\ Microsoft\ MSN Messenger\ ARandomNumberString\.
  3. There may be more than one folders in your MSN Messenger directory if you have multiple MSN IDs on the same computer. You have to open the folder which corresponds to the ID that you wanna have Yahoo Emoticons.
  4. Paste the CustomEmoticons folder here that you downloaded.
  5. Run MSN Messenger .. .. You have YMSN Emoticons as your custom emoticons.

• Do NOT use this method if you already have many custom emoticons as this may overwrite your existing Custom emoticons.

• Method 2: Use MSN BackUp:
• 1. Download and extract the archive. Note that this one is different from the archive above.
  2. Download and install MSN Backup. Its a great program to backup your MSN Messenger settings. We’ll use it to import custom emoticons.
  3. Run the program and enter your MSN Id in the textbox given. You will need to be running MSN Messenger too.
  4. In the right hand pane, navigate to the folder where you extracted the downloaded archive.
  5. It will take a while to load all the custom emoticons. After they have loaded, Enable the checkbox next to Emoticons in the right side pane.
  6. Click on the Install Objects button. The custom emoticons will be imported within in a minute.
  7. You may get one or two errors and two or three emoticons out of total 82 wont be imported. (I have no idea why some of them does not get imported..)

• Most emoticans use the same format as Yahoo Messenger but for some emoticons you will need to put an extra : to make them work. For example use ::| for .

  I’ve tested it with Windows Live Messenger and I hope they work with previous version of MSN Messenger too. I hope you will like it. …

  And yeah .. These emoticons are copyrighted by Yahoo. So you should agree to their terms of use if you wanna use these emoticans. ….

      Anyways .. To come to the point, there is still a way to make Pop3 working with Spymac again. This is an old trick, but very handy. Fortunately, Spymac have provided Mail Forward feature to all free users. So, you can forward all your Spymac mails to an account which does have Pop3 feature. The best service for this purpose, I believe, is Gmail all because with Gmail you can send emails as different “From: ” addresses. So the idea is to enable Pop3 on your Gmail account, Forward all your Spymac emails to your Gmail account. And with Gmail, you can send emails with your Spymac Address as “From :” field. So, to make it all work, do this :

      First login to your Gmail account (If you don’t have a Gmail account, you may post a request here).
      –>Now click on Settings.
      –>Click on Accounts.
      –>Click on Add another email address.
      –>In the Name field, put Spymac, and in Email Address field, type your Spymac mail address.
      –>Click on Next Step.
      –> In the next screen, click on Send Verification.

      Now login to your Spymac webmail. You should’ve got a confirmation email from Gmail. Complete the verification by clicking on the link provided in the mail. Now you can send messages from Gmail as your Spymac address. Now to enable Pop forwarding in Spymac:
      –>Click on Preferences > Account Preferences in Spymac’s webmail interface.
      –>Click on Mail Settings tab.
      –>Type in your Gmail address in the Forward To Address field.
      –> Click on Save Settings.

       With this, all your mails to your Spymac account will be forwarded to your Gmail address to which you can have Pop3 access. To configure Pop3 access to your Gmail account, check this. And to send emails from your Spymac account, you will need to use Gmail’s web interface (I tried all settings to make it work with email clients but it doesn’t work ). To send from a Spymac address, just click on Compose and select your Spymac address in From: address field. You should also tweak some settings in Gmail for better usage:
      –> Click on Settings.
      –> Click on Accounts.
      –> Under the When I receive a message sent to one of my addresses: field, select the option that says Reply from the same address the message was sent to.

       All this pain is necessary if you were using Spymac as your default email address and / or have more than one Spymac addresses (Just like I have ) .. So forward your emails from all your accounts to a Gmail address and use the Pop3 feature of Gmail to check your mails. However to send emails, you’d still need to login to web interface of Gmail (or you can login directly to Spymac too, but as I am writing this, webmail of Spymac is down and is doing this like for a week now). I hope Gmail will release some feature for users so that they can send mails from their email clients using different From addresses.

Windows OneCare Live: What is it ? :

Its the new security software from Microsoft. Its currently in beta testing stage, so you if you want to try it, you need to get an invite (available easily). The speculations of Microsoft entering the antivirus arena started when Microsoft bought antivirus firm Sybari early in 2005. With Windows XP Service Pack 2, the firewall was already built in the operating system and Microsoft testing an antispyware software, most people (including yours truly) were expecting Windows OneCare Live to have an integrated system of all these. So, when Microsoft started sending out invitations to beta test it, I also applied for it. And soon enough I got the invite.

Installation:

Windows OneCare Live (WOCL from here onwards) is installed from a web based installer. So if you want to install it on a system which doesnt have an internet connection, you can’t. When I started the installation, the installer told me that it will take around 5 to 8 minutes on a broadband connection, but it took more than 25 minutes. I guess it installed Dotnet framework too and thats why it took more time.

The interface and features:

The installer needed a reboot (when will this thing change ?) so I restarted my system. The boot time increased by around 35 seconds on my humble (PIII 800 Mhz, 512 Mb Ram) system. After the system boot up and when nothing happened ( I was expecting a setup wizard like Norton Antivirus), I started the program from shortcut in the Start Menu. The interface is simple and clean and as soon as I started the program, I got a “Windows OneCare Live Action required” notification as Automatic Updates are disabled on my system. “No thanks, I dont want you to waste my capped bandwidth by downloading patches from Windows Update site” I thought and snubbed the alert message. This setting is absolutely not recommended though.
Anyways, I started exploring the features of the program. It started with a surprise. There is no built in antispyware in WOCL !!. I dont understand the logic behind this. The main components of WOCL are : Antivirus, Firewall, a “tune up system” which will perform scheduled maintenence on your sytem and a backup and restore system. I’ll review each component seperately now.

Windows Antivirus:

Earlier I had Norton Antivirus 2004 and I stopped using it after my subscription ended. So I was expecting atleast those features that were present in NAV 2004 in Window antivirus. You shouldnt say its not a fair match as Norton 2004 was released 2 years ago and Windows AV has just released. Anyway, I loaded the antivirus module and tried scanning some folders. Though it takes some time to initialize, the scanning is quite fast. As I didnt have any virus at hand, so I decided to test it with Eicar test file. I downloaded the test file and Windows AV didnt detect it in the archive. So I extracted the archive and this time Windows Av did catch it. It told me that this file cannot be cleaned so will be quarantined. There was no “More info about this virus” on the dialog box and neither could I find any virus database on WOCL website. Only two or three virus threats are there on the main page. The antivirus module of WOCL also didnt tell how many virus it is protecting me from. There was no option to configure email scanning though my system cleared all of the GFI email tests. Which I believe must be configured by WOCL.
To test the real time scanning module of Windows Antivirus, I tried patching a system file. The file was patched easily and no alert came from WOCL that an important system file is being patched. I expected this cauz I already saw WOCL doesnt automatically scan downloaded archives unless you extract them. Bad practise I must say.
So without a nice real time scanning module, the antivirus isnt going to be very effective. And many of the virus can be cleaned with Windows Malicious software Removal tool, so Windows AV will have to come up with some good features if it has to compete with the likes of Norton Antivirus and Kaspersky.

Windows OneCare Firewall:

With more users having access to always on internet connections, the firewall has become a vital point of system security. Microsoft realised this after Blaster virus and Windows firewall was enabled by default after service pack 2. That firewall was crippled though as it didnt provide any outbound security but it was much better than having no firewall at all. Before trying WOCL, I was using Jetico firewall and I must say it wont be a fair trial if I compare Jetico with Windows OneCare firewall. Although Jetico appears very complex to new users, it gives the optimum protection if configured right. Having used Window’s default firewall for sometime, I had no big expectations from WOCL’s firewall.
This firewall is more like Windows built in firewall with only addition that it provides outbound protection as well. And ironically it recognised and allowed KMeleon to have internet access, it blocked both Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. Good start I thought. So I decided to customize the firewall to my preference to find that the firewall interface is hidden in Options section. There is a slider which gives you the option if you manually want to configure each program that require internet access or use WOCL’s service which recognize known programs and grant them access automatically.
I tested the outbound protection with tests available at Firewall Leaktester and it failed miserably. It passed only 6 of 15 tests. I was nodding my head in despair after the tests as I couldnt feel myself secure now. And yeah .. Two of the tests were detected by Windows AV as virus or having malicious code and the information box did have a link to “Find more online” which was useless as I got “No more information is available about specified virus”. Look at the links that I got : CopyCat, Firehole.

Although the firewall does block programs whose signatures are changed, it doesnt tell why its blocking them. I upgraded the version of Yahoo Messenger and when I tried to run it, I got “This program is blocked by Windows Firewall”. As I knew the reason that the program signature is changed and thats why it is being blocked but think of users who arent as much tech savvy. So if a file is modified by a virus and when firewall blocks it, they will unblock it as they trust the program. So there must be a different alert for changed programs. And yeah .. The “Blocked program” dialog box isnt displayed in the status bar and once I found it after closing a program. There should be more accebility to these modal screens. Jetico firewall let me configure which network address a program can access but there is no such option here. You can however open ports for program easily. Only good thing about this firewall that I found it set up the file and print sharing settings to subnet only. So if install it on server, your network users can access file and print sharing while users from Internet cannot. Hmmm..
Earlier I had planned to try installing a rootkit to test whether WOCL detects it or not but after such results, I decided against it.

Windows OneCare Backup and Restore:

This time I had something like Norton Ghost in my mind. But no, WOCL Backup and restore just copies files from your hard drive to a writeable cd or an external drive. And the list of files it found for me to backup didnt contain Windows System files. And yeah .. The size of backup for me was 43 Gb ( 68 Cds ) and time taken to create that backup was around 2 hours. Whew .. What a help ..

Windows OneCare Performance Plus :

This is a scheduled maintenence tool for your system. It will occasionaly defragment your drive, remove unnecesary files from your system, scan your system for virus , check updates for your computer and create a backup. Thankyou very much .. all this can be done with Scheduled tasks easily.. And that backup .. forget it ..

Conclusions:

After such a disheartening performance, I am tempted to write this software isnt of much use. And as it seems that Microsoft will sell this package .. I am not sure who will buy though. Anyways, this is just a beta and I believ much of this will be changed in the final version. The first letdown was lack of an antispyware which I am sure will be added soon. But the antivirus and firewall module needs hell lot of improvements. The memory usage isnt okay too .. There are five or six new process added to Taskmanager after this installation which together are using 62 mb of memory on my system (Whattt???? why didnt I check this earlier ????).

So while there are many negative points for this package, some good points may be .. Lemme think .. Okay .. WOCL is very nicely integrated with Windows Update. When that WMP vulnerability was exposed, it gave me a security advisory and told me that until Microsoft release a patch for the vulnerability, WOCL is protecting my system against any exploit. And if a system is update with all critical patches installed, it will be less prone to security fallouts. So I’ll give this software 3 out of 10 on its present status. I hope Microsoft will address the shortcomings in the final release. Till then .. I am going to install Norton Antivirus 2005 from Google Pack and my beloved Jetico firewall again.

And if any of your mortal want to use this software, You may contact me for an invite. Post your request with email address and I’ll send the invite. You can find the screenshots of Windows OneCare Live here

Chatting in Hinglish has become a normal routine for Hindi speaking people.. And with advent of Unicode support in most operating systems and browsers, it has become easy to write in Hindi easily.. The recent versions of MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger support Unicode so now you can chat in Unicode with your friends easily ..

Earlier the only way to do this was either to install an IME on both ends and then communicate or write the text in a transcripter program such as Baraha and copy paste in your IM window .. Well … No more such troubles now .. Now you can directly write in your favorite program in Hindi .. and no fonts installation required .. (Well some installation is required though .. )

हिन्दी में लिखने के लिये आपको जिस software की जरुरत है वह है HindiWriter Keyboad Map. ईसे आप इसके डेवेलपर के वेबसाईट से डाउनलोड कर सकते हें। इसको इन्स्टाल करना काफ़ी आसान है। ईस कमाल के सोफ़्टवेर को बनाया है देवेन्द्र पारख ने।

So, to use HindiWriter, you’ll need to install complex script support on your computer. On Windows XP, you can do so by going to Control Panel and opening Regional and Language options applet. On the Language tab, Enable the option of Install files for complex script and right to left languages. Click on Apply. You may need your XP Cd to complete the installation. Here is a screenshot :

For Windows 2000, Goto Control Panel and click on Regional Options. Click on General Tab. Enable ‘Indic’ Click on Apply. You may need your Windows 2000 cd for comleting the installation.

Now the tougher part is over. Just download HindiWriter and install it. Now to type in Hindi, just run the program and press Shift Pause. Hindi keyboard map will be activated and whatever you will type will be converted to Devnagri automatically. It’s a phonetic font so if you want to write श , you can do so by typing sh . So if you can type in Hinglish, you can type in Hindi too .. We are using it successfully with MS Word, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger too .. And you can write in Hindi on Unicode compliant browsers such as Maxthon, Firefox or Opera too …

तो जनाव, इन्तेज़ार किस बात का है ? आज से हिन्दी में बात करना शुरु कर दिजिये !

[Update as on 28 May 2008] Seems like Devendra Parekh’s original website is no more. I’ve updated the download link to SoftPedia now.