Managing the above said services through dedicated Desktop/Mobile clients is becoming more and more time consuming just because of the sheer number of services they provide. We have so many new Microblogging/Social Networking sites that keeping track of all of them becomes difficult on a day-to-day basis.

Here is where Ping.fm becomes into the picture. With Ping.fm you can link your social network together – post a Tweet, update your status, submit a meme ALL with just one click!

The status can be updated from virtually anywhere :

• Through Email
• Through IM
• Browser – Web/Mobile
• Mobile – SMS

Personally, I have a ‘Prosumer Light’ plan on my BlackBerry which only allows me to send/receive unlimited email & chat. Though, I could use Twitter via TweetyMail and TwitPic, I was missing out on other micro-blogging networks such as Meme and sometimes even Facebook. Now all I do is Email or IM Ping.fm and the message is posted across all linked network. Useful, Quick and best of all FREE.

All you need is the access to internet and your social network will follow you everywhere.

Link : Ping.fm

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Today, I was at my dad’s office and interestingly the Wi-Fi locator on his notebook flashed a new network – ‘Hari Om’ it showed the holly network as unsecured! My curiosity got the better of me and I instantly double clicked and Wolla! It was connected with a signal strength of 80%.

Although, I wasn’t hopping of any miracles but Firefox opened the default Google homepage and before I knew it internet was working on my laptop. I figured,”Essentially, I’d hacked into his Wi-Fi. Cool huh?”  His net connection was at my mercy. I could do anything, send emails to anybody and walk off without being traced.

The point is, did I HACK his Wi-Fi or did he let his Wi-Fi get HACKED due to his own foolishness?

What do you do with people who out of their own ignorance or complacency choose not to secure their own networks and cry fowl when somebody a little smarter gets the better of them. Is this hacking?

Enabling WEP security is the least one can do. How hard is it to set an encrypted key once and note it down in your cell. I know people who blame technology when they themselves are oblivious to their own ignorance. Your own system is the first line of defense and acts like a sitting duck if not secured properly.

Coming back to the ‘Hari Om’ network. I opened up Firefox and punched in : 192.168.1.1. It prompted for a username password. I ‘hacked’ that too. Wish to know how? Simple enough. It was what 80% people have, their default credentials :

Username : admin
Passswors :admin

Then, it didn’t take much time for me to figure out his ISP – MTNL, the IP Address, his phone number (from the username), the plan he was using (using register.bol.net.in). Getting the password out of those *****(Astrix) was a simple task. There are many free tools available on the net which let you show the hidden password in the active window.

So, now you tell me. Is this what you call HACKING? I guess, if you take care to secure your own network by following simple methods. It would take some serious hacking skills to get to the heart of your router. Keeping your WiFi open is like suicide. Just the same as keeping the door unlocked at night.

If everyday, you can lock your doors before saying goodnight , is setting a one-time WEP key too much to ask for?

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-- This Post Does using a Wi-Fi increase the chances of you being hacked? is Published on Devils Workshop .

Using G2P.org (a take on P2P – stands for Google-to-peer) allows you to search the web (via Google) for files you want. The concept behind it is simplicity itself – it uses special search operators to search Google for files you want in openly listed directories on Apache servers.

So you can search for songs, ebooks, softwares etc using G2P and get direct downloads! G2P is not a search engine but simply a frontend to one which makes searching for ’stuff’ easier. The data is hosted on by others listed in open directories; you may or may not find what you’re looking for. But for one off cases where you need to download something quickly without bothering about finding seeds it’s a great idea.

Link: G2P.org

Related: 5 Best Torrent Search Engines + Google Trick for Torrent Search

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-- This Post Use Google For Direct Downloads Instead Of Torrents is Published on Devils Workshop .

Here are a few false beliefs about virtual memory

1. More is better.
2. Setting a static swap file size will make virtual memory more effective.
3. Emptying the Pagefile will increase system performance.

All of these are false!!!!

What is virtual memory?

Without turning this into a lecture on Operating Systems, I’ll explain what Virtual memory is all about and keep it brief. Virtual memory is a technique which gives an application program the impression that it has contiguous working memory, while in fact it may be physically fragmented and may even overflow on to disk storage.

Now, lets say I have 512MB RAM and running Adobe Photoshop and Firefox simultaneously. On wndows XP, assuming 200MB is already allocated to the kernal, the user applications i.e Photoshop and Firefox are left with 300 MB of space. Firefox will run smoothly while you’ll notice lag while working with photoshop.

This is due to pagefaults which occur when the required amount of RAM is insufficient and data needs to be fetched from the hard disk. Firefox can accomodate itself well within 300MB of RAM but for photoshop it isnt a sweet deal. Thats where virtual memory kicks in, the OS reserves some portion of the hard disk as memory, hence the name virtual. As HDD space is higher than RAM, programs  use virtual address ranges which in total exceed the amount of real memory.

Problem with virtual memory

As the memory available for the system increases, you’d expect the performance to increase. To a certain extent it does help but as read/write speeds of electromagnetic HDD are very slow compared to the semiconductor based RAM, it doesnt help even page file increases twice the size of your main memory. Simply put, having over 1.5 GB of pagefile for 512 MB RAM is not benefitial.

Now adays, RAM has become very inexpensive and 4GB RAM in dual channel is very common. I prefer to disable page file as it saves me unnecessary read writes cycles on the HDD while also conserving my laptop battery. 4GB of memory is enough for most people and disabling the page file has given be better results. It even has long term benefits as it prevents undue HDD activity and increases its life.

Best way to enable virtual memory

• If you do not plan to upgrade to 4GB memory, then you can still make the best of your page file, by keeping it in a separate Hard drive altogether, the read write headers are spared of the extra overhead as pagefaults are dealt with in the other hard drive.
• Never, keep the pagefile in a different partition than that of Windows in the same HDD. Meaning, if you have only one hard disk then you should keep the pagefile in the same partition as that of Windows and not a different partition of the same hard drive as many people believe. As, doing so results in the read/write heads requiring to travel large distances spanning partitions back and forth!

I hope this mini guide on virtual memory help the readers.

If you too like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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-- This Post The truth about Virtual or Swap Memory is Published on Devils Workshop .

It all started the day I became a fan of Open Source softwares. I just love open source alternatives so much so that you’ll find me suggesting OSS to anyone who cares to listen. I even made a presentation on it for the purpose of my college project. Gravitating towards Linux was very natural. One day I got my hands on Ubuntu 7 and Fedora 9.

Without wasting a breath, I inserted the live CD in the optical drive and my geek instincts sprung into action. Installation was the easy part. The nightmare began soon after. I have Dell Inspiron 1420 so there were driver issues. Wifi & sound cards did not work. I could live with the fact that my speakers were useless but tell me, what is the use of a laptop without wifi?

I tried and wasted 7 days but could not find wifi driver. Peace prevailed and I again reformatted my drive only to install a virtual copy of Linux using Sun VirtualBox on windows Vista. All seemed familiar. I sincerely hoped the feeling of Deja Vu will go away. Then came a bumper. The display resolution and mouse tracking were not proper in the virtual machine so I figured that installing VirtualBoxGuest Additions might relieve me of my sins.

It was a uphill task, unlike windows softwares, VB Guest Additions are not the easy to install, something Windows users are accustomed too. You need to open up Windows equivalent of command prompt – TERMINAL and get dirty with Sudo….. $Sudo apt….. Some geek stuff.

After some help of a YouTube video, finally Ubuntu was up and running. Then, I decided to install some software and then I got face to face with “Dependency Hell”. It turned out that in order to install one software I needed to install 5 dependency package. And no, I can’t just install them, I had to download them from the respective repositories (another fancy geeky stuff).

I almost gave up. Then as a last test of my patience, I downloaded Sun Studio One (now Java developers can smile wide), and I was given a rude shock as I couldn’t install it. I had to compile it from source code tar balls (another geeky word, woo!). Installing software isn’t a simple task as hitting “next” “next”… few times while installing Windows softwares.  Its a whole compilation process as different distros of Linux have different libraries!

In the end, I formatted the silly penguin. Hopping I’ll be back being a Windows loyalist. My startup crashed as Mr. GRUB Loader couldn’t find the Linux as I had formatted my partition. Now Beat that!

If you are a Linux noob then kindly remain so. But in my opinion, you’ll remain much more happier being a Windows Expert than being a Linux novice user.

[Note: This article is a result of my own experiences with Linux. It doesnt mean, you'll also face the same issues but who knows... you have been warned sufficiently!]

If you too like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.

This article is part of new section TDIS (Thank Devil Its Sunday!). Read more about this section.]

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-- This Post Why Linux hates me and vice-versa is Published on Devils Workshop .

Power users, enthusiasts & programmers will agree on the fact that there are things which Notepad does better  Its a lovely piece of software that hasn’t changed much over the years. Its “Complete” in every sense of the term.

However, there are little improvements which can be made and simple addons like line numbers, syntax highlighting, indentation, spell check do make life a lot easier.

Notepad++ is as the name suggests an incremental version of Notepad, its a an Open Source application and has remarkable set of features.

It would be impossible for me to write about all of its features but here’s a screen shot to make things simple, as they say, A picture speaks louder than words :

I suggest Windows users must substitute the default Notepad for this Notepad++. It’ll be worth it. And yeah, did I mention its just 2MB and can even be added to the context menu – Open With Notepad++

You can download it here, Notepad++ can be supplemented with equally good plugins. Out of which my favorite is the FTP integration which allows you to edit and save files directly on the Server on the fly! Read about the FTP plugin here.

If you too like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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In WordPress, when we use the Tiny MCE Editor – WYSIWYG and click on Upload Media or Insert/Remove hyperlink or anything which gives a lightbox type effect in a different window and changes the focus from the previous window. The screen gets stuck and kind of hangs! You cant go back, the X (Cross Button) doesn’t work, Esc key fails. It just hangs! You have to close the tab and reopen it all again.

As you can see, both the background and foreground of the popup have merged together and no editing is possible

Click here to read more on the story.

Solution: Mike has posted a workaround here.

If you too like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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-- This Post Apple Safari 4 and WordPress Bug! OMG is Published on Devils Workshop .

Here is the Application in action, its a freeware, small in size – 333KB.

The trail of breadcrumbs toolbar shows the directories you’ve navigated to get to the current folder, giving you an easy way to navigate back to one of the root folders or to another folder in the trail.

Its very convenient hitting the address bar to copy the path or go up a few levels with no more than 2 clicks. It looks neat and is really useful. Get Breadcrumbs Navigation

There’s also a similar add on available for both XP and Vista users called Direct folders which lets you access deeply nested folders with ease, it even allows rescaling of Windows File Open/Save dialog box!

If you too like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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Here is what you have to do to integrate your Gmail accounts

1. LogIn and go to Settings, click on the Accounts Tab
2. Under “send mail as:” click Add another email address you own
   
3. A window pops up asking you to enter the email address which you wish to integrate
4. Gmail sends a verification email to the address specified, Sign In to your other gmail account and confirm the link or paste the verification code.
5. That’s it! Your done.

Related: Integrate Multiple Yahoo Mail Accounts Into A Single Account

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-- This Post Gmail: Send mails from multiple addresses using only one account is Published on Devils Workshop .

There are time when you must have faced a situation in which a friend of yours could help you out only if he could have access to your PC. Not only troubleshooting, if you have multiple systems and keep one turned on while not being physically present, this software may come as a life saver.

LogMeIn, is a software client gives you fast, easy remote access to your PC from any computer with an Internet connection. Its basic version is free but has various other flavours for which you need to pay depending on the Version you are opting for.

All you have to do is download the LogMeIn Client and register for a free account. Install the client on every PC you wish to access remotely using your credentials. Then, you can connect to the system from anywhere in the world as long as it has a decent broadband net connection.

LogMeIn allows control of the PC through Mouse, Keyboard and you can see the Desktop to work as if it was your own PC! I access my system from my college lab to view the status of the active torrents which i leave behind running when I am not home. Its that easy and cool.

Feel free to drop in your comments.

Link: LogMeIn

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-- This Post Remotely Troubleshooting Friend’s PC Straight From Your Desktop is Published on Devils Workshop .