Feb 10, 2012

Beginner techies guide to Internet World part II

Aug21



A big thank you, to everyone who commented on my last post. I know most of you don’t need that post but if you are an actual beginner it’s more useful and you can save your time for testing such basic things.

Blogging
The term “Blog” has been derived from “Web log”. These sites are useful to address the internet community. They are listed as Social Networking sites because it’s a place of interaction of the internet community and authors. Authors publish their articles and readers comment to those articles. But unlike other common Social Networking sites, most blogs address special groups. It mainly depends on what you write. If it’s a sport blog, your readers will be sports fans. If it’s your personal blog, then the readers will be your friends and followers. Sometimes no one reads blogs because it’s not worthy to anyone or because they can’t find your blog URL. Have you ever imagined why bloggers do this “blogging”? Is it because they have nothing else important to do? No. The main advantage of blogging is that it’s a big plus point if you are trying to join an IT related industry. And also when we blog, we need to search various things, hence we can improve our knowledge. To become a good writer, you must first become a good reader. Not only that, we can also earn some money from blogs by publishing ads in our blog. Google adsense  is the famous one but there are many more similar ones.


There are many free blog providers. I recommend Blogger.com if you are an amateur. It has a good collection of themes and features. But I prefer Wordpress.com since it provides many plugins, widgets and themes than blogger. Most people don’t write blogs because they have nothing to write. I remember how I posted my first blog post... I was waiting and waiting and it took me nearly 6 months to complete it. I posted just some basic java code sample and its result. Usually you don’t find any interesting thing to post until you start your first one..!! Techies’ world isn’t waiting for anyone. So start today, don’t delay it..!!! Use the following link to refer more about blogging.. http://rasikaonline.blogspot.com/ 
And also you can use blog posting software like Livewriter. It’s a free software for editing as MS Word and post your article. Keep in mind, no one can find you when you are posting with a different name. So don’t worry about what you post. Just give a try. One last thing, don’t copy someone else’s articles itself. If you have to, then publish source link as well.


Twitter.com is a micro blogging site which allows us to publish small posts with at most 14o characters. The main advantage of this is that you can stay in touch with new technologies by following the big guns of the tech world. For instance, you can even follow Bill Gates without his permission. But you can hide your posts from others by adjusting your privacy settings.
There are some rules in tweeting posts.
You can notice some other person using  @tweeterusername tag(eg:@csupmag for this techzoom magazine)and if it’s a general term use #term(eg: #techzoom). Also if you want to retweet a post made by someone else, use RT tag before post. And also you can connect it with Facebook account and can update your facebook status updates from twitter. First check some other twitter accounts, what they tweet, and then decide what you want to tweet..!!!
For more info, use the following link. http://bit.ly/oxM3xN.
And don’t forget to follow techzoom http://twitter.com/#!/csupmag .
I think I should conclude my post now. Please drop your questions, comments and suggestions if this post interested you. I hope to introduce some special searching techniques in the internet and some other techie stuff in my next post.
Until then, cheers..!!!

By - Rasika Bandara.



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Oct 13, 2011

Microsoft Surface




Microsoft surface is a multi touch surface computer (use of specialized graphical user interface) which brings the world on to your finger tips. Unlike ordinary computers where users are allowed to interact with the interface using mouse and keyboard, here it provides the opportunity to do the communication through single flick of the finger. Apparently Microsoft surface is a reflective tabletop which facilitate 360 degree user interface. The unique feature of this surface in contrast to touch pads, touch screens is providing multiple accesses at the same time. This interface can respond to hand gestures, movement of fingers, and real world objects like cameras, cell phones, paint brushes etc. For an eg: if a cell phone is kept on this surface it can identify all the features of the phone including price, battery type etc.

In order to identify objects, touches it uses near infrared waves. LED light source is being focused on to the object. Underneath the reflective surface a projector and 5 infrared cameras are placed. When the object touches the surface the light is reflected to the cameras. These act as sensors in identifying the object. In MS surface all the real world objects are tagged using a code like a bar code in ordered to differentiate them from others. So as soon as the object is identified the bar code and features are displayed on the screen. Also this reflective surface is capable of identifying up to 52 touches at one time.



     The components of MS surface


     




1-      multi touch screen
      2-      Infrared beam
      3-      CPU
      4-      projector


     





      This surface supports multi users. Several people can sit around the table and interact with the surface at the same time. But when considering the privacy there is no guarantee as the content is visible to everybody. In the mean time a user can use all the fingers to carry out a specific task. If someone has fat fingers the accuracy will not be gained well.  Further to interact with some application user only need to touch the surface. So it is quite fast and easy. Also tasks like copying, resizing, deleting, transferring data can easily be done with this interface. As the surface area is much large many users can access the interface at once. When an object is placed the surface recognizes the physical features and transfers those data to the CPU. It allows digital objects as well as non digital objects to interact with the surface providing a user friendly environment.
      As weak points, the surface is not portable and very expensive. So it is not affordable for many people. Other than that surface is being touched by many users. So the finger prints, dirt on fingers can disturb the visibility of the content on the surface. 
    
Nowadays this surface is used commonly in restaurants, retail shops, gaming purposes, public entertainment etc. Surface computing is the new era of computing . So this invention will become a revolution in near future.

      By : Chandrika Malkanthi


















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Sep 21, 2011

Google Goggles and Google image search

Aug21

Google goggles

Google Goggles” is an application which was developed by the Google .Inc for Android based smart phones. At first, it was only available for the Android OS, but now Google has also developed Google Goggle for both iPhone and blackberry devices as well.

  Google Goggles enables the web searching experience of the end users much more interesting by letting them search the web with an image taken from their handheld devices. It can identify various texts, land marks, books, contact information, artworks labels and logos. It uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to read texts and even allows them to be translated into another language. 

This application is available for free in the Android market. And it can operate on any android device which has Android 1.6 or higher and an iPhone which has iOS 4 or higher.

Google Image search

Google image search is very similar to the Google Goggles application. This allows PC users to search the web using a picture. At first, this was only available for Google Chrome. But recently Google has announced this feature for Mozilla Firefox as well. There are several ways to do this, copy and paste the image URL, upload from desktop or drag and drop from you desktop (which is the easiest) etc.






- By Tharindu D. Mahavithana -



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Sep 2, 2011

SAN & NAS

Aug21


Early mainframe storage designs took the promise that disk storage, which was cheaper than main memory, could be treated as an extended virtual memory to swap memory-pages. To achieve the fast data access, the data paths (or channels) between storage and processor were widened, the storage bus kept adjacent to the processor bus for data/signal integrity while boosting the channel speeds. Server attached storage architectures dominated the scene for several years from mainframe processor channels to PC Server bus slot and adapters.
A general purpose SAS server performed a variety of tasks concurrently from running applications, manipulating databases, file/print serving, providing communications, and checking data-integrity to many housekeeping functions.
Another limitation imposed by the SAS architecture was that of limited distance imposed by the interface - the OEMI wide parallel connections in mainframes and wide differential parallel SCSI connections in servers were limiting the distance between computers and servers to a few meters. This led to the creation of raised-floor data centers but posed a severe constraint and limitation on interconnectivity in multi-site operations.



NAS – Network Attached Storage

            Network Attached Storage, compared to server attached storage on the other hand is a dedicated file server optimized to do just one function only and do it well - file serving. NAS is a system independent, shareable storage that is connected directly to the network and is accessible directly by any number of heterogeneous clients or other servers.
In NAS, you can add storage at random without disrupting the network. When the storage was on the server as in SAS, the administrator had to take down the system, install or upgrade the drives and bring the system back up again. That created a lot of unacceptable downtime. NAS is being installed increasingly now to mitigate the downtime associated with SAS. NAS is making inroads into the marketplace at different 
price, performance and size levels.


SAN – Storage Area Network

A SAN (Storage Area Network) is a dedicated high performance network to move data between heterogeneous servers and storage resources. Being a separate dedicated network it avoids any traffic conflict between clients and servers. A fiber-channel based SAN combines the high-performance of an I/O channel (IOPS and bandwidth) and the connectivity (distance) of a network.
Adopting SAN technology through the use of Fiber Channel and hubs and switches allows high-speed server to storage, storage-to-storage or server-to-server connectivity using a separate network infrastructure mitigates problems associated with existing network connectivity. SANs have also the potential to allow cable lengths up to 500 meters today and unto 10 km in future so servers in different buildings can share external storage devices.




By - Dilshan Hemawardhane


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Aug 24, 2011

Beginner techies guide to Internet World – part I

Aug21


I was wondering what to write for this freshly created e-Magazine, and I decided it would be better to start from basics. I have more than 5 years of experience in the e-community, yet I’m a newbie compared to what the internet has to offer. In my opinion, our younger generations are misusing these resources mainly due to lack of awareness of its’ true value. Thus, I thought of providing the first few stepping stones on internet basics for beginner level users.
Internet Browsers
These are the basic software needed to browse the World Wide Web. There are numerous browsing software. The Microsoft Windows Operating System provides Internet explorer as the default browser and in most operating systems based on the Linux platform, Mozilla Firefox is used as the default browsing software. But I personally recommend Google Chrome since it has a quick search functionality (we can search the web from simply typing the search term on the address bar), large web page image_thumb1viewing space, a large collection of themes & plug-ins and there are many tools to support web developers and it’s softer than others. But it has some disadvantages too. It crashes often than others and needs more processing power when we use multiple tabs for browsing. Some Microsoft products aren’t compatible with other browsers so it’s advised to keep internet explorer updated and ready. And of course, Mozilla Firefox is ranked first according to
Search Engines
These are the websites you use the most. Most newbies to the internet do this mistake of typing the web address in search engines’ search bar since most of the homepages of browsers are set to search engines. Search engines are sites that help us to find data from the internet. All you have to do is just type what you need to find in a search engines’ search text box and it does the searching for us.
Google.com is the most widely used search engine and it has much functionality such as image, video and real time searching etc. “Googling” is the term referring to searching something from google.com. Other famous search engines like Yahoo.com and msn.com provide directory services, news and many other facilities. I prefer google.com to others for it’s capability to search for specific information.
Email accounts
There are many email providers. But for me, gmail.com is the best. Simply because we need Google accounts to use most of Google products such as Google docs, Google plus, Google maps and many more. And it also has chatting facilities, filtering and many features. If you are a beginner it’s better to create your email with gmail.com.
 image_thumb3
But of course there are many email providers. Ex: yahoo.com, live.com, and the newest one is phoenix mail which provides the facility to link many email accounts to one. But in my point of view, using too many email accounts is just a waste of time.
Social Networking sites
I don’t think any of you need guidance about social networking sites. But if you are not aware about them, just try facebook and google plus. These are the most common social networking sites in Sri Lanka. These websites facilitate chatting, photo and video sharing, status updates, personal information sharing and many more. Although there are many benefits of these, most people ruin those plus points by getting addicted to those sites.
image_thumb5
Does social networking mean Facebook and Google plus? Is that all? No. As you can see in the image there are many social networking sites that help us to build better social interaction opportunities. I have done my seminar presentation on Social Network Analysis and you can get more information about Social Networks from that presentation from the link below.
I think I have given a fair introduction from this post. I hope to post more about twitter, blogging and some other useful techie stuff in my next post. Please leave your comments and share your opinions about this post.
It will be a big encouragement to mold a better writer out of me.
Thank you for taking the time to read. Until my next post, Cheers….!!!

By - Rasika

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Aug 21, 2011

Convert your torrent into a direct download link…

Aug21

 
 
Who doesn’t love to download from torrents? We mostly do not own any subscription of those high priced hosting sites like MegaUpload, HotFile, Rapidshare ect . And sometimes though there are most wanted torrents, there may not be enough peers. Then again, torrents can’t utilize our proper bandwidth.
So, do we have any method to handle these problems???

Yes, that is Torrific.com
What it does is to convert your torrent into a direct download link. So, you don’t have to worry about peers, data check, Time wasting or anything.
Here is the method,
Step (1)
Go to http://www.torrific.com/
 
Step (2)
Go to sign up and create an account. Just give E-Mail address and a password.

 
Then login to your Torrific account

Step (3)


In the text box above you can enter,
 
1) a .torrent URL like  releases.ubuntu.com/10.10/ubuntu-10.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent
2) a torrent website URL like  www.clearbits.net
3) the keyword of a torrent you want to search Google for  linux

 
Then Click the button to initiate transmission
Now they will say how much time they need to provide our direct link of the torrent

 
After that time period you can download it directly.

 
 





And the most important thing is they provide resume capability for these direct links.
Try it now…..  This is great...  J

By :- Dilanga Abeyrathna.


 





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Aug 14, 2011

Ethical Hacking

Aug21


What Is Ethical Hacking?

An Ethical Hacker is an expert hired by a company to attempt to attack their network and computer system the same way a hacker would.Ethical Hackers uses the same techniques and tactics as those used by illegal hackers to breach corporate security systems. The end result is the company's ability to prevent an intrusion before it ever occurs. Look At The Environment
We Now Have Open Discussions on the Internet Concerning:
·         Vulnerabilities
·         Exploits and Attacks
·         Bugs and Faults
·         Newer and More Sophisticated Attacks
·         Newer and More Sophisticated Hacker Tools
·         Attack Scripts and Penetration Tools Available to Anyone on the Internet

Ethical Hacking – Benefits
·         Penetration Tests are Designed to Identify
·         Vulnerabilities Before They are Exploited
·         Provides a Solid Understanding of What is Visible and Possibly Vulnerable
·         Preventative Measure – Can be Very Effective
·         Should Include a Remediation Phase
·         Correct Identified Vulnerabilities and Exposures

Popular Tools
·         Internet Scanner
·         Ethereal
·         Nessus
·         Nikto
·         Kismet
·         THC-Scan
·         Nmap
·         EtherPeek
·         SuperScan
·         QualysGuard
·         WebInspect
·         C4 (formerly called L0phtcrack)

Further More
An Ethical Hacker works to uncover three key pieces of information.
First, he determines what information an illegal hacker can gain access to. Next, he explores what an illegal hacker could do with that information once gained. Last, the Ethical Hacker ascertains whether an employee or staff member would be alerted to the break-in, successful or not.

Recent Google Search Results:
·         Hacker 12,500,000 Hits
·         Hacker Tools 757,000 Hits
·         Hacker Exploits 103,000 Hits
·         NT Exploits 99,000 Hits
·         Unix Exploits  139,000 Hits
·         Computer Vulnerabilities 403,000 Hits
·         Hacking NT 292,000 Hits
·         Hacking Windows 2000 271,000 Hits
·         Hacking Unix 390,000 Hits
·         Hacking Linux 1,290,000 Hits


       By : Dilshan Hemawardena.


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