Cyberia has moved to www.cyberia.in

Cyberia.in is proud to announce that the website has finally moved to it’s own domain at www.cyberia.in and are also proud to announce that we have launched a discussion forum at www.cyberia.in/board . So, the websites on the blogsome server and that on the blogspot (blogger) server will be indefinately frozen. You are welcome to visit the new blog at www.cyberia.in and particapate in the discussion forums.

Hacking bluetooth is certainly possible as you may have read in my earlier posts - Hacking Bluetooth - It’s Easy (That’s a problem).” One thing that some people may describe as a bluetooth threat is bluejacking (the other being bluesnarfing, more on that some other time). Coming back to the topic, bluejacking is simply sending over a message to another phone using bluetooth without the need of pairing the phones (establish a one-time connection between them). This may just help in threats such as “You’re Hacked”, etc.. so this is not really dangerous. For how to use bluejacking, use the following steps -

1. Activate Bluetooth on your phone
2. Create a new contact and in the ‘name’ section, place the message you want to send.
3. Search for the required device and send the contact to that device.
4. You message has been sent to the device.

Now, as i said, bluejacking is not a real threat, unlike bluesnarfing, but it’s useful in surprisiong people. It works because transfer of conacts uses OBEX transfer that does not require prior pairing of the two devices.

Are you the intermediate gamer, then this article if for you. Tired of updating that computer evry year, spending tens of thousands of rupees just to enable your computer to play the latest games. The amount of money you’ll spend in two years will be enough to buy you the latest consoles on the market, and with the next generation of consoles arriving within a year, it’s time you made a consideration. Advantages of console gaming -

- No need to spend money on updating your computer.
- No complicated procedures, just pop in the disc and get going.
- No Viruses, No Trojans
- Game does not run through an operating system, so a 500 Mhz Console can deliver more than a 1GHz computer as far as gaming is concerned.
- Game Consoles do much more as well - they play dvd’s, audio, and even run linux and next generation consoles will allow even more, with wi-fi, 50 GB discs and more…

So for those of you who are casual gamers don’t want to spend megabucks but instead want to make an intelligent investment in your gaming needs, console gaming is the way to go.

Firefox is an open source browser (it’s software core is freely distributed). The Firefox package you download is simple, easy, and really fast, but also, it’s easy to turn it into the browser of your dreams - with Extensions. These are functionality enhancing plugins for the browser. So all it takes to make firefox all you ever want in a browser is a good selection of extensions.

The Essential Extensions

1. Flashgot

This is one of the most popular firefox plugins, it integrates firefox with many download accelerators/manages (surprisingly not Download Accelerator Plus), but nonetheless, it gives very good options similar to flashget’s ‘download all with flashget’ option and more…

2. Adblock

The Perfect Tool to block ads. Configure it in different ways to block anything from all files on a server to a particular file type, or having the word ‘ads’ or ‘banners’ in it. or you can download a readymade list from here. Goto “Tools” > “Adblock” > “Preferences” and choose “Adblock Options” and “Imort Filters” to import a filter from a txt file.

3. Sage RSS

For those of you who don’t like the inbuilt rss ‘live bookmark feature’ in firefox, and love to use RSS Aggregators for Newsletters and Updates that stay on your computer, unlike firefox’s default ‘live bookmark’ that only shows the latest titles, than this tool is a must. It’s simple, easy to use, and very effective.

4. UndoCloseTab

Opera allows you to open up a tab that you may have closed by mistake, now you can do the same with firefox. Instead of CTRL+Z, use CTRL+SHIFT+F12

Other Good Extensions

1. Chatzilla

For those of you who use irc chat, this is an irc client that can be integrated into Firefox.

2. Fireftp

Adds a beginner-intermediate level FTP Client to firefox, need i say more.

3. Tabbrowser Preferences

Firefox’s Tabs are too Rigid and simple, this is the best tool out there to configure them.

4. ForecastFox

Brings Weater forecasts straight to your browser, you can put it where you like within the firefox shell and it displays the weather forecast for the next week. Has several Indian Cities as well in the database, and believe me, it works, it correctly predicted rain on the sunniest of days.

5. FoxyTunes

We’re getting lazier by the day, now control your music/multimedia player from within the firefox window. Makes Life Easy.

Firefox - The Browser you can trust

For those of you who can’t stop clicking with your digicams, and have already piled up a huge collection of photographs that you’re struggling to manage, the great people at google have brought you the perfect thing - Picasa.

Picasa 2

Picasa’s a photo organiser, just like adobe’s photoshop album or JASC Photo Album. But makes it different is it’s size (3.2 MB compared to Adobe Photoshop Album’s 190MB) and it’s powerful (Really low on system resources, great enhancements for beginners and everything else you’d want in an organiser.

Features/Pros : -

- Neat and Clean Interface, Perfect for a beginner
- Zoom, upto 450% more than the original picture.
- Red eye removal (A common problem in digicams becuase of multiple flashes, easily removed)
- I’m Feeling Lucky! (One of the best Auto-Correction Options i have ever seen)
- Great Organisation (By Date, Album, etc…), that’s what it’s meant for
- Import pictures from external drives to your HDD without hassles
- Burn to CD or Upload Directly to Your Blog
- Add keywords to files and search by keywords or album information.
- Slide show, Captions and Collages
- Share Directly with Friends Online through the “Hello” Plugin
- Batch Naming (Rename All Files in One Click)
- Also Manages Video Clips
- Absolutely FREE

Cons :-

- Not Meant For Advanced Users (No Advanced Editing)
- Custom Format and Resolution changes not possible

My Verdict -

For Intermediate and Advanced Users, the likes of ACDSee and Adobe’s Photoshop Album may be the preferred choice, but picasa’s winning point is that it’s really easy, provides very good features, uses very little computer resources, and makes you spend more time on it.

The advent of better-than-ever spam killed off newsletters for good, nobody trusts them anymore, so something had to step in to deliver information right to your computer, and arrived it has - RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Rss is basically a feed broadcasted by a website that anybody who wishes can recieve. It is in the form of a regularly updated XML file. The Same RSS Feeds can be viewed in two ways -

1. As a Live Bookmark - Browsers such as Mozilla’s Firefox display the last ten or specified number of titles from the Rss feed and on clicking on them sends you to the appropriate web page. This method does not solve the need for a newsletter replacement.

2. Aggregator - An aggregator is a software that downloads the compllete RSS Article to your computer and stores it on your computer, just like a mail client. The only difference is that you get only what you set up the aggregator to recieve. An aggregator is built into the opera browser and there is a good freeware software called EasyFeed (No Spyware) to recieve your feeds. There is also a free plugin for mozilla firefox browser that gives it aggregator functionality called sage.

3. Online Aggregators

Websites such as MSN and Yahoo allow aggregating your rss feeds online and reading them on the move. Check MyMSN, Bloglines and MyYahoo. Use the ‘add content’ button and enter the location of the feed.

Using RSS

It’s Really Simple, all you have to do is to go to the website whose RSS feed you require (most websites have RSS Feeds these days). In Browsers like opera, you will automatically find a button ‘RSS’ in the right hand side of the Address Bar (Opera 8 ), or you can look for the button with the words ‘XML’ and copy the link into your RSS Aggregator to start recieving the feeds. However, the opera browser is the easiest, most convenient option. If any help is required concerning this topic, please feel free to contact me. A good place to start would be one of this website’s feeds under the ‘meta’ section.

Ever come across one of those sites that requies a ‘valid email id’ to complete regitration, but chances are, all they’ll register you to is spam. So now, for such purpose, you can create temporary mail id that can last as less as just a few hours, so that once the need is over, they expire. What more should i say, you can check out some of these.

Mailexpire

It will create a certain email id for you for a specific time, like groosebbar@kriocoucke.mailexpire.com for 12 hours for me, no password requires, it will just forward to an existing email account that will be discreet.

MyTrashmail

It creates a temporary online inbox for a specific duration of time. Once again, no password required.

For some, the increasing complexity of mobile phones makes it only for difficult to use the machine while others love it and thrive on it. Since their introduction over a decade ago, mobile phones have only become more complex, advanced and loaded with features, so much so that they can

also be used to talk.

At some of the world’s largest technology fairs early this year, several brands emphasized simplicity. But mobile phones have come a long way. They are no longer communication devices, but also organizers, music and video players, cameras, portable gaming devices, or simply - a portable computer. Truth is, many people are not buying newer mobile phones because they simply dont’ need the advanced functions in offer. All this may lead to a situation where the market might stanganate when people are satisfied with what they have. Some of my friends, who regularly changed handsets have not brought a new handset for years, and are citing the reason as no need of those more advanced machines. Manufacturers have to realise the everybody is not a technology geek and must make their products, because with today’s mobile phones’ software resembing a pc operating system, computer haters might just turn mobile phone haters.

As i had said, i was looking to move to wordpress and have brought over all my old articles here. The old website at blogspot will remain operational and updated until i make a decision. You can visit it here, but please do not take it for granted that we have moved here permanantly. Also, the cyberia.in domain now points to the blogsome website

Last year, something as simple as desktop search found a new lease of life. After google came out with it’s google desktop search, almost every other major market player came out with their own variation. MSN, Yahoo, X1, Blinkx and Copernic had a ‘war for the desktop’ and instead of a clear winner emerging, the whole topic seems to have died down. For those who keep their computers well organised, desktop search tools are no major help but for those who have files scattered all over their HDD’s, they are essential. So, without further wait, here’s a list that will help you decide your chice.

MSN Toolbar

It has probably the most exhaustive list of items that it can saerch for which are - Outlook Email,Outlook Contacts, Outlook Calendar , Outlook Tasks , Outlook Notes , Outlook Email , Word , Excel , , , werPoint , OneNote, Plain Text Files , AOL IM , MSN IM , PDFs , MP3 , GIF , JPG , BMP , WMA , AVI , HTML Pages , Outlook Express Email , Hotmail via OE or Outlook,.

It works by attaching to your taskbar as well as explorer, but on the downside it requires a decent computer so for those with sub 1GHz computers, look at google or msn.

Google

The one that ignited the war is quite good, but probably not the best, yahoo’s offers better functionality, but google’s offers more innovation, such as suggestions, etc…

Yahoo

It uses the tried and tested x1 engine so the functioanlity is good and gives better results than google.

Blinkx

A good, free toolbar software that gives very good results, and is free.

X1

An established product that was in the market before the wars begun, so it’s tried and tested. It has a free and a paid version. It’s a standalone application, not a toolbar.

Copernic

Probably the best of the lot, it’s been around for a long time and is constantly improving. Gives a lot of advanced features.

Which One Then ?

Search Tools have a complex working pattern so if possible you should try out the ones i’ve stated above and see what best suites you. If you have to make a descison now, then for beginners, i’d recommend google or yahoo toolbar, and for intermediate and above users, rither blinkx or copernic. Personally, i use yahoo since my computer is generally organised and i don’t need copernic’s or blinkx’s advanced features.