Archive for the 'Internet' Category

Broken Firefox3 - Internet with Auto-Configurable Scripts (.PAC)

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Firefox 3.0 is definitely a major enhancement & competition to Internet Explorer. However, with that comes new bug/ broken functionality.

One such issue that has recently reported by many by employees. In corporate environment, where normally proxies are implemented to limit access to internet, Firefox3 fails to browse internet while a previous version (Firefox2) worked just okay!

It seems the Proxy Auto-Config (.PAC) script doesn’t go well with Firefox3.0. Somehow, for reasons unknown to me, Firefox is not able to read the PAC scripts & thus get the proxy servers. An alternative to this, is to use proxy server names, if you know one.

Generally, if your compnay’s network department uses PAC scripts, you would not know the proxy server. There is a way though, to find proxy servers under the hood.

TCP Monitor in Action! Solution- Pretty darn simple, I used “TCP Monitor” tool to see which server my Internet Explorer connects. Once I found the proxy server, I used in the Network connection settings in Firefox3. This works for me, hope it does for you as well.

Stock Photography 101

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Stock Photos or Stock Photography is using existing pictures of common places, streets, people that can be bought online & is royalty free.

There are many websites today offering some of the largest collection of Stock Photography. Here are some site below:

iStockPhotos.com - my favorite site. I almost always use this while searching for Stock Photos. It also has a simple user interface, with full images dynamically show in DHTML popup when you hover over thumbnails. You don’t need to buy any subscription plans, unlike some site. You just add desired images to shopping cart, & pay for it.

If you are looking to earn some money out of your stock photo collection, then you can submit. Maintaining high quality stock images is their priority. So its not a simple/ straightforward process. They will ask you to submit three samples of your Stock photography. Based on personal evaluation of your submitted stock images, iStockPhoto would accept or most of the time even may reject your application. So only serious professionals are considered.

GettyImages : GettyImages has been into Stock Photography since internet. It also has one of the largest collection of Stock photos. I have observed that many Stock Photo websites get feed from GettyImages.

Photos.com : Another good collection of Stock images. But you need to buy a minimum monthly subscription plan for $99/ month.

public-domain-photos.com : This site offers public domain photos that are free price & royalty-free. Sometimes being free does put restriction on quality, but do give it try first before visiting paid sites.

Fotolia.com, GettyImages.com : A good resource similar to iStockPhotos.

How you can use Stock Photo?
Let me repeat a cliche- “A Picture speaks Thousand Words.” There are many areas you can use Stock Photos- be it personal or official.

  • Presentations: Use a compelling picture on issues of global warming, than putting loads of facts. This is what helped Al Gore succeed in presenting Global warming to worldwide audiences & even got him an Oscar for his documentary.
  • Websites: use Stock photos along with website text to make your point. I have seen many good examples where people have used stock photos to project their company’s professional image.
  • Documentation: Icons, small images can be effectively used in documents.
  • Blogs Banners: I have personally used one of the images from iStockPhoto to create a banner for my blog - RohitBlog.com. You should consider outsourcing your design requirements for right reasons. In my case, designing a banner was small tasks which not many free lancers would have taken, And in the end, it was gratifying experience.

FoxClocks - FireFox Add On to Manage Timezones

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

I love Firefox; it has plethora of add ons providing every single niche feature you imagined. One such Add on is - FoxClocks. You need to install FoxClocks as Firefox add on first. Then, just some simple configuration to display different timezone timings. Now, stick to that meeting in a different timezone.

foxclocks-firefox-status-bar

Eavesdrop Browser - Server Talks

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Recently I was working on an official assignment to “talk” to a web server. In short, it was to simulate user’s action on a browser, but without a ‘browser’. Means, write a program to simulate user actions…blah.

With such tasks, you just can’t do without a packet sniffer. For e.g., you want to see which ‘cookies’ are being sent, what data is exchanged between web server & browser.

There are couple of tools available in market. I tried three tools, IE Inspector’s HttpAnalyser, Firefox add on “Firebug” & Fiddler.

IE Inspector’s HttpAnalyser - this is shareware (not free); though you can download a trial version. The user interface is intuitive, easy to use & provides lot many details. You can choose which browser process to “eavesdrop”. There is a request builder, to be used to manually generate “request” to the webserver. This helps to analyze specific request types you may be interested.

Firefox add on “Firebug”: A good add on to Firefox. Lot of my colleagues suggested to use Firebug. For e.g. when you want to analyze performance/ response times of the website. Or if you want to check the size of the HTML pages being returned.

Fiddler - HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. I didn’t used this tool much, as by that time, I was already comfortable using HttpAnalyser & Firebug. But I didn’t find it very useful either.

Of all these, I liked HttpAnalyser. All the features above & much more is available in HttpAnalyser. You can export all debugging data to HTML, XLS formats.

Stop Inflation- The Egg Way!

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

Here’s a novel way to curb inflation doing rounds on internet. Please do pass this message to all your friends; you can click on the ‘email’ icon above to email this article.

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the Kirana store he pays Rs. 12 a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won’t last a week he normally buys two dozens at a time. One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to Rs. 16. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are Rs. 22 a dozen.

When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, “The price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly”. This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. He checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business. The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on.

As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there. He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.

Then week before Diwali the price of eggs shot up to Rs. 40 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, “Cakes and baking for the holiday”. The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc. happen.

This pattern continues until the price of eggs is Rs. 60 a dozen. The man says, ” There must be something we can do about the price of eggs”.

He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn’t work because everyone needed eggs.

Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need. He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn’t need any eggs.
Maybe wouldn’t need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn’t have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs. To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price.

The distributor said, ” I don’t have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free”. The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying
again.

The grocery store owner said, “I don’t have room for more eggs. The customers are only buying 2 or 3 eggs at a time. Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers
would start buying by the dozen again”.

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers but the egg farmers liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, those chickens just kept on laying. Finally, the egg farmers lowered the
price of their eggs. But only a few paisa.

The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, “when the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen.”

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers.

The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn’t buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for. Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn’t need eggs for quite a while.

And those chickens kept on laying.

Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn’t sell.

The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price.

And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.

What if everyone only bought Rs 200.00 worth of Petrol each time they pulled to the pump? The dealer’s tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn’t have room for the gas coming from the huge tanks. The tank farms wouldn’t have room for the petrol coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn’t have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the oil fiends.

Just Rs 200.00 each time you buy gas. Don’t fill up the tank of your car. You may have to stop for gas twice a week, but the price should come down.

Think about it.

Also, don’t buy anything else at the fuel station; don’t give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down…”

…just think of this concept for a while.

………………please pass this concept around….reaching out to
the masses …the world …..

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you “look ahead,” before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Bloggers! Snapshot features, installation & wordpress plugin can be found here. Snapshot plugins are also available for other blogging platforms like blogger- install instructions available when you signup with snapshot here.

See for yourself, when you move your mouse over the ‘call-out’ icon next to a hyperlink, you will get snap window displaying image of target page.

Snap-demo

All Hoaxes Busted!

Monday, June 30th, 2008

I am soooo happyyyy to receive this email, looks like I am going to become richie-rich. But wait, let me consult with my old friend. Aaahh rgh, another hoax! Now you might have received many many millions emails like this. Someone, of course you don’t know, informs about a secret. That he has found treasure, often in form of bank accounts whose owner is deceased. Now you can get a commission if you help him to transfer monies. But alas! There is no free-lunch. It turns out to be hoax- someone out there sitting behind lappie trying hard to fool you into a scam. But do not worry, firstly- you should always ’shit-delete’ such “too good to be true” offers. But in case you can’t stop yourself believing such thing, at least check internet. www.hoax-slayer.com is excellent resources to verify all such dream offers.

Hoax-slayer, is operating since 2003 with mission to help make the Internet a safer, more pleasant and more productive environment by:
o Debunking email hoaxes
o Thwarting Internet scammers
o Combating spam
o Educating web users about email and Internet security issues.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: KB Audit
Date: Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 7:15 AM
Subject: Business Proposal From KB Audit
To: undisclosed-recipients

KB AUDIT.
Head Office: 20, Palace Road.

Good Day,

I am an external auditor for a Suisse Bank, working as part of a
bigger team that covers the entire sub-euro region. I had taken
pains to find your contact through personal endeavours.

On routine audit check last month, I discovered some investment accounts
that had been dormant for the last 14 years. All the accounts belong to a
single holder (deceased) with monies totalling 21 Million United States
Dollars plus interest. Banking regulation/legislation in Switzerland
demand that I notify the fiscal authorities after a statutory time period
of twelve years when dormant accounts of this type are called in by the
monetary regulatory bodies.

The above set of facts underscores my reason of writing and making the
following proposing. My investigation of the said account reveals that the
death occurred in 1994 the exact time the account was last operated. I can
confirm with certainty that the said investor died interstate and no
next–of–kin to his estate has been found or has come forward all these
years. I am of the settled conviction that using my insider leverage; with
I working with you can secure the funds in the account for us instead of
allowing it pass as unclaimed funds into the coffers of the Government of
Switzerland. This is especially possible as you share same details as the
said investor. This exactly is why I crave your participation and
co-operation. I have seized all relevant documents (legal and Banking)
that will facilitate our putting you forward as the claimant and
beneficiary of the funds and ultimately transfer the money to any account
nominated by you. Of course you shall be handsomely rewarded for your part
in this transaction as I am prepared to share the deposit with you in
halves of the total funds for your efforts, less expenses. I shall however
leave out the finer details of this transaction till I receive an
affirmation of your desire to participate. Be assured that my colleagues
and I are on top of the situation all the time and there will be no risk
whatsoever if you agree to come on board.

Needless to say, UTMOST CONFIDENTIALITY is of vital importance if we are
to successfully reap the immense benefits of this transaction. To maintain
the level of security required to see this transaction come to a
successful conclusion, I have intentionally left out the details. To
affirm your willingness and cooperation to my proposal please reply to
this email:   kbaudit01@voila.fr  stating your Full Names, Date of Birth,
Telephone Number, Fax Number, company/position held, Email address,
Contact address and Postal address.

I await your response.

Thank you,
KB Audit

NB:
If you are interested please kindly reply to my alternative email
addresses: kbaudit01@voila.fr
———- end of message ———-

SlideShare- YouTube of PowerPoint Presentations

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

SlideShare is REALLY USEFUL. You can use it to:

- view & download presentations on virtually any topic under the sun
- upload your own presentations (ppt, pdf, odp, pps formats) and share with a global audience
- embed presentations into blogs, websites, wikis etc
- create an audio presentation using our free slidecasting tool
- use our event functionality to send conference invites, archive slide decks, publicise your event etc
- use our privacy feature to share presentations privately with business clients, colleagues, family members
- participate or vote in our annual ‘World’s Best Presentations Contest’

Millions of people use SlideShare every day to make personal/professional contacts, generate business leads, archive conference slides, distribute academic lessons/assigments, share personal photos, conduct remote online meeting (using Skype, GTalk, Yahoo Messenger) etc.

Check out this one-minute quick tour to learn how SlideShare can help you. Or subscribe to our blog’s RSS feed to keep track of the latest (new features, tips on presentation design from world famous experts, important announcements etc.)

If you are a developer and want to build cool mashups & widgets using our free APIs, visit the developers/API section.

Checkout my small presentation on Slideshare. It just takes you minutes to create your account.

http://www.slideshare.net/rohitagrawal/microsoft-office-powerpoint-annotations

DashBlog :: Firefox Add-ons

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Dash Blog- About.

Ever write blog on Wordpress, Twitter, Blogger or Tumblr? Well, I do maintain one using Wordpress & that is this site you are reading. Yes, RohitBlog.com.

I discovered a very convenient way of posting interesting Videos, Images, Screen prints directly to your Blog. It’s a Firefox add on “DashBlog“. However, when I tried posting this post with DashBlog, the image didn’t upload successfully. But anyway, see if it works for you.

Send Voice Message to USA Mobile

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

Want to leave a message to someone in USA? All you need to do is type your message & this Service will make call to its destimation number & read out (computer voice).

 http://www.bored.com/dialpeople/