Category: tips

How to know if your email is being spied upon

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who-is-reading-your-email.jpg

Employers all around the world are keeping a closer watch on their employees, whether its sneaking on their web browsing habits or reading their personal and corporate email. While there is little you can know about how they are tracking and using your web browsing habits. Your IT Hub system administrator knows about your browsing habits. He knows how much time you spend on Orkut or Facebook. Perhaps he is the one who told the company about the man hours wasted on Orkut and Facebook, which led to the sites being banned.

There is an easy way to track your email and to see if its being read by someone else. The easiest way is to send an email to yourself with a picture hosted on your server.Include words like secret and classified documents in the email. Dont post actual company secrets. Dont read the email yourself, and see in stats if that particular image was requested. You will also be able to see the IP address of the person reading your email. Doing a WHOIS on it, you will be able to tell whether its someone in the office who is reading your email or whether its a friend who has been able to guess your password. I am saying this from personal experience , guessing passwords isnt so tuff.

Taking care of and cleaning your precious LCD screens

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LCD screens can get dirty easily, but they require extra care when cleaning them, otherwise you can do more harm than good. LCDs are easily damaged by a lot of things and factors. Your notebooks, Ipods, mobiles all have LCD screens. LCD screens do not need anti glare stuff no matter what your PC salesman tells you, so dont get cheated.

LCD Screen Care and Protection

LCD monitors are also very delicate.

Cleaning an LCD screen

Never use alcohol, detergents or even mild soap for an LCD screen. All good LCD screens have outer protective coatings which can get damaged by abrasives, so always use a soft cloth (muslin), never use a scrubber. First switch of the LCD monitor and disconnect the power supply. Now wipe the screen with a cloth and gentle strokes, do not apply pressure or you may damage your screen. In case you see some dirt sticking, put 3 drops of water on the cloth and clean gently. Dont use too much water also.

Pressure on an LCD

Never press on LCDs too hard. Pressing too hard can permanently damage LCD pixels in that area.

Same image for so long, LCD Burnouts

LCD burnouts are another huge problem. Those who use CRTs are not aware that using LCDs can cause burnouts if the same image is displayed for a long time. Like my monitor has a weak imprint of the firefox browser, which basically stays there. That area also has become more prone to future burnouts. I was stupid. One should always use screensavers on LCD monitors, keep the waiting time as 2 minutes only so that screensaver is deployed quickly.

Extreme Temperatures

Never keep your LCD monitors directly in the sun, heat will damage your LCD monitor. Always keep the LCD monitor in a cool and well ventilated area. Also never use the LCD monitor in snow or sub-zero temperatures. It can cause permanent damage to the pixels.

Handle Carefully

Although it may not appear so, LCDs have glass too. Shocks to the screen can cause it to break and render your LCD useless. Sometimes cellphones in pockets get so much pressure that their screen just cracks and you have to get an expensive new screen.

Dont stick stuff to it

This might sound stupid, but NEVER stick post its to your LCD, the glue will damage your LCD monitor. I have seen people doing it.

Keep these things in mind and enjoy your new LCD monitor. Remember LCDs save money compared to CRT monitors and produce lesser heat helping you save on AC bills too.

How to Save Bandwidth while Accessing E-Mail

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This post goes out to all those who have limited bandwidth Internet accounts, and would like to save their limited bandwidths. Even though i dont have a limited bandwidth account, sometimes when i want to check my email fast, i still use Gmail for mobiles or Yahoo WAP to save time.

With some tips and tricks, this is possible on your Personal Computer. Here is a step by step guide telling how to access Yahoo Mail and Gmail through WAP through your computer , in the process saving some very hard earned bandwidth=money and time (also=money).

1. Get Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Firefox will help us open the WML pages.

2. Install the WML Browser Addon (Extension). WML stands for Wireless Markup Language, for your understanding, think of it as HTML for WAP(Mobile) devices.

For Yahoo Mail

Log onto wap.yahoo.co.in (Almost all nationalities’s people will be able to use this, except Japan i think because they have a different username system), Click on mail, and login !!!!

Yahoo WAP Screenshot

Yahoo Mail WAP Screenshot

 

For Gmail Email

Log onto http://m.gmail.com

Gmail mobile screenshot

Enter username and password and you are through !!!

How this would save bandwidth and time

This is very elementary, most cell phone WAP connections these days are low speed and expensive and billed by usage. Hence it makes sense to have only stripped down pages as WAP or WML pages. While a normal page may require a data transfer of 200 kbs, a WAP page would be about 4-5 kbs. a saving of approx 195 kbs. It you visit that page very frequently, it makes even more sense as the savings in bandwidth would be larger.

On a 56 kbps connection, it took me >10 seconds to load yahoo mail beta, Yahoo Mail WAP loaded almost instantly, hence time is saved.

So whats the catch ?

Like all good things in life, this one too has some weakpoints. Most sites wont use SSL for their mobile application pages(but Gmail for mobile does mind you). Also the display is anything but appealing. The website is basically a skeleton but most functionality is still retained.

How to scrap on Orkut using Opera Mini

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Opera mini it seems is everyone’s favourite , why shouldnt it be , the way it renders huge pages into a few kbs is ultracool. So many people had asked me how to scrap in Opera Mini on Orkut , the answer is simple (If you want to see how to login using Opera Mini onto Orkut , see our previous post
1. Just type what all you need to type in the field

2. Then type this javascript: submitForm(document.getElementById(‘b2′),’submit’);

Remove the space between : and s in the above command.

Similarly to know more such tricks , just see the javascript of the action you want to perform on Orkut and then you can use the same javascript URL on your mobile phone browser. This has to be done as Opera mini doesnt support javascript fully till now. Another good news for all you Opera mini fans is that Opera Mini 3 Beta has been released, keep looking at this column for a review !

Domain Name Buying Tips

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We analyse the domains market , and why you should buy your domain ASAP if you have an idea that just might click and some general tips while purchasing domain names.
1. Your dream domain name will be gone – I give my own personal example , i had (have 🙂 ) a pseudoname on the internet , the .com Top Level Domain (TLD) was available for that. I had the cash in paypal for it but was waiting mindlessly for no apparent reason. 5 days later i convince myself to buy that domain name, but to my horror i discover that someone has already booked my domain and parked it. So it makes sense to reserve your domain name.

2. Buy reputed domain names from reputed domain resellers – Dont go to your local market’s domain registrar , they might cheat you by registering the domain in their name and then blackmailing you. Also dont buy a combined package with hostings (Zac from zoomcities had this tip) , as your hosting provider might again blackmail you. Buy from reputed sites like Godaddy and others. I personally use Godaddy only and sure enough this domain is also purchased through them. (No we are not getting paid to write this , just our opinion). You may use any other reputed reseller also. Or maybe wait till we start reselling 😛
3. Choosing the domain name – This is the most crucial element of your purchase , spend a lot of time researching the names that might be appropriate for your buisness. Your domain name should attract customers and should clearly tell your sutomers what your site is all about. If you are already an established company without an online presence , your job is a little easier , most people will assume that your web address must be yourcompanyname.com , hence some traffic will be automatically sent to your website.

4. Multiple Extensions of your domain name – When you start earning big , people will try to take advantage of your name and will try and malign your site. Its the sad truth. So once you start earning a lot , we reccomend you buy other TLDs of your company too. For example if you are an indian company , once you get started , you might consider buying yourcompanyname.in or yourcompanyname.co.in

5. Dont get a pun domain name – Just like a good domain name can take you very far ahead , a bad one can take your buisness down too. Read your domain name aloud , with all the permutations and combinations , it shouldnt sound like something it isnt supposed to sound like.

We hope our writings were beneficial to you.

Credit Card Problem we faced

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This is from one of our readers (didnt know we had any :P)

Anyway , i got a call around 2 years ago from a bank (bank name not listed for privacy concerns) , they told me i had ‘won’ a lucky draw , i would get a free credit card and also a free bag. I never really liked the credit card concept but thought a free one wont hurt. I called them to my home and i signed on the dotted line.

After 5 days i receive the cards , an addon card was also sent w/o my knowledge. it was ok till then , but 2 days later i got a bill for rs.2000 for the cards , horrified i called the bank customer care which was not responsive and i was put on an indefinite hold. then i decided to write an email to my bank. They replied 14 days later promising to look into the matter. I replied ‘i am not going to pay’ and threatened consumer court. Within 1 day they send me a reply with 2 options

1. Cancel the card

2. pay the fee and get 500 reward points

By this time i had realised the direct selling agents were actually frauds so i didnt really want them to have any commission and i decided to cancel the card, tore it diagonally and sent them back to the bank’s office.

Our take is that always take it from written from the Direct Selling Agents who offer you credit cards. Anyone who says you won in a lucky draw is lying, banks dont conduct lucky draws to see who can be their credit card customer for free. Similar things happen in insurance sector also , a story about that too will be published soon.