Stop the Yahoo Messenger Spam!

If you too use Yahoo! Messenger like me, you've probably received an awful lot of IM spam from random people on yahoo messenger. Turns out, I'm not the only one. A lot of other people are having the same problem. Why is the Yahoo network so prone to random messages from spammers? Probably because the spammer doesn't have to be on your contact list in order to spam you, any random person can send you a message without your approval. And although this feature might be a pain in the neck, it's not hard to use it to your advantage. Here's how.

The solution to the problem is simply allowing only the people you know to reach you. Sadly, its a feature that only Yahoo Messenger (for now anyway) has because the Yahoo network (well AIM and other networks also have this feature, but Yahoo's the only one that seems to suffering the fury of the spammers right now) allows anyone to communicate with everyone on the network. So once a spammer has your Yahoo address, this is pretty much your only option.

How to ignore people you don't know in Yahoo Messenger

1. Click on Messenger after you open Yahoo Messenger
2. Click on Preferences
3. Click on Ignore List in the left column (this is the Privacy tab if you're using Yahoo Messenger on a Mac)
4. Then select the option 'Ignore Anyone who is not on my messaging list'
   
5. Click OK
   

The only downside here is that you have to add people to your contact list, and approve them before you can chat with them. But that's a small price to pay for being spam free.

How to use Hotmail with Apple Mail

Update: If you're using HTTPMail with Leopard 10.5.6 - You'll have to upgrade to HTTPMail 1.53 for it to work! Click here to download HTTPMail 1.53. No wonder, my hotmail stopped working on Apple Mail after I upgraded to 10.5.6 =( ... But its all fixed now... =)

I absolutely love Apple Mail because of its simplicity and to an extent it's robustness (the To-Dos and Notes) and use it all the time when possible. I find that Entourage is a bit too bloated, and the same goes for Thunderbird. Plus, other applications don't have iCal integration, which is another application I have come to love. However, one big problem is that by default Apple Mail does not support Http accounts, so it's impossible to use mail if you use Hotmail or MSN (now apparently called Windows Live Mail). The solution was created by Daniel Parnell fit the bill. It's called HTTPMail. You can find it over at the Automagic Software downloads page.

Once you download and install the plugin, you should be good to go. Simple enough? Not really, it's Microsoft stuff, and as I've come to find out, Microsoft stuff isn't exactly simple. Yet. When I tried to send an e-mail through my Hotmail account in Leopard, I got an " *** -[NSURL initWithString:relativeToURL:]: nil string parameter" error. But, using Microsoft software for so long has taught me something - never give up. So I set out to find a solution, and finally after a couple of minutes of thinking I figured, it must be the URL, since the error had URL in it. Turns out, that you need to use some other URL to send the mail. The steps I took to solve the problem were as follows:

How to stop *** -[NSURL initWithString:relativeToURL:]: nil string parameter error

1. Open Mail
2. Click on Mail (in the menubar) > Preferences. Alternatively, you can press Cmd + , to open the preferences dialog
3. Click on Accounts and select your Hotmail Account
   
4. Where it says Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) click on the drop down menu. Then click Edit Server List...
5. Create a new entry as shown in the picture below. Make sure to use the server name oe.msn.msnmail.hotmail.com

1. Switch to the Advanced tab for a sec and make sure it says port 25
2. Then Click on OK
3. I recommend you check the box that says Use only this server under the Outgoing Mail Server drop down Box
4. Close the preferences dialog box. If you asks you if you want to save your settings, make sure you say save
5. Send your Mail (I'm guessing you already have mail in your outbox, or else you wouldn't know about the error) through the Hotmail (or whatever description you put in) server you just created.

Hopefully, you'll now be able to send your e-mails through Apple Mail. Now you'll be able to send and receive e-mails through your Hotmail account without having to use the inelegant web-mail interface.

Fullscreen in Firefox on Mac OS X

Update: Finally, Firefox 3.6 (and onwards hopefully!) support fullscreen. Just Press the Command key + Shift key + F, or go to View > Full screen. Nevertheless, the method below might still be useful if you want to make the Firefox window a particular size, say 1024*768 or something like that for testing purposes.

_______________________

Mac: Hi, I'm a Mac. I look cool and interesting.
PC: And I'm a PC. I look ugly and boring.
Mac: Dude. You're so boring.
PC: I sure am.
Mac: I rock.
PC: Ya sure do.

- Some Apple commercial where Apple makes fun of "personal computers".

Yup. The Apple commercials sure are right. There is huge different between the Mac and PC lifestyles. I've been a switcher recently. And one big problem that I ran into recently is that a lot of things on the PC side aren't quite available to the Mac users.

Usually, when I'm on the PC, I hit F11 and Firefox goes into full screen mode. However, when I'm on Tiger or Leopard for that matter, hitting F11 will only show you your desktop. You can change that however through system preferences, but there's no way of going fullscreen on a mac :(. For other cocoa applications, Ian Henderson created a really lightweight and useful app/plug-in called megazoomer, but Firefox isn't exactly a cocoa application.

So, after searching the inter web for a while, I came across this lifehacker post. I then searched a bit more to find out what you can do with javascript and a bookmarklet. Turns out, you can do a lot.

To be honest, it's not possible to maximize a firefox window completely on a mac. However, it is possible to maximize the window to fit in the whole screen. To do this just follow these steps:

1. Create a new bookmark by right clicking on the bookmark toolbar. If you don't see the bookmark toolbar just go to View > Toolbars > check Bookmark toolbar.
2. Give the bookmark a name like Fullscreen (something that you can remember) and then paste the code below in the Location box. Make sure you paste all the code in 1 line only though, or else it won't work.

javascript:self.moveTo(0,0); self.resizeTo(screen.availWidth,screen.availHeight);


3. Click OK, and then just click on the Fullscreen button to maximize Firefox.

Then once you click on the Fullscreen Button, Firefox should then take up all the space that OS X allows an application to take up, depending on the size and position of your dock. Sometimes, when I'm viewing pictures, I like to minimize the dock by pressing Cmd + Option + D and this will allow Firefox to take up more space.

Do let me know if you find other ways of going Fullscreen in Firefox or any other Mac app for that matter.

How to export Firefox Bookmarks to Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us! Ever heard of it? If your answer is no, then I highly recommend to take a look at del.ico.us. It's a really cool website where you can store your bookmarks online, and then access it from anywhere. But the best part is that you can tag them and make them public so the rest of the world can see what you're really into.

This post is all about how to export Firefox bookmarks into delicious, so that you can access them from anywhere. And if you're anything like me then you probably have a lot of bookmarks in Firefox, so you might want to back them up first.

The easiest way is to use the del.icio.us plugin. Once you install it just go to del.icio.us in the menubar > del.icio.us website > import bookmarks. You will have to be logged in to do this step.


If you don't wan to use he plug-in it is possible to upload the bookmarks that you have in Firefox manually as well.

Once you are done backing up your Firefox bookmarks, you are ready to export them into a HTML file. To do so

1. Click on Bookmarks in the menubar
2. Click on Organize Bookmarks
3. Click on File and then on Export

Then a window should pop-up prompting you to choose a file name. Just choose a file name and remember where you saved it.

Log into your del.icio.us account and click on settings in the upper right hand corner of the window. Then click on import / upload.

Here, browse for the HTML file that you just created, and then choose your desired settings. Once you click on the import now button, delicious will automatically start importing all the bookmarks. Once its done, all you're bookmarks will be stored on delicious forever, and you can access it from anywhere.

Back up Firefox and Internet Explorer bookmarks and settings

The highly digital lifestyle that we live in today requires us to constantly back-up, update and maintain our computers. One of the most important applications that we use today is a web browser. And backing up the data in it is just as essential as backing up the files in your computer. It's impossible to know when disaster is going to strike and the next crash is going to happen.

Here are a couple of ways you can back up your web browser of choice.

How to back-up Firefox bookmarks, profiles, extensions etc.

If you use Firefox as your main browser, and I highly recommend that you do, and you're on Windows, the tool you'll most likely want to use is called MozBackup. It's a nifty little tool that backs up all your settings, profiles, history and bookmarks. It even allows you to back up your cache and cookies. Very handy if you ask me. You can download it here.

If you're on a mac, you're kinda going to have to do a bit more work. First, you're going to want to download the firefox environment backup extension. Then you can save your bookmarks, if you still have it on your browser, by going to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > File > Export. Then save the file to a safe location. Exporting it to Del.icio.us would be a wise decision.

How to back-up Internet Explorer bookmarks, settings and history

If you use Internet Explorer, then I highly recommend you switch to Firefox. It's better, trust me. And its most likely going to save you a lot of grief and trouble. However, if you are looking for an application to back up Internet Explorer, then I recommend Internet Explorer Backup. It's going to do the job for you without the hassle. If you do decide to switch to Firefox, it will automatically import all your Internet Explorer bookmarks and settings, and then you can back those setting up through the applications listed above.

Firefox Version 2.0.0.11?

Am I the only one noticing the fact that Firefox version 2.0.0.10 was just released a couple of days ago? Or is every Firefox lover out there wondering if the Mozilla team screwed up something, or is just working overtime. Now, first off, I must mention that I am a Firefox lover. I absolutely can't do without the really cool add-ons and features this amazing browser has. But why would someone release updates so quick? My first thought was that it was some kind of wierd virus/malware thing. However, Macs don't have viruses! Silly Me.

After thinking for a while, I've came to the conclusion that it was probably for a couple of reasons why the back-to-back updates were released.

• Some one in the Mozilla Team screwed up some code so they had to fix it
• A really really big security bug was discovered
• They wanted to introduced some new features (I didn't see anything new though)
• The FireFox team was bored to death and decided to release something new
• Some one noticed a bug in FireFox

Turns out, they did make firefox more stable. And although previous versions of Firefox used to crash on Leopard (Mac OS X.5) they don't anymore. Now I can get back to using the recipe editor on Tech-Recipes, hopefully. If you're want to know more about the recent update... you can mosey on over to C-Net, and they'll update you on it.
So now, rest assured, no one else needs to worry about the quick release of updates. I hereby confirm that Firefox is still the browser that you should use the most. Why? Because it is updated frequently, has great features and is still the fastest of the bunch. At least, I find it to be fastest.

Make VoIP phone calls for free

Voice over Internet Protocol is a technology that I find to be still in a stage of infancy. Nevertheless, this doesn't mean that we cannot take advantage of the benefits it provides us with. One of the most prominent benifits of VoIP is that it's cheaper than traditional phones, especially international calls, because essentially one simply uses the internet to call other people. However, although it might be cheap to call through VoIP, it almost always isn't free. Here are a couple of websites/applications that offer free VoIP services.

1. Gizmo Project - The guys over at Gizmo Project seem to offer a great deal for people who wish to try out VoIP, and allow you to call about 60 countries for free. Of course, they only give you about 40 minutes of time to take, and I presume that the actual time they give you is going to be a lot less but it is free if you wish to give it a go. I'm guessing the business model here is to get people to try it out, and then when they like it, charge them for their premium services.
   
2. Jajah - This is a pretty cool website where you type in your phone number, and then you type in your friend's phone number and the websites enables you to talk to your friend/who ever you want to talk to for free. You might want to take a look at the rates list to verify if the call is free or not.
   
3. Jaxtr - Works just like Jahjah. It connects you to the person that you want to talk to throught the web. Jaxtr also has a web widget which you can use to talk to other people
   
4. Jangl - Works just like Jahjah and Jaxtr, but it's more private and you first have to provide Jangl an email address of the person you wish to reach instead of a phone number. Jangl will then let you send them a voice mail, and if the person accepts it, it'll give that person a local number and send you a local number. You can then use that number to talk to each other.
5. The Pudding - Although this service is in beta and only open to beta testers, it allows you to talk to anyone in the US, completely free. The way they plan to make money is by showing relevant advertisements to you using speech recognition technology. I'm not sure if this would be a successful start up or not, but it will definitely be interesting to use this service.
   

So there you have it. 5 great ways to talk to most people around the world, totally for free! If you know any other services like this, do let me know.

Excellent Blogging Tips from the Doc

Cory Doctorow from boingboing shares some of his thoughts on how to blog better to Thomas Crampton in this extremely cool video for anyone who wants to get into blogging.



Here's what I got from the video. It's pretty much the last part of the video but I'd like to summarize anyway, so that may be I'll remember it better.

1. Have descriptive headlines and at the same time make them interesting (although it needs to be informative, I take it that it doesn't always have to be dull and would much rather prefer writing a headline that has Oomph. Like "The B@sturds of Sep 11" instead of "Sep 11" or simply "Basturds")
   
2. Simplify the reading process for the reader - state what the article is about in the first paragraph, so that the reader can skip it.
   
3. Every post should be only 1 page instead of a bazillion pages
4. Respect the reader, and don't bombard them with ads and extra other unnecessary info
5. Don't sell yourself and be honest

After listening to Cory, I feel as though I should remove the read more link on the homepage of the blog.

The main reason I have a read more link is so that the home page and the archive pages load up quick, and people (especially those with dial-up) can only read more if they are interested in the post. But I guess I might have to switch the template to display full posts on every page instead of just the excerpts if a lot of people start complaining.

Crayon Physics - I love this game!

I absolutely love the idea behind creating a game that actually has real-life physics involved. Love the music too. Check it out (you'll need a Windows PC though, but it works with a mouse too – oncehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif you get the hang of it at least) at Kloonigames.

Wait what? Why do I see ads on Beyond Teck?

Do you see ads on Beyond Teck? Yeah, I see them too.. because I put them there. Why? Because I felt like it!

Okay, not really. There are ads placed on the blog for a reason. A really big reason. The truth is that I'm trying to experiment and find out more about human psychology. Yeah, you read that stuff right. I'm currently performing an experiment on online advertising.

Why do an experiment on online advertising out of all other things I could be studying?

Google, the search engine giant, makes billions of dollars every year. Why? Because of Adsense. Surely, there must be a reason why online advertising is so successful. And there must also be a reason why some people can make a living off of advertising on the internet.

So, I decided to find out more about why people click, when do they click and if they will ever stop clicking in the future. This will give me an idea on why the internet as a whose is so successful, which I can then write a meaningful post (or perhaps even a e-book or something) on.

My plan is to do a qualitative and a quantitative analysis on why these ads really work. In order to accomplish this, I've volunteered my own blog to be the guinea pig. Over the course of the next few months, I plan to collect important data such as:

• What kind of a internet user clicks on the ads. these will be judged according to the target audience that will come to read a post and click on an ad - I'll be keeping an eye out for stuff like age, OS of choice, things they like and dislike and so on.
• What colours and tricks attract the users the most. Again, the kind of user will still be kept in mind while doing the quantative analysis.
• What tricks cause the most clicks. Stuff like blinking/fading backgrounds behind the ads, size of the ad and the colour of the URL in an adsense text ad etc.
• When do users click. This analysis is going to answer questions like -Sometimes, a user might be in desperate search for information, so is a user more likely to click on ads?

So as you can see, there are a lot of things that one can find out simply by looking at stats from Google analytics and running Adsense. Hopefully I have enough time to do these experiments though.

Okay, I've explained my reason why I chose to put ads on the site (yes this is a reason and not an excuse). Now it's your turn. Tell me what you think about adsense, online advertising etc.

Windows Vista Product RED free downloads

It's interesting to see that Windows + Dell actually would pay $50 to needy people if you'd spend an extra $150 to buy Windows Ultimate, which pretty much has the same amount of "cool new features" with this new thing called Vista Product (RED). I mean, if you really want to help out, wouldn't you rather just get the normal "Vista Premium" operating system and then just pay the $50 or even $100 (since you'll be saving $150) on your own for the same cause?

By this interesting marketing ploy it seems that the two big companies are actually trying to leverage their profits more than they are trying to help people out. Nonetheless, I think that those who willingly pay their money to such causes, without buying the operating system, especially if they already have a Vista computer, should be entitled to receive the same kinda "cool stuff" to spread the message around. I mean, I'm a big believer in viral marketing/word of mouth and if one person supports something, its quite natural for their friends to also support the same thing. So in a way, having the Product (RED) wallpapers/screensavers around remind you of the bigger problems that need some attention apart from the infinitesimally little problems that you might be experiencing. So, I'm putting some links to the downloads on this blog. Even if you can't pay with money, please keep in mind that you can still help a person out by doing many other things (that are indeed harder to do that just give money) such as volunteering in a soup kitchen and so on.

Windows Vista Product (RED) Wallpapers

You can download Vista Product (RED) the wallpapers from this page.

Windows Vista Product (RED) Screensavers

You can download the Vista Product (RED) screensavers from this page.

Windows Vista Product (RED) DreamScene Content

Please keep in mind that in order to run the DreamScene content on your desktop, you will need DreamScene. And therefore, you'll also need Windows Vista Ultimate. Although you can read my guide here on how to get DreamScene on any Windows Vista computer. But nonetheless, you can still play the .wmv file in your Windows Media player. You can find the Vista Product (RED) dreamscene content on this page.

Windows Vista Product (RED) Sidebar Gadgets

You can download the Vista Product (RED) Sidebar Gadgets on this page.

Again, please, if you do download any of this content, remember the people that need your help and act accordingly.

Adobe CS3 screensaver for Mac and Windows Download

Ever wanted to know how Steve Jobs felt like when he was on acid? Well, now you can! It's called the Adobe CS3 Screensaver. I call it virtual LSD. No kidding.

Okay, fine, I admit that the screensaver really does look good and I'm sure you'll agree too. It might be a bit abstract for some peoples' tastes, but I seem to like it anyway. You might want to keep in mind that if you computer is slow, it might not run the screensaver as well as a fast computer would. Also, you'll be needing QuickTime (yikes!) to run the screensaver. Quite memory intensive indeed.

So without further ado, here are the download links to the Adobe CS3 wallpaper.

Download the CS3 screensaver for Windows (about 10.1 MB)

Download the CS3 screensaver for the Mac (about 10.6 MB)

Oh and by the way if you are on Windows (if you are on a mac, you most likely won't have to worry about this) and want to use the screensaver, you'll have to first ensure that QuickTime can play flash tracks. Here's how to do that:

1. Click the Start button > QuickTime > QuickTime Player > Edit > Preferences > QuickTime Preferences...
2. Once in the preferences window, go to the 'Advanced' tab
3. Check the box that says 'Enable playback of Adobe Flash tracks'

Now, a couple screenshots to show you what virtual acid looks like (you can click on them to see the bigger version if you wish) :

Get free MSN messenger Emoticon Smiley Packs

If you tend to use Windows Live Messenger (you might also refer to this by the name MSN messenger, or simply call it MSN), then I'm sure you'd love to add more emoticons to your collection (Psst.. if you don't already have a emoticon collection you can steal emoticons from others when they use custom emoticons). I believe these emoticons used to be paid, but then Microsoft realized that no one was buying them, and finally decided to make them free.

Getting the emoticons itself is pretty straight forward. All you need to do is head over to Free Messenger Emoticons site (notice how the url is .ca - this is because most of the people who use MSN/Live Messenger are Canadian, I think. I'm pretty sure everyone uses AIM in the states). Of course, you need to have the latest version of Windows Live Messenger installed in order to use the emoticons, so if you don't already have it installed then you can download it here. There is also another free way of getting free emoticon packs along with lots of other cool downloads for Windows Live Messengers, which you can find at Kiwee.com. All you need to is go to the emoticon section and download whatever you want!

Once you go to the website, all you need to do is click on the 'Install 30 Messenger Emoticons' button and then download the Emoticons.exe file onto your computer. Once downloaded, simply follow the prompts on the screen to finish installing the smileys.
One word of caution though. As you go through the install process, in the 3rd step, the installer is going to ask you if you want to change your homepage etc. If you don't want to change your homepage, then make sure to uncheck the check boxes.
After you are done installing the smiley pack, you can then use the free smiley pack through the Windows Live Messenger conversation window. Make sure you click on the 'Show all...' link though.
Don't forget, you can also get other smileys from your friends, when your friends use custom emoticons.

How to find out if someone is stealing your content

Have you ever wondered if someone is stealing all your posts and other content that you've published on the internet? Well, this post is all about finding out if someone is copying and pasting your content word for word. Plagiarism is not a great thing for your website because you might be loosing a lot of visitors and or revenue when someone else who has a higher pagerank/gets more visitors steals your content and posts it on their website. Even worse, someone else might be making money from the content that you worked hard to write and publish.

Here are a couple of tips on how to find the content stealing culprits!

Use Copyscape. Copyscape is a great little tool that auto-magically searches for content similiar to that of your website on other websites. All you need to do is mention the url of the website, after which copyscape will search the web for similar articles.

The only downside to this method is that if someone has rephrased some of the words in the article, copyscape might not be able to find it (you'll have to use the google method mentioned below). Another thing is that the free version will only show you a couple of websites that have plagarized content from your website, and not all the websites on the internet that have copied your content.Use Google. Yup, that's right, this wonderful search engine can also be utilized to search for copies of your posts. Here's how you can find out if someone else has similar posts. Take one of your post titles, or key sentences in posts that you might think are plagiarized and search for them on google. The trick here is to enclose the title or key phrases in quotations, so Google will only show those phrases and not phrases/titles related to the query. Here's an example:

Yes, in case you are wondering... that website pictured in the screenshot above stole my post =( !

Use digg.com/slashdot.com/shoutwire.com search. You'll be surprised how many websites out there copy your posts, submit it to digg, and get more visitors than you do. Many people have websites for the only one reason - making money. If a website gets dugg, it usually gets lot of visitors.

Even if it doesn't make it to the homepage of digg, there is a good chance that when someone searches for that particular phrase, they land up on the digg.com submission page and eventually visit the website (that stole your content) to see what the post is about. So, all you need to do is search for your title on digg, and if you find a website that has copied your post... bingo! You've found the content thief!

Check your web-analytics logs. Often you might have put a link to a post in your own website in one of your posts. Many you simply copy and paste also copy all the links in that post. This means that when a user clicks on one of your links, they'll be coming to your website. Most of the time all web statistic softwares will record this incoming link, and add the incoming entries to your log. So once in a while, simply browse through your logs and check for any websites that might have reposted your content.

If you use wordpress or any other CMS software, check any trackbacks, or incoming links that might help you find the website that is stealing your posts.

I'm sure, if you use these tips, it should be enough to catch anyone who is stealing your content and republishing it on their website. Once you've found out who is stealing your content... dealing with them is another long story, which I'll try to cover in some other post.

Firefox Tip: Navigate through Firefox Tabs Faster

Ever wanted to be able to cycle through your tabs really quickly instead of using your mouse? Well, guess what! You can! All you need to do is use these keyboard shortcuts in order to go to the tab you want. No Firefox extensions needed!

Just press Ctrl and 1 (the number 1 key) together to go to the first tab. Press Ctrl + 2 to go to the second tab and so on. Of course, if you're on a Mac, its Cmd + 1 and so on.

It's that simple!

How to find out if a .exe process is spyware or virus

Windows XP has thousands and thousands of .exe files, and usually a lot of those executables are running at any given time. But are all of those .exe files legit or are they spyware/malware/viruses that are bad for your computer... I recommend you follow these instructions

First get the usual spyware finding stuff (if you don't have it already - DOWNLOAD IT!) like:

1. Spybot Search and Destroy
2. AdAware (the free version works fine...)
   
3. Windows Defender

Any one or more (more = better) of the programs listed below should be downloaded and run in order to search for any viruses. If the programs above find something then bingo! You've found the culprit! If not you'll have to do more digging....

Download Process Explorer from Microsoft's website and unzip the stuff and open up procexp.exe. There look for the .EXE file that you had your doubts about and click on the entry corresponding that bears the name of the executable. If you don't know what that entry means just right click on it and click on 'Search Online...'

Now it's time time to see if there are any suspicious DLLs associated with it. So just press Ctrl+L and then Ctrl + D to take a look at all the DLLs that don't have 'Microsoft Corporation' under the company name. If you aren't sure about the DLL then you'll have to search for it online and see what you get.

You'll also want to double click on the process, go to the 'Performance Graph tab' and see how much memory it takes up. It its taking too much memory or hogging up all the resources in your computer, then its probably a virus and should be dealt with accordingly.

If it doesn't show any of the symptoms mentioned above then it's probably supposed to be there, so just let it be there. Remember to run AntiVirus and spyware checks all the time though, because only those checks will tell you if something is bad or not.

Another tip that I can offer is to use your AntiVirus scanner to scan the specific .exe file you are suspicious about. To figure out where the .exe file is stored on your computer - double click the process in Process Explorer > Under the 'Image' tab you should see the 'Path:' box which is going to tell you where the .exe file is stored. Just point your AntiVirus to that location so that it can figure out if the file is a virus or not.

If you find anything suspicious using the methods above (yes, using the methods above is a requirement) then please post about it in the comments. If you need help in figuring out if a process is malicious, feel free to email me, and I'll try to help.

Follow cricket scores online for free

Here's a tip for all my brown buddies out there with a slower internet connection. It's not as exiting as watching free cricket online, but its just as good to be able to follow the scores online.


It's pretty simple actually. Whenever a cricket game is going on, all you need to do is head on over to http://www.cricinfo.com/ and then just click the live scorecard link under the title of the game.

TipIf you want to a quick way to find out scores, just type cricket [name of the team] into Google. Of course, you'll have to replace '[name of team]' with the name of the team you want to follow. Example: cricket India. This will show you the score of the latest game india played.

For every live game that's going, it's going to show a link where you can access the live scorecard. Simply click on that link and the scorecard should open up.

By default it just shows a basic scorecard. I on the other hand prefer the full score card, so too might want to click on the full scorecard link in order to see the full scorecard. All scorecards refresh automatically, so there is not need to keep clicking refresh, unless you have ADHD or something.

And there you have it. - instant updatification. If you have high speed internet though, you might want to watch the game online, instead of just staring at the scores.

How to watch cricket online for free

I have a confession to make - I'm addicted to cricket. I pretty much can't live without watching cricket matches (especially if India and/or Pakistan is playing). So if you are wondering how you can watch cricket online for free, here's how you can watch LIVE online cricket. All you need is a passion for cricket, a internet connection (hi-speed preferably) and of course a computer that can handle live streaming video. (Note: If you don't have a high speed connection or a powerful connection - you might want to just stick to watching cricket scores online.. which is almost as exiting...)

Step 1

Download SopCast from SopCast.org. You'll most likely need this because it is necessary for most live broadcasting stuff. It works in the P2P style of bittorrent, so as you're downloading, you're also sharing it to others.
Step 2

Open IE (yes you'll need IE for getting some Active X controls) and go to a website that has sopcast embedded players in it. Here are some of them if you don't know any already:

• http://sayan.freehostia.com/cricket.html (the last video player should be the Twenty20 live broadcast) - This is the website I'll be giving instructions for.
  
• http://muftavideos.com (this site might go down quickly and registration might be needed)

Step 3

Click on the Yellow bar on the top to install the ActiveX control. You might have to click on the Play button (shown below) in order for the yellow ActiveX bar to come up. Once the pop up box comes up, click Install.
Step 4

Once the ActiveX control is installed, the video players on the website should automatically start. If not, just scroll down to one of the players (if you're looking to watch Twenty20 cricket its the last one - normal 4:3 ratio OR first one -widescreen).

Then simply just click on the play button and wait till it loads. Once it loads you can also right click on the player Zoom > Full Screen, if you want to enjoy your game full screen. The quality won't be excellent but it'll be quite good.

Step 5

Cheer for your team, and have fun. Yes, this step is the most important one, so make sure you follow this step =) !

Now all you can do is hope your team wins, and hope that you don't punch the monitor if they don't.

Enjoy! And if you find any other websites where you can watch live cricket, just e-mail me (the link's at the top of the sidebar) or leave a comment!

An update to Adobe Shockwave Player is available?

Ok, seriously, I thought Adobe was the creator of Photoshop right? Then what's up with the ugly "update your shockwave player" screens? Seriously though, at first I was reluctant to even click on the install button fearing that it was some kind of evil malicious spyware thing that might infect my already pre-infected Windows machine.

Anyway, I just went ahead and clicked on the install link anyway, and turns out it is the real deal, no spyware here. Still, I think adobe should update their ways of updating, and stop scaring people like this with ugly screens.

Oh and if anyone is wondering about the install.. it goes something like this:

1. Internet Explorer asks you if you want to install an ActiveX control. I click install...
2. Then it asks you for which language you want.. I choose English US..
3. Then it asks if I want to install google reader.. I say what the flip, is evil google really trying to take over the world, and I uncheck the box and move on..
4. Then it says RESTART YOUR COMPUTER? What?

Ok, wait, so I'm supposed to restart my computer to finish installation of a think called shockwave player? Why? This doesn't even make any sense. Oh well, I guess its no use about talking to big giants like Google and Adobe, they never seem to listen.

5 ways to speed up and improve your wireless network for free

First off I need to mention that I live in an apartment complex, and getting wireless to work properly is extremely hard, and I guess I can say that I've learnt a lot form tweaking it so much. Recently I read a similar article on Microsoft's website, but most of the stuff in there is impractical. All they seem to say is upgrade all your devices and buy more stuff.

So here are 5 tips that are guaranteed to make your wireless connection work better for free. These "tweaks" can be performed in most settings and it shouldn't be a much of a problem to implement in your home or even office network. Make sure you secure your wireless network too though.

1. Find the right channel for your router. First make sure that you don't have any cordless phone in your own house that might be causing interference. If you find that your wireless connection gets weaker whenever you get a call, try changing the channel on your cordless phone. Then download net stumbler on one of your computers with a wireless card (it should work with most cards). Open it and check what channel other people are broadcasting on. People will usually be using either channel 1, 6 or 11, so try to stay away from these channels, but you never know. Then change your router's channel to some other channel no one else is using. You'll need to know how to work with the router configuration page to do this.Keep in mind though that other people might have cordless phones running on the same channel which might interfere with the your signal, so you'll have to use the trial and error method to find the perfect channel.
2. Switch to OpenDNS. Although this tip is more of a improve your "Internet speed" tip, its still good for getting better speeds through your wireless network. And since most people use their wireless network for Internet, I recommend replacing your ISP's dns service with OpenDNS. Instructions on how to configure your router to use OpenDNS can be found on their website. Basically its just copying and pasting a couple of IP addresses, so I won't mention how to do that here.
3. Move your router. Yes, although this is pretty self explanatory, most people ignore this tip. Try to move your router to a central location in your home. Although this might be kind of hard, since you're bound by the location of your high speed modem, phone line or even your cable line, its not always impossible. You don't have to move the router from one room to another, just moving it from one side to another side of the room should suffice. All you need to do is get 2 long pieces of Ethernet cable, it doesn't matter which kind since most routers have "wire management" so it'll accept any kind of cat-5 crossover, rollover or straight through cable and use that instead of short cables. This will enable you to move your router so that it is a bit more closer to the center of your home or closer to your laptop if you only use a laptop.
4. Change your wireless card settings. Most wireless cards are configured to the default settings of using wireless QoS and so on, so you'll want to tweak it to make it interface faster with the network. To start tweaking first press the Windows + Pause Break key if you are on Windows > Go to the hard ware tab > Click on Device Manager > Under Network Adaptors double click on your wireless and go to the Advanced tab. Here's what you can tweak on most cards:
   • Mixed more protection - Use CTS-to-self. This will make the speed faster since you are in a small home network
   • Power Management - Use the highest value, because this will make your card work faster. You might want to choose a medium or low setting if you want extended battery life though.
   • Roaming Aggressiveness - Use either the medium or lowest value in a home setting, so that your card won't keep searching for new connections, it'll just stay happy with the network in your home and won't connect to your neighbour's network.
   • Throughput Enhancement - Make sure you enable throughput enhancement to have the fastest speeds
   • Transmit Power - Use the highest option to connect to your network properly and get the fastest speeds
5. Update drivers/firmware and maintain your network. Here are a couple of things you should do with your network:
1. Update your drivers for your wireless card (usually found on the manufacturer's website) and the firmware on your router. Go to the manufacturer's website to get the latest firmware. Instructions on updating your firmware can also be found there.
2. Give your network a unique SSID and encrypt it! Why? Because your neighbour might be accidentally using your connection and making it slower, or someone might be using your network to download stuff on the Internet... so it is best to give your network a unique SSID and use at least WPA encryption if WPA2 isn't a choice. More instructions on that coming soon...
3. Make sure to also change the password to the router so that some one else does not modify the setting. I recommend setting a big password so it is impossible to crack.
4. Make sure your laptop and the router are using the 802.11 (wi-fi) G standard. Sometimes, if your laptop is set to use only wi-fi 802.11 B, even though it supports G, your router will only communicate to it using B, and not G which is way faster.

Why does Google AdSense show public service ads?

Ok, so its only been a week so far and I've already had some experience with the way adsense works. Oh, and did I mention, I've discovered several AdSense NO-NOs. Oh and I also figured out when and why google displays public service ads. I figured that Google will usually display public service ads in one of the following scenarios:

1. Your publisher ID is wrong or improper. Or perhaps you did not comply to the google TOS.
   
2. You tried to modify the adsense code and accidently screw it up.
3. Google can't find any ads to match the content in the page.
4. You did not put the code in the template, and put it in a post instead - The thing that you should keep in mind is always have the adsense in your TEMPLATE ONLY. Don't try and put any adsense code into your posts, because it will not work. Instead you'll just get a ugly ad like the one shown below. Why? because once you post the code through most CMS systems the code will not stay in different lines (the linebrakes between the code will be removed), therefore it wont work.
5. Google might have "flagged" your page? (see below for more stuff on why I think that might be the case)
   
6. There was a hardware malfunction that occured at Google HQ.

Recently, I also had a problem on this page, where google kept showing public service ads. I'm not sure if Google has some approving system where someone has to come and approve a "flagged page" or if it was a hardware malfunction that caused public service ads to be displayed, but I'm sure it was one or the other. I'm certain that there were at least some ads that matched with the content. They page appears fine now though. This is how the page used to look before when the public service ads were displayed and had some intentional mistakes in it(I'm sure you'd agree it looked ugly with all that empty space) :

I've also pointed out some "imperfections" in the page when it was published for the first time (of course, they have been corrected now.. I think..). Perhaps that was what caused the page to be "flagged". I'm not sure. I'll be performing a couple of other tests to find out what the cause for public service ads might be.

Stop Internet Explorer from crashing

If you've ever experienced IE crashing.. you know its not a good thing. Here's how you can stop the famous Internet Explorer from crashing over and over..

If you have the latest version of IE and know that you shouldn’t be using IE all the time, please skip to the How to fix Internet Explorer section I apologize for the stuff about Firefox that you might already know…

First off, you really shouldn’t be using Internet Explorer 6 or even 7 a lot. Why you ask? Because it is less secure, slower and outdated, especially if you’re using the older version of Internet Explorer, IE Version 6.

I highly recommend you get Firefox... because its better go check it out!

Use it as your primary browser and only use IE 7 (that’s the latest version) only when needed. However, sometimes you might need to use Internet Explorer for things such as Microsoft Updates.

If you window looks like the picture below. Don’t even bother reading the article… unless you upgrade to Firefox first because it is secure, faster, and better!

Internet Explorer 6 is a really old browser, which was designed many moons ago. This only means that you will leaving your computer wide open so that viruses/spyware/credit card number stealing thieves/bad stuff can come and take advantage of it. If your browser looks like the picture below...

Please go to Microsoft and download Internet Explorer 7. You have no reason not to!

Ok, so once you know you have IE 7, this is what you normally need to do to stop crashes, especially if you get the sysfader.exe error occured problem. You need to have administrator privileges to do this. Or else you’ll not be able to open the Internet Options window.

Step 1
Press the ‘Alt’ key on your keyboard so that you can see the menu bar. Click on 'Tools', then click on ‘Internet Options…’.

Step 2
In the window that pops up, go to the ‘Advanced Tab’. Scroll down to where it says ‘Browsing’.

Step 3
Uncheck the check box beside the phrase that says ‘Enable third-party browser extensions’.


Click on OK and restart Internet Explorer.

This, in most cases this should stop Internet Explorer from crashing due to other extensions you might have installed. If in case you are getting a sysfader.exe error that should stop as well. However, this might not sure all the problems that you have with Internet explorer if other settings (such as cookies) were previously messed around with.

In that case, please try resetting the Internet Explorer settings. Click on Internet Options again (please see step 1 above and follow those steps first before reading more…), then go to the advanced tab again, and this time click on the reset button. Click OK and restart Internet explorer.

TIP If you constantly get sysfader.exe errors with IE, please take a look at the sysfader.exe error page. (link opens in a new window)

Also, please keep in mind that many crashes might also be caused due to malware, spyware, viruses and other bad stuff that can be on your computer. It is highly recommended that you get rid of all malware on your computer that might be causing the crashes. More on that stuff coming soon...