IT Masala

You must have observed , Printers are becoming too damn cheap (Rs 5,875 or $133 ) for a brand new HP Officejet 4355 All-in-One which has print+scan+fax+copy features..What more you want ? Only thing that the printer sucks is the ink.This seems to be very costly deal when we look at the prices of printer cartridges. Its really not a big deal buying a printer now.Only worry is about the recurring cost of the printer cartridges. But don't worry , it does not mean you cannot print using  the cheap ones.You just have to know a few simple tricks.

My teacher always used to ask me , how to print only what i want in the webpage , otherwise the whole page with all the graphics were being printed and it would be a waste of ink. The first trick is best for people like my teacher who wants a piece of selected text to be printed.

Print only required Text : The best and my favorite way which i tell to everybody is : Select the text you want to print from a page. Goto File click on Print (or press <Ctrl> P) to get the Print dialog box. Choose Selection under Print Range . This will save the ink to a very large extent.

Preview before print : After you click on Print Preview you will get a dialog box, goto the "Page Setup" tab and adjust your page margins to remove unwanted headers and footers and the left and right side in the page .(For example when you are printing a mail , you need to adjust page margins to remove unwanted ads on top,bottom and left and right of the mail ). And also enter the start and end pages in the Print Range boxes so that you print only the pages you want.

Change Print Quality :  To reduce your ink usage - If you printing a normal page for personal use and not worried about colour quality then do this . Select the Printer Properties button and choose Draft mode under Print Quality. Check the Grayscale Printing button. To further reduce the ink usage you might also have option of Fast Draft, Fast Normal, Normal, High, and Picture.Choosing Fast Draft(is my fav option) will save ink to a larger extent.

Shutting Down the Printer :  I see people putting off the main power switch and not use the printer's switch. Due to this type of shutdown the printer heads are not parked properly. This can dry the printer head out or cause it to clog. Always use your printer's own power switch to turn it off.

Cartridge Drying :  If you keep printer cartridges without use for long , it will dry up .So print atleast one page once a week to prevent the cartridge from drying up.

Refill Kits- These seem to save a lot of money, but at a cost ( the print quality may not be satisfactory) !

My friend, who runs a cyber centre uses refill kits , its a nice way of saving money, but the print quality is not so impressive.And moreover the refilled cartridge holds less ink than the new cartridge. ( no doubt my friend still saves good amount of money using the refill kits , anyway , it depends on the individual too.)

Google team spends days and nights fighting spam. From stock spam to empty spam to you-won-the-lottery spam, they expend a lot of energy—human and machine—on keeping our inboxes clean.

When spam clogs our mailboxes, it's annoying.Gmail knows how much we love our clean inboxes.But even if Gmail can catch a lot of it, spammers will continue to send the spams in the hopes that someone else's filter will fail to catch them. It's so nice to see a root cause be addressed, as the SEC has done today, which will make the world a better place for both Gmail and non-Gmail users alike. wow .!

Brad Taylor, Gmail anti-spam engineer suggests : 

How can you help in the fight? Your most powerful tool is the "Report Spam" button. Use it early and often. That isn't just there to get the spammy message into the spam folder. It sends valuable information back to the spam team that helps us flag messages and senders so we can keep future messages out of your and millions of other inboxes.

Related Posts :

• Fight Spam using Gmail Email Add Trick
• SPAM FACTS
• 9 out of 10 e-mails now spam
• Alert: SPAM Messages on Yahoo IM
• E-Mail Signature Generator

Online criminals are thriving even in the face of new automated defenses. 

Do you think the new built-in phishing filters in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 will protect your private data? Think again. Anti-Phishing Working Group found 37,439 new sites- the number of sites devoted has nearly doubled since last year. (Click on the "Image" thumbnail to see the chart showing this trend.)

According to RSA, a security vendor, hackers in January started selling a phishing kit that lets criminals set up very convincing fake Web sites with little effort. The fake site pulls images and layouts from the real site, usually a bank or other financial institution, and passes the user's information back to the real site to mimic a regular log-in–while keeping a copy of the account data for the criminals.

Research firm Gartner estimates that 3.5 million Americans gave up sensitive information to phishers in 2006, an 84 percent jump from the previous year–for a total loss of $2.8 billion. One single phishing gang, called Rock Phish, is estimated to have taken in more than $100 million.

What should you do to protect yourself?

- Heuristic scanning may help combat the scourge

- Use McAfee's SiteAdvisor browser add-on for IE and Firefox (highly recommended)

- Look at the browser address bar which will turn green. This is due to the new type of site certification–called Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer, or EV SSL–may also help.The sites are verified by 3rd party such as Verisign.

- Never click a link in an e-mail or on a third-party site to go to any of your financial accounts.

- You always use your own bookmark or type in the address of the particular bank

- Be careful before clicking on the link in the email even when you're 100 percent certain that the e-mail is legitimate, you should be extra cautious.

-  Automated tools, such as the free Password Safe and PwdHash utilities can provide some help.

But to combat ever-adapting phishers, your best protection remains…YOU.

Related Artciles :

- India ranks third in phishing 

- Beware of Fake UTI Bank page online

- How Phishing Works 

- Fake Ebay Pages & Forums 

Videos :

- Phishing 101 : Learn how to avoid scam emails and phishing schemes targetting banks, PayPal, eBay, etc. Courtesy of My-PC-Help.com

- Phishing Demo : A demonstration of a live PayPal phishing site before we send requests to have it taken offline.

- Phishing Demo - Aloha : A live site phishing demo. The target is a small Federal Credit Union in Hawaii.

- Phishing :  Learn how to avoid phishing scams!

via [ pcworld ]

A 27B source inside Turkey reports that some proxies work for routing around the country's block on YouTube, which was instituted at the direction of a court after it found that a Greek video hosted on the site violated a law against ridiculing the country and its leaders.

Things that seem to work now:

- Using Firefox, instead of IE or Safari

- YouTube videos embedded in a web page or blog work fine

- A proxy, specifically http://youtubeproxy.org/ works well. Just visit that page and then find the video you want to watch.

Others proxies to try include:

http://www.proxymy.com
http://www.proxysmurf.com/
http://www.worksurfing.com/
http://unblockfacebook.com/
http://www.bypassfilter.net/
http://www.ibypass.org/
http://www.ipzap.com/
https://proxify.com/ https://proxify.us/ https://proxify.biz/
http://kproxy.com/index.jsp
http://www.attackcensorship.com/attack-censorship.html
http://mrnewguy.com/
http://www.unblockwebsites.com/
http://spysurfing.com/
https://www.the-cloak.com/anonymous-surfing-home.html
http://www.stupidcensorship.com/
http://www.evilsprouts.co.uk/defilter/
http://www.bypassbrowser.com/
http://www.proxymouse.com/
http://www.fsurf.com/
http://www.browseatwork.com/
http://www.surfonym.com/
http://www.iamnewguy.com/
http://www.ninjaproxy.com/

Find updated proxies here: http://myspaceblockedproxies.com/

My favourite:

For all such blocks is type in the website's ip and you will get through !

- Instead of typing YouTube.com into a browser window, type 208.65.153.253, to evade the DNS server.

This works for all sites which are blocked.. 

You want to know the ip of any website : Just ping it using command prompt.

Just type : ping <website name.com>    

Ex : ping www.youtube.com     to know its Ip address.

As a security measure to prevent potential viruses, Gmail does not allow users to receive executable files (such as files ending in .exe) that could contain damaging executable code. Gmail does not accept these types of files, even if they are sent in a zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz) format. Any message of this type sent to your Gmail account will be bounced back to the sender.

This is one of the best tricks i have evolved and it works fine and perfect. For example if you have a file called "Gre_Test.exe" .While sending it to your friend just rename it to "Gre_Test.exe.remove".

Or you can rename it this way . "Gre_Test.exe" be renamed to "Gre_Test.doc" . You can rename it to any file extension you want. Just be careful that the recipient renames it and then he will be able to use it.

When you rename you may get a warning saying …this ..you just say yes.

Then Send the file to the receipent.After the receipent recieve the file, ask them to rename the extension file with .remove and you have your original exe file back perfectly working .

Note :Renaming files can be tricky because windows hides the file extensions by default. Here's how to rename them:

1. Open explorer and browse to the file you want to rename
2. Click the Tools menu
3. Click Folder Options
4. Click View tab
5. Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types
6. Click OK
7. Now you should be able to see the extensions of your files.
8. Right-click on the file
9. Click Rename
10. Rename the file and change the ending. For example, Gre_Test.exe to Gre_Test.bak.
11. Now you can send it through gmail like any other attachment
12. The receiver of the email will need to rename it back so he/she/it can use the file correctly.

Enjoy.

Worried about spyware,adware or viruses in your pc ? You can find a comprehensive list in this site..

TaskList.org is the ultimate resource to help you determine if your computer is infected with spyware, adware or viruses.Its a comprehensive alphabetical database of various processes - good or bad - that might be running on your machine.

This is one of the kind and its really good..make the best use of it … you can know what to delete and what to keep in your pc ..!! enjoy safe computing ! 

via [ TaskList ] 

MediaRing was one of the pioneer first to offer free VoIP PC-to-PC calls and instant messaging with its flagship service “MediaRing Talk 99? which was first launched in 1998.

However, it’s soon overtaken by competitor products such as Skype which is immensely popular. Still popular especially in Asia, MediaRing Talk is an effort to regain past glory by integrating features of presence and Instant Messaging, VoIP phones calls between PC-to-PC as well as PC-to-Phone, with bundle of free value-added services such as voice and text conferencing. And now MediaRing Talk has launched Lunar New Year promotion where you can have unlimited free calls to United States of America (US), Canada, China, Singapore and United Kingdom.

Offer Time : 

The free unlimited fixed line and mobile calls offer is a limited time promotion where it will end on March 31, 2007 GMT 23:59 midnight.

Please Note : 

- No purchase is necessary, but the promotion is only applicable to new MediaRing Talk users.

- Beside, each call is limited to 10 minutes.

- However, there are no restrictions on calling the same destination multiple times.

- Unlimited Free calls are applicable to calls made to US, Canada, China, Singapore on fixed line or mobile (cellphone) phone, and United Kingdom on fixed line phone only.

To call for free to international phone, sign up for MediaRing Talk. via [ MediaRing ]

Yahoo messenger is a great tool to chat(as i am already stuck with the id.) ..i love Gtalk more than yahoo messenger.. No doubt Yahoo messenger has more facilities than Gtalk .. but still Gtalk voice chat ( voice clarity is amazing…)..

All that apart..

Many people get irritated by downloading Yahoo Messenger everytime from their server , we cannot save the exe at all.It does saves the exe file in a temporary file and it deletes as soon as the messenger is installed.We can copy it before it gets deleted..but thats quite a job..

So here's an alternative..This is a direct link to download Yahoo messenger to your PC.

Download : 9.9Mb file –> Yahoo! Messenger with Voice v8.1.0.239

Ever dreamt of unlimited simultaneous downloads,download manager support from Rapidshare  for FREE ! here is a chance..go get it..I always kept on doing my old trick to download continuously from Rapidshare ( Unlimited Rapidshare Downloads & Simultaneous Downloads with Rapidshare ).

But all those tricks aren't necessary now.. you just need to download this cool tool and its done.No more keeping awake at night and no more asking people for premium accounts..

CMS The Grabber is probably what you are looking for. Found it via cmszone forum.

Why CMS The Grabber?

* It’s Free.
* Skip download timer, download straight away. (Primary reason )
* Multiple proxies, thus allowing you to download multiple files at once.
* Works with both rapidshare.de and rapidshare.com.
* Able to transfer the download session to your favorite Download Manager.

Download: CMS The Grabber v1.4.7C
Password: www.cmszone.org
MD5-Hash (of the RAR file, not .EXE): cbe24f2dbc75917fef750bce8bb75b42

Important:

1. After you download the program check MD5 hash of the RAR file to be sure it is clean (download the MD5 utility from here and run MD5 GrabberArchive.rar in the console window - cmd).
2. Run the program immediately (necessary to activate it)
3. Keep Grabber.EXE and Grabber.INI files in a safe place. Without Grabber.INI, the program may be deactivated at any time; with it, it will work forever (or until rapidshare changes its site(s)).

Note: Grabber.INI is valid only for your computer. It will not work on another computer.

via [ CMSZone ]