IT Masala

Its an amazing firefox extension . Really cool and nicely done. thanks to Anish Sane for giving everybody this nice plugin for firefox to make our life easier with our favorite Orkut.

You know this right..this is some security thing the Google people have put up. If You Have Logged In To Orkut With "Remember Me On This Computer" Checkbox Checked & While Closing The Browser Window You Have Not Logged Out, Still The Next Time You Open Browser & Open http://www.orkut.com, You Are Asked For password ..but now with this plugin its possible..

This plugin has some deadly features like Autologin Feature, You Can Login, Without Entering The Password Again, View "My Scrapbook" Link On Each Of Orkut Pages, Not just On Your Profile/Home Pages,New Scrap Alert ,You can send a common scrap to all of your (or in general any profile's) friends or members of any community to name a few good features..there are many more.. have a look at the plugin page for details….

Fantastic thing this plugin has is : It Removes Google Ads From Orkut Pages…  ( maybe google will make this feature not work very soon )

Works with Firefox 1.5 - 3.0a1 ALL

[ Download ] via [ Mozilla Plugins ] thanks Prasad Chubachi for the info.

Already you must have gone through the post Bypass Windows Media Player 11 Validation - No Crack or Patch. These two methods below will make your work still easier..

Method I :

Download Windows Media Player 11 directly from Microsoft- Download from here.

If you’ve already installed WM11 go to STEP 2.

STEP 1: go to the old windows media player(WM10), go to tools–>options and click on ‘check for updates once a day.’ press apply and ok.
after a short time a window appears asking if you want to upgrade to a newer version, click ok.
let it download and install it, then after
installation restart your PC.

STEP 2:

Start–>Search. click ‘all files and folders’ then search for LegitLibM.dll.(its in C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player) After it is found, right click and rename it to legitlib.dll

STEP 3:
Run WM11, click on validate, it may say ‘unable to validate’ (but thats a fake message it still works, just click ok) then it will go on to settings and after you do that your ready to go!

Method II : 

This step involves usage of the cracked LegitLibM.dll, rename from the patched LegitLib.dll used to install beta version of WMP11 skip genuine Windows validation check.

1. Download WindowsMediaPlayer11
2. Download WinRAR and install WinRAR extraction tool.
3. Extract the WMP11 installer by using WinRAR or PowerArchiver to a directory.
4. Download legitlib.dll_CRACKED.rar (in RAR format, extract after download) from here.
5. Copy the extracted LegitLibM.dll to the extracted directory of WMP11 installer.
6. Overwrite any existing LegitLibM.dll file.
7. Run setup_wm.exe by double clicking.
8. Install Windows Media Player 11 Final accordingly.

enjoy the music !

Windows only: Bandwidth monitor NetMeter graphs shows how much data is going out and into your pc.

NetMeter is a small, customizable network bandwidth monitoring program for Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/NT4/2000/XP. As per the author "NetMeter is and will always stay freeware". The program has been tested extensively on Windows 2000 and XP, but it should work just as well on all other Win32 operating systems.

Read the rest of this entry »

With a tiny 6.76% of the search market, compared with Google’s 60%+ search share dominance, Microsoft has decided it’s time to leverage their massive base of global Windows users with juicy wads of cash to switch search providers!

So Whats the deal ? 

Microsoft’s new program is called “Microsoft Service Credits for Web Search” and has been unveiled by John Batelle’s ‘SearchBlog’. The money on offer is significant, especially when multiplied across thousands of PCs. The deal means that companies can earn between US $2 and US $10 per computer on an annual basis, plus a US $25,000 “enrollment credit” which is a nice big wad of cash that will likely need a large-ish, strong and sturdy brown paper bag to hold securely while being passed under the table.  

For companies that have thousands of computers, this could translate into anywhere from US $100,000 to $200,000 per year, which is money that could be put to good use in the IT department or elsewhere in the company.

Bad part of the campaign :

Microsoft will use a ‘Browser Helper Object’ installed into IE7 to track search queries and send information on search back to Microsoft, so they can use the information to improve the results that Windows Live Search delivers. Because of this, IE7 must be used – it doesn’t work with Firefox, Opera or older versions of IE browsers.

Really this is heights !! Is Microsoft so very irked by open source successes ?? anyway..read on.. 

Robert Scoble comments - "Microsoft sucks": 

“What Windows Live lacks, specifically, is an identity. No one can describe it, no one from Microsoft has even tried.”

Former Microsoft employee and blogger Robert Scoble who served as the online face of Microsoft during his three years at the company is not impressed with Microsoft’s moves in deciding to offer companies money to use search.

PS: Each search at click4thecause.live.com results in a financial donation from Microsoft to provide help with education programs to the refugee kids around the globe.

We all know that Google doesn’t need to pay anyone to use its search services – people use them voluntarily because of the quality of the results.

So, is Microsoft really that spooked by Google's dominating success in search, and why is Robert Scoble so unimpressed with the deal? - The answer is quality !

It will be a loooong time until Micro$oft Live search reaches the level of Google searches..Till then keep trying..Good luck, Microsoft, you’re going to need it!

via [ itwire ] 

Windows Media Player 11 offers great new ways to store and enjoy all your music, video, pictures, and recorded TV. Play it, view it, and sync it to a portable device for enjoying on the go or even share with devices around your home—all from one place.

This is a nice and simple way to install Windows Media Player 11 without validating.Follow the steps and you are done.

Steps:
1. Download and extract (unrar, unzip) wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu.exe to a new folder
2. RUN wmfdist11.exe
3. RESTART your COMPUTER
4. RUN wmp11.exe
5. RESTART your COMPUTER

Microsoft always says it opposes "software pirates" who sell thousands of unauthorized copies of Windows.

A security expert says Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, but Microsoft calls the process an antipiracy 'hack'.

Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end run around one of Microsoft's key antipiracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said Thursday.

Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secret newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely.

"The [activation] demands that Vista puts on corporate buyers is much more than on XP," said Livingston. "Vista developers have [apparently] programmed in back doors to get around time restrictions for Vista activation."

Brian Livingston describes the Registry key that's involved and the steps :

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you lost your data due to accidental deletion, corruption, or computer virus or trojan attack? Then here is a list of excellent FREE Hard Disk Recovery Utilities for your rescue.

- PC Inspector File Recovery : Recover lost data–even if your older system's FAT or boot sector is damaged.Complete Freeware.

License Type: Free /  Price: Free /  File Size: 5830KB

Recovers files, even when a header entry is no longer available. Competition products cannot recover such files. The "Special Recovery Function" supports the following disk Formats:ARJ,AVI,BMP,CDR,DOC,DXF,DBF,XLS,EXE,GIF,HLP,HTML,HTM,JPG,LZH,MID,MOV,MP3,

PDF,PNG,RTF,TAR,TIF,WAV,ZIP.

- Restoration : Recover deleted files–or delete them for good–with this small program.

License Type: Free / Price: Free / File Size: 163KB

Restoration is an easy to use and straight forward tool to undelete files that were removed from the recycle bin or directly deleted from within Windows, and we were also able to recover photos from a Flash card that had been formatted.

Windows XP's automatic update facility is really fantastic.You don't need to update manually, but its annoying too…it requires a reboot at the time when you're working on the computer… Then you get this lovely dialog:

This is the most Naggiest Dialog Box ever seen. It can't be closed. Not like KBC(where you get 4 choices) Here You get only two choices– Restart Now, or Restart Later. If you click Restart Later, it pops up again ten minutes later.

I want automatic updates, but I also want to restart my computer when I feel like it. Is there any way to turn off this amazing-annoying dialog box ? 

What is wuauserv Service ?

Enables the download and installation of Windows updates. If this service is disabled, this computer will not be able to use the Automatic Updates feature or the Windows Update Web site.

Two Solutions for this disabling this annoying dialog box :

Read the rest of this entry »

A rash of users of Microsoft's new Windows Live OneCare service, launched last January 30, have been reporting on Microsoft's support forums that virus scans performed by the service have resulted in the deletion of their OUTLOOK.PST files - the local, centralized repositories of e-mail, scheduling, and collaboration data used by Outlook.

Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare security suite has been rated at the bottom of the league in the latest industry antivirus tests.

In extensive testing by AV-Comparatives, an Austrian project set up to test different security products, OneCare antivirus was the only product to fail to achieve any kind of certification, leading the report's author to suggest that he might leave Microsoft's product out of future tests.

"Microsoft OneCare performed very low in the test and did not reach the minimum requirements for participation," Andreas Clementi wrote in the report (PDF). "Due (to) that, its inclusion in future tests of this year (will) have to be re-evaluated."

The highest scoring antivirus packages in the tests were Gdata AVK, TrustPort, Avira, F-Secure, Kaspersky and eScan, all of which scored an "Advanced+" rating.

God knows how OneCare is "still certified" by the International Computer Security Association (ICSA) Labs and the West Coast Lab's Checkpoint certification system.

Visit [ Windows OneCare ]