“Google Vs China” news was floating all over the internet forums, blogs and news channels, but the news got spiced up more when two more internet gaints dealing in domain name services signaled to pull out from China. Go Daddy and Network Solutions LLC, both among the largest domain name registrar and now also in web hosting field, said that they were fed up of the restrictions imposed on them regarding the registration of .cn domains.

Earlier the authority for .cn domain a.k.a cn nik intructed these firms to collect the first and last names of the registrant, physical address, telephone number, and an e-mail address. But later in december 2009 cn nik announced that they also need a photo ID in colour from the head to the shoulders, a business ID and a physically signed registration paper for all new .cn registrations. Now this created lots of buzz. These firms claim that they already are dealing with numerous hacking attempts originating locally which is indirectly aided by chinese govt. Though not very sure but they hinted that the posssible reason could be the provisioning of domain names and hosting services to social activists.

I dont think this will stop here. US has already politicized this issue. US congressman Mr. Jones backed these firms saying that US IT companies are dong right thing in repressive countries. On the other hand Chinese govt have always denied any role in ongoing hacking attempts into the US IT companies working in China.

What do you do when you get flamming emails send by unknown email id which you think could be one among your knowns. I am not talking about the spam mails, I am talking about the mails which are sent to irk you, like abusing your friends or relatives etc. Usually we try to ignore such mails as we think we can’t chanse a guy on internet. However, doing so you are you are encouraging them and biting yourself inside. You can do something which I do to trace emails sent to me. Tracing emails is possible and believe me you need not be a techie to that when I am here to explain it. I traced one such mail sent to me though it was from a friend just to have fun.

Read these steps carefully:

Step 1.  Find the IP address of email sender

I am explaining this for some major email services.

If you are a gmail user -

1. Just Log into your gmail account.

2. open the email that you want to trace.

3. Click on the down arrow given below in the image just on the right side of the Reply link. Choose Show Original from the list.

4. Just look for the lines starting with “Received: from“.  You’ll see that there are many Received From phrase in the message header. Actually the message headers contains the list of all IP addresses of all the servers through which the email was routed. Even if you did not get what this sentence mean, skip understanding that.  Below is the image from online-tech-tips.com where a techie explained the same procedure using his mail. For ease I am using his email header to explain you the same.

Fins the Last Recieved: From from the header. This gives the ip of the first computer through which message originated. As you can see from the above image, the first one is from a computer called “aseem” with the IP address 72.204.154.191. Then it was routed to the ISP’s (internet service provider likeBSNL, Airtel, British Telecom etc) server at eastrmmtao104.cox.net and so on and so forth till it got to your email server.

The computer aseem is the PC of the author who posted these headers on online-tech-tips.com.   72.204.154.191 is his public IP address for his PC in his house.

Surprised!!  This IP will help us locate his location. But lets take a look to find how we can get this IP from yahoo mail header.

For Yahoo user (yahoo beta):

 Click on it and choose Full Header.

Again, you’ll see the same information as before, just in a different window:

For outlook users:

Microsoft Outlook

 Just Go to View at the top menu (the menu options for the email, not the main Outlook window) and choose Options.

You’ll get a dialog box where you can set the message options and at the bottom you’ll see the Internet Headers box.  To extract the source IP you need to follow the same procedure as done for gmail account.

Step 2: Tracing the location of senders IP

There are various ways. Easiest way is to copy and paste your email header and email id of sender into email tracking tool at http://www.ip-adress.com/trace_email/.

One more way is to visit sites like IP2Location and GeoBytes IP Locator location lookup on the IP address. There are many sites on web where you can just enter the IP address and you will get the exact location of the ip address on Google map.

Hope this post helped you.

Also, thanks to online-tech-tips.com for nice post How to track the original location of an email via its IP address.

What is the ideal resolution of a digital camera? What resolution and optical zoom would be perfect for me? What specification can I get within my budget? All these are the questions haunting people when they go for purchasing a digital camera. If these questions are bothering you too then better clear all your little doubts and queries about camera SLR at a real buying guide of Consumermate. Some of the important features which you should consider before buying a digital camera are lens quality, battery life and screen size of the camera. These day people prefer LCD screen cameras. Carl zeiss lens are the best quality lens preferred by the professional photographers. Recently one of my friends bought a canon digital camera with 12 Megapixel resolutions. I was surprised by its amazing optical zoom. Even the picture taken at maximum zoom had astounding clarity.

High resolution cameras are available at very cheap prices nowadays. Even mobile phones are now equipped with high resolution cameras. You can also look what are the latest mobile phone prices at consumermate.com. You can select your favorite models from the huge collection of handsets from various brands. Some latest models from new brand like Fly are amazing. My younger brother recently purchased a touch screen dual Sim Fly mobile for just around Rs. 4500. He is quiet happy with its features. Customers today have lots of options when they are out for shopping. But with consumermate you buy exactly what you need.

Do you know why searching on Google is different than searching for something on other search engines. No I am not talking about the search speed or the efficient algorithm used to index or search for the given string or sentence in the text box. Rather, I am talking about the innovation which Google has imparted in its searching. Google has made its search engine customizable from user’s end too. If you are aware of some logical operators or some scripting knowledge then you can use it while googling too. But even if computer is not more than an idiot box for you you can can use these tricks and customize your search for more precise results. These tricks are not new, I read about all of these tricks lot earlier. Recently I read these tricks once again while I was surfing Binscorner.com for funny emails and forwards. I am pasting these contents from there. You can also follow the link to read it from Binscorner.com.

Tip Number One:
You need to think about what it is you really want. If you are looking for a comparative review of wireless telephones, you will probably get more results from a list of names such as SmartPhone, Audiovox, Motorola, and so on, than the words “comparative review of wireless phones”.

Tip Number Two:
Use Quotation marks to force finding a specific phrase. When you surround your phrase with quotation marks, the search engine will only return results exactly matching the entire phrase. This is an extremely powerful search technique, and yet it is not used by the majority of web searchers. If you search on the two words George and Washington, you will get over 8 million results. If you put quotation marks around the entire name, your results will be restricted to about 3 million. And if your search is on “George Washington” “Cherry Tree”, you will only get about 12,600 results. You get the picture. This is especially important if your search contains what are called “stop words” – words that Google is designed to ignore, such as “and” “of” and “the”. By including these inside your quoted phrase, you will get more targeted search results.

Tip Number Three:
Use the Plus (+) and Minus (-) Signs. The plus sign just before a search term means “This MUST be found in the search”. Conversely, if you find a lot of search results that include a specific product, word, phrase, or item that you do not want to see, you can put a minus sign before that word or phrase, and those results will be excluded from your search.

Tip Number Four:
Use the Asterisk (*) As a WildCard search term. Yes, you can insert an asterisk in your search phrase and it will act as a wild card matching any word in that place in the phrase. Not only that, but you can insert more than one asterisk in place of more than one word in your search phrase, up to the limit of ten search words – and the wild card markers are not counted toward this ten word limit.

Tip Number Five:
Use the site: command. If you are interested in finding examples of the term XMLHttp, but only on eggheadcafe.com, then you can create a search like this: site:eggheadcafe.com XMLHTTP This will restrict your search to only pages belonging to that web site. You will notice that in regular Google searches, if there are more than two results from that site, the second result will be indented and there will be a link “More results from …” – this automatically uses the site: qualifier. Also, you can search or exclude whole domains. For example, you can search for tampopo dvd site:co.uk or tampopo dvd -site:com (Tampopo is a wonderful Japanese noodle western spoof by director Juzo Itami that is sure to be enjoyed by Americans. If you really want to get educated IMHO, try to avoid watching films out of Hollywood, as they generally stink).

Tip Number Six:
Use the operators. Besides the site: command, Google understands a range of operators that include filetype: (eg doc, xls, or pdf), intext: and allintext:, intitle: and allintitle:, inurl: and allinurl:, author: (in Google Groups) and location: (in Google News). Google also understands a logical OR, provided it is upper case. This means you can search for a bar in Orlando OR Miami for example. It is useful when targets of searches have alternative or variable spellings: outsourcing bombay OR mumbai. The OR command can be shortened to a vertical bar (|), as in outsourcing bombay | mumbai. Another way of adding alternatives is to use a tilde character (~). Thus if you search for ~food, Google also searches for cooking, cuisine, nutrition, recipes and restaurants.

Tip Number Seven:
Use the Advanced Search Page. Fortunately, you don’t need to memorize all of the above tricks, since they are conveniently offered to you in various combinations in the Advanced Search option which is always available from the main Google search page.

Tip Number Eight:
Use Google Groups. Google has the most complete archive of usenet and other news posts going back over 20 years. By simply switching tabs from Web to Groups, your search term(s) will be repeated on the Groups archives.

Tip Number Nine:
Use new advanced search features. Google has a number of new features including Google Local, Google News (news items from newspapers and other publications around the globe), Froogle – which searches for the best prices on products, and the Dictionary – to get the spelling and / or definition of a word. One of the lastest new offerings as of this writing in October, 2004, is a mobile SMS search that allows you to send an SMS message to google with your search terms for a restaurant and zipcode, somebody’s name and address, or whatever, and get back the results to your cellphone in seconds.

Here’s a table with a listing of links to some of the Google advanced search features:

• Cached Links View a snapshot of each page as it looked when we indexed it.
• Calculator Use Google to evaluate mathematical expressions.
• Definitions Use Google to get glossary definitions gathered from various online sources.
• File Types Search for non-HTML file formats including PDF documents and others.
• Froogle To find a product for sale online, use Froogle – Google’s product search service.
• I’m Feeling Lucky Bypass our results and go to the first web page returned for your query.
• Local Search – New! Search for local businesses and services in the U.S. and Canada.
• News Headlines Enhances your search results with the latest related news stories.
• PhoneBook Look up U.S. street address and phone number information.
• Search By Number Use Google to access package tracking information, US patents, and a variety of online databases.
• Similar Pages Display pages that are related to a particular result.
• Site Search Restrict your search to a specific site.
• Spell Checker Offers alternative spelling for queries.
• Stock Quotes Use Google to get stock and mutual fund information.
• Street Maps Use Google to find U.S. street maps.
• Travel Information Check the status of an airline flight in the U.S. or view airport delays and weather conditions.
• Web Page Translation Provides English speakers access to a variety of non-English web pages.
• Who Links To You? Find all the pages that point to a specific URL.

Tip Number Ten:
Use the Google API. Google has an API with a WSDL webservices proxy class generator for developers that allows you to incorporate the power of Google search into your own applications. It’s free, and all you need to do is download the SDK and request a free license key. Now that I think of it, Amazon also has a very fine API that now includes the Alexa search engine which provides some very useful statistical information about URLs and web crawler searches from the Alexa engine, so Google “ain’t the only game in town”.

Cyber laws are getting stiffer and stiffer. In US and other developed countries cyber laws are very strict and those who are caught as guilty has to pay hefty amount as fine with imprisonment. Even in fast growing nations like India Cyber laws are tightening up. However cyber laws in India is not so robust yet. Piracy is one of the offspring of cyber crimes. You can download almost all the movies released anywhere in the world from internet. Even American movies can be downloaded online. Ususally cyber criminals take advantage of the weak cyber laws in many countries due to which they out of reach of those nations who have strict cyber laws. 99.99% of websites offering free or paid downloading of audio, video songs or movies are either breaking copyright policies or they are contributing to piracy. Peer to peer software such as bittorent, uttorent etc are very commonly used for downloading movies or any other copyrighted data. But how would you feel if producer of a movie declares that his movie will be available on the internet for free downloading. Shocked!!

  Even I was shocked, but it is true. Much talked upcoming bollywood movie 3 Idiots by producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra is going to be released tomorrow i.e. 25th december,2009. Speaking to reporters producer anounced that internet used can now download his movie through youtube after 2-3 months of release so that it does not ruins the theater and multiplex business. 3 Idiots is releasing tomorrow in 1,766 screens world wide out of which 366 are in 32 countries. This is the largest international release for a Bollywood movie. Amir khan, the actor, has been on his toe and wandering all over the country promoting his new movie. The movie is based on the bestseller novel ‘Five point someone’ by Chetan Bhagat. The decision of distributing the film for free online is first ever decision of its kind. The decision has been taked to crub the ghost of piracy.

After the arrival of 3g phones in India there is stiff competition among mobile phone companies. Cell phones from many vendors are in great demand in India. Popular brands include not only Nokia but even motorola mobile phones in india are great success. Nowadays you will find all the features of a laptop built inside mobile phones. Cost of mobile phone has reduced in past many years and will show more depreciation in coming months due to ergonomic and technological growth. Price of laptop has also reduced. Moreover, new and more exciting features are now available with every laptop brands. Compaq Pressario and HP laptops are already a hit in India. Dell has also earned a good brand value. One thing is for sure that when you will go to purchase a cell phone or a laptop you will get very confused about which brand to choose. We always want to buy the best within our budget, so we wander from one store to another searching for more brands and discount prices. If it is the case with you then let me suggest you the easiest way to purchase mobile phones, laptops, LCD TVs etc. Don’t waste your time and energy searching stores; rather visit ConsumerMate.com, a venture by 9.9 Media. 9.9 Media is an founded by highly educated techies from IITs and other reputed colleges.

At this online store you will be able to search your favorite brand just on few mouse clicks as all the products are categorized accordingly. They provide features for Laptop Comparison India. If you are looking for laptop or mobile phone then you just need to select the brands you prefer. Check the type of product, say slider for mobile phones and suggest your price range. You can also see the products in New Launches and Hot Deals section. Nonetheless, you can now submit your request to Consumermate.com in their Ask Us Section for any specific model. As a result you would be contacted by at least 2 to 3 vendors in your city with the best price offers for the products selected or mentioned in the message. This will help to get the best prices and deals from different vendors. The website is very user friendly and online transaction is secure. I am impressed by the services offered by the website. If you have any shopping experience to share about this online store please post it here via comments so that it would help our readers.

Virus is again in news for the damages it cause due to its unrestrained spread. This time it is not only the biological virus H1N1, but also the computer virus. The two virus namely Conflicer and W32 Nimda infected the servers which was being used for conducting CAT exam, entrance test for IIMs. Basically these are worms which mostly come either from USb drives or the internet. Needless to mention that they affect MS Windows operating system. If you search about these worms in Wikipedia you will find that Conficker exploits the flaw in Windows to take over machines and link them into a virtual computer that can be commanded remotely by some other person or program. You will be amazed to hear that there are nearly seven million computers now under its control—government, business and home computers in more than 200 countries.

Even W32 Nimda is known for its highly propagative nature. The most astonishing part is that Windows has already released patches against these worm but Prometric, the US based firm responsible for all the technical aspects of the online test, perhaps did not take it into their consideration.

Every company, specially in IT/Software company heavily relies on Security Token with one time password feature. Wherever security and privacy is an issue security tokens are used. Security token is nothing but a very small crytographic device which you can carry inside your pocket. It is like an electronic key to access private or confidential data. Some of these devices are like you credit cards or ATM cards with cryptographic keys like digital signature and biometric such as fingerprint minutiae. However some more advanced tokens may include small size key board on it which can be used to enter the PIN and generated the password to access the system. Some devices even come with USB, Bluetooth or RFID functions.Generally tokens come in four varieties. Some uses static password and some device uses synchronous Dynamic Password. There are devices which uses asynchronous password as well as challenge response.

These devices are not very simple as they make use of compex cryptographic algorithms. Moreover the password generated by these device are for only one time usage. That is why they are often called One Time Password or OTP. OTP algorithms uses different approaches to generate the random passwords:

One approach is to use a mathematical algorithm to generate a new password based on the previous password. So the generated passwords follows the chain and are used in predefined sequence.

Another effective approach is based on time-synchronization between the authentication server and the client providing the password. In this approach the passwords are valid for only short duration of time, say 3 minutes. Moreover, it is impossible to guess the next password even if you know know the current password.

One more approach is to use mathematical algorithm where the new password is based on a challenge.

I studied about various cryptographic techniques and algorithm during my engineering and was always curious to know more about it. Practically using these devices and understanding their importance is a wonderful experience for me. RSA and other cryptographic algorithms are highly used in web environment for authentication and secure trancations (like in htpps urls). OTP is yet another wonderful application of cryptography.

Believe it or not, but there is rumor in the binary world that soon Google is going to become your new phone company. I was shocked when I read it on wired.com about the news Google Poised to Become Your Phone Company. Rumour says that Google bought Gizmo5, an online phone company, for $30 million. Google has already outperformed as a search engine, web advertising through adsense, adwords etc and its free lab products such as Google Chrome browser. Non-the less its mobile OS called android has also come to the market. Companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft are already trying stiffly to compete Google. Now I am sure that Skype is going to feel the heat soon as the services to be offered by Google as online phone company is going to be similar to that of skype. It would be interesting to know how both wizards clash to save their business. Google is definitely going to offer its services at ultra cheap rate.

Though Gizmo5 has lesser number of users but with Google I am sure it will not be the issue. For us as consumer, it is a news to cheer.

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