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Reviews and Hot deals on Technology Gadgets

Deepak — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:29:12 +0000

When we go to purchase a laptop, personal computer or any other electronic gadgets we usually get confused. It is often tough to decide whether to give priority to high configuration gadgets with small brand or low configuration gadget with big brand name. Finally we end up purchasing whatever store owner convinces us best. Best thing about online shopping is you are not influenced by anyone while selecting your brand. Still if you need some buying guide ConsumerMate.com is second to none in India. ConsumerMate portal has an expertise on helping customers with choosing the best Laptops, Mobile phones, LCD/Plasma TVs, Digital Cameras and Camcorders etc within their budget. You can compare mobile phones, laptops etc from various vendors. I would rate them among the most unbiased reviewers of mobile phones india. They do not influence their customer unlike what you generally see at your nearby stores but they show you wide variety of choices from which you can narrow down to select the best one.

When I am talking about electronic gadgets I should not forget to mention about Digit, the No. 1 Technology magazine. Digit magazine has already gained trust of youth by providing reliable and robust reviews of latest laptops, computer accessories and various other gadgets. I myself have subscribed monthly edition of digit magazine. I love to go through their ultimate expert comments about the latest launches. Now to add to the flavour for their readers Digit has launched its own online shopping portal called http://shopping.thinkdigit.com/. Needless to say, it offers plethora of technology gadgets to choose from, Deep discount hot deals and convenient and secure shopping online.

Both the above portals are unique of their kind and extremely reliable. I must mention about the interactive web application by Consumermate known as Guru Gyan. This feature implemented by Consumermate is extremely helpful for the visitors to find exactly what best they can purchase within their budget. They narrow down the options of available products and gadgets based on customer’s usage, budget and brand choice. Customer care of Consumermate is very active and ready to help. You can post your queries on the portal in Ask Us section to contact Consumermate experts to answer your technical and legal queries/complaints on the gadget purchases. You will get immediate response via email or SMS for your query through Ask Us section. Non the less, you will also be provided with atleast three neares dealers in you city where you can get your products. Now that is indeed very customer centric facility.

Go Daddy and Network Solutions LLC to pull out of China?

Deepak — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:42:36 +0000

“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.

How to trace an email address

Deepak — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:22:54 +0000

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.

Want to know the basics of SLR Cameras- read buying guide of consumermate

Deepak — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:06:43 +0000

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.

How Buffer-overflow attacks work?

Deepak — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:55:44 +0000

Just now I listened to a brdocast by MIT guy on Malware threats and I encountered an attack technique known as Buffer Overflow Attack. I had heard about this attack before but to know how it works I did some research. I am posting what I understood and perhaps you will like it.

Buffer overflow is one of the most common attack techniques used by hackers. Most importantly it is often undetectable, and above that, most of the home build programs or code are vulnerable to such threats. I can gaurantee that all the codes that you wrote since your school and all the applications you build till date is vulnearable to buffer overflow attack. Code wriiten in unsafe languages such as C++ are more prone to such threats. Infact these days buffer overflows are a favorite exploit for hackers. You will be surprised to know that the vast majority of patches that Microsoft releases oftten in its updates actually fix unchecked buffer problems. However the applications developed in our house just as susceptible as commercial applications to buffer-overflow attack. And this is the only reason why freewares are not accepted as standard software in IT firms.

A buffer overflow takes advantage of a program that is waiting on a user’s input. Buffer overflow attacks can of two types – first is stack based and the other is heap based. Heap is nothing but a free pool of memory used by compilers to dynamically allocate the memory to running program. Heap-based attack basically flood the memory space reserved for a program, however this attack is rare due to the complexity involved. On the other hand stack-based buffer overflow is much easier and often used.

I could explain you this in my own words but it would be better if I quote from a technical article published at SearchWindowsSecurity.com as it would an unaltered version for you. Article goes like this:

“In a stack-based buffer overrun, the program being exploited uses a memory object known as a stack to store user input. Normally, the stack is empty until the program requires user input. At that point, the program writes a return memory address to the stack and then the user’s input is placed on top of it. When the stack is processed, the user’s input gets sent to the return address specified by the program.

However, a stack does not have an infinite potential size. The programmer who develops the code must reserve a specific amount of space for the stack. If the user’s input is longer than the amount of space reserved for it within the stack, then the stack will overflow. This in itself isn’t a huge problem, but it becomes a huge security hole when combined with malicious input.

Yet overflowing the buffer with an executable command doesn’t mean that the command will be executed. The attacker must then specify a return address that points to the malicious command. The program partially crashes because the stack overflowed. It then tries to recover by going to the return address, but the return address has been changed to point to the command specified by the hacker. Of course this means that the hacker must know the address where the malicious command will reside. To get around needing the actual address, the malicious command is often padded on both sides by NOP instructions, a type of pointer. Padding on both sides is a technique used when the exact memory range is unknown. Therefore, if the address the hacker specifies falls anywhere within the padding, the malicious command will be executed.

The last part of the equation is the executable program’s permissions. As you know, most modern operating systems have some sort of mechanism to control the access level of the user who’s currently logged on and executable programs typically require a higher level of permissions. These programs therefore run either in kernel mode or with permissions inherited from a service account. When a stack-overflow attack runs the command found at the new return address, the program thinks it is still running. This means that the command prompt window that has been opened is running with the same set of permissions as the application that was compromised. Generally speaking, this often means that the attacker will gain full control of the operating system. “

I hope you liked this article from SearchWindowsSecurity.com. Please post your comment and some other security issues if you have encountered or solutions which think is applicable. If you want to know about how You can prevent buffer-overflow attacks then follow the link associated.

Google Search Tips and Tricks – From Binscorner.com

Deepak — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:05:30 +0000

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”.

Google threatens to withdraw from China.

Deepak — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:24:11 +0000

Google has openly said that it can withdraw from China if needed. This statement has come after Google found some involvment of chinese government behind the hacking of Gmail accounts of some social activists. Google was already pissed off by the cencorship imposed by chinese government on the search result in china. You might not get any search result for Tibet or Dalai Lama or Tank man. However after this statement many disputed results are available in search results in Google China. Due to various regional pressure google search results have been different for different regions. A common example is – If you search for Indian state Arunachal Pradesh on Google Map in china, it is shown as a part of Republic of China. Same search shows Arunachal pradesh as Indian territorry in Google India. And the most irritating as well as hilarious thing is that Google in United States shows Arunachal Pradesh as a disputed Territory. I was amazed by looking at these biased search results.

Recently India has condemened Google for showing Arunachal Pradesh as Chinese Territory and warned to take action against the firm.

Google withdrawing from China seems completely impossible as China is a big market for internet users and internet advertising as well. Nor China can afford to lose Google as it can reder many unemployed in China and hamper the chinese interest a well. China assured that it will take care of foreign comanies investing in their country.

’3 Idiots’ to be available for free download

Deepak — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:20:50 +0000

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.

Consumermate.com: Buying giude for mobile phones and laptops

Deepak — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:43:06 +0000

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.

Working of IMEI

Deepak — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:13:15 +0000

IMEI stands for International Mobile Equipment Identity. It is a unique built in ID through which your cellphone can be identified and its whereabouts can be traced. It is associated with each cellphone during manufacturing process. Importance of IMEI numbers can be understood by the fact that if your cellphone gets snatched or stolen you can trace your cellphone using IMEI number. If you are unable to get back your cellphone then at least you can take help from police to blacklist that IMEI number so that it can not be used by anyone. Cellphones without IMEI number is a major threat to the security of any nation. Such cellphones can not be traced and terrorists can use it for malicious purpose. Most of the cheap Chinese cellphones in the market do not have IMEI numbers. Some of them use the duplicate IMEI numbers too.

Have you ever wondered that how your IMEI number gets traced and how the blacklisted IMEI numbers gets blocked? IMEI numbers of all the mobile terminals are stored in the database known as EIR i.e. Equipment Identity Register. EIR stores three different lists of IMEI numbers – A white list, A Black list and A Grey List. White list consists of all the IMEI numbers who are allowed to access the network. Black list consists of the list of those numbers which are blocked. These are usually stolen terminals whose service have been barred. Grey list consists of faulty or non-approved equipment. These equipments are under monitor.

Recently I India put a ban on cellphones without IMEI number. If you had purchased cheap Chinese cellphone and you want to continue with your same cellphone then all you have to do is to immediately apply for unique IMEI number. It is possible to use your cellphone. You need to approach to ICA i.e. Indian Cellular Association for unique IMEI number. They embedded a new IMEI number into your cellphone. So you can continue using your same cellphone.