No job if you link to Wikileaks

Wikileaks is now all over the place creating headlines. The wiki site of disclosing classified documents of differnet nations, the headache for most of the powerful countries has been tried to be stopped by hacking and also threatning; issuing arrestwarrant to the creator Julian Assange with charges of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion which he denies.

The hacking didn't stop wikileaks and he is now on hideout, government is now giving threats to civilians who link or comment on the wikileaks of getting ripped off from job. Here is a message issued by columbia.

From: “Office of Career Services” Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 ESTTo:

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,
Office of Career Services

I say this is a disgusting act of covering the truth and clear violation of civil rights. "You guys" wanna stop it then shut down the internet. I will eagerly wait for whats next to come and I support you WIKILEAKS.

Adobe Flash Builder 4 available on 60 day trial

Download From here
For those who are interested in building web applications good news! Adobe Flash Builder 4 is available free for 60 days. Interested guys check it out.

The Million Dollar Homepage- Every pixel Counts

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
Look at this new style of advertising your business. If pixels are up for sale for a dollar each, and someone thinks it a good idea to advertise on a pixel of space, then we get the million dollar homepage. Over a million small businesses and brands advertise on a single homepage making it worth a million.

The Chrome Tools you need

With more and more users switching to Google Chrome, Google’s open source answer to Mozilla Firefox, we have decided to feature some cool Chrome extensions this week to help you improve your browsing experience and save yourself some time in the process.

Adblock

Get rid of those flashy banner ads! These bandwidth suckers not only distract you but also make pages load slowly. Like Firefox’s Adblock plus, this Chrome extension is a perfect tool to block just about any annoying ad.

goo.gl URL Shortener

This extension shortens any long URLs with the Google’s new URL Shortener service. Once shortened the URL is then copied automatically to clipboard and can be shared with any supported services like Twitter and IMs where there are character limits.

Shareaholic

If you’re one of us who have to constantly sharing web pages over social networking sites then this extension is a must-have tool. It lets you share any web page on almost any social networking site and aggregators right from the website you are on.

IE Tab

Not all websites are compatible with Chrome, and some bummers force you to open IE. This extension solves this problem for once and for all by emulating Internet Explorer within the Chrome browser.

GMail Checker Plus

This amazing extension lets you manage, preview and delete emails without logging into your account on another tab. It also comes with sound notification service for new mail and also allows you to view the new Priority Inbox right from the current tab.

StayFocusd

Addicted to Facebook? This extension helps you focus while you work by blocking time wasting websites. It sets a timer for time-consuming websites you often tend to visit and then blocks them for the rest of the day when the time is up.

Google Translate

It gets quite frustrating when some websites link you to some other sites with information in some obscure language. For such occasions, this extension works its wonder by translating any webpage into any language supported by Google translate service.

Split Screen

Amazing for cross-reference study, this extension splits the screen and allows user to open multiple websites in a single tab. It is great extension for studying as it effortlessly enables the user to compare and contrast between different websites at same time.

Google Dictionary

With this extension, you can double click any word and the definition immediately pops on the screen. Alternatively, you can directly search meanings for the words by clicking the icon on the top right of the screen.

Chromey Calculator

This extension brings all the handy calculator tricks right at your fingertips. When Google fails to answer, it seeks help from the WolframAlpha computational engine. This extension also handles mixed unit calculations (like 300 inch+500 light years) with ease.

Geolocation - the new on Facebook

The web nowadays is getting increasingly interesting. After “What are you doing?”, it’s now come to “What are you doing, and where are you doing it?”.
Moving to challenge Google and other emerging location-based services, Facebook on Wednesday introduced Facebook Places, a way for users to expose their location to other Facebook users and applications and to locate their friends.

Places allows users to share their location in real-time using an iPhone or a Web page accessed through a mobile browser (http://touch.facebook.com) that supports HTML 5, geolocation(GPS enabled handsets) and you need to be in USA which a little disappoints me. However it is going to be available for all places as http://blog.facebook.com suggests.

With Places, you are in control of what you share and the people you share with. You choose whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. When you check in, you can tag friends who are with you but only if their settings allow it. When you are tagged, you are always notified.

Happy Tagging Guys.

MotoGP 09/10 - Moto Racing Unleashed - Review

The MotoGP game franchise has been licensed to Japanese developer Capcom since 2007, and it released its first instalment of the series on the PS2 console. Starting from 2008, the game was shifted to the latest-gen PS3 and Xbox 360 systems. Having skipped 2009, the latest episode has just been recently released, and is branded as MotoGP 09/10. The idea behind this move is that the game will feature the authentic and official lineup of 2009, and will add new content via the PS3's internet connection as the 2010 season progresses. For example, the first update that will be rolled out this month (July) will contain the 800cc class and associated teams, plus the new Silverstone (UK) track. A future update will introduce the 600cc and 125cc series.

In franchises like this, each instalment represents an incremental upgrade or introduction of new features as compared to its predecessor, mostly for the better. MotoGP is no exception to this. New to this “season” is a timed Arcade mode, in which you have to complete a race before time runs out, with seconds being added for good racing, and time being deducted for making mistakes or getting overtaken. Also added is a spanking-new Career mode, which is the highlight of this game. More on this later.

Before we go any further, let me say this right out. I'm not really a fan of racing simulators, because as anyone who's ridden a high-performance bike will testify, playing in front of the boob tube does not even remotely capture the visceral experience of having your guts wrenched back as the bike accelerates like a rocket. Then there are a few other mundane considerations, such as the control scheme. A console's controller is nowhere near as intuitive as a bike's handle, so whereas in the latter you can keep the throttle open for long hours with little discomfort, having to keep the accelerator pressed with one finger in the former leads to your hand starting to ache from the tension after less than an hour of playing. And don't even get me started on the gear shifting. The way I see it, racing simulators actually offer the worst of both worlds — none of the adrenaline-pumping experience of a real sports bike, and all of the inconvenience of the console's controls. It therefore makes sense that if you really do want to play a bike game on a console, it might as well be one that lets you perform outlandish stunts and physically impossible speeds, while letting you bonk competing riders and roving cops on the head with a baseball bat. I'm talking of course of the all-time classic, Road Rash.

Coming back to the present, judging from the limited popularity of simulators, I'm not the only one who feels that way. Therefore, any racing title tries to increase its potential audience by “easing up” on the player, giving him the option to tone down the realism and have a more forgiving race environment. MotoGP is no different in this regard. It pleases the hardcore fans by giving them an authentic official race experience, complete with real-world riders and race gear. More importantly, it lets you adjust every single aspect of your bike, right down to individual gear ratios. For the majority of us who couldn't be bothered with these things though, it has varying realism levels, starting from the lowest Gentle setting, which simplifies the learning curve.

For the most part, MotoGP succeeds in this respect. The most obvious way is through the display of a dynamic “racing line” on the track. For those not in the know, the racing line is the optimal route that the rider has to takes across a bend so that the running speed of the bike is maximized. The better you stick to the racing line at the fastest possible speed, the bigger the edge you have over the competition. While in older games, the racing line would be represented by a simple white line across the track, recent games have made it “smarter”, one of the earlier examples being with Forza Motorsport 2 for the X360. MotoGP too has borrowed this concept. What you now have is a racing line that changes colour to act as a speed guide as well. Dark green indicates a “safe” or low speed, which gets lighter as your speed increases, with white indicating that you're at the fastest possible speed level. If the line is red, you're going too fast and unless you brake, will wind up overshooting the turn, sliding across the gravel, and breaking some bones. This feature is thus your friend, philosopher, and guide on the track (not necessarily in that order).

Coming to the game modes, the standard Championship mode lets you race a full season as one of the real-world riders and teams in the MotoGP. Sensibly, the higher 250cc and MotoGP bikes are restricted until you've first proven yourself in the lower 125cc class by finishing third or better. You'll see why this is such a good idea when how realize how much more difficult it is to handle the higher-performance beasts. Championship mode is the perfect way to get a good feel of the controls. The AI (Artificial Intelligence, or computer opponents) are at their most forgiving here, and it is not too difficult to overcome this obstacle. Things get a lot more challenging in the Arcade mode, which as mentioned earlier, throws in the added challenge of completing a track in a given time.

The toughest of the lot though has to be Career mode. Here, you begin as a rookie racer in the 125cc class, gradually working your way up the MotoGP ladder. Each race you play pays you money according to how high you finish. With this money, you can hire a publicist, who will scout for sponsors. These sponsors impose certain conditions, say finishing the race in 11th position or better. Achieving these objectives gives you a bonus payout. With this money, you hire engineers, who begin researching better technologies to make your bike run faster and handle better. Which area the research is conducted in (engine, brakes, suspension etc) is totally up to you. Another aspect is added through Reputation Points. The skills you display while riding (overtaking opponents, not overshooting turns, and so on) translate into points. Once you achieve a certain number of points, you move to the next “level”, which lets you hire an additional employee (PR or engineer) and take on an additional sponsor. Essentially, as long as you make enough money to pay your employees' salaries, you're in the game.

The problem with Career mode is in the sudden rise in difficulty levels. After a bit of practice, I comfortably won the 125cc Championship in the lowest difficulty level. Buoyed by this victory, I decide to plunge into a full-time race career. Boy, was I in for a shock. Suddenly I found myself all at sea, stuck with a bike that was far inferior to the competition. I needed to research upgrades to make the machine faster, but to do this, I had to win races first, which in itself became a near-impossible task. From winning a Championship by a 100-point margin, I now found myself routinely finishing eighth or lower, barely struggling to make ends meet. I did manage to end the 125cc season in fifth place, but it was depressingly clear that I had little resources left to survive the even more challenging 250cc season. Come on, this is the easiest difficulty level we're talking about! I'm supposed to be enjoying the game at this level, not crying out in frustration! Multiplayer mode was an equally disappointing experience. Normally, it's really difficult to go wrong with calling a few buddies over and playing console games with them over a beer or several. No such luck here though. The extreme difficulty of the Aracade-style race, again at the lowest difficulty level, meant that none of us could finish even a single race, each time having to listen to an annoying “Game over, yeah!” voiceover. Not cool.

I have little to say about the graphics and sound, mostly because there are few complaints on that front. The graphics quality, as with any title from a top developer like Capcom, is top-notch. I especially like the rain effects and the way drops of water splash on your helmet visor as you race under a grey sky. The music tracks are well matched to a game of this kind, having a good mix of Rock and Techno numbers that keep playing in your head long after the TV has been turned off. My only complaint: I would have preferred a few more tracks though; the quantity seemed to be a little on the lower side.

Overall, with its inconsistent difficulty levels, MotoGP 09/10 is not a title that can be considered friendly towards the casual gamer. This game requires sincere dedication and commitment on your part to master the dynamics of controlling various high-performance bikes. For hardcore simulator enthusiasts who love nothing more than tweaking the minutest settings to get that much more out of their rides, the game will provide a challenge that they will relish for quite some time to come.

What We Like: A great-looking game that has seen a lot of effort go into it, MotoGP provides enough goodies for the racing enthusiast, while also keeping the casual gamer occupied. The brand new Career mode is engaging enough to let you imagine yourself as a MotoGP team owner.
What We Dislike: The inconsistent difficulty levels will have you swearing in frustration at certain points. The gameplay experience is tilted far more towards the hardcore enthusiast than the casual player.

Rating: 7.5/10
Price: Rs 3,345
Platform: PS3

The game of Lifetime! - GTA Series

The Grand Theft Auto series defines the times we are living in. Most people in their right minds would not plan to spend their weekends committing auto thefts or getting into fights with strangers. In that sense, Grand Theft Auto (GTA) redefined virtual entertainment for these same acts. Some critics and parent groups call it—quite justifiably—downright insane; some enthusiasts call it the biggest gaming revolution since Mario and Doom.

This best-selling series has become a modern-day cultural icon and is listed as a top game on most charts more dominantly than any other game today. The core reasons for this immense success are perhaps the great gameplay plots of the GTA franchise—which have been given more focus after GTA II—and the freedom provided by the genre, in which a player enjoys a non-linear flow of the plot and has choices like free-roam and non-mission activities.

In the GTA games, the protagonists who gradually rise through the echelons of the crime world are often forced, pushed back or pushed into a life of crime because of tragic events. GTA does not, as opposed to the common notion about it, glamorize crime. In fact, it lets the players see how dirty crime is. The game would be clean of controversies if only parents and some obstinate children really understood the significance of the ratings and leave GTA for grownup gamers. GTA is not mindless gore and not solely about thefts and shootouts; it is about emotions; the problems of underprivileged communities (hoods); families and friends (e.g. your ‘homies’ in GTA San Andreas); of love—lost and found; and above all, the lifestyle we are still strangers to.

In GTA, gameplay progresses with missions, side-jobs and bonus activities which are unlocked serially excusing the series the need to have a separate training module for novice players. The player and the character both grow from being a newbie to an expert in driving and shooting skills, and in newer GTA games, flying, and even wooing girlfriends!

With releases like the GTA Chinatown Wars on the Nintendo DS, PSP and the iPhone, GTA is now available on all gaming platforms. Nevertheless, I have had better experiences on the PC because only a keyboard and mouse combination justifies the rich array of controlling options provided by the games. However, the controls are intuitive on all platforms.

The first GTA releases, GTA I and II, came around in the late 90’s. Their 2D graphics were poor by the standards of other games. However, the release of GTA III marked a new era in sandbox action genre with the introduction of the interactive, alive and breathing New York-like ‘Liberty City’ with crowds, cars and buildings, and the freedom to do just anything that you wanted to. The third person view was introduced and the seamlessly-rendered environment was complete with excellent lighting and sound effects of a busy city. The next release, GTA Vice City, brought a new city based on Miami, the ‘Vice City’. The next instalment, GTA San Andreas, had a graphics engine with an unparalleled performance. This version introduced the whole state of California with cities like San Fierro (San Francisco, Los Santos (Los Angeles, Las Venturas (Las Vegas), the surrounding towns and areas of desert, water, woodlands, and the countryside of Nevada. San Andreas redefined GTA gameplay with a wealth of new features like hunger, exercises for bodybuilding, dating, and licenses for life skills like driving, boating and flying.

However, in terms of animations and physics, GTA has continued to be weaker than most games of the genre. Cars still crash like toys and damages are not always convincing. Collisions, braking, drifts and motion simulations are getting better with new releases but have still not been meticulously taken care of. Characters look funny after they get shot and act stupidly when they have to climb into your car stopped right next to them—they often seem to not spot you.

The award-winning music and the voiceovers are the best features this franchise has to offer. The GTA games have parodied many components of Western culture but, most ridiculously, they have successfully made the US look like a place where stealing others’ cars is just as easy as entering into one’s own. GTA has itself been parodied in the spoof movie Meet the Spartans.

GTA allows you to witness the crime world by immersing yourself in it. It will take some time for crime-based games like GTA, which are actually about the human inside criminals, to get acceptance among sceptics. For everyone mature enough, this is a must have.

Line Rider - Incredibly hard and addictive

http://www.linerider.com/
I won't say it is a game or I just might say it. You take it the way you want. The point is; it's addictive. The idea is preety simple. You make a line on a blank canvas, and when you hit play, a sledge appears with a snowman riding it. The environment has full physics, so rider will slow down and speed up according to the incline of the line. Users who play this game, have come up with some interesting pieces of complex art with Line Rider. Soon they realized that they make for good YouTube content and began uploading such videos. The game can be wicked too at times as the guy on the sled can be made to have some spectacularly violent crashes. You can even decapitate his head with a strategically placed line. I tried it but could not.:P


If you have tried this game and need some influence then don't forget to watch this awesome video. LOL how he did that!!!???

View more LineRider videos at http://www.linerider.com/movies.aspx

Twitter is Over Their Capacity

The much popularity of twitter has brought me to this. Must have been due to the loss of Brazil from Netherlands. This also made me lost of what I was thinking to write. Hopefully I will post better.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction (Conviction moves away from stealth) - Review

The hallmark of Splinter Cell games has always been mission that emphasized on quite and stealthy infiltrations; some of which required players to complete an entire mission without killing a single enemy. For me, patiently lingering in the shadows, watching and eavesdropping on oblivious guards was the real kick in those games. Compared to these past releases in the series, Splinter Cell: Conviction feels more like a cover-shooter than a spy game. Stealth is still an element in the game; however, it no longer rules the design of the game like it once had.


Artistic conviction

The most significant change in the series is in the art department. All other changes in the game’s design are apparently centred on this new art direction. Starting with the game’s protagonist, Sam Fisher has ditched his trademark night-vision goggles and tactical stealth armour, in favour of urban casual wear. And while there are well-lit and dark areas in equal measure, hiding in shadows has been stylized to meet the new art-style. In Conviction, lurking in shadows bathes the world into shades of gray and Fisher can see in the dark without the need for night-vision goggles. This is because enemies are almost always placed in well-lit areas. The way forward in the missions is mostly about leaving behind a sea of dead bodies. Stealth kills now includes effortlessly taking out enemies while hanging from a ledge or a window pane.

By far, the most game-changing addition to the list is the introduction of “Execute” move. Each time players take out an enemy in hand-to-hand combat, they get an opportunity for an Execute move. This move lets players mark enemies—up to four enemies at a time— while hiding in shadows. Then with a well-timed push of a button, Fisher automatically executes successful headshots on all the marked enemies. This is easier than it sounds and it can often be used to clear an entire room in a single move.
During set-pieces where stealth is not really the best choice, the player needs to work with another new feature in the game called “last known position”. While engaged in an out and out gunfight, it helps to intentionally reveal your position to the enemies. This causes all the enemies to concentrate their fire on that single spot, and using this as misdirection, the player can move away to flank the enemies and even the playing field a bit.

A nice bit about this new art direction is the way in which the game’s environment has been used to communicate with the player. Mission objectives and grainy videos of flashbacks are projected on the surrounding walls to dramatic effect.

Bang-bang!

Sam Fisher is a very different player in Splinter Cell: Conviction. He is a rogue agent on a quest for retribution for his daughter’s death and in doing so he is up against his former employer. So as you can imagine, he starts off rather ill-equipped, using stolen piece of a rear-view mirror to peek under doors. However, as the game progresses, Fisher has access to enthusiastically stocked weapon crates that are curiously placed at fixed checkpoints.

Weapons include customary weapon classes of most shooter games—there are pistols, SMG, Rifles and Shotguns. Selection of weapons in each class grows as the game progresses and all of them are upgradable. Achieving fixed game-play objectives and progressing through the main storyline awards the player with points that can used to upgrade weapons.

Just like weapons, the game also has a decent collection of gadgets that are fully upgradable. However, unlike previous Splinter Cell games, you will rarely feel the need to reach into the pockets and use a gadget. Conviction is a relatively fast-paced game with little room, or even the need for much planning or strategizing.

From humble beginnings of a broken mirror, the game progresses to something really exotic like goggles that can spot the enemies through solid objects. Besides the in-game un-lockable items, there are a few other items that you can download from the Ubisoft servers. Some of this DLC is free [confirmed only for PC] while others come with a price tag. So, between the on-disc items and downloadable content, there are more weapons and gadgets than one could possibly need.


Vengeance and beyond

Splinter Cell: Conviction has a fairly decent storyline which is delivered through often engaging voice-acting. The plot of Sam Fisher’s personal quest to track his daughter’s killers is intertwined with another plot which inevitably includes saving the world. I feel that new direction with game-play would have been better justified if the main storyline would not have essentially culminated into just another mission for the country. In its current form, Splinter Cell: Conviction appears to have abandoned its roots to be just another cash-cow in the herd.

All the missions are relatively short, quick affairs and as a result the game feels a bit short at the end of it. The good news is that besides the main campaign, there is a decent amount of bonus content. In online co-op mode, players’ assume the role of Archer and Kestrel in a joint effort to recover stolen warheads. Hunter game mode is about progressively clearing the area of enemies, and Last Stand is about surviving waves of enemies, while simultaneously defending an EMP generator. Face-Off is a competitive game which pits one agent against the other along with common enemies thrown in the mix.

My online experience with the game was not one of the best. The DRM software for the PC version of the game appears to incessantly ping the Ubisoft servers even during ‘offline’ play. On a really bad day, it made the game virtually unplayable since every three or four seconds the game would lose connection with the servers and lock the game up. Now, I don’t have the quickest of connections to the Internet; however it’s not the dark-ages either. Besides this, in my experience, finding online matches was not always met with success and getting knocked back to the lobby was fairly common.



On the plus side, most of the additional game modes do not require another human player; so it’s not all bad. Then there is new DLC that is released regularly and so far the developers have promised new free content every week.

Splinter Cell: Conviction has its fair share of virtues and vices, and on the balance of things this is a fairly solid game from a neutral perspective. More significantly however, it is the shift of emphasis from stealth to action that is most likely to hurt the fans of series. For PC users, the new DRM that requires persistent connection with Ubi servers can be a potential deal-breaker. For those who really want to get this game, it’s a hard choice between paying more for the Xbox 360 version or getting the far cheaper PC version and risk having to endure the DRM.

Rating: 7.0/10

Details
Genre: (Third Person) Shooter, Stealth
Studio: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
*Platforms: Xbox 360, PC (Microsoft Windows)

*Reviewed on PC

Yahoo! Got level 4 on Y! Answers

Well guys I am just level 4 at the Yahoo! answers. And I am loving it. I will try and take it to level 7 and, gosh, it will take time for my pace. You guys need to try the Yahoo! Answers if you haven't till now.

Creating a Secure Password

I had once had my Runescape id hacked. It wasn't the might thing of the password cracker stuffs but I just gave my password away for some greed that was popular at that time in Runescape. Well I never got my ID back but I did learnt a lesson; play as you like, don't get in to the greeds and don't talk to strangers. Thats the moral of the story.

Now lets get to the title 'Creating a Secure Password'. Actually no password is secure. I am telling you every damn passwords can be cracked. Even the google's. Yes that's true, it can really be done.


A normal password consists of alphabets and digits. With capital and small alphabets with digits, the password could be made of 26+26+10= 62 characters. Also add the 32 characters(', !, @, #, $, %, ^, &.....) we have 94 characters, plus the white-space character makes it 95. For a simple two character password, we have as many as 95*95 = 9025 combination. For password of 6 characters, we have 95*95*95*95*95*95=735,091,890,625 combination.

For a computer which is capable of testing a million passwords each second, a 6 character password could take as much as 204 hours. If we have a computer ten times as powerful, testing 10 million combinations a second , we will still need over 20 hours for a 6 character password, and by simply increasing the number of characters by one to 7, we increase the time required by as much as 100 times.  If you can last longer then you can wait to see 1.7 billion years for a 12 digit password to be cracked by a computer. Even all of the computers in the world networked together would need a couple of hundred years to crack it. Of course this is a theoretical maximum, and you can expect with such a crude brute force attack to achieve success in significantly less time. A real algorithm would take a more probabilistic approach with will check more commonly occuring combination first.

Choosing secure Password
As the time required guessing a password increases exponentially as the number of symbols in the password increase, we are only buying ourselves enough time for an extra character or two. How about we improve the odds?

The goals when creating a secure password should be to create a password which:
* Is long (at least 8 characters, 12 or more recommended)
* Does not use a dictionary word.
* Is mixed-case
* Contains at least one digit.
* Contains at least one non-alphanumeric character.

While this will create a password difficult to crack, it will also make it difficult to remember. There is no point on choosing a secure password if you can't remember it or have to write it down and keep in your table. It is hard to say what is the lesson here, whether you should memorize your password better, or choose an easier to remember, but comparatively less secure password.

A good way is to create a complicated password based on some memory trick. Instead of remembering the password, you could associate it with something easy to remember in itself- no not your personal data!. For example:
n<7Plc8c could be memorised as "no less than 7 People like chocol8 cake"
The sentence doesn't really make sense, but might just make it easier to remember! Alternatively you can take a meaningful phrase and make it into a complicated password.

Multiple password Problem?
Another common flaw in most people's password policy is to use the same password for all their accounts. For one you can choose different passwords for more important accounts such as online banking and lesser important ones. This way, even if password of your less secure websites are cracked, your important ones will remain safe.

Another thing you can do is to choose a base password and modify it depending on the website you are using. If your password is "X@deR5" you can create a Facebook password of "FX@deR5b" or something similar. If maintain the same password then it will be easier to remember. However it may be easier to guess for someone who know your trick unless you tell.

Passwords are fragile little things holding our online life and the security of our organizations together. They are the short character sequences that lie between us and total destruction. Keeping a secure password is very important, and it is equally important to understand how you might be at risk. I hope that this post has been of help.

Some parts refrenced from a local book.

Blogger Template Designer- Don't know what to do of it!

I recently came by to the new feature introduced by blogger to customize the templates. I like any other had a try on it. Firstly I little kept aside by the fact that my current template is not available to customize. Though a nice set of templates, mine current template was what I needed. So I didn't change the template of my blog as you can see. However I looked up how would my blog look on them. The blue one on the picture looked quite nice for me. Tried some tweaks on it and was fun to see whats available.

See this offical introduction video.


Try it yourself. If you don't like the templates available then you can just wait or create yourself one.

Vector Runner- Can't be more Addictive!

http://www.digyourowngrave.com/vector-runner/
Did you guys play the Cursor 10? A addictive game of same class is what Vector Runner brings you here. The game uses basic shapes; old school 3D vector graphics, a cube as a block, smaller cubes as power-ups, and a steady steam of pyramids and rhombuses to dodge. The game is addictive because of the three challenges, of how far you can go without hitting something. This is one of those games that you can play for short bursts whenever you feel like a break. Despite how simple the game looks, the gameplay is preety complex, and the game is by no means easy. The game is also available for iPhone.

Check out this video of making 74k points. He also has some tips for us.

Click here to play the game. My current hi-score is 13250. Beat that. Hehe.

World Cup 2010. OOoLae. See it Live

Sorry for that 3 weeks break I took. Wasn't actually a break but was some thing nonsense my neighbour did to cut off my internet. Anyway I am back and in the right time of the WORLD CUP. Currently there is a match going on between Mexico and South Africa. You can view it (actually commentary only) onhttp://www.fifa.com/live/competitions/worldcup/matchday=1/day=1/match=300061454/index.html. For other Matches too you can view it live on Fifa.com. Also just type "World cup" on Google then you will be given the current scores on the match being played and also future fixtures.

Current match is going great so I am gonna watch it. C ya guys. I am supporting England and Spain. Which one is urs? Anyway what are you guys doing? Go watch the match.... Meanwhile: South Africa 1- 1 Mexico.

In Facebook - Not Friends or Blocked? Not a big deal!

You have been having some creepy guys out there stalking at you. So you blocked them from your Facebook friends list; you get relaxed then. But by passing days you may find out that they are still watching you. Here's how people actually stalk on facebook.


Handling blocks(or not friends): Just search the name of the person you want to view and click on it. You will be taken to his profile and see his status updates, photos and other stuffs. BUT, If he has perked with the security settings and stoped unknown peoples from viewing his post then you won't be able to see his status updates. 


Handling blocks(blocked from post): A friend has blocked you from their posts? No worries, you can still find out what they've been up to. Type their name in the search bar and click on See more Results for X. Check out the list of events and wall posts and photo comments under Posts by Friends. If you want more, go for View All Posts by Friends.


Photos: To view a photo album put up by somebody who is not on your friend list, find a friend of theirs who allows public viewing of their wall. Now, amongst all their news feeds, you'll see: X commented on Y's photo. Click on the photo, and just keep clicking next. *Wink Wink* you just saw their entire album without actually being friends.

The Last Resort: Make a new facebook account and fake him/her as friend, send friend request and wait till he accepts. Rest you know.

YourVersion - Discovering your Interests

http://www.yourversion.com/
A collator of personalized web content. YourVersion is supposedly "the best\t way to discover new and relevant content tailored to your interests". Searching everything from videos to blogs, Tweets to websites, and products to news, YourVersion can be your daily source of customized content. Called a "Real-time Discovery Engine" bye the company. YourVersion gives you real-time results/updates not based on your specific interests. It is also significantly different from an RSS reader because it does not rely on your subscriptions to display content, but instead, compiles content real-time based on your interests.

YourVersion has a simple and uncluttered interface. Simply feed in your "interests" when signing up (you can add/delete new interests at any time). and find your real-time listings of the latest relevant content that is filtered by one or all interests. Have a slow Internet connection? Then click on "Condensed View" for an even simpler text-based listing interface.

You can bookmark interesting content on the site itself, and return to it simply and easily, whenever you want. You can also allow the site to auto-organise pages by interest. Sharing is especially easy on YourVersion, allowing for facebook, Twitter, and email-based sharing options, right on the listing page itself. You can also give a thumb rating to each article/piece of content.

Other interesting application of YourVersion are the iPhone app and mobile site, as well as the easy-to use firefox toolbar. For sign-up you can also do it with your Twitter accout.

The site was launched in September 2009 and has won numerous awards at prestigious events.
Visit the site

Dlvr.it - Distribute your blog to twitter, facebook and more.

http://dlvr.it
Whenever I post anything to my blog I always link it to my facebook and twitter account. It is little slow to log in to the accounts and publish it. So recently I have tried this application called dlvr.it. It is a free application that lets you publish your posts to your facebook, twitter and other accounts. I will let you know more after this.

Post Update: When I posted this post and checked on my twitter page there was no tweet about the post available on my blog. So I logged on to my dlvr.it account then checked my twitter page; it showed my post then. At last dlvr.it  works. Must had been an error or my misjudgement for it not showing my post at first. Anyway I will be using it for quite a while now.
Post Update:Now anyway dlvr.it works fine. Whenever I post new posts then it delivers it automatically which is what it is supposed to do. The previously informed problem would never have existed as dlvr.it might have taken some time to post on twitter and facebook.

Online life together with Threadsy

Following the trend right now in my blog here is what you need for your many social connections to get in one place. Gone are the days when you could make do with a single email account for all your social connections. But now with the likes of facebook and twitter you may well be close to abandoning your email altogether. Threadsy is a new web service which attempts to salvage this mess by bringing in a social context and relevance to your email inbox.

Threadsy allows you to pull in emails from multiple accounts into one inbox, where you can manage all your messages. Unlike the traditional way of forwarding all mails to one account, or using Gmail's external email checking features, Threadsy gives you more control over each inbox separately as well. Adding an email address is simple as entering email address and password. If you use either Gmail, Yahoo!, Windows Live, AOL, or Mobile Me, you are done. YOu can also add custom IMAP account if you use other services.

While email is central feature of this application, the main premise is to add social connectivity. It lets you connect with Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Threadsy divides your communications into two columns -"inbound" and "unbound" panels. The "inbound" column shows all the messages that are addressed to you. The "unbound" column lists all social updates from your connected sites.

Threadsy makes good use of your social data, adding profile images to your email conversations to make the experience richer. As you view an email message from a friend, Threadsy displays all their social data aggregated from multiple sources.

The best thing is that it is browser based. No need to download.


Click here to use Threadsy.

TweetDeck - The ultimate Twitter and Facebook Application

http://www.tweetdeck.com

Guys I just love it! I really do. I even left Digsby(but still use for msn and yahoo) for it. The first wow factor is it's the interface. Its looks so beautiful and well managed. Making groups for seperate stuffs on facebook looks great and is easy to see whats happening.

It is a free application that lets you connect with your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn Accounts. It is supported by Adobe Air(no wonder how the interface looks) so you will need to install Adobe Air first to your computer which is not a problem because it is automatically downloaded when installing the app.

You can update your status, comment on others, like other comments, upload picture, share links and do almost anything you do on your regular browser based facebook. Try it, you will love it.
Download it from http://www.tweetdeck.co.
Also want to know how twitter goes with it? Click here

Digsby - Everything you need on one place

http://www.digsby.com
AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook all in one place thats Digsby. Before using it i had been using the same old yahoo messenger and windows messenger to chat with my buddies. The separate applications not just take up more space and slow your computer but also slows your working speed. Now having all of them is really a relief. So here's what it does. Straight from its website.

Instant Messaging

One combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts. Manage multiple conversations with tabbed conversation windows. You can drag tabs out into their own windows for important conversations. Rename contacts with an alias so you don't have to remember buddy names like 'giantsfan123'. If one of your friends has more than one IM account you can combine them into a single merged contact to eliminate duplicate buddies. Send your friends SMS messages right from the IM window. The InfoBox lets you check everyone's status message and profile just by moving your mouse down the list. Changing your status has never been easier. just one click right on the buddy list! Multitask while you chat. Minimize the IM window and you see popups of new IM's. Best of all, you can reply right from the popup and get back to what you were doing. Log conversation history and find the information you need our search-enabled log viewer. And so much more.

Email

Manage your Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from digsby. Get popup notifications when new email arrives. Clicking a popup takes you right to the message with auto-login into webmail accounts. The email InfoBox gives you a snapshot of your unread messages with just one click Perform actions such as "Mark as Read" or "Report Spam" right from the email InfoBox. Send emails to your friends right from the IM window. The email is sent directly from any account digsby is tracking for you.

Social Networking

Stay up to date with everything happening on your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts. Receive alerts of events such as new friend requests, messages, group invites, etc. The social network InfoBox gives you a real time NewsFeed of what your friends are up to. Everything from new photos, to status updates, to upcoming birthdays is just a click away. Set your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn status right from Digsby.

Personalize

Customize digsby with application skins to give it a personal look and feel. Change the way your conversations look with themes – everything from simple AIM-style windows to 3D conversation bubbles. Complete control over the layout of buddies on the buddy list. Change everything from buddy icon size to whether or not to show a snippet of their away message. Sort your buddy list how ever you want! You can organize buddies manually, by status, by service, by name or by log size to place those you communicate with most at the top. You can even choose a secondary sorting method. Customizable notification system lets you choose what events you want to be alerted about and how.

Other

• Digsby offers complete synchronization between computers and installations. Everything from the skin you chose to your pre-defined status messages follows you from place to place.
• You can place a widget on your blog, website, or social network profile so you can chat with visitors right from digsby.
• Manage multiple simultaneous file transfers from one simple transfer manager.

To download this software goto  http://www.digsby.com

Dump your Photo - no registration just upload and share.

I was looking for a easy to use photo hosting website. I just stumbled upon this http://www.dumpyourphoto.com/. I had to put some pictures in my blog like this one. So I just upload my picture into this site and linked the image in my blog through it. So simple to use and no registration requried.

Anyway if you want to create a photo album then you will have to register.

Tweet Feed- A great Tweeting tool, I just could not resist.

Lol! Going through the twitter I was just about to forget what I was tweeting throught. The website of tweeter works too but there are plenty of third party applications to tweet. This tweetbar is one of which I am currently tweeting through. A easy to use interface.

You need to be using Mozilla Firefox. Download the tweetbar application from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4664. After download it prompts you to add a account. After setting up the account you just need to write something on the address bar(Url bar) and mouse hover to the little bird icon then click '+' it will then post what you wrote to the twitter. For more information about the addon click here.

Download the addon from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4664

I am using Twitter - Getting excited

Aye guys good news for the tweeter goos I joined you. Heard and seen lots of twits and I think I was compelled to use it or may a need of time. Anyway I like it. Having the nice blue and light green buttons around feels a sort of relaxation(might be due to my love to light blue colours). I have put my twitter page on my blog for your convenience. I am also looking for twitter update thats shows up my tweets on the blog. Hope I will find a good one soon.

Don't forget to join me at http://twitter.com/myruchan . I changed the theme a little bit. Anyway I liked every theme available. How do you like it???

Dragon Age: Origins- Awakening - Review

Dragon Age Origins Awakening is the expansion to, and also what appears to be, the final chapter in the Grey Wardens Origins story. The story picks up after the Grey Warden slays the Archdemon and effectively brings an end to the Blight. However, the Darkspawn hordes continue to endure and once again the Grey Warden is called upon to investigate and end this threat. What’s different this time around is that there are reports of raids on human lands that are led by a Darkspawn that can actually talk. To complete this investigation, the Grey Warden is sent to the northern lands of Amaranthine to take helm of Vigil’s Keep.


Warden’s Keep redux

At the start of the expansion, the player gets a choice to either import a character from the original campaign or create a new character. [Spoiler Alert] If you character had decided to sacrifice their life at the end of the original campaign, the game simply assumes that the character is still alive. It seems like Bioware has recently gotten into the habit of letting players make drastic choices and then finding it hard to effectively accommodate the consequences in the follow-up. In any case, bulk of the expansion is about finding new recruits (party members) to join the order of the Grey Wardens, building the Keep’s defenses and settling any disputes brought to your court. The developers seem to be suffering from RPG fatigue as we see ideas being recycled from one game into another; in particular the idea of upgrading and maintaining stronghold as one of the central themes is getting a bit tired.

Along with Vigil’s Keep and the city of Amaranthine, the expansion adds three major regions to the world map. These locations mainly serve as recruiting stations for new party members and the quests surrounding them are pretty ho-hum, with the only significant exception of Wending Wood area. Unfortunately, the other areas of the game suffer from another typical Bioware trait by which the levels are conspicuously tileset-based designs. As a result, they appear to be only slightly different from areas seen in the original campaign. One area in particular—the Knotwood Hills—suffers not only from mediocre design, but it is riddled with several major and minor bugs.

The Epic and the lame

To their credit, Bioware has made significant addition to the character development side of things. The expansion has six new specialization classes and over 50 spells and talents. It also adds the ability for the player to craft runestones, along with new recipes for potions, poisons, traps and salves. The most welcome addition to crafting is Stamina Draught, which recovers a character’s stamina pool. On the flip-side, crafting runes is a tedious and boring process. Another significant addition is the ability to redistribute skill and attribute points of the playing character as well as all the other part members. It would have been great to see Bioware fit this feature in the original campaign as this freedom to tweak party member’s abilities significantly raises a member’s utility in a party.
The new abilities and specialization classes become available beyond character level 20 and they raise a character’s ability to epic proportions. On the other hand, the enemies do not scale up according to the party’s abilities and due to this combat is a cakewalk compared to Origins. Significantly scaled down difficulty means that it takes much less time to beat the game and the entire expansion has about 10 -15 hours of game-play. When compared with 50- 60 hours worth of game-play in the original game, Awakening comes out as too short even for an expansion pack. This difference in the ratio between new content and actual game-play makes plot development seem rushed.


No time to chat

The pace of party member’s character development is similar to speed-dating and the player is inundated with gold and magical items of ungodly proportions. What emerges out of this is that Bioware has modified its original plan for the franchise and are shifting towards more fast-paced, action-based role-playing games— like their very own Mass Effect series— and moving away from old-school RPG with challenging, tactical combat. It’s either that or it’s a result of spending just four months on an expansion pack and consequently spending less time balancing the game’s difficulty.


A detour

Overall, Awakening is a hit-and-miss in equal proportion, making it an underwhelming—and almost disappointing— follow-up to the original game. The climax does not live up to the build-up and the insane gear that you have by the end of the game feels wasted on the final boss. The antagonists in the expansion pack are sentient, intelligent beings— as opposed to Archdemon from the original campaign, that was essentially a possessed Dragon. Unfortunately, very little time is spend exploring their personalities or their motivation, and effectively the only difference in this final battle is that you get to have a short conversation with the antagonist before inevitably engaging in combat.

Those who found Dragon Age: Origins too long and difficult, will appreciate the new direction Bioware has taken with Awakening. On the other hand, there is a good chance that those same changes will disappoint the hardcore.

Rating: 7.5/10

Details:

Genre: Role- Playing Game
Studio: Bioware
Publishers: Electronic Arts
Platforms*: PC (MS Windows), PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

*Reviewed on PC

The Talking Photo

http://www.pqdvd.com/talking-photo.html
Roaming through the internet for some interesting websites I found this website for you guys. Its called Talking Photo. Thought of saying happy birthday to your friend far away huh? Try it out on http://www.pqdvd.com/talking-photo.html. It is a free to download software. You can also use the lite version of it through in your browser and it needs latest version of flash player.

When you enter the lite version mode(http://www.pqdvd.com/talking-photo-list.php) there is a option that you can use the photos already in the application or you can upload your own picture and make one. You can select which of your photo is eye and mouth. You can also edit the frame of the picture that can be moved.

A must try application, Check this out.

How you like it ? Do comment!

God of War III - a Review

 


In the first game, he was a Spartan that rose to the ranks of Gods and in the second game he was a God fallen from his grace. Now in the third and supposedly the final chapter, Kratos is a vengeful spirit with the single objective of destroying Mount Olympus and killing the king of Gods, Zeus. God of War III is a final stand-off between the old Gods and the new, between the Titans and the Olympians. As one would imagine, the ensuing battle is spectacular, both in its scale and the destruction it causes. Santa Monica studio has not introduced anything significantly new to the series with God of War III. They have taken all that we have already seen in the first two games and just made everything grander.

 

Just like God of War II, this game starts off with an epic battle and by the end of it Kratos is stripped of his powers and weapons. Without giving too much of the game away, the central objective from this point is to recover the Flames of Olympus that are said to have the power to kill a God and in this particular case, kill Zeus. Standing between Kratos and the Flames is a whole bevy of Olympian Gods and their minions. The Spartan deals with this in the only way he knows-- ripping them apart from limb to limb and bathing in their blood.

 

God of War III is one of the most violent and gruesome games I have played since Manhunt. Even the violence depicted in the first two games pales in comparison to what you will experience in God of War III. During the course of the game, I actually started disliking Kratos as he goes on a spree of mindless violence and killing everyone he encounters. I appreciate that this is a story about a God of War and violence is to be expected; however at the end of the day, there has to be something left to fight for.

 

Accompanying Kratos in his bloody crusade is his trusty pair of Blades of Athena, now re-christened Blades of the Exile. Augmenting his destructive abilities are three other weapons, and all four weapons also have magic abilities attached to them. These magic abilities automatically upgrade along with the weapon. Kratos will also be able to carry Godly trophies like the Bow of Apollo, Hermes's Shoes and even the head of the Sun God Helios. Just like the weapons, the power of these items can be used in combat as well as to solve certain puzzles in the game. Familiar collectibles such as the Gorgon Eyes and Phoenix Features make a return, and once again they can be offered as sacrifice to increase Krato's health, magic and item-power pool. Kratos can also recover other relics of Gods throughout the game; however these can only be used during subsequent play-through. These items give the player incredible bonuses and essentially work as cheat codes. No wonder then that the game disables trophies for the entire duration of a play-through, even if you use any of these items only once.

 

The developers have introduced some new things to the series, even though they maybe few and far in between. For instance, some of the QTE-based finishing moves are viewed from a first-person perspective. There are couple of other features like this one, but we do not want to spoil them for you. For the most part, this game retains its core-mechanics from the first two parts. Krato's primary blade has the familiar combos and all other weapons have similar keystrokes and effect. If things get really hairy, you can unleash magic contained within the weapons for some effective crowd control. Outside of combat it is still about platforming, shifting pillars, smashing objects and pulling switches and chains, to unlock the way forward.

 

It took me about seven hours to beat God of War III on normal difficulty setting. After beating the game - true to God of War tradition - there is plenty of bonus content to get your hands on. The game unlocks bonus costume, the highest difficulty level, a challenge mode and lots of developer videos. All of the game's cinematics also become available in the video gallery. While you can pretty much get away with mindless button mashing throughout the game, the Challenge Mode will require some skills to beat. After beating the Challenge Mode, the game unlocks the Combat Arena. We are not sure about the nature of this Arena, but speculations on some of discussion boards indicate that this is where you can design your own challenges: to the extent that before the start of combat, you get to decide the type of enemy you wish to fight.

So, is this the game for you? If you are expecting all that was the God of War games on the Sony PlayStation 2, but at a much grander scale, then you should get your copy of the game immediately. The developers have been very careful not to mess too much with the game's core-mechanics, as new features are introduced only in small doses. God of War III is quite simply a relentless and an epic bloodbath from the start, right till the credits start rolling.

Rating: 8.5/10

Details:


Genre:     Action, Beat 'em Up
Studio:     Santa Monica Studio
Publishers:     Sony Computer Entertainment
Platforms:     PlayStation 3