Boost your Wi-Fi easily!!!

 

Are you bogged down by your slow Wi-Fi internet connection, chances are most of you are, since speed can never be enough for most of us. Jokes apart, there might be some issues interfering with your Wi-Fi network leading to slow speeds. However, if you’re 100 per cent sure of your network and are looking for manual tweaking of the network to increase your speed, well, we have got some tricks just for you!

1.Using that handy tinfoil!

This is a quick and easy way to get more range for pennies. Did you know you can use a little tinfoil to increase your signal strength by several decibels. Cheack the following video out by clicking here

 

2.Sharing your Mac’s internet connection wirelessly

System Preferences > Sharing > Internet > Add Source (Ethernet) and the way the other computer will connect (Wi-Fi) > Check Internet Sharing to create a Wi-Fi hotspot

3.NetStumbler

NetStumbler (also known as Network Stumbler) is a tool for Windows that facilitates detection of Wireless LANs using the 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g WLAN standards.

4.Turn off SSID broadcasting

Access point admin page > Uncheck ‘Enable SSID Broadcast’ to prevent devices from listing your network as one of the detected options.

5.Limit devices that can connect to your wireless network

Create a device access list of MAC addresses that can access your network.

6.WPA Encryption

Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) are two security protocols and security certification programs developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to secure wireless computer networks. The Alliance defined these in response to serious weaknesses researchers had found in the previous system, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy).

To switch to WPA: Access point’s admin page > set your WPA passphrase to something difficult to crack.

7.Wireshark

Wireshark is a free and open-source packet analyser. It is used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communications protocol development, and education. Wireshark is cross-platform, using the GTK+ widget toolkit in current releases, and Qt in the development version, to implement its user interface, and using pcap to capture packets; it runs on GNU/Linux, OS X, BSD, Solaris, some other Unix-like operating systems, and Microsoft Windows.

8.Wireless signal repeater

A wireless repeater takes an existing signal from a wireless router or access point and rebroadcasts it to create a second network. When two or more hosts have to be connected with one another over the IEEE 802.11 protocol and the distance is too long for a direct connection to be established, a wireless repeater is used to bridge the gap. It can be a specialiSed stand alone computer networking device. Also, some WNICs optionally support operating in such a mode. Those outside of the primary network will be able to connect through the new “repeated” network.

Firefox starts free video chating

 

As it stands, Google Hangouts and Skype have something of a stranglehold on the video conferencing market. For the most part, those tools work well enough, but the barriers to entry are surprisingly high. Mozilla is setting out to change that by building video conferencing directly into Firefox, and eliminating the need for accounts or dedicated clients. Even better, it’s built on open standards, so your friends and colleagues don’t have to use Firefox to accept a video call.

While Mozilla has been experimenting publicly with the Firefox Hello project for months now, the recent stable release of Firefox 35 brings this feature into the limelight. Smack dab on the menu bar resides a happy little chat icon, and clicking it allows you to start a new video call. From there, you can sign into your Firefox account to manage your contacts, but that’s an optional step. Without signing up for anything, you can start a chat, and simply send an invitation URL to anyone you’d like. They click the link, and the video conference begins. It’s shockingly easy to use, and that’s the real innovation here.

                                 Of course, it’s not a perfect solution just yet. Not every browser supports the WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) standard just yet, and that’s the backbone of Mozilla’s service. Safari and Internet Explorer do not work with Firefox Hello, but third-party WebRTC plug-insdo exist to fill that gap. More importantly, the only way to initiate a video conference is by using Firefox. Considering that the usage share of Firefox has been steadily declining, that’s a big problem. Unless this service is completely browser agnostic, it’s something of a non-starter.

Don’t be discouraged by the current limitations, though. Mozilla is partnering with the Spain-based telecom company Telefónica on this project, and since it’s being so prominently featured in the Firefox user interface, it’s safe to assume that Mozilla has big plans for this feature in the coming months.

Even if this specific implementation never gains traction, it sets the stage for major disruption in the realm of video conferencing. Stripping down the entire process to one or two button presses is a major step forward in usability, and it gives me hope for the entire video conferencing concept regardless of which services survive. As someone who works out of a home office, the idea of simple and immediate video conferencing is extremely powerful. But until Firefox Hello gets substantially more robust, I’ll be holding onto my Google and Skype accounts.

 

If you have some suggestions of your own please let us know in comments!

 

 

Best 6 tools to browse the net anonymously

Browsing the internet anonymously is your business and many people prefer to remain anonymous. As a result, there are a number of tools that allow you to do so. Some are cross platform tools, while others work only on a single operating system. Here are six examples.

1. Proxy Finder

This tool allows you to automatically search and extract the free proxy servers from web sites.

2. Tor

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.

3. Hotspot Shield

This is a VPN shield that lets users protect their privacy and browse anonymously.

4. PC Mesh

This tool masks your IP address in order to allow you to browser the internet anonymously.

5. Anonymizer

This is a paid tool that works on Windows, Linux, MAC and Apple’s OS X.

6. Ghostsurf Platinum

As the name suggests, this tool, meant for Windows, lets you surf the web anonymously.

 

If you have some suggestions of your own please let us know in comments!

What is DDOS attack?

Today, every information we shares on the internet, are being saved somewhere in server. It is very important to keep servers alive to access those information. Some information can be share to anyone but some of them are very important for us and we can’t let anyone know. Hackers always try to get private information to do their dirty work.

But, Hacking is not just about stealing the information. When hackers do not get success in stealing , they try to down the whole server. In this case, we may lose all the information on the server if we don’t have backup or a proper defense.

Now a days, we hear about attacks on gaming networks , news websites, bank websites etc. And when i write about those attacks i mention one term that is ‘DDoS’. Many readers may already know about ‘DDoS’ attacks but many of them are still not aware and they always ask me : What is DDoS ?

So in this article, i  am going to explain everything you need to know about DDoS attacks. If you will have any question, you can ask in comment section.

Distributed denial of service (DDos) attack refers to the attempt to make online service unavailable through overwhelming it with traffic from numerous sources. DDoS attack targets a wide range of important resources including news websites, banks, and many more. They pose a challenge to people’s attempts to access or publish important information.A decade ago, DDOS was only a basic attack that trying to overwhelm connection with traffic with the aim of taking a certain web property offline. When leading web experts began fighting DDoS attack in the year 2000, the flood attacks ranged at 400 Mbps but as we speak they exceed 100 Gbps.

The attackers build a network of infected computers called botnet and spread the malicious software through websites, emails and social media. The machines are capable of being controlled remotely once infected without the knowledge of owners. These machines are then used like the army in launching an attack against the target. Some botnet are as strong as millions of machines. The floods are generated in numerous ways including sending more connection requests that exceeds what a server can handle. They can also be generated by having the computers send to the victim huge volume of random data with the intention of using up the target’s bandwidth. Some DDOS attacks are so huge that they can max out the whole country’s international cable capacity.

Specialized online marketers exist who buy and sell individual DDoS attacks or botnet. By using these marketplaces, anyone can pay some fee in order to silence websites that they disagree with or to bring to complete halt online operations of a particular organization. A week-long DDoS attack for instance that is capable of bringing a small firm offline could cost as little as $200.

Beyond the democratization of DDoS attacks are the advanced techniques and targets. Today DDoS involves a series of attacks targeting multiple devices that consist of the organization’s security infrastructure as opposed to targeting connection bandwidth only. They include various applications and firewall or IPS devices that organizations rely on such as DNS, SMTP, VOIP, HTTPS and HTTP. The latest version of DDOS attack is the common multi-vector attack that combines flood, state exhaustion and application attacks against the infrastructure devices in a sustained single attack. These attacks have gained popularity due to their effectiveness and the fact that they are hard to defend against.

Today’s new realities of DDOS attack require new approaches to defense. Network experts have been in the forefront in looking for ways to combat DDOS attack for some years now. The best defensive mechanism against the modern DDOS attack is the layered approach combining cloud based protection and on-premise. With this type of protection, you are guaranteed of 100% security for your organization against the entire spectrum of DDOS attacks. A digital attack map is also ideal for protection against a DDOS attack because it displays global DDOS activities on any particular day. It displays the attacks as dotted lines that are scaled to size and stored in line with their source and the destination countries of attack traffic when they are known.

 

If you have some suggestions of your own please let us know in comments!

 

 

Pirate Bay is going to be back with code “I’ll Be Back”

While everyone knows it’s often used for shady purposes, there’s nothing inherently illegal about the act of torrenting itself. So when BitTorrent juggernaut The Pirate Bay was fully taken down by Swedish police last December after over a decade of occasionally interrupted service, you didn’t necessarily know who to root for. But it looks like the battle is far from over as an intrepid Redditor has finally cracked the mysterious code hinting at The Pirate Bay’s return, Terminator-style.

The code first appeared when the site itself returned two weeks after the raid. Instead of the plethora of torrents users were used to, all they found was a waving pirate flag and an “aes.png” image file containing an encrypted message. More hints appeared and users became would-be detectives obsessed with solving the case, perhaps because the sudden lack of terabytes of free media left them with a lot more free time.

 

Eventually, super sleuth Redditor “dakfy2000” discovered that the page’s source code contained strings of irrelevant HTML tags and made the connection between the “aes.png” image file clue and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) technology. With this new knowledge, he decrypted half of the message with password hashing algorithms, took a much needed sleep break, and returned fresh to finish the job. “I love a challenge and that hit the spot,” he said in an interview with TorrentFreak. And what was the result of all his hard work? A link to “The Arnold Schwarzenegger ‘I’ll Be Back’ Supercut” video on YouTube. Watch.

As it turns out, not all fans were satisfied that the solution was merely a funny little teaser for future news. Some had speculated that the answer might involve a secret backup of Pirate Bay files hidden beneath the deep web, or maybe the site’s new strategy to spread and store files locally using its PirateBrowser P2P network making it much harder for outside forces to crack down on copyright infringement.

However, we may now know exactly when more news is on the way. After the mystery was solved, The Pirate Bay homepage added a timer counting down to February 1, so whatever the next step for the site is, we should hear about it next month. The Pirate Bay has bounced back from takedowns in the past, and it looks like this time will be no different. If they can make a riddle that stumped its diehard users for this long, they can probably stay a few steps ahead of law enforcement.

 

If you have some suggestions of your own please let us know in comments!

 

 

Some of the best alternatives of wordpress blogging platform

In the web designing and development industry, WordPress is the most popular choice. Its flexibility has contributed a lot to its popularity factor. Though WordPress is a great platform to use by bloggers, there are some great alternatives to it too, which may fulfill your requirements in a much better way. So here we give you a list of 10 most suitable alternatives to WordPress:

1. Ghost: 

Ghost is one of the best alternatives to WordPress. Ghost is a superb blogging platform which is not interested to be a CMS, unlike WordPress. Ghost only focuses on being a blogging platform. It has a simple UI and it has been created with JavaScript. JavaScript offers Ghost better speed than PHP-based WordPress.

2. Movabletype.org:

Movabletype is another good alternative to WordPress blogging CMS which provides plug-in and theme support just like its counterpart. The best part is it’s open source and a pro version is also offered for business use.

3. IM Creator:

IM Creator, a website builder, is a good alternative to WordPress, and it offers mobile-friendly templates which are much better than WP templates. Template categories include wedding, hotel and restaurant, architect etc. It provides support for articles and manuals too.

4. Expression Engine:

It’s also a great alternative which is quite popular among publishers. This platform is great for blogging, though it’s not free.

5. Jekyll:

Jekyll is a static site generator which takes text files and puts them together to create a static HTML site. Created by GitHub co-founder Tom Preston=Werner, Jekyll is best suited for hackers.

6. Cushycms.com:

This CMS is quite different from WordPress. It’s free for five sites maximum, provides great language support, can use its own logo and scheme too.

7. SilverStripe:

SilverStripe is a CMS which is used for building websites, intranets and web applications. It’s also open source and it’s free to use. SilverStripe is known for small business owners and its Framework platform also benefits a lot.

8. Tumblr:

If you want a quick-managed blog then Tumblr is the best option for you. It’s a great service for a good 3rd party hosted service and it’s quite simple to use.

9. Statamic:

It’s a flat-file CMS which blends static and dynamic elements. That’s why it’s called Statamic. No relational database management system or MySQL is used in Statamic, rather it stores content in a simple directory structure using flat files. It’s one of the best CMSes in the world.

10. Habari:

It’s open source and it supports the Google group to a large extent. It also supports forums, it has variety of plug-ins and it also supports modern themes.

 

 

If you have some suggestions of your own please let us know in comments!

 

 

 

Cool addons for your google drive, try it now!

Google Drive is really cool. While it’s a handy alternative for those who don’t have a word processor or any office suite for that matter, it is an amazing collaborative tool for those that have one to interact, edit and share what they are doing. Further, cloud is clearly the way to go, and Google Drive is an excellent example of this philosophy.

1.MindMeister

Turns any bullet-point list into a mind map, and automatically inserts it into your document. This is a great way to visualise lists and quickly add a graphical overview to your documents.

2.EasyBib

Allows you to easily create a bibliography for your research paper. Automatically cite books, journal articles, and websites just by entering in the titles or URLs. Format citations in MLA, APA, and Chicago style.

3.Mail2Drive

Makes it possible to create a Google Drive file straight from an email message. When you sign up, you receive a unique, secret email address. Any email sent to it automatically gets converted into a Google Drive file.

4.Google Slides

Lets you create and edit your own presentations. Not only does it have everything you need to pull together an awesome presentation, but you’ll never have to hit save again.

5.DriveTunes

Allows you to play mp3 and m4a audio files right from Google Drive. Queue and listen to music in Drive, rather than just previewing it.

6.Maps for Docs

This add-on will insert a Google Map in your open doc. Simply select the entire address text, click ‘Get Location’ menu item, review the Google Map, and click ‘Paste to doc’ button.

7.PandaDoc

Lets you add legally binding electronic signature to Google Docs to close deals faster. Consist of more than 100 free business document templates, fantastic and easy-to-use project management and CRM partner apps.

8.UberConference

Lets you quickly and effortlessly get all the editors and viewers of a document on a conference call so you can be more productive.

 

 

 

 

Some best google services you might have missed this year!

Google is a billion dollar company that has developed more than its share of services. While popular services like Analytics, Search and many others are well known to even the least tech savvy users, there are many Google services that are equally useful but much lesser known.

1. Google Ngram Viewer

Want to search keywords in over 500,000 books? The Google Ngram Viewer is what you need. It is useful especially when you can’t remember a book, but remember excerpts from it.

2. Google Correlate

We all use Google Search, but in order to start a business, especially an online enterprise, one needs to know what others are searching for. Google Correlate allows you to view search trends over time. It is part of Google Trends.

3. Google Trends

As is evident from the name, this one allows you to find search trends on Google. You can find out popular searches etc.

4. Google Think Insights

This one is very useful if you’re starting a business. It brings you case studies and many other pieces of useful information that can help you with your enterprise.

5. Google Public Data Explorer

This tool allows you to search through public databases from around the world and find information that you need. There are also graphs to help you with the searches.

6. Full Value of Mobile

While a mobile site is more or less essential for almost every enterprise nowadays, this tool from Google tells you just how important it is. It is a calculator that tells you how much your audience uses mobiles for your website and how important a mobile site is.

7. Get Your Business Online

This one helps local small businesses in America to bring their trade online and optimise their profits.

8. Webmaster Tools

As the name suggests, this is a tool for webmasters, who can use it to monitor their website’s traffic and health.

9. Schemer

This is a tool that plans your to-do list for a particular area that you are in. It is useful for people travelling to new places.

10. Google Fonts

This is a variety of open source web fonts that can be used by anyone for private or commercial use.

11. Google Developers

This is actually one of the more known services from Google. It is a developer’s heaven.

12. Dart

While it hasn’t done so yet, Dart is a programming language that was meant to replace JavaScript in order to build web apps. It was developed by Google.

13. Google Keep

This is an app that connects your Google Drive to all your devices and helps manage various items.

14. Google Sky

Along with Google Earth and Google Moon, this is part of Google’s space initiatives. It is a part of Google Earth and lets you explore space while sitting at home. It has been developed in collaboration with NASA and the images come from the Hubble Telescope.

If you have some suggestions of your own please let us know in comments!

 

I

Facebook apologizes for its, “year in review” app for algorithmic cruelty

If you are spending a lot of time you may have noticed an irritating popup from Facebook called “Year In Review.” The “Year In Review” automatically gathers a selection of the most liked photos from your feeds and pop up messages into your timeline with a tagline declaring “It’s been a great year! Thanks for being a part of it.”

It may sound freakish but in case you have put up a photo of  death of a near and dear one in the family, and the photo has been most liked, Facebook’s Year In Review algorithm will rather cruelly put up that photo in your timeline with a rather inhumane and insensitive tag “It’s been a great year! Thanks for being a part of it.”

That’s exactly what happened to prominent web designer and writer Eric Meyer.  Facebook forced Meyer to relive the utter horror of losing his baby, who had died on 6th birthday in June, 2014 after suffering from brain tumour.  Meyer who is barely out of the grief of his immense personal loss was flabbergasted to see the photo and the very inhumane tagline. He summed it up aptly on his blog,

“I didn’t go looking for grief this afternoon, but it found me anyway, and I have designers and programmers to thank for it. In this case, the designers and programmers are somewhere at Facebook.”

Meyer called it a “algorithmic cruelty” on part of Facebook’s engineers who through the “Year In Review” app forced him to relive the horrors of the moment of his daughters death. From his blog, “Still, they were easy enough to pass over, and I did. Until today, when I got this in my feed, exhorting me to create one of my own. “Eric, here’s what your year looked like!”

“A picture of my daughter, who is dead. Who died this year.” Meyer added, “Yes, my year looked like that. True enough. My year looked like the now-absent face of my little girl. It was still unkind to remind me so forcefully.”

The Year in Review popup may workout to be great for some while it may cause insurmountable pain to others to who have put up a image of  their near and dear ones lost in the year and if photo is picked up by Facebook’s algorithm to declare it has been a great year for them.

Meyer said he had known about the Year In Review popup but for obvious reasons had avoided making his own.  But that day, he felt helpless on seeing the popup in his timeline,

“To show me Rebecca’s face and say “Here’s what your year looked like!” is jarring. It feels wrong, and coming from an actual person, it would be wrong. Coming from code, it’s just unfortunate. These are hard, hard problems. It isn’t easy to programmatically figure out if a picture has a ton of Likes because it’s hilarious, astounding, or heartbreaking,” Meyer added, “Algorithms are essentially thoughtless. They model certain decision flows, but once you run them, no more thought occurs.”

Meyer, who is a web designer himself, knows the shortcomings in coding and algorithms vis-a-vis human emotions but he reminded Facebook that certain things should not be let to run.  Meyer recommended Facebook not to “pre-fill” any pictures until making sure the user actually wants to see them. He suggested that Facebook would been better off asking users opinion before dishing out such popups in the timeline.

Facebook apologises

Facebook has apologized for this offending error of its judgement. “[The app] was awesome for a lot of people, but clearly in this case we brought him grief rather than joy,” the product manager for Facebook’s “Year in Review” app, Jonathan Gheller, told The Washington Post. “We can do better – I’m very grateful he took the time in his grief to write the blog post.”

 

 

8 need to know firefox tricks

Mozilla’s Firefox is undoubtedly one of the most preferred choice for developers/designers as far as web browsers are concerned. The fact that it lets you play around conveniently with its settings so as to ensure you have an amazing browser experience all the time makes it one of the better options available today. Did you know, there are a few interesting tips and tricks that can speed up Firefox remarkably?

1.Do you know these Keyboard Shortcuts?

-Spacebar: page down

-Shift-Spacebar: page up

-Ctrl+F: find

-Alt-N: find next

-Ctrl+D: bookmark page

-Ctrl+T: new tab

-Ctrl+K: go to search box

-Ctrl+L: go to address bar

-Ctrl+=: increase text size

-Ctrl+-: decrease text size

-Ctrl-W: close tab

-F5: reload

-Alt-Home: go to home page

2.Do you know these Mouse Shortcuts?

-Middle click on link: opens in new tab

-Shift-scroll down: previous page

-Shift-scroll up: next page

-Ctrl-scroll up: decrease text size

-Ctrl-scroll down: increase text size

-Middle click on a tab: closes tab

3.Adding smart keywords

If you use a particular search a lot:

Right-click on search box > Add a Keyword for the search > Name the keyword and a shortcut name > Save

Now, everytime you want to do the specific search:

Firefox address bar > Type the keyword for instant search

4.Auto-complete

Address bar (Control-L) > name of site sans “www” or “.com” > Control-Enter to auto-fill

In case of .net addresses: Control-Enter is replaced by Shift-Enter

In case of .org addresses: Control-Enter is replaced by Control-Shift-Enter

5.Tab navigation

-Ctrl+Tab: rotate forward among tabs

-Ctrl+Shft+Tab: rotate to the previous tab

-Ctrl+1-9: choose a number to jump to a specific tab

6.Deleting items from address bar history

Address bar (Ctrl-L) > Type an address > Use down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete > Delete key

7.Speeding up Firefox (for Broadband connections)

Type about:config in address bar and hit return > type network.http in the filter field:

-Set network.http.pipelining to true

-Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to true

-Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to any number

-Right-click anywhere and select New Integer > name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay > set its value to 0

8.Limiting RAM usage

about:config > filter browser.cache > select browser.cache.disk.capacity > lower the value down from 50000