Tech Pedia » Internet

Skin Lightening App on Facebook

Abhinav Kaiser — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:19:03 +0000

Indians have a special liking to the fairer skins and Vaseline has exploited their liking with the launch of a new app for Facebook. The sponsored app lightens your skin color and makes you look fairer, as fair as you want to be, or should I say, the app helps us with the Michael Jackson effect.

Vaseline has recently launched a fairness cream for men in India and this app will certainly bring them the moolah. More than anything else, the technique and strategy employed in this regard should be applauded and it makes the product worth a buy.

The app does more. It has a social networking feature — after you create a new, fairer avatar of yourself, you can share it with friends and create a gallery with a variety of images to be displayed on your Facebook profile page. What this means is obvious: Vaseline wants to remove whatever taboo is left in the usage of these creams.

The fairness obsessed country is digging hard into the app and 600+ fans have thronged it since its launch.

So, the next time you see a pic on facebook, especially from India, imagine him or her to be two to three shades darker, and the situation can be quite embarrassing for the person who has gone through trial by app, and the whole saga is an open secret of sorts.

India is not a racist country, everybody here emerges from the same race. But, the race to white-dom will see the fairer skins will achieve lot more in industries where skin color does matter.

Mozilla Firefox 4 Public Beta Launched

Abhinav Kaiser — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 04:14:10 +0000

Just a quick update! Mozilla has made Firefox 4 Beta available to the public as of today. You can download it here. I am going to download it tonight and offer my views. Keep tab on this post for further updates. Related posts:Mozilla Firefox 3.5 ShortcutsOffice 2007 Beta DownloadInternet Explorer 7 Beta 2: Wreck or Wonder? Related posts:

YouTube Hacked, Target Justin Bieber

Abhinav Kaiser — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:22:34 +0000

Video sharing website YouTube has been hacked yet again, but, this time around the website was not the target, young Canadian pop star Justin Bieber instead.

Bieber’s music videos were the target. Comments, abusive in nature were posted on the video clips and some comments even claimed that the singer was dead. Yikes!

The site was down for two hours on Sunday before the parent company (Google) took notice of the situation. A flaw in the website allowed hackers to redirect YouTube users to adult websites and also launch pop-ups.

A Google spokesman said of the YouTube hack: “We took swift action to fix a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability [which allows hackers to place code into a site] on youtube.com that was discovered several hours ago. Comments were temporarily hidden by default within an hour, and we released a complete fix for the issue in about two hours. We’re continuing to study the vulnerability to help prevent similar issues in the future.”

Graham Cluley from the security firm Sophos, told BBC News: “The thing with a cross-site scripting attack is that it will appear that it is a message being posted by that website, which gives it a certain legitimacy.

“It could be used to show a message that tells you to update your password; it could link to a malicious website; or it could attempt to phish you.”

For some strange reason, Justin Bieber has been on the receiving end for sometime now. His website which featured ‘My World Tour’ section was hacked. Voting was called for asking where Bieber should tour next – with no restrictions on location.

Most people voted for North Korea, followed by Israel, with just over half a million votes having been cast, after bulletin board, 4Chan, nominated the despotic state. This is the second joke in two months that 4Chan has played on Bieber, after getting its readers to search for the phrase ‘Justin Bieber Syphilis’ last month – making it number one in Google Trend’s ‘Hot Searches’ list.

Oh! By the way, Justin in alive, he tweeted it himself.

Google Caffeine Brewed and Served for Fresher Search Results

Abhinav Kaiser — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 03:07:55 +0000

Google’s new technology in web search is made public. Caffeine, as they call it is the brains behind the Google Search since yesterday. It provides 50% fresher results which is great news for information crazy public who dwell on getting new information from the net.

Illustration : Suppose I wanted to search for an event that took place a few hours back, Google Search was an utter failure, but Google News picked it up within a few minutes since it was reported. So, I used to head over to News and type the keyword to get the information I am looking for. But, on Caffeinated Google Search, I can get current news on Search within a few hours.

What makes the difference in Caffeine?
The old Google Search indexes was in the form of layers. To update the index, the entire layer was needed to be refreshed which was time consuming. And, the indexing was done for the entire web in one single stretch. This translates into the time taken for a webpage to show up on Google Search.

Caffeine is different, similar to the RISC technology in microprocessors. It does multiple mini updates on an hourly basis. The idea here is to scout for new data and whenever it finds one, feed it to the indexes and go out searching for a new one.

Here’s some Caffeine facts / stats from the Google blog:

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

Becoming Twitterpated

Om — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:56:07 +0000

If the term “Becoming Twitterpated” doesn’t ring a bell in your ears, then you’re missing out on loads of fun in your life. Basically, the term signifies the phenomena of thinking about your current object of desire.

It has also been described as a strange enjoyable disorder, which is mainly characterized by simultaneous feelings of anticipation, excitement, recent memories of interludes, physical over stimulation high hopes, giddiness, during a new love. However, we’re talking about a new form of love and craze – yes it is the Twitter, the latest micro-blogging and social networking platform.

Becoming Twitterpated simply means entering the wonderful world of Twitter where you can tweet about whatever you do on a daily basis, or promote your business, by expressing your views about the concerned industry and do lots more. When you become Twitterpated for the first time, it is often a totally new experience altogether. However, sometimes people just join Twitter and leave their account without exploring the real fun of tweeting around. Initially, you might think that tweeting is all about sharing a word with others, or passing on the hot-gossips, but this by no means is the real essence of Twitter.

After becoming Twitterpated, you should consider downloading the free Twitter Handbook, which briefly explains the history of social networking. It not only introduces a multitude of free applications, but also other things that are available totally free of cost via your Twitter account.

So, you must be thinking that you’re all set to join Twitter and enjoy after becoming Twitterpated, but hang-on, because that is not the end of the story.

You would be further pleased to know that Twitter allows you to hyper-learn about affiliate opportunities, taking your business to the next level, developing personal relationships(albeit virtual), asking questions and getting quick replies.

Furthermore, it is also possible to integrate your Twitter account with Wordpress blog or any other personal blog and tweet directly from Wordpress. The process is relatively simple, as all you need to do is to install a free plug-in and follow the process of integrating the two great inventions – Wordpress and Twitter!

Are You Biking? Lost? Try Google Maps…

Abhinav Kaiser — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:51:50 +0000

Google never ceases to grow, that’s the mark of a company which is good to invest on. Their latest addition to their tally is an add-on to its Google Maps engine, aiding bikers to find routes across the US.

Shannon Guymon, product manager for Google Maps said, “We wanted to include as much bike trail data as possible, provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trip, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and customize the look of the map for cycling to encourage folks to hop on their bikes. So that’s exactly what we’ve done.”

The search engine major has tied up with Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s TrailLink.com and has information to about 12,000 miles of bike trails. It is often argued that US has bike trails ranging around 40,000 miles.

Getting the latitudes and longitudes of bike trails is job half done. Applying the routing algorithm to these trails was always going to be a challenge. Google had to consider the urban terrains and the bike paths the city had to offer, and take into consideration the recommended routes by experienced bikers. All this has been accomplished as per the company.

“Our biking directions are based on a physical model of the amount of power your body has to exert given the slope of the road you’re biking on,” said Google software engineer John Leen. “Assuming typical values for mass and for wind resistance, we compute the effort you’ll require and the speed you’ll achieve while going uphill. We take this speed into account when determining the time estimate for your journey, and we also try hard to avoid routes that will require an unreasonable degree of exertion.” Up hills and down hills are something that the routing algorithm didn’t have to consider earlier for vehicle routing.

Paypal Back in Action

Abhinav Kaiser — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:24:59 +0000

Paypal, which had mysteriously stopped all transactions to and fro from India is back up and running. This is a huge relief for thousands of freelancers from India and also the minute section of exporters from this country.

Paypal had stopped all transactions based on a direction from the Reserve Bank of India, which holds the ultimate financial authority in the country.

During the outage of 37 days, Paypal has managed to sneak in a modification to the way it deposits funds. Along with the withdrawal request, Paypal users will now have to provide a IE code to identify the kind of transaction that takes place. All they need to do is select one among the many options available in the drop down. I wonder how this helps RBI to track down conspirators, still shady indeed!

If you don’t trust Paypal anymore, some alternatives are Moneybookers and Payoneer. Although Paypal is the cheapest of them, the alternatives that I propose are quite firmly grounded in their respective businesses. Moneybookers wires your money directly to your banks through SWIFT codes while Payoneer provides a Mastercard which it uses to load money. Commissions and taxes are quite high on this service.

New Features in Gmail

Abhinav Kaiser — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:13:06 +0000

The most popular webmail currently, Gmail is offering loads of new features. It seems like the web giant is beginning to unleash plenty of free options along with some paid ones too.

Here are some of the new features on Gmail:

1. Secure Gmail – Gmail is now enabled with HTTPS protocol and users can now choose to either go with the regular webmail or opt for the secure option. The HTTPS feature will slow down the web application considerably owing to complexities in secure protocols. However, if you are on a secured network, you will probably not required to opt for secure Gmail. This one particularly comes in handy if you are accessing your account on an unsecure network or on a public machine.

2. Double Verification of Emails Sent out to Contacts with Similar Names – Google calls it “Got the wrong Bob?” and “Don’t forget Bob”. If you have a Bob Turner and a Bob Turren, and if you are sending out a mail to either one of them, Gmail will prompt you if you are sending the mail out to the right person. A nice feature that would come in handy for those who have thousands of contacts on their list.

3. Extra Storage – The first commercial venture, in terms of webmail means. Google is offering an additional 20GB for a paltry $5 if you would like to store excess emails on Gmail and photographs on Picasa. This is over and above the free space offered. If you are using an application like the Gdrive, you could very well use this option to get cheap online storage space. I am thinking about opting to this feature and getting rid of my online storage drive.

4. New Themes – A set of four themes have been added onto Google Labs for Gmail. I particularly liked Tea House which changes themes depending on the time of the day.

5. Drag and Drop Labels – Have you tried dragging and dropping labels onto your emails? I found this out lately, but my sources tell me that this feature has existed for months. It is a nice feature, and will add to my usability experience on the system.

Hey, if you feel that I have left out a feature on Gmail that is new, give a shout.

List of Banned Passwords on Twitter

Abhinav Kaiser — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:35:56 +0000

Twitter has banned approximately around 370 passwords from being used during sign-up, and also at any point later in time. This is to ensure that the most common passwords don’t make Twitter look weak in security.

The ban is not new. Do a google search for ‘twttr.BANNED_PASSWORDS’ and you will get the same list that I have published below.

Twitter conducted a detailed analysis on the passwords used since inception and the ones that it found to be too obvious are the ones on the banned list.

I do not know the details of the analysis but I can probably decipher their methodologies. They would have numbered the common passwords and with a preset benchmark, they would have banned the ones ranging over it. For example, they would have counted the total number of common. The password ‘password’ would have appeared 1 billion times. Let’s say the benchmark is 1 million, it would have obviously been above the threshold. The same goes with 369 others as well.

If you are going to sign up for twitter, keep this list handy!

1. 111111
2. 11111111
3. 112233
4. 121212
5. 123123
6. 123456
7. 1234567
8. 12345678
9. 131313
10. 232323
11. 654321
12. 666666
13. 696969
14. 777777
15. 7777777
16. 8675309
17. 987654
18. aaaaaa
19. abc123
20. abc123
21. abcdef
22. abgrtyu
23. access
24. access14
25. action
26. albert
27. alexis
28. amanda
29. amateur
30. andrea
31. andrew
32. angela
33. angels
34. animal
35. anthony
36. apollo
37. apples
38. arsenal
39. arthur
40. asdfgh
41. asdfgh
42. ashley
43. august
44. austin
45. badboy
46. bailey
47. banana
48. barney
49. baseball
50. batman
51. beaver
52. beavis
53. bigdaddy
54. bigdog
55. birdie
56. bitches
57. biteme
58. blazer
59. blonde
60. blondes
61. bond007
62. bonnie
63. booboo
64. booger
65. boomer
66. boston
67. brandon
68. brandy
69. braves
70. brazil
71. bronco
72. broncos
73. bulldog
74. buster
75. butter
76. butthead
77. calvin
78. camaro
79. cameron
80. canada
81. captain
82. carlos
83. carter
84. casper
85. charles
86. charlie
87. cheese
88. chelsea
89. chester
90. chicago
91. chicken
92. cocacola
93. coffee
94. college
95. compaq
96. computer
97. cookie
98. cooper
99. corvette
100. cowboy
101. cowboys
102. crystal
103. dakota
104. dallas
105. daniel
106. danielle
107. debbie
108. dennis
109. diablo
110. diamond
111. doctor
112. doggie
113. dolphin
114. dolphins
115. donald
116. dragon
117. dreams
118. driver
119. eagle1
120. eagles
121. edward
122. einstein
123. erotic
124. extreme
125. falcon
126. fender
127. ferrari
128. firebird
129. fishing
130. florida
131. flower
132. flyers
133. football
134. forever
135. freddy
136. freedom
137. gandalf
138. gateway
139. gators
140. gemini
141. george
142. giants
143. ginger
144. golden
145. golfer
146. gordon
147. gregory
148. guitar
149. gunner
150. hammer
151. hannah
152. hardcore
153. harley
154. heather
155. helpme
156. hockey
157. hooters
158. horney
159. hotdog
160. hunter
161. hunting
162. iceman
163. iloveyou
164. internet
165. iwantu
166. jackie
167. jackson
168. jaguar
169. jasmine
170. jasper
171. jennifer
172. jeremy
173. jessica
174. johnny
175. johnson
176. jordan
177. joseph
178. joshua
179. junior
180. justin
181. killer
182. knight
183. ladies
184. lakers
185. lauren
186. leather
187. legend
188. letmein
189. little
190. london
191. lovers
192. maddog
193. madison
194. maggie
195. magnum
196. marine
197. marlboro
198. martin
199. marvin
200. master
201. matrix
202. matthew
203. maverick
204. maxwell
205. melissa
206. member
207. mercedes
208. merlin
209. michael
210. michelle
211. mickey
212. midnight
213. miller
214. mistress
215. monica
216. monkey
217. monkey
218. monster
219. morgan
220. mother
221. mountain
222. muffin
223. murphy
224. mustang
225. naked
226. nascar
227. nathan
228. naughty
229. ncc1701
230. newyork
231. nicholas
232. nicole
233. nipple
234. nipples
235. oliver
236. orange
237. packers
238. panther
239. panties
240. parker
241. password
242. password
243. password1
244. password12
245. password123
246. patrick
247. peaches
248. peanut
249. pepper
250. phantom
251. phoenix
252. player
253. please
254. pookie
255. porsche
256. prince
257. princess
258. private
259. purple
260. pussies
261. qazwsx
262. qwerty
263. qwertyui
264. rabbit
265. rachel
266. racing
267. raiders
268. rainbow
269. ranger
270. rangers
271. rebecca
272. redskins
273. redsox
274. redwings
275. richard
276. robert
277. rocket
278. rosebud
279. runner
280. rush2112
281. russia
282. samantha
283. sammy
284. samson
285. sandra
286. saturn
287. scooby
288. scooter
289. scorpio
290. scorpion
291. secret
292. sexsex
293. shadow
294. shannon
295. shaved
296. sierra
297. silver
298. skippy
299. slayer
300. smokey
301. snoopy
302. soccer
303. sophie
304. spanky
305. sparky
306. spider
307. squirt
308. srinivas
309. startrek
310. starwars
311. steelers
312. steven
313. sticky
314. stupid
315. success
316. summer
317. sunshine
318. superman
319. surfer
320. swimming
321. sydney
322. taylor
323. tennis
324. teresa
325. tester
326. testing
327. theman
328. thomas
329. thunder
330. thx1138
331. tiffany
332. tigers
333. tigger
334. tomcat
335. topgun
336. toyota
337. travis
338. trouble
339. trustno1
340. tucker
341. turtle
342. twitter
343. united
344. vagina
345. victor
346. victoria
347. viking
348. voodoo
349. voyager
350. walter
351. warrior
352. welcome
353. whatever
354. william
355. willie
356. wilson
357. winner
358. winston
359. winter
360. wizard
361. xavier
362. xxxxxx
363. xxxxxxxx
364. yamaha
365. yankee
366. yankees
367. yellow
368. zxcvbn
369. zxcvbnm
370. zzzzzz

Google Wave Invites Giveaway

Abhinav Kaiser — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:47:30 +0000

Hiya! I have around 25 invites left for Google Wave. Comment here if you want me to invite you to it. First come first serve basis. Related posts:Google Wave Coming to Google Apps this YearIBM’s Project Vulcan: The Next Generation of Lotus Notes and a Rival To Google WaveGoogle Caffeine Brewed and Served for Fresher Search [...] Related posts: