You’ve made a nice blog with a good design. Getting lots of traffic, huh? Now, consider getting it hacked. Isn’t it unfair? So, follow the steps to make your blog secure and hackerSAFE

STEP 1

Update Update Update!

Tip: Use the latest version of the Wordpress! Its always better as they fix up the Vulnerabilities and make it more safe.

How to: As soon as the new version is available, you’ll be notified on your Wordpress Admin Dashboard. Follow the process form there to update it.

STEP 2

Change Username and Password!

Tip: Wordpress provides you the default username and password i.e admin at the time of install so everyone will know your username so and its it would be easy for them to guess your password.

How to: Create a new user from the dashboard and keep an alpha numerical password even include special characters.And then sign in to phpMyAdmin through your webserver account and change user name from “admin” to something of your choice too.

STEP 3

Keep Backups

Tip: Its always good to keep a backup of your blog posts and comments, so that you can revert to the latest contents after a disaster. I suggest you backup often, depending upon your site’s traffic.

How to:There is a Wordpress backup plugin which does a pretty job. You can either email the backup or download it to your computer. Link to plugin here

Manual backup is even better to do a complete backup of your database.

STEP 4

Stop brute force attacks

Tip: Brute force is multiple attempt of logins. You can stop it!

How to: Use login lockdown plugin, its and excellent plugin which monitors login attempts to your site. It checks how many times in a short period of time the same IP range has tried to login and if in that time a particular IP exceeds the attempts allowed then this sweet plugin will lock down access privileges for a time period you set.

Download here

STEP 5

Password protect

Tip: Password protect you wp-admin

How to: Use the askapache password protect plugin It protects your Wordpress wp-admin folder which adds another layer of security by requiring a set of valid Username and Password to gain access to anything in the /wp-admin/ folder.

Easy to use, all you need to do is to create another username and password. Here, you added some more protection. It works by writing a new .htaccess file for that folder, and encrypts your new password. Highly recommended.

Download plugin from here

STEP 6

Hide Your Contents

Tip: Did you ever login http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-contents/plugins/ on your browser? Do it! You will see the list of your plugins now its again cake walk for the hackers to look at your plugin and see if you are using one with known security vulnerabilities and exploit them. So hide it

How to: Just make a blank index.html on your computer, upload it using the your ftp and put it in the /plugins/ folder and its all fixed. Its also good to add it in your /themes/ folder too. It works!

STEP 7

Block search engines

Tip: Block search engines from crawling up your wp-folders as there is no need to have all your Wordpress files indexed, so its probably better to block them so there is no need to having all your Wordpress files indexed, so its probably better to block them so when people search they do not see those files.

How To: You can block search engines from crawling your wp- folders by blocking access via robots.txt file.

Simply add this line: Disallow: /wp-*

If you are lazy again to do this then go ahead and use KB robots.txt plugin

Download from here




The Google PageRank, algorithm and its working

Introduction

Page Rank is considered very important by many Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts, though it does not place an important role in Google search results. But, still having a good page rank determines the importance of a link or web page. Google too gives the Page rank a Preference when multiple factors are considered.
Page Rank is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance. It is only one part of the story when it comes to the Google listing, but the other aspects are discussed elsewhere (and are ever changing) though Page Rank says nothing about the content or size of a page.
Google PageRank is displayed in Google Toolbar ranging from 0 – 10 whereas the actual Page rank differs in Floating point numbers shown below.
Google Toolbar PageRank
Real PageRank
0 0 – 10
1 10 – 100
2 100 – 1,000
3 1,000 – 10,000
4 10,000 – 100,000
5 100,000 – 1,000,000
and so on…
The Page Rank changes every time Google does its indexing.It is not convenient to show the Page Rank in large digits and to update it frequently. So, Google Page Rank and Back links are updated in the Toolbar mostly in a time span of 1-3 months.

So, what is PageRank?
  • PageRank is only one of numerous methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance.
  • PageRank evaluates two things: how many links there are to a web page from other pages, and the quality of the linking sites.
  • The Google PageRank algorithm it’s established PR across all of the outbound links. Put differently, if you had a web page with a PR6 and had 1 link on it, the site linked to would get a fair amount of PR value. But, if you had 40 links on that page, each individual link would only get a fraction of the value.
  • From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with P̸ and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with P̼ and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.
How the PageRank is calculated
  1. PageRank is based on incoming links, but not just on the number of them – relevance and quality are important (in terms of the PageRank of sites, which link to a given site).
  2. It often takes two full monthly updates for all of your incoming links to be discovered, counted, calculated and displayed as backlinks
  3. PageRank does not rank web sites as a whole, but is determined for each page individually.
  4. Google calculates pages PRs permanently, but we see the update once every few months .
  5. PR(A) = (1-d) + d [PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn)]. This is the formula to calculate the PageRank (of Page A).
Lets make it simple to understand
  1. PR(͉) – Each page has a notion of its own self-importance.That’s PR for the first page
  2. PR(TN) – That’s PR of the Nth number of page.
  3. C(Tn) – Its the total outgoing links from a page. The count, or number, of outgoing links for page 1 is C(T1), C(Tn) for n number of pages.
  4. d – All these fractions of votes are added together but, to stop the other pages having too much influence, this total vote is “damped down” by multiplying it by 0.85 (the factor “d”).
  5. (1 – d) – The (1 – d) bit at the beginning is a bit of probability so the “sum of all web pages’ PageRanks will be one”: it adds in the bit lost by the d It also means that if a page has no links to it (no backlinks) even then it will still get a small PR of 0.15 (i.e. 1 – 0.85). (Aside: the Google paper says “the sum of all pages” but they mean the “the normalised sum” – otherwise known as “the average” to you and me.)
A detailed Explanation with examples for calculating pagerank is coming soon. So, get subscribed.

Important factors for PageRank
  • Incoming Links from popular sites are important. If pages linking to you have a high PageRank then your page gains some part of their reputation.
  • Site can be banned if it links to banned sites.Be extremely careful of any out-going links from your site. Don’t link to bad neighborhoods (link farms, banned sites, etc.) Google will penalize you for bad links so always check the PageRank of the sites you’re linking to from your site.
  • Illegal activities will penalize your PageRank and possibly ban your site from Google.Hidden text, deceptive redirects, cloaking, automated link exchanges, or anything else against Google’s quality guidelines can ban your site from Google.
  • Different pages from a site can have different Page Rank.Search engines crawl and index web pages not websites, that is why your page rank may vary from page to page within your website.
  • Content is not taken into account when PageRank is calculated. Content is taken into account when you actually perform a search for specific search terms.
  • Links marked with nofollow-attribute don’t contribute to Google PageRank.Google implemented a new value, “nofollow”, for the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that website builders and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank — they are links that no longer constitute a “vote” in the PageRank system.
  • Bad incoming links don’t have impact on Page Rank.Where the links come from doesn’t matter. Sites are not penalized because of where the links come from
  • Google penalizes link farms.Google is only concerned with pages of over 100 outgoing links. Google considers overly linked pages to be link farms, and they are penalized as such.
List of PageRank Tools

We have got our own PageRank calculator which shows the current PageRank of your site with its Alexa Rank and Average backlinks from most popular search Engines.
Google PageRank Inspector
Google PageRank inspector is PHP scripts that can seek all of your website, include out linked page or not, and display Pagerank value for each of your website pages.
PageRank Decoder
This little tool is not too much different then a tool that tells you your PageRank, however it allows you to organize your sites (with PR information) in a visual network and then correspondingly connect them with arrows. You can move them around like cards, connect them or not, and even delete them by throwing them in a trash can.




There are hundreds of lesser-known but highly-useful open-source applications available for Windows. A few of my favorites are below.

These applications range from moderately popular to downright obscure, but all of them are open-source and FREE. All of them are worth the install time if you have never tried them. As a side bonus, many of them are cross-platform as well.

Here they are, in random order:

zscreen.jpg1. ZScreen

ZScreen is an open-source screen capture program that quietly resides in your system tray until needed. It can take screenshots of a selected region, the active window, or the entire screen. It can even send screen captures via FTP and copy the URL to your clipboard, all with just a single keystroke. Oh yeah, it can also interface with image editing software, such as Photoshop or Paint.net.

If you frequently take screenshots, ZScreen is light years faster than pressing Print Scrn and pasting into MS Paint.

pdfcreator-logo.png2. PDFCreator

PDFCreator allows you to create PDFs from any program that can print. Once it’s installed, simply “print” to the virtual printer that it creates, and the resulting document can be read on any computer with Adobe Reader (or comparable software).

There are several similar programs, but if you dig open-source software, PDFCreator trumps many of the others.

keepass-logo.gif3. KeePass

KeePass is one of those applications that you don’t realize how badly you need until you start using it. It securely stores and manages the login information that you use for e-mail, websites, banks, etc. Unless you always use the exact same login information (a terrible idea!), you need KeePass. It’s even available in a portable version.

I use KeePass to manage hundreds of usernames and passwords. I’d go crazy without it.

handbrake_logo.jpg4. HandBrake

HandBrake is a DVD to MPEG-4 converter that allows you to stick a DVD in your drive and have the video converted to a digital file for convenient viewing. It’s great for minimizing wear-and-tear on DVDs, plus it’s handy if you travel a lot and want to watch movies on your laptop.

For best results, use it in conjunction with DVD43.

notepadplus.gif5. Notepad++

Let’s face it - Windows Notepad is a pretty wimpy text editor, and there are many better alternatives. Notepad++ kicks the original Notepad in the junk pretty hard. Best of all, it interfaces nicely with Filezilla. Here are the features:

Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
User Defined Syntax Highlighting
Auto-completion
Multi-Document
Multi-View
Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
Full Drag ‘N’ Drop supported
Dynamic position of Views
File Status Auto-detection
Zoom in and zoom out
Multi-Language environment supported
Bookmark
Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
Macro recording and playback

peazip-logo.png6. Peazip

PeaZip is my current compression/zip utility of choice. It can open almost any archive type imaginable (including ACE - be sure to grab the separate plug-in). Peazip can split/join files, offers 256-bit encryption, and integrates nicely into the right-click contextual menu. It even manages to look good in the process.

Hey, there’s also portable version AND a Linux version available. Nice.

bonkenc-logo.png7. BonkEnc

BonkEnc is a fantastic CD ripper, encoder, and audio converter. It’s tiny, lightweight, and is my application of choice for ripping and encoding CDs. BonkEnc can produce MP3, MP4/M4A, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, Bonk and FLAC files, and also features CDDB/freedb lookup.

Along similar lines, if you’re looking for a batch audio/video transcoder, take a look at MediaCoder.

launchy-docu.png8. Launchy

I admit: I’ve been spoiled by Quicksilver on Mac OS X. My favorite similar program for Windows is Launchy, an open-source keystroke launcher.

To launch a program, press Alt + Spacebar, and then type a few letters in the program name and press Enter. Boom! You can also browse folders the same way. Once you get used to it, it’s a huge time saver.

cabos-logo.jpg9. Cabos

Cabos is a Gnutella file-sharing program originally based on Limewire and Acquisition. Unlike some other file-shaing programs, there’s no spyware, adware, or any other crap to junk up your computer.

gnucash-logo.png10. GnuCash

If you recoil in horror at the bloat of financial programs such as Microsoft Money and Quicken, GnuCash may suit your needs. It’s a slimmer version of those programs, and it has all the features I need for managing my meager amount of money.

The interface is easy enough to understand. It actually looks a lot like a digital checkbook ledger. Don’t be fooled, though - GnuCash can handle the needs of much more demanding users.

rssowl-logo.gif11. RSSOwl

RSSOwl is a cross-platform RSS reader. It allows you to easily track updated content on multiple sites. I really like the tabbed interface.

I find RSSOwl especially useful on a laptop, but on my always-connected desktop I prefer a web-based RSS reader, such as Google Reader.

vdub_logo.PNG12. VirtualDub

VirtualDub is a free video capture and processing utility. Wait, it’s more than that. VirtualDub lets you capture video and then manipulate it with a multitude of plug-ins and filters. It isn’t a full-fledged non-linear editor, but it packs a powerful punch for a free program.

If you work with video on Windows a lot, you probably already know about VirtualDub. If you’re just getting into video editing, you should grab VirtualDub immediately. Heck, it doesn’t even require installation.

eraser-logo.png13. Eraser

If you are paranoid about someone else recovering your sensitive deleted data, you owe it to yourself to check out Eraser. When you delete a file, your operating system really just removes the reference to the file from the file system table. The actual data is still present and can be recovered with an undelete utility.

Eraser securely shreds your sensitive data by overwriting several times with multiple, carefully-selected patterns. In other words: once you erase it, it’s gone!

paint-net-logo.png14. Paint.NET

Paint.NET is to MS Paint what NotePad++ is to Windows Notepad. It’s a dandy little photo editor that supports layers, unlimited undo, and a host of other features. By all rights, it should come with Windows by default.

Paint.NET isn’t meant to fill the shoes of bigger applications like Photoshop or The GIMP, but I use it almost every day for basic photo manipulation.

infrarecorder-logo.png15. InfraRecorder

Need CD/DVD burning software for Windows? It doesn’t get much better than InfraRecorder (by the same author of TUGZip).

InfraRecorder can burn audio/data discs. It can handle multi-session discs, creation and burning of disc images (ISO and BIN/CUE), and can even save audio/data track information to separate files. Oh yeah, it also has a portable version.

autohotkey-logo.png16. AutoHotkey

It’s hard to know where to begin with this one. What can you do with AutoHotkey? Almost anything!

For starters, by using custom keystrokes and mouse-clicks, you can automate practically any repetitive task. Define any shortcut for Windows. Remap keys and buttons any way you please. Control your mouse cursor with your keyboard. By writing your own scripts, the potential is limitless.

gantt-logo.png17. GanttProject

If you need to do any project management, GanttProject will help you get everything organized. As the name implies, it uses Gantt charts and resource load charts to help break a project into a tree of tasks, complete with dependencies.

GanttProject even allows you to exchange data with Microsoft Project, though you may find that you have no reason to do so.

mp3gain-logo.gif18. MP3Gain

MP3Gain is a simple and elegant application that serves one main purpose - to automatically adjust MP3 files so they all play at the same volume. It does it without decoding and re-encoding, so the quality remains the same. No more fiddling with the volume between different songs.

filezilla-logo.png19. Filezilla

Way back in the day, I used WS_FTP. Now I exclusively use Filezilla for my file transfer needs. It supports SFTP, allows for bandwidth speed limits, and easily saves server settings.

Best of all, it seamlessly combines with text editors (such as Notepad++) for quick-and-dirty file editing on the remote server!

wesnoth.jpg20. Battle for Wesnoth

After all this downloading, it’s time to take a break and have some fun. Battle for Wesnoth is a single/multiplayer turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. You can build an army from different kinds of units, such as trolls, elves, dwarves, and orcs. There are a number of standard campaigns included, plus a growing number of user-authored campaigns available on the campaign server.

The music is well done. As a composer, I appreciate games that incorporate an orchestral soundtrack.

alien-arena.jpg21. Alien Arena

If fantasy isn’t your thing, maybe you will like Alien Arena, a deathmatch-type game along the lines of Quake III and Unreal Tournament. The action is fast and furious, and for me mostly consists of running around and dying. I tend to suck at first-person deathmatch games anyway, but the game is quite engrossing.

The 2008 version just came out earlier this year, so join the servers and start fragging.

——

Those are some of my favorite, lesser-known open-source applications for Windows. If you have any to add, feel free to comment below.




Google Balloon
The balloons would provide wireless connectivity to those who don't have it. It seems a goofy idea, but Google seems to think it's worthwhile
This can't be a rumor, because The Wall Street Journal reported it; Google is considering contracting with a company with the exotic name of Space Data, or even buying it. This bit of news might just become that much hot air after a few weeks, but it's quaintly interesting nevertheless -- because it involves sending up balloons to extend a long-range cell network, or a wide-area (broadband) Internet network. In short, it goes like this: there's a tower at place A, and place B, hundreds of kilometres away, has no coverage -- so send up a balloon with transceivers into the stratosphere at place B, and the network gets extended. In fact, a signal could get spread across thousands of square kilometres this way; word is that an equivalent feat via cellular towers would need 40 of them to be put up.

No, we aren't kidding, and neither are they: balloons are an inexpensive proposition (just plastic and some gas, to be precise, and the transceivers aren't expensive either), so wireless service could be offered in remote areas at a low cost. Space Data isn't fumbling with a new concept: it already launches 10 balloons a day across parts of the southern US, providing telecom services to oil companies, among others. Their technology is even used by the US Air Force.



The technique is most often used to spread cellphone coverage to rural areas or places where cell towers are often blocked by hills and other terrain limits. This could help Google not only expand its network quickly but also change the mechanics of rolling out service over a wide area, according to the claim. With balloons relatively inexpensive to use and maintain, service could be offered in fringe areas without raising the costs for some or all users.



The part that seems really random to us is this: the balloons don't permanently remain up in the atmosphere. When they've done their duty, the transceiver comes down to earth (via parachute, of course, so no-one gets hurt...). Space Data pays $100 for each transceiver that's brought back to them. ("Look what I found! A transceiver!").

Those in the know say the bandwidth isn't all that impressive, and that lost-and-found transceiver bit (we can't stop harping on that one) just seems hilarious... Google and Space Data haven't yet commented on whether a deal is on the cards, but this one just goes to show that no-one in Google's Department Of Expansion is creativity-challenged.




The Google PageRank, algorithm and its working

Introduction

Page Rank is considered very important by many Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts, though it does not place an important role in Google search results. But, still having a good page rank determines the importance of a link or web page. Google too gives the Page rank a Preference when multiple factors are considered.
Page Rank is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance. It is only one part of the story when it comes to the Google listing, but the other aspects are discussed elsewhere (and are ever changing) though Page Rank says nothing about the content or size of a page.
Google PageRank is displayed in Google Toolbar ranging from 0 - 10 whereas the actual Page rank differs in Floating point numbers shown below.
Google Toolbar PageRank        
Real PageRank
0 0 - 10
1 10 - 100
2 100 - 1,000
3 1,000 - 10,000
4 10,000 - 100,000
5 100,000 - 1,000,000
and so on...

The Page Rank changes every time Google does its indexing.It is not convenient to show the Page Rank in large digits and to update it frequently. So, Google Page Rank and Back links are updated in the Toolbar mostly in a time span of 1-3 months.

So, what is PageRank?
  • PageRank is only one of numerous methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance.
  • PageRank evaluates two things: how many links there are to a web page from other pages, and the quality of the linking sites.
  • The Google PageRank algorithm it’s established PR across all of the outbound links. Put differently, if you had a web page with a PR6 and had 1 link on it, the site linked to would get a fair amount of PR value. But, if you had 40 links on that page, each individual link would only get a fraction of the value.
  • From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.
How the PageRank is calculated 

  1. PageRank is based on incoming links, but not just on the number of them - relevance and quality are important (in terms of the PageRank of sites, which link to a given site).
  2. It often takes two full monthly updates for all of your incoming links to be discovered, counted, calculated and displayed as backlinks
  3. PageRank does not rank web sites as a whole, but is determined for each page individually.
  4. Google calculates pages PRs permanently, but we see the update once every few months .
  5. PR(A) = (1-d) + d [PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn)]. This is the formula to calculate the PageRank (of Page A).

Lets make it simple to understand
  1. PR(T1) - Each page has a notion of its own self-importance.That’s PR for the first page
  2. PR(TN) - That's PR of the Nth number of page.
  3. C(Tn) - Its the total outgoing links from a page. The count, or number, of outgoing links for page 1 is   C(T1), C(Tn) for n number of pages.
  4. d - All these fractions of votes are added together but, to stop the other pages having too much influence, this total vote is “damped down” by multiplying it by 0.85 (the factor “d”).
  5. (1 - d) - The (1 – d) bit at the beginning is a bit of probability so the “sum of all web pages’ PageRanks will be one”: it adds in the bit lost by the d It also means that if a page has no links to it (no backlinks) even then it will still get a small PR of 0.15 (i.e. 1 – 0.85). (Aside: the Google paper says “the sum of all pages” but they mean the “the normalised sum” – otherwise known as “the average” to you and me.)
A detailed Explanation with examples for calculating pagerank is coming soon. So, get subscribed. 

Important factors for PageRank 


  • Incoming Links from popular sites are important. If pages linking to you have a high PageRank then your page gains some part of their reputation.
  • Site can be banned if it links to banned sites.Be extremely careful of any out-going links from your site. Don’t link to bad neighborhoods (link farms, banned sites, etc.) Google will penalize you for bad links so always check the PageRank of the sites you’re linking to from your site.
  • Illegal activities will penalize your PageRank and possibly ban your site from Google.Hidden text, deceptive redirects, cloaking, automated link exchanges, or anything else against Google’s quality guidelines can ban your site from Google.
  • Different pages from a site can have different Page Rank.Search engines crawl and index web pages not websites, that is why your page rank may vary from page to page within your website.
  • Content is not taken into account when PageRank is calculated. Content is taken into account when you actually perform a search for specific search terms.
  • Links marked with nofollow-attribute don’t contribute to Google PageRank.Google implemented a new value, “nofollow”, for the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that website builders and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank — they are links that no longer constitute a “vote” in the PageRank system.
  • Bad incoming links don’t have impact on Page Rank.Where the links come from doesn’t matter. Sites are not penalized because of where the links come from
  • Google penalizes link farms.Google is only concerned with pages of over 100 outgoing links. Google considers overly linked pages to be link farms, and they are penalized as such.
List of PageRank Tools

Google PageRank Inspector
Google PageRank inspector is PHP scripts that can seek all of your website, include out linked page or not, and display Pagerank value for each of your website pages.
PageRank Decoder
This little tool is not too much different then a tool that tells you your PageRank, however it allows you to organize your sites (with PR information) in a visual network and then correspondingly connect them with arrows. You can move them around like cards, connect them or not, and even delete them by throwing them in a trash can.




There are plenty of Firefox Addons for pretty much everything – including blogging. So I thought it would be cool to just share a few of those I found useful and made my life a bit easier. And here it is – a list of 15 Firefox Plugins (or Add-ons), what they are capable of and, how you can benefit from using them.

Add-ons helping you to blog


ScribeFire Blog Editor – This is probably the most popular tool which allows you to blog from within Firefox. Formerly known as Performancing, this handy tool opens a window within Firefox in which you can do rich text editing and all sorts of stuff while doing your research on your web. And when you’re done, just hit the publish button and your post will go live on your blog. Works on a number of blog platforms including Wordpress and Blogger.

Live Writerfox – This is one of my personal favorites. If you think that Windows Live Writer is the next best thing since sliced bread, you’ll love the functionality it provides you to integrate Windows Live Writer with Mozilla Firefox. Helps you “Blog It” straight from Live Writer.

Deepest Sender – Primarily a LiveJournal client, but now supports Wordpress and Blogger. This Plugin provides similar functionality as ScribeFire. You can straight away blog something and publish it from within the Firefox environment. Doesn’t have as much functionality as the ScribeFire – although a strong second-in-place contender.

Add-ons enhancing text editing/formatting


Clipmarks – If there are phrases you use often while blogging, this tool will come in handy for you. Simply select a word/phrase that you’re using frequently and assign it to a shortcut key. Personally, this is really useful to me when I’m commenting on a blog. I’d just store my name, URL and e-mail on macros and inserting them into the commenting fields literally take seconds!

Text Formatting Toolbar – Gives you a handy toolbar to apply HTML/BBcode markup to any text area within Windows Live Writer. It comes really handy when you want to leave a comment on a blog with some HTML formatting or when you want to do some quick edit in any text area that allows BBcode – like forums. Save you a lot of time, and can cut the work in half for you theme developers.

CoLT – Hate it when you lose the formatting/link when you’re pasting a hyperlink from another page – while blogging? You got to have CoLT! This add-on let’s you specify how you want your links, the way you want it.

Fun tools


Zemanta – This is a fun too to work with. Just let it run while you’re blogging and it will automatically recommend relevant links and Flickr pics that matches your content. You can then insert that stuff on your post or read them to refine your understanding on the subject. Totally worth a go!

Feedly RSS News Reader – Another fun tool for your to play around when you want to kill a minute. Feedly RSS News Reader combines your Google Reader and Twitter in a “fun magazine-like environment”. An innovative way to catch the news I’d say.

Blog Management Add-ons


Wordpress Helper – Wordpress Plugin/Theme developers can’t ask for a better tool than this one. This literally puts the whole Wordpress Codex in your fingertips. When you’re ding an edit on a theme or a plugin within Firefox it will provide you with additional documentation and help if you run into some problem, straight from the Wordpress Codex.

Wordpress.com Sidebar – Managing a Wordpress.com blog? Have all the functionality of your blog from within a handy sidebar. This Firefox Plugin creates a sidebar which you can use to manage your Wordpress.com blog on the go!

Third Party integration Add-ons


ShareThis – This Plugin brings the legendary “Share This” button to Firefox. Easily submit your favorite content on the web for your Social Network buddies to see. Provides the same functionality as the Wordpress plugin for any page you are surfing.

FeedBurner Subscribers Display – Tired of checking Feedburner every time you want to check on your Subscriber count? Install this handy add-on and Get your Feedburner Subscriber count right there on the Firefox status bar, so it’ll be visible to you all the time. Additional options are available to display “feed hits” for your feed too.

Google Reader Notifier – Something like the Gmail Notifier, but for Google reader. Shows you when new items are available alongside the count of unread items. A good way to keep in touch with your favorite feeds.

Better GReader – Another GReader tool that enhances few things on Google Reader. It’s actually a Greasemonkey script and you need to install Greasemonkey plugin to activate it. It’s really customizable and has some pretty good tweaks to go with Google Reader.




You can try Multiple Inboxes, a Google Labs experiment which makes it possible to have more than one 'inbox' in your default Gmail view.You will find the main view split into several panes; the normal inbox, but also your drafts, or starred messages to its right by creating a filtered pane.

Here is a screenshot of a gmail acocunt with multiple inbox panes


You can check out this new feature by Logging in to your gmail acocunt and then into Settings ->Labs -> Multiple Inboxes -> Enable -> Save Changes. Restart or Relogin as necessary




What is WiMax?

WiMax stands for
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. It is a telecommunication technology that provides wireless transmission of data using variety of transmission modes from point to multi-point links to portable and fully mobile internet access.This technology provides up to 72 Mbit/s symmetric broadband speed without the need for cables. This technology is based on IEEE802.16 standard.WiMAX can provide broadband wireless access (BWA) up to 30 miles (50 km) for fixed stations, and 3 - 10 miles (5 - 15 km) for mobile stations. In contrast, the WiFi/802.11 wireless local area network standard is limited in most cases to only 100 - 300 feet (30 - 100m).

Wimax is proposed to be launched in India and a number of other nations very soon and is soon going to be available across the globe making it the most widely used communication technology. In India wimax deployment is delayed due to the government of India’s pending decision on allocation of spectrum for commercial wimax services. Majority of spectrum which is worldwide used for wimax is being held up by the defence forces in India which is creating further delay as the defence forces are not ready to give up their frequencies which are not even being used for any purpose at all.

The service providers which are goin to roll out this service soon are Reliance Wimax, Sify wimax, MTNL wimax and a few others which have plans in the pipeline and some of them are applying for licenses at the moment. Reliance wimax has already been launched in Bangalore and Pune with plans for a Mumbai launch any time soon.

The Government of India too realized the immense potential of this technology in bridging the digital divide – as it made a decision to allocate and auction WiMAX spectrum to the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz frequency bands. Buoyed by the government decision, the WiMAX Forum predicted that the Indian WiMAX market including devices will be worth $13 billion by 2012. The Forum has also said that it will add an Indian certification lab to support certification of products in this region. Private players such as Intel too announced their plans to tap this promising market, by working with the WiMAX forum to bring affordable low cost devices that would help in increasing Internet access.


Architecture of WiMax



WiMax Architecture


The WiMAX Forum has defined an architecture that defines how a WiMAX network connects with other networks, and a variety of other aspects of operating such a network, including address allocation, authentication, etc. An overview of the architecture is given in the illustration.

This defines the following components, plus a number of interconnections (or reference points) between these, labeled R1 to R5 and R8:

  • SS/MS: the Subscriber Station/Mobile Station
  • ASN: the Access Service Network
  • BS: Base station, part of the ASN
  • ASN-GW: the ASN Gateway, part of the ASN
  • CSN: the Connectivity Service Network
  • HA: Home Agent, part of the CSN
  • AAA: AAA Server, part of the CSN
  • NAP: a Network Access Provider
  • NSP: a Network Service Provider

It is important to note that the functional architecture can be designed into various hardware configurations rather than fixed configurations. For example, the architecture is flexible enough to allow remote/mobile stations of varying scale and functionality and Base Stations of varying size - e.g. femto, pico, and mini BS as well as macros.




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