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The most widely used free email service is from Google which has occupied proficient and prominent position in the cloud. GMAIL – The free email service from Google with enough storage space to keep your communications intact through years and years. Since Gmail is widely used mail service, security concerns are primarily of respect and main focus. Hence here in this post, we’ll share  a few important and useful Gmail security tips so that our accounts shall never be compromised.

1. Always Use HTTPS – This is a great feature from security point of view in Gmail. HTTPS is secure protocol for transmission of vital information on web in encrypted form. Although, when we sign into our Gmail account, https is used but to make sure https is used throughout our session for our Gmail account, we need to enable this option from Gmail settings. To enable this option, go to settings of your Gmail account and check “Always use HTTPS” under general tab and save changes. HTTPS makes mail little slower than normal but security should be of our prime concern.

2. Remember to log out – Log out whenever you have completed checking mails even if you’re on your own computer. If you’re on public computer like in cyber cafe, make sure you had unchecked “Remember me” or “keep me signed in” option while logging into account. Clear cookies, passwords before leaving public PC.

3. Audit – You know your own ip address. Now find out the ip address from where your Gmail account was opened last time. In the footer, at the very bottom of your inbox, you will see information about last sessions – Last activity : ip address : Details . Just hit on details button and you can see when was your account accessed and from which ip address.

You can also use this feature there to log out all sessions if you find any session open or if you forgot to log out on your friend’s pc or public computers. One should make habit of checking/ auditing Gmail account session details regularly.


3. Don’t disclose – Don’t disclose your id and password to anybody. You might get fake email asking for your Gmail id and password, but remember,  Google never asks you to disclose your password. Stay safe. Also, some websites have features to invite your Gmail contacts to network with you on their website, for this they ask you to enter your Gmail id and password – Don’t give your Gmail details to untrusted or small or new , unestablished websites .

4. Change your password – Once in two months or so, you should change your password but remember the new one!! Don’t use easy to guess password i.e. don’t use your mobile number, date of birth, your girlfriend’s number as your password! Use password of at least 8 characters. Don’t use repetitive letters in passwords as aaaa1111. Don’t use your Gmail account password as passwords on other websites. I find many people use the same password for variety of websites so if one of your passwords is hacked, all are hacked.

5. Check links – Don’t fall prey to phishing attempt. Your so called friend might give you a link stating that it the link to new and feature packed advanced Gmail, you then try to log onto the link given by your friend and your friend gets your id and password. So always check links before hitting on any such links.

6. Keep your account up to date – Your Gmail password is your orkut password and the same password is used for other Google products and services, hence ensure security updates and measures in all your accounts so that neither way, your account could be compromised. Keep your account recovery option updated and remember your security question and answer so that you can recover your password in case if something wrong happens. Although, after reading this post and following accordingly, such unfortunate case is nowhere to stand. You can also add phone number to account for recovery purposes. To review your gmail recovery options, follow this link: GMail account recovery options

7. Use updated internet security suite (Antivirus, Firewall, Antispyware) on your pc - This point is also very important because your computer might have been compromised by a trojan, keylogger or virus which may distribute your account details to remote hacker. Update your browser, operating system, security softwares, mail applications so that you should not be vulnerable to latest exploits and hacks.

8. Attachments – Gmail scans every attachment you receive or send for virus or other such kind of threats but even then, it is not advised to download attachments from untrusted source. This will keep your computer safe and so your account. 

9. Spam – Don’t waste your time reading spam messages. Spam messages are not only waste of time but also may prove to be a security concern as spams may contain links to malicious websites.

10. Backup – Well, backup would be useful in case of recovery of your account if your account had been compromised. Although this point is not a necessary step, yet you can backup all your gmail mails to make your life easy! One such tool to backup gmail is – Download GMAIL Backup tool

FAQ’s – Ask your concern through comments!

Is basic HTML view less secure ?
Ans - No. Basic HTMl view is for faster access to mails. It has to do nothing with security.

My friend sent a mail to another friend from my email address. Does it mean, my account is compromised ?
Ans – Not exactly but may be. There is a technique through which we can send email so that it looks sent from another desired email address to recipient but such emails could be identified by viewing its headers whether it is sent from original email address or not. One such fake email service is – Send anonymous Emails from another address

I am not sure whether I logged out of my account in cyber cafe or not?
Ans – You should log into your account on your own pc or anywhere and use remote log out session feature options located at the bottom of your gmail account. You should also change your password if you feel risk or doubt about security.

Using gmail in outlook express is secure ?
Ans – Yes as long as your computer is up to date with latest windows updates and security software updates.

Just can’t get enough of writing about Google. Every other day we get to see some new service being offered. The latest one may not be unique, but it is useful and works pretty well. Similar to the Google Similar Image search, Google Similar Pages is an useful utility to find similar web pages which can be used to find the alternative to the current page.


Google Similar Pages is a Google Chrome extension using which you can quickly preview and explore other pages that are similar to the one you are browsing, on the fly. When you click the Similar Pages button, your browser will send a search query to Google to see if there are any similar pages for the page you are viewing.
As you see in the above image, when I tried finding sites similar to imdb which is a popular movie database, it gave me options like Rotten tomatoes, Yahoo Movies etc. Google Similar Pages extension is currently in beta (as any other Google service) so expect some imperfections in the results, but on a whole it left me pretty impressed!

Download Google Similar Pages extension for Google Chrome

Some months back we had written an article on how to Boost Bit-Torrent Download Speed, it involved using a Bit-torrent accelaration tool which was a freeware then, but now has been a made a paid software. Hence I was looking for a free alternative and got to know about uTorrent Ultra Accelerator.

There are hell lot of Bit-torrent clients available, but uTorrent is arguably the best torrent client amongst all. The best thing about uTorrent is the low memory footprint which enables us to carry out our normal work while the torrent is getting downloaded at the backend.


But uTorrent, being an open source software has loads of configurable parameters, which have to be manually set for optimal performance. Add to this, ISP throttling is another issue which needs to be dealt with for many torrent users. Keeping all these in mind, TrafficSpeeders have come out with a tiny utility which promises to get the maximum speed possible which uTorrent can squeeze out of our internet connection.
uTorrent Ultra Accelerator is an valuable add-on module for one of the most in demand p2p clients worldwide. This plug-in fits flawlessly into uTorrent native client to ensure extra augmentation to its central features. Though very small, its architecture allows it to upgrade your searching and squeeze the maximum of speed from your file-sharing program.

uTorrent Ultra Accelerator is the perfect tool for downloading your favourite movies, music, games and other files at an incredible speed. You can check the info about the status of your downloads in the main window. Downloads are auto-resumed in case the internet gets disconnected in the middle of a download.

uTorrent Ultra Accelerator – key features

· Simple, intuitive, easy-to-work-with interface;

· Automatically resuming of paused downloads;

· Saving configuration from last run and auto loading on start-up;

· Removing of complete and invalid files;

· Improved searching at user-specified intervals;

You can download and use Torrent Ultra Accelerator for FREE and save your worries – the app is 100% CLEAN! NO ads, adware, spyware, Trojans or any other malware hidden! It works on Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista


Download uTorrent Ultra Accelerator to boost your torrent download speed

Lighttpd is a secure web server, which is faster when compared to Apache. We will show here how you can install Lighttpd on an Ubuntu 9.10 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

In this tutorial we have used hostname as server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100. They maybe different for you.
The first thing you need to do is to login as root. You can login as root in Ubuntu Linux by typing in the terminal:
sudo su

Installing MySQL 5:

In the terminal type:
aptitude install mysql-server mysql-client

You will be asked to provide a password for MySQL user “root“. The same password will be valid for the user root@localhost as well as root@server1.example.com .

Installing Lighttpd on Ubuntu 9.10:

Lighttpd is already available as a pre-configured package in Ubuntu 9.10, so we can install it through terminal very easily. Type in the terminal:
aptitude install lighttpd
Now open your web browser and type http://192.168.0.100, and you should see the Lighttpd placeholder page:

The default document folder of Lighttpd for user root is /var/www/ on Ubuntu, and the configuration file is /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf. Additional configurations are stored in files which are situated in the /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/ directory.

Installing PHP5

To enable PHP5 in Lighttpd, you will have to modify the configuration file /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini. To edit it, type in the terminal:

vi /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini
Scroll down to the end of this file and add this line at the end of file:
cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
To enable the FastCGI configuration (which is stored in /etc/lighttpd/conf-available/10-fastcgi.conf), run the following command:
lighttpd-enable-mod fastcgi
To reload the server for changes to take place, type in the terminal:
/etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload

Installing MySQL 5 support:

To get MySQL support in PHP, we can install the php5-mysql package. But it is a good idea to install some other PHP5 modules together with MySQL as well, as you might need them for your applications. You can search for available PHP5 modules by typing in the terminal:
aptitude search php5
Based on some of the packages that you select, you can install them with MySQL by typing in the terminal:
aptitude install php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-mhash php5-ming php5-ps php5-pspell php5-recode php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl php5-json
Now, again restart Lighttpd by typing:
/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

Testing your web server and PHP:

The document root for the default web server is /var/www. We will now create a small PHP file (info.php) in that directory and call it in a browser. The file will display lots of useful details about our PHP installation, such as the installed PHP version.
To create this file, type in the terminal:
vi /var/www/info.php
Now type this code into this file:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Save the file and close the terminal.
Now we call this file in a browser by typing http://192.168.0.100/info.php

As you see in the screenshot, PHP5 is working fine, and it is working through FastCGI, as shown in the Server API line. If you scroll further down, you will see all modules that are already enabled in PHP5.Now, your web server is ready for working.

Hope this tutorial helps you in setting up a light and fast as well as a faster web server in Ubuntu 9.10.

If you are someone who has a Wi-Fi setup at home, ask yourself these questions -

• Are the signals from your Wi-Fi router dropping out every now and then?
• Do you wish for more coverage?
• Does your Windows notifies you about a weak signal?

If your answer for any one of the questions above is an Yes, you have come to the right place. This article provides some tips to improve the signal of your wireless network and possibly extend its coverage area.

Guide to improve and extend Wi-Fi coverage at home

1. Position your wireless router & modem in a central location

See if you can place your wireless router in a central location in your home. Say if you have a two-storeyed building placing the router in first floor makes sense. Don’t worry if you can’t move your wireless router, because there are many other ways to improve your connection.
2. Check for any Interference
Make sure interference from other Wi-Fi networks or other transmitting devices aren’t hindering your signal. Metal, walls, and floors can also interfere with your Wi-Fi signals. Devices such as Bluetooth adapters, cordless phones, wireless cameras, wireless keyboards or mice, and wireless speakers or even microwaves can hinder the signal strength. Download and use NetStumbler to check for all the networks in the area.
3. Replace your router’s antenna

Normally, the WiFi routers come with omni-directional antenna, which means that they broadcast in all directions around the router. In case your router is near an outside wall, most of the signals will get transmitted outside the home, so the best thing in that case would be to go buy a hi-gain antenna that focuses the wireless signals in only one direction. You can aim the signal in the direction you need it most.
4. Check and Replace your computer’s wireless network adapter
Sometimes, your router can broadcast strongly enough to reach your computer, but your computer can’t send signals back to your router. In order to improve this, you can try replacing your PC’s wireless network adapter that uses an external antenna. Note that laptops usually come with excellent antennas and hence won’t need to have their network adapters changed.
5. Upgrade to Wireless N
If you think there is no issue with the router’s positioning or interference or the network adapter, you can consider upgrading your devices to 802.11n. But this would involve buying brand new equipment as the older 802.11g or b isn’t upgradable with latest firmware. Wireless N uses multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO), a smart antenna technology, and other improvements that make for much larger coverage areas and faster connections. To get full improvement, you also need to use both Wireless N for the router and the wireless adapters.

6. Add a wireless repeater
This is a very common suggestion you would come across everywhere. Wireless repeaters extend your wireless network range without requiring you to add any wiring. Just place the wireless repeater halfway between your wireless access point and your computer, and you’ll get an instant boost to your wireless signal strength. They don’t even cost more, so it surely makes sense to go for quality wireless repeaters.
7. Update your firmware or your network adapter driver
Router manufacturers regularly make free improvements to their routers. Sometimes, these improvements increase performance. To get the latest firmware updates for your router, visit your router manufacturer’s Web site. The same holds good with network adapters as well.
8. Pick equipment from a single vendor

Now this might look weird, but it really works. You often get better performance if you pick a router and network adapter from the same vendor. Some vendors offer a performance boost of up to twice the performance when you choose their hardware.
9. Extend Coverage Using Access Points
Another way to boost your Wi-Fi signals is by using additional access points to your network. This method uses Ethernet cables to connect these additional access points back to your router. You might need to hide those additional cables!
Hope you find this article useful. Share your experiences!

What do you do when your internet speed is at its worst? You want to check your mails, check your adsense income or complete some important research work and you are not able to do any of them? This will be a day-to-day affair if you are using dial-up connection or a slow broadband connection. This post is especially intended for those power users of internet who don’t want to miss their web experience even when connections speed sucks. Using this trick, you can carry out your web surfing easily and swiftly as if you were on a proper broadband line. We will see about a way/alternative to surf internet when your internet speed is frequently irregular and slow at times.

Trick to Browse web faster when Internet connection Sucks

Opera Mini is a mobile browser based on java platform used on most cellphones to surf internet on mobile in a pc-friendly navigation style. Opera Mini 5 (the latest version) is faster, easier and features pc-friendly internet/web-surfing. Browsing through opera mini is faster because opera mini uses its own proxy server to fetch websites for you. Opera Mini squeeze webpages and present to you your desired content at a reasonable speed.
Steps to surf on PC using mobile browser opera mini to experience speed even when actual internet speed is low:
1. First, we need to make sure that Java runtime is installed on our PC, because to run mobile java applications, we need an emulator and to run emulator, java runtime class is required.
Download the latest Java runtime environment for windows pc.

After downloading, install it and then proceed to next step.
2. Now we need an emulator to emulate mobile java application on pc. The emulator should be able to use network and should support full-screen view of mobile application. Here we choose MicroEmulator.
Download MicroEmulator
After downloading, open microemulator.jar


3. Now we need to fit/resize microemulator to our PC screen so that we can surf web on PC in full screen mode. For this we need to add a device to microemulator.
Download devices.zip containing resizable.jar and opera mini 5.jad for microemulator
Extract the downloaded folder.

4. Now click on options button in Microemulator. Check Midlet Network Access. Then click on Select Device, then click on ADD button. Locate the downloaded resizable.jar and click open

5. Now select resizable.jar – Click on set as default – hit OK.

6. Now click on File menu, locate opera-mini.jad in the downloaded folder above. Click on Start. Opera Mini will configure itself. Now just open your desired website and surf the web swiftly with a few limitation.

Using the method, mentioned above, you can browse the web fastly and swiftly while some websites doesn’t render fully but this method is particularly useful for dial-up users to get their web-task done in a minute.