The last couple of weeks saw me reading extensively about PDAs given that my much loved E61 was not keeping well. E61 was a good choice but then it was a bit bulky, little too wide and Symbian was not too fast. After a bit of research and playing around with various PDA models such as HTC, iPAQ, O2 and iMate, I picked up a sleek black HTC Touch. With just under $475, it is definitely value for money.What I Needed I needed a PDA that can remind me of tasks, shows appointments, stores emails and syncs well with Windows based laptop that I use for work. And if it enables me to read RSS and plays Tetris, nothing like it. Continue reading ‘Review: HTC Touch’
Archive for the 'Blogroll' Category
It is all over the place. Open first page of Digg, and every story there shows a crack key. I think Mr Rose and associates underestimated the power of net-revolution. It apparently all started off after some fiasco created by this post and led to this.
Update: Kevin wrote:
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
And he just totally redeemed himself ! Game on mole!
The works of Mr Dino A. Dai Zovi has created much of a swirl around mac community, especially in the security arena. He found a vulnerability and won $10K, and more than that won fame and glory. Even Mr Gruber who admonished many claims of mac vulnerabilities in the past, was forced to accept the 0-day vulnerability as legitimate.
At the same time, Matthew Bookspan clearly demonstrated his IQ, or rather lack of it, by deleting his /usr folder to render his system inoperative and then blaming apple to be less intuitive. (Found via DF)
My favourite desktop manager for Linux, Gnome has jumped to 2.18. Improvements to Tomboy, Seahorse and Gnome Power Manager. I have used these apps for a long time, and certainly recommend them for any user switching to Linux. Managing OpenPGP and SSH Keys using Seahorse couldn’t be easier, and Gnome Power Manager seriously needed some bump. I haven’t tried the new document manager myself, but the new document manager supports multiple instances of the same document at the same time. This is something useful if you are editing a document and referring to its original state.
And last but not the least, just as Remote Desktop Sharing in Microsoft, Gnome now supports desktop sharing over the Internet. Much useful for me for browsing my server sitting at alternate location without using VNC.
The detailed release notes are available on the official link. This release surely sets high standards for the upcoming KDE version. Personally I have not liked KDE much for various reasons including its unstability.
Quicktime has always been a pain point for me, and yet I come back to it. Time after time, player after player. It’s the default player for Mac OS X and not only it looks good, it works well most of the times. But like the famous .mac membership, Qucktime isn’t free. It requires user to cough up fair amount of money before the user can enjoy full screen and host of other features legitimately. VLC and mPlayer on the other hand provide almost the same, if not better, functionality free (free as in beer) of cost. Keeping the feature Vs Cost debate to the minimum, I launched my software update application and was shocked to see this:
QuickTime 7.1.5 delivers numerous bug fixes and addresses critical security issues. This update is recommended for all QuickTime 7 users.
Important Notice to QuickTime Pro Users
QuickTime 7 will disable the QuickTime Pro functionality in prior versions of QuickTime, such as QuickTime 5 or QuickTime 6. If you proceed with this installation, you must purchase a new QuickTime 7 Pro key to regain QuickTime Pro functionality. After installation, visit www.apple.com/quicktime to purchase a QuickTime 7 Pro key
This is plain ridiculous. I cannot understand why don’t they offer a free upgrade ever? It’s almost like Windows: you launch a software, convince million people to buy it, declare it unsafe, launch a new software and charge for license for newer software.
It somehow feels too unhealthy to be Apple.
Browsing through articles on MSNBC, I found an interesting and rather alarming article describing how companies might now want to consider using TPM for checking user authentication. So does this bring us to end of frauds and anonymity mennace on the Internet? Not exactly. Anonymity can be used in many better ways than just creating menace on the Internet. Ofcourse there are several ways to beat the TPM system, but I wish to hear TOR and EFF’s take on the matter.
Read the complete story here
Following a massive cleanup of my windows server at home, I realised I had deleted few important documents. Looking through various sites to use a free download program before I stretch out to Helix, I found quite a few of them on Lifehacker. Lifehacker has reviewed several data recovery softwares in the past. As with most of the other Lifehacker reviews, the information given in each of the reviews was just perfect for me to take my pick. 
Undelete Plus is a tool that I highly recommend for any one to recover accidentally deleted files, files removed from the Recycle Bin, in a DOS window, from a network drive, from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. Another cool tool with a cool interface is Recuva from Piriform – of CCleaner fame. I recovered almost all my data in about 20 mins. Excellent !
I can never have enough USB memory drives. From 64 MB in 2003, I recently moved to 2 GB. It’s unfortunate that although small and extremely useful, none of the USB memory sticks could satisfy my hunger. While looking at some expensive and designer drives, I found gold, silver and diamond studded drives on Chinese sites, which I can never afford. And then I found these ultra cool oooms memory sticks. Made out of hand-selected fine and polished wood, these look stunning when attached to a mac.
I am Sumeet,an information security enthusiast, crazy about Coffee, iPod, everything mac, travelling, consuming rss and eating. I work for a large consulting firm where I usually rant about security best practices.