Google India had launched a nation-wide competition for students to design a Google logo for 14th November, 2009. Finally, the winner is Puru Pratap Singh of Gurgaon – a student of class 4th. 
November 14 is celebrated as Bal Divas (Children’s Day) in India. This logo will be live on Google.co.in on 14th.
Today I bought a Hohner 21 Tremolo Deluxe (Harmonica) for myself. Its a Silver body, 21 Notes (3 Octaves) Harmonica. It has two Reeds for each Note and is precisely tuned by hand, slightly apart from each other. Although I don’t know how to play a MouthOrgan, this tuning difference between reeds produce a Tremolo Sound which in this case is very pleasant. With its complete scale tuning over three octaves, it is possible to easily play beautiful melodies in pop, folk, country and many traditional styles. And one more thing it is tuned in C Major Scale.
Hopefully, I will find someone who can teach me “How to play a Harmonica”. If you have link to a good online tutorial, please let me know.
Recently I created an IM BOT that works with GTalk, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live and other popular instant messaging clients.
To create your own IM Bot you need to have some very basic programming skills. You can use any programming language, I prefer PHP. You also need to have web space to host your bot.
For example, I have created a Twitter Bot that can be used to tweet in your twitter account using any IM client.
If you like to write a personal IM bot, just follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Register at Imified
Step 2: Create your Bot which is just a simple script which resides on your webserver. It can be in any programming language.
Step 3: Copy the path of your script in the clipboard shown below.
Your Bot is ready to serve now.
The script I wrote is self-explanatory.
Just Add Tweetbot@bot.im in your IM client to try it.
//Twitter.PHP
require('TwitterAPI.php');
if($_REQUEST[('value'.($_REQUEST['step']-1))]=="reset")
{
echo " start all over again now ";
}
else if($_REQUEST[('value'.($_REQUEST['step']-1))]=="?")
{
echo " Hi, I am a Twitter Bot, you can tweet and see friend's timeline using me.
type 'reset' to start again at any stage.";}
else{
switch ($_REQUEST['step'])
{
case 1:
echo "Enter Twitter UserName:";
break;
case 2:
echo $_REQUEST['value1'];
echo ",Enter Your Password, dont worry I dont store your password:";
break;
case 3:
echo "Thankyou for submitting details
Type 'tweet' to post a tweet and 'friend' to see friend's timeline";
break;
case 4:
if (trim($_REQUEST['value3']," ")=="tweet")
{
echo "Enter Message to tweet";
}
else if($_REQUEST['value3']=="friend")
{
echo "I am working on this function, will publish it soon";
}
else
{
echo "enter correct choice ";
}
break;
case 5:
$result=tweet($_REQUEST['value1'], $_REQUEST['value2'], $_REQUEST['value4']);
echo $result;
}
}
No, This is not the only code you require. We need to use Twitter API as well, I have put that code in a seprate file.
You can make a number of Applications using different Open APIs
//TwitterAPI.php
function tweet($username,$password,$message)
{
// The twitter API address
$url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml';
// Set up and execute the curl process
$curl_handle = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "$url");
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=$message");
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");
$resultArray = curl_getinfo($curl_handle);
curl_close($curl_handle);
if($resultArray['http_code'] == "200")
{
$result="Yipee, Check your profile ";
}
else
{
$result="Error , Username or Password is not correct ";
}
return $result;
}
Learn How To Use Imified API
Happy Coding!
This is one of my favourite monologue in movie history by Alec Baldwin from the movie ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’.
In this scene, Alec Baldwin is confronting the employees of a tough Chicago real-estate office. Alec Baldwin plays a perfect Hitler in this performance.
The look on Jack Lemon’s face when Alec Baldwin pulls out the brass balls says it all.
IBM is presenting Rational User Group Launh on 21st April, 2009 at Hotel Taj Mahal, Delhi. Here is the excerpt of the mail I received…
It is our pleasure to invite you to Rational User Group meeting in Delhi on 21st April, 2009.
You are cordially invited to attend the launch and join the community of Rational users in Delhi.
The Rational User group will provide a platform for discussions with like minded people, share best practices and have some fun while we are at it.
The agenda will cover latest topics from Rational Software.
Please mark your calendars for the 21st April, 2009 from 5.00p.m onwards at Taj Mahal.
Do join us for dinner thereafter.Thank you and look forward to meeting with you.
Agenda Topics:
* What is Jazz and Change Management using Rational Team Concert
* Quality Driven Software Delivery through Rational Quality Manager
* Secure Web Applications using Rational AppScan
Date: 21st April, 2009
Venue: Taj Mahal, Delhi
Tools that help people collaborate i.e. IM, IRC, Social Networking Sites, Video Conferencing, and White Boards. Users can expect to see a surge of attacks through collaboration tools, as membership continues to increase. These tools will help cyber criminals in stepping up to hit interactive social networking site with unsolicited e-mail and malicious links. Ignorance about clicking on an ‘interesting link’ will be exploited by the bad guys on internet. The cases of identity theft, cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying and cyber-extortion are expected to rise. At the corporate level, this may give rise to increase data theft from corporate databases.
Now a day’s companies are using virtual environments to reduce cost, save space and to increase convenience for their employees. Virtualization includes running a platform (Linux) on a different platform (Windows). But virtualization makes the security more complicated as it introduces an extra layer that must be secured. Now we have to secure both Virtual machine and the physical machine.
A bot planted on the machine, maintains a command and control mechanism to enable communication with its master. A large number of such bots under command of the same master becomes a “bot army“ that has considerable computing power to engage in a variety of malicious activities including data theft, DoS attacks, spam delivery, NDS spoofing , to name a few.
The low cost associated with launching cyber attacks as compared to physical attacks, the likely deniability of crime committed on the internet and the lack of international cyber laws to resolve conflicts between nations, are the main reasons for many governments mentoring cyber warfare. The vulnerability in systems , user ignorance and overdependence on outsourcing agencies are likely to be the main reason for the success of cyber warfare. The cyber attacks that occurred between Russia and Georgia in 2008 are indicators for military cyber engagements in 2009 and beyond.
The attacks on network devices (router, switches etc) and other hardware systems that rely on firmware to contain OS related problems are likely to increase. In this type of attacks, hackers upload nonauthentic firmware to devices under the guise of original firmware updates. However this malicious firmware provides a back door into a network or permanently disables the devices. This may result to completely denial-of-service attacks.
Wireless will continue to be a big threat in 2009. Insecure protocols, easy accessibility, lack of strong encryption and authentication and more importantly, user ignorance are the main reasons for the increase in wireless risk.
Using computing resources efficiently is certainly a good thing. But extra care should be taken while recycling computer resources, for example it can expose your data to a stranger if you don’t ensure that the hard drives have been completely wiped.
Cloud computing is a buzzword these days. It is a style of computing in which resources are accessed as a service over Internet. In this technology all of your resources are kept in terminals that are placed somewhere else. But when your data is placed somewhere else you can’t ensure the security of your data from everyone else out there.
The financial meltdown and resulting lay-offs may fuel employee discontent, to cause serious threat to corporate networks and data theft.
Linux is safer than Windows. Is it true?
The reason Linux enjoying this reputation is Linux is not much popular as Windows is. Major portion of desktop OS market is acquired by windows. But as the popularity of Linux will increase, attention of bad guys toward Linux will also increase. There will be more targeted attacks on Linux in coming years.
This is kind of funny video I encountered but still Twittering is the buzz word among web communities.
It’s Twitter’s 3rd birthday. Happy Birthday Twitter!
Twitter reportedly grown over 1300% last year (reported on Mashable). Now this Micro blogging service is everywhere. It’s fun, easy and more useful with over 100s of applications supporting it.
Keep going and growing.
Hey, this is really strange issue I faced today. I don’t know if it happens to anyone out there, but I guess this is a Bug with Twitter. I was playing around with my account when I changed my user name from “aakash” to “Aakash”. Curiously, I tried to create a new user as “aakash” in twitter with my other email-id. To my surprise, it was created successfully. WTH ! This means I was having two different accounts “aakash” and “Aakash”. A got a mail from Twitter that confirmed the successful creation of this new Id. Just to dig it deep, I tried to logout and login again and play more but then it failed to login my newly created account. I was not able to login into any of the both account and that moment I feel that I will lost all my updates and followers. Finally, I have to use “forget password link” (my email address and ph. number) to recover my password for my original account. Now I am using my email id to login as username doesn’t work. I am not sure if it happens due to delay in update in databases between servers. I would like if you could try it on your end too and let me know your experience. If it is a Bug then it need a fix.
A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves. Just loved it.
World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.
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