Well, doing some lots of C# and SOA lately and my new love is Jquery. Its awesome by the way if you are new like me. fall back for more stuff.

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.

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.

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!

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

Click here to register

1. Collaboration Tools

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.

2. Virtualization

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.

3. BotNet

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.

4. Cyber Warfare

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.

5. Phlashing attacks

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.

6. Wireless Risks

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.

7. Threats due to Green Computing

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.

8.  Cloud Computing

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.

9. Insider Threat

The financial meltdown and resulting lay-offs may fuel employee discontent, to cause serious threat to corporate networks and data theft.

10. Risk for OS other than Windows

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.

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.