Taiwan offers free Wi-Fi to all foreign tourists

Taiwan became one of the first countries in the world to offer free Wi-Fi on a mass scale to its citizens, and now it is extending that to any foreign tourist, also for free, in a move that will gain it a lot of goodwill.

The Taiwan government-backed free “iTaiwan” wireless network launched in 2011, and now has about 4,400 hotspots in major tourist spots, transportation hubs, cultural establishments and government offices all over the island country.

Citizens needed just their local phone number to register and then use the semi-fast 1 MBPS service.

Now, for foreign vistors, who generally have trouble getting a local SIM in the country (two forms of identity, etc), the process of tapping these wi-fi networks has been made a lot easier starting this month.

Visitors can open an iTaiwan account at a Taiwan Tourism Bureau counter/center, show their passport as ID and that’s it: they can login using their account, on their digital devices.

In addition, iTaiwan has established roaming agreements with four local governments so that tourists also have access in Taipei City, New Taipei, Taichung and Tainan.

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

Use Yahoo Video Chats? You May Have Been Spied On

Everyday, it seems, there is new information released that makes individuals question how private their “private” lives really are. If it’s not revelations about the NSA intercepting our telephone calls and/or our emails, it seems to be something along those same lines. Unfortunately, in the year 2014, it doesn’t even seem like it’s even a remote possibility to have a private life. After all, if you own a smartphone you can most likely be found wherever you are. It seems all of the technology that is helping us run forward is also tying our hands behind our backs.

Edward Snowden shocked the world when we he released all of the confidential documents he “obtained” from the NSA. Even with all of the information he initially gave to the media, NSA officials were worried that more of their practices would eventually come to light. It turns out their fears weren’t without merit, as information about a British spy program known as Optic Nerve has recently been brought out into the open.

No, Not That Optic Nerve

It turns out that Optic Nerve is the codename for a surveillance program operated by Britain’s GCHQ (with help from the NSA). In an attempt to use facial recognition to catch terrorists and other wanted individuals, the images from 1.8 million users of Yahoo video chats from 2008 to 2010 were collected and stored on GCHQ’s servers. Obviously, most all of the images had nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever.

And, of all of the images stored, there were many images besides people’s faces, as it turns out that a large number of sexually explicit images from the video chats were also stored on the servers.

When Yahoo recently found out about this invasion of privacy, they were not at all happy about it, saying it was a total invasion of their users’ privacy rights, and stating they had no prior knowledge of the spying.

Does this news surprise you at all?

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

Bugs Fixed in Stable Channel Update For Google Chrome

Google Chrome has dominated the browser market and eventually become the most used browser globally since being released six year ago. Google has worked hard to develop and refine Chrome, resulting in a fast and secure browser that can be tailored and customized to suit the user.

In Version 33.0.1750.117 of Chrome, Google has been able to fix a number of security issues, some of which were highlighted by external sources.

In total, twenty eight bugs were fixed, ranging from an issue with relative paths in Windows sandbox, to a problem with an information leak in the XSS auditor.  

Google Chrome 33.0.1750.117 is available to download here.

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

:Latest Version Of CCleaner is Available Now:

The Latest Version Of CCleaner is Available Now

inShare

CCleaner from Piriform is likely the most popular freeware cleaner out there thanks to the fact that it is quick and easy to use. Effectively CCleaner gives your computer a good spring clean, removing cookies, temporary files and any other unused data that clogs up your PC, slowing it down. Once CCleaner has worked its magic, your computer’s system can run faster and enable you to have a more secure internet browsing experience.

Piriform’s latest update, Version 4.11, sees improvements to the File Finder tool. Included is an option to find duplicate files based on file content, as well as a new upper file size threshold, which will further narrow a duplicate file search.

Version 4.11 also features an improvement to the way the Driver Wiper detects SSD drives.

Other changes made to CCleaner include:

•     Added Opera 15 and newer Startup item management
•     Added File content duplicate detection to File Finder
•     Improved Drive Wiper SSD detection
•     Added Torch Browser support
•     Added File Finder upper file size threshold
•     Optimized Firefox Profile Startup items detection
•     Improved Scheduler language support (Professional only)
•     Improved Google Earth, Winamp, MusicMatch Jukebox and Windows Live Messenger  cleaning
•     Minor GUI Improvements
•     Minor bug fixes

CCleaner Version 4.11 download now

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

:YouTube with Google anti-American Court has ordered the removal of the controversial film:

YouTube with Google anti-American Court has ordered the removal of the controversial film.

Google in U.S. court against the anti-Islam film by actress Cindy Lee Garcia was filed . 

YouTube with Google anti- American Court has ordered the removal of the controversial film .
According to foreign kbrayjnsy on Google in U.S. court against anti-Islam film by actress Cindy Lee Garcia was filed , Garcia argued in court that he was involved in the film clip was made ​​for another film and I inherited his voice changed because they are life-threatening . U.S. Circuit Court during the hearing by Google as opposed to controversial material was removed 2 of the three judges hearing the company was ordered to remove anti-Islam film .
Garcia's attorney Armen Saras expressed happiness over the court's decision and said the initial removal of the controversial court ruling is a correct decision .
The controversial anti-Islam film due to protests from Muslims around the world was the ban imposed by Pakistan , which was still intact .

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

Apple expected to release iOS 7.1 next month(March)

Apple brought a brand new version of its popular operating system last year with iOS 7.0, but shortly after the release it was obvious that the company was going to have to do some fixing as users complained right away about bugs that caused some devices to reboot randomly.  Apple listened, as it should and sent out a few smaller updates over the next couple weeks and while some of the bugs were fixed, others were brought forward as more users downloaded and installed the new software.  It has been a few months now, but it looks like the company is ready to release version 7.1.

Apple typically releases its new software in a series of beta testing phases and that allows the company to get valuable feedback about new features before it is sent out to the public in a mass rollout.  Even though an online source claims that Apple will be releasing the new iOS 7.1 next month, the source also claimed that Apple does not have any surprises set up for this version of the software.  Basically, what that means is the software that was revealed in the first 5 beta testing stages is exactly what is going to be seen once you download and install the software next month.

Apple is looking to set up a huge month for the company with the arrival of the iOS 7.1 and reported updates that are coming to the Apple TV as well.  Because there seems to be a few things that Apple wants to get to the public, there is a good chance that the company will do all of this with an event, but that has not been confirmed at this time.  Coming along with iOS 7.1, users will see new features, a couple of tweaks to the user interface and apps, plus an improved Calendar app.  Enhancements to the performance and fixes for some bugs that have been reported are also expected with the new software.

Judging by what was reported with the last beta version of the software, there are no major features coming with the new software, but the fifth stage is the last one before the official update and that is just as exciting to know.  There is a chance that one more beta round will be released with the Gold Master edition following shortly after that.

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

Google: All New Android Phones Must Ship With KitKat

According to MobileBloom, a leaked memo has been identified, stating that all Android smartphones will have to run KitKat or else Google will not endorse the handset.  The Android memo is the first sign that Google is finally sorting the problem it has with fragmentation.  Because Google offers hundreds of phones to customers from many manufacturers across the world, Google’s operating system is swiftly becoming fragmented.  This issue is one of the top objections the operating system receives from application developers.

Apparently, the memo was sent from the Android team to its top OEM partners: Sony, Samsung, HTC, and LG who are all original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for Google.  “Starting February 2014, Google will no longer approved GMS distribution on new Android products that ship older platform releases,” the memo states. “Each platform release will have a ‘GMS approval window’ that typically closes nine months after the next Android platform release is publicly available.”  Any handset that does not get approval from Google Mobile Services (GMS) will not be able to ship with Google’s main applications which include Now, Maps and Google Play store.

Does this mean the end of all budget Android phones?  It could be! If real, the memo could mean an end to cheap  Android handsets and increase the price of middle of the road smartphones.  KitKat also has higher minimum specifications than foregoing operating systems.  This may mean that phones like the Samsung Galaxy core are no longer possible.  It has been said that KitKat has been coded to work better on lower powered smartphones. However, this could still have enough of a knock on effect to possibly  give the developing market to opponents such as Mozilla’s FireFox and Tizen.

Last year, Android CEO Sundar Pichai said him and his team were working on solutions for Android fragmentation. Figures showed, at the end of January 2014, that approximately 1.4 per cent of all Android smartphones were running the latest version of the operating system. While in contrast, over 80 per cent of iPhones were running iOS7, Apple’s latest operating system.  Android released KitKat just weeks after iOS 7 was released for Apple’s devices.  It is uncertain how Nokia will be affected as they use older versions of Android. We will just have to wait and see. 

As always, if you have any sensible comments regarding this story, please leave your comments in the section below.

 EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

:Top Ten Password Cracking Methods:

Top Ten Password Cracking Methods

1. Dictionary attack :-

"This uses a simple file containing words that can, surprise surprise, be found in a dictionary. In other words, if you will excuse the pun, this attack uses exactly the kind ofwords that many people use as their password..."

2. Brute force attack :-

"This method is similar to the dictionary attack but with the added bonus, for the hacker, of being able to detect non-dictionary words by working through all possible alpha-numeric combinations from aaa1 to zzz10..."

3. Rainbow table attack :-

"A rainbow table is a list of pre-computed hashes - the numerical value of an encrypted password, used by most systems today - and that’s the hashes of allpossible password combinations for any given hashing algorithm mind. The time it takes to crack a password using a rainbow table is reduced to the time it takes to look it up in the list..."

4. Phishing :-

"There's an easy way to hack: ask the user for his or her password. A phishing email leads the unsuspecting reader to a faked online banking, payment or other site in order to login and put rightsome terrible problem with their security..."

5. Social engineering :-

"A favourite of the social engineeris to telephone an office posing asan IT security tech guy and simply ask for the network access password. You’d be amazed how often this works. It take the advantage of people trust."

6. Malware :-

"A key logger or screen scraper can be installed by malware whichrecords everything you type or takes screen shots during a login process, and then forwards a copy of this file to hacker central..."

7. Offline cracking :-

"Often the target in question has been compromised via an hack ona third party, which then providesaccess to the system servers and those all-important user password hash files. The password cracker can then take as long as they need to try and crack the code without alerting the target system or individual user..."

8. Shoulder surfing :-

"The service personnel ‘uniform’ provides a kind of free pass to wander around unhindered, and make note of passwords being entered by genuine members of staff. It also provides an excellent opportunity to eyeball all those post-it notes stuck to the front of LCD screens with logins scribbled upon them..."

9. Spidering :-

"Savvy hackers have realised that many corporate passwords are made up of words that are connected to the business itself. Studying corporate literature, website sales material and even the websites of competitors and listed customers can provide the ammunition to build a custom word list to use in a brute force attack..."

10. Guess :-

"The password crackers best friend, of course, is the predictability of the user. Unless a truly random password has been created using software dedicated to the task, a user generated ‘random’ password is unlikely to be anything of the sort..."

EnjOy.. :)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

How To Change System Properties Logo in Windows 7

Windows 7 System Properties Logo Changer is a free portable tool that allows you to change your system properties logo in Windows 7.

How to use:

1. Run the tool as administrator.

1. Click on Select image and browse for the image that you want to set as the System Properties Logo.

1. If you want to resize the image, click on Resize image and specify the height & width of the image. After that, click Resize.

1. Click on Apply.

1. Click Check. Now the logo of System Properties will be changed:

(1.22 MB)
Disclaimer: This app is not made by me. The developer of this app was orbit30 who has disappeared long since.
EnjOy..:)
Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

:How to Monitor Hard Drive Or SSD Health & Performance With HDD Expert:

Monitor Hard Drive Or SSD Health & Performance With HDD Expert

Manufacturers are always pushing boundaries trying to make hard disks as robust and reliable as possible. Despite that, HDD failure and data loss remains an inescapable reality. Therefore, there are RAID configurations, backup systems and other solutions designed to prevent data loss and minimize the impact to an organization when drives simply stop working. While there are various ways to help you prevent data loss, one of the easiest methods is to keep a check on your hard drive’s health using monitoring tools. One such utility goes by the name HDDExpert. It is a free Windows application by KC Software that displays health & performance of your HDD or SSD, decodes S.M.A.R.T. attributes into readable form and recommends ways to maintain the health of your drives.

The program doesn’t confuse you with excessive technical jargon, unlike most similar tools. It’s simple interface makes it an easy tool to use even for novice users. It doesn’t confuse you with .

Once launched, HDDExpert scans through all drives and partitions in your system. It then displays manufacturer name, model, firmware, serial number, temperature reading and cache size of the disk(s). The app also displays warning messages for temperature and health, and lets you know whether a backup or spare HDD is needed or not.

The lower part of its interface carries information related to damage or errors at different sectors on the disk. In addition, the app displays total power cycle count and total operation time.

Right beside these readings, you’ll find three buttons labeled ‘Fans’, ‘Spare’ and ‘Backup’. The first two take you to an Amazon search page, which contains recommended products such as cooling fans and HDD replacement parts. The Backup button links to ‘Backup & Recovery 12 Home’, a paid program that you can install and use to create backups of the data on your disks. In the ‘Message’ section beside these buttons, the tool displays its verdict on the state of your drives and recommendations to prevent (Spare) or prepare (Backup) for failures.

All in all, a simple disk health monitoring software that could save your precious data before it’s too late. The tool can come in handy to test old drives as soon as they start posing problems, so you may get a replacement before complete failure of the disk and the loss of all the data on it.

HDDExpert works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Download HDDExpert

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

How To Reset Google Chrome To Default Settings

The factory reset concept doesn’t need any introduction, and is commonly found in many devices and operating systems. Even Microsoft has now included the reset and refresh functionality in Windows 8. Mozilla also recently implemented the reset option in its Firefox web browser, enabling users to revert everything to factory defaults whenever they wish. So, it’s about time that Google brought this feature to Chrome. Using the reset option, you can reset the browser to its default state whenever you want. When you reset the browser, you basically turn its state to how it was when first installed: no extensions or other browsing data on it, and all settings reverted to original. In other words, in one step, you’re are allowed to completely erase any info and start over from scratch without having to manually uninstall and reinstall the browser. Although Google already had this feature on-board in Canary and Dev builds, it’s now natively available in the latest stable release. Here is a thorough and complete step-by-step guide on how to reset Chrome back to its default settings.

The reset function in Chrome can come in handy if you want to troubleshoot a damaged or corrupt installation. Likewise, if your Chrome is simply crashing at times due to some extension or malicious script, a reset can be a viable option.

The first thing you will need to do is open your web browser and head over the Settings screen. You can quickly access it by entering ‘chrome://settings/’ (without quotations) in the address bar. There, you will find a plethora of options, but the one we’re particularly looking for lies at the very bottom of the page.

Simply scroll all the way down in until you see the ‘Show advanced settings’ link (a blue hyperlink rather than a button). Click it, and further options will be made available to you.

The Settings screen will be expanded further and you will need to scroll all the way down again until you see ‘Reset browser settings’. Clicking this button will restore everything to default.

When you click this button, Chrome displays a confirmation popup informing what would be reset, which basically includes all browser settings, homepage, new tab page, search engine. The reset will also disable all extensions and unpin all your tabs. Furthermore, it will remove temporary data like cookies, cache and site data.

You can click Learn more to see further details. Click ‘Reset’ to confirm, and Chrome will go back to its default state.

Did you find the above guide useful? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Happy web surfing!

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

How to Manage Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive & More From One Place With MultCloud

Using a large number of cloud storage services can lead to the nuisance of not being able to manage each of them efficiently. That’s where services like MultCloud aim to offer a handy solution by letting your control and manage your cloud accounts from one unified interface. Based entirely online, it lets you create a MultCloud profile, to which you can connect your other cloud storag services for easy access and management. The service currently supports most major cloud storage providers including Dropbox, SugarSync, Google Drive, SkyDrive, Box and Amazon S3.

MultCloud is quite easy to configure, and takes only a couple of minutes  for setting things up. It doesn’t require you to enter a lot of details – just your email address, name and password would do. Once you visit the website (via the link provided at the end of this post), you can click the ‘Create An Account’ button to get started. Once an account has been created, just make sure to verify your email address with the service from the link provided in the confirmation email that’s sent to your inbox.

Next, you just need to enter your email address and password at the login screen after the verification to finally log in to your account – it’s simple as that.

While design isn’t the main focus of the app, but it’s still pretty well crafted. The fine-looking interface of the dashboard makes the service fairly intuitive to use. From the dashboard, you can add the cloud drives of your choice to the service. To do that, simply choose one of the services from the available options, specify a display name for it, and click Add. After that, you will need to sign in to the service with your account (if you aren’t signed in already) and authorize MultCloud with the appropriate permissions when prompted.

Once a cloud service account has been added, you can do pretty much everything from it that could possibly be done from a dedicated client or web interface of that service. For example, you can easily view contents of your cloud storage, upload files to it, download existing cloud files to your local storage, and create new folders. MultCloud also offers a preview feature for some files such as images. Other than that, you can rename your files and copy and move them between different cloud folders.

Overall, MultCloud is a great service that keeps things simple while taking the hassle of controlling all your cloud accounts from different browser tabs or desktop clients out of the way. The service is currently available for free.

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy

How To View The Date & Time When Windows Was Installed

So, you want to find out when was the last time you installed Windows on your machine? Since you’re reading this post, the answer to this question is probably yes. I’m not sure about you, but many simply feel that re-installing Windows at regular intervals – after a year, let’s say – keeps the system in optimal state. I wouldn’t argue with that theory, but in such a case, having a reference date of your last Windows installation does make sense. Or you might want to know about the date and time of your Windows installation just out of curiosity. Fortunately, then there are several different ways available to do that, which I will explain step by step, right after the break.

Windows Explorer Method

The first method comprises of taking help from Windows Explorer, and it’s surely the easiest (though not necessarily the most accurate) way of finding out the installation date and time. To do that, simply open the partition where the operating system is installed (usually drive C:) and right-click the ‘Windows’ folder followed by clicking ‘Properties’.

Under the Properties sheet of the Windows directory, you will be able to see it’s Created date and time. This date and time should be the same as when Windows was installed to your computer.

Earlier, I mentioned that this method may not be very accurate, and the reason for this is because since Windows Vista, many computers come with image-based installation media for Windows installation, which doesn’t exactly ‘install’ a new copy of Windows to the machine, but instead just replicates the image on the CD or DVD to the computer’s storage. As the date of actual creation of the Windows folder on the image-based installation media is not the same as the date and time at which you last used that media to reinstall Windows on your computer, the date will not be accurate. To cope with this issue, you can alternatively check the creation date of your ‘Users’ folder because this folder is created during Windows installation. Do note that this will give the accurate result only for the account that was created during or immediately after the installation.

SystemInfo Command Method

Another way of finding the correct Windows installation date and time is via the systeminfo command. Just open Command Prompt from your Start Screen or Start Menu.

Next, type the following command in the Command Prompt window, and press the Enter key:

systeminfo | find /i "date"

The tool will scan the information for youand show you your Windows installation date, as shown below.

WMIC Command Method

The third method is to use the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC). This method is also quite easy and displays accurate result.

First off, open Command Prompt as Administrator and run the following command. You can also refer to the screenshot below:

WMIC OS GET installdate

From the above screenshot, you can see that it displays a number. This number contains year, month,, date, hour, minutes and seconds of the installation date and time. According to the above screenshot, the number translates to 2012-11-05, 10:52:26

Registry Editor Method

The Registry Editor is another way of finding installation time and date on your system. This method is a bit more complex than the ones explained earlier, and require doing some manual calculation. Nevertheless, here’s how to do it.

Open Registry Editor via the Run dialog window or Start Screen.

Now go to the following registry location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion

In the right pane that displays DWORD values, there will be an InstallDate DWORD. It carries the total number of seconds since 1st January, 1970 till the installation time, enclosed in brackets.

There can be a lot of ways you can use this number to calculate the accurate time. One way is to divide this number by 60, 60 and 24 to get the number of days between 1970 and the installation time, and then convert them to years by dividing with 365.25 (to account for leap years). There can be other ways too, including online converters that can calculate this duration for you automatically to show you the correct date and time.

This concludes our tutorial. If you have any additional thoughts or some other tips for finding the installation date and time, drop a line in the comments section below.

[via AskVG]

EnjOy..:)

Bugs Of Techn0l0gy