Brand New feature at GMail

November 30, 2007 By Ruhani Rabin Leave a Comment

Group chat
Chat with multiple people without multiple windows. Invite your friends to a group discussion. To start a group chat, click ‘Group chat’ from the ‘Options’ menu when chatting.

To get started, follow these steps:

Start a chat with a single person in your Contacts list.
Once you’ve started the chat, click Options at the bottom left of your chat window and select Group Chat.
In the field labeled ‘Add a person to this chat,’ enter the name of the contact(s) you want to add to your group chat.

To end your chat, click the X at the corner of the chat window. Others in the group chat will get a message saying that you’ve left the conversation. If you want to rejoin, you’ll need to be invited back by a contact who’s still in the group chat. The group chat will continue until all participants have left.

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: Features, gmail

Microsoft and Their Inevitable BSOD

November 29, 2007 By Ruhani Rabin 1 Comment

We all know very well Microsoft and BSOD is two side of a coin. It’s inevitable how the BSOD scares us off. Now there is some other BSOD that can give you a descent naughty smile on your face.. It’s created by the Genius Mark Russinovich from SysInternals. Let’s take a step back in the history. Previously SysInternals made a huge number of Windows NT, 2000, XP & Server 2003 tools which the very advanced developers and core operating systems developers didn’t even dream about. With his numerous success with command line administration tools and core system level utilities he took immediate attention from Microsoft itself. At 2006 Microsoft bought over SysInternals and it was inevitable too. SysInternal Administrator tools are the optimal Swiss army knife for any windows server administrators. SysInternal Administrator tools are still freeware and available for download. So back to present, Mark Created an innovative BSOD emulated screensaver for windows and it utilizes the original ntoskrnl.exe from NT, 2K, XP, 2003. Here is some official description for it:

Get 5GB Free Space on the Cloud for your Devices

One of the most feared colors in the NT world is blue. The infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) will pop up on an NT system whenever something has gone terribly wrong. Bluescreen is a screen saver that not only authentically mimics a BSOD, but will simulate startup screens seen during a system boot.

On NT 4.0 installations it simulates chkdsk of disk drives with errors!
On Win2K and Windows 9x it presents the Win2K startup splash screen, complete with rotating progress band and progress control updates!
On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 it present the XP/Server 2003 startup splash screen with progress bar!

Bluescreen cycles between different Blue Screens and simulated boots every 15 seconds or so. Virtually all the information shown on Bluescreen’s BSOD and system start screen is obtained from your system configuration – its accuracy will fool even advanced NT developers. For example, the NT build number, processor revision, loaded drivers and addresses, disk drive characteristics, and memory size are all taken from the system Bluescreen is running on.

Use Bluescreen to amaze your friends and scare your enemies!

Bluescreen runs on Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 9x (it requires DirectX).

Note: before you can run Bluescreen on Windows 9x, you must copy winntsystem32ntoskrnl.exe from a Windows 2000 system to your Windows directory. Simply copy Sysinternals BLUESCRN.SCR to your system32 directory if on Windows NT/2K, or WindowsSystem directory if on Windows 9x. Right click on the desktop to bring up the Display settings dialog and then select the "Screen Saver" tab. Use the pull down list to find "Sysinternals Bluescreen" and apply it as your new screen saver. Select the "Settings" button to enable fake disk activity, which adds an extra touch of realism!

Now Here is the Download directly from Microsoft

>> Official Site

Filed Under: Software Tagged With: bsod, microsoft

Hosts file configuration – Windows, Linux and Mac

November 16, 2007 By Ruhani Rabin 2 Comments

The Hosts file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. This file is loaded into memory (cache) at startup, then Windows checks the Hosts file before it queries any DNS servers, which enables it to override addresses in the DNS. This prevents access to the listed sites by redirecting any connection attempts back to the local machine. Another feature of the HOSTS file is its ability to block other applications from connecting to the Internet, providing the entry exists. It’s a general practice of web developers to test any site locally by emulating the original web address pointing to a local or development server by modifying the hosts file. Here is a brief explanation on how to set it up properly.

Common Locations:

The host file is located in different locations in different operating systems and even in different Windows versions:

Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista:

1
%SystemRoot%system32driversetc

is the default location, which may be changed. The actual directory is determined by the Registry key

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HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesTcpipParametersDataBasePath

.
Windows 95/98/Me:
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%WinDir%
Linux and other Unix-like operating systems:
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/etc
Mac OS 9 and earlier: System Folder: Preferences or System folder (format of the file may vary from Windows and Linux counterparts)
Mac OS X:
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/private/etc

(uses BSD-style Hosts file)
OS/2 and eComStation:
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"bootdrive":mptnetc

Setting it up:

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Filed Under: Software Tagged With: hosts, linux, mac, Windows

FizzBoost 2.0 Facebook Desktop Application

November 14, 2007 By Ruhani Rabin 2 Comments

With the myriad of facebook alert applications out there it is difficult to decide on which one to use. Functionality and quality varies considerably.

Luckily there’s FizzBoost! Truely the best Notifier there is!.

Pictures always say a thousand words… so here you go

Now, a new FizzBoost version is ready for download (read the rest of the post to get the direct download) and has a whole bunch of new features. Including:

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Filed Under: Software Tagged With: desktop, facebook, Software