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Imagine a scenario when you’re sitting in your office in LA, and you have your manufacturing unit in Philadelphia and marketing teams and business partners in every continent and clients all over the world. A change in product design or order has occurred, and you wish to send this information to your teams, and departmental heads, but NOT to all. A remote server and FTP? Email? Think again.

Enter Egnyte cloud computing. This is an online, on-demand file sharing service that puts you (the ‘power user’) in charge of who gets what. The interface is quite straight forward. When you sign up, you get an on-demand file server for your account accessible through a unique web address, which you may even customize this secure URL with your company logo.

Egnyte then lets you create a full hierarchy for all your documents on the server. All the users created by you can log into this account (whether in the office or on the move and even from a mobile device), and you decide who gets access to what folders and files by assigning permissions. You can also lock files to prevent them from being modified or deleted.

Power users can also access the folder directly from a desktop application provided by Egnyte — which means you open your Explorer and rename, move or delete your files and folders which will be automatically mapped to your Egnyte server, which again means the changes will be there all to see who log in from their Web browser. And no more renaming of files for each version with every change to keep track — Egnyte creates versions as files change.

Also called Egnyte Local Cloud (ELC) is an easily installable on your computer hard drive or shelf storage (external) devices. Yet another great feature of this service is the off-line access to your files. When you’re not online, you can still work on your files, and once you get your connection, ELC synchronizes your new, modified files to your on-demand file server. Plus, there’s a useful back-up configuration that lets you take back-ups of your entire computer or selected folders at pre-determined times or intervals.

And, by the way, in case you were wondering, ‘cloud computing’ comes from the familiar image that we’ve been seeing all along — that of a cloud used to represent the Internet. Perhaps also goes to suggest that we don’t care what goes on out there so long as we get the service we need — on demand. Which Egnyte does extremely efficiently.

Drivers, as the name implies, is the driving force of the apparatus we are using. Basically, it is a piece of software, or a small program that controls a device. Every piece of device we use or connect to our computer must have its own driver for it to work. Examples of these devices are printers, cameras, disk drives, and even keyboards. However most of the time, for the keyboard and mouse, the driver is automatically loaded and installed on the computer’s operating system.

For the video card and sound card though, we may have to pull out that disk installer that came with our computer (the motherboard disk) when we first purchased it (that is if your video and sound card is a part of your motherboard). If in case we purchased the cards separately from your motherboard, we may have to use the disk provided along with those cards as they have the drivers saved in those disks.

Now, if it was that easy then why do we need to update our drivers? Well, there are times that unfortunate accidents happen to our computers that may cause them to work silly or be dysfunctional. When that happens, a usual quick fix for this is to disable and then re-enable the driver. If that doesn’t work, uninstall and then reinstall the device. Not working yet? Check the version that you have and then check the latest version on the internet. Do they match? If yes, call a resident technician to have them verify it. If the answer is no, then update the driver. Usually that fixes the issue. File Extension MDI

Every time you use the Internet, you’re being tracked by both your server and the servers you access. Your ISP keeps logs of your MAC address (your network adapter card’s number) and your private IP address; the rest of cyberspace sees your public IP address assigned by your ISP. Yes, no matter what you do and where you go, your computer trail leads right to your doorstep. Scary thought? Disturbing? No doubt.

How Your IP Address Invades Your Privacy

Whether or not you’re engaged in illegal or immoral activity, there’s reason to be worried about this lack of privacy on the Internet. Even people who do nothing strictly unlawful deserve privacy. You may be sending an anonymous mail, or having an illicit affair, or visiting websites that your family and friends would be offended by. You may have moved away and parted with friends and just want to check on their blogs without being identified. Perhaps you share an e-mail account with another person and you want to answer mail for them without giving away the fact you are someone/somewhere else. There are all kinds of reasons why being anonymous is important, and they are not all illegal.

Unfortunately, you can’t be anonymous without a proxy server that hides your tracks for you. The websites, forums and web mail services you use all log your visits. Even social networking sites do. If you use your office’s network, the administrator keeps records of who uses it and when. Your public IP address may be changeable and have limited details only, but whoever gets past that and sees your private IP address (behind your ISP router) and worse, your Mac address, will be able to identify you. Read the rest of this entry »

Viruses, phishing, spyware, spam, denial-of-service attacks, botnets. You have probably heard these words, and perhaps even suffered from what they signify, with or without knowing it.

I’d like to lay out a simple path to addressing (not resolving) these security problems, one that does not require agreement among all governments (or people) on what really constitutes a crime, much less a global police force or unenforceable global treaties. If we can increase security in general, then governments can focus on the real criminals.

A better approach is to view computer security as an issue of public health and economics, in which people can protect themselves but must pay for the costs they impose on others. We need to enable people to defend themselves against others; prevent innocent, well-meaning people from becoming infected and harming others; and reduce the incentives and ability of the ill-intentioned to do harm.

That sounds like a lot of different challenges. But there are effective approaches to each of them that do not require tracking everyone online, or requiring IDs for every interaction. Tracking user IDs will not enable us to catch or stop bad guys, and it will render the internet impossible to use. We can’t save cyberspace by destroying its openness.

To implement effective security, the entities best equipped to do so, the internet service providers, must take the lead. They are technically savvy organisations with the ability (more or less) to protect users and detect abusers; they have a direct (though impersonal) relationship with their users; and they compete for users’ business, so that, unlike governments, they will suffer if they perform badly. Read the rest of this entry »

Owning the newest high tech gadget gives you a chance to impress friends, and even strangers. They’ll think you’re the “James Bond” of the local set when you pull out your latest high tech gadgets.

If you’re considering purchasing a high tech gadget for a friend or loved one, there are some important things you should keep in mind.

Tips for purchasing high tech gadgets

1. The fact a gadget is high tech means it’s very new. Lots of new gadgets end up not being popular for a variety of reasons. People might think they’re too complicated, or don’t have useful features. If a new high tech gadget doesn’t have a lot of reviews and a big base of fans, maybe you should steer clear until more guidance is available.
2. New hight tech gadgets tend to be expensive. You have to pay to be on the cutting edge of technology. Often you can wait six months and get the same gadget at a much lower price. Unless there’s a real need for most gadgets, you can generally shop for a cheaper price or wait until overall unit prices get cheaper.
3. High tech gadgets have bugs. Make sure the product you’re considering buying works well. There’s no point in buying someone a gift that turns out to be junk.
4. There are tons of high tech gadgets for sale. Don’t just buy your gadget lover the first gadget that comes along. Feel free to shop and buy them just the right, personalized gift. Match the high tech gadget with the person you’re giving the gift to.
5. Use technology to make your high tech gadget shopping easier. Sign up for RSS feeds, use search engines, and keep abreast of the latest in technological developments. The world of gadgetry is getting bigger daily, so you need to use a technological advantage to sort the data.

Read the rest of this entry »

You’d think with the outbreak of the latest Internet browser war, companies like Microsoft and Mozilla would be doing everything possible to make their products competitive.

Microsoft announced that a flaw in Internet Explorer (IE) allowed hackers to redirected users to websites that would download malicious software designed to steal personal information such as user names and passwords onto users’ home computers.

Not surprisingly, the error was listed as critical, which resulted in some security companies calling for a boycott of IE until Microsoft released a patch to fix the flaw. I’ve never been a big fan of IE. In fact, I’ll only use it when I’m forced to, so I smugly sat there and gloated, confident that as a Firefox user I didn’t have to put up with the spreading panic.

Then karma turned around and bit me in the rear. Turns out earlier in the week Mozilla, the company that makes Firefox, issued a patch that fixed six critical flaws. Then Bit9, a US-based company that monitors security flaws, released a report of what it considers the top ten most vulnerable programmes.

Sitting at the top of the list was Firefox. IE didn’t even appear on the list. I was initially sceptical about Bit9’s results, but they make a good point. They based their report on a number of factors, including the number of critical bugs in the software, its overall popularity, and - here are the kickers - how easily updatable and supported the software was. Bottom line, IE is supported and patched by Micro-soft. Read the rest of this entry »

Google’s Chrome scored lowest in a test of password management security, but other browsers didn’t fair much better. The security expert found security flaws in the Firefox 2 password management two years ago. He tested Google Chrome during its beta period and Chapin’s company, Chapin Information Services (CIS) had reported three bugs in Chrome that were not fixed by release time. Chapin said that, along with seventeen other issues in Chrome’s password manager, they created “a toxic soup of potential vulnerabilities that can coalesce into broad insecurity”.

Safari 3.2 for Windows was also added to the CIS testing, and “essentially tied for the worst password manager” with Chrome. CIS’s tests are made up of 21 specific checks to ensure the browsers are not easily fooled into giving up the password information that they have remembered for the browser user.

Phishers could exploit these flaws to trick a browser into disclosing a username and password for a third parties site.

Interestingly, Google Chrome was the only major browser that passed one test; not filling in a form when auto-complete is set to off, but this only brought its score up to 2, the same score as Safari. No browser scores well on Chapin’s tests.

The “winner” was Opera 9.62, which only passed 7 of the 21 tests. CIS have a test suite which allows users to evaluate their own browser against the CIS tests.

Google and Yahoo look all set to drop their proposed ad alliance and this could happen as early as next week as early as next week because of antitrust objections by the Justice Department, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Google is considering pulling out of the deal because it doesn’t want to accept the conditions the government might require to avoid harm to competition, the sources said.

The officials from the two companies met with regulators and appeared to be unwilling to make the compromises needed to satisfy Justice Department concerns that their combined power would overwhelm the online advertising market.

The deal was announced in June and proposed that Google start selling its search ads throughout Yahoo’s US properties.

Needless to say that the demise of the plan would represent another tough blow for Yahoo, which had hoped that the tie-up with Google would help it boost revenues after it rejected a 47.5-billion-dollar takeover bid from Microsoft. This upcoming collapse of the planned venture between the two biggest online advertising companies would deprive Yahoo of as much as 450 million dollars in operating cash flow over a year, according to estimates. What’s Yahoo upto next?

Some time back, Google executive Marissa Mayer had made an impassioned - not to mention lengthy and kind of complicated argument over on Google’s blog about how much effort the company has to put in to keeping its home page clean. We were told it’s space is sacred: you can’t add new stuff to it, because it makes the homepage all cluttered and messy. That’s not Googley.

The real idea was to explain that the company had decided to add a link to its privacy policies on the homepage - with the underlying implication being that privacy was so important it deserved space on that hallowed virtual wall.

All that means very little in the long run. After all, the company’s supposed 28 word limit doesn’t count promotional text - and we’ve had plenty of that recently. Indeed, just a few weeks after Mayer’s post, we were suddenly treated to a big old link telling us to download Chrome, Google’s new browser. It didn’t last too long, but it was still there.

I noticed today another new addition: a link trying to get users to buy the T-Mobile G1/ You remember, the Google-powered phone.

That link adds nine words - a 33% increase in wordcount. Not very Googley, really, is it?

There is more news on the browser front than the release of Google’s Chrome and Microsoft giving a complete makeover to its dominant Internet Explorer with Version 8 Beta 2.

Opera Software is leading a first-of-its-kind project to create a search engine that tracks how Web pages are structured on the Web. This engine will help browser makers and standard bodies work towards a more standards-driven and compatible Web.

Opera today announced results from its MAMA (Metadata Analysis and Mining Application) search engine, a brainchild of Opera engineers that indexes the markup, style, scripting and the technology used while creating Web pages.

From the beginning, Opera is known as an innovative company and MAMA is proof of its understanding of the Web, claimed the company.

The MAMA search engine scours 3.5 million Web pages, and the resulting data can answer questions such as “can I get a sampling of Web pages that have more than 100 hyperlinks?” or “what does an average Web page look like?”– a dream come true for Web developers. Read the rest of this entry »