dailyApps

Apologies for the Lack of Posting Of Late

Karthik Kastury — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:42:10 +0000

Before I say anything else, I’d like to apologize for the lack of posts for the past couple of months on a regular basis.. Simply put you’d not want to be in a situation I am in right now.. Screwed up college life, and personal life to a smaller extent, has made things a lot difficult for me..

I have become a lot more busier at college, after becoming the Vice President of the department which has added a whole new range of activities I am supposed to be doing.. Added to that, I have also been selected by Microsoft to become a Microsoft Student Partner on campus, wherein am expected to conduct technical sessions and other seminars on a regular basis.

Combine these two responsibilities with the bigger and more important responsibility that is of a student, things are kind of messed up for me at the moment.. The past month has gone completely in preparations for a major event in college, and am tired and exhausted while I leave for Goa today to attend a training program of sorts to be organized by Microsoft.

Once I come back, its a hectic week after that.. I am not making excuses here.. I just want to keep you guys in the loop on what’s happening over at dailyApps. Also to an extent I have hit the writers block, and whenever I sit down to write something the words simply don’t come out..

I cannot say when exactly dailyApps will come alive again, because College has got a lot busier than it ever was.. For me and my family my education and studies remains the primary concern, so its only natural I feel that blogging will suffer.. But trust me, I don’t like all this either.. I miss blogging daily on dailyApps, I miss reading your friendly and useful comments and I can’t wait to get back on the ship.

Hopefully in the coming weeks everything should be sorted out, and things should be back to normal.. Till then if you have any suggestions for me on how to manage time effectively I am all ears..

After all I’m just 19 and I have never before carried so much of responsibilities.. I am determined to make things work, which means you will see new posts on a regular basis pretty soon, and dailyApps will be the same active blog it was before.

Please stay tuned, the best of dailyApps is yet to come.. Cheers!!

Thank you all of you, for sticking around…

Got A New PC? Install PC-Decrapifier First!

Karthik Kastury — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:50:22 +0000

photo credit: Editor B

Just got a new PC or a Laptop? You must already be cursing the manufacturer for installing all crapware on your shiny new PC by now! worry not, there is an amazing app that will save you from all the mess and restore your PC to a shiny bliss..

As someone who cleans up a lot of new laptops, PC Decrapifier has been a trusted helper for a long time to me.

A couple of days back version 2.0 of PC Decrapifier was released. With the older versions it took some time for new crapware to be added into the PC Decrapifier database, since it was first polled in the forums and then manually added..

Here’s what the developer of PC Decrapifier, Jason had to say about the new version :

Short term, you’ve got a faster, more stable application, but release doesn’t bring you much in the way of removal updates. There are a couple more icons and startup entries though. However, with this re-write I’m able to put together updates much more quickly. So now that the major work is done, you will start to see this application updated more frequently.

So with the new versions you should be seeing updates more frequently, which is a good thing as far as removing crapware goes..

Here’s a screenshot of PC Decrapifier in action :

Currently Decrapifier can remove common bloatware like McAffee, Norton, and Office 2007 trials, several Roxio, Sonic, and Corel apps, and even AOL software. If you’re the "guy who is the comp geek," be sure to keep Decrapifier with you always for quick, automated removal tasks.

I am sure a lot of your friends will thank you for decrapifying there PC..

Hack Attack : Get Free Ringtones on your iPhone in Less than a Minute!

Karthik Kastury — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:48:35 +0000

Getting custom ringtones on the iPhone has always been a process that requires some amount of hardwork. Sure there are jailbreak and third party apps that will you help get custom ringtones on the iPhone for free rather than buying from iTunes.

But the catch is that these softwares either cost a bit or require a jailbreak which can be risky for your precious iPhone.

There has to be a easier way right? Thankfully there is a easy, fast and most importantly legal way to get custom ringtones on your iPhone in less than a minute.

Well am referring to a service called Audiko, that allows you to put ringtones on any mobile device and not only the iPhone.

Audiko is a simple service which helps you to make a ringtone of your favorite song! Audiko is an amazing service. It allows you to upload any song, cut up to 40 seconds of it, and put it right into your iTunes Ringtones folder for quick and easy syncing.

Best of all Audiko is a free service and doesn’t require any registration..

Let’s get started with the process..

To start off visit Audiko.net and search for the song whose ringtone you are looking for.

And choose an appropriate search result…
Click "Download Ringtone for iPhone"

Once you’ve saved the ringtone to a folder on your computer, double click the file to add the file to your iTunes Ringtones library.

Now whenever you sync your iPhone next you will find the ringtone in your iPhone’s Settings >> Sounds >> Ringtones menu.

What’s more Audiko even allows you to upload a song and cut any part of it (up to 40 seconds).

You can also enter the URL for any YouTube video and Audiko automatically extracts the sound. Just like when uploading a song, you can cut any part of the audio.

Adding custom ringtones on your iPhone could’ve never been easier. No more SSH, no more jailbreaking, and no more useless utilities.

Hack Attack : How to Create aXXo Quality DVD Rips

Karthik Kastury — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:12:17 +0000

photo credit: ryoichitanaka’s

DVD movies are the best way to pass time while you are at home and have nothing else to do. There are times though when the DVD you rented at the local DVD store has to be returned within 24 hours and you want to watch the movie again and again. In such situations ripping the DVD’s is the best way to go.

If you have been a P2P torrents user for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve heard of aXXo. A lot of people are in love with him and his releases on the internet (including me as well). The quality of his rips are always spot on, and many people have asked me to how he creates such wonderful rips at 700mb which is insanely small.

Sometime in the past aXXo had stopped releasing new movies, and many users were angry. Well you can’t blame him, because he had his own reasons. The purpose of this Hack Attack though is to reduce your dependency on guys like aXXo.

Its as simple as going to a DVD rental store or site, getting the DVD and creating a perfect 700mb DVD rip for the rest of us to enjoy. You don’t need to depend on guys like aXXo anymore.

Without further delay, lets get started with the process, of creating your super small high quality DVD Rip. Here are the tools you will require to get started…

DVD Decrypter
Auto GK
K-lite Codec Pack (if you already have a codec pack installed you can leave this one out)

Install the above softwares, just like you would install any other software, and then grab yourself a cup of caffeine before you proceed. I am going to split this guide into two parts. Lets get started with the first part.

PART 1 : Ripping the DVD to your Hard Disk

Step 1

Fire up DVD Decrypter. It should like the screenshot above. Insert your DVD in your DVD drive and select the appropriate drive as Source, and a folder on your hard disk as the destination with atleast 3-4GB of free space.

Step 2

As you can see in my screenshot, my DVD doesn’t have any region protection, copy protection and RCE protection. It might not be the same with your DVD, and you need to get rid of the protection schemes.

To get rid of the protection schemes, click tools from the menu bar and select settings. The settings dialog should now appear. Now tick the “Remove Macrovision Protection” check box, this will remove the Macrovision flag of the VOB files on the disc. RCE
Protection Region should be set to the region your drive (or standalone DVD player) has.

You can find the regions below :

Region 1 - 1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
Region 2 - Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
Region 3 - Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
Region 4 - Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
Region 5 - Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
Region 6 - Peoples Republic of China
Region 7 – Reserved
Region 8 - Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)

See the following screenshot for a clearer picture of what you are supposed to do.

Step 3

Now that you are done with everything, you are ready to rip the DVD to your disk. Make sure the drive containing your destination folder has enough free space on it. Select all the files on the right column if they aren’t already selected and hit the Start button as highlighted in the screenshot below.

It should complete ripping after a while and you should see something like this…

Yup that is it, you are done with the first part. Now that you have the ripped files on your disk, you can test them on your media player and when you are satisfied you can eject the DVD. Now lets proceed with part 2 of this guide…

Part 2 : Compressing the DVD to AVI format

Open up Auto GK. It should like the one shown above. Basically this is where all the action happens. I’ll guide you through the process of choosing the best settings through to the last step where you can watch your 700MB rip.

Lets continue then…

Step 4

(Click on the screenshots to enlarge)

Locate the input file from the folder you used to store the rips in DVD Decrypter… Here’s how you select the file. In the Open dialog box, select the details view. The input file that we are going to select is an *.IFO file.

As you can see from my screenshot VTS_00_0.IFO has three .VOB files under it with the maximum size, which means this is the movie we’re looking for. Select the IFO to proceed.

Now give the output file, whatever name you need to give by clicking the Output file field.

Step 5

As you can see from the screenshot above, the program lists the available subtitles and Audio tracks. On my DVD there are no subtitles, and there is only one Audio track, so I will select that.

On most DVD’s you have 2 Channel Sound (2ch), Surround Sound (6ch). I’d prefer Surround sound over normal 2 channel if available simply because they sound much better.

Now select the Target (Output) Size. I have selected 700MB here. Generally speaking, higher the size you select, the more clearer the picture is on the DVD will be.

Now click Advanced Settings button to show the Advanced Options window as shown.

Configure the settings as shown in the Screenshot. Choose XviD over DivX because it gives you higher compression for same quality compared to DivX.

Step 6

Now that you have finished configuring everything, just click the Add Job button and the Start button to start the conversion/compression process.

Just grab yourself some coffee, if you have finished the one you took before getting started. The compression process will take quite a while, so you could even have a nice nap meanwhile.

Note : You won’t much activity in Auto GK itself. A lot of programs will load including a couple of command prompt windows, do their jobs and exit. This is completely normal so don’t bother messing around with anything.

That’s it guys! You have made your first aXXo like DVD Rip!

Please share with is in the comments how the process went. I’ll be gald to hear your opinions out.

P.S : I am trying out a variety of settings, so I will write a follow up post sometime in the future detailing them as well.

If you have any ideas or suggestions please share with us in the comments …

uTorrent 1.8 is Released, Mac Version on the Way

Karthik Kastury — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 15:53:19 +0000

Its been a over six months since we last saw an update to everyone’s favorite BitTorrent client. The uTorrent team has released version 1.8 of their BitTorrent client, with significant improvements and updates.

Added the already pent up excitement about the new uTorrent there is also a word that a Mac version of uTorrent is on the way.. Good news for all Mac users out there.. But I feel that a stable Mac build is quite a few months away.

We’ve had to wait for quite a while for this release since the last stable build 1.7.7 was released way back in January. A lot of work has been done in these seven months though, and the list of changes and additions that were implemented is “absolutely massive”, to quote Firon from the release announcement..

One of the most significant updates in the latest version of uTorrent is that it comes with built in IPv6 support, which improves connectivity and thus performance. The only problem is that IPv6 is still not common, and we have to wait for it to take over IPv4. Other new features are better Windows Firewall registration on Vista and improved distribution of new connections across torrents.

According to uTorrent developer Greg Hazel since 1.8 is finally out, the uTorrent team is going to be more focused to get a Mac OSX version ready on which they have been working already for the past year. According to Greg a private Alpha of uTorrent for the Mac should be out in a few weeks.

uTorrent 1.8 can be downloaded from the uTorrent website, and the list of changes, improvements and additions is available in the forum thread announcing the release.

Way to go uTorrent! Its time to upgrade one of my favorite pieces of software. What are your thoughts on the latest and greatest version of uTorrent? I guess the Mac users are waiting to get their hands on uTorrent for Mac as soon as possible.

Via Torrentfreak

Is it Game Over for Windows Vista’s Security?

Karthik Kastury — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:22:24 +0000

Reading through my RSS feeds today, I stumbled upon an interesting post over at Neowin entitled “Vista’s Security Rendered Completely Useless by New Exploit” which reports on a new technique that can “bypass all memory protection safeguards that Microsoft built into Windows Vista.”

Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc. have discovered a technique that can be used to bypass all memory protection schemes that have been built into Windows Vista by Microsoft. These new methods are basically used to get around Vista’s Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and other protections by loading malicious content through a web browser.

In a nutshell, this hack is something that many of us weren’t expecting.

While this may seem like any standard security hole, other researchers say that the work is a major breakthrough and there is very little that Microsoft can do to fix the problems. These attacks work differently than other security exploits, as they aren’t based on any new Windows vulnerabilities, but instead take advantage of the way Microsoft chose to guard Vista’s fundamental architecture. According to Dino Dai Zovi, a popular security researcher told, "the genius of this is that it’s completely reusable. They have attacks that let them load chosen content to a chosen location with chosen permissions. That’s completely game over."

Microsoft has yet to post a statement officially, but they are apparently aware of the security issue and are waiting for the exploit to be made public. We can only wait and watch as to what comes up now…

If successful this could be a mess as good as the DNS exploit in the wild these days. This can potentially change the whole view of how the industry thinks about hacks in my opinion. Microsoft will have a quite a lot of work on hands in the coming days, I’m sure. We’ll know more about this in the near future and there even lies possibility of being faced with the prospect of your "secure" server being stripped completely naked of all its protection.

You think its game over for the already struggling Vista?

Mozilla Wants to Know Your Vision of the future of Web

Karthik Kastury — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:57:34 +0000

The world of Internet is constantly changing every minute, and the tools that we use currently can not stand up to our requirements in the future. Which means this is the right time to make some drastic changes in the way we interact with the web and prepare ourselves for the future.

Mozilla labs has put forward a call to anyone in the world to share their vision of how they would like to see the browser or the web in general in the future. Called The Concept Series, the project will track down and share future web concepts submitted through a very simple process. What would you like the web to look like in the future?

UI is very Important

For any application the User Interface is of the utmost importance. A poorly designed software however powerful it is, will turn out to be unusable. With today’s standards, there is so much of untapped potential in User Interface design.

Interface is not all about being pretty and good to look at. Case in point is the iPhone Software design. While the iPhone uses dell and subtle colors in its designs and hardly is good to look at, but is tremendous ease of use and fast response is what sets it apart from the others. I wouldn’t put the HTC touch in the same category as the iPhone even though it has a very pretty interface.

First Round of Concepts

As you would expect, Mozilla began the Concept series on a high note. Three concepts have been submitted so far. All of the three videos are produced by Mozilla, but that shouldn’t stop you from submitting your own concepts, including mockups, prototypes or ideas expressed in any way you feel is best. If you want to submit your own concept follow the instructions in the Concept Series announcement or just tag an image "mozconcept" on Flickr.

Here are the first round of concepts :

Aurora Concept Video

Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios. Here is the concept from Adaptive Path

Bookmarking and History Concept Video

An investigation into a better way of visualizing and interacting with bookmarks, your history, and the browser in general. Here is the concept from Wei Zhou

Firefox Mobile Concept Video

Firefox is coming to mobile. The innovation, usability, and extensibility that has propelled Firefox to 200 million users is set to do the same for Firefox in a mobile setting. Here is the concept from Aza Raskin

What Would You Like to See ?

Those were some really interesting concepts right? I am making something complex in my mind as I write this, meanwhile what are your thoughts on this initiative? What do you want to see in the Browser of tomorrow?

Feel free to link to your own mockups or ideas in the comments.

15 Most Beautiful Looking Linux Desktops You’ll Ever See

Karthik Kastury — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:26:21 +0000

photo credit: psd

Who said Linux can’t look pretty? For long its been said that Linux is the most boring OS ever and is not user friendly. I’ve been a linux user for sometime and I can say that my experience with it was nothing short of marvelous. Linux offers you unlimited amount of control as to how can you customize your desktop.

Scoring around the net I found some really fantastic desktops and here is what I feel are the best of what I’ve seen. Certainly not the most exhaustive list, but they are reminiscent to the fact that Linux can look pretty good if you know how to make it look good.

Without further delay, here are my favorite Linux desktops, and I’m sure they are some of the prettiest you’ll ever see.

Note : Click on the images for bigger screenshots

10)

11)

12)

13)

14)

15)

Are you a Linux user? Please show us your desktops.. It will be go a long way in promoting Linux as a User friendly OS. If you have come across other cool looking Linux desktops, please share them as well.

Way to go Tux!!

Hack Attack : Hack Vista to Browse at High Speeds

Karthik Kastury — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:04:22 +0000

photo credit: jpctalbot

I’m not a Windows Vista fan, but even then everyone at my home uses Windows Vista, while I dual boot with OSX on my Hackintosh.. I’ve used XP before and for some reason I always felt that Internet speeds on Vista were comparably slower than on OSX, and more so even Windows XP.

Considering it was quite slower than what I used to get on XP, I realized that Vista was doing something extra that made my internet connection slow down. After a bit of investigation and a bit of googling I found the solution.

Before I give the solution, let me explain the problem in a bit more detail… It all comes down to Vista’s “Auto Tuning” feature. Turns out that this feature isn’t compatible with many routers and networking devices(including mine). Means the feature that was supposed to be a boon turned itself into some sort of a bane.

Anyways here’s what you need to do turn off the Auto Tuning feature on Vista..

At the Start menu type command, but don’t launch the command prompt immediately. Instead, right-click it and choose Run As Administrator. Once the prompt is open enter the following command.

netsh interface tcp show global

If the line Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level does not say “disabled,” enter this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=restricted

If this doesn’t help, substitute this command and see if it works

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

At this moment, you should notice considerable improvements in your browsing speeds, or rather you should be cruising now. If it works, you should notice the difference in browsing speeds immediately. If it doesn’t work for you, and you feel the need to put things back the way they were, you can type this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal

Here are screenshots showing the whole process, incase you feel the need for it..

Good luck, hope this works for you.. Please let us know if this worked for you or not..

5 Reasons Why the Mojave Experiment is Epic Fail!

Karthik Kastury — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:19:36 +0000

The Mojave Experiment has been the center of the latest round of controversy surrounding Microsoft and its flagship operating system Windows Vista. Initially I thought Mojave was a brilliant marketing ploy and it would work wonders to clear the bad air on Windows Vista..

Well it is not really the best marketing ploy ever! If I were to choose my words, I’d call it the lamest marketing exercise of the year. The Mojave Experiment means Microsoft has stooped to an all time low, trying to do every single thing it can to clear the air about Vista. But trust me Microsoft its not as easy creating a beautiful new OS codenamed Mojave only to reveal that its nothing but Windows Vista.

Here’s how Microsoft describes the Mojave Experiment :

What do people think of Windows Vista® when they don’t know it’s Windows Vista? We disguised Windows Vista as codename "Mojave," the "next Microsoft OS," so regular people who’ve never used Windows Vista could see what it can do - and decide for themselves. Now decide for yourself.

Oh well, here are my top 5 reasons why the Mojave Experiment is Epic fail…

Microsoft treats its customers as though they are stupid

One of the chief reasons, why many people dislike Windows, is plainly because of the number of steps it takes to do a simple thing. Microsoft makes sure that the user has to go through an endless sequence of steps to get a simple job done. It’s always click, click, click, click, click, click, click, where one or two clicks should suffice.

Microsoft treats its customers as though they are kids. They feel that the user should be shown around the system, and be told what’s right and what’s not.. These way of holding users hands just like a parent holding a child’s hands is not the way Microsoft should be working.

It should instead focus on giving the power back to the user, in his own hands. Let him do as he pleases, after all its his PC. What MS feels is that by giving the power in users hands, it is going to make Windows more vulnerable. But in real life that isn’t the case, take for example Linux where the user is supreme and the number of attacks just pale in comparison to those on Windows.

Come on Microsoft its high time you gave your users some respect, and treated them as smart humans!
Microsoft tries to seduce its customers

Microsoft’s initial campaign on Vista, was all about the new interface and the WOW! features. Somehow the we never heard people saying Wow while looking at Vista. Now Microsoft was downright frustrated and it wanted those Wow’s somehow, and that’s why Mojave began in first place.

Here’s what MS told the participants of the Mojave experiment, “Hey! Listen, I’m going to show you a peek into the latest operating system from Microsoft. You’re really lucky and special, and I hope you like it”.

Now when a tester hears that he’s all excited, and when he sees the demo later only to find that it was Vista he’s embarrassed. Of course he’s going to like it!There’s no one way he’s going to tell he didn’t like Mojave or Vista or whatever its called.

Now this is something that’s human nature. When we are shown something that’s top secret we’re almost always going to like it, and that’s what Microsoft’s been targeting. I believe they have a good psychologist on the Mojave team.
Microsoft completely controls the test environment

The chief complaint of millions of users when Vista came out was it didn’t work well with their existing hardware. It ran terribly slow and many of there hardware didn’t work properly.

Now with Mojave, Microsoft set up the hardware. Microsoft brought the accessories. Microsoft picked the software. Microsoft sat people down with Vista experts driving the mouse, and walked people through Vista.

In such an environment, people liked Vista. What Microsoft fails to understand is that these guys want to be able to run Vista smoothly on their computers back home, and not have to run to the nearest computer store to buy a computer that can run Vista smoothly even though their existing computer is less than a year old.

Windows users have always wanted to set up their own hardware, and they would expect Vista to work properly with the hardware they have, and not use the hardware that Vista is comfortable with.
Mojave Experiment blames the customers for all the problems, rather than Vista

What do you think is the problem? Why is it that thousands of people are downgrading from Vista to XP? Why is that many OEM manufacturers are still selling PC’s with both XP and Vista?

What Microsoft feels is that all the negative perception behind Vista are because of the bloggers, forum posters, reviewers and hell even the Apple’s marketing campaign. Microsoft’s attitude has been more like, we’ve solved many problems with SP1, and we’ll solve many more with SP2. Until then just hang on tight alright!

The first step in fixing a problem is admitting that you have one and this is something which Microsoft fails to do. The only way I read this experiment is that Microsoft considers Vista’s failure to be due to customer ignorance rather than failings of the product itself.

Way to go Microsoft!!
Mojave is Microsoft’s Arrogance at its best

Microsoft’s attitude with Mojave is something on these lines, “We’re smart. You’re stupid”. Microsoft’s methods of choosing testers, specifically on the basis that they had strong negative attitudes about Vista isn’t right.

What Microsoft feels is that by tricking people and making them feel that Vista is way better than they thought its just another way to reinforce its new corporate mantra “Customers are Stupid!”

The problems that Vista has become famous for are not the kinds of problems you encounter in a few minutes of playing with it in a controlled environment that Microsoft setup with Mojave.

If Mojave is what Microsoft spends $300 Million to promote Vista, then am afraid that the bad is only going to get worser. What are your thoughts on the Mojave Experiment?

Atleast for me Mojave is Epic Fail!

dailyApps

Apologies for the Lack of Posting Of Late

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Got A New PC? Install PC-Decrapifier First!

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Hack Attack : Get Free Ringtones on your iPhone in Less than a Minute!

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Hack Attack : How to Create aXXo Quality DVD Rips

PART 1 : Ripping the DVD to your Hard Disk

Part 2 : Compressing the DVD to AVI format

That’s it guys! You have made your first aXXo like DVD Rip!

Related Posts at DailyApps

uTorrent 1.8 is Released, Mac Version on the Way

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Is it Game Over for Windows Vista’s Security?

Related Posts at DailyApps

Mozilla Wants to Know Your Vision of the future of Web

UI is very Important

First Round of Concepts

Aurora Concept Video

Bookmarking and History Concept Video

Firefox Mobile Concept Video

What Would You Like to See ?

Related Posts at DailyApps

15 Most Beautiful Looking Linux Desktops You’ll Ever See

Related Posts at DailyApps

Hack Attack : Hack Vista to Browse at High Speeds

Related Posts at DailyApps

5 Reasons Why the Mojave Experiment is Epic Fail!

Microsoft treats its customers as though they are stupid

Microsoft tries to seduce its customers

Microsoft completely controls the test environment

Mojave Experiment blames the customers for all the problems, rather than Vista

Mojave is Microsoft’s Arrogance at its best

Related Posts at DailyApps