Five ways Apple is shoring up Mac security

   By now most people that keep themselves updated with regards to the tech happenings would all be aware of Apple’s retraction of their claim that a Mac is the daddy of all computer monitoring software. In other words Apple claimed that a Mac is not susceptible to the viruses that wreck havoc with the Windows-based computers. That stance has been changed to a rather modest – and ambiguous – built-in safety claim.

  The presence of Malware on Apple products has become a reality. Just ask any knowledgeable iPhone buff what their biggest concern with regards to the impending iPhone 5 release is and their answer would be: its security mechanism to counter iPhone spyware. So with the security concerns surfacing regularly Apple is upping the ante on security. Here are six ways that Apple has fortified its defense.

1. Lessons Learnt From Flashback

  It goes without saying that it was the Flashback debacle that highlighted Apple’s procrastination in covering quite a few security bases. Obviously when 600,000 Macs were affected, it was the proverbial hand gesture towards the Apple hierarchy, and they had to do something about it – something that intriguingly took months to conjure up.

  Apple’s lethargy with regards to acknowledging the presence – and the means to counter them – of malware like computer monitoring software became the butt of global ridicule. And now the company is ensuring that it learns its lesson and realize that Macs are under the malware gun relentlessly. Hence, the need to strengthen the security has become all the more important.

2. Gate Keeper Has Been Hired

  Apple has been constantly revamping its security mechanism of late, which gives the hackers something new to think about. The OS X feature which has been dubbed the ‘Gate Keeper’ is being touted as the best thing that has ever stood next to the Apple door.

3. Sandboxing

  Gate Keeper protects Mac devices owing to the fact that it channels the iOS aspects on Mac OS X. Apple has been hiring developers to sandbox their applications, which restricts the actions that a program can perform on a Mac device. It also keeps an eye on the files that can be accessed, and monitors the programs that can be launched. In simple words sandboxing reduces the area that is available for the spyware to strike a blow, which in turn increases the overall security.

4. Background Checks

  A mechanism to restrict the execution of apps has also been formulated courtesy Gate Keeper. Users can ensure that their settings determine whether or not OS X should allow the applications in, which have been obtained via Mac.  And for this purpose Apple has decided to build a developer ID codes database, and a related system of tracking.

5. Encryption

  FireVault 2, the latest Apple maneuver introduced with Apple OS X 10.7 (aka Lion) offers full-disk encryption, to further hike up the security. And this when compared to the previous version of FireVault also confirms that Apple is taking Mac security rather seriously now. And who knows maybe they might have something similar to counter iPhone spyware on iPhone 5.

How to Connect Two Computers Without a Router

Let’s assume you have two computers at home and you want to connect them together so that you can easily share an internet connection between the two machines or transfer photos, music and other files from one computer to another. How do you do this?

Connect Two Computers with an Ethernet Cable

There are two options – you can either buy a router or, if you are looking for something more simple and don’t want to spend money on new networking hardware, you can connect the two computers using a commonly-available cable. The latter method doesn’t involve any complicated network settings and you will still be able to share files, internet connection, and even printers between computers.

 To set up this basic wired home network, all you need is an inexpensive Ethernet crossover cable and the other requirement is that network cards* (also known as LAN or Ethernet cards) should be installed on each of you computers.

[*] This should not be an issue because network cards are available on most newer machines by default but if you are working with a very old computer, you can either attach an internal LAN card to your computer’s motherboard or go for a USB Network adapter that will turn a USB port into an Ethernet (RJ45) port.

An Ethernet crossover cable looks like a standard Ethernet cable but the internal wiring is a little different. You can purchase crossover cables at Amazon.com or from your local computer store. If you have trouble finding them, you can purchase an inexpensive crossover adaptor and that will let you use any standard Ethernet cable as a crossover cable.

Connect Computers with an Ethernet Crossover Cable

Before connecting the two computers with a physical cable, make sure that both machine are using the same workgroup. Here is step-by-step guide that explains how you can change the workgroup of your computers.

Changing workgroup in Windows XP – From the Start menu, right-click “My Computer.” Select Properties in the drop-down menu, and then select the second tab that says “Computer Name” from the System Properties window. Now click the “Change” button, enter a unique Workgroup name and reboot your computer.

Changing workgroup in Windows 7 or Vista – Open the Control Panel, type “Workgroup” in the search box, and select the entry that says “Change Workgroup Name.” Click the “Change” button, enter a Workgroup name and restart the computer. Windows 7 users can skip one step; simply type “Workgroup” in the search box in the start menu, and select the first entry, then proceed as above.

Now that the workgroups are same for both computers, connect the two computers together using the Ethernet crossover cable. Simply plug-in one end of the crossover cable into the network adapter of Computer A and connect the other end of the cable to the network adapter of Computer B.

Windows will automatically recognize the new network, and you can now easily view files and folder that the other computer has shared. Simply open Networks from the Start Menu (or the Control Panel), and you should see the other computer by its name. You can then browse any shared files on the other computer, and can even utilize shared printers.

Troubleshooting – If you do not see the other computer under Networks, you probably have a prompt at the top of your Network window saying that Network discovery is turned off . Select “Turn on Network Discovery and File Sharing.”  In the next prompt, select “No, make the network I am connected to a private network.”  Now you should see the other computer on the home network.

[*] While it is possible to share files between two computers connected with a crossover cable without making them part of the same workgroup, the method will only work if both computers have this network set as a private network, and may still cause problems. It is therefore advisable to have both computers on the same workgroup before sharing files and printers.

Share an Internet Connection Between Two Computers

There are scenarios where you may want to share the same internet connection between two computers. For instance:

Situation A - You have setup a Wi-Fi network at home but your old desktop computer doesn’t have a wireless network card. In that case, you can use the laptop to connect to the internet wirelessly and then share that same connection with the desktop over a crossover Ethernet cable.

Situation B – You have a netbook with a built-in cellular data connection. You can share that connection with any another computer at home through the crossover Ethernet cable.

Situation C – You use a (slow) Wireless USB modem with your laptop computer while your desktop is connected to an ADSL Broadband line and there’s no router at home. For any bandwidth intensive tasks, like when you want to backup photos from your laptop to an online service, you can connect the laptop to the desktop and things will happen much faster.

OK, let’s look at the steps required for sharing an Internet connection.

First, if you only wish to share internet connection and not files, both computers need not belong to the same workgroup. All you need to do is to connect the two computers with the Ethernet crossover cable, and then turn on Internet connection sharing in the computer that already has an Internet connection. The instructions vary for different versions of Windows:

For Windows XP – Select “Network and Internet Connections” from the Control Panel and click “Network Connections.”

Right-click on the network connection you wish to share (the one connected to the internet), select Properties, click on the “Advanced” tab, and then check the box that says “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection.”  Click OK, and the second computer that you have

How to Sign Documents Electronically Without Ink or Paper

  

  You are working hard to achieve that perfect paperless office but there are some things that still require paperwork. For instance, you just received a contract via electronic fax that you are supposed to sign and fax it back. Or there’s a PDF / Word document waiting in your email inbox that you need to print on paper, put your handwritten signatures, scan the signed copy and send it back to the client again via email.

 That process is both time consuming and forces you to do something that you are trying so hard to avoid (i.e., use paper). So if you are looking to eliminate paper from the loop, here are some software tools, web services and workarounds that will help you capture your signature directly on the electronic file without requiring paper or ink.

How to Digitally Sign Documents

 The first step is to create a digital image of your signature – there are multiple ways of doing that:

Option #1. If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or any touch sensitive mobile device, use an app like “Fountain Pen” or “Sketch Pad” to draw your signature using your fingers and then transfer the image to your computer.

 Option #2. If you have don’t have access to a touch phone or a scanner, put your signatures on a white piece of paper and take a photograph of that paper using your digital camera or even the camera of your mobile phone (some tips).

Option #3. Alternatively, you can use any graphics software (like MS Paint), an online image editor (like Splash Up) or even Google Docs (see video) to draw your signature with the mouse pointer. I like the Google Docs options since it creates a transparent stamp of your signature.

Option #4. Go to Live Signature, draw your signature on the screen and click the “Create Signature” button to download your signature as an image.

How to Sign a PDF Document

  If the initial document is in Adobe PDF format, you need to follow a couple of extra steps because, unless you have a PDF editor like Adobe Acrobat, editing PDF files is not always straight-forward.

Option #1: Convert the PDF document to Word using this free web service, add the image to the Word file (as in the previous example) and export the document as PDF to prevent editing. The PDF to Word service may not always replicate the exact formatting and appearance of the original PDF file but it’s still very close especially in the case of text documents.

To password protect your signed-PDF documents, open the document inside PDF Hammer, add a password restriction and re-export it as PDF.

Option #2: If the PDF document that you have to sign is long or includes complex formatting, conversion may not be the right option for you. In that case, you have two choices:

Import the signature image into the Stamps Palette, open the PDF file that you want to sign and use the stamps tool (under Tools -> Comment & Markup) to sign anywhere in the document. You can then export the signed document as PDF and none of the original formatting should be lost.

2 b: OpenOffice Draw – The latest version of OpenOffice 3.1 along with this free Sun Extension can be used as a PDF editor.

Once installed, click the OpenOffice icon on your desktop and open the PDF document – this will auto open in OpenOffice.org Draw. Now choose Insert -> Picture -> From File to insert the signature image anywhere in the PDF file.

The good part about OpenOffice is that it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux platform but there’s no individual install for the Draw module so you’ll have to download the full 150 installer of OpenOffice.org but choose to install only Draw at setup. 

Web Apps for Electronic Signature

  The options discussed above are handy if you have to sign documents but what if you are on the other side of the fence and need another party to sign your document electronically.

In that case, you should consider using web based signatures services from either EchoSign or Right Signature – they both work on similar lines. You upload a PDF or Word document that needs to signed and also specify the email addresses of people who have to sign that file. The recipients can open the document inside their web browser, add their signature (with the timestamp) and done.

  You can then download the signed document on to your own computer. There’s no software to install and no sending fax messages back and forth. Both Echo Sign and Right Signature are paid services but trial users can send up to 5 documents for free.

Related: Your Guide to Adobe PDF Tools

[*] These electronic signatures should not be confused with Digital Signatures that can only be had from certification authorities such as Verisign. Electronic signatures on documents are also considered legally binding in most countries.

 

Activate Windows 7 Ultimate with OEM SLP Master Product Key

  Hackers are back in action again and this time they managed to crack Windows 7 Ultimate edition. Now anyone can activate Windows 7 ultimate edition using a master product key. This master product key will activate Windows 7 Ultimate offline and it will pass Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation. This is indeed a great news since many people were exited to try their hands on Windows 7 much before it’s release date. This OEM-SLP product key and OEM certificate for Windows 7 Ultimate has been leaked from a Chinese forum.

  Hackers managed to crack Windows 7 Ultimate by extracting the OEM certificate and OEM product key. OEM (Original Equipment Manufactures) certificate is digitally signed by Microsoft with its own Private Key with OEM Public Key and OEMID (part of SLIC table in BIOS). Till now everyone were searching for a Windows 7 crack to get it activated permanently and this cracked product key works like a charm since it activates your copy offline and eliminates WGA notifications.

Product key that has been extracted by hackers and has been working perfectly on all Windows 7 Ultimate editions. This key activates Windows 7 Ultimate system that has already been installed on your system, which BIOS has a valid OEM SLIC 2.1, and corresponding OEM cert. This cracked master product key is able to activate many OEM brands like HP, Dell, MSI and Lenovo.

P.S – Cracking/hacking is illegal and we do not encourage it. This news is for information purpose only.

Download Windows XP Key Finder Applications Free to Search Product Key Number

  All genuine Windows XP CD or DVD come with a product key printed on it. You need to use the product key while installing Windows XP on a system. But in case you have forgotten or lost the product key no and have to reinstall a program or make a fresh installation of Windows XP or even have to repair Windows XP, you won’t be able to do it. All fresh installations along with the repair asks for Windows XP product key and you can’t proceed with the installation until and unless you provide the product key number.

Product key number can be easily found from the registry editor, but it’s pretty difficult to locate and use. Thank God, there are some applications, known as Windows XP key finder that you can use to find the product key automatically. All you have to do is simply install these product key finders and they will automatically find the product key of the installed Windows XP copy.

Here are some Windows XP product key finders that you can use to trace and find Windows XP serial no :

 

Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder

Winkeyfinder

Keyfinder Thing

LicenseCrawler

WinGuggle

ProduKey

geProductKeys Finder

Product Key Finder

KeyFinder Pro

RockXP

Product Key Informer

MSKeyViewer Plus

 

 Even if you have purchased a computer where your system came with a pre-installed copy of Windows XP, you can run these key finders to get the generic product key number that your system manufacturer used during installation.

The Best Web-based OCR Services

Most scanners ship with some sort of OCR software but if you don’t have a scanner, you can simply capture a photograph of the printed text with your digital camera or even your mobile phone and then use an online OCR utility to extract text out of that image.
Meet the best online OCR services that can help you convert images into text.
 
1. Google Docs – When you upload an image file or a scanned PDF to Google Docs, check the option that says “Convert text to Google Docs format” and Google Docs will automatically perform OCR on the file before saving it to your account.
If the OCR operation is successful, all the extracted text is stored as a new document else Google Docs will store your original image without any modification.
With Google Docs, you can perform OCR on images and PDFs as large as 2 MB, the text recognition accuracy is quite impressive and there are no limits on the number of files that you can process in a day. However, Google Docs won’t retain the original formatting of the document and the OCR engine almost fails with low-resolution images.
 
2. Abbyy FineReader – FineReader Online is a web-based OCR service that can instantly convert your PDF files and images into corresponding office file formats. This is an Abbyy service and therefore the character recognition accuracy is quite good.
Unlike the OCR engine in Google Docs that can only recognize printed text written Latin characters, FineReader can understand a much wider variety of languages. It even works with multilingual documents that have text written multiple languages.
A free account at FineReader Online will only let you convert a handful of images to text and you’ll have to shell out around $3 per 10 pages for additional conversions

   

3. OnlineOCR.net – Online OCR, as the name suggests, is a cloud based OCR service that can handle all common images formats including scanned PDFs. If you have multiple images that you would like to convert to text in one go, you can put them all in a single zip file and upload it to Online OCR.

Of all the OCR services that I have tried so far, Online OCR has impressed me the most. The character recognition accuracy is quite good and the converted documents look like a replica of the original images. In my limited test with three different types of images, Online OCR was able to preserve the structure and formatting after the conversion in all the three case.

Like FineReader, Online OCR offers credits for converting around 5-6   images to text for free and after the limit is over, you’ll have to pay around $4 per 50 pages.

4. FreeOCR.com – If you ever need to extract plain text from an image or a scanned PDF file, Free OCR may be worth a try. The service requires no registration and you can handle up to 10 image uploads per hour.
Free OCR is like a graphical front-end for Google’s Tesseract OCR engine that is often considered as one of the most accurate text recognition engines around. However, Tesseract supports only a limited number of languages and it ignores most of the formatting of the scanned image.
 

5. OCR Terminal – OCR Terminal is one of the most mature online OCR services out there that not only supports images and scanned PDFs but even software screenshots.
For instance, if you ever get an error message on your computer, capture a screenshot, upload the image to OCR terminal and it will return you the entire error in plain text that you can copy-paste in emails or online forums.
OCR Terminal is internally powered by Abbyy’s OCR engine. A free account with OCR Terminal gets you 20 free conversions every month and you can pay around 7-9 ¢ per additional conversion.
 

6. OCR Online – Like FreeOCR, OCR Online doesn’t require any registration and you can translate up to 100 images to text in a single day. It also supports a large number of languages.
OCR Online offers good recognition accuracy and preserves most of the original formatting but what you’ll like most about this service is batch processing. You can upload a large number of files in one batch and it will output the results as one document.



 

Clean up your Gmail Inbox Automatically

Automatic routing of emails. Download now free Vera version!
Gmail has always had an excellent spam filter that keeps junk messages out of your Inbox. Then, earlier this week, Google added a reverse feature that is quite unique to Gmail – it’s called the Priority Inbox.

Priority Inbox is like having a personal secretary whose job is to sort your incoming mail based on importance. She knows about your friends, your colleagues and other people with whom you interact regularly and can therefore categorize your email accordingly.

Priority Inbox is something similar – it’s an intelligent, self-learning filter that automatically puts your most important email messages at the top of your Inbox so that you may deal with them first. The feature is now live for both Gmail and Google Apps email accounts.

Sort your Emails by Priority

Priority Inbox has one limitation – it works with incoming emails only and doesn’t really care about the hundreds and thousands of messages that are lying in your Inbox unattended.

I have been testing an impressive web app called Other Inbox that brings much need order to your existing Gmail Inbox and looks like a perfect complement to Google’s Priority Inbox.

Share a Network Printer between x86 and x64 Windows Machines

   The problem: You have a network printer attached to a Windows 64-bit computer. How do you send files to that shared printer for printing from a laptop that is running the 32-bit version of Windows.

  For the most part, the transition from 32-bit (x86) to 64-bit (x86-64) computing is seamless; old software applications will usually install and run fine, and the average user will notice no difference in the 64 bit version.

    Device Drivers are however the only thing that can hamper a successful transition to the 64 bit world, especially if you use hardware devices that are shared over a network from a computer running a 32 bit version of Windows. For example, if you have a computer running a 64 bit version of windows and try to install a network printer that is connected to a computer that is running a 32 bit of Windows, you will receive an error message saying that Windows cannot find the drivers for your printer.

   If the printer vendor provides 64 bit drivers, you can still use the printer with your new 64 bit computer but it might take a bit of extra work.

Best Sites To Check Internet Speed

    Internet is an important part of our lives. We always want to remain in touch with our loved ones and friends on internet. To enjoy communication with friends and relatives online or to surf the world of websites one should have a fast internet connection. It can get very frustrating and irritating if we need to wait for minutes in order to just check our emails or surf a website. Here are some of the best sites that will check your internet connection speed and you can make sure that you are getting correct speed according to your internet plan.

 

1. Speedtest.net : 

   

    This is the best site out there that can measure the speed of your internet connection from various servers around the globe. This website requires Java to be pre-installed on the client computer. Once you open the website, you can select the server from the world map displayed on the website and it would start the internet speed test. Usually a server nearest to your location is recommended for a more accurate speed test and the website does this automatically for you and display the server nearest to your location. The site will test both the upload and download speeds for your internet connection.

2. Broadband Speed checker

   Broadband speed checker website has been featured on various important public portals and other sites. The website interface contains two speedometers, the first one displays the internet connection speed and second meter shows the progress of the test being performed. There are two tests that are performed by the website namely Download and Upload test.

3. TestMySpeed.com

   This site is another way through which you can check the speed of your internet connection. If you don’t care about the data storage and time needed for the test and simply care about the accuracy then this site is one of the best site for the purpose. There are certain basic tips that are given on the website to make sure that you get the most accurate internet test speed results.

4. InternetFrog.com

  Internet Frog test the speed of your internet connection and rate your connection speed with respect to the previous test results of other users. After checking your speed it displays a chart illustrating the time it would take you to download a file from the internet. Apart from testing the internet connection speed the website also offers a number of tools such as Anti-Spyware, Virus Scan Software, IP Address Look-up and much more.

5. Bandwidthplace.com

 This is another simple and easy to use website that gives you accurate internet speed test results without any hassles. The website conducts the upload and download tests which will reveal the upload and download speeds of the internet connection.

If you like to use any other site other than the above mentioned sites for checking your internet speed do share the name of that website with us by leaving a comment below.

Print document from phone anytime and any place

  This trick will help you print documents, emails, photos, PDF files, etc. from a mobile phone and tablet to your printer. All you need is a printer connected to the computer (even your old wired printer will do) and a mobile device for sending print jobs – this could be a BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, Android or any other mobile phone.

Wirelessly Print Anything from Anywhere, Anytime

  While mobile phones have become a lot more capable in the past few years, the connection between the printer and your phone is still very weak.

  For instance, if you are using a BlackBerry or an iPhone, how do you print any of the presentations or spreadsheets that you have as email attachments? Or if you are viewing driving directions on Google Maps using an iPad, how do you send that map to the printer?

  Your phone’s app store will have a few printing apps to let you wirelessly print files but if you want to save a few bucks, you can simply use Dropbox to print documents from your phone to any printer without requiring any additional software.

  Some upcoming printers will have built-in support for mobile printing via email but with Dropbox, you get the same feature without requiring any new hardware.

  Before we get into the details, watch the video above as it shows how printing from a mobile phone actually works through Dropbox (apologies for the bad audio quality).

Print Files from any Mobile Phone through Dropbox

  The workflow is like this. You download a small utility on your computer that runs in the background and constantly monitors one of your Dropbox folders for any new printing jobs.

  You can send files for printing from your mobile phone through email or using any of the Dropbox mobile apps. As soon as Dropbox downloads the file locally, the utility will send it to the default printer. Once the file is printed, it gets archived to the logs folder.

To get this thing running on your computer, please follow these easy steps:

  Step 1: Make sure that you have Dropbox installed and running on the computer that is connected to the printer.

  Step 2: To send print jobs from your mobile device to the printer, you have two options. You can either download a Dropbox app on your mobile phone – they have apps for iPhone, BlackBerry, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, Nokia – or the other option is you upload the files (that you would like to print) to your Dropbox using email. You can use IFTTT to send files to Dropbox over email.

  Step 3: Download this zip file* and double-click the eprint.vbs file (see the source code). The script will create a sub-folder inside your main Dropbox folder called PrintQueue where all the mobile print jobs will queue up and another sub-folder called logs where all the completed jobs will be archived.