Flash and cookies - learn more about privacy

People rightly see cookies as a problem in terms of privacy and tracking their activities. If you read this article (link), you will learn about the ability of tracking cookies set by Flash, something that is used by a large number of sites.
Unlike traditional browser cookies, Flash cookies are relatively unknown to web users, and they are not controlled through the cookie privacy controls in a browser. That means even if a user thinks they have cleared their computer of tracking objects, they most likely have not.
Several services even use the surreptitious data storage to reinstate traditional cookies that a user deleted, which is called ‘re-spawning’ in homage to video games where zombies come back to life even after being “killed,” the report found. So even if a user gets rid of a website’s tracking cookie, that cookie’s unique ID will be assigned back to a new cookie again using the Flash data as the “backup.”

Education/Projects/ProcessingForTheWeb - mozilla wiki

Processing for the Web is a initiative (under the auspices of the Mozilla Education program) to create a complete and robust port of the Java-based Processing language and environment (popular for art, design, and visualization applications) to the open web, using standard technologies such as JavaScript, Canvas, etc. It builds on the existing processing.js port of Processing to JavaScript.

The goals motivating the initiative are as follows:

to enable Processing users to leverage the full power of the open web, and help spark a new wave of innovative uses of Processing
to serve as a forcing function to drive improvements in key aspects of Mozilla products and technologies, including JavaScript performance, Canvas functionality, applications of Bespin, Ubiquity, Multi-Touch and others
to reach out to and increase cooperation with the design, art, and new media communities, both as part of the existing Mozilla Education program and as a component of possible future Mozilla outreach efforts directed at those communities

Learn more at this link.

Providing digital publishing solutions for the publishing industry - Olive Software

In this digital world, an increasing number of newspapers and magazines are looking to have a combined digital and print version, or only a digital version; in addition, they have a huge amount of content, and need good stable solutions. One such company providing such solutions is called "Olive Software". From the site:
Olive Software is the leading provider of digital edition and digital archiving solutions for the publishing industry. Our solutions enable newspapers, magazines and other content publishers to cut printing and distribution costs, boost online traffic, and create new markets and revenue streams.
Olive Software’s products allow you to transform your content resources into intelligent knowledge assets, enabling information discovery, effective search and future-proof preservation. Our product lines support the entire content lifecycle, including digitization, transformation, warehousing, search, access, view, and Web-based delivery.

Looking for the web designer for your project ? - Use Haystack

Finding the right web designer for your project can be a big pain. It would be good to have a site that shows web designer availability across cities, and across price points. Well, Haystack (link) is one such service.
From the site:

Why Haystack?
If you're like most web designers, you have a great site but you're having a hard time getting qualified leads to visit your site. Haystack is here to help drive potential clients to your site. We promote Haystack to thousands of businesses, they find your work on Haystack, and then we direct them to your site so you can finish wowing them. Haystack helps them find you so you can do your magic.
Does it cost anything to hire a firm I found on Haystack?
No. Haystack isn't involved in any financial transactions between a firm and a client, and there's no fee to browse or hire anyone via Haystack. Transactions and negotiations are handled off Haystack. Haystack is just a place for clients to meet firms - after that everyone is on their own.

Introduction: WWW - The Client Side

The Internet / World Wide Web consists of pages and each page contains links or pointers to other pages. Users follow the link by clicking on them. This process can be repeated indefinitely, possibly traversing hundreds of linked pages. Pages that point to other pages are said to use "hypertext".

Pages are viewed with a program called a browser. When a page is requested, the browser fetches, interprets the text and formats the commands that it contains and displays the page. Strings of text that are links to other pages are called hyperlinks.

Most browsers have numerous buttons and features to navigate the Web. In addition to having ordinary text and hypertext, web pages also contain icons, line drawings, maps and photographs. Some pages also consist of audio tracks, video clips, or both. When hypertext pages are combined with other media, the result is called hypermedia. Many Web pages consists of large images which take a long time to load.

Some browsers deal with slow loading of images by first fetching and displaying the text, then getting the images. Some Web pages contain forms that request the user to enter information. Some browsers use the local disk to cache pages that they have fetched. A check is made before a page is fetched to see if it is in the local cache. If so, check if it is up to date. If so,there is no need to load the page again.

To host a web browser, a machine must be directly connected to Internet or have a SLIP or PPP connection to a router or other machine that is directly on Internet.

Quick Introduction to the World Wide Web (WWW) / Internet

The World Wide Web is an architectural framework for accessing linked documents spread out over thousands of machines all over the Internet. The World Wide Web began as a networked information project at CERN, where Tim Berners-Lee, now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C], developed a vision of the project.

The Web has a body of software, and a set of protocols and conventions. Through the use of hypertext and multimedia techniques, the web is easy for anyone to roam, browse, and contribute to.

World Wide Web can also be defined as system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a markup language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. You can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web. Web is basically a client-server system. Web pages are written in HTML and java.

Acer Aspire One AOD150-1165 10.1-Inch Sapphire Blue Netbook - 6.5 Hour Battery Life

Acer redefines mobile connectivity with the Aspire One, the revolutionary Netbook featuring a 10.1" display and fun, powerful computing features delivering an optimal on-the-go Internet experience. Browse the Internet, check email, share photos, webcam, check sport scores, listen to music and enjoy a variety of entertainment in a small compact design that you can take anywhere.

Technical Details
- The 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor combines performance, power and efficiency to explore the Internet and stay connected while mobile.
- 6-cell battery provides up to 6 1/2 hours of battery life for extended use and productivity when away from an AC outlet.
- Windows XP Home with SP3 gives you the freedom to do what you want at home and at work - simply, reliably and more securely.
160GB Hard Drive, 1GB RAM, Integrated 802.11b/g Wi-Fi Certified.
- Acer Crystal Eye webcam delivers smooth video streaming and high quality images for your on-line chats and business video conferences.



HIGHLIGHTS:
1. Processor
The Intel Atom processor uses a brand new design structure that packs in 47 million transistors into a single chip sized at just 22mm (0.87 inches), and it uses just 2.5watts of power--less than 1/10 of the 35 watts used by an Intel Core 2 Duo processor-for excellent battery management.
2. Storage
This version of the Aspire One comes with a 160 GB hard disk drive (5400 RPM), which offers enough to room to hold a an extra-large digital audio library of and still have room left over for movies, games, and a large collection of software.
3. Memory
The 1 GB of installed RAM (512 MB onboard memory and one 512 MB DIMM, 533 MHz) can be expanded to a maximum of 1.5 GB of RAM.
4. Screen, Video and Audio
The 10.1-inch screen has a WSVGA resolution (1024 x 600) and support for up a 262K color depth. Video is powered by the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950, which uses shared video memory with the main memory.This notebook includes an integrated audio card with Microsoft DirectSound compatibility, and it includes two stereo speakers.
5. Connectivity
This Acer Aspire One notebook has an integrated 54g wireless LAN (Acer InviLink) that's compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g networks and offers Acer's SignalUp technology for enhanced antenna efficiency.
6. DVD/CD Drive
Because of its size, the Aspire One does not come with an integrated optical drive, but optional CD/DVD read/write drives can be connected to the laptop via one of the three USB ports, enabling you to create your music mixes, burn movies to DVD, and more.
7. Operating System and Software
Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Acer eRecovery Management; Acer Launch Manager; Adobe REader; McAfee Internet Security Suite; Microsoft Office 2007 (Trial).

FEEDBACK
Acer made a nice mini-notebook into a better one. The screen is larger and just as bright. The keyboard is still great (for a small one). No weirdly placed right shift key placement (Asus, Lenovo, etc). The mousepad buttons are below the touchpad not along side (yeah). It is now easy to increase ram or replace the drive without entirely dismantling the unit and voiding the warranty.

Introduction to Routers

A computer networking device which forwards data packets across a network toward their destinations, through a process of routing is known as Router. In companies and large corporations, a central computer system acts as a router to connect all of the company's computers to one network. This allows group participation and collaboration on large projects or just to connect all of the company's resources at one central location. It also aids in reliable communication between employees working on different floors in the building or in different countries.

1. Router is required to connect multiple networks, like your LAN to the Internet.
2. Routers store large tables of networks and addresses, then using algorithms to determine the shortest routes to individual addresses within those networks.
3. Routers not only facilitate intra-network communications, but also play a role in overall network performance.
4. Routers help in delivering the information faster.
5. Routers also protect LAN from Internet.
6. Router blocks any packet that has a destination address outside of the LAN. If the destination address is valid, the router could check the Packet for an error. If there is an error, the router could discard the Packet and send a message to the originating address.
7. Routers have address translation and filtering capabilities.

Logitech Squeezebox Boom All-In-One Wi-Fi Internet Radio

Logitech squeezebox boom all-in-one network music player with integrated speakers ¿ Plug it in. Turn it on. Rock the house.The all-in-one network music player that combines award-winning squeezebox functionality with an integrated amplifier and speakers to deliver your digital music to any room in your home. Enjoy the music and content you love, with crystal clear sound.

Technical Details
* Built-in high-fidelity amplifier and speakers for crystal-clear, room-filling sound.
* SqueezeNetwork for easy wireless access to thousands of Internet radio stations and music services.
* Compact, all-in-one design with wireless networking for clutter-free audio in any room.
* Included 3.5mm line-in cord works with iPod and other MP3 Players.
* Seven-day alarm wakes you to your favorite Internet radio station or music playlist.



Where does the music actually come from, really?
There are thousands of free Internet radio stations and millions of songs served up from a wide range of online music providers that are now at your fingertips with Squeezebox Boom. And the real beauty of such streaming audio via the Internet is that you hear this music as it arrives, so there's no waiting around for a complete download in order to enjoy it.

How does the music get to the Squeezebox Boom?
Wirelessly, that's how. Clean, clutter-free advanced wireless technology is built in, so there's no need to run any clumsy cables or wires across rooms or through walls in order to complete the installation and bring music to any room in your home.

HIGHLIGHTS:
1. Integrated, all digital amplifier and breakthrough acoustic design.
2. Enjoy an amazing array of music available on the internet.
3. No need to run wires — wireless technology for clean, clutter-free installation.
4. 7-day alarm.

Pros:
1) It plays just about anything you can throw at it including almost all audio file formats, streams, and even RSS feeds.
2) Small and quite portable, even at nearly 8lb. Yet it feels solid and quality built.
3) Can stream internet radio without attaching to a PC.
4) Open Source development.
5) Built in support for some of the most widely used internet audio sources including iTunes, Rhapsody, Pandora, Last.FM, Live365, Sirius, etc.
6) Web control is very cool and allows you to fully control the device from your web browser, even on your internet enabled phone.

Cons:
1) No battery operation, decreases portability.
2) No usb port to attach external storage.
3) No iPod dock.
4) No handle to carry it around.
5) Price too high.

Problems with depending on cloud computing

In recent years, we are being sold on the total promise of cloud computing, or to be on a much simpler level, storing our data on sites on the internet and depend on internet applications for a lot of their work. Some examples of these are using Google Mail, Hotmail, Google Docs, Online Maps, Online photo sharing and storage. Corporations also depend on applications running off the internet such as Salesforce, Google Apps, etc. In fact, the entire concept of Software as a Service (SAAS) depends on companies basing their primary business applications on 3rd party hosted apps. We are now at that stage when companies no longer have a backup for these services; consider your own case - when you save something on Google Docs, do you also have a local copy of that data ? Do you have a backup way of running your business when the internet app goes down for whatever reason ?
Most companies now depend on these hosted services / data storage being always available. After all, if you are a photo storage company and depend on customer photos being stored on Amazon's S3 service, the service better be always available. If the service even goes down for a couple of hours, that is a time when your customers can no longer access their photos, and would not be a pleasant experience. Now consider the recent case of Google services being unavailable for a few hours due to a traffic jam at one of its data centers. This means that services such as Google Analytics, Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, and so on were unavailable (link to article):

Google has apologized for yesterday's service outage that left 14 percent of its user base without Google's wide variety of online services for a few hours. Google said in a blog post the outage came down to a simple traffic jam at an Asian data center. Well, a quick look at this graph from the Web security company Arbor Networks shows a canyon-sized hole in North American Internet traffic during the G-outage. With a wide variety of practical services like Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, Calendar, and even Google search gone, online activities came to a standstill for many people during the Google blackout.
Just how smart is it to depend on a company to store all your data online? Some smaller storage companies have even gone under without giving users a chance to collect their precious bits and bytes. Canadian photographer Ryan Pyle told Spring how he lost more than 7000 edited and retouched images after the storage company Digital Railroad abruptly shut its doors last year.

Leads to 2 problems - with many companies operating on wafer thin margins and in a recession, there is a greater chance of many companies disappearing. If these companies were in the service of either data storage or app hosting, then customers will be hit when these companies go down. In some cases, when the disappearance is sudden, then customers may be hit with data loss.
In the second case, it may be possible that a company does not go down, but operations are hit for some time due to some technical issues, planned downtime, or even hacker attacks. Customers dependent on them will need to suspend activities during such a period.

OCR Terminal - free online Optical Character Recognition service

What is OCR Terminal?

OCR Terminal is a free online Optical Character Recognition service that allows you to convert scanned images and PDFs into editable and text searchable documents. It accurately preserves formatting and layout of documents.

PDF to Word Conversion
Convert PDF files into editable Microsoft Word documents without installing any software. OCR Terminal allows you to easily upload .pdf files, convert them to .doc files and download them without need for any lengthy software installation, and does it all for free.

Image to Text ( jpeg to word)
Convert scanned images in a number of formats to editable text format. OCR Terminal supports multi-page TIFF, JPEG, GIF, BMP formats. The formatting of all text in the images is accurately preserved and download is available in .doc, .txt, .rtf, .xml formats.

Read more at the site (link)

Resizing your photos - Webresizer

The web demands richness, and having images in posts and on pages is one way to ensure that the content is rich and attractive to users. However, for those users who are not good at using desktop imaging tools, the very thought of putting images into a page elicits the fear of alignment problems, about the size of the image and so on. How often has it happenad that a page that has been beautifully laid out somehow seems totally out of whack when an image is introduced ? Don't you just hate it when that happens, and would prefer that there was a simple way of ensuring that your images are of the right size when you are putting them in the page.
Further, images can be large, and increase the amount of time that your viewers have to take to load your pages, and you certainly don't want your users to have to struggle to load your site, because there is a chance that they would get frustrated and leave even before the page has been fully loaded.
Well, here is a free online tool that helps you do that.
http://webresizer.com/
And what all can you do with this tool ? You can:
- reduce image size
- crop photos
- sharpen
- resize - change width and height
- rotate
- adjust contrast, brightness, saturation
- convert photo to black and white
- add a border

Hexoku.org

Something different, but looks similar. If you have tried Sudoku, here is something that looks similar - called Hexoku.org

Hexoku uses the hexadecimal (hex) numeral system (with a base of 16).
It uses sixteen distinct symbols: 0-9 to represent values zero to nine and
A, B, C, D, E, F to represent values ten to fifteen.
The rules are simple:
- enter digits from 0 to 9 and letters from A to F into the blank spaces.
- every row, column and 4x4 square must contain one of each symbol.
- you can change the puzzle difficulty by selecting easy, medium or hard

Exhaustive list of web browsers

Most people have heard of the following Browsers - Internet Explore, and Firefox, and recently, Google Chrome. A few others have heard of Opera, and some others. However, there are many others browsers available to download nowadays; some of them are just shells built on top of Internet Explorer, others are text browsers, or those built for different platforms such as the mobile phones. Here is a comprehensive Wikipedia link for browsers.
An example from the site:

Browsers for the Java platform

* Bitstream ThunderHawk
* HotJava (discontinued)
* Lobo
* Opera Mini
* X-Smiles (experimental)

Article on security for home computers

Most people who have a computer at home have no idea about what constitutes a good security policy, or what they need to do to make sure that their computers are not remotely taken over by hackers. So, here is a good article that talks about all this:

I've come up with a list of steps that, if followed, would contribute an immense amount to the security of most user's computers. I'd like all my readers to print it out and walk through it with their family, friends, churches, and clubs. Fill it in with them, or better yet, explain to them how to fill it in. If they need to know more about an item, point them back to this page and tell them to click on the links I've provided. After the checklist is filled in, tell them to post it next to their computers or in a safe place, but tell them to refer to it if they have any questions.

This is a pretty great checklist. It ensures that you have put your mind to a number of issues such as browser security, anti-virus, email, etc.

PuzzleFactory

People are constantly searching for new games and puzzles. Here is one more, with this site (link) allowing people to play single-player or multi-player games. Some of the games available include Chess, Marbles, Pool Zapak, Checkers, Backgammon, Tic Tac Toe, Four in a Row, Darts, 8-Ball, Reversi, Sudoku, Poker, Mahjong Dynasty, etc.

Sudexel - Number and logic puzzles

From the website:
Sudexel has been supplying high quality Sudoku style logic puzzles for printing in Newspapers, Magazines & Books since 2004. Whether your requirement is for a single puzzle, perhaps for inclusion in a Company in-house magazine or for several hundred puzzles for a Sudoku magazine, we can offer something to suit. Sudexel supply only, top quality, previously unpublished Sudoku style Number & Word Puzzles. A selection of Sudoku variants are available including Sudoku, Sudoku Tanto, Killer Sudoku, Sudoku 6, Sudoku mini-sam, LatinCalc, Kenduko, Samurai Sudoku and Ninjo Sudoku. Additionally, we can supply themed puzzles with pre-defined grids. These include Hearts for Saint Valentine's Day and Shamrocks for Saint Patrick's Day.

Read more at this link.

Have you been CodeFused?

You will be given random puzzles, try to solve them using the clues. If you can't find the clues you must dig deeper into your mind. The solution may be right in front of you or it might not. All the solutions can be found from where you are sitting. The degree of difficulty will increase.

Complete the puzzles and add your name to the Top CodeFused list. Solve it by yourself or as a group. I just ask that you keep the solutions to your self. Providing hints and/or clues on private Blogs are always welcome but the idea behind a puzzle is the challenge and the satisfaction of solving it.

Read more at this site.

Site with some chess problems

Excerpt from this site (link)

Welcome to my world of Chess. Here you will find some challenging stuffs towards the game that I loved most. Some of them are my own and the other are collected when surfing across the web. The problems are really challenging and will give some food to your brain for sure. I will be publishing the solutions to these problems as well, until then, have a good time in solving them!

The problems are in the grid below this text (below the Google Ads)

Mozy - Backup system

Chances are you have a lot of important stuff on your computer like financial documents, email, digital photos, music and more. Unfortunately, computers are vulnerable to hard drive crashes, virus attacks, theft and natural disasters, which can erase everything in an instant. Current statistics show that one in every ten hard drives fail each year. The cost of recovering a failed hard drive can exceed $7,500, and success is never guaranteed.
Mozy is a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable. Mozy makes online backup possible for everyone with an affordable, secure solution that's easy to use.

Read more at this location.