Five ways to access blocked Internet sites

The Internet is a vast expanse and there’s a ton of information out there, most of it is legal, while some of it is illegal. Unfortunately, due to a number of reasons, sites that have content that may be in the clear might also get blocked by either the authorities, your ISP or sometimes even your office network administrator. Gaining access can be considered to be a very technical and complicated process, but it really isn’t. We’re going to look at some of these ways to unblock sites. Most of these techniques are really simply, while a couple of others might need more than a minute or two to get running.

Unblocking by changing your DNS server

A DNS server is like an index, with a list of domain names - such as YouTube.com, Tech2.com and pretty much every other site on the Internet. When you type in a website address in your browser, your computer sends a request to the DNS server and it tells you the IP address for that site. One of the easiest ways for ISPs to stop access to a particular site is by removing the entries for the sites that need to be blocked. ISPs can choose to redirect the request to a different site or a notice page as well.

A simple DNS server change could open up your connection

However, there is a way around this. There are free, fully open third-party DNS services run by organizations and other ISPs. The most popular ones are run by Google and OpenDNS. All you need to do is change your DNS server settings to theirs. In a typical Windows 7 system, head over to the Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings. Right click on your network adapter, click on Internet Protocol Version 4, click on Properties. Click on the Use the following DNS server addresses and enter the DNS server of your choice. Google’s DNS addresses are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, while OpenDNS’ are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. Click on OK to save the settings and reboot your PC.

Using browsing proxies

Browsing proxies are services that allow you to use their Internet connection, thus bypassing most of the restrictions setup by the ISPs or the network administrators. There are plenty of these on the Internet that can be accessed through your browser. All you need to do is access them and enter the URL of the site that you want to access in the address bar provided by the site. All the requests will then be channeled through that browsing proxy server.

The only downside to this of course is that if the browsing proxy itself gets blocked by your ISP, you’ll have to find another one. Some of these browsing proxies, depending on how popular they are, can be slow to access. A quick Google search for ‘anonymous browsing proxy’ will give you a long list of services available on the web.

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Google Drive: Top 10 things you must know

Google has recently come up with its Google Drive cloud-storage service that lets you store up to 5GB of data on Google's servers for free. But before you start driving with Google's new cloud service, here is all the basic information that you must know about it.

1. Google Drive is Google's newly launched cloud-based storage service that lets users store data online on Google's servers, and access the same anywhere, anytime. In other words, it is a place where users can create, share, collaborate, and keep all their stuff.

2. If a user runs the free Google Drive application, he will get a folder on his computer (Windows or OSX) where he can drag his files in to. Any data stored in that folder is kept on your hard disk and is also copied to account in the cloud. Users can anytime, anywhere access those files from drive.google.com or from other computers, including mobile devices.

3. Google Drive is offering the first 5GB of storage per account for free. Additional storage will be sold for prices starting at $2.49 per month for 25 gigabytes.

4. Users can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB. This will be a bonus for you!

5. Users can install Drive on their Macs or PCs and can download the Drive app to their Android phones or tablets. The company says that it is working on a drive app for iOS devices.

6. Any file you put in the drive, and any changes you make to the data stored in the drive are automatically updated not just in the cloud but on all the other devices that you have connected to the Drive.

7. Within file size and space limits, users can store any file or folder, which they can store on their hard drives, in a cloud drive.

8. Google Docs is also built right into Google Drive, so users can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

9. All users may not have immediate access to the Google Drive service. The Google Drive page says, "Your Google Drive is not ready yet." And when you click the 'Notify me' button beneath the message, it states: We'll email you at ******@gmail.com (your email address) when your Google Drive is ready.

10. Users can attach photos from Drive to posts in Google+. According to the company, users will soon be able to attach stuff from Drive directly to emails in Gmail.

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Google adds 2.5 GB to Gmail storage

Google launched the Gmail service on April 1, 2004 on invite basis. In these eight years time span, it has gradually increased its storage from 1 GB to 7.5 GB. Google has launched the Google Drive, cloud storage service yesterday and to celebrate it, the company has added 2.5 GB storage for the Gmail users.

The Gmail team has mentioned in the official Gmail blog that they are increasing the free storage from 7.5 GB to 10 GB. This does not mean that the Gmail storage counter will jump directly to 10 GB. It will happen gradually. This storage is not fixed and it will be increasing slowly.

This additional 2.5 GB increase is for all the users of Gmail while those who are signing into the paid account of Google Drive will get a total of 25 GB free storage. The paid accounts enable them to enjoy storage space of 25 GB, 100 GB and 1 TB in Google Drive for $2.49, $4.99 and $4.99 per month.

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Android Glasses Have Arrived

Epson has been around since the dot matrix printer days. I know some of you are thinking “What’s a dot matrix printer”? Well just take my word for it, it’s a long time.

The Tokyo Japan based company has announced the availability of the Epson Moverio BT-100 Android powered glasses. They carry an MSRP of $699 but for the technology you’re getting, that’s a relatively good deal.

The Moverio BT-100 feature include:
80 inch perceived projection display
Dolby Mobile surround sound
Wi-Fi Connectivity
6 hour battery life
1gb of built in storage
microSD slot with 4gb card.

More after the break

The glasses use micro-projection technology along with an Android powered track-pad controller. The user can enjoy video on the 80 inch perceived projection display. You can also experience 3d side by side content and download digital content.

Apps like Netflix, Amazon Kindle, and Angry Birds work great on the Moverio BT-100 glasses.

“As the world leader in visual imaging technology, Epson continually strives to set industry benchmarks for quality and innovation,” said Anna Jen, director of New Business Development, Epson America. “The Moverio BT-100 see-through display is poised to significantly impact not only the way people interact with content for personal enjoyment, but the development of content for future applications – from virtual training platforms to a new way to interact with 3D CADenvironments to visualizing 3D design renderings.”

Highlighted features:

• Enhanced Mobility: Rechargeable battery offers nearly six hours of battery life
• Removable Memory: Built-in card slot supports up to 32GB microSDHC card
• Download and Go: Transfer content, games and apps to the included 4GB microSDHC card or internal 1GB of user storage on the controller
• Adobe® Flash® 11 Support: Stream videos from popular television websites featuring Flash 11 content and content rich Flash-enabled websites
• Big Sound: Dolby® Mobile surround sound delivered to personal earphones or Moverio’s detachable earphones (included in-box)
• Innovative Navigation: Touch-enabled track pad and navigational buttons enable easy interaction of content
• Immersive 3D: Enjoy side-by-side 3D content like never before

Epson is also looking for developers interested in working on the platform. Developers can visit www.epson.com/moverio for more information, as can consumers interested in the first ever Android glasses.

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Create a secret partition on a pen drive

A workshop, where we show you how to create a secret partition on your USB pen drive which can be accessed only on your PC

There is no way you can partition USB pen drives. They show up as a removable drive on the PC. In order to do so, you need to trick the operating system into recognizing the USB pen drive as a fixed hard drive. To do this, you will need to create your own set of drivers. In this workshop, we shall demonstrate just that. Doing so, you can create multiple partitions and store your private data on it. Only the first partition will be visible, and the other partitions will not show up on any other PC, but your own.

This way, you can store your personal data away from your friends and family, and also you can avoid viruses affecting this data when plugged in on another computer. To do this, all you need is a simple universal USB pen drive driver, which can be downloaded from ‘http://www.mediafire.com/?oqlgdvcymzz’. Download the archive, uncompress it to a folder on your desktop and get started. Don’t forget to backup the contents of your pen drive, as it will format it.

Step 1: Plug in your pen drive into your PC’s USB port. Next, right-click on ‘My Computer’ and click on ‘Manage’ in the context menu. Click on ‘Device Manager’ on the left pane. This will show all the hardware devices connected to your PC. Now, on the right pane, scroll down to ‘Disk Drives’ and you should see your pen drive connected here. Right-click on the pen drive and select ‘Properties’.

Selecting properties for the flash drive

Step 2: In the properties window that just opened, click on the ‘Details’ tab. From the scroll down menu under ‘Property’, choose ‘Device Instance Path’. You should see a string of characters highlighted in the ‘Value’ window below, which should read something like ‘USBSTORDISK&VEN_&PROD…..’ Right-click on this value and select ‘Copy’. Now close all the windows without saving changes.

Selecting the Device Instance Path

Step 3: Now open the folder that you uncompressed after downloading the universal USB flash drive driver. In this folder, find and open the file named ‘cfadisk.inf’ in ‘Notepad’ or any test editor you prefer (Notepad++ is ideal to be used here’ (download from ‘notepad-plus-plus.org’).

Modifying the flash driver

Step 4: Now locate the words ‘device_instance_id_goes_here’, which is available on line 26. You need to replace these words with the string you just copied to the clipboard from the Device Manager. Save the file and close the editor.

Step 5: Now go back to the ‘Device Manager’ page (repeat step 1). This time click on the ‘Driver’ tab and click the button ‘Update driver’ 

Switching to the updated driver

Step 6: On the next window, choose ‘Browse my computer for driver software’ when the system asks how you want to search for the driver software. Then on the next window, choose ‘Let me pick from a list of drivers …. ‘. 

Step 7: On the next window, uncheck the box ‘Show compatible hardware’ and click on the ‘Have disk button’. Now click on ‘Browse’ and from the universal USB driver folder on your desktop select the ‘cfadisk.inf’ file and click on the ‘Open button’, followed by the ‘OK’ and then ‘Next’ buttons on the previous windows.

Step 8: An update driver warning message should show up stating that you are trying to install a driver, which is not compatible with your hardware. Ignore the message and click on ‘Yes’. The system will start installing the driver and show up another warning that the driver is not a verified or authentic driver. Ignore this one message and click on ‘Install this driver software anyway’. Let the system update the driver and you shall receive a message of a successful driver update. 

Windows security warning for the driver

Note: You can use this modified driver for this pen drive only. To use another pen drive, you will need to do the whole process again.

Step 9: That’s all you needed to do. Now once you are back to the ‘Computer Management’ window, click on ‘Disk Management’ from the left pane and start partitioning your pen drive as you would with a regular hard drive. You can create multiple partitions and format them, accordingly. 

Partitioning the flash drive, like you would a hard drive

Note: You can access all the partitions on the pen drive only from your PC. Other PCs will only be able to see the first partition and the rest will be unavailable. Make a copy of the driver on the first partition of the pen drive and you can install it on other PCs, in case you need to access the other partitions.

This way, you can plug in the pen drive on your friend’s PCs without worrying about your private data. To reset everything back to the way it was, simply delete the partitions completely and uninstall/delete the driver for the pendrive from the Device Manager.

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Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos Review

The original Samsung Galaxy Ace was quite a popular phone, even though it wasn’t the best in the milky way. Now, Samsung has brought its cousin brother out for the Indian market. The Galaxy Ace Duos sports a dual SIM slot and comes with a 3 MP camera (the original had a 5 MP camera with LED flash) without LED flash. With these ‘features’, does the Galaxy Ace Duos justify its price tag? Let’s find out.

  Design and Build Quality

There’s not much that has changed here – this phone has the exact same looks as the Ace with the addition of an extra button for dual SIM configuration. The same 3.5-inch screen has been retained with a pixel resolution of 320 x 480. The look and the feel is exactly like the S5830, so if you want more fodder in this section, 

Looks the same as the original Ace

Features and Performance

Interface

With the addition of a second SIM card slot you get more icons on the top of your screen and some more settings in the connectivity options. But still the phone is powered by the same 800 MHz processor with 158 MB of internal storage and 278 MB RAM. It’s got Samsung’s TouchWiz UI onboard and is sadly one of the slower phones in the market at this price range. Not too impressive on the spec front, either, but in terms of plain usage, with time, the phone tends to get frustratingly slow making multitasking an absolute no brainer. 

We put it through a few synthetic benchmark tests as well and here are the results. In AnTuTu, the Duos got a score of 1626 points, which puts it well below the HTC Explorer, but above the LG Optimus Net – two phones that are much cheaper than this one. In Linpack, we got a single thread score of 9.49 points and a multi thread score of 8.418 points. 

Benchmarks

Media

The one thing we really loved about the Duos was the media department. The same interface look that we saw on the Wave Y Young is present on the Duos as well. Custom enhancements, 5.1 channel sound and a good pair of in-ear headphones means that you’ll be rocking to the tunes. Format support is limited, just like the original Ace, but you have third party apps to counter that problem. The Ace Duos was unable to play 720p videos, but that’s a limitation you’ll have to live with. 

Media interface

Connectivity

Here’s where the Galaxy Ace Duos stands out from the other Androids in the market. Err, did we just say stand out? This section more or less exposes the shortcomings of the Duos. Firstly, it’s got dual SIM card support, which means you can slot in a primary CDMA card and a secondary GSM or CDMA card slot.iew/

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YouTube India Adds TV Shows

The YouTube India website has a new section called TV shows where you can find and watch the latest episodes of your favorite Hindi "saas-bahu" serials.

If you are a fan of the soap operas that completely dominate the TV channels in India, at least in our Hindi belt, this bit of news should make you happy.

The YouTube India website has recently added a new section called TV Shows where you watch the latest episodes of your favorite Hindi serials that you may have missed the previous night.

So what’s new here?

These episodes have always been available on the YouTube website but with their new section dedicated to Indian TV shows, finding your favorite episode becomes much easier.

Also, all these TV shows are available as YouTube channels that one can subscribe to and YouTube will send email notifications as and when new episodes are uploaded to these channel.

And the collection isn’t just limited to saas-bahu dramas. You will also find comedy shows, classics – like the original Ramayana and Mahabharata – and the “scripted” reality shows.

Most of the content available on the YouTube TV Shows section is provided by Sony Entertainment TV (SET), Star Plus TV and Viacom 18 owned Colors and MTV. I am however not too sure if these videos will be available to viewers outside India anytime soon.

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Google’s own Font ‘Roboto’ is Available for Free Download

Roboto is a beautiful sans-serif font originally designed for Google Android but the font is now available as a free download for other projects as well. 

Roboto is a beautiful sans-serif font that was specially designed by Google for Android mobile phones and tablets.

The previous Android phones shipped with the Droid Sans family of fonts but with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, or Android 4.0, Google made Roboto the default system font powering the entire Android UI from menus to buttons to on-screen text.

Download Roboto Font from Google

The .ttf (True Type Font) files of Roboto have been available on various file sharing sites for a while but, like all the other Google Web Fonts, Roboto is now “officially” available as a free download on android.com. The font is released under the Apache Software License so you can use the font in pretty much any project.

This brings two possibilities. You can now use Roboto with various Microsoft Office programs and graphic design tools like Photoshop. Or if you have an older Android phone, you can grab an app like Font Changer and set Robot as your default font without upgrading to Ice Cream Sandwich. You’ll however have to “root” your Android device to change the system font which may not be worth the risk for most people.

Google Roboto vs Helvetica Neue

Helvetica Neue is the default typeface of Apple iPhone and some typographers were quick to notice visual similarities between Roboto and Helvetica. [via LA Times]

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