TOP 5 RSS Feed Readers

azhar    IT     Feed Reader, News Aggregator, RSS Feed

RSS feeds are a spam-free, quick and very efficient way to read news and weblogs. For this purpose You need a powerful aggregator, that lets you organize, search, categorize and use news items just like emails. Under given are top 5 RSS feed reader for windows users;

1. Feed Deamon

FeedDemon is a clean and well thought-out approach to reading RSS feeds. Easy to configure and use, FeedDemon still has a very comprehensive feature set and hardly any weak spots.

2. News Crawler

NewzCrawler is a fantastic RSS feed reader with a highly usable interface and tons of useful features. While NewzCrawler lets you post to blogs, its weak spot is news item relations.

3. Google Reader

Google Reader is a decidedly simple yet very usable and, thanks to a flexible labeling system, quite comprehensive web-based RSS feed reader.

4. Omea Reader

Omea Reader makes staying up to date with RSS feeds, Usenet news and web pages a smooth experience tailored to your reading style and organizing talent with search folders, annotations, categories and workspaces.

5. Blog Lines

Bloglines is a great, web-based way to read RSS feeds. There’s no software to wrestle with, and using Bloglines is smooth and easy. You can even subscribe to searches in either your or all feeds and publish a blog with remarkable simplicity.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Difference between 40 pin and 80 pin IDE/ATA data cables

azhar    IT    

1. 40 Pin IDE/ATA CABLE

· Each IDE/ATA channel uses one IDE/ATA cable. The cable that has been used for over a decade on this interface was once just called "an IDE cable", since there was only one kind (with the exception of special cable select cables.) Today, however, there is also the new 80-conductor Ultra DMA cable;

· A standard IDE cable is a rather simple affair: a flat ribbon cable, normally gray in color, with a (usually red) stripe running down the edge. The cable has 40 wire connectors in it, and usually has three identical female connectors: one is intended for the IDE controller (or motherboard header for PCs with built in PCI ATA controllers) and the other two are for the master and slave devices on the interface. The stripe is used to line up pin 1 on the controller (or motherboard) with pin 1 on the devices being connected, since the techniques used for keying the cables are not standardized.

2. 80 PIN IDE/ATA CABLE

• Requirement: The 80-conductor cable was first defined with the original Ultra DMA modes 0, 1 and 2, covering transfer speeds up to 33.3 MB/s
• Cable Select Support and Drive Assignment: All 80-conductor cables that meet the ATA specifications support the cable select feature automatically.
• Connector Assignments and Color Coding: For the first time, the 80-conductor cable defines specific roles for each of the connectors on the cable; the older cable did not. Color coding of the connectors is used to make it easier to determine which connector goes with each device:
  • Blue: The blue connector attaches to the host (motherboard or controller).
  • Gray: The gray connector is in the middle of the cable, and goes to any slave (device 1) drive if present on the channel.
  • Black: The black connector is at the opposite end from the host connector and goes to the master drive (device 0), or a single drive if only one is used.

Popularity: 3% [?]

How to configure LINUX MACHINE as a ROUTER with one Network Card

azhar    LINUX     LINUX MACHINE AS A GATEWAY, LINUX MACHINE AS A ROUTER, LINUX MACHINE ROUTER/GATEWAY

It’s a bit older but a very cheap way to use a Linux Machine as an internet Router/Gateway. There is no need to be a LINUX expert to do this task. No need to have two physical fast Ethernet cards. Sharing internet connection with only one physical fast Ethernet card is very easy using the under given rules.

Required Items to configure a Router on LINUX Machine are given as under;

• One Physical Fast Ethernet Card
• DSL/Cable/Fiber Optic Internet Connection with Public IP Address.

1) Please configure the Fast Ethernet first like under given;

a) Assign Public IP address to the Fast Ethernet Card with the followings;

i) Eth0

ii) IP Address (61.5.156.1) change with your public IP address

iii) Net Mask (Provided by the Internet service provider) (255.255.255.248) change with your net mask

iv) Default Gateway (61.5.156.146) change with your Default Gateway

v) Preferred DNS (203.143.22.22) change with your preferred DNS

vi) Alt. DNS (203.153.240.10) Change with your alt. DNS

b) Create a virtual IP address on this Fast Ethernet Card

i) Copy and paste the configuration file of the eth0 with a new name eth0:0

c) Assign a private IP Address like you have assigned the other computers in your local area network

i) Eth0:0

ii) IP Address (192.168.1.10)

iii) Net mask (255.255.255.0)

iv) Default Gateway (leave this blank)

2) Creating forwarding rules with iptables:

# Delete and flush. Default table is “filter”. Others like “nat” must be explicitly stated.

3) iptables –flush – Flush all the rules in filter and nat tables

4) iptables –table nat –flush

5) iptables –delete-chain

# Delete all chains that are not in default filter and nat table

6) iptables –table nat –delete-chain

# Set up IP FORWARDing and Masquerading

7) iptables –table nat –append POSTROUTING –out-interface eth0 -j MASQUERADE

8 ) iptables –append FORWARD –in-interface eth0 -j ACCEPT

9) echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

# Enables packet forwarding by kernel

10) Create a route for internal packets:

11) route add -net 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 61.5.156.146 dev eth0

# Change 61.5.156.146 with your Gateway IP Address

Configuring PCs on the office network:

All PC’s on the private office network should set their “gateway” to be the local private network IP address of the Linux gateway computer. 192.168.1.10 change with your own gateway

The DNS should be set to that of the ISP on the internet.

Or you can configure your own DNS server on this LINUX machine; I will try to explain that in a later post.

Configure the firewall to control the security.

First flush everything and then allow limited ports and IP Addresses

12) iptables -F

13) iptables -A INPUT -i lo -p all -j ACCEPT – Allow self access by loopback interface

14) iptables -A OUTPUT -o lo -p all -j ACCEPT

15) iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -m state –state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT – Accept established connections

16) iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –tcp-option ! 2 -j REJECT –reject-with tcp-reset

17) iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth0 –dport 21 -j ACCEPT – Open ftp port

18) iptables -A INPUT -p udp -i eth0 –dport 21 -j ACCEPT

19) iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth0 –dport 22 -j ACCEPT – Open secure shell port

20) iptables -A INPUT -p udp -i eth0 –dport 22 -j ACCEPT

21) iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -i eth0 –dport 80 -j ACCEPT – Open HTTP port

22) iptables -A INPUT -p udp -i eth0 –dport 80 -j ACCEPT

23) iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –syn -s 192.168.1.0/24 –destination-port 139 -j ACCEPT – Accept local network Samba connection

24) iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –syn -s trancas –destination-port 139 -j ACCEPT

25) iptables -P INPUT DROP – Drop all other connection attempts. Only connections defined above are allowed.

26) alter the Linux kernel config file: /etc/sysctl.conf

Set the following value:

27) net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

28) Service iptables save

Now you can test by opening a page in internet explorer that your Linux router/gateway for internet connection sharing is working or not. If everything goes according to the above given instructions your router/gateway is ready to be used by your users in your local network.

Note: Please share your experiences and comments about this post.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Transparent Desktop ICONS

azhar    IT    

It is very easy to make your desktop ICONS transparent to get rid of the desktop’s ugly look.

Under given is the comparison of two XP desktop icons;

To set the transparent background on the icons

Open System Properties in Control Panel (or right-click on My Computer and select Properties).

In this dialog, click the advanced tab, and then the Settings button under the Performance section.

Now scroll down to the button where you’ll find a checkbox for “Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop”. Make sure you check this box if you want transparent backgrounds on the icons.

Note:

If the above does not work, you might want to also check these additional settings suggested by readers in the comments.

• You can’t be displaying a web page as your background. To check this, right-click on the desktop and choose Properties. Select Customize desktop on the Desktop tab, then select the Web tab on the desktop items window and deselect any web pages that are shown.
• You need to make sure that High Contrast is not selected under Accessibility \ Display Options in your Control Panel.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Decrypt Encrypted files In Windows XP

azhar    IT    

1. Login as Administrator
2. Go to Start/Run and type in cmd and click OK.
3. At the prompt type cipher /r:Eagent and press enter
4. This prompt will then display:
5. Please type in the password to protect your .PFX file:
6. Type in your Administrator password
7. Re-confirm your Administrator password
8. The prompt will then display
9. Your .CER file was created successfully.
10. Your .PFX file was created successfully.
11. The Eagent.cer and Eagent.pfx files will be saved in the current directory that is shown at the command prompt. Example: The command prompt displays C:\Documents and Settings\admin> the two files are saved in the admin folder. (For security concerns, you should house the two files in your Administrator folder or on a floppy disk).
12. Go to Start/Run and type in certmgr.msc and click OK. This will launch the Certificates Manager. Navigate to Personal and right click on the folder and select All Tasks/Import. The Certificate Import Wizard will appear. Click Next. Browse to the C:\Documents and Settings\admin folder. In the Open dialog box, change the Files of Type (at the bottom) to personal Information Exchange (*.pfx,*.P12). Select the file Eagent.pfx and click Open. Click Next. Type in your Administrator password (leave the two checkboxes blank) and click Next. Make sure the Radio button is active for the first option (Automatically select the certificate store based on the type of certifcate). Click Next. Click Finish. (You’ll receive a message that the import was successful). To confirm the import, close Certificates Manager and re-open it. Expand the Personal folder and you will see a new subfolder labeled Certificates. Expand that folder and you will see the new entry in the right side column. Close Certificate Manager.
13. Go to Start/Run and type in secpol.msc and click OK. This will launch the Local Security Policy. Expand the Public Key Policies folder and then right click on the Encrypted File System subfolder and select Add Data Recovery Agent… The Wizard will then display. Click Next. Click the Browse Folders… button. Browse to the C:\Documents and Settings\admin folder. Select the Eagent.cer file and click Open. (The wizard will display the status User_Unknown. That’s ok). Click Next. Click Finish. You will see a new entry in the right side column. Close the Local Security Policy.
14. You, the Administrator are now configured as the default Recovery Agent for All Encrypted files on the Local Machine.
15. To Recover Encrypted files:

Scenario #1

If you have completed the above steps BEFORE an existing user encrypted his/her files, you can log in to your Administrator account and navigate to the encrypted file(s). Double click on the file(s) to view the contents.

Scenario #2

If you have completed the above steps AFTER an existing user has already encrypted his/her files, you must login to the applicable User’s User Account and then immediately logout. Next, login to your Administrator account and navigate to the encrypted file(s). Double click on the file(s) to view the contents.

Do not Delete or Rename a User’s account from which will want to Recover the Encrypted Files. You will not be able to de-crypt the files using the steps outlined above.

Popularity: 2% [?]