I just recieved 998 invites from Joost. So anyone without an Joost invite just drop a comment and it would be sent to you. The email would contain the download link for Joost. After downloading and installing the software, you would be asked to create an account upon first run. Just make sure that you use the email address to which the invite was sent during registration.
More Joost Invites
Joost Invites
I have got 3 Joost invites which has been lying around for some time. Joost invites are quite easy to get these days (Joost should go public in a few days). However, if you haven’t managed to get your hands on an invite yet, just drop a comment, and the invite would be emailed to you.
I have given away all invites (six) that I had.
Comments Closed.
GreedyTorrent – Boost Your Ratio
An Indian Software Developer has come up with a software, that promises to boost your download to upload ratio in private torrent trackers.
GreedyTorrent acts as a local proxy for the BitTorrent Protocol. To start using it, you need to change your clients proxy settings to localhost:3456 . You can find detailed step by step instructions for doing this here. Once your torrent downloader connects to the tracker, GreedyTorrent modifies the upload amount reported. It is a configure it once and forget it, kind of software. Once configured, it sits quietly in the system tray and makes sure that the desired upload ratio is maintained.
OpenDNS – Faster and Smarter
DNS stands for Domain Name System. Essentially, Domain Name System (DNS) translates domain names (host names) into actual ip addresses. So whenever you type an url in your browser, it first sends a request to the DNS of your ISP which resolves the hostname. If your ISP has a poor domain name system, then a website would take longer to load due to the time taken by your ISP’s DNS to resolve the domain name. This is where OpenDNS come into the picture.
OpenDNS claims to have a super fast Domain Management System, that reduces the time taken to resolve a domain name. I had come across OpenDNS a few months back, but didn’t bother checking it out, as I didn’t believe it would do any good. But, after reading a bunch of positive testimonials in Neowin I decided to give it a go. Instantly I noticed an increase in speed, which was too large to be placebo effect. Its was very noticeable in Opera, as Opera browser has the ability to redraw pages instantly.
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Opera Bytes v3
Hi there! Its time for another longish edition of Opera Bytes. I shall take you through all the hot news and scoops from world of Opera.
Yesterday, Johan Borg posted a rather poetic update in the Desktop Team Blog, regarding the future of Opera. Of course, like everything coming from Opera Soft. Developers, it was vague (and believe me very very vague). You can read his blog-post here. The main revelations were:
A new (weekly build) build of Opera v9.20 with a new feature (never seen in a desktop browser before), will be unveiled later this month. Meanwhile, you can download the latest weekly build from here.- The next major build of Opera – codenamed as Kestrel, will aim to further unify various builds of Opera for various platforms. A part from that it will also contain several rendering improvements.
- Kestrel will be followed by Peregrine. This will be a significant update. My guess is that Kestrel will be released as Opera v9.50, and Peregrine will be Opera v10. It will contain significant improvements in the user interface, improved standards support, improved performance, thousands of bug fixes and groundbreaking new functionality (any guesses? ).
- The much requested auto-updater is coming.
- Opera Mail (M2) will also be improved in Peregrine. Tim Altman revealed that one of the most-debated wish list items will finally appear. I am guessing that it may be support for html emails (just a guess). Besides that, the indexing back-end will be replaced, which will hopefully fix a long-standing and dreaded indexing corruption bug.
- David Storey has blogged about the logic behind the codenames. You can read his article here.
Review : Vista Start Menu
One of my major grudges with Windows Vista has been the way it’s start menu works.
I am someone who regularly arranges the start menu entry into folder and subfolders. In this way, in spite of having a large number of applications instaled, whenever I want to launch a program I know exactly where to look. But in Windows Vista, Microsoft got rid of the old cascading style start menu. Now, the programs list shows up within the start menu itself (instead of popping out). This is convenient if you dont have a large number of start menu entries. However, if you have a large number of entries organised into folder and subfolders , you would need to click several times to just launch the program. The other option is to use the search feature, but its not very convinient to keep switching from mouse to keyboard everytime I need to launch some application.
Vista Start Menu solved my problems and did more.
Screenshot
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Shilpa Shetty gets bullied in the Big Brother House
As many of you may already know, Indian film actress Shilpa Shetty is currently living in the Big Brother (UK) house. She has reportedly been paid a whopping sum of money by channel 4 to participate in the reality show. I started watching this series of Celebrity Big Brother as all the television shows I watch are in the middle of a season break and I was interested in seeing how Shilpa Shetty was doing in the house. And to sum it up in one sentence she is having a really tough time in there. The behaviour of fellow female house members towards her has been absolutely appalling.
First it was Jackie who refused to call Shilpa by her name and referred to her as “the Indian”. Soon, her daughter Jade and Jade’s boyfriend jack joined in on the act. During a conversation with Jade, Jack used a very offensive term for Shilpa which was censored. Most people believe he either called her a ‘fucking paki� or a ‘cunt’. However, without a doubt the word was extremely offensive as it troubled even the nasty Jade.
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Opera hiding security vulnerabilities ?
As I mentioned in my previous blogpost, couple of days ago Opera and iDefence lab announced that opera v9.x suffered from two highly critical vulnerabilities. Both of them have been patched in the latest release v9.1. However, the timing of the announcement has created a fair amount of controversy. Today I read Asa Dotzler’s blogpost – Opera fails to notify users at risk
He says :
Not telling the user that an update is a critical security update and that the unfixed versions of the browser are vulnerable to remote attack is just wrong.
By adopting this practice, Opera is doing their users a great disservice. If Opera has fixed any serious security flaw, the only responsible way to ensure that users are safe is to clearly and consistently explain to those users that the latest release of the browser has fixed security flaws and users should immediately update or face real dangers on the web. Opera should be using the press it gets around releases to forcefully proclaim that previous versions of their browser are unsafe and should not be used. Failing to use the loudest microphone they have to reach their users in cases involving user safety is simply unacceptable.
Asa Dotzler is (in)famous for bashing Opera (for ridiculous reasons) in the past. However, this time around he does make a valid point. Failing to mention in the changelog that you have fixed a critical vulnerability is shabby. Have a look at the timeline of events :
11/16/2006 iDefence notifies Opera about this.
11/17/2006 Opera sends a response to iDefence.
11/17/2006 Opera releases a weekly build of v9.1. Doesn’t say anything about the vulnerability. Between this time and 18th Dec they release several weekly builds. None of the changelogs contain any information about the security vulnerability.
12/18/2006 Opera releases 9.1 final in which this has been fixed. However, the changelog fails to mention this.
01/05/2007 Opera and iDefence jointly releases details about these security holes.
Its baffling that they waited for 3 weeks before going public with this piece of information. In the past they have always revealed the security vulnerabilities fixed in the changelog, and their response time is generally around a couple of days.
Opera has also received flak for downplaying the seriousness of these exploits. If properly exploited (which is difficult but not impossible) it can allow execution of arbitrary code, which can be very dangerous. Yet, Opera Soft chose to classify them as moderate (apparently their reasoning is that the vulnerability is difficult to exploit).
The problem with not declaring that an update has security fixes is that many users (especially those having slow internet connections) may not download the newer version, which they think has only cosmetic additions. The fact that opera doesn’t have a proper update system doesn’t help either. In spite of the fact that in a normal upgrade majority of the files are unchanged users have to download the entire setup file. Opera should either add an update system like Mozilla Firefox or start distributing smaller setups with only the newer files.
However, I would like to state that I do not believe that Opera did this on purpose. It’s probably a mistake/slip-up on their part.
Update (8th Jan) : Opera has issued an clarification regarding this issue.
It is important that both parties do respect each other: if a fix is included also in development snapshot builds that reach a public audience (like the weekly builds on this blog), fixes for the vulnerability are not announced: this is a form of respect both for the reporter and for all the users that only upgrade to stable releases. Making the vulnerability public knowledge before a stable version fixes the issue would leave lots of users vulnerable. Serious reporters do not announce vulnerabilities before vendors have a fix in public builds – and vendors do not announce vulnerabilities before the reporters makes their discovery public, in order to properly credit them.
You can read the entire clarification here. Hopefully this would end this unfortunate controversy.
Opera Bytes v2
It’s time again for some Opera stuff. There is some good news for Opera fans. According to Market Share opera’s market share has increased from 0.52% in the beginning of the year to 0.87% in December. It’s currently in 4rth position; well behind Internet Explorer (79.64%), Mozilla Firefox (14% – which is an increase of 4.5% from Jan ’06) and Safari (4.24%). Netscape is now just behind Opera with 0.85% (it had 1.17% market share in Jan ’06). So, Opera v9 is indeed making some headway.
Opera 9 has already impressed a lot of Techies. eWeek chose Opera as one of the Top Products of 2006. Digit – leading tech magazine in India now includes Opera in its list of essential software.
However, Opera’s market share is still small enough for major websites to completely ignore the browser. The latest offender is Askx – the new Web 2.0 avatar of the search engine Ask.com. And again the problem is due to lousy web developers. You can find more info on this here.
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Searching for 2006
It’s that time of the year again when we pause for a moment and look back at that year bygone. The search engines have done their bit by releasing their list of hottest search terms of 2006. This time around these lists created a fair bit of controversy as several renowned bloggers alleged that these lists are nothing but carefully edited marketing tools. The controversy got so much attention that Google was forced to post an explanation on the Google Blog. I am still not convinced though (more on this later in the article)
Anyway, that aside Google Year-End Zeitgeist was as usual interesting to go through.
The Top Gainers list continues to be dominated by Web2.0 websites. While in 2005 only three out of the top 10 gainers (Myspace, Wikipedia and Orkut) were Web 2.0 sites, in 2006 their number is five (Bebo, myspace, metacafe, wikipedia and wiki). This shows that Web 2.0 is something which continues to fascinate people as well as mainstream media. “define:Web 2.0” is second in the list of most popular defination searches while Ajax which is another term associated with Web 2.0 is at number 5. A lot of people also wanted to learn how to create a wiki or a blog or how to podcast.
The “what is” list on the other hand is dominated by various drugs. Two of them ‘Vicodin’ and “hydrocodone” have been made famous by the medical drama “House”, whose protagonist Dr.Gregory House is addicted to vicodin (brand name for Hydrocodone).
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