Tor: anonymity online

Most internet users may not know their web history is continous recorded. Websites track your browsing and sell this information to businesses and interested individuals. Tor is a program to enhance your security and protect your privacy. This is description from Tor's website:

"Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world use Tor for a wide variety of reasons: journalists and bloggers, human rights workers, law enforcement officers, soldiers, corporations, citizens of repressive regimes, and just ordinary citizens. See the Who Uses Tor? page for examples of typical Tor users. See the overview page for a more detailed explanation of what Tor does, and why this diversity of users is important.

Tor doesn't magically encrypt all of your Internet activities, though. You should understand what Tor does and does not do for you.

Tor's security improves as its user base grows and as more people volunteer to run relays. (It isn't nearly as hard to set up as you might think, and can significantly enhance your own security.) If running a relay isn't for you, we need help with many other aspects of the project, and we need funds to continue making the Tor network faster and easier to use while maintaining good security."

http://www.torproject.org/

PhotoSnack

I've come across this website through a course I'm taking on Internet Literacy. Would you believe I was able to create this album in mere 5 minutes! It's amazing tool and totally free. You can share the album on a bunch of networking websites directly from PhotoSnack

Printing at the Office Depot - Never Again!

A client came to me to design his business card. It was my first time designing a card for client so I did research online for proper rules and dimensions of designing business card. I wanted everything to be perfect so after completing the design and getting approval from the client I went to Office Depot with him to get the cards printed. The lady assisting us told us the specifications for the card then she loaded our design and printed it out to show us how the card will look like.

We believed everything she said because she was dead serious the whole time she was talking to us - no smile for miles around. Anyway my client and I ignored her attitude and looked at the printout. We asked her if this is how the cards will come out and she assured us that's exactly how cards will be printed.

My client decided that he wants raised text. We asked her if only company's logo can be raised. She told us that only the text will be raised and it will be all the text not the design. My client agreed to it so we went ahead and placed the order. We were told to wait for their call, which should come in within 5-6 business days.

Unless they called in two hours I wasn't available during the whole week, I never received any calls from them. On the 7th business days' night I called them to find out cards have been delivered. The next morning I went to pick them up. There was some other lady working there. She gave me the cards and guess what, the cards aren't what was showed to us. The WHOLE design was raised, text and all! And there is white line going through the bottom of all the card. I told the lady that's not what we ordered. She goes 'the other lady has been working with them for 5-6 years (as if I care how long she's been working there) so she can't make mistakes and there's no way she would tell you that raising will only be for the text.'

After disputing for about ten minutes I decided not to waste my time with her anymore. I was going to print another client's cards there but I told her that I'm not taking any more risks with them and that Office Depot should properly train its employees.

Throughout the dispute I controlled my tone because initially I didn't think it's that lady's fault because the person who helped us before took the orders and misinformed us. However, the second lady did raise her voice with me and she seemed to be more agitated as if she's the one losing money on this and not me.

So here's my message to Office Depot:

1 - Train your employees to smile. It doesn't take too much effort.

2 - Tell them the number one rule of customer service : The customer is always right (unless proven wrong)

3 - Tell the customers exactly what they will be getting

4 - Write down all the specifications that the customer agrees on

5 - Print name of the sales associate who takes the orders

I will never go to Office Depot for my printing needs unless I don't have any other alternative then I'll be very specific about my requirement regardless if it seems like they know what they are doing.

Flash Photo Album in a Flash

I taught myself to create photo album through Dreamweaver. After 3 hours of reformating I found out I could've created the whole thing in Flash within 5 minutes. The process is very simple but it only works if you have Adobe Photoshop CS4. Here's how to do it:

1. Open Bridge CS4 from any Creative Suite program (Ctrl+Alt+O/Opt+Cmd+O)
2. Gather the images that you want to display in the Preview panel.
3. Select Output from the Workspace menu, and choose the settings you want.
4. After you have made any changes, click Refresh Preview to see the effect.
5. When you're finally happy, either save the gallery to disk or upload it directly to your web server using the Create Gallery options.

It automatically creates a Flash-based gallery.

Plugged In But Not Charging

Two months back my laptop's battery went dead. Two weeks back my laptop's charger went dead. Since my bank account is already dead (empty) I figured it's impossible to buy a new laptop (unless BestBuy is giving them away for free) so I decided to buy new battery and charger.

My first step was to go on BestBuy's website and see what they expect me to pay for the "accessories". Turns out a good battery is not less than $120 and charger is no cheaper either. I could've added couple hundred dollars more and have bought myself a new laptop if I was that naive.

Lucky for me I know about this little website Ebay (www.ebay.com - you have to be living under a rock to not know that web address). I searched for battery and charger on Ebay and got everything for mere $65.00.

I recieved everything by last night. I plugged in everything and put my laptop on charge. After two hours I decided to check up on the system and found out battery was still at 0% charged. When I moved my cursor over the charge icon it said, 'plugged in, not charging'. I almost freaked out because I thought there's something wrong with the battery. But before I write email to the seller, I decided to search online to see if there's a solution available.

Turns out I had to update laptop's BIOS. So I went on HP's website, since that's the maker of my laptop, and searched for drivers and software to download. You need to know what's your machine's number to get the exact version of BIOS. You can do it by going on Start/Help and Support/System Information.

After necessary updates I restarted the PC and now it's running perfectly.

Green Technology

Information Technology has become crucial part of our lives. Fact is, progress isn't possible without technology. But with all its rewards, IT also has negative side effects on our environment.

CO2 emission from technology products account for 2% pollutants impacting our environment. We have been avoiding the issues till recently when nature started to show global warming's deadly effects in form of hurricanes and storms. Environment conservation is becoming growing concern. As awareness spreads about dangers of global warming people are becoming more inclined towards buying environment safe products.

IT industry is responding to demands by introducing green products that are energy efficient, made by recycled products or toxins free recyclables products. Most of green products in the market today are inferior in performance than their hazardous counterparts, giving companies less incentive to implement green technology.

Many business lack proper knowledge of green technology solutions available today. But this is changing fast with awareness programs conducted by industry giants like Microsoft and Intel. Also, Samsung and Nokia, along with many other companies around the world are responding to environment preservation by introducing more green products that are affordable to consumer or save energy cost.

Though progress is slow in green IT industry but it's speeding up fast as consumers are demanding more green products without compromise on performance.

Spring 09

My semester is off to a bumpy start. First off, I got to know I can't register for any more information technology courses because of a pre-requisite requirement. I thought I had taken the courses because I took few IT courses at my previous college that were transferred, plus, the university allowed me to take much higher level courses in my previous semesters.

This isn't the first time degree requirements got messed up. I won't into details but my experience as student in USA has been one of the worst I've ever had. This time I decided I won't take everything university tells me. SO I got in contact with everyone who I thought can help me through this issue.

I was told to take CLEP (http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html) exam (I'd recommend every student to look at this website and see if you can get some courses waived by taking this exam). I figured it'll be ABC's of IT so I didn't study at all before going in for exam. Major mistake! I took my last IT course six months before the exam. Not just that, I chose the earliest morning time when traffic was the worst and on top of that my area had to be hit by snowstorm the very same day and time I was on the road. I had to avoid collisions twice because of icy road conditions. When I reached the testing center my mind was dead tired from tension and stress. Needless to say I did awful in the exam. My grade was generally accepted at most universities but my university has higher standard starting from this semester (I'm so lucky) so my grade wasn't acceptable.

Eventually I was given permission to take course in this semester as long as I take its pre-requisite concurrently. Now I'm taking five lectures and two labs. It'll be miracle if I survive the course keeping my GPA stable but I'm determined to finished bachelors ASAP now.