Even Browsers can give your location

Yes. If you are on facebook, or for the matter on any web site,  and worry about your privacy, which you should then what to do?.

The first thing that you can or should do is, disable your location. Let your browser not know your location. How do get this done on three main browsers.

1. Firefox. (works on Ver 26)

a. Open a window and type about:config

b. Agree to the warning.

c. Search for geo.enabled and Set it as false. Look in the image.

2. Google Chrome

a. Open a windows and type chrome://settings

b. Click on Advanced Settings

c. Under Privacy click on “Content Settings”

d. Scroll down and choose “Location Setting” and select

3. Internet Explorer

a. goto Tools->Internet Options

Select the “Privacy Tab”

And check the box as shown above.

 

And now surf the internet atleast not worrying about your location is tracked. What next?

Lessons : The honest truth about dishonesty.

On my recent travel I read this book. Very relevant and lots of research gone into it.

 

You can click on the book to goto Amazon.

Dishonesty, that we hardly think about in our daily lives is sometimes very subtle. I look back and find that in my life as well there are cases where it can be seen. For instance taking more than an hour for lunch, or sometimes taking a long tea break. Also the research done in the book gives insights on how we can ensure practices that can reduce dishonesty in our work place.

A worth read.

Cloud Storage. What to look for.

Every one talks cloud. Let us look at Cloud Storage. What it means? You store your data at a third party place. Why? May be lower cost, administration simplification, security, protection etc. All these things encourage us.

Where are the risks? Like all business a cloud business can fail too. What if your cloud company is the single point of failure. What happens then?

a. Your data sits on the cloud. Your cloud provider closes shop. Do you have enough time to get it back? Even you have that time, do you have enough space to get it back. Even if you can get it back will the provider have enough bandwidth for all those who want their data?

b. Suppose you got back the data, you also somehow managed to secure some storage, will your applications work? Who will make changed to them? Can you keep your RPO?

So then what is the solution? May be in a next post.

Bye Bye Altavista

Come 8th July and another search engine altavista is going to leave cyberspace. Altavista has been one of the first search engines, indexing millions of pages. It was a product that too ahead of its time. Some how through companies buying each other, it came with Yahoo. Now Yahoo has decided to stop this product.

Surprising but in my two decades in IT I have started to see even good products reaching their end of life. Have a look at this page as of today.

From 8th July the domain name www.altavista.com will redirect to yahoo.com.

Source : BBC

Google Reader

After all the requests, signatures, announcements, one of the very good service from Google, the Google Reader will be retiring tonight. When I logged in today I got this message,

Felt sad to see this. I had been a regular of this since many years. So finally I logged in today and deleted all my feeds. Make the life of Google a bit easier.

I hope Google changes its mind. And hope that other of my favorite services like GMail, Search Engine, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Documents also do not face the same fate as the Reader.

Get Start Button in Windows 8

One of the notably sad omission in windows 8 is the start button. The 8.1 version had lots of promise. Bloggers got greatly impressed with it when they saw the preview. The actual working was never published. What happened when 8.1 was released? The magical start button never came. The one put is practically of no use.

So how do we get the start button back. A genuine start button. One that works the same way it worked in Windows 7 and earlier versions. The best and free among the pack is Classic Shell.

So what happens after you install the Classic Shell. It should look something like this.

Where do you download it from?

a. From here

A normal setup.exe, next, next, finish. And you have the shell.

A thanks to the developers of classic shell.

Get back productive, and get back fast.

Allway sync

The amount of data that we are storing is on the rise. A normal household owning a computer easily has a TB of data. You just add up the hard disks, USB sticks, DVDs and CDs. Loss of data can mean a great loss.

What is the easiest way to sync your data. Say for instance you want to sync your internal disk to an external USB hard disk.

Of the many software one I like is AllwaySync. Easy to use. Download and within minutes you are on the go.

Some pieces of advice.

1. Keep your hard disk organized. I mean decide a directory structure and maintain it. For instance you can have folders like the following that I have on my disk.

I always like to begin with numbers. That way the organization is well and easy to understand. Alphabetical order is just a waste.

2. Keep the same structure on all your hard disks. So you need to thus create one plan

3. Keep atleast sync to two USB disks. This way you keep three copies. One on your local hard drive, two external copies. Sync them say every Friday. Since they have the same structure, It is just a single click.

 

So next time there should be no way to lose data.

Happy Syncing.