By popular demand its DROPBOX!!!!!!!!

It is freaking amazing...seriously just click the link below and see for yourself

So lets me be honest, Dropbox is amazing, and it has changed my life. What is Dropbox? Well it is perhaps one of the best, FREE, computer back up solutions out there.

DropBox is a free program that can be used on the Windows, Mac & Linux OS, and essentially creates a folder that automatically syncs with a server each time you log on to the internet. So you can drag and drop files into this folder (its just like any other folder on a computer) and if you are connected to the internet your files will be synced up. Once the files are synced, you can access them from the internet (using your DropBox account) and download any of your files.

You can even upload files via the internet, and the next time you log onto your machine, DropBox will download the new files to your local folder.  Heck there is even an iPhone app, Android app & a BlackBerry app in the works!

I think this is something every college student needs to invest in, and with 2 gigs of FREE, thats right FREE storage available there is no reason you shouldn't.

Tired of waiting, get DropBox now by following the link below:

CLICK HERE TO GET DROP BOX

Got a tech question, need an answer or just want to know more about something?? Email me at devangj031@gmail.com.

Cheers

--Devang

Are your passwords safe?

Passwords are nice things, because they allow nice people (like you and me) to keep our nice things away from bad people. However, like a lot of computer driven things, the password is only as good as you, the end user, make it.

It’s no surprise that most passwords people use to secure there email, Facebook and even there online banking tend to be simple facts about the person / or horribly lame attempts at making a password in the first place. So let’s talk a little bit about how secure your passwords are and how you can make them even more secure.

A password is based in a finite world, meaning that if someone had the time, they could quite possibly go through every possible combination and find your password (understanding that passwords in general tend to have rule. Example: your password needs to be between 8-16 characters long and needs at least one number). So it’s not difficult to see how it’s possible for the computers out there to mill through the billions of possibilities (and yes a billion is a lot but it’s still finite so no you are still not safe) and find the key to your personal information.

Also as computers become faster and faster, the power that the everyday “home hacker” also increases. Recently, researchers used pairs of graphics cards to break 8 digit passwords in about two hours. Not impressed well let’s think about it. In the English language we have 26 letters and 10 numbers (0-9). So with an 8 digit long password using 26 letters x 2 (accounts for upper and lower case) + 10 numbers is 62 possible characters. Obviously I am not counting all the crazy symbols you can put into your password like (!@#$%^&* etc……). Okay back to the math (the exciting part the reason why you read right?), with 62 possible characters and wanting passwords 8 characters long we can use a combination to find the number of possibilities:

The formula I used

8,361,453,672 possibilities

Let that soak in for all those who think that you are safe in the world of “billions of possibilities”, that’s 8 billion plus possibilities that researchers cracked with graphics cards. 8 BILLION!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It just goes to show that you’re not as safe as you think you are. Add to that the fact that your everyday password is not something you grabbed from a random password generator (and if it is I apologize, you are a real trooper) and we are all kind of screwed. Luckily there are simple ways to keep your password safe.

-          Use a longer password with both numbers and letters. Security experts now say that a password about 10-12 digits long is a good length. You can maximize the security by using upper and lower case characters.

-          Make your password something unique, something only you would know. (and don’t worry if you are madly in love and your soul mate knows everything about you, your wrong they don’t know EVERYTHING so don’t be lazy).

-          Make your password hints unique. A lot of websites allow you to recover your password by answering security questions etc… Making these questions difficult makes it difficult for people to crack them. Think about it, if you’re favorite movie is the Lion King and your password hint is “My favorite movie is…” and you constantly profess your love for Lion King on Facebook….get it?

-          NEVER EVER GIVE YOUR PASSWORD TO ANYONE. A lot of people fall into this trap. If someone from Facebook emails you asking for your password to perform site maintenance etc…don’t buy into it. Facebook, Winthrop IT, Bank of America do not need your password to access your account or perform maintenance.

-          Don’t save passwords on your computer, on a piece of paper or on your wallet. Your mind is the best place to keep your password, because its hard to loose your brain right. If your worried about the government kidnapping you to get access to your Flicker account…well you have bigger problems.

So be careful, learn more about the way your secure your online accounts and remember to be proactive.

For questions or comments feel free to email me at devangj031@gmail.com!

Cheers,

--Devang

Read this article from more info on what inspired me to write this post: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/08/20/super.passwords/index.html

Net Neutrality--Yes this effects you!!!

Net neutrality, ever heard of it? If you haven't, I assure you that it is more important then the latest on Snookies visit to jail. In many ways, it is hard to exaggerate the importance of the debate on net neutrality simply because our lives rely so much on the internet.

Okay so what is net neutrality? The concept is actually not that difficult to understand.

The internet is a "free space" and area that provides equality to all people in the world. (This means that the internet does not limit peoples powers although countries can and do restrict peoples access to the internet). It is in this technological utopia where the information age really came out of its infancy and created offspring such as Google and Facebook. The internet is free because everything is treated equally, referred to as 'packets'. This translates to how the flow of data moves between your computer and the websites you browse. Although your speed is limited by your ISP (internet service provider), everyone with your style of internet connection is able to view websites equally quickly.

Let use an example to help illustrate what is happening. Devang and Anthony have the same laptop computer (we do actually thats kind of freaky). Devang and Anthony also have the same 100Mbps internet connection from the same ISP. We want to view two websites, Blog a and Blog b. Blog a is a small personal blog with no followers and very limited content. Blog b is a huge megalith, with dynamic content, advertisement and much much more. Blog b also hosts free ads for the ISP. If Devang and Anthony were going to view blog a and blog b, the data (packets) would flow at the same speed regardless of the fact that Blog b is providing a benefit to the ISP. That is net neutrality, and it is what allows content to be equally accessible by all.

No I am not exaggerating 

In the business sense, helping blog b would be better for the ISP because they could barter for more money from those who pay. To do this, blog b would be given a "clear connection" while blog a would not. So the ISP would physically hold the packets coming from blog a to let blog b go on, which would speed up b and slow down a.

This issue has come up frequently in the past few years as the ISP's battle the content providers over the issue. Major telecommunications companies such as At&t as well as ISP's are against net neutrality, because it is a potential cash cow! Think about it, lets say the net neutrality rules were abolished, that means a company like At&t (which basically owns all of the freaking fiber optic cables in the bloody country) could basically control what search engines would be able to be the fastest on there networks based off of who could pay the most. The search engine that would win would be Google and just like that your options would be limited. In addition, a company could limit a websites speed (like Facebook or this blog) simply because they do not agree with the content or again because the site could not afford "premium" speeds.

Net neutrality is one of those topics that never really makes it into the main stream media even though its effects are so wide spread. Senator John McCain has also been actively pursing legislation against net neutrality, so this is not simply an issue debated by your local Geek Squad crew.

So what do you take away from this? Simple KEEP YOURSELF INFORMED ABOUT THIS ISSUE. ITS THE THINGS THAT WE TAKE FOR GRATED THAT EFFECT US ALL THE MOST!!!!

Cheers
--Devang

How Google Works

Google is kind of a big deal in the internet world, hell lets just go ahead and call google the kind of the internet world! But how does google "know" so much? Well Google my friends is a search engine, and the concept is pretty neat.

A search engine (e.g. Google, Bing etc) is, in basic terms, a computer program that searches the internet for new websites, images etc... and sends that data to be compiled on another machine (a server in the case of Google). Search engines work based off of an algorithim (generally) and can also involve human input.

Dramatic reenactment 

What does all that mean? Well lets break it down.

A computer program is nothing more then a set of instructions that tells the machine to perform a task. These tasks (like adding or subtracting in a calculator) are powered by an algorithim. An algorithim can be simply defined as a "well defined set of instructions to complete a said process". So a search engine runs off of
an algorithim that tells it to go across the internet and collect as much data as possible, which is called crawling hence the term 'web crawler' Then it takes the data and sends it to a computer to be compiled and hence useful to you and me.

So Google, and other search engines, send out thousands of these crawlers across the internet to search for all sorts of data.

But then why is Google so vast? Well simply put it is one of the oldest search engines out there, and they have had alot of time to crawl (and they have ALOT of cash which allows them to create more crawlers and build more servers to store all of that data).

To illustrate just how many little crawlers there are running around the big ole internet, lets take a look at the website for The Johnsonian (thats http://www.mytjnow.com your source for Winthrop University news). :)

As webadmin I can see the number of visits the site has had over its life time (in this case the site has been up for roughly a month):

• --Google's crawlers have stubbled upon this site 515 time (43.24%)
• --Bing's 84 (7.05%)
• --Baidu 60 (5.05%)
• --Yahoo 21 (1.76%)
• --Ask 2 (0.17%)
• --All others 509 (42.74%)

The numbers show why Google is google, because they alone account for almost 50% of the crawler traffic on our site (and probably many many more). This is because Google has used its search engine to sell ads and therefore make alot of money and get involved in many lucrative deals.....but thats another blog huh?

So in a nut shell thats how Google works (and other search engines too).

If you have any questions or comments email me!

Also send in your suggestions for my next blog (I blog about what you want to learn about!!!!)

--Cheers

Devang