Month: November 2009

No Component Directory Based Third Party Add-Ons in Firefox 3.6

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Component Directory Lockdown in Firefox 3.6:

Firefox until now has been allowing third party contributions to be added to the application’s components/ directory.However starting with Firefox 3.6 (Download), they have decided to change this.The reason? To minimize the Firefox crashes.

Usually components that are being added by these third party contributors in this way would be invisible to users and cannot be updated nor can they be managed through Firefox add-on manager.Even worse is that they can’t specify the version of Firefox with which they are compatible, thus creating problems and compatibility issues when you upgrade your Firefox.

The above reasons are good enough for the Mozilla team to think about closing the door for third party softwares access to component directory.

In Firefox 3.6 (including upcoming beta refreshes), we’re closing the door. Third party applications can still extend Firefox via add-ons and plugins the way they always could, but the components directory will be for Firefox only.

Q. This is fine, but what are the other alternatives for me to install these third-party sofwares in my Firefox?

Ans: Firefox from now on allows third party softwares in Firefox only as add-ons (as XPI additions).So these developers just need to change their packaging of their software to XPI- based approach.Nothing needs to be done on the Firefox users part though.There is a migration document available for the developers for more directions on the changes they need to make.

Firefox 5th Anniversary @ #CODEFAIL Party Bangkok Thailand

[This special cake in the above pic was designed for 5th anniversary of Firefox part @ Bangkok]

Firefox 3.6 Beta Revision 4 Version Available For Download

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Okay, if you are still using Firefox Beta 3 version, just check it out guys, Firefox has released beta 4 version couple of days back.

Upgrades in FF 3.6 B4:

  • Third party components lock down
  • Fixes for more than 140 bugs since the last beta version.
  • It can run scripts asynchronously

I just kept it simple by giving some major upgrades, the list is pretty big, you can check it out at this page.

Download FF 3.6 Beta Revision 4 (For Windows–English (US), 7.7 MB)

Click on the below link to go to download page:

Firefox 3.6 Beta Revision 4 version download

Using Webmaster Tools To Find Malicious Hacks In a Website

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These are the days where many websites (even prestigious ones) like FMS (see my post about FMS hack) are getting hacked by malicious parties.These hackers/spammers penetrate into the site and insert spammy or dangerous stuff.Many a times it may not appear to the normal users of the website.But when you do a Google search of the website, it may appear like

buy-generic-cialis[1]

HackedFMSBSchoolwebsite[1]

Thanks to Google Webmaster Tools(GWT), Fetch as Googlebot feature gives a breather to the webmasters.Fetch as Googlebot fetches any webpage of your site as it appears to the Googlebot.

Just login to Webmaster Tools, .Click on Fetch as Googlebot under “Labs” section inside your website profile dashboard.

Fetch as Googlebot in Webmaster tools

Fetching a webpage as Googlebot

Now enter URL of any particular page which you want to fetch as a Googlebot or just leave it as blank to fetch the Homepage of your site.

fetchas googlebot 200 success

Results of Fetch as Googlebot

There you go!! There’s the spammy content that’s being injected.GWT made this easier for you through ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ option.This confirms that the site has been hacked, the next step is to contact your server administrator or your hosting provider to take further actions.

Illustrative Images via Google Webmaster Central Blog post.

Gmail Tip : Send Email With Attachments While Offline

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Many Gmail users are aware of accessing Gmail offline.That means reading all your mails while you are traveling in a plane or when you are at work with no internet access or in some cases when there is a temporary problem with your internet connection and you need to access your mail a bit urgent.

But until now there’s no option to add attachment while sending mail offline.But now it is here.Just attach files to your mail even while composing them offline just as you do when doing it online.Gmail will automatically captures them to Outbox (even if you suddenly get disconnected from network) and tries to send them as and when you are online again.

To Activate This Feature:

  • You must eave enabled ‘Offline Gmail’ under ‘Labs’ section first (Click ‘Enable’ and save settings)
  • You will see the ‘Offline’ link next to the green Labs features button just right next to your username inside your Gmail.

Offline Button in Gmail

  • Click the above Offline link and install the Gears

Install Offline Gmail Access Gears

Installing Gears for Gmail Offline

  • Install Gears and you are done.Go through your mails offline and send attachments offline and even more of them.

But perhaps one thing you can’t do using offline access is ‘Adding Inline Images’ , except that you can virtually play around with your offline Gmail messages.

BSNL Prepaid Broadband Launched In AP

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BSNL has today officially launched the much talked Prepaid Broadband for the customers in Andhra Pradesh (At present the service is not yet available in Hyderabad Telecom District though).

The advertisement in newspapers today reads:

“Now you have the power to control the broadband bill.Pre-decide your usage, speed and validity by a recharge voucher of your choice ranging from Rs.50/- to Rs.5000 /- for the limited usage plans and Rs.300/- to rs.1200 /- for the unlimited usage plans.

Top up vouchers: Rs.100/- to Rs.500/-

Validity Vouchers: Rs.100/- to Rs.250/-

Initial Charges    : Rs. 1000/-  for Type-I modem and Rs.1600/- for Type-II modem.

Customer service numbers for further queries:

1800-424-1600 (Toll Free)

1500 (Toll Free from any BSNL phone).

Ad (I could get only Telugu version):

bsnl ap prepaid broadband

Registration and Installation is free for 30 days from today, so hurry up.

would like to hear your opinions about this new service.

BSNL Prepaid Broadband Plans

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We do know about many prepaid usage in case of mobiles, but never heard of prepaid Broadband, right?

BSNL, becomes the first broadband company in India to launch prepaid Broadband in India.Even though their prices seem to be a little costlier, they are worth the price if you are going to a place for a temporary stay where you don’t afford to get a new BB connection with all those installation charges etc. Just get a ADSL modem from one of your friends and of course you have to pay onetime installation charge of 250 Rs.).

I just went through BSNL Prepaid Broadband page and here I’m quoting the price table for unlimited usage packs.

bsnl broadband

Unlimited download/upload Plan vouchers :

Speed

Validity in Days for different Recharge Vouchers

BB R_UL 300 Voucher (*MRP Rs. 300)
BB R_UL 550 Voucher (*MRP Rs. 550)
BB R_UL 900 Voucher (*MRP Rs. 900)
BB R_UL 1200 Voucher (*MRP Rs. 1200)

256 Kbps

7-days

15-days

30-days

N/A

Upto 512 Kbps

N/A

7-days

15-days

30-days

Upto 1 Mbps

N/A

N/A

7-days

15-days

Upto 2 Mbps

N/A

N/A

N/A

7-days

May be it’s time for all other ISPs to think in this direction to provide such prepaid broadband plans to their users.

BSNL initially may have started this service in some parts of the country, I heard they’d soon (by this month end?) be extending this to all over India.

For more details, visit BSNL Prepaid Broadband

FMS Website And It’s Hacking Woes

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Faculty of Management Studies, FMS a Delhi B-School website has been compromised by some hackers couple of days ago, since then a Google Search for FMS or fms.edu yielding weird result as shown in the below screen shot.

There has been an official statement from the management of FMS, as seen in Times Of India website.

Hacked FMS B-School website

Below is the screen shot of Google’s cache of fms.edu as seen on Nov 5.

cached version of FMS

The site may have compromised around Nov 4-5, but since Google updates their index on a weekly basis we are still seeing the weird “Online Cialis, Oder Viagra” string in the search result snippet.

Thankfully, no damage has been done to the website.

This clearly signifies the need for the educational or such other institutions (both govt. and private) to have a serious thought abut security of their websites and important private data that they store through them.

Blogger Update: New and Improved ‘Next Blog’ Link

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From next week onwards, Blogger users will find that clicking on the “Next Blog” link at the top right corner of the NavBar will take them to a blog relating to similar topic.For example if you have a blog written about your favourite electronic gadgets in French, it’s most likely that the click on the Next Blog will take you to a blog written in French about gadgets.

Until now, Next Blog link used to open up a random blog written by a random user in any language.This new feature, according to the blog post in Blogger Buzz, will be rolled out from next week.

blogger navbar next blog link

According to them, using this “You might discover a cool blogger who has hobbies similar to yours, has similar taste in electronic gadgets, likes sports that you’re into, or has similar curiosities and interests.”

Hmm, let’s see to what extent it works.

WordPress Tip: View All Your Blog Posts With Titles & Post URLs

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I wanted to have all of my blog posts with post URLs and titles at one place so that I can quickly quote or make reference to them whenever I post a new post at appropriate places.(In fact I wanted to have a XLS list of the same so that I can always check them directly from my computer .I’m not sure if there’s such a possibility in WordPress.)

However, there’s a little code (thanks to jdembowski), which will allow you view all of your Blog posts with Titles and URLs:

<?php

require_once('../wp-blog-header.php');
query_posts('&showposts=-1&order=ASC');

while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

"<?php the_title(); ?>","<?php the_permalink(); ?>"
<br />

<?php endwhile; ?>

Open text editor, paste this code into that and save it as posts-urls.php,Now upload this file into “wp-content” folder i.e it should be like wp-content/posts-urls.php.

Now open this in your browser like www.yourdomain.com/wp-content/posts-urls.php and you can view all of your Blog posts in Ascending order of time (latest one at last) as a comma seperated list.However if you want it to be in descending order, just use ‘DSC’ instead of ‘ASC’ in the above code.

The output would be something like this:

viewing all blog posts with titles in WordPress

Please let me know if there is any another really good method to extract all Posts and titles form any WordPress blog.

Note: I know that  sitemap.xml file lists all post URLs (in fact all URLs associated with blog) but it doesn’t serve the purpose as it doesn’t show up post/page titles.

Also read Configure Google Friend Connect For WordPress Blogs.

WebPage In Search Result Even After Disallowing in Robots.txt ? Read This

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The Problem: I have disallowed one of my WebPages in my robots.txt file, and it’s still appearing in search result. What’s the deal ??

Have you blocked any of your webpage/sub-folder of your website using robots.txt, and still wonder why it is showing up in search results? If so, read on..

This is the most common complaints from many webmasters and fortunately we have an answer from Google Webmaster Guru Matt Cutts,

Let me take an example to show you how this can happen.Take robots.txt of the Google.com itself.

It’s located in google.com/robots.txt , you can find many entries in that file which are part of the Google and blocked by Google itself.Let’s pick any one of them at random, here I’ve picked up

google.com/m/trends

For some reasons Google has blocked this URL from being crawled by search engines.So if you search for google.com/m/trends, you’ll probably see something like this in the snippet of the search results :

example-google trends robots txt blocked

Sometimes you’ll find similar results for your sites too and may not be sure why is that URL is showing up in results? in general, something like this:

search snippet after robots txt block

According to Matt Cutts, this URL is not the indexed one.It’s just showing a link that Google finds it may be of some use to the search users.

So even if you have disallowed a URL in robots.txt, if someone links to it Google still may consider it of some value to the users and may show it up in results even though it hasn’t really crawled it.Sometimes it may even take up the description snippet from places like Open Directory project if that is listed there.

“If you truly don’t want that page to be in the search results, use ‘Noindex’ HTML meta tag at the top of the page.Another options is to use the URL Removal Tool from Google Webmaster tools.”

Watch this video for more details:

So the next time if you see any such URL blocked in robots.txt being shown up in search results, you need not worry, you may want to try the above said alternatives instead.

Special thanks to Matt Cutts and Google for letting us know about this.