Check the Current Location of Indian Trains on Google Map

The Indian Railways has just launched RailRadar, a useful website that shows the current geographical location of any train on a Google Map.

To get started, you can zoom-in to any location /city on the map to see all the trains which are arriving at the station or have just departed. Or you can use expand the left sidebar to search trains by name, by train number or by the station name.

If you click a particular train, the map will also show the exact route of the train including all the stops and the current location of the train. The train markers highlighted in blue indicate trains that are running on time while the red markers indicate trains that are delayed or behind schedule.

Send SMS From Gmail For Free In India And Internationally

Chat feature in Gmail is capable of doing more than instant messaging or text chat. You probably know about video conferencing and voice calls from Gmail but now it went one step ahead and brought Free SMS in Gmail. You can send message in SMS via Gmail to your contacts from any country even when they are offline.

SMS in Gmail isn’t exactly new feature. I mean some of you may have already enabled it from Labs but used to get an error that mobile carriers is not supported. But now, Gmail welcomes you with “Free SMS in Gmail” pop up giving the list of mobile networks supported in India and 50 other countries.

In India, it supports Aircel, IDEA, Loop Mobile, MTS, Reliance, Tata DoCoMo, Tata Indicom, Vodafone (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Gujarat, A.P, Bihar, W.B. & A & N, Assam, N.E. circles only). I am still wondering why the giants like Airtel and BSNL aren’t in the list.

How To Send SMS From Gmail

There are two ways to send SMS from Gmail:

1. Enter the phone number in the text box which reads “Search, chat..” and Gmail offers an option to send SMS to that number. You may have to assign a contact to that number before sending.
   
2. If phone number is already associated with any contact. This is generally seen in the Google accounts associated with Android phones where contacts have phone numbers. In this case, open the chat window and click on More on upper-right corner of chat box and click “Send SMS”.
   

1. 50 SMS Credits or 50 SMS are free initially in every account. After that, you will have to buy credits.
2. If you send a reply message, your SMS credit is increased by five.
3. Each account has unique phone number.
4. If you receive SMS from someone, you can reply to that number and person will receive that message in conversation.
5. Person from any country can send Free SMS to any country from Gmail. (check the supported mobile operators)
6. If you receive an unwanted SMS message from Gmail Chat, you can block future messages from the sender. Just reply to the message with the word ‘BLOCK’.

SMS From Gmail on Phone

This is how it appears when you receive SMS from Gmail contact. Phone number is different (not related with the user). Email ID of the contact is shown in email followed by the message sent.

As you can notice, the number from which SMS is received is a general/regular number not premium one. So, sending reply to this one will charge normally.

That is indeed a nice move by Gmail but I am waiting for the day when Gmail will introduce Email alerts via SMS. That is more important because Data connection may not be available all the time and some people check mails often.

Top 6 Open Source Disk Cloning and Imaging Softwares

Disk cloning is nothing but the process of copying the contents of one hard disk (or partition) to another disk or to an "image" file. I make backup regularly using rsnapshot tool, but I also clone my hard disk once or twice a month. This option allows me to restore my OS and installed software quickly. Linux comes with various utilities for performing disk cloning. In this post, I'm going to list my favourite open source disk cloning softwares that has saved my butt multiple times.

#1: Old good dd command

The dd command allows you to make the low-level copying and conversion of data in raw format. It copies the standard input to the standard output. It can also be used for backing up the boot sector (MBR) of a hard drive or destroy data using /dev/zero or /dev/random.

Examples

To clone /dev/sdb3 partition to another partition called /dev/sdc3, enter:
# dd if=/dev/sdb3 of=/dev/sdc3 bs=4096 conv=noerror

You can clone a hard disk /dev/sdc to /dev/sdd:
# dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd bs=1M conv=noerror

You can duplicate a disk partition called /dev/sda1 as a disk image file called backup.sda1.mm.dd.yy.img file:
# dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/path/to/safe/location/backup.sda1.07.28.12.img bs=4096 conv=noerror

OR
# dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/nfs/backup/images/backup.sda1.07.28.12.img bs=1M conv=noerror

To restore an image, run:
# dd if=/nfs/backup/images/backup.sda1.07.28.12.img of=/dev/sda1 bs=1M conv=noerror

The dd command can make backup of any partition regardless of an operating system. You can use it with FreeBSD / OpenBSD / Mac OS X / MS-Windows and so on:


(Video.01: dd clone hard disk demo)
Say hello to ddrescue

The ddrescue command copies data from one file or block device to another, trying hard to rescue data in case of read errors. The dd command will fail but ddrescue will continue:
# ddrescue /dev/sda /dev/sdb

#2 partimage - Backup partitions into a compressed image file

The partimage command backs up disk partitions into image files and restores them (much like Ghost). You can use the apt-get command under Debian / Ubuntu Linux to install the same:
# apt-get install partimage

If you are using RHEL / Fedora / SL / Red Hat / CentOS Linux, turn on EPEL repo and type the following yum command:
# yum install partimage

Type partimage as follows to see various options:
# partimage

Sample outputs:


Fig.01: partimage in action
You can now follow on screen instructions to backup or restore images.

Examples

Create an image of /dev/sda2 (make sure /dev/sda2 is not mounted):
# partimage -z1 -o -d save /dev/sda2 /nfs/backup/laptop.wks01.sda1.home_07_08_2012.gz

You can restore it as follows:
# partimage restore /dev/sda2 /nfs/backup/laptop.wks01.sda1.home_07_08_2012.gz.000

See how to use this fast software to backup and restore images:


(Video.02: partimage command demo)
Please note that partimage will only copy data from the used portions of the partition. This is done for speed and efficiency, free blocks are not written to the image file. Since the partition is processed on a sequential sector basis disk transfer time is maximized and seek time is minimized.

A note about server software

Partitions can be saved across the network using the partimage network support, or using Samba / NFS (Network File Systems). This provides the ability to perform an hard disk partition recovery after a disk crash. You need to install partimage-server package which provides server daemon for remote imaging, much like Ghost. See documentation for more info.

#3: Clonezilla

If you are looking to replace Norton Ghost Corporate Edition, try Clonezilla. It provides the following features:

Disaster recovery
Disk cloning
Disk imaging
Deployment solution
Free and Open source
This software allows you to do bare metal backup and recovery. Clonezilla works in any one of the following mode:

Clonezilla live - Use this at home or for single machine backup and restore.
Clonezilla server edition - Use this at office or data center for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk. This increases the clone efficiency.

Fig.02: Clonezilla in action
=> Download clonezilla software.

#4 Mondo rescue

Another good free disaster recovery software that I use frequently. It works with Linux /FreeBSD and supports clone tapes, disks, USB devices, network and CD/DVD as backup media, multiple filesystems, LVM, software and hardware RAID. Restoration may be done from a physical media including OBDR tape support, or CD/DVD/USB media, or from the network through PXE.

This software used by Lockheed-Martin, Nortel Networks, Siemens, HP, IBM, NASA's JPL, the US Dept of Agriculture, dozens of smaller companies, and tens of thousands of users around the world.


Fig.03: Mondo Rescue in action
=> Download Mondo Rescue software.

#5 Redo backup and recovery

Redo backup and recovery is a free backup and disaster recovery software. It runs from a bootable Linux CD image, features a GUI, and is capable of bare-metal backup and recovery of disk partitions. It can use external hard drives and network shares. It is the simplest point and click open source backup and recovery solution available. You can store images on an external drive or network shares such as nfs based shared folders.


Fig.04. Redo backup and recovery software in action
=> Download redo backup and recovery software.

#6 Trinity Rescue Kit

Trinity Rescue Kit or TRK is a free live Linux distribution that aims specifically at recovery and repair operations on MS-Windows systems, but is equally usable for Linux recovery issues such as as rescue, repair, password resets and disk cloning. Some features:

Reset windows passwords with the improved winpass tool.
5 different virusscan products integrated in a single uniform commandline with online update capability.
Full ntfs write support thanks to ntfs-3g
Winclean, a utility that cleans up all sorts of unnecessary temporary files on your computer.
Clone computers over the network via multicast.
Contributed backup utility called "pi", to automate local machine backups
Easy script to find and mount all local filesystems
Recovery and undeletion of files with utilities and procedures
Recovery of lost partitions
Evacuation of dying disks
2 rootkit detection uitilities
And much more

Fig.05Trinity Rescue Kit in action
=> Download trinity rescue kit software.

My favorite software

For bare metal restore I prefer dd command (gziped images) as it includes copy of the boot sector, boot partition and the root partition. The dd command works well for small setup or home users. But, for a large setup and data center, I prefer to use either clonezilla or mondo rescue softwaee due to ease of use and reliability.

Have a favorite open source disk cloning and disaster recovery software? Got an alternative? Let us know your preferred app in the comments below.

You should follow me on twitter here or grab rss feed to keep track of new changes.



{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
6r00k14n August 25, 2012
I have used the Clonezilla Live disc, which is fantastic, but if you are not so certain about what you are doing, try PartedMagic (trust me, you do not want to pick the disc you want to copy as the target).

It is a bootable Linux CD, that includes several disc tools, including Clonezilla, in a terminal window (so that you can use other tools to validate your decisions).

REPLY

FX August 26, 2012
Ha, dd is still the best for quick and easy cloning :)
Once, I even piped dd to netcat to remotely clone a partition, best hack I ever did, and it just took a few seconds!

REPLY

Bubba August 26, 2012
For the longest time, we used PING (http://ping.windowsdream.com/) as a very capable replacement for Symantec Ghost. We even went as far as building a custom boot/recovery CD for use by our remote users to restore a default image from a hidden partition on the hard drive. It worked very well.

REPLY

deepak August 26, 2012
target disk should be equal or more size in clonezilla, this is the drawback i have seen, eg. i have 10G data on 50G disk to clone my target disk should be equal or more that 50G

REPLY

Flo August 26, 2012
Very good article (as usual…)

For more complex network backup, there is also Bacula :
http://www.bacula.org/fr/

Otherwise, I always use Clonezilla / DRBL (http://drbl.sourceforge.net/) since several years without any problem.

REPLY

ilion1250 August 26, 2012
Partimage is my choose, easy, secure and reliable, I have been used it; to clone the system partitions of my PC and laptop and I never had any issue.
To backup the /home partitions I prefer rsync.

REPLY

DontForget August 27, 2012
SystemIMager? http://sourceforge.net/projects/systemimager/ Has a bunch of different features, like torrenting, and “updating” installed images.

REPLY

PNA Prasanna August 27, 2012
I used to run dd command for creating junk files for checking user quota.

But these are very good stuff.

REPLY

Esteban August 27, 2012
I use FOG, is a free, open source computer cloning solution

REPLY

m.ardito August 28, 2012
filesystemarchiver is also a useful tool, as it saves one or more partitions at the filesystem level, in compressed archives. it can then restore them also on smaller disks, if the case. i find it useful, too.

REPLY

Vivek Gite August 28, 2012
Hey all,

Thanks for sharing additional tools :)

REPLY

xandry August 28, 2012
> Fig.01: partimag in action

“partimage”, not “partimag”

> from the used portions

“partition”, not “portion”

> Redobackup in action

Keep space sympols

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Code of Flag - INDIA

Its an humble request, not to miss use the freedom of Flying Our National Flag. 

Please Follow the Code of Flag. By Following the Code will Salute to Our Nation & National Heros.

Please refer the following for the Code of Flag.

http://mahapolice.gov.in/mahapolice/jsp/temp/html/flag_code_of_india.pdf

Open Source Software

Get some free software used for your day to day work.......

http://www.pdfforge.org (pdf converter)

http://portableapps.com (use to create pen drive, which run your sofware on any computer).

Railway Ticket

Dear Railway officials,

I request all officials of railway and irctc to try booking for tatkal in morning from their residence from internet. if you can book a ticket, i will award you for the same. 

we are not getting connected to server till 20-30 minutes after repeated trying. once we get server does not respond, and by the time we reach the screen where we can select train, tatkal is full with regret.

Tatkal tickets are booked only before 24 hours, if we want to travel to some location which takes more then a day. how we can book tatkal ticket for return ? do you have any answer for this ?

no agents are taking tatkal ticket booking ???????????????????

there are touts who are charging 300/400 per passenger and they stand in queue and book the ticket, is railway journey has become so luxurious. Can any person afford standing in queue in night take the token and stand next day morning in queue with this touts which make their fortune by taking benefit of common man problem. 

railway has started booking 4 months in advance, do you people as a individual citizen(not as railway official) in your personal life ever plan before 4 months to travel. 

it is just become night mare to travel in train, as ticket cannot be booked in any simpler way. 

and for tatkal i will like to tell you this situation is not only for season, its for whole year. and over and above if we cancel tatkal tickets no refund, dont you think this is worst then a dictatorship.

Please forward this mail to following email id's as every one is facing this problem. please help in this initiative

crb@rb.railnet.gov.in

secyrb@rb.railnet.gov.in

gm@wr.railnet.gov.in

drm@bb.railnet.gov.in

psmr@rb.railnet.gov.in

msrm@rb.railnet.gov.in

mr@rb.railnet.gov.in

care@irctc.co.in

gujmid@gmail.com

IT Pays To Be a Linux Expert

The IT industry is expected to hire many more Linux professionals this year, and to take extra measures to retain Linux talent within organisations. LINUX For You digs into their pockets and finds out what this demand means in terms of remuneration.

There is no doubt that the open source industry has been growing at a fast pace. Linux has gained a level of importance that was unheard of a few years ago, and today, Linux is one of the most sought-after skills in the job market. Various studies indicate that Linux professionals garner more full-time positions, and better salaries, bonuses and perks, compared to other IT professionals.

According to a recent survey of more than 2,000 hiring managers, conducted by The Linux Foundation and Dice Holdings, a jobs posting website, 80 per cent of companies that use Linux have made hiring Linux professionals a priority, but find that there’s insufficient talent out there to meet their demand. So yes, as the rules of economics dictate: excess demand + inadequate supply = better remuneration for you. Companies everywhere need trained Linux professionals, and they need them now.

Linux = hot skill

As Linux is increasingly being used in IT, companies that rely on it are increasingly willing to loosen their purse strings and policies to recruit and retain the best Linux talent. “For Linux kernel development, we have seen a change in the remuneration scene over the last two to two-and-a-half-years. The industry now values open source developers a lot,” shares Divyanshu Verma, engineering manager at Dell R&D, India.

Industry stalwarts believe that though people with Linux skills were at par with other IT professionals, it was not considered a hot skill in the past. “It is important to know that a decade ago, open source skills were not part of standard job requirements, and therefore were paid based on the particular need of the project,” reveals Jyothi Bachhe, head, Open Source Practice, MindTree. “Now, these are increasingly being adopted by various segments in the industry, and in some cases, salaries paid for open source skills are much higher than other skills. It is also true that the industry now expects their employees to have more than open source skills — open source integration, open source software governance and community collaboration awareness are some of the priority areas for the industry.”

The Linux Foundation-Dice survey also states that companies are making significant “aggressive” investments to attract talent, and to ensure that they retain and reward top Linux professionals. While the average pay increase for tech professionals was just two per cent in 2011, professionals with Linux skills have seen a five per cent increase in salaries, and a 15 per cent jump in bonus payouts over the same time-frame. Moreover, the hiring managers have also reported an increase of 28 to 38 per cent in perks like flexibility of work schedules, additional training and certification programs, and salary increases above the company norm.

The forecast for 2012

Linux professionals have reason to be optimistic about the future, as Linux is being considered a priority skill this year. Companies are on a major look-out for development and systems administration skills. The survey finds that companies are most aggressively targeting the mid-level professional, with 75 per cent of the respondents in the survey looking for Linux professionals with three to five years of experience. Nearly half of the respondents intend to add more Linux professionals to their firms in the first six months of this year than they did in the previous six months. “86 per cent of the survey respondents from Asian countries feel hiring Linux talent is a priority in the year ahead, citing an increased use of Linux as the primary driver. This is consistent with reports about the increasing use of Linux among consumer electronics makers, largely concentrated in the Asia/Pacific market,” the study states.

How important is the community

Apparently, your involvement with the open source community online has a direct impact on your pay structure. Bachhe discloses, “If an employee is part of an open source community and is contributing to the respective open source software, the depth and knowledge that he would bring in is different from someone who has just acquired the skills by way of adopting the software in a solution, or by way of training. The company’s faith in the use of the particular software in a project increases when those employees implementing the software are active contributors to it. In fact, MindTree pays consultant-level salaries to such employees — who are either authors of open source software, or participate actively in the community.”

Sreehari Seetharamsastry, managing director, India Development Centre (IDC) Attachmate group, agrees, “Most of the time, they are paid at par with the other non-open-source professionals. However, if there are well established open source professionals in the community, they will get a premium. It takes a lot of effort, time and commitment from a good professional to build credibility in the open source community. So many companies would be willing to shell out extra dollars to get an established open source professional, since they will be able to influence the community through these professionals. In terms of remuneration, there is room for corrections since this is still a niche skill. There is also a need to factor in the costs related to traveling since the open source professionals need to travel a lot for attending worldwide conferences, which is a big motivating factor for them.”

In addition to increasing your package, contributing also adds to your credibility from an employer’s perspective. “Contributing to open source projects would be vital in the near future for showcasing the skill-sets. Involvement with the community is regarded as one of the most important aspects of a developer. Sometimes, just hanging around in IRC channels and reading mailing lists gives you an idea of where one can contribute,” opines Muthu Subramanian, an independent consultant who currently consults with Novell/SUSE (LibreOffice).

What you can expect

When asked about the verticals in which employees can expect a higher pay, Naveen Nimmu, senior manager at Broadcom, replied, “Embedded systems and software systems targeted for enterprise and data centre jobs are areas where employees can expect to be compensated well. Linux embedded developers and kernel device driver developers can earn anywhere between Rs 7-30 lakh annually, depending on their experience and skills.”

Sreekandh Balakrishnan, architect at gnuyoga.in, believes that skills in big data, IT infrastructure consolidation/virtualisation and storage will pay well in terms of remuneration. He shares, “Highly experienced Web/PHP developers, Linux embedded developers and kernel device driver developers can expect to earn over Rs 24 lakh annually, while a fresher’s pay would start from Rs 60,000 to Rs 2 lakh annually.” Meanwhile, Verma feels that the areas of growth are algorithms, kernel device driver development and embedded Linux.

Subramanian states, “In the Indian market, an open source professional can start with a minimum of Rs 2-4 lakh annually and the level varies largely across organisations and areas. There seems to be a boom in the mobile industry, especially in Android, and you can expect good growth prospects there. However, in the long run, one vertical is as good as another.”

Top recruiters

Industry stalwarts named Google, Cisco and Broadcom among the top employers of open source professionals, and also named Red Hat, Novell/SUSE, LSI TI, Amazon, Canonical, Wind River, Microsoft, IBM Research and Yahoo in the list.
Well, maybe now is the right time to build up on your Linux skills, and ask your boss for that raise you have been dreaming about!

Virtual Labs by IIT

Virtual Labs Project Launched

 

The  Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Government of India todaylaunched Virtual Labs — a collection of ninety-one virtual laboratories containing hundreds of experiments in nine disciplines of science and engineering. As part of Ministry of Human Resource Development(MHRD)’s National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), Virtual Labs is part of a comprehensive undertaking to provide easily accessible and high quality education throughout India.

 

Virtual Labs’ primary focus is to provide graduate and undergraduate college and university students with the ability to perform their required laboratory experiments using only the World Wide Web, a standard computer, and an Internet connection. Virtual Labs allow students to practice and better learn the science and engineering behind the experiments that they are required to perform. Virtual Labs also allows the sharing of costly equipment across the country, and in very rural areas, students will be able to perform experiments that they would not otherwise be able to access.

 

Nearly 300 department heads, faculty, and staff representing 152 institutions have been trained across India. Over 20 Nodal Centres have been created, institutions who have expressed their interest to champion Virtual Labs in their organisations and geographical areas.

 

The Pilot Phase of the Virtual Labs project started in April 2009.  During this phase, approximately twenty labs were developed as proof of concept.  The Main Phase began inApril 2010.  So far, over 80 Virtual Labs have been developed, and are undergoing field trials in various parts of the country.

 

Two types of virtual labs have been developed under this project. In the Simulation Based Virtual Labs the experiments are modeled using mathematical equations.  The simulations are carried out remotely at a high-end server, and the results are communicated to the student over the internet.  Simulation based Virtual Labs are scalable and can cater to a large number of simultaneous users.

 

Using the Remote Triggered Virtual Labs the actual experiments are triggered remotely.  The output of the experiment (being conducted remotely) is communicated back to the student over the internet.  This class of Virtual Labs gives the student the output of real-time experiments.  Typically, time-slots are booked before conducting such experiments.

 

All Virtual Labs can be accessed through a common website: www.vlab.co.in. At the user end, a PC and broadband connectivity enables the user to access Virtual Labs.

 

These Virtual Labs will be very useful for Engineering College Students who do not have access to good lab-facilities, High-school students, whose inquisitiveness will be triggered, possibly motivating them to take up higher-studies, Researchers in different institutes who can collaborate / share equipment and engineering colleges, who can benefit from the content and related teaching resources.

Currently 85 Virtual Labs have been developed comprising of 769 experiments. Trainings and workshops have been held all over India to disseminate knowledge of these Virtual Labs. Future efforts will involve development of virtual labs in different subjects and wide dissemination of this knowledge.

 

A Collaborative Platform for Development of Virtual Labs has been created that assists the faculty with authoring and maintaining Virtual Labs. The platform hosts over 825 experiments developed by many of the partner institutions. The Collaborative Platform provides the server side architecture for ensuring that virtual labs run securely, can effectively serve thousands of students simultaneously, and reserve time slots for experiments that require scheduling. The Collaborative Platform also provides tools to help teachers monitor their students’ progress and make changes to the instructional material.

 

Student interest in Virtual Labs has also been enthusiastic. The Virtual Labs site (vlab.co.in) has had 233,570 site visits and 1,034,443 page visits in just the last 6 months. There are over 4500 registered users from 134 countries and handles around 100GB of traffic per month with visitors from India, United States, Malaysia, Philippines, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, Pakistan and so on.

 

With the launch of Virtual Labs Indian students will have easy access to an encyclopedia of science and engineering knowledge presented in a way that is engaging, immersive, and enjoyable. Virtual Labs will allow students to explore, discover, and learn wherever they are and at their convenience.

http://www.vlab.co.in/

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Free Linux CDs

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Facts for PDF

Q: First things first – How do I create PDF documents on my computer without Adobe Acrobat?

A: You can download and install a virtual PDF printer like Nitro Reader on your computer. You can then create PDF files from any Windows application using the regular Print command – just choose Nitro from the list of available printers.

Q: I like the cloud and don’t want to install software just for converting a bunch of documents to PDFs. Are there any web-based alternatives?

A: Sure. You can upload your documents to Google Docs in the browser and then export them as PDF files. In fact this is the recommended approach if you want to covert multiple documents to PDF in a single batch.

Q: Is it possible to convert documents to PDFs on a mobile phone?

A: There are tons of PDF conversion app for the iPhone and Android phones but you can also use email to convert documents to PDFs on a mobile phone without requiring apps. Just forward the source file(s) to pdf@zamzar.com as an email attachment and they’ll send you an email when the PDFs are ready for download.

Q: How do I directly save web page as PDFs in the browser?

A: There are several options. Either open the web page in your browser and then print it locally using the Nitro PDF Reader (See #1). Or you can email the web page URL to mypdf@joliprint.com and they’ll send you the full page as a PDF. Alternatively, you can use CleanPrint to download web pages as PDFs. This is available as a bookmarklet and as an extension for all popular browsers.

Q: How can I convert PDF files to other formats like Word, images, HTML, etc.

A: You can upload the PDF document to zamzar.com and convert it to other formats like doc, html, text, and more.  Or you can use your Gmail account to convert PDF to HTML.

Q: Someone sent me a PDF document in Chinese but I can read only English?

A: You can easily translate PDF files from one language to another using Google Translate .

Q: Can I edit PDF files?

A: PDF files are essentially read-only documents but there are several tools to help you edit PDF files.

Q: How do I merge two or more PDF files into one? Can I also change the page order?

A: You should use PDF Fill, a versatile PDF editing tool that lets you combine multiple PDF files into one. PDF Fill can also be used to rearrange pages of a PDF file or for rotating pages (useful for scanned PDFs).

Q: I want to extract text from a scanned PDF document and use it in my Word document. What is the best option?

A: You can easily extract text from regular PDFs using the text selection tool in Adobe Reader but for scanned PDFs, Google Docs OCR is a good choice. Upload the scanned PDF document to Google Docs, select the option that says “Convert text from PDF and image files to Google documents” and then choose File –> Download as Word to save the extracted text.

Q: I have some restricted PDF documents on my computer that neither allow printing nor can you select text with the mouse.

A: You can use online services like PDFUnlock.com or freemyPDF.com to remove all common restrictions around a PDF file – such as print, copying, etc. – without requiring any passwords.

Q: Some PDF files on our intranet are protected by a password and the employee who created those PDFs is no longer with the company. How can we open these PDFs?

A: There are workarounds to open password protected PDFs or you can completely remove passwords from a PDF file (like your bank’s credit card statements).

Q: Is there a PDF conversion service that I can integrate with my website to help visitors download my articles as PDFs?

A: Add the Joliprint button anywhere on your website and people can convert your web articles to PDFs with a click. If your blog offers an RSS feed, you can use RSS2PDF to offer a downloadable PDF version of your blog.

Q: How can I add annotations or text notes to some of my PDF documents?

A: Get PDF-X Viewer, a PDF viewer app like Adobe Reader but with some extra features. You can add comments, annotations or even paste images to your PDF pages. Alternatively, use PDF Escape to add annotations, call-outs and text to your PDFs online in the browser without requiring any software.

Q: Can I fill PDF forms online without Acrobat Reader?

A: Sure, go to PDF Filler, upload the PDF form and start typing. It converts the PDF form into images and the user can type right on top of these images. When you have filled the form and ready to print, the images and user text are combined into a single image. The other good option is FillanyPDF.com that is again free.

Q: How can I add watermarks or even my (real) signature to a PDF document?

A: First draw your signature in Paint (or other photo editing tool) and save it as an image. Now open Adobe Reader and choose Tools –> Place Signature. Copy-paste that signature image anywhere on the PDF page. You can use the same technique to insert watermarks inside the PDF.

Q: I have a PDF book that contains some 200 pages. Is there a way to extract selected pages from that book and save it as another PDF.

A: You can the free PDF SAM (split and merge) utility to extract one or more pages from a PDF document and save them as separate PDFs. The same tool can be used to merge multiple PDFs into one file.

Q: How can I protect my PDF documents with a password?

A: Upload the PDF file to pdfprotect.net, set a security password and export it as PDF again. The service can be used to password-protect files up to 10 MB in size.

Q: How do I embed PDF files on my blog?

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RASIKA BHAUSAHEB KALE | Web Audition Entries | Indian Idol

RASIKA BHAUSAHEB KALE | Web Audition Entries | Indian Idol

How to find the IP Address of E-Mail Sender . .

Option A: Gmail may include the IP Address

Gmail doesn’t include the IP address of the sender when the sender is using Gmail’s web interface to send email. However if he or she is using a desktop client (like Microsoft Outlook) or a mobile device to send that email, the IP address is often included in the outgoing message.

Open the message in Gmail, click on More –> Show Original and search for the line “Received: from “ – it may have the IP address of the sender that you can map to a physical location with the help of Wolfram Alpha.

Option B: Find the Sender’s Time Zone

When the IP address is not available, you can determine the sender’s very-approximate location from the time-zone of the originating computer. Go your Gmail Labs page and enable the “Sender Time Zone” feature.

Now open any message in Gmail and click on the down arrow that says “Show details”. The message will display the the current time in the sender’s time zone as shown in the following screenshot.



Next you can use this timezone map to determine countries where the current time is the same as the time displayed in the Gmail message. Obviously this not the most foolproof method as two different countries can be in the same time zone but when the IP address is not available in Gmail, this is the closest you can get.

On a related note, the time zone of your outgoing Gmail messages is determined from your computer’s time zone. If you would like your Gmail messages to show a different time zone, just go to your computer’s data and time settings and change the time zone.

Cybercrime now third biggest business crime issue - survey

UK CIOs worry most about reputational damage

By John E Dunn

Computerworld UK

30 November 11

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3321715/cybercrime-now-third-biggest-business-crime-pwc-survey-finds/

Cybercrime is now the third biggest crime problem experienced by UK businesses behind only asset theft and accounting fraud, the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Global Economic Crime Survey has found.

Nearly half of the 178 middle and senior managers in private and public sectors said that cybercrime (defined as loss of IP, malware incidents and industrial espionage) had increased in the last year, with a quarter reporting more than 10 incidents.

Half of these incidents happened in the financial services sector, ahead of media and communications (17 percent), industry and manufacturing (13 percent); the public sector reported a relatively low rate of 8 percent.

The burden of responsibility for such incidents appears to fall overwhelmingly on the CIO, CSO, and to a lesser extent the CEO even if the problem area turns out to be in information systems normally considered beyond their area of expertise.

The main cybercrime worry in the UK was reputational damage which belies the fact that only 57 percent reported having a media or PR plan in place to respond to data loss incidents.

"Reputational damage strikes an organisation at its core. The effects can seriously damage the perception of a brand, leading to loss of market share,” said PwC director of cybersecurity services, William Beer. “As society becomes less tolerant of unethical conduct, businesses need to ensure they place a premium on building public trust."

Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they had no access to the forensics help needed to investigate acrybercrime incident.

One interesting finding is that while external fraud is still mostly committed by a business’s customers, a growing number of respondents were unsure who to blame. PwC’s author’s link this to the anonymity offered to cybercriminals with organisations unsure who to blame. Traditional insider fraud, mostly by middle-managers, appears to be declining.

“I wish I could say I was shocked by these stats, but the volume and severity of breaches this year have made it patently obvious that many organisations have severely limited visibility into what exactly is happening within their own systems," said LogRhythm vice president, Ross Brewer, in response to the survey.

"The PwC survey respondents are right to fear reputational damage as our research has found 87 percent of the UK public would actively avoid interacting with an organisation that had suffered data loss as a result of cyber crime.

"If, as expected, data loss disclosure laws are introduced across Europe next year, this reputational damage will be even more likely to negatively affect business performance,” he added.

Study finds major weaknesses in single sign-on

Researchers were able to deceive both OpenID and Facebook authentication systems

By Cameron Scott,

IDG News Service

March 27, 2012

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/032712-study-finds-major-weaknesses-in-257692.html

The single sign-on protocols that allow users to sign in to a range of websites with their Google or Facebook accounts suffer from security flaws that could allow scammers to log in as somebody else, security researchers have reported.

The researchers, from Indiana University Bloomington and Microsoft Research, say they have found a number of serious flaws in OpenID and the single-sign on system used by Facebook, as well as implementations of those systems at several popular websites. Google and PayPal are among the users of OpenID.

"The problem here is that the authentication system makes life easier but it makes security management more challenging," said XiaoFeng Wang, one of the authors of the study.

Using a single sign-on login initiates a conversation between the website a user is currently visiting and the provider of the identifying account. The website asks for certain information to be verified, and the account provider responds with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. But, as with most conversations, there is room for misunderstanding.

In one of the flaws the researchers exposed, for example, not all websites confirmed that a verification coming fromOpenID included all of the items the website asked to be confirmed, such as the first name, last name and email address. The researchers were able to access the request, delete one piece of requested information (the email address, for example) as it went to OpenID and simply re-insert it in the signed okay from OpenID. In this way, even a hacker who didn't control the email address linked to the user's account on the website in question could log in,and potentially make purchases, using that person's account.

Using Facebook's authentication system, researchers were able to persuade third-party websites that they were somebody else and hijack that person's legitimate Facebook account.

The researchers looked only at a few popular websites in the study. These included Sears, Yahoo, the Web-based project management application Smartsheet, FarmVille's Facebook portal and The New York Times website.

All the security flaws they documented have been fixed, the researchers noted. Wang did not know of any cases in which the flaws he and his colleagues documented were exploited by scammers. But, he said, "it's our feeling that there will be a lot of similar problems" on other sites using single sign-on.

The shared login method is growing in popularity, including among e-commerce platforms. A recent study by Forrester Research found that more than 10 percent of would-be buyers abandon online purchases out of reluctance to create a new account.

Forrester Research analyst Andras Cser said the OpenID platform "has long been a pretty weak platform."

The impact of the Facebook authentication flaw, he said, "was bigger than just Facebook being cracked, because a lot of sites use Facebook Connect for logging in. That's a big problem."

Cser predicted that "the fix will come from using two-factor login." He suggested that login requests from a new device or coming from an unusual location could trigger a second set of security questions or require users to retrieve a temporary password by text message.

The study, "Signing Me onto Your Accounts through Facebook and Google: a Traffic-Guided Security Study of Commercially Deployed Single-Sign-On Web Services," is available online at - https://research.microsoft.com/pubs/160659/websso-final.pdf