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Hamsphere simulates a full blown virtual Ham radio transceiver on you system. It can be operated by licensed and unlicensed DX’ers for free. If you are not having Amateur radio license, they will issue you a “call sign” while registering.

What is so great about this Ham Radio Software Transceiver?

No extra hardware needed, just your PC, a microphone, speakers and you are ready to call CQ on the virtual Ham Radio bands.

You can feel audio on Hamsphere with simulations of occasional band noise and fading, as in a real radio transceiver. The user interface looks like a real HF transceiver

If you are interested in becoming an Amateur radio operator, here is the opportunity to practice it without buying costly amateur radio gear.
Forget about building complex antennas, raising it on high mast, antenna tuners etc. All you need is an Internet connection and Java support.
Voice (SSB) and CW (Morse code) are allowed on most bands. On the lower bands we can turn on/off(noise-free) the simulation.

Digital modes were prohibited on HamSphere earlier, but are now supported on the 30m band. RRTY, PSK31, SSTV etc can be used.

Pre-requisite: Download JAVA

Download Hamsphere (Windows, Mac and Linux )

For more updates @Hampshere

Here is a hassle free service from CL1P.net, a free online clipboard. No sign ups or activations are necessary to use it. That makes it ideal to share a bunch of links quickly from a public computer.

Sharing is an easy three step process:

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Enter a URL that starts with http://cl1p.net
               example: http://cl1p.net/vipinonline/
            2. Paste in anything you want.
               Some text, links, etc. Click ‘Save’ when done.
            3. Access the same URL from the target machine.
               You will find the information you entered in step 2.

   If the information is confidential, you can secure it by going to Options—> Security, then add a password. We can specify the lifetime of the clipboard from 1 hour to 9 months.

It is not just a clipboard, you can do more with CL1P

• Create a notebook and secure it with a password.
• Have conversations, share the link with your friends. Each of you can update it.
• Create an online community. You and your friends can create cl1ps and link them together using the cl1p link feature

Diaspora is a “privacy-aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open-source social network“. It’s a decentralized alternative to social network services like Facebook. Diaspora works by letting users set up their own server, like a hosted wordpress installation, to host content; pods can then interact to share status updates, photographs and other social data.

It’s your data and you ought to be controlling it. Diaspora is to allow participants to retain ownership of all the material they use on the site, and retain full control over how that information is shared. It categorizes the social connections into individual groups called Aspects, and the user can control which groups see which material.

Choice

Diaspora lets you sort your connections into groups called aspects. Unique to Diaspora, aspects ensure that your photos, stories and jokes are shared only with the people you intend.

Ownership

You own your pictures, and you shouldn’t have to give that up just to share them. You maintain ownership of everything you share on Diaspora, giving you full control over how it’s distributed.

Simplicity

Diaspora makes sharing clean and easy – and this goes for privacy too. Inherently private, Diaspora doesn’t make you wade through pages of settings and options just to keep your profile secure.

In short it’s the social network which respects your privacy the most.

The Alpha version of Diaspora is out !

A few invites are left. Click on the following link to sign up for Diaspora

Diaspora invites

The netstat -a command shows the amount of traffic on the network.

It gives only a basic overview of the active network connections.

As hackers, we are interested in much more finer details. Currports is a light weight and portable application which lists all the open ports and remote connections with

• Process Name
• Process ID
• Protocol
• Local port
• Local Address
• Remote Port
• Remote Address
• Remote Host Name
• Process path
• Process Services etc.

The good thing is that you get detailed information about all the web traffic, to which programs traffic is bound to, the current open ports, protocol (TCP/UDP) etc. If you suspect any unusual network activity, you can close unwanted TCP connections and kill the process that opened the ports. It supports IPv6 ports and can generate reports in HTML and XML file formats for debugging.

Download CurrPorts:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.zip (61.9 KB, 32-bit Win)
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports-x64.zip (81.6 KB, 64-bit Win)

Yesterday I was tinkering the partitions with Microsoft Disk Management in Windows XP.I’m not a big fan of it, but it’s pretty simple with that GUI. I wanted to delete my last partition and salvage some space for Linux, clicked on "Delete logical drive". voila !!! the whole extended partition got deleted !!! so simple !

was wishing hard for an undo there. no way ! all my important files are gone in split seconds.

There came TestDisk for my rescue.

TestDisk is a powerful free and open source data recovery software which supports DOS, Windows, Linux and Mac.

Within minutes all my partitions are recovered,the old MBR was restored.In windows it works in Command Line mode without any eye candy GUI,but it really serves its purpose.

TestDisk can

• Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
• Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
• Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
• Fix FAT tables
• Rebuild NTFS boot sector
• Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
• Fix MFT using MFT mirror
• Locate ext2/ext3 Backup SuperBlock
• Undelete files from FAT filesystem
• Copy files from deleted FAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3 partitions.

Download Testdisk

TestDisk has features for both novices and experts.

TestDisk can run under

1. DOS (either real or in a Windows 9x DOS-box)
2. Windows (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista)
3. Linux
4. FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
5. SunOS and
6. MacOS

It has versions for

• Dos/Win9x, zip
• Windows NT/XP/2000/2003/Vista
• Linux, kernel 2.6.x i386/x86_64
• Linux, kernel 2.4.x i386/x86_64
• Linux i386 RPM
• Linux SRPM
• Mac OS X

TestDisk can find lost partitions for all of these file systems:

1. BeFS ( BeOS )
2. BSD disklabel ( FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD )
3. CramFS, Compressed File System
4. DOS/Windows FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32
5. HFS, HFS+ and HFSX, Hierarchical File System
6. JFS, IBM’s Journaled File System
7. Linux ext2 and ext3
8. Linux LUKS encrypted partition
9. Linux RAID md 0.9/1.0/1.1/1.2
   RAID 1: mirroring
   RAID 4: striped array with parity device
   RAID 5: striped array with distributed parity information
   RAID 6: striped array with distributed dual redundancy information
10. Linux Swap (versions 1 and 2)
11. LVM and LVM2, Linux Logical Volume Manager
12. Mac partition map
    Novell Storage Services NSS
13. NTFS ( Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 )
    ReiserFS 3.5, 3.6 and 4
14. Sun Solaris i386 disklabel
15. Unix File System UFS and UFS2 (Sun/BSD/…)
16. XFS, SGI’s Journaled File System

Download here

Exploiting cross-site scripting flaw on Orkut, “Bom Sabado” worm is spreading like a plague on Orkut. Bom Sabado means ““Good Saturday” in Portuguese. It sends “Bom Sabado ” scraps to your friends and automatically joins your profile on some adult communities. It’s a cookie stealing script in action.

Am I infected?

If you have seen “ Bom Sabado! “ scrap on orkut, on your scrapbook or your friends scrapbook, or seen this scrap on Gmail’s web interface, you are infected.

Don’t panic !

What should you do?

• Clear your cookies and cache.
• Change your Google account password immediately by visiting the following link and don’t login to Orkut till Google engineers fix this issue.

https://www.google.com/accounts/EditPasswd?hl=en

• Change the security question too

• Keep your Mobile phone no. updated for getting password reset code.
• Don’t try to open Orkut or messages from Orkut by e-mail. (SMTP & POP users may view the message in plain text)
• Stop visiting the scrapbooks of others till they fix this issue.

How can you help to avoid its spreading?

• Login to mobile version of Orkut http://m.orkut.com from Opera Mobile and delete all “ Bom Sabado! “ scraps

Alternatively,

• Disable Javascript on your browser
• Login to mobile version http://m.orkut.com

Pass this information to your friends. Stay tuned for further updates.

UPDATE from Google:

Hi all,

This is to inform you all that we've contained the "Bom Sabado" virus and have identified the bug that allowed this and have fixed it.

We're currently working on restoring the affected profiles.

Thanks a ton to each of you who's made an effort to alert everyone else about this.

The MS-Windows port of the popular Linux tool can be used in Command Line Interface (CLI) of Windows (XP onwards).

Dmidecode reports information about your system's hardware as described in your system BIOS according to the SMBIOS/DMI standard.

Download DmiDecode

Install it, then you have to set the path

open a command line window and type

path=C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\sbin

if it is installed in C:\Program Files\

Three additional tools come with dmidecode:

• biosdecode prints all BIOS related information it can find.
• ownership retrieves the "ownership tag" that can be set on Compaq computers;
• vpddecode prints the "vital product data" information that can be found in almost all IBM computers

Now you can execute commands

dmidecode –t x

where x can be

• 0 – BIOS
• 1 – System
• 2 – Base Board
• 3 – Chassis
• 4 – Processor
• 5 – Memory Controller
• 6 – Memory Module
• 7 – Cache
• 8 – Port Connector
• 9 – System Slots
• 10 – OnBoard Devices
• 11 – OEMStrings
• 12 – SystemConfiguration Options

Do you know your system well? How to post your PC profile on online forums? 

Belarc Advisor is a free nifty application which automatically detects your software and hardware under the hood, without opening the CPU cover. It displays a comprehensive list of Applications installed and allows you to browse through their installation folders at ease.

A detailed profile of your installed software and hardware is created and generates an Html file which you can post it on your website or blog. From HDD SMART status to list of applications, including the last started date.

The major feature are :

• Processor details with primary and secondary cache memory size
• Software Versions & Usage
• Missing Microsoft Security Hotfixes
• Local Drive Volumes and free space
• Installed Memory Modules
• Installed Software Licenses 
• Installed Microsoft Hotfixes

Your system administrator will appreciate the report, as it could help him to easily troubleshoot and resolve any conflicts easily.

From a security point of view, it provides the current system security status, from Antivirus Definitions and Security Hotfixes

Download Belarc Advisor

File size: 2284 KB

Operating Systems:  Runs on Windows 7, 2008 R2, Vista, 2008, 2003, XP, 2000, NT 4, Me, 98, and 95. Both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows is supported.

As per the Belarc website:

“they are in use on well over twenty million computers and are licensed by numerous customers including: AIG, Dana, Kindred Healthcare, NASA, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, Unilever, WebMD/Emdeon, and many more.”