There is quite a handy tool for all the users of iPhone out there and it is iPhone Explorer. With iPhone Explorer you can easily Copy files to or from your iPhone via USB link regardless of the format of that file and in that way you can also use your iPhone as a USB flash drive.

You can also access your iPhone’s Pictures, videos, songs and ringtones  directory and can easily transfer them from your iPhone. The special thing about that software is that it can also be used with iPod.

Download iPhone Explorer

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Samsung has finalized and announced Skype Enabled HDTVs. Samsung New Series TVs like 7000 and 8000 Series Televisions will have access to Skype.

Panasonic and Samsung has already launched this facility but now Samsung will be their competitor too in this facility of providing access to Skype.

Users will be able to log in or create their account using their remote control and can make live audio and video calls through their PCs.

However It will require HD Video Processing  Webcams which should have an average quality VGA video at 22fps rather than 720p which will surely have a high cost.

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Security companies have noticed a rise in trojans known as diallers that used to be popular during the days of dial-up net access.

On a smartphone the diallers are being used to call premium rate lines leaving victims with a big bill.

Experts say the diallers are proving popular as a quick way for criminals to cash in.

Diallers were widely used during the days of dial-up net access when most people connected via modem.

Many diallers lurked on porn sites and, once they snared a victim, disconnected their modem and then placed a long distance call. Many victims were left with huge phone bills.

The economics of international calls meant that some of the cash spent on the call would be shared with the criminals. Some diallers were very sneaky in that they muted the speaker on a modem so victims could not spot when the overseas call was being placed.

Now, the security wing of software firm CA has said it is seeing a rise in diallers for smartphones. This time, instead of calling international numbers, the diallers call premium rate lines and land victims with the bill.

Writing on the CA security blog, Akhil Menon said it was seeing a “an increasing trend of trojan diallers”. Mr Menon profiled one such virus, called Swapi.B, which sends premium SMS messages.

“The messages sent out are in the typical format to invoke premium services and land the mobile user with heavy mobile bills without the user’s knowledge and consent,” wrote Mr Menon.

Many diallers, including Swapi.B, are contracted from porn sites which disguise themselves as software, video clips or helper programs.

Mikko Hypponen, head of research at F-Secure which makes security software for mobiles, said it had seen a “handful” of diallers in recent months.

They were popular, he said, because they get round one of the big problems facing anyone wanting to make money out of Windows viruses.

“PC malware can’t just directly steal money from your machine; it has to jump through hoops like keylogging your credit card number or sending spam,” he said.

“However, mobile malware can just instantly steal from you by making premium-rate calls or messages,” said Mr Hypponen.

Some creators of diallers were also working to ensure that it was hard to shut down the premium rate service they had set up to cash in.

Mr Hypponen said some diallers sent messages or rang many different numbers, including legitimate ones.

“The trojan can place calls to, say, 100 different premium-rate numbers, only one of which is his own number,” said Mr Hypponen.

“How would you fight this? Shut down all the numbers, including the innocent ones?”

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Mobile phone firm TeliaSonera has completed work on two 4G networks in Oslo and Stockholm.

The company said that the first customers will be able to start using the networks in early 2010.

Despite the launch of the network, no handsets can yet use 4G. Initially customers will connect via a dongle and a laptop.

Fourth-generation, 4G, networks are based around the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology and downlink data speeds can hit 100 megabits per second – about ten times quicker than the fastest 3G networks.

The technology has been designed to overlay existing 3G networks and most operators have committed to upgrading to the faster system.

TeliaSonera said it was recruiting customers to pilot the network during the first quarter of 2010.

It has released no information about the cost of connecting to the high-speed network. The dongles for connecting to the LTE network are made by Samsung.

Phone equipment maker Ericsson has put together the network in Stockholm, Sweden and Chinese firm Huawei is behind the one in Oslo, Norway. Both networks cover the central regions of both cities.

TeliaSonera said it expected the boost in speed to drive many novel applications including gaming on the move and much greater viewing of video on laptops.

Handsets that can use LTE are expected in mid-late 2010.

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On paper, TeliaSonera’s 4G mobile broadband sounds blisteringly fast, with speeds of up to 100 Mbits/second–up to ten times faster than the provider’s Turbo 3G service, the company says. Users of data-intensive apps such as video conferencing, online gaming, and Web TV broadcasting would benefit from 4G speeds, which initially is for data services only. The company’s FAQ provides additional pricing and service details.

As is often the case with cutting-edge tech, early adopters will face some major challenges when upgrading to 4G. TeliaSonera customers, for instance, will need a special modem manufactured by Samsung to access the 4G network. And since the Samsung modem isn’t compatible with 3G networks, users will need a separate 3G modem for when they leave the 4G coverage area. The good news is that a 3G-4G combo modem should be ready by Q2 2010.

On this side of the pond, the rollout of 4G will likely be a slow and steady process.

Wireless service provider Clearwire is currently building the first national 4G network in the U.S. Using WiMax technology, Clearwire offers broadband speeds of 4Mbps to 6Mbps–relatively poky compared to TeliaSonera’s 100Mbps offering. As of September 2009, Clearwire reported 173,000 WiMax subscribers.

Sprint, which owns 51 percent of Clearwire, has announced plans to sell a 4G smartphone in 2010. And

Comcast, using the Clearwire network, is offering WiMax 4G service in Portland, Oregon. The Comcast High-Speed 2go service maxes out at 4Mbps.

Verizon, meanwhile, has been testing its 4G LTE network in a few U.S. markets, including Boston and Seattle. The carrier, as well as archrival AT&T, is expected to begin offering 4G service in limited areas next year. However, it’s unlikely either provider will offer widespread 4G coverage until 2011.

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• keyword.yourdomain.com
• keyword2.yourdomain.com
• keyword3.yourdomain.com

It’s not as difficult as you might think, however, you will need access via SSH to edit a few server files, or, contact your web host to make a few quick edits on your account.

Step 1

First things first. The server. You must have access to “Edit DNS Zone” on your server WHM or Cpanel. This option is listed under DNS Functions. We’ll assume you already have a domain on your server you want to test this with. If not, you’ll need to create your new account as you normally would.
Click “Edit DNS Zone”
You should have a list of your domains. Select the domain you wish to use/edit.
Be sure not to edit any of these, but as noted!
Scroll down till you see “Add New Entries Below this Line”
You’ll need to put an * in the first box, followed by adding your server IP address in place of “65.66.67.68″ . Your IP address should be in one of the other entries in this screen where you can easily copy/paste it.

Here is a screen shot of what it looks like:

So it’s only two entries here.

Step 2

The next step involves connecting to your server via SSH. This can seem like a daunting task, perhaps one you’ve never attempted before, so I’ll take than into consideration as I explain the process. It’s really not too difficult and hopefully the instructions will have you executing commands like a pro in short! First, you’ll need a program that is capable of accessing your server via SSH. I use a program called putty that’s freely available. You will use this program on your local computer, so download the version for your desktop/laptop’s operating system.

Next, open (launch) putty.exe. Here’s a screen shot of what it looks like:

Enter your server’s IP address. The port should be 22, unless you’ve configured your SSH access to another port.

Next are a series of text you’ll type into putty:

• login as: username
• password: password
• enter: cd /etc/httpd/conf/
• enter: pico httpd.conf
• press: ctrl w
• enter: youdomain.com

OK, let’s pause here for a moment. What we’ve done so far is opened up putty, logged in, changed to the conf directory, opened httpd.conf, pressed ctrl w (control key and the w key), entered your domain, press enter. This should lead you to a screen that looks similar to this one:

What you are going to do here, is edit the line that looks like:

ServerAlias yourdomain.com

to:

ServerAlias: *.yourdomain.com yourdomain.com

You can accomplish this by using the arrows on your keyboard to place the curser to enter: *.yourdomain.com

One more illustration, to show what it looks like once added:

Take a look at the previous photo, then the one just above. You are just adding “*.yourdomain.com” to line two in the illustration, the line for “ServerAlias” .

Once you’ve entered that, press “ctrl x” to exit. Be sure to save your work, you will be prompted to do so.

OK, so with step one and two, you’ve configured your server to use a wildcard dns for your subdomains. Next, we’ll look at some php code to pull it all together!

Getting your wildcard subdomain name with PHP

You really don’t need a .htaccess file to use this in it’s simplest form. Instead, we can simply trap for the subdomain in our index.php file. Of course, this assumes your are using one file, perhaps index.php, for your subdomain purposes, but if you’ve made it this far, you can probably figure out what’s taking place.

The code:


$serverhost = explode('.',$_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"]);
$sub = $serverhost[0];
if ($sub = "www") {
$sub = "";
}


OK, here’s what’s taking place. You insert this code in your main php file and what it does is check to see if the subdomain portion of the domain (ie: thishere.yourdomain.com) is www. If so, it just nulls $sub, otherwise, $sub will contain your subdomain keyword. Now, you can check if ($sub > “”) and take appropriate action with your code if a subdomain exists, to display a page based on that value.

So there you have it, using wildcard dns for subdomains on cpanel. Hopefully this will help you get going.

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Usually Nvidia use five categories when talking about its processors including Value, Mainstream, Performance, High Performance, and Enthusiast. For the 300M series, however, only Mainstream, Performance, and High Performance are being used. Here’s the breakdown of where the different GPUs fall within those categories:

• High Performance
  • GeForce GTS 360M
  • GeForce GTS 350M
• Performance
  • GeForce GTS 335M
  • GeForce GTS 330M
  • GeForce GTS 325M
• Mainstream
  • GeForce GTS 310M
  • GeForce GTS 305M

The performance of these new GPUs is thought to be very similar to the processors being replaced in the older 200M series. The real differences therefore lie in the support being offered. We’ve already mentioned Windows 7 optimizations which includes GPU powered drag-and-drop transcoding for video as well as GPU-accelerated video and image processing. Nvidia is also talking up the inclusion of PhysX and CUDA support.

The top-of-the-line GPU is the GeForce GTS 360M which has 128 processor cores and can cope with resolutions of up to 1920 x 1080. Expect to see it in high-end performance notebooks shortly.

Toshiba seem to be the first vendor to use the 300M series in their Qosmio range of laptops.

Read more at Laptoping

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Google has posted on its official blog this afternoon and decided to share a difficult decision it is having to make about the company’s presence in China.

Apparently Google and a host of other large companies have recently been targeted by a highly sophisticated attack on their corporate infrastructures. To begin with it was thought this was just a grab for useful information by hackers located in China, but further investigation revealed it was targeted specifically at individuals associated with human rights activities.

In the post Google state:

We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists … as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties.

Google has responded to these attempts to gain access to Google services and its own infrastructure by enhancing its security, but is also stressing that individuals should be using security solutions on their own PCs.

Most importantly these targeted attacks have made Google question its presence in China. It is well known that Google has bowed to censorship in order to have a presence in the region, but now the search giant is no longer willing to comply and be censored. The post continues:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The post, written by David Drummond, SVP of corporate development and chief legal officer at Google, makes it clear this is a tough decision. He also stresses that it was made by senior management and not with the involvement of any other staff including those based in China.

Read more at The Official Google Blog

Matthew’s Opinion

Although it’s not stated it is clear Google think that this isn’t some group of hackers attempting to target individuals, but either the government directly or an agency associated with or instructed by it. That’s the impression I get from the post.

Faced with such illegal and wholly wrong actions Google had to react and it seems to be doing so with an open mind and a will to negotiate with the Chinese government. It does seem more likely, however, that Google is going to have to walk away from China. There is no way the Chinese government would agree to not censor content on Google services and Google is stating that’s what it needs to happen to stay in the Chinese market.

We don’t know how long it will take for this to come to a conclusion, but the real losers if Google does leave are the Chinese people. Anyone using Google services may see their accounts disappear and have to find other, censored and regulated service to use instead. Google is focusing on search here, but if search goes I suspect service like Gmail would too. Google may have no choice if it gets on the wrong side of the Chinese government.

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Gone are the days when computers had only CUI OS, that is, Character User Interface Operating Systems, like MS-DOS. When I joined my first computer course nine years ago, Windows 95 was ruling. You could see Windows 98 here and there. We were in 8th standard, and working on a computer was like a dream coming true. Microsoft’s Paint Brush was the only known (for us) GUI software and was the greatest means of entertainment. The instructors taught us only MS-DOS commands and how to Shut Down the computer. Remembering such weird names as DIR, CD, MD, RD, CHKDSK, FDISK, VER, ATTRIB, REN, DEL etc. along with their syntax and usage was a great accomplishment. But I had a problem understanding this: DOS has a separate dedicated command for every action; literally every action, except… creating a file!

Yes, we used COPY CON filename to create a file with name filename. Anyone can say that it is a form of COPY command. So, why was creating a file different than all other commands? I didn’t understand it, till I found out how to print using DOS, almost four years later.

DOS uses different names for the attached devices, I learnt. PRN was one such name. TYPE filename would display the contents of a file and TYPE filename > PRN would print it instead of displaying. Curiosity brings many hidden matters out. PRN would surely mean Printer and will redirect the output to the printer instead of console. Console (monitor) is the implicit default output device, and it can be bypassed if needed. So, how to put it explicitly? There must be some means to do that. Yes, there is! TYPE filename > CON performs exactly same function as TYPE filename. These special names for the devices really mean something special for the operating system and those names can not be used as folder or file names: CON, PRN, NUL, COM1 to COM9, LPT1 to LPT9, which stand for CONsole, PRiNter, NULl, serial COMmmunication ports, Line PrinTer ports.

The time has changed and Operating System can also be fooled! But still, many people think that it is not possible to create a folder by name CON. Using the path of network drive, these special names can also be used as folder names! Here is how:

1. Goto DOS
2. Type MD \\.\C:\CON. The folder will be created. You can check it in Windows Explorer also, but you can’t access it
3. To delete the folder, type RD \\.\C:\CON

In short, use the network path syntax instead of absolute path syntax.

Now on to the practical aspect of this. Why can’t we create it directly but using the network path syntax? The answer is simple. A computer can have only one default console, printer, null etc. So, if it is accessed from a network, theoretically, the console should belong to another node in the network. Since that node may not have a device which can be referred using the name CON, it will no longer be considered as a reserved name. Hence, the folder can be created.

The next time when someone asks the question why we can’t create a folder by name CON, say with confidence that it is not true…

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Then I got to know that the Id is a numeric sequence such as 2263754. To find your Feedburner Id:

* Login to your Feedburner account
* Click on My Feeds
* Click on the name of the appropriate feed (if you have more than one)
* Click on Publicize.
* Scroll down to Email Subscriptions in the left navigation.
* Select the Feedburner radio button and then click on Activate.

Activation will generate an HTML email subscription link for you to place on your blog and which contains your Feedburner ID, such as:

http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/emailverifySubmit?feedId=2263754&loc=en_US which renders as Subscribe to Technically Personal by Email.

Note that the feed ID in this particular case is 2263754.

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