You know all that extra time you have to work on Search Engine Optimization? [A little sarcasm there] Actually, I tried to put together a list of quick things you can do that will help you move a little higher in your Google or Yahoo results.

1. Get listed in more search engines. There are tons of them out there. There are also many free services that will help you get listed. Or just set aside some time to get it done yourself. Here is a free search engine submission site that will let you cycle through the top 100 search engines and get your site submitted.

2. Get listed in more directories. Again, there are a lot of them out there. Look for higher pagerank directories. Improvingrank.com has some listed by pagerank. Look on the left side of the homepage.

3. Clean up your html and check your links. You want the bots to have smooth sailing through your site. Use the tools on W3c.org and have a real person check them over too.

4. Get a few more links to your site. Make them relevant and at least the same pagerank as you.

5. Make your page filenames descriptive and keyword rich. Naming your page new_page_1.html is wasting an opportunity to do some SEO. Use names that describe the content and keep the keywords flowing.

6. Check your Title tags. You can use 90 - 100 characters in the title, so add some keywords. We know Google looks at them, and so do many more search engines.

7. Check your ALT tags. Searchbots can’t see pictures. Make sure you have ALT tags on all of your pictures, and make sure they are descriptive and keyword rich.

8. Rewrite your URL (anchor) tags. Good anchor tags (the text between the http: and /a tags) reinforce the message and key words of your site.

9. Go post in a few forums and put your website in your signature. Forums are a great place to put one way links. And you can help somebody out at the same time.

10. Put together a text based sitemap and put it on your site. There’s a lot of navigation that spiders can’t understand, such as flash, forms, java and javascript. Putting together a text-based sitemap gives the bots a way to navigate around the site.

Fifteen minutes every couple of days will make a huge difference in getting your rank higher.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Otherwise, User Accounts are the primary means of protecting your data, even if you’re the only person who uses your PC. The user accounts system allows you to encrypt your data, so it can’t be read by someone who doesn’t know your password, and it makes it possible to securely share your files with those on your network who do. And it means you can share your PC with your kids without having to stare at their “Astronaut on a Surfboard” desktop wallpaper.

There are actually three different User Accounts dialogs in Windows Vista, each with a completely different design and “intended audience,” so to speak. The problem is that each tool has a few options not found in the other, so no single window can be used exclusively to handle all your tasks.

User Accounts The primary user accounts interface, found at Control Panel ➝ User Accounts and shown in the Figure, is the one that most users see. It’s large, friendly, and unfortunately, somewhat cumbersome.

Some additional settings also can be changed only with the alternate User Accounts window, which, incidentally, is identical to the sole User Accounts tool in Windows 2000. To open the old-style User Accounts dialog, open the Start menu, type control userpasswords2 in the Search box, and click OK. 

Local Users and Groups

The third way to manage user accounts in Windows is to use the Local Users and Groups policy editor, shown in the second figure; open the Start menu, type lusrmgr.msc in the Search box, and press Enter. The Local Users and Groups window (LUaG) is actually a Microsoft Management Console (mmc.exe) snap-in, like the Disk Management utility and the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security window, and therefore can be accessed remotely if necessary.

Now, How to Control User Account Control?? we will see it later!

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

What if your keyboard has no Winkey? Strictly speaking, you don’t really need it, but there are a bunch of nifty keyboard shortcuts you can only do with the Winkey, such as Winkey+D to show the desktop, Winkey+R to run a program, and Winkey+Tab to use the Flip 3D task switcher.

To give your keyboard a Winkey, or any other key it doesn’t have, you need a keyboard remapping tool. Most tools use an obscure feature already built in to Windows, such as

Sharpkeys (free, http://www.randyrants.com/sharpkeys/), 

KeyTweak (free, http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/), and  

Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (http://www.annoyances.org/exec/software/mklc). 

First, pick a key on your keyboard you don’t use the righthand Alt key is usually a good candidate for the Windows Logo Key and remap it to the key you want Windows to think you pressed. 

In SharpKeys, for instance, click Add, select Special: Right Alt from the Map this key list, select Special: Left Windows from the To this key list, and click OK. Back in the main window, click Write to Registry, and then log out and back in again for the change to take effect.

Of course, the Winkey isn’t for everyone. On most keyboards, it’s right next to the Space bar, which means it’s easy to hit by accident. And since it’s one of the few keys that takes the focus away from the active window, it can be decidedly inconvenient if you press it while you’re typing.

To disable Winkey, all you do is use one of the aforementioned keyboard remapping tools to remap Winkey to something innocuous, like Ctrl or Pause/Break. Or, if you have the MyExpose task switcher installed, you can remap the Winkey to activate MyExpose instead. While you’re at it, you can likewise disable some other nuisance keys like Insert (Ins), so you’ll never again inadvertently delete text as you type.

If you want to keep your Windows logo key, but you don’t like the Winkey hotkey combinations (e.g., Winkey+R), you can turn those off with a quick Registry hack. Open the Registry Editor and expand the branches to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ Explorer. Create a new DWord value by selecting Edit ➝ New ➝ DWord Value (32-bit), and then name the new value NoWinKeys. Double-click the new value, type 1 for its data, and click OK. You’ll need to log out and then back in again for the change to take effect.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Most of the societies in the world have unique features and characteristics. The societies in the South Asian countries are agrarian in nature. With plethoPreviewra of languages spoken and religions practised in India, it becomes a unique case of unity in diversity. Every such society becomes difficult to tackle administratively. Indian society has had its own problem from time to time. Economically as well as socially, the Indian society has wide variations. 

There are various divides, including rural urban divide, rich and poor divide and the class divide. This is why many people believe that the Indian society is full of contradictions. 

(a) India has almost 250 million people living below the poverty line, which in absolute terms is the largest number of such people in any country. But at the same time, the number of the billionaires in the country is also on the rise. This is a great contradiction for any society.

(b) India is considered to be a tolerant society. Indian history is replete with the instances that would vouch for this fact. But at the same time, we do experience the ghastly instances riots, blasts and communal clashes every now and then. This is a glaring example of social contradictions.

(c) While majority of the Indian population lives in the rural areas, constituting almost 60 per cent of the work force, the incomes in the rural areas have been the slowest to rise during the era of rapid economic growth. This contradiction has made the large rural majority suffer despite the high growth rate.

Also Consider This!

• All the societies in the world, including the most developed ones, have had certain contradictions and the contradictions in Indian society are the extension of this global phenomenon. There is nothing unique in the Indian society.

• No society in the world is absolutely equitable. Even the most developed societies like the US have their own contradictions and divides. The erstwhile communist countries also could not achieve completely equitable societies. Disparities and contradictions are the law of nature and cannot be avoided in any modern society. 

The government has taken several steps to reduce the contradictions in Indian society. Several mega schemes to uplift the people of the backward classes and backward areas to bring them at par with the mainstream population are also being implemented.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

On the phone side, the iPhone synchronizes with the contacts and calendars on your Mac or PC. It includes a full-featured QWERTY soft, or virtual, keyboard, which makes typing text easier than ever before  for some folks.

Granted, the virtual keyboard takes a bit of time to get used to. But we think that many of you will eventually be whizzing along at a much faster pace than you thought possible on a mobile keyboard of this type. The 2-megapixel digital camera is accompanied by a sophisticated photo management application, so taking and managing digital photos is a pleasure rather than the nightmare it can be on other phones. Plus, you can automatically synchronize iPhoto photos with the digital photo library on your Mac or PC.

Finally (not really), one of our favorite phone accoutrements is visual voicemail. (Try saying that three times fast.) This feature lets you see a list of voicemail messages and choose which ones to listen to or delete without being forced to take in every message in your voice mailbox in sequential order. Now that’s handy!

Those are merely a few of the iPhone’s excellent telephony features.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Internally, Windows Vista refers to itself as Windows 6.0. When held up against Windows 2000 (Windows 5.0) or XP (5.1), that means nothing more than the fact that Microsoft considers Vista to be a major milestone, and the basis for its operating systems for the next few years at least. 

Windows Vista is like a papaya: sleek on the outside, but a big mess on the inside.

Love it or hate it, Vista is what Microsoft is serving up right now. Whether it goes down smoothly or gives you heartburn is up to you. On the plus side, Vista gives you a new, faster Search tool; the shiny, translucent “Glass” interface; and a revamped Windows Explorer. It’s also the first version of Windows where you can get Tablet PC and Media Center in the same package, which means you can use it to build a DVR(Digital Video Recorder) without a keyboard. 

And Vista handles videos and pictures much better than earlier versions of Windows, with improved thumbnail and metadata support built right into Windows Explorer. 

As for the minuses, Vista seems intolerably slow compared with its predecessors, and its reliability leaves something to be desired. The Green Ribbon of Death is an everyday occurrence, bringing down Windows Explorer if you so much as bat your eyes at it. And the horrendously annoying User Access Control (UAC) prompt forces you to endure repeated prompts for even the most mundane tasks in Control Panel.

Fortunately, you can deal with most of the minuses... I will let you know that in the coming days!

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

It was a sunny day and fox was walking across the fields. Soon he came to a vineyard. As he came nearer, he could see some bunches of juicy grapes. The fox looked carefully around him. He had to make sure that he was safe from the hunters.

He decided to steal some before anyone came along. He jumped upwards but he could not reach the grapes. He jumped again as high as he could. He still could not reach them. The grapes were just too high for him! He was not ready to give up. He backed off, took some running steps and leapt into the air towards the grapes. Again he failed to reach them.

It was getting dark, and he was getting angry. His legs hurt with all that running and jumping. At last he stopped trying.

As he walked away, he said to himself, “I don’t really want those grapes. I’m sure they are too sour to eat.”

Moral: Sometimes when we cannot get what we want, we pretend that it is not worth having.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Microsoft suggests that anyone installing Vista on a PC that already has a recent version of Windows on it should use the Upgrade feature; that is, boot into the old Windows installation and start Vista setup from within. 

There are a few reasons you may want to do this: 

Preserve your programs. If you upgrade to Vista from within, you won’t have to reinstall all your applications and their settings. Of course, most of your programs will need to be updated or eventually reinstalled to work with Vista, but at least you won’t have to do it all at once. 

Preserve your settings. Some of your custom file type associations and Windows Explorer settings will be preserved during the upgrade, as will most of the settings (custom toolbars,etc.) in your installed programs. Preserve your drive letters. If you have more than one hard disk (or morethan one partition), the upgrade process preserves your drive letters.

Sure, you can reassign drive letters at any time, with the exception of the Windows drive. When you do a “clean” install, setup insists on naming the Vista drive C:, regardless of the partition you choose during setup. 

Save time, sort of. It takes a lot less time, at least initially, to upgrade a previous version than to install Vista “clean” and subsequently install and set up all your programs. Of course, down the road, you’ll spend a lot more time troubleshooting your upgraded system than you would a fresh install. And there’s also the fact that a freshly installed Vista will easily outperform an upgraded one.

It’s easier. Upgrading is easier, but again, only initially. As you can see, it’s not all lollipops and rainbows. 

Here’s why you may want to install fresh rather than upgrade a previous version.

Time for a little spring cleaning. How long have you been using that previous version of Windows? If you got XP when it came out, you’ve amassed as much as six years of junk—drivers, software, spyware, video codecs, and countless leftovers from software you don’t even use anymore—that will continue to bog down Vista once you upgrade. If you take this opportunity to start anew, you’ll have a leaner, faster PC when all is said and done, even if it does take more time to set up at the outset. 

Be free of old hardware drivers. Even if Vista updates every hardware driver on your PC during an upgrade installation, pieces of the old drivers and support software—not to mention Registry settings from those old versions—will remain on your system and undoubtedly cause headaches down the road. Don’t be surprised if you can’t get your sound card—or any sound card, for that matter—to work on an upgraded Vista installation. 

It’s harder. OK, this may not seem like a selling point for a fresh install, but why back away from a challenge? It’s not that much harder than upgrading.

Set up a dual-boot system. You’ll need to install fresh if you want to keep  your old Windows installation intact.

Before upgrading or installing fresh on a hard disk containing  data, you’d be wise to back up the entire system. But  make sure the backup software you use—not to mention the  backup device—will also operate in Windows Vista so you  can read the media after the install is complete; otherwise,  your backup will be worthless.

So, if you want to proceed to upgrade your old software, just pop in the  Vista disc and start the setup program. 

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

You might already know it but when I read this trick over at iPhone Central @ MacWorld, I thought of sharing it with you. One of the features missing in the iPhone is it’s lack of integrated support for MMS. If you were used to using MMS in your previous mobile phone then it can be that much more painful. 

However, there is some good news for you. You can make use iPhones built-in support for email to work around this lack of functionality to send and receive picture messages and importantly without the need of some nerdy iPhone hack. 

What is An iPhone: The iPhone is an internet-connected multimedia smartphone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a flush multi-touch screen and a minimal hardware interface. The device does not have a physical keyboard, so a virtual keyboard is rendered on the touch screen instead.

The iPhone functions as a camera phone (including text messaging and visual voicemail), a portable media player (equivalent to an iPod), and an Internet client (with email, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity). The first-generation phone hardware was quad-band GSM with EDGE; the second generation also adds UMTS with HSDPA.

Apple announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007. The announcement was preceded by rumors and speculation that circulated for several months. The iPhone was initially introduced in the United States on June 29, 2007, and has since been introduced worldwide.

It was named Time magazine's "Invention of the Year" in 2007. On July 11, 2008, the iPhone 3G was released. It supports faster 3G data speeds and Assisted GPS. On March 17, 2009, Apple announced the iPhone firmware version 3.0, due to be released in mid 2009

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Next-Generation iPhone: Apple has made it very difficult to refer to the next iPhone, because the second-generation iPhone is the current iPhone 3G. In this way, should I be calling the next iPhone the iPhone 4G. even if it doesn't have 4G connectivity? Whatever you choose to call the next iPhone, I choose to call it pretty freaking hot. Forget about curves, because it's hip to be square once again.

The concept shown below is obviously not an official announcement coming out of Cupertino, but it easily falls within the line of reason for what Apple has been doing in the last year or so. With the new unibody MacBooks, we're seeing renewed interest in even sleeker lines and aluminum bodies. In this way, the iPhone 4G (or whatever you want to call it) could take on this design aesthetic as well.

As you can see here, the concept calls for lines that are definitely more square than the current model and the black front has been replaced by the silky silver of aluminium sturdy titanium and glass.

In terms of the wish list for features, the designer calls for a bright OLED touchscreen display, 3G data, true GPS, a secondary iChat camera mounted on the front, a removable battery, standard headphone jack, 3.2 megapixel camera on the back with video, 32GB internal memory, and a messaging light.

Some of these ideas, like the increased capacity and secondary camera, sound very feasible, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Cupertino cast the removable battery aside yet once again. Hopefully, cut and paste will be part of their plans though.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Take the Blue Screen of Death, a Windows mainstay for more than a decade. Yes, it’s still alive and well in Vista, but now it has a cousin: the Green Ribbon of Death. The Green Ribbon of Death capable of bringing Windows Explorer to its knees comes from a combination of poor design and bugs in its code. 

And thus the reason for distinguishing where an annoyance becomes clear: you need to know what you’re dealing with in order to fix it.The User Account Control (UAC) feature in Windows Vista is a perfect example of a feature gone awry. Most of the time, UAC does precisely what it was designed to do—prevent programs from doing harm to your PC, occasionally asking your permission when it deems it appropriate to do so—but the result is a system that frequently bothers you with UAC prompts, while intermittently breaking your applications without telling you why. 

Because this behavior isn’t caused by a bug per se, fixing the problem is instead just a matter of customizing the system so that it suits your needs. This inevitably leads to an important conclusion: one person’s annoyance is another’s feature. Although Microsoft may be motivated more by profit than excellence, often leading to products designed for the lowest common denominator, you’re not bound to that fate. 

In other words, you should not be required to adjust the way you think in order to complete a task on your computer; rather, you should learn how to adjust the computer to work in a way that makes sense to you.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

A manager in an organisation is not  always a leader. Management and leadership are two different concepts, though often appear to overlap. Modern organisations tend to be complex and operate in a global business environment. Therefore, there is renewed focus on the importance of management and leadership and their distinctive roles in promoting and advancing the interests of the organisation. Hard competition and continuous pressures for change demand that managers and leaders work closely together for achieving business goals.

On the practical level, a manager is called upon to evince the quality of leadership and a leader the knack for managing difficult situations in their respective roles in any organisation. Pragmatically speaking, then, the distinction between a manager and leader is not problematic. “A manager is often portrayed as a procedural administrator/supervisor—an individual in an organisation with recognized formal authority who plans, coordinates and implements the existing directions of the organisation (Koontz et al, 1986).”

A leader, on the other hand, is defined as someone who occupies a position of influence within a group that “extends beyond supervisory responsibility and formal authority” (Vecchio et al. 1994: 504) and is involved in devising new directions and leading followers “to attain group, organisational and societal goals” (Avery 1990: 453). This distinction between the supervisory manager and visionary leader has to be understood in terms of their respective tasks and functions. Dunsford, a management guru, believes that management is concerned with ‘efficiency’—with tasks such as coordinating resources and implementing policy, while leadership has to concern itself with ‘effectiveness’ of making decisions, setting directions and principles, formulating issues and grappling with problems. 

Katz (1974: 90-102), however, has identified three critical managerial skills and the last two happen to be attributes of competent leadership. These are: technical skills (the ability to perform particular tasks or activities); interpersonal skills (the ability to work well with other people); and conceptual skills (the ability to see the ‘big picture’). Modern leadership theory supports an integrated approach to management and leadership.

Early work on leadership identified the various styles of leadership based on personal traits and behaviour of an effective leader, such as drive, desire to lead, decisiveness, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, job relevant knowledge (Kirkpatrick and Locke 1991: 48-60). The behaviourist models focused on the relationship between a leader’s actions and their impact on the attitudes and performance of employees.

These studies compared various styles of leadership, such as authoritarian and democratic styles. They studied if an effective leader was more prone to efficient accomplishment of a task rather than being inclined to the welfare of employees and subordinates. The ideal style, as proposed by Stogdill in 1974, combined the best of both approaches. In later work we find considerations of leadership theory as part of a wider approach to modern management.

The traditional distinctions between a manager and leader is disappearing. Modern business operates in the midst of uncertainties as the current global slowdown and enveloping financial crisis show. Accordingly, the role of a manager demands flexibility, dynamism, management skills as well as leadership quality.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

A lamb was grazing with a flock of sheep one day. She soon found some sweet grass at the edge of the field. Farther and farther she went, away from the others. She was enjoying herself so much that she did not notice a wolf coming nearer to her. However, when it pounced on her, she was quick to start pleading, “Please, please don’t eat me yet. My stomach is full of grass. If you wait a while, I will taste much better.”

The wolf thought that was a good idea, so he sat down and waited. After a while, the lamb said, “If you allow me to dance, the grass in my stomach will be digested faster.” Again the wolf agreed. While the lamb was dancing, she had a new idea. She said, “Please take the bell from around my neck. If you ring it as hard as you can, I will be able to dance even faster.” The wolf took the bell and rang it as hard as he could. 

The shepherd heard the bell ringing and quickly sent his dogs to find the missing lamb. The barking dogs frightened the wolf away and saved the lamb’s life.  

Moral Of The Story: The gentle and weak can sometimes be cleverer than fierce and strong.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

A selfish fox once invited a stork to dinner at his home in a hollow tree. That evening, the stork flew to the fox’s home and knocked on the door with her long beak. The fox opened the door and said, “Please come in and share my food.”

The stork was invited to sit down at the table. She was very hungry and the food smelled delicious! The fox served soup in shallow bowls and he licked up all his soup very quickly. However, the stork could not have any of it as the bowl was too shallow for her long beak. The poor stork just smiled politely and stayed hungry.

The selfish fox asked, “Stork, why haven’t you taken your soup? Don’t you like it?” The stork replied, “It was very kind of you to invite me for dinner. Tomorrow evening, please join me for dinner at my home.” 

The next day, when the fox arrived at the stork’s home, he saw that they were also having soup for dinner. This time the soup was served in tall jugs. The stork drank the soup easily but the fox could not reach inside the tall jug. This time it was his turn to go hungry.

Moral: A selfish act can backfire on you.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

The just released Microsoft Windows 7 Beta 1 retains much of Vista's Kernel architecture, as well the final verson. But the new OS  is more compact than Vista, has an updated interface, and builds in better networking capability. It also includes some cool advances, such as multitouch support and a redesigned taskbar with movable buttons. You can put the beta on as many machines as you like, but you can't use it for real business purposes, and it expires in August 2009.

Though the interface has its own new look, Vista users won't have much to learn. Even upgrading XP users will have little trouble, but neither will then be able to cling to the past. There's no XP emulation theme in Windows 7, as there is in Vista. The taskbar has the most noticeable changes, with taller buttons and the choice to combine multiple docs/windows in one app or keep separate. The buttons glow when you hover the mouse over them and show a preview thumbnail of open docs. Also, the Libraries folder-arrangement system let you group related files - regardless of their location. Windows 7 is also optimized for touch-screen systems.

Some other noteworthy features in Windows 7 relate to hardware and networking. Device Stage is a feather that, when you plugh in a cell phone or other device, pops up a screen specific to that device with options, including syncing. (However, this feature relies heavily on the device manufacturers providing Mictosoft with the necessary data.) When you join a wireless network with Windows 7, you can choose to set ir as home, work, or public. When you choose the first, you can create a HomeGroup. That way, you can specify libraries and devices to share, as well as migrate settings to your home environment.

Although the licensing agreement for Windows 7 beta prevents me from publishing benchmark test results, I can say informally that in a couple of months of running the pre-beta and a short period of heavy-duty testing on beta 1, I have yet to see any thing remotely resembling a crash. I have, however, encountered occasional error dialogs. As far as recommending Windows 7, we'll have to wait to see how the pricing and final code bears out. But for those who like to tinker, I definitely recommend taking a look at the future of Windows.

• Windows 7 Release Candidate: Download instructions
  

Related Links:

• Windows 7 Beta Debut | Review 
• Free Anti-Virus Will Replace Microsoft Live OneCare
• Microsoft Reveals Details Of Gazelle Browser
• Gazelle Browsers Sinks Roots Into OS

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

One day long ago, some sailors set out to sea in their sailing ship. One of them brought his pet monkey along for the long journey. When they were far out at sea, a terrible storm overturned their ship. 

Everyone fell into the sea, and the monkey was sure that he would drown. Suddenly a dolphin appeared and picked him up. They soon reached the island and the monkey came down from the dolphin’s back. 

The dolphin asked the monkey, “Do you know this place?” The monkey replied, “Yes, I do. In fact, the king of the island is my best friend. Do you know that I am actually a prince?”

Knowing that no one lived on the island, the dolphin said, “Well, well, so you are a prince! Now you can be a king!”

The monkey asked, “How can I be a king?” As the dolphin started swimming away, he answered, “That is easy. As you are the only creature on this island, you will naturally be the king!”

Moral: Those who lie and boast may end up in trouble.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Helping people sort out PC problems remotely – or getting help yourself – isn’t difficult, and best of all Windows comes with all the free tools you need.

Windows Remote Assistance lets another user see your PC’s entire desktop and optionally take control of your mouse and keyboard. 

Although the Windows Remote Assistance feature is quite powerful, an even more flexible option exists in the form of UltraVNC. UltraVNC is commonly used as a support tool to take control of other computers that are used on the same local network. But it can also be used like Remote Assistance to take control of a remote computer via the internet or used solely to view the screen of another PC. 

Just as with Remote Assistance, remote sessions with UltraVNC must be confirmed by the person whose computer is being connected to, helping them to avoid unwanted connections from malicious users. UltraVNC can be downloaded free from www.uvnc.com and, while it’s more complicated than Windows Remote Assistance, it is also far more powerful and can be put to a variety of uses. It’s definitely worth a look for experienced users. 

Paid-for help:
There are numerous commercial remote access applications available, such as Gotomypc  (www.gotomypc.com), I’m in Touch (www.01com.com/imintouch) and Log Me In (www.logmein.com), but most of these are aimed at getting access to your own PC from a remote location, rather than giving someone remote support. But Gotomypc does allow you to let someone else take control of your PC (and chat to them) and costs £11.99 per month. If you wanted to set up a small remote access and support network for, say, a club or organisation, a Gotomypc Pro subscription is cheaper at just over £110 per PC per year (monthly plans are also available) and allows you to act as a central administrator for users. Those products aimed purely at remote support, such as Log Me In Rescue, are generally business-oriented, with prices to match – a monthly subscription to Log Me In Rescue costs £76, but this lets you support unlimited users. Log Me In Rescue doesn’t require the PC you’re assisting to have any special pre-installed software – a small file is sent to the remote PC that allows communication just for the duration of the session.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

One hot day, an ant was searching for some water. After walking around for some time, she came to a spring. To reach the spring, she had to climb up a blade of grass. 

While making her way up, she slipped and fell into the water. She could have drowned if a dove up a nearby tree had not seen her. Seeing that the ant was in trouble, the dove quickly plucked off a leaf and dropped it into the water near the struggling ant. 

The ant moved towards the leaf and climbed up there. Soon it carried her safely to dry ground. Just at that time, a hunter nearby was throwing out his net towards the dove, hoping to trap it. 

Guessing what he was about to do, the ant quickly bit him on  the heel. Feeling the pain, the hunter dropped his net. The dove was quick to fly away to safety.

One good turn deserves another.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

If your Windows PC is set to dual-boot with Ubuntu Linux, and you’ve explored Linux enough to know that you want to live inside it for a while. But the problem is, all your files are on an NTFS partition on the Windows half of your machine, and Ubuntu can’t see that partition, no matter what you do.

That’s because Microsoft considers the workings of the NTFS fi le system a highly confidential trade secret (unlike the workings of FAT32, for example). What to do? There’s the old standby of e-mailing the fi les to yourself, or uploading them to an FTP site or a Yahoo! Briefcase or some such storage location. It works. But come on—it’s 2008, already. For regular work you need something more direct, and Linux’s development community has come up with multiple ways to work around Microsoft’s roadblocks and help this happen.

Three quick and easy solutions present themselves: NTFS-3G, Samba, and NTFS for Linux. NTFS-3G is a driver that gives Linux users full access to NTFS drives installed on the same PC. Ubuntu’s new Gutsy Gibbon distro includes the driver in the Synaptic Package Manager. Samba (also found through Synaptic) is designed to provide fi le and print services to all SMB clients, including Microsoft Windows. It functions primarily as a network utility, in effect mounting your NTFS drives onto your Linux network. NTFS for Linux is a powerful tool for IT managers, but the personal version gets you simple read/write access.—Neil Randall

1 USE THE FILE BROWSER

After installing either Samba or NTFS-3G, use Ubuntu’s File Browser to locate the NTFS partition you want to work with and double-click to open it.

 

2 CHECK THE VOLUME’S PROPERTIES
The Volume Properties dialog box in Ubuntu shows that this folder has indeed been formatted as NTFS.

3 GO PRO WITH NTFS FOR LINUX
Well-known Windows utility maker Paragon Software  distributes NTFS for Linux, as either an IT-targeted tool ($149.95), a full-featured package ($29.95), or a free download. The free version gives access to your Linux partitions but is read-only.

ON THE WINDOWS SIDE: LINUX READER AND EX2 IFS
Two programs provide access to your Linux drives from within Windows. The Linux Reader from DiskInternals (pictured) gives you read-only access and makes you use its included viewer, while Ex2 IFS provides both read and write access from Windows Explorer. But before installing Ex2 IFS, read the site’s troubleshooting page, which lists some issues you might experience (although I had no trouble with either program). Both give access even to protected Linux partitions, ignoring Linux security, so be aware of this before installing.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

A tortoise one day met a hare who made fun of her. “My, my, you move so slowly, you will never get far!” The tortoises, upset by the hare’s manner, said, “Let’s have a race and see who is faster.”

The hare laughed and said, “You must be joking! But all right, we’ll see who reaches the other side of the hill first.” Off he ran, leaving the tortoise far behind. After a while, the hare stopped to wait for the tortoise to come long.  

He waited and waited till he felt sleepy. “I might as well take a nap,” he thought. “Even if she catches up with me, I can easily win the race.” So he lay down under a shady tree and closed his eyes.

When the tortoise passed the sleeping hare, she walked on slowly but steadily. By the time the hare woke up, the tortoise was near the finishing line. He ran as fast as he could, but he could not catch up with the tortoise.   

Moral: Slow and steady in Life will take you to success.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Terrorists don’t use the Internet solely to recruit members, spread their ideology, and raise funds for their activities. They also use it to conduct their own internal debates, creating a rich pool of information for analysis by counterterrorist groups. 

Gabriel Weimann, a professor of communication at the University of Haifa, Israel, and author of the book Terror on the Internet monitored just 12 Web sites operated by terrorist groups in 1998. Today he monitors 5,800. 

Intelligence agencies are having trouble keeping up with the volume. That’s why researchers from the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona have developed a set of automated tools to collect and analyze terrorist content on the Internet in a systematic way. 

The project, named the Dark Web, uses Web spidering to find and catalog millions of Web pages, postings to terrorist forums, videos, and other multimedia content. The Dark Web has identified seven jihadist Web sites that host 90 percent of the information related to improvised explosive devices, such as instruction manuals and videos, says project director Hsin chun Chen. The findings are passed on to military intelligence agencies.

To make spiders more effective at retrieving forum contents, proxies and randomized processes are used so that they don’t get blocked. The group (chen) has also developed analysis tools to make sense of the content and prioritize the information.

For example, “authorship analysis” captures the writing styles of anonymous senders, and “sentiment analysis” identifies who on the Web is the most violent and radical. “Some forums have a quarter million people posting, so there is no way anyone can eyeball those results,” explains Chen. “[Now] we can analyze millions of postings in a matter of seconds.”

Tools such as the Dark Web help intelligence analysts do the first pass. “They take this massive entity of the Internet and scale it down into something more manageable.” But Moran (Deputy Director, Virginia-based Terrorism Research Center.) retains some skepticism about the ability of such automated tools as spiders to differentiate adequately between relevant data and junk. 

Weimann agrees with Moran that human judgment remains an invaluable tool in determining which sites contain potentially harmful content. “What automated search can do is save expenses, manpower, and time. But it is limited in the depth of the analysis. Human eyes and mind see more and deeper than a crawler,”

FINDING TERRORISM ONLINE: HOW IT WORKS
Methods (beyond Web spiders) To Identify Terrorist Web Content.

• Searching the Web using the State Department’s list of known terrorism groups.
• Sharing information with other terrorism research groups.
• Searching known keywords of several terrorist groups (for example, many jihadist sites refer to Osama bin Laden as the “Big Chief”).
• Doing link analysis—following links posted on terrorist sites to explore other possibly dangerous sites.
• Employing domain experts skilled in Arabic to analyze and browse domains. Chen emphasizes that the team does not pursue fundamentalist Muslim sites that do not advocate or promote violence.
• Searching the Web using the State Department’s list of known terrorism groups.
• Sharing information with other terrorism research groups.
• Searching known keywords of several terrorist groups (for example, many jihadist sites refer to Osama bin Laden as the “Big Chief”).
• Doing link analysis—following links posted on terrorist sites to explore other possibly dangerous sites.
• Employing domain experts skilled in Arabic to analyze and browse domains.

Chen emphasizes that the team does not pursue fundamentalist Muslim sites that do not advocate or promote violence.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

As your storage increases, so do your backup needs: There are nearly as many ways to back up your business data as there are ways to lose the data and require that backup. Products available to perform archiving duties range from the venerable tape backup to newer technologies such as hard drive, CD, and DVD, or even remote storage facilities. No matter which you select, the principles of data backup are the same, and it’s important to understand which data needs to get backed up, how often, and for how long.  

The first step is pure common sense, yet it is frequently skipped: Conduct a thorough analysis and inventory of existing systems with a focus on data storage. It will be tedious, but you need to catalog the location, owner, and importance of each bit of data. The alternative is to back up everything, wasting time by writing extraneous files and wasting money on extra media.

That “total backup solution” is what a lot of so-called experts advise, probably because they take advice from companies looking to sell more tapes / DVD. But you may not have to do it. A good place to start is simply by listing the directories on each server or storage device in a spreadsheet and then adding columns for the type of data in that directory (the content, not the file type— “Contracts” or “Bookmarks,” not DOC or XLS), the owner (who would care if the fi les were deleted), and whether they are essential to your business. In a more complex environment—for example, an online business that has no off-hours—add another column for a time when no one is using the fi le and it can be backed up. 

This brings up an interesting question: What is essential to your business? For a simple answer, ask yourself, “If I lose that file, could I lose money?” Note that the question is could rather than would; this casts a wider net—better safe than sorry. Next consider your backup schedule; there’s a whole theory and science to backup rotations. There are three common methods.  

A full backup includes all fi les whether they have been changed or not; differential includes all files changed since the last full backup; and incremental includes only those files that have changed since the last backup of any kind.  Beyond that, here’s some sound, basic advice for proper business backup.

Back Up Data Every Day, Applications Less Often Save your backups for longer than you think you have to—something unexpected always comes up. (Why is it still unexpected? No one knows.) I tend to use an adapted version of Grandfather-Father-Son: I call every third Grandfather an archive and don’t overwrite it.

Test Your Backups
Like many of my friends, I have learned the hard way that just because you set up a job, load a tape, run the job, and even read a successful report does not mean that files were actually backed up. Tapes fail (they are mechanical), files are locked and can’t be copied, and software errors do occur. Frankly, backup software is notorious for reporting that everything is satisfactory when in fact the job has failed. As a fail-safe, at least once a month, you should select a few files at random and restore them, making sure not to overwrite newer versions. Then open the files and confirm that they are intact and usable. If you find that they aren’t, you have time to address the problem before an emergency arises. Make sure that you do so. Always Keep Some Sort of Backup Off Site The reason for off-site backup is simple: If something physically catastrophic happens at your place of work and your backups are there, they will be rendered inaccessible or destroyed. Store your offsite backup securely, in a lockbox or safe, and update it with a current backup every six months. Protecting something just long enough for someone to steal (or something to destroy) every bit of data your company cherishes is not going to help you.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Once there was a shepherd boy who had to look after a flock of sheep. One day, he felt bored and decided to play a trick on the villagers. He shouted, “Help! Wolf! Wolf!” The villagers heard his cries and rushed out of the village to help the shepherd boy.

When they reached him, they asked, “Where is the wolf?” The shepherd boy laughed loudly, “Ha, Ha, Ha! I fooled all of you. I was only playing a trick on you.”

A few days later, the shepherd boy played this trick again. Again he cried, “Help! Help! Wolf! Wolf!” Again, the villagers rushed up the hill to help him and again they found that boy had tricked them. They were very angry with him for being so naughty.

Then, some time later, a wolf went into the field. The wolf attacked one sheep, and then another and another. The shepherd boy ran towards the village shouting, “Help! Help! Wolf! Help! Somebody!” The villagers heard his cries but they laughed because they thought it was another trick. The boy ran to the nearest villager and said, “A wolf is attacking the sheep. I lied before, but this time it is true!”

Finally, the villagers went to look. It was true. They could see the wolf running away and many dead sheep lying on the grass. 

Moral: We may not believe someone who often tells lies, even when he tells the truth.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Storing your entire digital life on a PC or laptop has never been easier. However, keeping your treasured memories, digital entertainment, and crucial documents in one place also means you’re in constant danger of losing it all in the blink of an eye. That’s why protecting your data with regular backups is as important as ever:

Without a reliable backup, data loss is painful, costly, and often permanent: Your data isn’t just a bunch of electronicbits, it’s your life! And you could lose it all in an instant. Hard drives crash, laptops  disappear, people delete things they shouldn’t have…it happens all the time. Sure, you can spend the time and money to download all your favorite MP3’s and TV shows again. But what about your digital photos, college term papers? Without a backup of your irreplaceable data and memories, once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

Viruses, worms, and malware are a constant threat: As if hardware failure and theft weren’t enough to worry about, malicious code can also wreak havoc on your data. No virus scanner is 100% effec-compromise an entire machine. During a successful infection viruses and malware can corrupt files and data inaccessible. 

Restoring data after a loss is a huge hassle: Without a solid backup and restore plan in place, getting back on your feet after losing a hard drive can take an eternity. Unless your idea of fun is spending countless hours re-installing your operating system and programs, restartingyour latest school or office projects from scratch, or finding and downloading your favorite music and movies all over again, taking the time to make a backup copy is well worth the investment. In a pinch, professional data recovery services may be able to salvage data from a failed or corrupted hard disk using specialized software or by repairing the drive in a clean room environment. However, the cost of these services often run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars and success is not guaranteed. When it comes to protecting your data, an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.  

Prepare for the worst and hope for the best: Flood, fire, earthquake, tornado, tsunami—disaster recovery isn’t the most pleasant thing to think about but it is important. Ensuring your data is safe, ideally with an offsite backup, is a good way to protect yourself and your loved ones when Mother Nature lets loose. When the dust clears it’ll be nice to have one less thing to worry about. 

The backup drive isn’t just good for backups: External hard drives make great backup devices, but they have other benefits as well. For Example,  they cann provide additional storage capacity when you run out of space on your laptop or desktop PC. They’re also a convenient way to share files with friends and family. Also, compact mobile drives make it easy to bring your digital life with you on the road.

Now that you know why backup is so important. Start up. Recommended Backup Software: Acronis True Image

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Thomas Edison tried two thousand different materials in search of a filament for the light bulb. When none worked satisfactorily, his assistant complained, “All our work is in vain. We have learned nothing.”

Edison replied very confidently, “Oh, we have come a long way and we have learned a lot. We now know that there are two thousand elements which we cannot use to make a good light bulb.” 

Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.

From your own mistakes you can gain wisdom and accelerate self-improvement. Mistakes, because of their relationship with risk taking, are essential to success. The important thing is to view mistakes as a useful stepping stone to a higher reality and better outlook on life.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com

Two men were walking along one summer day. Soon it became too hot to go any further,  and seeing a large plane tree nearby, they threw themselves on the ground to rest in its shade. 

Gazing up into the branches one man said to the other:

“What a useless tree this is. It does not have fruit or nuts that we can eat and we cannot even use its wood for anything.” 

“Don’t be so ungrateful,”

Rustled the tree in reply. 

“I am being extremely useful to you at this very moment, shielding you from the hot sun. And you call me a good-for-nothing!” 

Moral Of The Story: All of God’s creations have a good purpose.

Haja is currently working in a multi-disciplinary role that combines programming including, SAP Administration, Network Management, and System Administration. He is passionate about Technology and this blog is his platform for sharing his ideas. If you like this post, Please leave a comment. And if you have any queries, mail to help @ bench3 . com