Hiding Drivers in Windows 7

Hide Drivers in Windows 7:



In windows 7, the drivers can be hidden by using default techniques. It is helpful to hide some of the important drivers. First open cmd by right clicking and make run as administrator. Then type DISKPART and hit enter. Then the following screen will be opened:




Then type list volume and enter...
Then select the volume no. which driver want to be hidden...
For example: I'm going to hide G: drive that is volume 2...
For that type select volume 2 and enter...
Then Remove letter g and enter..


Then open the my computer and there (G:) driver will be hidden...


To make visible that driver. Do the same process that is list volume ---> Enter,
then select volume with volume no. and then type assign letter G and hit enter...






Then open the my computer and see the driver will be shown..

Is it Raining Now in your City?

Want to know if it’s raining in any particular city of the world?

Just go to your browser’s address bar and type IsItRaining.in/. For instance, a URL like isitraining.in/New-York will show you the current conditions of New York in just one word – Yes or No.

If there are two or more cities with the same name, you can add the name of the State or Country after the name of the city to point to the right one.

For instance, the tool will interpret Las Vegas for the more popular Nevada city but you can use isitraining.in/Las-Vegas-New-Mexico to get the rain conditions for Las Vegas of New Mexico.

The tool is internally powered by Yahoo! Weather and caches results for 30 minutes so it may not give the real-time conditions always.

Example:
http://isitraining.in/coimbatore
http://isitraining.in/chennai
http://isitraining.in/new-delhi

Windows shortcut

Quickly Launch Programs from the Windows Start Menu





The Start Menu in Windows offers you an easy way to launch your favorite programs and folders without having to use the mouse.

For instance, if you want to open a program like Windows Media Player on your computer, press the Windows key on your keyboard, or click the Start button, and type Windows Media Player in the search box.

The Start Menu is therefore a big time-saver especially for power users who prefer using the keyboard more than their mouse.

Quickly Open Programs from the Start Menu

If you already enjoy using the Windows Start Menu, here’s a tip that’ll make you love that feature even more.

When you are searching for a program (or a file) inside the search box, instead of typing the full name of the program, just type the initials and Windows will still find it for your.

For instance, instead of typing Windows Media Player, type “w m p” (without quotes) and hit Enter. Similarly, typing “m w” will launch Microsoft Word, “g c” for Google Chrome and so on. This is also useful when you have multiple versions of the same program on your computer -- “fi 3” would open Firefox 3.6 while “fi 4” for the latest version.

Online Password Test

Just type your password in the input box of How Secure is my Password and this nifty little tool will tell you how long it would take for an average desktop computer to crack your password using the Brute Force method.

The tool uses the simple formula “(number of possible characters ^ password length) / calculations per second” to derive that number but it can also determine if you are using one of the common passwords (like qwerty or 123456) that can be cracked instantly.

“How Secure is my Password” runs inside your browser through JavaScript and therefore your passwords won’t be transmitted anywhere while you are checking their relative strength.

Just test ur password http://howsecureismypassword.net/

Secure Password Selection

The importance of picking a good, secure password can't be emphasized enough. Your password is the way the computer verifies that someone logging in is really you, so pick something that cannot be guessed by others. The top reasons people gain unauthorized acesses to a password protected system is: They guessed someone's password. (often because they found it on a piece of paper next to the victim's computer or because they saw the person type the password in, but also because they use software programs that are VERY good at guessing common passwords.)

What Happens To People Who Choose Weak Passwords
If someone else obtains your passwords, they may start to use your account to see your private data, including email, your bank accounts, your phone messages; they could start to alter or destroy your files or they could take over your computer; and they might even perform illegal activities in your name -- in such cases, it is difficult to find out who the culprit is and you might get under suspicion.

The Basics
The following guidelines will guard against someone finding out your password and using your account illegally:

1. Make your password as long as possible. The longer it is, the more difficult it will be to attack the password with a brute-force search. Always use at least 6 characters in your password, at least two of which are numeric.
2. Use as many different characters as possible when forming your password. Use numbers, punctuation characters and, when possible, mixed upper and lower-case letters. Choosing characters from the largest possible alphabet will make your password more secure.
3. Do not use personal information in your password that someone else is likely to be able to figure out. Obviously, things like your name, phone number, and address are to be avoided. Even names of acquaintances and the like should not be used.
4. Do not use words, geographical names, or biographical names that are listed in standard dictionaries.
5. Never use a password that is the same as your account number.
6. Do not use passwords that are easy to spot while you're typing them in. Passwords like 12345, qwerty (i.e., all keys right next to each other), or nnnnnn should be avoided.

Try This If You're Having Difficulty in Selecting a Good Password
If you are having difficulty picking a good password, one good method is to use the first letter of each word in a phrase you can easily remember. For example, "Alta is my kind of place" would be Aimkop. Another method is to intentionally use misspelled words, or words with a number or punctuation mark suffixed. Examples include: braekfast, kite276, and weather. (the period at the end is part of the password). Also, many hackers use numbers or punctuation instead of letters to do a basic encrypt of text, as in: h3llo is hello or he!!o is also hello. Don't copy any of these examples, but y0u g3t the d4ift! The more creative you are the better.

Here are some guidelines about what secure passwords should not include:

• Your name
• Your spouse's name
• Your parent's name
• Your pet's name
• Your child's name
• Names of close friends or coworkers
• Names of your favorite fantasy characters
• Your boss's name
• Anybody's name
• The name of the operating system you're using
• The hostname of your computer
• Your phone number
• Your license plate number
• Any part of your social security number
• Anybody's birth date
• Other information that is easily obtained about you
• Words such as wizard, guru, gandalf, and so on.
• Any username on the computer in any form (as is, capitalized, etc.)
• A word in the English dictionary
• A word in a foreign dictionary
• A place
• A proper noun
• Passwords of all the same letter
• Simple patterns on the keyboard, like qwerty
• Any of the above spelled backwards
• Any of the above followed or prepended by a single digit

Good passwords:

• Have both upper and lower case letters
• Have digits and/or punctuation characters as well as letters
• Are easy to remember, so they do not have to be written down
• Are seven or eight characters long
• Can be typed quickly, so someone else cannot look over your shoulder

Advanced Password Strategies
Changing passwords -- some people say that changing your password every 30 days is a good rule-of-thumb, and you should never go longer than 90 days before picking a new password. Other's disagree. The longer you wait before changing passwords, the more difficult it will be to get used to the new one. Whatever you do, do not reuse any previous password you have used and do not write a password on a sticky piece of paper and put it near your computer. Also, please note that if someone cracks your GPG, PGP or SSH private key file password and makes a copy of your keyring, then you can change your GPG password all you want and they'll still be able to decrypt their copy of your keyring with the old password. So in the case of GPG, you should set your public key to expire and change your public key (I set mine to change every year) in addition to changing your password.

Safe House

How to Protect your Files and Folders:

Do you have files and folders on your computer that you absolutely don’t want anyone else to see? Or do you even carry important documents on those easy-to-misplace USB drives?

If the answer is yes, you should definitely download a copy of SafeHouse Explorer – it’s a free and incredibly easy-to-use file encryption utility that will hide all your private files from prying eyes in few easy steps. You may use the tool to password protect files that are residing on your computer’s internal hard disk or even on external USB drives.

Tutorial: Encrypt and Password Protect your Files and Folders

SafeHouse Explorer, in simple English, works something like this. It creates a hidden storage area on your disk to hold all the files that you want to protect. These files and folders are hidden from normal view and will only become visible when you enter the correct password.

Here’s a more detailed tutorial on how you can protect your files with SafeHouse Explorer.

Step 1: Download and install SafeHouse Explorer to your hard-drive.

The software works with XP, Vista and Windows 7 (both 32 and 64-bit editions). It is also portable so you may run it directly without installation.

Step 2: Once the installation is complete, click the “New Volume” button to create your hidden storage that will house your various files and folders.

You may either create one large volume to store all the “private” files or you can create multiple smaller-size volumes each corresponding to the type of files that they’ll store. For instance, you may have one volume for storing confidential documents and spreadsheets while another one could be for hiding those “personal” pictures and so on.

For step 2b, choose a volume size based on the size of the folders that you’ll be storing inside that volume. The “Pre-initialize Volume with Random Data” basically means that your virtual drive will be filled with random data if there aren’t enough files to fill complete that volume. Use the default “on” setting.

Step 3. Now that your volume is created, open Windows Explorer (Win+E) and you’ll see a new “virtual drive” under My Computer. Just drag and drop any of your folders and files into this virtual drive and they’ll instantly get protected using encryption.

Once you have added all the files to the “protected” volume, make sure you delete them from the original location as the original copy is unencrypted and therefore anyone can open it without requiring a password.

Step 4. Switch to SafeHouse Explorer and choose File –> Close Volume to lock up the files. Congratulations. You have successfully created your first encrypted and password-protected folder on your computer that you can only access after typing the correct password.

To access your protected files, simply navigate to the folder that houses your SafeHouse volumes and double-click the corresponding volume file to open it. Type the password and you should see all the files and folders under a virtual drive in Windows Explorer again.

Encryption is obviously a complex subject for most of us but what you’ll really like about SafeHouse Explorer is that it hides all the technical details from the end user.

Encrypt your USB Flash Drive and Email Attachments

The tool will also be extremely handy for people who carry around important and confidential files on USB drives and external hard disks.

Instead of copying files and folders to your external disk directly, first encrypt these files on the hard-drive (as explained above) and then copy the encrypted volume (the .sksk file) to your external disk. Now even if the drive gets misplaced, the finder won’t be able to read any of your files and, since the software uses 256-bit encryption, it will be nearly impossible for anyone to crack your password.

Similarly, you can add an extra layer of protection to your sensitive email attachments with SafeHouse. Encrypt the files, send them as email attachments and communicate the password to the recipient over another medium (like phone).

To download SafeHouse Explorer 3.01

http://download.cnet.com/SafeHouse-Explorer/3000-2092_4-75219687.html

Google SMS for your phone

How to search google using SMS in India:

In India, internet on mobile is still not so common and in that case when you need to make search on google, How do you go about it ? Thanks to Google SMS service which is availble for many countries including India, now you can type in your query and send sms to recieve updates on your mobile phone.

For example :

• If you want to search on iPad waiting time. Just type in iPad Waiting Time
• and Send an SMS to 9-77-33-00000

The advantage of this service is that you need not to pay 5 rs an SMS like you do for special numbers. It only costs you local sms charges so you can anytime use it get cricket scores when away from TV, or Indian Railways train schedules, movie show times etc.

Get cricket scores, Indian Railways train schedules & ticket status, horoscopes, movie showtimes, restaurant information and more ...all through SMS on your phone.

Best of all, you don't pay a premium charge for any of this, just the price of a standard SMS.

Try it out! Simply send your search query by SMS to 9-77-33-00000and we'll send you results back by SMS immediately.

Unicode Character for the Indian Rupee

Proposed Unicode Character for the Indian Rupee:

The Indian Government has proposed to the Unicode Consortium that the Unicode character code U+0971 be assigned for the new Rupee symbol. This was revealed in a presentation by D. Udaya Kumar who is is best known as the designer of our new currency symbol.

It may take several months for the Consortium to include the new symbol in the standard character set but once that is done, you should be able to type Rupee using the standard keyboard without requiring any special fonts.

For instance, Microsoft Word users can insert any Unicode character in a document by typing the character code followed by the Alt+x key. In the case of Rupee, they’ll have to type 0971 followed by Alt+x. Currently this combination will output an unused Devanagri character that the Indian government has proposed to replace with the new Rupee symbol.

File Extensions

Common file extensions that are good to know, organized by file format:

Text Files

.doc	Word Document
.docx	Word Open XML Document
.log	Log File
.msg	Outlook Mail Message
.pages	Pages Document
.rtf	Rich Text Format File
.txt	Plain Text File
.wpd	WordPerfect Document
.wps	Microsoft Works Word Processor Document

Data Files

.accdb	Access 2007 Database File
.blg	Windows Binary Performance Log File
.csv	Comma Separated Values File
.dat	Data File
.efx	eFax Document
.pdb	Program Database
.pps	PowerPoint Slide Show
.ppt	PowerPoint Presentation
.pptx	PowerPoint Open XML Presentation
.sdb	OpenOffice.org Base Database File
.sdf	Standard Data File
.sql	Structured Query Language Data
.vcf	vCard File
.wks	Works Spreadsheet
.xls	Excel Spreadsheet
.xlsx	Microsoft Excel Open XML Spreadsheet
.xml	XML File

Image Files

Raster Image Files

.bmp	Bitmap Image File
.gif	Graphical Interchange Format File
.jpg	JPEG Image File
.png	Portable Network Graphic
.psd	Photoshop Document
.pspimage	PaintShop Photo Pro Image
.thm	Thumbnail Image File
.tif	Tagged Image File
.yuv	YUV Encoded Image File

Vector Image Files

.ai	Adobe Illustrator File
.drw	Drawing File
.eps	Encapsulated PostScript File
.ps	PostScript File
.svg	Scalable Vector Graphics File

3D Image Files

.3dm	Rhino 3D Model

Page Layout Files

.indd	Adobe InDesign File
.pct	Picture File
.pdf	Portable Document Format File
.qxd	QuarkXPress Document
.qxp	QuarkXPress Project File
.rels	Open Office XML Relationships File

Audio Files

.aac	Advanced Audio Coding File
.aif	Audio Interchange File Format
.iff	Interchange File Format
.mp3	MP3 Audio File
.mpa	MPEG-2 Audio File
.ra	Real Audio File
.wav	WAVE Audio File
.wma	Windows Media Audio File

Video Files

.3g2	3GPP2 Multimedia File
.3gp	3GPP Multimedia File
.asf	Advanced Systems Format File
.asx	Microsoft ASF Redirector File
.avi	Audio Video Interleave File
.flv	Flash Video File
.mov	Apple QuickTime Movie
.mp4	MPEG-4 Video File
.mpg	MPEG Video File
.rm	Real Media File
.swf	Flash Movie
.vob	DVD Video Object File
.wmv	Windows Media Video File

Web Files

.asp	Active Server Page
.cer	Internet Security Certificate
.csr	Certificate Signing Request File
.css	Cascading Style Sheet
.htm	Hypertext Markup Language File
.html	Hypertext Markup Language File
.js	JavaScript File
.jsp	Java Server Page
.php	Hypertext Preprocessor File
.rss	Rich Site Summary
.xhtml	Extensible Hypertext Markup Language File

Font Files

.fnt	Windows Font File
.fon	Generic Font File
.otf	OpenType Font
.ttf	TrueType Font

Plugin Files

.8bi	Photoshop Plug-in
.plugin	Mac OS X Plug-in
.xll	Excel Add-In File

System Files

.cab	Windows Cabinet File
.cpl	Windows Control Panel
.cur	Windows Cursor
.dll	Dynamic Link Library
.dmp	Windows Memory Dump
.drv	Device Driver
.key	Security Key
.lnk	File Shortcut
.sys	Windows System File

Settings Files

.cfg	Configuration File
.ini	Windows Initialization File
.keychain	Mac OS X Keychain File
.prf	Outlook Profile File

Executable Files

.app	Mac OS X Application
.bat	DOS Batch File
.cgi	Common Gateway Interface Script
.com	DOS Command File
.exe	Windows Executable File
.pif	Program Information File
.vb	VBScript File
.ws	Windows Script

Compressed Files

.7z	7-Zip Compressed File
.deb	Debian Software Package
.gz	Gnu Zipped Archive
.pkg	Mac OS X Installer Package
.rar	WinRAR Compressed Archive
.sit	Stuffit Archive
.sitx	Stuffit X Archive
.tar.gz	Tarball File
.zip	Zipped File
.zipx	Extended Zip File

Encoded Files

.bin	Macbinary Encoded File
.hqx	BinHex 4.0 Encoded File
.mim	Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Message File
.uue	Uuencoded File

Developer Files

.c	C/C++ Source Code File
.cpp	C++ Source Code File
.cs	Visual C# Source Code File
.dtd	Document Type Definition File
.java	Java Source Code File
.pl	Perl Script

Backup Files

.bak	Backup File
.bup	Backup File
.gho	Norton Ghost Backup File
.ori	Original File
.tmp	Temporary File

Disk Files

.dmg	Mac OS X Disk Image
.iso	Disc Image File
.toast	Toast Disc Image
.vcd	Virtual CD

Game Files

.gam	Saved Game File
.nes	Nintendo (NES) ROM File
.rom	N64 Game ROM File
.sav	Saved Game

Misc Files

.dbx	Outlook Express E-mail Folder
.msi	Windows Installer Package
.part	Partially Downloaded File
.torrent	BitTorrent File