Microsoft Silverlight to be on Nokia’s Symbian Next Week?

This is a partnership between Nokia and Microsoft which could see Silverlight on Symbian mobile phones as early as next week.

Microsoft posted the developer tools and the beta version of the code on March 11th but then quickly pulled them down again. Mary Jo Foley thinks it may launch at Mix next week.

Mobile may be the killer app to get Silverlight in more users hands. With Silverlight being heavily integrated with the up coming Windows Phone 7, soon with Symbian and even talk of a port to Android, Microsoft will significantly expand its reach with the platform.

The MIX conference next week will certainly be interesting as Microsoft pushes to reclaim the mobile space.

[via ZDNet]

Has My Hotmail Account Been Hacked?

Email hacking is a big issue for thousands of people every day. If your Hotmail account for example has been hacked there are a couple of things that can be going on with your friend’s account, one of which is that she could be the victim of what’s called a “joe job”, when someone sends out spam to a random list pretending to be you. But they’re not, and they haven’t broken into your account, they’re just using some software that lets them specify “from = x@hotmail.com” and then looks just like they’ve used your account but haven’t.

After all, if the message you got from your friend Pegah was addressed just to you (e.g., had your yahoo.com email address as the “To:”) then that would imply that they sent messages one-at-a-time to each and every person in her address book. And that would be really tedious, wouldn’t it?

However, since you two are friends it sounds like it’s probably not a joe job after all, but rather that somehow her account has indeed been compromised or broken into somehow. Not good.

First step if you think you’ve been hacked: Change your password immediately!

Now, let’s try to figure out what’s going on. If your friend didn’t need to log in to her account that suggests that anywhere she’s previously logged in to check her email (like a public computer at the library or at school) remained logged in and if the next person on the system simply went to “hotmail.com” then they might well have found themselves logged in to her account. That’s why it’s so critical not to check the “stay logged in” box on any computer other than your own secure system.

Another possibility is that she has a virus or keylogger or spyware on her computer that let someone identify her account and password, then utilize them. I suspect that’s not the case, but it’s always good to run some decent antivirus and antispyware software to see if there are any issues. One that’s a good option and is free is AVG.

Finally, and this might be obvious, never, ever, ever share your password with any of your friends. BFF or boyfriend, it’s not that they are going to do something bad but that they too might make a mistake and log in somewhere unsafe then never tell you. Not good.

Hope this helps your friend clean things up. Again, step one, your immediate reaction to anything of this nature should be to immediately change your password to something new and complicated.

How to Install FreeNX Server and Client in Ubuntu 9.10

FreeNX is a system that allows you to access your desktop from another machine over the Internet. You can use this to login graphically to your desktop from a remote location. One example of its use would be to have a FreeNX server set up on your home computer, and graphically logging in to the home computer from your work computer, using a FreeNX client.

Installing the FreeNX server on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

Open your terminal from Applications->Accessories->Terminal

Run the following commands

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freenx-team

sudo apt-get update

sudo aptitude install freenx

Now use nxsetup to install necessary files and create the special user “nx”

sudo /usr/lib/nx/nxsetup –install

FreeNX Client installation in ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

If you want to install opensource client for freenx use QTNX,QTNX NX client for QT install qtnx using the following command

sudo apt-get install qtnx

Install Freenx client in windows

You can download freenx windows client from here and install.

How To Clear Your Cache in Sea Monkey

Sea Monkey is another open source browser from Mozilla. Clearing your cache is very simple in Sea Monkey.

1. Once your browser is open, click the Edit menu and select Preferences.
2. In the left-side list, open the Advanced node and select Cache.
3. Click the Clear Cache button.

How to Make a Lolcat

If you’re Internet-savvy, you’ve probably come across a “lolcat”–an image macro usually featuring a cat and a caption in broken English. You might subscribe to them through RSS, or even collect them. Now you can make your own by following these steps!

1. Search for (or take) pictures of cats. Get several of them and choose which one would look funny with ‘capshuns’. If you use someone else’s image, make sure to ask for permission, or if it’s a Creative Commons image, give them credit appropriately.
2. Think of a caption. Remember that spelling/grammatical errors are deliberate. This “language” is sometimes called lolspeak, kitteh or kitty pidgin. You may be able to find some translators online^.
   • Try these caption templates (replace the blanks with your desired noun/verb):
     • “IM IN UR ___, ___-ING UR ___”
     • “IT ARE ___, I HAS IT”
     • “OH NOES! MAH ___ IT ARE ___!”
3. Try finding cats in positions that look as if they have an ‘invisible object’. Put a caption describing what is the ‘invisible object’. A good (existing) example would be “invisible bike.”
4. Open up the desired cat picture with Adobe Photoshop or GIMP, place your desired “capshun” on the picture in Impact font, Bold it, colour the text white and enable a black outline around it.
5. You’re done! Now send to friends or post on forums for the world to view your creation! Many lols will come forth!

Top 100 Engineers on Twitter

We received a great tip this morning about a list of the Top 100 Engineers on Twitter. Nearly everyone knows what Twitter is these days, but its so hard to find quality people to follow. Here is the top 8 Engineers to follow on Twitter. For the full 100 list you can check it out here.

Top Engineers on Twitter

The below feeds are solely or mostly dedicated to the profession of engineering.

1. Kevin Mastaw : This popular engineer nearly has 9,000 other users following him. He is a self-described pensive engineer, FOREX trader, internet marketer, and fan of quantum physics. He also enjoys the words of Neil Peart.2. Mustafa Yusuf : He works in the field of industrial engineering and management. Although he is located in Ohio, he travels the world and tweets all about it.

3. Tyrone Taborn : Also known as the Black Engineer, he is the Chairman and CEO of Career Communications Group. Engineers, along with those looking to bring diversity to the field, will enjoy this Twitter feed.

4. Angela Melick : If you are an engineer who feels they are wasting their talent, visit here for someone who feels just like you. Angela is both a mechanical engineer in the sustainability sector and author of a webcomic entitled “Wasted Talent.”

5. David Rush : Visit here for the Twitter feed of an engineer with an ecologic frame of mind. David is a civil/environmental engineer who promotes sustainability and the reduction of man’s impact.

6. Manny Jimenez : This engineer is actually in recording and mixing. He is also a computer nerd and not shy about it.

7. Matthew Anderson : He is a civil engineer from the suburbs of Chicago. His other interests include AutoCAD, hydraulics, and being a father of five.

8. Chris Gammell : Chris is an electrical engineer who uses Twitter to blog about analog electronics and renewable energy. Check out interesting engineering tweets, along with daily life.

Start Menu 7: Replace The Standard Windows Start Menu With Something Better

Start Menu 7 is a new piece of software which replaces the standard Windows Start Menu.

Start Menu 7 key features:

• The list of menu items is alphabetically sorted, so you can easily find any program or command by its name.
• Open any location on your PC with a single click.
• You can create, modify, and reorder items in Start Menu 7. So it’s easy to create a list of the most used locations, popular directories, and virtual folders to access them with a single click.
• There is a special Run button to access seldom used locations without adding them into menu.
• Start Menu 7 has a customizable Power Buttons panel.
• With Power Timer feature you can delay any of power management operations.

Currently there is a free version of the software, but you can also buy the pro version which has even more added features.

Tap Tap Love: Bubble Wrap iPhone Game Rip Off

We received a very interesting tweet today suggesting that we take a look at Tap Tap Love. Tap Tap Love is a new game on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Tap Tap Love is exactly the same as a previously popular game in the App Store, that game was Bubble Wrap.

Bubble Wrap and Tap Tap Love are games in which the user just tries to pop as many bubble or hearts as possible in an alotted time. Currently Tap Tap Love is priced at $0.99 and Im really not too sure they are going to sell many copies, especially when I can get Bubble Wrap for FREE!

Hex Colour Charts

When you’re adding a color to your web page with HTML, sometimes you can just type in the name of the color. But more often than not, you’ll need to use what’s called the hex code, which is something that the browser will be able to understand. Choose a color from the list below and look to its left to get the hex code. If we wanted our background to be red, for example, we’d type bgcolor=”#FF0000″. Try it out!

Colors

How to Clear Your Cache in Firefox

The more time you spend online, the bigger your cache will get. Each time you visit a Web site, Firefox captures data from that page and stores for the next time you visit that Web site. Instead of allowing your browser to use up a great deal of memory, you can clear your cache periodically in Firefox.

Clear Your Cache in Firefox

1. Open the Firefox browser and navigate to the Tools menu (for Windows users) or the Firefox menu (for Mac users).
2. View the drop down menu display and choose Options (for Windows) or Preferences (for Macs). A new dialog box will appear.
3. Click the Privacy icon to get to the cache options. Now you can click the ‘Clear Now’ button.
4. Watch for a drop down box to appear with numerous checkable boxes. Check ‘Cache’ and press the ‘Clear Private Data Now’ button.
5. Press the ‘OK’ button (Windows) or simply close the preferences box (Mac). Your cache will now be clear.

Pirate Bay Court Appeal Set After General Election

In April 2009, all four defendants in the Pirate Bay trial were found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison and a fines of $905,000 each. The defense didn’t accept the decision, and went on to file for an appeal.

Their appeal is now expected to head to the Court of Appeal on 28 September 2010. Nine days have been allocated in all, and the last is due on 15 October.

The dates are not fixed in stone and could be changed if the plaintiffs or defendants have any objections, which even at this early stage seems to be the case.

Peter Sunde has already taken note that the provisional date is penciled-in for after the Swedish parliamentary elections which take place on 19 September 2010.

Sunde says that the four are only available for an appeal before the elections, commenting: “Who said this case is NOT political?”

If the appeal was heard before the elections, there would be a very real chance that an affirmation of the original conviction could turn into a major political issue in Sweden. Following the conviction of the ‘four’ in 2009, the Pirate Party received 7.1% of the vote in the European Parliament elections, receiving more votes from those under 30 than any other party in Sweden.

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