Multiply.com--amazing photo sharing site with a difference.

My friend Alex who runs the Samanblog recently asked me to check out this site. And I found out that this is a great photo and video sharing with a difference and let me share with you why I feel so:

The most friendly stuff when it comes to uploading photos is that there is a Java and Ajax upload tools available at this site when you choose to upload photos. And instead of just uploading photos one by one, using this option you can just drag and drop all your photos or even copy and paste all the photos onto the upload box. And I dig this feature. YOu can also import photos from Yahoo, Windows Live spaces, Flickr or any other web pages.

You can choose these options to upload photos by clicking on the related link at the bottom of the page where you upload photos by where it is written "Check out our JAVA, AJAX and E-Mail upload tools.

One can even upload photos via email.

At multiply.com you can Import contacts from Yahoo, MSN, Myspace etc:- Or add contacts manually. This is not just a one-stop site for uploading and sharing your photos but you can share your videos, music, and even have a blog space and start your own network by importing contacts from all popular social networking sites such as myspace, Orkut etc:-

You also get an yourname@multiply.com url and can customize your webpage.

Another feature is that apart from uploading your own vidoes you can add videos from YouTube and Google videos and can upload your music to this site and share it with your friends.

Apart all these there is a free blogspace available and many other features. Check it out folks.

Pixelotto--Alex's follow up to his milliondollarhomepage.

Previously, I had written two articles viz:- "Unique ideas and money on the internet" and "More pixels making
money!" in which among other things I had talked about the milliondollarhomepage created by Alex and how he made a million dollar by selling pixels. And as I had mentioned in those articles after the success of the milliondollarhomepage many copy cats sprung up. But none could reach the one million dollar mark.

It was not just the unique idea that earned Alex the one million dollar but it was also the result of some well executed marketing and promotional strategies which in itself is unique. After the milliondollarhomepage was sold out Alex had clearly stated that he was already onto something similar but with a different strategy. And I been curiously waiting for him to unearth his next brain child and now it has arrived in the form of his new website which is Pixelotto.com.

This time what Alex has done is to entice the users into participating by sharing a part of the revenue with the
registered users. With every click the user makes on the Ads, the user gets a lottery ticket which allows him to participate in the lucky draw for a million dollar!

This means more visitors to the site and more registered users and more clicks on the Ads. No wonder this time the advertisers are paying $2 per pixel where as in the milliondollarhomepage it was $1 per pixel. And also this means after sharing the one million dollar with the users, Alex will again stand to make a million dollar.

Anyone can register and registration is free. Just visit the site and sign up. You are allowed 10 clicks in a day which gives you that many tickets and thus increasing your chance. If you click for more than 10 times in a day only the first 10 clicks are accounted for. Users have to be above the age of 16.

According to the site "A month after all the ad space is sold, one ad is selected at random and a winner is chosen from all those people who clicked that correct ad. A millionaire is made! The winner will also get to nominate a charity of their choice to receive $100,000.".

So one also has to make sure they click on all the Ads at least once before the draw is made. This is a very clever technique to make sure that every Ad on the site is clicked by the visitor at least once.

Along with all the buzz about Alex launching his new website there are also reports that the website is not taking off as expected. Let us wait and see.

Getting your site listed in DMOZ.

Today I came across a very useful article written by Akash Kumar in which he gives some really useful tips about how to get your site listed in DMOZ.

As you know DMOZ is an Open Directory Project and it is the largest human-edited directory on the Web and this task is taken care of by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.

It is not easy to get a listing in the DMOZ directory and as blogger or a webmaster getting listed in DMOZ is a big step towards drawing in some good traffic.

In the article there are 5 tips mentioned. They are:-

1. Submit your site to a proper category.
2. Make sure that your site has original and quality content.
3. Get your web site professionally designed.
4. Be sure to put your contact information on the web site.
5. Check your site for broken links and spelling errors.

To get a detailed explanation about the 5 tips mentioned here read the article here.

Google Notebook--sensitive informations revealed.

As most of you might know Google Notebook is a bookmarking tool which lets users to bookmark a content from a Google search or a webpage by using the extension. Using this you can add clippings of text, images and links from webpages and publish the notebook.

This is a really useful tool to organize your notes and can be accessed from anywhere.

But recently the Google Notebook search has been found to be used by people to search for sensitive informations such as social security numbers and email passwords which has been bookmarked by the Notebook users.

A very recent Techcrunch article written by Michael Arrington points to a Digg post in which among one of the user comments there is a link to some very sensitive personal information such as social security numbers bookmarked by Google Notebook user.

And in one of the other links among the Digg user comments one can see a list of emails and passwords. And Google clearly states that "The content on this page is provided by a Google Notebook user, and Google assumes no responsibility for this content." So naturally if someone's personal information is revealed because they were careless enough to put it out there in the open it is not Google's responsibility.

It seems even after all the phishing and scam attacks that is rampant on the net some users are still living in a land where they are oblivious to all the happenings.

Christmas themed malwares.

Christmas is here and it is also time for Christmas themed malwares. Users unwrapping these unsolicited gifts are bound to have a PC that can be kept wrapped forever.

There are three now making the rounds according to the F-secure weblog. One is the Christmas.exe malware. This is a IRC bot variant and once executed this one downloads malicious executables from web servers at waiguadown.008.net and user.free.77169.net.

This is what it looks like when opened and what works in the background is not as pretty as what you see here:
The other two are the backdoor called Christmas_Puzzle.exe, and a powerpoint file called Powerpoint file called Christmas+Blessing-4.ppt.

The Christmas_Puzzle.exe is a backdoor and is a rootkit. And this is more dangerous since rootkits are hard to detect by ordinary Anti-Virus tools. Once opened it displays a christmas themed Jigsaw puzzle on the screen just to trick the user into believing that this is a friendly software.

The Power point based malware, Christmas+Blessing-4.ppt. opens up a slide slow while it the background it drops and execute two embedded programs.

Screenshot of Christmas+Blessing-4.ppt. from the F-secure blog:


The two word vulnerabilities are not yet patched and so is the Firefox 2 password manager security flaw. And also news is that the vista exploits are being sold in the underground market for $50,000 a pop. It seems the hackers are having a busy Christmas season but at least with this christmas themed malwares I am glad that they at least realised that it is Christmas time.

Related reading:
What are Rootkits and free Rootkit detecting softwares.
27steps to prevent Viruses.
Everything about trojans and Anti-Trojans.
About spywares and Anti-spywares.
Mozilla fixe s 8 security flaws in FF2.
A look at the top 10 security threats for the coming year.

Digitize your Audio Cassettes.

First method:

Today I came across an Article in the Lifehacker blog, written by Rick Broida. In that article he gives some tips about how to digitize the audio cassettes and there are basically three things you need viz:- a stereo patch code, a cassette player and Audacity, an open-source, cross-platform program that makes simple work of recording and editing audio. Check out the article and also some of the comments because there you can find some alternative methods for doing this stuff.

Second method:




There is a gadget I came to know about a while ago which can be used for coverting not just audio cassettes but vinyl records too. It is called the ION usb turntable. It coverts vinyl records into WAV, WMV and MP3s. And you can plug a tape deck into an auxiliary port and convert your old cassettes. But unlike the above method this will cost you a cool $200, since that is how much this gadget costs.

One of the best things about digitilazing audio cassettes is that you can get a lot of audio cassettes for a very low price especially rare items (not just music but audio books and stuff) that would cost you a lot on CD at bargain stores or online stores like ebay etc:-