Raymond.CC Blog

Webmasters loves their readers to help them spam share articles so that they are able to get more traffic which only means more money from advertisement. Now you know why there are requirements to like, share, tweet, digg, +1, stumble and etc just to enter a giveaway draw. I’ve never installed any social buttons until one of my reader requested it so that he is able to share interesting stories more easily. Well it makes sense as good things should be shared. There are a couple of ways to implement these social buttons. If you are using WordPress, there are a dozen of free plugins which allows you to easily add the social buttons but they require maintenance and updating.

Another option is to use a hosted share button such as ShareThis, AddThis, Lockers (AddToAny), Tell-a-Friend, SmartAddon and etc. All you need to do is select the look of the button and insert a small piece of code to the page that you want the button to appear. Upon hovering or clicking the button, normally a popup will appear listing tons of social websites to share and also the option to email the article to your friends. I am not going into details of the social buttons but rather the performance. Adding social buttons to your webpage will definitely decrease the performance of your website and increase the load time. Remember that Google has taken website performance into consideration of rankings so we don’t want to install and use a social button that slows down your website.

To keep up with times, I recently purchased a new Sony Ericsson Xperia ray smartphone that runs on Android so that I can play around with it. It is a little overwhelming at first because there are icons everywhere but I eventually got used to it. I’ve heard about rooting android phones which is actually the same term as jailbreaking an iPhone. One thing is for sure. Rooting your android will void any warranty that you have on your phone unless there is a stock rom for your device in which case you can reverse the rooting and make your phone stock again.

Checking on the steps that has been posted on numerous forums and they seemed a little confusing with a lot of new jargon to learn. Thanks to UnlockRoot tool, it currently support automatic rooting of 563 android devices with a single click of a mouse button. Of course before rooting your android phone, it is best for you to first read up what is rooting and why should you root your android phone. If you think it is all worth it, then go ahead and root it with UnlockRoot.

Never been a great fan of social websites because I just don’t like the idea of too many people revealing too much information publicly on the Internet. Although some information can only be seen if they are added as friends, but it wouldn’t be too hard to be added as friend with a little social engineering. One day me and one of my friend were discussing about Twitter and we laughed at how some people tweeted that they are having so much fun outside which only meant they are not at home. Thief can now break in to houses by monitoring tweets.

Anyway, no matter how much I anti social websites, I have to keep up with times and technology. I signed up a Facebook account few months back but never really did anything to it, leaving it idle. One day when I was ready to check out Facebook, to my surprise I saw that there were already more than 200 friend requests!

I looked around and couldn’t find a button where I can automatically confirm all friend requests. Facebook probably just wants you to be sure that you are confirming the requests of someone you know and not just anyone. Since I don’t have personal information on my Facebook account, I have no problems confirming the 200 friend requests. I surely won’t want to click the Confirm button one at a time, so I looked for a solution that enables me to automatically confirm all Facebook friend requests.

Nmap is a very popular and powerful security scanner that can be used to discover hosts and services which has been in development for more than 10 years. It is unlike any simple port scanner where you enter an IP address and it will sweep through 65535 ports to look for any open ports and inform you the common service that is normally running on that open port. Nmap is able to accurately detect the service and version even if the service is running on some obscure port. Another well known feature of Nmap is the ability to tell what operating system is on the machine. It also support scripting allowing users to write (and share) simple scripts (using the Lua programming language, ) to automate a wide variety of networking tasks. One example is a built-in script that is able to detect whether a host is infected with the Stuxnet worm. The current version of Nmap 5.51 contains a total of 178 scripts.

As good as it sounds, Nmap may not be very user friendly because it is a command line application that requires user to input command line options. If you would like to give Nmap a try, you can use the official graphical user interface frontend and results viewer called Zenmap. Zenmap is already included in the Nmap self-installer and during installation, just make sure that Zenmap (GUI Frontend) is checked.

Here is another free rescue disk offered by Trend Micro which I have recently discovered but it seems to fly under the radar as it has not been reviewed by other websites or blogs. Normally a rescue disk is the last resort or method used to clean an infected machine when it is way too difficult to remove in Windows itself when the infected system files are loaded into memory. Other than that, it can also be used to fix unbootable Windows caused by virus which may have modified the Master Boor Record (MBR).

Trend Micro Rescue Disk is a portable solution that uses a CD or USB drive to examine your computer without launching Microsoft Windows. It finds and removes persistent or difficult-to-clean security threats that can lurk deep within your operating system.

When discussing a project online, sometimes it is very difficult to explain what needs to be done and providing a screenshot can be tedious because you need to circle the area where you want the attention to be placed on. Other than that, language can be a barrier when either one doesn’t speak fluent English. Probably the best way is to create an online meeting that is able to share your screen while simultaneously chat or talk to the project manager. The ability to record or save the meeting is also very important so that both parties can refer back the agreements and what needs to be done.

Recently I needed someone to help me work on something and I want the discussion to be completed as soon as possible. I remembered that I reviewed Mikogo before which was pretty good but I needed something more advanced that allows me to record the meeting and also possibly speak to the other parties using a microphone through VoIP. After doing further research, I found out that TeamViewer now offers online meeting!

I really appreciate people who provide screenshot together with an explanation of the problem that they are experiencing when they get help from our forum. This enables everyone at the forum to understand the problem better and provide a more accurate solution to solve the problem. Since ImageShack is one of the most popular image hosting website where anyone can upload images for free, most of the time the screenshot ended up being uploaded there. You may have noticed that there are times you see an image of a frog being stuck in an ice cube with the message Domain Unregistered. To view, register at: bit.ly/imageshack-domain. Even if you copy the direct link and try to open it on your web browser, the same image will appear and auto forwarding you to the blocked_login.jpg image.

In order for ImageShack images to be displayed when embedded to a website, the domain will have to be registered with ImageShack for manual review and approval. I registered long ago and the restriction has been lifted on raymond.cc. I just tried visiting the ImageShack domain registration page and all I see is 403 Forbidden error. For a normal user, if someone sends you an ImageShack image in direct link, you will have to be a registered user in order to view it or else you’ll be redirected to the blocked_login.jpg image. Good news is I’ve discovered a simple trick to bypass this restriction so that you can view ImageShack direct link images without an account.