Host your website in Google -Google apps for your domain

Posted on September 7th, 2006 in General by daya

 

It’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software for you to install or Google Page Creator - Create and publish web pages for your domain in a seconds.

Now you can offer private-labeled email, IM and calendar tools to all of your users for free*, so they can share ideas and get things done more effectively. You can design and publish your organization’s website, too. It’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.

You can choose any combination of these Google services

Checkout

Gmail  -  Offer email to your members with 2 gigabytes of storage per account, search tools to help them find information fast, and instant messaging built right into the browser.

AdSense

Google Talk  -  Your members can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free — anytime, anywhere in the world.

Analytics

Google Calendar  -  Members can organize their schedules and share events, meetings and entire calendars with others.

Search for your website

Google Page Creator  -  Create and publish web pages for your domain quickly and easily with this what-you-see-is-what-you-get website design tool.

Sound interesting?

To sign up, click the button below and then sign in with a Google Account (or get a new one)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Diamond info

Posted on September 7th, 2006 in Uncategorized by Sam

Diamond is the hardest known natural material and one of the two best known forms (or allotropes) of carbon, whose hardness and high dispersion of light make it useful for industrial applications and jewelry. (The other equally well known allotrope is graphite.) Diamonds are specifically renowned as a mineral with superlative physical qualities - they make excellent abrasives because they can be scratched only by other diamonds, Brazen, ultrahard fullerite, or aggregated diamond nanorods, which also means they hold a polish extremely well and retain luster. About 130 million carats (26,000 kg) are mined annually, with a total value of nearly USD $9 billion. About 100,000 kg are synthesized annually.[citation needed]

The name ”diamond” derives from the ancient Greek adamas (??????; ”invincible”). They have been treasured as gemstones since their use as religious icons in India at least 2,500 years ago-and usage in drill bits and engraving tools also dates to early human history. Popularity of diamonds has risen since the 19th century because of increased supply, improved cutting and polishing techniques, growth in the world economy, and innovative and successful advertising campaigns. They are commonly judged by the ”four Cs”: carat, clarity, color, and cut. Although synthetic diamonds are produced each year at nearly four times the rate of natural diamonds, the vast majority of synthetic diamonds produced are small imperfect diamonds suitable only for industrial-grade use.

Roughly 49% of diamonds originate from central and southern Africa, although significant sources of the mineral have been discovered in Canada, India, Russia, Brazil, and Australia. They are generally mined from volcanic pipes, which are deep in the Earth where the high pressure and temperature enables the formation of the crystals. The mining and distribution of natural diamonds are subjects of frequent controversy-such as with concerns over the sale of conflict diamonds by African paramilitary groups. There are also allegations that the De Beers Group misuses its dominance in the industry to control supply and manipulate price via monopolistic practices, although in recent years the company’s market share has dropped to below 60%.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Gmail Hack

Posted on September 7th, 2006 in General by daya

We love Gmail, the web-based mail service that is run by the folks at the Google search engine. I have tons of space and a pretty snappy email viewer that is free and doesn’t have tons of graphic ad banners competing for my reading attention (text ads don’t seem to bother me as much).
The one thing that I don’t like about most web-based email applications like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo!Mail (among others) is that usually only the login phase of my email session is encrypted and protected from prying eyes. After I have confirmed who I am, usually by proxying to some Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) enabled server, I am dumped to a non-SSL-encrypted inbox where I, and anyone sniffing my network, can read my mail in the peace of the harsh glow of my laptop screen.
That’s a crock! Sure, I want my login credentials protected. That keeps out all the crazies from messing with my account. However, I don’t want just anyone knowing the ingredients of dear Aunt Elma’s Lemon Drop Snappies. That’s sacred stuff.
By default, Gmail is the same.
A typical login session for most users goes something like this…
We type http://gmail.google.com into the Location Bar of our favorite web browser.
We are then taken to an SSL encrypted page where we can put in our login credentials. Some email services only encrypt part of the page, but Gmail does the whole thing. No matter, the effect is the same.
When we click the Sign In (Login, Logon, BeamMeUP) button, our credentials are wrapped in encrypted garbage and verified against the authentication service. If all is well, we are dumped into a non-encrypted page that gives us access to our email.
The problem with this setup is that all the surfing that we do within our email account from this point on is completely in the clear and easily snapped from the air waves for those of us that increasingly use WiFi (though, unprotected wired networks, like those in some hotels, are also at risk). Anything that we read is potentially able to be read by anyone else.
Some see this as an overreaction. After all, who cares about our email and, besides, isn’t that hard to do?
Actually, email is ripe with useful information like passwords confirmation messages to various online accounts including accounts that might store your credit card information. Also, it is incredibly easy to sniff unencrypted network (including WiFi) traffic. Combine the two with opportunity, say at a WiFi enabled coffee shop or hotel) and you have the makings for disaster.
Luckily, an undocumented (as far as I can tell), hack makes it possible to not only login securely but also encrypt all of the traffic between your web browser and the Gmail servers.
And the hack is to simply type in your browser’s location bar:

https://gmail.google.com

You’ll notice the “s” that I put into the address. This is common stuff now, so no big surprise. You see it every time you order something from Amazon.com or work with your bank.
However, there is a difference.
Normally, when you connect to Gmail, you connect to the default http://gmail.google.com and are immediately redirected to a secure login page whose address begins with https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin? and somewhere in the middle contains continue=http%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com.
It looks to me like this is Google’s login proxy. Furthermore, the continue address (those %3A and %2F’s are just the encoded forms of the “:” and “/”) indicates where we will be dumped upon successfully logging in, mail.google.com, and what protocol we will be using, the unencrypted http . And if you login, that is exactly what happens.
Now let’s try going to https://gmail.google.com.
We notice that we are once again redirected to a secure URL that begins with https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin? >but this time, if we scroll over the continue address has changed. It now reads https%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com or https://mail.google.com. So once we’re successfully logged in, we are redirected to the secure version of Gmail inbox.
A simple change that makes all the difference. I just make a bookmark to https://gmail.google.com in my Firefox web browser’s Bookmark Toolbar to make always accessing Gmail in a secure fashion easy.
Now, I don’t know why Google doesn’t make this an option on the login page and why they don’t mention it in their help pages. It does work though. No need to pay for a service that does this for you, just use this tip.
Have fun and good luck.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Gmail as a Spam filter

Posted on September 7th, 2006 in General by daya

 

Using Gmail as a Spam Filter

If there’s one thing Gmail knows, it’s spam. Hosting millions of email addresses means millions of spam messages arrive every day-and Google must unleash their minions in the never-ending battle to stop that stuff from getting into your Inbox.

So, Gmail’s spam filters are really good, and with a little bit of cunning technique, you can use the system to filter all of your mail, and not just Gmail.

You can do this because Gmail allows you to forward messages. This is a little bit complicated, so bear with me. Here’s what to do:

Go to the Settings page, and click on the Forwarding tab, and set Gmail to forward all messages to your non-Gmail account (from now on referred to as example.com).

Once you’ve done that, all messages to gmail.com will go to example.com, except for the spam, which will be filtered.

Now, go to over at your example.com mail server, and create a filter to check the headers of any incoming e-mail. Have it forward to your Gmail account if it does not find the following in the header:

X-Forwarded-For: user@gmail.com user@example.com

There are many ways of doing this, and you’d be wise to ask your system administrator to advise you on it. For really advanced users, a procmail filter to do this would look like this (with your Gmail account and real mail server replacing user@gmail.com and user@example.com in the obvious places):

:0
* !^X-Forwarded-For: user@gmail.com user@example.com
! user@gmail.com

When this is set up, your server will send all the mail that Gmail hasn’t seen to Gmail. Gmail will filter it for spam, and then pass it back, having added in the header. The filter ignores all the messages with the header, and so all you see in your example.com account is beautifully filtered mail.

This technique also has the advantage of saving a copy of all of your mail within Gmail - handy for backups. And remember, if you use Gmail as your SMTP server too, then all your outgoing mail will be saved also.

An Even Simpler Way Of Doing It
There is, naturally, an even easier way of doing this. Justin Blanton, this tome’s noble technical editor points out that if you can’t set server side filters, but can create multiple mail accounts, you can do the following:

  1. Create a new mail account (the username doesn’t matter; no one will see it).
  2. Forward the e-mail from your current account to Gmail.
  3. Forward your Gmail e-mail to the account you just created.
  4. Gmail will filter your e-mail before forwarding it along.
  5. Use your new mail account (you’ll obviously want to set the "reply-to" and "from" fields to your current address and not the one you just created).

Popularity: 2% [?]

Gmail manager

Posted on September 7th, 2006 in General by daya

This firefox plugin allows you to manage multiple GMail accounts from firefox. It will give you basic stats about all your GMail accounts, and can check for new mail at a user defined interval.

Allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications. Displays your account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.

Works with:  Firefox
Install Now (160 KB)

Popularity: 2% [?]

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