Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a grand name in Indian IT Industry, a brand that’s publicly traded and counted as one of the most elite IT solution providers for countless private and public sector projects across and beyond the country, has recently been hacked by some anonymous hacker group.

It brings nothing less than tons of shame to the IT Giant that consults/sells enterprise solutions to other companies(both indian and foreign) for security and all other facets of IT.

If you would pay a visit to the homepage of TCS ...]]>

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a grand name in Indian IT Industry, a brand that’s publicly traded and counted as one of the most elite IT solution providers for countless private and public sector projects across and beyond the country, has recently been hacked by some anonymous hacker group.

It brings nothing less than tons of shame to the IT Giant that consults/sells enterprise solutions to other companies(both indian and foreign) for security and all other facets of IT.

If you would pay a visit to the homepage of TCS right now then you would see the message shown below…

The message has been written in “french” and the email id highlights “uk” as the native country of the hacker. It looks certain that the hacker(or the whole group) is least probable to be british(“uk” is just to disguise the site visitors). It could still be french in my opinion.

Some significant points to note here….

• As Careers page of TCS official is very much active, there’s no ambiguity that its a pure DNS hack(for more on DNS, go here)
• If you carefully look at the DNS redirection(reload the site and keep staring at the bottom of your browser), you can figure out that TCS.com is being hijacked to Pactole.com. (having the same redirection page)
• Now “Pactole” is a french word (that means “bonanza” by the way) which increases the possibility of this hack from some french group. The server hosting Pactole.com is also located in france itself(Aubervilliers, France)
• Generally, any such hacker groups love flaunting their abilities by explicitly posting their group codename on the hacked site(remember twitter hack, techcrunch hack) but this hacker/group seems to be a little shy in their approach.
• Rather than posting any offensive message on the redirected page, the hacker has choosen to flash a “Domain For Sale” message. This indicates that the hack attempt is more of casual and has not been attempted out of frustration or anything of that sort. There might be some french guy having wild fun on sundays, that’s it !
• Looking at the reputation of TCS, it is an unbelievably lame retaliation from the Indian IT Giant in handling their own hack. It’s well over 5 hours and the the site has still not been recovered.

We will update as and when the site gets back on track !

Update : TCS Site is up and running now. Just to explore things a little more, we sent a mail to the mail id mentioned on the redirected page(hacked one) and we also got a reply from the hacker.

I am a poor person can not find work
If you really paid the amount $….,I swear to you that leave you and your business and I will protect your domain from hacker hack.

Sami

After getting the reply, we traced back the email and it is confirmed that the email originated from Algeria, (not france). Hence, it’s confirmed that this hack attempt was done by some algerian hacker.

Anyways, the issue is over and things are at peace.

Source : TC

All of us take pride in living into the Internet Age and there are countless reasons why Internet has almost become as critical part of our lives as electricity or water supply.

We can do almost everything online. From filing tax returns to paying mobile phone bills, from booking advance train/flight/movie tickets to doing business communication, internet is an all-purpose solution to getting things done today.

Considering the last five years or so, any netizen would admit to being regular(or addicted) to some social networking site(Facebook?) or the other(regional sites). ...]]>

All of us take pride in living into the Internet Age and there are countless reasons why Internet has almost become as critical part of our lives as electricity or water supply.

We can do almost everything online. From filing tax returns to paying mobile phone bills, from booking advance train/flight/movie tickets to doing business communication, internet is an all-purpose solution to getting things done today.

Considering the last five years or so, any netizen would admit to being regular(or addicted) to some social networking site(Facebook?) or the other(regional sites). Nowadays, most of us prefer socializing virtually than actually.

But many of us silently complain about the Social Networking Fatigue that most of us are afflicted with. In simple words, we are so much into this Online socializing thing that we just need a break from it.

We need to get back to the basics. We need to socialize…..but Actually, not just virtually.

And today, we have got a website that’s purposely meant to help you Socialize actually(rather than virtually).

Meet CribSocial. (i am glad that it’s not a JASN (Just Another Social Network)

Cribsocial is a website that’s meant to serve one single purpose…Helping you find local buddies to actually(not virtually) socialize with.

For instance, you might be seeking a partner to catch a movie in a theatre, struggling for a partner to join you on the dance floor, missing your cousin on the pool table or just want to have a cup of coffee outside your home with anyone who is locally available and equally interested in the concerned activity. But it’s just too hard for you to pair up with that “locally available” and “equally interested” guy/girl for socializing in real sense.

If that’s the case with you then you badly need Cribsocial.

CribSocial asks for the bare minimum details about you, your location, interests, profession etc and helps you locate folks near your residence who’re also seeking a companion for similar activity.

CribSocial’s future growth depends largely on heavy duty marketing efforts as it’s not a typical social network where friends attract friends(known). But once grown to a decent extent, the fruits may be well worth it.

CribSocial is currently open for U.S. audience only so if you’re a U.S. resident, you must check out Cribsocial and see if you’ve got any nearby guy who’s there to give you a company, whenever needed.

While coming across plethora of startups and small scale businesses on a regular basis, we generally observe the need for enterprise email solutions by almost every company.

Whether it is about effective business communication or personalizing email experience, enterprises tend to prefer a self-hosted and fully governed email solution rather than relying on free email services such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail etc.

And it brings no surprises to us when we hear most businesses buzzing about Microsoft Exchange Server, being the most adopted solution for corporate email hosting and management. Reasons ...]]>

While coming across plethora of startups and small scale businesses on a regular basis, we generally observe the need for enterprise email solutions by almost every company.

Whether it is about effective business communication or personalizing email experience, enterprises tend to prefer a self-hosted and fully governed email solution rather than relying on free email services such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail etc.

And it brings no surprises to us when we hear most businesses buzzing about Microsoft Exchange Server, being the most adopted solution for corporate email hosting and management. Reasons for MS Exchange being the ‘hot favorite’ for enterprise email solution are quite predictable too. Here are some of the main pros of MS Exchange.

• Tens of millions of users are deeply hooked to ‘Microsoft Outlook‘ as their desktop email solution for years.
• With Windows Mobile OS commanding a significant chunk of new age smartphones along with Blackberry and iPhone, mobile based email is fast becoming the ideal way of checking out and responding to email conversations on the go.
• With Outlook Web Access at disposal, enterprise users access and manage everything from their web browser itself, with instant updates to the desktop based Outlook.

But managing a self-hosted exchange server for business communication needs isn’t feasible for everyone, mainly because of financial constraints. Self-hosted Exchange Server asks for maintenance of IT infrastructure, which is tough to bear, especially for small businesses and startups.

Solution ?

Externally Hosted Exchange . There are several hosting services, Rackspace being one of them, which provide Microsoft Exchange Email solutions, hosted on their web servers.

As widely known brand in web hosting solutions, Rackspace strikes the chord with added advantages such as :

• E-mail with your domain
• Web based control panel
• Rackspace’s fanatical support
• All email conversations go over secure HTTPS connections with the latest SSL encryption techniques.
• Ability to send email attachements upto 50 Mb file size and many others.

So, if you are one of those entrepreneurs/businessmen looking for a viable email hosting solution for business communication requirements, don’t forget to consider externally hosted Exchange solutions.

With the advent of internet across the globe along with contractual work outsourcing, employees (both regular and contractual) of medium/large sized businesses are becoming a lot more geographically diversified. No matter where the employees reside, the efficiency and work throughput remains unperturbed, thanks to the fast adoption of Cloud computing and plethora of collaborative web technologies available at zero cost to the users.

But one critical aspect of speculating and enhancing the efficiency of location independent or contractual work strength is to track whether they’re actually working ...]]>

With the advent of internet across the globe along with contractual work outsourcing, employees (both regular and contractual) of medium/large sized businesses are becoming a lot more geographically diversified. No matter where the employees reside, the efficiency and work throughput remains unperturbed, thanks to the fast adoption of Cloud computing and plethora of collaborative web technologies available at zero cost to the users.

But one critical aspect of speculating and enhancing the efficiency of location independent or contractual work strength is to track whether they’re actually working for the number of hours they’re being paid or not.

For tracking employee work hours, large businesses make use of proprietary softwares, installed within their closed Intranet. But the same intranet based software model doesn’t work out well for small & medium sized businesses. Small scale companies & startups can’t really afford the cost of proprietary time clocking softwares and it also lacks the flexibility to track contractual or geographically diversified employees, especially those who don’t even have a PC.

Solution ? Meet Clockspot !

ClockSpot is a SaaS(Software as a Service) alternative for employee time tracking using Online Time Clock, which stands firm against conventional Intranet based software solutions, but as Clockspot is completely web based, it has much more to offer than its Intranet based competitors.

In brief, Clockspot is a Web-based employee time tracking solution that allows managers and administrators to run their businesses efficiently by tracking their employee schedules, work hours, sick days, vacations, holidays using Online Timesheet. It gives a great flexibility to those business owners who usually get their work done on contractual(hourly) basis or have their offices at multiple locations.

Clockspot offers ease and flexibility to the employees by letting them clock In & out from their PC or even their mobile phones. As all the control resides in the hands of manager only, permission grants and other account capabilities can be enabled/disabled by the manager, depending on the specific needs of the employer/company.

The only way by which this Web based tracking can be wrongly exploited by remotely working employees is Proxy clocking. This problem is effectively handled by providing control to managers to decide where employees clock in, from by IP address or by specific computer.

Clockspot also empowers the managers to authenticate clocking sessions by Voice authentication. This feature comes pretty handy for situations where you want a Phone Time Clock for tracking employees such as plumbers, cleaners, etc. This helps tracking all those employees who either don’t have a PC within reach or simply don’t know operating computer.

Some other pros of Clockspot include

• No long term commitments. Month-to-month, Cancel any time service
• Simple and Intuitive UI
• Ease of Access (Via PC and Phone )
• Ability to calculate overtime, tax, tips and bonuses, etc.
• Flexible pricing plan

Clockspot offers a 14 day free trial to all its customers so there’s absolutely zero risk in start using the service right away. In a nutshell, Clockspot is a cost-effective & easy way to track your employee working hours, no matter where they reside or whether they own a computer.

Now that Facebook has grown to well over 350 million users, it’s an uphill task for them to implement even a small policy change to the entire network population. You never know how users will react to the new policies. Nobody can forget the Beacon controversy and now there is another BIG Policy change rolling all across Facebook these days. And this one is tough, really tough to handle(did we hear why ?) Because, it’s about your Privacy folks.

Privacy is something that’s most critical for any Facebook user, as ...]]>

Now that Facebook has grown to well over 350 million users, it’s an uphill task for them to implement even a small policy change to the entire network population. You never know how users will react to the new policies. Nobody can forget the Beacon controversy and now there is another BIG Policy change rolling all across Facebook these days. And this one is tough, really tough to handle(did we hear why ?) Because, it’s about your Privacy folks.

Privacy is something that’s most critical for any Facebook user, as nowadays, folks live their social lives more on the web than in real. And Facebook is now making changes to that.

Is it really for the benefit of the end users ? Is it really to give you more control ? Really ? Have some reality bytes now…

Facebook is making these privacy changes to actually let your content get indexed by Google, Bing, Yahoo and all other search engines around. This way, you are not only making privacy changes to those who are logged-in Facebook users but also to search engine spiders, which will index your personal content, pictures, posts and everything else that can be indexed.

Now simply try to figure out one reason why exposing your private data to search engine spiders is good for you. No, you can’t figure it out because the reason simply doesn’t exist !

So, why Facebook wants to give you more control(as what they say) then ? Because it’s good for Facebook. It’s a way for them to squeeze out more revenues from their network. Opening up to search engine spiders will drive huge amount of traffic to them, eventually converting to more money in their bank.

Now the main problem with Facebook right now is their approach with implementing Privacy changes to its user base. When you get a notification to go through the new changes they’re making to every user’s profile, you’re not really told the hard facts about search engine exposure upfront(they’re deep buried in the terms and conditions you never read).

So any common Facebook user isn’t all that concerned over the changes being made to his profile.

Will this trouble Facebook like Beacon did ? The chances are poor as the changes do not really affect front scenario but the rear one. And later on, the public reaction will not be impulsive or unified.

We have to say that Facebook is doing excellent job on its part…making more $$ for itself.

Finally, the (controversial) JooJoo is here ! The much hyped CrunchPad(now JooJoo) tablet, so-called brainchild of TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington, has opened its floodgates to start taking Pre-orders for their Internet Tablet device.

The company behind this internet tablet, Fusion Garage, is currently in a tussle with TechCrunch, a highly infuential technology blog that brought up the whole idea of an Internet Tablet, some 1.5 years back. TechCrunch named the internet tablet as CrunchPad, and kept updating the media on the progress of the CrunchPad with ...]]>

Finally, the (controversial) JooJoo is here ! The much hyped CrunchPad(now JooJoo) tablet, so-called brainchild of TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington, has opened its floodgates to start taking Pre-orders for their Internet Tablet device.

The company behind this internet tablet, Fusion Garage, is currently in a tussle with TechCrunch, a highly infuential technology blog that brought up the whole idea of an Internet Tablet, some 1.5 years back. TechCrunch named the internet tablet as CrunchPad, and kept updating the media on the progress of the CrunchPad with pictures of the prototypes built, every once in a while.

It was the last day of last month, when all of a sudden, CrunchPad collapsed. And soonafter JooJoo took a fresh lease of life.

The latest update over the entire controversy is that TechCrunch has filed a Federal lawsuit against Fusion Garage, with causes of legal action as Fraud and Deceit, Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unfair Competitition and Violations of the Lanham Act.

As promised by Fusion Garage founder, the official website of JooJoo has started taking Pre-orders now. The pre-orders are currently limited to U.S. only. The cost of the device is $499 with additional $30(optional) for JooJoo Stand(the only accessory with JooJoo). According to the site, it will take 8-10 weeks for them to ship the JooJoo to your doorstep, once pre-ordered.

The device is undoubtedly cool and unique for plenty of reasons. The 12.1” capacitive touchscreen, 9 seconds boot time, staggering UI and HD Video experience are its main attractions.

Now comes the BIG question….Is it worth it  ? Should you pre-order JooJoo ?

Honestly, its a BIG NO from us. We DO NOT recommend any of the crazy freaks out there to go pre-order JooJoo and there are several reasons for it. Here are three major reasons why NOT to buy a JooJoo !

1. As pointed out by TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington in his recent post, Fusion Garage is almost out of funds. They’ve exhausted whatever they had raised this far and they’re suffering from alarming level of debts right now. Now, TechCrunch is a trusted source, except few cases when it screwed up things too badly so there’re reasons to believe them, especially when it’s about their own brainchild, the CrunchPad (now JooJoo).

Now as you’re not getting the device right away(it’s a a pre-ordering) and Fusion Garage gets busted within coming weeks, your money is gone ! There’s no reason putting your hard earned money at such a risk.

2. JooJoo, the company behind it (Fusion Garage) and the founder (Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan) are all under huge controversies at the moment. Lawsuit has been filed against Fusion Garage and JooJoo is being ubiquitously criticized for plenty of reasons by tech fraternity. All of this makes JooJoo, a bad device for pre-ordering, atleast for now.

3. JooJoo is way too costly. We agree, its unique in many regards but that doesn’t justify its cost ($500) at all.

And if you’re still interested in exhausting your $500 for JooJoo, take one last suggestion of ours….Go right here and better donate $500 to Wikipedia. In return, expect some tax deduction and a whole peace of mind.

Before getting onto Chrome extensions directly, lets have a quick look at how Google Chrome evolved itself in the past one and a half years to become a real threat for leading web browsers.

Since the launch of Google Chrome, i have been one of its all time fans and also a loyal Chrome user for over an year now. Although Chrome faced some level of criticism in its early days, i stuck rock hard on Chrome for certain reasons, except once.

After early excitement ...]]>

Before getting onto Chrome extensions directly, lets have a quick look at how Google Chrome evolved itself in the past one and a half years to become a real threat for leading web browsers.

Since the launch of Google Chrome, i have been one of its all time fans and also a loyal Chrome user for over an year now. Although Chrome faced some level of criticism in its early days, i stuck rock hard on Chrome for certain reasons, except once.

After early excitement for Google last year, it did see some decline for a while but then kept rising steadily till date. And this steady growth credit partly goes to Google’s aggressive promotional bandwagon, starting from its own homepage to Orkut, Youtube among other web properties. Google Chrome kept improving and quite soon(100 days from the date of launch), the beta tag was dropped from Google Chrome.

The latest stuff that has completed this Google browser in every sense is Chrome Extensions. In my belief, this is the moment of avalanche for Google Chrome. In coming couple of months, tens of million of users will be making a switch from Firefox and IE to Chrome. Google Chrome for Mac is also out now so Safari is no more safe at all.

As i have experimented with a plenty of Chrome extensions by now,  i have some recommendations for folks out there.

Here are some notable Chrome extensions…Here you go !

Google Mail Checker

This extension is meant to notify you of any new mails hitting your Gmail inbox. The number of unread mails gets displayed on the ‘extension icon’ and updates dynamically as you read the mails. Wouldn’t say that it’s a great utility but as i am active in my Gmail accounts only, i find it helpful. There’s a similar Chrome extension for YahooMail as well but I dumped YahooMail some 4 yrs back so useless for me.

Chromed Bird

It’s a lightweight & deal simple twitter extension for Chrome. If you’re a twittering soul and use(or switching to) Google Chrome as well, you need this ! You might also find Brizzly(I tried and then dumped it) as one of the options to try as well, but my experience wasn’t too good with it. It’s slow and i hate apps that respond slowly(too slow in case of Brizzly).  If you love things simple and useful, go Chromed Bird

Cooliris

This is one Firefox extension that forced me back to Firefox at some point, but only temporarily. And now, i am happy to have it on Chrome. Go get it.

Google Quick Scroll

It is one extension that’s serving as a great utility to me.

In their own words

“After you click on a Google search result, Quick Scroll may appear on the bottom-right corner of the page, showing one or more bits of text from the page that are relevant to your query. Clicking on the text will take you to that part of the page”

Aviary Screen Capture

This is an extension that will serve as a Web based Photo editor for you. If you’re a Photoshop guy then you would find things more comfortable. After editing the photo, you can either save it on you desktop or choose the cloud to save the photos. I see this extension as the closest cloud based alternative to desktop based Adobe Photoshop application. It’s not capable to the height of Photoshop but it stands somewhere atleast. You can try Picnik extension for web based image editing as well

PageRank Display

This will be useful for bloggers and webmasters, to easily keep an eye on the pagerank of various webpages.

Social Networking is an inevitable part of our life today but honestly, it is nothing more than an extension of our Social life onto Web. We prefer connecting to folks who’re real life friends of ours, not strangers.

Our cause of friendship on these social networks is our pre-established real life relations. This is all what Facebook, Myspace, Orkut etc are all about.

Now, it’s time to for you to explore a new social life, purely built around you and everything that’s just about yourself,  in a different, refreshing way altogether. Meet

Social Networking is an inevitable part of our life today but honestly, it is nothing more than an extension of our Social life onto Web. We prefer connecting to folks who’re real life friends of ours, not strangers.

Our cause of friendship on these social networks is our pre-established real life relations. This is all what Facebook, Myspace, Orkut etc are all about.

Now, it’s time to for you to explore a new social life, purely built around you and everything that’s just about yourself,  in a different, refreshing way altogether. Meet Youtego.

Youtego is a Social Networking site that lets you explore and befriend other mates on the site, on the basis of overlapping interests, characteristics, academics, profession etc. This might remind you of Lunch.com, if you’ve heard about it already but the true novelty of Youtego doesn’t lie in Interest based exploration and networking but Self-visualization.

Youtego lets you self-visualize yourself with the use of images. On Youtego, instead of filling out long in-depth forms or answering questions about your interests or passions, you pick pictures from various sources(Flickr, Picasa, Google Images..) or upload it directly, that identifies you, your interests, academics, profession etc. This might not sound that interesting but do it yourself and it won’t take you long to realize how interesting it would turn out to be.

From end user’s perspective, filling out user’s profile feels like a burden at the beginning of any new account at conventional social networks but Youtego reverses the game altogether by making Profile creation, quite a fun actually.

It sparks quite an excitement to even imagine how would a social networking experience be, when everything about you and other mates on that network would purely be symbolized by staggering images.

After you sign up, you get to have six default ‘Tegosets‘(I, I Know, I Can, I Love, My Work, My Education) and you can simply start picking up pictures from available sources and associating them with respective Tegosets. It is all about how you self-visualize and depict it in the form of pictures.

The moment you populate your tegosets with appropriate pictures, you start getting suggestions for matching tegomates, who happen to share some or many traits/characteristics with you. You can then look at their profiles and send them friend request.

You can also create Tego Tours, a basic video using your choosen pictures with a background music and the good part is that you can also share these TegoTours outside Youtego as well. Here’s a TegoTour that i created within my account.

Take a note that you create a Tegotour by using your existing Tegosets only so you got to have some tegosets before you create your first Tegotour. You just need to think of anything that you want to share with Tegomates and outside world  and start creating it by adding appropriate Tegosets within the tour. Putting some ‘description text’ is recommended as it would make things more elaborative for Tegotour viewers.

Take a look at this TegoTour !

Branding terminology such as Tegos, Tegosets, Tegomates, Tegotours might not be very intuitive to new eyeballs but as one gets used to it, there shouldn’t be much problems in understanding their meaning.

Overall, it’s an all-new and innovative way of exploring and building interest oriented social relations. The overall website and UI design is pure visual treat to the end users.