How do you 'whois' a domain? As a Windows User, most probably you would have no option other than using third-party websites like whois.net to query any domain.

But Sysinternal's Mark Russinovich(who is now with Microsoft) created small whois DOS application many years ago.
Just fire up the command prompt, type in
'whois somedomain.com'
and you'll see the business,administrative and technical contacts with informations such as email and phone number as well.

You can download 'whois' from the link below:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897435.aspx
I've almost all applications made by Mark Russinovich stuffed into one USB flash drive and I use it when necessary. It's like a swissknife to troubleshoot most of the Windows PC problems. I recommend have a read before using those tools. It's simple to understand.

And the fun part is, you'll leave your client dazed with what you did using all those command prompts typing. They'll give you a look as if you are an uber geek.

Many many thanks to Mark for his wonderful programming, and if you are a computer nerd like me, you can get almost all of his wonderful tools in one simple download. They named it Sysinternal Suites.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.aspx

What you'll get in this 12 MB package are :

AccessChk AccessEnum AdExplorer AdRestore Autologon Autoruns BgInfo CacheSet ClockRes Contig Coreinfo Ctrl2Cap DebugView Desktops Disk2vhd DiskExt DiskMon DiskView Disk Usage (DU) EFSDump Handle Hex2dec

Junction LDMDump ListDLLs LiveKd LoadOrder LogonSessions NTFSInfo PageDefrag PendMoves PipeList PortMon ProcDump Process Explorer Process Monitor ProcFeatures PsExec PsFile PsGetSid PsInfo PsKill PsList PsLoggedOn

PsLogList PsPasswd PsService PsShutdown PsSuspend RAMMap RegDelNull RegJump RootkitRevealer SDelete ShareEnum ShellRunas SigCheck Streams Strings Sync TCPView VMMap VolumeID WhoIs WinObj ZoomIt

One more thing, I've tested it and works on Windows XP and above. I'm on Windows 7 professional edition. These tools are gems to own.

Thank you for reading my post.

Make free calls using Gmail anywhere in US and Canada. This is the latest update from Google team. It took me few seconds to set it up and to do test call on my own cellular phone. No more hassles of boring installation and audio/video setup wizard.


Google has been delivering outstanding services so far. Few of it's projects were big flop in the past but whatsoever, this Google phone service integration from inside Gmail is a smart move.

You can still do all those basic free things like Gmail-2-Gmail user video/text chatting for communication atop the email service. In addition to that, this newly added phone service has expanded the scope. One can call any phones in the world. They don't have to have computer to receive calls. I think Google is changing slightly the concept of PC-2-phone services. The most important thing while using Google phone service from Gmail is the ease of use.

Read official blog note on this service here

Is it time to say goodbye to other fishes like skype, magicjack???
Time will tell us. May be Google could be sued upon. Just my random thought, I don't know.

Thank you for reading my post.

Nintendo DS revolutionized the way people played games. It topped the chart as the best selling among the portable handheld gaming devices. With it's first generation Nintendo DS announced on November 13,2003 due for release the following year, it created hype and so far delivered it. After it's huge success, Nintendo released the Nintendo DS lite, a redesign on March 2, 2006. It was slimmer and brighter than it's predecessor with added features. Then on October 2,2008, Nintendo came up with another version of Nintendo DS known as Nintendo DSi. Few Unique things about it was two cameras and DSi shops for DSiwares. And not so long ago, on October 29, 2009, they announced Nintendo DSi XL which was also sold as Nintendo DSi LL in Japan. The most intriguing feature of this particular model was massive screen. It packed in all the improved features from it's older models but with significant huge screen and audio capability. I happen to own two models on my possession; Nintendo DS Lite and DS XL. So far I've to admit I'm happy with my buy.

Now, Nintendo 3DS is the latest incarnation of Nintendo DS. They announced it on March 23rd, 2010 in Japan. After few months, on June they demoed the prototype how it would look and feel at E3 Expo. It drew lot of attention and lately it's on many gamer's waiting list. This new gaming handheld will bring all the 3D games into your pocket. Unlike old 3D roaming in some of DS games, this new Nintendo 3DS will have totally new 3D dimension to experience. Let me list few of those unique features than it's predecessors:

• 3-D effects without using 3D glasses
• 4" screens with 800 x 240 resolution depth, able to produce a stereoscopic three-dimensional
• Added Analog sticks,stable Wi-Fi support, built-in vibration and extended battery life.
• Slightly jacked up 0.3 megapixel camera
• 3D movie playability

Alright, these are some of the unique features I've noted so far. As you can see, the screen is gonna look much crispier than before. Battery life is said to be go more than 17 hours on low bright settings.


My HTC phone features gyroscope. It keeps up with my orientation while handling it, kind of motion sensor. Similar feature can be found in Nintendo 3DS. It's more focused towards user control this time. It's dynamic in a sense it even lets you adjusts the intensity of the 3D effect depth. So, guys you can set your own preferences. It also has a round nub analog input called the 'Slide Pad', an accelerometer. I'm sure some games will utilize these features in full. I was kind of tired of using 4 ways directional keys and this 'slide Pad' will definitely gonna ease up while playing games. Especially useful for combo moves in fighting games.


If you've been envying 3D console games, Nintendo 3Ds is gonna end that soon with what I've seen and I strongly believe that all those 3D titles like Grand Theft Auto,Metal Gear Solid,etc will soon be inside our pocket. I still wish I could play games like GTA 4 in real 3D on my Nintendo DS, not the one I've been playing like ChinaTown wars from top isometric angle view. It simply sucks like I'm playing 90's games. During the keynote presentation, Nintendo chief promised a huge number of real 3D titles coming up on its way.

Impatiently, I'm waiting for Nintendo 3Ds due to release next year on March 2011. I got my last Nintendo DS XL for approx $180. The estimated price for this new Nintendo 3DS is between $199 to $299.

Nintendo if you are reading this, I've a suggestion for you (Sneakingly, companies are as part of a growing trend recently looking towards what bloggers are saying about their products.), get your next Nintendo DS prototype up with TV out option. Most probably, HDMI or any sort of connectivity to 3D TV/HD TV would be stepping up into future. It's time to marginalize and converge. We'd be ready to pay little up for that extra added feature. You could still make profits if you are fearing loss in sales on your other consoles Or may be you guys are already working on it Or may you are not yet ready for that.

Thanks for reading my post.

Check the video below from IGN crew sharing their Nintendo 3DS hands-on experience:






Pre-order some of these Nintendo 3Ds games:

Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3DS

Contra 3DS

Also,
Click this link for Official Nintendo 3DS news and updates:

Few 3DS game list developed / under-development:

• DJ Hero 3D

AQ Interactive

• Cubic ninja

Atlus

• Shin Megami Tensei
• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona
• Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor

Capcom

• Resident Evil Revelations
• Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition (name not final)

EA

• EA FIFA Soccer
• Madden NFL
• The Sims 3

Gameloft

• Asphalt DS

Harmonix

• Music Game

Hudson Soft

• Bomberman franchise
• Deca Sports franchise
• Kororinpa franchise

Konami

• Baseball franchise
• Contra franchise
• Frogger franchise
• Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D "The Naked Sample"
• Pro Evolution Soccer franchise / Winning Eleven franchise

Level-5

• Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle (name not final)

Majesco Entertainment

• BloodRayne: The Shroud
• A Boy and His Blob
• Face Racers: Photo Finish
• Lion's Pride: Adventures on the Serengeti
• Martha Stewart
• WonderWorld Amusement Park

Marvelous

• Bokujyoumonogatari (Harvest Moon) 3D (name not final)

Namco

• Dragon Ball franchise (name not final)
• Gundam franchise (name not final)
• PAC-MANTM & GALAGATM (name not final)
• Ridge Racer (name not final)
• Super Robot franchise (name not final)

Nintendo

• Animal Crossing
• Kid Icarus: Uprising
• Mario Kart
• nintendogs + cats
• Paper Mario
• PilotWings Resort
• Star Fox 64 3D
• Steel Diver

Rocket

• Crash-City GP
• VS-robo

Sega

• Sonic (name not final)
• Super Monkey Ball (name not final)

Square Enix

• CODENAME: Chocobo Racing
• 3D Dragon Quest franchise
• Final Fantasy franchise
• Kingdom Hearts franchise

Take-Two Interactive

• Carnival Games franchise

Tecmo Koei

• Dead or Alive 3D (name not final)
• Dynasty Warriors (name not final)
• Ninja Gaiden (name not final)
• Samurai Warriors 3D (name not final)

TOMY

• Lovely Lisa 3D
• Naruto Shippuden Action

THQ

• de Blob 2
• Kung Fu Panda
• Kaboom of Doom
• Marvel Super Hero Squad
• Infinity Gauntlet
• The Penguins of Madagascar
• Puss N Boots
• Saints Row: Drive-By

Ubisoft

• Assassin's Creed: Lost Legacy
• Battle of Giants: Dinosaur Strike
• Driver Renegade Hollywood 61 (name not final)
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory

Warner Bros

• Batman franchise
• LEGO franchise

If you want to check their updates, here is their blog http://imbp-mars500.livejournal.com/

Till now, there is no manned landing on Mars. And, 2/3 of the launches were failure. One guided robot Spirit is still stuck on the surface of Mars. A lot of things in Mars have puzzled our scientists and they still don't know the reasons why those spacecrafts launched from Earth stopped working just when they're ready to enter and land on Mar's atmosphere.

Scientists believe there was once life in Mars. But we just don't know how to get there to do more researches. If we were to launch manned spacecraft to the Mars, it'd take roughly six months of time to reach Mars based on current rocket speed. And, things would start from there if it is successful.

Back to reality, this Mars-500 experiment is just the beginning of that manned Mars landing project.

Also, I found one interesting fact on this little boy called 'Boriska' from somewhere in Russia. He claims to be from Mars. You need to see the whole interview before I elaborate any more.
Here is the video(below):



















Here is a well written article on Mar's landing if you are further interested.

Freshlyground, a South African band who performed together with Shakira in 2010 Fifa World Cup, if I've to comment in one word is simply scrumptious. You just can't get enough.
I loved every songs in their bucket.


For more information on the band, here is the wiki. 
Be my love when the fire is low, is such  a beautiful song, I want to share it through my blog.


For all humming birds, lyrics is pasted below.

Chorus 2x
Be my love when the fire is low
When the fire is low, when the fire

Verse 1
Have a wonderful time, and don't forget to write to me
Be like the swallows and remember home as a loving tree
I feel silence is best enjoyed with an open heart beating next to you
But for now be my darling and whisper your words to the rolling moon

Chorus 2x
Be my love when the fire is low
When the fire is low, when the fire

Verse 2
Bear in mind the words of strangers may lead you astray for everything you knew was true
Every corner of tomorrow may bring the sorrow hiding in the blue
Bur for now hide your worries in the very heart of the rolling moon


Repeat Chorus 2x

Verse 3
Have a wonderful time, and don't forget to write to me
Be like the swallows and remember home as a loving tree
Yes, I have found feel silence is best enjoyed with an open heart beating next to you
But for now be my darling and whisper your words to the rolling moon

Repeat Chorus 2x till fade

If you loved them singing, buy their album

Before I jump into VPS hosting and start blabbering on it, let me tell you something about how the web hosting business kicked off. Before DOT COM fever, it was only those few fortunate businesses and corporate offices who acquired domains/hosting for exposure. For average site goers, it was almost like an out of reality stuff to achieve limited by the boundary of their budget. The humongous pricing was easy enough to ward off the thoughts of having one's page online.

During and after the dot com boom, Internet has become affordable for everyone. Even average Joe could buy a domain and web host services at very affordable price. With the advent of faster internet services, every individual started to set up his/her own personal pages. Slowly, small businesses realized it's potentials and jumped on the dot com train. It was already a status symbol for huge companies to have an online presence. So, this boom resulted birth to tripling numbers of websites being published every few seconds. Most of these huge number of professional sites started their internet sites on shared hosting.

Shared hosting is a platform where single resources are utilized by multiple users. In this scenario, the traffic and activities of other users will adversely affect one's operation. It was like one room populated with so many people. So, this kind of shared web hosting has very limited features and lack flexibility.

And then to meet growing need of these particular group who needed stable and rock-solid performance during it's peak hours, a concept of dedicated server was born and they were offered with the powerful features. Dedicated hosting offers the entire server at your service. One can have full control over the server including the choice of OS,hardware etc. Server dependant commands can be issued as per requirement. To lease these kind of server housed in data centers are still beyond the reach of people with normal pay. It's still too expensive.



As Internet grew (I know it's still growing), new technology and concepts emerged. With the social network sites coming into the scene, many writers and internet users turned themselves to online journal writers called blogger. Many of these bloggers now are so professional that they lure millions of hits in a month. Limited shared hosting couldn't handle this influx of visitors.  They needed to find an effective solution that bridges the gap between the limitations of shared hosting and the flexibility of dedicated server hosting. This is where VPS(Virtual Private Server) hosting is born.

Now is the generation of VPS hosting. What makes VPS hosting so popular is that it provides control at a level similar to a dedicated server at a price not too far from affordable shared hosting. The concept of virtualisation is not new and it's now global.If you've ever tried to use any virtualization software to emulate different OS on top of your current running OS, then you would realize how efficient working this way is. Likewise, a VPS is created by virtualization software which partitions a single physical server to form multiple servers within it.  Each virtual server is completely independent of its neighbors and functions like an actual single entity networked server. It cuts off all the limitations of shared hosting and yet it's so affordable. That's the beauty of VPS hosting.  

Thanks for reading my post.

One fine morning you wake up, as usual you check your online banking and to your dismay, all you see in your account balances is zero 000000. How would you feel? Over 3000 account holders in UK (United Kingdom, Britain) felt ground slipping away from their feet when they figured this out. This news was reported yesterday on the cloud. I'm  not here to report the same news.



How do you get infected with malwares?
All these brilliant minds at dirty works create malwares and malicious scripts. One report says these people even pay big chunks out of their pocket to put their malicious ads on high traffic popular sites. Their Ad is the host of all the malwares/ill programs. Visitors click those Ads or view them in some manner and that's how they transfer the trojans into the system. Malwares are not often as destructive as virus. They sneak attack and work behind the curtain unnoticed. 
There are assumptions that some legitimate bank sites were hosting these malwares through the Ads they're serving. As soon as someone enters their log in infos, it gets sent to some remote servers.

How to protect yourself from trojans and malwares? 
Some news sites reported that all the major security softwares couldn't detect money stealing trojan named 'Zeus'. More and more attacks are getting sophisticated and complicated to understand for antivirus softwares. To rely solely on Antvirus softwares for all your computer security has become mere stupidity. You need to use your own intelligence and common sense also care about how you interact with your computer.

1. Try to use safe browsers esp Firefox. Internet Explorer easily allows you to run activX or some other web app without user's consent.  It takes great deal of knowledge and time to tame IE the way you want.

2. If you are already paying yearly subscription fees for your computer security softwares just because they've promised your safe landing on any online sites. You are being misinformed. Try anti malware softwares like Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Don't be relaxed on Windows Firewall. Go ahead and load your system with some rock solid firewall stuff like COMODO firewall. Antivirus software should be as effective as ESET's NOD32.

3. Notice some pop-ups in the middle out of no where asking you for some 'YES' 'No' click. Click nowhere but cross [X] at the top right corner of the window. Sometimes their 'NO' is also 'YES'. 

4. Frequently update your security softwares and make a habit of scanning your computer on weekly basis. I personally and manually scan for malwares because these are the culprits which go unnoticed from the Antivirus's radar. So, manual scanning and removal is the must.

5. Don't open up any email attachments esp with .exe or .zip extension. If you are sent low res high MB pictures, don't download it either. If it seems your friend has sent something unsual with attachment through email , confirm it either by calling them or asking them through any other means. Don't click any links on the email asking you for any account updates or stuff like that.

6.And guys, I urge you to use Sandbox for all your surfing needs. Here is what I suggest. Load your system with the best security softwares. Then install Sandbox software. You visit news site, whatever sites you like that don't need log in informations inside the Sandbox software and do your regular bank login, email login outside the Sandbox. This is becoming the only effective solution to fight those trojans at the moment with all things around. 

Go for easy to use Sandboxie. Visit their site and you'll get an idea on what really a Sandbox is.

How to remove malwares/trojans like Zeus or it's any variant??
I strongly insist you to use Malwarebytes Anti-Malware  , scan multiple times and remove all the trojans and it's traces. This is one of the effective program I've found so far. There is a limited freeware version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware too.

Thank you for reading my post.

Ignore the words below but
if you like to buy these meroguff recommended softwares, I've a link below to buy them.

Internet age students, they have no shame in copying-pasting materials off the internet without proper reference and labeling it under their own names for their projects. Internet as known as the sea of information is growing every second but there is a deep concern among intellects when people uses those information ditto without giving proper credentials. On the other hand, plagiarism is killing creativity or say, they are not using their brain to create an article of their own. It takes great deal of time and thinking to create one and this generation now is getting lazy and careless .



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