What does ‘Unlimited Broadband’ really mean?

View Full Album

 

 

Major Indian Broadband market players viz. Airtel,  TataIndicom and Reliance now have an asterisk (*) [Conditions apply] on their unlimited Broadband plans. Following the metered broadband trend from International players, they are also providing unlimited Broadband attached with “Fair Usage Policy“  [..lol...]

Under this scheme if you violate their policy, your speed may be reduced to half or you have to pay some more bucks. Worse, they may terminate your connection.

 

There are a lot of threads you can find on Broadband forums regarding this step, so be aware and use the BB carefully respective to your ISP  .

 

You are not going to get all that you are paying for. [Unfair policy]

Check what unlimited means

 

TataIndicom Unlimited Means

Speed                 Limit
64 kbps               5GB
128 kbps            20GB
256 kbps            45GB
384 kbps            70GB
256 kbps            80GB

If you go beyond your limit, you will get a call from Tata Customer Care ( ) and they will suggest you to reduce the usage or upgrade to a higher plan. If not, they will terminate your broadband connection.

 

Source ( TCISL Fair Usage Policy )

Airtel Unlimited Broadband Means

Speed               Limit
128 kbps          10GB
256 kbps          15GB
384 kbps          20GB
256 kbps           25GB

 

If you cross this Fair Limit ;)  your speed will be reduced to half for rest of  month with out any intimation.

 

Source ( Airtel Fair Usage Policy )

 

Check the Reliance unlimited broadband features also

So, what do you think… unlimited means ???

Sources: ( TCISL Fair Usage Policy & Airtel Fair Usage Policy)

How to Configure Hotmail POP3 Access in Outlook

Configuring Hotmail in Outlook is very simple and follows the same process of adding a new POP3 account. If you are already using Outlook, go to Tools-> Account Settings.

In the new account settings, select Internet Email which connects to email account using POP or IMAP access.

In the next step, add your account details like email ID, name, password and server information.

POP server: pop3.live.com

(Port 995)
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com
Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live
SMTP server: smtp.live.com

(Port 25 or 587)
Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes

Click on More settings button and this will open advanced settings. In the Outgoing server tab, select the box against “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication”.

Next select the advanced tab and enter the outgoing and incoming server ports as mentioned above.

Once you have entered all the settings, Outlook will connect to Hotmail server and fetch all you email using POP3 access.

Amazing Dock Application for Windows- XWindows

here is another amazing dock application which looks very similar to Mac OSX dock. XWindows

is the newest free Windows Vista and XP program of the class Application Launcher and Desktop Organizer. It even works great with Windows 7. XWindows gives better UI experience than most of the other dock applications for Windows. It allows you to view the docs as 2D or 3D and also has the option to add new skins.

 

 

 

XWindows option panel has lots of customizations like size of icons, opacity, positions etc. XWindows Dock does not require a lot of resources and its optimized for memory usage.

 

 

 

 

Features of XWindows;

• Opacity and blur of reflections.
• Panel opacity, hiding and showing time
• Space between panel and screen border.
• Use or create your own skins for 2D or 3D dock.
• Shows indicators of running applications.
• New skin format, now a skin can be created even without specifying some PNG files.

Download XWindows Dock  [Via]

Internet Privacy Eraser

Every time you use Internet for various purposes, the browser records your Internet activities like sites visited, images opened and other information. Internet Privacy Eraser

is a free tool to completely erase the Internet browsing history and can easily protect your privacy and keep your surfing private with a single click. Internet Privacy Eraser allows you to erase common Internet and computing tracks, including browser cache, cookies, visited websites, typed URLs, recent documents, index.dat files and more.

You can selectively clean the Internet history of applications or Internet browsers. For each browser, you can select options which you would like to clean. You can even add a custom list of application whose history needs to be cleaned.

You can also easily erase the tracks of up to 100 popular applications. It also includes an option to overwrite deleted data multiple times, so it cannot be easily recovered at any point. There is also a cookie cleaning feature which allows you to specify which cookies to keep, so that you don’t erase your important login cookies. You also can schedule automatic erasing for any time you like.

Another interesting feature is the Boss key which when pressed will hide all your browsers. This key can be configured from the settings menu.

It also features a cookies manager enables you to decide which cookies to keep and which to erase. Overall, Internet Privacy Eraser is a good application to clear the trace of all Internet activities.

Download Internet Privacy Eraser

30+ Free Temporary and Disposable Email Services

Temporary or disposable free email services are those which provide you give you a temporary email ID and inbox which is totally spam free and needs no registration or sign up. This is very much useful if you want to get some content from forums where registration is a needed. You can use the temporary email ID to register. Most of the temporary email IDs have very less expire time. So here is a list of top 31 temporary and disposable email service.

1. GuerillaMail provides you with a temporary inbox for a period of 15 minutes.

2. TemporaryInbox is yet another simple and easy to use temporary email service that gives you an email address in different formats

3. Mailinator is one of the top rated disposable email services that gives you a temporary mailbox.

4. MyTrashMail is another pretty good temporary mail service

5. SpamGourmet is yet another service which provides you with a temporary email addresses.

6. Mint Email – provides with a temporary disposable email address with a validity of four hours and also has automatic email verification

7. YOPMail – YOPMail is a different kind of disposable email service, where you can create email addresses without even visiting the site, simply use username@yopmail.com. Only thing to note is that the username should be unique as anyone can see the mails received to the particular username.

8. NowMyMail – NowMyMail is another service which will allow you to create temporary disposable email addresses.

9. MailExpire is a disposable email service with a longer expire time ranging from 12 hours expiry to as long as 3 months.

10. MailEater gives you a free temporary email inbox in the format username@MailEater.com

11. Jetable allows you to set the expire time of your temporary inbox and also allows you to forward the emails in the temporary inbox to the permanent address. They even have Firefox addon

12. SpamBox gives you a temporary email address in the format e.g. username@spambox.us and also allows users to set the expire period of your inbox

13. DontReg is another temporary email service which is faster and safer

14. TempEmail aims to give you a fast, anonymous yet secure temporary email inbox

15. PookMail is a email inbox service that gives an email address in the format e.g. username@pookmail.com

16. SpamFree24 is another free temporary email service provider

17. Skeefmaillets you pick a temporary address. You can also choose a random address instead of picking one yourselves.

18. SpamHole provides you a temporary email which has a validity of 2 hour.

19. 10MinuteMail generates a temporary email for 10 minutes

20. TempoMail is another temporary email inbox services that give you spam-free mailbox

21. KasMail provides with temporary email ID which requires registration and allows up to 25 aliases.

22. MailCatch - MailCatch is another disposable email service that allows you to create temporary disposable mailboxes.

23. SpamMotel is another service which requires registration and provides mail forwarding, mail can be accessed through desktop e-mail clients,

24. GreenSlothis another service which does not requires any registration, but it is a receive-only e-mail and expires automatically after a week

25. AnonInbox requires no registration and is easy and simple to use.

26. Spam.la is a disposable email service which requires no registration

27. TempEmail is another free temporary and disposable email service provider

28. EmailZorz lets you make an address like username@emailzorz.com. There are also a some variations to the domain like you can use emailrama.com , emailzorz.com, e-mailzorz.com and mailzorz.com

29. Email Bugmenot

Another good disposable email service where emails are auto deleted after 24 hours.

30. Lite drop

Provides a disposable e-mail addresses which is set to expire after 60 Minutes.

31. MeltMail

is another service which provides with the option to select the expire time. You can chose from 3h, 6h, 12h and 24h.

There are many more services which provides temporary and disposable email IDs. If your favorite ones are not written, do share it here with the features.

Monitor and Remove Autorun from USB Drives

Most of the time, spreading of viruses can happen due to the autorun.inf file which executes programs automatically from USB drives. AutoRunExterminator

is a free utility which can monitor all drives and prevent autorun.inf file from being executing itself. This application monitors all logical drives (from C: to Z) looking for the file “autorun.inf” and if it finds a file with this name in the root of any drive, will exclude it.

This application will not disable autorun from CD/DVD drive as it is not writable. The utility runs from the Windows system tray and monitors all drives. You can also add the application to the start up folder of Windows.

The AutoRunExterminator shows in your window how many files “autorun.inf” were found and how many were excluded. The application is tested on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The application needs Microsoft .Net framework 2.0 for working.

Download AutoRunExterminator

Webcam Recorder for Yahoo Messenger

Record webcam audio and video while chatting.

Webcam Recorder records webcams to AVI files and watch them whenever you want. Work with AOL Instant Messenger. Audio can be recorded from any source. With Webcam Recorder you can replay some of your favorite moments. Webcam Recorder can record anything which can be displayed on your screen - webcams, streaming video, video chat and instant messaging software.
Webcam Recorder is the easiest and fastest way to record Yahoo! Messenger webcam of your chat partner to the hard disk for replay in future.

Here are some key features of "EatCam Webcam Recorder for Yahoo Messenger":
· Work with Yahoo! Messenger that supports the Webcam feature, including Windows Live Messenger .
· Export of recorded streams to AVI format.
· Record both audio and video streams.
· Audio can be recorded from any source, including microphone, line-in, or speakers.
· Real time compress the webcam streams so to make the output media files smaller and not occupy too much disk space.
· Easy to record and playback.

Requirements:
· Pentium-II 450 MHz or a faster processor
· 64MB of RAM
· 800 x 600 screen resolution with 256 colors

 

DOWNLOAD
External Mirror 1 [EXE]

Me and My Social (Networking) Life

I use social networking sites like almost anyone else. But slowly I’ve come to realize how much it has changed me as a person.

I can no longer talk about my feelings to anyone. It is my profile status. I actually revel in the joy of the number of comments I get for each status update. And I am depressed when no one cares about my state of mind.

Why is it necessary to announce to the whole world that I had dinner at a long lost relative’s place yesterday? I complain about this, yet I find myself asking whether my friend enjoyed the dinner.

If I am depressed, I want everyone to know. Everyone consoles me and asks what happened. I pour my heart out into another status update.

It is easier for me to message a friend Happy Birthday or write on her/his wall. Just for being so impersonal, I get my thank you as a status update on her/his behalf - ‘So and so: Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes.’ Of course, if that is how much you care about me, this is how much I care about you.

A friend of someone I know passes away. His status update reads: ‘Still in shock. May your soul rest in peace.’

I gauge my popularity by the number of photographs and notes I am tagged in. It matters more when someone comments about me in the photograph. It hurts me when I haven’t been mentioned.

I hate what it has done to me. I have lost feeling and emotion for people. I cannot look anyone in the eye and tell them about my feelings. I find it so much easier to write in on their wall.

The point is, social networking sites have made my life most impersonal and inhuman. I feel like I am connected to the world only by means of these. I feel like I don’t have a life beyond it. But what I don’t realize is that I have destroyed all of my life beyond this. It is only my doing. I didn’t know where to stop. I went on ahead, wearing my emotions, not on my sleeve, but on my profile status. Everyone knows what’s happening in my life, and no one cares.

I want to give it up. I want to maintain relations with only people who matter. I don’t want to make new friends online. I want to make real friends out in the real world. I want to expand my network by being myself. I want to meet new people through me. I want to be the reason for my happiness and unhappiness. I don’t want to credit the same to some website online.

Ironically, I am complaining about the internet to the internet. I really am trapped in this world wide web. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it…

Five Best Image Editing Tools

 

Long gone are the days where snapshots came back from the photo lab and disappeared into albums and shoe boxes. Now, digital photos are tweaked, adjusted, and remixed in ways their analog counterparts couldn't imagine.

Photo by NoiceCollusion.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite image editing tool. The votes have been tallied and now we're back with the top five contenders for the crown of Best Image Editor.

 

 

 

Picasa (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)

Picasa is the kind of application that geeks love because it's so simple and effective and non-geeks love because they usually don't have the time or inclination to get bogged down in the more technical aspects of digital photography. If your tech un-savvy mom or dad emailed you tomorrow and said she or he needed an easy-to-use program for organizing and editing photos, you'd likely send them to download Picasa. The built in editor is more than robust enough for most casual users and includes basic color correction, cropping, and a variety of special effects—the majority of which manage to avoid being cheesy. Picasa isn't a tool for deep and detailed editing, but it's extremely easy to use for the kind of quick crop and correct editing most digital camera owners need.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GIMP (Windows/Mac/*nix, Free)

GIMP has long been toted as the open-source competitor to Adobe Photoshop. Many people are quick to point out GIMP's shortcomings, claiming it isn't a true Photoshop replacement, but in the process they overlook what GIMP has accomplished. Without the extremely polished and commercially driven Photoshop to stand against, GIMP is almost entirely unrivaled in sophistication. Color correction, channel mixing, advanced cloning, paths, and layered compositions are all part of the GIMP package. There is very little the average Photoshop user does that can't be done in GIMP, and if you're not working for a company footing the bill for Photoshop, the free-as-in-beer price tag looks mighty fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adobe Photoshop (Windows/Mac, $699)

Photoshop has achieved such status in the design community and such widespread recognition by the general public that even non-designers recognize what someone is saying when they exclaim, "That's photoshopped!" Many of the techniques and methods that are standard across photo editing software were pioneered in Photoshop, like layers, slices, and image correcting macros and filters. On its own Photoshop is a titan of photo editing power, but thanks to a nearly complete dominance in the graphic editing industry, there are entire companies devoted to creating plugins for it. When it comes to manipulating images, if you can't do it in Photoshop, there's a strong chance you won't be able to do it at all. Photo by HVarga.

 

 

 

 

 

Paint.net (Windows, Free)

Paint.net was originally the senior project of some computer science students at Washington State University, taken on under the mentorship of Microsoft. The project exceeded expectations and has been in development now for 6 years. Over the years it has grown to include layer-based composition, blending, and support for plugins—the majority of which are designed by an active support community. The interface of Paint.net is easy to pick up, and an unlimited undo function makes correcting your learning-curve mishaps a snap—making Paint.net a favorite among Windows users looking for a no-nonsense (yet powerful) image editor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adobe Lightroom (Windows/Mac, $299)

Lightroom is on the same branch of the editing family tree as Picasa: a hybrid of an organizational tool and a photo editor. Unlike its big brother Photoshop, Lightroom wasn't designed to be a detailed pixel-by-pixel editing tool. Lightroom focuses on being a digital darkroom for modern photographers, allowing them to quickly make the corrections necessary to their workflows. Lightroom excels at batch work and advanced color balance corrections; photographers can even tether their cameras to their computers with Lightroom integrating directly into their editing workflow. Photoshop might be the appropriate tool for giving a single image a deep and intense workover, but Lightroom is the tool you call on when you have a huge batch of images from a photoshoot that need to be cropped, corrected, and made print ready as soon as possible.

Check Username Availability at Multiple Social Networks

Namechk is a new web service which checks the availability of username in popular social networking and other web services. This service checks if your desired username or url is still available at dozens of popular Social Networking and Social Bookmarking websites. The advantage of using this is that you can maintain a single username in most of the networks where it is still available.

 

One thing good about the service is that results are very fast and loads quickly. All you need to do is to enter the desired username and click chk button. The service displays the results pretty quickly as to whether the name is taken (shown in red color) or available (shown in green color).

Namechk searches for the usernames in 84 social networking and bookmarking sites. It covers almost all the popular sites and the search result is very quick.

Try NameChk [Via Webware]