Windows Phone App Porting Challenge

Posted by & filed under Featured, Microsoft, Smartphone, Tech Flush.

Microsoft had launched Porting Challenge to attract developers for porting their popular phoneGap applications from other mobile platforms to windows phone 8, The main criteria for applying is that the developer must have created an application using Apache Cordova (aka PhoneGap) and the app must be published in any of the app store for download.

clip_image002_thumb_43F15E0B

Contest starts on 20th May 2013 and the app must be submitted on or before 30th June 2013,Winners will be announced at PhoneGap Day event on 19th July 2013, Selected by a team which contains members from Microsoft, Adobe PhoneGap team and other industry experts based on the apps which are innovative, original, Easy to use and visual appearing.

PRIZES

Grand Prize: A prize package including

A Nokia Lumia Windows 8 Phone. Approximate Retail Value, ARV, US$300

A Microsoft Surface Pro with a Type Keyboard. Approximate Retail Value, ARV, US$1,130

(17) Runner-up:

A Nokia Lumia Windows 8 Phone.

Resources for developing PhoneGap apps using visual Studio will be given at

http://www.phonegapwpchallenge.com/Home/Resources

 

Source: Microsoft

Single-Pixel Detectors – Future of 3D Imaging

Posted by & filed under Research, Social, Web.

Researchers from University of Glasgow’s finds a new way for capturing 3D image of objects in much more affordable technology, they use a  technique called ghost imaging or 3D Computational imaging to process the captured images. Single Pixel detectors use only Single Pixel rather than millions of pixels used in digital camera detectors.

media_277940_en

They are using four single-pixel detectors to capture the image from data projector in the form of shadows, Using “shape from shade” technique images from four detectors are merged to form a 3D image and these detectors are capable of capturing wavelength from far beyond the current digital cameras from x-ray to Terahertz. Planning about the commercial version of this product is ongoing   because of its wide usability in geography and medical areas.

media_277939_en

 

Source :  University of Glasgow

ISRO to launch Independent Regional Navigation Satellite System

Posted by & filed under India, Security, Web.

India ready to launch Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS-1) on 12 June, it’s an independent regional navigation satellite system designed by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization)  to provide accurate real-time Position like GPS(Global Positioning System) with 24×7 service availability under all-weather conditions and provides position accuracy better than 10m over India and region extending about 1500 kms.

sat

INRSS will made India less dependent on foreign technologies, it provides two basic services such as Standard Positioning Service (SPS) for common civilian users and Restricted Service (RS) for special authorized users.

satl

The IRNSS architecture is made up of three main elements Space segment, Ground segment and User segment. It consists of seven satellites. Three Satellites will be placed in the Geostationary Equatorial orbit (GEO at 34 deg East, 83 deg East & 131.5 deg East) and two satellites each will be placed in the Geosynchronous orbit (GSO) with equator crossing at 55 deg East and 111.5 deg East and an inclination of 29 deg. Two spare satellites are also planned. These satellites are specially configured for navigation and the navigation software is developed at ISRO Satellite Centre.

 

SOURCE: ISRO

Android gets its own Developing Environment from Google

Posted by & filed under Android, Featured, Google.

Unlike IOS and Windows Phone, Android didn’t have its own developing Environment but eclipse fill that space for Android Developers, Now at Google I/O (annual developer-focused conference) Google released its Free and open source IDE  Android Studio based on IntelliJ IDEA (jetbrains) .

 

 

It uses a new build system that’s supports a larger development environment based on Gradle that provides flexibility, customized build flavors,  Identify bugs more quickly, Dependency resolution and much more.

 

 

 

 

Android Studio comes with some great features like Powerful code Editing, Smoother and richer GUI and Easy access to Google services within Android Tools and it adds direct support to Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) From Ide

 

 

 

To ease android fragmentation problem for developers it supports quick Switching between different screen layouts and screen sizes between phones to tablets.

 

 

It’s not an immediate replacement for eclipse now it has been released in EARLY ACCESS PREVIEW only and Google has provided Caution about using this Ide in android developer’s site We expect that Android Studio will replace current IDE’s and become default Development environment for Android developers.

 

Download Android Studio from this link.

 

 

Anna University Website Compromised By Hackers!

Posted by & filed under Security.

It looks like Anna University official website (http://annauniv.edu/) was compromised by hackers and now acts as a carrier for malicious malware planted by them. “Google Safe Browsing” marked Anna University webpage as harmful to the viewers’ computer and recommends them to stay away from the site. Even Google search gives a warning reading “This site may harm your computer” as shown in the below image.

anna university hacked

Google identifies a site as harmful when they find any malicious software (malware) being downloaded and installed from that site to the user computer without user knowledge. Malicious scripts, .htaccess redirects and hidden frames which are commonly found on websites that were compromised by hackers are also the factors that help Google to decide if a site is harmful. Here chances are that the annauniv.edu might have been compromised through a security hole, like outdated software or plugins, stolen passwords, or insecure permissions. Even using an infected PC to update the website could have caused the site to become infected.

According to Google safe browsing, there is an exploit (malware) found on the website over the past 90 days (until January 11, 2013) in around five webpage and the infection was spread even into annauniv.ac.in. It is unfortunate for Anna University webmasters as they need to take the site offline for a while to locate and remove the malware or even they might be needed to clear the entire infected server and re-upload the site entirely to ensure the safety of the viewers and their own server.

TNPSC CSSE-1 (TNPSC GROUP 2) ENGLISH & TAMIL ANSWER KEY DOWNLOAD

Posted by & filed under Jobs & Careers.

Download answer keys for both English and Tamil TNPSC CSSE – 1 (TNPSC GROUP II) exam papers here below.

TamilNadu Public Service commission (TNPSC) conducted group – II examination on 4th November 2012 and released the answer key lately. You can view/download the answer key from below or directly from TNPSC website itself.


04_11_2012_GT_GK_NEW
04_11_2012_GT_GK_NEW

U.K Ministry Of Defence Website Hacked: The Whole Database From MOD Server Was Leaked

Posted by & filed under Security.

MOD hackedNullCrew, a hacking group allegedly entered into the servers and leaked the entire database belonging to the U.K Ministry of Defence (MOD). The hackers claimed that they made use of the SQL injection vulnerability existing in the MOD website to get into the servers, which exposed the poor security measurements maintained by MOD.

The dumped database contains mostly the login credentials including username or email and password, which I believe would have urged the webmasters of the MOD website to reset the passwords for every users (including their own). The hackers also left a message along with the dumped data to MOD as,

Message: Your webmaster made a terrible mistake… You may criticize us on the simplicity of the vulnerability. But if you can get so much useful data so easily, why wouldn’t you? We hope that all governments and organizations realize that #FuckTheSystem is definitely not a joke. We hope that you have the decency to grasp the concept of it. But hey… You’re the government right… Just some butthurt little fags. This security just proves how much of a joke our governments are.

The whole dumped database is available at Par:AnoIA, the Potentially Alarming Research: Anonymous Intelligence Agency website and also (as usual) in Pastebin.

 

 

Windows 8 For Dummies PDF E-book By Dell – Free Download Or Read It Online

Posted by & filed under Featured, How-To, Microsoft, Windows 8.

windows 8 for dummies

For users who recently moved from other versions of Windows OS to Windows 8, and feel like they are left behind or lost, The Dell Enterprise team released a free e-book in pdf format to help them cope with the changes and latest features in the metro interfaced OS. Although this is just a pocket edition, having limited topics extracted from the “Windows 8 For Dummies” written by Andy Rathbone, it is still “quite a some quick reference guide” for free of cost.

I don’t want to wast any more of your time, so here below I embedded the pdf e-book of Windows 8 for Dummies, a quick reference guide.
 

 

 

 


windows-8-ebook

342,478 Email Addresses and Passwords Hacked And Leaked From Yahoo Voices

Posted by & filed under Security.

Yahoo-sad-faceEvery major tech blog confirmed a huge security breach in Yahoo Voices lately that, 442773 of which 34,2478 unique email addresses and passwords of various domains including Gmail.com, Yahoo.com, AOL.com, Hotmail.com, MSN.com and from others were leaked. It must be embarrassing to a high-profile tech company like Yahoo which confirmed the leaked email and passwords were of course in plain text format.

According to The NY Times and other major tech blogs D33D company was responsible for this huge dump of data; even the hackers warned Yahoo that this leak was just to point out the security holes existing in their servers, and there were several vulnerabilities exists in some Yahoo sub-domains unrevealed. The infamous SQL injection (union-based) was used by hackers to infiltrate into the victims database while Yahoo was still unclear whether the hackers got out of the servers completely or not. That means, clearly Yahoo is in a big trouble and needs some time to regain their servers with full security and clear this mess created by data leak.

Out of 442773 email addresses and their respective passwords, only 137556 email addresses were from Yahoo.com while 106869 accounts from Gmail.com, 55147 hotmail.com, 25520 aol.com and so on goes the list. In this mayhem, there was a good news too, that there were only 1666 accounts have 123456 as password. Compared to the data obtained from the previous hacks and leaks, this number was very far less than usual and so do their was a fall in usage of other feeble passwords like password, qwerty, monkey, jesus, love and welcome.

Right now, all you could do is check whether your email address was hacked or not at Sucuri Malware Labs and change your password immediately if it was. Although this leak has nothing to do with the password strength, I highly recommend setting up a strong password.

 

How To Play “.wma” Format Audio Files In Android Smartphones

Posted by & filed under Android, How-To, Smartphone.

Not every Android powered smart phone default music player can play wma format audio files. Although some Smartphones powered by the versions of Android less than 3.0 supports wma files, but as far as I know most of the Android phones powered by Android 3.0 and above doesn’t play wma files on default music player and so do my phone. So obviously I started digging into Google play to find a music player that can play me wma files, possibly for free. I found a bunch of music players for Android, and yes I installed them all and none of them played wma file type.

PowerAmp player that supports wma files on AndroidFinally, I found Poweramp player which actually costs $5 and I’m glad they provide a trial period of 15 days to try the player out. Actually I did tried the Poweramp player and it was quite good to use and may be even cool, I say. But I wasn’t convinced on spending $5 over a music player and so didn’t I.

I converted all the wma files into mp3 files using a free file conversion software (FormatFactory) and then used the same old grumpy default Android music player to play them all. But Poweramp player sure worth $5 dollars, if you want to save you both time and resource by skipping the conversion process every time you come across some wma files. Check this Poweramp app page on Google play for reviews and download.
Note: I also found some other players like Astro and PlayerPro says that they too support wma files, but those players would play wma files on devices that already supports wma files. So correct me if I am wrong that, “there is a single music player that supports wma files on all  Android powered devices and that player is PowerAmp”.