Nokia - 10 interesting facts

1) The name of the town of Nokia originated from the river which flowed through the town. The river itself, Nokianvirta, was named after the old Finnish word originally meaning sable, later pine marten. A species of this small, black-furred predatory animal was once found in the region, but it is now extinct.

2) Nokia is sometimes called aikon (Nokia backwards) by non-Nokia mobile phone users and by mobile software developers, because "aikon" is used in various SDK software packages, including Nokia's own Symbian S60 SDK.

3) Unlike other modern day handsets, Nokia phones do not automatically start the call timer when the call is connected, but start it when the call is initiated. (Except for Series 60 based handsets like the Nokia 6600).

4) Nokia was listed as the 20th most admirable company worldwide in Fortune's list of 2006 (1st in network communications, 4th non-US company).

5) In Asia, the digit 4 never appears in any Nokia handset model number, because 4 is considered unlucky in many parts of Southeast/East Asia.

6) The Nokia corporate font (typeface) is the AgfaMonotype Nokia Sans font, originally designed by Eric Spiekermann. Previously in advertising and in its mobile phone User's Guides Nokia mostly used the Agfa Rotis Sans font.

7) The "Special" tone available to users of Nokia phones when receiving SMS (text messages) is actually Morse code for "SMS". Similarly, the "Ascending" SMS tone is Morse code for "Connecting People," Nokia's slogan. The "Standard" SMS tone is Morse code for "M" (Message).

8) Nokia is currently the world's largest digital camera manufacturer, as the sales of its camera-equipped mobile phones have exceeded those of any conventional camera manufacturer.

9) The world's first commercial GSM call was made in 1991 in Helsinki over a Nokia-supplied network, by Prime Minister of Finland Harri Holkeri, using a Nokia phone.

10) The ringtone "Nokia tune" is actually based on a 19th century guitar work named "Gran Vals" by Spanish musician Francisco Tárrega. The Nokia Tune was originally named "Grande Valse" on Nokia phones but was changed to "Nokia Tune" around 1998 when it became so well known that people referred to it as the "Nokia Tune."

Widows user can copy files faster with TeraCopy

I don't now the etymology of the name of this application, but it is easy to guess. Tera, i think, comes from the the amount of data that could be managed with the help of this utility, and copy comes from the feature it provides.
So.. the application can help you to copy much faster the files from one hard drive to another, to make this process in several times by put it on hold and continue it when you want, integrate with the shell. Very useful when Windows wants more space on a drive (you know that Low disk space message), and the time is always important, so the delay in the work process because of copying files.
You can find this product on codesector page ,I think I'll try it too.

Bigger attachments for GMail

Now the message can have 20 MB in size, that means that your mail and the attachments can't jump that size (!?). Until now I had problems sending files that have 11-12 MB and my applications that are .exe or .js, now the firs problem transforms in: cannot send files of 21- 22 MB - but this is a smaller problem. I could use another mail client for bigger attachments or a free file hosting service.
See more news about GMail on About GMail news.

New features on Blogger - autosaving post

... in GMail it happens from the beginning, when you write a message it will be saved from time to time in your drafts just to make sure you don't loose your changes. Now the same thing was added to Blogger when you write a post for your blog.
Read about this news on the Blogger's blog : Blog Buzz.

[New] Tunderbird 2.0 released

Tunderbird 2 is available for download on Windows, Mac and Linux in over 35 languages. Thunderbird 1.5.0.x users will be offered Thunderbird 2 via software update at a later date. Those wishing to upgrade now are therefore advised to download and install Thunderbird 2 manually.

There are some new things in Tunderbird 2.0:

- Message Tags: like GMail labels

- Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: you don't have to configure some pop3 servers, it is easyer now

- Find As You Type: Firefox like searching

More of these advantages you can find in the Release Notes of Tunderbird 2.0 page.

Windows Media Player Plug-in for Firefox

Have been released another official Microsoft plug-in.
This plug-in allows you to use Windows Media Player inside of Firefox.

It is designed to support the following Windows platforms:

• Windows XP SP2 (x86)
• Windows XP SP2 (x64)
• Windows Vista (x86)
• Windows Vista (x64)/li>

Port25 is hosting it, and you can download it from here: Download - indows Media Player Firefox Plugin

It is backwards compatible with the old 6.4 Windows Media Player. And among other things has the following new features.

Read more.

Decrapify you computer

PC Decrapifier - a funny name for an application, a funny word too.

What does this mead? It is the process you need to take for removing unnecessary programs that are installed on you computer. Most of the times it is very useful on new laptops or workstations that comes with a lot of junk stuff. There's an application that could help you to uninstall lots of these unnecessary stuff (like trial versions of some programs, some toolbars in your browser, some unknown/unwanted utilities).

This program you could find free at PC Decrapifier team that created it. It should be very helpful.

Time is not the same

The time is not the same in the whole world, an we all know it. It is a different time in Washington and in London, or Ulan-Bator, and most of the time we don't need to realize that, but sometimes we do. Let's say that a friend of yours went abroad, or in to the other end of the country, or your boss sent you to the far away kingdom, or your brother is on holidays in Ethiopia, and you started to talk with some of them on a instant messaging program, or voice call program, and he tells you "Good morning!" at five o'clock in the afternoon. Then you start to ask yourself what time is it there (especially when it is your boss and you don't want to ask his time, you should add/subtract hours), but your head don't respond to your question. When you have a problem you solve it, you could create a table with your and theirs hours (me : 7 - boss : 11, bro' : 3 ...), or make your application, use something that exists already. I am lousy and I choose the las one. I found a MS TimeZone application that is very useful.

It looks like that when it is installed and runs in your system tray. And to perform this first step (the installation step), go here. The second step is to set your locations in options (right click on the tray icon) and your locations could be like this: To create your custom named locations just go in the Option dialog box to the add button under the Available locations list.

More informations about this application you can find here.
Or maybe you want a screen saver with time zones: here's a screen saver.
You could choose a less user friendly interface but mybe with some more power (i dont't realy know about it) by using this app.
One more thing: all these applications here are free, an work for windows.

Your Windows show a "Low disk space" warning again!?

Sometimes you get tired of these warnings, and this is one that most of the people will gladly disable. But for that you need to go editing registry of your operating system. On the Downloadsquad website you'll find the line below like an alternative to registrar editing. Just copy the line and paste it in a command prompt. (To open a command prompt you need to type cmd in Run dialog box, to show this dialog box type Window key + R).

 

regini HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks" = REG_DWORD 1

But this warning i find sometimes useful. I start to download a little bigger file, and may be I do not have enough space on the disk, and this warning will make me find some space before the downloading process is finished or download the file on a different drive. So it is your choice to disable the warning. I didn't do it on my computer, because it shows not so often, and it still appears useful to me.

GMail has about 3 GB - you could use it like a drive

You can use it on your computer by installing an application that will do to access the drive easier, or you could use it from the net.
The first method is very easy to use (too bad you can't see the drive in Total Commander, but the Windows Explorer will do). You just have to:
1. Download the GMail Drive shell extension 1.0.10 from here.
2. Extract he files from the archive and run setup.exe
3. Access the new drive in Windows Explorer - it will ask you to log in (you know that Windows Explorer is something like Internet Explorer but with some other default tools, so when you copy files on that drive you just upload a file into an email sent to you, and when you copy from it you just download that file, so don't expect extra speed).
Look at the tips on the download page that I gave you above. It is nice to put a filter to your uploaded files.
Here you can see a little illustration how it works:


The method number two:
But sometimes you want to access your files not only on your computer, but somewhere else, at school, where you have no time or will to install that application. You can use this page witch is user friendly, and uses the same GMail. It is xMailHardDrive page powerredby BlackBox.
I saw this site is in the beta version, and sometimes you need patience with it. This guy from the clip above say that is is ok. It wasn't for me...

If the second method doesn't work, try downloading files from your GMail inbox (that's kind of third method), that sure will work, it will be just harder to upload files, but for that you better use the first method from home, where you have the drive installed.

If you deleted those file accidentally

 

The Shift + Del shortcut to delete the file skip the file to go Recycle Bin and then go to throw all the trash, now the files are lost. Lost like the moment you empty the Bin - if the you don't have a Norton Antivirus or something that helps you to keep you hard dick full. But sometimes you lost some files that you needed. In this case try to use as quick as possible a recovery tool - quick, I mean until you didn't added some files to that partition, or  you didn't defragmented it.

A new utility, free utility is called Recuva (pronounced "recover") from recuva.com, it is a Windows utility that helps you to recover those files.

 

I hope it will do good for you, if it is not good enough try other utilities. Easy recovery worked once good enough for me. You can find the trial version here, it has no limitation.

More information about recovering data - on http://www.data-recovery-software.net/ .

Opera Introduces Fraud Protection : PhishTank

For the Opera users some new features in their browsers - the browser deals with the phishing problem.

Phishing is a form of online fraud in which a malicious party convinces users to visit a forged Web site. That site is designed to mimic a trusted site in order to trick users into divulging personal information, credit card numbers, or bank account details. According to PhishTank, the month of November alone saw more than 9,628 unique phishing attacks. Since most phishing sites are taken down quickly, only real-time protection holds the key to consistent safety.

Firefox and IE introduced this feature a long time ago, I don't know what is the way these browsers are detecting the "phishy" sites, but I think that the user should pay attention anyway where and how he gives his personal information.

About this PhishTank you can read more on the Opera site.

Internet can help you to convert a file

Sometimes you need to convert a file and you don't know what utility would help you to do that. A word document must be send to a friend and he cannot see it, make a pdf file and send it. Or your mobile phone supports only specific formats of audio files, take a mp3 file and convert it to the format you want. And for that you will need only an Internet connection (for bigger files you will stay longer and it depends on your connection speed too). There is a page - Media Convert - that convert files for free (max file size is 50 MB, but I don't think you want to upload and download a file bigger than that). It is easy an useful, it is always available (if you'll need a little tutorial on how to convert a file, see it here).

New on Google Earth: Panoramio and Wikipedia

In the morning, I was looking for a shorter path for my travels, and I sow these little white circles with an blue x on them on the map, and some gray ones. (You should see them too if you see a right part of the map - peek a city that may contain something interesting - and if in the layers panel the Geographic Web is checked).
So the x-circles are from Panoramio and the grey ones are from Wikipedia. (they are like the sites favicons - those that appears in the address bar before the site url).
Let's what the gray icons can do:
It retrieve informations from Wikipedia and show it in Google Earth, I found it nice.
The Panoramio little circles are nice too, you can see a picture of that place the circle is.
But the bes way to see it is in Google Earth. Find some time to watch it.

Share files with your friends

Web site Upload.sc lets you share large files with your friends.

Upload up to 100-megabyte file (it's free) and enter the recipient's email address. An email will be sent to the recipient with instructions on how to pick up the file. And you don't need registration for that.
Your buddy don't need to wait to download the file, and the file is scanned for viruses.
Try it, you could like it.
-- upload.sc

Choose your vista

What sould can do the new OS on your computer? If you want this new OS be Windows Vista, you'll find some information about the product and its versions in the new ExtremeTech article. Depending on where do you use it you can choose a home edition or a Home Edition(Basic or Premium), or a Enterprize/Business edition. All the features are included only in the Ultmate Edition, but from my own experience, I know most of the times users are disabling some of the features, so maybe you don't want them all and you better choose an other version, I don't know yet about the behavior of this OS on 32 or 64 bits, but soon we'll found out.

.The article Which Vista Edition is Right for You? on ExtremeTech.

Critical Firefox hole allows password theft (IE - FF | 1 : 0)

Vulnerability lies in browser's Password Manager software

A flaw in Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox browser makes it easy for cybercriminals to steal user information on Web sites where users create their own pages, such as MySpace.com.

The flaw lies in Firefox's Password Manager software, which can be tricked into sending password information to an attacker's Web site, said Robert Chapin, president of Chapin Information Services Inc. For this attack to work, attackers need to be able to create HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) forms on the Web site, something that is allowed on blogging and social networking sites.

The attack was used in a MySpace phishing attack reported in late October. In that attack, users registered a MySpace account named login_home_index_html and used it to host a fake log-in page that exploited the flaw.

This page sent MySpace username and password information to another Web site, and MySpace users who visited the page using Firefox could have easily had their information compromised, said Chapin.

Firefox developers rate this bug critical, according to an entry in the project's Bugzilla database.

The flaw arises because Firefox's Password Manager does not perform a thorough enough check when it is deciding whether to send password information, and then does not ensure that password information is being sent to the server that requested it, Chapin said. In the MySpace attack, for example, Firefox would check to see if the form was coming from the MySpace.com domain, but did not make sure that the password information was being sent back to a MySpace server.

"From a programming point of view, this is almost like a typo," he said. "Ironically I think that's why it hasn't been discovered until now. It was just way too obvious."

Chapin has posted an analysis of this type of attack, which he has dubbed a Reverse Cross-Site Request, as well as a demonstration of how it works.

Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE) is also susceptible to these type of attacks because, like Firefox, it does not ensure that password information is being sent to the same server that requests it, Chapin said.

But IE is less likely to be tricked because it does a more thorough job in checking to see where the log-in form is coming from before it automatically submits password and user information, he added.

You need to protect your computer? You may do it for free...

While viruses remain a threat to our precious data, you need not necessarily invest in expensive antivirus scanners - there are plenty of free options available that may give even some commercial vendors a run for their money.
Free Online Virus Scanners (run inside the web browser to scan your hard drive - but they'll ask you t install a little activeX, or a java application, you should allow it to be scanned)

• Trend Micro HouseCall - allows you to remove detected infections. Works with Firefox and IE. Requires Java.

• McAfee Freescan - prepares a list of infected files and links to information about the viruses on your computer. It also gives you an option to clean your system. Requires IE with ActiveX.

• Windows Live OneCare Scanner - scanner from Microsoft that cleans your system from viruses and also recommends ways to improve the overall performance.

• Symantec Internet Security - can detect most virus threat but there is no option to delete the virus infected file or repair it. Does not examine compressed files. Requires IE with ActiveX.

• BitDefender Online Scanner - scans your system's memory, all files, folders and drives' boot sectors - the default options automatically cleans the infected files. Requires IE with ActiveX.

Free Anti Virus Software for Windows

• Avast! Home Edition - One of the most popular antivirus software, can also be run from Explorer context menu. You can either scan the entire hard drive or selected folders.
  

• AOL Active Virus - based on Kaspersky Antivirus. The software can be configure to check only new and modified files thereby reducing the memory requirements. Also support scanning of incoming and outgoing email messages.

• ClamWin Virus Scanner - An opensource antivirus software that is great for running routine antivirus checks on your PC. You need to manually scan a file in order to detect a virus or spyware.

• AVG 7.5 Free Antivirus - One of most popular free virus scanning software

And don't forget to install a firewall, the one from Win XP SP2, is pretty good, but you can use Zone Alarm, or Sygate Personal Firewall.
Have a healthy computer!

Keep the browser up to date with the season

Like your house should be ready for the holidays, get a new look to your firefox browser...

Tinseltown is a Christmas theme with holiday imagery including Christmas lights, snow, reindeer, presents and more. This theme is made eve better with great Christmas icons from Watiworks and a semi-transparent URL bar. Get in the holiday spirit with Tinseltown.

Get it here

And when you'll find a IE skin, let me know(in post coments)

SIM+ 128MB with 3D content

Orange makes it possible to listen to music, see pictures and watch videos saved directly to the SIM+ card's memory. The SIM+ card makes 128 MB of additional flash memory available, which you can use as you wish, to store multimedia, personal or any other content.

SIM+ card works with any mobile phone, but the 128 MB flash memory is only accessible from a compatible mobile phone. Enter the SIM+ menu on your mobile phone and you have access to a variety of multimedia content: special 3D content that you can view using the special glasses included with the SIM+ package, wallpapers, video clips and music.

Along with the 128 MB of flash memory, the SIM+ card makes available all the services you find on any Orange 2G SIM card, simply by accessing the Orange menu on your mobile phone. Here, you’ll find a number of services which provide you with useful information, let you carry out mobile banking transactions, save and recover your SIM card contacts and personal data, services that let you send text messages to groups of recipients and much more.

See more...