Posts

Privacy in Internet - Avoid flash cookies

Due to some of the recent developments in the area, the browsers have a Do Not Track functionality which does not let the sites to identify a browser and ultimately you and your browsing habits. But the Ad providers are using Flash cookies which need to be blocked separately. The method here is to block all flash content in FireFox and let the user choose which flash content to run. This has another advantage that unnecessary flash Ads will also not be played and thus saving bandwidth. An 'Activate Adobe Flash' message will be shown over blocked content. So, if you want to play a flash, click on the link and view it. Open FireFox and press ctrl + shift + A to open Add-ons Manager. Find Shockwave flash in the list. Change the button to the right end to 'Ask to Activate'. Now if a site try to save flash cookie, you will see a notification below the address bar. You can now see how many of the sites you regularly visit are tracking you. NOTE: This method is also...

Best way to get portable WiFi Internet in India for light or medium users

I think this post will benefit users who are thinking to get Internet in their mobile devices. If you are a light internet user and have multiple devices, one way you can choose is to tether your connection with your devices. This will drain battery on your device. Otherwise you will need to buy Internet packs on all the devices which will not be a cost-effective method. My plan is to have a single connection that can be shared with all the devices so that you need only one data plan and the devices will be connected with WiFi means less battery drain. The initial investment is a bit high though ;-) The devices you need are: GSM WiFi dongle that usually supports 5 - 10 devices to be connected at once. ( Sample ) USB power-bank. ( Sample ) BSNL GSM connection with Internet. I chose BSNL as this is the cheapest with Rs.155 for 1GB data as of now and will support both 3G and 2G on this pack. Setup is simple, slide in the SIM to the WiFi dongle and connect t...

Pictures of Kanyakumari, Madurai and Aattukal temple from some books printed around 30-40 years back.

Image
Here are some pictures I found from the archives that are more than 30-40 years old. Kanyakumari (Cape comorin as it was known at that time) Cover page of the book Photo of Sunrise at Bay of Bengal Photo of Kanyakumari Devi Temple Madurai Cover page of the book Meenakshi amman Main entrance of Meenakshi Temple, Madurai The South Tower of Meenakshi Temple, Madurai The Music pillars of Meenakshi temple, Madurai Back cover of book. See the price. :-) Aattukal Temple, Thiruvananthapuram Front view of Rajagopuram, Attukal Temple Ambala Vinayakar, Attukal Temple These books have many other photos. If you like to see them, let me know.

Optimal settings for an iPhone to save battery (my experience)

There are lot of articles telling you to turn off many features in an iPhone to save battery and this is not one of those. I have been changing settings and get a best battery life for my iPhone 5c and with the following settings I am easily getting a 30 hour usage on a single charge. You can also try this. UPDATE : I have written another post on how to setup cheap portable wifi. Check here. Switch off the battery percentage indicator (Settings -> General -> Usage -> Battery Percentage) and do not check the phone constantly to see if you got a notification. Use a louder ring tone (Settings -> Sounds) so that you are notified and use vibration. Use Auto-Brightness (Settings -> Display & Brightness) and set the level to the minimum that is comfortable to you. Use smaller text Text Size (Settings -> Display & Brightness) suitable for you. This will help you to read faster. Group the less-commonly used icons in folders so that you can access the product...

How is the price of some of products are kept constant for few years?

There is a joke about a person who is not concerned about the price of petrol. When asked he said "I don't care whether the price of petrol increase or decrease, I will only fill for Rs.100/-". Do you know most of us have done this for years, may not be petrol, but for most FMCG goods? Yes, if you notice the weight of the toothpaste that you have been using for years, you can see that it has been reduced while the price was maintained the same. As we are only checking the price usually, we do not notice a small difference in the weight. These are happening for lot of products. Try to keep a watch on the price and weight from now on and see the changes.

ColdFusion CFHTTP analogous to CURL

* This is a continuously updated post on the corresponding  CFHTTP  syntax for  CURL . If you need help, send me a message and I will try to help. I have been trying to integrate different APIs with ColdFusion/Railo recently and the difficult part is of course to understand the way the API is expecting data. Mostly they 3rd party will provide library or code for PHP and .NET, but not for ColdFusion. In some cases they provide the CURL syntax. I thought I will scribble my findings here so that it is useful for someone to write CFHTTP by seeing the CURL syntax. File Upload   e.g.:  to post a file to the folder /upload to the server. The URL is http://app.prasanthkumars.com/upload the API uses Basic Authorization File name is test.png CURL curl -f file=@test.png "http://username:password@app.prasanthkumars.com/upload" CFHTTP <cfset credentials = tobase64("#username#:#password#")> <cfhttp method="POST" url="htt...

How to turn off WhatsApp messages getting stored to iCloud from iPhone

If you are using WhatsApp messenger on iPhone you might have noticed the data getting automatically backed up to iCloud. If you prefer to turn off this feature, follow the steps below: Go to Settings -> iCloud. Select Documents & Data. You can see WhatsApp listed below. Turn off the feature. If you do not want to turn off this feature, but like to delete the data occasionally, then follow these steps: Go to Settings -> iCloud. Select Storage & Backup. Select manage Storage. The list of all stored data is displayed. Click WhatsApp Messenger. Click Edit to the top right corner. Click the Delete All that appears. Confirm Delete All.