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And installing Windows Messenger is the not that user friendly, many a times all the installation goes haywire while downloading and installating due to some network connection error or just some Windows Messenger glitch saying

“Another version of the product is already installed”,

“Your computer has a newer version of MSN Messenger than the one you are trying to install”,

“Your computer has a newer version of Windows Live Messenger than the one you are trying to install”,

“The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable” and etc, you are basically stuck because you can’t install the latest version nor go back to the old version”.

Additionally, in some cases the installer can’t be found in the Control Panel’s Programs applet or has become damaged with a  Catastrophic failure (0x8000ffff) error or the Windows Installer is prompting for a missing .msi file which you can’t find anymore.

Well to make things simple after all the goofup here is one small tool which could help you remove all the traces of Windows Messenger from your System.

Zap Messenger

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ZapMessenger will automatically uninstall Windows Live Messenger, MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger 5.x and their respective installer references. To uninstall using ZapMessenger, all you need to do is to download this small tool 282KB, run it and click on the Start button. It will take from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on your computer configuration. I’d advice you to close any running programs, or even better running it in Safe Mode before using ZapMessenger. If you get the error “.NET Framework Initialization Error” or “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135), make sure you have Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and above installed in your computer.

Latest Windows Live Messenger

Once you’ve successfully removed or uninstalled Windows Live Messenger or MSN Messenger from your computer, you can now try to download the full installation file to install the latest Windows Live Messenger 2009.

Usually Ubuntu releases are every 6 months with the new update. The next major release—version 9.04, codenamed Jaunty Jackalope—is moving towards feature freeze and is scheduled for launch in April. Ubuntu 9.10, which will be the next release after Jaunty, is planned for October.

Since the Ubuntu Server launch in 2005, its been gaining good faith amongst all the Server companies but lacks many features and this Red Hat takes the deal. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has been investing considerable effort into making Ubuntu a first-class server distro. During the development cycle for Karmic, Canonical aims to strengthen the server edition by introducing enhanced support for cloud computing.

On the desktop, boot performance and beautification will be an area of focus. The target boot time for Jaunty is 25 seconds.  Sounds amazing for Ubuntu as compared to the present version. The developers would also explore ways to bring a smoother, flicker-free startup animation. If you have used Red Hat, i suppose, it would be similar to that. More news regarding the Karmic and Jaunty release would be done inUbuntu Developer Summit (UDS) in May  at Barcelona.

These updates are to be installed manually, even if MU are automatic on your PC,as they are just the optional updates Microsoft released.

These updates would help Microsoft  test how smooth the update process works. The updates are for systems, servers, and other basic Beta client.  Well, thats the way Beta works.

Microsoft Update blog post:

“We do typically verify update scenarios during a Beta, and releasing these test updates will help ensure that when we need to release real updates, the process will run smoothly. There will be at most five updates….

“The updates will be offered interactively. This means that users will be notified of available updates, but they won’t install automatically. Users will need to go to the Windows Update control panel and manually start installation. They will also be clearly titled as a test update. If you don’t want to install the updates then you can right click on each update and select ‘Hide update’ to prevent it from being shown in the list of available updates.”

It is advisable to backup your important data before installing these updates. Just to be extra safe.

These updates would just be a test run to check the Beta updates and other things related to Beta versions which can render the further updates. Microsoft promises, this process would be fast and would run very smoothly. There will be at most five updates. These updates test the Windows 7 servicing infrastructure. They will not deliver any new features or fixes as of now.

The updates will be offered interactively. This means that users will be notified of available updates, but they won’t install automatically. Users will need to go to the Windows Update control panel and manually start installation. They will also be clearly titled as a test update. If you don’t want to install the updates then you can right click on each update and select “Hide update” to prevent it from being shown in the list of available updates.

Fair enough Microsoft is getting all geared up for the RC Windows 7 coming in weeks to come. This would ensure Microsoft how smooth the process of upgradation would be as RC would be the most stable and fixed version possible.

via Technet

The Windows 7 RC is right on schedule with development, and if there are no significant problems over the next few weeks the April 10, 2009 release date will remain in tact. Releasing the Windows 7 Beta was  a fairly good option under MSDN as there have been over 500,000 suggestions since the public launch of the Windows 7 Beta. So its probably MSDN subscribers would be the first one to receive the RC download.

It would be launced broadly all over so lets hope we have pleasant surprises from Microsoft regarding the same in the next coming weeks.

Well I still don’t understand is this, a Beta version is supposed to be a RC version, then shouldn’t this be RC2?

But as zillions of users are using this service, Google has been filled up by users adding up their feedback and new suggestions to the Email service. Now these dudes, don’t just read them and discard the emails, rather they work on the legitimate and good ones to give us Gmail Labs. Seems to me a part of Experimental Google Labs extension.

How to access Google labs? Simple just log in your Gmail account and check your setting page or simply just click on the green labs button on the top of the page. There are many new things in the lab as they are made by different working Gmail teams in their Silicon Valley office. I just sorted out my favorite and must have Lab Applications

Offline - Access your inbox through your browser and use Gmail’s familiar features when you’re offline. You just need to have Google Gears installed and configure it properly to get started.

Muzzle – If you access your Gtalk via Gmail then this is a must. Our friends usually add up a long Status message which we hardly ever read. Now Muzzle can help you remove them, so what you see throught muzzle is just the actual name of your friend and nothing else .

Multiple Inboxes - Well reading all your emails under you single Gmail account was never a big task (Settings > Accounts ). But Multiple Inboxes helps you create multiple inboxes for various other labels of yours, so that each label shows up as different Inbox to you.

Custom Label Colors - Got rid of those default colors for your labels? Now using this you can create your own combination of colors for labels.

Create a Document – Append your Google Doc with Gmail. Create a new document with a just a click in your Gmail Account

Google Docs gadget – Adds a left panel listing your Google Docs in your Gmail Account just as the Chat and Labels in the sidebar.

Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat – Allows you to send and receive text messages (SMS) in Chat. US phones only for now.

]]> http://tftb.net/2009/02/12/gmail-labs/feed/ 2 http://tftb.net/2009/01/10/google-chrome-2-pre-beta-launched/ http://tftb.net/2009/01/10/google-chrome-2-pre-beta-launched/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:22:14 +0000 TFTB.net http://tftb.net/?p=377 Continue reading →]]> Google catching up with Browser market very fast. Just four months and Google Chrome has advanced from 0.2 to 2.0. Though the present version is just a Pre-beta launch but the progress seems very fast. Many new features added, but some bugs and errors have their stay.

Getting the Pre-Beta Version :

Install Google Chrome google.com/chrome . Now, Subscribe to the developer preview channel. This is required even if you’ve previously subscribed to the channel. Wait until the new version is downloaded (you may force the update by opening the “About Google Chrome” dialog).

Some New Added Features :

via Google System Blog

1. Autocomplete

2. Autoscroll by middle clicking on page

3.Profiles- Very different from other browser profiles, can be used anytime and can easily be managed. No need of Browser Restart to switch to new profile. Isn’t that great?

How was your experience? And,If ever while experiencing the Beta Version, you feel the urge to stop using this Beta due to some problems, you can downgrade to lower version, just by reinstalling Chrome again.

Finally after so much of eagerful wait, 3G iPhone unlock is here.

Yellowsn0w is out and ready to PWN 3G Baseband, and make it SIM Independent.

Here is a simple tutorial to get things started

- Install the latest 2.2 firmware before beginning this process.

Jailbreak your iPhone using Quickpwn

1.Download Quickpwn > Choose iPhone 3G and Start the Jailbreaking Steps

2.Use the latest firmware . Download it here. If you haven’t updated to the latest firmware. And make sure you install Cydia.

3. Now the Jailbreak process starts and within minutes your iPhone will boot and you would have a Jailbroken iPhone 3G.

Now Start the Unlocking processAdd the Repositories as given by Dev-Blog Team

• Cydia source: http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/
• Installer repo: http://i.yellowsn0w.com/

Install yellowsn0w and Run it to complete the Process.

- Turn off the iPhone and insert your SIM.
Note : For US users trying this with T-Mobile, please turn off the 3G switch in Settings.

- Turn on the phone. Wait until your carrier pops up. If it doesn’t, take out the SIM out and reinsert it.

And Voila iPhone 3G is Jailbroken and Unlocked.

Everything is in beta and there is no guarantee of success. You will have to jailbreak your phone for this to work, as well.

I do get that feeling many a times , Thankfully the best Email service, Gmail has a solution for this,

Click on Details and a window pops up with all the details of last Gmail logins.

With IP details and Time and everything you can Log out of all those sessions ( if still logged in) to be safe.

How does this help?

If you find a suspicious or simultaneous access, then you can sign-out all other sessions, except yours from this session window. Then you can make necessary steps by changing the password/security question to avoid unauthorised access. And other security Changes.

This is an excellent service provided by GMail. This will help you to protect your GMail account from unauthorised use. As well as keep track of all your recent logins.

Thats why I call GMail very safe.

You can read their research paper named “A Low-cost Attack on a Microsoft CAPTCHA“, which clearly how vulnerable CAPTCHA has been from 2007 since the spammers attack grew tremendously.

Excerpt of their Research paper:

In this paper, we analyse the security of a text-based CAPTCHA designed by Microsoft and deployed for years at many of their online services including Hotmail, MSN and Windows Live. This scheme was designed to be segmentation-resistant, and it has been well studied and tuned by its designers over the years. However, our simple attack has achieved a segmentation success rate of higher than 90% against this scheme. It took ~80 ms for our attack to completely segment a challenge on a desktop computer with a 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 CPU and 2 GB RAM. As a result, we estimate that this Microsoft scheme can be broken with an overall (segmentation and then recognition) success rate of more than 60%. On the contrary, its design goal was that “automatic scripts should not be more successful than 1 in 10,000? attempts (i.e. a success rate of 0.01%). For the first time, we show that a CAPTCHA that is carefully designed to be segmentation-resistant is vulnerable to novel but simple attacks. Our results show that it is not a trivial task to design a CAPTCHA scheme that is both usable and robust.

For more read the research paper.

All these recent CAPTCHA problems show how vulnerable CAPTCHA has become, for sometime proving helpful this Anti-Spam method has become really easy for hackers now . Security should be tightened and some more Anti-Spam techniques should be implicated or the Internet would be filled with spammers.

via ZDNet