Neel Nirjon

Is it safe to download skin and themes for my computer?

What is a skin? What is a Theme? Skin is s most often used word by computer users. You may wonder what can be the relation between a computer and skin? What is the meaning of Skin. Now what is the literal meaning of skin. Skin is used to cover our body. Isn't it? Similarly, the term skin in computer is used to refer to the interface or look and feel of any program or application. There are many skins available in the internet that can be downloaded freely.

For instance, some popular media players such as WinAmp, Music Match, Real One or Windows media player have many skins provided by third parties. There are many ways you can download these skins and use it in your computer. In any windows software, from the menu choose 'Options' or 'Preferences'. There you may find the option to 'Change Skin' or 'Change theme'. Not all software will have this feature. If the software has this feature to change skin or theme then you can download your favorite skin or theme and apply it on your software.

For example, if you use Netscape version 6 or higher then select 'View' and click on 'Apply theme' and 'Get New themes'. This will bring you to the 'Theme park'. Here you will see many different skins and themes that can be downloaded. Once downloaded you can apply it to your Netscape software and the whole look and feel will change to the new theme.

But beware of one thing. When you download these free skins and themes from internet, the skin developer may embed the 'spyware or adware' in these skins to spy on your activities or to steal your personal particulars. For example a company that provides skins namely hot bar, openly states in its website that if you download skins from their website they will monitor the which websites you visit, which search engines you use and other details. Just for the sake of a skin, are you willing to share your personal details. Not only that, they will also show advertisements in your computer. Another such company is Neo Planet. In their website they declare that those who download and use their skins, their emails and browsing habits will be collected and shared with their partner companies. These partner companies who get your personal data will then send you SPAM emails selling and advertising their products.

In this world nothing comes free. How can someone give you skins and themes free after spending so much of their time on programming and developing the skin. Who will pay for their programming effort. Their only way to get money is to gather your personal details and sell it to companies.

Therefore, be very cautious and careful while downloading these skins to your computer.

VoIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol - is a very popular buzzword in the Internet world.
VoIP makes communication possible without telephone wires, telephone exchanges and even
without telephones. You can make voice calls free of charge or at a minimal charge over
internet.

If VoIP can give the same quality and standard of voice as in normal telephones then
there will not be any need for telephone exchanges any more. People will change to free
or cheaper VoIP alternative sooner or later.

The VoIP service is available in two types. Free service and cheap service. Skype is a
free VoIP service. While services such as Phonewala, HCL, sathyam provide payable VoIP
service. You can download Skype software from www.skype.com .

In payable VoIP service PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) plays a part. Therefore
you can call any other phone number through this service. The called person may have
subsribed to the VoIP service or maynot have subscribed to the VoIP service, you can
still make calls to him. Generally the subscribers of the same VoIP service provider can
talk with each other freely. The free VoIP service does not use PSTN. Therefore if you
are using the Free VoIP service then you cannot call other telephone numbers and vice
versa. But you can use the free VoIP service to talk with each other using computers
conencted to the internet.

Ok, now you have decided to try and use VoIP. What are the requirements to use VoIP?
You computer should have sound card, Microphone and speakers. If you have a headphone
then it is better. And then you should have internet connection. Broadband connection is
better.

In 1999, Internet Society, introduced the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). SIP protocol
is used to find out whether the computer that you want to call is currently connected to
the internet and is available for making a call. Even internet phones use this SIP
protocol.

Earlier I mentioned that using VoIP you can make free calls between computer to computer. You can also make phone calls from your computer to another phone but at a cheaper rate than the normal phone charges.

If you compare VoIP calls to a normal phone to phone call, it is like comparing the quality of a mobile call and a land line call. Many agree that the quality of a land line to land line call is better than the mobile to mobile call. Similarly the quality of the VoIP calls as compared to phone to phone call is slightly below standard. In VoIP, your voice is converted to digital signals and packed into small data packets and then sent over internet. There is no guarantee that these data packets will be received in the same order in which it was sent. The data packets may get mixed. Therefore in order to get all the data packets and arrange them in order it may take some time and hence there may be delay. This is called 'Jitter'.

If some data packets take too long to arrive then the routers may reject these packets. This will cause 'Packet Loss'. Therefore the speech may be intermittent and sometimes irritable.

And some argue that VoIP is crackable and crackers may evesdrop to these data packets and listen to your conversations. But even normal telephones can be tapped. The VoIP technology is fast evolving and some VoIP providers use Public Key Encryption to encrypt the data packets and hence cannot be cracked.

To read more about VoIP and to download some free VoIP software visit m-indya.com.

With the invent of Television, the popularity of the Radio was reduced. But with FM radio , people are again getting addicted to Radios. Furthermore if you have a computer and internet connection then you can hear Radio through your computer. There are many internet radio stations which broadcasts news, weather and songs. You can connect to these radio stations via internet browser and hear the radio in your computer.

Difference between conventional radio and internet radio

Radio waves are used to transmit radio programmes over the air. You can then tune into your favorite stations and hear them. Whether you can hear a particular radio station depends on the distance between your radio station and your radio. Therefore you are limited to hearing only a few radio stations.

In contrast you can hear hundreds of radio stations through internet. The distance doesn't matter any more. Just by a click you can change from one station to another station and you can hear 24 hours.

Types of internet radio

There are two types of internet radio.

1. Radio Station which requires a Player
2. Radio station which doesn't require a player.

Player is nothing but an audio software and many players are available. Among them there are a few which can download the programmes from the radio station and play it in your computer. You have to download these players and install them. Then you can start these players and goto the URL of the radio station and hear it.

There are also a few radio stations that do not require a player to listen to it. In these stations you just goto their website and then click on the link to star hearing the radio.

Free Internet Radio Player softwares download

If you are keen to hear radio through internet then download windows media player and real player and install them in your computer.

1. Generally, windows media player comes together with your Windows OS. Therefore most probably it will be in your computer already. You can also download it from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp
   
2. You can download Real player from www.real.com .
   
3. WinAmp is another popular player and it is available at www.winamp.com
   
   Most of the radio stations broadcast using real audio, windows media or mp3 formats and hence the above two players are sufficient to access any radio station in the internet.
   
   Some radio stations use proprietary audio formats. To hear such radios you need to download their players and install in order to hear them.
   
4. You can download Live 365 player from www.live365.com
   
5. You can download vtuner player from www.vtuner.com
   
6. Radio Netscape plus is another popular player and it is available at http://radio.netscape.com

How to access radio stations from audio players

1. In Windows media player select 'Media guide' and 'Radio Tuner'.Use these options to tune into different radio stations.
   
2. In Real Player, choose the 'Radio' menu and the 'Radio Tuner' to choose and access many radio stations.
   
3. In 'Radio Netscape Plus' you will see a list of radio stations under many categories. Just click on the preferred radio and listen to it.

To listen to free internet radio stations from websites

1. To get thousands of internet radio stations goto http://www.shoutcast.com . From this website you can listen to radio stations using WinAmp player.
   
   To access many free internet radio stations you can goto the following websites.
   
2. www.internetradioindex.com/iprobe/ipradio2.html
   
3. www.internetradioplaza.com
   
4. www.radiotower.com
   
5. www.webradios.com
   
6. http://launch.yahoom.com/launchcast/stations

Special internet radio stations.

1. BBC www.bbc.co.uk/radio
2. Beethoven www.beethoven.com
3. CNN www.cnn.com/audio

We search for lots of information on the internet. But it is not necessary that others know about this. Whenever you visit any website this information is captured and stored in your computer in the form of 'cache', 'cookie', 'history', and 'windows registry'. There is a danger due to this. Whoever uses the same computer after you have used can find out which websites you have been visiting. If you have a personal computer that no one else will ever use, then you don't have to worry much about this. But if your home or office computer is shared then you better clear this history. In this tutorial let us see how to completely remove the recently visited websites from your computer.

1. Cache Folder
   
   Every time you visit a website, every browser has the functionality to store the images, websites, urls etc in your hard disk somewhere in the temporary folders. This is useful to save bandwidth. When you visit the same website again, instead of downloading all the images again, the browser will retrieve them from the temporary folders from your hard disks and therefore increasing the speed and saving internet bandwidth. So when you finish browsing you can clear these temporary folders. This temporary folder is usually referred to as Cache. The exact location of this folder will differ based on the browser you are using. For instance if you use Internet explorer then this cache is located in the 'Temporary Internet Files' folder under your c:\Windows folder.
   You can either delete from this folder or you can delete it from your browser. Goto Tools-> Internet Options. Under the General tab click 'Delete Files' button.
   

2. History
   
   All the browsers also store the urls of every website you visit. This is used to show the address of the site on the 'Address Bar' when you start typing the first few letters of the websited address, the browser will take from the history and prompt you for the full address. This makes your job easier so that you need not type the full address every time. But if you want to hide the sites you visit then you have to remove this history also. Internet explorer stores this history in a folder called 'History' under c:\Windows folder.
   
   Or you can delete history from your browser. Goto Tools-> Internet OPtions. Select the 'General' tab and click on 'Clear History' button. In the confirmation dialog box select 'OK'. This will clear your history.
   

3. Cookies
   
   Whenever you visit websites, some information about you and some information about that website is stored in your computer's hard disk. When you visit the same site again, the information stored in this cookie file will be read to identify you. This is especially useful for sites that can personlize the site for you and displays messages such as 'welcome your_name' etc. But this cookie also stores the name of the site you visit so you should also delete these cookies if you want to hide the sites you visited.
   
   To delete cookies, goto Tools->Internet Options. And click on 'Delete Cookies' button. Or you can choose the security tab and click on 'Custom Level' button to disable or enable cookies.
   

4. Registry
   
   Another place in which the websites you visited are stored is the windows registry. It is not advisible to modify registries if you are not sure how to use them. Only those who are confident and willing to take risk should touch the registry. Click on 'Start->Run' and type 'regedit' and press enter. The windows registry will open. Now click on 'Edit->find' and type 'URL History'. In the right hand side you can see a list of website addresses that you visited. You can select them one by one and delete them. programs, viruses and hackers.

Transferring files in Internet is one of the many facilities Internet provides us. You may be aware that files can be downloaded using HTTP or FTP. Now you can use the 'Bit Torrent' protocol to send and receive files.

Bit Torrent protocol functions in a peer-to-peer method. One person can enter into another person's computer and send are receive files. That is why this type of computers are called 'Peer's. But there is a server required to make all these computers work together. This server is called 'Tracker'.

The tracker just monitors the connections between the peers. Other than that the tracker does not know which files are being transferred between peer computers. Therefore the tracker needs a very little bandwidth to monitor a huge number of peers.

When someone uploads a file from his computer to another computer, he can also download a file from another computer simultaneously.

How Bit Torrent works?

Let us see how Bit Torrent works with an example. A few people are seated in a room. Let us consider that all these people need a complete copy of all the pages in a book. Person A says that he has pages 1-15, 29, 36-40, 55, 74-89 and 94-100. Let us assume that these pages are not with persons B, C, D, E and F. Immediately they contact A and get a copy of all these pages. Now person B announces that he has pages 17-24,32,34,41-50,57,60-70 and 90-93. Then the rest of the persons will get copies of these pages from B.

Likewise all the persons announce the pages each of them have. Those who do not have a page they will get the page from the respective persons

Very soon, all the persons in the room will have all the pages of the book. In that group a person named 'K' will be present. He will have all pages of the book. You may ask why not all A,B,C,D and E get all pages for K directly. But if all of them connect to K at the same time then they can just be receivers not senders.

Instead, if A,B,C,D and E share pages from each other then they can be both senders and receivers.

Therefore if everyone needs everything then everyone should be both receivers and senders. This is exactly the method used by Bit Torrent.

K is called 'Seed' in Bit Torrent.

What is special about Bit Torrent?

Generally, HTTP and FTP protocols in Internet use the client-server architecture. Here the client computer will just connect to the server computer. One client will not connect to another client. When many clients connect to the server the speed of the server will slow down. Both installation and usage of client-server is very easy.

Peer-to-peer method was introduced as an alternative to Client-server architecture. Grutella, eDonkey, Kazaa etc used peer-to-peer architecture. Whoever is connected to the network can send or receive files from any computer in the network. When a computer sends some files to another computer it functions as a server and when it receives a file from another computer it functions as a client.

Since a file can be shared between any file and not shared from a central server there is no way to track which files are being transferred. Therefore many started sharing illegal audio and video files using these peer-to-peer software. Peer to Peer software enables speedy transfer of files.

Bit Torrent method uses the best features of Peer-to-Peer and Client-server architectures. Computers get the different parts of a file from the 'seed' and then the computers share these parts of the file from other computers and completes the file.

How to get Bit Torrent software?

Bit Torrent is an open source software. Many versions of Bit Torrent which can run on Windows, Linux, Unix or Mac are available.

In Windows there are many Bit Torrent software such as The shadow's experimental client, burst, ABC (Another BitTorrent Client), Simple BT are some of them.

You can download bit torrent software from www.bitconjuver.org/BitTorrent or www.bittorrent.com

Internet has become part and parcel of our lives. Not only for individuals but even for a country's economic growth, scientific growth, organizations' success, Internet is very essential. The companies that offer these internet connections are called ISPs (Internet Service Providers). These ISPs offer many different internet connection plans. How to select the best connection plan for home use or for offices? The following tips will give you an overview of different types of internet connections, their advantages and disadvantages.

PSTN Dialup

Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) dialup uses your phone connection to connect your computer to the internet. You need a modem, phone line and a computer for a PSTN dial up connection.

Advantages of PSTN dial up

1. This is the basic internet connection and all the ISPs provide this type of dial up.
2. To install PSTN dialup and to use it is very cheap and affordable.

Disadvantages of PSTN dial up

1. The speed of a typical PSTN modem is 56KBPS. Therefore the speed of the internet connection will be slower than this.
2. During the time you are connected to the internet, you have to pay the telephone charges.
3. While you are connected to the internet you cannot use your telephone to call anyone because you are using that phone line for connecting to the internet. You also will not receive any calls from outside during this time.

ISDN dialup

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) dialup uses a higher end digital telephone line to dial up. To use this type of connection you need ISDN telephone line, computer and a 'Terminal Adapter'.

Advantages of an ISDN dialup

1. While you are connected to internet using ISDN dialup connection you can use your ISDN phone to make phone calls simultaneously.
2. When you are making phone calls while connected to the internet then the speed of internet will be 64KBPS.
3. If you are using the ISDN phone line just for internet then the speed of internet will be 128KBPS.

Disadvantages of ISDN dialup

1. Not every place has ISDN connection.
2. Even if your place has this facility, it is expensive to get an ISDN dialup connection from your ISP.
3. Not all the ISPs provide ISDN dialup plan.

Leased Line Internet Plan

In both ISDN dialup and PSTN dialup you need to dial up from your computer before getting connected to the internet. And you close this connection when you no longer need internet connection. If you need a continuous connection 24 hours of the day and 7 days a week then you need a 'Leased Line' also known as 'dedicated line'. This type of permanent connection is called 'Always On'.

Advantages of Leased Line

1. You get 'Always on' connection 24 hours every day.
2. The speed of the internet ranges from 2.4 KBPS to 2G based on your subscription.

Disadvantages of Leased Line

1. The disadvantages of a leased line is that it is very expensive.
2. Since your computer is always connected to the internet your computer is exposed to many vulnerabilities such as viruses and spywares. So you may need to secure your computer using firewall and Antivirus software

DSL

1. Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) also uses a normal PSTN phone line. But using DSL you can use both internet and phone simultaneously. Therefore many prefer DSL to PSTN dial up.

Advantages of DSL

1. The speed of DSL connection is fast. 64 KBPS, 512 KBPS, 1.5MBPS and higher speed can be achieved in DSL connections.
2. DSL also provides 'Always On' connection 24 hours a day always.
3. You can also use your phone while using internet

Disadvantages of DSL

1. More expensive
2. You need an ADSL modem to connect but the distance between this modem and your computer cannot be more than 18,000 feet.

Consider you have created a personal website with some useful information for others to see. This website will be useful only if other people visit your website. How to make other people visit your site. This article discusses about how to promote your site.

How can you make your website address known to everybody. To your friends and relatives it is possible to tell your website address directly to them. You may even distribute notices in your town. But how to tell your website address to the whole world. This is where the Search Engines come in handy.

Almost everyone uses Search engines to search for information or products in the Internet. Then the search engine will display a list of website results based on the searched keyword. If your website is in this result returned by search engines then people will visit your website from around the world.

There are at present billions of websites today. In each website there will be atleast ten pages. Some websites will have many pages. So the website you create is just one of these so many websites.

Therefore when the search engine returns results, if your website is not listed in the first four pages of the results then chances of people visiting your site is less. So you have to create your site such that it appears in the first four pages of the search engine results. For this you need to optimize your website for search Engines. This is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). To learn SEO techniques, first you need to understand how search engines operate.

How does Search Engines identify and index your website.

Search engines use programs such as Spider, Web Crawlerm Robo, Bot etc for finding and indexing websites. These programs will keep searching for new websites and read the content of the pages in the websites and understand what these pages are about and index those pages accordingly.

It may take some time for the search engines to find your website. If you cannot wait for the search engines to find you then you can tell the search engines about your website and the search engines will send its spider program to crawl your site and index your pages based on their content.

Use of Meta tags in your web pages is one of the most easiest and effective method to tell search engines about your webpage and its content. Those who know HTML language will know about HTML Tags. If you are not familiar with thest tags then below are some tips on using meta tags in your web pages

How to use Meta tags?

The meta tags contain attributes such as 'Name', and 'Description'. The Name attribute can take values such as 'Description' or 'Keywords'. While the 'Description' attribute will have details about keywords and description.

Assume that you do Real estate business and you have created a webpage regarding this. The tips given below will explain how you can effectively use the Meta tags in your webpage.



As you can see the description tag uses the most relevant keywords of your webpage and describes the content of the page for search engines to describe your webpage in search results and also for indexing.



The keywords meta tag is to list the keywords in your webpage.

You can add your website for search engines to crawl your site. For this you need to submit your site details to search engines. Some of the most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. You can use the links given below to submit your website.

Yahoo: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request

Google: www.google.com/addurl.html

MSN: http://submit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

Other than search engines, you can also submit your site to directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo directory. You can visit www.dmoz.org to list your site under appropriate directory. You can also generate money from your website. Now the easiest and hottest internet marketing method is by using google adsense

For one computer to connect to another computer and transfer information, the IP address of that computer should be known. This IP Address is made of numbers. The 32 Bit IP address is divided into 4 sections of 8 bits each separted by a '.' (dot). Each 8 bit is called an Octet. The value of each Octet will vary between 0 to 255.

For example, 203.116.56.34 is an IP address. As you can see there are four sections each separated by a dot.

Name Vs Number

If someone asks you whose phone number is 98343453 you may not know it. But instead if someone asks you whether you know 'John peters' immediately you will remember your friend. The reason is names are easier to remember than numbers. This is human nature.

In internet, there is a need to connect to a lot of different computers daily. If you have to remember the IP address of each computer in the internet, it is impossible. Because IP Address is made of numbers.

That's why, computer scientists decided to give a name to each of these IP addresses. These computer names that represent IP addresses are called 'Domain Names'. For example, www.yahoo.com is a domain name. It is easy to remember a name. Isn't it?

Every computer that connects to the internet has a unique IP Address. Most of the computers especially servers will have a domain name.

DNS - Domain Name System

If you need to connect to a computer in the internet, you can use the IP address of that computer or the Domain Name of that computer.

But the computers need just the IP addresses. For our own convenience we use domain names. Therefore when we use the domain name, for example www.yahoo.com, our computer will first find out the IP address of this domain name and then uses the IP address to connect to it.

Let us assume that the IP address of the computer that you want to connect to is 123.232.231.132 and the domain name of this computer is www.xyz.com .

Now you connect to Internet, open your browser and key in the IP address 123.232.231.132 in the address bar and 'Enter'. The browser will immediately connect to the computer because the computer knows how to use the IP address.

Now imagine that you typed the domain name www.xyz.com instead of the IP address in the browser. What the computer needs is the IP address not the domain name. Therefore the browser will try to find the IP address for the domain www.xyz.com . For this purpose it will contact the DNS (Domain Name System) server. The DNS server will find the IP address of that domain and will return the IP address to your browser. Then your computer will use that IP address to connect to that computer.

If you type the IP address, the browser will access that site immediately. If you type the domain name, there will be slight delay because the browser has to connect to DNS server first to determine the IP address. If for some reasons this DNS server is down or there is not DNS entry for that domain, then that domain name or website address will not be accessible.