Photos of two Lumia smartphones leaked

Leaked photos of two new Windows Phone 8 devices from Nokia, the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, hit the Web on Friday ahead of the handset maker'sNokia World event next week in New York.

Two high-resolution photos popped up on the@evleaks Twitter account around 7:30 a.m. ET, showcasing bright, slick phones which Nokia is expected to debut next Wednesday.

As The Verge first reported, the leaked photos likely display the "Phi" (Lumia 920) and "Arrow" (Lumia 820) devices (pictured below), both available in a number of colours.

The Lumia 920 phone will supposedly sport a 4.5-inch display, as well as a PureView camera, which has a 41-megapixel sensor and is meant to eliminate the visual noise found on most smartphone cameras. According to VentureBeat, Lumia 920 plans will be sold exclusively by AT&T.

The Lumia 820, comes in at least seven colors, has a 4.3-inch display, and will run on AT&T's and T-Mobile's networks, VentureBeat said.

The mysterious @evleaks has posted only 10 messages in four days, including eight photos of an unknown HTC Android tablet, and already has almost 700 followers in less than a week.

Nokia has a lot riding on its Windows Phone 8 offerings and its tight relationship with Microsoft. The beleaguered Finnish handset maker, once a market leader, has struggled to keep up with competitors like Apple and makers of various Android phones in recent years.

"Nokia bet everything on Windows, and if this doesn't succeed the next step might be having to do what's best for shareholders, and that might include selling off key assets or selling the whole company," Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley said in an interview with Reuters.

Windows Phone 8 isn't expected to drop until Oct. 29, VentureBeat pointed out, so if they are revealed next week, the Lumia handsets will still have to sit on the shelf for almost two months before Nokia starts selling them.

Lumia 920 with PureView

Lumia 820

Tunlr DNS: Watch Hulu, Pandora, Netflix and Others Without VPN

Many services based on the entertainment industry, viz. the music and movies, are geographically restricted because of licensing issues. The video streaming service Hulu, movies on demand service NetFlix and Internet radio service Pandora, for example, are available only within the United States. Similarly, BBC iPlayer and Channel 4 are only for the U.K. audience. But the global Internet population couldn’t be easily kept away from such treasures. Many Internet users are getting around the geo-location block using proxy, and VPN services in particular.

A large number of VPN providers have sprung up in a short period of time to meet demands. Unfortunately, they are all paid services and for students and for those without a regular paycheck, even $5 a month is expensive. Besides, they're are already paying for Internet connectivity. Free VPN services are available but they are always subject to abuse because of which they either become slow, restrictive or shut down entirely.



Recently, a new free service called Tunlr has emerged that allows users to access services blocked outside the United States. But Tunlr does not provide VPN service. It is a DNS unblocking service that uses a combination of a DNS server and a collection of proxies in various countries to go around the geographical block. The user simply change their DNS servers to those provided by Tunlr. After doing this, they are able to bypass the block and access Hulu, Netflix, Pandora and any of the supported services.

Unlike VPN, where the content is routed through the VPN servers, with Tunlr users are able to stream directly from the blocked service with no intermediary servers in between. Besides, Tunlr is free.

Tunlr can unblock the following services:

• US video streaming services: Netflix, Hulu, CBS, ABC, MTV, theWB, CW TV, Crackle, NBC, Fox, TV.com, PBS, Vevo, History, Lifetime TV,
• US audio streaming services: Pandora, Last.fm, Turntable.fm, Mog.com, iHeartRadio,
• Non-US services: BBC iPlayer (UK), Channel4 4oD (UK), iTV Player (UK), and Zattoo (Germany).

How Does Tunlr Work?

Tunlr uses two main components - a DNS server and a collection of proxies located in different countries. When your computer sends a DNS query for a blocked website, for example, hulu.com, instead Hulu’s real IP address, the Tunlr DNS server returns the IP addresses of a proxy server operated by Tunlr in the US.

When your connection is received by Tunlr’s proxy in the correct country, it is forwarded to the service provider e.g. Hulu. For Hulu, you appear to be in the correct country because it sees the IP address of the proxy server located in the US.

Once the IP address check is passed, and your connection established, Tunlr re-introduces your true IP address into the data stream so that the video content is streamed directly to your computer and not through Tunlr’s proxy server.

In order not to overwhelm their DNS servers with request, Tunlr strongly recommends that you switch to their DNS servers only when required to access the blocked services. You can do this easily using tools such as Public DNS Server Tool or DNS Changer. If you are using an alternative router firmware such as DD-WRT and Tomato, it is also possible to use Tunlr DNS for only the supported sites and use ISP’s for all other sites.

Unfortunately, many people are using their DNS servers in a permanent fashion, which forced Tunlr to introduce restrictive measures. Tunlr wrote in their blog.

Since too many users are using our DNS servers in a permanent fashion, we have to introduce some form of traffic shaping in order to make the permanent use of our DNS servers less attractive with the ultimate goal to keep Tunlr a free service. We’re going to implement artificial response delays and tighten the existing request rate-limiters on our DNS servers. This is going to slow down internet surfing a lot (!) for anyone who’s permanently using Tunlr’s DNS servers.

And from their FAQ:

We’re not aiming to provide a professional 24/7 service. Tunlr is up when it’s up, and is down when it’s down.

If you want to use Tunlr, please pay heed to their request otherwise you are going to kill an amazing free service.

3 Great Firefox 15 Features You Should Enable Right Now

Mozilla debuted Firefox 15 just a few days ago, and unlike most of the recent releases, version 15 includes some major changes. The most notable among them is an improvement in the way the browser uses and releases memory. Mozilla has been working to fix the memory leak problem that has been plaguing the browser for years, and although I won’t hold my breath, Firefox 15 is showing appreciable improvement. According to the organization, the developers have managed to patch Firefox 15 solving the most common add-on leaks. The best part is that add-on developers don't have to do anything as the fix applies to all add-ons.

While most changes are performance based, there are a few new features that users can benefit from during the day to day use of their browser. You won’t see them because they are disabled by default. And that’s for good reason – they are not ready for prime time as the developers feel there are still a few issues that needs to be ironed out before the new features can be released to the masses. If you are willing to accept the occasional hiccups that you might encounter on the way, here are 3 hidden features that you should enable in Firefox 15 right away.

Native PDF Viewer

Mozilla has been working on PDF rendering functionality since first introducing pdf.js a year ago. Initially available as a separate PDF Viewer add-on for the browser, pdf.js displays PDF files in HTML5 with JavaScript using Canvas and SVG APIs. The PDF viewer functionality is now built-in by default and its user interface was refreshed several times during the development stage.

How to Enable?
Go to about:config, search for "pdfjs.disabled". Double click on it to change the value to "false." Restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.

Click-to-play Plugins

Click-to-play plugins disable plugins by default, such as embedded Flash player, so videos in YouTube will not autoplay as soon as the page loads; you will have to click the Play button to load the Flash player. This is a good thing as it prevents any Flash content from auto playing.
Both Google Chrome and Opera has had a "click-to-play" plugins for more than a year now. Now Firefox has one as well.

How to Enable?
Go to about:config, search for "plugins.click_to_play". Double click on it to change the value to "true”. Restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.

Options in Tab

Taking a cue from Google Chrome, Mozilla developers have included an option in Firefox 15 that allows users to view the browser’s Options window in a tab instead of in a separate window. Peculiarly, only the Options window is affected by the change; the Downloads, Bookmarks and History still open in their own windows.

How to Enable?
Go to about:config, search for "browser.preferences.InContent". Double click on it to change the value to "true”. You don’t to restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.

Convert Scanned PDF Documents to Text with Google OCR

A new, elegant and streamlined OCR to PDF, HTML, RTF and Unicode text

There are two types of PDF documents – those created by sending Office files, images, etc. to an Acrobat like PDF printer and those created by scanning physical paper like pages of a book, legal documents, etc.




Google could always index PDF documents created by conversion but now they also recognize text from PDFs that are generated by scanning paper documents using OCR software.

This is a scanned document and this is the html text view of that same document converted by Google.

Since scanned PDFs are nothing but images, don’t be surprised if Google adds a "search by text" function to their Image Search engine similar to OneNote or EverNote. That will surely be huge.

Convert Scanned PDFs to Text

Now if you have bunch of scanned PDF files on your hard drive and no OCR software, here’s what you can do to convert them into recognizable text.
Create a folder in your website (say abc.com/pdf) and upload all the PDF images to that folder. Now create a public web page that links to all the PDF files. Wait for the Google bots to spider your stuff.
Once done, type the query "site:abc.com/pdf filetype:pdf" to see the PDF documents as HTML.

FVD Speed Dial With Online Sync for Firefox and Chrome

All new web browsers utilizes the empty space on a new tab to display a row of thumbnails of your most recently and frequently visited web sites. Opera calls this the Speed Dial, after the speed dial feature found in most phones, while other browsers simply call it the ‘new tab page’. In Firefox and Chrome, the new tab page is not very customizable. The extent of customization that is allowed on the new tab page depends on the browser you are using. In Firefox you can arrange the order in which the thumbnails appear and pin select sites so that they are always available. In Chrome, you can arrange the thumbnails but you cannot pin sites. This is why third-party speed dial/new tab page extensions are very popular among Chrome and Firefox users. However, they still lack the ability synchronize your speed dial across all your computers and devices. Currently, the only speed dial extension that supports this is FVD Speed Dial.

The ability to sync online is just one of the many perks of using FVD Speed Dial. This add-on is highly customizable and supports a range of features like custom backgrounds, custom dials, organized groups, most visited dials and more.




Initially, FVD Speed Dial will display your most visited websites, but you can replace the tiles with your preferred websites. The extension also lets users group sites into multiple speed dial pages and quickly switch from one page to another. For instance, you can create groups for social networking sites, blogs, news and whatever you find useful. Also available is a list of most visited sites, a list of recently closed tabs and a recover session button that lets you recover your last browsing session, that is, the pages that were open when you closed Firefox the last time.

Options for customizing the appearance of the speed dial page are plenty. You can set everything from dial size, dial opacity, background colors, background images, fonts, font size, and even minute things like whether or not to show the URL below each speed dials.

FVD Speed Dial for Firefox

FVD Speed Dial for Chrome

Other Features

• Block by URL or Domain. This feature allows you to exclude unwanted URLs from appearing in your most visited Speed Dial group.
• Background templates (similar to wallpapers in Windows) in browser window.
• Mouse gestures for switching between sped dials and various viewing modes.
• Four thumbnail sizes: Big, Medium, Small, List (just a list for those who prefer a compact view)
• Several modes for setting the background image: Fill, Fit, Stretch, Tile, Center same as in Windows.
• Activate or deactivate Flash, Silverlight and Java Script when creating a screenshot for the Dial.
• Customizable page opening mode in the Speed Dial: in the current tab, in a new tab (Hotkey: Ctrl+Click), in a background tab (Hotkey:Ctrl+Shift+Click).
• Customizable number of rows in the Speed Dial. Auto mode available.

Disable Start Screen and Hot Corners in Windows 8

Among the many radically different interface changes Microsoft introduced in Windows 8 is one called “hot corners”. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it’s a triggering system that actions by hovering the mouse pointer over the four corners of your screen. In Windows 8, the traditional Start Menu is gone and is replaced by these hot corner or hot edges.

When you move your mouse to the right edge of the screen, a an interface called the Charms menu is displayed. The Charms Bar provides icons to access Search, Share, Start Screen, Devices and Settings. It is from the Charms menu that you shutdown or power-off your computer.

Move your mouse to the left edge of the screen, and you'll see a different interface - the Switcher menu. This provides an easy way to switch between running Modern/Metro apps and the Desktop.



Move your mouse still lower to the bottom-left corner of the screen and a tiny popup will appear, that takes you to the Start Screen.

These mouse-over interfaces, can be launched from your keyboard too: the Start Screen can be launched by pressing the Win key on your keyboard; the Charms Bar can be opened with Win+C, and while Win+Tab lets you cycle through apps without the Switcher menu on the left.

If you are annoyed by the mouse accidentally triggering these menus, you can disable the hot corners. This does not mean that Switcher and Charms Bar are entirely disabled, for you will still be able to show them using the keyboard shortcuts.

Manually Disable Hot Corners

Open Registry Editor (press Win+R, type regedit.exe in Run dialog and press Enter) and navigate to the following registry key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ImmersiveShell
Right-click on ImmersiveShell and select New > Key. Name the key EdgeUI.
Right-click on EdgeUI and select New > DWORD and name it DisableTLcorner. Create another DWORD and name this one DisableCharmsHint.

DisableTLcorner stands for “Disable Top-Left corner”. Double-click it and change its value from 0 to 1. Switcher will not appear when you move your mouse to the top-left corner of the screen. However, it still appears when you move the pointer to the bottom-left corner and then move it upwards along the left edge of the screen.

DisableCharmsHint: Double-click it and change its value from 0 to 1 to disable the Charms bar when using the mouse. The Charms Bar will not appear when you move the pointer to the top-right or bottom-right corners. But like the Switcher, if you move the pointer to the top-right corner and then move it down along the right edge of the screen (or from the bottom-right corner up to the screen center along the right edge), it’ll appear again.

The settings take effect immediately, you do not have to restart Windows Explorer. To re-enable the default behavior of Switcher, simply set DisableTLcorner value to 0 or delete it. Same goes for DisableCharmsHint value.

Disable Hot Corners and Start Screen With an App

If registry editing is not your thing, you can use Skip Metro Suite to disable the hot corner actions. Skip Metro Suite allows you to disable the Switcher, the Charms Bar and the Start Screen as well so that you can boot directly to the classic desktop after logging on. All options can be selected or unselected with a single click.

Add Windows Defender to Desktop Context Menu in Windows 8

Windows Defender was introduced as an anti-spyware program in Windows Vista and remained thus in Windows 7. In Windows 8, Microsoft upgraded Defender into a full fledged antivirus software comparable to Microsoft Security Essentials. In fact, Windows Defender is Microsoft Security Essentials and is intended to function as the default anti-virus program on Windows 8 computers. Although not immediately apparent, because it doesn’t have an icon in the notification area, the antivirus program is indeed running and protecting you against malware infection.



Windows Defender can be launched by double clicking the program icon on the Control Panel. If you want to scan your computer or a thumb drive, you have to start the program either from the control panel or by searching it on the Start Screen. Unlike most anti-virus program, Windows Defender has no shell extension, i.e., you cannot right-click a file or a drive in Windows Explorer and select “scan” from the context-menu. But this can be easily fixed by adding some registry keys.

Over at EightForums.com, a forum member has shared a tutorial that show you how to add or remove a cascading (expandable) Windows Defender menu to the desktop context menu for all users in Windows 8 that enables users to quickly open Windows Defender to settings, update, update and quick scan, quick scan, or full scan.



The easiest way to do this is to download this file, unzip the contents and run Add_Windows-Defender_to_Desktop.reg to add the necessary keys to the registry. To remove the Windows Defender entry from the context menu, run the corresponding Remove_Windows-Defender_from_Desktop.reg file.

For those who like to get their hands dirty, here are the contents of both files.

Add Windows Defender to Desktop Context Menu

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\WindowsDefender]
"MUIVerb"="Windows Defender"
"SubCommands"="WD-Settings;WD-Update;WD-Update-QS;WD-QuickScan;WD-FullScan"
"Icon"="%ProgramFiles%\\Windows Defender\\EppManifest.dll"
"Position"=-
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-Settings]
@="Settings"
"HasLUAShield"=""
"Icon"="%ProgramFiles%\\Windows Defender\\EppManifest.dll"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-Settings\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Windows Defender\\MSASCui.exe\" -Settings"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-Update]
@="Update"
"Icon"="%ProgramFiles%\\Windows Defender\\EppManifest.dll"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-Update\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Windows Defender\\MSASCui.exe\" -Update"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-Update-QS]
@="Update and Quick Scan"
"Icon"="%ProgramFiles%\\Windows Defender\\EppManifest.dll"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-Update-QS\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Windows Defender\\MSASCui.exe\" -UpdateAndQuickScan"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-QuickScan]
@="Quick Scan"
"Icon"="%ProgramFiles%\\Windows Defender\\EppManifest.dll"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-QuickScan\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Windows Defender\\MSASCui.exe\" -QuickScan"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-FullScan]
@="Full Scan"
"Icon"="%ProgramFiles%\\Windows Defender\\EppManifest.dll"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-FullScan\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Windows Defender\\MSASCui.exe\" -FullScan"

Remove Windows Defender From Desktop Context Menu

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\WindowsDefender]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-Settings]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-Update]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-Update-QS]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-QuickScan]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
CommandStore\shell\WD-FullScan]

Turn Your Android Phone into a Server With Servers Ultimate

You must have read countless articles that talk about possible uses for old computers. Aside from the most obvious ones (sell or donate), there are some interesting projects mostly revolving around servers – web server, file server, network attached storage device or a proxy to tunnel through from work. You can do the same with your old Android device that is gathering dust in the desk drawer.


While individual apps that let users run different server software on their Android devices has been available for long, Servers Ultimate is a one stop shop for all your server needs. This new free app can turn your Android phone into 10 different kinds of servers. These are DLNA, DNS, Dynamic DNS, Email (POP3 and SMTP), FTP(S), Proxy (tunneling), SMS Gateway, Time (NTP or TP), HTTP(S) and/or (secure) WebDAV.



With such a wide range of options you can do all kinds of stuff like stream music from and to your phone using DLNA, browse and transfer files between your device and your computer or another device through FTP or WebDAV. You can also setup your Android device as an email server to send and receive mails or set up an SMS gateway. There are other options like setting up a time server or a proxy tunnel or a plain old HTTP web server.

Setting up and running a server is easy, and the best of all – it doesn’t require root access. Simply install Servers Ultimate and add servers from the list. Name the server, enter a port number or let the device assign a random port to prevent conflict between your server and currently running apps. In most cases you will be asked to add a folder – the location that you want to be accessible through the server. After you have created and saved the server, you will find it listed in the main screen. From there, you can start and stop the servers with a single touch. You can even run multiple instances of the same server type at the same time, although the free edition limits this to only two.
The servers can be started and stopped depending on the connected Wi-Fi network, and can be started on boot or on when the app is started. You can even restrict connection to your device from only specific IP addresses.

To connect to the server from a network, you will need the IP address of the phone. This you can get from the “Info” option in Servers Ultimate. The screenshot below shows Firefox accessing the content of my phone through FTP.



Features summary per server type:

• DLNA media server: add multiple roots, support for Samsung devices (television)
• DNS server: caching, forward to dns server, use web dns server for requests, only access from certain IP’s, add rules to block or change requests
• Dynamic DNS updater: run dynamic updates to keep your server(s) available, select from predefined ddns services (set a custom URL, or choose from ChangeIP, DNSdynamic, DNSexit, DNSMadeEasy, DNS-O-Matic, DNSPark, DtDNS, DynDNS, easyDNS, eNom, HE.net, Joker, Namecheap, No-IP, ZoneEdit), set timer, username, password, hostname, SSL supported, update on connectivity change
• Email server: POP3 and SMTP server, set domains, set users
• FTP(S) server: allow access from certain IP’s, enable SSL/FTPS Implicit (custom or our certificate), allow anonymous login, per user set username, password, document root, force stay in document root, allow write access, allow custom FTP commands (CUSTOM SENDLOG, CUSTOM STOP, CUSTOM VIBRATE)
• Proxy server: only allow access from certain IP’s, enable HTTPS requests, supports GET and POST, set tunneling by forwarding everything (allows the proxy to work for other protocols beside HTTP as well, like FTP), add rules to block or change requests
• SMS Gateway: allow http access, allow access from certain IP’s, add rules for incoming SMS (body, from), forward to SMS, email or URL, and add users with maximum amount of allowed sms per month
• Time server: user the Network Time Protocol (NTP) or simple Time Protocol (TP)
• Web, HTTP(s) server: use simple htaccess (.shtaccess) file to set directory specific configurations (like password, directory listing, encryption, upload, Server Side Includes, and way more!), enable SSL/HTTPS (custom or our certificate)
• WebDAV server: enable SSL (custom or our certificate), only allow access from certain IP’s, allow web browsing, allow HTTP digest authentication, add multiple users

Offensive Images in SkyDrive Will Lose Your Entire Microsoft Account

Be careful of what you upload to your SkyDrive storage, for even a single stray image containing offensive material can make you lose your entire Microsoft account and all services associated with including Outlook/Hotmail, XBox 360, Zune and what not, as a German man recently found out the hard way.

Every cloud storage service has its own set of policies and restrictions that determine what you can or cannot store there. This is reasonable as long as the policies are restrictive only towards materials that infringe copyright or violate laws of the land, such as child pornography. But Windows Live code of conduct that governs SkyDrive are much more restrictive than that.

SkyDrive’s EULA doesn’t allow users to store any images that “depicts nudity of any sort, including full or partial human nudity, or nudity in nonhuman forms such as cartoons, fantasy art or manga.” This means that your private beach holiday photos or even nude drawings are off-limits. Microsoft also disallows users from storing pornographic and obscene content so all your legally purchased adult movies should be kept off SkyDrive. Others things restricted include materials and documents that expresses profanity, hatred, bigotry, racism, or gratuitous violence.

Neowin speculates that your SkyDrive account could be banned if you upload a document with just one swear word inside. The ban on "gratuitous violence" means you could possibly be banned if you upload a movie of your gameplay in, for example, the "M" rated Halo series from Microsoft.
The German man who was banned from SkyDrive, along with all of the services linked to his Microsoft online account, had upload four partially nude pictures in his private folder. The keyword here is “private folder”.

This poses a big problem for users. SkyDrive is deeply embedded into the Windows 8 operating system and Microsoft expects everybody to use SkyDrive in Windows 8 to store pictures and documents in Office 2013. So what happens when you sync your private pictures to SkyDrive, or if you write a story with one too many swear words in Word and save it to SkyDrive? Windows Phone 7, too, has an option to automatically upload any picture you take to a private folder on your SkyDrive.

With Windows 8’s release round the corner it’s time that Microsoft review their SkyDrive policies or at least offer some guidance on its SkyDrive agreements.

DAEMON Tools USB Lets You Share USB Devices Over Network/Internet

DAEMON Tools USB is a new free program that lets users remotely share USB devices over LAN, WAN or the Internet. While it is possible to share USB storage devices such as Flash drives and external hard disk over a local network, DAEMON Tools USB makes the process easier. Additionally, using DAEMON Tools USB it is possible to share non-mass storage devices such as webcam, printers, USB speakers etc.

DAEMON Tools USB must be installed on both the remote machine where the USB device is physically connected and the local machine from which you will access the remote device. The first step is to add the remote machine as a server through DAEMON Tools USB’s interface. For this you will have to know the remote machine’s IP address. This step must be repeated on the remote machine. Once both machines are cross connected through DAEMON Tools USB you can proceed with USB sharing.

On DAEMON Tools USB program window, you will see two tab – one for remote devices and the other for local devices. Under the “local devices” tab you will see a list of all USB devices connected to the machine. Right click on the device you want to share and click on the Share option.

Within a few moments, the shared device should appear on the remote machine under DAEMON Tools USB’s “remote devices” tab. Right-click on the device and click on the Connect option. Once this routine is completed, the remote USB device will become available on the local machine.

Kepard VPN Accounts Giveaway

How protected are you when surfing the Internet? How often do you expose your sensitive information to spyware or malware? How often does the government see what you’re transferring? If you’re like most people, you really don’t know. The actual answer is pretty stunning – the amount of risk on the modern Internet is staggering. For 10 lucky readers, that won’t be a problem, though, thanks to Kepard’s awesome giveaway.

Kepard is a new VPN service provider that has servers located in 5 different countries: the US, the UK, Germany, Canada and the Netherlands. Additionally, each server has multiple IP addresses and the client program actually allows you to choose your preferred IP address.

Kepard supports all the three major VPN protocols: OpenVPN, L2TP and PPTP. It is possible to use Kepard without installing their client software. L2TP and PPTP protocols are natively supported by Windows. If you want to connect through the more secure OpenVPN protocol and if you already have the OpenVPN software installed then you can simple download the OpenVPN certificates from the website and connect through OpenVPN. However, using Kepard’s own client software is recommended as it allows you to quickly change VPN server locations, VPN protocols and IP addresses.

 

All Kepard accounts feature unlimited traffic, unrestricted speeds and even allows torrents and P2P downloads. You are also allowed to access Kepard’s services simultaneously on 2 computers.

Generally, people use VPN services either to access geographically restricted services such as Hulu, Pandora, BBC iPlayer and so on, or to remain anonymous in such a way that that their online activities cannot be linked to their true identity. If your primary reason to use Kepard is to protect your identity then you should be aware of their logging practices.

This is what Kepard says about connection logs:

Considering all the frauds happening on the internet we do have to keep logs in order to protect our business from the abuse of using our services. But this should be not a concern for you because we keep the logs just for 3 days. If during this time there are no official complains regarding any illegal activity, the logs containing your IP addresses are automatically deleted. We would like to make clear that no third party can get access to your logs. The reason of keeping the logs is just to protect everybody’s business.

But information in their privacy policy is contradictory:

The way Kepard Applies Collected Data From Kepard VPN Sessions:

This data is preserved for usage with billing, troubleshooting, service offering evaluation, TOS issues, AUP concerns, and for managing violation achieved over the service. We keep this information on a per-session base for a minimum of ninety days. We may continue upload and download bytes at total extended periods of time.

Update: Kepard told me that the 90-days period was an error in their privacy policy, and the actual log retention period is indeed 3 days.

However, Kepard assures us that they “will not provide any personal data - minimal information rationally intended to recognize and no more - or activity information to investigators, attorneys, or agencies in case when we are forced to do it by a court of competent jurisdiction in the domain. If there is a trial in court, the customer will be informed so they will have an occasion to contest the surrender of private information.”

The Giveaway

We have 10 3-months accounts of Kepard Premium VPN for this giveaway. If you are interested in entering the sweepstake, leave your name and email ID in the form below and also tell us what you intend to do with your VPN account. Winners will be selected by a random draw. The contest closes on 21 August, 2012.