To Orkut or not to Orkut: Lessons from 'Bom Sabado'

The Internet has added several verbs to the English language. If you don't belive me, just 'google' it out. 'Googling', 'Orkutting' are from this new clan of verbs. For those who don't know what Orkut is, let me tell them that it is a social networking site by owned by Google Inc. and for those who were hibernating deeper, social networking is a form of net-friendship for people. I have been on Orkut (maintaining an Orkut account) for the past 3 years or so and have experienced all the good and bad effects of being on it. Among the good parts is the fact that Orkut lets me remain connected with so many friends, family members and acquaintances -- not all I am connected to but the ones who see their accounts regularly and care to respond, send a broadcast by way of status messages and share a few pictures with them. There are other uses of Orkut too, but I use it just for these three.

A couple of days back, I received a couple of scraps (small messages, mostly visible to all my friends and me) on my scrapbook. The messages read 'Bom Sabado'. I could not make the head or tail of it because this was definitely not Hindi, English or German. It didn't sound like Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic or Persian either. Looked like European to me. I 'googled' it out and found out that 'Bom Sabado' means Good Saturday in Portuguese.
I also came to know that this scrap was the result of a new worm (a kind of virus) attack that infested some Orkut accounts and sent 'Bom Sabado' as a message to all the persons enlisted as friends in the affected account. The worm originated from Brazil. Incidentally, Indians and Brazilians form the biggest demographical groups on Orkut. The worm utilized a small vulnerability in the browsers from compromised accounts on orkut to get the encrypted password from the cookie file and use it for itself.
Mostly the systems infected were the ones that were online when this worm spread and attacked. People who answered to this scrap also had some vague Brazilian communities added to their accounts and ended up getting infected and sending the scraps. There were also reports of accounts being rendered inaccessible, the 'Bom Sabado' scraps not being deleted and scrapbook not opening. I was fortunate that although I received two such scraps, my account was not infected because I took some timely measures.

By now, Google has taken care of the worm and stopped the spread of this worm. It is also trying to restore the infected systems. However, it was strongly recommended by Google that the users clean up their browser cache of any saved passwords, cookies and temp files, along with a change of their account access password and the security question.
Wait a second! Google asked me to change my password and my security question too??? Now, Orkut account is always connected to an account on google, which most people open with the opening of an email account. Later they start writing a blog, sharing pictures through picasa, buzzing away, using a calendar for their schedules, and several other google onlline services, again using the same account details, i.e., the username and the password!
So, I had to effectively change the password for all the google services, though just once and at a single place. But, doesn't this mean that if my account details and password could be obtained from Orkut, or through some vulnerability in the browsers, all my google accounts are vulnerable to such attacks and could be compromised.

This 'Bom Sabado' episode taught me a few lessons that I would like to share with all of you.

1. Don't keep yourself logged into Orkut (or any site, for that matter) when you don't need it and when you are not using it.

2. If possible, maintain a separate account (separate from your regular email account) for Orkut. This could mean creating a new account and adding up friends again and deleting your old account. Else, create a new email account for yourself. It would be a pain, but still do it, if you want to be safe.
This could be tough, but you need to do this because it also means that if something like the 'Bom Sabado' attack is possible, everything connected to your Google identity could be compromised, and is at stake, so be sure to isolate things before something like this 'Bom Sabado', or a better version of such an attack threatens your main email account (if in Gmail) and all connected Google accounts like Picasa, Reader, Buzz, Calendar, Voice, Sketchup etc etc.

2. Set up your Orkut account to send an email to you whenever someone scraps you. You would get the content of scrap on your email without even logging into your orkut account. When you see something strange like 'Bom Sabado' in some strange language, think if the friend who scrapped to you would know this language, or if it probably makes sense to both of you. If not, and if you see multiple emails informing you of the same scrap content, google it out immediately (I did this when I saw two scraps with this 'Bom Sabado') and get to know what is going on. Mostly you would get to know about such attacks along with an advice on what to do, on the Net itself.

3. Don't log into Orkut if something like this happens. Be sure to clean your browser cache of all history, auto-complete, saved passwords, cookies and temp-files. Change your password and security question too.

4. Still don't login. Stay off Orkut until things are taken care off by Google. When you read on the Net that it is over, log back in.

Let's hope such basic precautions would suffice, at least for a while and google would be more robust and less prone to such attacks in future! Amen!!

My experiments with music files: You can do this too!

I would like to share an experience I had today with some audio editing. I happened to watch a part of a movie file and ran through it because the cast had an actor I hold in high esteem. However, the  movie itself wasn't anything to talk about, and I skimmed through the part in under 10 minutes and make that out. But as it happens, at times, while rummaging through useless material, you chance into gems. The same happened here. I heard a few lines of an excellent song and developed a liking for it immediately. The song is sung by one of the superbly talented singers who has become my favourite, off late. It has some wonderful tabla playing in the background, with melodious flute and piano compositions.

Next I searched the sites I use regularly for listening to my fav songs for this song. I checked out fmw11.com and similar sites, and it wasn't there. Then I tried the online repositories like dishant.com to see if I could just enjoy it on online streaming. Unsuccessful, I tried a wild Google search, followed by a youtube search. To my chagrin, the song wasn't anywhere. Not much of a surprise, as the movie was such a low profile caper, with almost nothing good to talk about.

Now, I couldn't just let the song be lost. I would probably forget about it in a few days if I didn't act immediately, and I didn't really want to. I also wanted to share it with others who share my taste of music. This paved way for some audio engineering work that I experimented with. I came out with the prototype result that you can listen to, in the attached file. 
 
How did I get this file? To start with, I searched for, and found out a free software called "AoA Audio Extractor" that could rip apart the audio from composite video. I downloaded and installed it on Windows Vista, without any problems.
 
Initial experiments with the software gave me great results and I understood its use perfectly, without problems. I could select portions of the video file and extract audio out of it. However, there were quite a few problems with the target song. The song was in three different parts in three different places in the movie file, with some overlapping music and lines. To add to the complexity, these song portions were recorded with different sound levels, and had voices in the background.
 
Using the Extractor software, I ripped off the three audio files corresponding to the song as three mp3s. Next, I switched to "Audacity", another freeware, a sound editor that I have been using to create my cellphone ringtones for some time now. I opened the three mp3 files in separate Audacity windows. 
 
To start with, I trimmed the ends of these files to exclude the sound extraneous to the song itself. Once done, I picked up the file with the highest level of audio amplitude and decided to use its level as a base or common level. Then I edited up the other two files, one by one, and amplified their sound levels by trial and error to an approximate level of the base file. Once I was convinced that the sound levels of all three files were almost same, I selected all contents of file 2 in the sequence, and copy-pasted them at the end of file 1. Then I did the same with the third file in the sequence and copy-pasted its contents at the end of the composite file containing contents from files 1 and 2. Finally, I had to listen for and trim off redundant, useless and duplicate parts at the joints. Once I was done, I exported the final, composite file as a single mp3 file, and I was done. The work wasn't really perfect, but, not bad either, considering that it was the first time I did anything like this.
 
I could not suppress or chop off some dialogues which were superimposed on the music because of the limitations of Audacity. Further, I think I can work on the file more and improve the audio quality; this is just version 1.0 of my work, you can say. I plan to experiment with some advanced software like Cakewalk or Goldwave and find out how that can be done. All in some good time. At the same time, I also wish that the song doesn't go unheard, and gets its praise due.
 

[PS: The sound quality that I finally received is far superior to what you get to listen with the above video file. I had to cut down on the video file size for its use on the blog and consequently compromise on the audio quality for this.]

Freeware Data Recovery Tools for Windows

So, you just deleted an important file or en entire directory, only to realize you should not have done it? Don't panic. This post is all about help on this topic. When recovering data from accidental deletion, there are some rules to follow.

1. Stop using the hard drive you want to recover as main hard drive (if it is HDD data that you are trying to recover). Don't save anything after detecting lost data, don't even shutdown or restart the machine. Windows has disk and registry activity in background, and a lot of changes happen on even while shutting down and restarting.
2. Never install the data recovery software on the hard drive that you want to recover. (This may be different with some software, that use prior installation of a small component of the recovery software)
3. Never save the recovered files on the same hard drive (the one that you’re recovering - could be any type of media)

There are several freeware Windows utilities to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files (of any kind) emptied from the Recycle bin or deleted by user error from hard and floppy disks, USB flash drives, CF and SD cards and other storage media used in digital camera memory cards or MP3 players - or even from network drives. You can even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses! Most of these would work under Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista and support almost all Windows file systems, even with compression and encryption, across partitions, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged.


Pandora Recovery, FreeUndelete, Glary Undelete, Avira UnErase Personal, Recuva, and PC INSPECTOR File Recovery are some such free tools.


TOKIWA DataRecovery, SoftPerfect File Recovery, and Undelete Plus are other portable freeware utilites that do not even require a prior installation and can run off removable drives and USB memory.


ADRC Data Recovery Software incorporates extremely simple GUI and is a favourite of the newbies.

Repairing detectable but corrupt or non-working pen/thumb/flash drives

We all are used to relying on the pen/thumb drives of today that are descendants of their great grandfather, the floppy. Although much more reliable than floppies, pen drives are still prone to failure. This post is on repairing these drives and making them usable again.

Have you suddenly encountered with the problem that when you plug in your USB drive, the removable media shows up but when you try to open it, it returns with the message “Please insert a disk in to drive H:”.

If yes then follow the following steps. By applying this simple method you’ll have 80 % chance to get back your USB drive hardware. This works only in the above error condition. If the windows doesn’t detect your USB drive, then there is probably flaw in the USB media.

Please keep in mind that, you’ll have to lose your data when following this tutorial.

1. Plug in your USB drive.

2. Go to Start>My Computer, right click on the 'My Computer' icon and click on 'Manage' menu.

3. 'OK' any confirmation dialog box needed. The Computer Management window will pop up. Click on 'Disk management' under 'Storage tree' menu.

4. Now at the right side of the window right click on your removable media. (unlike the image below, it will show unknown information) , right click on your removable media and choose 'Change Drive Letter and paths'.

                                                                        Click to enlarge

5. Now in new window choose any drive later that is not taken by any media (M:, N: , :K: etc).

6. Click on the 'ok' button and close the management window. Try opening your pen-drive.

7. There is a chance that your pen-drive has recovered if this method worked.

If the problem still prevails, follow the above steps but instead of choosing 'Change drive letter and paths', choose 'Format' and give a quick format to it. Now you’ll have finally lost your data but the pen-drive is safe in your hands. Use this step only if the changing of the drive letter and paths doesn't work, because this step would probably mean that your data will be lost.

Hope this worked. We can have yet another post on recovering data out of faulty flash drives and cards later.

For friends who need a reminder service but have none

Google or Yahoo and other calendars are quite easy to use. There are several 3rd party calendars and reminder freeware tools available too, but I recommend these as they seamlessly integrate with your email, which you are going to use anyway.

For Google users, if you are in your google/gmail account, the "Calendar" tab at the top can lead you straight into a new tab with the calendar opened in it. There, you have a planner available to which you can add events that you would like to be reminded about. You simply need to navigate to the right year, month, date and time where you need to put the event. The navigation itself is very easy, using the month calendar at the left column. Events could be one-time, like a seminar or a meeting, or frequent, like monthly bill payments or yearly birthdays' and anniversaries' reminders. Once you have added up an event, you can click on the entry and enter the frequency of occurrence for that event.

The next important thing to do is setting up reminders. You can choose to be reminded days or hours in advance about an event, and can also configure the calendar to mail you a daily agenda to ensure the reminder on the particular day, sent to your google mailbox early that morning. To do this, you need to go to: Settings (top right in Calendar)>Calendar (tab)> Notifications and set the type and number of reminders along with the email address where you would be notified.

Things are pretty simple and similar in Yahoo. So try for yourself and see.

(For any help or problems, please leave questions on the comments of this post)

Never miss out on anything again, just remember to enter it in the calendar immediately.

It isn't rocket science I will blog here about

Hello Future Readers/Followers,

In this blog of mine, I would be sharing my experiences regarding the use of technology and see if I can provide all of you with something that you can possibly use. I am going to talk about gadgets, technology, software, inventions, breakthroughs and related stuff here, for the benefit of all of us. The whole idea of this blog is to present tough-stuff in as simple and easy-to-understand way as possible. So fasten your seat-belts and get ready for the take off.



Goodspeed!