24 TIMES REVIEW * SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, MUMBAI

SEPTEMBER 19, 2010

IE9 beta: Power-packed, Operation

BUT NOT FOR EVERYONE lockdown
Marco D’Souza can secure a few files or your even
entire hard disk. It can also be used

Also, thanks to better handling of
The most popular HTML 5, you can browse the internet in
a much faster and interactive manner;
browser in the world with much better handling of games and
videos than on any other browser.
just got one of its Another reason for IE9’s better per-
formance is its utilisation of a comput-
biggest makeovers. We er’s resources: If your machine has an
advanced graphics card, the browser
take a closer look at will use it to render a better image or
video, giving you a richer experience.
Internet Explorer 9 beta And if you think that the add-ons—
small applications that let you do things
Nimish Dubey from within a browser, such as check your
Gmail or tweet—are slowing down your
A
ll those months of toiling on
that new business plan just
slipped through your fingers.
After taking every precaution
of locking your computer and remem-
bering to hide your important folders,
you’re flummoxed by how anyone could
get to that all-important document.
Welcome to the real world—where even
the average Joe is finding ways to reach
other people’s data and seasoned hack-
ers are lurking around every corner.
Think about it—portable gadgets
like thumb drives have made it so
convenient to carry important data, but
stop and consider what a thief might
with portable storage like external hard
disks and thumb drives. And the icing
on the cake: It’s free.
Steganos Locknote: If you’re looking
for a tiny, powerful and free program—
that enables you to protect text data like
passwords, bank and credit card
details—this little application will work
just fine.
Once again, it is protected by ultra-
strong 256-bit encryption, and is a snap
to use—simply double click the
program, enter your password and
voilà; you have access to your sensitive
information. Close the program and it
all gets encrypted. This program is

F
or most people, surfing the surfing, simply use the Manage add-ons have access to if they managed to get small enough to be copied to a thumb
internet has become synony- feature to see which one is affecting the their hands on one of these devices: drive or even e-mailed.
mous with clicking on the ‘e’ performance of IE9, and shut it down. Photos of your family? Maybe even a
icon on their computers to text file containing your passwords or Mobile and portable applications…
launch Internet Explorer (IE). IE 9 has got the features to bank account details? For external storage: SafeHouse
And while it is by far the most popular And so we wonder: How secure is Explorer is a handy little free tool runs
browser in the world, of late, IE had take on the best (browsers), our digital data? directly off your thumb drive and
seen increasing threat from others such but alas, it is not for all Most of us know how enables you to encrypt all of its
as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Windows users. As of now, important it is to use contents, with the added abili-
Opera that claim to be faster, have more strong passwords (long ty to hide files or entire fold-
features, and more secure. Microsoft’s
the new browser is available combinations of let- ers. This is something you
answer to all these criticisms has been only for those who have ters, numerals and can’t do without if you
to unveil a new version of the browser: Windows Vista (Service Pack symbols); un-share frequently carry sensitive
Internet Explorer 9 (IE9). 2) and Windows 7 folders so that data on portable drives.
they’re not visible For mobile phones: If
A beta that looks good... on a shared net- you have an Android,
The new browser is currently in a beta ...but is not for everyone work, use the pass- Windows, or iPhone and
version, which means that while it has IE9 has got the looks (all the see-through word protection for are keen on storing sen-
a number of features and is generally joys of Windows 7 are here), the speed key documents et al. sitive information
usable, it is not quite the finished and the features to take on the best, but But all this is just on it, you’ll
article, and therefore is liable to the odd alas, it is not for all Windows users. As the first (and thin) definitely want to

crash and fumble. But for all its alleged
rough edges, there can be no doubting
that IE9 does represent a significant
step forward for browsers in general.
First, you will have to get over the
slightly tedious task of installing it:
Download it from http://windows.
microsoft.com/en-IN/internet-explor-
er/download/ie-9/worldwide; then wait
for updates to be installed, and finally
restart the computer to get things work-
ing properly.
However, once you get started, your
patience is amply rewarded. IE9 sports
a minimalistic look that seems similar
to Google Chrome. Gone are the crowd-
ed toolbars, and in its place is a simple
address bar with some navigation but-
tons (back, forward, refresh, and so on).
The back and forward buttons also
change colour depending on the site you
are browsing. The result is a much
cleaner, uncluttered appearance.
Incidentally, the address bar—where
you key-in the address of the website
you wish to visit—now doubles as a
search bar, just like in Chrome and Fire-
fox. However, in a neat addition, even
as you type what you are looking for,
suggestions keep popping up below.
For instance, if you are searching
for the weather in Mumbai, by the time
of now, the new browser is available only
for those who have Windows Vista (Ser-
vice Pack 2) and Windows 7. Windows XP
users—who comprise roughly half of all
those using Windows computers in the
world (including most netbooks)—cannot
use the new software at all.
From what we heard during our
interaction with Microsoft, there are no
plans to make a version for Windows
XP. The fact that the browser also uses
the resources of the computer such as
graphics cards for better rendering
EXPLORE THIS: (Top) Internet Explorer 9 has got the transparent Windows 7 look. It also means that it delivers different results
sports a minimalistic look that is similar to Google Chrome. (Above) You can now drag on different computer, and also tends to
down a tab of a site you visit frequently and pin it to the Windows taskbar at the bottom eat away a bit (but not too much) of the
of the screen where it will appear like the icon of an application. The next time you want battery life on notebooks.
to visit the site, just click on the icon on the taskbar and you will be on your way And, while IE9 is definitely faster
than earlier editions of IE, we still found
you finishing typing “Mumbai weath- of an application. So the next time you Google Chrome to be much faster on
er” you will not only have a list of things want to visit the site, just click on the icon most sites, especially those that did not
you could search for, but also the on the taskbar and you will be on your way. depend too much on multimedia.
current weather conditions of the In the case of certain websites, such In short, IE9 is a browser that shows
metropolis – this, even before you hit as Facebook and Twitter, you can also immense promise, but is unlikely to go
the Search button. right-click on the icon to bring up a mainstream – at least not until most users
“jump list”, which lets you perform a migrate to Windows 7 or Vista. For those
...is power-packed... variety of tasks like post new messages, who have already migrated, it is a must-
There are other new features as well. You view mentions and news and so on. download.
can now drag down a tab of a site you In fact, in Facebook, the icon even And, of course, we are also keenly wait-
visit frequently and pin it to the displays a red dot whenever you have a ing to see what Google and Mozilla will do
Windows taskbar at the bottom of the new message, saving you the trouble of now. IE9 definitely heralds a new chapter
screen where it will appear like the icon going to the site. in the browser wars…
line of protection.
To really lock down
confidential infor-
mation, you’ll need
to resort to more ro-
bust applications.
Simply put, the key to
your data’s security is
encryption.
Encryption is a tech-
nique for encoding docu-
ments using mathemati-
cal algorithms that process
data in wonderful ways to make it ap-
pear random and indecipherable to
unauthorised viewers. Think of it as a
way of putting important files through
a shredder, and being able to magically
re-assemble them to their original state
whenever you want to view them.
For your desktop…
TrueCrypt: This program does a
brilliant job of protecting data on your
desktop, laptop, or thumb drive. It is an
encryption software that creates a
protected space into which you can
dump pretty much any file. This space
is protected by military-strength AES
256-bit encryption (yes, that translates
to being very strong and practically
unbreakable). Using this program you
Gettyimages
secure it. Mobile
applications like
Crypto Wallet for
Windows Mobile, OI
Safe for Android,
and Lockbox for
iPhone enable you
to securely store
data like user names,
passwords, credit card in-
formation, bank account details,
and PINs. And yes, all of these apps
are free.
Ultra-secure USB drives: If you’re in
the market for a USB drive and want
best-of-class security, many popular
USB drive manufacturers offer
products that have built-in encryption.
This includes thumb drives like the
Kingston DataTraveler Elite Privacy
Edition, IronKey Enterprise series and
the Sandisk Cruzer Enterprise edition.
Even if these drives are lost or stolen,
there’s no way the data on them can be
accessed.
Remember that security is more crit-
ical than ever these days, and isn’t some-
thing to be scoffed at—after all, a few
hours of effort, learning how to lock
down your data are nothing compared
to keeping that life-changing business
plan safe and secure.

Tweet your way to 7 websites to make you seem

productivity more interesting than you are
Savio D’Souza reading. True story.

From security systems that blow the whistle on intruders via tweet
S
o you checked. wolframalpha.com
You don’t How do I put this mild-
to plants that demand water on Twitter, the microblogging service suffer from ly without sounding like
halitosis, no a fanboy? Wolframalpha
has evolved into much more than just a waste of time body odour problems, is a search engine with a
and you’re not even difference. Enter your
Kavita Kukday-Deb results and compares them to emerg- need to place the sensor into your bad-looking, but you birth date as a search pa-
ing topics on Twitter. In short, it uses plant’s soil. This keeps tabs on the just can’t seem to rameter, and the engine

W
ith more than 55 mil-
lion tweets a day, many
accuse Twitter, the
microblogging site, of
being a drain on productivity. But
that’s a misconception you had
better not encourage. In fact, scores
of companies have piggy-backed on
the popular communication tool to
build some wonderful produc-
tivity apps.
What makes these compa-
nies tick is Twitter’s open-
ended framework that provides
users with endless possibilities
within the 140-character limit.
Using this structure, people
have simply begun building
conduits and pipes to connect
to the service to perform var-
ious day-to-day tasks.
Instant sharing, of
course, is the central
idea behind micro-
blogging. And built
around this capability
are tools such as Twit-
Pic.com and Twitter-
share.com that lets you swap
photos and other digital me-
dia with friends and family.
For those into software
programming, for instance, a
Twitter-based services on Snipt.org
allows the sharing of snippets of code.
Spun from the same fundamental
concept of sharing, there are sites
such as TweetMyJobs.com and
TwitJobSearch.com. These have
turned Twitter’s limited format of
short, text-based announcements into
a front-end for employers to promote
their job openings, and for jobseek-
ers to search for those jobs. Since
Twitter is as real time as it gets, there
is a perception amongst jobseekers
that career openings show up here
before they hit the traditional online
jobsites such as Monster or Naukri.
Think regular news sites give
dated stories? Microblog-based ap-
plications can help. Take, for instance,
Tweetnews.appspot.com, a brainchild
of Yahoo BOSS engineer Vik Singh.
This app simply takes Yahoo’s news
topics that are most popular on Twit-
ter as an index for determining the
importance of different news stories.
Other similar sites that use
Twitter trends to sort top world news
include TwitScoop.com and Twitter-
sphere.com. The Twitter trend find-
er gives them an edge over the algo-
rithm-based ranking
Mahesh Benkar systems, such as
Google News,
by offering
faster up-
dates and
better relevance,
Twitscoop claims.
Twestival.com is an-
other example wherein people
have piggybacked on the microblog-
ging framework to organise events to
raise money for charity. The site
claims to have already organised
more than 150 offline events across
the world, and raised over $1.2 mil-
lion within 14 months.
On the hardware side, businesses
are making use of the ubiquity of
Twitter to keep you connected with
your home appliances.
Botanicalls.com, for example, has
a Twitter-enabled hardware kit that
lets your home plants ask for water
every time the moisture level in the
soil dips.
The DIY assembly kit has a tiny
moisture sensor attached to a circuit
board with an Ethernet port that
connects to your internet. After you
have the system in place, you just
moisture level, and once it drops
below a certain range, the system
sends you a tweet saying your plants
are thirsty.
On a similar principle, IBM’s
Andy Stanford-Clark claims to have
hacked into his home electricity me-
ter to tweet energy usage. If you fol-
low his tweets (www.twitter.com/
andy_house), you can see in real time
when Stanford-Clark turns his lights
off or whether he has an unusually
high electricity usage on a particu-
lar day. Updates are sent via sensors
in the home, and the system uses IBM
middleware to connect to the serv-
ice. Stanford-Clark says
that he can turn the
lights on or off re-
motely from the
website itself.
Inspired? Well,
you could take a
crack at making an en-
ergy-measuring gadget
yourself with step-by-
step instructions at
Tweet-a-Watt (www.la-
dyada.net/make/tweet-
awatt). This isn’t a project
for non-engineers, but for those with
thorough knowledge of wires and cir-
cuitry. The site gives a fair idea of
what you’d need to put together a
gadget that will plug into a home elec-
trical system, connect to a Wi-Fi
network and send progress tweets.
Share this with a group of friends
and you’ll have a healthy energy-
saving competition going for you.
And then there’s Linux expert
Shantanu Goel who has tried to cre-
ate a remote security system that
leverages Twitter.
He connected motion-sensing soft-
ware to a webcam on his computer,
which in turn connects to the inter-
net. So if someone breaks into his
house, the software detects movement
and tweets a warning. He also has
step-by-step instructions on his web-
site (tech.shantanugoel.com/2008/
05/14/keep-tab-on-home-security-
with-a-webcam-and-twitter.html) for
creating you very own home spy.
make any break- will throw up details
through with people like the number of
at social gatherings. years, months and
Why? Well, it’s days you have spent
probably because on this planet;
you’re bad at conver- famous personalities
sations. You don’t know that were born on
where to begin, and the same day; the
when you do, you most- phase of the moon
ly don’t have anything on the day you were
interesting to say. born, etc. Enter in
Mostly, you’re the per- a colour, say ‘pink’,
son nursing a drink at and it will throw up
the periphery of a par- its RGB value, its
ty conversation, nodding hexadecimal code,
sagely – at least that’s the complementary
look you’ve been going for so far. Mahesh Benkar colours and the like.
But why stand at the edge when But don’t take my word for it, go on, type
you can be bang in the middle of all the definitions, abbreviations and acronyms in Mumbai and Tokyo in the box, and see
action; holding court, narrating anecdotes, about computers, technology, telecommu- what you get. Useless facts and statistics
and generally just appearing well-informed nications, and the military. So bookmark it can be a great conversation opener.
on anything and everything. Here are ASAP before people start ROTFL at your
seven websites, equipped with which, you ignorance. www.pantheon.org and www.theoi.com
can appear intelligent to almost anyone. Everyone likes a story, and mythology has
Well, not everyone, but at least it’s a start… www.etymonline.com always a good subject to mine for conver-
This site is all about polishing you into a sations. So for your fill of gods and demons,
www.thefreedictionary.com fairly decent wordsmith. You know you can’t check out Pantheon.org and Theoi.com;
This resource is one of the best places in have a conversation without being equipped both excellent places to start. While the
Cyberia for any information of any sort. with the right linguistic skills. Also, it latter only covers Grecian divinity (and does
Besides dictionaries in English and 13 always helps to know the root of words so it exceedingly well), Pantheon includes
other languages, the site boasts of a the- you don’t trip while trying to appear smart. mythological characters from across the
saurus, a section for abbreviations, idioms, Enter Etymonline. This resource will help globe: From our own Ganesha to the Greek
an encyclopaedia, as well as a literature you understand the origin, development, Zeus, the Roman Jupiter to the Nordic
reference library – and all supported by a and the ‘true sense’ of a word. In simpler Freya, from the Egyptian Anubis to the
nifty search engine. Daily visitors can also language, if you need to know the basis of Aztec Quetzalcoatl. The gods, it seems, have
expect regular features such as word of the any word in English, then this is the place made these two URLs their personal
day, quote of the day, article of the day, this to go to. Heck, it even covers “supercal- domain. So if the exploits of the gods has
day in history, and so on. But my personal ifragilisticexpialidocious”. You might want always been your Achilles’ heel, then this
favourite has got to be the word game sec- to look that one up while you’re at it. site is your river Styx. Take a dip.
tion, which includes Hangman and Spelling
Bee. But I digress. Equipped with this www.biography.com www.brainyquote.com
resource, you can wax eloquent on practi- Great minds discuss ideas, average minds So you’ve tried a few Siddhuisms, and you’ve
cally anything under the sun. discuss events, small minds discuss peo- managed to get a few guffaws out of your
ple. But how will you ever discuss people, soft-headed friends. But now it’s time to up
www.acronymfinder.com if you know nothing about them? I suggest the ante. If you’re looking to impress
Every now and then, someone might try to you make haste to this resource. Whether people with higher IQs than your cronies,
appear smarter by spewing out an acronym it’s Pope John Paul II or Martin Luther you must take recourse to BrainyQuote. The
or abbreviation at you with a condescend- King, Adolf Hitler or Winston Churchill, site is a repository of quotations from hu-
ing smirk. But if you have bookmarked Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great, mourists, playwrights, presidents, authors,
Acronym Finder in you browser, that’s one Princess Diana or Marilyn Monroe, you’ll humanitarians and practically everybody
less tactic they can use to make you feel stu- find all their biographies here; complete who is anybody. Like someone famous said—
pid. Now, while it won’t keep you informed with photographs, videos snippets, etcetera. and I don’t remember who— but you’ll prob-
about everything there is to know, at least And on those nights when you don’t have ably find the quote on the site itself: “Next
it will help you mitigate your losses. This any social invites, visit Biography.com to being witty, the best thing is being able
site has more than 7,50,000 ‘human-edited’ anyway. It definitely makes for interesting to quote another’s wit”. I agree.