Twibbon is now the easiest way to promote awareness of your cause on twitter, by overlaying a support icon over your Twitter profile. There are hundreds of causes to support and there is surely one you are passionate about. Just click on the cause you like, it will make you login via Twitter (which is safe), and your profile is changed. You can also revert back to your original profile by selecting your original icon from your unique profile page (like mine).

You can also create a new Twibbon, but you will first need to log in to Twitter to get started.

Boost Wireless Router Signal
Herein are some handy tips that enable you to boost up the signal strength of your wireless router.

1 ) Position of wireless router – Placing your wireless router in a room may result in signal loss or weak signal. It is always advisable to place the wireless router at the center of your home, such that you will have the same signal strength all over your place. Placing router near to metal objects like file cabinets or near dense brick walls can also add to signal loss or weak signal. So care must be taken not to place the wireless router near to any bulky objects such that the signal path is obstructed.

2 ) Interference by other wireless equipments – We use many other wireless equipments other than the wireless router like cordless phones, garage door openers, etc, which also operates using radio signals. Most of the wireless equipments emits radio signals in the same frequency, hence signal interference can take place. Placing the wireless router near to these equipments can also lead to signal scrambling and signal strength loss. Place the router away from these appliances and you can also change the frequency of the wireless router such that its signals will not be interfered with others.

3 ) Change Wireless router relay frequency – In US and Canada most of the routers relay signals using channel 6 2.4 G Hz by default and most other equipments like cordless phones may also use the same frequency. So try changing the channel such that the signal frequency will change and help reduce the signal interference and may improve the signal strength. You need not have to change any settings in your computer as it will detect the signal automatically.

4 ) Update Router firmware – The Router manufacturers will constantly update the firmware fixing problems which help in improving the performance and signal strength. To do this just visit your Router manufacturers web site and download or update to the latest firmware. It is always better to keep your operating system up to date such that any improvements or updates made to the network adapter drivers will be updated automatically. This can improve the performance of your system as well as improve the network adapter performance.

5 ) Buy Router and network adapter of same brand- Signal strength and the wireless performance can improve a lot when you use the Router and the network adapter of same make. Many manufacturers include signal boost techniques in there equipments such that you can have high performance. Router and adapter from different vendors may work fine but they cause problems some times and may not perform to the full capacity.

6 ) Use high gain antenna – Antenna supplied with the router will be an Omni directional antenna which will emit signals in all directions. So when you have placed the router in your living room then half of the signal is transmitted outside your house which is of no use. This can result in signal loss and poor performance. The solution is replacing it with High gain antenna which will emit signal in only one direction. You can install the antenna in such a way that all the signals will be transmitted inside your house. This is only possible if your router has a removable antenna. Check it before you install.

7 ) Placing a repeater – Router can transmit signals only to certain distances, mostly up to several meters. As you move away from the signal source (that is router), signal becomes weak and performance will be decrease. To overcome this problem you can place a repeater to boost the signal strength such that you can roam for more distance.

8 ) Replace your network adapter – The signal problem may not be always related to the router itself. Remember it is a two way transmission, so check the wireless network adapter of your PC or Laptop. Try replacing the network adapter and check if the problem is resolved. You can also use wireless USB network adapters for better performance and reliability.

9 ) Boost the signal with reflector – Reflector will reflect back the signal in the direction that we need, just like a mirror reflecting the light. Wireless signal from the router can be reflected the same way using a Tinfoil reflector which acts like a mirror. This can be easily made in your house using daily household items and in few minutes – all that you need is tinfoil, cardboard, sticky taps.

•Cut cardboard in rectangle shape about 15 x 10 cm in size and wrap tinfoil around it.
•Cut another piece of cardboard (or paper) in a circular shape. Now bend the circular paper slightly and place it like shown in the figure.
•Now pass the tip of the antenna along the focal point of the parabola, reflector. This not only helps to reflect the signal but also acts just like a dish to receive signals and focus them on to the antenna.

1. Install firmware update with care

Nokia periodically releases phone firmware updates which can be used to patch the device in both software and hardware side. But sometimes these are only minor upgrades with some extra software applications. Updates are usually installed to phone memory, which would eventually affect overall device performance by limiting resources for other applications. So read the change log, update size and compare it with your phone memory size before proceeding with new firmware upgrades.

2. Speed up Nokia phone with software

Symbian phones also have disk partitions, system registry etc. But these are not accessible to normal users unless they are using file explorer software. Software installations and file transfers create logs files, thumbnail images, registry errors and other junk files in Symbian phones. Memoryup is a software that aids in recovering dispersed RAM in Symbian OS and arranges them to speed up the device. It has both pro and free versions. The free version is also good for minimal recovery from unwanted items.

3. Remove unnecessary applications

Usually we install mobile applications for testing, and later leave them on the phone unused. Periodical checking should be done to remove these unnecessary softwares. Antivirus software is not recommended for Symbian S60 V3 and other latest phone models. Also make sure that you are not installing applications to phone memory.

4. Kill background running and autostart apps

Few applications automatically start with phone boot and they will work in the background while the phone is multitasking. For instance, in Nokia series and music phones, the default music player is an auto start app. Also when we open messages and other programs, we forget to exit them. So altogether they will reduce the memory available to needed applications and results in “phone out of memory warnings”. It’s very simple to kill these unwanted applications. Press firmly on standby button. Open each of them and exit.

5 . Use default themes

There are lots of custom Nokia Symbian themes available for download. Though they look better than your default themes, they would affect the total network and application speed of the device.  There is also a chance for malware infections.

Speed of any mobile phone depends on the processor and the installed phone memory. So it’s the discretion of the user to select a suitable phone matching his requirements. These tips would additionally help them to maintain or manage existing memory performance and speed.

For all those who want to clean a dirty CD with minimum effort in the cheapest way, follow the process with simple steps given below in order.

•Find yourself a container (a medium sized one which is good enough to submerge a disk in it)
•Squeeze into the container a table spoon of liquid soap or window cleaning solution. You can also use all-natural cleaning liquid made out of distilled water.
•Now pour clean water into the container and fill it. Now the water should become soapy once it gets mixed with the cleaning solution added whatsoever.
•Now put the dirty disk into the container filled with soapy water. Leave it there for about a minute or two.
•Now remove the disk from the soapy water container and rinse it with running warm water.
•Repeat the process if the disk is still a bit dirty. In case the smudges on the disk are stubborn, you can use a soft cloth to rub soap on those parts.
•Finally shake off the excess water and let the disk to dry naturally. Do not use any artificial blower or hair drier.
Now you have your shiny good as new CD which can be easily run on your computer and there are less chances of getting data copy errors on running it.

WARNING: Use this technique at your OWN RISK. If you have important stored data, seek professional help to clean your CD. We take no responsibility for data loss or CD damage.

There are plugins available for WordPress that allow you to shorten the lengthy URLs and enable you to count the number of clicks for each shorten URL. WordPress plugins are very easy to install and use. You can include a short URL for every post in your WordPress blog so that users can easily share posts with others right from your blog.

Here-in are the five handy WordPress plugins for shortening URL’s.

1. Short URL Plug-in – This WordPress plug-in allows you to shorten the long URL’s easily and it even enables you to keep track of the short URL’s so that you can know how many times each short URL has been clicked. This feature is really useful to track downloads and other links in your blog. If you wish to reset the counter you can click on the ‘clear all’ button to zero the counter. It includes pagination of links, easier setup of htaccess (permalinks) and allows administrators to pass variables to their redirects.

2. YOURLS WordPress plug-in – This is a URL shorting service that lets you to shorten the long URL’s on your post and tweet them to the Twitter site automatically. You can configure the settings according to your needs such that you can set it to tweet when you have added a new post or page on your blog. It will send a Tweet with the title of the post and a shortened URL which will redirect to your post. It is very simple to install and works automatically after the initial configuration of the plug-in. It is also compatible with other URL shorting services like the Tinyurl.com, bit.ly, is.gd, tr.im etc.

3. WP-Chunk – This WordPress plug-in will shorten the URL’s that are present in the comments field. Most of the visitors would like to add or share some other information related to the post in the comments. In that case, they just add the URL of the page that contains the related information. This WordPress plug-in will help shorten the URL’s present in the comments field so that you do not have problem when editing the comments or your blog will look just tidy with all the short URLs.

4. Pretty Link – This is another handy WordPress plug-in that allows you to shorten any web page URL’s. It will help you to track the hit count of the shortened URL’s, where each hit came from, the browser used, OS and the host. One cool feature of this plug-in is that: you can use your own domain name to shorten the URL’s.

5. Shorter Links – This WordPress plug-in will generate shorter URL of the posts on your blog so that users can easily post the link on any of the web services like Twitter, friendfeed, share it etc., When you save the post to WordPress, the shorter link that is generated can be edited into more meaningful characters. You can further configure the plug-in using the provided settings.

Password Protect Directory with htaccess
Step 1 – Create .htpasswd file with your desired username and password in any text editor (like Notepad) and save without the .txt extension. It is a good idea to encrypt the password  for extra security. Here is a good htpasswd encryption tool to do just that – simply enter the username and password and it will generate the code for you, which you can copy and paste. For a user ‘abc’ and password ‘abc’, I got this (but it generates a new one everytime) -

abc:9476nIHW7Esgw

Step 2 – Create .htaccess file with the code below. It can be created using any text editor (like Notepad) and saved without the .txt extension. Remember to double check the location of the htpasswd file, or it will not work. You can change ‘Login Details’ to whatever you want displayed on the pop up alert.

AuthUserFile /home/user/domain/secretfolder/.htpasswd
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Login Details”
Require valid-user

Step 3 – Upload both these files in the same folder which you want to protect  (in this case ’secretfolder’). Now whenever anyone accesses that directory or any files in it, they will be asked for login details. You web directory is now secure.

NOTE – You might not be able to see these files on your server since they are hidden files. I use Filezilla FTP client and often use the “force showing hidden files” option to view these files. Also remember that these files can be created easily in Notepad but save without .txt extension (Save a type -  choose “All Files”, then you can save without any extension). If the Login window keeps popping up,  most probably your login details are wrong.

OPTION – Here are some simple scripts to protect webpages, but they are only the first line of security. However, they are easier to implement as they can be simply inserted in the webpage  HTML code.

WARNING: .htaccess is a very powerful file to mess with and if wrongly configured can make your site inaccessible. If you are not sure of what you are playing with, seek professional tech support from your hosting provider. Edit your .htaccess at your OWN RISK, we bear no responsibility for the same and cannot provide support.

There are two types of IP addresses:-

•Static IP: This IP address is assigned by the network solely for a computer and does not change every time the computer is connected to the network. This is to ensure same settings in a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN) or even a Personal Area Network (PAN). These settings remain intact and thus ensure that the computer gets access to all the data it needs very fast. This type of IP address allocation is used by expensive broadband customers, or by express desire.

•Dynamic IP: This IP address is allocated by the network router by using the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). This protocol dynamically allocates an IP address to the computer when it connects to the network, from a pool of IP addresses. This kind of allocation is used in most broadband services as this reduces costs for the Internet Service Providers (ISP’s). Thus the IP address of the computer changes every time it connects to the host servers.

To change the IP address of a computer, it is necessary to know what kind of IP address the computer is assigned to and which IP address indeed that computer should change. To change the LAN IP address, one must know what the LAN connection’s name is, as well as the original router settings etc.

Change IP Address

The steps to be followed for Windows XP are:

• Open Control Panel from the Start Menu. On Microsoft Windows systems, this is the place where all the settings of the computer reside and many changes can be made here.
• Click on Network Connections – the place for all internet connections’ settings to reside and new connections can be made and existing connections can be edited or deleted.
• Double Click on the LAN connection. One must know the LAN connection’s name. Contact the system administrator for detail.
• A Menu will pop up with a lot of options. Click on the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) option and click on Properties.
• Write down these settings somewhere and then change the IP address of the system.

Description
Adobe Illustrator is the gold standard for creating exciting, color-rich artwork for print, the Web, or even mobile devices. Whether you’re stepping up to Illustrator CS4 or tackling Illustrator for the first time, you’ll find Illustrator CS4 For Dummies is the perfect partner.

This full-color guide gives you the scoop on the newest tools, tips on color control and path editing, ways to organize graphics, and how to get your work into print or on the Web. You’ve heard Illustrator is a bit complicated? That’s why you need this friendly For Dummies book! It shows you how to:

* Manage Illustrator CS4’s many tools, commands, and palettes
* Decide when to choose RGB over CMYK and how to get perfect color when printing
* Compare path and pixel documents, adjust points on a path, and learn to use the versatile Pen and Pencil tools
* Use the Character and Paragraph palettes and get creative with type on a path
* Work in pixel preview mode, create Web-specific vector graphics, and use Flash with Illustrator
* Set up your pages for printing and work with separations, or save files in Web-friendly formats
* Create basic shapes, straight lines, and precise curves, then bring it all together into eye-popping artwork
* Organize with the Layers palette, tweak color, and make the most of styles and effects
* Use Illustrator together with other elements of the Adobe Creative Suite

With plain-English instructions and colorful examples of what you can achieve, Illustrator CS4 For Dummies will make you an Illustrator pro in no time.

From the Back Cover

Have more fun and get more done with Illustrator — here’s how to free your creativity!

Illustrator is the artist’s choice for creating spectacular graphics, and here’s the fast and easy way to get up to speed on all the coolest features. This full-color guide gives you the scoop on the newest tools; tips on color control and path editing; ways to organize graphics; and how to create for print, the Web, or mobile devices.

Colorful choices — learn when to choose RGB instead of CMYK and how to get perfect color when printing

Follow the path — compare path and pixel documents, adjust points on a path, and learn to use the versatile Pen and Pencil tools

Just your type — use the Character and Paragraph panels and get creative with type on a path

The artistic Web — work in pixel preview mode, create Web-specific vector graphics, and use Flash� with Illustrator

Get it out there — set up your pages for printing and work with separations, or save files in Web-friendly formats

Open the book and find:

How to work with Illustrator’s panels and menus

The newest tools and how to use them

Ways to create basic shapes and bring them together

Simple steps for tweaking color

How to create straight lines and precise curves

What to do with styles and effects

How to organize with the Layers panel

How Illustrator works with the rest of Adobe’s Creative Suite

See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details

* Paperback: 384 pages
* Publisher: For Dummies (November 10, 2008)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0470396563
* ISBN-13: 978-0470396568

Download Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/252545170/Illustrator-CS4.rar.html

Before you choose a web host, it is advisable to review if the web hosting company meets your requirements. If it doesn’t, you remove the company from your list and look for one that meets your requirements.

What to look for in a web host?

1. Cost of Hosting – Consider your budget before choosing a host. Some web hosts would give you discount if you pay for 1 year. Some might give you more discount if you can pay for 2 years or even more. I prefer  going for hosting that cost less than $5 a month, but I will compromise if I cannot get a host that meets the other requirements of a web hosting company.

2. Addon Domains - If you have multiple websites, get a webhost that allows addon domains. I prefer hosts that allows  unlimited addon domains i.e. I can add as many as 20 sites to my account without being charged.

3. Down time – Look for hosts that have low down time. It is annoying if you try to access your site, and you cannot. If you have a business, this means losses because there were no sales. (If you have a wordpress blog, you can cache you site. You can read more about how QOT got more than 20K pageviews traffic despite Internal Server Errors!).

4. Web Space – You need a lot of webspace if your site is growing especially if you have addon domains. Every post you post on your site uses some of your web space. So this means that the more you post, the more space is being used monthly. If you have a WordPress blog, you would like to install plugins to improve your blogging. These plugins also use some portion of your web space. All this is for just 1 blog. If you have about 4 blogs, you post daily on your site, and you have been blogging for more than 2 years, how much web space would you have left if your web space is small.

5. Customer Support – A good web host should have online customer support. This is because you would like to receive an answer immediately and not after 6 hours. The customer support should be able to handle all your technical needs. A tech support representative from my host helped me transfer my database. If I go to look for help in places like forums, I would have to pay money to get that done for me.

6. Cpanel - Having a Cpanel feature would save you a lot of trouble. If you want to install a blog platform such as WordPress, you can do it with a single click from the Cpanel. If you don’t have a Cpanel, installing wordpress can take you more than 30 minutes if you have no clue.

7. Money Back Guarantee – You might change your mind later and decide to cancel a hosting service. Most good web hosts have 30 days or more money back guarantee. So if you change you mind within 30 days, you are sure of receiving your full refund back.

8. Reviews – Look for reviews about the web hosting company. People would always write if a web host is good or not. Read the negative reviews and see if it is a recurring problem or if it is an isolated problem. You can get web host reviews on forums or you can do a search on any search engine.

Create a new document in Notepad or any other text editor
Type following with no spaces or lines above or below

<?
phpinfo();
?>

Save the file as checkversion.php or any other name you like, but should end with .php
Upload using an FTP client to the root of your domain name where wordpress is hosted.
Run http://yourdomain.com/checkversion.php in your browser
And a detailed page will reveal all the information about your PHP version and lots of technical details about your PHP core and server configuration which you never knew.