Most Common Places Where People Lose Mobile Phones

Where do People Lose their Mobile Phones

Lookout, a company that develops security and tracking software for mobile phones, has released a report illustrating the top ten locations where one is most likely to lose their cell phone.

Airplane seat pockets, buses, subway trains and the taxi seats are among the most likely places where people lose their cell phones and the unfortunate part is that the chance of recovering the phone in these places is extremely low. People also seem to forget their phones at the Airport security scanner but the recover chances are pretty good in that case.

Luckily, there are tons of free apps to help you locate your lost phone with GPS.

Understanding your Credit Card Number

You credit card number may look like a random string of 16 digits that’s unique in the world but those digits reveal a little more than you think.

Making Sense of you Credit Card Number

The first digit of the card represents the category of industry which issued your credit card. American Express is in the travel category and cards issued by them have 3 as the first digit. If you have VISA or MasterCard, your card’s first digit should be either 4 or 5 as they are from the banking and financial industry.

The first six digits of your credit card number identify the institution that issued the card to you. VISA cards follow the series 4xx while MasterCard uses 51-55 as the prefix.

You may even verify if a given credit card number is valid or not using simple addition. The following visual illustration courtesy Mint.com will help you understand more about the anatomy of your credit card.

How To Turn Your Windows 8, 8.1, 10 Device Into A WiFi Access Point

Previous editions of Windows allowed users to create ad hoc wireless connections between computers. You could use those connections to create a wireless network between multiple computers or to share the Internet connection that was available on one of them. This can no longer be done in Windows 8.1, at least not using a visual interface and the mouse. However, with the help of the Command Prompt and a few commands, you too can turn your Windows 8.1 laptop or hybrid device into a WiFi access point. Here's how:

NOTE: Lots of readers have asked us for a way to automate the steps described in this tutorial. That is why we have updated the tutorial and created a small program, which aims to automate the steps involved in this process, as much as possible. You can find more information and the download link at the end of the article. However, we do recommend that you read the whole article before using our program, so that you understand how to use it.

What You Need In Order For This To Work

In order to use your Windows 8.1 laptop or hybrid device as an WiFi access point for other devices, it must have at least 2 network cards installed and one of them must be a wireless network card. One of them must be connected to the Internet.

Setup scenarios we tested that worked great include:

• One laptop using its Ethernet connection for Internet access and its WiFi adapter to broadcast - use a network cable to connect your Windows  8, 8.1, 10  laptop to the Internet and the wireless network card for the access point that's sharing the Internet access with other devices.
• One laptop that is connected to the Internet through a USB mobile modem and broadcasts the wireless network through its WiFi adapter - many users will have a USB mobile modem available with 3G or 4G connectivity. They can use it for Internet access and use the wireless network adapter for creating the access point and sharing the Internet access with others.
• One laptop and two wireless network adapters, one connected to the Internet and the other acting as an access point - you won’t find this situation too often, as laptops and hybrid devices don't come with two wireless network cards installed. However, you can install a USB wireless adapter and use it for creating the access point.

Step 1. Create A Virtual WiFi Network in Windows  8, 8.1, 10 

To begin, we'll need to open the Command Prompt with administrative privileges and use a command to create a virtual wireless network that is broadcasted by your Windows 8, 8.1, 10  device.

To show you how this is done, we will create a wireless network called Hotspot. The password for this network will be "Allsoftlearn".

Inside the Command Prompt window, type the following command:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Hotspot key=Allsoftlearn

Notice that the name of the network is set using the SSID parameter and the password is set using the KEY parameter. Obviously, you can set your own values for them.

To create the access point, press Enter. If all goes well, you should see that the hosted network has been set.

Now you have created a virtual adapter that can function as a wireless access point for other computers and devices in your area. However, in order for it to work, you need to take one more step: turn on this virtual adapter.

Do not close the Command Prompt. Keep it open and enter the following command:

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

Then, press Enter.

The virtual wireless adapter is now started and shown in the Network and Sharing Center.

You can connect all your devices to the newly created wireless network. However, it has no Internet access. If you stop at this point, when you connect other devices and computers to the newly created access point, you can create a network between them and use it to share files and resources.

Step 2. Allow Internet Access For The Devices That Are Connected To The Virtual WiFi Network

Open the Network and Sharing Center. Notice that the virtual network adapter you just created is displayed as active, but it has no Internet access at this time.

Click or tap the connection of the physical network adapter that currently has Internet access. In our case, it is an Ethernet connection.

This opens the Status window for the selected network adapter. Click or tap Properties.

In the Properties window, go to the Sharing tab.

In order to give Internet access to the virtual WiFi adapter that was created earlier, check the box near "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection".

Then, select the virtual adapter that was created earlier.

Click or tap OK and Close to save the settings you've made.

Go back to the Network and Sharing Center and you will notice that the virtual network adapter now has Internet access.

The virtual adapter now gives Internet access to all the devices that are connected to it.

Camtasia Studio 3.0 - Screencasting Swiss Knife

Camtasia Studio 3 is one the most popular Screencasting tools developed byTechSmith. I personally use the wonderful Camtasia Studio with Snagit all the time for my website and presentations.

Camtasia Studio can help you record and edit videos of screen activity in all multimedia formats and enhance the captured material with special effects, narration and a variety of multimedia features. With Camtasia Studio, you can teach and demonstrate complex ideas and subtle points visually, rather than through words alone with exact video renderings of desktop activity. Stream videos live or distribute by CD-ROM and from the Web.

Camtasia is very popular tool for creating screencast. Even Jon Udell, the lead analyst for the InfoWorld Test Center prefers Camtasia over Qarbon Viewletbuilder andMacromedia Captivate.

Techsmith is now positioning the tool as a Flash Printer for converting CAD Drawings, Photographs to smaller Flash SWF files. The most amazing new features in the upcoming version :

Picture-in-Picture (aka PiP): You can now record the presentation and the presenter. Camtasia now captures video from your video camera and synchronizes it with your screen recording. Now it's easier than ever to deliver training and presentations with a personal touch.

Titling: Give your videos a common look and feel with Titles. Title graphics and text can be inserted to introduce your videos or to add credits to their endings.

The best screencasting software is just getting better. Other new features include quizzing, smaller Flash files, and one month of free web hosting for your videos. If you buy Camtasia Studio 2.1 today, you will get a free upgrade to 3.0 when it's released.

Techsmith has released a free update to Camtasia Studio 3.0.1 which is available for free.

What's new in Camtasia Studio 3.0.1 - Changed the IDs of the PowerPoint buttons so that they don't conflict with the IDs used by the Macromedia Breeze Add-in for PowerPoint.

Compare your version of Camtasia Studio with the latest Camtasia 3.0.1

Techsmith provides a casestudy for converting PowerPoint Live presentations to flash with Camtasia Studio used by Stanford University Professor Carrye.

Thom Robbins tells us that Microsoft Channel 9 team members also use Camtasia Studio for creating screencasts. 

How to Access Blocked Websites, Unblock Restricted Sites

How to access blocked websites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo at school or office? 

This article suggests workarounds to help you unblock access to restricted websites at universities, school and offices. 

Background: Blocking access to undesirable Web sites has been a common government tactic but China, Iran, Saudi Arabia are believed to extend greater censorship over the net than any other country in the world.

Most of the blocked or blacklisted sites in Saudi Arabia are about sex, religion, women, health, politics and pop culture. They even block access to websites that sell swimming or bathing suits. In China, websites that talk about sex, Tibet or Democracy are blocked.

Social sites that are often blocked include Google News, Typepad, ebay, Blogger blogs,YouTube, Facebook, Bebo, Myspace, Orkut, MySpace, Pandora, Bebo, Photobucket, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL AIM, Flickr, last.fm, etc. 

There are always legitimate reasons to bypass the internet filters and unblock websites. The following tricks will show how to access all websites at school, college, offices or at home.

1: To access blocked website, type the IP number instead of the URL in the browser address bar. However, if your blocking software maps the IP address to the web server (reverse DNS lookup), the website will still remain blocked.

2: Use a URL redirection service like tinyurl.com or snipurl.com. These domain forwarding services sometimes work as the address in the the url box remain the redirect url and do not change to the banned site. 

Access Google Talk Chat or GMail in Office

3: Use Google Mobile Search - Google display the normal HTML pages as if you are viewing them on a mobile phone. During the translation, Google removes the javascript content and CSS scripts and breaks a longer page into several smaller pages. Google Mobile

Use Mobile browsers as proxy to open restricted websites

4: Enter the URL in Google or Yahoo search and then visit the cached copy of the page. To retrieve the page more quickly from Google's cache, click "Cached Text Only" while the browser is loading the page from cache.

5: There are anonymizer websites who will fetch the blocked web page from their servers and display them to you. As far as the service provider is concerned, you are viewing the page on the Anonymizer website and not the blocked site.

6: You can access blocked or restricted websites by using Yahoo Babelfish or Google Translate language tools as a proxy server. 

You just have to invoke the Google translate service with the same language pair like English to English. Assuming that Google is accessible in your school, you should be able to access any website with this method - Babelfish Proxy Sever

Unblock restricted websites that require login

7: Anonymous Surfing - Browse the internet via free proxy server. A proxy server (or proxies) is a normal computer that hides the identity of computers on its network from the Internet. 

Which means that only the address of the proxy server is visible to the world and not of those computers that are using it to browse the Internet. Just visit any proxy server with your Web browser and enter a URL or the address of the blocked website.

How to Edit Files That Require Admin Privileges

There are certain files and folders in Windows that you can only access when you are logged in as the administrator of that computer.

For instance, if you ever need to block a website on your home computer through the hosts file, your would require administrative privileges. Similarly, you may not be able to execute all the commands at the command prompt if you not logged in as the admin.

Sometimes Administrators Cannot Edit Files

There’s another related problem that mostly concerns the home consumers of Windows 7 and Vista.

Sometimes you are the admin (and the only user) of your home computer and yet, when you try to open some protected file, it says “access denied”. This is confusing because you are logged in as the super-user and if you don’t have access to all parts of the system, who else will?

The fix is simple though. I will illustrate this with Windows hosts file but you can apply the workaround to virtually all files that you are unable to read / edit in Windows because of permission problems.

Step 1. Open your Windows start menu, search for the notepad application and then right click the notepad icon.

Step 2. Choose “Run as administrator” and then, while inside notepad, browse to folder (/windows/system32/drivers/etc) that contains the hosts file.

You can now edit and save that file in the same folder without any issues. To recap, the trick is that instead of directly opening a protected file in the associated application, you run the application first as an administrator and then open the file inside it.

How Parents Can Block Certain Websites from Children

A mother recently wrote saying she is very concerned that her young children are spending too much time on websites like Orkut, MySpace and Facebook.

Her worries are not just about children wasting time on the Internet – it’s more about the activities that children are doing on these sites. She is concerned that children could be interacting with complete strangers (or online predators) and even sharing personal information.

And with some news reports saying that criminal activities could have been planned on Orkut, the mother has finally made up her mind to restrict access to Orkut and some other websites on the home computer.

The only problem is that she has absolutely no clue about how to block websites – parental control software like Net Nanny or Norton Internet Security are pretty good but they cost money.

Now before you take this extreme step of blocking website (that is very likely to be opposed by children), try a few things:

1. Educate your children about the dangers of sharing information online with strangers. Family members should talk in detail about privacy and the web.
2. Place the computer in the living area of your home from where you can easily see the screen so you’ll have some idea about activities that children are doing on the computer including the websites they are visiting frequently.
3. Orkut is an open social network – that means you can easily see who’s in the friends’ list of your children and what kind of text notes (or scraps) are they exchanging with each.

Finally, to block websites on your home computer without investing in expensive software, here’s the trick (for Windows PCs):

Step 1: Click the Start button and select Run. Now type the following text in that Run box:

notepad c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Related: Edit Files as Administrator

Step 2: You will see a new notepad window on your screen containing some cryptic information. Don’t panic. Just goto the last line of the file, hit the enter key and type the following:

127.0.0.1 orkut.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 myspace.com

Save the file and exit. That’s it. None of the above sites will now open on your computer.

You can block as many websites as you like with the above technique. If you want to remove the ban later, open the same file as mentioned in Step 1 and delete the above lines.

Pretty simple but remember, our children are also very smart. And there are some popular ways to unblock websites.

Can Parents Get Access to Facebook Accounts of Their Children

Q: How can I gain access to my child’s account on Facebook?

A: Facebook is generally forbidden by federal and many state laws to give unauthorized access to someone who is not an account holder. Parents may want to install monitoring software on home computers if they are concerned about what their children are doing online.

How Parents Can Block Certain Websites from Children at Home

If your child is under 13 and you believe they have created a Facebook account, however, the Childrens’ Online Privacy Protection Act gives you the right to access personal information they have provided before Facebook follows its policy of promptly deleting such data. You may access and direct the deletion of such data by having them sign into the account and then deactivating the account, or by making a request by email to Facebook. Please send requests to privacy@facebook.com with the subject line “COPPA Data Request”.

Facebook strongly urges parents to talk to their children about the dangers they may encounter online, and to make sure their children are using Facebook in a safe manner. Children must know that they should report any inappropriate or offensive Facebook content to their parents and to Facebook using the tools made available through the site.