Just noticed a new and important privacy setting on Orkut: “allow people to find me through my email address”
Using this setting you can restrict others from finding your orkut profile using email address. Just select “Don’t allow people to find me” option in above screenshot and you are done!
This is surely good for most job seekers as many companies/employment agencies nowadays go through candidates’ profiles on social networking sites before making an opinion about them. Its hard to find a person specially in IT industry who is not using atleast one social network.
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I remember myself coding a script for one HR agency where the script accepts list of email addresses, find orkut profiles for each of them, gather some information from profiles and uses a customized algorithm to rank candidates! 😉
Guess, now you can save yourself from some disappointment if you have a profile which you do not want to seen by your employer.
Personally, I will recommend not to put any private information on social networking sites, no matter what privacy settings they offer.
Sometime back, Rajat Arora and few other Devils Workshop readers suggested me to start a new dedicated twitter account for readers who like to follow Devils Workshop on twitter.
Now acting on their suggestion and because of my growing interest in twitter, I have created a new twitter account for Devils Workshop with id @devils_workshop.
So those who are following old account @rahul286 just for updates from Devils Workshop can now follow @devils_workshop.
Sorry for inconvinience. Thanks for twitter-love! 😉
I could not blog about one of my favorite event BarCamp earlier, but I will be attending it for sure with buddies Deepesh, Vivek, Anil and maybe Santosh tomorrow. So if you happen to be there, lets meet up! 🙂
BarCampPune wiki is still open, just in case you want to add your name to the list of campers. BarCamp is nice place to get latest update about techno world.
If you a PHP guy, then you will find Amit Singh‘s session on PHP frameworks quite helpful. Amit is the same dude who organized PHP Camp earlier. (our coverage of PHP Camp)
One of the most popular bittorrent client, uTorrent, is now available for Mac. This is beta release and only available for Intel-based Mac.
Like its Windows counterpart, Mac-version of uTorrent is lightweight and have simple user-interface. I used it to download few files had no issues. Stability is more than one can expect from first beta release.
Now I am confused between uTorrent and Transmission, my favorite torrent client on Mac!
If you like to be notified when stable or a release for Mac OS X older than version 10.3 will be available, you can submit your email address here.
This is Rahul Bansal, Founder, Admin & Chief Editor, Devils Workshop.
Many of you have noticed that I was away from our workshop for more than a month. There were some personal problems which kept me away from this blog and other work. Although I couldn’t write in last month, I was always working at backstage and kept expanding parent company rtCamp.
I have noticed many of our readers left (unsubscribed) during one last month. Those who enjoyed my writing, please don’t make it point to leave Devils Workshop. I have so much to share with you guys and I won’t make you wait for it any more.
Now I am back with a better plan for our workshop, I want to take this as an opportunity to talk only about good and positive things…
We are now bigger family. Mayur Somani and Vivek Jain are next 2 members of rtCamp family. Mayur joined us on November 10. Vivek is under training and expected to get a position in development team within a week.
We are also working on many new products, blogs and services whose outcome will start appearing soon. Can’t reveal more about them right now. You know business secret…. 😉
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Now I want only one thing from you guys… Whatever queries you have, please ask them at forum. I have so much to do so that from now on, no question will be answered via email, orkut scrapbooks, facebook walls, messages, etc. Please use forum only.
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Since last morning I spend more than 20 hours answering more than 500 emails, comments and posts at forum. If I accidentally missed your question then please bring it to my notice. I always loved to reply all queries which are in line with our comment policy.
For guest bloggers, we have few surprises lined up. So start writing! Also as per demand by some authors we are considering to bring in a new revenue sharing model. Take this small survey to help us serve our community better.
If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment.
Just had a glimpse of one of the most awaited feature on Orkut, THE Google Talk Integration! It looks like I am the last one to see it on my orkut account! 😉
After many Greasemonkey scripts, orkut apps and other hacks, nothing seems to beat this official integration.
More than 2 years ago, we posted about this much needed integration. But after a bold move from rival Facebook to offer chat feature, this was quite expected from Orkut.
Integration looks nice but with some open questions…
Whether Orkut will show list of online Orkut friends like Facebook? List of Orkut friends can differ from list of Google Talk friends.
In any case, list of online friends is good option. I could not see it anywhere. May be I failed to notice it.
I am not sure if all Orkut users can use this feature. It looks like one need to be user of Google Talk separately to enjoy this feature.
It is not clear whether you can chat with online Orkut friends from your existing Google Talk clients.
Orkut added a separate Google Talk settings page, but it contains just one option – Choose which friends can chat with you.
Lets hope like many other features this feature will be improved with time.
WidgetBucks is one of the very few ad networks I have been using successfully from long time. Of course, it doesn’t help me earn money like Google AdSense but it is a good choice if you just have some free ad-space on your blog/website.
To celebrate their first anniversary, they have re-introduced $25 signup bonus offer they had during first three months. You will receive $25 bonus when your earnings will reach $50.
WidgetBucks ads are mix of CPM and CPA which means you will get paid for sure for ad-impressions your blog will serve. If you are from US then their newly introduced travel and local widget ads will work for sure. If you are running a product-review blog then you can put customized widgets listing related products as well.
Personally, I use merchsense type of widgets where they(WidgetBucks) automatically crawl this blog and serve relevant ads. Also these ads blend good with rest of the blog so it won’t degrade user experience at all.
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There are just really many options too choose from that you will find success with WidgetBucks for sure. 😉
Apart form this they have relatively good referral program which is the reason I am posting this! 😀
So hurry up to join WidgetBuck as this $25 bonus offer is valid till tomorrow only. You can explore it later!
Link: Signup for WidgetBucks
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Personal Note: Many of you have noticed, I was away from this blog for more than a week. I was stuck with some personal problems which are almost fixed now. I appreciate all of you who have contacted me and showed concern. Please bear with such posting delays for another week. In meantime, guest authors and co-bloggers can contact Deepak Jain, as he is new and first editor at Devils Workshop. I will resume frequent blogging in a week or two and very soon Devils Workshop will be hiring too! 🙂
One of the most famous addon for Firefox browser, Foxmarks added support for password syncing. Originally developed for bookmark syncing, the addon was used in conjunction with Google’s now-out-of-development Browser Sync addon.
I posted long time back, how these two addons, Foxmarks and Browser Sync, together can help you synchronize your online data from anywhere on the web. Over the time, Google stopped development of Browser Sync and released its source code here. Since then, Firefox community was missing a really good addon to sync passwords, cookies, history, sessions and other sensitive data.
Those who are already using Foxmarks, just need to update it. Once its done, you can go to Foxmarks settings, and from Sync options turn-on password synchronization. By default, its turned off.
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If you like to know, how password synchronization works, please check this official wiki.
Foxmarks expected to have support for cookies, sessions and history sync in future versions. So if you are not using it or missing Google’s Browser Sync, start using Foxmarks.
The only thing that they need to change soon is their punch-line! It is no more just essential bookmarking addon! For me, its now essential Firefox addon… 🙂
Following rival Facebook’s path, Orkut added another new feature, conversation, to its continuously upgrading new features list. This is similar to wall-to-wall feature present on Facebook since beginning.
As usual, with Orkut’s most of new features, this will take some time to get enabled on your account. Once it is there you will be able to see a button/link in your scrapbook beside reply link already there.
When you will click on it, a popup will show all scarps exchanged between you and your friend. You can delete any scrap from pop-up. Below is screenshot provided by Deep.
I will update this post once the feature gets enabled on my account. In meantime, if you find something new about it in your account, please let us know.
Directory listing allows a person to see list of files and folders of a targeted directory on your website. This is something not serious itself but may help someone to launch attack on your site.
So it is good practice to turn-off or prevent directory listing by default and then, if needed, allow directory listing selectively. Yes, there are times when you want to enable directory listing for some directories. I will come to this later. Before that…
To Turn-off or Prevent Directory Listing Sitewide…
Open .htaccess file in your websites root (/) directory. If it is not present, then create one. DO NOT forget . (dot) in the name of .htaccess.
Add just one line in the beginning as follows and save/close .htaccess file.
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Options –Indexes
That’s it. With just one line of code in one file, sitewide directory listing is disabled. Next…
To Turn-on or Allow Directory Listing…
Go to the folder for which you want to allow directory listing.
Open .htaccess file in that directory. If it is not present, then create one.
Add just one line in the beginning as follows and save/close .htaccess file.
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Options +Indexes
That’s it. Now the directory and all sub-directories under it will have directory listing enabled.
If you have well organized website structure, you will only need 2 .htaccess files. At Devils Workshop, I prevented directory listing sitewide by creating a .htaccess file in it. And then I created another .htaccess file under /pub directory as I keep all publicly accessible file under it.
I feel all bloggers who are using self-hosted WordPress setup should follow this. WordPress is quite secure, but plugins you are using on WordPress may have some security flaws. Now a person can use directory listing to get list of plugins you are using and depending on it, can launch an attack on your site. So its better to play safe… 😉
If you do not have permission to create or edit .htaccess files on your webserver, you can still secure your sensitive directories by creating a blank file named index.html in them. This way remember to create such index.html files for each directory you want to protect. I know it sounds a lot of work and chances are you may miss some sub-directories on the way. But that is what makes .htaccess method best!
