IT Times (5.12)

Citation preview

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

» lifehacks » loki » mark shuttleworth » mahangu weerasinghe » wardriving » mahangu » securing the airwaves » kalum somaratna » prince of persia » raveen wijayatilake

» new game releases » compiled » cell phones » wifi phones » digital cameras » peripherals » storage » audio » apple » notebooks » vista, office and more » isuru wijeyaratne

» top ten free mac applications » indranil dasgupta » the breezy badger » mahangu » elusive anonymity - TOR » raveen

» follow the bouncing ball - 3ds Max » zafar issadeen » customizing windows XP » abhimanyu ghoshal » application design - .NET » APIIT Research and Innovation Center

» floats - xHTML and CSS » prabhath sirisena » local scene » chamil thanthrimudalige » banga lore » shemal fernando » industry watch » chamil » wifi map

it times 5.12 So, we finally got our act together and brought you some gadgets. The shopping scene in Colombo has been pretty dismal in the past, but Sri Lanka is slowly starting to get some modern and cool items. In this issue we’ve tried to resist temptation and feature only products that are available locally. Of course, more gadgets can be found abroad. If you’re lucky enough to have expat relations or tenacious enough to ship items then the net is a wonderland for gadgets. Check gizmodo. com or engadget.com for the latest. We think we’ve found a nice crop here, however. There are external hard disks, some cool cell phones, laptops (ranging from the extravagant to the work-a-day) and even cell phones that pick up WiFi (wireless internet). Mahangu has also gathered an interesting set of articles on WiFi, including his mysterious encounter with Weasel - a hacker mapping all the hotspots in Sri Lanka. We’ve also included an article on WiFi security, for those seeking to secure their data (while hopefully still sharing the bandwidth). Now, onto housekeeping. IT Times began as 56 pages, and this issue is 68. We’ve had a great outpouring of content since November and I think we may be able to keep growing. Also, please keep the emails coming. There are still a lot of bugs in this magazine and we need community support to iron them out. And speaking of community, we have two special bonuses for IT readers this month. Simply send me an email with ‘EPSI’ in the subject line and you’ll be entered to win a 15” Viewsonic LCD, model VE510B, with an estimated value of Rs 30,000. Happy hacking,

Indi Samarajiva Editor [email protected] Thanks to Sockeyed (flickr.com/photos/sockeyed) for the use of his Pettah shot as the background to the cover.

editor Indi Samarajiva [email protected] associate editor Mahangu Weerasinghe [email protected] contributing editor Ashwin Hemmathagama manager Pragathi Mahilal business development Dunstan Wijegunaratne design consultant Aruna Wickramarachchi graphics/layouts Lalani Heenwella proofs David Ranabahu printing Primal Fernando circulation Rohan Fonseka subscriptions Nimal Weerakkody advertising Saranga Wijeyarathne

 it times Editor Manager Advertising Subscriptions

free monitor here

hotlines (077) 301-1266 (077) 228-8199 (077) 321-9733 / (077) 329-3511 (077) 350-2183 / [email protected]

published by Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. No 8, Hunupitiya Cross Rd, Colombo 2 printed by Lake House Printers & Publishers ( [email protected])

promotions Nalin Wickramasinghe branding Sujith Pathirannehe systems Naveen Guneratne

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

lifehacks BugMeNot BugMeNot is old news to most of us, but some things are so indispensable that they’re worth repeating. Have you ever been sent a newspaper article link by email, but when you got there you were prompted to register first? You just want to read the article and get out of there, not waste precious time and bandwidth mucking about with forms. This is where BugMeNot comes in. BugMeNot is a communal registration sharing service. Enter the URL of the site you want to read and BugMeNot will suggest an already existing account name and password for you to use. Now there’s no need to waste time filling out unnecessary forms with potentially intrusive details. Use BugMeNot instead and bypass compulsory Web registration. (bugmenot.com)

Cooking For Engineers This cooking site approaches cooking as a form of engineering rather than an art. Step-bystep descriptions and pictures guide you through each recipe/ tutorial. What more could a geek ask for? I particularly enjoyed the tutorial on how to cut up a chicken and a recipe for condensed milk fudge – yum! (cookingforengineers.com)

TagCloud TagCloud is a service that can create a weighted list of tags (or tag cloud) based on an RSS feed. You can then add this list to your Web site. Essentially, TagCloud searches any number of RSS feeds you specify, extracts

keywords from the content and lists them according to prevalence within the RSS feeds. Clicking on the tags link will display a list of all the article abstracts associated with that keyword. It’s an interesting way for readers to browse your blog as opposed to traditional categories. TagCloud is still in beta (tagcloud.com).

A PowerPoint Tip At times during a PowerPoint presentation, you should to redirect your audience’s attention away from the screen and towards yourself. One useful tip is that pressing the B key will temporarily black out the screen. This allows you to control the flow of your talk and keep your audience’s focus where it needs to be - on you. Just make sure you’ve got an alternate light source to illuminate you during these moments. You do not want to dilate your audience’s pupils by darkening the room and then shock them when returning to the slide show. Just speak for a while and slowly transition back. When you want to return to the presentation, press B a second time to restore the previous display.

Planzo Your Life Here’s another entrant into the ever growing space of social calendaring: Planzo bills itself as an ‘online planning community,’ allowing you to quickly and easily share your calendar entries via cut-and-paste. It speaks Web 2.0 (AJAX, RSS, XML) and promises a dead easy interface with one click event creation and drag-an-drop event changes. The service offers a number of ways to export or share your calendar - as a daily email digest, SMS reminder, event sharing with Planzo contacts (including access controls), and via RSS. You can also customize

by Loki

the look and feel of your calendar till it works just how you want it (planzo.com).

ter viewing, just add a ‘rented’ tag to keep track of what he’s already seen. Simple and effective (joeschmidt.com).

Stickies

Conversate

Mac users are spoiled. Among many other built-in goodies, they have digital versions of the post-it notes we all know and love. They linger on your screen as reminders until you decide to trash them. Stickies is a free Windows alternative that you can install and use for the very same purpose (zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies).

Conversate, a hosted “instant discussion” space, seems to hit that sweet spot somewhere between blogs, message boards and tags. It supports topic-specific RSS and enables you to have conversations with a large audience without worrying about the stress and mess of group e-mails. The Conversate bookmarklet enables one-click starting of a discussion from any Web page, rather like a blog combined with del.icio.us. Conversations can be public or private and you can use either email or RSS to receive invitations and track conversations. Depending on your needs, Conversate can be used to share interesting websites or to collaborate on projects. It can also serve as a group blog or as an ongoing chat room and best of all, its free (conversate.org).

Deskloops This is a Windows application that helps you organize your open windows. Deskloops does this by arranging windows along a virtual horizontal loop. At any one time, you’ll only see one window open on screen. Don’t worry though, your other windows are hidden the loop, waiting happily for you to call them up. A strip of thumbnails on top of the screen map the loop’s full content. It’s sort of hard to visualize but they’ve got a goofy flash animation that does the trick. It’s an interesting concept that may help those of you who have problems with screen real estate (xilokit.com/deskloops).

Movie Rentals You can use a del.icio.us (http:// del.icio.us) account to keep track of movies you want to see. When you find a link to a movie in the Internet Movie Database, just post it to your del.icio.us account under the tag ‘toRent’. Af-

Remember the Milk Remember The Milk is a free, on-line, to-do list management service. It has all the features you’d expect from this sort of site: multiple lists, priorities, duedates, repeating tasks, etc. Then it adds the cool stuff. One such feature is the built-in “nagging” system that reminds you to get the job done. You can request reminders by email, IM or SMS. In addition, you can share and publish your to-do lists and create new tasks by email. Plus there’s atom support as well (a form of XML). Can I get cookies with that? (rememberthemilk.com)

loki is a recovering net junkie, enthusiastic musclehead and enjoys frequent tête-à-têtes with her food.

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Mark shuttleworth What would you do if you had a million dollars? Book a ride to space? Invest in a Free and Open Source Operating System for everyone to use? Probably not. But that’s just what South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth did.

Interview by Mahangu Weerasinghe

In 1995, Mark Shuttleworth founded a computer security consultancy company called Thawte. Specialising in providing digital certificates to small and medium scale businesses, Shuttleworth’s firm filled a big void in the online sphere of yesteryear. In 1999, Mark sold Thawte to Internet giant VeriSign and founded a nonprofit called the Shuttleworth Foundation. The Shuttleworth Foundation’s main goal is to develop the standard of education in South Africa. However, many of the Foundation’s projects can also easily be adapted to work in other developing countries. Out of these, the tuXlab and Freedom Toaster initiatives are by far two of the most innovative. The tuXlab project centers around providing cost effective and easily implementable computer solutions for schools. Using cheap second hand computers and Free and Open Source Software, the Shuttleworth Foundation has put together more than one hundred and thirty labs in three South African provinces. Another, more recent project of the Shuttleworth Foundation has been the Freedom Toaster Project. An effort that is aimed at making Free and Open Source Software accessible to more people, the Freedom Toaster is essentially a FOSS dispenser. You can bring blank CDs, slip them in to the vending-machine like contraption, choose software of your choice, and have

/it-times/interview

the Freedom Toaster burn you your very own copy. Once again, innovation at its best. What Mark is most well known for however is his spearheading of the Ubuntu Linux project. An effort to develop a user friendly Linux based operating system for day to day users, Ubuntu has gained an immense following in the past few months. Funded by Canonical, a company founded by Shuttleworth, Ubuntu builds off the Debian GNU / Linux core. Linux was traditionally an OS for more experienced computer users, but Ubuntu is slowly but surely changing that stereotype. From vastly improved hardware detection to a streamlined (and very pretty) User Interface, the new OS on the block is fast becoming one of the world’s most popular desktop Linux distros. Shuttleworth’s fame, however, is not just limited to cyberspace. In April 2002 he became the first African in space when he took part as a civilian cosmonaut aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-34 mission. The mission, which included research aboard the International Space Station, cost Mark a cool twenty million US dollars. Philanthropist, Hacker and Cosmonaut – how’s that for a combination? Hang on tight as we travel with Mark through the wide and varied world of Ubuntu

Linux.IT Times: We’ve read Bug Report #1 (at right), and understand your main objectives behind Ubuntu. However, how is Ubuntu different in working towards these goals? What makes the Ubuntu approach different from the Redhat, Suse, or even Debian approach? Mark Shuttleworth: First, we are very desktop focused. The Microsoft monopoly was created on the desktop, and to create competition in the industry we will have to focus on the desktop. Until now, Linux has been successful on servers, its new to have a world class distribution that is truly focused on the desktop user. We focus on the needs to a desktop user during the default installation. A lot of work goes into making the installation as simple as possible, and the resulting desktop as easy to use as possible. We keep the whole world of free software accessible over the network, you can install any of thousands of applications with just a few clicks, but by default the desktop is focused on common desktop tasks, and simple to learn to use. Second, Ubuntu is very community oriented. We put a lot of work into creating an environment that brings the best out of people, and attracts the best. What helps is that we are committed to free software - there is no “professional edition” that has extra goodness for which you have to pay. So the community in Ubuntu

has grown very strong, and very large, rather quickly. ITT: This is something which pretty much everyone asks me. Why GNOME, and not KDE? :) MS: Both Gnome and KDE are important. So we have both Ubuntu and Kubuntu. These two desktops address different needs that users have. Some users want more features, more bling, richer functionality, and are

prepared to accept more complexity for it. Other users want it to be easy to use out of the box. Because we are focused on desktop users, who are traditionally “nervous” about Linux, we chose Gnome for the Ubuntu install, which we worked on first. We then build a separate community around KDE in Kubuntu. The two projects collaborate, in the same bug tracker, but they have freedom to make the right choices for their desktop environment.

/it-times/interview

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

I firmly believe that Free Software will come to define the software industry over the next five years. Free software will become the absolute norm by which people judge the industry. ITT: Some users also seem to like using lighter GUIs such as IceWM and XFCE. Are there any plans for the release of “lighter” flavours of Ubuntu? MS : It’s not an official release yet, but there’s a community forming around XFCE-for-Ubuntu, so the packages are being well tended with much love and care going into them. There are unofficial install CD’s, I believe. This is particularly popular amongst the community of people trying to get the most value out of old hardware, for example in large data processing companies that have lots of users just running simple apps and don’t want to upgrade the hardware. I believe that we will see many “xxx-buntu” distributions, driven by communities that have specific needs, requirements and goals. They will collaborate on the core, using Launchpad.net to coordinate their efforts. ITT: There is much speculation regarding plans for Ubuntu after the release of Dapper. What are some of the development goals that have been established for post-Dapper Ubuntu? MS : Gosh. After Dapper we will be able to accelerate again. It’s difficult to speculate now about what will be important. There’s some discussion about the embedded environment, and bringing Ubuntu to that market, but I think there are still plenty of problems to solve on the desktop itself. The Ubuntu philosophy is to work

with the best that the open source community can deliver, so to a certain extent we are in the hands of that community, and its best for us not to try to plan specific features unless we know we can deliver them ourselves. ITT: You’ve said on many occasions that Ubuntu is in particular targeted at developing countries. What aspects of Ubuntu do you think are most useful for these developing nations? MS: First, the translation system at Launchpad. net is really optimised for people who want to make software useful to local users in the local language. Take a look at http://launchpad.net/rosetta/ and see if you can’t contribute a few translations yourself! It’s addictive, and every translation there means that more users can benefit from a free platform. Second, we work hard to create local community structures (we call the “LoCo Teams”, short for “Local Community”) and these provide good support and services to people close by. And third, we try to make sure that our governance is open to people from all countries. We have meetings at different times of the day to accommodate time zones, and we welcome contributions from people from a number of different countries already. ITT: In general, where do you think the Free and Open Source Movement is headed? Where do you see (or where would you like to see) the FOSS community in five to ten years? MS: Headed to the top! I firmly believe that Free Software will come to define the software industry over the next five years. Free software will become the absolute norm by which people judge the industry. It will be standard to deploy free software first, and then consider proprietary software if you have specific needs that cannot be met by the open source tools. It is a much better way of producing, and distributing software, and I think results in a better quality product. That’s why I encourage IT students to make sure they have Linux at home and in the classroom, because Linux skills will continue to be more valuable than Windows skills.

/it-times/interview

Kismet screenshot superimposed onto ‘Driving Is Fun’ by Ben McLeod (flickr.com/photos/benmcleod)

Wardriving

by Mahangu Weerasinghe

So, MIT is mapping WiFi flow among students on its campus, and San Fransisco may soon have city wide access courtesy of Google. But what about Colombo? We’re pretty far back in terms of WiFi coverage, right? Wrong. It’s a public holiday, and I’m sitting in the front seat of Weasel’s car, holding a small laptop and watching as it reads out the Wireless Networks we pass. New wireless network found, SSID conexant, channel 10, network open, says a computerized voice. In the short distance of just a kilometer, we’ve come across seven open Wifi networks. Weasel? No, I’m not suddenly in the protection of small rodents – Weasel is the handle or alias used by one of Sri Lanka’s earliest Wireless Network scouts. Using a highly customized laptop and an ordinary automobile, he drives around Colombo mapping its many wireless hot spots. He says that the city and its suburbs have a lot more wireless coverage than we think. I’m not just talking about public or open access wifi hotspots – if your home or business runs a WLAN

(even a closed one), the chances are that you have already been mapped. How, you ask? Kismet. No, I didn’t just ask you to... Erm, Kismet is a network detector and wireless packet sniffer for Linux. It allows you to passively scan for wireless networks. What does that mean? Well, it’s basically looking for open networks without actually connecting to them – nobody knows that you’re sniffing them. Sniffing, network detection – all this is a part of a new culture called Wardriving. An evolution of the term Wardialing, which was used to describe the age old act of repeatedly dialing in to phone numbers till you got access to a network, Wardriving is the art of driving around looking for open Wifi Networks. Back in Weasel’s car, I watch as Kismet picks up way-

/it-times/work/wifi

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

ward data packets. We’re parked inside the circumference of what appears to be a WEP encrypted network, and Kismet is patiently listening for packets that are being passed back and forth between the access point and other clients. If we wait long enough, it will even crack the password for us. Although we’re not about to infringe on someone’s private turf by breaking in to their network, a cracker with an ulterior motive could easily get access to personal data using means like these.

sharing is caring Weasel does this for a hobby. No, he’s not crazy, and yes, he does have a life. He is part of what is a growing sub culture of hackerdom – Wardrivers, a group of technologists who believe that Wifi should be shared and made easily accessible to all. This isn’t a hallucinogenics induced hippie theory from the sixties – it’s a novel idea that just may save your skin one day. Picture this – it’s Friday night and you’re on your way to a party. Miles from both home and work, you suddenly realize that you haven’t sent one client their weekly update. Oh oh, the boss is gonna kill you for that. Fortunately, you’ve brought along your laptop and instead of turning off towards the party, you drive a little further, looking for the open node warchalking symbol as you go. A few hundred meters down the road you find one on a lamp post. Noting the SSID and channel number, you connect, fire up your Gmail, attach the report and click send. The boss is happy, the client is content, and

/it-times/work/wifi

you’re at your party on time. This is what sharing Wifi is all about – helping each other in times of need. In some cities Wireless Network users have come together to donate their bandwidth, covering parts of the city in a veritable wireless grid.

warchalking your way to freedom Similarly, in cities the world over, concerned netizens are using a series of symbols to map Wireless Hotspots (see diagram). Warchalking is a subculture that finds strength in numbers. It’s all about quantity. Hotspots and their security levels are constantly changing. An open, high bandwidth access point today, could be a WEP encrypted hotspot tomorrow. That is where communal warchalking comes in. The idea is that if enough people find enough hotspots, the number of access points in the city will remain at a relatively static level. Also, as more and more people scan and use open wireless networks, the availability of wireless access for all will increase.

honesty and ethics Wardriving has always been an issue. Is it stealing bandwidth? Most enthusiasts will say no, it’s just borrowing. Indeed, the technical infrastructure of Wifi is such that it usually provides connectivity to all who ask. Indeed, most access points come configured by default to provide connectivity to anyone who requests it.

 

Run Kismet or Netstumbler

Drive around and watch as the software detects WiFi hotspots



When a hotspot is found, get down and leave a chalk mark on a nearby wall or lamp post

Wardriving enthusiasts frequently argue that by setting up an open access point (one without security measures) a person is inadvertently offering others free access. Still others point out that this is akin to saying that people who leave their garden gates unlocked are asking strangers to come in and use their lawns. The ethical issues also go hand in hand with the software used to Wardrive. Software like Kismet, which Weasel uses, is of the listen only variety, and does not attempt to connect to any of the networks it finds. Thus, Kismet users often say that what they’re doing is a lot like listening to a local radio station. The only reason Kismet is picking up signals is because someone’s access point is broadcasting them. On the other hand, software like NetStumbler for the win32 platform goes about discovering networks by probing – sending packets to each access point and seeing how they respond. This method is a little more intrusive, and can possibly be interpreted as a breach of privacy. When a non Wardriving enthusiast first sees how easy it is to track and connect to open access points, they will probably go about securing their own networks. What they don’t realize however is that you can share your bandwidth, and still keep your data secure.

spread the love, protect the fort Having an open Wifi network is a good thing. Have an access point at home? Put a sign outside your gate. Someone, somewhere is going to thank you for it. At the same time, you don’t want that someone reading

 A Car

 Laptop with WiFi

 Kismet (Linux) or NetStumbler  Chalk open

closed

secure

your personal email, right? Well, there is a solution. Using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) for your POP or IMAP email, you can make sure that nobody in between you and your server gets to read the data that is being passed back and forth. In the same way, using Secure HTTP (HTTPS), you can make sure that your online transactions are done in complete privacy. However, there are times when you may want to totally encrypt your data, and as usual, we have a solution turn the page and read Kalum’s tutorial on how to better secure your home or office WLAN. However, having an open network may be beneficial in more ways than one. In fact, it may well soon be another way of being socially responsible.

hook them with bandwidth Of course, there are people and places that offer their wifi free for public use. These places don’t even need to be warchalked – they often have a sign offering free wireless. While some businesses continue to give free access, there are others who charge an hourly access fee. What they don’t realize however is that the little revenue they earn from the paid access will be negligible when compared to the amount of customers they will lose due to lack of free access. Call me weird, but given a choice between paying for Wifi, and paying for a donut, I’d choose the donut. If the cafe on the other hand had free net access, I’d probably spend more time there, and eat a lot more donuts than necessary. Businesses need to understand that users are no longer willing to pay for bandwidth. To any managers listening in – providing free connectivity is a great (and now very cheap) way of attracting more customers. For the few thousand you pay each month for a DSL modem and a Wireless router, you’ll earn much more in terms of patronage and community kudos.

/it-times/work/wifi

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Securing Since WiFi offers the benefits of easy setup without wires and cables, it has proved to be very popular among net savvy users. The increase in the number of available access points is a testament to WiFi’s new found popularity. Easy connectivity, however, comes at a price - wireless networks have poor security compared to their wired counterparts. When you network two computers using a wireless connection, the data is sent via radio waves on a certain channel. Thus anyone with a receiver (a wireless card will do) can analyze the data being sent. This is called sniffing. If you are running an open network, a cracker with a laptop can listen in and analyze everything that you are doing online - the websites you visit, the emails you send, even the user name and passwords you exchange with servers. After connecting to your network, he may be able to scan and connect to other machines as well. Sharing your WiFi by keeping your access point open is regarded as nice, but there are instances where you want to secure your data. Here’s how to protect your WiFi network: SSID Cloaking - Wireless networks identify themselves by a SSID, which can be something like ‘mywireless’. Computers with a wireless card whose SSID is set to ‘mywireless’ can connect to each other. Access points send out periodic beacons which are meant to indicate their presence. These beacons also usually broadcast the respective SSID. Thus, anyone with a sniffer can find out that there is a network with a SSID and connect to that. A basic form of security is to disable the broadcast of SSID. When this is done, the access point doesn’t identify itself when sending out its beacon packets. An intruder Fort Worth by (flickr.com/photos/timcummins)

/it-times/work/security

the Airwaves

by Kalum Somaratna

a cracker with a laptop can listen in and analyze everything that you are doing online - the websites you visit, the emails you send, even the user name and passwords you exchange with servers

who doesn’t know the SSID won’t be able to connect to the network. The weaknesses of this method is that the network’s SSID is sent via other data packets as well. If you listen long enough to the communications between two networks, the SSID can be easily found, making connecting as easy as before. MAC Address Filtering - A MAC address is the hardware address of the wireless card. The network uses this to identify where to send data packets. If you have a wireless network with a router and two wireless cards connected to it, you will see two machines connected with two unique MAC addresses. Here is an example of a MAC address, 00:0F:3D:EA:AB:F5. Since a MAC address is unique for each network card (like a fingerprint), another method of security is to ask the wireless router to accept connections only from certain MAC addresses. Using this method, you could ask the router to only connect machines known to you. The weakness in this method is that you can set the hardware MAC address of a wireless card to whatever you wish. If an attacker listens to a wireless network for long enough, he can get a list of connected computers along with their MAC addresses. Then all he has to do is to wait till one of the computers disconnect from the wireless access point. If he sets his own wireless card’s MAC address to that number, then he is on the network. As far as the access point is concerned, the new connection will be from a known client. This technique is called MAC address spoofing. WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) - This a security method where the computers in a wireless network use a pre-shared security key to encrypt data. Since the data is encrypted before transmission you cannot decrypt WEP enabled network traffic if you don’t have access to the key. The problem with WEP is a design limita-

tion - it is inherently insecure at high volumes of traffic. If you have enough data that is transmitted in a WEP encrypted network you can subject the data obtained to a statistical analysis and guess the security key with near one hundred percent accuracy. Once you have obtained the key, the network is completely decrypted and is like an open access point. Because of these problems, security experts no longer recommend the use of WEP for securing a network. WPA (Wireless Protected Access) - Due to the weaknesses of the WEP system, a stronger security model was needed. The WPA encryption method is much stronger than WEP and is more resistant to attempts at guessing the security key. However, one weakness in WPA is weak passwords (‘blue’, for example). An attacker can guess the security key by subjecting captured WPA authentication packets to a dictionary attack. However, WPA is a secure method far superior to WEP if you use a proper password with alternating letters and numbers and no dictionary words. IpSec (IP Security) - This is the strongest security method available. IpSec is initiated by the computers connected to the network themselves, independent of the medium of transmission (wires or wireless). This method can be used to establish a secure encrypted channel of communication between two computers. The data is authenticated as well, meaning that no outsider is able to insert data packets or generate false packets.The disadvantage of IpSec is that it is difficult to setup without trained, professional help. Although wireless network security has always been problematic, viable solutions are slowly emerging. Although IpSec is by far the most secure encryption method to use on a network, we also recommend WPA for combining both security and ease of setup.

/it-times/work/security

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Prince of Persia the sands of time

artwork above by Hussain Almossawi

by Raveen Wijayatilake

Let’s take a break from all this first person shooter madness for a while. I have an underrated but extremely enjoyable action adventure game for you. Remember Prince of Persia? The game you had to play on your black and white monitor - probably one of the first games that satisfied your need for gaming. Well, this game doesn’t follow in its monochrome ancestor’s 2D path, but it will definitely give you as much enjoyment. Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and The Flame was the original game’s first predecessor, followed by Prince of Persia 3D which brought the franchise into the 3D realm. The Sands of Time (SoT) differs from the story you’re used to, but only slightly. You are a young prince, who brings back a dagger from a kingdom that was conquered by his fathers’ army. An evil vizier, who knows the dagger’s true potential – the ability to give the possessor control over time itself - convinces the prince to use the dagger to open a golden hourglass, which was also retrieved as a token from a conquered kingdom. By opening the hourglass, the prince unleashes the sands

/it-times/play/games

Remember Prince of Persia? The game you had to play on your black and white monitor...

of time, a Pandora’s Box of sorts. The horror of the unleashed sands turn the people of his kingdom, once beloved friends, into mindless sand creatures out to put an end to his life. Your goal is to undo your mistake and bring normalcy back to your kingdom. If you didn’t guess already, you will take on the role of the young prince. The game takes on a 3rd person perspective, which means the whole of the prince can be seen in front of you – like Splinter Cell or Resident Evil. I usually find the camera control of 3rd person action adventure games rather annoying, but SoT was a frustration free experience. The game’s fluid camera movement is important and is a big boost to game play, especially since SoT has a lot of fast paced moments and complicated puzzles. A combination of keyboard and mouse is used to look around, move and fight. You will find that your prince is exceptionally agile and can perform a variety of acrobatics, which not only look good, but are also required to get through the game. You will be able to jump, run, climb, leap, bounce and hang onto objects in the environment. The developers have done an excellent job at animating the prince’s interaction with the environment. We all know even some of the newest games with the best graphics tend to look bad when interacting with environments – limbs poking out of walls etc. SoT will have none of that - the prince will interact perfectly, and it’s a pleasure to watch. Some of the moves you can carry out are really cool too. Running towards a wall and pressing jump makes you push yourself off the wall and into the air. This can be used to get onto a higher ledge that you otherwise couldn’t reach, or set you up for nice kill from above. Jumping onto a higher platform makes you hang on to the ledge – trademark Prince of Persia. You can never fall off a ledge accidentally as you will always grab onto the ledge and hang on for dear life. This makes the game that much less frustrating, and I dare say, easy. When you encounter that chasm you can’t leap across or row of spikes you can’t get over, you can run along the wall instead. Again, the prince will interact perfectly with the wall he runs across, and it’s one of those maneuvers that you feel good performing. It’s smooth and

it’s sexy. The levels will be littered with deadly traps and very sharp objects that can do a lot of damage, and this is where most of your agility will be exploited. Rolling under swords protruding from walls, jumping over spikes jutting out from the floor and running across walls to avoid wooden bars that hang from the ceiling. With all this against you, you sometimes can’t help but get ground to bits as your well timed move turns out to be… not so well timed. So what do you do when your health bar goes empty? No, you don’t hit the quick load key (there isn’t one), or curse the developers for placing a pit of spikes at that very spot. If you didn’t skip the intro paragraph you would have read something like this; “the ability to give the possessor control over time itself ”. You’re the possessor of the dagger…lucky you! This means you have the ability to undo that last fatal mistake you made by ‘turning back time’. With the press of a key, time will pause for an instant, and then your actions during the last few seconds will be reversed, right on screen. It’s a cool effect and a lifesaver. Of course, every cool feature has a catch, and the number of times you can undo a fatal mistake have been limited. Each time you turn back time, a ‘sand tank’ is used, and you have a limited number of sand tanks you can have filled at one time. Re-filling sand tanks can be done by killing enemies and also exploring – take a swipe at the pretty looking vase on the floor and you just might find a yellowish glowing sand tank. These can also be used to perform special attacks on enemies. Although the Prince will take slight damage from the various obstacles he encounters, those aren’t worth wasting a sand tank on. This is where the normal health bar comes in. SoT’s medi packs are pools of water that you’ll find scattered throughout the levels. Have a sip and your health bar will be restored to its fullest. Your health bar will also increase over time as you progress through the story, giving you a larger maximum health. This comes in handy when dealing with the numerous sand creatures you’ll have to put sword to. The combat system in SoT is probably the most fun and good looking element of the game, even though it can get repetitive at times. It’s all about close combat, no guns or projectiles here – sharp things are the

/it-times/play/games

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

weapons of choice. There isn’t a lack of variety in the types of enemies you encounter, each enemy having its’ own characteristics. You have a few basic combos you can perform to deal death to your fore, which require some amount of keyboard and mouse work. For instance, press the correct key and mouse button combo and you will jump over an enemy and take off its head from behind. This is really cool the first few times you dispatch a group of enemies using it. Other moves include variations of jumping attacks off walls which are beautifully animated and extremely fluid. Again, the interaction with the environment is nicely done. These attacks will have to be coupled with a lot of blocking, to save your skin from your foe. One annoyance you might encounter is the slight inaccuracy of the controls during fights. Since you don’t see anything from a first person perspective, you’ll have to rely on the game, most of the time, to aim your attacks at enemies. You can of course turn in the direction of the enemy you want to hit and slash away. But when it comes to combo attacks, you might on occasion find yourself landing in an empty area and hitting the floor, while your enemy is just beside you looking confused. This is not to say that the combos never work - they do most of the time, and when they do, they work well. The Prince’s control over time gives him the ability to slow it down to a certain extent – a medieval bullet time. When in bullet time, all enemies around you slow down to almost a halt and your speed increases, giving you a chance to weaken a group of enemies at times when you’re overwhelmed. This effect looks good and will save you a lot of time-reversing if used wisely. Since the enemies in SoT are not real people, more like sand zombies, they can’t be killed using conventional weapons… if you can call a big shiny and sharp sword conventional anyway. You can only cut and chop these creatures till they fall down. Once they are down, they will be that way only for a short while, only to return back to full health ready to treat you to more head chopping. To kill them off completely, you’ll need to plunge your dagger into them while they’ve hit the dirt. This will get rid of them with a pretty animation and also provide you with some sand tank goodness. During the more hectic fights, you will find yourself less able to ignore the hoards and plunge a dagger into a fallen enemy. This makes it really hard since all the effort in putting down a fore is lost if, after a few seconds, it gets up and charges at you like nothing happened. The battles in SoT can be frustrating, and you’ll be screaming at the screen as you’re killed for the 4th

/it-times/play/games

consecutive time and you find you’ve run out of sand tanks to reverse the last fatal blow. Once this happens, you will have to load from a ‘recent’ save point, which sometimes can feel not-so-recent. That said, the loading times are pretty fast and treat you to a unique loading bar that you might enjoy watching fill up. The levels you have to complete are very linear in fashion. Each has a set of puzzles to solve, lots of traps to get through and a bunch of enemies to kill, and you will have to follow one route to pass them all. The route is pretty much shown to you at the beginning of each level in the form ‘flash forward’ visions. You will see, briefly, the path you have to take to either complete a puzzle or get across to the end of the level. The puzzles in the game are entertaining at times, annoying at others, and very satisfying once completed. You will be pulling levers, jumping on blocks and pushing big boxes around to align pillars, expand bridges and other such actions to solve the puzzles. The game play changes slightly when you hook up with Farah, the daughter of a rival king who was conquered

by the prince’s father. Apparently, you, Farah and the Vizier are the only ‘people’ alive. She helps you with certain puzzles, using her ability to creep through small gaps in walls etc. She also does a decent bit of fighting alongside you. She carries a bow and arrow which deals some good damage to anything that gets in the way, and that can include you, if you’re both going for the same enemy. As the story progresses, you fall in love with Farah, though it’s hard to see why, from the way she’s modeled in game. The developers could have done a better job with her modeling, though the cut scenes look decent enough. You will undergo another slight change of game play when you come across a sword that’s stronger, can kill enemies with one swipe, and can break down weak walls. The only thing the wall bashing accomplishes is giving the developer a few new minor details to present the player with during play – a wall you can break through instead of a plain boring archway to walk through. The one-swipe-kill on the other hand can be fun, and is a refresher after the mostly monotonous combat you’ll indulge in. SoT looks great. It looks like it’s been dipped in a bowl

/it-times/play/games

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Sands of Time looks great. It looks like it’s been dipped in a bowl of faint sunlight, which helps give it a brilliant graphical feel of faint sunlight, which helps give it a brilliant graphical feel. Character animations are executed superbly, and adds the wow factor to the already excellent game play – especially the prince, whose movements are fluid and very realistic. The Prince starts off dressed in typical royal clothing, and you will play the initial sections of the game in that attire. Later on during battle and other such physical activity, the Prince will tear his top, and finally run around without it – making him look like those topless Arabian guards with big swords and mustaches, except he’s not big, and he doesn’t have a mustache. Combat looks fantastic, killing creatures looks terrific and the environments are full of detail. Running around dusty areas will kick up dust from the ground in the Princes path. Textures have been amazingly detailed, and you can see the developers have covered all aspects, from the ceiling in rooms to the walls and ledges in vast hallways. Environments are littered with believable objects that look perfect where they’re placed. Libraries will have ladders to access tall bookshelves, castle walls will be draped in rich red curtains and such, and gets across the feel of ancient Persia really well. You will spend some time outdoors, maneuvering on tightrope like objects, trees and other dangerous

/it-times/play/games

looking platforms. These levels look absolutely stunning. Combined with the soft sunlight effect, you’ll find yourself stopping to take a longer look at the glittering ocean seen in the distance, or the vista you’re presented with from the tall tree you are perched on. SoT sounds great. From the ambient background sounds, the pattering of footsteps, to the echo heard in large rooms, sound will play a big role in your experience with SoT. Combat is especially well done, with the sound of sword swipes and metal hitting stone being distinctly realistic. The music pipes up as you get yourself into battle. Middle Eastern tunes with a heavy metal touch are perfect for the game’s melee encounters. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is leagues above its initial 3D counterpart, Prince of Persia 3D. Winning 2004’s Game developers choice award for excellence in game design, and the Penny-Arcade award for ‘Best Absolutely Everything’ (Game of the Year 2003), SoT, putting it simply, kicks a lot of butt. If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing SoT already, I suggest you go out and buy it right now… it’s a definite gem that should be played by any gamer.

new releases The Movies By: Activision, Lionhead Studios Genre: Business Strategy Release Date: Nov 8, 2005 The Movies proves to be an accessible and good-spirited tycoon game, and its moviemaking tools offer a surprisingly deep amount of control. But the disconnection between these elements is noticeable. Need For Speed: Most Wanted By: Electronic Arts, EA Canada Genre: GT / Street Racing Release Date: Nov 15, 2005

compiled from GameSpot.com

Upon arriving, however, he’s greeted by a rather unpleasant surprise: His land has been invaded and his people slaughtered, and his love, Kaileena, has unleashed the sands of time in order to combat the menace. The prince will again have to face off against waves of sand-zombies, and figure out who is making trouble in his homeland and how he can stop them. L.A. Rush By: Midway Genre: Racing Release Date: Dec 22, 2005

The game will feature three main game modes that are pretty much in line with what the franchise has offered before. You’ll be able to try your hands at career, challenge series, and quick race. The career mode is the now-standard story-style mode that casts you as a new street racer in the town of Rockport, hankering to make the local “blacklist” a numbered collection of the top 15 street racers in the city.

L.A. Rush moves the series south to Los Angeles. The game takes place in an accurate rendition of the Southland area, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 miles of drivable roads. Most of the game will see you driving your cars in races against three other opponents. Most of these races will be one-lap “point A to point B”-style races, with plenty of big jumps and shortcuts for you to find in each setting. There will be 50 unique tracks to play through here. But racing isn’t the only thing going on in the City of Angels.

Prince of Persia : The Two Thrones By: Ubisoft Genre: Fantasy Action Adventure Release Date: Dec 1, 2005

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland By: Aspyr, Neversoft Ent. Genre: Skateboarding Release Date: December 2005

After spending years on the run from the Dahaka, the horrible time beast that haunted him in Warrior Within, the prince has finally returned to Babylon, expecting to escape his tortured past and finally settle in for some peace and quiet in his own kingdom.

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland sets the series in one gigantic Los Angeles, free from load times. Every Tony Hawk game offers addictive and competive gameplay and the chance to one-up your friends. American Wasteland adds BMX biking and online play to the mix.

/it-times/work/office

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

inspector gadget Welcome to the Gadgets section of IT Times. Tech shopping traditionally means Unity Plaza or Majestic City, but these locations are often more bazaar than store. The service is surly and the prices change depending on your negotiation skills. You also tend to get the same products everywhere. However, companies like NEAT, EPSI and PC House have developed showrooms which make shopping a whole lot more fun, and actually more affordable. We have visited most of these gadget stores in Colombo and selected a range of cell-phones, WiFi phones, accessories, MP3 players and laptops. All of the prices are current as of late November, but do note that cost and availability of items may change. In fact, the prices probably will change for the season, so please consider these estimates. All locations have been given on the map at the end of the magazine. Happy gadgeting!

Image from the 1983-86 cartoon series, Inspector Gadget. Not the crappy movie.

The Panasonic X400 is an affordable, svelte clam shell. The included camera and 16 chord polyphonic ring tones are nothing special, but it does well at the core business of a handphone - making calls and sending text messages. The predictive text is well implemented and calls are clear. Only downside is no outside display, so you have to open the phone to check the time. This can be fun, though, as there’s a neat auto-flip button. Available at Abans for Rs. 19,490

If there is an ‘it’ phone, it’s the Motorola Razr V3. The Razr appears in countless paparazzi photos and now the price has dropped pretty dramatically. It is a strikingly sexy phone, literally razor thin and cool metal, not plastic. The engineering is spectacular, though the software is a bit clunky. Some notable features are that it can charge via USB and that the speakerphone is powerful enough to be used comfortably in the car. However, the real selling point is the phone is downright gorgeous. You’ll find yourself sending text messages to yourself just to show it off. Available at Abans for Rs. 33,990

/it-times/play/gadgets

Cover Model: Trishan

Impakt has never been content to sit back and become just another Model Bank. The company is proud of its achievements, and continues to listen to its clients and push the boundaries. Their newest venture is the Grooming School Project. This project was to be launched in March 2006, says Paul, but with the ever increasing amount of assignments, it became clear that there was an urgent need for a grooming service now. Constant conversations and comments arose such as; Why is nobody training or Grooming these Models to be true professionals and manage their careers? If India can do it why can’t Sri Lanka? Given this feedback from their clients, ImpaktModels brought forward the launch of their Grooming School by 6 months. “There would be no point whatsoever for us to launch a Grooming School in Sri Lanka if it wasn’t going to be supported by industry professionals or if we did not train to International levels, and make that all important difference or change of attitude,” said Azad. The most important aspect of our school is the teacher. Our trainer Jacquie Z was one of Singapore’s top models and has worked extensively throughout South-East Asia. Jacquie modelled apparel for High Fashion magazines & Ad Campaigns, Runway Shows & TV Commercials, explains Paul. As a former model, this naturally led to passing on her skills to young people who want to become more successful themselves. It was amazing to see some of our models reaction to Jacquie recently at a Fashion Show. Within 10 minutes of meeting the girls she was advising them on hair, makeup and posture. The girls immediately knew they were being coached by a Professional.

Impakt Grooming School Classes will be held at the recently re-vamped Excel world, up to 4 days a week Excel World will become the place where new Models walk down the runway with style, passion and grace, something that will be new to the scene in Colombo, says Paul. We have to offer opportunities to the models after the grooming schools, we will be able to promote them on a higher level than before locally and abroad, since the difference in presentation will be second to none. Basic Grooming Course (Rs, 10,000): course designed for anybody, Male or Female It s contents are Hair, Skin, Make-up, Etiquette, and Personal Presentation. Professional Modelling Course (Rs. 8,000): All entrants must have completed the Basic Grooming course. Those who have modelling potential will be taken to the next level of professional styling, fashion, posture, posing, and of course The Catwalk! All courses are payable over four weeks. The full course contents will be advised on confirmed bookings. Each course runs twice a week 18.30 ‒ 20.30 for four weeks at Excel world, in the new conference rooms. Impakt Models are constantly seeking new faces of all ages, from Juniors to Adults for TV, Press, Fashions Shows, Promotions, and more. It only takes 10 minutes to join ImpaktModels and there is NO Fee. e just need a good picture of you, and that is all! For more information on our courses call or joining our agency contact, Impakt Models c/o Inlanka Group of Companies (BOI) Ltd 97 Galle Road, Colombo 3 Tel: 011 2394343 Web: www.impaktmodels.com Mail: [email protected]

advertisement

IMPAKTMODELS is the first all-encompassing Model Management Company in Sri Lanka. Created by Azad Moulana and Paul James in March 2004, ImpaktModels has built a strong reputation based on professionalism and quality. This agency began with a vision to change modelling in Sri Lanka and South Asia within 5 years, and they are right on track. Today, they are the benchmark for account management and model presentation in Sri Lankan fashion and advertising. ImpaktModels has supplied successful models for TV, Print, Hoardings, Fashion Shows, and have developed a very popular website at impaktmodels.com

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Sony Ericsson may not be pushing the envelope engineering wise, but their user interfaces are superb. Not that the chromed out K700i is bad looking. It’s sleek, tough and very light. The keypad is comfortable and the display is quite sharp indeed. The camera quality is a bit dodgy, but there is a built in FM radio, which is cool. Available at Global GSM for Rs. 26,900

Though it looks suspiciously like a Sony Ericsson, the Nokia 3230 is a welcome step for Nokia. This a solid phone from a company that tried redoing the keypad. These keys are a little hard to use, but the joystick works and the screen is big and sharp. Photos are nothing special, but the Symbian interface is quite polished and fun to use. Available at Global GSM for Rs. 37,900

Until Dialog releases the Blackberry, this is the king of smartphones. The Treo 650 lacks the WiFi of the i-mate’s at right, but it’s still a solid business device. The keyboard makes pounding out text messages a cinch, and the Treo is an email machine once you get the GPRS setup. It’ll even sync with corporate Microsoft Exchange Servers. What the Treo basically does is combine a cell-phone and PDA effectively. This is quite a feat as this synthesis has been messed up a thousand times before. The Treo is just the right size such that you don’t feel silly using it as a phone and you don’t trip over your thumbs typing. It can handle your communication and organizational needs like a good secretary and still fit in your pocket. Available at Dialog Future Store for Rs. 95,000 (price from website)

The Globetrotter GPRS Card is (obviously) not a cell-phone, but it does slot into your laptop to send and receive data via GPRS. This means you can check your email from anywhere you get cell reception, and on the big screen. Speeds aren’t blazing, but they can actually be quite comfortable. When it comes to sending that vital proposal, a card like this can save the day. Available at Dialog Future Store

/it-times/play/phones

The i-mate SP5 is probably the most full featured smart phone on the market. WiFi is still the holy grail, and the SP5s have got it. These phones offer you satisfying Internet in the various hotspots popping up all over Sri Lanka (including nightclubs like Glow and Tantra). The interface is Windows Mobile 5.0, so nothing new to learn. It also comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera, email, MP3 player, and MSN messenger. Basically, it lets you do everything a corporate PC does, on the road. The design is also glossy and feels solid in your hands. As a side note, the buttons are rubberized and fun to push. All imates include a one year warranty. Available at Infinity for Rs. 54,000

The i-mate K-JAM is a nifty little click-top. It slides open to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard, perfect for SMS and email. After thumbing away on keypads the speed and comfort difference is remarkable. The Windows Mobile 5.0 device runs GSM/GPRS/ EDGE, Bluetooth and WiFi, offering speed and the wide range of third party software. WiFi means you can work from Barista’s, and the Bluetooth means the device can sync contacts and calender info with your laptop. It’s powered by 128MB persistent memory. Internet, e-mail, word, excel and a builtin 1.3 megapixel camera/camcorder are other key features. Available at Infinity for Rs. 85,000

The i-mate JASJAR is a true communicator. It has every type of connectivity imaginable - GSM, GPRS, 3G, Bluetooth and WiFi. You can check your email all over with GPRS, but if you find a hotspot then you can guzzle attachments like a real workaholic. As a PocketPC the JASJAR can handle most office tasks (Word, PDF, etc) which means you can write and OK proposals on the go. With the spotty Internet in most offices, it’s a comfort that you can just duck out to the McDonald’s hotspot when the network fails. Specswise it’s a decent computer, running Windows Mobile 5.0 on a 520MHz Intel processor and 128MB of persistent memory. It also makes phone calls. Oh, and takes 1.3 megapixel photos. And does the dishes. Available at Infinity for Rs. 125,000

/it-times/play/phones

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

The Fujifilm FinePix Z1 probably produces the best photos of all the slim cameras. The biggest problem with digital cameras is that they blur in low-light, meaning your party shots don’t come out. The Z1 uses a faster shutter speed and higher sensitivity to automatically suppress blur, and it performs pretty well. The start-up time is less than a second, meaning you can grab moments as they happen. It clocks in at 5.1 megapixels, plenty good for prints. Available at Hayley’s Consumer

The FinePix A345 is a middle of the road 4.1 megapixel camera. It’s a bit big, has slow start-up time and performs average in low-light, but it has one advantage. It’s much more affordable than its slim cousins, and still takes pretty good photos. Actually, the photos look almost exactly the same. You can spend the money on something like an actual vacation. Available at Hayley’s Consumer

Many people take photos with their cameraphones, but few people actually do anything with them. The Fujifilm Pivi makes it easy to print little polaroids via an infrared link (which most camera phones have). The prints are about 6 cm by 4.6 cm and the printer itself is pint sized. It’s a handy little device for parties, and it fits in a purse. Available at Hayley’s Consumer

The Orite VC3250 is a solid 5 megapixel camera that takes decent snaps without many frills. It does have a movie recording feature, although the included 16 MB of memory is a bit skimpy. EPSI has thrown in a free memory card in the past, however. One downside is that it runs on AAA batteries, and Sri Lankan batteries burn out fast. It is, however, and affordable camera that takes good photos. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 11,900

/it-times/play/cameras

The Viewsonic Wireless Desktop (CW2403) is a sleek and functional keyboard/mouse replacement. It’s wireless, so you can say goodbye to desktop clutter. In fact, with a setup like this you can operate your computer from the couch if you’re so inclined. One added bonus of the Viewsonic is that the mouse comes with a cradle charger. Wireless mice usually devour batteries, but the charger saves you the hassle. Includes keyboard, mouse, and charger. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 5,000

The Viewmate Optical Travel Mouse is a good gift for your local road warrior. Notebook touchpads can drive you crazy and even lead to physical pain, so it’s good to keep a real mouse on the side. You have a choice here between wired and wireless, though you have to wonder whether the short distance warrants cutting the cord. These little mice are quite small and should tuck away nicely into a laptop bag. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 1,400, wireless for Rs. 3,000

These Creative Wireless Headphones are cool cause you can actually dance around the house in them. They’re also useful for plane rides or any other situation when you’d rather not be entangled in wires. The little Bluetooth transmitter will plug into any headphone jack - MP3 player, computer, or TV. From there you can roam up to 10 meters away. The sound quality is not incredible, but it makes no difference with compressed MP3s. The price is a bit on the steep side, but at what price freedom? Requires batteries. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 15,000

/it-times/play/peripherals

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

st or ag e

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Not the most exciting gift, but a memory card will give someone hours more of photo-taking, music or whatever they enjoy. Do check what memory the camera, MP3 player or phone actually uses. It could be SD/ MMC/Compact Flash, etc. We have prices for MMC (multimedia cards) here. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 2,250 (32 MB), Rs. 2,500 (64 MB), Rs. 3,500 (128 MB), Rs. 5,500 (256 MB), Rs. 10,000 (512 MB)

The ASUS External Slim Combo (SCB-2424V-U) is a quick fix if you’ve been leaving without a DVD player or CD writer. CD burning means you can share music or files easily with friends or simply between stereos. The drive is external, so you can simply plug and play without opening your computer at all. You’ll pay a little for the convenience however, as internal drives are cheaper. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 15,000

Most home videos are seen once through the viewfinder and then collect dust. The problem is that the average PC chokes on huge video files and digital video editing is beyond most consumers. Even if you can get through the editing process then you have to somehow get it off your computer and onto your TV. DVD burners, slowly, promise to make life easier. The Sony DV Direct (VRD-VC200) avoids the computer altogether. Simply plug your digital camcorder (or VCR) into the DVDirect and burn to DVD. It will automatically add titles and chapters as well. For immediate gratification, it can even burn a live feed from your camcorder. If you ever want to crack open Premier and edit, the drive will connect to your computer as well. Available at NEAT Notebook Shop for Rs. 25,000

/it-times/play/storage

There are an infinite variety of flash disks internationally, but you tend to get the same few around Sri Lanka. Transcend JetFlash is probably the main option. Here are some prices from the EPSI Showroom. The unit itself is sturdy and reliable, and indispensible for any student or professional. 128 MB

256 MB

Rs 2,250 3,250

512 MB

1 GB

2 GB

4 GB

5,500

9,000

20,000

35,000

Another ubiqutious model is the Kingston Data Traveller. This is another sturdy international brand with no particular frills. Not that frills are recommended. Try to avoid combo camera/MP3/flashdrives as they tend do none of those jobs well. This Kingston (and the white ones) are good for moving your data around, and that’s all you need. Available at PC House for Rs. 4,000 (256 MB)

This is a rather rare find. In fact, we can’t vouch for it being in stock at all. The iMation Swivel Flash Drive is tiny and simple, and very nice to behold. However, we’ve only found it at one hole-in-thewall at Unity Plaza. The store is Pretec and we cannot be sure of the availability or price, as Unity Plaza is more of a bazaar than store. Rs. 3,950 (256 MB)

If you work with graphics, video, or print media a flash disk may not be enough. What we have here is a full fledged external hard-disk, as roomy as most computers. This magazine, in fact, is taken to press on one of these. This Yion USB Hard Disk fits all your files in the palm of your hand. It’s also useful for backing up your computer, as you should be doing. Other stores may sell ‘hard-disk enclosures’, but don’t be confused. You have to buy a hard-disk to put in there, whereas this is the whole package. If you live by data, then one of these is priceless. They’re also way cheaper than equivalent amounts of flash memory, without being much bigger. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 14,000 (40 GB), or Rs. 18,000 (60 GB)

/it-times/play/storage

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

au di o

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

sounds so pretty

Harman Kardon’s SoundSticks were a design triumph when first released for Apple in 2000. You can almost see technicolor sounds wafting around the internal enclosure, and the sound quality is superb. On paper the specs are below comparable systems like the I-Trigue but it’s impossible to tell. Anyways, it’s not like the girls are going to be more impressed by a 33Hz low-end than the jellyfish skin. Main downside is the lack of a headphone jack for when the bass rumbles too many dishes downstairs. Includes two satellite speakers (10 watts) and one subwoofer (20 watts). Frequency Response: 40Hz-20,000kHz (low means more bass). Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 15,000

The Creative SBS 2.1 is the entry level speaker set, good enough to enhance your MP3s and games without denting your pocketbook too much. The looks are a bit ordinary, but it comes with a wired remote, so you never have to see it. Includes two satellite speakers (5 watts) and one subwoofer (11 watts). 40Hz-20,000kHz. Can be found at Unity Plaza (basement), though available for sure at PC House for Rs. 3,750

Lord Vader’s skull-piece certainly has good acoustics. This system (actually named the JBL Creature) will add an extra kick to your games or MP3s at a limited kick in the wallet. The sound does thin out at higher volumes, but that’s the nature of multimedia speakers and MP3s in general. The volume controls are touch sensitive and a little curvy to figure out. With those caveats, the sound is great and these speakers are a definite conversation piece, on or off. Includes two satellite speakers (10 watts) and one subwoofer (20 watts). Response: 40Hz-20,000kHz. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 12,000

darth vader’s helmet /it-times/play/audio

The Creative Zen Neeon is the latest answer to the mighty iPod, and it’s not a bad one. A full 5 GB of space means you can cart around 2,500 songs, and the ample battery life lets you listen to them for 15-16 hours. The Neeon approaches the form factor of the iPod, although the lack of search makes thumbing through 2,500 songs a bit tenuous. It is nice that you can shuffle songs in a folder, though. At the end of the day its a quite solid device, roomy with excellent sound quality - and smaller and lighter than the iPod Mini. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 25,000

The Creative Zen Micro is a tiny little player, though it stores a hefty 4GB. The overall design is quite elegant, and the thing fits snugly in the palm of your hand. The controls are quite easy to manipulate from inside your pocket and the sound quality in the headphones is excellent. It is also a bit more rugged than the iPod Nano, which is prones to scratches. The Micro also includes an FM Tuner and voice recorder. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 22,000

The Muvo Mix and V200 (pictured) are two solid entry-level players that make affordable gifts. First, one thing common to both Muvo’s is that they are basically built as flash disks attached to battery packs. Adding music or data is as easy as popping the flash disk out, no cables. Do note that they run on AAA batteries, not a rechargeable cell. The difference between the models is that the more expensive V200 has an LCD display and FM Tuner. Both available at EPSI Showroom. Mix for Rs. 7,000 (256 MB) or Rs. 10,000 (512 MB). V200 for Rs. 9,000 (256 MB) or Rs. 12,000 (512 MB)

/it-times/play/audio

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

The veritable father of the Nano, the iPod Shuffle is sleek and sexy – tiny enough to slip in to your wallet, and yet loud enough to drown out a bus engine. Did I say wallet? Yes I did. The shuffle is by far the most budget friendly device from a company known for high prices. At just Rs. 16,350 for 512 MB, the device is attainable for students and other jobless geeks. However, don’t be fooled by the price – the little gizmo delivers clear, rich audio via the iPod’s white earbuds.

by Mahangu Weerasinghe

pod people

ap pl e

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Did I say bus engine? Yeah. I mainly listen to my Shuffle on the bus. Going to class or from class, it doesn’t matter – the iPod is my friend. It drowns out every bit of ambient noise, letting me listen to my Switchfoot in peace. The nice clickety-click controls are intuitive, and give me maximum control for out of sight skipping and pausing – useful when traveling on the footboard. Many people cite the Shuffle’s lack of screen as a disadvantage. For me, however, this lack of LCD display has been most welcome. I’m notorious for abusing my electronics, and the iPod Shuffle takes more than an average beating due to its daily use. Thus, the fact that there is no screen to crack has been a big plus point. Since there is no screen, however, it’s difficult to find a specific song. On the other hand, the Shuffle is not built for that kind of browsing. It’s meant to be loaded with a hundred (or two hundred in the case of the 1gb model) songs, put on shuffle mode and listened to continuously. If on the other hand, you listen to a song and feel you just have to hear the rest of the tracks from that artist, you can just flip the slider back to playback mode and listen to your music in playlist order. The Shuffle comes with iTunes for both Windows and Macintosh. Linux users can use it via gtkpod, a Free and Open Source Software interface to the device. Being the first flash memory player from Apple, this fourth generation iPod is definitely one of the better pieces of equipment to be released by the company. If you want five gazillion songs in your pocket, you’re going to want another iPod. But if you’re like me, and just want a few tunes to carry about, the Shuffle is definitely worth a look. I assure you, public transportation will never sound the same again.

The iPod Shuffle Available at BT Options for Rs. 16,305 (incl VAT)

/it-times/play/apple

The iPod Nano is insanely sexy. It is so slim that it actually makes you gasp. You can actually place this thing in the change pocket of your jeans without trouble. It plays a ton of songs and will wow all your friends, with one caveat. The iPod Nano scratches like crazy. Even normal pocket use can scratch it after a few weeks. Apple is currently fighting a class action lawsuit on this one. However, the Nano is still inhumanly attractive, just go with the white to be safe. Available at BT Options for Rs. 25,600 (2 GB) Rs. 29,900 (4 GB)

The Mac Mini is probably the smallest PC you’ll ever see. Everything is contained in an elegant package the size of an external drive, including a CD drive. This means, of course, that you’ll have to supply your own monitor, mouse, and keyboard. The base model runs at 1.25 GHz with a 40 GB drive. It kinda groans under heavy strain, but the well-designed OSX will speed up your workflow in many ways. Available at BT Options for Rs. 79,307 (incl VAT)

The iBook is a pretty little laptop in the right price range. It also offers none of the hassles of a Windows laptop (viruses, spyware, etc). It is however, difficult to find Mac software in Sri Lanka, so you may find yourself limited. If you do intend to do Photoshop or resource intensive tasks, go for the Powerbook. For personal computing, however, nothing is more elegant or better designed than an Apple. Comes with a 12.1 inch screen, 1.33MHz processor, 40gb drive, 512 MB of RAM and a combo DVD/CD-Writer drive. Available at BT Options for Rs. 120,380

/it-times/play/apple

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

ks

no te bo o

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

The white Asus S5A is one of the sexier laptops available in Sri Lanka. It’s all white with a pale translucent keyboard. Comes reasonably featured with a 1.5 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, and a 40 GB hard-drive. Some useful extras are a 4-in-1 card reader (for cameras, mainly) and a combo DVD player and CD writer. This is a looks buy, though. Less than one inch thick and weighs in at under three pounds. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 159,900

The HP Compaq NX9020 is the cheapest notebook featured here. It offers wireless connectivity, 3.5 years of battery-life and will serve as a generally functional computer. Definitely not for gaming, or heavy graphics though. It won’t turn any heads, but at least you’ll have money for drinks. At 1.3 GHz with 256 MB RAM it is going to be a little slow, however. 40 GB harddisk. Available at NEAT Notebook Shop for Rs. 80,000

The Asus M5A is a built from a dark carbon-fiber alloy. This, in addition to being nice looking, lowers the weight to 1.55kg. It’s pretty high-performing as well, with a 1.73GHz processor and similar specs to the S5A above. Comes with a multiple card-reader and combo DVD/CD-writer drive. Available at EPSI Showroom for Rs. 189,900

/it-times/play/notebooks

The Acer Ferrari 4000 is a unique design venture, drawing from the elegance of the Italian car-maker. The exterior is carbon-fiber and the interior is rubberized and it’s solid under the hood. The 80GB hard-drive is bigger than average, and a 2.8GHz processor makes applications well fast. Throw in 512 of RAM and it’s good to go. Certainly more of a looker than your average notebook. Available at NEAT Notebook Shop for Rs. 220,000

The IBM Thinkpad R50e is the Volvo to Acer’s Ferrari. In a laptop, that may be a good thing. The Thinkpad series is rugged and reliable, and well suited for the wear and tear of Sri Lankan life and business. You can drop it, expose it to heat and generally behave like a human. The downside is that the rigidly functional design won’t turn heads. The R50e is the entry level Thinkpad, the T42/43 is for the poweruser, though you’ll be lucky to find it in stock. Available at NEAT Notebook Shop for Rs. 105,000. Thinkpads available from eWis and PC House.

The HP NC6120 is a solid workhorse from Hewlett Packard. Looks-wise, it’s nothing special, but the feature set is highlighted by a flash card reader and DVD writer. This means you can copy images directly from your camera card and back-up large amounts of photos and files onto DVD. The standard specs are 1.73 GHz processor, 512 Mb RAM, and 60 GB memory, though individual units may differ. That should be more than enough for your average home/business user, and the price is right. Available at NEAT Notebook Shop for Rs. 145,000

* all of these laptops have WiFi (wireless internet)

/it-times/play/notebooks

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Vista’s can save a search as Virtual Folder, organizing your data in a number of useful criteria

Vista, Office and a Little Acrylic Is it true that Microsoft is coming up with a whole new set of headaches disguised as an operating system? Yes it is, and the first Beta version is already available for download at microsoft.com. This new OS finally has a commercial name - “Windows Vista”. Windows Vista comes with the slogan, “Clear, Confident and Connected” to emphasize the improvements in the system. Starting off with the end-user perspective, Windows Vista brings a new paradigm to the way we use the computer. Remember the first time you loaded Windows? It seemed to get slower by the day, that’s why Windows Vista is going to be totally different. The developer community boasts that a Windows Vista bootup will only take as long as switching on your television. Moreover, Vista won’t slow down your computer as time goes on because the operating system re-organizes itself according to the applications being used.

/it-times/play/windows

desktop The moment you see Windows Vista you will notice that Microsoft has focused a lot more on the graphical user interface and usability. The colors are toned down, icons are changed, and the windows are transparent. A lot of redundant options are also stripped away, making everything more clear. One notable feature is that the taskbar is an opaque black, highlighting a generally nice environment. One of the most appealing desktop features, for me, is the ability to have a 3D view of all windows open at that time (stacked one on top of the other). This view is displayed when the Windows Key and Space Bar are pressed simultaneously. This looks good, even though it is said this idea was taken from Sun’s Looking Glass.

Vista’s document view offers detailed data on files and lets you modify them in useful ways, like with keywords

by Isuru Wijeyaratne

office 12

internet explorer

The latest available version of Office 2003 is version 11 of the Microsoft Office series. Although Office 12 will not be a part of Windows Vista, the beta version itself has given us a taste of what we are to expect in 2006. The rich graphics and interoperability of applications built into the system will increase overall efficiency. As for .NET developers, the direct APIs given in applications would take away a lot of hassle. Another innovative feature is the use of RSS (syndicated XML) to pull data from corporate servers or websites, meaning your Excel spreadsheet could automatically pull the latest figures from your office. This version has been thoroughly redesigned to suit the result oriented end user and it will introduce very new ways of working.

The biggest difference you see in Internet Explorer is that the amount of space given to view web pages has increased considerably. They have dropped the space consuming logo from the browser. Web search is built in and allows the user to choose from major search engines (such as Google, Yahoo! or MSN). Finally, the long awaited feature of tabbed browsing is available, and doesn’t require a separate MSN toolbar to be installed like we have to at the moment. It’s about time IE introduced this feature since browsers such as Mozilla and Opaque have had it for sometime now. IE7 also incorporates RSS feeds directly into the browser, meaning you can get live updates from your favorite sites without having to browse to them in a traditional manner.

/it-times/play/windows

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

The new look of Microsoft Office 12

applications and exploring The most impressive update to Windows Vista would be its search system, which now finds documents and applications fast. The folder view in Vista can be configured to display just the amount of detail you require. Furthermore, the file icons will show a preview of the first page of documents so you will be able to identify the required file with ease. Versioning of the files in the system is available to keep a track of the file’s history. Searching for an application is just as easy. The Start Menu now contains a textbox in which you are able to type in the name of the application you need to find, and the system will show it ‘on the fly’.

security It’s hard to protect your computer from other people, especially if you have computer savvy kids. Windows Vista has the ability to restrict the users’ rights and features. You can restrict games which you think will have a bad influence on your kids. You are also able to restrict the read/write rights for certain users accessing the file from inside and outside the system. A simple

/it-times/play/windows

change of settings and even the print screen feature can be disabled – if an unauthorized person takes a print screen he won’t be able to view the screenshot. Microsoft also has a lot in store for developers. The current frameworks and applications promise an exciting time for developers once Vista is released. The back-end of Vista is divided into three pillars, each very robust in their own area of functionality. The pillars are named WPF, WCF and WF - though their codenames are more colourful.

avalon Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), code named Avalon is going to be huge for those who appreciate the rich graphical UIs. WPF is going to change the way users will look at user interfaces used in systems. WPF will give the developer the chance to provide the end user with the richest graphics in the most efficient way. The developer will also be able to give the user media rich interactive systems whose functionalities are similar to the win32 applications today. With XAML as the fundamental technology, it is WPF that enables each

Internet Explorer 7, note the expanded screen real estate and the ability to read RSS feeds in the sidebar

application to utilize the graphics hardware without a 3rd party such as Direct3D. This makes it easier for the UI engineers out there to come up with great graphics for their applications.

indigo Web services are being tied into every aspect of our lives with applications spanning across so many sectors. Previously code named Indigo, Windows Communication Foundation will be the web services framework for Windows Vista. Applications on other platforms will also be able to use WCF to communicate with each other. Defining the end points by Address, Bindings, and Contract, each end point can communicate with standard protocols. For distributed applications, WCF will cater to many needs in the future.

workflow foundation WF is Workflow Foundation, which is the framework built into the system to carry out the workflow activities of the system. Microsoft is yet to provide a detailed description of the WF, which is eagerly anticipated.

flash killer? photoshop killer? Adobe is in for a hard time to compete with Sparkle and Acrylic. Sparkle Interactive Designer is an environment that enables the designers to work with vectors, 3D content, and image pixels to create rich cinematic experiences for the user. Acrylic Graphic Designer is an ideal image processing tool for the innovative and creative graphics designer. Acrylic also has some cool effects, such as blurs, drop shadows, color correction and filters can be accomplished by using nondestructive, editable Live Effects. Both of the above products will come under the Microsoft Expression Family which will arrive together with Windows Vista next year. All in all, Microsoft is promising to change computing and IT next year with the largest product launch since Windows 95. The betas are just the tip of the iceberg. It will truly be an exciting time to come. Isuru Wijeyaratne is the Microsoft Student Ambassador of Sri Lanka and a student at the University of Moratuwa.

/it-times/play/windows

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

/it-times/play/mac

A computer without software is like a deep blue sea without its aquatic life, and we know software sells computers. For those of you who didn’t get that complex analogy, neither did I. As I’ve delved deeper and deeper into the Mac society, I’ve discovered many amazing things that I didn’t believe existed. Some of my observations;  There actually are people who aren’t satisfied with the current Macs, and want more.  As opposed to the notion of everything being costly, many of the best software is actually either freeware or shareware, as we will see shortly.  There are theme changers for Macs too, and yes, people do use them.  Macs, at times, can be so much fun, and end up being a great hindrance to productivity. So without further ado, let me chalk out the top Mac free/shareware apps for you to download and enjoy. Adium X: Sure, you can download Mac versions of all the IM clients from their respective sites, but none match up to this little baby. It supports MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, Jabber (and therefore Google Talk), ICQ, Gadu Gadu, and a whole lot more. And it’s free!

by Indranil Dasgupta ([email protected])

Top Ten Free Mac Applications

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

What’s really cool about Adium, apart from the cool visuals and the cute green duck, is the site adiumxtras. com. It is a community site that deals with skinning and dressing up Adium. So you can have a Yoda icon on the dock, AIM style emoticons, and transparent contact windows, all thanks to little downloads from the site. Adium is also based on Gaim, hence Open Source. Woohoo! It supports everything you’d expect in an IM client and then some. All in all, a must download. Quicksilver: Once in a while, an application that manages to increase the usability of your OS tenfold will be released, and you’ll wonder how you lived without it. The fact that it’s free makes it too good to be true... almost. Meet Quicksilver; an application which greatly simplifies the process of opening apps. Each program is easily accessible, thus giving the dock bar an uncluttered feel. The first time you run Quicksilver it will search and file all the apps for easy searchability. Configure a hotkey to activate Quicksilver, and you’re all set - I’ve set my command to Ctrl + Spacebar. To get a program running, all I have to do is to type the first few letters of the app I want to open, and press enter. Quick, easy, and painless. Another must have. Just visit quicksilver.blacktree.com.

Growl: Have you happened to see the highly annoying tool tip bubbles in Windows XP? Obviously. Well, remove the annoyance, keep the usefulness, add a cool skinnable interface to make it pretty, and you’ve got Growl. A highly useful notification system, without the irritation. It is another of those tools you can’t work without. Available from growl.info. VoodooPad is a wiki-like notepad for jotting down and organizing all your notes. It allows you to create links between two or more text files, keeping everything organized. You can then export the files to any required format. A simple yet intuitive interface drives VoodooPad, and makes it an absolute breeze to use. If you’re a writer or just an obsessive note taker, by all means download (flyingmeat.com/voodoopad). Shapeshifter: Although a Mac may look great at first, just aqua and graphite tends to get a little boring after a year or two. This is where ShapeShifter steps in. It’s a theming application that changes your default aqua into something more to your liking (unsanity.com/haxies/ shapeshifter). Here are a few chosen theme sites:     

maxthemes.com swizcore.com resexcellence.com desktopper.net macthemes.net

TinkerTool: This little beauty is the bomb. With this tool, getting down and dirty with Tiger is as easy as, well, getting down and dirty. This tool unlocks, or rather, brings to front, several cool hidden features in OS X. Not much to say about it, except it’s another definite must (bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html). Camino: Now, you may be a Firefox fan or you may be an Opera fan, but the fact remains that Safari kicks some serious backside. (Notice I didn’t mention IE? Let’s face it - no one likes IE anymore). For those of you out there who’s already downloaded and tried Firefox, you’ll be thoroughly disappointed. The Mac version of the red fox is a mere shadow of its’ Windows/*Nix shell. Fear not, the Mozilla organisation has us covered - we get a Mac only browser, and a cool one at that. Enter Camino. This browser is, what I like to call, Firefox for Mac, done right. ‘Nuff said, check it out. So, if you don’t like Safari, download away. And if you like Safari,

download anyway. Two is better than one, wisdom tells us (getcamino.com). Colloquy: If you use IRC chat, this is an essential download. It offers all the bells and whistles in a smooth clean intuitive package that’s distinctly Mac. If you don’t use IRC, this is a good time to start. I’ll recommend Freenode (irc.freenode.net) as a great place to start your journey (http://colloquy.info). AppleJack: Just because OS X has Unix doesn’t mean that it is crash proof. Although very rare, OS X may — if you are very unlucky - suffer a crash. And if that happens, Applejack is there to protect you. With this troubleshooting tool, you can “repair your disk, repair permissions, validate the system’s preference files, and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files.” Although I haven’t had to use this app I have second hand experience. One of my friends’ hard-disks decided to misbehave once, but he was saved from a lot of lost data and frustration because he had been forewarned by Applejack. This gave him the chance to back up all his files (applejack.sourceforge.net). DashOnOff: If you are like me, you probably get irritated by the fact that the dashboard eats away at your resources, and you don’t even use it. Not being able to turn it off doesn’t help either. DashOnOff does just what it says. It provides an option to turn off the Dashboard. Finally (macupdate.com/info.php/id/18261). ClamXav: This is in no way an essential tool, but if you’re a Windows convert like me, a main problem you’ll face will be the general lack of attention paid to protection. You’ve probably been trained to update anti-virus and anti-spyware software regularly, and various other tasks just to keep your windows box safe. Mac is a whole different story - I still can’t get over how secure OS X is. Old habits die hard, so to indulge an old habit from my old Windows days, I’ve got myself ClamXav, a free antivirus application. The best thing to do is to get a copy of ClamXav to bring some peace of mind to the part of your brain that keeps nagging about a world filled with virii and trojans (clamxav.com). So, I’ve compiled a list of ten free/share ware items that I think must reside in every Mac users Application folder. If you think I’ve left any out, you know the email address, right? Lob one at us.

/it-times/play/mac

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

the breezy badger by mahangu weerasinghe

linux for human beings

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

GNOME 2.12.1 OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta 2 Wider hardware support Easy application installation Multiple Language Selector Editable GNOME menus Launchpad infrastructure audio CD writing (Serpentine) Graphical startup (USplash) New documentation

I know I promised a run in with BASH this week, but something really cool happened in the Ubuntu community since last column, and well, this issue is gonna be about that. That’s right, a brand spanking new version of everyone’s favourite desktop distribution was released. Say hello to the Breezy Badger. Hang on while I run you through a few of my favourite features.

speed baby, speed! And I’m not talking about narcotics. Breezy quickened my startup time by at least ten seconds. Shut down time has been reduced as well, and overall application response times seem to have improved. If you thought Hoary blew Windows away, just wait till you get your hands on this piece of pie.

packages, packages and more packages Ubuntu 5.10 comes with Open Office 2.0, a newer (and spiffier) version of what is arguably the best FOSS Office Suite around. This new release of OO is faster than ever before, making word processing quite literally a breeze (no pun intended). Similarly, Breezy also contains PHP5, which is just what the doctor ordered for a web scripting addict like me. Almost every other package is updated for Breezy as well, meaning you get the latest versions of the software you’ve been using all along. Although most packages are still updated for Hoary, this will slowly wind down during the next few months. In short, you will

/it-times/learn/linux

need breezy if you want to stay really up to date.

add applications Breezy includes a nice new interface which lets you add and delete applications from GNOME’s menus. Found (surprise, surprise) in the Applications menu, the interface is similar to the Add/Remove programs dialog found on Windows. There is a marked difference of course. This utility automatically downloads and installs the packages you select. How’s that for convenience? Try and imagine a cross between the traditional Win32 Add/Remove Programs dialogue box and Ubuntu’s Synaptic, because that’s exactly what the new Add Applications interface is. Naturally, Synaptic is also present, giving you more control over exact packages.

the looks, oh the looks Perhaps the most noticeable change in the new Ubuntu is the way it looks. The Human desktop theme has finally come of age in Breezy, and the desktop is now truly lovely to look at. The boot process too has been beautified and you now get a nifty progress bar alongside the usual verbose boot sequence.

show me my HDDs The new release also catches up in an area where other distributions out performed it untill now. Hard drives. With Hoary, getting windows partitions to mount meant editing /etc/fstab. One of the minor (and yet useful) things Breezy does is mount my windows drives

on the fly. That means I can drag stuff from my bygone win32 days straight on to my new Ubuntu desktop. The drives also show up in the Places tab and can thus be browsed from the Open and Close dialogue boxes found in programs. Of course, there are other features which I have not mentioned here. These I leave for you to discover as you go along. Now let’s see how you can get your very own copy of Breezy.

getting the badger In depth instructions are available at https://wiki. ubuntu.com/BreezyUpgrade: Upgrade With Breezy CD and Synaptic:

 Open up Synaptic Package Manager  Click on “Edit/Add CD-ROM”  Click on “Mark All Upgrades”  Click on “Apply”  See the additional notes below  Note that you need to add the cdrom again with Synaptic “Edit/Add CD-ROM” after the first reboot, this is needed because of new package authentication. Upgrade through the Synaptic Package Manager

 Open up Synaptic Package Manager  Change your repositories to look for Breezy

From URI: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ Distribution: hoary Sections: main restricted To http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ Distribution: breezy Sections: main restricted

 Reload sources  Mark All Upgrades

For a fresh install, jump to Ubuntu ShipIt (https:// shipit.ubuntu.com) and order as many CDs as you need. As mentioned in earlier issues, Ubuntu will ship them to you free of charge. Once they arrive, just take out the CD marked install, pop it in your drive, boot from it and follow the instructions. For a detailed run through of the install, see our October 2005 issue. Note : You really must backup all your data before you attempt any system upgrade. Although many users report a glitch free ride from Hoary to Breezy, it always makes sense to be extra careful. Having said that, don’t be afraid to take the plunge – Linux after all, is all about experimentation. Join me next time for the promised introduction to the world of the console.

/it-times/learn/linux

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

‘Symbol of Uneasiness’ by Osuzu and Izumi (flickr.com/photos/osuzu_and_izumi)

elusive anonymity by Raveen Wijayatilake

The internet has grown beyond being just a method for geeks to leave messages for other geeks. It is now a jungle, and if you don’t know how to protect yourself you will be devoured without even knowing it. Last month Indi enlightened you about spyware/adware and how to protect yourself from it. So you’re probably feeling very safe at the moment right? Let me take you down from that high horse for a moment. You are being watched. While you’re surfing the net, each website you visit tracks you. If you’re interested in a particular item, they will get to know. May it be that camcorder you’re dying to buy or something more exotic. Anyone who wants to can figure out which country you’re from, which ISP you use and what programs you’re running. If you’re a torrent user, anyone connecting to the tracker can see you’re IP address. With the recent RIAA and MPAA lawsuit barrage that’s been aimed at torrent users, avoiding this kind of exposure is wise. The battle between the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and organisations such as the RIAA and MPAA (music and film industry) over user privacy is one that

/it-times/learn/security

probably won’t end anytime soon. The stakes are high but the battleground is always changing. When these organisations are given the power (by law) to easily gain access to your personal information, someone has to do something for us poor Internet users so we can defend ourselves from these rogue giants. Let me introduce you to TheOnionRouter a.k.a Tor. This is an effective tool affiliated with the EFF that helps secure your online privacy. So effective in fact that the US government and certain groups in the US Navy use it for privacy reasons as well. Use Tor with a proxy such as ‘Privoxy’ and you’ve got yourself more privacy than you’ll know what to do with.

technology Imagine you need to get from house A to house B. But someone’s following you, and you need to get to your destination without being noticed. What you do is, instead of going straight from A to B, you take a circuitous route and periodically erase your tracks. This

Step 1: Alice’s Tor client obtains a list of Tor nodes from a directory server

ensures that no one can follow you to your destination. Tor uses the same concept in making your data transfer over the Internet private. Instead of data streaming from your computer to the computer you want access to (may it be while accessing a website, chatting with a friend or downloading torrents) your data packets are routed through the Tor network. The Tor network consists of many servers that help the data packet along on its way. When data is transferred, each server only knows which server it received data from and which server it is giving the data to. No individual server knows the complete path the data has taken, and thus, figuring out who the initial source is, is close to impossible. Things get even harder to trace since the path through the Tor network is chosen at random. This means if the data went through server 1, 4 and 8 to get to the destination the first time, a few minutes later a different path of servers will be used to transfer the data. This, however, protects only your physical data transmission. If you don’t want your information such as browser type, cookies etc to leave your computer, a proxy such as ‘Privoxy’ has to be used with Tor. Privoxy adds a layer between the webserver and your computer which stops unwanted information leaving and entering your computer. For example, Privoxy will search through the HTML of a page you visit and disable any banner ads on the page before it loads in your browser. This not only saves you the pain of having to wade through banner ads on a page, but also saves you bandwidth. Ok, so let’s cut the geekspeak and install. This is a guide on how to install Tor and Privoxy on a Windows system. For Linux installations see the box titled ‘Installing Tor on Linux’.

installing tor on windows Tor installation is pretty simple and fast

Step 2: Alice’s Tor client picks a random path to destination server. Green links are encrypted, red links are in the clear



Download Tor for Windows from http://tor. eff.org/download.html. Make sure you download a stable version. These are shown on the top on the page. Alpha versions are labeled as such, stay away from them. Latest version at time of writing 0.1.0.15.



Installation is pretty straightforward. At the ‘Choose components’ dialogue you can choose whether to make Tor run at startup. If you want Tor only while your doing a certain task, then uncheck this box. Tor can be opened manually when needed. If you want Tor security throughout, check the box and Tor will run at startup.



Tor is now installed. It will open in a DOS window where errors and logs will be visible. Give it some time and you should see a Tor has opened a circuit. Looks like it’s working message. If this doesn’t happen immediately don’t panic... it takes time. Once this message appears, you know your data is being routed through the Tor network. Do not close the window as it will close Tor. You can minimize the window if needed. Yes, I know it spoils the whole look of your funky looking XP theme and if this is a problem, there is a small app called TorCP that let’s you run Tor in the system tray instead of a window.

Step 3: If the user wants access to another site, Alice’s Tor client selects a second random path. Again green links are encrypted, red links are in the clear

/it-times/learn/security

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

‘Chameleon’ by noqontrol (flickr.com/photos/noqontrol)

From the TorCP site: “TorCP is a Tor controller for Windows 95 and higher. TorCP runs in your system’s notification area, giving you a way to check on the status of Tor without having to have the console window open all the time. TorCP also lets you monitor the bandwidth Tor is using, as well as configure some of Tor’s settings without having to manually edit Tor’s configuration file.” Tor works perfectly fine without TorCP. TorCP is just an addon which represents the information Tor outputs in a graphical way. It’s available at www.freehaven.net/~edmanm/torcp. That’s it for Tor. Now you need to get Privoxy installed.



installing privoxy Download Privoxy and install. Visit http://www. privoxy.org and click ‘Recent releases’. You are taken to a sourceforge page, scroll down till you come to the Win32 releases. Once installed a ‘P’ icon should show in your system tray.



Privoxy has to be configured to run with Tor. This can be done by editing the configuration file. Start > All Programs > Privoxy > Edit Config > Main Configuration.txt. Once this opens in notepad, add the following line to the top of the file.

/it-times/learn/security

forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .

Don’t forget the dot at the end, type this in just as you see it here. Also use ‘find’ on NotePad (Edit > Find) to search for “logfile privoxy.log”. This should be commented out by adding a # to the start of the line. So, logfile privoxy.log

should look like this after adding the #... # logfile privoxy.log

Search for and do the same for “jarfile jar.log”. This stops Privoxy from logging everything that goes through it. Save the file and restart Privoxy. (Right click on system tray icon ‘P’ and click Exit Privoxy. Then open it via the start menu.) Now the changed you’ve made to the configuration have taken place.

enable programs to use tor You will need to set programs to use Privoxy. Programs will have to be configured to HTTP proxy localhost port 8118. Let’s start with browsers.

You are now an anonymous being in the internet jungle

Opera Navigate to Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Network > proxy servers. Check the HTTP box and enter ‘localhost’ in the long text field (proxy address) and 8118 in the port field (small one). If you want other protocols to use Privoxy, just fill in the fields as above.

FireFox Navigate to Tools > Options > General > Connection Settings. Select ‘Manual proxy configuration’. Enter ‘localhost’ in the long text field (proxy address) and 8118 in the port field (small one) in the protocols you want.

Internet Explorer Navigate to Tools > Internet Options > Connections > LAN settings. Check ‘use a proxy server for your LAN’. Click Advanced and fill in the fields as explained above. Giving these settings to other programs is pretty much the same. Enable proxies and set “localhost” as the proxy server and “8118” as the port. You are now an anonymous being in the internet jungle. Don’t believe me? Ok let’s check. Find out your original IP address. This can be usually done by right clicking your internet connection icon in the system tray, click status and then Details. The IP address next to ‘Client IP address’ is your original IP address. If you have a different setup and can’t do this, you can always configure your browser to connect direct (undo all the ‘enable proxy’ changed mentioned in the above steps) and visit this site http://www.showmyip.com. This will show your IP address. Now enable proxies again and refresh the website. If it shows a different IP from your original IP, it’s working. Of course you must remember even with this level of protection, your anonymity is of no use if you practice unsafe surfing habits such as giving away your name and other personal details on webforms. Enjoy your newfound anonymity, and use it wisely.

installing tor on linux These steps are for Debian based distros, you may need to compile the tor sources manually for others. Visit the Tor Download page for more information (tor.eff.org/download.html).



apt-get tor and privoxy

Using apt-get or synaptic, search for and download the relevant tor packages. If you’re familiar with the command line it’s as easy as this apt-get install tor apt-get install privoxy



Open the privoxy config /etc/privoxy/config

Use your favourite text editor to open it. In this example I’ve used nano -



nano /etc/privoxy/config

Make the following changes to the privoxy config settings

 ‘add forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .’ to the top of the file (don’t forget the dot)  comment out the following lines logfile logfile jarfile jarfile

 

Jump in to console and execute both packages by entering their respective names. Configure your applications to use Tor (port 9050) and Privoxy (port 8118).

/it-times/learn/security

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68



 12

10

Follow The Bouncing Ball by Zafar Issadeen Welcome back to the realm of 3d. This is the first tutorial in the series, essentially a hello to the world of 3d. Let’s get straight down to business. This tutorial will cover the basics of animation and materials as we get a ball to bounce into the spotlight and bounce back out. First up load 3d Studio Max and start a new project. (fig 1). This is your ‘workspace’ for projects and essentially the 3d world you will be working in. The 4 boxes that you see are the 4 ‘view ports’ that give different perspectives of the same visual. This enables you to gain an accurate depth and perception of the image you are about to create.

 13

Then create a sphere (a round ball which is to be used in the animation). (fig 2). A sphere is part of the family of primary or simple objects. These are the basic shapes and other elements such as the L extension (covered later on) are derived from these objects. This is how it should look in the 4 view ports on the screen (fig 3). Rotate the scene (read below for the controls to do this) and zoom and pan till u get the feel of the ball being just right for the scene.

11

/it-times/learn/3D

Render (tea kettle, fig 3) the scene once (fig 4). Make sure the perspective port is selected (there should be a yellow colored line around it). Rendering is essentially creating an image output of the 3d environment. What you see in the viewports is data of the 3d imagery from different angles. This has to be translated into an image or video so that it can be viewed by media players.





3ds Max Next we add a material to the ball. Press ‘M’ or the (fig 4.5) icon in the top toolbar. Think of materials as cloaks around your 3D objects. Material editing is a whole ball game in itself, and we will cover some of it in upcoming chapters from this series. Gaming for example, is all about the correct texture and material mapping on an object. This loads up the material editor. Select the first ball and scroll down to the button circled on the screen. (Fig 5). We are going to add a texture to this material. If material is what cloaks the object then a texture is what essentially cloaks the material. (Think of the object being you. The material is the shirt and the texture is the funny polka dots running down your horribly tasteless outfit). Click on that and select bitmap from the drop down menu (fig 6).







Go to the folder Stones and select LIMESTO1.jpg (fig 7). This will be the texture for the ball giving it the white look. Feel free to try other materials. The “\maps” folder is packed with them so give some of them a try to get the ball looking the way you want it to. Click on the ball and then press the (fig 8) in the material editor. This assigns the material to the ball. Select the perspective view port and then press render. You should confront a screen such as this (fig 9). Now notice that it is looking more colorful with the material and possibly more (or less) like a ball. Now the next step is to make the ball bounce around.

 /it-times/learn/3D

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

14

17 15 16

Get to the shapes panel on the screen (fig 10). Next up select line and in the front view port draw the line (right click to end drawing, left click to add the points as on the diagram, fig 11). Next select the animation panel after selecting the ball (fig 12) and select trajectories (fig 13). Change samples to 80 and click ‘convert from’. Then select the line that you just drew and you’ll have something like fig 14. Now using the rotate, pan and zoom tools at the bottom half of the screen (fig 15), position the perspective scene to the desired angle (fig 16). These tools are your biggest asset in navigating the 3d space that you are to work and in are generic to most 3d programs. Get to know them well and be set for life. Press play on the VCR tool (fig 17) and watch the animation that you have created. The ball should jump around the screen a bit. Well done! Next to make this an animation click Render though this time the (fig 18) icon and you are now confronted with the screen as follows in fig 19. Press Render on the form and watch as it renders your animation (make your view port perspective). After it completes go to the folder and view your AVI.

/it-times/learn/3D

18

19

Second Skin

customizing windows XP

by Abhimanyu Ghoshal

snakeskin by Ogal (flickr.com/photos/ogal)

D

espite it being well over a decade since Apple Macintosh and Microsoft first released their personal computer operating systems, desktop functionality still hasn’t really come as far as it should have. We have to upgrade our PCs every year just to keep our basic software applications running smoothly, and total security seems quite far off.

hancements use up a lot of precious system resources, so approach this with caution. Further, most of the applications mentioned are for Windows 2000/XP.

wallpaper

However, graphical user interfaces have improved over the years - most noticeably in Mac OS X and Windows Vista, which is yet to be released. Sleek anti-aliased fonts, transparencies, alpha shadows and skinnable applications and elements help beautify desktops, and more importantly, make it possible to emulate the looks of futuristic computers seen in several movies (check out Minority Report and Star Wars)!

First on the list is your wallpaper. This is the background image displayed on your desktop. Windows supports file formats .bmp, .gif, .png, and .jpg. Wallpapers can be any image of any size, although the best size would be that of your desktop resolution. Otherwise, you can stretch the image to fit your screen. Another option is to use tiles, which are small images that can be used to form a pattern across your screen. There are also several applications available that change your wallpapers for you on a basis you select.

Using desktop enhancement software, skins and plugins, you can completely modify the look and feel of your desktop to suit your mood, style and aesthetics. We’ll go over some of the common ways to dress up your desktop, and maybe check out a few tips and tricks while we’re at it. Be warned though, this is not for the settings-shy, and not for lean machines either. Most en-

I recommend downloading all your wallpapers into a single folder for easy reference. Plus, if you use Microsoft Internet Explorer (v5 and up), you can add elements from the web which will updated live to show up on your desktop. I sometimes use a ‘Today’s Comic Strip’ (my favourites being Dilbert and Get Fuzzy) desktop item, which updates itself everyday. To do

/it-times/learn/windows

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

this, simply right-click an image in IE, and select ‘Set as Desktop Item’. Active Desktop must be enabled on your desktop for this to work.

icons Now let’s think of icons. Every software application can be recognized by its icon, which can be found in its respective folder and in the Programs menu. You can also set them as shortcuts on your desktop. If you’re tired of the ones you normally see, change them by downloading new icons, or using an icon manager application. Windows icons are essentially 32x32 (with multiples, up to 128x128) .ico files. A group of icons can also be packaged and distributed, especially if they’re all themed. You can also create your own icons. Stardock offers a host of software for managing icons and icon packages, adding effects to icons (such as shadows, transparent text backgrounds, animation, etc.) and editing them. Similarly, you can also customize your cursors. Once you download a set, click the ‘Mouse’ icon in the Control Panel, and select the Cursors tab. Then create a new theme and add the cursors that are meant for each action. Some cursor packs come with installers, so all

/it-times/learn/windows

you have to do is select the Cursor Theme. Once again, Stardock delivers the goods on this front.

docks Those of you who can’t get enough of icons might want to check out docks. A dock is basically a custom taskbar, which acts as a resizable, customizable, holding pen for icons. Most docks also have animation features such as zoomers and shakers. Neat addons also exist in the form of clocks and weather panes. Nifty, eh? ObjectDock and Y’zDock are two dock applications I’d recommend to anyone.

visual styles To dress up your windows, check out Windows Visual Styles (VS). They’re the evolved version of the Appearance Settings in the Display Control Panel. You can get hundreds of great visual styles online, a lot of which mesh brilliantly with other application skins. VS customization, however, is only available in XP. For those lacking the ‘XP’erience, there’s Object Desktop’s Windowblinds. Windowblinds are essentially allin-one skins that theme your windows and menus, Start

Menu and Taskbar. There are many customization options to choose from such as colour themes for your skins (skin-dependent), font, font size, and much more. This requires a bit of memory though, so make sure you’ve got enough RAM. If you’re adventurous and not afraid of unfamiliar screens and dialog boxes, check out some shell replacements. A shell is the outer layer of a program that provides the user interface. You can replace the standard windows shell with one or more of several others, like Blackbox, Litestep, Talisman, and Aston. With these you can alter the way you interact with your computer. You no longer need to have a Start button, or a small clock. You can even skin your Windows PC to look and feel just like a Mac (complete with one-click functionality). Skins and plug-ins are easily available for them all. They’re really fun to use, although after a while you might find that all you do is customize your desktop rather than get any actual work done. Shells also enable you to fiddle with code (if you know how) to add loads of custom this-and-that to suit your needs. That, my friends, is power. There are also programs that let you add Widgets to your desktop. Widgets are like mini-applications, such

as a configurable alarm clock, a weather viewer, media player remote, RSS reader, photo album, or a cartoon character who cracks a few trademark jokes every now and then. Konfabulator is my favourite - it’s really easy to use, and features a huge Widget gallery. Mac OS X features Dashboard, which has some nifty Widget functionality for you to fool with. Lastly, hundreds of applications out there are skinnable. Most media players, including Winamp, Windows Media Player, fooobar2000 and QCD have hundreds (if not thousands) of user made skins for them. Mozilla Firefox has themes ready to download on its website. Limewire, the popular P2P program is skinnable, and so is MSN Messenger 7 (you’ll have to download the skin installer and run it). I’ve included some links for you to follow to get started. Don’t be afraid to search the web for more. So get up, rub your already-raw eyes, take a swig of caffeine and get customizing! deviantart.com - the largest digital art community, and great for wallpapers and skins stardock.com - home of the Object Desktop tropicalwares.com/wallpro.html - a wallpaper utility customize.org - more skins and themes shellcity.net/content10.htm - all about shells

/it-times/learn/windows



01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Good Application Design In by the Research and Innovation Center of APIIT Lanka

Microsoft’s .NET Framework is a software development platform focused on rapid application development (RAD) for enterprise and desktop applications. .Net Framework 2.0 along with Visual Studio 2005 is their latest release slated for November. Many developers enjoy working with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the .Net platform, because it’s an intuitive tool that minimizes coding effort. However, others argue that while some of the .Net components may be easy to use, they incur too much overhead, leading to performance degradation and the breaking of the accepted n-tiered model. It’s therefore important to know how to pick the most suitable component for a given programming task, and its associated cost. This article will provide a general overview on how to architect applications in Visual Studio .NET, from a data access perspective, for both rapid application development oriented as well as performance conscious developers.

dot

ecuteScalar method to return a single value. Most developers find writing this code to be tedious and repetitive. So .NET introduced the DataSet object (pictured below), which represents a complete set of data including the related tables, constraints and relationships. It’s capable of representing a snapshot of any subset of your database within your working memory. In order to bridge the DataSet to the database, a data adapter is used. By calling methods on a DataAdapter, you can execute database commands to populate the DataSet [Code Snippet 2] as well as to write the changes made to your DataSet back to your database. In addition to this, .NET also introduced a typed DataSet – a class that derives from the DataSet and inherits all the members of a DataSet. The fundamental difference is that a typed DataSet has its own workspace, configuration wizard [Figure 2] and automatic code completion, making it easier and less error-prone. While this is ideal for rapid development, the un-typed DataSet/DataAdapter combination mentioned earlier would be more suited for applications that cannot afford to incur any unnecessary overhead.

Well designed applications follow an n-tiered architecture consisting of the presentation, business logic and data access layers. There are different ways of communisqlSelectString = “SELECT custName FROM Customers WHERE custId=7845”; cating data between SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(dbconnectionString); these tiers in Visual SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand(sqlSelectString, conn); Studio. First off, conn.Open(); let’s consider how data access compocustName = comm.ExecuteScalar(); nents can be used conn.Close(); effectively in each of these tiers.



data access techniques Traditional data access design uses a data command object that includes either a SQL statement or a reference to a stored procedure, which is then executed. Code Snippet 1 exemplifies the use of a SqlCommand’s Ex-

/it-times/learn/.NET

The DataSet object has become increasingly popular because it contains and transmits data between tiers quite easily. One of the most



NET

Incredible ‘Goal’ shot by Kyle Stauffer (flickr.com/photos/kylestauffer)

attractive things is its disconnected nature; once the DataSet has been filled, the connection can be closed and the DataSet’s contents can still be manipulated. Data is both editable and randomly accessible. Although this is ideal for desktop applications, the DataSet is not perfect; in some cases – particularly with web applications – there may be extra programming required to save its state. For web applications, behold the DataReader. It is designed to be a ferry of data between the database layer and a .NET application [Code Snippet 3, next page].

It’s a connected data object because it requires an active connection to the database. Furthermore, a DataReader is limited to being read-only and forward-only. That is, data cannot be modified by the DataReader, nor can the DataReader access records randomly. The records can only be accessed one record at a time, in sequence. The advantage of using DataReaders is that it incurs less overhead than a DataSet. A summary of data access techniques is shown in Table 1 (next page).

shuttling the data

sqlSelectString = “SELECT * FROM Customers”; DataSet ds = new DataSet(); SqlDataAdapter sda = new SqlDataAdapter( sqlSelectString, dbconnectionString); sda.Fill(ds, “Customers”);





The Data Access Layer (DAL) can return results to the Business Logic Layer (BLL) in a number of ways. As a List of objects (i.e. an Array List), as DataSets, as DataTables, as DataViews or as a scalar

The DataSet is capable of holding multiple tables along with primary key and relationship information. DataSets should be returned to the BLL when users need to keep a working copy of a part of the database in memory for a prolonged period of time. Consider the example of editing the contact information of a class of students.

/it-times/learn/.NET

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

A quick solution outline is to 1) Populate a Dataset with student information i.e. return DataSet from the DAL, 2) Perform add/edit/delete operations on the DataSet and 3) Use the DataSet to update the database when the user has completed all edits

qlSelectString = “SELECT * FROM Customers”; SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(dbconnectionString); SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand(sqlSelectString, conn); conn.Open(); SqlDataReader r = comm.ExecuteReader(); while(r.Read()) { custId = r.GetString(0); custName = r.GetString(1); }



Note that only steps 1 and 3 require database operations. By using a disconnected data r.Close(); model we ensure that no exconn.Close(); pensive data connections are left open during the possibly lengthy step 2. Since the DataSet mirrors the constraints in the database, these constraints can facilitate the business GridView1.DataSource = BLLCustomer.getCustomers(); rule processing in the BLL.



GridView1.DataBind();

DataTables will hold data returned by a single select statement. As with a DataSet, data held within a DataTable can be manipulated. Therefore you can return DataTables to the BLL where further business-rule processing can be achieved through the DataTable without the overhead of constructing a list of objects. However, you may return a DataView to the BLL if you do not intend to modify the data within it; usually for display purposes. A summary of data types that can be used in the BLL is given in Table 2.

populating the GUI [figure 4] Traditional application design separates the presentation layer from the data access layer using business objects. These business objects act as a distinct middle tier between the presentation layer and the data layer. Data controls in the presentation layer can be directly bound to business objects [Code Snippet 4].

Method Typed DataSet DataSet and Table Adapter DataReader and Command Object ExecuteReader() Command Object ExecuteScalar() Command Object ExecuteNonQuery()

/it-times/learn/.NET



This approach gives the developer a lot of flexibility with the business layer, the downside being that it’s coding intensive and takes time to develop. To promote ease of code, .NET has introduced the ObjectDataSource in their 2005 release. The ObjectDataSource is an ASP.NET data source control that represents the middle-tier object. It can be used with data-bound controls to display, edit and sort data with minimal coding effort. What we like about the ObjectDataSource is that it provides an added layer of abstraction in our n-tier model, for example, switching an ObjectDataSource to a SqlDataSource could be done without having to modify other layers. It also auto-generates the code for data-bound control functions such as inserting, editing, deleting and sorting. However, the ObjectDataSource does have some limitations in that you can specify only the four methods – select, insert, update and delete.

1 When To Use Rapid Application Development/Prototyping Windows Forms Keeping data in working memory Web Forms Not keeping data in working memory When getting a scalar(single) value Updating, deleting or manipulating data

Lastly, the ObjectDataSource component resides on the .aspx page causing the methods and parameters to be specified in the presentation layer. Some would argue that this approach doesn’t provide enough separation between layers. Another approach could be to use a hybrid; both the business objects and the ObjectDataSource.

significant period of time, while DataReaders are recommended for one-off database access. In particular, we recommend that DataReaders be used for web applications where a large amount of data is never kept within working memory between posts to the server. DataTables, while being a constituent component of a DataSet, also allows for complex data manipulations. DataViews on the other hand, allow only simple fixed operations such as sorting and are therefore light-weight. We recommend using DataTables for complex data centric business logic and DataViews for binding data centric data to the presentation layer.

The rule of thumb being that the controls can be directly bound to ObjectDataSources, except in the following situations when it’s more efficient to bind to business objects: When data needs to be loaded just once AND When no manipulations on data bound controls are necessary When designing the data access layer keep in mind that the DataSet/DataAdapter combination is designed to maintain a mini-in-memory database whereas a DataReader is a light weight component designed to be a ferry of data between the database layer and a .NET application. We recommend the use of the DataSet/DataAdapter combo when a large amount of persistent data needs to be kept within memory for a

Return Type A list of objects

DataSets

DataTables

DataViews



ObjectDataSources can be used as an added layer of abstraction between the presentation and business logic tiers. ObjectDataSources can cut down the amount of GUI coding, but at the expense of performance. We recommend using ObjectDataSources only when a significant degree of code simplification can be achieved without significant loss in performance.

2 When To Use It This is the traditional object oriented approach. Use this if business logic processing is done exclusively in an object centric manner. i.e. business rules are executed exclusively within objects and lists of objects. If some business rules can be implemented in a data centric manner. Usually within the scope of update/delete operations. When a large snapshot of the database is needed in-memory over a long period of processing / user interaction time. If some business rules can be implemented in a datacentric manner. Where modifications to the retrieved data is necessary and easily achieved in a datacentric environment. When a snapshot of data is needed to be further processed using business objects or to display data in a presentation layer control

/it-times/learn/.NET

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

taking back the web by Prabhath Sirisena

Floats In the previous issue we used absolute positioning to give a basic layout to our simple web page, index.htm. I’m sure you went beyond what we discussed in the tutorial and played around with your newly acquired xhtml and css skills to come up with your own layouts too. Today we’ll be discussing floats – a different, perhaps a bit difficult, but definitely a more powerful way of positioning elements on a web page. Strictly speaking, floating of page elements is not supposed to be a way of constructing a layout. CSS provides us with Absolute and Relative positioning properties that are meant to be specifically for this purpose. However, careful use of the float property allows us to avoid headaches thrown up by absolute and relative positioning. Floating is not without its own problems but for the purpose of this tutorial it suits our needs.

of balloons and boxes Imagine releasing hydrogen filled balloons inside a closed container. They will float to the top of the container, and stay pushing against the ceiling. If we keep releasing balloons, eventually the ceiling will be fully covered with them, and the ones released later will stay wedged under this “top layer”.

/it-times/learn/web

The balloons are our floated elements. The container would be whatever containing element they reside in. What you see from a side of that container is the layout you see in the browser window. Admittedly that wasn’t the most helpful explanation of floats, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t make any sense. Anyway, let’s jump in to the code and see how we can put it to work.

the structure We haven’t had a look at our index.htm for a long time. Let’s see what we’ve got in there again, for the benefit of the newcomers.

I love web standards

TM xH

I am the div> I am content column I am content column I am the div>

header