AOL 9.0 Accused of Behaving Like Badware

A few days ago, I posted here the story of AOL Bundle ware Security Edition 9.0. The malicious software was a havoc on my system and is nearly impossible to unistall completely. Finally, the sucker - AOL's free Internet client software -has earned the company a slap on the wrist from StopBadware.org, a consortium set up to combat malicious software. It seems that many other AOL victims have decried about the problem. PC World magazine online edition has posted the story.
===>>>LINK

Future is coming.......!!!!!!

In wired mag's august issue, Derek Powazek, cofounder of JPG magazine, defines current generation as Generation M. "M for multitask: We listen to music while surfing the Web and having four IM conversations. M for mashup, my favorite example of multitask culture. Finally, M for media, with emphasis on the me. There is no corner of our lives left undocumented, no niche topic left unexplored." I would like to add one more M to this list, M for mobile. In a survey, carried out by wired mag,27% of 608 wired readers polled that cell phone is the device in their arsenal they arn't using to its full potential. An article on "Six emerging technologies that will change the world of communications" by David Haskin of Techweb, suggests that it's a good time to be mobile. In 2005, 825 million mobile phones were shipped according to IDC(International Data Corporation). Gartner estimates Mobile Phone Sales Will Exceed One Billion in 2009. Mobile phone is a device which has a great impact on the way we communicate today and with the applications that are alreday available such as Google Maps, Google search, Scanbuy shopper, Scanbuy Media and many more available and some emerging applications intertwined with the WI-FI, its gonna take a revolutionary change.

In his article, David Haskin talks about Six technologies that will change the world of communication by letting mobile users stay online and in touch.
These are the six technologies in brief:

1)Pay by phone
2)Commanding Presence
3)Internet Everywhere
4)Ubiquitous Media
5)Easier Health monitoring
6)Safety

You can read this interesting article here. This article seems like a document of history of future, Future... thats coming....

P.S. My roommate Shabbir Ahmed,who works for Scanbuy provided useful information on futuristic applications of mobile phones.

AOL Security Edition 9.0 SUCKS !!!!!

Two days ago, I stumbled upon a post on TECHDIRT about AOL going free for all, I tempted to download AOL SE 9.0 and registered for AOL and it turned out to be a havoc on my system. AOL installed a whole lot of stuff I didn't want to install without any prior notice or warning dialogues. Its a bundleware and after installation I had:

> A Windows AOL Deskbar (a search box that would sit in the Windows bar)
> An Internet Explorer AOL Toolbar
> A Windows Tray Icon which can’t be disabled (not by clicking exit, sign-out, etc.)

First, I deleted all the shortcuts on the desktop and then tried to uninstall AOL SE 9.0 from ADD/REMOVE programs. I clicked the remove tag and I saw something like "AOL is serching for available SE versions on your computer....Please wait...." I waited...and waited.. and waited.. and to my frustration.. nothing happened. I googled for the solution and found out on BLOG OUTER-COURT that I was not the only victim.

I literally wasted an entire day to get rid of all unwanted crap.
Here is what I did:

1.I deleted all the shortcut icons from the desktop.
2.I removed the applications that could be removed from the START>CONTROL PANEL>ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS.
3.I deleted all the AOL/america online files and folders from the registry.
START>RUN> type REGEDIT> and find the folders
4.I also overwrote the deleted files using free ERASER APPLICATION (Thanks to Wired Magazines' August Issue, " How TO" section.)
5.I performed the search START>SEARCH>ALL FILES/FOLDERS using file name AOL and america online and manually deleted each and every file.

Performing above five steps was irritating and frustrating because after every step, I had to reboot the system. The system got froze for a couple of times. It slowed down the system.

After suffering so much of labor, I still have stains(some files and folders that didn't let themselves get killed (what the heck!!!!)) but, its okay. Atleast I got rid of the AOL SE 9.0 icon from the Add/remove program application and AOL icon from the system tray. My syatem has come to its normal operational speed.

No doubt, AOL sucks and AOL is an evil.

Special Thanks to: Google( ofcourse), BLOG OUTER-COURT,
ERASER APPLICATION and Wired magazine.

UPDATE: On 29th of August, Over at VariableGHz,an article lists *detailed* instructions as to what it would take to FULLY remove AOL 9.0 Security Edition from your system. Here's the LINK

Snapfish Vs. Webshots

I have a Digital camera Sony Cybershot DSC S-40 and I'm preety much happy with it. Recently, I had my july 4th long weekend at Chicago and I had an opprtunity to snapshot some views of downtown chicago, Navypier park and hindu Swaminarayan Temple. I uploaded the pics on WEBSHOTS and SNAPFISH to share them with my friends and family. Snapfish offers 20 free prints for the first time registered users. But there is one problem. The images get uploaded of the size smaller than 540 X 360 resolution. 540 X 360 resolution is the required resolution to have good quality images according to snapfish. So I am confused whether its the snapfish uploader aplication that uploads the photos of the small size or there is something I have to learn about the settings of my camera. And ofcourse, I opted for the big image upload which takes a hell of the time for the images to upload. I never had a problem like this with webshots. when one uploads photos on webshots, the images are big and preety clear. Webshots also provides features like community and tagging of pics which snapfish don't. For conventional film roll camera users, Snapfish sends user in the pre postage paid mailers that one can use to send their films and get the images developed. Webshots don't provide such service. The other features that both the portals offer are, you can order the images to be developed online, you can have your images in the form of stamps or on coffee mugs or t-shirts etc.

So now, I'm googling for some knowledge about image resolution and how to upload the images to have a good quality prints. Once I have that, snapfish works best to order first 20 free prints. To order more than 20 prints, webshots and snapfish both are good and comparable. But, to share your photos online, I feel webshots much more convenient.