ArJ.uNo

Well, I seen many people going carzy as to weather choose Google+ or Facebook, so I found this interesting image that distinguishes both of them.

This is a century of computers. Nowdays even a smallest possible thing cannot be done without a computer and its a major tool of information today. I was having a laptop that was given by my company to me, but I want something that would belong to me personally. So, I started studying over the internet for things that I should consider while buying a computer system. Well I like buying things that are ultimate and can do anything and everything possible with the same. I do like gaming but its not the only thing that I like doing. My current laptop has a very simple configurations (Core 2 duo + 2GB Ram + the default Intel video card). This laptop was with me for more than a year and I did nothing to benchmark its power, just normal office stuff, that’s it.

Well for quite a while I was not able to check the progress of the technologies that exist now, and being an enthusiast I want a system that works like wow. So I started searching over the internet for a system that can fulfil my needs. First I thought to go for a branded system. In India I think Dell can only be the one that can fulfil my needs. Althought I tried for lenovo and HP also. But even Dell’s highest configs can’t match what I finally brought and apart fromt that it was still very expensive. Finally, I brought a new system with configs as follows:

1. Processor: Intel Core i7 Sandy Brigde 2600K – Unlocked 3.4Ghz (overclockable to 4.8Ghz)
2. MotherBoard: ASUS P8P67 Pro – This MotherBoard is meant to overclock processors and run them beyond their capabilities.
3. RAM: Corsiar 4GB x 2 (eql. 8GB) – 1600 Mhz
4. Graphic Card: ATI Radeon – HD 6850 – MSI Cyclone OC based, 1GB.
5. Western Digital 7200rpm – 500GB x 2, over Raid0 Hard Disks.
6. A very usual CD/DVD combo recorder cum burner from Sony.
7. Internal WiFi Card.
8. Cooler Master SMPS – 600watts
9. Cooler Master Cabinet – 430.
10. Dell 24 inch Full HD Monitor.
11. Microsoft Wireless Keyboard and Mouse v2.
12. Microtek UPS – 1000watts

The things to look above are basically the Processor, MotherBoard and Graphic Card. They are builing block and they are awesome. The Processor is world ranked #11 and #1 in terms of its Architechture. (Intel Nahelam Architechture). The mother board has all latest technologies USB 3.0, SATA @ 6GBps, Graphical BIOS evolution called UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), SLI/crossfire capable, TPU, EPU, MemOK and much more.

But what about the Headline of this post, says something Burned up.

Well this Saturday, suddenly the video went off and I couldn’t guess the reason for the same, so I opened up the cabinet to see what happening inside, everything was looking fine, except the boot light was ‘red’. Apart from that all fans were working fine, I tried switching up the RAMs and at the end the only viable option that I thought was “READ THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL”. So I started reading it while my computer was On. Just after five minutes the top right part of the MotherBoard (where RAM is placed) started burning. Yes, I am not exaggerating here, it seriously started burning and everything was all smoky. I pulled out the power cable as soon as I saw that. Also tried to pull out things, by that I noticed that the RAM was ‘hot’, very ‘hot’ maybe because the fire took place near it.

Well two good things during this incident were that nothing else (apart from the mother board) was damaged and I had a 3 year warranty with the mother board.

I was shocked, means look at that, bought a damm good computer just 2 weeks ago and it went into flames now. Above all the ASUS customer care  said that they will check the degree of burn and will see if its covered under warranty or I have to pay for it.

Will update on what happens next.

Well, I said before that hostgator has launched Indian operations on this post. Which is actually good for all of the Indian users out there. But do you think that the services of the two are same? I would rather say they are not even comparable.

I review both of them as I have hosting accounts on Hostgator.com and Hostgator.in, one of my site i.e. MyWebStay.com and arj.uno are on the Indian servers and dotKB.com is on the Texas server. So here’s the differences i found which I would like to share with you.

1. Hostgator.in is expensive as you need to pay 10.3% extra as service tax. [1 point for Hostgator.com]
2. Hostgator.com is far so there is latency problem (means data will take more time to reach you), Hostgator.in is near and it is about 4x times faster [1 point to Hostgator.in]
3. Hostgator.com has a better technical support, the indian servers are expensive due to expensive network so Hostgator India has planned to cut cost by reducing their staff.[1 point to Hostgator.com]
4. You can pay your web host in Indian currency and there is no foreign exchange fluctuations for you. [1 point to Hostgator.in]
5. Hostgator.com is offering discounts upto 25% on their hosting plans and there are other coupons too, like First month for 1 cent. [1 point to Hostgator.com]
6. Hostgator.in gives discounts according to Indian festivals, so it gives you a feel of home. [1 point to Hostgator.in]
7. Hostgator.com has working affiliate system, whereas hostgator.in has no affiliate system. [1 point to Hostgator.com]

All the above points are what other peoples are discussing and there is nothing technicalities invloved in them. You can even check that out even if you don’t have a hosting account. But below is the comparison that provides things which you will probably came to know after buying. You should seriously consider them.

1. Hostgator.in will not give you adword credit
2. Hostgator.in is new.
3. Hostgator.in is not Green as Hostgator.com is.
4. Never go for a “Business Shared Plan”, as its of no use to you. Since won’t be getting a toll free number, its better to take the “Baby Plan” and put IP/SSL as addon, this would be cheaper and effective.
5. The system used as shared server on USA servers have 16 cores CPU, whereas the System used in Indian servers have 4 cores CPU.
6. Hostgator.in is not providing Windows Shared Hosting.
7. On bandwidth analysis I found that Hostgator USA servers give an average download rate of  4-5MBPS and peak is 8-9 MBPS that I have noticed. Whereas Hostgator.in servers gave average download speed of 300-400KBPS, however the peak level noticed by me was 5-6MBPS. I used wget tool in terminal to do that.
8. When it comes to dedicated servers you can see that Indian dedicated servers have a 1000GB-2000GB bandwidth, whereas USA dedicated servers have 10,000GB bandwidth.
9. Even number of IP’s assigned by Indian servers are less than USA servers.
10. Moreover the System spec of USA servers are far better than the Indian systems.
11. Indian servers are slow and sluggish, so as its support team. I was very happy with the support I got from Hostgator USA, means you just need to mail them and they use to reply within 15-20 min. Here even a very small and simple query takes 8-12 hours for reply.

Despite so many drawbacks why am I still using Hostgator India services, well here’s why:

1. My sites when working on Hostgator India servers are still fast (In terms of processing).
2. Even though it’s 10.3% expensive than american servers, its still it is cheaper than other Web Hosting companies in India.
3. The major reason is that one of my site wiz. CommentIndia.com uses Facebook Integration and there needs to be very less latency (in terms of ping time) to function it properly. This was not working well in the American servers as still in India many people use slow and poor quality networks (Edge, GPRS and High speed wireless internet are poor quality networks for me). Ping times on these network for USA servers is sometimes >1200ms, the same in Indian server is about ~400ms. And my Facebook intergation works well in that.
4. I had a good time with Hostgator with last couple of years and I believe that they will improve their services in Indian operations and make them usable for people those who had normal hosting requirements (Unlike specific hosting requirements like I had).

I still love Hostgator, if you are planning to get a Hostgator USA server use coupon code “25percentlower” to get 25% discount or use coupon “gatorfor1cent” to get First month for 1 cent. On the other hand if you are planning to go for Hostgator India server use coupon code “25percentlowerindia” to get 25% discount.

For further queries, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

Facebook lost nearly 6m users in the US last month, according to figures from Inside Facebook, sparking fresh concern that the social network’s growth is slowing.

Total monthly active users on the site still grew by 1.7 per cent between the beginning of May and early June, taking its total to 687m, according to Inside Facebook, part of the Inside Network, which provides news and analytics tools for social media, virtual goods and mobile apps.

But in the US there was a drop for the first time in a year, from 155.2m to 149.4m during the month of May. Canada also lost 1.52m users, while the UK, Norway and Russia lost “more than 100,000”.

That was all offset by big gains in Brazil, India, Mexico and Indonesia, Inside Facebook says, but “overall growth has been lower than normal for the second month straight, which is unusual”.

Although these are headline-grabbing statistics, they are just a couple of months’ data – it isn’t yet a trend. Inside Facebook itself gives a health warning on its figures, suggesting that seasonal factors and “bugs in the Facebook advertising tool” can distort the figures. Facebook has not commented on the report. (Updated: see end of post for Facebook’s response.)

This is not the first time that people have tried to suggest Facebook is losing momentum – and each of them has, so far, proven a blip in an otherwise frenetic growth rate.

It is almost exactly a year since an Inside Facebook interview with Mark Zuckerberg triggered the most recent fears that growth at the world’s largest social network might be running out of steam.

Just as Mr Zuckerberg was talking onstage in Cannes about the importance of Japan, Russia, South Korea and China for its next phase of growth, Inside Facebook published an article quoting him as saying: “We saw our exponential growth rate continue for a very long period of time, and it still does at a super-linear rate, though not quite 3 per cent a week any more.”

According to Inside Facebook’s latest stats, Facebook is “not quite” growing at 3 per cent a month any more, so it’s true to say that things have slowed down.

But back in June 2010, Facebook had around 500m users. Now it’s closing in on 700m. Its huge scale will inevitably affect its growth rate but from an international perspective, its dominance is greater than ever. Another set of data, from Cosenza, suggests that Facebook is now the leading social network in 119 out of 134 major markets.

As Facebook targets 1bn users, many have focused on China as its great untapped source of growth. But as Facebook’s investors target an initial public offering next year, the health of the network in more immediately profitable areas such as North America and Western Europe might be just as big a concern.

Source: shellypalmer.com

Well, recently Hostgator.com has expanded itself to join hands and partner with other companies to provide hosting facilities around the world. Very recently they announced the newest HostGator addition; the launch of HostGator India, http://www.hostgator.in!

I am sure that HostGator India will allow all, the opportunity to receive local hosting with servers in India, as well as localized support from their new office in India as well for HostGator India clients! Hostgator’s Indian operations have already started and their Indian office is located in Nashik, Maharashtra. The Indian office works 24×7 and provides technical as well as sales and billing support to all HostGator.in client base.

I have been one of their very first customers and have already got all my sites ported to Hostgator India.

Since day one, I have seen incredible change in the site speed due to very less latency and even my site’s ranking has also spiked up.

I recommend all users who are India based to look forward to this opportunity and use Hostgator India as their web host.

Who may use the coupon “25percentlower” and get additional discount on you hosting plan (for 1year or more).

Remember that you need to pay an additional amount of bucks as service tax @ 10.3%, but since you got a 25% discount coupon code, it’s still worth to get one.

Exam pressure is one of those which has a huge magnitute on all students. We have to face this pressure after every few months. An example of the same is >>>>>me.

Well on 15th May my IPCC group 2 exams were finally over. I just thought wow no more exams now, just fun masti enjoyment but look what happen with me the same day when I reached home. There was an admit card posted by School of Open learning, Delhi University (i.e. The same place from where I am doing B.Comm[H]).
After opening it, I came to know that I have to give another examination, Yes it was for B.Comm only.

And the worst thing was that it was scheduled from 20th May, means Friday of the same week.
It was a very irritating moment for me and I think that I should get use to it.

Well wish me luck for these examinations and lets see what God has sent me in this packet.

Update: Exams are over now and I have cleared my IPCC Group 1. Now I have to prepare to give my final examination which is on nov, 2012. Still for the time being I can say myself “Exams are over Arjun”

Well I am one of those guys who get tons of mails everyday, but the main problem in my case is that I use to get many SPAM mails everyday. Well I thinks most of us have the same problem.
But today a miracle had happen its 11.26pm here and I have not received even a single unsolicited mail yet. And since its about half an hour left for the end of the day, I believe k wont get any more mails now. So I can confidently say that today is the day when I got not even a single spam mail in my inbox or even if I do its either trapped by Gmails spam assassin or has been automatically deleted by my own spam filtering method.
But what I want to share today is that why do we get spam mails and how to avoid it. If I start from scratch spam mail are basically promotional mails that we all receive everyday every-time, one good thought here is why do we get all such stuff? A one liner answer to this is because we all give our mail ids very easily to anyone and anywhere in the Internet and email spamming is considered as best and cheapest method to drive traffic on a website. Be cautious as spam mails contains various tricks like spoofing, phishing and spreading virus on your systems.
Although spamming is now considered as a very poor technique of website marketing (due to the great efforts done by Gmail/Yahoo/MS guys which makes them ineffective) still many folks try the same method to gather audience.
Well all I can say is follow these simple steps to make sure you wont get spammed anymore:
1) Create two email ids, one for handling your personal mails and other for giving it to websites all over the internet. Remember internet is a way good technology and you have to give your email ids for correspondence, separating personal mails and mails used for correspondence/contact purpose is a very nice method for managing your emails and is less irritating. One thing to consider is that every site won’t send you spam mails, only few will do. So don’t think that you should not give your email id to anyone.
2) Always mark spam to mails that are spam rather than just ignoring it, believe me you wont get at-least that kind of mail ever. And this will also block the source.
3) If you have your own domain or if you are planning to get one, make your mail id like [email protected] or [email protected], mails like this do not get even a single spam mail.
4) If you are publishing your email to your blog or any forum do write it like this yourmail [at] gmail [dot] com. This will avoid spam bots from capturing your mail. You may use your own method of writing your email on a forum page by editing the method given above.

And ya do change your password every 2 weeks and make it alphanumeric and add few special symbols to the same.

You may reach me via email at [email protected]

Well I think a GUI based system is very important as most of us hates CUI (although its extremely fast and consumes less resources), so I just figured out how to connect to my new server with GUI at http://dotkb.com. After a whole day of study over the internet I was finally able to make out, how to install GUI on a VZ server. FYI, its posted below:

Running KDE inside an OpenVZ container is a rather easy task. And this may help you in case you wanna have an online office available from any where in the world.

In order to accomplish this you will need a CentOS VPS, this can be done with other linux distributions also, but I’ll stick to CentOS.

First of all let’s make sure we have the latest packages installed:

Now let’s install KDE:

Here you have a list from which you can add more, or remove:
kdemultimedia.i386 : Multimedia applications for the K Desktop Environment
kdegames.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Games
kdeaccessibility.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Accessibility
kdepim.i386 : PIM (Personal Information Manager) for KDE
kdeutils.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Utilities
kdeadmin.i386 : Administrative tools for KDE.
kdegraphics.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Graphics Applications
kdenetwork.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Network Applications
kdeaddons.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Plugins
kdeartwork.i386 : Additional artwork (themes, sound themes, …) for KDE
kdeartwork-icons.i386 : icon themes (kdeclassic, slick ….) for KDE

Now that KDE is installed, it’s time to install the vnc server:

Next we’ll need to add an user under KDE will run:

The final step is to configure and start the vnc server:

With the above commands you configured the password and the vnc server started, but the problem now is that it’s not using KDE.
Let’s kill the vnc server and edit the configuration file that was automatically generated:

Make sure the configuration file looks like this:

The only thing I changed was the last line.
Start the vnc server once more:

Now you are ready to use the new desktop, simply connect using your favorite VNC viewer, but remember to use the port 5901 (some VNC servers use port 5801).

You may start VNC on browsers by typing <your IP adress like 192.0.0.27>:5801

Please comment for in case you need any further clarifications.

Explained in brief  below.