Tips :- more useful and secure USB pen drive

USB thumb drives are one of the most commonly used ways to transfer data if you happen to work across multiple computers. Lets just make the USB drives prettier, useful and secure.

1. Add icons and labels to your drive.

Download an icon you would want to see appear when you plug in your thumb(pen) drive. Place the icon at the root of the drive. Next open notepad and type the following:

[autorun]

label = ""

icon = "yourIcon.ico"

Save the file onto the root of your thumb drive and name it "autorun.inf", be sure to put the quotes or else it will be saved as a text file. Now Safely remove your USB drive and plug back in, the icon and name should appear in Windows Explorer if your did everything right. You can also automatically launch an application. If this is not the way you prefer to work use this neat application to generate the autorun.inf file automatically

2. Add a Start Menu to your USB drive

portable appsDownload and install the Portable Apps Suite on your USB drive, it not only gives you a nice start menu for your USB drive but also gives you the ability to run some of the most popular applications (like Firefox, Putty, OpenOffice, SumatraPDF, notepad++ and many more) right from your USB drive. A must have for your USB drive1

3. Use Mojopac

mojopacMojopac gives you your operating environment right on your USB drive. You can be rest assured that you will find a familiar interface with Mojopac on any pc you plug your USB drive into, all the customization will be preserved from computer to computer. Moreover it lets you operate without leaving any trace what so ever on the computer, so you can be rest assured about your privacy and data

4. Write Protect your Drive

My USB drive has a write protect notch that prevents it from being written onto when plugged on a computer, this is important because if the computer you are plugging into is infected than it can readily infect your USB drive. However if your drive cannot be write protected then you can use thumbscrew. It makes anything connected to the USB non writeable until you are sure and want to make it writeable.

5. Make Autorun.inf read only and system file

Thumbscrew may prevent writing on USB devices but it has to be already present on the computer you want to plug your USB drive into, so if its not possible for one reason or the other then you should make sure that you have a custom autorun.inf file and that its read only and has the system file attribute set. This prevents malicious code from writing entries to your autorun.inf and thus even if your USB drive may have a virus it won’t actually run it automatically. So a little bit more protection but not fool proof by any means.


6. Hold down the shift key

If you suspect your USB drive may be infected but still you have to plug it in to scan and remove the infections, then when you plug it in hold down the shift key to prevent autorun if its not already disabled.

7. Encrypt your drive using Truecrypt

true cryptYou can encrypt all the data on your USB drive using Truecrypt. This fives you added security if you have some sensitive data on your USB drive. Simply run it and choose your USB device to encrypt. TrueCrypt is free, Open Source and efficient and gives you extra security, download it here.

8. Sync your drive.

Microsoft offers an excellent application specially to address all your syncing needs. Its called the SyncToy. If you have to work on the same files on two different computers than you want to have the latest version of all files all the time, this can be easily done with synctoy. It offers both oneway and twoway synching. Its also free to download. Download it here

9. Backup your drive

toucanBacking up is always a nice thing to do, specially when you have to use it on different computers. There is a portable app to make this very easy. Its toucan, you can install it on your USB drive and back up, sync and encrypt your data as and when you want. Or else there is this the USB Image Tool that creates an image of everything you have on your drive and saves it as one file.

10. Make it bootable

pen drive linuxYou can install and run Linux from your USB thumb drive, this is an excellent way to recover systems that won’t boot, or to just plug it into another computer and do all of your work using linux applications and surf the net without leaving any history on the host computer. For this try pendrivelinux

Hacking Gmail

I know this post will get lots of clicks, because of its name. Now for the people with mischievous intents who managed to reach here, I m sorry to say that i don’t know how to get the password of someone else’s gmail account(unless the other person is careless enough to fall traps to social engineering). This article is a collection of tips and tricks that help to increase your Gmail productivity! Thats also known as hacking by the way.



Meanings of hacking (these are not all)

Hack #1: Address
Almost everyone knows about the "." trick with gmail addresses. Okay just in case you don’t know I will quickly point out that:

* mickeymouse@gmail.com
* mickey.mouse@gmail.com
* mickeym.ouse@gmail.com
* m.i.c.k.e.y.m.o.u.s.e@gmail.com

all refer to the same address. In other words mail sent to any of the above will go to the same inbox.

Hack #2: Address
Here is what most people don’t know, If you know this already go buy yourself a beer and send me the bill! The tip is that in addition to the "." hack there is also a "+" hack which is that you can add any text to your mail address using "+". eg

* mickeymouse+minniemouse@gmail.com still is same as mickeymouse@gmail.com

Hack #3: Labels
As elementary as they can be, not many people use them somehow. If you are like them and can’t find folders to arrange you mail and always wonder what that Green rectangle is there for then this is for you. Labels are Gmail’s equivalent of folders. Infact they say labels are even better than folders as a mail can be in more than one label.

* Click on edit labels
* Enter the name of the new label and click create. I hate to say this but for the traditional minded, now you have a "folder".
* Any time you need to move a conversation to the label use the "More Actions" drop down list and choose the label name under "Apply Label:"

Hack #4: Filters
The true power of the all the above tips cannot be utilized until or unless you use filters. As the name suggests filters do nothing more than filtering email. Its when used in combination with labels and the above hacks that they prove to be one of the most useful feature that Gmail has to offer.

* Click on settings.
* Then go to the filters tab(click on filters).
* You will see a create new filter link at the bottom. Click on it.

Filters are basically a search criteria, any mail that satisfy the criteria you provide will land be caught by the filter, what you want to do with filter is another thing. You can apply a label, forward to another account, delete , archive and loads of other stuff. By using hack #1 and hack #2 you can actually avoid unwanted mail and spam. eg if while registering the site requires email address then you can give your address as mygmailid+sitename@gmail.com, this way you know that any mail addressed to mygmailid+sitename@gmail.com is from that particular site or person and you can decide what you want to do with it :)
Bonus Hack: You can also create labels on the fly by clicking on the arrow next to the reply drop down when you are viewing a message to create a filter which matches the criteria for the current mail.


Filters on the fly

Hack #5: Keyboard Shortcuts
Again not many people use keyboard shortcuts on Gmail. For lazy people like me for whom moving their hand from keyboard to mouse is too much of a job this is great, actually its very fast, believe me once you get hold of it its amazingly quick. I seldom use mouse within Gmail.

* For most people c (compose), k (next), j (previous), r (reply), a (reply to all) , enter (open conversation), x (select) would be enough but there is a complete list at Gmail help page.
* Note that you can use C and R to compose and reply in a new window

Hack #6: Send .exe files
You probably know that Gmail doesn’t allow you to send .exe, .dll, .ocx, .com or .bat files for security reasons. Come on Google all of us should not suffer only because of some stupid people with malicious intent.
Anyway to send exe files either use some other service, or change the extension of the exe file or compress it, but zip compression wont work because Gmail can detect exe files within zipped files as well so try other formats.

Hack #7: HTML Signatures
Gmail doesn’t provide facility to add HTML signatures. However, there is an easy workaround to this. Copy the code you want to use as signature. Create a notepad file and add the following:




your code here



Save the file and open it in a web browser(Firefox, Opera etc). The page will be rendered by the browser. Click and Drag the mouse to select the rendered graphic or whatever and copy it. Go to Gmail, hit compose and then press Ctrl+v, there you have it – HTML signatures in Gmail. You will have to do this every time you want to use the signature so don’t delete the file if you are going to need it in future.

Hack #8: Search
Its Google Mail and how can we not include search in this. Now you might be wondering whats great in search, actually there is. There are a number of operators(keywords) that you can combine to search mail within a label, or only read messages or only from a particular user or only from a particular date and so on. Some people complain that lack of GUI features to search with all these criteria but hey if you are a power user you don’t need a GUI plus its faster this way!!



Search using keywords

Hack #9: Bookmarks and Bookmarklets
You can use your browser to bookmark any label or message type that you see often. Suppose you often like to view all the unread messages then you can type in search "label:unread" without quotes and you will see all your unread messages, but it doesn’t end here you can save it as a bookmark and then get back to it later, not only this you can save other searches as bookmarks too. Bookmarklets are piece of JavaScript code that enhance your productivity(mostly), There is a Gmail This bookmarklet that you can add to your bookmarks toolbar, clicking on which will open up a new compose window with the link to the current page as the body and its title as the subject of the new mail.
You can even bookmark a particular mail or conversation you have to get back to frequently.

Hack #10: Chat Invisible with Gmail
This is no hack! But increases your productivity for sure (if your friends like disturbing you). Well simply mentioning this here because a lot of people dont know it yet. The much awaited invisible mode is here. You can now chat invisibly on Gmail. Yuhooo!!

How to know if someone is invisible on Gmail

As you might be knowing from quite some time you can go invisible while chatting on Gmail. The invisible status is available in Gmail Chat, Google Talk gadget, Google Talk Labs Edition and Google Talk for iPhone .

What to do if you want to know if someone in really offline or is playing Mr. Hideous or as we call here in India – "Mr. India" ?

Follow these steps:

Step 1:

Open the chat window for the contact you want to confirm is offline of invisible

Step 2:

If you see a message "The chat is off record" then proceed to step 3, else click on options in the chat window (Gmail) or the down pointing arrow (Gtalk) and choose "Go Off Record" You will now surely see that "The chat is off record"

Step 3:

Now you need to interpret what you get.

* If you get a message in red like below, this indicates that the user is really offline.

As you might be knowing from quite some time you can go invisible while chatting on Gmail. The invisible status is available in Gmail Chat, Google Talk gadget, Google Talk Labs Edition and Google Talk for iPhone .

What to do if you want to know if someone in really offline or is playing Mr. Hideous or as we call here in India – "Mr. India" ?

Follow these steps:

Step 1:

Open the chat window for the contact you want to confirm is offline of invisible

Step 2:

If you see a message "The chat is off record" then proceed to step 3, else click on options in the chat window (Gmail) or the down pointing arrow (Gtalk) and choose "Go Off Record" You will now surely see that "The chat is off record"

Step 3:

Now you need to interpret what you get.

* If you get a message in red like below, this indicates that the user is really offline.



This shows the contact is offline

* If you get nothing then the user is invisible, or any status updates in gray it means the user is online but invisible.



This shows the contact is invisible