Did you know Microsoft has a download manager for Web browsers? I am sure not even 10% of the readers know it. As its name says, it enables you to download files like songs, zip files and multimedia, etc., in a more secure and better way just by using your Web browser, but tell me WHY would anyone need it? Though mostly all browsers come with an inbuilt download manager.

Download Manager

This is just like an ordinary download manager. According to Microsoft it is much fast and secure as compared to other download software (they think that they don’t care of security? Bad!) Though I can’t say how it is more secure because it does not have any extra features for security (it does not even support HTTPS extension to download something.. So how can one say it is secure huh?), moreover it does not support Google Chrome, Opera and Safari browsers. It is only available for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

In my opinion there are much better download managers available on Internet, I didn’t expect Microsoft to release such a basic and simple manager to download. If you still want to give it a try, then you can download it officially from here.

Fed up of online frauds, scams and sites containing viruses? Look NO further McAfee has launched its site advisor software. This soft gives a rating and display an icon next before the site’s link which tells about safety details of site or in the other meaning it lets us know that how secure a page (web-page) is.

A green icon means site is safe to visit whereas red icon means site is harmful or contains potentially harmful applications. This software protects you from online frauds, browser exploits and phishing attacks. McAfee released two versions of this great utility – one is freeware with limited features on the other hand other is paid one (paid one i.e Site Advisor Plus have much more features).

For normal users I will suggest you to definitely download a copy it as nowadays nothing is safe on Web even CERT issued high alert for increasing Cyberattacks. Download a free version as for a try, it will protect you from most of the common scams and attacks and also you would get to know that how does it work, so if you will find it useful, then buy the Plus edition.

After all safety is the best policy

so it’s a must have software for all Internet users …………..

Link: Download

Yeah! One of the giants telecom company Vodafone has launched a social application, but the bizarre thing about it is, it’s not only for Mobile phones, but also available for desktops!  This application released by Vodafone called ‘The update app’ is an application that allows the users to update their social profiles’ status right from desktop only.

What’s happening right now in Twitter or facebook?? What are your friends sharing/doing? With this application you can easily get all the details all in one application, even you don’t need to visit the sites again and again. It appears as if Vodafone has finally comprehended the overwhelming power of social networking these days.

Now no need for login in your Facebook,  Twitter or MySpace account, all your accounts can be accessed via your desktop only. All updates are available on your desktop only. You can update your status or post tweets using this awesome application and uploading photos to different networks was too never such easy.

Its greatest advantage is, it is fee to download and easy to install. Looks like an awesome app isn’t it?

So what are you waiting for? Go and check out the app at Vodafone!

Almost all of us have heard about Paypal, right? It is the online money transfer system. Paypal has 153 million accounts worldwide, it’s the biggest online money transfer system. It’s definitely the best  medium to send money online, but the thing which I hate most is logging in again and again to check all the transaction details.

Being a proffesional writer,  to check my balance that how much money did I get I have to login again and again on their website, which I, even many users too find time-consuming. So what’s the solution for this problem?

Putler ya you read it right Putler! While reading some articles on Paypal details I came to know about this small application. It is an Adobe air based application which shows your Paypal balance on your desktop, keep details of all your transactions and much more….. All you have to do is to download it from here.

After downloading it, just provide your Paypal details to the application (you might find it a bit difficult cause for that you need to provide your Paypal API credentials, but don’t worry there’s a tutorial to do so), don’t worry it is not a fraud application, then after successful configuration it will notify you whenever your balance changes.

This application certain advantages which are listed below:

• You don’t have to login on PayPal website to check balance and other details
• Auto update of balance no timeouts.

All you should have to use this wonderful application no matter whether you have Paypal business or premier account! , I suggest you to give a try to this great application for sure.

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple (not the fruit ) in year 1976. Apple recently introduced the iPad, a breakthrough Internet and digital media device just like their Mac, plus the iBookstore, alongside iTunes and the App Store. Steve also co-found and was CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which created some of most successful animated movies in the World.

Ever thought how much Steve gets paid per month? Huh ever? This morning while reading The Times of India, came through a list of lowest paid CEOs and Steve was one of them. So what’s his salary? One dollar! Yeah! Shocked? Even I was too, then I thought how can one make living from 1$ per month? So Googled it and found that it’s just a ploy.

Ploy? Yeah! It’s just a ploy to save taxes. If Steve used to get the normal salary that a CEO gets, then he would have to pay 35% of the salary as tax.

So how he earns?

He too lives a luxurious life just as other CEO do. Disney Pixar is his main source of income, being one of the boards of the directors he is owning 138 million shares and Disney pays $.35 per share. So you can imagine how much does he make.

This proves that smart work is always better than hard work! Isn’t it? ;-P

Also Check: Bill Gates Vs Steve Jobs: the Game!

Sometimes it become hard to visit some sites  or remain anonymous on the Internet. The usage of social networks and  blogs have become too much and nothing is now private. It’s OK to share what you like, but tell me if we continue doing like this, then what would be the difference between a virtual life and a real life? I am going to share with you the three top most IP hiding software.  These software are used to hide your IP from outside world thereby protecting your real identity up to a certain extent.

• Easy hide IP: It is really a good software to hide your IP address, it comes with many features such as location hiding, privacy protection etc. You can try this software for three days. Download it from here.
• Hide my IP: This software has many unique features such as auto IP changing, Anonymous Emails and much more. You can download it from here.
• Ultra Surf: I think it is too common software. This software has one advantage its user interface is simple, and all other features are similar to above software. You can download it from here.

In short all three perform same task of hiding IP, I tried all three of them and personally and feel Hide my IP is best software among these three in terms of cost, IP hiding and ease of usage. Have ever use any other software to hide your IP?

No doubt that Facebook is addictive social networking site, but yeah it also helps to get a great business and money; especially for bloggers. Though for an addicted user working at office it becomes hard to even open it and update his status because in most of the offices, social networks are blocked by firewalls and proxies even don’t work there. So you too are one of addicted facebook users working at office where it is blocked? Not able to surf it? Don’t worry! I have found a great plug-in for Microsoft Outlook (I think every office has its copy) using which you can easily access it, FBLook (Facebook + Outlook).

Now you can update your status message on facebook, can see your friends’ status & see the number of new requests without having to open Facebook in any of the browser or application. FbLook merges with your outlook and provide all above-mentioned things within outlook itself.

Features:

• Update your Facebook status directly from Outlook.
• Set your status to the name of the song you’re playing in itunes
• See your friend statuses.
• See notifications of new Friend Requests, Messages, Invites, Pokes, etc..

Configure [How]:

FB Look is supported by all windows versions with outlook 2003 SP3, 2007 SP2. It’s not supported by outlook express. Download it from here. After you have installed it, just open your Outlook add-ons click on login in Facebook option after that several messages will be displayed to guide you through the process. There are four steps, but they need to be followed only once.

It took me about four minutes to download and install it and I must say for people like me who use Outlook it is a great utility. Share your views about it.

Link: FB Look.

People are getting so much addicted to social networks these days that their psychiatrists are suggesting them to use social networks only for a short period of time and if they can’t then do a virtual suicide! I have seen many people including some professionals also tweeting and sharing 24 x7 that what is going on? And what are they doing? Sometimes it becomes difficult for me to distinguish between a guy (addicted to social networks) to his online profile. Most of the time people are found especially on Facebook sharing something or other. Well, it not bad sharing something with others, but anything in Extreme is bad (not Extreme Trix ).

If you are too one of them who are addicted to use social networks, or pissed off with Facebook’s uncensored searches or whatever, then I have a solution  for you kill off your Facebook identity with kindness! Yeah!

Today while stumbling across I came across a site Seppukoo, named after ancient Japanese samurai who preferred to die with honor, voluntarily plunging a sword into the abdomen and moving the sword left to right in a slicing motion rather than fall into the hands of their enemies that draws a parallel relation between a samurai and social networking profiles. The best thing about doing virtual suicide using this site is that you could easy get your profile back just after (re) signing in to your Facebook account! Moreover, you can do a virtual suicide to check just who is your real friend? And who is not? If you kill your facebook identity and a friend follows it, then he is a real friend and on the other hand if he does not, then he is not a good friend, Al tough a good friend is a Seppukoo follower!

How to suicide?

Doing suicide is easy just follow these steps:

1. Login in to the site using your Facebook ID – Pass.
2. Customize your memorial page as you wish!
3. Enter your last words.
4. Get scored!
5. Done!

Enjoy suiciding! Don’t forget to speak out last words!

We all love to chat and stay in touch of friends online, some of us even like to share what we do, what are we doing and what we find interesting by blogging via Twitter, WordPress, Blogger or any other blogging tool. Bloggers like me always try to find shortcuts for making their task easier for them. Digsby is a one the most used application used by many bloggers as it is multi protocol internet messenger, which makes staying connected to friends and sharing updates task easier, as it helps them to be a social media dude, which would help them in better productivity. It is a great tool, but there is a problem in it, it doesn’t work properly on Windows Vista 32 bit and doesn’t work at all in some PC. (source)

So today I’m sharing top six alternatives of Digsby, which are tested by myself and works great! (honestly speaking (actually writing ) I have just tested them on Windows platform not on all Operating Systems.)

1. Pidgin:  If you are an Ubuntu Linux user, then I’m sure you may be aware of the default internet messenger client installed on it called Pidgin. The best thing about this is, it is extend-able through plug-ins, including “Off-the-Record Messaging” and Pidgin encryption, providing end-to-end message encryption. Pidgin is available for Windows, Linux & Mac.
2. Trillian Astra: It is not used by many people like Pidgin or Digsby is, but believe me it looks awesome. It lets you connect to multiple internet messenger and social networks at the same time, managing contacts and real time status feeds efficiently, currently it is available on Windows, iPhone, online & Mac application is under development, but alpha is there!
3. Psi: Psi is a free instant messaging application designed for the Jabber IM network (including Google Talk). Fast and lightweight, Psi is fully open-source and compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It is not having stunning looks like Trillian Astra, but works great on Windows XP.
4. qutIM: It is also an open source chat client available for Windows and Linux operating systems. It looks a bit similiar to Digsby in graphics.
5. Yoono addon: basically it is not an application, it is an add-on for Mozilla’s Firefox browser, which allows any one to connect to social networks while surfing internet within the browser only. This add-on works only on browsers installed on Mac & Windows. Its desktop version is also available, but I didn’t try it yet so I’m not writing about it.
6. Miranda IM: It is the smaller, faster, easier instant messenger with support for multiple protocols. Designed from the ground-up to be resource efficient while still providing a rich feature set, Miranda includes support for AIM, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu and more. Additionally, with the choice of hundreds of plugins, icons, sounds and other content. It can be highly customized like by addons just like Pidgin. It is available only for Windows.

[Update: Today I came across a new chat messenger - Chit Chat. It is not a  multi protocol  like the other messengers I listed above, but it is a simple chat messenger designed especially for facebook, which has several benefits over the other chat messengers. It looks simply awesome in design. You read rest about it here.]

Do you know any other alternative of Digsby? If yes please let me know.

What do you do when you forget your Windows password? Call an engineer or what? I’m sure that most of you do so. Ever thought how much money do you waste by giving to that engineer for just a simple task, which you could have done yourself. It is not too much geeky or needs any programming knowledge. To crack a Windows password you just a program called Ophcrack and spare 10-15 minutes.

Ophcrack

Its an open source program that uses LM hashes to crack Windows passwords through rainbow table. As its open source you can download it for free and start using it.

How to use it?

It is very simple to use, just download its iso from here and burn it a CD/DVD or a flash drive. If you want to burn it on a flash drive, but don’t now how to do that, then you can read the tutorial posted here by Satish bro. After burning insert the CD (or DVD or flash drive) into the computer of which you want to gain password and restart the computer. Now turn on the computer and enter BIOS at startup. Change the boot sequence to CD before HDD, then save and exit. The computer will be restarted, Ophcrack will be loaded and you will get its Windows password!

Isn’t it easy? So next time if you forget your computer’s password remember not to waste any more money just read this- post once again.

I know many tech savvy guys prefer downloading software rather than buying original copies from shops. I too like to download trial software and applications from internet because I do not think there is any use of buying an original copy of software, if I keep on formatting my hard disk after every two weeks and keep on changing my operating systems. Previously I was on Windows XP Professional, then I upgraded my XP to Windows Vista Ultimate and, then I formatted my HD again and installed the all new Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 to give it a try. Well I didn’t like it as compared to previous versions of Ubuntu because of some Adobe flash plug-in error, sometimes when I try to install a plug-in in my Ubuntu I get some weird Adobe flash plug-in error. So now I’m planning to upgrade to new Windows Seven.

Software CDs

Today when I logged in my laptop got a message my trial period of Nero burner is over, I was not having time again change the Operating System. I changed my date to two months back, but I didn’t work, still it was showing expire error. That time I had to burn some important data too on my DVD. So I searched on internet to get a solution, finally a found small 844 KB application named Time Stopper which can stop the time of trial versions of software. (Found it on Genius Hackers blog.) It solved my problem. I thought to write a detailed post about it on Extreme Trix as my blog is read by many tech savvies so thought it may help them.

Using Time Stopper we can use any trial version of software forever for free. The best thing what I liked about this application is real time and date run normally on our systems.

How it Works

• Open Time Stopper
• Browse and select .exe of required trial software
• Choose the new date (Any date which occurs in between your trial software time period before expiration, suggestion: set it to two days before trial software expiration date.)
• Choose any time
• Click open software on your selected date

Note: I do not support piracy, I used this software to just extend my trial period of Nero for just five minutes as I had to burn some important files, then after burning my DVD I removed this application and my trial Nero too.

Image credits: LeaseSource and MusicLab

Download / Info

If you are a regular reader of Extreme Trix, then you may remember that couple of days back our site was deleted while upgrading and it took me almost two days to again make it up. My site was deleted because of my carelessness only. Satish bro told me on first day only to always keep a backup of site so that you can re-store it if anything happens to site by mistake, but didn’t take that seriously and forgot to keep a backup. When I was upgrading my site to WordPress 2.8.6 from WordPress 2.8.1 accidentally my blog directory got deleted (where Extreme Trix is installed) and everything was gone. That time I felt really bad, but thanks to Google Cache which saved my work and time. Somehow I was able to restore my site because of Google Cache (Thank you again Google! ). I don’t want any of my reader to face some problem so today I thought to write about a plug-in for WordPress called – WP-DB-Backup which can be used to take a backup of Database.

Backup

WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database. The best thing about this plug-in is you don’t need to take backup of your site regularly, just schedule a daily backup from setting page of the plug-in and it will be automatically emailed you or will be saved on your server.

Installation of the plug-in is very simple, just like a normal plug-in upload it to wp-content folder of your WordPress and activate it from Manage Plugins page of your blog. You may need to make /wp-content writable (at least temporarily) for it to create a backup directory. For example: $ cd /wordpress/ $ chgrp www-data wp-content (where “www-data” is the group your FTP client uses) $ chmod g+w wp-content.

If you have yet not installed this plug-in on your blog I will suggest you that to install it immediately. If you are already using this plug-in on your blog to take a backup, then if you don’t mind please share few words about it via comment.

Download / Info

<Image Credits>

Spam is the worst thing that every blogger is worried about. Although there are many spam control plug-ins which help us in controlling spam none of them is 100% reliable here are the best available anti spam plug-ins which I have used and reviewed.

Akismet – This plug-in is developed by Auttomattic Company and it comes inbuilt with WordPress installation. It checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template.

WP-Ban – Most of the Spammers are bots which will comment from a particular IP and WP-Ban is very useful plug-in to avoid comments from particular IP’s and can be used to ban comments based on IP addresses.

WP-Spam Free – Once installed this plug-in will automatically delete comments and thing which I didn’t like in this plug-in is we can’t see the deleted comments.

reCaptcha – I personally hate captcha and at the same time I know that even my readers will hate that, but I hate Spam even more. reCAPTCHA is one of the best captcha plug-in. No doubt this is a great captcha plug-in, but I recommend this plug-in only for those blogs which will get lots of spam comments, as users will lose interest in commenting at your blog if you use captcha at your blog. So use this at your own risk.

Also read – Top 10 WordPress Plug-ins to make your site more user friendly!

Let us know if you know any other anti-spam plug-in that performs better.

[Editor’s Note: This is second guest post by Rajesh Kanuri who regularly blogs at TechCats about WordPress, Social Media, Technology, Tips & Tricks. If u like this post Follow him at twitter (@rajkanuri)]

Torrent is the best way to download anything whether it is a 16GB game or just a small 2MB song. Its best thing is that it makes our work easy to download. If you are regular reader of Extreme Trix, you may remember couple of days back I posted a post in which I told you all about Torrent2Exe application which can be used to download torrent files directly without any torrent client.

Today while surfing the Internet I came through a new torrent search engine – www.kickasstorrents.com. The thing which I liked the most in it was the speed and its layout is clean and simple without any annoying advertisements. It was created by a team of professionals and is based on latest technologies in web development and search. There are many old and respected torrent sites that are larger than Kickasstorrents, but they have the fastest and the best search, and great usability. Here are some of their features -

• clean layout without annoying ads;
• real-time torrent stats with real seeder and leecher numbers;
• direct HTTP download of selected torrents (currently in beta);
• fast growing and friendly community;
• customizable user area;
• many extra features like AJAX comments preview or Firefox search plug-in;
• Last.fm and imdb integration.

The website was opened to public on February 2009 and right now they already have over 100.000 visitors and over 700.000 page views every day (some more stats can be found here.) In less than a year their site became noticed even by some of the big torrent sites. If you are a regular torrent user, then check it out and let me know what do you think of it.

Link – www.kickasstorrents.com

No doubt that blogging is a good time pass which can be turned into a good source of income if used in a right way. I know most of new bloggers in greed of money fill up their blogs with loads of advertisement or write creepy products review that is not at all good for SEO and finally result in a mess.

If you are new blogger and want to earn a few bucks from blogging without spamming or writing creepy products review, then I will recommend you guys to start using Affiliate Marketing. According to Wiki Pidea – Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. It is an application of crowd sourcing. In simple language it is the commission paid by the product company which you promote.

Affiliate Marketing

Here are a few tips for starting Affiliate Marketing -

• Select products based on your niche - Always select a product based on your niche, means select products based upon the topic you blog on. For e.g, if you are blogging on “Blogging” niche, then you should try to sell premium themes (like thesis) or hosting services like Host Gator.
• Come up with your own ideas – It is always best to come up with your own ideas for promoting your product. Experiment with different banners, text links, or reviews. Keep these that bring good results, and change the others. Sometimes only change of few words or color of link can mean difference.
• Write a review of the product – Write a small review of the product you want to promote, letting the people know how good the product is. (Like our editor posted a small review about the HostGator web hosting service. If you want you can check this – post.)
• Join popular marketing forums – join some popular online marketing forums and make frequent contributions to the popular threads there. Remember you have to promote that product through your affiliate link not to spam forums.

These were some main points of Affiliate Marketing. BTW do you do Affiliate Marketing on your blog or site, if yes, then how do you judge which product is good for your blog and which one is bad?

<Image Credit>