Still some More Google Hacks

In a previous blog entry, I introduced 2 Google advanced operators, (aka hacks) site:, and inurl:
I use those 2 hacks quite a bit to quickly find what I want via Google.

There are 2 more hacks that may come in handy. intitle: and filetype:

intitle: specifies keywords that you want included in the title of a web page.

filetype: defines the specific file extension, e.g., filetype:php will only return documents that have the file extension of php.

You can mix the hacks in a query, e.g.,

inurl:softwarejourney filetype:html

You can use boolean operators to narrow your search, e.g., use the not operator ("-"). E.g., -filetype:php

May you find what you are looking for.

Wireless Network Security Tips

I don't operate a wireless network. But, recently, I've taken some interest in wireless network security. After doing some research, I've compiled a list of TO-DOs for better securing a wi-fi network.

• If you have not done it already, change the default SSID for the wireless base stations (Access Points).
  
• Turn off auto SSID broadcast from your base stations.
  
• Make sure that WEP encryption is turned on (many base stations leave it off to improve throughput)
  
• Change the WEP key periodically, if feasible (not too many wireless devices)
  
• Restrict access to wireless network using the network cards' MAC address. This means you need to manually enter the MAC address of each network card into your base station.
  
• Change the default IP subnet that your base station is preset to (192.168.1.0).
  
• Disable the DHCP IP address generation feature of your wireless base station.
  
• Build a firewall between the wireless network and your trusted intranet.
  
• Turn off administrative access over wireless if possible.
  
• Upgrade your wireless network encryption to WPA/TKIP. This may require some geek help.
  

A portion of the above list comes from this article.

Flash Plugin Trouble at Ubuntu LiveCD

I've been booting my PC using the ubuntu LiveCD for the last couple of days. I'll spare you the pain of why, suffice to say I am experiencing a fallout from a Windows problem.

My experience with ubuntu during this trying time is that it did what I wanted to do. I used it check my webmail, and access the Web using Firefox. I was able to access my NTFS files (albeit read-only, but this is a more Linux issue rather than ubuntu-specific).

One problem was that I could not install the Flash plugin for the Firefox browser (1.02). The most obvious (easiest) way did not work: Clicking on the download plugin link on the web site which has flash movies on it.

Then, I started a rather long journey of finding out how. Along the way, I found 2 useful references for general information about ubuntu:

• Unofficial Ubuntu Guide
  
• Support for Proprietary Formats

It looked to me that I needed to install some flashplugin-nonfree directly from some ubuntu universe repositary. To do that, I need to first add that repositary to the package manager. This I could not do after some effort of following instructions given in the above links.

At this time, I gave up, and decided to fix my original problem that led me to use the livecd.

Tabbed Browsing with Firefox

A highly touted feature of the Firefox browsing is tabbed browsing. Basically, tabs allow you to open multiple web pages, each in a different tab. All these web pages are live. You can achieve all this of course with multiple browser windows. But the effort to manage these windows can be painful.

If you are a novice Firefox user, you may wonder where you can find these tabs. When you have only one web page open (such as when you open the browser), no tab bar (or tab) is visible because there is only one tab open.

At this point, if you want to open another web page in a separate tab, you can do a File/New Tab. And then, open the web page, and drag and drop it onto the tab bar.

What I suggest you do is change the value of a Firefox parameter, which will make the tab bar visible all the time (even when only 1 tab is open).

Simply go to Preferences/Advanced/Tabbed Browsing and uncheck the Hide the tab bar when only one web site is open box. With the tab bar open at all times, you can drag & drop a web page onto the bar.

Another bonus of tabbed browsing is that it is now possible to have multiple home pages. To do that, go to the Preferences window (Tools/Options on Windows, Edit/Preferences on Linux), select the General panel, and type the URLs, each separated by a pipe character (|), in the Home Page box. For example, http://softwarejourney.blogspot.com|http://www.google.com/

If you are an IE 6 user, you will find this tab feature useful. but then of course, you can wait until Microsoft releases IE 7 for your platform (Win XP or Win 2003) which will also have the tab feature.