How to Easily Switch Between Profiles On Firefox With ProfileSwitcher

One of the best things about Firefox is that it lets you create multiple user profiles on it. This feature might come in handy when you have siblings around working on the same computer. Firefox comes with an excellent profile manager of its own where you can create and manage profiles. The sad part is that there is no way you can quickly switch between the profiles directly from your browser. It’s like giving a five year old a wrapped chocolate bar he can barely open.

To fix the things we already covered an add-on called Switchy, a Firefox add-on that lets you create and switch between profiles quickly. Though the plugin did the task it claimed, there were some issues like there are weird symbols in the toolbar icon options, one can only create a profile and there is no option to remove or rename an existing one which sometimes made working on it difficult and annoying.

So today I would like to introduce another profile switcher for Firefox that does the task effectively yet elegantly.

ProfileSwitcher is a simple add-on for Firefox that lets you easily launch other profiles right from the browser menu. After you install the add-on restart your browser. Now when you click on the file menu you will find two new options. The first one is the Launch another profile and the second one is Open Profile Manager (Normal and Safe Mode).

As the name speaks, the first option lets you switch between profiles easily and the second one opens the default profile manager for Firefox where you can handle all your profile needs.

If you already have the necessary profiles created, just click on the file menu and choose your desired profile from the Launch Another Profile section. If you don’t have the profiles created, you can open the profile manager using the second option and create them.

Note: You will have to install the add-on across all the Firefox profiles you have on your computer manually.

There are some settings about the add-on behavior as well that you can configure from the add-on options page in the add-on manager.

My Verdict

Switchy’s developer has promised that he will come with a better add-on in the next update which will cover all the present shortcomings. Let’s see how well it works out but until then ProfileSwitcher is the best to go with.

What is Pen-Testing? | Pen-Testing vs.Vulnerability Assessment | How Vulnerabilities Are Identified?

What is Pen-Testing?

Penetration testing is the process of attempting to gain access to resources without knowledge of usernames, passwords and other normal means of access. If the focus is on computer resources, then examples of a successful penetration would be obtaining or subverting confidential documents, price lists, databases and other protected information.

The main thing that separates a penetration tester from an attacker is permission. The penetration tester will have permission from the owner of the computing resources that are being tested and will be responsible to provide a report. The goal of a penetration test is to increase the security of the computing resources being tested.

In many cases, a penetration tester will be given user-level access and in those cases, the goal would be to elevate the status of the account or user other means to gain access to additional information that a user of that level should not have access to.

Some penetration testers are contracted to find one hole, but in many cases, they are expected to keep looking past the first hole so that additional vulnerabilities can be identified and fixed. It is important for the pen-tester to keep detailed notes about how the tests were done so that the results can be verified and so that any issues that were uncovered can be resolved.

It’s important to understand that it is very unlikely that a pen-tester will find all the security issues. As an example, if a penetration test was done yesterday, the organization may pass the test. However, today is Microsoft’s “patch Tuesday” and now there’s a brand new vulnerability in some Exchange mail servers that were previously considered secure, and next month it will be something else. Maintaining a secure network requires constant vigilance.

Pen-Testing vs.Vulnerability Assessment

There is often some confusion between penetration testing and vulnerability assessment. The two terms are related but penetration testing has more of an emphasis on gaining as much access as possible while vulnerability testing places the emphasis on identifying areas that are vulnerable to a computer attack.

An automated vulnerability scanner will often identify possible vulnerabilities based on service banners or other network responses that are not in fact what they seem. A vulnerability assessor will stop just before compromising a system, whereas a penetration tester will go as far as they can within the scope of the contract.

It is important to keep in mind that you are dealing with a ‘Test.’ A penetration test is like any other test in the sense that it is a sampling of all possible systems and configurations. Unless the contractor is hired to test only a single system, they will be unable to identify and penetrate all possible systems using all possible vulnerabilities. As such, any Penetration Test is a sampling of the environment. Furthermore, most testers will go after the easiest targets first.

How Vulnerabilities Are Identified?

Vulnerabilities need to be identified by both the penetration tester and the vulnerability scanner. The steps are similar for the security tester and an unauthorized attacker. The attacker may choose to proceed more slowly to avoid detection, but some penetration testers will also start slowly so that the target company can learn where their detection threshold is and make improvements.

The first step in either a penetration test or a vulnerability scan is reconnaissance. This is where the tester attempts to learn as much as possible about the target network as possible. This normally starts with identifying publicly accessible services such as mail and web servers from their service banners.

Many servers will report the Operating System they are running on, the version of software they are running,patches and modules that have been enabled, the current time, and perhaps even some internal information like aninternal server name or IP address.

Once the tester has an idea what software might be running on the target computers, that information needs to be verified. The tester really doesn’t KNOW what is running but he may have a pretty good idea. The information that the tester has can be combined and then compared with known vulnerabilities, and then those vulnerabilities can be tested to see if the results support or contradict the prior information.

In a stealthy penetration test, these first steps may be repeated for some time before the tester decides to launch a specific attack. In the case of a strict vulnerability assessment, the attack may never be launched so the owners of the target computer would never really know if this was an exploitable vulnerability or not.

Local File Inclusion Exploiter Version 1.2 Download Free

Local File Inclusion Exploiter Version 1.2 Download Free by Valentin

Description
The Simple Local File Inclusion Exploiter helps you to exploit LFI vulnerabilities. After you found one, simply pass the URL of the affected website and the vulnerable parameter to this tool. You can also use this tool to scan a parameter of an ULR for a LFI vulnerability.

Usage./lfi_sploiter.py –exploit-url= –vulnerable-parameter=

Usage example./lfi_sploiter.py –exploit-url=http://www.example.com/page.php?file=main –vulnerable-parameter=file

Usage notes- Always use http://….
- When you pass a vulnerable parameter, this tool assumes that it is really vulnerable.
- If you do not know if a parameter is vulnerable, simply pass it to this script and let the scanner have a look.
- Only use one vulnerable parameter at once.
- This tool does not work with SEO URLs, such as http://www.example.com/news-about-the-internet/.
- If you only have a SEO URL, try to find out the real URL which contents parameters.

Feature list- Provides a random user agent for the connection.
- Checks if a connection to the target can be established.
- Tries catch most errors with error handling.
- Contains a LFI scanner (only scans one parameter at once).
- Finds out how a LFI vulnerability can be exploited (e.g. directory depth).
- Supports nullbytes!
- Exploit features: Dumps a list of interesting files to your hard disk.
- Supports common *nix targets, but no Windows systems.

Known issues- I know there is more about LFI than it is covered in this tool. But this is the first release,
and more features will be implemented in future versions.
- This tool is only able to handle “simple” LFI vulnerabilities, but not complex ones. For example: Some LFI vulnerabilities consist of two URL parameters or require to find a way around filters. In those cases, this tool unfortunately does not work.
- Like most other LFI exploiter / scanner, this tool here also has problems with handling certain server responses. So this tool does not work with every website.

Some notes- Tested with Python 2.6.5.
- Modify, distribute, share and copy the code in any way you like!
- Please note that this tool was created for educational purposes only.
- Do not use this tool in an illegal way. Know and respect your local laws.
- Only use this tool for legal purposes, such as pentesting your own website
- I am not responsible if you cause any damage or break the law.
- Power to teh c0ws!

All are Python scripts

Download Version 1.2

Download Version 1.1

Download Version 1.0

Exploring Google Music, the Amazing Cloud-based Music Player

Most of us, when asked about the default music manager and player we use on our computers, are likely to mention iTunes or Windows Media Player. Both of these, and the other popular desktop media players like Winamp and VLC are useful in their own right but they can only reign over your music as long as you are using your PC.

If you also listen to music on your smartphone or any other such portable device then getting your favorite tracks on them means manually syncing it with the computer, which after a while feels like drudgery.

You need a cloud-based music player that can show up your favorite playlists on any device which can connect to the Internet, be it a smartphone or a public computer in a different continent.

Google Music is an online music manager and streaming service, and also a music store that lets your play your music on the go. When I say that Google Music is an online music streaming service, don’t judge it wrong by comparing it to services like Grooveshark and Earbits. Google music does stream your songs on the clouds, but the songs should come from you. It is also available as an Android app and web based optimized versions for iOS devices.

Let us get started with Google Music and see how it works. Well, firstly, here’s the bad news: Google Music is available only in the US for now. And now the good news: you can easily override your IP using a US proxy and activate Google Music on your account.

Once you get Google Music activated on your Google account, it’s time to upload some music to it. To upload music from your local drive to you can use the Google Music Manager. You can upload as much as 20,000 songs to Google Music Manager for free and the music can be uploaded from iTunes, Windows Media Player or local folders.

Wait!! Don’t upload your whole collection just yet. Just upload few of them as there’s a lot more to it.

Once you have some of your albums uploaded on Google Music, you can play them right away. Just like iTunes, Google also has some auto-playlists with room to create them manually as well. Don’t worry if your music collection is huge. It’s a Google product and thus talking about its searching powers will be a waste of time. Stay rest assured that you’ll be able to find any track in seconds.

Google Music not only serves as an online music manager, but it’s a music store as well. You can buy, listen and download lots of paid and free tracks, and listen to them across all the devices you have Google Music installed on.

My Verdict

Of course, one question that came to my mind was, “Why should I waste my bandwidth to upload the music on the clouds and then again, spend the same bandwidth to stream them?” Well, I realized that’s a small price to pay for the universal access to my favorite songs irrespective of the device I am on (provided it can connect to the world wide web).

Have you tried out Google Music yet? Do you like it?

3 Awesome Add-ons to Watch and Manage YouTube Videos From Chrome Toolbar

Whenever I get some free time online, I resort to 2 of my favorite pastimes: scouring through Wikipedia or devouring videos on YouTube. I have already talked about two extensions I use in Chrome to enhance my Wikipedia browsing, and today I will reveal the extensions that help me manage YouTube videos in Chrome.

If you are like me who watches videos on YouTube quite often and uses Chrome to do that then these 3 add-ons should get you excited.

Video Controller

As the name speaks, Video Controller extension for Chrome lets you control your YouTube video right from the extension bar. You can play/pause, change tracks, adjust volume and replay the tracks. Though the plugin is not useful when you are viewing videos on YouTube one after another, it works as a great music controller for YouTube music videos. Don’t want to hear a track? Just skip it and replay the one you love without leaving the tab you are working on.

If you have two or more YouTube tabs running videos, all of them can be controlled simultaneously using this extension. You can click on the title text of the video to open the respective tab too. Overall, a very nifty YouTube tool for sure.

YouTube Feed

You probably know what YouTube channels are. You can think of channels as some user created category which is updated by an individual or an organization in a regular basis. You can subscribe to many available channels, and YouTube will notify you via an email regarding the addition of the new content.

YouTube Feeds is a simple add-on that notifies you right in your browser whenever new videos are available in your YouTube subscribed channels and friends. In simple words, you can think of this add-on as an RSS aggregator for your YouTube channels.

All you need to do is authenticate your YouTube account. The extension icon will notify you whenever a new video is available. You can control things like Number of feed items to retrieve, Polling interval, Number of feed items to show, etc. from the option page.

Lyrics for Google Chrome

Do you love to sing along with your favorite artists on YouTube, but don’t remember the lyrics well enough? Don’t worry, Lyrics for Google Chrome is a simple extension which will help you with that. After you install the extension, just click on the extension icon in the omnibar to show the lyrics next to the playing video. If the extension is not able to recognize the song, you can manually provide the name and search again.

Note: All the lyrics are fetched from LyricsWiki.

The extension not only works for YouTube but also for Grooveshark, Last.fm and Google Music.

Conclusion

I am sure these three add-ons will definitely enhance your YouTube experience. Do you have a personal favorite extension for YouTube, we have not mentioned above? Do let us know.

2 Ways to Arrange Firefox Tabs Vertically

The use of tabs has made browsing so much more efficient. A power user knows that browser tab management is a productivity boost. Firefox came late on the tabbed browsing scene, but it was a fast learner. The Tab Groups feature is a default way to manage your Firefox tabs if you have quite a few open. Thanks to Firefox add-ons, what’s not there by default gets covered adroitly by these add-ons.

Here are two add-ons which will give you a way to arrange your Firefox tabs vertically. Whether that gives your browsing an added edge depends on personal experience, but try it out and see for yourself.

Side Tabs

Side Tabs is a restart-less Firefox add-on that has been preliminary reviewed by Mozilla. It’s quite nice if you have a widescreen monitor as you can take advantage of all that screen estate by moving your tabs to the side. It gives you a few options to configure. For instance, you can set the width you want the vertical Side Tab to occupy (just drag with the double headed arrow on the edge). You can place it on the right or left of the screen. You can open a new tab by clicking on the ‘+’ sign or by double-clicking on the side tab.

Side Tabs is very simple in looks and function. No extra colors or themes for eye candy. A bit of a run with it found me getting used to side–tabbed browsing quite swiftly.

Tab Sidebar Reloaded

This is another Firefox add-on which takes the horizontally arranged tabs and places them vertically. Compared to the plain Jane looks of Side Tabs, Tab Sidebar Reloaded is like a rockstar. After installing the add-on, click on View –>Tab Sidebar to bring up the vertical tabs on the left. You can see that the open tabs are loaded on the side with thumbnails which give you active previews of their content. By default the top tab is rendered invisible when the vertical tab opens in its place. You can set these in the options:

You can drag the vertical tab area with the crosshairs to change their width. You can drag ‘n drop the tabs to change their order. Close the tabs with a click on the cross or open a new one with a double-click. The little thumbnails come with their own navigation buttons (history, stop and reload). But if you are a power user, then you will appreciate that this extension also works with other tab managers seamlessly.

Go for simplicity or opt for a more complete feature-set. These two add-ons give you the choice. Which one would you pick? Let us know.

How OSI 7 Layer Model Works? Understanding OSI Layers by Anuj Tyagi

This article aims to study the 7 layers of OSI model used by Computer system, when communicating with any other system in same/ different network.
Note: This article is not about understanding OSI layers. It is a practical approach for how OSI layers works & used by our computer system.

Application Layer: Application Layer provides user interface i.e. user directly interacts with this layer. The most common examples of applications which enable us to communicate through different protocols are :

• FTP (Eg. Filezilla Server Application)
• http/https (Eg. Firefox or any other Web-browser)
• SMTP ( via any email client like IBM LOTUS or Microsoft Outlook or WebBrowser)
• Telnet ( shell interpretaors like Command Prompt in windows/ terminal in linux distro)

As all of these applications accessed through computer .

Presentation Layer: This layer gets name from it’s purpose . This layer responsibility includes :

• Presents data to application layer and responsible for data translation and formatting. Eg. Translation of data we enter into browser to be converted into web language codes with different tags . Also it takes care of data which has been sent should be understood by browser to present it on user-interface .
• Compression and encryption of data .

I tried to capture a packet for PING REQUEST to www.google.com and on capturing packets got this in packets.
For compression, take an example of browser which uses HTTP Compression to save transfer data volume and speeds ups Web page load time. Firefox uses Gzip encoding to send data .

• We proved that presentation layer also used by & within computer system .

Session Layer : Session layer establish, maintain and terminates sessions between end devices. We can check current sessions in the system using netstat command and output will look like this :

This command is common for windows/Linux OS.

Transport Layer : This layer is concerned with reliability of data transfer .
It is of two types :

1. Connection Oriented (TCP)
2. Connectionless (UDP)

It is easy to find if connection is establish is in TCP/UDP state. Look at the above figure in which first column defines whether connection is established as TCP/UDP. This process is Protocol dependent .

It also take care of other responsibilities like :
Flow Control (windows) : Which find how much data should be send in one packet during transfer to minimize the data loss due to buffer overflow. It doesn’t send data but Segment into smaller pieces and size of which is defined through windowing feature. To show this in practical manner, I started to upload a file on mediafire.com .

By ping , we got ip address of mediafire.com .it’s 205.196.120.8 .
And Now I started to sniff the packets using wireshark on my pc. So, it’s easy to confirm that below captured packets are those during transfer from mediafire. .

So, what do we learn from above image ?
Source address: 205.196.120.8
Destination address: 192.168.1.3
Protocol type: TCP (connection oriented )
Win (window size ): 66240 bytes = 65 KB approx .
Source address is mediafire server as we are uploading data.
So, what conclusion it makes ? Data is being split up into 66240 bytes each and after reaching destination it being re-ordered.
The segments which are delivered are acknowledged back to the sender upon their reception.
Network Layer: Network layer works on Logical address which is IP addresses. A computer system understand IP addresses and communication and identification also takes place in computer system.

Any device which use ip-address for communication
Data Link Layer : The main focus of data link layer on use of MAC address. Whenever data flows through the LAN , communication takes place through MAC address .
So, to find if MAC address is being used during data transfer in lan or not ?
I start capturing again using wireshark .

Which shows Destination MAC address : 00:26:5e:ff:c5:fc for 192.168.1.3
Source MAC address: 00:26:5e:fc:10:Se for 192.168.1.2 .







Physical Layer :
This layer conveys the bit stream through the network at the electrical and mechanical level. It provides the hardware means of sending and receiving data on a carrier.
The Physical Layer defines electrical and physical specifications for devices. In particular, it defines the relationship between a device and a transmission medium, such as a copper or optical cable.
The major functions and services performed by the Physical Layer are:

• Establishment and termination of a connection to a communications medium.
• Participation in the process whereby the communication resources are effectively shared among multiple users. For example, contention resolution and flow control.
• Modulation, or conversion between the representation of digital data in user equipment and the corresponding signals transmitted over a communications channel.

In short, Computer translates the signal and instructions into Binary language (0 or 1). Hardware devices understand Binary language (including computer device components , connecting cables)


So, during transfer of data, various instructions and signals executed whichch converted into binary language . Similarly, when we transfer data from our system to any other then transfer takes place through various components and leave through cable.

Yersinia: How to analyzing and testing Network Protocols

Yersinia: How to analyzing and testing Network Protocols

System: Linux/Solaris/All BSD Platforms

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Purpose: Framework for analyzing and testing networks and systems

Homepage: http://www.yersinia.net/

Yersinia: Research work Amarjit Singh & Rishabh Dangwal | Yersinia - How to analyzing and testing network protocols

View more documents from amarjitsingh1984.

Brief Summary:

Yersinia is a free open source utility written entirely in C which is great for security professionals, pen testers and hacker enthusiasts alike. Yersinia is a solid framework for analyzing and testing network protocols, and it is a great network tool designed to take advantage of some weaknesses in different network protocols. Yersinia allows you to send raw VTP (VLAN Trunking Protocol) packets and also allows you add and delete VLAN’s from a centralized point of origin.

Other Useful Features:

One of the useful features I like using with Yersinia is the DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) attack. In this scenario a DHCP starvation attack works by broadcasting DHCP requests with spoofed MAC addresses. This is easily accomplished with Yersinia, if enough requests are sent; the network attacker can exhaust the address space available to the DHCP provider for a period of time. I have used this attack on my Netgear router WGT624 v2 and every machine, regardless of whether it is connected via a wired or wireless looses its network connection. Once the attack is stopped the DHCP clients can reconnect and are able to use the network again.

Yersinia also runs as a network daemon (#yersinia –D) and allows you to setup a server in each network segment so that network administrators can access their networks. Yersinia listens to port 12000/tcp by default and allows you to analyze the network packets traversing the network. This is very useful because you can determine the mis-configurations on you network segment and correct them before an attacker takes advantage of them. With Yersinia you can also launch HSRP (Hot Standby Router Protocol) attacks. The first option with sending raw HSRP packets is simply sending custom HSRP packets; you can then test HSRP implementations on the local network segment. Another option is becoming the active router with a fake IP which results in a Denial of Service (DOS). You can also can launch a MITM (Man in the Middle) attack by becoming an active router by editing the HSRP packets fields in the attacked routers, by enabling IP forwarding on the attackers machine and providing a valid static route to the legitimate gateway the traffic from the victim’s machine will go through the attacker’s platform and will be subject to analysis and/or tampering.

You can configure a CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) virtual device that is fully automated by selecting the correct parameters frames in CDP. My favorite attack vector is using the flooding CDP table attack. It also allows for capturing editing and manipulating the frames in the Yersinia GUI interface.

Disadvantages:
Only two disadvantages within Yersinia are worthy of mention. The first is that it was created solely for the *nix community and is not available for the Windows Platform. The Yersina team has requested that the community contribute to the Windows platform, so all the Windows enthusiasts cross you fingers and let’s hope it will be available on Windows in the near future. Secondly, the Yersinia output log is written in Spanish words so have your translator of choice at the ready!

ATTACKS:

Spanning Tree Protocol

Sending RAW Configuration BPDU
Sending RAW TCN BPDU
DoS sending RAW Configuration BPDU
DoS sending RAW TCN BPDU
Claiming Root Role
Claiming Other Role
Claiming Root Role dual home (MITM)

Cisco Discovery ProtocolSending RAW CDP packet
DoS flooding CDP neighbors table
Setting up a virtual device

Dynamic Host Configuration ProtocolSending RAW DHCP packet
DoS sending DISCOVER packet (exhausting ip pool)
Setting up rogue DHCP server
DoS sending RELEASE packet (releasing assigned ip)

Hot Standby Router ProtocolSending RAW HSRP packet
Becoming active router
Becoming active router (MITM)

Dynamic Trunking ProtocolSending RAW DTP packet
Enabling trunking

802.1QSending RAW 802.1Q packet
Sending double encapsulated 802.1Q packet
Sending 802.1Q ARP Poisoning

802.1XSending RAW 802.1X packet
Mitm 802.1X with 2 interfaces

VLAN Trunking ProtocolSending RAW VTP packet
Deleting ALL VLANs
Deleting selected VLAN
Adding one VLAN
Catalyst crash

DOWNLOAD HERE

How to Create Your Own Custom Search Engine Using Google CSE

Google has been drawing a lot of flak lately for the degradation in the quality of its search results. A lot of times the sites that end up on the first page of Google are nowhere relevant to your search query. That being said, Google still remains the best way to search online. However, if you are someone whose searches are usually limited to one or a few niches, and you do not seem to locate meaningful information through the regular Google search and instead end up visiting your favorite sites directly, then you could consider creating your own custom search engine using Google CSE.

This helps you create a search engine that only contains your preferred set of trusted websites and hence you get clean and reliable results every time you search for something. The service is free to use without any limitation of any kind and comes with advantages such as:

• CSE allows to add specific domain names, hence add your favorite sites there and limit search around “quality” sites only.
• Remove spam and “personal search suggestions” easily.
• Add your friends to contribute and use the custom search engine. Here, “contribute” means that the invited users can add more domain names to the search engine.

Here on Guiding Tech if you search anything using the search box on the top right of the page, you will see all the results that are specifically from Guiding Tech and that’s because we are using CSE limited to just one domain name here.

Steps to Create Custom Search Engine Using CSE

Step 1: To start, first login at Google and open Google Custom Search. On the homepage, click on the blue button that reads Create a Custom Search Engine.

Step 2: You will now see the three-step wizard to guide you with the whole creation process. The first step is all about the search description and the sites you would like to limit the search to. Once you have mentioned the necessary details, agree to the TOS (reading or skipping is totally your decision) and proceed to the next step.

Note: Google offers two editions of custom search, the Standard Edition and the Site Search details of which are as follows.

Standard edition gives you a tailored search experience using Google technology. You can also customize the look of your search engine and integrate into your site using an iframe. You must show ads alongside the search results, unless you are creating your search engine for a nonprofit organization, university, or government agency, in which case you can disable ads. You can make money from these ads with the AdSense For Search program.

Site Search starts at $100 per year and comes with additional options. You get guaranteed support and greater results customization options via an XML API. Ads are not shown next to search results.

Step 3: Actually, the creation of your custom search engine is already completed in the step above. This step is like a playing ground to test if the stuff’s working as expected. Just select the theme you like and test drive your custom search engine. If everything looks perfect, proceed to the next step but if you are not getting the results you expected, you can always go back a step and make changes.

Step 4: Finally, you will get the Custom Search element code which you can paste as HTML on your blog. You can also change the look and feel of the search tool before you integrate it to your page. Those of you who don’t have a blog or a forum, you can access your Custom Search Engine right from Google. You can go to the Google CSE admin page and select the search engine you have created and start searching. You could also bookmark it for referencing later.

You can make more than one CSE and maintain all of them from the admin panel. If you own a website and are an AdSense publisher, you can sign up to make money with Google AdSense.

Conclusion

One caveat to the above process of creating your Google-powered personalized search engine is that you need to know the names of the sites to include. For someone like me who subscribes to a huge number of sites in Google Reader, it wasn’t difficult. But if you want to create a CSE in a niche that you haven’t explored yet then you first need to invest time trying to unearth the best sources of content which you’ll ultimately create a search engine with.

Rest, it is a pretty cool way to efficiently and productively search the World Wide Web (or a small part of it).

How to Stitch Two or More Photos Using Windows Live Photo Gallery

Creating beautiful panoramic pictures by stitching two or more photos into one isn’t an easy task. It takes practice to first take those pictures, then choose the right combination of photos, and finally stitching them in a way that the person looking at the photo has a hard time making out if it was a single panoramic shot or several photos blended into one. We have talked about this stuff before and since it’s a lot of fun, we’ll talk about it today too (the tool will be different as you might have already guessed).

Windows Live Photo Gallery is useful personal photo editor and organizer that helps you organize and edit your photos, batch tag faces, share them online and fuse multiple photos to give them a better finish. In this article, we will see how to stitch a series of photos to create beautiful panoramic pictures.

Five Easy Steps to Create your Panorama

We’ll leave the task of taking the pictures and identifying the right ones to combine to you. That’s a significant part of the process mind you, so you should invest time in that. Once you have lined up the photos, stitching them can be as simple the steps below:-

Step 1: First and foremost, you will have to import your photos from your device by connecting it to your machine. If you have them pre-saved, you may include the folder or create a new one. These options are stacked under the New section of Home tab.

Step 2: Once you have your collection you need to select the series you want to stitch together. Be careful to select photos with some overlap, failing which you might be disappointed with the result.

Step 3: Next, move over to the Create tab and hit the Panorama icon under the Tools section. Just a few minutes and you’ll find yourself rejoicing over your first panoramic image.

Step 4: The result of Step 3 is pulled down to an editable interface. You will be able to notice that the image has distorted edges. This happens in the attempt to align all your images. Select the crop option to cut out the required portion.

Step 5: On the image, drag the crop canvas and guide lines to set a perfect selection. Finally, apply crop and save your masterpiece.

Conclusion

I think I re-discovered my love for creating panoramas when I tried out this feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery in the process of writing this post. I am actually going to do it a lot more over the weekend.

I would advise that you get a feel of the tool and understand the type of series and overlaps you need to click before you head out to your next vacation.

Best of Guiding Tech in Jan, 2012 and Cool Links From the Web

Following are our posts from last month that our readers appreciated the most. We’ve also got some nice links from our friends that you’ll find use for.

Best of Guiding Tech in Jan, 2012

1. 5 Very Neat Uses of Wolfram Alpha Search Engine

Some really cool ways to use this unique search engine.

2. How to Save Multiple Webpages As a Zip File in Chrome Using ZipTabs

A quick way to save entire webpages in bulk for offline usage.

3. 3 Useful Tools to See Who is Using Your Home Wi-Fi

If you’ve got Wi-Fi at your home then you ought to know about this. Better safe than sorry.

4. An Overview of the New Facebook Timeline Apps

Facebook introduced new apps for its timeline feature last month. We check if they are worth the trouble of installing.

5. A Useful Guide to Using Online Tools and Apps For Staying Fit

A no non-sense guide to using web apps for learning about and tracking your fitness.

6. How to Quickly Disable (or Enable) Chrome Extensions without Going to the Extensions Page

A quick and easy way to disable and enable chrome extensions.

Cool Links From Our Friends

1. What’s the Best Startup Manager for Windows?

A very detailed comparison of different startup managers and which one you should use.

2. Reviewing Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security 2012

Another nice post from 7Tutorials on how good or bad Trend Micro’s latest internet security software really is.

3. How to Sync Your iPod With Another PC Without Losing Your Music

iPod users should bookmark this.

Understanding Google Alerts and 7 Interesting Ways to Use It

From price drop alerts to tracking movies, we have covered a few alert and notification services which help you stay on top of things. Alerts are just what they sound like – they are messages that are sent to you when the alert service comes across a new result. There are specialized alert services galore, but the Big Daddy of them all is Google Alerts which has existed for quite some time.

Think of Google Alerts as your own personal homing missile; or a Google Search robot on automatic mode. Your ‘missile’ is armed with a keyword (a search term you are looking for). When Google Alerts comes across the keyword in web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs, it sends you the results as an email. You can also subscribe to Google Alerts via Google Reader or any other feed reader.

As you can see, it’s easy to set up your keyword search with Google Alert. You can fine-tune it by choosing Result type (search everything or optionally search – news, blogs, videos, discussions, or books); How often; and How many (all results or only the best results). To make Google Alerts more powerful, you can also use Google’s basic search options and also advanced search operators. Google Alerts lets you see a preview of the results and that alone helps you carefully work on creating the perfect alert.

But as the proof of the pudding lies in its eating, let’s go over the uses we can put Google Alerts to:

Monitor your Favorite Topics

With just a keyword, you can let loose Google Alerts and allow it to pick up mentions of your favorite topic as they break on the web.

Track What the Web is Saying About You

Reputation tracking is not only limited to companies and brands but also individuals. Google Alerts is a good enough tool for the job, as you can turn ‘ego-Googling’ on its head and monitor where and when your name appears.

You can watch out for identity theft by using personal data as keywords. Examples could include – your address, your phone number, your professional designation, your email address, your driver’s license number. But avoid using – social security numbers, credit card details, bank account numbers, and mother’s maiden name (as it is used for verifications too).

A Roving Plagiarism Checker

Insert a line of unique text from any of your published works (within double quotes) in the Search query field. Any mention of it on the web could catch the eye of Google and help you look into it further.

Track Updates and Software releases

With Google Alerts you don’t have to go out looking for product launches and update notifications. Set it up with the product name of your choice and watch your inbox.

Track Your Favorite Author

If you follow someone’s writing, the inpostauthor: operator can be a quick way to distill all the places where he is being talked and his latest writing.

Break Your Own Writer’s Block

Stumped for ideas? Maybe Google Alerts can help with a combo of your favorite keywords (could be the topics you like writing on) separated by the ‘OR’ operator.

As a Career Tool

Apart from monitoring your reputation online, or monitoring the company where you would like to work, Google Alert can also be set up to net you a job that’s just breaking. Let’s say you are interested in a Quality Analyst job in IBM and that too in your city. The above screenshot shows you how it would look like.

These seven points serve to illustrate the power of Google Search and Google Alerts which catches them while you go to take your nap. Experiment with Google Alerts and the entire range of Google search operators. Tell us about the use you would want to put it to.

Wallbase: A Fantastic Tool for Finding Fabulous Wallpapers

What do you stare at for obscene amounts of hours every single day? Let’s face it, your computer has become an invaluable tool and asset. You’ve grown accustomed to staring at your desktop and the icons on it, thinking about what you need to get done or finding a tool you need to use. Your wallpaper can help define you. Your exposure to it is so frequent and lengthy that you can’t help but be affected by it. Ever clear your desktop icons and use a simple wallpaper and realize how much less stressed out you feel?

InterfaceLIFT can be a great tool, but it’s archives are mostly centered around photography or graphics manipulation. What about the fantastic elements that appeal to our more imaginative sides?

Wallbase is a collection of wallpapers that has something for everyone. Whether you’re an avid animé lover (there’s a whole lot of that), car enthusiast, science geek, art lover, or zen minimalist, you’ll find something that will draw your attention.

As you can see, Wallbase has a very simple and clean interface. It doesn’t have any unnecessary text, and features thumbnails of potential wallpapers.

The main navigation is done all from the top of the screen. Here’s a closer look:

You can sort images according to a variety of filters. There are categories (Wallpaper/General, Manga, and High Resolution) that you can turn on and off. You can also choose to view NSFW or sketchy pictures, or sort according to screen resolution or aspect ratio. These sorts of filters set Wallbase apart from other archives. Wallbase also features a great ever-scrolling script, which means you no longer have to move your mouse. This makes it all the more addictive.

When you actually come upon a piece of wallpaper you like, you click on it. Here’s what a specific wallpaper page looks like:

The main focus of Wallbase is always the image, and this page is no exception. There are also tags on the left-hand side that show how many users have favorite-d this specific image, and the file format. You can zoom into the image by clicking on it, and then Save the image right onto your computer.

Users of Wallbase also choose to create their own collections of wallpapers. You can discover people who have similar tastes to you, and find wallpapers that they love! Even better: some people have organized them into very neat categories. Depending on your mood, you can find still photography, cartoons, or cars all from the same user.

Wallbase has a great archive of all types of wallpaper. It has a browsing experience like few other websites dedicated to wallpapers, and has something for everyone. You may find yourself on it for much more time than you’d previously intended to spend (dear Lord, the last thing we need is another 9gag)! I hope it serves as a good source of renewal, energy, and inspiration.