Techreevu's Google Voicehub Can Dial Letters!

I couldn't remember the number for Slydial so I typed 267-slydial directly into the Google Voice Desktop-based dialer I use (now called VoiceHub, originally called Lev's Google Voice app???). And no, there's still no way to actually place calls through the Internet only unless you were one of the fortunate few who got a Gizmo5/Gizmo Project account before they were bought by Google, AFAIK. Dialing by letters doesn't work on the GV web interface, so apparently the Techreevu app is doing the conversion.

Should I keep these Google Voice related posts here or move them over to my Google Voice Fanatic Blog? What do the three readers of my blog think?

What's The Most Secure Windows Firewall?

The reason I ask is, Google isn't much help in this most important security matter. What do I recommend to my computer repair business customers who trust my judgement? I don't like to tell a customer that there is no perfect firewall/anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-rootkit program, even though it's true, as any who has ever read the Phrack e-zine or 2600 magazine knows.

Don't Pay Best Buy To Uninstall Their Adware/Malware/Trial Software

My sister bought a laptop from Best Buy that had a lot of problems almost right away. The Trend Micro combination security/virus scanning software had some error. Also it had ran really slowly and had problems with the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer. Finally, it had a horrendous amount of other garbage installed and trial-ware to boot. Me, being the families system administrator and technical support by default, was at that time out of town on this occasion. Best Buy charged a friend forty dollars to uninstall their junk and fix all the problems she had, when only a mere two months old! (There's a program that can remove most of the junk programs installed on new computers called PC Decrapifier). She could have just returned it to HP, but for various reasons, she didn't want to take that course of action. Ironically, a few months later, and just eighty days before the warranty was ended, another problem with the system's memory cropped up which was fixed for no charge by HP. The screen cracked on its own too! Moral of the story: Best Buy is pretty bad. HP is less awful.

As a general rule, if you want a good computer with hardware that will last, get the business-class models.

Publicly Posted Google Voicemails are listed in Yahoo! Search

Concerning this post, Google Voice Blog: About Voicemail and Privacy

They are still in in Yahoo!, of course, as every SEO'er knows Google is the most strict in removing robots.txt content. Although in this case, Google probably manually edited the results for privacy reasons.

My Google Wave Invitation Request

Here's what I asked on the Google Wave invitation request web site.

I want to collaborate with others in my corporation in real-time and prefer to use web-based tools to enhance productivity and avoid information being locked up in silos such as inboxes and MS Sharepoint behind a firewall.

What did you ask in your request?

Howto Check Your Voicemail From Any Phone For Free!

This guide will show you how-to check your voice-mail from any phone for free! This works well especially if you have some sort of unlimited long-distance phone system, like MagicJack, Voip, or Google Voice with a Friends & Family cellular phone.

There are two ways to do this. The first and easiest way is by calling your own phone number, then when your phone goes to the 'leave a voicemail' prompt, press the Star Key (called Asterisk in the phone world) and enter your voice-mail pin code and Bam! You're in.

There's a more complicated way to do this (and also a way to leave someone a voice mail without even ringing their phone or using Slydial [Slydial does leave your number but only rings for half a second]), but I'll add it to this post later because it's not possible to explain in a few words.

Google Voice/Grandcentral Email Support

IF you ever need help email voice-help (at) google.com with your pin#, google voice number, cell number, the date you opened the account and associated google account username. Also it would be smart to send a carbon-copy (cc) to these addresses,

support (at) grandcentral.com, grandcentral-help (at) google.com, accounts (at) grandcentral.com

Google Voice/Grandcentral Number/Business Cards iPrint Promo

I'm posting the the full html (minus my email and phone number) of the 'Google Voice Number Cards - powered by iPrint.com' landing page below since people are so curious what the page actually says as opposed to a screenshot.

Free Google number cards, powered by iPrint.com
Business Cards

Hand out your Google number
In celebration of the relaunch of GrandCentral as Google Voice we are giving away 50,000 sets of 25 Google number cards totally free. Yep, shipping, printing and everything is included. Have a little fun and show off your Google number.
Calling Personal Business
Layout Layout Layout
Layout Layout Layout
How it works:
1) Select one of three styles
2) Add the information you'd like on the card
3) Fill in your shipping and email information (iPrint will use this only for the purposes of confirming and sending you your cards)
4) Your personal Google number cards should come in 10-12 days

(Offer available to U.S. continental street addresses.)


Google Voice Support iPrint.com Customer Support
Business Cards Copyright © 1996-2009 iPrint.com All Rights Reserved. Terms and Conditions


Here's a screenshot of what your Google Voice 'inbox' looks like with the promotional business card invitation:






Oh yeah, one more thing, Google Voice is great!

Google Coop Isn't Listed On Google's Product Page

Concerning Official Google Blog: How to steer clear of money scams, Google Coop Search and Custom Search Isn't Listed.

How To Forward All Mail In Gmail Without A Filter

Here's how you do it: You download it with POP3 to the other gmail account.

In the account that needs all of it's mail forwarded, select this option under POP3/IMAP:

1. Status: POP is enabled for all mail that has arrived since xx/x/xx
(x) Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)

In the account where you want the mail forwarded to, just download all your emails! Use you Google Account username for the username (without the @gmail.com domain), enter your password, and choose port 995, smtp server smtp.gmail.com amd Use SSL. Don't select "Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server" as gmail doesn't support it, and will give you an error.

There are other similar articles around the net but none have this solution.

I'm still waiting to be 100% sure it works as my account still says "checking mail" but it doesn't show anything yet in my new account.

Update as of May 20, 2009: It downloaded all the email from the old Google-Mail account but sent them all to spam. But hey, it worked! Now the last thing is export my contacts and import them into the new one.

SPAM: Bangalore Wimax

here's an interesting piece of spam. I received this exact same message twice and it passed Gmail's filter. Was it from signing the freetheairwaves petition? I tried texting the number through Gmails SMS function but it didn't work through India, using the India and Bangalore code (91 and 80).

Dear Friend,

Greetings to you,

Its time to Switch to the Broadband, “The WireFree way”. Now available @ 90% of Bangalore....

Yes, now you can get the power of the Broadband at your Home or Office without a phone or a modem.

Key Benefits:

1). Unlimited usage of 1mbps. 50% off on monthly rental*
2). 100% off on Installation.
3). Assured Gift for every Reliance WiMAX Bookings made before 31st March, 2009.
4). WireFree availability of Broadband throughout Bangalore.
5). Bangalore covered @ 90%.
6). Options of Shifting or changing the plan at any time.**

Special Savings & Offers for Bookings before 31st March, 2009.....

To get more details and for bookings:

Just SMS "wimax" to 9xxxxxxxxx
Or
Call - Mobile: 9xxxxxxxxx
Or
Email: mary@reliancewimax.info

Thank you & Best regards,

Mary. B.

* offer of 50 % off on monthly rental available only for customers who apply for Reliance WiMAX before 31st March, 2009 12:00 p.m.

** Minimum of 30days usage on starter plan compulsory for opting of change in plan. Shifting charges applicable.

Don't Use Yahoo! Web Services

Here's why: they are shutting down the Yahoo! Briefcase. If you're going to shut down a web service, why start it in the first place? Okay, I digress, Google shut down The Google SOAP Web Service, which a lot of SEO's and spammers liked very much. Although, to Google's credit, they closed it down to signups for new API keys, and to this day continue running the service for existing keys. Remember when Yahoo! shut down it's music store and took its DRM server with it? Although they rethought their actions and gave customers refunds, just the idea that they would consider shutting it down so quickly is scary. From a consumer/user standpoint it makes me trust them that much less. Make some good decisions for once Yang! Yahoo! is the Microsoft of the Internet Age. Why? Because everyone uses Yahoo! for no good reason other than they were there first.

Login To Multiple Gmail's/Blogger/Google Services With Chrome

Have you ever wanted to open multiple gmail accounts or use other Google services all at the same time for testing purposes? In the old days there was CookiePie for firefox (which never really worked with Gmail). Just use Google Chrome's Incognito mode by pressing Ctrl-Shift-N. That is it! Your original (aka non-incognito, non-InPrivate, non-Private-Browsing) windows will continue logged in as normal when the Incongito windows are closed. It seems that each Incognito window shares cookies between that windows tabs, but not among any other windows, Incognito or not. Make sense? You can open as many different copies as you want up to your amount of memory, since nothing is ever written to disk, but rather is stored in memory.

This should also work with any other service that doesn't tie logins to IP addresses, but to cookies like Facebook, Mypsace, etc.... I don't really know if it works with IE8's In-Private browsing because I'm allergic to Microsoft software, and use it only when forced to.

Be careful composing in Blogger or using another service though, as nothing is cached at all. If you go back a post that wasn't saved as a draft will be gone.

Update (April 23, 2009): It seems that you can only login to two Google accounts at a time, one in an incognito window, and one in the regular window. Also it seems that playing Windows Media Player videos in Incognito mode leaves traces in Internet Explorer!

Scribd.com DjVU Support

I contacted Scribd.com via their feedback page, and was pleasantly surprised to have actually gotten a response from a real person. It appears that they will support DjVU documents in the future. I pasted their response below:

Hi Justin,

Thank you for contacting Scribd.

We do not support djvu files at this time, but we are working to provide support in the future.

Regards,

Gary

Google Personalization (Eg. The pws parameter)

Compare this:

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS291&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=CL.TechSupport.Jobs@gmail.com&pws=0

with this:

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS291&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=CL.TechSupport.Jobs@gmail.com&pws=0

I thought it was curious that of this obvious craigslist spam, Google showed me only the result from Atlanta, which is a word I've been searching for a lot lately, eg atlanta jobs, employment, etc.... Is this a secret? No. But it's another piece of the puzzle. Btw, hittail is still the easiest way to SEO your site!

Google Gears and Myspace: Cool

So what exactly does it do? Does it really enable searching and sorting of your myspace inbox? I never installed used because it just has too many privacy implications. Never use it on a computer other than your own (it stores your myspace inbox on your hard drive!).

Free Laptop Factory Service/Repair/Maintenance Manuals

I've created a new custom google search engine here, which limits searches to only sites which have free service manuals to download for common Laptops, such as eserviceinfo.com and sonyrecovery.co.uk. As an example, here is a search for Acer 1300.

If anyone knows the URL's to electronics manufacturers internal, partner-only, or ASP (authorized service provider) support portals (and hopefully passwords too ;-) such as csd.acer.com.tw please leave a comment below, email me, or give me a phone call.

Also, if you need your computer, laptop, printer, or cell phone repaired, or home or business computer networking, data recovery, and you're in the New Orleans area I am available for business. My contact information is below.





Here's an RSS feed that may interest you ;-)

Plugoo Spam

This message was sent through plugoo. I'm pretty amazed it took so long to get my first plugoo spam:
4:19 PM plugoobuddy: [OFFLINE MESSAGE] by [xixo1951] ERROR > "102 my spans dont del"

Sweet.

MSN/Live/.Nyet Web Messenger Sucks!

I just tried logging in to the MSN Webmessenger and I get this lovely message:

We can't sign any more people in right now. Please try signing in again later.

Perhaps Microsoft should consider using Google App Engine.

Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) For Malware Research, Hashes, etc....

I've been working as a PC technician, and to make it easier to identify what Windows processes are legitimate and which ones are bad, and I've created a custom google search engine which currently searches four Microsoft Windows process information sites, file.net, bleepingcomputer.com, neuber.com, and auditmypc.com. Of course, just this alone won't fix everything, but I find this to be kind of useful. If you find another site that offers real information, please leave a comment below.

Another search engine I've created with Google CSE is one that searches anti-scam sites such as ripoffreport etc....

Google's Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) Knob Tweaking

It looks like the query deserves freshness knob has been tweaked a little too far. A query for details in El Google shows the USGS data for the recent quake in Sichuan, China as the second result. The only curious thing I can see in the code is that the details link is the first link after the first H1 and H2 HTML tags.

HyperTerminal Private Edition 6.3

Since HyperTerminal no longer comes with Windows Vista, you get still download Hilgraeve's HyperTerminal private edition 6.3 (HTPE), the last and final free version, from the Internet Archive here.  It should install and work fine under Vista/7/Server 2003/2008/2012. You may need to disable uac or run the installer as an administrator.

Update: 7.0 is here but it is trialware. 

There is an old FAQ from 1999 here.

The source code for Hyperterminal is in the Windows 2000 source code (htpe version 4) that was leaked.

If you are working with binary data or other difficult data streams, I strongly suggest using Realterm instead.  To quote their page: 

Realterm is a terminal program specially designed for capturing, controlling and debugging binary and other difficult data streams. It is far better for debugging comms than Hyperterminal. It has no support for dialing modems, BBS etc - that is what hyperterminal does.

Is Mint.com Safe?

Is mint.com really as secure as they purport it to be? The blogosphere tends to disagree, except for wilkinsonlaw and a few others. But is it really?

At least you are logged out automatically after ten minutes. But if you've ever submitted a password reset request on the Mint.com web site, the link stays active for a long time, much too long. It was still active a month after the request. I emailed the webmaster as I couldn't find any other contact address on the site, and got back a boilerplate response, naturally:

Please do the following to recover your password:

1. Go to the login page at: https://wwws.mint.com/recovery.event
2. Click on the “recover it” link next to “forgot your password”.
3. Enter in the email address you used to create your Mint account.
4. An email will be sent to the email address you specified (note: the link is valid for only two hours).
5. If you don’t see the information in your inbox, please be sure to check your spam and bulk mail folders as well (ISPs sometimes route emails to these folders).

At least the email got through to a person and didn't sit around forever in unread email lalaland. You have to give them credit on that, in this age of email inundation. On a tangent, is knowledge management the solution? Back to the topic, I emailed them saying that email can be captured and snooped. All I ever got back was the standard "a highly trained team of monkeys is feverishly working on the situation" automatic reply email.


Today I reset my password again, and the same thing happens. The reset link stays alive after using it. It's not a big deal if you use the link, because you'll notice if someone snooped and reset it. You'd think Mint would send an email alerting you that your password has changed.


Here's the reset email:

This email was sent in response to your request to recover your password. To reset your password and access your account, click on the link below.

Reset your password [https://wwws.mint.com/recovery.event?username=email@example.com&token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&utm_source=xxx&utm_medium=xxx&utm_content=xxx]

The link will reset your forgotten password, and let you create a new one. For security purposes, this link will remain active only for the next 2 hours.

If you did not request that we send this Forgotten Password email to you, please report this email to us at: support@mint.com

Thank you for using Mint.com!

Cheers,
The Mint Team

Also they are using a google analytics urchin tracking link, which is kind of irksome for the paranoidal borderline-schizo types like me.

One final thing, I also get a "Connection Partially Encrypted" message in the Firefox "Page Info" window.

Search Engines User Data

I just read this article Search engines warned over data, and it really makes me mad. Why can't the search engines just use a unique id for each user, using a one-way hash function which cannot be decoded back to the original IP address unless it's brute-forced, which would take years just to get one ip address unless you're the NSA with their alien technology?

Or is the real privacy problem with relating different searches together, and not ip addresses? They could merely be removing ip addresses like they say and not removing your GUID linking the searches together for their relational data.

I hope someone at Google reads this.

Also I doubt Yahoo! has done anything like the article says, and if they have, when why did they give up data on the chinese dissident blogger who is now sitting in jail? It's hypocrisy, and Yahoo!'s privacy reputation is now ruined forever. They are the Micro$oft of search engines.

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep SEO Contest

Enter it today?

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep

But Alas, The Internet Archive Does Have Search

Bow down in my eliteness for this nugget of knowledge:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/people.netscape.com/*

I found an really amazing quote on Jamie Zawinski's old page:

``We all enter this world in the same way: naked; screaming; soaked in blood. But if you live your life right, that kind of thing doesn't have to stop there.''

-- Dana Gould

Gmail Custom TimeTM

Google's newest april fools joke, Gmail Custom TimeTM, brings up a great idea for Gmail, or any email service or architecture. What about sending an email in the future? If my eight year old Nokia phone can schedule an SMS text message at a certain point in the future, why can't gmail?

read more | digg story