Setting up proxy in Apple IPhone

Nowadays many Mobile Service Providers requires proxy support to be enabled and configured to allow GPRS internet via their network,

Since Apple IPhone hasn't been officially released in many countries and because of bonding with AT&T they haven't provided an option in their user interface to enable and setup proxy.

Here i am going to outline the steps required to enable and setup proxy in Apple IPhone

1) Turn off Auto-Lock Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘General’ -> ‘Auto-Lock’ and select ‘Never.’ You can turn it back on after you’re done with this, but for now disable it.

2) Enter APN, username and password Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘General’ -> ‘Network’ -> ‘Edge.’ For the APN field enter wap.voicestream.com. Make sure the username and password fields are empty.

3) Create proxy.pac Open your favorite text editor, and paste in the following code into a new document:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
if (isInNet(myIpAddress(), "10.0.0.0", "255.0.0.0"))
return "PROXY 216.155.165.50:8080";
else
return "DIRECT";
}

Save the file to your Desktop as proxy.pac.

The text file should be in UTF-8 Text Encoding Format.

Upload proxy.pac to the iPhone Now we need to copy proxy.pac to our iPhone’s /private/var/root/ directory using iBrickr or iFuntastic

Update preferences.plist located at /private/var/root/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist on your iPhone.
look for the area of the file where it has the lines:

<key>DeviceName</key>
<string>ip1<string></string></string>

Note that the text inside the string tags should be ip1 (as opposed to en0, ip2 or anything else). Now add the following chunk of xml (in blue) to the file in the appropriate place.

<key>Interface</key>
<dict>
<key>DeviceName</key>
<string>ip1</string>
<key>Hardware</key>
<string>com.apple.CommCenter</string>
<key>Type</key>
<string>com.apple.CommCenter</string>
</dict>
<key>Proxies</key>
<dict>
<key>ProxyAutoConfigEnable</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>ProxyAutoConfigURLString</key>
<string>file:///private/var/root/proxy.pac</string>
</dict>

<key>com.apple.CommCenter</key>
<dict>
<key>AllowNetworkAccess</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>Available</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>Setup</key> </dict>

By adding this code to the file, you’re instructing your iPhone to use a proxy

Phew you are done, restart your phone and fire up Safari.....

Correct way of configuring Thunderbird for Gmail's IMAP

After Google unveiled IMAP support to GMail, there has been lot of guides popped up describing how to configure Thunderbird for using it with GMail's IMAP,

Most of these guides are not describing the correct way of configuring Thunderbird to be used with Gmail's IMAP,

They are just suggesting to override folder mappings,
Many of the folders such as Drafts, Sent, are shown only as sub folders under Inbox,

The correct way is

We have to tell the IMAP root folder for Thunderbird to use,

1 -> Start thunderbird

If you are going to create a new account, then after completing the "New account setup" wizard

2 Go to Edit -> "Account Settings"

Select the newly created account and

3 Go to "Server Settings"
-> Check SSL under "Use Secure connection"
-> Click "Advanced" button,

4 In "IMAP server directory" field enter [Gmail]

5 Now go to "Copies and Folders"

6 For now remove Tick for "Place a copy in" under "When sending messages, automatically"

7 Choose "Local Folders" in both of the drop down menus under "Drafts and Templates"

8 Close the "Account Settings" windows

By doing this we are avoiding new extra label creation in our Gmail account.

9 Now click Inbox, you will be asked for account password, enter the password.

Now new folders will be populated under Inbox,
No more sub-folders.

10 Now follow step 5 and tick the "Place a copy in" and select the "Other" radio button then choose the Sent Mail folder from the newly created account.

11 For drafts just choose newly created account name from the drop down "Drafts folder on"

Configuring GMail's IMAP in Microsoft e-mail applications

Hello the lucky few who got GMail IMAP activated.

When you follow GMail configuration steps outlined in Supported IMAP Client List
you would be able to use IMAP in your Microsoft e-mail applications ,
But the experience won't be smooth,

You will encounter following problems.

• Headers with Full message will be downloaded by default in all folders,
  
• Sent Items folder won't contain the mails that you sent in past in GMail.
• Deleted Items folder won't have the mails that you deleted in GMail.
• Long folder tree
  

What this boils to down to is

• Inefficient Bandwidth Usage (When you have huge amounts of mail)
• Lesser integration

We will now see how to optimally configure Microsoft e-mail applications to access GMail's IMAP.

First configure GMail's IMAP in Microsoft e-mail clients as per the Google instructions outlined in Supported IMAP Client List

Next -> Right click All Mail, Spam, Starred folders and choose Synchronization settings -> "Don't Synchronize".

Next -> Right click All Mail, Spam, Starred folders and choose "Hide"

Now comes the important step.

Click Tools -> Accounts and Choose the IMAP account and click "Properties"
Go to IMAP Tab
Under the "Special Folders" remove the tick near "Store special folders on IMAP server"
Click OK.

Now remove the "Sent Items" "Deleted Items" and "Junk e-mails" folders by right-clicking on them and choose "Delete"
A dialog box will pop up asking you to confirm the action. Click "Yes"
You might receive an error, don't worry.

Thats it,

From now on

• Your e-mail client won't be wasting your Bandwidth and Time downloading mails from All Mails, Spam, Trash, folders.
• There won't be any duplicated folders in different names,
  
• Tighter integration

Note : This guide was written for Windows Live Mail, The steps mention here may slightly differ in other Microsoft e-mail applications,

Opensuse 10.3 does lot of tricks that needs so many clicks.

I am a seasoned Opensuse user from SUSE 9.1 days.

Until then i was a redhat fan.

Before trying Opensuse 10.3 i tried Ubuntu 7.04 that came with my computer magazine.
Except its looks, i was pretty impressed with it.

Then i wanted to return to Opensuse for checking out how cool Opensuse 10.3 experience would be.

I'll admit from here itself that i am Less-Is-More fan so i downloaded Opensuse 10.3 Gnome Edition to install on Intel Pentuim 4 3.4Ghz rig, having 1GB Ram and ATI X800 GPU,

The system also has Windows Vista Ultimate edition installed..

Normally i won't burn cds dvds for installing Opensuse distributions. I'll just download the ISO's and configure grub to boot from the iso.

I was very happy and comfortable in trying out Opensuse 10.3 in just single cd,

Installation

Installation went fairly smooth. No issues, But, as many distribution nowadays does it would have been very nice if Yast automatically added Windows Partitions in fstab automatically,
I hope Yast will add Windows Partitions only when i use its proposals. I was bored to do this kind of after installation tinkering in the current age of GNU/Linux.

Also as some reviewers noted, Yast is asking too many questions.

System restarted after installation for running the post installation routines.
Grub showed a nice bootsplash, but only in grub bootsplash appeared.
It seems it is the consequence of installing from ISO.
Yast didn't add frame buffer resolution into grub. That was the culprit. But i am tired in fixing this manually for each release.

For fixing this bug i fired up Startup Logs from Yast, but to my surprise the app started with an empty log, even after choosing the correct file, the log windows was empty.
Then i opened the bootlog via vt, cat correctly displayed the log,
Surely a bug in the Yast Log Viewer.

I had to fiddle with sax2 for hours for getting my lcd monitor tuned correctly. Ok, i don't want blame Opensuse for that,

Desktop

Finally i enabled compiz, I am surprised to see that it required a logout/login, Novell the lead developer of compiz itself not employing advanced techniques when Ubuntu n'all enables compiz instantly,

The updated Gnome Main Menu looks great. Very very user friendly.
One suggestion, many users doesn't finding the right click functionality to add favorites add to startup, and blaming application browsers, so add a visible add to favorite button.

The Update Notifier utility also worked well, but it is difficult to see what updates are available.

Multimedia

Installing codecs was made is with the 1-Click Installation method.
It installs everything, even dvd decryption plugin in a signe ymp.

Great job Opensuse Team.

Installing ATI drivers failed for me, but i won't blame Opensuse for this, it failed in Ubuntu too.

Yast

The Gnome-ified Yast control center looked great, very much consistent.
The problem is as some reviewers suggested it highly duplicates the gnome control center,

Individual Yast modules worked well. But the UI of the individual modules was not at all pleasing.
I wonder how much HIG the individual modules followed.

My ISP's dns server is not any fast, so i tried to switch to opendns. But it took lot of tries to successfully switch to, because Default Route setting was located in a weired location in wizard.
It again makes me wonder how much HIG compliant these gtk based Yast configuration modules are following.

Package Management

1-Click Installation worked superbly. It laid a great framework for future.
GNU/Linux Package management framework was already consistent and rock-solid comparing to other platforms, now Opensuse 10.3 marked a milestone in making the framework a child's play.

Some issues still there, 1-Click Installation doesn't care about already installed packages.
That is if i already installed the same version of Pidgin, 1-Click installation won't check the existence and downloaded and install Pidgin again.

Also toooooooo many popups are coming and going in the process of adding a repo and installing a package,

I suggest embed the progress bar/message into the wizard itself. Instead of showing the the
progress bar/message in a new window.

GTK2 based Yast Package Installer's UI also totally different and highly non-intuitive,
It won't allure to us it repeatedly,
Also why is it unnecessarily refreshing the repositories at the startup itself.

I will be very happy if Novell retire the SuSEconfig scripts completely, Most of the other distributions are doing well even without such a technology.

Nautilus was configured to open ,rpm package in the file-roller by default, i dunno how this kind of tinkering work missed the eyes of the development and testing process.

Also it would be nice if Novell retire its age old Industrial Icon set for gnome and use Tango Icon set by default,

Performance

Opensuse 10.3 highly lessened the startup time. It is a great leap comparing to the previous versions.

But i am not very happy in the startup performance of Gnome. It got worse after enabling compiz.

Yast Package Management stack has greatly improved in speed.
Adding repositories was breeze.

Application startup times also was not any instant, it took 2-3 seconds to start common gnome applications such gedit, calculator etc,

Conclusion

Opensuse is a solid feature rich distribution,
Opensuse 10.3 is put out with the latest technologies from the open source community and from the Novell team but without polishing well, atleast the Gnome edition.

Get Notifications when your favorite website is updated.

Hello Everybody

Not all web sites are adopted Web Feeds technology to notify its users when the site content gets updated.

Are you BSNL Dataone user like me who are wanting to keep an eye in latest Tariff updates automatically?

Do you want to be notified when your favorite software gets updated automatically?

Here comes http://www.ChangeDetection.com comes to the rescue.
When you add a site to monitor, ChangeDetection.com constantly monitors the site and if it changes ChangeDetection.com will sends you a notification to your e-mail address.

The service is best suited for static pages in which the site doesn't syndicate its contents via
web feeds, but updated frequently.

Best Firefox Theme for Vista users

Myfirefox is the best Vista compatible theme for firefox.

It perfectly blends with Vista's Aero Glass UI.
It also has integrated some features like Firefox Showcase, TextZoom from status bar etc. that you can only get by installing additional extensions
Also the theme is updated frequently.

Legally obtain non free softwares for free

Recently i came across a site called Giveaway of the Day.

The sites daily randomly gives away commercial non free softwares for free.

You don't have to register in that site to download the softwares.

You can click a software title to read comments written by others who already downloaded that particular software .

But you have to download the software before the offer finishes, you can't postpone it.