Airtel has announced a special offer for its all Fixed Line Customers. All Airtel Fixed Line Users will enjoy free calls to other Airtel Fixed Line Customers on 7th, 14th, 21st Feb 2010 (i.e. The upcoming 3 Sunday’s). The usage of Fixed phone have been heavily affected by the recent price drops of calls rates on mobile phone’s. Most of the fixed line operators are now depending on broadband users.

Valentine’s Day is also round the corner. This move proves to be fruitful for the fixed line customers of Airtel. So go ahead and enjoy endless conversations with your valentine’s or closed one’s on these Sunday’s.

Webmasters, Blogger, Authors are usually excited about knowing how there content is being is getting feedback over the Internet. Most popular way to do so is to track in-links to their site from the web. There are a bunch of sites which offer the same, but what better than a search engine. Scanning search engine’s index is one effective way of tracking back links. We have reviewed the top search engine methods on how to detect back-links to a site. Here are some of the queries we have tested over a while:

Using Google Web Search:

Google provides a search filter known as “link”. It is basically designed to show the sites in google index that link to your site. A example link query is shown below:

Query: link:www.lifebaker.com

Sample Link: http://www.google.com/search?q=link:www.lifebaker.com

You can even create a Google Alert so that you get informed every time a new update is added to Google’s index.

But this method yields very few results, so I gave other queries a try and found the following one to work quite good for detecting latest in-links to your blog. It shows the latest links being indexed by Google which have back-links to your site.

Query: http://lifebaker.com/* -site:lifebaker.com

Sample Link: http://www.google.co.in/search?q=http://www.lifebaker.com/*%20-site:lifebaker.com&tbs=rltm:1

Using Google Blog Search:

This is a very common method in use by many blogger but its accuracy has reduced over time. The in-links you find in Wordpress panel are also found using Blog Search RSS feed.

Query: link:http://lifebaker.com

Sample Link: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=link:http://lifebaker.com

Feed Link: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?q=link:http://lifebaker.com&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss

Using Yahoo:

Yahoo’s Site Explorer is another goog method for tracking in-links to your blog.

Query: link:http://lifebaker.com

Sample Link: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http://www.lifebaker.com&bwm=i

Using Bing:

We can use the same query as we used above for Google to search inlinks using Bing. Bing even provides a rss feed for your queries if you add &format=rss at the end of the query.

Query: http://lifebaker.com/* -site:lifebaker.com

Sample Link: http://www.bing.com/search?q=http://www.lifebaker.com/*+-site:lifebaker.com

Feed Link – http://www.bing.com/search?q=http://www.lifebaker.com/*+-site:lifebaker.com&format=rss

Using Technorati:

Technorati is one of the oldest service to provide in-links but its accuracy has decreased over time. You can find in-links to your blog from other blogs indexed by Technorati.

Conclusion:

There are a bunch of more services which offer the same. But mainly I prefer using Google Blog Search, Google Latest Web Search and Bing to track the links. Note: LifeBaker is a new blog. We have limited posts as of now, thus above link might not yield much results. Try it on some popular blogs and you will be able to note the difference. Image via Flickr.

India and some other countries users might be wondering where has the Yahoo Call button disappeared. Well in some countries government has restricted usage of VOIP and to secure itself, Yahoo has taken measures to disable PC-to-PC calls in these region by disabling calling features in local version of Yahoo Messenger.

However this limitation can be easily by-passed using a simple hack, well it cannot be called a hack even. All you have to do is un-install the current Local Version of Yahoo Messenger from your system and download the US version of Yahoo! Messenger. When you visit the Yahoo Messenger’s site, it automatically selects the local version to your country by scanning your IP address.

To bypass it you have to directly download the US version from Yahoo Server. We have provided the Direct Download link below. The step-by-step instructions for windows users are as follows:

1. Goto Start -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs.
2. Select the Yahoo Messenger from the list.
3. Click on Un-Install button.
4. Goto My Computer -> C: (or the drive in which windows is installed) - >Program Files.
5. Delete the Yahoo Folder if it still exist.
6. Now download the US version by the links provided below.
7. Install the downloaded file.
8. Run the newly installed Yahoo Messenger.
9. If you are still unable to see the Voice option, you must restart the system and then login again.
10. Enjoy.

Please Note: Un-installing Yahoo! Messenger will delete all your chat history. Also the local rooms and audibles of your country won’t be accessible in the US Version.

If it still not works for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users, you may also have to delete the following paths before installing the US version.

C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Local\Yahoo

C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\LocalLow\Yahoo

C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Yahoo

Download Link for US Version of Yahoo Messenger

You can directly download 10.0.0.1102 US version by clicking here, or you may get the latest version from FileHippo.

Virgin Mobile in partnership with Tata Teleservices is raising the heat in Telecom industry again. A few months back industry was shook up with the pay-per-second plans. Now Virgin Mobile is all set to revamp the Indian Telecom Industry once again with its low calling rates.

Interesting part is Virgin Mobile uses the network of  Tata Teleservices and still being able to provide calling at such a low rate. So now you can imagine how telecom operators used to fool us with high charges an year back.

The group will start its services from southern region of India and other parts will be followed up till end of March 2010. Virgin Mobile will provide STD calling rates at 20p/min without any top-up packs, in order to capture the market space, however the other tariffs details are yet to be declared.

Not only this but they will also be offering itemised bills to all their customers at no extra charge. Also if the bill complaint is now answered with a span of 48 hours, the bill will become the liability of  Virgin Mobile. Now this generates a true win-win situation for the users.

The big players such as Airtel, Reliance are creating a no-match for the cheap rates provided by the new telecoms. Its interesting to see where this competition is going to end. ”India is the first country where Virgin Group will be offering both CDMA and GSM services” said Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin group.

Number portability is also expected to launch by the same time i.e. March 2010 end, thus creating a new room for Virgin Group to grasp customers from other teleco’s.

How will you respond to this move – Stay with current 1p/sec plan (60p/min) or go with the new scheme as 20p/min?Leave your thoughts in comments.

Yahoo has officially released the final version of Yahoo Messenger 10 which includes new features like High-quality video calls, new icons, new sorting methods, a new and useful Yahoo Insider and the “Y Updates” tab which list the activites of your friends and much more.

This release is stable and fully compatible with Windows 7 and also includes a bunch of security fixes. You can download the final version directly from the official Yahoo Messenger site by using their installer but the problem with it is it does not support resuming. The people with slower connection or limited bandwidth can opt for the country-wise direct download links for Windows from the Yahoo servers only.

US English: ymsgr1000_1102_us.exe

America
Argentina: ymsgr1000_1102_ar.exe
Brazil: ymsgr1000_1102_br.exe
Chile: ymsgr1000_1102_cl.exe
Columbia: ymsgr1000_1102_co.exe
Mexico: ymsgr1000_1102_mx.exe
Peru: ymsgr1000_1102_pe.exe
Venezuela: ymsgr1000_1102_ve.exe
Yahoo! Telemundo (Latin America Spanish): ymsgr1000_1102_e1.exe

Europe
France: ymsgr1000_1102_fr.exe
Germany: ymsgr1000_1102_de.exe
Italy: ymsgr1000_1102_it.exe
Spain: ymsgr1000_1102_es.exe
UK & Ireland: ymsgr1000_1102_uk.exe

Oceanic
Australia & New Zealand: ymsgr1000_1102_au.exe

Asia

India (English): ymsgr1000_1102_in.exe
Indonesia: ymsgr1000_1102_id.exe
Hong Kong (Chinese): ymsgr1000_1102_hk.exe
Korea: ymsgr1000_1102_kr.exe
Malaysia: ymsgr1000_1102_my.exe
Philippines: ymsgr1000_1102_ph.exe
Singapore: ymsgr1000_1102_sg.exe
Taiwan (Traditional Chinese): ymsgr1000_1102_tw.exe
Thailand: ymsgr1000_1102_th.exe
Vietnam: ymsgr1000_1102_vn.exe

Microsoft has turned their marketing strategy this time. Microsoft offered people to celebrate the Windows 7 Launch Day and in return Microsoft provided them with a “Special Signature Edition of Windows 7 Ultimate” to the all the party host which is signed by Steve Ballmer. As Microsoft as expecting this attracted a lot of crowd towards the program and thousands of entries were enrolled. Microsoft marketing and house Party team short listed the host and luckily we were the one to be in.

Here are few pictures of the kit which arrived in yesterday noon. The kit contains:

• Ten Tote Bags.
• Two Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition (32-bit & 64-bit) with one genuine license.
• A puzzle.
• Bunch of Napkins.
• A huge poster.
• A hanging banner.
• 2 Papers with party idea’s and instructions.

Windows 7 is no doubt, a true winner. We have been using RC edition for months now and it just make us felt “This is My PC”. Almost all of our old software’s ran without any glitches. Stunning graphics, ubercool features, and the most important thing “Stability” is what we have found in Windows 7.

These days picking up an email address at popular email services is quite a horrible task. There are so many people around the world which share common names and so finding an email address for your need which is not only short but looks professional too is quite a hectic job. Or even though you have got a cool email address how about getting a premium one like firstname@lastname.mp for free? Though you can buy your own domain and setup your email over it but as I said FREE top level domain address, lets move over it.

A service known as Chi.mp, allows you to create you personal profile or online identity at your own top level .mp domain. I will not be going into details of the whole chimp service as you can read their FAQ here. The interesting point is that they set-up a top level .mp domain for every user that registers at chimp. Chimp also offers one free email address at the domain you choose while registering and puts up as e-mail forwarder to your existing e-mail address.

Getting Ready

If you are new to email firstly please setup an account at Gmail and then follow the step further. In order to setup, first register at Chi.mp and setup your account be careful while choosing the domain as once created it cannot be changed. I used duseja.mp domain so that I was able to have the mail address as ankit [at] duseja.mp

Directing Mails from new address to your existing one

After your account is ready, login at your domain you just created using chi.mp credentials and then go to Settings –> Email Forwarding. Enter any desired mail address and your current mail address. Finally click on Save Changes button. Good you have completed the first part of the process. now you can give out that address to your friends, family or anyone.

Sending Mails with your brand new address

It depends on your mail provider whether it allows sending mail from another address or not. Gmail users are lucky enough so that they can tightly integrate the new address in there current account and send mail from the newly created one using you old Gmail panel. Here’s how to do it in Gmail:

• Login to your Gmail account or Google Apps for domain account.
• Go to Settings –> Accounts & Imports.
• Click on Send Mail from another address.
• Enter you new email address here and verify (the verification will directly reach you current inbox as you have already forwarded all mails from your new address to gmail one).

You are done. To send an email from your new top level domain address just click on compose in Gmail and select your new address in from field. Both your new chimp address and old gmail one can be accessed under one place. Life’s good! ;)

Yahoo has released the new version of their Messenger in Beta i.e. Yahoo Messenger 10 Beta. This time Yahoo has not revamped the console but has worked on the internal features and unlike previous version the interface remains same as that of version 9. Also Yahoo is in plans to expire the older versions below 8.0 in the early September.

Yahoo Messenger Beta 10 has the same look and feel as before though some of the icons have been revamped. The main focus is given on the Video Quality and social networking capability. A separate tab has been provided for Y! Updates which sync your updates from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and more.

Here is a list of new features in this ‘refurbished version’:

• Enhanced video calling – Now supports Full Screen
• Keep up with what your friends are doing – Social Updates
• Improved language support
• Use the built-in media player to watch web videos and view photos with friends.

The messenger just worked fine though being in Beta and the new updates tab looks useful, but people need to get their activities in sync from different networks to their Yahoo Profiles so that you can view their updates.

Download:

You can download the BETA version for windows from here or directly download full EXE here. Mac Version is also available and can be downloaded here.

Pen Drives and viruses have became a perfect duo these days. Every time we plug a drive that comes from a remote system, we feel insecure as virus might have traveled via that drive and may infect your system. Antivirus surely makes a sense but remember that these drives are made for portable use and not every system has a good antivirus. So here is a very simple approach, we will create two folders to prevent virus! You might be thinking that I am joking but I am serious. Lets have deeper look at this method.

You might be known to a term known as Autorun file. It basically helps in starting a program from the drive when it is plugged in to a system. Now most of the viruses use Autorun file to self-start themselves when the drive is plugged in. Autorun has two variants: 1. Autorun.ini & 2. Autorun.inf So if we have to prevent these type of viruses from spreading we just have to block this Autorun file from executing. This can be done at two levels:

1. Altering the Operating System’s Autorun settings.
2. Making creation of these files impossible (which we are going to do in this article).

In order to do so we have to prevent viruses in infected system from creating this Autorun file, we take a very simple approach. Windows and some other OS doesn’t allows creating a file and folder of same name. So what we basically do is create folders with name of autorun variants which blocks the creation of autorun files. Here is a step-by-step process:

1. Open your pen drive’s root directory.
2. Delete autorun.ini and autorun.inf files (if they exist).
3. Create two empty folders and name them as Autorun.ini & Autorun.inf (Not Case-sensitive).
4. For added security, right click the above newly created folders,open its Properties and select the option “Read Only”. (You may also mark them as hidden if you wish. This is basically for your convenience only.)
5. That’s it, your drive is now ready to fight against those crazy perks. ;)

If you are unable to create directories with this name, it is probably because you didn’t deleted autorun files as they might be hidden or marked as a system file and so they don’t appear in Windows explorer. In this case you have to unhide them or remove the system file property. You can also format your drive and create these folder. Don’t forget to backup your data before you format.

Let me remind you, this technique doesn’t guarantee 100% security because it depends on various factors such as OS and the technique that a particular virus use. But still it is good for the most common one’s. If you take my personal experience, I have never experienced a virus again after doing so and I highly recommend this method to to my friends and relatives.

This trick will work only in Windows and some other Operating systems, so you can’t fully rely on this method. And you will not be able to use Autorun functionality from your drive which is not a big deal against protecting your drives.

Firefox 3.5 is going to be released in next few hours. But you can download it just now before it officially launches at Mozilla’s site or anywhere. Grab it on before the rest of the world gets it. Here are the links to download it direct from mozilla’s site.

Download Links

• Windows: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.5&os=win&lang=en-US
• Linux: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.5&os=linux&lang=en-US
• Mac OS: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.5&os=osx&lang=en-US

Firefox 3.5 Features:

Enjoy!