What if Windows XP was the Matrix?

Its been a while, but unfortunately, I have no time to give reasons for going AWOL. Just wanted to share the video below. :-)

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

RevoluTV - Watch Live TV in Windows

RevoluTV is a Windows application that allows you to watch TV channels live on your computer. From their webpage,

"RevoluTV allows you to watch hundreds of free Internet TV channels on your PC. If you are interested in breaking news, entertainment, learning languages or foreign cultures then this is a perfect choice for you. News, Sports, Music, Weather, Religion and more internet TV channels all over the world!"

This is almost like Livestation but has more channels. You can grab it from here.

Warez-SL no more!

A forum dedicated to IT related stuff, Warez-SL.com has been taken down. An email sent by the super admin of the site goes as follows.

"guys I know when you see this message how much you hurt your selves. But they already banned our site.I really tried to save the web.But i couldn't. I cant even access my back ups. they will not allows to access those areas. My final word is thank you very much for your contributions and you gave me 100% support. please don't scold at me.000webhost blacklisting warez sites. finally I will not create any sites.I will not come online for few days coz i can't answer them.few guys already raised mails saying site not working..How could i answer them.So guys thanks again for the support."

This is very unfortunate, as the site contained a good set of links to various software. But I feel even more for the Super admin. He seems to be totally heart broken. I don't know but, maybe this is the first time something like this happened to a Sri Lankan site? Who's next? FileNetworks, you better watch out!

Where are all the Programmers?

I have a routine when it comes to starting my day on the internet. I visit about a dozen sites before I visit any other. This list of sites contains among others, download.com, softpedia.com, Warez-SL.com, and Filenetworks.blogspot.com. As you can see, all these sites are software related, and I usually download new software through these sites (Directly and Indirectly). But almost all the software I've downloaded in my entire lifetime were written by people outside the country. What I mean is, there is not enough software of Sri Lankan origin swapped around on the net.

There are exceptions to this of course. The new web browser xAurora was made by a Sri Lankan, and there is also another software called Suduputha. And there are many Sri Lankan contributors to many Apache Foundation projects, like Geronimo and Apache Axis. But apart from these, I haven't come across any others of Sri Lankan origin.

Is it because our programmers aren't good enough? But then again, xAurora is said to be written in Win32 Assembly. Maybe the courses offered don't cover the high-end stuff needed? But courses can only teach you so much. At degree level, students are supposed to be independent in their learning. They have to pursue knowledge on their own, without waiting for it to be spoonfed to them, which wont happen at that level.

Maybe they don't have enough time. Most of these graduates go into companies like Virtusa and MIT, and get a full time job. I don't know what kind of software they create in these companies, but most probably they are specialized software tailor made for different companies (I don't see at least a general Accounting software offered by Virtusa). And most of them learn Web 2.0 technologies, to give them the edge in the new service driven market. With all of these going on, they probably don't have enough time to even think about writing a general purpose software.

Maybe there is no need to for us to create new software. There certainly are enough free software out there to get most of our jobs done. Maybe, with the changing face of IT, the desktop might become a thing of the past, taking along with it software like Windows and Linux.

Whatever the reasons may be, I definitely would like to see the presence of the Sri Lankan IT people felt more strongly on the internet. Perhaps not software, but the next Generation MMORPG? How about 'SLA Vs. LTTE - The Battle for Elephant Pass'? Now that is a title to get the attention of all the Sri Lankans out there!

New Sri Lankan Browser on the Block

xAurora is a new web browser created by a Sri lankan named Dr. Sameera De Alwis. I have absolutely no idea wether this is true or not, but at first glance it seems to be so.

Whats special about this new browser, apart from being written by a Sri Lankan, is that it was apparently written completely in Win32 Assembly. Yeah you heard me right. Win32 Assembly. All that WinMain, WndClass, TranslateMessage and DispatchMessage stuff. Writing full blown applications in Win32 Assembly is a rare feat in itself (these days or for a local guy), and must be contributing to the fact that the executable file is just 759KB. The code seems to be using the IE Engine to render pages, but I am not sure on this. Another serious thing is that the browser runs in ring 0. The same level in which the kernel operates (I didnt know this was possible. Can anyone tell me how to do it?). Of course, there is no way to verify this claim, since the site says that the application is closed source. But the software itself is free, so go ahead and download this software and support our local talent (Did I mention it loads pages fast too).

Ebooks for you

Wow! its been a while since my last post, and a lot has happened. Heroes and the other TV shows started, a few bombs went off here and there, other things happened, and oh yeah, Sakvithi got away with a fortune. Reminds me of a certain other company named Seagull. But... well, you know our countrymen, right? Speaking of Seagull, check out the photo below.


Neat eh? I check the Google blogs everyday and couldn't find any information regarding the above claim (and I didnt expect to either!). I dont know wether this is a recent ad but if it is, their timing couldn't be any worse. We sinhalese forget things after some time, so they should've waited until the Sakvithi fiasco was over. I suggest they wait at least a couple of months before starting this thing. A few cricket matches later, and everything will be forgotten.

Okay so getting back to what this post is actually about. I use Ebooks as a reference when programming, because, well, its easier than flipping through the pages of a book looking for a certain command and how to use it. And even when reading for leisure, Ebooks are OK I guess.
Most of the sites I mention here are just blogs giving links to rapidshare files. Others are more legitimate, but in the end, you should be able to find a reasonable amount of books you want.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Some (or ALL?) of these sites were first featured on Filenetworks. I hope he doesn't mind...

KnowFree.net

Here's an excerpt from the site's About Us page

"KnowFree (KF) is a web portal with a slogan: "KNOWLEDGE IS FREE", so it is place for users to exchange freely e-books, video training and other materials for educational purposes, self-practice only."

One thing to note is that, some (If not most) of the RAR files are password protected. Usually, the password is knowfree.net, but make sure you read everything on the site to find the correct password.

Ebookeesh
A blog that gives links to ebooks spread around the net. This site has an impressive collection of IT related books, but fails when it comes to books in other categories.

Ebookshare
Another site with links, but the links here lead to .torrent files. After downloading the .torrent file, you have to use a Torrent program to download the actual Ebook. I have downloaded Ebooks through the torrents at this site about a dozen times without any problems (And the torrents had a considerable number of seeders too). Sports an impressive collection of IT related books.

Computer Ebook
As the name suggests, this site is also about IT related Ebooks (Does all this lead you to the conclusion I'm an IT man?). Great collection of programming Ebooks are available. Apart from that, there is a small collection of Ebooks related to Robotics too (Is anyone in Sri lanka into this field?).

Freebookspot


Unlike most of the sites mentioned above, this site has a considerable amount of ebooks in categories other than IT too (Like Sex for instance!). Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, Astronomy, etc... and books in other categories are available.

Techbooksforfree
Another Tech related Ebook site. Yawn...

Freetechbooks


Okay, so Tech means not only computers, and as such, this site has a collection of links to other Tech subjects, like Electronics and Mathematics (Math is Tech?). Unlike many other sites out there, most of the books listed here are not pirated, but actually available under special licenses. I didnt bother to read it, but the books are fine, and thats all you and I need to know.

Classical Computer Science Texts
Okay, so I know we're moving away from single core and 32 bit to 2 or more cores and 64bit, but remember, If you dont know your past, you cant make sense of your future. I just made that up, but the point is, some of these texts were pioneering in their age (For example, the Fortran Compiler) and we wouldn't be here if not for them. And of course, it does make interesting reading too.

O'Reilly Open Books and O'Reilly Commons

O'Reilly has made a number of books open for various reasons (Like, they've made enough money out of it, and now, its content is outdated), and this collection is good enough for most of us I think.

Global Text Project


I'm getting tired of writing my own review so here's an excerpt from the above mentioned site.

"The project will create open content electronic textbooks that will be freely available from a website. Distribution will also be possible via paper, CD, or DVD. Our goal initially is to focus on content development and Web distribution, and we will work with relevant authorities to facilitate dissemination by other means when bandwidth is unavailable or inadequate. The goal is to make textbooks available to the many who cannot afford them."

I'm pretty sure I belong to the 'many who cannot afford them'.

IBM Redbooks


I have no idea about the term Redbook, or what most of these Redbooks are about ('IBM System Blue Gene Solution: Blue Gene/P System Administration' isnt Blue Gene a Supercomputer?). I thought one of you out there might actually be able to make sense of the contents of these books, so the site goes in the post.

Wikibooks

"Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. Wikibooks began on July 10, 2003; since then Wikibooks has grown to include over 32,341 pages in a multitude of textbooks created by volunteers like you! "

Undoubtedly one of the best sources of Ebooks, many of these are very professional and informative (Like the Haskell Wikibook). Wikibooks are available in many categories, for people at many levels of education (Wikijunior anyone?). Definitely recommed this site.

Project Gutenberg


The mother of all Ebook sites. Project Gutenberg was the first of its kind in 1971 when it began, and is still going strong today. Chances of finding titles like, 'The C Programming Language' are slim, but can you compare reading that to reading, say, The Art of War, or maybe, The Illiad? PG contains cultural works that are in the Public Domain, like the previously mentioned books. If you want to get a dose of culture after a hard days work, a visit to PG is recommended.

ZScreen - Open Source Screen Capture program

There are many screen capture programs out there, but the Open Source ZScreen gives them all a run for their money.

ZScreen has a plethora of options when it comes to capturing the screen and what to do with the captured image. It has the standard 3 ways of capturing the screen (selected region, active window, or the entire screen), and a number of options to choose from afterwards. You can either directly copy it to the clipboard, open the captured screenshot in an image manipulation program of your choice, upload the captured image to an FTP server, or simple save the image automatically in a predefined folder in an image format of your choice, and you can tweak almost all the settings for any of these actions. This software is a must have for anyone who frequently takes screenshots.


Grab the software from here (You'll need the .NET framework to run this).

GanttProject - Open Source replacement for Microsoft Project

If you are doing higher studies in IT or Business (Or any other), when you get to work on projects, you usually have to submit a documentation. And when preparing this documentation, the last thing you usually do before submitting is creating the Gantt chart (Although its supposed to be done first!). Most of us usually use Microsoft Project to create this. Now you can use an Open Source alternative called GanttProject.

GanttProject is very much similar to MS Project, with the tasklist on the left hand pane and the graphical timeline on the right hand pane. There are two tabs on the main window, one for the Gantt Chart and the other for the resources allocated for whatever the Gantt chart is made for. There is also an option to get the corresponding pert chart for the Gantt chart.

The software is not bloated like MS Project and has all the necessary tools to quickly create a chart. Plus, you can export the charts you create into several formats including JPEG and PDF. I never considered Gantt charts seriously and couldn't make head or tail of it. If you have the unique combination of being into Project Management and Linux, GanttProject is the way to go. You can download it from here.

Digsby - Unifying IM, Email and Social Networking

First of all, Pidgin is an excellent IM client. So is Digsby, but it goes a few steps further than simple instant messaging.

Manage you emails from Digsby

Digsby is an IM client, an email manager, and a social network 'client', all rolled into one application. Its IM behaviour is similar to pidgin with combined buddy list for all AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and Jabber protocols. But one added bonus is the ability to chat with facebook buddies right from the digsby window, without logging into the site separately. Once you set up your email accounts, you are notified of new messages, and can take all the usual actions on them like, 'Mark as Read' or 'Report Spam'. There are numerous other features you can check out here. Grab the windows version from here (Linux and Mac versions are also available).

Keep track of social networks and get alerts on new events

UltimateDefrag - Powerful Defragger and Optimizer

We all have defragged our hard drives at some point. Usually we do this using the defragger that comes with Windows itself. But if you want to squeeze that last nanosecond of speed out of your hard drive, you can use UltimateDefrag.

UltimateDefrag is an advanced defragger that, unlike other software of its kind, gives the user complete control over (almost all) the inner workings of the defrag process. You can defrag individual files, folders, or even applications and you can place them around the hotspots (places which are easily accessed) on the hard drive.

The software defines two types of files. High performance and Archive. High performance files are those files you access frequently and will be placed so as to minimize access time. Archive files are the ones you rarely use and will be defragged so as to not get in the way of the high performance files. You can either let the software automatically select the high performance and Archive files or you can select which files to be in these categories manually. You can also include files based on their extension which is good if you want to access a particular file type quickly, like .EXE files. There are many other options for defragging, but the best part of this software is its visual representation of the fragmentation, which gives a very good picture on how files are physically laid out in the hard drive. You can click on any part of the disc and see what files are stored in that particular sector.

UltimateDefrag. Notice the name of a file stored at a particular sector on the hard drive displayed at the bottom left corner

Needless to say, the software is a bit complicated with a lot of options to choose from. Fortunately, there is a PDF file which explains all the bells and whistles of the software, and also gives a good idea on how hard disks work, and fragmentation occurs, etc... You can grab UltimateDefrag from here.

BackTrack - Penetration testing Linux distribution

BackTrack is a Linux distribution based on Slackware, created for penetration testing purposes. It merges two existing distributions, Whax (formerlyWhoppix) and Auditor Linux, into a single powerful Live CD system.

BackTrack incorporates all the necessary tools used in security testing, like nmap, finger, traceroute, Metasploit and other software. The Live CD worked perfectly in my VirtualBox VM, but actual installation on a USB drive or a hard disk is a bit technical (Although anyone who seriously uses BackTrack can do this). BackTrack also has all the other usual software for web browsing, image manipulation, document editing, etc... BackTrack automatically comes with HTTP, SMTP, and other server software so there's no need for manually installing them. The major drawback to BackTrack is the lack of an updating mechanism.

BackTrack Penetration testing Tools

I don't recommend this distribution to the average user. Only those who are extremely curious or expert computer users should find any use for this. You can download the distribution from here.

Get your own free web based desktop - Jooce

As internet speeds get faster and faster, more and more desktop applications are being ported into web platforms. This post is about a free service that gives the user a web based desktop, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

Okay, so what is Jooce? As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I'm not good at stringing words together, so here's a sample from their about page.

"Jooce is your very own, private online desktop - with public file sharing capabilities. A highly-secure, online space to keep, view, listen to - and instantly share with friends - all your files, photos, music and video."

There, that is what Jooce is all about. I tested it out, and was surprised by the speed of the OS, considering the whole site is made using Adobe Flash (You'll need version 9). So now I have an account, what can I do? According to the Jooce FAQ,

"you can start uploading files, music, photos, videos from a local disk drive or the web, store and organize them as if you have your own computer, play them using the jooce media player, transfer any of your jooce files or folders to any of your friends in your contact's list instantly with drag-n-drop ease, chat with any friend even if they have MSN, Yahoo, AIM, or ICQ instant messenger accounts, create a public joocetop from where your friends can see and retrieve any files or folders you post there, visit other people's public joocetops, transfer files and folders from your friends public joocetops onto your own jooce account or share them with other friends on your contacts list, customize your private desktop as well as your public joocetop."

As with any usual OS, you can create, rename or delete folders and files. There is a control panel with limited settings you can tweak, such as the desktop background, your jooce account info and your instant messaging settings. The Public Joocetop mentioned above is simply a desktop which is presented to the outside world (It's like your profile page in Facebook). Your friends (Those whom you have included in your contacts list) can not only view your Joocetop, but can also copy files to and from it. There are a few videos available that explains the main functionalities of Jooce in the Videos folder of your jooce desktop. One major feature still lacking is email support. And one more thing to note, currently there's no limit to the amount of data you can upload!

Jooce Desktop

I was pretty impressed with the number of features available for this beta version of jooce (But there is still much room for improvement and better features). If you are a serious file sharer, I very much recommend getting a Jooce account.

Check it out at http://www.jooce.com

VirtualBox 2.0 released

VirtualBox, Sun Microsystems' Open Source Virtualizer software reached version no. 2.0 yesterday.

Most important new feature of VirtualBox is the support for 64bit guest OSs. However, there are a few conditions that must be met for this.

• The CPU of the machine should be 64bit with hardware virtualization support enabled(At the moment, VirtualBox doesn't support software virtualization for 64bit guest OSs).
• The Host OS should be 64bit.
• VirtualBox itself should be the 64bit version.

Even with all these restrictions, the addition of 64bit guests is a good move by Sun, since 64bit versions of software are the future. This new version also fixes a few problems with AMD CPUs.

VirtualBox is available in both x86 and x64 versions for almost all major linux distributions (and any linux distro with kernel version 2.6) and also for Windows XP/Vista.

You can download VirtualBox 2.0 from here (Make sure you select the correct version for your architecture).

Weblin: Chat with 3D avatars and instant messenger functions

I've posted before of another instant messaging system with 3D avatars. This new app is a bit similar, but not nearly as bandwidth hogging or truly 3D.

Weblin is a simple chat application that works like any other out there. But unlike other applications, weblin allows you to chat with people, inside your web browser, who are visiting the same site (The website you are at acts like the chat room). For example, say I'm visiting the kottu.org website. While I'm there, I can see the avatars of other people who are there at that time. (Below picture shows there are no others visiting kottu with weblin installed).



Once you download the weblin setup,It will in turn download and install the actual program. Once installed, you can create your weblin account to start using weblin. Firefox users have to install an additional plugin to get started (I'm not sure whether there's a need for an extension for IE).

You can start chatting with other avatars on the website by double clicking on your avatar. This will show the speech bubble, into which you can type and your message will be visible to all in the current page. You can also have a private chat with anyone in the page by right clicking on the other persons avatar and selecting Private chat from the menu that pops up. You can also animate your avatar by selecting any of the actions available like dance, clap, wave, etc... Right clicking on your avatar provides much of these (and many more) options to you, as well as the 'Butler' icon available on the bottom left corner of the screen.


Download Weblin from here.
Firefox extension can be found here.

Google Picasa 3 beta

With the much hyped release of the new Google Chrome browser, the launch of the new and improved Picasa 3 beta went relatively unnoticed. The newest release from Google contains many improvements.

The best new feature of picasa is the 'name tag' along with the face recognition. You can tag a person in a picture, and picasa, using face recognition techniques, will try to automatically tag all the other pictures of that person in your collection. Needless to say, sometimes picasa makes errors in taggin and sometimes doesn't recognize people at all. But most of the time I tried, picasa was able to get about 65% of the faces correct (You might not get the same results).

With this beta, Google has tried to tie the picasa software to the picasa web albums platform even more tightly. For example, there is a 'sync to web' option which transfers any changes you make to pictures inside the software, to your corresponding web albums pictures. There is another option which allows you to easily post pictures from picasa to your blogger posts (One drawback to this option is the use of an IE window to post the pictures).

Another option is the Geo-tag, which allows you to put pictures on your Google Earth software (Need Google Earth obviously). With this beta, you can now combine your pictures, existing videos and music to create new movies, with relative ease. I would say the new movie maker is as much powerful as the Windows movie maker itself. Picasa has all the photo editing features available in other photo management software like removing red eye, cropping, setting contrast, etc... There is also a nifty photo viewer which can be used to view your pictures from inside the explorer window, instead of the standard Microsoft Image Viewer.

There are many other new features and a lot of improvements to the software. I definitely recommend Picasa to be your standard photo management software (But remember, as with most Google products, this is still in beta).

Grab Picasa 3 beta from here.

One of my favourite features of Picasa is Create Photo Collage. What are you looking at son?

Chat in 3D with Google Lively

This reminds me of Second Life. It really is more like a limited version of Second Life. But since its coming from Google, there might be good things in store for Lively in the future.

Lively is a chat application that creates 3D worlds in place of the traditional chat rooms and lets users create 3D characters, or Avatars, to represent themselves in the 3D world. You can customize the look of your avatar, ranging from the color of the skin to the clothes to wear. The characters can interact with each other using various actions (hi5, hold hands, hug, kick, etc...). You can also create your own chat rooms and customize them by placing various furniture you want. And the best thing is, you can embed these rooms into your own web pages, and anyone with a Lively account can enter it.

Currently, only Windows XP/Vista and IE/Firefox combination is supported. You have to install a plugin to use Lively, and a Google account to create a Lively account. Be warned though, that this is still in beta.


You can download the plugin at Google Lively. Check out the room I've embedded below.

New Web Browser from Google - Chrome

Just got this news. Google is releasing its own web browser, called Chrome (See screenshot below). They put up this post on their blog after a comic book introducing the new browser started circulating earlier than anticipated. The new browser boasts a lot of new features, one of which is a new and improved JavaScript engine called V8. This news comes just as Mozilla announced that they have created a new Just-In-Time (JIT) JavaScript compiler called Tracemonkey, to replace the current Firefox JavaScript compiler SpiderMonkey, for the next version of firefox. There are other features to the new browser, such as the new privacy mode called 'Incognito' (which is like the InPrivate mode of the new IE8 browser) where your browsing history won't be recorded, and 'Sandboxing' of tabs, which will prevent one tab from crashing all the others (By isolating, or sandboxing tabs).

The browser war just got heated, as this new Chrome browser is sure to get widespread usage (coming from google). You can view the comic introducing the new browser here.

TV Shows begin again

Its the first of September, and what I like to call the 'TV Series Season' will kick off today, with one of my favs, Prison Break. And its time to backup the old seasons onto DVD and make up space for the new seasons, and time to make some serious use of our SLT bandwidth! Below is a list of premiering dates for some of my(and your, maybe) favourite TV shows.

Fox - Prison Break


Lincoln Burrows and Michael Scofield are both out of prison (But Michael is still a fugitive. He escaped from fox river remember). Michael is on a lone mission to destroy the company and to take revenge against their agent Gretchen Morgan. Show starts today with a 2 hour season premier. Cant wait...



Fox - Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles


This show lasted only 9 episodes in its first season (due to the writers guild strike). The second season should see Sarah Conner and Co. trying to track down and destroy 'The Turk', the computer which stems the growth of Skynet, all the while being hunted down by Cromartie, the skynet cyborg. Show starts on the 8th. Cant wait...



Fox - House M.D


The angry, brutally honest, nihilistic (maybe?), Sherlock Holmes like medical genius comes back for a fifth season of medical mysteries and sarcasm. Last season saw House hiring new people for his diagnostic team, and failing to save the girlfriend of his best friend. Cant wait to see whats going to happen between House and Wilson (and maybe Cuddy?). Show starts on the 16th.



NBC - Heroes (OH YES!!)


One of the best TV shows out there for certain. Heroes season 2 closed with Sylar getting his powers back, and the new season is said to be full of villains (The season premier is called Villains). Apart from Sylar, there's a new villain who will be the arch-nemesis of Hiro, a girl who can run fast, which is in direct collision with Hiro's time stopping abilities. You can check out all the hints, the comics which fill in the gaps of the storyline, and some new webisodes at the official Heroes Site. Check out the video below (Claire shooting Peter?). The show starts on the 22nd.



NBC - Knight Rider


The new show takes off from where the 2 hour backdoor pilot stopped a few months back. The old KITT is dismantled (The pilot shows the number plate and the steering wheel from the pontiac) and the new Knight Rider is a Ford Mustang on steroids, with a new home called KITT-Cave (as in Batcave), which serves as the HQ for the Knight Rider team. The show has borrowed some ideas from the Viper TV series, with KITT having the ability to transform itself into a truck (or something. not sure on this. check video below). There seems to be a lot of changes to the car since the backdoor pilot, and I cant wait to watch this. Show starts on the 24th. Darn.



CW - Supernatural


The Winchester brothers are back, sans one. Go to Hell Dean! and he did. Sam couldn't save his brother from the deal he made with a demon, and the season 3 finale showed dean caught in a web like structure, which is, apparently, Hell! While they could've come up with a better place for Hell, the new season is a must watch (for me anyway). Season 4 starts on the 18th.

CW - Gossip Girl


Sex, Drugs, Betrayal are back again with the second season of Gossip Girl. Last season's finale showed the teenagers readying for their summer vacation and Blair, who finally became the Queen Bee at the Upper East Side private school, getting on to the helicopter without Chuck. What will happen to Blair and the gang during the summer vacation? We'll find out on the 18th, when the second season premiers.

CW - Smallville


Clarke Kent aka Superman went down in the last season finale, but rest assured he'll be back. Bad news is that Lex Luthor won't be in the new season. Instead, three more villains (Doomsday and Maxima from the DC Universe, and a new character called Tess Mercer in place of Lex Luthor) will be introduced. This series has gone a bit stale, and I hope this is the last season of Smallville. Show starts on the 18th.

Track and Recover Stolen Laptops - Adeona

A very interesting software for all you laptop owners out there to try out is Adeona (Name of the Roman Goddess of safe return!), a free and open source tracking software. But before you get excited, know that this is not a foolproof method of protecting your laptop. In fact, if your laptop is really stolen with adeona already installed, I don't think it will be able to help you recover your laptop because of the current networking technology available in Sri lanka. But once that situation improves, this software can come in handy.

Adeona tracks the location of your laptop by recording its internet connection information, such as the IP address of your laptop, addresses of nearby routers, and also the names of nearby access points (for wireless connections only). This information, once collected, is encrypted, and then stored in the OpenDHT system.

Adeona installs two softwares to your computer. One is a client program which, at random times, sends the internet connection information to OpenDHT. The other is the retrieval software through which you can retrieve the stored information. In order to retrieve the information, the software uses a file called an Owner Recovery File (extension .ost) which is generated when adeona is installed. This file is of great importance as without it, retrieval of the information is impossible, even for the rightful owner. The recommended method of using adeona is to install the client on the laptop, backup the created .ost file to a USB pen or other medium which is secure, and delete the original file from the laptop. If the laptop is stolen, you can use the ost file and the retrieval software from any other PC in the world.

As you can see, a good networking system is required for this software to be effective. In western countries, where internet connections are readily available, and wireless hotspots are in abundance, this software is pretty useful. But here in Sri lanka, without such technology, adeona is limited in what it can do. But still, like I said, in the future, when these technologies are implemented (eventually), adeona is sure to become a very useful tool.

I installed adeona on my desktop computer, and after a couple of days, I tried retrieving my location information. Here is a sample.

info: ======== start location data =========
update time: 08/28/2008,19:09 (PST)
internal ip: 192.168.1.2
external ip: ---.---.---.---
access point: (n/a)
Nearby routers:
1 0.000ms 192.168.1.1 (could not resolve)
2 23.000ms 220.247.232.7 (could not resolve)
3 24.000ms 220.247.193.249 (could not resolve)
4 23.000ms 222.165.130.241 (could not resolve)
5 23.000ms 222.165.130.10 (could not resolve)
6 72.000ms 217.6.48.33 (could not resolve)
7 281.000ms 62.154.14.98 (could not resolve)
8 0.000ms 62.156.138.70 (could not resolve)
9 327.000ms 67.17.108.165 (te1-2-10G.ar2.MAD1.gblx.net)
10 348.000ms 67.17.108.165 (te1-2-10G.ar2.MAD1.gblx.net)
11 456.000ms 162.97.119.18 (could not resolve)
12 479.000ms 130.206.250.26 (NAC.XE1-0-0.EB-Barcelona0.red.rediris.es)
13 473.000ms 130.206.202.30 (cesca-router.rediris.es)
14 474.000ms 84.88.18.18 (upc-anella.cesca.es)

Quite interesting information (I've blanked out my external IP for obvious reasons). The first entry under nearby routers is an internal address. The second entry is the gateway address given by SLT. An although I'm not sure on this, I think entries 3, 4, and 5 all are gateway addresses of SLT. About 7 entries couldn't be resolved into domain names (because they don't have domain names). Entries 7 and 8 belong to a one Deutsche Telekom AG, the largest telecommunications company in Germany and the EU, while number 12 is somewhere in Spain.

Most of this information is repeated throught the retrieved location information, since I am using my desktop computer to run the program. The program can be truly tested only on a laptop, which changes location often, and has a good internet connection. If anyone does carry out this, please drop in a comment with your observations.

Grab the software from the Adeona website.

LTTE Vs. Sri Lanka - A form of Cyberwarfare

As the battle between the SLA and the LTTE rages on, I decided to analyze another form of warfare between the two sides that has been raging for, well maybe not as long as the real war, but it has become very important in recent years. i.e. LTTE Vs. SLA Cyberwarfare. Although this is not as fierce (or real) as, say, the Cyberwar that erupted between Russia and Estonia (and more recently Georgia) and there is no real hacking of sites, banks or anything like that going on, the Internet has become a major source of information for Sri lankans and Tamils living in Sri lanka and abroad, and also a medium for propoganda for both sides, so holding the edge in this war can be justified as being important for both sides.

Google Search Volumes

To start off my analysis, I visit Google Insights for Search, where I can get an idea on the amount of web searches done using google for specific keywords throughout the world.

First, I search for the word 'LTTE'. I want to see the graph for the word 'LTTE', throught the world, from 2004 to present. Then I get the following graph.


The LTTE has had exposure to the world for quite some time. Now the same criteria for the phrase 'Sri lanka army' yields this.


Looking at the two graph, one can see the term LTTE gets searched more on google. This is confirmed by the bar next to the search term on the top right corner of the graph, which gives the average of all the points on the graph. 'LTTE' has an average of 50 while 'Sri lanka army' lags behind at 35.

Now comes the interesting graphs. The graph for the search term 'tamilnet' within sri lanka from 2004 onwards is this.


Tamilnet has been around for some time (longer than defence.lk) and this graph shows how many searches for it have originated from Sri lanka. The early years from 2004 to mid 2005 are the low points, at which time, the ceasefire was being repeatedly broken by the LTTE. Then, there is a sudden surge in searches during 2006, when Mahinda Rajapaksa has assumed power and the war was been openly fought out. Then it goes downwards (except for November 2007, when 16 are killed in a bomb attack in Colombo, and January 2008, when the government pulls out of the ceasefire agreement) and virtually dimishes at July 2008. This downward trend can be attributed to the government imposed ban on tamilnet within Sri lanka.

The graph for Sri lanka Ministry of Defence website defence.lk, for searches originating from Sri lanka from 2004 onwards is as follows.

The graph starts at around June 2006, which I think is around the time defence.lk was started (I'm not sure on this), and has continued its upward trend ever since. These last two graphs show how late the GoSL has been on entering the cyberwar. The LTTE has been spreading their word since 1997 while the government only started their website around 2006. This headstart has cost the GoSL something, since tamilnet has firmly established themselves as a major source of information on the internet for news regarding the ethnic conflict. The two graphs below, which show search volumes from 2004 onwards for tamilnet and defence.lk worldwide, confirm this.


Web Traffic Analysis

For web traffic analysis, I use two services, called Compete and Alexa.

Starting with Compete, the first thing to note is that this service calculates these graphs based on traffic from the USA only! But that fact aside, here is the graph for tamilnet and defence.lk websites.



The above graph shows the number of unique visitors for each site. As expected, tamilnet has a bigger audience than defence.lk, owing to their longer presence than defence.lk on the internet. But as the table below shows, the number of visitors for defence.lk has grown from June, while for tamilnet it has decreased (Although this trend might not hold in future).

Date: 07/2008	Visits	Month Δ	Year Δ
defence.lk	12,509	46.6%	265.0%
tamilnet.com	58,777	-10.2%	-11.0%

The popular Alexa site has the following graph for the comparison between tamilnet and defence.lk. Alexa collects its data from users who install their special toolbar for the web browsers, which sends the users surfing data to alexa servers, so this calculation is also biased.


This graph also shows tamilnet being over defence.lk, but that gap has diminished throughout the year and defence.lk for this month ranks higher than tamilnet.

Observations

The general trend among all statistics presented is that defence.lk is gaining on tamilnet rapidly. As I said earlier, the gap between the two sites' general popularity can be attributed to tamilnets headstart. But the GoSL has hit back by banning the website in Sri lanka, which caused its popularity to decrease and defence.lk to become a regular web destination for Srilankans.

But defence.lk has a lot to improve on. For example, tamilnet has made its website available in German and French languages for international readers (defence.lk is available in Sinhala), and their site is much more better in terms of organization of information and appearance. But the appearance and organization of defence.lk doesn't warrant a second visit. Tamilnet also has an edge over defence.lk on mobile phones, with a WAP version of its site available (I dont know wether this is still available or working).

You can argue on the statistics presented here, and I admit they are not rock solid. If you want to know more about the methods of calculation for the above represented data, the links are provided below.

• Alexa traffic rankings
• Compete FAQ
• Google Insights for Search Help

Post your comments (If you want to).

P.S. Perhaps our government can hijack tamilnets' IP address. Like many sites out there, they have only one IP address (83.138.147.99), and this kind of thing has been done before. If they do do this, then at least it will justify my including the word cyberwarfare for the heading of this post!