Daily Bits

Virtual Browsers

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Virtual browsers are one of the two technological twists that have come to the browsing world. The other being 3D Browsing. With increased focus on security over internet activities, the concept of virtual browser makes for a secure browsing environment that would ideally not take down your system due to some malicious activity with or without your knowledge. I use the word ideally here because virtual browsers are not exactly proofed from all known and unknown exploits.

Virtual browsers provide for more secure browsing by a process called Sandboxing. Sand-boxing is the creation of a safe execution environment on a host machine so that changes made from one process do not affect the functioning of the system. The processes running inside a sandbox have limited access to the system resources and importantly to the critical resources. Thus the host as such is as secure as the absence of flaws in the sand-boxing program itself.

Coming back to browsers, the main criteria to consider when choosing among various sand-boxed environments is the option of how much fine grained control you have on the data that is stored in the sandbox session and movable to the host machine. Recently, HP in association with Mozilla announced its virtual browser. Google Chrome also features a sand-boxed approach to its browser tabs – which means that each tab runs as a separate process and does not crash all other tabs in event of any failure. This technology has been a reason why Google acquired Greenborder, a maker of secure software.

Virtual browsers are a good choice to make your web browsing experience much safer.

Check if Your Gmail Account Has Been Hacked

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If you rely on Gmail as much as I do, you probably worry about someone hacking into it right? Well, among the advanced features on Google’s mailing service there is a cool little trick that you can use to monitor “foreign” activity on your accounts.

The tip is coming from Make Use Of, and it is really easy to use.

You basically just need to check the bottom of your Gmail account for the “Last activity…” message. There you will see when the last login was effectuated, and using which IP address. You can also click on “Details” to see a list of the last logins, their IP address, browser and so on. All you need to do, therefore, is to check if you are really the only person using your Gmail account!

The Human Clock

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If there was a “useless crap” category on the blog this post would probably go there…

Well it is useless but cool at the same time. Wouldn’t you like to see a clock where the numbers are created by humans entangled in different positions? Now you can, check it out.

Do You Have an Idea to Save The World? Google Wants to Hear About It!

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Google recently launched a project called “10 to the 100th,” and it is generating a good amount of buzz on the web. The idea is a really cool one and I applaud the Mountain View company for kick starting it.

Basically they are allowing people to submit their ideas that will make an impact on the world and help as many people as possible (you have until October 20th to submit yours). After that, they will launch the voting phase (starting on January 27th, 2009), where the general public will choose 20 finalists.

Finally, an advisory board will choose up to five winners, and those ideas will each receive funding to see the light of the day. Google will be giving $10 million for those projects.

Cool huh? Here are the topics that you can cover with your idea:

  • Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
  • Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
  • Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
  • Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
  • Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
  • Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
  • Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
  • Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.

And here are the criteria that will be used on the voting phase:

  • Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
  • Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
  • Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
  • Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
  • Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?

Watch Stand Up Comedians on YouTube

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I don’t live in the U.S., therefore I don’t know many comedians from there. Well, at least I didn’t until a while ago. Then last week I came across a post on Make Use Of that listed a bunched of them, with links to their YouTube videos. Funny stuff, check them out if you have some free time:

Ninja Cat Video

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There are some good chances you have already seen this video on the Web. If you have not, take one minute of your day and do it. It is just amazing.

When I first watched it a couple of days ago it had 50,000 views on YouTube. Two days later and it is over 1 million already!