College Students build Online Scrabble, Scrabulous
October 11, 2007
College Students and brothers Jayant Agarwalla(21) and Rajat Agarwalla(26) loved the game of Scrabble and used to enjoy playing it online until that site started charging users to play the game. So the brothers, in 2005 developed a free online version of Scrabble.
Although popular when they put it on their own site, scrabulous.com, the game really took in May this year after Facebook started letting developers run applications on its site. The brothers adapted scrabulous to run on Facebook and since then there has been no looking back. Scrabulous on Facebook boasts of the most active users of any game played on Facebook.
The game now has more than 950,000 registered users with over 340,000 active users everyday. Players get immediate and graphic feedback for each move. While the brothers don’t plan on charging their loyal users any money to play the game they love, they are open to partnering with investors who may increase value to the game’s users.
So, if you are a member of Facebook, search for Scrabulous and then you should see in there an application like this below. Add yourself and enjoy.
In case you are not a member of Facebook, you can still enjoy the game of Scrabulous through their standalone site scrabulous.com
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Facebook’s $10 Million Grant to Stanford
October 10, 2007
Ever since Facebook opened up to the developer community to build cool applications for its site, more than 5000 Facebook applications have been created since May. Many of these have become wildly successful and popular with the Facebook community.
So now, Facebook wants it’s next generation cool app to come from the students themselves. So, Facebook hands over a check of $10 million to Stanford and is giving out upto $250,000 to developers who build promising new software to sit on top of Facebook.
Students at the university are flocking to this computer science class which is on Designing Software Applications for Facebook according to this article on Fortune magazine. Students hope to make a quick buck by designing the next killer application for Facebook
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Yuvraj Singh’s 6 Sixes vs England at Twenty20 World Cup
September 20, 2007
This is for our Indian viewers, a couple of them complaning that the only sports we cover at AskStudent are mainly American Football(NFL) and Soccer. So for our Indian Cricket fans, here is a treat for you.
India is trying to qualify for the semi final knockout stage of the Twenty20 World Cup match being held in South Africa. India’s premier batsman, Yuvraj Singh takes the English bowlers to the cleaners hitting 6 sixes in the penultimate over in their Twenty20 World Cup match against England. He also claims the record for the fastest 50 scored in just 12 balls. Other than Hershelle Gibbs of South Africa, Yuvraj Singh is the only batsman to hit 6 sixes of 6 balls in an over.
Enjoy Yuvraj Singh’s 6 sixes vs England at Twenty20 World Cup
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Family Guy Emmy Introduction
September 18, 2007
Stewie and Brian of Family Guy do a musical “welcome” making fun of several tv shows and networks at the 2007 Primetime Emmy Awards on FOX.
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Google Maps now with Draggable Driving Directions
September 17, 2007
Now you can change customize your driving directions on Google Maps by simply dragging & dropping the default directions to your preferred roads or highways, route around traffic, or add multiple stops on your way.
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Monster.com Resume Database Hacked, information Stolen
September 3, 2007
You may not be surprised to know that of all the hacking attempts made on companies, the companies which hold and maintain large databases of information such as those of credit card companies, banks etc are online targets for hackers and opportunistic criminals who attempt to extract information from such databases. One such company which maintains such large databases of information is Monster, the largest and most popular Job portal on the Internet.
At Monster, they keep information of Job applicants and this information includes Name, current address, phone number, information about employers, past employment history(which can give away location of previous addresses) and other confidential information, all very appetizing for Internet Trolls and malicious hackers.
Recent reports coming out from Monster suggests that the Monster resume database was hacked into and information such as names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of job seekers with resumes posted on Monster including MonsterTRAK were stolen and illegally downloaded. Apparently there was a rogue server within the Monster Network which was used for downloading all this information from job seekers.
While the company claims to have conducted its own investigation, it still cannot say for sure which individual job seekers have their information stolen.
How can Hackers use this confidential information?
When your personal information has been stolen from the monster.com resume database, you can be a prime target for a phishing email. You may get an email stating that there are issues with your account and need immediate attention. You might be asked to click on a malicious/spoofed website. Worse yet, you may get a phishing email saying that you have obtained a job with the company you applied for and you need to click on a spoofed site which might ask you to enter more personal information or download some malicious software.
An example of such an email could be one show below. Notice the spelling mistakes
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!How to Encrypt a File and apply Image Steganography
August 30, 2007
Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the intended recipient knows of the existence of the message. Generally, a steganographic message will appear to be something else: a picture, an article, a shopping list, or some other message. A Steganographic message (plaintext) is often first encrypted by some traditional means, and then a covertext is modified in some way to contain the encrypted message (ciphertext) , resulting in stegotext.
In this article, we will teach you how to do this. First to encrypt a message and then apply image steganography techniques to hide this encrypted message in an image.
PHASE # 1: How to encrypt a text/message
When Concealing data within encrypted data, the data to be concealed is first encrypted before being used to overwrite part of a much larger block of encrypted data. This technique works most effectively when the decrypted version of data being overwritten has no special meaning or use. Some cryptosystems, especially those designed for filesystems, add random looking padding bytes at the end of a ciphertext so that its size can’t be used to know what was the plaintext size. We will be applying this encryption technique using TrueCrypt.
TrueCrypt is a free open source disk encryption software that works on both Windows and Linux platforms. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. TrueCrypt does this by creating a virtual hard drive that will read and write encrypted files on the fly. The advantage of using TrueCrypt is that you need not download it everywhere. All you need are the files truecrypt.exe, truecrypt.sys and the volume file you create which you can carry on your flash drive.
Step by Step Tutorial on how to encrypt your Hard disk or data or message using TrueCrypt
Step # 1: Download and install TrueCrypt
Step # 2: Once you Launch TrueCrypt, Click on “Create Volume” button. This launches the Volume Creation wizard that prepares the encryped drive location. Next, choose ” Create a Standard TrueCrypt Volume” and hit Next. Next, click on “Select File” button. Browse to a place where you want to store your encryped files. In this case, I am selecting askstudent.secret Note: This is not the file you want to encrypt. Think of this as a Folder Name which in turn would contain the files you want to encrypt later on. Hit Next
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