A salute to the Flag: "जय हिंद" : Happy Independence Day

“India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.” ~ Mark

Today on 15th Aug 2013, we are celebrating our 67th Independence Day. India has been a great country till date and it’s not only because of the history but the people it keeps. We believe that on the face of this earth India is the only place where dreams of a common living individual found a home from beginning when man began the dream of survival. Independence Day of India is a moment of glee and dignity but this is not something which was easily achieved, India had to put up a long battle for over years against the British Empire. On August 14, 1947 at midnight, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru said that ‘Awake to freedom’ "Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.” At the stroke of that midnight hour, the world was sleeping but India was awaken to life and freedom.

On that precious day of 15th August 1947, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru asked one question to India that “The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?" And today after 66 years of Independence we presume that India got its own respect and identity throughout the globe for its incredible success in various facets like economy, science, technology and engineering. 

Today India stands 2nd in the world for its substantial success in Technology. India has the largest technical and professional talent pool in the world. It’s said that Adaptation is the key of success and that’s where India started its journey. When asked about India Mr. Bill Gates said “India is in an interesting position: It has both a deep understanding of the challenges and great capacity to help solve them. India’s cities are flush with highly educated people working in well-funded labs, as well as extremely poor communities like the slum in Uttar Pradesh that I visited last year. That makes the country an ideal place to understand both the problems and the solutions. This is one reason why I try to visit at least once a year”. In recent survey 80% of European and US IT companies outsourcing firms ranked India as their number one destination. The National Association of Software & Service Companies (NASSCOM) also reported that almost half of all fortune 500 companies choose to outsource software development to Indian outsourcing firms. Even there are large competition for India like China, Mexico, Ireland etc., India has managed to outmaneuver all others and emerge as top outsourcing.

Well, there is a lot to write and our aim behind this is not to show off what India is but to inspire all upcoming developers, IT companies that it’s just the start of the journey and there is a lot to do for us. All we want to conclude with this, be the change you wish to see in this world! Lead the country with pride and honor!

You have the freedom, Live It and Share It !

Tech Insect wishes you a very Happy Independence Day !

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Do You Need Anti-virus Software for Your New iPad?

I get asked this question all the time actually. People who have recently purchased an iPad for themselves are rightfully aware that it's a significant investment and certainly don't want to see their expensive device fall prey to viruses or other forms of malware which could render these devices inoperable or compromise the security of their data. But do you really need anti-virus software on your iPad in order to ensure your device's safety?

No, Says Apple

Many anti-virus software companies have asked Apple personally, to open its iOS platform so that anti-virus programs could be designed for it but Apple has resisted. It says about its own product, that no anti-virus software should be necessary. Apple regularly sites the strict process for having apps approved for download in its App Store as one major way it has protected its mobile operating system from the risk of viruses. Indeed, the less stringent app standards for the Android platform have certainly made it more at risk of virus attack. This is impossible to deny.

But Less is Not Never

Apple's primary argument for the lack of virus protection on the iPad is that if you are using the iPad as is originally intended and downloading software and apps only through approved services then you should be protected against any risk of infection. This is a pretty solid point and it makes a certain amount of sense. However, it is foolish for Apple to say that this will never happen. iOS devices might be safe for the time being, but hackers are industrious individuals and if they try hard enough, they could certainly find ways to exploit the iOS and eventually infect these systems with viruses. There have already been several attempted hackings of the iOS system so we know that hackers and virus programmers are already on the move.

Apple has designed an extremely user-friendly and secure operating system for their mobile devices. As of right now, the risk of infection is minimal. But this does not mean that such risk won't increase in the future. As the number of users of iPhones and iPads rises, so too will the motivation of hackers and virus programmers to target these devices with their malicious creations designed to take them down. Currently there is no anti-virus software available for the iPad, however, this could change in the future as the risk of virus infections and hackings increase. You will not miss out when the first anti-virus software for iOS is released however, as it will be major news. 

As always, I recommend that in case the worst does happen to you and you have a compromised iPad in some form, it is a good idea that you are protected with a service such as Protect Your Bubble iPad insurance so that you can be covered if some sort of malicious software makes your device unusable.

About the author:

Laura Ginn is a professional writer and blogger. She writes regularly on the subject of technology and is wedded to her iPad, so you know she's aware of the potential security issues facing these devices!

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Create a Bootable Copy of your Mac OS X

Even though Mac OS X is termed as the best computer operating system, the performance issues Mac users around the world face every day make them realize that being best does not mean that it is perfect.

You find Macs running incomparably fast (i.e. high-speed data execution in technical terms) when they are new, though. However, their newness does not last too long and you find them sluggish after a period of rigorous usage. This sluggish performance of your Mac could be a symptom of its failure. Since you cannot be sure about the health status of your Mac, you should make some suitable arrangements to keep it alive. For example, you must have your Mac boot DVD, as you never know when a disastrous situation comes across resulting in data inaccessibility. 

Mac Bootable Disc

A bootable disc is a removable digital data storage media that is used to boot operating system on computers having inbuilt programs to boot and execute program files based on some predefined standards. When you purchase a new computer, you get a bootable disc along with it. A bootable disc enable you repair and re-install the operating system installed on your computer. For this, you need to boot your computer with this disc and choose desired option (i.e. to repair or to install).

Significance of Bootable Disc on Mac

Perhaps you rely on boot volume (i.e. Macintosh HD) on your Mac, but this trust may break anytime and you will find that your data is no longer accessible. Since all applications and their updates you install on your Mac reside on its boot volume, even a minor mishap (i.e. virus infection, software or hardware error) may cause Mac’s failure. Apart from this, following are the major needs for a bootable disc:

To Boot your Computer: You might have come across performance issues on your Mac, which sometimes lead to failure of your Mac system. As a result, you lose all your data stored on it. In such a situation, bootable disc is the absolute resolution that enables you to access all your data. Using bootable disc, you not only can repair minor corruption issues, but go for a fresh Mac OS X installation as well.

Repair Boot Disk Permissions: On Mac OS X, each volume has a set of particular access permissions associated with it. These permissions, as named, not only limit user access on Mac volumes, but maintain integrity of your Mac system as well. You might have found one or more volumes on your Mac inaccessible, which is due to corruption of their access permissions. You can easily repair these permissions if they are associated with any of the secondary volumes. However, repairing permissions on Mac’s boot volume requires you to boot from Mac OS X install disc (especially in Mac versions earlier than Lion), and then launch Disk Utility to repair its Disk Permissions.

Repair Boot Volume: Boot volume is the primary partition on your Mac drive, named as Macintosh HD. It not only contains system files and user applications, but the updates you install for them as well. Apart from these, a Mac slows down due to numerous causes, including corruption of its boot volume. This causes Mac startup issues, poor execution of programs, freezing, and crashing issues. In such situations, you need to repair Mac’s boot volume. For this, insert Mac OS X install disc and press C key to boot from it. Select a preferred OS X language, and then select Disk Utility in Mac OS Utilities window. Select Macintosh HD at the left and click Verify Disk at the right. If it reports any error, click Repair Disk.

What if there is no Bootable Disc

When you face inaccessibility or corruption of Mac’s boot volume or its permissions, you need to repair the same after booting it using Mac’s bootable disc. You might wonder that if you can repair all Mac volumes as well as their permissions, then why you cannot do the same on its boot volume. Well, to repair Mac’s boot volume, it is necessary to boot from Mac’s bootable disc because you cannot repair it while booting from it. However, what to do if you do not have your Mac’s bootable disc? How would you install Mac OS X in case it is crashed suddenly? Besides, how would you repair Mac’s boot volume and its permission? You certainly cannot perform either of the operations it there is no Mac’s bootable disc. 

Creating Bootable Disc on Mac

A bootable disc is nothing but a bootable data storage media that is used to install and repair the operating system. In addition, using a bootable disc for your Mac, you can recover inaccessible data, troubleshoot software as well as hardware issues, and customize settings on your Mac in order for running large applications (i.e. games and Photoshop).

If you are a Mac Lion or Mountain Lion user, then perhaps you remember that Apple did not ship you Mac OS X bootable disc. According to Apple, Mac Lion and Mountain Lion users do not need a bootable disc, as they can download (after purchasing) these installers from Mac App Store and run them directly. However, this only way of making these installers available is proved as the biggest complain of Mac users, as it is much more convenient to boot from a physical media (such as a bootable DVD, a USB flash drive, or any external media) than a downloaded app. However, if you do not have a bootable disc for your Mac, you can create bootable disc using Mac OS X installer after downloading it from Mac App Store.

For this, you have to go online to Mac App Store, purchase the OS X installer app, and then download it. When downloading is finished, go to /Applications directory and look for ‘Install Mac OS X <version name>.app’ (such as Install Mac OS X Mountain Lion.app). Right-click or Control + click installer app and choose Show Package Contents in the context menu. In the opening folder, navigate to Contents folder > Shared Support folder, and then look for a file named as InstallESD.dmg (i.e. an image file). Once it is located, minimize this directory window and launch Disk Utility (found in Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility). Now, drag InstallESD.dmg to the left pane of Disk Utility. Now, you have two options:

• To create a bootable external drive (i.e. using any of the volumes on your Mac or a USB hard drive) or a flash drive, or 
• To create a bootable DVD 

Creating a Bootable Drive for Mac

Select InstallESD.dmg in the left pane of Disk Utility and click Mount option in the toolbar above. You see a new volume named as Mac OS X Install ESD mounted in the Finder. Select this volume under the image shown in Disk Utility and go to the Restore tab in the right pane. Attach a minimum 8GB drive (i.e. it requires around 5GB space) to your Mac. Now, drag Mac OS X Install ESD from left pane of Disk Utility and drop it to the Source field, and drag the destination drive to the Destination field at the right.

Important: Make sure that the destination drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and is using GUID Partition Table, which means you must be using an Intel-based Mac. If it is not, then format it first using these steps:

Attach a destination drive to your Mac and launch Disk Utility. Select this drive at the left, and simultaneously go to the Erase tab at the right. Now, select Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) as the Format and type a name for this volume. Click Erase button and wait until it is finished. Now, go to the Partition tab and click Options button. Choose GUID Partition Table as the Partition Map Scheme for this drive. Finally, click OK, and then click Apply button.

Once it is finished, click Restore button to start copying your Mac boot volume to external drive. Please note that the process formats destination drive, so make sure that there is not a single crucial file stored on it. If you have set a password to your user account, then you need to enter it (when prompted) to initiate this process. Besides, the time taken by the process is based on the number of applications installed on this volume.

Creating a Bootable DVD for Mac

Aside from a bootable disk or flash drive, you can also create a Mac OS X bootable DVD using the same InstallESD.dmg file. For this, you need to track the following process:

With Disk Utility launched and InstallESD.dmg shown in its left pane, select InstallESD.dmg image file and click burn option in toolbar above. Now, a message prompts and you need to insert a blank DVD (you can use both single as well as dual layer disc); set your disc burning preferences, and then click Burn to start burning it. When it finishes, you can use this DVD to boot any Mac matching system requirements (Mac OS X version according to hardware configuration).

Note:The above described method is for creating bootable dvd of Mac using Disk Utility which is an inbuilt tool of Mac. However, if one is not comfortable with this tool and want some advanced tool that can perform this job easily so, you can go for third party tools like Stellar Drive Clone. This tool is extremely simple and fast for cloning and imaging of Mac drive.

This post is written by our proud Reader and Writer : Rashmi Chauhan 

You can contact her on rashmi.chauhan09999@gmail.com

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Leap Motion ~ A glimpse into the innovative future of computer interaction !

LEAP MOTION CONTROLLER - Since the beginning of graphics enabled computers in April 1981, interaction has tremendously evolved over the past thirty years to include different interface metaphors like mouse and keyboard, pen computing, touch screens and recently multitouch screens. These continuously enabling developments have made the view of interaction more accessible and natural. But despite of the broad range of technologies in these development area, they all rely on two-dimensional plane. So as a qualifying technology, Leap Motion has very important and motivating platform to encourage further improvement and it helps to improve the naturalness in this interaction metaphors. What motivates me to use Leap Motion is a problem of wasting time and inconvenience by duplicating same keyboard and mouse events to extract information from same source, in which I am interested in accessing same kind of information using hand pose signs given by me. Due to real-time operational requirements, I am interested in a computationally efficient algorithm and probably hardware. And here it is, the revolutionary future of computer interaction Leap Motion. Leap Motion is first and unique mainstream contender for a high fidelity gesture peripheral. The first question everybody asks is, "So what can it do?". The short answer is, today, very little. Tomorrow? Well, I for one am a believer. What we have here is a limitation of imagination, not of technology. That is usually a catalyst for innovation.

The Leap Motion controller is a small USB peripheral device which is designed to be placed on a physical desktop, facing upward. Using two cameras and three infrared LEDs, the device observes a roughly hemispherical area, to a distance of about 1 meter (3 feet). It is designed to track fingers (or similar items such as a pen) which cross into the observed area, to a spatial precision of about 0.01 mm.

Leap Motion CEO Michael Buckwald said:

"We want there to be world-changing applications that fundamentally transform how people interact with their operating system or browse the Web.... The goal is to fundamentally transform how people interact with computers and to do so in the same way that the mouse did, which means that the transformation affects everyone, both from the most basic use case all the way up to the most advanced use cases you can imagine for computing technology."

I love the idea of controlling computers by waving my hands. Using the Leap is a novel experience, it is very user friendly but there are still some flaws which will be resolved soon.

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