The goal of this article is to enlighten you to the concept of backing up/modifying data from your mobile phone (e.g. Contacts, Picture(s), Video(s), etc). Using a free open source tool called bitpim and a data cable you can easily download and edit your mobile phones contents.

If you have ever had the joy of switching cell phones only to find that all your contacts will now have to be added to the new phone by hand then this article is for you. Bitpim allows you to easily update, add and delete contacts from your phone book using your computer. Compare that to using the keypad of your phone to update you 1000 contacts in your new Motorola Razor phone. You can also save your phonebook and anything else you fancy to your hard drive and then upload it to a different phone. This is extremely useful if you have developed a nice list of contacts in outlook and want to quickly transfer them to your mobile phone. Also an additional feature to Bitpim is it’s ability to add calendar events to your phone using a computer.

What you will need

1. Your Mobile Phone
2. A data cable (Can be purchased at most cellular providers retail outlets) or visit http://www.cellularfactory.com
3. Bitpim free for download here

First things first check if your phone is supported by Bitpim you can do so by reading the supported phones list here.

Then you just connect your mobile phone to your computer, launch Bitpim, select your phone from the drop down menu in the software’s interface and browse through the data. I wont go into details explaining how to use Bitpim they have already done the work for me here http://www.bitpim.org .

Has anyone been to the airport lately? Well I am here to tell you it’s not what it used to be. As many of you may know airport security has stepped it up a notch after the events of 9/11/01. This has caused some delay in many peoples lives as they are frisked, scanned and even questioned at the security gate. That’s why I created “6 waysto make airport security painless”.

The idea behind this method is be prepared for the security check and things will move in a more timely fashion. This is not an article on how to avoid being the lucky flyer number 23 who is submitted to a full body cavity search. It is however an article featuring 6 ways for you to optimize your luggage. Doing so will ensure that if and when you do get stopped the delay will be minimized.

1. Make a list of everything you are going to take with you on your trip. Once you have this list it is time to start minimizing. Less is more and that logic can be directly applied to this situation. Try to exclude items you may be able to obtain at your point of destination. This will make les luggage for you to carry and also less luggage for them to search.

2. Once you have your list in order and you have removed the kitchen sink from it :) it is time to categorize your belongings. I personally use the three tier method for this part. The three tier method is a priority based categorization method. The first tier is the highest priority items. These items include crucial necessities such as plane tickets, cell phone, laptop, pda, tom tom, jewelry, maps, important documents, invitations and other highly important items. The second tier is depreciated from the first tier and includes medium priority items such as clothing, hygiene products, and gifts ect. . Then there is the third tier depreciated from the second tier the third tier is the easiest to fill. At this point anything that didn’t fit in the first and second tiers will no belong to the third tier.

3. Check as many bags as possible. You will want to try and check as many bag’s as possible. This is something that may make many people nervous based on previous experiences with lost or stolen luggage, however this will make it easier on you at the security gate. The fewer bags you have the less they will have to search “right there” and the faster you move through the gate and on to your flight. (Hint check the second and third tier bag’s to ensure your important belongings are not victims of the infamous lost luggage scenario)

4. The day of your flight schedule yourself one hour earlier than your flight departure. The airport recommended two hours for security but trust me you should not need more than one unless you are at an international airport and have to go through customs.

5. Purchase your tickets as far in advance as possible. This will not only lower the cost of the flight and get you a better seat but also will lower your chances of being selected for a random search. Evidently passengers who purchase tickets 60 days or more in advance are less likely to be subjected to a search.

6. Have proper identification available and ready to go. Make sure you have some sort of dmv issued valid photo id handy. You never know when someone may want you to identify you. Not having your id can cause a major dilemma if you have to return home to retrieve it. So be prepared and have all your identification documents on your person (or in your carry on).

Finding a clean public restroom is not always easy. Sometimes we use questional restroom facilities out of sheer desperation. Not anymore, The Bathroom Diaries features a list of public restroom’s and also a user’s experience at that location. So next time you plan a trip dont use just any restroom you can find build your self a guide to the top toilets in America using The Bathroom Diaries website.

Personally I dread using a public restroom almost every time. I have found a neat resource for finding a decent place to do your business on the road or at home. Next time you travel dont forget to check out this site.

So you have lost your password and cant log in to your workstation. If you are on Windows XP Home Edition you have nothing to worry about. You can reboot into safe mode (reboot “Press F10 at Windows Loading Screen”) and login to the administrative account using no password. You can then reset a user’s password to anything you like. When you have finally changed the password you reboot and let Windows restart and log onto the account using the new password, that’s it.

By: Redbird redbird@2600.com

This article will cover making a simple robust single track magstripe reader from scratch.
The following was inspired by author Redbird in 2600 volume 22:1. This magstripe reader will be designed to plug into your microphone port on any sound card of your choice.

Read

Anyone who has used a web statistics program should understand that to a competitor the statistical data found in a web stats page is very valuable. Something this valuable should be kept safe from prying eyes right. Well in some cases web stats can be extremely insecure and need further configuration beyond the default settings. This article deals mainly with the Awstats program. I am most familiar with Awstats and I am sure the majority of readers are too. With that said lets get started.

Overview

• How to search for web statistics via Google Hacking
• Ways to prevent your stats from becoming public.

How it works

Ok go to Google and do a search for inurl:”awstats.pl” I came up with 296,000 pages with public stats using just that search string. As you can see everything about these sites is made public thanks to Google and poor web administration practices. So now you see the problem, now I am going to show you some methods to prevent this sort of snooping on your own site.

How to prevent it

First and foremost many websites are hosted on shared hosting accounts. The web stats are installed either automatically or using some sort of installer such as Fantastico etc. For these users you will need to start by contacting your web host. Some other methods of preventing you web stats being made public are to restrict search indexing of the cgi-bin and other sensitive directories within your web space using a Robots.txt file. This will prevent search spiders such as Google and the like from spidering your stats pages. Another way would be to use .htaccess to prevent access to that directory all together. For the purpose of example and simplicity I will explain only the latter. The Robots.txt file mentioned before is a simple text file that search engines look for as a set of guidelines for proper indexing of the site. The Robots.txt file tells the spider where it is welcome and where it is not welcome. Now I am not going to go into major details on how to setup a Robots.txt file. I will give a quick overview on how to protect your cgi-bin with a Robots.txt file. First things first start by creating a plain text document in the root folder of your site and name it robots.txt. Open the file and on the first line type User-agent: * then on the second line type Disallow: /cgi-bin . Explanation : Ok so the first line tells me the user agent (i.e. the search engine reading the file). Using a star or “wildcard” makes the rule apply to all spiders. There are literally thousands of spiders out there so here is a list of spiders I found

Most Well Known Spiders

• GOOGLEBOT - http://www.google.com
• SLURP - http://www.yahoo.com
• MSNBOT - http://www.msn.com

Ok so far we have learned how to make a robots.txt file that will disallow all spiders from spidering out cgi-bin directory(I chose this directory because it is the primary location where most stats scripts are installed). Now let’s learn how to disallow just one spider.

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /cgi-bin

ok the above instructions tell Googlebot the spider to exclude the /cgi-bin directory of the site from its crawl. You can change the user agent to whatever spider you want and set specific instructions for the spider.

This is by no means the most secure way of preventing access to your cgi-bin folder. It is however a simple precaution to make the public viewing of your stats pages less probable. To prevent access using a more secure method use the .htaccess file to restrict access to the directory.

I hope that this tutorial has brought to the attention of web master’s that their competition could very well know their next move or even their latest clients and should take precautionary steps to prevent it.

Ok Sprint is the worst carrier I have ever found. So if you’re unfortunate enough to be with Sprint I hope to brighten your day with this article. Ok so here’s the thing Sprint offers free mobile to mobile service to PCS subscribers. On the other hand they charge you for calling and retrieving your voicemail from the CLAIRE system (CLAIRE is the annoying teleprompt voice system at Sprint). So here is how you go about getting what’s rightfully your’s “Your Voicemail Messages”. The concept of this hack is that when Sprint detects you are making a Sprint to Sprint call meaning both lines are Sprint lines it considers your call free as mentioned above.

• What you will need
• 1. A Sprint PCS phone
• 2. A friends or anyone’s Sprint PCS number (Must be active and must be Sprint)
• 3. About five minutes of FREE time whatever that is. LOL

Instructions

Dial 11 + area code + PCS Number then insert 2 two second pauses then ** then one more 2 second pause you may have to activate some sort of options menu depending on your phone model. My Samsung I had when I was on Sprint had an insert menu when in dialing mode. Anyway you should now have something like 11 (Area Code) + (Sprint Number) PP** now add your number area code first to the end of the string of digits then add a pound sign #. You should now have something like this 115555555555 P P ** P 555-555-1212# (example number is 555-555-5555 and second number the other persons number is 555-555-1212 for example purposes) this last part is optional and not recommended but to automate putting in your password you can just add one more 2 second pause to the string right after # and enter in the digits that make up your password. Now simply save it as vmail or whatever in your phone and use that number to call for your voicemail. If you didn’t add your password to the end just wait until you are asked for a password. If you did everything right you should get your mail. Good luck and if your bill severely drops in the next billing cycle ask Sprint why they advertise Free voicemail and then charge you minutes to use it?

OK, I did this a while back to have more control over my computer when I am not at home. Keep in mind this method will turn off a computer with an “constant” internet connection i.e.(cable,DSL).

Basically you setup a rule in outlook to look for say a keyword in the subject line of an email. Then you select run application as the action for when that keyword is found. Then all you have to do is write a simple dos batch file and use the shutdown command with the -fs parameter to ensure the shutdown is not aborted by any running applications. After that the rest is simple you simply send a sms text message from your cell phone or other source to your email address. You must have automatic send and receive tunned on for this to work.

Ok so let’s get started.

Create a file called shutdown.bat in notepad with the following code in it.


shutdown -s


Save it to your C:\ drive so the path to the shutdown batch file is something like C:\scripts\shutdown.bat (Important this is a must the path must be exact) or you can modify the rule once you import it to point to the new destination it’s your call.
Now open outlook and adjust your settings to send and receive email every minute on the minute (1 minute for testing time can be increased if a delayed shutdown is desired.) now in Outlook in the file menu click Tools and select Rules and Alerts with the Rules and Alerts dialog open click the options button on the far upper right portion of the dialog window. Choose import rules from the options dialog and browse to the file C:\sms_functions\rules\shutdown.rwz
(the file was included in the downloaded project files) and your done. Now send a text message from your cell phone to your email address and in the subject use the key phrase smsshutdown%% (or make your own! :) and send it. When the email is received and found with the smsshutdown%% in the subject Outlook runs the dos batch file containing the shutdown -f command and shuts down your computer. You could also accomplish other task’s using this method using more dos commands, php scripts, perl what ever. This will work on Linux using pine also.

I hope this will be as useful to someone else as it has been to me.

Bonus Tip
I have found that this article explaining the MS-DOS SHUTDOWN Command Syntax can answer most of your questions about the command.

Update: I recently updated the file so it works the way it should thanks to everyone who helped in the comments. If you re download the files it should work for those of you whom it did not.

More Windows Automation Tips, Tricks and Software Also see my automation category for more Windows automation tips, tricks and software.