"Your security settings have blocked an untrusted application from running" how to workaround

  Got this error message in Internet Explorer, preventing the pop up from opening. I wanted to add an security exception since I knew what I was opening was a trusted internal site. So it should be done only when you are sure that the site is secure and not done when you are not sure, use your discretion.

  Press on Windows Start button, type "Configure Java" hit enter. "Java Control Panel" window will open. Click on the "Security" tab. Click on the "Edit Site List" button. Add the URL that you wish to bypass the security check for. Click Add and Ok.

   This would bypass the security check and refreshing the website in IE opened the pop up.

Add xml so that it renders "as you type" to your blog

If you paste the XML code as such it gets interpreted by your browser and doesn;t show as you type it and eventually the way you would want your readers to be reading it.

Came across this tool called http://www.freeformatter.com/xml-escape.html Here you need to paste your XML and you hit escape button. The resulting text is the "Escaped" version of your XML. You can paste this "Escaped" version of your XML as such to your blog and it will finally render in the browser as its original text/XML version.

Building Weka source code GPG error and resolution

Tried to check out svn repository of Weka using

"svn co https://svn.cms.waikato.ac.nz/svn/weka/tags/stable-3-6-10"

Loaded it as Maven project in Idea Intellij 13.

From Pom targets hit compile - it succeeds.

Pom target -> build succeeds.

Pom target install -> Build hangs at following message :

[INFO] Building jar: C:\Users\user\Desktop\Code\Weka\stable-3-6-10\weka\dist\weka-stable-3.6.10-SNAPSHOT-javadoc.jar

[INFO] 

[INFO] --- maven-gpg-plugin:1.1:sign (sign-artifacts) @ weka-stable ---

GPG Passphrase:   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *...

It will keep on printing ***s on the console and never stop !!

Found the addition of following in your pom.xml to be resolving the issue.

------------------------
<configuration>
       <skip>true</skip>
</configuration>
------------------------

which may finally look like this

-----------------------
<plugin>
  <groupid>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupid>
  <artifactid>maven-gpg-plugin</artifactid>
  <configuration>
    <skip>true</skip>
  </configuration>
  <version>1.1</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>sign-artifacts</id>
      <phase>verify</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>sign</goal>
      </goals>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>
-----------------------

The general idea behind this plugin is to protect what you might create and share, with a passphrase that only you know. More information about what it does and how to use it is here http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-gpg-plugin/usage.html

However as in my case it became a bottleneck in the build process of a freshly downloaded source, not sure what the bug was there, but adding the skip tag bypassed it and the build succeeded.

Irresponsible marketing spam emails from indiatimes.com

Nowadays the spammers are more responsible then they ever were, atleast they have the courtesy to add a "unsubscribe" link on which if you click, it takes you to a page confirming your unsubscription, which is honored most of the times.

A big and supposedly responsible group like indiatimes.com sends a marketing email purely as spam and do not have the courtesy to have a "unsubcribe" link which even worst of the spammers have started adding nowadays.

Shame on you indiatimes.com ! Folowing is a sample email i received from them:

==============================================================

Subject: Missed your daily dose of business news last week?

From: The Economic Times  Wed, 20 Nov '13 8:55p

To: You

Show full Headers

GE 

Live-Market News Portfolio Mobile Live TV Newsletter Commodities Speed Blogs Alerts Follow Us on ET:

About us | Advertise with us | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Feedback | Sitemap | Code of Ethics © 2013 Times Internet Limited.

==============================================================

Best online radio for Hindi Bollywood songs

After a lot of search finally I have settled for this online Radio which does not have Ads, noisy Rjs or any other "noise". It has a bunch of options like, a channel for New bollywood hindi songs (Meethi mirchi), a channel for old bollywood hindi songs (Purani Jeans), a channel for non-filmi hindi songs (Mirchi Edge), a channel for Discotheque themed hindi songs (Club Mirchi), recently also added a channel for English romantic songs (Radio Romance), and a channel for Pop english songs (Cassette classics).

Runs 24/7, online, no ads, no Rjs, just pure music and a very good collection of songs in pretty much every channel, it actually does sound too good to be true, until you listen for yourself : http://www.gaana.com/radio

Hassle free and free : Download Youtube videos for Mac

I was looking for a Youtube video downloader and also if it could convert video to Mp3. Found this downloader to be working as expected without any "surprises"/issues like Ads, license fee crashes, etc.

Get the Youtube video downloader for Mac here https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/37714/youtube-to-mp3

Vine server and viewer - license key free of charge

Recently my Vine viewer for Mac started asking for a license key, just filling the registration form and trying to get free trial working, didnt help.

   After a lot of search found the answer on this page : https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11283/vine-server-&-viewer

Here the key free license key is provided which can be entered in the view viewer form and it starts working again.

Youtube videos getting stuck, my feedback to Google on it.

Recently I;v noticed that a feature has been added to Youtube vidoes, that prevents a paused video from loading fully in background. I understand this was added to save bandwidth and that is good.

But after this feature was added, the video keeps getting stuck and i'm not able to watch videos on Youtube anymore.

Usually if a video stats with default 720p load, first thing i do is to change it to 240p or 144p sometimes, to make it load faster and save on bandwidth. But the video just stops loading and gets stuck .. for good. Even changing back setting to higher pixel doesnt help.

So basically my suggestion is, please see that this preventing of full load feature is revoked, until fully tested.

Because i'm not able to watch videos anymore and thinking about what other video sites have good collection.

Thanks a lot for hearing me out.

Facebook outage down and unreachable in India right now

Facebook is having an outage and is not reachable in India right Now.

The Simpsons, Tapped out reset game to level 1, support problem - Resolution

   The Simpsons themed smart phone game called Tapped out is very popular. But recently when I was on Level 26, I found that the game has been reset to level 1. Quite obviously I was quite pi**ed off at this glitch, since it meant a month or so of my effort I have put in this game has been reset and is wasted..

   Fortunately I found the solution to return back to my original level 26. The real problem is *Not* that the game has been reset to level 1, as it appears on the surface. The *real* problem is that I was logged out of the game (which was probably because the auto login had expired). There was a message which said, "You are playing anonymously" - which kind of hints at the problem, but instead it should be saying "Please relogin into the game since you are logged out"

    So the solution is to login again. After logging in again I recovered my level 26 and continued from there on ...

How to unsubscribe from MakeMyTrip.Com email newsletter and Marketing Phone calls

Just found about this DND (do not disturb) page on MakeMyTrip.Com, http://www.makemytrip.com/support/dnd.jsp. Not sure if they really honor all requests, hope they do and not disturb people unnecessarily.

Lend microloans in India through RangDe

RangDe is a non-profit organization, with a view to make a social impact through micro-finance  It partners with various trusted NGOs in different states of India. These NGOs find and list micro entrepreneurs, for example a lady who wants to borrow ten thousand rupee and buy a cow. The NGO will list her and her requirement for loan on the RangDe.org. People like you and me can go to this website, browse through the potential borrowers listed and lend them starting with smallest amount of one hundred rupee or more. Eventually many lenders put together ten thousand rupee and the amount is given to borrower.


      RangDe makes sure about dealing with trusted partners so you are assured of your help reaching the right people. Eventually when through part payments you get the money back, you can go to your online account and lend it to someone else. OR have a feature called "auto Lend" enabled which will automatically pick a borrower and lend as soon as the amount becomes available in your account.

     So effectively this organization gives me an opportunity to help  a micro entrepreneur far away and put my money to good use. The return rates (percentage of borrowers successfully repaying all loans) is 99.0+% and therefore is an indication that these loans are given to the right people.

     I personally use any occasions like birthdays, anniversaries etc to go to RangDe and lend five hundred or thousand rupees, which over time has accumulated and with auto lend option i dont have to keep track of it. The system picks the right borrowers and automatically allocates any amount that has accumulated in m account for lending. So the money just keeps rotating and put to good use.

    Eventually this money is helping create a lot of value in terms of employment and encouraging micro entrepreneurs to provide services to people around them.

     At this stage RangDe has presence in 5-6 states, I wish they partner with more and more organizations and grow their presence to all over the country, and may be eventually to other countries too.

Zee Cafe - Theme song (Check it out)

Popular Zee Cafe theme song, heard in background when showing Program schedules. This song is "check it out" by Nicki Minaj. Lyrics are here.

Why Yahoo India web hosting service is not SEO friendly ?

I am availing Yahoo India's web hosting plan. The good things about the service are :

. Unlimited space
. Competitive rates
. Decent Hosting Control Panel with web based FTP etc.
. No service outages
. Good brand to give you confidence that they will continue to exist


There is a big BUT following this. This specially concerns any website which is looking to be SEO (search engine optimization) friendly, which these days everyone is.

Yahoo web hosting doesn't allow ".htaccess" modifications. Which most of the other web hosting solution providers out there provide because of it being so important for SEO. But Yahoo doesn't.


".htaccess" is a VERY important SEO feature. There are some really cool things that can be done that are a must for SEO. Listing below are things that can be done:

. Friendly URL : This feature allows every page on your site to be access with a Search engine friendly URL. Something like : "http://www.website.com/posts/the-topic-of-my-page-post.html"
 versus something like "http://www.website.com/posts.php?postid=462"
   The difference between the two version that are pointing to the same page post on your site, is that the friendly version of the URL contains post topic keywords. These keywords in the URL are ranked very highly by search engines and are more likely to rank your pages higher in searches. This is possible only through ".htaccess" modification which is not allowed by Yahoo.


. 404 redirect : As your website grows big, over a period of time there could be broken links because of moved/deleted posts/content. This problem of dead links pointing to non-existent content is where your search engine bot might land and find that a link to your site is dead link. It is possible that the search engine reduces its confidence in such sites, if there are too many such cases. Way to deal with this problem is to modify ".htaccess" to redirect any request to a non-existent content/page to something more meaningful, like your home-page with a error-message on top or a some other page which suggests other content on your site or external content which it deems as relevant to the original queried content. Thereby dealing with the problem of dead link in a much more algorithmic manner, satisfying search engine to quite an extent.

. 301 redirect : Old URL to new URL modification. For example if for any reason (change of topic of a post after it was first published) the URL of a page changes. It could again lead to dead link scenario described above. 301 redirects can be done through ".htaccess" modification, can make the request of the old URL converted to request for new URL automatically, hiding the face that there has been a URL change to the bot or the user reading. Again better way to deal with dead URL problem, and thats why good for SEO.

. Above mentioned are some basic things that are must have's for SEO done through ".htaccess" modifications. However there are some more advanced things that could be done as well, which sound like rarely used practically, like - accessing certain IPs only, prevent Image HOT linking, disable director browsing etc.


Other things being rarely used alright, BUT the top three SEO uses of ".htaccess" are considered must haves and simply can not be ignored. There are sites like www.woorank.com which give you a SEO rank based on how SEO friendly your website is and give you important tips on what could be the things to improve. These sites also look at features which are implantable only through ".htaccess" and unfortunately can not be done on Yahoo web-hosting.

To be fair to Yahoo web-hosting, it should be mentioned why they do not allow ".htaccess" modifications, there reasoning is that it exposes security risks. Considering this coming from the internet giant's technical experts, this might be right BUT how do we make justify :
. Most of the other web-hosting solution providers allowing this ".htaccess" modifications ?
. Why does SEO rank the features as important and expect them to be present ?
. Isn't this something that everyone out there is doing (more importantly your competing websites) and you might be losing out on a important dimension while your competitors have it.


Overall this sounds like an overkill that Yahoo web-hosting technical team is going after security wise and should be changed, my2c. Do share thoughts.

incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in Income Tax India website registration error : Internal error please try after some time

I was recently told by the customer care helpline from Income Tax department India, that there is a website where I can go and register my PAN number. After registering I will be able to view past filings, whether e filing or physical filing. Also it will be useful in checking status of current filings, refunds etc.

Today I tried to register my PAN number on the website, but got this error : Internal Error. Please try after some time.

Here is a screen shot of the error I got :

Initially the website registration had given an error saying this will not work on Google Chrome browser. So I tried with Firefox browser. The registration form showed but the above mentioned error did not let the registration finish. Share any solutions anyone who might have come across this error, knows. Thanks

Facebook Ads errors : "Save operation failed" "update table failed"

These errors I have encountered very frequently while operating my Facebook Ad account. Specially while I'm modifying the CPC amount. It just fails to update the amount giving the above mentioned error. This is quite frustrating experience specially because this involves the money being spent, and despite your attempts to modify Facebook is not accepting the updated CPC amount.

Another frequently seen error is :

Many times this is seen when modifying the running status of the Ad. For example If I'm trying to pause an Ad, It will show the above error "Save operation Failed" and it will continue to run!!

  The irony is i do not see such error very often as a Facebook user, but as an advertiser, I do a lot frequently, which is almost daily. Thing to note is that it is not just a one off error. It is seen for hours together, of course I will not sit on it for hours. I go back to work, check back after some time and it is still there!

Advertisers is the way Facebook makes money. The focus on user experience for an advertiser is not appropriate, specially given that these are seen very frequently.

What you cannot do on Facebook Ads - improvement required in targetting

Came across this limitation while creating Facebook Ad in targeting.

Explaining here with an example : While targeting Facebook ad there is a way to say "Show my ad to people who like Tennis". This part is good. BUT there is no way to add a exclusion rule like "do not show my ad to people who like Golf"..

So basically Facebook seems to have tonnes of information regarding what people like etc. based on which it can smartly target ads. But isn't it just a matter of exposing this as a exclusion also, in the sense described by example above. I may want to exclude people from my targeting based on what they like. But that as of today is not present in Facebook ad creation targeting options!

It can be an advanced targeting option that can easily be exposed and might find use for advertisers giving them much finer control on not just whom they want to target but also whom they do not want to target. Do share thoughts..

Recently came across this amazing free tool from Yahoo called Dapper which allows you to create a RSS feed from a HTML page by visually selecting the parts of a page you would like to add to the feed.

Have been using it for some time now but recently the service is down and the website open.dapper.net is not up as well.

Has it something to do with Yahoo exiting from many of its services. It will be very unfortunate if this service goes down or is removed.

If thats the case may be Yahoo should open it up to the community to maintain through donations. I know I'll be one to donate for such an amazing service.

Swtching back to old profile not possible after enabling Timeline on Facebook Profile - one way street

I just wanted to see how the new timeline feature works with the assumption in my mind that there will always be an option to go back to old style of Facebook profile if I do not like the new timeline.

That is the first thing I checked after switching to timeline was to see how to go back.

Cons :
For the post that have happened earlier the Privacy control option does not show up! So if I wanted to change the privacy option of an earlier post there is no way of doing it. except may by deleting it.

If you find out any way to switch back please share in comments. AFAIK it is not possible.


Trying Timeline is a one way street. Time to switch to Google + ? :)

New application creation is not available at this time. Please check later. - Yahoo API

I wanted to create new project in Yahoo API but getting this error. not sure why ?

So, you want to use some Yahoo! APIs...

We need some information about you and the application you're building before you can use Yahoo! Web Services. We collect this information to get a better understanding of how Yahoo! Web Services are being used and to protect the security and privacy of Yahoo! users.

New application creation is not available at this time. Please check later.