Ashesh Shrestha

Nepali calendar for iPhone

Ashesh — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 18:40:25 +0000

Just made iPhone version of Nepali Calendar. Want to have Nepali Calendar on your iPhone? It is very simple to integrate.
1) Open this link (http://www.ashesh.com.np/calendarlink/calendar.php) on safari browser
2) adjust the view size
3) tap on ‘+’ sign and
4) tap on add to home screen.

This will add Nepali Calendar icon on your iPhone home screen.

Whenever you want to see Nepali Calendar , just tap tap it on your home screen.

iPhone at risk from security flaw

Ashesh — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:15:24 +0000

Security firms are warning of a vulnerability in Apple’s iOS for iPhone, iPad and iPod.

Symantec said that it could be exploited by remote attackers to take
complete control of a vulnerable device .

Experts said that the threat, at present, only exists on paper but that Apple need to issue a fix before it becomes a reality.

Apple said that the company was aware of the report and was investigating.

The problem lies in the way Apple’s Mobile Safari handles Adobe Acrobat PDF documents.

As the browser automatically opens PDF files, a hacker could embed malicious code into this file.

Graham Cluley, a computer security expert with Sophos, told BBC News that the exploit used the same principle as Jailbreakme – a utility that lets iPhone 4 owners run non-Apple approved applications – although it uses the exploit in a benign way.

“It uses the same tricks as you do when jailbreaking,” said Mr Cluley.

“We always thought that Apple’s Mobile Safari would be the main vulnerability.

“At present, we have yet to see any of these exploits out in the wild, but it is only a matter of time,” he warned.

Jailfixed

In an ironic twist, the only way of preventing Mobile Safari from automatically opening PDF files is by jailbreaking a phone and installing an application, called PDF Loading Warner, that then asks for permission every time the browser tries to open a PDF file.

US authorities declared it was legal for users to jailbreak their phones.
“I personally wouldn’t want to jailbreak my phone to get the fix,” said Mr Cluley.

He suggested that concerned users may want to switch to an alternative web browser, such as Opera, although he stressed that they had not yet checked these systems for exploits.

“Right now, its all eyes on Apple who we hope are going to fix this problem as soon as possible.

“Historically, Apple have been slow to fix problems on their Mobile browser.

“This has been a concern of ours in the past and continues to be,” he added.

In an ironic posting on Twitter, one of the developers behind Jailbreakme – who uses the handle “comex” – speculated: “how long until a fix is released?”

Apple have yet to release a patch that would either prevent Jailbreak from working or close the highlighted security flaw.

Happy Friendship Day

Ashesh — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 06:30:35 +0000

Someone Somewhere

someone

Is very proud of you

Someone

Is thinking of you

Someone

Cares about you

Someone

Misses you

Someone

Wants to talk to you

Someone

Wants to be with you

Someone

Hopes you aren’t in trouble

Someone

Is thankful for the support you have

Provided

Someone

Hopes everything turns out all right

Someone

Wants you to be happy

Someone

Wants you to find them

Someone

Is celebrating your successes

Someone

Wants to give you a gift

Someone

Think you ARE a gift

Someone

Wants to lavish you with small gifts

Someone

Admires your strength

Someone

Is thinking of you and smiling

Someone

Wants to be your shoulder to cry on

Someone

Wants to go out with you and have a lot of fun

Someone

Thinks the world of you

Someone

Wants to protect you

Someone

Would do anything for you

Someone

Wants to be forgiven

Someone

Is grateful for your forgiveness

Someone

Wants to laugh with you about old times

Someone

Remembers you and wishes you were there

Someone

Is praising God for you

Someone

Needs to know that your love is unconditional

Somebody

Values your advice

Someone

Wants to tell you how much they care

Someone

Wants to stay up watching old movies with

You

Someone

Wants to share their dreams with you

Someone

Treasures your spirit

Someone

Wishes they could STOP time because of

You

Someone

Praises God for your friendship and lov e

Someone

Can’t wait to see you

Someone

Wishes that things didn’t have to change

Someone

Loves you for who you are

Someone

Wants to be with you

Someone

Is hoping they can grow old with you

Someone

Hears a song that reminds them of you

Someone

Wants you to know they are there for you

Someone

Is glad that you’re their friend

Someone

Wants to be your friend

Someone

Is alive because of you

Someone

Is remorseful after losing your

Friendship

Someone

Is wishing that you would notice them

Someone

Wants to get to know you better

Someone

Wants to be near you

Someone

Misses your guidance and advice

Someone

Values your guidance and advice

Someone

Has faith in you

Someone

Trusts you

Someone

Needs you to send them this letter

Someone

Needs your support

Someone

Needs you to have faith in them

Someone

Needs you to let them be your friend

Someone

Will cry!! when! they read this

That Someone is your Friend

and that something is Friendship

wish you a very Happy Friendship Day

Firefox Tab Candy Organizes Your Tabs in Groups, Looks Excellent

Ashesh — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:42:57 +0000

Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox Tab Candy is a new tab management feature for Firefox that organizes tabs into groups to help you keep your tabs grouped by task. Not only does it offer incredibly handy features, but it looks beautiful.

Watch the video down, by Mozilla’s excellent interface designer Aza Raskin, for a quick overview. The idea is sort of like the new app folders in iOS 4, or like a better version of OS X’s Exposé—except for it’s all about your browser tabs. You can drag and drop to re-arrange all your tabs into groups, create new groups by simply dragging a web page outside an existing group and dragging another item on top of it, and name all your groups based on what task they’re related to.

An Introduction to Firefox’s Tab Candy from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Rename Files Fast with the Tab Key

Ashesh — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:32:37 +0000

What is HTML5?

Ashesh — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:28:31 +0000

You have probably seen the term “HTML5″ if you have read any of the recent articles about Apple and Flash. HTML5 is a new web page coding standard in advanced stages of development. Among other goals, it aims to reduce the need for proprietary plug-ins and add-ons (Flash, Silverlight, Java, etc.).

HTML4 came out more than a dozen years ago, when the web was just a toddler, and it is in serious need of spiffing up. HTML5 introduces new elements and attributes, including

for navigation and

Steve Jobs’ letter explaining Apple’s Flash distaste

Ashesh — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:09:30 +0000

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers–Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products–but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven–they say we want to protect our App Store–but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript–all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264–an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple–we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins–we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era–for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards–all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Force IE to open link in new tab

Ashesh — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 02:13:40 +0000

If you use Firefox or Google Chrome, all links automatically open in a new tab, which for me is more convenient. However, with IE 8, all links open in a new window, which is really annoying since it now supports multiple tabs! So how does one configure IE 8 so that clicked links are opened in a new tab? Here’s how.

First, open Internet Explorer and click on Tools and then Internet Options. Press the ALT key if you don’t see any of the menu items.

Now click on the Settings button under the Tabs section on the General tab.

Finally, under the heading “When a pop-up is encountered”, choose Always open pop-ups in a new tab.

That’s it! Now when you click on a link in Internet Explorer that is set to open in a new window, it will instead open in a new tab! You can also change the setting below it, Open links from other programs in, to open in a new tab. That way if you click on an Internet link from an email, etc, it will open in the current IE window as a new tab. Enjoy!

How to Enable Multisite in WordPress 3.0

Ashesh — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:05:18 +0000

With version 3.0, regular WordPress and WordPress MU are merged into WordPress 3. All betas of WP 3.0 had Site Admin section in backend (even if upgraded from regular WordPress), but since RC and final release this option disappeared. It is a hidden part of WordPress 3.0 and has to be activated manually with a a few edits to a WordPress installations wp-config.php file. You need FTP or shell access to do it.

Follow the simple 10 minutes max. instructions to activate Multi User functionality in your WordPress 3.0 installation:

Disable all plugins. You can re-enable them after multi-site has been configured.
Activate the multi-site features of WordPress 3.0 by adding this line of code to your wp-config.php file:

/** Enable or disable Worpress Multi-site features **/

define(‘WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE’, true);
Refresh your Dashboard then visit Tools -> Network. You will see a screen that looks similar to the one in the picture below. Read onwards before you make any configuration changes.
If you want to install your additional blogs on sub-domains instead of sub-directories you will need to create a wildcard DNS record on your server to enable the virtual host (sub-domain) functionality of WordPress 3.0. Your server must support wildcard DNS records for you to do this.
You need to install the now activated WordPress 3.0 Network settings◦Find the Network settings page in your WordPress admin panel (Tools -> Network)
◦Choose whether you want to use sub-domains or sub-folders for the additional blogs

◦Type a name for your network of sites

◦Set your admin email address

◦Click “Install”
After a minute or two you will be presented with a configuration screen. Back up your .htaccess and wp-config.php files before you proceed to follow the instructions provided on that configuration screen.◦As a precautionary measure to prevent visitors of non-existent sites from being greeted by 404 error messages, redirect them to a URL of your choice by adding the below code to the bottom your wp-config.php file:

/* Send visitors to non-existent blogs here */

define( ‘NOBLOGREDIRECT’, ‘http://yourdomain.com/’ );

change http://yourdomain.com/ to the main blog you want to redirect to.

◦Log out then log back in.

You will now need to go through your settings to enable or disable the new options provided by WordPress Multi Site.

Here is also video to setup mulitsite by Devin

Apple’s Steve Jobs admits ‘we are not perfect’

Ashesh — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:27:45 +0000

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, admitted that the company was “not perfect” at a hastily convened press conference to address reported signal problems with its latest must-have gadget, the iPhone 4.

As with iPhone 4 has software update last night on 15th july 2010 iOS 4.0.1 for miss calculation of bar to display for the signal strength.

Also apple is giving free bumber for iPhone 4 and refund who got already.