Don’t be bummed if you didn’t get a Spock invite. You would’ve had to wear the pointed ears and a too-tight suit. Now on to more pratical matters: The world wide web is the best place to look up many different do-it-yourself articles from blackjack to golf clubs  - or how to golf and play blackjack at the same time - or even how to perform an oil change while you double down and roll in a birdie putt, all at the same time!

Last week I had reviewed a new search engine called Spock. Spock allows you to search for people and people related themes. You can read my review here. Spock is a very impressive service with a lot of potential. It was one of the 12 new and promising startups showcased Supernova’s 2007 Connected Innovators session.

Spock is still in closed beta. However, I have 100 invites to give away. If you are interested just drop a comment here. Just make sure that you use your full name and real email address while commenting.

Sometimes your own “personal metrics” need reinvigorating. A little learning helps to remedy the doldrums, and the Web is a fantastic place to learn, with many informative articles on a wide range of topics, including  blackjack, golf clubs and even a loan calculator for those tricky amortization issues.

Reinvigorate is a new free web analytics service. It offers everything that a standard website metrics service provides, but it offers so much more.

Reinvigorate sports a very clean and well organised web interface, that�s not only functional but also fast. Let�s have a look at various reports offered by Reinvigorate.

Traffic : Reinvigorate displays the number of page views and the number of unique visitors on an hourly, daily and monthly basis using tables and graphs. The screenshot below demonstrates some of the graphs offered by Reinvigorate.

Traffic (Graphical)

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Consider this situation. You have just downloaded a file from a little known website. And although your antivirus didnt detect anything malicious you suspect that the file may be a rogue file. And since no antivirus software has a 100% detection rate (many popular AV software have a detection rate of below 90%) it is possible that you are right. What should you do?

Thanks to web-services like Jotti’s Malware Scan and Virustotal you can now get your file scanned by multiple antivirus engines. These services allow you to upload any file and get it scanned by several antivirus softwares. Virustotal scans every file using 30 antivirus engines where as Jotti checks every file with 18 antivirus engines. However most of the time Virustotal servers are overloaded and you are made to wait in queue. If the file isnt deemed clean by all AV engines then it’s safe to assume that it is clean (unless its a 0-day exploit).

Irrespective of the browser you use, irrespective of the security software installed on your system if you are using Windows you are never truly secure. There is always the possibility that a trojan horse or a worm may sneak through. There is always the possibility that someone may exploit a zero-day vulnerability present in your browser.

So, what is the solution? The best solution is to completely separate the browser from your system so that your browsing session doesn�t affect the system. This is called creating a sandbox - a virtual container in which untrusted programs can be safely run (more info is available at Wikipedia). There are two free and easy to use solutions that I recommend.

Sandboxie

Sandboxie creates a safe environment - which is separated from your operating system, for applications to operate in. It tracks all requests made by an application and makes sure that actual system files are never modified. Restrictions put in place by Sanboxie also ensures that threats like rootkits and keyloggers aren’t installed in the Sandbox itself as well as the system. Sandboxie is a donationware and almost all the features are available for free (more info). Sandboxie is a very powerful software with plethora of options. It should work with most applications. I tested it with Opera and didn�t run into any problem. It allows you to even create and manage multiple sandboxes. However, the free version of Sandboxie doesn’t automatically sandbox particular applications when they are launched. There is another issue with Sandboxie - files downloaded using a sandboxed application are not normally visible in Windows Explorer. Sandboxie replicates the actual directory structure on your hard disk and places the downloaded files in its own ‘Application Data’ folder.

Download Sandboxie (230KB/320KB)
Requirements : Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista (64 bit edition also available)
Version Reviewed : 2.86 (Freeware)
Licensing : Donationware

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Welcome to another edition of Opera Bytes.

As far as Opera Browser for desktop is concerned this has been a rather non-eventful month. Kestrel (Opera v9.5) is still few weeks away and details are still scarce. Earlier this week The Desktop Team provided some teasers about Kestrel in their blog. This release should please Linux and Mac users. Not only will Opera integrate better with these platforms Mac users would also get a refreshed UI. Kestrel is also expected to deliver significant performance improvements.

The real big news this month was the release of Opera Mini 4 beta. Since I don’t have GPRS/Edge on my mobile phone I wasn’t able to try it out, however it has received largely positive feedback so far.
This is a significant upgrade to Opera Mini and features many changes. Airlan San Juan did an in-depth review of Opera Mini at his blog. Do check it out. If you want to testdrive Opera Mini head over to mini.opera.com/beta. You can even test it before installing on your mobile phone using the Opera Mini Simulator. However please keep in mind that this is a beta version intended only for testing and it is still buggy.
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Last month I recieved an invitation from Diogenes to share my opinion on blogging and related matters on his blog - Quassi Fictional. Quassi Fictional has been running a series called The Fine Art of Blogging for quite some time. Bloggers are invited to share their opinion on blogging and related matters. So far more than fifty bloggers (including me) have contributed to the series. You can view the full list here. Be sure to check out all the posts and if you have a blog you are also invited.

Time for another edition of Link Love. Every week I feature some of the best content from my reader’s blogs.

Nirmal wrote about five statistic tool you can use on your blog
Benedict did a quick-review of fourteen blogging platforms
Manas reviewed Smorty - another paid to review service
Ram explained how to find out if your friend is appearing invisible in y!m
Shankar wrote a guide onadding ‘Safe Mode’ to WindowsXp bootlist

Do you think the real Spock can do pdf conversion with a simple mind-meld?That may be the way of the future, but for now you need old-fashionedpractical pdf conversion for your small company. The Internet is the best source for more info about pdf to word and pdf to image conversion. Find out about how to convert pdf to doc, too!

Spock is a new (vertical) search engine with a difference - it’s a people search engine. According to Spock press release thirty percent of all internet searches are people related, and this is the market they are targeting. Like other search engines Spock employs bots that crawl the web looking for people related information. According to its CEO Jaideep Singh it has so far indexed more than 100 million people.

I have been playing around with Spock for last couple of days and I must say I am extremely impressed. It presents the search result in a very well organised manner which ensures that you are able to find the information about the person quickly and easily. Below is the search result for famous Indian author and film maker Satyajit Ray.
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