How to secure your important documents in your wallet

Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc., so you will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call to cancel. Keep the photocopy in a safe place. We've all heard horror stories about fraud that's committed using your name, address, SS#, credit, etc. To limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know. As everyone always advises, cancel your credit cards immediately, but the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them easily. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where it was stolen, this proves to credit providers you were diligent, and is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one). But here's what is perhaps most important: (I never ever thought to do this) - Call the three national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and SS#. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.

Top 5 Apps by Retailers Choice for online Shopping

The power of any online shopping application can be measured on various metrics. Among the key parameters of measurement is how much it can do for the shopper, the retailer and the developer respectively in order of priority. This is in tandem with the new electronic age adage which recognizes customer as king and everyone else comes behind. Internet plays a key role in marketing trends since every item on the shelves of all physical stores in the world has a corresponding review, description or even online marketplace where you can buy it online from the comfort of your home. Billions of dollars are spent every year to make sure consumers get compelled to buy from one manufacturer and/or vendor/brand in the competitive market offered by internet. This is evident from influential ads found on the internet. Be it through youtube videos, eye-catching ads on top-ranking sites  and the millions of “Top 10” lists available on the internet.

With increasing competition comes the need to make sure brands, products and services get to consumers at their comfort, whenever they want to have them and how to have these brands, products or services. Numerous apps have been developed to meet this niche that taps from the power of online shopping. The measurements of these apps are based on a number of approaches but the core important ones to consider in this scenario is their capabilities to the online shopper and the vendor/retailer/manufacturer depending on who is providing the services of the online shopping. The applications are used to link the two to implement sale and therefore the application involved is of critical importance. Among the most efficient applications for online shopping to hit the market are:

1.       1. Amazon Price Check

Amazon price check app searches for products by way of scanning barcode; snapping the cover page of a book, DVD, CD, or video game poster; or by a product name query. This app limits the user in that only items listed in Amazon will appear as search results. Only merchants from amazon can sell their items from this app denying the consumer the variety and competitive pricing they would get from vendors outside Amazon marketplace. The 2 million merchants available on Amazon will offer most items online shoppers would like but does not offer the most competitive pricing. Bargain hunters will be happy to know they can benefit from the Deal of the Day offer as well as Lightning Deals offer which can change multiple times a day. The app is available for apple and android devices.

1.      2. Jifiti

Jifiti is a gifting platform that allows user to spot, share and redeem gifts while walking through stores. Friends and family can easily purchase or chip in for a gift on the Jifiti platform. Friends and family can actually buy the user a gift or easily chip in with one click directly on the Jifiti.com website. All they have to do is click on the link sent by user to them, hit buy (or chip in) and user receives a notification directly to their app. Recipient can simply walk into the store and pick it up with the in-app notification. The app is capable of searching items from captured barcodes.
Jifiti adds a social aspect to online shopping. This makes it very easy for friends to spot you that item you have always craved for. Upon receiving a gift you can opt to check out from store. The variety of items and number of vendors provides for competitive pricing of items. Jifiti shoppers can get this app from Apple online store. New 'Friends' button allows you to see your Facebook friends and invite them to join the Jifiti shopping experience.  The android version is on the pipeline but not yet released. This app derives high rankings from social engagement as well as variety of items offered from stores which is crucial to customer satisfaction. This app does not promise much to bargain hunters although the competitive prices are very compelling.

1.       3. Goodzer

This app promises to get you what you need in the shortest time possible. You however do not get the benefits of competitive pricing. Goodzer is specifically resourceful in finding goods in the nearest stores. This is achieved through providing results which are mapped out to the closest store near you. It lists products sold at major retailers as well as small stores and boutiques that would have otherwise been ignored by most online shopping apps. You should however make a call to confirm the availability of goods in the stores listed by Goodzer before making a trip to the store as they are out of stock in some instances. Goodzer is available for iPhone but users can still access the services from goodzer.com as well.

4. Google Shopper
Google Shopper can scan the bar-code of almost any product. It also lets you scan the covers of books, CDs, DVD, or video games just by pointing your phone's camera at the product. Users can simply say the name of a product and Google's voice search will find it in Shopper. Once users have found an item within the app, they can find the product at various sellers online, complete with seller ratings. Users can also locate the item at nearby stores, read reviews of the product, and read details about the product, including a description, related products, specifications, and videos. The advantage that comes with this app is its linkage to Google Offers—daily local deals available in select cities—so users can purchase a Google Offer right within Google Shopper. The app can also keep lists of products scanned and be used to create a shopping list. The app is available for iPhone and android devices.

5. Smoopa

Smoopa uses barcodes to compare prices from different stores such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Sears, Kmart, Office Depot, OfficeMax, CompUSA, TigerDirect, Buy.com, and more. The user scans a product barcode while at a store, enters the price of the item, and selects the store. The app then compares it with other prices in its database. Smoopa shows a green and yellow button, signifying user can save money by price matching (yellow), or it's a good price and the user should buy it (green). Smoopa can also track a product and send alerts to the user if the price drops below a specified amount. Smoopa also rewards people for using the app with giftcards, rebate checks, and donations to charity. The more people use Smoopa, the more rewards they'll earn. This android and iPhone app is especially useful to merchants who would like to keep check on the competitiveness of their prices relative to other stores.

How to download torrents when your P2P/torrents are blocked by web proxy

Dear ardent readers of my blog,
I have recently delved into migrating this blog and another one that I run at samloffee.webs.com to a self-hosted domain and host. You should check updates on that soon.
Lets now go to the duck of the day. Its pretty well fried I guess. you are probably lost in desperation when your school/college/university/workplace has the "torrents blocked". This is  not unusual. Most institutions do that to limit on bandwidth use per host and improve the network performance. This however does not justify the reason why users should be blocked from using this file sharing technology which proves to be next frontier after most file servers face the risk of shutdown due to infringement on copyrights on account of content found in their servers (Story for another day). You are probably asking yourself how to get that file you found out is only available through torrent downloads.
You should take note that most often the admin of the network will have probably blocked you from downloading the torrent file (that small torrent file usually below 200kb that initiates the torrent download of interest). you will thus not be able to have a torrent file unless you use an alternative unrestricted internet connection to download the file. In this case, you will have to depend on a magnetic link to be able to use the method am about to describe below. Go to your preferred website that hold torrent file collection. Find the file of interest within the website. Once spotted, choose tto download the same using magnetic link (This usually opens your torrent client say uTorrent/BitTorrent etc and feeds it with the URI- Its pretty happens very fast you might not probably notice it.). Ensure you have either the torrent file of interest or its URI in your torrent client application.This is how you proceed:
1. On your torrent client, right click the file of interest. Select the option of "Copy Magnetic URI".
2. open web browser. Open the ZBIGZ Website
3. Paste the Magnetic URI on the bar at the top. Then click "Go"
4. Proceed with the steps and Wait for the file to be prepared for direct download.
5. Click download/zip when ready
Enjoy the download experience
Robust speeds and resumable downloads can be attained from premium accounts. More info coming soon.

How to unlock ZTE San Francisco Orange

This week i have been researching on tricks to unlock ZTE San Francisco locked to orange kenya. The progress is amazing and I will soon be releasing an archive for that, so you can check from my www.4shared.com account for that.
And just as a by-the-way I stumbled upon a commercial (cloud) server that lets you download stuff from the internet at amazing speeds. Free users get to enjoy all the benefits enjoyed by premium users and whats more, they pay users for uploads. interesting? check it out at www.180upload.com

How to unlock Huawei Gaga Orange

This week i have been researching on tricks to unlock huawei gaga locked to orange kenya. The progress is amazing and I will soon be releasing an archive for that, so you can check from my www.4shared.com account for that.
And just as a by-the-way I stumbled upon a commercial (cloud) server that lets you download stuff from the internet at amazing speeds. Free users get to enjoy all the benefits enjoyed by premium users and whats more, they pay users for uploads. interesting? check it out at www.180upload.com

TIPS TO INCREASE SPEED AND PERFORMANCE OF MOZILLA FIREFOX

We all know, Firefox is widely used internet explorer and now many popular Add-ons are available for it. But If we install many ad-ons for Firefox, we experienced some slowness in the performance while opening multiple pages at the same time so to increase the performance here are some tips.

Write "about:config" In the address bar of your Firefox browser and press Enter (Some time you can see some security alert so, click "Proceed" Button). Many configurations you will find.
Now After making some change in to pipelining and some for simultaneous connections we can increase the performance of Firefox.
Setting for Pipelining :
Look for the following entries in to the configuration page.
network.http.pipelining

network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Now you have to change above entries by just double clicking each entry.
Set network.http.pipelining to TRUE
Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to TRUE
Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to number 8 (requests at once).

Now right click anywhere and select New->Integer . Name it as nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set the values 0 .
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. This will again help you to increase the performance of browser.
Now we will do some settings for simultaniously connections.
Settings for Simultaneous Connections:
Look for the following Entries and change the values of each entry.
network.http.max-connections = 96
network.http.max-connections-per-server = 32
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy = 24
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server = 12
You have to follow the same method to change the setting. Double Click on each entry and modify the values for each
Pls. Note that doing the above settings, with some of the pages you can face some loading problem and for those who are using Broadband with Firefox will experience much faster speed from now onwards.

Install Microsoft Security Essentials Without Genuine Validation Check

Microsoft Security Essentials is the free antivirus developed and provided by Microsoft for free to Windows XP, Vista and 7 users. It has been very good detection against virus and it is light which does not put a lot of load on your computer. However to install Microsoft Security Essentials, the user must go through the genuine validation check first. If the genuine validation passes, the installation continues but if failed, the user cannot proceed with the installation showing the message “This copy of Windows did not pass genuine validation. You might be a victim of software counterfeiting” and will be either asked to close the setup or get a genuine Windows.

If you do not have Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) installed because you want privacy and does not trust what information is being constantly sent to Microsoft, then here is a method on how to install Microsoft Security Essentials bypassing the genuine validation check.

1. Download Microsoft Security Essentials.

2. Right click on mssefullinstall-x86fre-en-us-xp.exe, go to 7-Zip and click Extract to “mssefullinstall-x86fre-en-us-xp.exe\”

3. Download MSSE Genuine Check Bypass Loader, extract and copy the loader.exe file to the mssefullinstall-x86fre-en-us-xp.exe folder.

4. Run loader.exe and Microsoft Security Essentials setup will launch. Follow the on-screen instructions and when asked validate your Windows, just continue with it. Within a few seconds you will get a message “This copy of Windows passed genuine validation”.

You can now update and use Microsoft Security Essentials as normal. However you will notice that there are some red alert notifications in the program telling you that Windows did not pass genuine validation and you can run another validation check after you get genuine Windows.

This annoying message can be removed by following the steps below.

1. Press WIN+R, type %WINDIR%\system32\drivers\etc and click OK.

2. Open hosts file with a text editor, add the following entries to the file and save it.

127.0.1.1 spynettest.microsoft.com

127.0.1.1 spynet2.microsoft.com

127.0.1.1 mpa.one.microsoft.com

3. Press WIN+R, type "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\Windows Genuine Advantage\Data" (with quotes) and click OK. Delete the data.dat file in the data folder.

The method above only works on Windows XP. We have tried it on Windows 7 and got the error message “Unable to change access to memory region!” when trying to run the loader.exe. Unfortunately every running loader.exe with Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode also won’t work.