Do note that Redsn0w 0.9.6 version provides only the tethered iOS 4.2.1 jailbreak. iPhone Dev team is working on the untethered iOS 4.2.1 jailbreak in version 0.9.7 which is currently in beta testing.

Note: If you have jailbroken your iOS 4.2.1 device with one of the previous versions, you may do a fresh restore before this jailbreak.

Download RedSn0w 0.9.6rc8 for Mac and Windows below.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.6rc8 for Mac

Download Redsn0w 0.9.6rc8 for Windows

Other Related Articles:

• How to insert SIM card in iPhone 4

So after few weeks of research and experimentation I have come up with this list of suggestions on how to make internet connection faster. Essentially, these suggestions will help you to use your internet connection much more efficiently, thus getting maximum out of your internet connection. These suggestions will make your internet experience faster.

Do you have a right connection for your requirements?
It is very important to select the right connection for your needs in order to enjoy a faster internet connection. If you are a person who just uses the internet for basic email, web browsing, facebook  and occasional youtube, you may not need an unlimited usage connection. In this case it’s better to go with a limited download usage (4 to 5 GB is more than enough) and a high speed connection.

If you are the person who downloads media files a lot it’s better to go with an unlimited / unmetered usage connection. Get the best speed that your budget permits.

Is your Internet Service Provider (ISP) actually delivering you the speed you are paying for ?
This is critical. Get what you are paying for. You need to keep checking for your internet speed from time to time. Many times the ISPs only deliver 50 to 60 percent of the speed promised. Recently I asked one of my friends to check his speed for his 1 Mbps line. He was getting on an average only 600kbps. When he raised the issue with his ISP, his connection speed was fixed.  You can check the speed of you internet connection using following websites:
– speedtest.net
– testmyspeed.com
– mcafee.com

Check Auto-Updaters for the softwares installed:
Auto-update of the installed software like Java, Windows, Adobe etc can run in the background while you are browsing and make the internet feel slow for you. Best way is to switch off the auto-update for softwares and windows. We have already written about how to disable adobe updater in one of our earlier posts. You can run these updaters manually as and when when required. Another good way is to schedule these updates to download updates during the time your may not be using your computer.

Use good and light weight Anti-virus and anti-spyware software:
Your PC can be infected by viruses, malware and/or spy wares which will not only slow it down but also affect your internet connection by utilizing it for their own purpose without even your knowledge. They can potentially download or upload huge amounts of data from your system making your connection really slow. Two of the best anti-virus software are:
– Avast
– Kapersky
– You can also use Windows Defender (which comes with Windows Vista and Windows 7)
Avoid using Norton or Symantec Anti-virus as they can really slow your system down because they utilize a lot of system resources (RAM).

Use download Managers for large files:
If you have to download large files, say about 20 MB or more, always use a File Transfer / download manager. There are many free options available like  FlashGet / Free Download Manager (FDM) / Internet Download Manager (IDM). If you use rapidshare to download files from the internet, then you can use one of the free rapidshare downloader to download the files while the connection has a comparatively lower level of pressure.

User Better Browsers:
Firefox and Chrome are much better browsers to use compared to Internet Explorer. They process HTML/Java/Javascript, faster and hence render pages much faster that Internet Explorer. Firefox and Chrome also have good memory management and rarely hang. You can use Opera which is also a good option. Over all if I have to recommend one browser, I will go with Google Chrome.

Keep your system(PC) fast and clean:
Many a times it’s not the internet but your system that is slow. To keep your system running fast, do the following maintenance tasks periodically:
- Disk Cleanup
- Clear cache of all your browser
– Disk Defragmentation
- Full system scan from your anti-virus
- Update your windows and other frequent programs (if you set auto-update to off)
– Uninstall all the unnecessary programs that you may have installed

BEWARE! Avoid softwares which claim to increase your internet speed:
There are many softwares available on internet which claim to increase your internet speed by changing TCP / IP, Winsock and other internet settings. Most often than not these will harm your system or change your internet settings in a way that your internet connection will stop working. Avoid these at all costs.

Avoid browsing on VPN to make internet connection faster:
If you have a office VPN, use it only for your official work. Avoid browsing on your office VPN. When you use a VPN, your entire data flows through it, and it can get slow if your office servers are slow or if they have too many concurrent connections. So for non work related browsing, it is a good idea to browse without the VPN connection. BTW, have you seen the free VPN service that we have talked about in the past?

Use OpenDNS (Only for the more technically inclined):
Many times the ISPs do not maintain their DNS servers properly. As a result their DNS servers get overloaded or experience other technical problems. They may take a long time to respond to lookup requests or they may not respond at all. Sometimes when your Internet connection seems to be down, it may be fine but it may simply appear down because your ISP’s DNS isn’t working properly.

To avoid this, you can OpenDNS as your DNS service instead of your ISP’s DNS. I have used OpenDNS and found it really good. My internet connection seems to be more stable and robust. (Note: Using OpenDNS, will not increase you internet speed, but it will reduce to downtimes or ‘server not found’ scenarios). Refer OpenDNS.com/ for more details. OpenDNS basic is free and also provides your with added features like Web Content Filtering, Phishing Protection and Typo Correction.

Please let us know if you are able to make your internet connection by using some of the tips mentioned in this article. If you have any specific question then just leave them as a comment and we shall try to solve it as soon as possible.

If you buy books online then you should use mysmartprice because

1. It is the most comprehensive book price comparison site in India comparing price from 10 stores
2. A google suggest like feature makes it possible to search for the book only in a few key strokes
3. It provides you information about prices of different versions of the same book, helping you make a better decission.
4. Other important decision points like shipping cost and time of delivery is given as well
5. The result is provided in less than 30 seconds for 30,000 top books. If you are looking for an obscure title, then expect a 2-3 minute delay for getting the information. I am working on improving the timeline.

MySmartPrice continues to be a work in progress. I request you to give it a spin and share your views with me.

I am also looking for bloggers writing about books and voracious readers to get their feedback as an end user. I will really appreciate if you can put me in touch with any such person that you know.

Requirement of a free VPN Service

While working on a project, I realized that some websites are banned in office. Previously I have written about how to use gmail proxy to access blocked websites in office. However one of my co workers told me that using a proxy may not be safe as system administrator is monitoring the usage of proxy sites. Moreover one of the problems with proxy sites is that many of them may get your system infected with virus. That is when I came across the idea of using free vpn to access these blocked websites. Unfortunately many of the top ranked posts about free vpn services had outdated information.

A word of caution about using free VPN service

I have myself worked in organizations that had very strict policies regarding internet usage. Please remember that using websites that have been blocked by the administrator may be looked at very seriously by your employer. Especially if you are working in a client premises where any breach of confidentiality may result in cancellation of contract or imposition of penalty on your company. Hence please use your common sense while accessing any of these websites.

AceVPN

AceVPN is one more free VPN service based on openVPN that allows unlimited surfing. The similarity between the services is not a coincidence since I was specifically looking for a free vpn software based on openVPN for the sake of data security and software that provides unlimited access.

 What is a rapidshare premium link generator?

A rapidshare premium link generator is a site that allows you to download files from rapidshare with all the features of a premium rapidshare account. That means no waiting time, ability to download multiple files simultaneously and so on.

List of free  rapidshare premium link generator

Here is a list of free rapidshare premium link generator that you may use for faster download.

1. http://www.rapidsharepremiumlinkgenerator.com/
2. http://rapidhack.prv.pl/
3. http://www.rapiddownloader.info/
4. http://www.rapidquick.net/

Let me know if you get to know about any more free rapidshare premium link generators. I shall update with the rapidshare link generator so that all the users can benefit.

Other posts about rapidshare on binaryday

1. Rapidshare download Manager and Rapidshare manager
2. 5 free rapidshare downloader

1. To know where your blog stands
2. To identify the strongest pages on your blog
3. To analyze the backlinks of your competitor
4. To analyze the competitiveness of a keyword that you may be planning to target

All these 4 types of task need 5 different types of tools.

1. Tools to find pagerank of a single page : These are the most common type of tools and you will find 100s of them by simply typing in pagerank checker into google. Some of these tools generate a beautiful image displaying your pagerank as well. You may use one of these to show off your pagerank.

2. Tools to find pagerank of all pages of your website : More often than not you will have some blog posts that accumulate links and hence have a high pagerank while they are not necessarily targetted at keywords. Identifying those pages will help you to spread the link love to other pages of your blog that are targetted at keywords. There are many sites/tools that claim to show you pagerank of all your pages at the same time but fail or give wrong information. I could find the following tools after trying out around 15 pagerank tools claiming to be able to find pagerank of the entire site.

• http://pagerank.trismegistos.net/ This is an online tool. Really easy to use. Just supply your sitemap file url and it will give you the pagerank of each page. Unfortunately it does not have a sort option.
• http://pagerank.bthomson.com/: Another online tool to find pagerank of all pages of your blog. In this case you need to have an ajax enabled browser and you need to download the sitemap and then supply the downloaded file as the input. No sort option available in this.
• Parameter: The only problem of this tool is that it is a desktop based tool and hence you have to download and install. Else it is the best tool to find the pagerank of each page on a site. Even sites that do not have a sitemap will do. The best thing is an option to sort pages by PR. It allowed me to find out the best pages really easy.

3. Analyze the backlinks of your competitor: Backlink analysis is an integral part of doing reverse engineering of sites that are ranking high on Google. Obviously we can not target all the backlinks, so we need to prioritize. Pagerank is a good measure that will give you an idea about which links to pursue.

Bulk pagerank finders are the best suited for this type of activity. Once you are done with backlink analysis, export the links to csv file. http://www.bulkpagerank.com/default.aspx and http://pagerank.bthomson.com/ are my favorite bulk pagerank finders as they do not need any captcha.

4. Keyword Analysis: The best way to find out the competitiveness of a keyword is to put in the keyword in google, see the results along with their pagerank. I have found the firefox extension from seobook as the best way to achieve the same. However this means that I need to use firefox for my seo analysis. Please let me know if you know some other tool/ ie extension for the same.

Understanding System Restore

If you have not encountered system restore in earlier versions of windows then think of it as a undo command for microsoft windows. If your os starts behavings badly after installing a particular programme or because of a virus etc, then you can use system restore to take your computer back to an earlier date when it was working fine.

How does System Restore in Windows 7 work

If you enable system restore then it takes periodical snapshot of your system and stores them as restore points when you make any significant changes or install any driver. When you use system restore to solve a problem it simply overwrites your current file system by this backed up configuration. Since the backed up version did not have the problematic software or virus, the problem gets resolved.

Scan for Affected Programs before doing system restore in Windows 7

A big problem with system restore in windows xp was that there was no way to find out what all programmes will be deleted after the system restore. The problem has been resolved to a large extent in windows 7 through a feature called scan for affected programmes. It will provide you a list of prgrams that will be uninstalled after the system restore, thereby making it easier to decide if you need to back up certain files.

The biggest problem with antivirus softwares is that they are way too cumbersome. It is possible to download and install the software in less than half an hour. BitDefender is capable of logging when files were last accessed, and if a file hasn’t been used since the last scan, BitDefender skips it.

Many people, me included, get infected with virus as they forget to update the antivirus softwares in time. BitDefender updates its virus signatures every hour unless you adjust it to a longer interval.

Effectiveness of bitdefender antivirus 2009

Most important aspect of a software is its effectiveness. In several tests conducted by antivirus comparison sites, bitdefender antivirus has scored better than other more expensive antivirus softwares. One of the key features developed by bitdefender is a virtual machine on which it can run suspect codes to check if it is virus or not. Hence bitdefender is one of the few antivirus softwares that is not dependent on signature files to identify virus.

bitdefender download

Bitdefender antivirus 2009 comes as a paid software. However it provides an option to download the antivirus software for free as well. I have downloaded the bit defender internet security 2009 from the above link. I shall update this post with my experince soon. In the mean time you may go though my post about How to remove recycler virus on USB

What is windows 7 upgrade advisor

Windows 7 upgrade advisor is a tool that will let you know if all hardware and software on your pc are compatible with windows 7. It can be installed on windows vista and xp. The windows 7 upgrade advisor will hopefully protect users against unpleasant surprises.

Where to download windows 7 upgrade advisor

The beta version of windows 7 upgrade advisor is available at the official microsoft site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/upgrade-advisor.aspx

How to install windows 7 upgrade advisor

As with all other products from microsoft, installation is a piece of cake and quite intuitive. So I need not explain this step.

Windows 7 Themes

Some of the best themes of windows 7 are available at the official website of microsoft at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/Windows7/Personalize. Mike Swanson has put together a cool theme for windows 7 at http://www.mikeswanson.com/wallpaper/Mike%20Swanson%20Macros.themepack. However while windows 7 themes have made it comparatively easy to get a cool look, that is not good enough reason to migrate your operating system.

Windows 7 themes for Vista

If you intend to continue with Vista O/S and get the looks of Windows 7, then you can do so by using windows 7 themes for Vista. Some of the best themes for Vista are available at http://giannisgx89.deviantart.com/art/Windows-7-Style-For-Vista-102269037, http://pankaj981.deviantart.com/art/Windows-7-Inspirat-76378417, http://vistaaero.deviantart.com/art/Windows-7-M1-Original-Theme-90127567 and http://deskmundo.deviantart.com/art/Windows-Seven-M1-VS-76834286

Windows 7 themes for XP

If you need to get a look similar to windows 7 on your XP machine, then you should consider using a windows 7 theme for XP.

http://rapidshare.com/files/193530863/Windows_7_M__20VS_2.zip, http://www.askvg.com/download-sevenvg-refresh-theme-with-superbar-for-windows-xp/, http://dopeysneezy.deviantart.com/art/Windows-7-Complete-109505907