What is DRM, Digital Rights Management?

Digital rights management (DRM) is a generic term that refers to access control technologies used by hardware manufacturers, publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. Whereas copy protection only attempts to prohibit unauthorized copies of media or files, digital rights management allows the issuer of the media or file to control in detail what can and can not be done with a single instance. For example, an issuer can limit the number of viewings, number of copies, which devices the media can be transferred to etc.

There is a huge controversy all around the globe about the DRM and the dust is not yet settled. The protection enthusiasts have their own reasons to advocate the DRM, and on the other hand, their are people and organizations, which oppose it in the name of freedom of speech.

Whosoever is right, one thing is very much clear. As far as you are using the copying or Media format conversion for your own use, it comes under Fair Use Policy, and it should be allowed. Courts all over the world, have also held this view, and it is the legally accepted doctrine as of now.

Enter TuneBite, the master to circumvent DRM restrictions.

So, if you are a music buff, but always feel cornered because of DRM restrictions, then you can safely rely on TuneBite.

TuneBite is the amazing software, which legally removes DRM copy protection from music, audio books and videos at the highest quality levels. With TuneBite, you can convert media into the formats of your PC, mobile phone and other mobile devices. More than 100 formats are supported by Tunebite plus it automatically populates your music with ID3 tags, CD cover artwork & lyrics. What’s more, you can also create free ringtones from your favorite songs and transfer them to your mobile phone

With Tunebite’s professional-grade format converter, you can configure individualized conversion settings that produce exactly the media formats you need – optimized for the power and resolution of your device.

Tunebite searches the Web for the ID3 tags that are missing from every music and video file in your collection and inserts these automatically. Not just ID3 tags like title, artist, album and year of release, but also CD cover artwork. And Tunebite is the only software that also finds the lyrics for each track. For real fans, this is the icing on the cake.

Tunebite is equipped with an optimized audio studio that lets you edit music tracks you’ve recorded from Internet radio stations.

Visit Their Website

[This review was done on request. If you also want to showcase your products / services on Webtools and Tips, please do not hesitate to contact us]

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In this one year, this blog has achieved moderate success and is getting about 3-6k pageviews daily.

This blog is live due to some excellent web hosting service provided by Lunarpages.

I had preferred a shared hosting plan from Lunarpages, just like most of the starters and at that time it had touted providing 15GB of web space with 1500GB of BW each month. This has now been increased to “Unilimited” web space and “Unlimited” Bandwidth.

Like most of the beginners, I was not knowing that this huge web space and huge BW is just a misnomer. No website can actually reach there, because much before reaching that point, you will be choked by another of the rider, which a beginner might never have anticipated.

All was going well, till three days back, when I was just preparing to renew my Web Hosting Account from Lunarpages, for another one year.

Suddenly, I found a mail from Lunarpages Support desk announcing that

…we found your account utilizing excessive resources, causing a significant degradation of services on the server.

Top Process %CPU 65.0 /usr/bin/php /home/webto1/public_html/index.php

Top Process %CPU 59.0 /usr/bin/php /home/webto1/public_html/index.php

Top Process %CPU 58.0 /usr/bin/php /home/webto1/public_html/index.php

Then they offered me to upgrade my account within a few days or face suspension of the account.

I took their concern seriously and the first thing I did was to install the WP-Super Cache plugin, which seems to be doing a fine job for many bigger blogs like QOT and many others. I also reduced a few php requests in my WP theme and contacted LP helpdesk, if it improved the CPU Load.

I received their response after one day, and it said that the load has reduced but it is still not within the acceptable limits.

Here is your resource usage for today:

CPU usage: 3.99

Memory usage: 1.99

MySQL usage: 0.2

Top Process %CPU 64.0 /usr/bin/php /home/webto1/public_html/wp-admin/theme-editor.php

Top Process %CPU 63.0 /usr/bin/php /home/webto1/public_html/index.php

Top Process %CPU 27.0 /usr/bin/php /home/webto1/public_html/index.php

Please note that the acceptable usage range for shared plans is 1.0% average %CPU or less, 1.0% average %Memory or less and Top Processes below 20%.

Then I contacted some of the wonderful people for advice, whom I have met on this wonderful world known as blogosphere. (One thing I find amazing about bloggers. Most of them like Keith, Abhishek, Rajesh, Madhur, Pavan, Haris, Les, Sid and many others are amazingly helpful people and really care for the relationships even for those who have never met them in person).

With their feedback, one thing was clear that the number of my visitors is not that big so as to raise a red flag for CPU usage. It may be due to some plugin causing huge CPU load or something else. A few of them even suggested that LP may be bullying me to purchase their VPS plan. I have heard after you sign up for their VPS plan, they also charge money for transferring your site to VPS and it is nothing less than extortion.

But without getting biased, I took the concern of my web host on its face value and carefully looked at all of the installed plugins. I found the following in my list.

• Adsense-Deluxe 0.8
• Advanced Category Excluder 1.2.3
• Akismet 2.2.1
• Adsense-Deluxe 0.8
• Advanced Category Excluder 1.2.3
• Akismet 2.2.1
• All in One SEO Pack 1.4.6.15
• AZIndex 0.6.2
• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator 3.15
• FeedBurner FeedSmith 2.3
• Google Analytics 2.4
• Google XML Sitemaps 3.1.0.1
• Hide Pages 0.1
• No Ping Wait 2.0
• Login LockDown v1.2
• Official StatCounter Plugin 1.0
• Post-Plugin Library 2.6.2.1
• Post Template 3.1.0
• Similar Posts 2.6.2.0
• Top Commentators Widget 1.0
• WP Contact Form III 1.6.2d
• WP Super Cache
• WP-Polls 2.31
• WordPress.com Stats
• WordPress Database Backup 2.2.1

Most of them looked to be innocent except WordPress.com Stats, Akismet 2.2.1, Google Analytics 2.4, WP-Polls 2.31, Official StatCounter Plugin 1.0.

I cannot live without Akismet and Google Analytics (Disabled and hard coded Google Analytics into the theme itself). And I also use StatCounter and WP-Polls. So, I kept them also. But WP Stats looked to be totally un-installable to me. And I just de-activated it.

Now I have just contacted LP to keep me informed about my stats.

I request my readers, visitors and friends, if they have any suggestions to make on what may be causing this huge CPU load. Your comments are invited.

PS.: Shared Web Hosting Plans are a classical case of “Overselling”. I am not blaming Lunarpages, because I suspect that most of the other web hosting service providers must be like them only. But still, I feel like saying bye-bye to LP, just in case I have to upgrade my account. I will consider to continue with them, in case the issue is resolved and they continue to host my blog on their shared hosting account.

Again your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Update 1:

Taking a cue from giedrius, I have disabled the Google Analytics Plugin and hard coded the code into the theme itself.

I am also uploading the screeshots of the settings of the WP Super Cache for comments, just in case I have made some mistake in the settings.

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Update 2:

I just received mail from Lunarpages announcing that..

As of right now, your resource usage is:

CPU Usage 0.05%

Memory Usage 1.41%

MySQL Usage 0.0%

Top Process %CPU 0.2 /usr/bin/php /home/webto1/public_html/index.php

Top Process %CPU 0.1 [/wp-content/themes/The%20Gazette%20Edition/styles/darkblue/]

As the time now is 00:42 PST, what this means is that during the last 42 minutes, your scripts have used more than the allowed memory for a shared account.

They are still saying that the account is still not acceptable as the memory usage is higher.

One more thing I noticed that there are almost 50-60 Core Dump files in the root directory. The file name is something like core.12345, core.23456 and so on, and almost all of them are of same size of around 18MB. I guess they have been lying here for quite sometime.

File Type: ELF 32-bit LSB core file Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), SVR4-style, from ‘php’

Googling that, I came to know that these are binary files created due to some server crash and I am going to inquire Lunarpages about them. They seem to be meant for deletion at my end, but I will delete them after consulting Lunarpages.

Furthermore, on the advice of Michael VanDeMar, I am changing my expire time of Cache Pages to 6 hours (21600 seconds).

Hope these things bring some order.

Update 3:

While I was analyzing the log files of my Webalizer reports, I noticed that out of the Top 10 referring sites, 8 were from IP range 65.208.151.112 - 119. This was strange.

I had never come across this IP range.

On searching a bit, I came across a few more webmaster reporting unusual activities from the same IP range and some of them also linked them to an attempt towards a SQL Inject / Cross-site scripting effort. I do not know much about them.

The whois record also doesn’t reveals much about them.

I am contemplating blocking these IP ranges. What is your take?

Meanwhile I have also hard coded the StatCounter code into the theme files and disabled StatCounter plugin also.

Update 4:

Despite all these steps, and reducing the fat on the theme files, Lunarpages is contantly warning me about the high CPU load and memory usage.

Finally, I have decided to move away this blog to a VPS account, where I will have certain guaranteed memory, CPU cycles and bandwidth. The prime reason being that I cannot afford to remain this blog shut even for one day, because it will cost me more than what I will be paying in a month for my VPS account. After a little bit of research here and there, I have zeroed in on KnownHost, and moved it to their VPS account.

The transition was smooth like a breeze, with zero downtime, and within a matter of few hours, almost 98% of my traffic was being served from the new servers.

But, this incidence has surely made me learn a lot of lessons. I do not blame Lunarpages and would not go that far to claim that they were bullying me to upgrade my account. They might have valid reasons, although everybody has suggested that 3-5k visitors daily, with all unnecessary plugins removed and WP Super Cache Plugin performing to its optimum performance, should easily be within the limits of CPU Cycle amd memory usage. But still, I feel that as a host, they could have done a lot better in helping their clients to identify the cause of the problem, instead of repeating the same warnings again and again.

Thanks, for all the support and advice given by the visitors and friends through comments on this post as well as emails, which really had guided me to dig deeper and understand the process better.

Surely, I feel like I have grown a bit, alongwith my little baby blog, Webtools & Tips.

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Talking about the Security tools, there are primarily three types on Security tools available in the market today.

• Desktop Security Tool, which provide you the real time security - for instance your favourite antivirus
• Desktop Security Tools, which do a scheduled / manual scan of your system and files
• and, Online security tools, which scan your system and files.

However, there remains a need for a product, which can scan the files and scripts on a webpage, which you are intending to visit.

For example, suppose you find a link on a webpage, which promises to take you to a webpage or to a download, which is the next best software in the world. You find it tempting to visit the page by clicking on the link, but you do not have full faith on the security aspects of that software / webpage. At that time, you wish to a have a tool, which could scan the destination before you proceed to visit that.

I am sure there may be such tools available, but at least I was not aware of them, till I came across Dr. Web.

It is a cool Firefox Addon, which quietly sits in your Firefox Browser and does exactly what you require.

The only issue is that I have come across some negative feedback about it, which say that it is not that effective. But still I feel, it is worth try for two reasons. It is unique in concept, and off-course, it is free.

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Domains cannot be dangerous by themselves. The websites and their creators make the domain name dangerous.

I recently came across a report from McAfee, which states that 19.2% of all Web sites ending in the “.hk” domain pose a security threat to Web users. China (.cn) is second this year with over 11%.

These are significant figures. These are based upon an analysis by McAfee of 9.9 million heavily trafficked Web sites found in 265 different country.

The report ranks the domain names as follows.

Most Dangerous Web Domains:

1. Hong Kong (.hk)
2. PR of China (.cn)
3. Philippines (.ph)
4. Romania (.ro)
5. Russia (.ru)

Safest Web Domains:

1. Finland (.fi)
2. Japan (.jp)
3. Norway (.no)
4. Slovenia (.si)
5. Colombia (.co)

The other interesting facts are…

• The chance of downloading spyware, adware, viruses or other unwanted software from surfing the Web increased 41.5% over 2007
• Sites which offer downloads such as ringtones and screen savers that are also loaded with viruses, spyware and adware increased over the last year from 3.3% to 4.7%
• The Philippines (.ph) experienced a 270% increase in overall riskiness
• Tokelau (.tk) and Samoa (.ws) were notably safer in 2008 dropping to 28th and 12th
• In Europe, Spain (.es) experienced a 91% increase in overall risk

The report is a bit dated, as it was published in June 2008, but still an interesting read. If you are interested, you can have a look at the report here.

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URLs are the pathways of the Internet World. Internet happens to be what it is because of URLs. They take you from place to place, from website to website. And this very fact offers the biggest threat to your Internet Security.

If URLs are the gateways to great websites with heaps of information, they are also lead to the bad places and websites, which may cause havoc to the PCs and systems of their visitors. It is only you, who has to decide where you want to go. Be rational, be calm and develop a habit of taking a hard look at the destination before clicking on any URL.

Believe me, this one habit will be worth more than hundreds of dollars you might throw in purchasing the best of the Internet Security Software available today. Remember, prevention is better than cure, and it is true here also.

How to check the destination of a URL

It is so easy that I sometimes wonder why people do not use it. Just enable the Status Bar on your favorite browser (most probably it will already enabled because default is ON) and make it a habit to keep looking on the bottom left corner of your browser.

Simple.

Whenever, you are about to click on any hyperlink on any webpage or email, make it a habit to place your mouse on the hyperlink and look at the status bar. The status bar will tell you the destination of the URL. Remember, this may be different from what is being shown on the webpage.

For instance, place your mouse on the following link.

www.google.com

And look in the Status Bar.

If you click on it, you will be taken to Yahoo homepage, and not Google homepage.

This simple trick is used by millions of the phishing attempts daily, and you will be surprised to know that many of the them succeed, just because many of us do not care to have a look at the Status Bar.

Weekly Security Tips through Email

We encourage you to go through all the Tips on Internet Security. Some of these tips are quite common, but often ignored by most computer users.

To get such Security Tips and many exciting contests, offers, discounts and deals delivered right in your inbox, fill the details requried below and subscribe to WTT Security Watch, the weekly newlstter from Webtools & Tips.

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What is RadioTracker Platinum

Simply decide the genre or artists you’re interested in and Radiotracker will do everything else.

RadioTracker searches thousands of Radio Stations simultaneously and brings them directly to your desktop based upon your search query. You can download them and make your personal library. I have found that RadioTracker software performs quite flawlessly in monitoring the type of music you want to rip and save from Internet Radio. You just have to enter the genre or the name of the artist and you will be surprised to find the number of simultaneous possible download you will see. It performs with an amazing accuracy.

If you are concerned about the quality of the download, I must vouch that the quality is extremely good. There is only on glitch that sometimes if a DJ is saying something in the background, that will also get recorded. Personally speaking, I like that thrill of live recording more than the original one.

But isn’t it illegal

Not at all.

When you are downloading a file from a copied version over the Internet, there may be a copyright issue involved. Because you are making a copy or replica of something, which has already been recorded. But in the case of RadioTracker, you are recording yourself. The software is listening to the music and then recording it in the background before serving you for download.

This is not copying. This is recording. And it is perfectly legal.

What else is good about RadioTracker?

The other option to get your favorite MP3 files is use some peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa and LimeWire.  I have seen many people using that. But they are unaware of the fact that such networks are a huge source of Spyware. Kazaa is known for distributing lots of adware and Spyware, and I know lot of people whose PC got extremely slow after they started using Kazaa.

Yet another option is to use Torrent sites like BitTorrent and MiniNova. You may find lots of MP3 files there, but again, Bit Torrent are a huge source of spreading malware, and I will never recommend anybody to use Torrent sites to download anything in wake of huge online threats lurking around.

In such a situation, a software like RadioTracker is as perfect tool for quickly building your MP3 library. A licensed version will cost you around 20-30 bucks, but it will be a wise investment, if you are a true music buff.

Download RadioTracker

[This review was done on request. If you also want to showcase your products / services on Webtools and Tips, please do not hesitate to contact us]

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Passwords are the keys of your Internet Security. Web 2.0 is characterized by the development of membership websites, where the content is dynamic and user driven and for using them you have to get the membership. And with every membership, you are required to maintain yet another set of username and password.

With so many usernames and passwords to remember, it becomes natural that you start compromising on the security of your passwords and start repeating them for different websites. Or you start making weak passwords like names of spouse, date of births, zip codes, telephone numbers, etc. etc. And if you do not do any of these two things, you start trusting your browser, and store your login and passwords in your browser.

I must say, all of these three situations are dangerous and jeopardize your online security.

So what is the solution

The solution lies in devising a way to manage passwords, without compromising on the strength of the passwords.

We will let you know about how to create strong passwords easily in a different article. We will also let you know how to manage your passwords easily. There are useful tools like Roboform for that (See the video below to understand how Roboform works). In this post we just wanted to let you know about a useful tool, which allows you to check the strength of your passwords.

After you have created a password, you can easily check about its strength on the Microsoft’s Password Strength Checker. You can trust Microsoft not storing your password in any manner. When you are absolutely sure about your password strength, then only you start using it.

However, after extensive trial of this tool, I am not completely satisfied with the algorithm. It heavily relies on the use of different types of characters in the passwords. For instance, I tried to make a 40 character password, with all lower case letters, and it continued to tell me it is a weak password. Yes I know that using only lowercase letters in a password is not a good idea, but the 40 character length should have prompted it to give it at least a medium grade.

But still a useful tool, and I recommend it.

Remember, your Internet Security is too precious and spending a few moments here and there to fortify your online security, is better than repenting later.
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Video shows how Roboform Works

We encourage you to go through all the Tips on Internet Security. Some of these tips are quite common, but often ignored by most computer users.

Weekly Security Tips through Email

To get such Security Tips and many exciting contests, offers, discounts and deals delivered right in your inbox, fill the details required below and subscribe to WTT Security Watch, the weekly newsletter from Webtools & Tips.

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Keyloggers are one of the biggest threats to your Online Privacy. They just sit quietly in your system, watch your activities as you type, and send that info to a remote administrator. You never know, when all your credit card numbers, bank passwords, email accounts are now within the hands of a fraudster.

How to avoid Keyloggers

There are different algorithms and different levels at which Keyloggers operate. And there is no fool proof security against all types of Keyloggers. But here we will introduce you to a simple but highy useful tool, which is effective against many sorts of Keylogging activities.

Welcome to KeyScrambler.

It is a Browser extension, which scrambles / encrypt all your keystrokes, when you enter anything on a web-form on a website. Thus it protects you from any sniffing activity in-between.

KeyScrambler Personal: The anti-keylogging browser addon protects IE, Firefox, Flock against keyloggers. It encrypts everything you type into a web page, including logins, account numbers, addresses, email messages, and more. Absolutely Free.

If you are a firefox user, you can download it from the official Firefox addon site. In case you are using any other browser like IE or FLock, you can download it from the develop site.

See this small video below to understand How Keyscrambler operates.
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We encourage you to go through all the Tips on Internet Security. Some of these tips are quite common, but often ignored by most computer users.

Weekly Security Tips through Email

To get such Security Tips and many exciting contests, offers, discounts and deals delivered right in your inbox, fill the details requried below and subscribe to WTT Security Watch, the weekly newlstter from Webtools & Tips.

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