Re-design the web with Stylish Firefox extension

Bored up looking at same old interface from years, time to give web your colors! Stylish is a Firefox extension which enables you to change the look & feel of a web site. I got to know about this at Barcamp Bangalore from The100rabh a fellow Blog-a-lorean. If you take example of Gmail, it has the same interface from the day one. Though slighter changes were made in adding functionalities like chat inside email, there were no changes made in color scheme & look/feel.

Stylish enables you to define your own stylesheet for a website. But for writing a stylesheet of your own, you should be having knowledge of CSS. Hey, don’t stop reading! there are lot of ready stylesheets for many websites, which you can just load into Stylish. Stylesheets are available at http://userstyles.org

Procedure to install Stylish & load new stylesheet:

• Install Firefox if you don’t have from getfirefox.com
• Install extension Stylish for firefox from addons.firefox.com
• Browse available stylesheets at http://userstyles.org & load stylesheets you want
• That’s it!! start re-designing the web!

To give you an example how stylish can change a web site, I am posting couple of screenshots of Gmail after loading awesome stylesheet Gmail Re-Designed.

Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

Google has released Google talk labs edition with lot of new features. The most awaited group chat is implemented in this labs edition. Group chat was implemented on gmail web chat app few months ago, but it’s desktop application was lacking this feature. Following are new features found on Google talk labs edition:

• Group chat, have conferences in Gtalk desktop labs edition. I used to log in to Yahoo! for this feature before.
• Notification from other Google services orkut & calendar.
• Tabbed chatting, no hassle of new chat window, chat with different friends in different tabs.

There are also few things which I don’t like in this new client:

• Installation is different from previous client, is pretty similar to Yahoo! messenger. First downloads a 300kb installer, upon executing that will download other required files to install application. This installer may not work at office, because they might be blocking the port through which installer tries to connect to server.
• One more much awaited feature “Invisible Mode” is not yet implemented.
• Copying of text from chat window is not possible! This looks really annoying for me.

You can get Google Talk labs edition here. This is the labs edition, you can click on “Feedback” button present at bottom of application to send your feedback about the application & to improve next Google talk release.

Yahoo Messenger & Gtalk could be enabled for multi user logging. It will be helpful if you have two IDs or you & your sister/brother wants to be online.

Yahoo! Messenger
To enable multiple login in Yahoo messenger, you need to add a registry entry. Instead of doing that manually, you can just download registry file here. Double click that registry file & restart Yahoo Messenger. To disable this option, download registry file from here & double click it.
Trick by Daydream

gTalk
1. Create a shortcut of Google Talk messenger on your desktop or any other preferred location .(To create a shortcut, right click on your Google Talk messenger application and select Send To–>Desktop(create shortcut) )
2. Right click on the Google Talk messenger icon and select Properties option
3. Modify target location text “c:\program files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe” /startmenu to

“c:\program files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe” /nomutex

4. Click Ok
Now open gtalk multiple times & login, depending on how many logins you want to make.

Trick by Tech Dreams

My last post, “Anybody can use your email identity to send mails” left you (& me) with lot of un-answered questions in mind. Let’s understand how email delivery system works & how it could be manipulated & mis-used. 

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the technology used worldwide to deliver emails in Internet. Whenever you compose a mail & send, it goes to SMTP server of your email provider (say for gmail it’s smtp.gmail.com). SMTP server then checks for recepient’s email Ids & delivers it to appropriate mail servers. SMTP server could be manipulated to send spams with deifferent email Ids or identity. This is a known issue from years. Whoever has good workarround of SMTP server, can easily manipulate it for spamming. But all these are bit advanced stuff & dummies can’t make use of it so easily. 

The software I downloaded has inbuilt SMTP relay. Which means you need not to configure anything & no any technical stuff. Anyone who knows composing a mail can mis-use it. You will need to just enter “From” field while sending mail. If you send mails manipulating SMTP server, still server name gets displayed in email headers. For ex: If I send mails using SMTP server provided my hosting provider (am hosted on bluehost.com), email header will contain something like “mailed-by: box22.bluehost.com”. But when you send mails using this software, there will be no info about SMTP server in email headers! So there is no piece of evidence to find out from where that mail came from.

This is just an example; spammers use more hundred ways to manipulate SMTP servers. They use bulk email senders, automated scripts…etc. Finding a solution to this problem is a huge task. SMTP cannot be replaced by other standard or system, because it is extensively used worldwide. Millions of SMTP servers are running worldwide. Even making huge modification to SMTP cannot be done.

But since there is no other way, we have to keep our hope alive. Anti Spam Research Group (ASRG) of Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is working on tools & technique to fight spamming. Here is what its home page says:

The Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) investigates tools and techniques to mitigate the effects of spam. The focus of the ASRG is on technology solutions, although it may consider tools and techniques to aid the implementation of legal and other non-technical anti-spam measures. It also provides input for standardization efforts within the IETF

I was searching for a email newsletters software to send bulk emails. Searching few minutes on Google I found an appropriate software. The software was good & did what exactly I wanted to. As I do normally, I started checking each & every option of the software.

In Preferences of that software, there was “Sender Options”, where you will give sender’s email ID & name. When I used this first time I used my actual email ID. Just got bit curious about that option, I entered a non real email ID (anything that came to mind) & sent a mail to my gmail. Shocked! in a second I received that mail in gmail with from email ID exactly as entered in “Sender Options” of the software. Here I will show you how exactly it worked with screenshots:

1. As you see in below screenshot, I have given email ID as admin@google.com & name as Google.

Click to Enlarge

2. I composed a mail & sent it to my gmail & Yahoo IDs

Click to Enlarge

3. The mail got into my inbox in seconds:

Gmail:

Yahoo:

I got this email in my gmail inbox & Yahoo! identified it as Spam. But in this email, no way you can find out it is sent by someone else & not Google. This means you can enter whatever you want in “Sender Options” of the software & send mails. You can enter your boss’s ID, your cousin’s, a bank’s…..whatever. I think you already realized how dangerous this could be. Without hacking anything, any password of email accounts you can use other’s email IDs (identity) for whatever kind of emails. But in gmail still there is a way to find out that is a fake email. When you open a mail in gmail, click “Show Details”. You can find “mailed by & “signed by” information there.

Click to Enlarge

These two info is missing in emails which I sent using that software. But a very less people will look into these options. I am not a hacker & don’t know what’s happening in the background. But I think major email providers should have any algorithm to find out these kind of mails & should block them. Yahoo! even found it as spam, if recipient looks into spam folder & finds sender is known to him, he/she will definitely mark it as “Not a spam”.

Update:

Few more Screenshots

Since many of readers got confused with post, am posting more two screenshots. This time I enter my cousin’s email ID as sender & I will send a mail asking credit card details.

But my cousin is not aware of this email & sent using a software by anyone (here it’s me) And it can also be made such that reply to this mail could go to some other email ID. Gmail is also showing online/offline status of sender & his profile picture on mouse over!

Here my cousin could never know somebody sent a mail like this using his identity.

Aw! This post has become too lengthy.

Name & information of the software I used is not disclosed in article for security reasons.

Group chat was a major feature got missed in Gmail Chat compare to Yahoo!. Now Google brings this feature up, checkout following screen shots:

1) Start conversation with anyone of your buddies & then click               Options–>Group Chat to invite more people into this chat:

2) Invite others to your chat:

3) All done you can add more people into this chat any time:

This feature is only available on integrated chat box inside Gmail & not available on Gtalk desktop IM. We may soon expect this from Google.

Was observing usage meter of my gmail account from few days, It was constantly been at 53% since I use Yahoo for all my subscriptions. But yesterday I saw it suddenly getting less of about 48%. I got wondered because I have not deleted any of my mails. Then I moved my eyes towards total space, It was about 3250 MB. Gmail is now increased it’s mailbox size to more than 3GB. When I logged in today, my usage even got reduced to 46%. So got to know about how fast gmail is adding spaces to accounts.

While still on my gmail mail box in Mozilla Firebox, I opened gmail homepage in Internet Explorer to see how fast mailbox size is increasing.

Here space shown was 3470 MB, but in my inbox it was 3452 MB. It means that in about 10-15 minutes gmail added 20MB of space! Let’s hope gmail adds more & more space for free accounts to keep all our mails.

Update: 21/10/2007
Gmail reached 4GB:
Just few minutes back gmail reached 4 GB mark. Let’s see how much more space they will add.

As written in my previous post I am switching to Yahoo! If you want to find reasons for switching read on here. Mails & contacts of Gmail can be easily moved to your Yahoo! account with 3-4 clicks! Yahoo in association with true switch offers you this amazing service. Here we go step by step :

1. Login to your Gmail account & disable POP access if it is enabled. It will be in disabled state by default. You can achieve this by going to “Settings –> POP & Forwarding“.
2. Login to Yahoo! mail & click on options. In options click on “Address Book“.
3. Now click on “Transfer contacts to Yahoo!” option as below.
4. Fill your gmail ID & password, Select what all you want to move (contacts, mails).
5. Finally you will get a confirmation message that requested emails & contacts will be copied to Yahoo! in 24 hours.

While writing post on Yahoo!’s move to provide unlimited space to its users, I had hope on Google that it will also launch unlimited storage soon to fight with Yahoo! But latest announcement of Google about selling extra space to add to your google accounts like gmail, picasa..etc clearly shows Google’s intentions. So I think we can’t expect free unlimited space from Google. Now Yahoo! mail has become no.1 choice for me because of it’s unlimited storage, very good simple interface. Yahoo! almost has all features that gmail has & offer even more better services. Yahoo! also added chat inside mailbox like the one in gmail. New Yahoo! mail also has integrated feed reader which is one of my favorite feature. I am switching to Yahoo! & if you also think to switch to Yahoo!, please read on my next post on moving your contacts & even all mails from gmail to Yahoo! with 3-4 clicks!