http://techeverytime.com/2011/05/norton-360-giveaway-winner/

I was very sure to have a .com domain this time. It was a real headache to find a good domain for .com. In fact, now it’s even difficult to find any .com domain. I was disappointed to see more than 90% of good domains are available for .com but are not used since they have been purchased and are used for auctions.

I finally managed to get a simple and easy to remember domain name ‘techeverytime’. Migration of the site was not as lucid as I thought it would be. I had done Worpress transfer many times but now it has to be done to a different host. Even that wasn’t a problem either. The main concern was to change & update all links to point to new location. I am still in process of correcting some link problems.

Despite that I really like theme of AnkurChauhan.net, I decided to move to a smoother theme this time. The theme chosen is from themeforest.com and I find it really great (thanks to the designer). The theme is called Someday. I recommend everyone to check out this designer portfolio as he really makes very good WordPress themes.

I hope this new transition brings good flavours and most importantly better interaction with readers. As always I rely on you to spread more about the site to your friends. Any suggestion would be welcomed. I would try my best to bring you good content and those issues which would actually be of use to you.

So, Remember to Check out TechEveryTime.com regularly.

So, here are some of good video/music steaming sites:

Metacafe:

This site gives you a chance to make money too along with regular video streaming. One can share videos twitter, Facebook and also on various websites and personal blogs. Original videos may fetch you some cash too.

DailyMotion

Also a very famous site next to YouTube is DailyMotion. It provides you with short movies, videos, TV episodes for online steaming. It even supports high quality videos. It is a free service too. Its app is also available for prominent mobiles such as iPhone, windows phone 7 & android. One can even subscribe to other videos and create playlist.

Last.fm

It’s actually not a video streaming site but rather music streaming site. You can search for any song and also create your own radio station. It provides videos and lyrics of songs too.

Grooveshark

It is built on flash, so interface is very beautiful and simple to use. Searching for your favourite songs is quite easy here. It gives you suggestions depending upon your music taste. You can also create your playlist. You can link it with your blog/site with widgets.

Collegehumor

Its content is created by team of people who upload unique videos on the site. It’s mainly meant for entertainment and should be considered as a good option for sharing your videos. ( Might contain inappropriate content too  )

4shared

Mainly 4shared is file hosting site. But it also provides option to stream music and videos too. Your entire collection is made public, so anyone can download it .it’s not a good option for things you want to protect and maintain your privacy. Nevertheless it’s still an option.

Now , the lucky winners of the Giveaway are :

Congratulations to the winners . You would get my email shortly.

Also don’t forget to check out the ongoing giveaway of Norton 360 at :

http://ankurchauhan.net/2011/04/29/review-of-norton-360-v5-and-giveaway/

Stay tuned at AnkurChauhan.net

UPDATE : Since sheldon366 has not replied me , so a new winner delenn13 has been chosen randomly.

Again a possible rumor has emerged that Microsoft is showing interest in buying RIM . Steve Balmer ( CEO of Microsoft ) was recently seen in the Blackberry world conference.

If this is true then it could ease out Microsoft efforts in dominating the mobile industry. Microsoft is working hard to settle down in mobile market. The recently developed Windows Mobile 7 did not quite worked well. Hence this could be next major step for Microsoft if it captures Blackberry along with it . But till now its just a rumor.

• The first (or second) thing that you do when you log on to Internet is check your Facebook page.
• You constantly change and update your status and Wall updates.
• You are so involved into the Facebook World that you even post things like “ going to sleep “ or “ I am tired “.
• As soon as you click a picture, you rush to post it Online on your Facebook albums.
• You become agitated or restless if you can’t get Internet to check up your social networking updates.
• You feel too delighted or too sad depending upon the comments you receive on your profile or pictures, comments etc.

I am sure many people would answer above questions as “Yes”. If that’s the case with you then you are indeed suffering from FAD. Also it’s important that you realize this early and take corrective actions. This addiction is similar to “drug addiction “. In case of drugs, you can observe the change physically whereas in this case the changes might not be that visible. Due to this reason we don’t realize this and continue to suffer from FAD for a long time. The most prominent change seen in people with Facebook Addiction or in fact any other social networking site addiction is lack of sleep.

Not only this, many even complain about headache, anger and even lack of concentration and deviation from studies, lack of concentration (source: Internet and some health magazines)

The most vulnerable target of social networking site’s addiction is Kids. Some kids are so addicted to such sites that they lose interest in outdoor games, activities, play etc. What they always want is to be logged on the net. If that’s not possible then cell phone come to the rescue. With cheap Internet on mobile now, FAD has extended its reach to almost everyone.

How to prevent from FAD:

For parents, set a good example for your children. If parents are constantly hooked up on the net then children also imitate the same.

Traveling is another good solution. It helps you to bring close to nature and most importantly takes you away from your busy life.

Avoid the temptation: Don’t make it a habit to check social networking daily.

Don’t post everything on the social networking sites. Maintain your privacy. Those who need to know more about you should talk to you, spend time with you , hang out with you . You don’t need to update anyone with pity things such as “what you are eating “

Meditation: it’s always a solution for stress relief and recommended even for those who are not affected by FAD.

I hope my readers would not be suffering from FAD, and if they are then good luck in overcoming it.

Don’t consider as an official announcement but there have been some reports indicating that Facebook is interested in buying the VOIP client ” Skype “. According to some sources Mark Zuckerberg is in talks to buy Skype for around $3-4 billions.

Earlier Google had also shown interest in buying Skype. It was thought to be a ” joint venture “. Apparently , things didn’t worked out . But now with Facebook showing interest in deal , it could have a great change in terms of some upcoming additions in social networking sites if things worked out .
Note that none of above companies have officially confirmed above reports.

Lets see what are the most useful technique through which cloud is used today :

Utility Computing

Big industries and companies rent out hardware from the cloud service providers. The advantage of this is that companies are not required to invest in the required hardware needed. It is particularly useful for the SME which cannot afford to buy the expensive infrastructure for the development purpose. This also saves maintained cost too. So, pay for only what you use.

SAAS

A quite similar is SAAS which is “software as a service”. In simple terms , let say you want to use a software called Microsoft powerpoint but you are required to pay for the whole office suite. But with help of SAS , you only pay for the service which you are using. So , you are not required to worry about the product updates, license validity of the software or buying the latest version of the product. All this is managed by your service provider.

Using cloud for your personal storage

This segment is particularly gaining importance today. With Internet rates falling and accessibility of net everywhere , its great idea to have your data with you always using the net. This is done via the cloud . You store your data ,files,videos, music etc. on the cloud. Just upload your files and access them anywhere. This eliminates your worry about physical hardware damage that could happen to your hard disk which could corrupt your data and important files. The restriction to this is that most of such cloud service providers offering cloud storage have a upper limit to storage space which is quite small such as 2-5Gb.

Some of the best Cloud services available are :

Amazon Cloud Drive

It offers you 5Gb of free space. You can upload all your stuff such as music ,videos ,files etc to the servers. The upper limit to the file size is 2Gb. You can always buy more storage if you like . It even allows you to stream videos and music without need of downloading them.

Windows Skydrive

If you have a Live ID( such as your hotmail account ) then you are also entitled to get skydrive. It gives you 25 gb of free storage with upper limit of 50mb per file. It gives you maximum storage space given by any cloud service today. The ‘ Live Mesh’ available can be used to simply drag & drop files with ease.

Box.net

Here you have two choices, either a free space of 5 gb with upper limit of 25 Mb per file. There is also a business account with better features and facilities. Ofcourse the business account comes with a hefty price tag.

Dropbox

One of the most common cloud space provider is dropbox. It offers 2 Gb of free space , though there are ways to increase this space like referring friends which gives you 250 Mb of free space for each referral in case your friend joins dropbox. There is also way to use your .edu email address to increase your space ( just Google to find ways to increase dropbox free space).

Google

Our beloved Google also provides you with approx 8Gb of space which includes your gmail ,docs,spreadsheet and picassa space.

Safesync

it is owned by Trend micro solutions which is most famous for its security products. It is actually a paid service cost you around Rs 1800 for 20Gb space.

Advantages of the Cloud

Quickly reviewing the advantages offered by the cloud are

• Accessibility of your files from the INTERNET anywhere
• Backing up your important data and files over the net
• Accessing files simultaneously over multiple PC’s.
• Cost saving by renting only the necessary hardware and software and not the complete production unit.

So make sure that you take advantage of the Internet cloud and use it to the fullest.

Now , I am sure that one thing that you would have surely noticed in 11.04 is that all panels/windows have so huge shadow at the back . Its very annoying for me personally. After searching for the solution to decrease that shadow width , I found a little tweak which would help us to reduce it as per our choice .

Procedure :

1. open a terminal
2. write following commands:

cd /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/metacity-1
sudo nano metacity-theme-1.xml

3. Find following line ( use Ctrl+w to find ):

shadow radius=”45.0″ opacity=”0.75″ color=”#abde4f” x_offset=”1″ y_offset=”4″/>

Alter the contents of radius to your choice. I found 15 as appropriate.

Exit and save when prompted.

Now you shadow width would reduce to appropriate value.

Since ,the major portion of Norton 360 v5 is similar to Norton Internet Security 2011 which I have already covered before,  Hence I would be focusing more on new additions :

http://ankurchauhan.net/2010/12/16/norton-internet-security-2011-review-giveaway-new-year-special/

INSTALLATION

I would mainly be reviewing the distinguished components of Norton 360 V5. Norton Installation was as expected very fast . Just run the setup and enter your product key and Norton 360 would install within 2 minutes . It doesn’t ask you anything for default installation , so you are not required to fill any details , or click and give info about your network etc . It configures them automatically and provides you with start screen after installation . It also check whether a new setup is also available online and install that if available.

INTERFACE

The Norton 360 interface is primarily designed keeping Novice people in mind. So its very easy and straight forward . Almost anyone can understand the basic meaning of all tabs . So it would be beneficial for Home Users primarily. Actually Norton 360 is targeted at home users who just want to install and forget but Nonetheless it got everything a power user might need too.

At the Bottom you would find a Global threat Map displaying the live threat prevalent in various cities across the globe. It is not actually of any use in terms of feature though. You can change this panel layout with “Online family “ Activities panel displaying your Kids online activities . Another alternative is “ Norton Safe Web “ which checks whether a site is safe or not.

The Speed Factor

Gone are those days where Norton used to be resource hog . Now in fact it is counted in one of the fastest security product . I personally did not found it to be fastest with close competition with Nod32 and Vipre in that race leading slightly ahead of it but that difference is not so much. So it is a fast product overall. My RAM consumption was between 15 – 25 Mb on normal running of product. During a scan it raised to about 50-60 Mb which is a very good score. Note that these are not actually a criteria to measure the performance but I am just mentioning them to provide general detail of memory usage. You can refer to professional testing such as AV-Test and AV-Comparatives for results regarding this.

What I personally liked is the fast boot up. It hardly delayed my start up time whereas for other security application , I could actually observe noticeable delay during boot.

The Feature List

I would not be going in much detail of this part since most of it is common as in Internet security 2011 which I had already reviewed and posted it on the website . It has all required options of basic to custom scans. A different feature is Facebook scan which actually scans all the links on your facebook wall page to determine whether they are safe or not. This is not of much importance for me but since now I see that lot of Facebook scams have come up recently and its becoming a serious concern in facebook , this feature might become a good additive in coming time.

The main Difference between Norton 360 and Internet security is that Norton 360 provides you with 2GB of online backup. I could backup all my desired documents and files easily . I could also schedule the backup at any desired time too.

Over the Online servers you would find your files in exactly same order and in same folders and subfolders as in your PC. 2 Gb might not be adequate for many people. You can get additional storage but that comes with a expensive price tag.

Detection

The latest detection in AV-Comparatives report was not very good this time for Norton which bagged ADVANCED rating unlike its competitors which got ADVANCED+ .

However the latest results from AV-TEST are outstanding for Norton. It has got one of the best score of all and nearly 100% detection in Zero Day malware whic is most important criteria for me personally. Since everyday , thousands of malware are enetring on the net , its always good if your antivirus could protect you from the latest threats.

Conclusion & Verdict

Norton 360 provides you with complete all round protection. It is perfect for home as people who just want to install it and let it take control. It manages everything and that too with good performance capability without much slowing your computer down. So , I would recommend this product to anyone. The downside is that its an expensive product . So , if you could shell out some few bucks more then go ahead and get Norton 360 .

How to Win a license of Norton 360 V5

Good news to the readers of my site is that I would be giving away ONE license of Norton 360 to my readers . You are required to fulfill  simple conditions as described below :

1. Tell us ” Why would you like to win Norton 360 ? ” in your comment along with above mentioned link.

(You can write  about its strength, weaknesses, what it does well or what can be improved in the next version and where you find it to be better than other products in the market )

2. ( optional ) Follow @Ankurandu on twitter and Share this article on Twitter, Facebook , Digg or any other Social Site and post the link of that in the comment.

NOTE : This giveaway is Valid for Citizens of INDIA only. I would post you the package free of cost too.

Contest closes on  14th MAY 2011.

Most importantly I would like to thank Symantec Corporation  for Sponsoring this giveaway and Special Thanks to Sushil for helping me organise this Giveaway.