Instead of throwing away your old LCD monitor, why not turn it into a home theater projector ? No messy cables, configuration, or AV nerdiness required.
Frank Völkel of Tom's Hardware gave a great step-by-step guide on how to turn a regular LCD monitor into a high-quality XGA projector.
The well-known auction portal eBay has just about everything. For some time now, several sellers there have offered instructions for building a so-called "multimedia projector", as well as other "bargains" designed to help the customer get a giant screen at home without too much financial outlay. This is how it works: the seller offers a PDF construction guide for $20 in a "buy it now" auction that contains everything the customer needs to know. But does it really work?
While these guides didn't seem like a great deal, they gave us the idea to stage our own "do-it-yourself projector" promotion. In contrast to the eBay offers we briefly examined, you should come away from our tutorial with a good foundation for building your own XGA projector, and of course, there's no charge! In order to offer a realistic impression of the picture quality possible, our new video provides a step-by-step guide to building and operating your own projector.
The resulting picture quality is quite spectacular. According to Frank: "Despite daylight flooding the room, the luminous efficiency of 3,500 ANSI lumens made it possible to screen DVD films and images onto a white wall. Perfect display quality can be achieved in a completely darkened room."
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Turn any LCD monitor into a TV projector
Build your own home cinema projector
A few years ago, I used to spend a lot of time on eBay trying to spot attractive bargains for LCD screens and video projectors. Auctioning sites are an excellent place to find out about price levels and market demand but they also provide impostors and swindlers with a stage. In the eBay offerings you’ll often find DIY and step by step books that will tell you how easy it is to make a video projector yourself using only a cardboard box and an old LCD screen. Out of curiosity I decided to invest the $39.99 to purchase such an online book but, to my great disappointment, I never received it. Not only was I upset about losing my money but I was frustrated I wouldn’t get a chance at building the projector.
All this time, I thought the whole “build your own projector” was a scam and that it was technologically impossible to realize until I found this cool video on Youtube where you can see how to do it yourself. In fact, using an LCD monitor, an overhead projector, a cooling fan and a little of your time you can actually create your own home cinema projector.
You don’t need to spend a foolish 40 bucks, just check out the video to find out.
Buttsplice's escape from ittybittyTVland
Testing of the light and ballast after finishing the box and wiring. It takes 4-5 minutes for the bulb to completely warm-up, but the crazy-bright white light is worth the wait!
This is a view of the box in its functional state. The threaded rod squeezes the focus box after the focus is set for the desired screen distance. It's crude but works beautifully. Now that I have a rough estimate for the projection triplet placement I can eliminate the focus box and mount the lens on a threaded PVC pipe cap and twist it for a more precision focus, but the focus box ain't half shabby. The black paint up front is to limit spurious light from washing out the main projected image. Air enters the top of the box between the LCD and rear lens/glass, cools the entire LCD and rear lens, travels under the rear lens/glass, then exits the box via the fan, pulling bulb and ballast heat with it.
The basic function is as follows: the rear fresnel lens collects light from its focal point (the bulb) and distributes it evenly on the back side of the LCD panel. This light then picks up the image from the LCD and travels into the forward fresnel lens, which takes this light and focuses it into a beam that converges to a point, which is where the projection triplet lens is at the front of the box. The image flips as it leaves the triplet so the LCD is actually mounted upside down to account for this. The fresnel lenses are acrylic and flexible so they are mounted to 1/8" glass with simple binder clips from the wally world stationary dept. The glass also keeps the rear lens from melting and a piece of UV filter sheet is placed between the glass and rear lens to protect the LCD and viewer from UV radiation. This may or may not be a real concern but it's cheap insurance.
Here are the circuit boards for the LCD. Placing them would've been much easier had I made the box a little wider. The red wire is to provide a ground between the 3 boards since the original metal chassis ground is gone. I soldered to two of the boards and sandwiched the wire under the third since I had no ring terminals on hand. I would recommend ring terminals since they allow for easy removal. The small green board contains the front panel controls for contrast, brightness, etc. This is one area where the Benq monitor shines since it uses a modular control panel that can be easily mounted to outside of the projector box. The Samsung is pretty crappy but you really don't need access to these controls except for the first setup, and I believe you can install the included software and control them remotely if you need to change them on a regular basis.
These pics show the layout of the light box. The ballast and capacitor are mounted to the floor right under the fan for cooling and all the wiring and 12V power adapter for the fan are under the piece of flashing below the light bulb. There really is no specific placement of the flashing, just be sure that no wiring or wood is exposed to direct light. I found out the hard way that my initial method of placing the flashing using duct tape was a bad idea when it started emitting a foul odor as the adhesive on the tape melted and turned yellow. The flashing is now all screwed into place.
One important thing to note here is that I have the fan wired separately from the lighting. This is because the fan must run after the light is turned off in order for the remaining heat to be sucked out rather than transferred to the LCD panel. For now I am doing this manually but I plan to add a switch and a circuit that will run the fan for a few minutes after shutdown. The fan is 12Vdc 0.45 amp and pushes a ton of air, which also is fairly noisy. Adding a thermostat will allow the fan to run slower and still keep the panel cool, which is also in the works. Most LCD's are rated to function up to 100 degrees F and mine has yet to breach 79, thanks to the fan.
Here's what the beast looks like after its first test run. After adjusting the focus box and verifying that the LCD temp was fine, a 10-ft diagonal screening of Return of the King was enjoyed with an ear-to-ear grin. The heavily taped area is where the LCD power and signal cables enter the box. They could be routed inside the box to the rear panel if desired. Most people simply cut a slot in the lid of the box for an air intake but I found it easier to cut the lid into two pieces after I placed the LCD and lenses so that I knew where to cut. This has proved convenient for tweaking the focus box and LCD controls while not having to wear a welding mask to shield my eyes from the bulb. I'm going to get a couple more hinges and leave this lid as two pieces.
Parts list (shipping and tax included):
Item Source Price
Samsung 512N 15" LCD monitor eBay (new in box) $197
EYE (Iwasaki) BT28/U 400W metal halide bulb 1000bulbs.com $115
Sola 400W metal halide ballast
Mogul base for bulb
2 fresnel lenses, projection triplet lens, UV filter sheet Lumenlab.com $79
4x8' sheet of 3/4" MDF and 6 cuts on their big saw Lowes $25
Two pieces of 13.5x10" glass (custom cut free by Lowes) $10
Wire nuts, power cord, strip foam, etc. $10
Galvanized steel flashing, duct tape, 12V fan and power supply already had on hand ----
TOTAL --- $436
I have not included a projection screen of any kind but it looks like the best solution is going to be the 110"x80" blackout cloth that Lumenlab sells for $40. Even with this included, the price is still less than half of what a decent XGA (1024x768 native resolution) projector costs. This does not account for the fact that commercial projectors use a special bulb that lasts only 2000 hours and costs over $400! The bulb I used in this project costs $35 and will last 20,000 hours. Bulbs can be found as cheap as $15 but they are huge so the box would have to be a little bigger and the bulb mounted diagonally.
I cut the wood for the box before I received the components and it was actually a little small for everything to work right so I extended the height by 3/4" using a frame I cut out of a piece of MDF. I also extended the box lengthwise by building the focus box that faces the wall such that it extends out of the box by ~3". I could've saved myself some work if I had sketched out the requirements for each component rather than relying on rough external dimensions from other folks' guides. Measure twice, cut once. An internal size of 15"Wx13"Hx29"L would leave plenty of working room.
The monitor I used is one of the easiest (if not the easiest) monitor to strip due its circuit board layout and FFC (flat flexible cable) placement. The only board that's attached to the glass ends up at the bottom of the projector so it's out of the projection area and can simply rest on the floor. Other brands require soldering an extension FFC and mounting boards in odd places so the 512N is a real time-saver in that regard. The power board and IO board can be mounted nearby with a fair amount of slack in the factory connectors. The other reason I chose this monitor is that it has a 450:1 contrast ratio and 16 ms response time, both of which are about as nice as you'll find for a 15" LCD monitor. Thanks to eBay, it didn't cost me any more than the monitors that have less to offer and are harder to utilize. I hear Benq has a few models that are worthy of a projector as well, so check the two forums listed in the links section for the latest monitor list.
Display Hibernate Option on the Shut Down dialog
Display Hibernate Option on the Shut Down dialog
For some reason, Hibernate isn't available from the default Shut Down dialog. But you can enable it simply enough, by holding down the SHIFT key while the dialog is visible. Now you see it, now you don't!
How to Double Your AdSense Income Instantly
How to Double Your AdSense Income Instantly
As you probably already know, AdSense is revolutionizing the way many infopreneurs are creating revenue from their web site traffic. The reason for this is its simplicity. Through AdSense, revenue is generated when someone simply clicks thru the AdSense ads displayed on the webmasters web site.
In this article I want to give you a few simple ways to dramatically increase your AdSense income.
The bottom line:
To increase AdSense income all you must do is increase the number of click thrus you receive.
There are two ways for you to increase your total number of click thrus. You can either increase your website traffic or you can increase your AdSense click thru rate. Now, getting more traffic would be great, but let�s be honest increasing your web site traffic is much easier said than done. So, let�s focus on increasing your AdSense click thru rate instead.
4 Tips to Increase Click Thru:
Match your AdSense to your website:
You want your AdSense ads to appear as seamless as possible. Your goal is to match every aspect of your AdSense ads to the theme of your website. What you want to do is remove the borders from your AdSense ads and match the background color of the ad to your website. Additionally, you want to match the color of the AdSense links to the rest of the links on your website plus choose an ad format that makes the ads look seamless.
For example, if your web site has a white background and the default color of your hypertext links is blue you will want to remove the border from your AdSense, make the background white, choose either a square or a rectangle as your ad format instead of a skyscraper or banner, and yep you guessed it� make the links blue.
Placement Matters:
Where you place your AdSense ads is just as important as how they look. Luckily, there are only a few concepts that you need to worry about in order to increase your click through rate.
�The more white space around your ads the better
�The closer to the top of the page the better
�The closer the left of the page the better
Follow these concepts and I can assure you that you will see an increase in your AdSense click thru rate. (It really is that simply!)
Google Search:
Now this is one that I rarely see webmasters take advantage of. The Google AdSense program gives webmasters the ability to add a Google search box to there web site.
Why should you use this function?
Well, when a website visitor chooses to use this search box from your website your AdSense ID will be imbedded in ALL of that visitors Google searches. If that person does 1 search or 50 your AdSense ID will still be imbedded throughout process.
Why is this so great?
If that visitor clicks on any of the sponsored listings while surfing from your web site guess who makes money. YOU! If they hit the back button and click on another ad guess who makes money? YOU! This is absolutely huge. Through this function you now have the ability to earn multiple click thrus from the same visitor on the site visit. Please don�t overlook how powerful this is. Besides, most of your website traffic will just be browsing anyway, so I why help them find what there looking for and make a little coin along the way?
Tracking:
Just like any other type of marketing, you won�t know what�s working the best for you on your web site unless you track the different things that you�re experimenting with. Set up a few Google AdSense channels for the different ads that you�ll be placing on your website. Then just see which channels are working the best and stick to those.
That�s it!
Follow the tips above and I can assure you that you will absolutely double your AdSense click thru rate and your AdSense income. The best part about the four tips I�ve shared here is that you can put them into action immediately and see how they will work on your website right now. Who knows� you could be making twice as much by tomorrow by just making a few simple tweaks here and there.
Good Luck!
How Google Detects AdSense Invalid Clicks
How Google Detects AdSense Invalid Clicks
Still thinking to cheat AdSense? Stop that. It will never bring you anywhere. You might pull it off with smaller ads network, but definitely not with Google. Here are some detection methods they might use. At the very least, they have the resources to do so.
IP Address
If the AdSense click is originated from the same IP Address as the one used for accessing your AdSense account, your account is flagged.
Cookies
Most home users do not use static IP Address for Internet connection. In most cases just disconnect and reconnect will give you a new IP Address. But don’t forget, Google has set cookies on your computer.
Other Google Services
Thinking that you are safe just because you do not access your AdSense account? Think again. This time, consider these: GMail, Google Earth, Google Calendar, Google Search, Google Toolbar, Google Talk, Google Sitemap, Google Desktop, Blogger, and so on, and so on. With the wide range of services they provide, Google can trace the originator of most (or probably almost all) clicks.
Click Pattern 1
Oh, why this computer / IP address / person is so trigger-click-happy on this particular website but never click on the ads on other sites?
Click Pattern 2
And why is it that people accessing these sites direct (type-in URL or from bookmark) tend to be very active ad-clickers compared with those referred from search engine or other sites?
Click Pattern 3
And why the ad-clickers like to hit and run, compared with non ad-clickers that surf a few pages before leaving?
Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Your CTR may range from 0.5% to 10%, but if it exceeds a certain point (probably around 10%), you are flagged.
Geo-Location
Used Urchin (Google Analytics) before? Then you should know that Google can trace traffics origin down to the small town. Different IP doesn’t mean much. Unless you site is really targetted to one small geo-point, a high number of clicks from nearby location will get you banned quickly.
Hardware address?
MAC address of the LAN card, modem, and router works almost like a fingerprint. I’m not sure if Google can track this, but probably they do. They have rocket scientist, remember?
Advertisers conversion rate
Ad click is one thing. But does it bring value to the advertisers? If none of the clicks on your site translate to conversion to the advertiser, you are in trouble. First the Smart-Pricing hits, then your AdSense account disabled.
Search Engine Ranking
Your website is not indexed on any search engine, not linked by any prominent website, but get consistently high traffic? That sounds like something is in play. Regardless of whether it is an adware-embedded software, spam, trojan clickbot, or intentionally installed click-exchange network, it doesn’t sound right.
Webpage design
How about the “click here” or “support us”? Google has the best search engine in the world. Is it really that hard to find those words?
Combo
Each of these detection methods might seem rather weak. But combine them together, and not many click-fraud can pass-through these filters. Even the smartest clickbot will have a hard time.
In short, it is almost impossible to cheat AdSense in the long term. Instead of spending time, money, and effort trying to outsmart Google, try these tips to improve your AdSense earning.
Disclaimer : I’m not working for Google nor in anyway know anyone inside Google. Google might or might not use these methods to detect click-fraud. I’d believe that they have much better detection mechanism.
How to Cheat Google AdSense (and get your AdSense account disabled)
How to Cheat Google AdSense (and get your AdSense account disabled)
Face it. You come to this article probably thinking to find some ways to cheat Google, or to confirm whether some method you have on mind will work. Well, if you want to know how to cheat AdSense, here are the ways, focusing on the AdSense click-frauds. These covers from basic AdSense cheating techniques to the advanced class.
But before you proceed, you might need to know why you shouldn’t cheat Google (answer: you will get caught).
Basic clicker cheat
This is a noob. This guy knows almost nothing about web technology or network architecture. He clicks on his ads every time he has chance. It can be a few clicks to hundreds of clicks daily. Most likely he doesn’t even read the AdSense Program Policies and Terms and Conditions.
Proxy clicker cheat
She knows a thing or two about cookies and IP address. Or she doesn’t know, but somehow guessed that if she use the things called anonymizer, Google will not be able to trace her, because her identity is hidden. She may use anonymizer / proxy websites or specialized anonymous software like tor (The Onion Router).
Multiple computer clicker cheat
He knows that somehow Google will detect if the clicks are originated from his own computer. So he will try to even out origin of the clicks. He will recruit his friends, family members, relatives, neighbors, his cats, and his dogs on single mission: to click on the ads. He will also click on the AdSense ads when he is using the library computers, or his office workstation.
Software clicker cheat
Graduate to the next step is buyers of clickbots / click-bots. These are specialized robot software to click on AdSense ads. It will browse around your websites, clicking on the ads every few minutes. The more advanced ones will cloak the IP address too, so the website seems to be very popular worldwide. To cover the track, this clickbots will browse around the advertisers sites too while continuing its “click quest”.
Paid-clickers cheat
If you don’t like automated things, there is always other option for you. Just pay $50 dollars a month to the professional AdSense clickers. These are groups of highly specialized Internet surfers with office in the dark rooms in street corners of India, Pakistan, and China, helping AdSense account owner to earn good amounts of money � before the AdSense account is disabled, that is. They will browse around your websites, clicking on the ads every few minutes. Because they use human eyes, they know which ads worth more. And to be more convincing they can click a link or two, or sign up free offers / newsletters on the advertiser sites.
Click-rings cheat
Network is power. So says many business gurus. Instead of taking things to their own hand, this people realize that they can join hands with those with similar goals and distribute AdSense clicks among themselves, the so called AdSense click-rings. Joining this click-ring network means that your website address will be made known to members, who will regularly browse the website and click on your AdSense ads. In exchange, you will also browse other members’ sites and click on their AdSense ads. The medium used varies. Some click-ring groups use mail-list for communications. Some are using bulletin boards/forum, Yahoo groups, or Usenet. IRC is another popular way. Slightly more complicated is specialized AdSense exchange software for collecting members website address and displaying others’ websites for clicking.
Other medium cheat
I have tens of thousands email address on my newsletter subscriber list. If I include AdSense ads on my newsletters, with 5% CTR, I can get a thousand clicks per one email. Not bad. Or I can pay someone to write some useful/nice/funny/cute toolbars or firefox extensions or screensavers that people can download and use for free, and display my AdSense ads there.
Visitor cheat
Simply putting “Visit out sponsors” or “Check out the ads above” on your website is cheating. This might not be very clear-cut cheat to some. But Google AdSense program policies has stated clearly, the only text allowed are “Advertisements” or “Sponsored List”
Spam cheat
This is the highest level all click-frauds, the Maestro of Fraudsters. She spams millions of emails regularly, offering to “satisfy your inner needs if you can help me check on the links on my website”. Of course, email is not the only way. What IRC and instant messaging (IM) are for, after all. She will look for unsuspecting victims, offering something too-good-to-be-true “if only they will visit the website and click on the links”.
Click-through-rate cheat
Whichever method(s) above used, there is one limiting condition: the CTR(click-though-rate). Any CTR that exceeds certain percentage (probably around 10%) will raise red flag in Google AdSense back room. To lower the CTR, the professional cheaters will create some pages on the same domain that attracts very high traffic. Some interesting freebies will sure do the tricks. AdSense code is pasted there, thus creating a very high page impressions. Whether or not the the ads are clicked does not matter anyway, because they are targeting low paying keyword that does not have much competition. The fake clicks are, of course, on where the big money is, the low traffic pages stuffed with high-paying keywords.
Build your own speaker stands
e of the most common do-it-yourself projects is building speaker stands. Almost everyone needs them, you can make them cheaply, and they are a great starter project.
Many home-theatre systems use bookshelf speakers for left and right main channels. Bookshelf speakers require stands to get them to the right height. With store-bought stands, you'll probably find that one stand sits your speakers down too low, another raises them up too high, and the only stand that does work sports a ghastly price tag that makes you gasp. This is a perfect place to add some DIY know-how and get a perfect fit.
Basic bookshelf speaker stands
First, measure the footprint of your speakers, which is just the width and depth of the bottom of the speaker. You usually want to match that pretty closely with your stand; too much excess and the stand looks like it was made for larger speakers (and we don't want that!). The stand tops shown in Figure 1 are 20 cm wide and 20 cm deep. These stands are about as simple as you can get and still look good.
Figure 1. Basic speaker stands
Once you've measured the base of your speakers, obtain some 2 cm thick, medium-density fibreboard (MDF). Cut two rectangles to your speaker measurements, then cut two more squares slightly bigger (for example, cut two squares 20 by 20 cm, and two more 25 by 25 cm). The smaller squares are for the speaker base and the larger ones are for the stand base.
Next, cut four longer rectangles; these should be about 5 cm less deep than your speaker base. So, if you have a top plate that is 20 cm deep, these rectangles should be 15 cm inches deep. To obtain the height, you'll need to know how high you want your speaker to sit. Then, just subtract 2.5 cm and cut to length.
The top and base of your stand actually total 3.8 cm in height, but assume 1.3 cm of settling, especially if you have carpet. In fact, if you have really thick carpet, you might want to assume even more. So, these might be 15cm deep and 75 cm wide (for example). Two of these become the connectors for one stand and two for the other.
At this point, if you're able, bevel the long edges of the connectors. You also should round all four edges of the tops and bases. This will add a polished, classy look to your stands and allow the base of the stands to sit more firmly on the floor.
With the rounded sides up on both the top and bottom plates, the two long pieces should be evenly spaced, centered, then angled slightly (see Figure 1 as a reference). Now, glue and nail in place. All that's left is to paint the stands; prime first, then lay on a couple of good coats of black or whatever colour you prefer.
Sturdier stands for heavier speakers
If you have heavier speakers, you might want a sturdier design. This design also works well if you need your speakers quite high; the basic stand sometimes looks a little wobbly as the connector pieces get really lengthy. The basic procedure is similar, with just a few twists for stability.
First, I'll assume you have larger speakers. For this job, mine had a footprint of 40 by 25 cm, so my tops were a bit larger than in the basic stand. Again, round the tops. The base follows the same process; in this case, my bases were 45 by 30 cm, also rounded. Instead of long connector pieces, though, I made a square box out of MDF (2 cm thickness is fine). This box was half the depth of the top -- in this example, 12.5 cm -- and the height was calculated as shown in the basic stand section. For a nice look, the edges of the box should be sanded slightly round, to look less... well... boxy.
Glue and nail this box to the base of your speaker; I set mine in the shape of a diamond for a bit more visual interest (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Sturdier speaker stands
Now glue and nail on the top. Before you finish up and paint, though, drill a hole in the centre of the top plate, which opens into the box that acts as a support. Now prime and paint. However, before putting these stands into action, fill the box support with sand. This really solidifies these stands, allow them to hold heavier speakers and look more substantial.
Costs involved
Believe it or not, it cost me only about $50 to make all four stands. Similar stands can run up to hundreds of dollars in higher-end shops. Clearly, this is a no-brainer way to get into DIY and save some bucks. Also, don't be afraid to get creative. If you don't have a lot of tools, find materials you can work with that require only simple tools. Buy premade shelves and have the hardware store cut them to the sizes you need. Substitute threaded rode (the line you see attached to the anchors of small boats) or PVC pipe for the centre supports. Add door or corner moldings to get a different look. Whatever you can come up with that gets the job done and saves you money will make your project successful.
simple-adsense-hack-for-a-higher-ctr
Removing the ‘Advertise on the Site’ Link
Log in to your Google Adsense account and click on the ‘My Account‘ tab.
After which, scroll down the page until you reach the ‘Onsite Advertiser Siteup‘ section. Click on the edit link.
Now, just untick the box which includes your website in the Onsite Advertiser signup program. (More info on the On-site advertiser signup program here.)
Viola! And you’re done. Now the ‘Advertise on this site‘ link is removed from all the ads served to your websites. The only downside for this tweak is that it won’t be so easy for Advertisers to target ads specifically for your site. However I think the benefits of removing this link outweighs the cost for most bloggers. Here are some reasons why:
A larger percentage of visitors to your website are end-users and not advertisers.
Most advertisers will not want to put up specific ads on relatively new/obscure blogs or blogs with low traffic
Removing the link makes it far easier to blend ads with text - which ensures higher CTR
I think that leaving the On-site advertising link up will be beneficial for websites that are very popular, because advertisers often want their ads to go out to as many relevant eyeballs as possible. But if your website doesn’t fall into that category, why not try this tip to see if it actually improves your blog’s Adsense click through rate? My suggestion would be to set it up for two weeks in order to observe the number of clicks you receive on each ad channel.
After monitoring the results, you can decide if you want to keep the change or revert back to the default ad setup. Alternatively, if there is no significant improvement you could try rearranging your ad placement to see if it’ll bring better results.
What do you think of this simple Adsense tweak? Do you think it’ll actually improve your Adsense CTR?
Google Hacking
Using Google, and some finely crafted searches we can find a lot of interesting information.
For Example we can find:
Credit Card Numbers
Passwords
Software / MP3's
...... (and on and on and on) Presented below is just a sample of interesting searches that we can send to google to obtain info that some people might not want us having.. After you get a taste using some of these, try your own crafted searches to find info that you would be interested in.
Try a few of these searches:
intitle:"Index of" passwords modified
allinurl:auth_user_file.txt
"access denied for user" "using password"
"A syntax error has occurred" filetype:ihtml
allinurl: admin mdb
"ORA-00921: unexpected end of SQL command"
inurl:passlist.txt
"Index of /backup"
"Chatologica MetaSearch" "stack tracking:"
Amex Numbers: 300000000000000..399999999999999
MC Numbers: 5178000000000000..5178999999999999
visa 4356000000000000..4356999999999999
"parent directory " /appz/ -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums
"parent directory " DVDRip -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums
"parent directory "Xvid -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums
"parent directory " Gamez -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums
"parent directory " MP3 -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums
"parent directory " Name of Singer or album -xxx -html -htm -php -shtml -opendivx -md5 -md5sums
Notice that I am only changing the word after the parent directory, change it to what you want and you will get a lot of stuff.
METHOD 2
put this string in google search:
?intitle:index.of? mp3
You only need add the name of the song/artist/singer.
Example: ?intitle:index.of? mp3 jackson
METHOD 3
put this string in google search:
inurl:microsoft filetype:iso
You can change the string to watever you want, ex. microsoft to adobe, iso to zip etc…
"# -FrontPage-" inurl:service.pwd
Frontpage passwords.. very nice clean search results listing !!
"AutoCreate=TRUE password=*"
This searches the password for "Website Access Analyzer", a Japanese software that creates webstatistics. For those who can read Japanese, check out the author's site at: http://www.coara.or.jp/~passy/
"http://*:*@www" domainname
This is a query to get inline passwords from search engines (not just Google), you must type in the query followed with the the domain name without the .com or .net
"http://*:*@www" bangbus or "http://*:*@www"bangbus
Another way is by just typing
"http://bob:bob@www"
"sets mode: +k"
This search reveals channel keys (passwords) on IRC as revealed from IRC chat logs.
allinurl: admin mdb
Not all of these pages are administrator's access databases containing usernames, passwords and other sensitive information, but many are!
allinurl:auth_user_file.txt
DCForum's password file. This file gives a list of (crackable) passwords, usernames and email addresses for DCForum and for DCShop (a shopping cart program(!!!). Some lists are bigger than others, all are fun, and all belong to googledorks. =)
intitle:"Index of" config.php
This search brings up sites with "config.php" files. To skip the technical discussion, this configuration file contains both a username and a password for an SQL database. Most sites with forums run a PHP message base. This file gives you the keys to that forum, including FULL ADMIN access to the database.
eggdrop filetype:user user
These are eggdrop config files. Avoiding a full-blown descussion about eggdrops and IRC bots, suffice it to say that this file contains usernames and passwords for IRC users.
intitle:index.of.etc
This search gets you access to the etc directory, where many many many types of password files can be found. This link is not as reliable, but crawling etc directories can be really fun!
filetype:bak inurl:"htaccess|passwd|shadow|htusers"
This will search for backup files (*.bak) created by some editors or even by the administrator himself (before activating a new version).
Every attacker knows that changing the extenstion of a file on a webserver can have ugly consequences.
Let's pretend you need a serial number for windows xp pro.
In the google search bar type in just like this - "Windows XP Professional" 94FBR
the key is the 94FBR code.. it was included with many MS Office registration codes so this will help you dramatically reduce the amount of 'fake' porn sites that trick you.
or if you want to find the serial for winzip 8.1 - "Winzip 8.1" 94FBR
Credits and More Info
http://johnny.ihackstuff.com
Cracking Wifi with Back|Track
Ever wondered just how secure your WEP protected wireless network is? Well today I'll show you how to test it. There have been a lot of articles written about this subject already and by now it is common knowledge that WEP is only the barest of security precautions. I'm going to show you how you can test your own wireless network's security using the linux livecd distro back|track. Before we go any further, I feel it necessary to mention two things. The first being the ethics of hacking. Most of you are probably familiar with this subject already but, just to refresh your memory. Second, it goes without saying that this is for YOUR OWN NETWORK TESTING PURPOSES ONLY. Unauthorized access of other people's networks is illegal. If you have problems or questions about anything in this guide, for the love of god use google/wikipedia and look it up first. Don't just start ranting on forums like a moron without doing a little research first. There are probably other people who have had the same problems and solved them already. Ok, parental rant over. Lets get down to the dirty stuff:
First of all, you'll need to check and make sure your wireless card has the right chipset. Most wireless cards are programmed only to accept data that is addressed to them. Other cards, specifically the ones that are of use for wifi sniffing, are capable of picking up all traffic that is flying through the air. Common types are Atheros, Prism, Aironet, Realtek, Hermes, etc based cards. You are on your own figuring out what type of chipset your wireless card has, as its too vast to get into here, but check this thread for more info. Your probably just going to have to search for your specific card to find out what chipset it has then compare it to this compatability list. For a good discussion on types of cards that work, check this http://forums.remote-exploit.org/showthread.php?t=2191
Next, download a copy of back|track, a slackware distro designed for security testing purposes. This is a linux livecd, which means it will boot the entire OS from the cd. Download the ISO and use a burning program such as Nero, Alcohol or my personal favorite, the awesome freeware cd/dvd burning program cdburnerXP to burn the disk image to a cd. Pop the disk in and reboot, and boot from the disk. Back|track may take a while to boot up.
When back|track boots up (and hopefully finds all your hardware) you will be presented with a login screen. To quote the venerable xatar, "Read the f**king screen!" The login, as it says above the prompt is "root" and the password is "toor" (minus the ""). Note that linux is case sensitive. After you are logged in, you could run all of the commands I will get into later from this prompt. But thats no fun, so type in:
xconf
This should create a file /etc/X11/xorg.conf and autodetect your video settings. (with nvidia cards, you may still have video problems as I did, such as not getting above 640x480... should you choose to install backtrack to the harddrive, check out http://forums.remote-exploit.org/showthread.php?t=2176&highlight=nvidia for more info on fixing this)
To get the KDE gui desktop to start up, simply type:
startx
If everything goes smoothly, you should be awash in the beautiful glow of the back|track KDE desktop. Given the beautiful read only nature of the livecd, you can do anything to this operating system and not have to worry about messing it up. If things get a little weird, or screwed up, just reboot and the OS is back to normal. So GO EXPLORE, run random programs, see what they do, go nuts.
At the bottom left of the screen is a little icon that looks like a monitor with a black screen. This is called the bash prompt. This is where you will be spending most of your time, so click on this to open up a new bash prompt. Note that you can double click on the bar to the right of the tab that says "Shell" and it will create a new bash tab, negating the necessity to open up multiple instances of the bash window. First, a few networking commands to get you up to speed on your own system. Type
ifconfig -a
This will show you a list of all compatible network cards on your system. You should see a list of devices such as ath0, eth0, wifi0, wlan0 etc. One of these is your wireless card. If you have an Atheros based card, it will be ath0. Make note of the name of your card, as you will be using it later. For the rest of this guide, I will be using ath0 since that is the card I have. Replace ath0 with whatever card you have.
You can also check out your wireless cards specifically by typing in:
iwconfig
I've got two wireless cards. The one built into my laptop, an intel card (eth0) and an Atheros pcmcia card (ath0). Now that we have the name of our wireless cards, we can start sniffing. Some like to use Kismet to sniff for networks, but I find using airodump-ng to be easier and ultimately more effective. In your bash prompt, type:
airodump-ng --write out --ivs --abg ath0
This starts airodump-ng and tells it to begin sniffing data, write it to the file out, only capture IVs (Initialization Vectors), search the a, b and g bands using the ath0 card. Keep in mind, every time you specify the same output file name, such as "out", airodump-ng will append the file name with "-##" such as out-01.ivs, out-02.ivs, etc.You will see a list of access points on the top half of the screen, and clients on the bottom. Find your access point in the list. Write down the BSSID or Mac address of the access point and any connected clients. You'll need it later. From now on in this document, the access point's mac address will be referred to as APmac and the client mac as CLmac. The goal of the attack is to capture as many unique IVS as possible. Every time data is sent between the wireless server and client, each packet contains IV which are collected and then run through the aircrack-ng program for computation.
You should be seeing a ton of numbers flying by, but not updating vary quickly. Thats because airodump-ng is searching all channels. Once you see your network, note what channel it is on (under the CH header). Stop airodump-ng by hitting:
ctrl-c
Now start it up again but this time we will add --channel # where # is the channel number of the access point, say, channel 6
airodump-ng --channel 6 --write out --ivs --abg ath0
Airodump-ng should be running much faster now, and updating constantly. You will see a number rising very quickly, this is generally the beacons. Beacons just basically say "hey, i'm an access point" about 10 times a second. You can judge the quality of your connection by how fluid the rise in beacons are. Other than this, they are useless for our purposes. For this type of attack it is important for there to be a client connected to the access point. So march over to your other computer and log on to the net wirelessly. In backtrack, you should see at the bottom a client pop up, the first MAC is the access point and the 2nd is the Client. Write down both. Open a new bash prompt and type:
aireplay-ng -2 -b APmac -d ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff -m 68 -n 68 -p 0841 -h CLmac ath0
Where APmac is the mac address (bssid) of the access point and CLmac is the mac address of the client. For a detailed explanation of what all these settings do, open up a new bash prompt and just type aireplay-ng and it will spew out all the controls and what they do. The only one not explained is that the very first -2 tells aireplay to do the 3rd attack method in the list at the bottom (the first being 0).
aireplay-ng will now start sniffing for a certain type of packet with a length no more and no less than 68 bytes between client and access point. It will say "Read ### packets". At this point, if there is significant data transfer between the client and ap, it may snag the right type of packet already and there is no need to do the next step. In this case, hit Y to use the packet and skip the next step. If however, it keeps reading packets for a while (more than a couple min) and does not pop up saying "Use this packet?" then do the following:
Open a new bash prompt and type:
aireplay-ng -0 1 -a APmac -c CLmac ath0
This command will effectively terminate the connection between the AP and the client forcing the client to re-connect. It is this re-connection packet that we are looking to scoop up with the first instance of aireplay.
Go back to the first instance of aireplay and you should see something at the bottom of the screen saying "Use this packet?" Hit Y and aireplay will start sending out tons of packets to the AP. Switch over to airodump-ng which should still be running in the first bash prompt. Look at the data rate of the targeted AP. If all is going well, Aireplay is spewing out packets like mad to the access point and airodump-ng is picking up the chatter in between, the data should be rising quickly. This is exactly what we want.
If for some reason the data isn't going up quickly, go back to the first aireplay-ng and hit:
ctrl-c
If aireplay had picked up any more packets, it will prompt you again if you want to use them. Try more packets. Also, you may need to get closer to your access point or try the aireplay-ng -0 method again. Experiment. Once you've got the data rate going up quickly, start aircrack-ng and start crunching the numbers. Type in
dir
To get a list of the files. One file should be the out file that you specified in airodump-ng, specifically out-01.ivs. Each time airodump-ng is started with the same file output name, it creates a new one tacking on -01, -02, etc. Make sure you know which one you are outputting to.
Type in:
aircrack-ng -f 2 -a 1 -b APmac -n 64 out-01.ivs
Again, if you want to know what all the parameters mean, open up a new bash and type aircrack-ng and it will tell you. Basically -f is the fudge factor- default is 2, a higher number will be a more thorough but slower search. -b filters out all but the specified mac of the AP, -n says to search for a 64 bit key. If it runs for a long time and finds nothing, either you don't have enough IVs, or you are searching under the wrong key length. Try 128. You can also run multiple instances of of aircrack with different variables. Aircrack will continually update, notice the increasing IVs in the upper right as long is airodump-ng and aireplay are still going strong. After a bit of time, it should spit out your WEP key. Congrats! You now know how hard it is breaking into YOUR OWN NETWORK. Perhaps switch to WPA? If it didn't work, there could be any number reasons why. Do a little searching on the backtrack forums, google, etc, try setting up a different access point or learn how to do another type of attack, learn how to configure your hardware properly, etc, etc, etc. Take your time and explore the OS, if your new to linux, like i was when i started using backtrack, you'll have a lot to learn.
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As a side note, In order to connect to a wireless network in backtrack, you must type in
iwconfig ath0 essid nameofnetwork key whateverthekeyis
ifconfig ath0 up
dhcpcd ath0
A message should pop up in the bottom right of the screen saying something about ath0 being connected. To disconnect, before switching to another network, type:
ifconfig ath0 down
then repeat the steps above with the new network information.
Increase the range of a Linksys WRE54G Wireless Repeater
On a casual walk around my apartment I discovered that a neighbor in my neighboring complex was sending their wireless signal into my apartment. After connecting to their unsecured network I realized that it was 4X faster then my current DSL connection. The problem, I could only get a "very low" connection from the wall in my daughter's room. So after some thought I purchased a Linksys WRE54G Wi-Fi range expander. Setting this up at the wall in my daughters room slightly solved the problem by rebroadcasting the "very low" signal throughout my apartment but it still held that title of "very slow" and often dropped the connection. So after some more thought I decided to invest in a cAntenna. The only way to use the cAntenna was to hook it into my laptop and sit in my daughter's room with the cAntenna hanging out the window. Sure enough, I got a "very strong" signal from that. But being forced to sit in a room, surrounded by Dora the Explorer, just to get a faster internet connection wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted it to be a wireless connection. So I got my cAntenna, spliced it into the WRE54G, aimed it at the neighbor's and BAM! Now I have a "very strong" connection that is repeated throughout my apartment. This is how it's done!
Prepare the cAntenna
Step 1: Cut off the RPSMA connector
Step 2: Strip the cAntenna pigtail. Pull back the shield from the center conductor and
make sure they're not touching each other.
Prepare the WRE54G
Step 1: Unplug the WRE54G and remove the power cord
Step 2: Remove the 4 rubber pads on the back of the WRE54G
Step 3: Remove the 4 screws found under the rubber pads
Step 4: Open WRE54G and locate the existing antenna connection(below)
Assemble the WRE54G/cAntenna
Step 5: Carefully solder the cAntenna conductor to the existing WRE54G antenna conductor(below)
Step 6: Carefully solder the cAntenna shield to the existing WRE54G antenna shield(below)
Step 7: Drill a small hole in the side of the WRE54G to feed the cAntenna wire out
Step 8: Put the WRE54G back together
Now simply mount the unit, aim the cAntenna, and setup the WRE54G with the installation CD.(below)
The cAntenna will pick up the distant wireless connection; feed it into the WRE54G; then the WRE54G will repeat the signal throughout the area around it.
Free 3 Months of T-Mobile WiFi
For the release of Microsoft Vista, T-Mobile is offering 3 free months of their hotspot service. The catch is... You have to be running Windows Vista. (don't do it)
Here is a quick tip to get three months of free hotspot service at the firm's North American WiFi access points found at Starbucks, Borders, FedEx-Kinkos, hotel chains, etc. Turns out, they only use the agent information for validation... So that enables us to SPOOF IT!
1. Download the firefox extension for spoofing user-agents: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/59/
2. Restart firefox and goto: Tools > User Agent Switcher > Options > Options... \
3. Click "User Agents" and then "Add"
4. Fill out the window with following info:
Description: Internet Explorer 7 (Windows Vista)
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
App Name: Microsoft Internet Explorer App Version: 4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)
Platform: Win32
5. Save it, goto Tools > User Agent Switcher > Then click the newly added one. Browse over to http://hotspot.t-mobile.com/vista/ and you should be redirected to a trial sign-up page.
Remember this ends on April 30th!
Hacking your FON Router to install dd-wrt firmware
Recently a company called FON started giving away their Fon Routers for free (like here: http://www.fon.com/en/promos/fonbucks )
The idea behind this router is that you hook it up to your internet connection, and it transmits two wifi signals, a WPA secured one, and a unencrypted FON_something signal. From there, you manage your Fon from your user zone on www.fon.com. You choose to charge people for access to your open FON signal or not. For more information on the Fon's original purpose, see their site.
Now, this is all well and good. But, what if you could hack this little free router? And maybe install something like dd-wrt, a firmware that many people put on the older Linksys routers. Well, that's what we're going to do today =)
Free router + installing dd-wrt = yay.
Written by CodedChaos
Information Provision: LinkinCable and dd-wrt.com
If you like it, please
What you need
1 Fon router with firmware 0.7.1 r1 or lower (you'll learn how to find this at the beginning of the guide.)
Laptop (something to wirelessly ssh to Fon)
SSH Client (We'll be using Putty)
Telnet Client (We'll be using Putty)
TFTP Server (We'll be using PumpKIN)
Cross-over ethernet cable -OR- powered ethernet switch (Guide to making a cross-over cable here: http://www.littlewhitedog.com/content-8.html)
Understanding of some SSH and Telnet
Understanding of Manual IPs in your OS of choice (OSX, Linux, or Windows)
HTML Editor (or notepad)
I-Hacked Members: Download this zip file, and skip ahead to "Getting Started"
Preparation
First, we need to create two HTML files.
Create a file called step1.html
It's contents should be:
/