IndiaTimes website (www.indiatimes.com)- part of India’s largest media and entertainment house, The Times Group has been reported to be serving up atleast 434 malacious files, directly or indirectly. Visitors can be infected even if they have up-to-date systems with anti-viruses installed on them as many of these viruses are not detectable by the anti-virus softwares. According to Mary Landesman -a senior security researcher at ScanSafe, who used to be a security researcher for Microsoft, India Times website has exploited multiple vulnerabilities and previously unknown flaws in Windows. She said, according to The Register, most pages on the IndiaTimes site are clean. Those that are infected, however, contain a potent cocktail of downloader and dropper Trojans and other binaries. Information Week informs that the size of the malicious payload is unusually large.They contain a script that points to remote sites, some of which link to still other sites. ScanSafe first detected and began blocking the malware on the IndiaTimes on October 25 itself.

India Times’ website receives very good number of visitors (its alexa ranking is 483 worldwide & 15th rank in India). Moreover, this was the busy festival season due to Diwali celebrations. So to save its visitors from the unnecessary trouble of virus and Trojan attacks, it should have closed down untill it was completely cleaned up and safe for visit. When some couple of days back Vodafone India’s website got partially hacked-up, it blocked its site completely and has resumed back functioning recently.

It should be considered illegal to continue such unsafe websites even after the threat is detected. Ignorant visitors suffer due to continued hosting of these kind of infected websites. Its really strange that ScanSafe had intimated the IndiaTimes office about this alarming issue on this Thursday itself. But it was told that no action could be taken till Monday because of holidays! Till then, as the rule goes Buyers Beware ….Visitors Beware!!!

Technorati Tags: Virus, infected, indiatimes, India Times, Times of India

I would like to outrightly admit herewith that I am no expert of any language whatsoever. But with this new theme to this blog, an added feature to translate this blog into French, German, Spanish and Italian is being provided by a third party and I have no role to play in the process of translation. Infact, I don’t know even a word in these languages! So please forgive and inform me about any kind of mis-interpretation or unintended meaning in the translated tag. Also note that Hindi being my mother tongue, sometimes Hindi words are used in my writings as well as by some commentators. These parts are not translated in other languages. So don’t try to extract any meaning on your own out of it. Whenever in doubt, you may hover your mouse on that text, you will see the original text posted by me for your reference. You may consult an interpreter thereafter. Thanks for bearing with me.

And PROST (this is the only German word I know ) for this new feature!!!

One of the greatest literary genius William Shakespeare once said “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Very true. But Shakespeare was a literary genius and not a marketing guru! He himself used to spell his own name in over a dozen way.

These days corporates are spending billions of rupees for getting a new name or brand-makeover. Smaller companies are taking undue advantage by frequently changing their names. Recently, in an attempt to crack down on companies that frequently change their names to dupe investors with dubious stock offerings, the Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has tightened norms for changing of names by listed Companies.

Well, but why I am talking all these here? The last month was full of activity for this blog. Though there were the least posts (only three) in October, the site received a record traffic. As much traffic that one morning I was surprised to note that almost all its allocated bandwidth had exhausted and required urgent upgradation of my hosting package. The October also saw the blog in a new look after quiet a long time, courtesy: pinkforoctober.org movement. Thanks to the blog action day, this blog saw a real action after an exclusive post was written for it. Due to the recent traffic surge, this blog notched up some 5 million places in a span of a single day at Alexa - the highest ever in its life span. Last week’s Google PR update also brought it a Page Rank of 1 from the zero earlier.

At this point, I noticed that some of the readers used to key-in CenturyTimes.com instead of the complete version www.TheCenturyTimes.com. It comes naturally to many as most will not assign any value to this valuable word “THE”. Even if they do, they would most likely ignore it when typing it in their address bar just to ease their efforts. How many of you type www.thetimesofindia.com or www.thehindu.com to visit timesofindia.com and hindu.com respectively? People naturally create an acronym or a short name as per their convenience when they frequently use those words. I won’t like to miss these loyal visitors to this blog. Hence this month onwards, readers will not frown after typing merely centurytimes.com And to greet them, I am going to upgrade the Word Press to its latest version …with a new theme ofcourse. So cheers!

Technorati Tags: Ashutosh blog, Ashutosh Mehta’s Blog

Today is the first blog action day and I’ll like to direct my thoughts and energy to this single most important issue of protecting our environment.

Much have been said about the importance of preserving our Environment and the Nature, but only a little has been done in this regard. Most of us today will agree to save our environment but will hardly do anything for it. Time today demands action and that too in a big way. Mere thoughts, awareness and sympathetic attitude will not serve the purpose. Many of us honestly want to contribute something towards this cause but don’t know what and how to do it! So I thought to list the (Read the rest of this story.)

In 1993, the U.S. President Mr. Bill Clinton named October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the third Friday in October as National Mammography Day in the U.S. The rest of the world was quick to adopt this new American tradition. India too is no exception to this. The incidence of breast cancer in India is on the rise and is rapidly becoming the number one cancer in females pushing the cervical cancer to the second spot. The seriousness of the situation is (Read the rest of this story.)

A Tag line / Punch-line / Slogan is a catchy one or two line phrase associated with a product, campaign or business. These are often developed by big-name advertising agencies as part of an advertising or branding campaign. But big-name agencies come with big price tags ― beyond the reach of many small businesses, including me.

Well, I was in the process of launching a new job site which might be expanded to a career-site later on, with the name “Meri Manzil” (two Hindi words meaning something like “My Destination”). I was looking for an attractive. witty Tag line for the same.

(Read the rest of this story.)

After changing the world of communication with his first innovative venture hotmail.com, what Mr. Sabeer Bhatia is doing these days? Well, according to Business Standard & News Track, he is preparing to launch & promote a new social networking website namely www.apnacircle.com along with one Mr. Yogesh Bansal. You might be wondering that after so many websites on social networking including orkut, myspace, facebook, etc. do we need another one? But perhaps we do. Perhaps thats why the mega-giant Reliance too recently entered this field with its own social networking site BigAdda.com. Other Indian players include Desimartini, indyarocks, brijj.com (business networking by naukri.com team), etc. Then how Mr. Sabeer Bhatia is going to promote his website in this overcrowded market?

Actually, Sabeer Bhatia is a (Read the rest of this story.)

Yahoo! recently announced a new version of its Yahoo! Mail application that allows users to send free SMS messages from Yahoo! Mail to mobile phones in the US, Canada, India, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Hongkong, Indonesia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines. Earlier something similar was being provided by Rediff. This PC to Mobile service is currently in its beta version and claims to be compatible with all major Indian cellphone networks viz. Airtel, Aircel, Hutch, RIM (Reliance India Mobile), MTNL (dolphin) , Idea, (Read the rest of this story.)

Last month there was much media hype when Taj Mahal at Agra was announced to be at the top rung among the New 7 Wonders of the World during the official declaration ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal on July7,2007. This was solely decided by more than 100 million voters who took part in the voting. Though, I am not convinced by the polling process as any one could have participated in it irrespective of whether she has seen the place herself or not. How many of the voters do you think must had even heard of all the places which were being polled, leave aside the question of visiting them all? How can one vote in favour of a place or monument without comparing it with others? and how can one compare them without even visiting them to name them as wonders! It was all about the number game and commercial interests. From that aspect we, the Indians, the second most populated nation have lost the battle to some extent by making only one of our beautiful monuments to that list! Thus we have underperformed at the international platform to earn more foreign tourists.

Now this month, one of the leading international travel magazine of America “Travel + Leisure” has announced Udaipur as the 7th best city in the World. Udaipur has beaten Istanbul (8th), San Francisco (9th) and Cape Town (10th) to reach at the seventh spot of the best city of the world and became the only Indian city to get this honour. Its around a month ago, this result was made public in the US overnight, yet there is no mention of it on the Indian government’s tourism portal “Incredible India“.

Udaipur being my home town, I often bragged about its beauty. Now my words will be more credible than before. For many years, my office table-top always had a picture of Lake Palace - a Taj group Hotel seeming to be floating in the Lake Pichhola. The picture itself was so romantic that I always preferred it over the Taj Mahal. Though beauty is a subjective term and as the cliche goes, it lies in the eyes of the beholder, I would have voted this property above the Taj Mahal, if both of them were nominated for the polling!

Hotel Lake Palace, Udaipur

More Pictures: (Read the rest of this story.)

Assume if on one weekend, all of us starts discussing a particular subject or topic wherever and whoever we gossip with, what situation it could be? Well, it might signify a event, a danger or a news which has intensely influenced us all. So we had the urge to discuss it with whomever we interact. And more we discuss, more of the attention it gets from the society. That’s how society starts thinking about that issue, develops its ideology about it and work out some kind of solution or future measure to deal with it.

It is the human nature that she puts urgent priority to the matters which affect her the most, beginning with the personal matters and then comes in the issues related to the family, the relatives or the friends, the neighbours and then finally the society and the environment. Matters or issues common to all are dealt with the least priority as we are not the only one responsible for it and there are so many who could be blamed for the same. So we don’t feel any guilt if we ignore them altogether. We have a list of several excuses to defend ourselves. Over time ignoring social issues becomes our habit and even when we are in a position to contribute a bit, we can’t despite our wishes, because we get habitual to ignore them and we don’t have left with any strength in our wishes!

But here is a way to show you how a little of your effort can make a big impact

(Read the rest of this story.)