Almost everyone is hot on the SLR craze these days – and why not? With amazing features and high-resolution pictures, these expensive babies are sure to lure anyone into their bait. But because these are rather costly, of course you may want to get the best deal your money can buy. However, choosing the perfect SLR camera for you isn’t just about that.

One of most important things you should consider when buying an SLR camera is your personal preference and need. Many SLRs offer basically the same basic layout, but differ in their more specific features. For example, your favorite photographic style deals with macro shots. Find a camera with the best macro shots there is. This may include features such as image stabilization, a live view LCD, and must be compatible for the macro lenses you intend to use. Or if you’re the type to go for action or sports shoots, getting an SLR with the highest shutter speed, large buffer, and a fast multi-point focus may be more useful for you.

If you’re the type to love taking pictures on low-light or at nighttime, go for an SLR that’s fully equipped with low noise at high ISO settings, remote shutter release, image noise reduction for slow shutter speeds, and of course, image stabilization.

For the adventurous spirit who loves to take photos outdoor, then you might want to consider getting a an SLR with extended dynamic range. It may also be better to opt for a small sized, lightweight camera to keep your stuff handy. As you can see, it all just depends on what you love to photograph.

The next thing you’d want to base your preference on the price. For some, this is what matters the most. If you don’t have Bill Gates’ income however, you can always wait for special offers or promos that manufacturers sometimes give.

Another thing you may want to consider when getting your own SLR is its appearance. There are SLRs that come in different colors, although most of them do not. And if you don’t want to keep lugging it around like a solid brick, choose a smaller SLR.

It helps to read user’s comments and other reviews on the specific SLR models as well. The more you learn about the differences and similarities, the more you’ll be helped in your search for the ultimate SLR for you. So do your research and happy clicking!

Guest Post: Chris Zuckerman is a photography enthusiast who regularly travels all over the world just to take pictures. He is the President at his b deck and steel deck fabrication facility located in Atlanta GA.

Google Docs app for Android based devices gets improved features. It was meaningless using this app on Android based devices as it was like a shortcut created for the Docs website and the documents was not available to view/edit offline. With the new version the apps readability has increased and selective files can be made available for the offline access. After editing it offline it will automatically get synced when an active connection is available.

I would be happy if Google think about a single sign-on as well for this app. Otherwise its perfect now!

This is how you enable “Available offline” for individual file.

Click on the Image to enlarge

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What makes a ‘worst’ data breach? Is it the number of people effected, the severity of the effects, or the importance of the system that is breached?

Whatever the case, we’ve chosen Data Privacy Day (Jan 28) as the perfect time to remind you of ten of the most serious examples of breached security in network history. Whether its national governments, international finances, or simply millions of account details exposed, any of these qualify for the unauthorized access Hall of Fame.

1.  Albert Gonzales and TJX (2005 – 2007) — During an 18-month period, 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen from TJX systems in Miami, hacking into wireless networks at TJ Maxx, Sports Authority, Barnes & Noble, Office Max, Marshalls, and other merchants. During this time, Gonzales was working with the US Secret Service, providing information about a previous credit card scam in order to avoid jail time.

2.  AOL (2006) — Security breaches aren’t all caused by hackers. In 2006, an in-house team at AOL publicly posted data about 20 million Web searches, from over 600,000 users. AOL was trying to aid academic research on Internet traffic, but the data was found to contain personal information, such as Social Security numbers — and the New York Times quickly showed how individuals could be quickly and easily traced from the supposedly ‘anonymous’ data.

3.  Monster.com (2007) — Hackers used a Trojan to make off with names, phone numbers, email addresses and Social Security numbers of job-seekers on Monster.com — many of which were then used for a further phishing scam. The numbers still haven’t been nailed down; anywhere from 46,000 to 1.6 million people may have been compromised, including Federal applicants on USAJobs.gov.

4.  Alberto Gonzales and 7-Eleven (2007) — yes, him again. Along with ‘unnamed Russian conspirators’, Gonzales managed to get into the Heartland Payment Systems/ Citibank ATM network via SQL injection at a 7-Eleven — and make off with 130 million credit and debit cards (about a year later, authorities finally arrested Gonzales — concerning yet another major breach, of Dave & Buster’s).

5.  Operation Aurora/ Operation Shady RAT (2009 – 2011) — Although taking place at distinctly different times (with distinct snappy code names), both Operations are the epitome of 21st Century cyberwarfare — originating in China (probably, maybe?), these Operations use a combination of spear phishing and RAT (“remote access tool”) attacks versus some people you may have heard of — such as Gmail, Yahoo, Adobe, Morgan Stanley, Dow Chemical, the US government, US military, US defense contractors, the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee..

6.  Sony (2011) — Between April and June of 2011, Sony suffered what could be the largest security breach ever. Over 77 million accounts on the PlayStation Network, another 24.6 million on Sony Online Entertainment, and an indeterminate number of Sony Pictures accounts were compromised. Before it was over, we saw credit card fraud, the involvement of the US and Japanese governments, and wideapread criticism of Sony’s security and response to the crisis.

7.  TriCare/SAIC (2011) — 5.1 million people (mainly current and retired members of the armed services, as well as their families) had personal medical and financial data exposed when unencrypted backup tapes containing data were stolen from a Tricare employee’s car. But wait — back in 2007, SAIC suffered a breach where unencrypted data for more than 800,000 U.S. service members and their families was access. And still that wasn’t the first — in 2005, thieves had broken into SAIC offices and stolen unencrypted personal data. What does it take to teach SAIC to encrypt their data?

8.  HBGary Federal (2011) — This Federal contractor and hacker-taunting security firm was left red-faced when members of Anonymous accessed the web site, phone system, and 68,000+ emails — via some very simple exploits. Among the files exposed by the hacktivists: PowerPoint proposals and presentations to prospective clients by HBGary and other security firms, and a long-term strategy of intimidation and disinformation against the WikiLeaks organization.

9.  RSA Security /SecureID (2011) — It’s bad enough when you’re a respected security firm that gets breached by hackers, but then to have your flagship encryption software stolen? 25,000 SecureID clients (including top-secret defense contractors Northrop Grumman, L-3 Communications, and Lockheed Martin) had some extremely nervous days over the spring and summer of 2011, thanks to a successful phishing-based attack. In all, over 40 million “tokens” (encrypted user accounts) were made accessible in the breach.

10.  Epsilon (2011) — This Dallas-based marketing service was breached, exposing customer data (chiefly email addresses — Epsilon sends around 40 billion emails each year!) from over 2,200 Epsilon clients such as Best Buy, Target, Marriott, Hilton Hotels, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Capital One, Walgreens, TiVo, and HSN. Epsilon’s parent company, Alliance Data, had also acquired Heartland Systems at about the same time that Albert Gonzales was arrested).

About the Author: Greg Buckskin is a tech guru and writer at CableTV.com.

I have been using PureVPN for few days and it’s quite impressive in terms of the quality of the service they offer. While connected using PureVPN service you will find it much faster than other VPN services in the market. PureVPN has supports the major VPN protocols like PPTP, L2TP and SSTP. Another advantage of this VPN is it has servers in most of the countries.

The features are pretty nice!

So while connecting the VPN you can select the desired country and make use of the server in that country. To make that more easier PureVPN client has some profiles created which serves various purposes such as for watching TV channels which is only available in US (To watch Hulu from UAE), Accessing blocked Social networking sites (Such as accessing Orkut from UAE) Accessing VOIP from blocked countries or even for higher security and anonymity you can select the relevant profile.

PureVPN has a multiplatform support. The client is available on Windows, Linux and MAC operating systems. Also the PureVPN can be configured on your iPad, iPhone and any Android based Phones and Tablets. Step By step of configuration is available on their website.  Pure VPN is also offering a business class service which can be configured on routers. (We have not tested this service since this requires a dedicated IP address)

PureVPN service is worth paying for since it has a multiplatform support and faster browsing speed. The plans are affordable too. Take a look here

Today I am up with a quicktip series article. I will share a tip for finding the computer (or some people say it Hostname) name using an IP Address of it. Usually ping is a command used to check the connectivity between the computer and any other networking device. When you do a ping command to an IP Address the device it will actually send and receive few data packets between the origin and destination devices. By looking at the reply we can determine if the destination device is active. Using the same command we can determine the computer name as well.

We will use the same ping command but we will add “-a” switch before we type the destination IP Address. (Use the switch without the quotes.)

Here is the screenshot for this command in action.

You can even try this command without adding the “-a” switch. See the difference what you get.

Team viewer has become very popular remote accessing software because of its simplicity and ease of use. The easy screen sharing tool does not require knowing the IP Address or requiring the Windows firewall to be unblocked. Team viewer is cable of starting an online meeting as well. (A registered Team viewer account is required for inviting members to the meeting) So using this feature you can do a presentation for your customer on the go. So that means it is not only used by the tech people to access the computers! Team viewer 7 portable has the same features of the regular version.
Team viewer portable is packaged by Portableapps.com and using the portable version of Team viewer is little tricky. But don’t worry let’s do it together!

• First download the portable file from Portableapps.com. Click here to download
• Now open the downloaded file and extract it on your desktop by specifying your desktop path (It would something like this “C:\Users\Hackstacks\Desktop\TeamViewerPortable” )
• Now you must copy this extracted folder to your USB drive.
• Open the “TeamViewerPortable.exe” There it become your portable Team viewer.
Hope you enjoyed it. Let us know your comments and feedbacks!

Note : Team viewer is free for personal use but any commercial use should be under a licensed agreement.

For all the people who love to download here is a chance to win the Binverse Usenet account. So here is our first giveaway content for Hackstacks readers. The lucky winners will grab the Binverse Usenet account for free.
If you don’t know about Usenet read more about it here Usenet-Wikipedia

Binverse is a client for accessing tons of Usenet data on the internet. Let’s see what are the features you get if you use Binverse?

• Access to uncensored files up 800 TB. That’s huge indeed!
• Unlimited download speed.
• 12 Simultaneous connections.
• More than 100,000 news groups.
• 256 bit SSL encryption. (Whatever you do with this client is fully encrypted)
• Search engine enabled Usenet client software
• Category based file browsing.

About the Contest!

We have two Binverse account for this Giveaway contest. With the free account you are provided with 50 GB of data download using Binverse client. Your free account will not expire unless you complete the 50 GB. So download anytime without any time limit!

How will you win the contest?

It’s very simple! Tell us how much GB of files you will usually download in a day? Post your answers in the Facebook page under this post as comments!
Lucky winner’s names will be publishing by 27th Feb 2012.

So what are you waiting for? Post your answers now!

Note: If you wish to share this Contest with your friends please don’t hesitate to post this part in your social networking page. Copy from here “ Giveaway – Win Free Usenet account from Binverse for unlimited Download read more .. http://bit.ly/yvP93t   “