Using FTP with Microsoft FrontPage

Source: Acme Internet technical Support

Microsoft FrontPage supports two methods of publishing files to a web server:  HTTP POST and FTP (File Transfer Protocol).  HTTP POST is the default publishing feature in Microsoft FrontPage (using the PUBLISH button), and the preferred method for uploading your Microsoft FrontPage created web site.

However, under certain circumstances you may want to use Microsoft FrontPage to transfer a file via FTP.  You may need to use FTP for one of these reasons:

• The site you are uploading the file to does not support Microsoft FrontPage Server Extension-based publishing

• You are publishing a large file (over 1-2 megs) and are getting timeout errors publishing the file via Microsoft FrontPage publishing

To use Microsoft FrontPage to upload a web via FTP, perform the following steps:

1. Open your web in Microsoft FrontPage Explorer

2. Click FILE -> PUBLISH WEB

3. Type in the destination FTP Server name in the location box in the form of:
   ftp://ftp.yourdomain.com

4. Choose whether you wish to publish all pages, or only changed pages since your last publishing session

5. Click the PUBLISH button

6. Enter your FTP username and password when prompted

Also see the Microsoft Tutorial: Using FrontPage 2003 to Publish with FTP
http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC010405101033

THE BEST HOST???

The major question is, which is the best free host? Are there any absolutely free services available?

Well fortunately the answer is yes. There are quite a many services that are free. And what’s more, there are services for free WITHOUT ANY ADVERTS too. There are so many who claim to be that way, but the best I think is ByetHost. Most sites will recommend this service only to you. It’s free and advertisement free too. It comes with FTP support and it’s own uploader. Upload your files there and your site is ready to go.

In next webmasters post, we would be telling you about Widgets and where you can find them.

Plan your Content

First you need to plan what’s your site is going to be about. Now I think that making a personal and random site with no topic orientation is useless. Your site needs to be on a certain topic. It may be small, it may be huge. Don’t think only popular topics will be a hit. The less popular the topic is, the more chance of YOUR making it popular . Choose a nice name, not like “Your name’s site” or something personal.

Designing a site

There are many ways to design a site. You can use Microsoft Frontpage or Dreamweaver. To know how to build a site on Microsoft Frontpage, see the tutorial on the Microsoft site here. There are many other similar tutorials available online. But if you don’t have them, you will have to buy them. Alternately, you can use Yahoo! SiteBuilder. It’s free but I am not fond of using it. So here are the best sites I know to help you create your site easily in a few steps online.

1. NING- Create a social network for your community and friends.
2. YOLA- Easy to use online site builder with different modules and settings.
3. WEEBLY- Best online site creator I have used. Customizable and user friendly.

Some random tips

Explore the options of all three sited. Choose the one you like. Be sure to make it as extensive yet light as possible. If it becomes too heavy in size, it will take time to load and visitors will get irritated. Always use video sharing sites like Youtube and Metacafe to upload and share your videos so that you don’t have to sacrifice your own space on the server. Keep tutorials (video if possible), and make it complete with images and borders. It should catch eyes at the first chance. And remember to check if any of your link is broken or invalid. Most important is the quality of content.

Do you know any other good site builders? Please let us know. In the coming Webmasters post, we tell you about widgets, hosts, publishing, and other related stuff.

To speak of the process itself, it is very complex and technical and I will not go into the details of it. For our understanding it is crucial to note that this field is still in its infancy. Meaning, it is still under its initial development and a lot of work is being done in almost all parts of the world simultaneously. What might be the applications of such a field? Most applications are limited to the “first generation” applications where only passive nano materials are used and not actually modified ones. Such applications include, titanium dioxide in sunscreens, cosmetics and food materials, silver in food packing, disinfectants, zinc oxide in paints, varnishes and many other such applications have been found and are being commercialized.

As mentioned, Nanotech is still under development and hence, applications requiring very precise and large scale manipulations of materials at nano-scale are still under research. One of the most widely known substance that is under research is Carbon nanotubes. These are microscopic tubes made by specific arrangements of carbon atoms and have incredible strength, special electrical thermal properties. It is about 300 times stronger than steel BUT they are not yet developed at macro levels. At macro level, this might not hold true, but since these nanotubes are very light, they can be woven together into ropes and cables can be formed that will be very light and very strong. But, till now they have not been developed at macro scale. These can be used in solar cells, as electrodes in circuits or in paper batteries and in structural materials in sports gear, jets and the ever popular Space Elevator.

Carbon nanotube. Source : wikipedia

Second most important outcome that is desired is in the drug delivery system. Since this technology deals with controlling the material at the most fundamental level it will be really handy in controlling them so that they supply drugs to specific areas on the body and cells. In this wake nanobots or nano robots are in the making. These are the most unnerving and yet exciting concept in the nanotech. The implications of such a technology will be huge both in terms of constructive and destructive use. Some of the very first nanobots being made from the bacteria by modifying their DNA to perform some specific functions. Actual mechanical part-building has not yet been completely developed. Only small structures like pulley, lever and other small structures have been developed. On September 29, 1989 he demonstrated the ability to manipulate individual atoms with atomic-scale precision, and went on to write I-B-M with individual Xenon atoms which gave the boost to nanotech research. Future speculations include autonomous swarm of nano robotic “doctors” which will maintain the health of an individual by specifically targeting the diseased parts.

However, caution must be practiced while we develop these technology. It is widely known how Madam Curie, who discovered radioactivity and even won the Nobel Prize, died of radiation poisoning. The risks involved in this new branch are substantial and subtle. The implications are not very clear on the face of it, but can always be inferred by the mishaps that happen in the industry. The first death where nano-technology was a major cause was reported in a poorly ventilated Chinese factory where a spray paint containing nano particles was used. Over a long period of exposure, two women died due to damaged lung and failed respiratory mechanism and 5 others were hospitalized. A new study shows that nano particles can affect the cells not only directly, the nano particles can also mess with DNA on the far side of a cellular barrier, by creating signaling molecules. Of course, these can be exploited in a constructive way, but precautions have to be taken to make sure that these particles do not affect people just because necessary precautions were not taken to protect those who may be working in such environment. It is needless to say that we need to cultivate cautious approach in our further research

Now that you have chosen a sensor, always remember that it will give you a HIGH or a LOW output at the end. Now you can make this high to represent either a presence or absence of a white line (say). It is completely in your control. For the sake of example let us consider a white line on a black background. Now, you place your sensors so that it is on the background, then the sensor sees black. Now set your comparator such that it will output a high when this voltage is fed at its input. A NOT gate can be used to reverse this if you want to. It is completely flexible and in your hands to modify. Next is to decide on a logic circuit to drive the bot. Depending on your logic, the number of sensors will vary. In this example, I am going a use a very simple logic that requires only two sensors. Next, you must consider the placement of sensors. Lastly, the motor driver, meaning, the circuit that will enable you to drive the motors. So, lets start building now.

I will build a white line follower (White line on a black background). For this, LDR or IR sensors can be used. For construction of LDR sensor click here and for IR click here. Now, we have two sensors which are like two eyes of our bot. Using these “eyes” we make it see the line and make it follow the line. Once you have built the sensors’ circuits and tested them individually as explained in those posts, you must no consider their placement. Placement is very very important. Make sure you place them towards the front of the vehicle and they must be on the black background when stationary and not on white line. Now you may wonder why that would be? That is because, its the best way to follow any line. Always, try to locate the background (this I learnt from experience). Refer the figure below to understand it

Placement of the sensors

In the figure, the green circles are the two sensors that hover over the sides of the central white line that is to be followed. The yellow part to which we attach all our circuits, motors and batteries is called the chassis (Pronounced cha-see). Anyway, Now that the placement of the sensors is taken care of, i.e., the eyes have been placed. Now, you need to give it “legs” that being the motors and wheels.

For this purpose, there are many methods that are used. first lets see our “driving force” that is given by the motors. Two important considerations are to be kept in mind. First, what will be the total weight that will be driven by these motors. That will help you in choosing the right torque for the motors. Generally speaking, most of the motors are rated in terms of rpm (rotations per minute). One thumb rule is that lower the rpm of a motor, higher is its torque for the same voltage. So, for starters, I would suggest you to go for 150 – 200 rpm 12 V motors. This will give you reasonable torque and controllable speed for our primitive logic circuit. Second, consideration is the battery power. As suggested above, if you use 12 V motors, you can run them on a 9 V battery, but its rpm and torque will be reduced because the energy supplied by the battery is not what the motor expects for full performance. Of course, you can use 9 V + 3 V to make 12 V and supply it to the motors. That time the motors will run at full speed. But once the battery drains (which is fast if the robot is heavy) the rpm will reduce. You need to consider these things when you start building high precision robots. But for now, we can ignore it for time being.

For wheels, you can use wooden wheels. I use wooden wheel that we got from a wood works shop after a lot of requesting. You can also try toy wheels and use adhesives to fix the wheel to the shaft. You might go for the commercial wheels sold in shops along with the motors if you can access them. When using wooden wheels do remember to put a piece of cycle tube around it for frictional purposes. As for the front, you get Caster wheels wheel that are the best suited for such applications, the ones that are used in movable chairs and stools, but only very small in size. This can be seen in the image below

Ball caster wheels

Then depending on your motors you can use either L-clamp or U-clamp to fix the motors to your chassis. Now comes the electronics part of the robot. Remember, if you use 12 V DC motors, then you will need two separate power supplies. One 12 V for your motors, and the other 5 V for your sensor and control circuit ICs. Since this is not feasible, we will use a “Voltage Regulator” that will take 12 V as input and give 5 V as output. There are many such ICs, we will use the popular LM 7805 voltage regulator (its datasheet can be downloaded from here). The circuit diagram and the image of the IC is as shown in the figure below. The two capacitors are very crucial and must not be omitted from the circuit.

LM 7805 IC with Circuit Diagram

Once we have over come the issue of dual power supply, we can now go ahead and try to run the motors. But, there is a problem, the output of sensors is 5 V but the motors need 9-12 V at least to run. That means, we need to have some kind of a mechanism to convert that 5 V signal to 12 V signal. A number of options are available for this. Pure mechanical relays can be used but these are bulky and not preferred by many. We can then turn to what are called as motor driver ICs which are specially made for this purpose. One more advantage of using them is that we will get some familiarity at the initial stage itself and we will be one step ahead while designing more complex robots as we may require to operate the motors in two different directions (ex. Remote controlled vehicle). That time, these motor drivers come in very handy and will considerably reduce the circuit size. There are a number of motor drivers in the market, many beginners prefer ULN 2003, but I think we can go for L293D motor driver or rather quadraple half H-Drivers as they are called. Datasheet can be found here. Just observe the circuit diagram of the IC in the figure below

L293D internal circuitry

As seen in the internal diagram, this driver IC has 4 half H-drivers (Triangular buffers in the figure). Each of this driver is made up of transistors to form a H-bridge (totally 6 transistors) that are capable of driving the motors in one direction. So, to drive a motor in both the directions, we need to utilize two such half bridges. As shown above, the pins 4, 5, 13 and 12 are ground pins that must be connected to your circuit ground. Pin 16 is Vcc1 which supplies for the IC. So, we connect it to 5 V as shown in figure below. Now, a 5 V at pin 1 will enable the driver 1 and driver 2 where as a 5V at pin 9 will enable driver 3 and driver 4. In our circuit below, we are using drivers 1 and 4 for the convenience of connection and hence we connect pin 1 and pin 9 to Vcc1 which is 5 V. Since we only go forward following the line, we will use only half the bridge. So, we connect one end of the motor to output of the driver which is pin 3 for driver 1 and pin 14 for driver 4. The other end of the motor is grounded. Make sure that same ends of motor are grounded and the motor is rotating in the forward direction only. If it is rotating in reverse direction, just interchange the connections and you will be able to drive the motors forward all the time. Now, the output of your two sensors must be given as input to these motor driver bridges. That is pin 2 for driver 1 and pin 15 for driver 4 as shown in the figure below. Finally, the most important part is the 12V connection must connected to pin 8 which is Vcc2. Make sure you connect the left sensor output to left motor driver and right sensor output to right motor driver.

L293D with Circuit Diagram

Thats all! Now just to clarify, for the chassis you can use almost anything. You can use a piece of plywood sheet, or a switch board plate which is a Bakelite plastic or you can use Aluminium sheet or perforated sheets that you gets in some shops. It totally depends on you and what materials are available to you. Now that we are done, its time to try out the line follower. Take a big sheet and paint it black and make a white track. Then calibrate your sensors ( on how to calibrate refer the sensor related posts that here towards the end of the post). Once that is done, just place your robot on the track and watch it go. Once you actually make this first robot, you will become aware of all the practical difficulties that one faces during making a robot work. This is the first step one must take to enter the field of robotics. The first one I ever made, I made it “see” the white line (which I advised you to avoid) and hence it was not very successful when it was presented with obstacle. Watch the 3gp video of the same

Any problems, suggestions, broken links; please notify using the comments

On September 16th REVA NXR (NeXt Reva), a new lithium-ion powered electric car, which is scheduled to go into production early 2010 which is the company’s 2011 model. REVA NXR is an M1 category three-door, four-seater hatchback family car with a top speed is 104 kph (65 mph) and a range of 160 kms (100 miles) per charge. Using the 90 minute fast charge (normal charging is eight hours), the REVA NXR offers an effective range of 320km a day. The REVA NXG is also M1 category but with two-door, two-seater car with a targa top with a range of 200km (125 miles) per charge and a top speed of 130 kph (80 miles per hour) and using the fast charge, it has an effective range of 400 kms (250 miles) a day. It was styled by Dilip Chhabria.

Both vehicles have keyless entry and operation, dual charge ports, intelligent digital display and a range of telematics including REVA’s exclusive REVive remote emergency charge. REVive addresses ‘range anxiety’ where a customer low on charge can telephone or SMS REVA’s customer support center. The advanced telematics feature will assess the car’s batteries remotely and activate a reserve amount of energy while protecting the battery life. Within minutes, a few extra kilometers of range are made available and the driver can continue home or to a place where the NXR can be charged. Meaning, as predicted, it will not be charging wirelessly, it will only be routing a backup power supply using a remote trigger so that no one will be stranded in a remote place when the battery dies. This also helps in avoiding the complete draining of batteries which might cut the battery life.

All in all, not worth all the hype

How does it work?

Its easy, you enter your email ID and choose the time for which you require this service (say 1 hour). Now you give the secondary generated email ID to which ever site you are trying to register. All the mails coming to that address will be re-directed to your original email ID. That much time will be enough for email verification and then after 1 hour, the generated email ID will we gone thereby protecting you from any further onslaught of emails. The chatter on web suggests that this is a legit site which will not sell your ID to spammers, also there is not much info to sell anyway (considering people sign up to unknown forums all the time)

There are tons of sites which will provide this service. Spambox is one such service where you will not need to register to get the service. Also, it has a Mozilla Firefox addon that is highly convenient and easy to use. And of course, it is free of charge. I mean, thats what our ultimate aim is on this blog to make sure the readers get the good stuff for free . There are many other such services on the web that you guys can try out. There is GuerrillaMail which is very widely used across the world. Then there is Mail expire which will do the same thing as the other two.

Then there is Mailinator which is very different and might be attractive to many. Here you dont have to disclose anything, not even your mail ID. All you need to do is just think on a unique mail ID (say cognoscis) and when any forum asks for your email for verification just type “cognoscis@mailinator.com”. To check your mails, just go to Mailinator and type in “cognoscis@mailinator.com” in the left hand side field saying “Check your inbox” and press ok. You will be directed to your inbox where your mails can be read. The drawback of this is that anyone can read your mails. Hence, use it ONLY for email verifications and not in places where your personal info is available.

You can google for many other such sites. Spams cannot be cut out 100 %. All we can do is keep them at bay by using such techniques and being careful.

Note : Suggestions are welcome and please report broken links

I have faced a similar problem quite a many times. Sometimes, less popular songs are named as unreleased versions of super hit artists by people to promote their website. For ex. The accordingly “unreleased” song “Pool of Death-Linkin Park” is actually “Lie to Me” by a young artist named Jonny Lang. So there are 2 sites that I know of to find the name of the song.

1. Lyric Rat- Type your lyrics you know of the song here and find the name of the song. There are 2 problems associated. First is that you have to put the lyrics of the chorus of the song or it will tell you a new song’s name altogether. Second, sometimes the name of the song told by lyric rat is different and the preview is of a different sponsored song. So be careful. Lyric Rat is also functional on twitter through tweets.

2. Midomi- Search for music by singing or humming. Based on voice recognition, this can be really helpful. You can also browse the site for songs and videos. Midomi also has an app. for iPhone.

Do you know any other such sites which are really great? Be sure to tell us.

All you have to do is just type in the keyword of the file you are looking for. Just like normal search engines. There is option for advanced search and browsing recent files too. This is a very good website. It’s advanced search is pretty convenient too. It is really useful. Be sure to try it. Because I am going to use this now only to find files.

P.S.- There’s a Firefox add-on available too.

All you have to do it forward the email you want to share to post@moomeo.com and soon you’ll get a reply from Moomeo with the link of your email to share on Facebook, Twitter or somewhere else.

I have a great joke sent by a friend which i wanted to share with everyone (including you). So I forwarded it to post@moomeo.com and within a minute I had the link from Moomeo.

Here is a mail preview on Moomeo. See it below (And click on the pic below and read the full joke too. It’s great )

It gives 8 safety tips to curb the radiation you’re exposed to. For eg. Use headset to talk over the phone. Don’t use phone in low signal, opt for texting rather than calling, etc.

So have a safe talk everyone.