Open Innovation, the future

Innovation, the key thing to bring changes, making the developmental process for this society existing, is the major talk these days. Every company is now getting an innovation department or something more or less the same.

"Open Innovation", as Henry Chesbrough, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, coined describes a growing number of initiatives by companies to reach beyond their own walls to use talent and ideas from others. Open Innovation is supported by various Companies seeking for the fruit from the mass to solve challenging problems with simple and elegant ideas where anyone can participate. InnoCentive, a Waltham (Mass.) company spun out from Eli Lilly (LLY) in 2001 is one of the company running online to recruit Innovators who could be anyone..even you.

The key thing is that, these companies are tapping ideas from the mass to bring out changes in the world. Who know, maybe the idea you propose today becomes the world of tomorrow. The challenges ranges from Physics, Chemistry, Science, Engineering, a greener earth and so on. Non-Profit organizations raised challenges, and we, the general people, who have ideas proposed their ideas and you are rewarded if your idea turns out to be the next big thing!

Take a look yourself at Innocentive, the places where innovators are groom. See the various sections and the pavillions to find the right topic you are interested at. Open a project room for the challenge you want to participate, make your proposal. Wait for the result.

Open Innovation: let's make a change!

Hacking Websites

Disclaimer: Any damage/damages which may occur or arise using the information or by gaining knowledge through this particular post provided here lies solely on the person performing the act. I'm not responsible for any damage/damages of the same. What is written here, is provided solely on informational purpose.

Even dreamed of Hacking a website? Ever wonder how to get into ones website and deface it?

Well dream it.. there's no harm in doing that; but don't practice it (Are you confident enough about hiding your traces behind?).

Words be, lemme tell you a few live hacks done through SQL injections. You can try right now as it works (by the time this post is written) but CONSIDER doing it at your OWN RISK. What i'm telling here is more of a Ethical Hacking; that means, know that it can be done the way I'm explaining here, and find out how to protect from being a victim yourself.

It's simple. Most people think Hacking is for the master coders only, which rather is wrong. Of course some knowledge are required and depending on the level of security, one can break through any system. HACKING into a system can be minimize but you CAN'T guarantee a 100% secure system.. as there is always a way!!

So now, here are some sites which lack some serious security measures:

Uttar Pradesh technical University website -

http://uptu.ac.in/ (To login, goto login on the top right, go to college login, and then choose VC)

Red Fm 93.5 website -

http://myredfm.com/ (To login Goto http://myredfm.com/admin)

What the web developer of these sites have done is, they forgot, or don't know how to use a escape string function (in PHP language). I won't go into details just for the sake of the laymen. They don't know or haven't implemented certain measure to exclude certain characters from being input by the user. When a site asked for a username & password, what happens is that, the code checks the username to the username existing in the database and compare with the password in the same row with the user input password. If both the conditions returns TRUE, then the user is shown the next password protected page.

Look at this: "1' or '1' = '1". Put the above in the username as well as the password field (without the double quotes). Here we formed an always TRUE condition as 1 always equals to 1. Or you can change it '2' = '2' or anything else. Now press enter and voila, you are at the backend of those sites. You can change anything from the backend.

The Missing Gmail Labs Feature

Google has done a lot to improve its emailing features and User interaction through the Labs module. However, I strongly felt that the gmail labs lack one 'mundane' feature which everyone needs and would be happy to include with; and that is - an urgency rating system.

If you are one person who uses the email service frequently to communicate, you perhaps must have come to notice that the rating system is extremely essential.

What Google can add to its labs feature is a 5 options rating module, say something like the one shown on the right. The module is suppose to rate the urgency of the email.

What one usually does is read the email he or she receives first, and so the last email you sent, even though it is urgent, could be read last. It's kind of a FIFO arrangement. You can mention in the subject line, the degree of urgency but there is a better way to do that.

You can simply send a 'Someone's Dying' rated email. The subject line will appear in the corresponding color and one will identify it as soon as he sees the subject, (everyone reads the subject to the mails they received..don't they?).

Someone's Dying:
This is an email of the greatest priority. You rate this when there is and extreme need for the recipient to read the mail as soon as possible.

Finish your Coffee:
This are normal emails. The recipient reads it as when he feels like reading.
Most emails should fall in this category.

I'm Feeling Lucky:
It is a Google style rate. The recipient reads it as he wants. You can rate this when you think the email is really interesting.

Actions Required:
You give this rating when the recipient needs to perform some Actions; as the likes in which site administrators sent to its users to inform the change in its privacy policy and the users need to accept it before continuing using.

No Reply:
This is an email sent when you don't need a reply but want to inform the recipient.

How I'd been these past few days

It's been some time since i posted my journals here. Basically, I've been busy with a lot of stuffs. Shristi 2009, the annual techno-management fest of NERIST is about to start from 6th to end on the 8th of April 2009.

As the site developer and administrator of the official Shristi site, www.shristi.org, I'd been pretty busy keeping it up with the requirements. The Shristi Open Rubik's Cube event which is going to be held at an international level is one such awaited event; and the workshops given on Robotics by the the Professional Mumbai based Robotics firm, Technophilia and the workshop on Ethical Hacking and information Security under Kyrion, a Delhi based hacking club were magnificient. I gained much knowledge from the workshops delivered by Kyrion and today, there is going to be a small competition on live hacking and am hoping for a good outcome.

Moreover, the annual Magazine of NERIST, the Altius 2009 (Vol VIII) has just been done with the graphics and design part has already printed and about to be released on the start of the Shristi 2009. It took me around 3 days to complete the whole graphics, designs and layouts for the magazine.

Apart from that, shortly from now, I'll developing a complete site for the BioInformatics center newly opened under the Department of Forestry, NERIST.