Raj Agrawal

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Suspicious Activity On Your Gmail Account?

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Gmail will now notify you, if it is in suspicion

A longtime ago Gmail had rolled out a feature that gave you the accessibility to check which IP address accessed your Gmail account when your account was last logged in (works even when your account is not using https). Now, Gmail has extended this feature by adding the country name tag to the IP address and will notify you of a suspicious activity if your Gmail account was last accessed through another location.

Notification of suspicion

As mentioned on Gmail Blog: To determine when to display this message, our automated system matches the relevant IP address, logged per the Gmail privacy policy, to a broad geographical location. While we don’t have the capability to determine the specific location from which an account is accessed, a login appearing to come from one country and occurring a few hours after a login from another country may trigger an alert.

By clicking on the “Details” link next to the message, you’ll see the last account activity window that you’re used to, along with the most recent access points.

Recent account access log

If you think your account has been compromised, you can change your password from the same window. Or, if you know it was legitimate access (e.g. you were traveling, your husband/wife who accesses the account was also traveling, etc.), you can click “Dismiss” to remove the message.

3D Invisibility Cloaking Device Has Been Created

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Two years after successfully creating a 2D invisibility cloaking device, scientists have moved a step further and created the first invisibility cloaking device that can render an object invisible in three dimensions. Even though this is not a “complete and full form” of invisibility cloaking but, it is an a very significant step towards achieving it.

Tolga Ergin, a scientist from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany led the study. This device, called as ‘Carpet Cloak’ was designed to initially designed to work in two dimensions. The carpet cloak was originally designed to work in two dimensions. But, when Dr Ergin and his colleagues calculated how the rays of light would travel through an object, they realised that they could use their technique to build a structure that would work in three dimensions.

The “nanostructure” of tiny rods bends light around a bump in the gold surface

They used the cloak to conceal a small bump on a gold surface — a bit like hiding a small object underneath a carpet and then making both the bump and the carpet invisible.

Source: BBC Technology

GmailAssistant, A Smarter Alternative

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A much better one..

GmailAssistant Logo

Google’s Gmail notification tool is really not very convenient or should i say, “too simple to be convenient”. It lacks many essential features and the requirement of patching it to enable https support qualifies itself to be called as ‘a total waste of time’. On searching for alternatives and carefully comparing them, i shortlisted the best one called GmailAssistant. It has a much denser grey matter and is enough to fulfill almost all your Gmail notification needs. It features:

  • Standalone program ( You don’t need to install it )
  • Does not generate logs or modify system files
  • Multiple account handling,
  • Always on top,
  • SOCKS proxy support,
  • Save/load program and account settings in encrypted profile files,
  • Automatic profile loading,
  • Adjustable mail check frequency,
  • Blinking Caps lock/Numlock/Scroll lock key on arrival of new mail,
  • Persistent and navigable popup message.
(Click to enlarge)