Teenager techie set for his fourth book release

By Nabeel A. Khan
New Delhi, Feb 12 (IANS) The twists and turns of dingy lanes in Old Delhi's Kasab Pura take you to a one-room rented accommodation where one of the country's youngest cyber wizards and "ethical hacker" Sahil Khan lives. He is now getting ready for the release of his fourth book.

Sixteen-year-old Sahil has achieved a lot. He has invented nine computer games and written three books on computer sciences, making him one of the youngest people in the country to have published on the subject. "My fourth book 'Tricks of Email Hacking' is ready for release this month," Sahil told IANS.

Sahil, who calls himself an "ethical hacker", lives here with his younger brother and mother. His mother gives tuitions to schoolchildren to carve out a modest living, while his father is a hakeem (practitioner of Unani medicine) in Mumbai. The family hails from a small village, Bugrasi, in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh. Sahil, nicknamed 'Indian Einstein' by a section of the electronic media, invented nine computer games when he was 13 and wrote his first book on computer hacking a year later. "When I made my first game at home I told mother, but she was not excited, thinking it would just be a petty thing. Later she realised when my teacher told her. Soon the school formally announced it and I got an award from Newspapers in Education (NIE)," Sahil told IANS. Sahil, a humble and soft-spoken teenager, did not attend any professional course in computer science and he also did not own a personal computer until recently.

His first interaction with computers began when he learnt internet chatting with his father who stays in Mumbai. "Since then he got interested in gaming on computers and though we did not have enough money to buy a computer, soon somehow I managed to buy him a PC on instalments," said Sahil's mother Atiya Suleman. Sahil, a student of Class 10 at Harcourt Butler Sr. Secondary School, however, doesn't bask in his achievements and feels that every person has some special quality which needs to be pursued at the right time. What are his plans for the future? "For now my main focus is on board examinations and then I will try to get into an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and become a cyber expert of repute," Sahil said. Sahil's first book "Hackers and Crackers", which was published by ABC, was launched by Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal. The second part of "Hackers and Crackers" was published by Diamond Publications and was launched by Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury. "We have published two editions of 'Hackers and Crackers' in 10 months. This is a very helpful book and we have been getting an overwhelming response; so now we are translating this book into Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and Tamil. The other book 'The Anatomy of Computer Viruses' has been a favourite among people," said Narender Verma, owner of Diamond Publications. Sahil has also come in for praise from computer experts. "Sahil's books give great grounding for any common man to understand the problem of computer viruses and computer hacking. This book can be a great help for the readers to protect their computers from virus attacks and hacking. Computer viruses are, however, a very vast area of study which has a number of complex aspects and some of them are not included," said Ahmad Kamal, a lecturer in computer science at Jamia Millia University

For more coverage please click the links below

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090222/spectrum/book8.htm

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=LifestyleBooksSectionPage&id=5471bb2a-8c87-4279-aafb-7a656e6d0101&Headline=Teenager+techie+set+for+his+fourth+book+release

http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Feb122009/scroll20090212118038.asp?section=scrollingnews

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Teenager_techie_set_for_his_fourth_book_release/articleshow/4116061.cms

Did you know you can access your computer from anywhere?

By Nabeel A. Khan
New Delhi, Feb 1 (IANS) Did you know that through the Internet you can access your computer from almost anywhere?
Relatively few of us have taken advantage of facilities like Google Document, Zoho Offline Office or Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia's Live Document. These provide softwares like Word, Excel or Power Point. You can use them without having MS office installed in your PC. "I wasn't aware that something like this exists. Does this mean I can read my excel file without actually having Microsoft Excel installed?" asked Abhishek Jha, an asset manager with IDBI Bank. Online office suites enable you to view or edit existing documents in Google Docs without requiring an always-on Internet connection. It is however not possible to create new word documents while you are offline in Google Docs. Any changes that you make to the documents locally will automatically get synched to Google Docs the next time you connect to the Internet. This office suite also allows editing of files from the remote location. "It was very difficult for me to keep updates of the projects and the involvement of employees. Once researching on Internet, I saw the features on Google and started using it to maintain the project's and employees' daily report," Surjeet Kumar, owner of an advertising agency, told IANS. A similar facility is available on Zoho, which does not even ask for a Zoho e-mail id. Zoho supports offline access via the same Google Gears plugin. It includes tools for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note taking, wikis, project management, invoicing and other applications. Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail, launched Live Documents last year. It has all the features of Microsoft Office 2007, and is available free online. However experts believe using such online office suites may be risky. Sahil Khan, a 14-year-old IT prodigy who has written three books on hacking and computer viruses, told IANS: "The risk increases if you share files with others when you are working from a remote location. You may unknowingly allow other people to copy private files - even giving access to entire folders, subfolders and sometimes the whole computer. You may also download a virus which can breach your security." However, Google assures foolproof security for the data being shared. "We provide choices and the control to decide how much users want to share. Google gives you your own private cloud to store your data. Only you can grant permission to access it. So for Google Docs a user can share docs with entire office, or just one friend." a Google spokesperson told IANS. "To protect data we employ some of the world's best engineers and use the most cutting edge technology available." the spokesperson added. There are other remote accessing softwares like GoToMyPC and TeamViewer that allow users to access their computers from anywhere. GoToMyPC is a paid software while TeamViewer is available free of cost for non-commercial use. To use TeamViewer both the remote and the original computer must have the software. It has the added feature of an user id and password. All those sharing the password can make a virtual private network of computers through cyberspace. "I was in Jaipur to conduct a training session. Just an hour before I found that the file containing details of the training session was missing. The file was too heavy to be e-mailed. So my colleague told me to download TeamViewer and then he put the file on my desktop. It was a great saviour," Sarfaraz Bora, a human resource manager, told IANS.

(Nabeel A. Khan can be contacted at nabeel.k@ians.in

For more coverage please click the links below

http://www.aol.in/news-story/did-you-know-you-can-access-your-computer-from-anywhere/2009020100239012000004

http://www.gulf-times.com/mritems/streams/2009/2/10/2_272189_1_255.pdf

http://www.newkerala.com/topstory-fullnews-85064.html