1) Basic Search

Google: [name] + (email or “contact me” or “contact us” )

2) Website Search

Google: site:companywebsite.com/personalblog.com + [name] + email

3) Social networks

Google: [name] + linkedin/twitter/facebook

4)  Paid Services

Use 123people or linkedin (tips: a free way to message)

5) Whois

Do a whois lookup of his website or blog. There is a chance that the email is available in the domain’s admin/technical contact.

Sniffing traffic is a very hackish thing to do. So if you are against hacking things, stop reading.

There are a couple of ways to sniff the HTTP traffic. Using Wireshark, which has a nice user interface, is one of the mos popular ways. Today, I am going to introduce another tool call mitmproxy.

mitmproxy is an SSL-capable man-in-the-middle proxy. It was the very tool that was used to discover the misdeeds of Path.

How to use mitmproxy?

1. Download mitmproxy, and install. You could install from source and run sudo python setup.py install
2. Go to your Terminal and run mitmproxy.
3. Obtain the IP address of your computer by running ifconfig en1 (or whatever that you are using).
4. Set the proxy on your iPhone by going to your connected wifi settings. Set HTTP Proxy to “Manual”, and enter the IP of  your computer with port as 8080.
5. Start sniffing! Refer to the console tool guide. Press ‘?’ to bring up the list of commands.

I have a secret. I cheated badly with some iPhone games.

The key to cheating is use an awesome software to hack the app. It involves changing some variables in the program.

General Steps:

1. Download iExplorer and install
2. Connect your iPhone to your PC/Mac and open iExplorer
3. Edit the game’s plist to make yourself super rich or invincible or whatever. I will use Tiny Tower as an example.

Exact steps to Cheat Tiny Tower

There is a good Wiki on that. Read on the infinite tower bux hack. Their version is kind of long. So here is my shorter version, with an edited missions.plist. It’s all that you need.

1. Open iExplorer with your iPhone attached to your PC/Mac
2. Browse to Apps > Tiny Tower > Documents (see screenshot)
3. Download this edited missions.plist and drag/copy to the Documents folder
4. Run the game and complete that new infinite bux mission!

iExplorer is a really awesome tool for hackers. You could use it to hack most apps, including Facebook , Scramble with Friends, etc.

So, if you hacked other apps, do share with me!

Not sure since which update, my Mac OS Lion 10.7 would not go into sleep mode.

Apparently, you can find out which service is preventing your Mac from sleeping by executing the bash command:

pmset -g assertions

This is the result for me:

What’s wrong here is this: PreventSystemSleep named: “org.cups.cupsd”. That process is preventing my Lion from sleeping. If I kill the process, it just comes back up again.

The fix for me is to go to Preferences > Print & Scan > Delete my printer, then add again. This somehow triggers the system to really OFF printer sharing.

Insomnia solved.

UPDATE: Another possible cause could be that the printer has a pending print job. Delete the print job, and the process will terminate.

I wasn’t impressed with Android team on their documentation for installing Android SDK. It is long, and jumps from page to page. Here is my better version:

Step 1 – Install Eclipse IDE

Go to http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ and download Eclipse Classic (the latest version is 3.7.1).

After downloading, install and verify that it can run.

Note: If there is any error, check the System Requirements. In particular, you might need to install the JDK.

Step 2 – Install Android SDK

Go to http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html and download the Android SDK package.

For Mac and Linux users, download the zip/tgz package and unpack it to a safe location. The SDK files will be unpacked into a directory named android-sdk-<machine-platform>. Proceed to step (3).

For Windows users, download the .exe package, and run it to install. After installation is complete, the installation wizard will launch the Android SDK and AVD Manager. There is a slight inconsistent behaviour for Windows users here. Go to step (4) first, and return back to step (3) after you have finish step (4).

Step 3 – Install ADT Plugin

1. Start Eclipse, select Help > Install New Software. Click Add.
2. Enter “ADT Plugin” for Name and the following for Location:
   https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/
3. Click OK
4. Click Next, Next, Next.. and Finish
5. When the installation completes, restart Eclipse.
6. In Eclipse, select Window > Preferences (Mac OS X: Eclipse > Preferences).
7. Select Android from the left panel.
8. For the SDK Location in the main panel, click Browse and locate your downloaded SDK directory.
9. Click Apply, then OK.

Step 4 – Adding Android Platforms

The Android SDK uses a modular structure that separates the major parts of the SDK. Specifically, the different versions of Android OS are each a module. To develop for a particular version, you would need to add the platform for that version.

To do so, from within Eclipse, select Window > Android SDK and AVD Manager.

Go to Available Packages, and select at least 1 platform. You may select additional platforms if you require.

Click Install Selected to download and install. Done!

The Home button got to be the most problematic hardware on the iPhone.

Recently, my iPhone 4 Home button started to respond slower. I either have to press multiple times, or press harder.. If you faced the same problem, you are not the only one.

Luckily, there is a fix for it! I tried the fix, and it did work help! Here is what you need to do:

No doubt LinkedIn is the biggest social network for working professionals.

LinkedIn is very useful for finding people with job opportunities, or connecting for business partnership. However, it doesn’t come cheap to use LinkedIn. To be able to send someone a message, it requires a premium account, which cost at least $30 per month (just to send 3 messages).

Follow this to send FREE messages:

• Browse someone profile
• Scroll to the section Additional Information > Groups and Associations
• Join one of his group (it might take time for admin to approve)
• Go to the Group > Members, and search his name
• Use the "Send message"

In the unfortunate event that the person did not join any group, this trick would not work. If that happens, look for clues in his profile such as twitter or website.

Adding live chat to your blog/website gives you another means to communicate with your website visitor.

It is especially useful for e-commerce website whereby product support is much needed. A live chat would be a good experience for the visitor who needs immediate dedicated assistance.

There are a number of live chat services that you can find. I have shortlisted 2, and tried both on my websites. Olark on Just2us (left), and Zopim on Just2me (right).

Both Olark and Zopim are easy to set up (less than 10 min including signing up). Yet comparing the 2, I am liking Olark more, for a couple of reasons:

• clear instructions for setting up wordpress blog and website
• use of separate Jabber account for each agent
• can add agent’s account to Adium easily
• has powerful command such as “!push www.google.com”, which will push your visitor to another webpage
• nicer default chat interface (cleaner and bigger font)

For now, Olark is my choice!

There is a method to easily create multiple, or thousands, of email accounts! All it requires is 1 real gmail account.

Let’s say you have 1 gmail account – ladygaga@gmail.com

Then you already have multiple gmail accounts!  ladygaga+1@gmail.com, ladygaga+2@gmail.com, etc..

This is because gmail has this cool trick where it can let you pre-label your emails. It works by giving out a version of your email that comes with the label. Eg. if you want to label all emails from your colleagues with “work”, then you would give them ladygaga+work@gmail.com.

You might be wondering: why would I need multiple email accounts?

It depends. For me, having multiple email accounts allow me to register certain services multiple times. For example, if a trial account expires in 1 month, I could infinitely register for trial accounts using different email accounts (:

I have also used the trick when registering for a US iTunes Account (in addition to my SG iTunes Account).

Google+ is a new social network application that Google has recently introduced.

It is like both Facebook and twitter, yet even more awesome.

With killer features such as hangout, where several friends can join a VIDEO chatroom, and even watch youtube together! You never need to have physical hangout with Google+ hangout.. Very nerdy yet awesome feature!

Problem

No doubt Google+ is one of the most awesome thing on the Internet now.

But the problem is that it is released in its very early stage, so only those who are invited can try it out. And although Google+ users can invite ~300 friends, the invite mechanism was shut down due to insane demand..

Solution

The good news is, there is a workaround to getting the invites (:

You still can be invited to Google+ by an existing user. The existing user has to do these:

1. Post something in his steam.
2. Add the email of the friend to invite.
3. Share
4. The invited friend will receive an email asking them to sign up to Google+

A screenshot of how I invite someone@gmail.com to Google+ in my stream.

Where to find an existing user to help?

If you need an existing user to perform the above invitation workaround, I can help.

Just leave a comment below with your email.

Update: If you did not receive an email from Google+, do not panic. Wait for another day, or two. They should arrive..

Tips: To increase your chances of being successfully invited by Google, you should  create a google profile with your gmail, and +1 something.

For example, +1 this post!