Free yourself of network administrators with G.ho.st

Let me introduce you to a new system this week. Besides being great fun, it’s a wonderful utility that allows you to make your personal computing environment accessible from any browser anywhere.

G.ho.st (Global Hosted Operating System) is a web-based virtual operating system. Yes, just type http://g.ho.st in the address bar. You can take control of all your web activities with a single desktop once you log in. You free yourself completely from network administrators whose job is to bind you to the best of their abilities. You don’t need to take backups or software updates and are completely immune from viruses, spyware and malware attacks. Best of all, you save money with a free operating system, free web mail and free online storage.

G.ho.st is a completely free virtual computer. You access your desktop, data and all your programs with any browser. The system offers 3GB of storage for files and another 3 GB for G.ho.st Mail. Web applications can be launched without any installation. It has fully automated security features, backup and updates. Once you close your browser, all traces of your activities on G.ho.st are gone.

Right after you log in, your computer desktop magically transforms to a screen with flowers under a blue sky. You will find icons of all the features that are currently available on the desktop. Click on Go and find the other programs that are available.

To upload files to the G.ho.st Storage, open Windows Explorer and type ftp://g.ho.st. Browse for the files and upload them.

The G.ho.st Directory (in your Virtual Computer’s Go Menu) includes a rapidly growing list of leading hosted software and services. Here are some that are currently available:

The Instant Messengers — Meebo(r). It works with Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ and Google Talk. There is G.ho.st instant messaging for G.ho.st users too. G.ho.st Mail with contacts and calendar offers you 3GB free.

The Office suite — Zoho — can read and write Microsoft Word and Excel formats and play any PowerPoint file. Additionally, there is ThinkFree which can read Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats directly from your G.ho.st Storage. GoogleDocs edits Word files stored at Google.

For photo editing there is Snipshot. Communicate in real time with Twitter. You can drag and drop icons for Amazon, Flickr and YouTube into your desktop. I really like their Internet Radio called Last.fm. You can even listen to Hindi and Bengali songs! G.ho.st also has some games.

There are several widgets, visual objects on the screen that can be manipulated with the mouse and keyboard. These include an MP3 player, a clock (with time zones), RSS-ATOM news reader, specific newsfeeds, Calculator, Sticky notes and Yahoo weather.

Dataone woes

Many readers have complained to me that they are unable to access the Dataone page at 10.240.43.216 or 10.150.128.195 to change their password. The solution is simple. Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools—Internet Options and then click on the Privacy tab. Next, click on Advanced. Under Cookies put a tick mark “Override Automatic Cookie handling”. Accept First Party Cookies and Third Party Cookies. Make sure there is a tick against “Always allow session cookies”. If you encounter an error, check the top of the browser for a yellow bar that reads “This site might require the following ActiveX control: J2SE Runtime Environment 6 Update 3 from ‘Sun Microsystems, Inc.’. Click here to install...”. Click the yellow bar and choose “Install ActiveX Control...” to allow installation to proceed. If you do not see the warning, go to www.java.com and click on downloads. There you will find the one required for Windows XP. Download and install it and restart your computer.

Sometimes, Zone Alarm Firewall blocks access to that page. When this happens, shut down Zone Alarm and access the page. After you are through, remember to start Zone Alarm again or you will be exposed to threats from the Net.

Send in your computer- related problems to askdoss@abpmail.com The solutions will appear soon