Google offers an excellent free email service to website owners where they can use custom domain names (yourchoice@yourdomain.com) to offer full-fledged Gmail styled email service with personal customization's and branding to their users.

To use Google's SMTP servers for sending emails, webmasters must configure there servers and application/scripts to use it instead of the default SMTP server configured on the system. While configuring the same for this drupal blog using SMTP Authentication Support Module, the following errors were shown resulting in repeated failures.

Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]:
unable to connect to ssl://smtp.gmail.com:465 (Connection timed out) in SMTP->Connect()

We have shared quite a few good Partition Managers for Windows like Paragon Hard Disk Manager, AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro and EASEUS Partition Master Professional, all of which were free under a promo for a limited period only. However, MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition is a much powerful and advanced utility for the job and is absolutely free.

MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager software supporting Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 (32/64bit). Main features include - resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Extend Partition, Split Partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition, Partition Recovery.

The software also features the ability to format partitions in popular Linux filesystem ext4 (3/2/1), this feature is missing in majority of the other Windows based partition managers.

What is TinyUmbrella ?

TinyUmbrella is an utility for Windows and MAC which allows users to save SHSH Blobs or Digital Signatures for Apple Devices (iPhone, iPad and Apple TV) locally, this allows restores to older firmware's which are no longer officially supported by Apple. TinyUmbrella works the magic by running locally as a proxy to iTunes, intercepting and faking the communication while iTunes thinks it is communicating with Apple servers for authenticating the firmware restore as permitted irrespective of what Apple Servers allow and disallow. This feature becomes indispensable for users relying on "Software unlocks" which are supported on older firmwares and basebands, as Apple restricts restores to these exploited versions forcing users to newer versions of iOS.

What is SHSH Blobs ?

These are backup files of firmware digital signatures which are needed to restore an Apple device, Apple generates these based on hardware keys of the device and the hash of the firmware - which makes them unique for every device. It is to be noted that Apple only issues signatures for the currently-available, current iOS version. What TinyUmbrella does is to save these digital signatures locally for later use, when Apple does not allow them.

How to save SHSH Blobs using TinyUmbrella ?

Simply download the TinyUmbrella utility (links provided at the end of this blog post), and connect your device. Once detected click the "Save SHSH button" and it's done, if having errors look at our TinyUnmbrella troubleshooting guide.

The DFU (Device Firmware Update) mode is needed to update/upgrade/restore an Apple iDevice, however if you want to flash a custom .IPSW file you must enter a Pwned DFU mode i.e. a special DFU mode which had exploited limera1n jailbroken core to allow operations not permitted by the normal Apple DFU core.

Here is a simple to follow, visual tutorial on how to enter the Pwned DFU mode on an Apple device using ever handy redsn0w jailbreaking tool.