Archive for September, 2005
Saturday, September 24th, 2005
For users of Windows 95/98/2000/NT/XP, the solution to your backup problems is here. Peter’s backup has many advantages over the backup programs supplied with Windows.
You can back up your data files on to disk, diskette, CD or DVD. Peter’s backup will keep track of file versions and disks. You can restore any file to any previous version without having to know on which disk or in which backup set it is located. You can create unlimited incremental backups. This saves time, backups and restores are very fast.
Backup Options
- Individual Files.
- Multiple files in a directory with a wildcard specification.
- Entire directory structures.
- Files in a directory structure matching one or more wildcard specifications.
- Exclusion of files matching wildcard specifications.
- Exclusion of directories within a directory structure.
- Scheduled backups or backups from the command line can be done with a command line switch.
Restore Options
- A full restore will get back all of the files that were in place at the last incremental backup.
- You can select individual files to restore and select any individual date version of a file.
- In any restore operation you can restore to the original or a different location.
- You can choose whether to overwrite existing files or only overwrite older files.
Requirements
32 bit Windows (95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, NT-4). For windows 95 the program requires OSR2 or later. For earlier versions of windows 95 use Peter’s Backup version 1.15.
Download: Peters Backup 2.2
Posted in Tools | No Comments »
Saturday, September 24th, 2005
SiteBar is a solution for people that use multiple browsers or computers and want to have their bookmarks available from anywhere without need to synchronize them or take them along. The bookmarks are stored on a server (this could be a public server or your own server running our free software) and displayable/modifiable in almost any standards compliant browser.
SiteBar allows you keeping links private (the default) while giving you possibility to grant access to your bookmarks to selected user groups or to everyone. You can maintain your personal, family, team, company or enterprise-wide bookmarks with flexible access rules, permissions and customizable design!
Using RSS feeds you may monitor what additions have been added to certain SiteBar folders or to the whole SiteBar installation.
Download: SiteBar 3.3.5 | Requirements
Posted in Web/internet | No Comments »
Saturday, September 24th, 2005
XNap provides a plugin enabled framework for peer-to-peer (P2P) applications and a client which is based on that framework. It is free software and licensed under the GNU Public License .
XNap is purely written in Java. The client features a modern Swing based user interface and console support that will run nicely on every platform with a recent Java Runtime Environment (1.3 or higher).
Operating system: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Download: XNap 2.5r3
Posted in Linux, Mac OS X, p2p | No Comments »
Saturday, September 24th, 2005
Customers conned out of confidential information
An email scam is targeting AOL customers in an attempt to steal personal details, according to web monitoring company Websense.
Users receive a spoofed email purporting to come from the security department at AOL claiming that the company suffered a security breach over the weekend and that confidential information may have been compromised.
The email also requests users to connect to a website to download and install a new ’security patch’, which will ‘protect their information’. The spoofed message reads:
‘Failure to download this security patch in the next 48 hours will result in the temporary suspension of your America Online account. At this point we will send you a Security Patch CD in the mail. Upon installing it, your account will be reactivated.’
Full story: vnunet.com
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Saturday, September 24th, 2005
Apple Computer released 10 security fixes to address Mac OS X flaws that security experts described as “critical.”
Apple issued the patches, available through its Web site, Thursday. The flaws affect versions 10.3.9 and 10.4.2 of the Mac OS X operating system, as well as related server software.
Symantec and the French Security Incident Response Team both said the vulnerabilities are serious and that the need to patch them is urgent. However, no exploits for them have been reported, Symantec noted in an alert sent to members of its DeepSight service Friday.
The flaws expose affected machines to remote attack using arbitrary commands and e-mail interception, according to Apple’s bulletin. Certain vulnerabilities could also be exploited for a denial-of-service attack, FrSirt said in an online advisory.
Read more: ZDNet News
Posted in Mac OS X | No Comments »
Saturday, September 24th, 2005
DVD Collector is a Windows program that allows you to manage your DVD collection. Whether you have 5 DVDs or 500, DVD Collector is the easiest way to manage them. Enter your titles by hand, or do a search of our online database and download disc information. Extensive customization features mean that you can store as little or as much information about your collection as you like, and it’s all stored on your own computer where it’s easy to back up or move to another machine. Password protection, a unique multi-currency purchase manager, and a loan manager are just a few of DVD Collector’s many features.
System Requirements
- Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP*
- 32 MB RAM minimum
- internet connection for online database access
*although not extensively tested on Windows 95 or Windows NT 4, DVD Collector should run okay. Use on these platforms at your own risk!
Download: DVD Collector 1.0.2
Posted in CD/DVD Tools | No Comments »
Saturday, September 24th, 2005
Company battling to fix the problem as money flies back and forth…
PayPal is battling to fix a glitch that has been causing duplicate debit card withdrawals and deposits on some customer accounts since the beginning of September.
The problem first surfaced on 6 September when some PayPal customers noticed duplicate withdrawals from their debit cards that sent their accounts into the red. Two weeks later more PayPal customers then also reported duplicate withdrawals and deposits into their accounts.
PayPal is blaming the duplicate withdrawals on a third-party processing error with some PIN-based transactions.
eBay discussion forums have been inundated by angry customers who are unable to tell what their actual PayPal account balance should be. They are claiming they can’t access their funds because the accounts have gone into the red.
Full story: silicon.com
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Friday, September 23rd, 2005
OpenFX is an Open-Source 3D modeling, animation and rendering suite created by Dr. Stuart Ferguson. He made the decision to release the source code to the public in the middle of 1999, and the product formerly named SoftF/X was renamed to OpenFX. It has now been released under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence.
A powerful feature-set includes a full renderer and raytrace engine, NURBS support, kinematics-based animation, morphing, and an extensive plugin API.
Plugin capabilities include image post processor effects such as lens flare, fog and depth of field. Animation effects such as explosions, waves and dissolves add enormously to the flexibility of the program. Check out the full list of the various effect types and let your imagination run wild!
Currently, OpenFX only runs on the Win32 platform, which includes Windows 95/98/NT/2000. There are plans afoot to port it to Linux/*BSD platforms, and it currently runs fairly well under these by using the WINE set of libraries.
Download: OpenFX 1.5 | Gallery
Posted in IMAGE/PHOTO Editor | No Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
As early as May 1995, three months before Netscape Communications’ initial public offering sparked the dot-com boom, Microsoft executives were worried that the nascent World Wide Web could one day become a significant threat to the Windows franchise.
In an extensive memo called “The Web is the Next Platform” that was introduced as evidence in Microsoft’s antitrust trial five years ago, Microsoft engineer Ben Slivka described a “nightmare” scenario for the software giant.
“The Web…exists today as a collection of technologies that deliver some interesting solutions today, and will grow rapidly in the coming years into a full-fledged platform (underlined for emphasis in the original memo) that will rival–and even surpass–Microsoft’s Windows,” Slivka wrote.
Microsoft, however, didn’t heed the warning. Instead, it embarked on a strategy–championed by Jim Allchin, who today heads up development of the next version of Windows–that was fanatically focused on the operating system.
Fast-forward 10 years: The nightmare is inching closer to reality and Microsoft execs are apparently paying attention to the decade-old alert. As part of a management shuffle, Microsoft said Tuesday it would make hosted services a more strategic part of the company and fold its MSN Web portal business into its platform product development group, where Windows is developed.
Full article: CNET News.com
Posted in News | No Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
And don’t telcos know it
VoIP is going to be massive. The effects of internet telephony are touching technology, business, culture, geographic penetration and consumer expectations in a way that is certain to turn the telecoms industry on its head.
So says Benny Last, MD of telco IDT Europe. Earlier this week he spoke about the impact of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) on the global telecoms industry.
He told delegates at the Carriers Conference in London that traditional voice providers “will need to make additions to their service offerings beyond voice” if they want to continue to compete in this new telco world order.
“Enhanced offerings will include Internet broadband access, media, IPTV [TV over the internet], online gaming, messaging…as well as ‘next gen’ services. They must enhance their service offerings because that is precisely what VoIP makes possible,” he said.
Full article: The Register
Posted in News | No Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
miniMIZE is an application that minimizes your windows to thumbnails on your desktop.
Requires Windows XP
Posted in Desktop | No Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
Code has been published that exploits one of the flaws patched in the latest Firefox and Mozilla suite releases
Computer code that could be used to attack Firefox, Mozilla Suite and Netscape users has been released on the Internet. The release of the attack code comes days after Mozilla released an updated version of Firefox to fix several security flaws, including the bug exploited by the code. A fixed version of the Mozilla Suite is also available, but Firefox-based Netscape has yet to be updated. The Netscape browser is a product of Netscape, which is a division of Time Warner’s America Online subsidiary. An AOL spokesman had no comment on Thursday.
Full story: ZDNet UK
Posted in News | No Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
Mozilla is a Web-browser, advanced e-mail and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and HTML editor — all your Internet needs in one application.
Tabbed browsing gives you a better way to surf the net. You no longer have to open one page at a time. With tabbed browsing, open several pages at once with one click. And now your homepage can be multiple tabbed pages.
Popup blocker lets you surf the web without intrusion. Advanced popup blocker notifies you when popups are blocked. You can also block pop-ups on a site per site basis.
Image Manager lets you block images to block offensive images or to speed up the rendering of web sites.
Find as you type gives you another way to navigate a page. Just start typing to jump from link to link or to find a word or phrase within a page.
Plus all the features a modern browser should have including: Advanced security settings; Password, Download, and Cookie managers; Themes; multi-language and multi-platform support; and, the latest in Web Standards.
Download Mozilla 1.7.12: Windows | Linux | Mac
Posted in Mozilla | No Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
Bill Gates rallies the faithful in a Seattle field
Microsoft is celebrating its 30th birthday in an upbeat mood, promising to deliver twice the number of new products and services as it has during the past three years.
Speaking at the firm’s annual meeting/birthday bash held at Safeco Field in Seattle, chairman Bill Gates spoke of Microsoft’s achievements so far and the challenges ahead.
“As I think about the past 30 years, I’m most proud of our making ‘big bets’ on technologies like the graphical user interface or web services, and watching them grow into something people rely on every day,” he said.
Full article: vnunet.com
Posted in Microsoft | No Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
Simple - just buy its customers
When Steve Ballmer yelled at a departing Microsoft employee that he would ?¢‚Ǩ?ìkill Google?¢‚Ǩ? we had no idea just how direct a method he had in mind. Buying all or part of AOL may be the first part of the master plan, as Google relies heavily on the advertising pages that come from Yahoo!, since it now syndicates its search to Google.
One estimate suggested that Google would lose as much as $380m of advertising revenue if AOL dropped its search engine and took on MSN’s. That would cut Google?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s profit by something like 25 per cent, potentially giving its huge share price something of a tumble. No wonder Google is thought to be entering the bidding to partner with Time Warner on AOL instead of Microsoft.
Full article: The Register
Posted in News | No Comments »
Friday, September 23rd, 2005
Google’s one-of-a-kind computer network gives it a chance to surpass Microsoft to become the most dominant company in tech, according to the author of a recently published book on the search giant.
Google already has plenty of influence. It handles nearly half of the world’s Web searches. It’s hiring some of the biggest names in the industry, from the controversial Kai-Fu Lee of Microsoft to the legendary Vint Cerf, an early Internet pioneer. And it has become such the topic du jour in Silicon Valley that its search for a new corporate chef warrants significant local news coverage.
But what’s next? Author Stephen Arnold has closely analyzed Google patents, engineering documents and technology and has concluded that Google has a grand ambition–to push the information age off the desktop and onto the Internet. Google, he argues, is aiming to be the network computer platform for delivering so-called “virtual” applications, or software that allows a user to perform a task on any device with an Internet connection.
“Google is this era’s transformational computing platform and could be about to unseat Microsoft from its throne,” Arnold writes in a summary of his book, “The Google Legacy: How Google’s Internet Search is Transforming Application Software,” published this month.
For all of its wild success, about 99 percent of Google’s revenue still comes from advertising, mostly from Internet keyword searches. Certainly, it has built on the core business, adding everything from the Gmail free Web-based e-mail service to Google Earth, a satellite mapping service. And it has plenty of cash to spend on new technology–nearly $7 billion in cash, $4 billion alone from a secondary stock offering on Sept.
Full article: News.com
Posted in Google | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 21st, 2005
Putting two and two together wasn’t very difficult. IBM has practically been joined with Sun at the hip in applying a full court press on the recently OASIS “ratified” (OASIS isn’t really a standards body) XML-based Open Document Format for saving files produced by productivity applications such as word processors and spreadsheets. The two were the biggest co-sponsors of of the OASIS-governed initiative. Both companies have executive bloggers like Bob Sutor (IBM), Tom Glover (IBM), Tim Bray (Sun) and Simon Phipps (Sun) who have given liberal coverage to either the open specification or to the controversy that it has sparked in Massachusetts (where that state’s government has established “ODF” as the statewide standard with which all agencies and contractors who do business with them must comply).
Only something was missing.
Full article: blogs.zdnet.com
Posted in News | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 21st, 2005
For years, Microsoft has been trying to add features to Office without them getting in the way of people who already know their way around the software.
Unfortunately, the company was a little too successful at making its innovations unobtrusive. In user testing, Microsoft found that nine out of every 10 features that customers wanted to see added to Office were already in the program.
“They simply don’t know it’s there,” Chris Capossela, a Microsoft vice president, told a developer crowd last week. “It’s just too hard to find it.”
Indeed, Office has become a case study for feature creep–the phenomenon in which a simple technology becomes complicated and unmanageable through the addition of new features. Office, which once had 100 commands neatly organized into menus, ballooned to contain some 1,500 commands located in scores of menus, toolbars and dialog boxes.
Having sensed that the software has reached the limits of functionality, Microsoft has been preparing its most radical overhaul ever for Word, Excel and friends. With Office 12, due next year, the company plans to do away with a system that depends on people remembering which series of menus lead to a particular command. Instead, users will see a “ribbon” of different commands above their document, with the options changing depending on the task. Microsoft previewed the new look for Office at last week’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles.
Full article: CNET News.com
Posted in Office | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 21st, 2005
Instant messaging by definition is all about messaging. It’s now indisputably about Voice over IP too, thanks to a new VoIP service and new Triton IM preview client announced today by America Online.
AOL said its Total Talk VoIP service, which will be available on October 4th in the US and Canada, offering full featured VoIP services to broadband users of any broadband service.
Total Talk is the successor to AOL Internet Phone, which was a VoIP service just for users of AOL. Total Talk offers the typical range of of residential VoIP services such as Caller Id, E911, three-way calling and a web based dashboard for call and voice mail management.
Not all of what AOL Total Talk is offering is typical VoIP fare though.
Full article: internetnews.com
Posted in News | No Comments »
