Archive for January, 2007
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
Is Google having second thoughts about its decision to allow censorship on its Chinese service? At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, the world’s great and good gathered to talk, ski, and do business (not necessarily in that order). During one of the sessions, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative.” It arguably was not a success on the moral level, either, but Brin and co-founder Larry Page have always made clear their distaste for the practice. The issue is how the company should apply local laws in countries like China, and Brin’s comments have led to speculation that Google was planning a change in policy sometime soon.
Full article: Ars Technica
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Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
Windows Easy Transfer helps you to easily move the files and settings stored on your PC running Windows 2000, Windows XP, or even Windows Vista to a new PC running Windows Vista. Windows Easy Transfer will automatically transfer things like:
User Accounts, Files and folders, Email messages: settings and contacts, Photos, music, videos, Windows settings, Program data files and settings, Internet settings and more to your new Windows Vista based PC. This software enables you to transfer data with Easy Transfer Cables (Windows 2000 not supported) or across a network, external drive, or CD/DVD.
Download: Windows Easy Transfer 6.0
Posted in Windows Vista | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
Yahoo’s brand-centric sites, announced in November 2006 and dubbed ‘Brand Universe’, have started to go live. These sites each revolve around a single popular brand - like this one on the Nintendo Wii - and have almost no original content. Instead, Yahoo is taking content from Flickr, Del.icio.us, Yahoo Answers and other Yahoo properties, along with some slick graphics, and hoping for page views.
Read more: TechCrunch
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Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
WinSnap is a small enhancement utility for taking and editing screenshots. It can easily capture windows of non-rectangular form with the background of your choice, automatically perform simple canvas transformations and coloring effects, add professional smoothing shadows in Photoshop style and more. Also, WinSnap supports variety of image formats and provides advanced auto-save features.
:: WinSnap saves info about window form and adds real smoothing shadows!
:: Unique “Application” mode allows you to capture all visible windows of the foreground application with one click.
:: Basic coloring effects and canvas transformations.
:: Advanced auto-save and auto-copy options.
:: Usual keyboard and mouse control (Print Screen replacement).
:: Make all this work with one 100-kb application - smaller than Paint!
Download: WinSnap (30-days trial)
Posted in IMAGE/PHOTO Editor | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
StartRight will manage the execution of programs that are automatically started by the operating system at logon time. Instead of executing many programs at once (causing your OS to spit and sputter and attack your hard drive), StartRight will give the OS time to execute the program before running the next program. The OS should become much more responsive almost imediately after logon.
Those of you that have a dozen system tray programs (and you know who you are), might want to give this a try.
Features:
- program executing ordering
- custom delays
- Auto-Tune delays based on CPU usage (optional)
- new item notification (optional)
- automatically disable all new programs (optional)
- pause or stop program execution (optional)
Download: StartRight 1.3.4 All Windows
Posted in Utilities | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
RegTweakage.NET is a registry tweaker for Windows XP.
Download: Regtweakage.NET 0.2 Beta MSFN.org
Posted in Tools | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
How to recycle a 3.5in disk. And a PR strategy?
PC World?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s marketing department declared the death of the floppy disk yesterday, generating a wave of publicity that even rivalled Bill Gates?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ touting of Vista.
The chain said it would eject floppies once it has cleared existing stock. It reckons that by the summer, none of the laptops or PCs it sells will actually include floppy drives.
Read more: ChannelRegister
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Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
Up to five times faster - for a fee
Apple has released the software needed to unlock the fast wi-fi chips inside almost every one of its new Macs.
At Macworld earlier this month, CEO Steve Jobs revealed certain Macs were shipped with a fast 802.11n chip inside but the chip was disabled until the standard was more complete. The company subsequently said it would charge $1.99 to unlock that capability, or Mac users could buy a new 802.11n Airport Extreme Base Station with the needed software.
Both products are now available, because the industry is more comfortable with the current draft of the standard, according to David Moody, vice president of worldwide Mac product marketing. The software enabler can be purchased from the Apple Store, and the $179 base station is also available online. It should show up in Apple stores over the next few days, the company said.
Full article: silicon.com
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Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
At less than 1MB, blinkx pico is the smallest search engine in the world. As you work, browse ‘n’ play, Pico understands automatically and finds relevant results from the web, news, TV and, in the full version, your own PC.
Shorter results lists, less typing and more accurate results. Less is more.
Oh yes, and Pico is free.
Download: blinkx pico 4.0.26 Windows 2000/XP
Posted in Web/internet | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Virtual ‘House of Sweden’
Sweden has announced its intention to be the first nation to have an embassy in Second Life, Reuters reports.
The virtual consulate - based on the country’s new embassy in Washington - will be rather brilliantly known as the “House of Sweden”. Olle Wastberg, general director of the Swedish Institute, explained: “It will have answers to questions on all aspects of Sweden.”
Read more: The Register
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Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
What is gone is gone? Far from it! Avira UnErase recovers data that have been deleted from the hard drive either accidentally or as a result of a virus infection, an uninstaller or defective software. The danger of important data being lost forever is averted with Avira UnErase.
The private, non-commercial use of Avira UnErase Personal is free.
Download: Avira UnErase Personal 1.4 Windows NT/2000/XP
Posted in Tools | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
In the 21st Century, the very idea of reviewing an operating system is, well, quaint. Are you really going to let someone at the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or even ZDNet tell you whether you should buy a new operating system? The notion that any person can give a one-size-fits-all recommendation for such a complex product is amusing, to say the least.
Instead of taking one person’s opinion, you could gather the facts and make up your own mind. There’s certainly no shortage of raw data. Over the past year, experts and enthusiasts have sliced, diced, and analyzed Windows Vista with an overwhelming, almost obsessive amount of detail. Two million people downloaded beta releases, and the final code has been available for business buyers, developers, and MSDN/Technet subscribers for nearly three months.
Full article: ZDNet Blogs
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Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Kudaz is a programmer’s editor with selective syntax-highlighting capabilities that currently supports 53 languages/scripts as follows. (fully user-configurable)
C/C++ , CA-Clipper, Cascading Style Sheet , COAS Product Manager Report, COBOL , CORBA IDL , Fortran, Foxpro, Gembase, GW-TEL , HP48, HTML, INI File , Inno Setup Script, Java , JavaScript, Modula 3, MS VBScript , MS-DOS Batch , Object Pascal, Perl, PHP , Python, SQL, Standard ML , Structured Text, Tcl/Tk, TeX, Visual Basic , x86 Assembly , XML , Modelica, Semanta Data Dictionary, Galaxy, Cache Object Script, KiXtart, Haskell, Unreal, Progress, UNIX Shell Script, C#, 68HC11, Assembler, AWK, Baan 4GL, Borland Forms, URI, ADSP21xx, Ruby, Resource Script, SynGen Msg, LEGO LDraw, DOT Graph Drawing Description language, Eiffel .
Download: Kudaz 2.1.0.1 Windows All
Posted in Utilities | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Naja is a download manager and a website grabber. You can add some plugins (newsreader, FTP client and WebDAV client) and take control of your downloads from your office.
Naja has several modules:
- downloader (HTTP, FTP)
- websucker (website grabber)
- newsgrabber, newsreader, newsposter (uue, yEnc, base64, Par2)
- FTP, FTPS, SFTP, SCP client
- WebDAV client
Other Features:
- Csv filter
- Cheksums (CRC32, MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA, SHA1, MDC2, RMD160)
- Crypt and Decrypt (AES, DES, 3DES …)
- CGI & WebDAV Server
- Web Interface
- Compress and decompress (zip, tar.gz, tar.bz2)
- Picture viewer
- Text Editor
- HTTP and HTTPS Server
- Create SSL certificate with Crypto XML Engine
- Virtual Terminal for SSH (XTerm)
License: Freeware
Download: Naja 1.3.5 Win32, Mac OS X, Linux/Posix
Posted in Web/internet | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007
Seal culls Spit
NEC has announced new technology to counter the growing problem of unsolicited VoIP calls, known as Spam over Internet Telephony (Spit).
The company’s Seal software checks all incoming VoIP calls to see whether they are likely to have come from a human, rather than software, based on communications patterns observed during the call.
Read more: vnunet.com
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Monday, January 29th, 2007
Microsoft is investigating new public reports of limited “zero-day” attacks using a vulnerability in Microsoft Word 2000.
Alexandra Huft, a member of Microsoft’s security team, said the Redmond, Wash.-based vendor posted Microsoft Security Advisory (932114) for an issue “that only affects Microsoft Word 2000.”
“We are currently investigating a report of a posting of proof of concept code which could allow an attacker to execute code on a user’s machine in their security context by convincing them to open a specially-crafted Word document,” Huft wrote in a posting to the company’s Web site on Friday.
Internet security firm Secunia reported the exploit on Friday and deemed it “extremely critical.”
Microsoft, however, minimized the potential impact of the exploit.
Full article: internetnews.com
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Monday, January 29th, 2007
ReSysInfo is a system information viewer for Windows. The tool has 25 total information modules: BIOS information, CMOS, desktop, DirectX, drives, environment, fonts, keyboard, locale, machine & APM, mainboard, MCI, memory, mouse, multimedia, network, OpenGL, passwords, ports, printers & fax, processes, processor, video system, general information about Windows and a summary.
The tool supports most of the latest technologies: SMBIOS/DMI, AGP, PCI, PCI64/66, VESA, EISA, MCA, PCMCIA, CardBus support, full DirectX support (DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectInput), OpenGL support and detection, processor detection for most processors currently available on the market.
ReSysInfo has a Report Wizard which can export the information to 3 different formats: plain text, HTML and XML.
The program doesn’t need to be installed, but if you want to have icons in your start menu and on your desktop there is an installer available, too.
Download: ReSysInfo 2.1.0 Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003
Posted in Hardware | No Comments »
Monday, January 29th, 2007
LiMo Foundation to build open source mobile phone OS
Six industry heavyweights have formed a consortium to develop a Linux operating system for mobile phones.
Initial members of the LiMo Foundation include Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics and Vodafone.
Full article: vnunet.com
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Monday, January 29th, 2007
Ad share planned
YouTube founder Chad Hurley says the company will soon start to share advertising revenue with users of the service who post popular videos.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Saturday, Hurley gave no details of how this would be achieved or how much contributors would be paid.
Hurley told the Financial Times that the company had initially rejected paying for content because “we didn’t feel it was a great way to build a community. We wanted to keep it pure”.
Full story: The Register
Posted in News | No Comments »
