Dashlane is currently in private beta, which means that you need an invite to start using it (thanks to The Next Web). Once you have have entered your email address you are redirected to a page where you can download the Windows or Mac client to your local system.

Dashlane currently connects with the Chrome and Firefox web browser only, with an Internet Explorer version in the making. Installation gives users choice to connect to one, multiple or all of the supported browsers, which is better than Norton’s all or nothing approach. It felt kinda weird though that you had to close all browsers, even if you unselected the extension from being installed in them.

The program ships with a desktop program that you can use for all management purposes, and a browser extension that handles input and detection in the web browser.

The browser extension basically acts as a link between the desktop app and the web browser. It can fill out login information automatically for you if you have configured it that way, and will automatically ask you if you want to send new logins to the password manager for safe keeping. It is furthermore possible to click into a login form directly to select one of the available accounts for the site.

You can configure the program to generate strong passwords for you whenever you register new accounts. Just click in the password field of the registration form, and then on the generate strong password button that appears right beneath it to create a strong password.

Dashlane furthermore can do all the form filling for you, if identity related information have been saved into the program’s database previously. The program takes care of multiple identities for you, and if you like also of ID related information and payments that you make on the Internet. These information can then be filled out automatically whenever you register a new account on a site.

One interesting feature of the desktop application is the security dashboard, which lists password strength ratings for all accounts.

Links point directly to low safety accounts giving users options to change their passwords on site directly to make them more secure.

The desktop app is protected by a master password which needs to be supplied on start before you are able to access the information. The developers have published a white paper that explains the security concept in detail.

You can synchronize password information easily, provided that your devices are running a support operating system and web browser. Data is encrpyted with an AES-256 key before it is written to the computer’s hard drive. Information may also be stored in the cloud, if users select to synchronize their information across devices for instance.

Users can access their data on the web as well, which is useful if you are on a public PC, mobile phone or computer that’s not compatible with the Dashlane desktop app. They should note though that the web app is read-only.

The program only asks you if you want to import your browser passwords into the password manager (and delete them afterwards). Users find desktop password manager import options under the File menu. Supported are popular password managers such as Last Pass, KeePass or 1Password.

Dashlane Presentation Video

Closing Words

Dashlane shows a lot of promise for a closed beta product. It is definitely superior to Norton’s password manager at this point in time. Not everything is golden though right now. The program lacks support for Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari currently, with only Internet Explorer listed as “soon” to be compatible.

An option to generate secure passwords, or to modify password creation rules, is not available currently.

It is also not clear if the developers plan to turn the service into a commercial password manager at a later point in time, or if they are going down the LastPass road which would keep the basic desktop version free.

If you are looking for a password manager for Windows or Mac, and are using Firefox or Chrome, I suggest you give it a try.

The developers of VLC Media Player have just announced on their Twitter account that they will release the first release candidate of VLC 2.0 at the end of the week. The latest release version right now is VLC 1.1.11 which is available for Windows, Mac OS X, popular Linux distributions and even other operating systems such as Android or OS/2 (anyone still using that?).

Windows 64-bit version of VLC Media Player running the Spin Demo

Once a suitable release candidate has been found, VLC Media Player 2.0 will be released for all operating systems. Existing VLC users likely want to know what they can look forward to in version 2 of the player. Here is a list of important changes taken directly from the latest nightly build of VLC 2.0.

• Major Video Core and Outputs rework and rewrite: Subtitles, subpictures and OSD can now be sized and blent inside video outputs x11 (Unix), OpenGL (Unix) and Direct3D (Windows) are such video outputs.
• Almost every video filter can now be transcoded
• Port to Android, iOS, OS/2 and Win64
• Multiple files are now supported inside RAR files
• Experimental Blu-Ray Discs support using libbluray
• You can now use ffmpeg-mt in conjunction with vlc, to split decoding load on multiple cores. H.264, VP3, VP8, JPEG-2000, Mpeg-4 ASP/DivX and RV3/RV4
  are notably concerned.
• C64 SID file playback support of using sidplay2
• Support for WMV Images, aka WMVP and WVP2, as used by Photo Story
• New video output based on Direct2D for Windows 7 and Vista (with Platform Update), New video output for iOS platform

Probably the biggest improvements are the 64-bit version for Windows, the port to mobile operating systems and Blu-Ray playback support.

You can get a taste of things to come by downloading the latest nightly build from the VLC build server. Remember that nighly versions are not necessarily stable, as they are development builds. (Thanks Mike)

While we are at it: Which media player are you currently using?

Update: First release candidate builds for Mac and Linux have been posted on the VLC ftp server. You can access the change log here.

System Stability Tester is a free open source software for Windows, Linux and Mac systems that can stress test and benchmark a computer system. It does so by calculating up to 128 million digits of Pi which is extremely taxing for the processor.

When you first start the program you have the choice to run a benchmark or system stress test. A benchmark can be used to compare the results of a system to another system, the stress test to verify that there are no calculation errors.

You can also select the amount of Pi digits you want to compute, the turns, and the number of threads the computer should use for that task.

The stress testing application supports two pi computation algorithms: The Quadratic Convergence of Borwein and Gauss-Legendre with Borwein being selected by default.

Please note that you can only run a stress test if at least two threads are selected. The program then starts the calculation which can slow down the PC considerable during operation. Statistics are updated regularly that display the amount of calculated Pi digits, the state, and time it took to calculate them.

An overview at the top highlights the total amount of errors of the calculation as well as the processing time until the first error was detected.

You can optionally save a log file or a Pi file. The first saves basic information about the run, the second all Pi digits.

One of the core advantages of System Stability Tester is that it is available for Mac, Linux and Windows systems, which means that it can be used to compare the performance of computers running different operating systems.

Interested users can download System Stability Tester from the developer website over at Sourcerforge.

We have reviewed several tools in the past that allowed you to download books from the service. A new tool has been released recently in a new version that allows anyone to download all readable books and magazines from Google Books.

Google Books Downloader is a free application for the Windows and Mac operating system. The program needs to be installed, and it is suggested to select the custom installation option to avoid the installation of Arccosine (whatever that is). It is definitely not needed for the program’s core functionality.

You need to open the Google Books website in a web browser to copy the web addresses into the downloader. Just head over there and search for books that you would like to download. All that needs to be done afterwards is to copy the web address and paste it into the application afterwards.

You may want to check the output format options before you click on the Start button to download the selected book. The program will download and convert the selected book to pdf format by default, with options to change the format to png or jpg instead.

The only other options that are available are to change the book’s output resolution (default 800px, with options to change from 350px to 1200px) and the destination folder the book will be saved to.

Windows and Mac users can download the latest version of the program from the official program homepage.

My Folders is a free software for the Windows operating system that improves folder management and functionality of Windows Explorer significantly. It is in many regards similar to previously reviewed programs such as Folder Guide or Direct Folders.

It can be used to configure quick access folders for various operations, including opening, copying or moving to, and opening the command window in.

New users should run the configuration tool first which allows them to add, remove, order and separate folders from each other. Folder links to the My Documents and Desktop folder are already in place, with options to add an unlimited amount of new folders to the folder listing.

These folders appear then under the MyFolders context menu entry in Windows Explorer.

Commands are displayed in submenus under the main menu entry. Here is a quick explanation of each entry’s functionality.

• Copy To: Copies all selected files and folders to one of the quick links folders added during the program configuration phase.
• Move To: The same as Copy To, but moves files or folders instead of copying them.
• Go to: Opens the selected folder right away in Windows Explorer.
• Open Command Window in: Opens a command prompt window with the selected folder as the starting path.

A (new) folder link is available in each submenu to run the command on new folders with options to add the selected folder to the folder listing permanently.

It is furthermore possible to add selected folders directly to the quick access listing.

MyFolders is a useful tool for Windows users who often have to copy or move files to specific destinations on the system. Instead of opening two Explorer windows or dragging and dropping files and folders, they can now simply right-click and select the copy or move command to perform the operation.

Windows users can download MyFolders from the developer website. The program is compatible with all recent versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Insync is a new option for Mac and Windows users (and soon Linux as a Linux port is in the making) who want to synchronize their Google Docs documents with local PCs. The program uses Google’s own authentication system for authorization, which means that you do not have to supply your Google login information to use the program.

The first thing that you need to do after installation is to link machines to the service. Linked machines are the only systems that will synchronize documents with Google Docs. Linking did not work right away on a test system, a restart of the application did however resolve the issue.

A web page is opened if your run the program from a new system to link the new computer with the synchronization service. Once done, files will get synced automatically to the system whenever the app is running. Please note that you do not have options to sync selected files or folders with local machines. If you configure Insync to run on a system, everything will be synchronized.

Documents are by default stored in the Insync\Google Docs Email\ folder in the My Documents folder. It is possible to change the root document folder but not the folder name.

Any changes that you make locally to your documents will be synced with Google Docs automatically and vice versa.

The developers have hinted at the possibility to use Google Docs and Insync as a Dropbox alternative. Since it is possible to upload non-document file types to Google Docs, it is possible to use the service to host files online. The biggest advantage over Dropbox is the price for additional storage that is up to eight times cheaper.

Users who do not want to buy additional storage on the other hand get only 1 Gigabyte of free storage space, which is half of what they get when they sign up for a Dropbox account.

The Insync guide lists features that the program offers that Dropbox does not offer:

• Read/write + read only sharing permissions (on folder + file)
• File sharing (you have to share folders in Dropbox)
• Share recipients aren’t charged against their Google Docs storage quota
• Nested sharing (you know who you are!)
• Google Docs collaboration
• Leave Insync anytime and all your stuff are in your Google Docs account
• No direct access to your files (a rogue employee will have to create a program that uses the Google Docs API and steal your access credentials to get at your files)
• Insync only stores your file metadata

Some of the functionality is provided only on the Insync website and not in the client. This includes the ability to share documents among other features.

Google Docs users who want to synchronize their documents with multiple machines may find Insync quite useful for that purpose. The developers do have plans to integrate premium features at a later point in time. (via Caschy)

Businesses and organizations use vpn servers to secure data transfer. This can be useful in countries where services or websites are blocked, or data transfers are likely monitored.

Home users can benefit from vpn connections as well. They can use it to protect their connection on a public network or to access services that they would not otherwise be able to access.

Users from outside the United States, or US citizens abroad, can use vpn servers to connect to sites such as Pandora, Hulu and many other services that are limited to users from the United States.

All they need for that is a VPN that is located in the United States. We have covered several vpn services that offer free limited accounts for users from all over the world. This includes the popular Hotspot Shield, Ultra VPN or Vypr VNP which is free for Giganews Diamond account owners.

TunnelBear is a vpn service that is offering easy to install and use clients for Windows and Macintosh PCs. Users need to register an account before they can make use of the vpn. A free account limits the monthly data transfer to 500 Megabytes, a commercial account allows unlimited transfers. Free accounts are protected with a 128-bit algorithm, while paid accounts make use of 256-bit data encryption.

New users can setup an account right in the software during installation (please note that you need to confirm the email to log in). The program will handle all the heave lifting on its own, including the installation of a new network connection that is used to connect to the VPN.

The core application interface has only two switches. One to connect to the virtual private network, and the other to select a US or UK server to connect to.

The interface displays the current connection status and the remaining bandwidth for the month.

TunnelBear offers one of the most comfortable experiences when it comes to setting up and using vpn servers. The 500 Megabyte limit should be enough for users who do not access a lot of media in a month. Those users may consider paying the reasonable price of $40 per year for unlimited data transfers. The company is currently running a Twitter promo that offers 1 Gigabyte of additional data transfer when completed.

TunnelBear can be downloaded from the developer website. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system, and for systems running Apple Mac OSX 10.6 or greater.

TweetDeck made the list of Melanie’s Top 5 Twitter Add-ons and has been recently acquired by Twitter. Rumors surrounding the acquisition suggested that Twitter might have the intention to drop all versions of the application and integrate the development team into the in-house Twitter team.

Those rumors have now been refuted with the release of native TweetDeck clients for Windows and Mac operating systems. The Adobe Air client is no longer available on the official site, and it seems as if the developers have moved away from it completely.

The move has not been officially announced yet, while desktop clients are already offered on the official TweetDeck website.

Users can start connecting their Twitter and Facebook accounts once the software has been installed on their system. The three columns Home, Me and Inbox are displayed by default. If you have followed yesterday’s news about the upcoming Twitter relaunch you know that this is the new Twitter terminology and layout (only discover is missing).

A click on Add Column displays additional data streams that can be added to the TweetDeck interface. This includes lists, trends, tweets, favorites and search results. The program displays configuration options. If you want to add a search column, you are asked to enter either a hashtag or keyword.

A new option is the notification option. A click on a column’s settings button opens a menu with options to enable notification sounds or popups.

Not everything is golden though. Several features of the Adobe Air client went awol in the first desktop version. Different column sizes, color schemes or keyboard shortcuts are nowhere to be found in the native client versions of TweetDeck.

It is not clear if the features have been removed intentionally from the client, or removed because of time limitations to meet yesterday’s redesign deadline. (via Caschy)

Celtx is available as a free version for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. There is also Celtx Plus, a commercial desktop version and an online studio version to manage team projects. Most users should start with the free version though to see if they can work with Celtx to create their novels, comic books, films, audio plays, storyboards or other types of media. The software is very versatile in this regard.

I’d suggest to load one of the demo projects on first start to get a feel for the program. A demonstration is available for each type of media supported by Celtx. The program layout adapts to the selected production type. If you have selected Novel for instance, you are presented with an interface divided into the project library, the novel’s chapters and the core text editor part. Other modules can be displayed, like index cards, the title page or the master catalog offering information about characters, items of importance or scene details.

One of the program’s strengths is the ability to add detailed information to the catalog. Character information for instance include a name and description, media, physical description, character traits, functions, motivation and backgrounds.

Even better, information added to the catalog are automatically linked in the play, novel or script. Additional options include adding notes to any part of the media, external links to websites that offer information or are important for research, options to add a synopsis or history to the project library and a lot more.

The text editor is decent enough. While it does not offer the full functionality of an Office suite like Microsoft Word or Open Office, it offers enough text editing and formatting options to the aspiring content creator.

It feels a bit strange that all guides posted on the site are for purchase only. A good starting point for new users are the Celtx Wiki and user forum.

Some buttons in the program interface, like Toolbox or My Studio, lead to the add-ons page on the website. Add-ons need to be purchased before the functionality becomes available.

Celtx is a sophisticated pre-production system. More than 1.5 million users use it worldwide to create media according to the project’s homepage. The program can be downloaded for all supported operating systems from the developer website.

TeamViewer 7 is now available for Windows, Mac and mobile operating systems such as Android or Apple’s iOS. The Linux download page lists version 6 as the latest.

The developers have added a lot of new features to the remote access software. It is a long list divided into the two core areas Remote Control and Meeting.

Remote Control

All users benefit from performance optimizations. Especially direct connections, file transfers and working with TeamViewer Manager have seen performance improvements. The new media features, e.g. screenshot creation during remote control sessions or the AVI converter make life easier in specific situations. The option to display multi-remote screens on a 1:1 scale may be interesting as well to some TeamViewer users.

• Drag & Drop Even Faster – Simply drag each desired file from and into the remote control window and drop it exactly where you want it.
• Enhanced Multi-Monitor Support – Do you and your clients both work with two or more screens? Then simply display multiple remote screens on a 1:1 scale on your own monitors – simultaneously and without toggling.
• Save Connection Settings per Computer – You can now store individual connection settings for each computer in your computers & contacts list. Thereby, saving you valuable time for all further connections to the same computers.
• Integrated Screenshot Feature – Create a screenshot at any moment during a remote control session. Thus, snapshots of the remote screen are acquired at lightning speed.
• AVI Converter – Convert your recorded sessions into AVI format and then edit your videos at will.
• Movable TeamViewer Panel – Position your TeamViewer Panel wherever you like on your local monitors so that you can see every important screen area at any time.
• Performance Improvement – Especially direct connections and file transfer are now even faster due to optimization of data packets and display settings.
• Optimized performance with TeamViewer Manager – Huge speed increases, especially for large databases. Through optimized database requests, TeamViewer Manager is now up to 4x faster.

Meetings and Presentations

Please note that TeamViewer 7′s meeting feature is only compatible with other TeamViewer clients, it is not backwards compatible.

Several useful new features have been integrated, from recording presentations and converting them directly to avi video files over participants who join the meeting on mobile devices to options to start meetings before participants are added which is ideal for testing and preparing.

• Instant Meeting – With just one click, you can start your meeting even before adding any participants – ideal for preparation and testing. Invite your colleagues, business partners or clients on the fly.
• Schedule Meetings – Schedule your meetings and send invitations directly from your email client. Use the new “My Meetings” functionality in your TeamViewer account to maintain the perfect overview of all your planned meetings. Transfer your appointments automatically to your Outlook calendar.
• Up To 25 Participants – Invite up to 25 participants to your meeting. From marketing presentations with potential new clients in a personal 1:1 scale, to large international meetings, anything is possible.
• Mobile Participation On The Road – With the new TeamViewer Apps for iPhone, iPad (coming soon) and Android, participation in meetings is possible at any time from the road. That way, you and your colleagues will never again miss important discussions.
• Presenter – Organizer – Participant – Assign different rights to your participants during a meeting. Name one participant the organizer. This person will have expanded rights in order to support you during the meeting. Alternatively you can give another participant the presenter role so that this person can share their screen.
• Communication Tools – Now all participants can see and hear each other. During a meeting, they are connected via Voice over IP and Webcam. Additional tools, such as chat, whiteboard or telephone conferences, support the acoustic and visual exchange of ideas. Choose from a variety of communication tools for lively meetings and presentations.
• File Box – Would you like to make files available for download during a meeting? Simply copy the desired documents into the shared file box via Drag & Drop and easily and quickly exchange them at will.
• Record Presentations – Record your screen presentations and convert your video into the AVI format. This way, you can edit your videos at will.
• Movable TeamViewer Panel – When presenting your entire screen, just drag your TeamViewer Panel to each desired position – even, for example, to a second monitor, to have a complete view of all the important screen areas.

Are you using TeamViewer? If so, which new feature do you like the most? (via)

Java users can verify their computer system’s Java version on this page. Affected by the security vulnerabilities are all JDK and JRE 7, and JDK and JRE Update 27 and earlier versions.

The risk matrix highlights each individual patch, the affected components, attack vectors and scores.

End users can make use of the automatic updating routine or download the new Java versions directly from the Oracle website. Windows users can check manually for updates from the Java Control Panel applet. They need to switch to the Update tab of the applet and click on the Update Now button there to run an update check and install the update on the system.

Users running the Java Runtime Environment 6 (who want to stay on 6 and not switch to 7) can download the JRE 6 Update 29 from this page. The new version is available for all supported operating systems. Windows users can download online or offline installers of the JRE.

Users who are already running the Java Runtime Environment 7 can download the new version that brings their version to JRE 7 Update 1 here.

Developers can download the Java Development Kit 7 Update 1 from the Java SE Downloads page. Additional developer related downloads are provided on that page as well.

Oracle classifies the patch update as critical. Users running either the JDK or JRE on their computer system should update the systems as quickly as possible to protect their operating systems from potential attacks and exploits.

Oracle notes that 19 of the 20 vulnerabilities can be remotely exploited without the need for authentication. System administrators who need more information should start with the official patch update advisory linked above. It includes temporary workaround suggestions that may mitigate potential attacks on computer systems.

SuprSetr basically improves the photo set capabilities of Flickr, and here in particular the organizational process of Flickr set management. When you run the program for the first time after installation (under Windows) you are asked to authorize the application on Flickr to enable access to a user’s photos on the photo hosting site.

The program opens an authorization url in the default browser. This is a specific Flickr page where the user can accept or deny the authorization. Once authorized a list of all existing photosets are retrieved from Flickr. All sets are set to unmanaged at the beginning, which means that SuprSetr has no additional information about the sets that have been retrieved from Flickr.

The main window of the program displays a list of the photo sets. All managed sets are listed first, followed by unmanaged sets in alphabetic order. It is optionally possible to hide all unmanaged sets from the View menu.

The toolbar at the top offers buttons to add, edit, delete and refresh the sets, and to use the filter text box at the top which filters sets by their title. Sets can be viewed on Flickr with a right-click and the selection of Open Set in Browser from the context menu.

To manage sets, double-click one. This takes you to the Set Editor window. The first step is to check the Manage this set with SuprSetr box, the second to define the parameters that become available afterwards. Parameters include tags, date taken and uploaded and sorting.

Once you define the parameters of the set, SuprSetr will know how to search your Flickr stream for photos that match the parameters, and can then update the content of the photoset based on the search results. SuprSetr will add and remove photos from the set to make it match the results of the search. However, SuprSetr will NEVER delete photos from your photostream.

SuprSetr comes with additional tools and options. This includes Twitter integration to tweet whenever new photos are added to specific sets or all sets. Messages can be customized with placeholders:

• %t – This will be replaced with the photoset title
• %u – This will be replaced with the photoset URL. The URL will be shortened with bit.ly
• %c – This will be replaced with the number of photos that were added to the photoset
• %C – This will be replaced with the total number of photos in the photoset

The Tools menu leads to some nice to have tools like FavrTagr which analyzes all photos on Flickr based on the number of favs that they have received. For every ten favorites a new tag will be added in the form fav10, fav20, fav30 and so on. It is possible to create a new set based on these tags.

A second tool that is available is the Set Ordering Tool which can be used to reorder the list of photosets on Flickr.

Flickr users who work with photo sets and need better manageability of their sets can download SuprSetr from the project website.

The JRE is needed to execute Java applications on the local system and in the web browser. I use it for instance for the excellent RSS reader RSSOwl.

The JDK, Java Development Kit, has also been released as version 7.0 Final. The Java SE 7 Features and Enhancements page lists the highlights, changes and known issues. The page, which acts as the release notes, is highly technical. It links to additional pages with the most important changes in the new release, which makes it that much harder to compile an overview of important changes.

Probably most important from an end users point of view are security improvements and changes. Some weak ciphers have for instance been disabled in the Java 7 release to enhance the security.

This release includes new features such as small language changes for improved developer productivity, a new Filesystem API, support for asynchronous I/O, a new fork/join framework for multicore performance, improved support for dynamic and script languages, updates to security, internationalization and web standards and much more.

Java developers find all the information they need in the release notes and documentation. This includes updated installation and troubleshooting guides as well as JDK 7 and JRE 7 specific development guides and API documentations.

The Java Runtime Environment 7 has been released for all supported operating systems. Users can download the JRE 7 for supported 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows, Solaris and Linux from the official download page.

The Java offline installers have a size of about 20 Megabytes under Windows, and between 12 and 35 Megabytes under Linux and Solaris.

Developers can download the latest Java SE Development Kit 7 from Oracle as well. JDK 7 is offered for the same set of operating systems. It’s download size varies between 80 and 160 Megabytes.

The feed reader has just been updated to RSSOwl 2.1 which adds several very interesting features to the program. Probably the biggest feature in the new release is google reader synchronization which means news states, labels and stars are now shared between Google Reader and RSSOwl.

The synchronization can be activated via File > Import > Synchronize with Google Reader. One of the things that users need to know is that there is no automatic synchronization of feeds between Google Reader and RSSOwl, for that you need to use the Import feature. Whenever you add a new feed to one of the readers, you need to use it again to synchronize the feeds. The news items on the other hand are automatically synced after the initial setup.

The developers have improved stability, scalability and performance of the RSS reader significantly. Among the improvements are crash fixes, support for large profile databases beyond 2 Gigabyte, a new wizard to automatically repair broken search indexes and a reduced memory footprint.

Layouts have been improved. The developers have redesigned the newspaper layout, headlines layout and list layout. Layouts can be changed via the View > Layouts menu.

There have also been other user interface changes, for instance integration of the archiving feature in all layouts to quickly move news items to the archive bin for safe keeping, support for instapaper and readability or a per feed configuration of the layout.

Existing RSSOwl users will receive update notifications when they start the feed reader. New users can download the latest version from the official program homepage. There they can also read up on all the changes of the new release in the changelog.

Probably the biggest new feature in the beta is native 64-bit support for 64-bit Windows operating systems. While still in beta, it marks a milestone in the 64-bit development of Flash, as the beta release indicates that 64-bit support might be added to the final version of Flash 11.

Users with the intention to download the 64-bit version of Flash beta need to know that it can only be run in a 64-bit web browser. That’s Internet Explorer mostly, and some custom compiled versions of the Firefox web browser. Users who run a 64-bit browser can install the 64-bit version of Flash normally on their system, provided that it is a 64-bit operating system as well. To sum it up: You need a 64-bit OS, a 64-bit web browser to install the 64-bit version of Flash 11 Beta.

What else is new in Flash 11? Adobe lists the following features on the Adobe Labs page: Stage3D APIs, G.711 audio compression for telephone, H264/AVC SW Encoding, Socket Progress Events and HD Surround Sound.

Adobe® Flash® Player 11 desktop beta drives innovation for rich, engaging digital experiences with new features for cross-platform browser-based viewing of expressive rich internet applications, content, and videos across devices. Some of the features from the Flash Player Incubator, such as Stage 3D and 64-bit support, have been moved into this beta release.

While useful to some users, they might not be relevant for the majority of Flash users at this point in time. Flash 11 Beta could be more interesting to developers who may have plans to integrate one or some of the new features into their applications.

Interested users can download 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Flash 11 Beta from the Adobe website. The new version is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh computer systems. The download page links to 32bit and 64bit Flahs uninstallers, for users who need to go back to version 10 of Flash.

The HTML format offers an alternative. While it is often not that pretty to look at it provides better controls to read and work with the text of a document. Tools like Calibre can convert pdf documents into various formats. Their disadvantage is that they often do not get it completely right, so that header, footer and other textual information are added that are not really needed to read the text.

Enter PDF Masher. The Open Source software turns pdf documents into HTML pages. Instead of relying on guesswork or an algorithm to extract text from the pdf document, it asks the user to identify and select the text that should be available in the next document.

You can load a pdf document via the Open File button at the top of the interface. PDF Masher scans the document and displays all the text that it found in a table like structure.

Displayed in the sortable table are the font size, x and y position, text length and the text itself among other data. This makes identification of text that you want included in the resulting document relatively easy. A click on a row display that row’s text in the lower half of the screen. Here it is possible to add, edit or delete text directly. That’s helpful if the automatic text detection created some mistakes that need to be corrected.

It is furthermore possible to ignore single or multiple text ids automatically so that they do not turn up in the new document.

Lines can also be set as footnotes and titles. Footnotes are for instance automatically added to the last page of the document, so that they do not appear in the document.

The developer has created a small video that demonstrates the programs functionality.

PDF Masher is a handy program for users who want better control and readability on their mobile devices. The manual conversion options may take longer than automatic conversions, but they ensure that the accessibility of the document is improved.

Users who want to convert multiple documents at once need to look at other programs for the job. If it is just one document, then PDF Masher is one the best options, provided that you are fine with the resulting HTML format.

PDF Masher is available for Mac OXS, Linux and windows operating systems. It can be downloaded from the developer website.

Users who want to migrate usually want to take their photos hosted on another service to the new service. Flickr or Facebook users can make use of the excellent Fotobounce to do that. Melanie reviewed FotoBounce’s face recognition capabilities recently. The photo organizer is versatile and supports downloading of all photos hosted on either photo hosting service.

Please note that Adobe Air is required to install Fotobounce. Photographers who only want to migrate their accounts can install the program, download all their photos and uninstall it again when the migration completed successfully.

Options to log in to Facebook and Flickr are displayed on the left sidebar after application start. A click on login launches a new window where you are asked to enter your login credentials for the selected service and to allow the application access to it.

A click on the account name after authorization displays all albums of that user on the screen. It is alternatively possible to switch to a photo preview mode instead.

It is possible to download individual albums one after the other, or all photos at once. A right-click on an album or photos displays a context menu with options to download the selection to the local computer system.

There does not seem to be an option to download all photo albums on Flickr or Facebook at once. This could be problematic for users with many photo albums, especially if they want to retain the folder structure on Picasa.

Still, it is a one time operation and the downloading is fast and straightforward. Users who prefer a software that is able to download all photos in one go can take a look at the previously reviewed Downloadr that can backup Flickr account.

Fotobounce can be downloaded from the developer website. The software weights in at an astonishing 70 Megabytes. It is available for Windows and Mac computer systems (inspiration taken from Caschy)

4K Video Downloader is a free software program for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux based operating systems that supports downloading online videos from the four sites YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and Dailymotion.

Video urls need to be copied to the clipboard before they can be pasted into the program via the Paste url button in the program interface.

The program displays download information immediately after the button has been pressed.

A thumbnail image of the video, its name, playing duration and link are displayed at the top. All available video qualities are displayed underneath. This ranges from low resolution videos all the way up to 4k videos if supported on site.

The only other option available is to change the default save directory. A click on the download button starts the download.

This is indicated int the main program interface. Each video that is added to the program is displayed there. A progress bar indicates the download progress of each individual video.

Videos that have been downloaded successfully can be played right away, either by hovering the mouse over the video information and selecting play, or right-clicking the video and selecting play from the context menu.

The context menu links to additional features that include opening the folder the video has been downloaded to or pausing and resuming video downloads.

And that’s basically the functionality of the whole program. When you look at what is offered, you probably will notice the lack of features that would make the program more comfortable, like automatic recognition of video urls or configuring a specific quality setting as the default.

On the plus side, it works not only on Windows but Linux and Mac computers as well. You can download the latest version of the video downloader from the official project website.

Pogoplug can be a bit of a drag to install. Its installer does not go as fast as those of many other programs, so those who tend to sit and watch downloads and installations may be staring blankly at their screens for a few minutes. Once finished, however, you will be able to configure Pogoplug by clicking on the new icon on your taskbar – it looks like a pink circle with a line inside of it.

The program will make you begin by creating a new account, requiring your email address and the creation of a new password. You can then choose which general folders you would like to be included in your cloud, including your documents, music, and picture folders. By unchecking the boxes, you prohibit access to the files within those folders from access by Pogoplug.

Once you have selected your folders and clicked Next the program will offer to give you a tour. If you tend to pick things up pretty quickly, don’t waste your time with it. Finally, activate your email and you should be ready to go.
To access your files remotely, simply visit my.pogoplug.com and sort through your various files from there. You can get to them from literally any Windows-based PC directly from the web, sparing you from having to download and install programs on the various machines you may want access from.

A quick look around Pogoplug’s website shows that it does much more than simply throw your files into an online folder and expect you to manage them. It actually sorts them into categories based on what it assumes they are. By selecting different tabs along the top of the screen you can find your files sorted into their various types – Music ends up in Jukebox, Images in Gallery, Videos in Cinema, and so on.

If at any point you decide you no longer want or need a folder to be made available through the Pogoplug’s cloud, simply click on the icon in your taskbar again to return to your preferences. By selecting the Remote Access tab you can change which folders are allowed access and even turn off remote access to your folders altogether.

One last reminder – your computer needs to be turned on any time you want to access your files. If you’re far from that computer and are wondering why the online interface is denying you, it’s probably just because it’s turned off. Happy sharing!

Pogoplug is not only available for Windows PCs and Apple Macintosh systems, but also as an app for Android and Apple smartphones.

One of the options to access all photos taken, regardless of where they have been stored or archived, is a image cataloging software like vvvP. Despite the strange name, it turns out to be a very effective solution for photographers and computer users who want a single program to view and work with all their photos or photos they have to manage.

The program stores information about images in catalog files. It stores various information about each image that is added to the catalog.

• A thumbnail image with a configurable size
• EXIF data if available
• The SHA-1 hash of every file
• User comments

The program supports various image formats, including jpg and raw images. It has to be noted that the program does not process RAW images but adds a preview image instead.

When you first start the program, the first thing that you need to do is to create a new catalog on the hard drive. Click the New button or select File > New to save it. This catalog file contains all the information necessary to manage images even if they are not located on fixed or removable drives.

The program differentiates between fixed and removable storage locations. Fixed locations are for instance internal hard drives connected to the computer, while removable locations are for instance removable hard drives or optical discs.

If you want to add photos from fixed locations, you need to select Catalog > Fixed Locations first before you can crawl them. Once added, you can add photos with a click on Catalog > Catalog Images.

Check the “handle removable volumes” or “handle fixed” volumes” first, and pick a folder that you want crawled. The crawling may take some time, depending on the amount and type of files.

All folders are afterwards shown in the main program interface, provided that the right catalog is loaded. It is possible to browse the folders in the interface to see thumbnail previews, image names and other information like the date the image was taken.

The program comes with a search which can be used to search for file names, extensions, start and end dates or descriptions. The search is very fast and responsive.

Images can be added to virtual folders which are then accessible in the program interface as well. Handy for instance to make a pre-selection of photos that are stored in various locations.

One interesting option is the ability to use the image catalog in a network, which effectively means that multiple users in the same network can access the catalog.

The photo cataloging software vvvP is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh computers. Interested users can download the latest program version or the source code from the project homepage.