Virus Total is one of the many services that let you upload files to their server which are then scanned for viruses and malware. One major advantage of Virus Total over a single antivirus solution installed on the user’s pc is the fact that it uses almost every known antivirus engine to scan the files which could not be done on a single system because those applications would surely interfere with each other.

The guys from Virus Total have created a file uploader that makes the whole process comfortable. The 80 Kilobyte application installs itself in the right-click context menu as a Send To entry which in effect means that you can right-click a file on your computer and select Send To > Virus Total to send it to their website to scan the file.

A browser window will open displaying the scan results in the end. This is way more comfortable than to open the Virus Total website and browse for the file on your hard drive once you are there.

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Faceted Browsing can be very helpful if you do not precisely know what you are looking for. It gives you choices which narrow down the search results. Seek is a Thunderbird extension that brings that concept to the email client. It displays mails by a variety of variables like recency, tags and from and offers a sophisticated search that narrows done the search results.

Searching can be done in two ways. In the first the user clicks on an entry in one of the variables, say mails since yesterday which blends all older mails out. The matching mails are then displayed in the mail folder as usual. The same principle works with every column, say tags or priority.

Search can be refined by typing in search terms. It would not be a problem to find all messages with the search term ghacks of the last two days, or mails of the last months that have been tagged with work and contain the keyword project.

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Manage PC Shutdown [link, via Genbeta] is a small application for Windows that, as the name already suggests, manages several ways to shutdown the computer. The main purpose of the software is to define the event and action that should be undertaken. Possible events are if a process stops, a countdown, low cpu usage, low battery or at a specified time.

The actions that can be assigned are manifold as well. Users can choose to shutdown, reboot, hibernate, log off, lock / switch the user, turn on the screensaver, turn off the monitor, put the PC in sleep mode or shut down the Internet connection. That’s a lot of options to choose from already but there is more to it if you check the options of the program.

Another program can be executed before the selected action takes place. It seems that only executable files can be selected though.

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Did you ever loose track of all the password protected files on your system ? This happened to me just a few days ago when I was looking for a zip file that a friend send me which was password protected. I could not remember the name and location where I saved it to and since I tend to clear the history at each reboot I was not able to take a look at the software protocol of the transfer anymore.

I could ask my friend and admit that I did not look into it yet and make myself look a little bit lost or try to find the file by myself. I naturally decided to try to find it on my own first and use my friend as a last resort.

The application that helped me find it was the Passware Encryption Analyzer, the free version of it to be precise. This tool scans the computer or selected folders / drives for encrypted or passworded files. It lists everything that is found in a table with information such as name, location, file type and date modified.

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Todays Giveaway of the Day [Gotd] is a file recovery software named Data Recovery Wizard. Let me explain the Gotd concept briefly. The website lists one commercial software every day that is free to download and use. Companies use this for marketing purposes while the users get free applications. Great concept and you can really find the occasional gem on that site.

The Data Recovery Wizard software retails for $69.99 usually and can be compared to recovery tools like Recuva although it provides a far more sophisticated way to search for and recovery files. Supported operating systems are Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Windows Vista.

All you need to do is download the application from the Gotd website and install it today. This activates the software and you can use it.

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