You start each map with all of your characters which you can place on the map. Your one and only goal is to keep them away from Azra, your lead character. Azra, while not fighting actively, has a repertoire of spells at her disposal to aid in battle.

You start the game with a single melee class which only gets you that far. New characters are recruited in town, and sometimes awarded during the story telling in between battles.

Each character has a skill set available to that class. The berserker for instance gets a double-cut early on in the game which hits two enemies passing by when executed.

Your sorceress gains PSI power during battles which can be used for spells, summoning more characters to the battlefield or powering up characters. When you power them up, they grow considerably stronger.

Characters have attack, armor and health values that you need to keep an eye on. Especially health – and armor items – become important later on when enemies start attacking your characters either in melee or range.

Your characters gain experience with every battle they fight, and the occasional level up awards one skill point that you can spend to improve an existing skill or learn a new one. Skills are divided into active skills, like the berserker’s double hit, and passive skills like swiftness which increase abilities passively.

You can equip each character with a weapon and armor, to increase their damage and resistance. These items become more important later on in the game.

Some maps allow you to select a challenge level with considerably stronger enemies and greater rewards. Rewards usually get you more experience and items that you can equip your characters with.

Defender’s Quest all in all is a solid game that does a lot of things right. If there are things to criticize, it is the low variance of enemies that you encounter on the map. The developers have released a full version of the game which boasts more maps, character classes and five additional acts to play through. The full version retails for $6.99 currently, and you get $2 off when you visit the purchase page from the Kongregate website.

Many Windows users dislike the nagging prompt, especially if they are currently running tasks that would be interrupted by a reboot. This includes video rendering, an important download or upload, or a document that needs to be finished in the next hour or so.

While you could select 4 hours from the menu to see the reboot prompt after 4 hours, you may still like to disable the display of the update prompt for a longer period of time. This can be useful if you are currently in a day long presentation that requires the computer.

There are two options to deal with the issue. You could first stop the Windows Update service for the current session. This basically blocks the prompt and any attempt to install new updates until the computer is rebooted.

The following steps are needed for this:

• Open up an elevated command prompt window. You can do that by clicking on the Start button of the operating system, entering cmd in the search form and using the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Enter to open it with administrative privileges. A user account control prompt may be displayed.
• Run the command net stop “windows update” to stop the Windows Update service for the current session.

You can restart the service with the command net start “windows update”. The service will also be started normally on the next start of the system.

The second option lets you disable the auto reboot option when users are logged on. This requires some Registry hacking and is only suggested for advanced users. You may also want to backup the Registry first before you make those changes.

• Use Windows-r to bring up the run box. Enter regedit and hit enter to open the Windows Registry Editor.
• Navigate to the following Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update
• Locate the ForcedReboot key there and change its value from whatever it is set to to 0.

Please note that this works only under Vista, Windows 7 and newer operating systems.

The third and final option is the Local Group Policy Editor which is only available in some versions of the Windows operating system. Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update and locate the following two parameters:

• No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations
• Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations

Enable the first parameter to block automatic restarts after update installations, and set the second to a high enough period to receive the reboot prompt less often.

Technology today can be used to track users across domains. A study in 2009 saw Google on 92 of the top 100 sites followed by DoubleClick with 70 presences (which are now also Google owned) and Microsoft’s Atlas with 60 occurrences.

Cookies, regular or Flash, are usually used to track users. These cookies can be accessed on all domains a company script is loaded on, which in the case of Google would mean the ability to track user movement on 92 of the top 100 domains in the world. While this percentage is surely going down a bit if the sample size increases, it is still common to be tracked across many web properties.

There are options available to not be tracked online. This includes clearing all cookies after or even during a browsing session, using private browsing modes, or installing extensions like the excellent NoScript to block third party scripts from running on a site.

TrackerBlock, available for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome offers another option. The program can make sure that you are not tracked across the web. It does so in a number of ways:

• Do Not Track Me Header – Whenever you make a request to a website, you submit a signal that tells the website that you do not want your activities tracked. Websites and companies are not obligated though. Option to delete Flash cookies.
• Opt-Out Cookies – So called opt-out cookies tell websites, services and agencies that the user does not want to be tracked. This turns off data collection and tracking off more than one hundred companies.
• Tracker Blocking – Blocks advertising agencies and companies from reading or writing cookies on your system. The extension does that for more than 550 different companies.
• HTML5 Storage – Visualizes which companies are using HTML5 to store data on your system, with options to delete the data manually.

Click on an image to see how the settings and preferences look like in the Firefox web browser.

The program combines several anti-tracking options in one interface. Especially useful is the ability to write the opt-out cookies on the system, to clear Flash and HTML5 data storage that are often used for tracking, and to block advertising companies from reading or writing cookies on the system.

TrackerBlock can best be installed at the Privacy Choice website, as it is available there for all supported browsers. It is not really clear if the extension is available for other browsers as well. It is definitely available for Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer.

This may have happened by accident, for instance by plugging in a SD card or connecting a smartphone full of photos, by discovering the new “Enable Dropbox Camera import” option in the settings, or by reading the what’s new section in the forum detailing the new feature.

The forum post provides information about the photo uploader. The importer is currently only available for Windows users and Mac users who do not run Os X 10.4 or lower.

Mac OS X 10.5 users may notice that some devices register as read only. While it is still possible to import photos from such devices, it is not possible to make device settings persistent at this point in time. Windows users on the other hand need to make sure that autoplay is enabled on their computer to use the feature. If it is disabled, the automatic importing won’t function.

There is also some device specific advice. Apple iPhone owners for instance can only import if the phone is unlocked and the passcode has been entered. Android users should use the connect as disk drive feature and not a synchronization feature offered by the phone’s manufacturer.

It is interesting to note that the feature is enabled by default if the operating system meets the requirements. Dropbox users who do not want to use the photo import feature can disable it in the preferences under the general tab.

The feature is currently only implemented in the latest experimental version of the Dropbox client which may explain why it has been automatically activated. Some forum users have criticized Dropbox for adding unnecessary features to the program. What’s your take on the addition?

Dropbox users who would like to try the new version with photo import can download it from the official Dropbox web forum. (via Caschy)

When you look at popular extensions you will notice that they differ considerable between browsers. The most popular Firefox extensions for instance are all about ad blocking, security, downloading and web development, while Chrome users like ad blocking, lookup extensions, notifiers and extensions that simplify day to day surfing. Simplifying day to day surfing extensions are also making the top list of Opera extensions along with adblocking and notification extensions.

Lets take a look at the top 10 extensions for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera.

Google Chrome

• Adblock – An adblocker for the Google Chrome web browser.
• Google Mail Checker – Notifies you if you have new mail in your Gmail inbox.
• FB Photo Zoom – Zoom photos on Facebook.
• Turn Off The Lights – Improves video watching on the Internet by dimming the rest of the page.
• Google Translate – Translate text on the Internet comfortably.
• Google Chrome to Phone – Send links and other information directly to Android phones.
• IE Tab – Display web pages designed for Internet Explorer directly in Chrome.
• Google Dictionary – View word and phrase definitions directly on the page they appear.
• Evernote Web Clipper – Save things you see on the Internet to your Evernote account.
• 
  Add to Amazon Wishlist – Add items that you see on the Internet to your Amazon Wishlist.

Firefox Add-ons

• Adblock Plus – An adblocker for the Firefox web browser.
• Video DownloadHelper – Download videos from hundreds, if not thousands of video hosting sites.
• Greasemonkey – Lets you install userscripts in the Firefox browser.
• Personas Plus – Install Firefox skins.
• Download Statusbar – Display downloads more conveniently in the Firefox status bar.
• Firebug – THE extension for web developers.
• Flashgot – Adds download manager integration to Firefox.
• 
  DownThemAll! – A built-in download manager for the Firefox browser.
• NoScript – THE perfect security extension.
• WOT – Know Which Websites to Trust – Displays security and privacy related information about websites before you access them.

Opera Extensions

• Gismeteo weather forecast in speed-dial – A speed dial extension that displays the weather forecast for a selected location
• YouTube WebM Plus – Play all YouTube videos in WebM format without Adobe Flash.
• Facebook Preview – Displays Facebook notifications, unread messages and friend requests inside a Speed Dial Cell.
• Gmail on speed dial – Displays the unread email count in a speed dial slot.
• Photo Tagger – Tag and save images that you find on the Internet.
• SaveFrom.net helper – Download files from Youtube, Rapidshare, Vkontakte und a few dozen other sites.
• Opera AdBlock – An adblocker for the Opera web browser.
• StockTwits – Stock market trending information.
• Reddit on Speed Dial – Displays Reddit karma and notifications in a speed dial slot.
• FastestTube – YouTube Video Downloader – Download YouTube videos.

At least one adblocker is among the top 10 in all three browsers. That’s however the only similarity you will find. The Opera and Chrome top 10 list no security related extensions, while the Firefox top 10 contains two. Opera is the only browser that offers speed dial / new tab page extensions, and four have made it into the top 10.

Are Chrome users more casual and less into security? Or are Firefox users downloading security related extensions because their browser is not as secure as Chrome?

What’s your take on the data?

Back in October we ran a story about the founding of Eyos GMBH, the new parent company for Adblock Plus that was founded by Wladimir Palant and Till Faida. And with the company came the idea to change the behavior of Adblock Plus. The managing directors back then mentioned that they had plans to fix the web for both web publishers and users.

Their decision to allow unobtrusive ads to pass through the filter was backed by a user study were 75% of all users stated that they were using an adblocker primarily to block annoying ads on the web, and that they would not mind if unobtrusive ads were displayed to them on websites.

Adblock Plus 2.0 for Firefox will introduce the concept of acceptable ads to all Firefox users who upgrade to or install the new version of the add-on. Users will see a notification once they install or update to the new version.

The notification states that Adblock Plus has been configured to allow non-intrusive advertising. Links lead to a help page with additional information about the new feature and the configuration were the feature can be turned off. The page explains the reason for the move (supporting websites that rely on advertising, forcing websites who use annoying ads to think about it), that users can disable the acceptable ads feature if they so desire, and what the developers consider acceptable ads.

According to their information, acceptable ads are static advertisements (no animations or sounds), preferably text only and use at most one script to avoid delays in page loading times.

A list of acceptable ad providers and websites is available here. The only big name in the list is Google, the remaining filters refer to ads on specific sites (mostly German based). The page states that Adblock Plus has agreements with “some websites and advertisers”. It is not clear how those agreements look like.

Adblock Plus users can disable the feature in the add-on’s Filter options.

I have to admit that I like the move as a webmaster. Why? Because I earn my living from this website with ads on the site. If everyone would block the ads on this site, I would be working in a 9 to 5 job with little or maybe no time to update and maintain this website.

Users still have the option to turn off the the exception list if the want to continue blocking all ads on the Internet.
The new version for Firefox is said to be released tomorrow. The Chrome version will receive an update in the coming months.

What’s your take on the move? Let me know in the comments.

Types is a lightweight Windows program to modify file extension properties under Windows Vista and Windows 7 (it actually is compatible with Windows XP as well). The application displays a list of all registered file extensions in alphabetical order in the main program window.

Each file extension is displayed with its current icon and the file extension text itself. A double-click opens the tabbed editor window to modify the file type’s properties. The Classes pulldown menu at the top can alternatively be used to select a file extension. A click on the edit button on the menu’s right opens the properties window if this option is chosen.

A filter is provided to quickly display only the selected file type in the program window.

The tabbed editor displays options to change default actions, class specific settings or the icon of the extension. The icon menu displays the current icon along with a selection of icon alternatives. A double-click on an icon displayed in the window sets it as the default file extension icon.

A browse button is available to select a different icon from the computer system. Users who want to pick a default Windows system icon need to point the browser to C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll to do so.

Changes take effect immediately without need to restart or kill the explorer.exe process.

Types functionality does not end here. You can use the program to create new file extensions or delete existing ones.

An alternative is the Nirsoft application File Types Manager which offers a similar functionality.

Types is compatible with all recent versions of the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0.

The first task after starting the program is to load a photo via the load image button. The selected image is automatically displayed in the program window afterwards. The default selection displays split lines that indicate the beginning of a new sheet. You can disable that feature in the options on the right. The lines will not be included in the printout.

The program will print the image size by default which prints the image the native resolution and DPI of the image and printer.

Options under print mode can be used to change that to fit to page (which would print out one sheet of paper with the full image on it), stretch to page (which does the same but stretches the image to fill the whole sheet that is printed) or pixel to pixel which prints the image in the printer resolution.

Only Image size allows the image to be printed on multiple pages. Scale can be used to better fit the image on a certain number of papers.

It is suggested to click on the Preview button first for a preview of how the printed image will look like. You can click on Print when you are satisfied to start the print job.

Poster It is a simple program best suited for quickly printing out photos and other images on multiple pages. The program felt a bit laggy at times, especially after loading an image into the program and after switching print modes.

Windows users can download the program from the developer website. The software is free to use for non-commercial purposes.

This application is completely free with no catch and you don’t end up with a dozen different toolbars in your browsers or applications that you don’t want. The download is free of advertizing and so is the installation. You get a quick download in a .zip file and then simply double-click the .exe file to start the installation. This application does not open automatically after installation, but does offer a desktop icon for easy access. You can download RMPrepUSB from this link: http://www.rmprepusb.tk/

The interface is straightforward and fairly self explanatory. If you want an instructional manual, there is one available at the link provided, though you might have to search around a bit. The site gets changed often and updated versions are consistently released. It is best to use the latest version.

In order to create a bootable USB, first do the obvious and insert a blank USB drive into your computer. Using this application is so basic and easy that anyone can do it (yes, really). The interface displays a list of bootloader options to choose from. By default, the Image Tools setting is set for File to USB.

The File to USB option reads the image file content then writes to the selected drive. Only binary images will work and they cannot be compressed. The USB to File option reads file content and then writes it to an image file. With either option, supported image formats are IMG, ROM, BIN, RAW, BMDK, VDI, RAM, QCOW, QCOW2, CLOOP, DMG, VPC, VHD, VVFAT, and NBD. File Info option is included so that you can obtain file information.

Select the desired bootloader and then choose a file formatting system in the field just below the BOOT TYPE list.

If the USB that you are using has any files or portable applications on it, they will be erased once you create the bootable USB. That is why using a blank USB drive is emphasized. RMPrepUSB automatically formats the drive and, as we all know, formatting erases all data.

Once you have selected the format and the bootloader, all you need to do is click Prepare Drive at the bottom pane. This will initiate the process to create the bootable USB for the selected operating system. You will see a warning stating that all data will be erased and it will ask if it is OK to do so and create a new partition.

Click OK and the application process will start. When finished, it will show that the bootable USB was created. If you want to test it, there is a Test button in the right pane. The only catch is that testing also erases the USB and you have to start over, but it is good to do this to ensure that it is working properly.

Once tested successfully, start over and then you have your bootable USB.

This includes among other things to make sure that automatic defragmentation of the SSD is disabled or that Trim is enabled on Windows 7. (Users of other [Windows] operating systems need to run software like Intel’s Solid State Drive Toolbox to run emulate the trim command.

For more optimization related tips check out Optimize Slow Solid State Drives, Optimize Windows For Solid State Drives Usage and Use A Ram Disk To Reduce Writes On Solid State Drives.

SSD Fresh is a free software program for the Windows operating system that can be used to optimize the computer automatically for using SSD hard drives. You are asked to register the program (free) by entering an email address and name.

The software displays an overview of all connected SSDs on the system after startup. Information include the drive’s name, type, size, number of partitions, file system and the pie chart visualizing the drive’s used and free diskspace. A drive’s S.M.A.R.T. information are displayed with a click on the Smart data button.

A click on Optimization displays the list of suggested optimizations. The program scans the system automatically and displays the optimization status for each suggestion automatically.

Each optimization is listed with its name, status, description and link to activate or restore the suggested feature.

Here is the list of all suggestions that are currently available in the program:

Indexing (disable search indexing)
Defragmentation (disable automatic defragmenting)
Timestamp (disable access time logs)
Prefetch (disable prefetching)
Defragmentation of boot files
Windows event logging
Systemrestore
8.3 name creation

The program can be used to enable or disable a specific feature or to optimize all of the settings at once. It is recommended to check all suggested optimizations manually before making the suggested changes. It is for instance not recommended to disable the operating system’s System Restore feature unless other forms of backup and restoration are available.

Experienced users can disable all of the suggested features manually, and maybe even faster considering that the software needs to be registered before it can be used. The program fails to address some important optimizations that include the Windows pagefile or the location of the temporary files folder on the system.

Another issue is that it is not possible to make optimizations only for select solid state drives. The changes that you make in the software affect all SSDs on the system.

Interested users can download the SSD optimizer from the Abelssoft website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

For a long time, WEP was considered to be an extremely good method of encrypting wireless connections. The acronym simply means Wired Equivalent Privacy. Originally it was only available in 64-bit configuration, but soon after 128-bit and even 256-bit encryption became available. Entering a 64-bit WEP Wi-Fi key was as simple as choosing a ten character hexadecimal number. Each character represented 4 bits, making 40 bits in total, and then 24 bits were added to complete the 64-bit key. WEP however, was proved to have many flaws mainly involving the short key size, which were relatively easy to crack. WEP also does not provide for security against altered packets – a process where packets of information is intercepted by an intruder and then altered before sending them back, making it look like the intruder is valid user.

These days, WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) and WPA2 have completely taken over from the old WEP encryption methods. You’ll probably still find WEP available on most routers, but it’s being phased out and someday it probably won’t be available at all. The main advantage WPA has over WEP is that it employs a powerful new feature called TKIP, or rather Temporal Key Integrity Protocol. TKIP is 128-bit, but instead of the key being static, it generates a new key for every packet of information that is sent, meaning it is a lot more secure. WPA also integrates a method of message integrity checks, used to defeat network attackers intercepting and altering data packets. WPA2 goes even further and replaces TKIP with CCMP. CCMP is an AES based encryption method that is much stronger even than TKIP.

In the home, you’ll probably want to use an encryption method called WPA-Personal. This is sometimes also called WPA-PSK. PSK stands for Pre-Shared Key, and is designed for home users and small offices where a server is not required for authenticating messages. It works by having each wireless device such as a laptop or smart phone authenticating directly with the wireless access point using the same key. Offices and large buildings may employ WPA-Enterprise. You can’t generally use this without a complicated authentication server set-up, but it does provide additional security.

Both WPA-SPK and WPA-Enterprise are available in WPA2, meaning even home users can now benefit from AES encryption over their Wi-Fi connections. All of these methods can transmit data at maximum speed, and you won’t notice any speed differences between each type of encryption. Therefore the recommendation is to use the best encryption you can. This means going for WPA2-PSK where you can in a home environment. There are new and more exotic types of Wi-Fi encryption becoming available, but for now even advanced users will find WPA2 more than adequate for most security applications.

If you are using wireless connections, you may want to check your router to make sure that it does not use encryption that can easily be cracked by users with the right toolset.

If you have a laptop computer with a TPM chip then using BitLocker to encrypt the content of your hard disk is a very worthwhile activity, especially for work computers where you may be carrying sensitive personal data on staff or customers, or where any data you are carrying will be subject to local data protection regulations anyway.

Bitlocker is easy to use too, you just go into the BitLocker option in the Windows Control Panel, select your hard disk(s) you want to encrypt and, if your computer has  TPM chip, turn it on.  But what atre the problems and pitfalls of using BitLocker?

Bitlocker will work very effectively and silently in the background and you won’t even realise it’s there.  This can cause problems should something go wrong with Windows and you need to either restore it from a backup, or reinstall it completely.

When you encrypt your disk with BitLocker, Windows will prompt you to store a copy of your encryption key on a USB pen Drive.  There are good reasons for this and it’s wise to keep a copy of the encryption key on that Pen Drive and keep the drive itself somewhere safe but handy.  Obviously if you’re taking a laptop out and about you shouldn’t keep the Pen Drive with you at all times where it could be stolen with the laptop, this is almost as bad as having no encryption at all.

If you need to restore Windows from a backup image however Complete System Restore in Windows will ask you for a copy of the encryption key before it can work with your hard disk(s).  It will happily look on Pen Drives and find the appropriate keys.  Without these keys the restore process simply won’t work at all, neither will any the startup repair options in Windows 7.

When you come to reinstall Windows the problems will be worse.  Before you can do this it is extremely wise to completely decrypt your BitLocker-protected drives; a process that’s probably best left running over-night.  You can create yourself all types of security problems if you try to reinstall Windows 7 over a partition that’s already encrypted, or if you wipe the original partition and recreate it and have a second partition or disk for files.

A BitLocker encrypted disk is tied to the boot loader of a Windows installation, and it is this that it looks for to check it’s not been modified before the TPM chip releases the decryption key.  It would be too easy to reinstall Windows and then find you no longer have any access to your files and data because they’re encryped and not backed up in an unencrypted form somewhere safe.

Backups are essential when you are dealing with any form of file or disk encryption, even Windows EFS (Encrypted File System) which I personally hate as it strips useful metadata out of files when it compresses them for reasons that make no sense.  You should always make sure there is at least one fully unencrypted backup copy of your files stored in a secure location.

I would also recommended keeping a copy of your encryption key in a safe location, perhaps Microsoft’s SkyDrive service.  It wouldn’t even matter here if hackers gained access to your account and downloaded the keys, as without physical access to the computer they relate to, the keys are completely useless to them.

So while BitLocker is a fantastic idea and one that I use on my own laptop paired with a fingerprint scanner, you need to be very careful when putting it into implementation.

For mobile devices like laptops though, and situations where the computer is shut down and restarted again multiple times throughout the day, the new Windows 8 Hybrid Boot technology could have a huge impact.

Microsoft is very thorough when it comes to improving the operating system. The company always starts with data of the current use. When it comes to Windows 7, Microsoft noticed that 45% of laptop users and 57% of desktop users where shutting down (and possibly restarting) the operating system. The reason for shutting down the PC, instead of putting it in sleep or hibernation, has several reasons. A core reason is that some users want their PCs completely off, while others want to preserve as much batter or energy as they can.

The core difference between the boot process in Windows 7 and Windows 8 is this. Microsoft uses hibernation to save the kernel session. Think of it as partial hibernation. The core gain is a speed increase of 30% to 70% on all systems, as “reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster”. But that’s not the only reason why it is faster. Microsoft has added multi-phase resume capabilities to the operating system which uses all cpu cores in multi-core systems in parallel to split the work load.

Here is a video demonstrating the fast startup feature of the Windows 8 operating system.

Microsoft notes that the demonstration above used a laptop with an UEFI BIOS. This speeds up the POST significantly.

One thing you’ll notice in the video was how fast the POST handoff to Windows occurred. Systems that are built using Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) are more likely to achieve very fast pre-boot times when compared to those with traditional BIOS. This isn’t because UEFI is inherently faster, but because UEFI writers starting from scratch are more able to optimize their implementation rather than building upon a BIOS implementation that may be many years old. The good news is that most system and motherboard manufacturers have begun to implement UEFI, so these kinds of fast startup times will be more prevalent for new systems.

Systems with traditional platter based hard drives and the faster solid state drives will benefit from the faster startup mode. Additional information about fast boot times in Windows 8 are available at the Building Windows 8 blog.

Game Booster 3.0′s installation should not pose troubles. Users should take note however that it will install a toolbar unless declined during installation. The developers have once again changed the interface which now displays a single button dominantly on the start screen.

A click on the button performs the optimizations automatically. Users who want more control need to click on the Configure button.

Here they can select the processes, unnecessary services, non-windows services and other items that they want disabled when a game is started on the system.

Processes include web browsers and other third party programs that are running on the Windows PC. Services are divided into unnecessary core services and third party services. Others finally offers options like clearing the computer’s RAM, killing explorer.exe, lowering the process priority of other processes or changing the power settings to high performance.

The edit button can be used to add services to the list of available services, and to edit the services and process whitelist. All edit options link to a plain text document that needs to be edited for that.

Gamebox mode offers a list of games that will automatically trigger the game boosting mode when executed. You can add new games either by dragging and dropping their shortcut into the program interface or with the help of the Add button in the program interface.

One great feature of Game Booster’s game mode is that it will restart the closed processes and services after the end of the gaming session. This is done automatically without user interaction.

The program offers additional features and services. This includes a Diagnose option which you can use to create a very detailed report about the PC, and a Tools section that offers system tweaks, defragmentation and a drivers updater.

If there is one thing to criticize it is the text-based editing of services and processes that you want to add or whitelist. The ability to optimize system resources with one click, and the automatic option to restart processes and services after the game ends should attract lots of gamers who never bothered with programs of this kind before.

While Game Booster 3.0 has been primarily designed to improve gaming performance on Windows, it can in theory be used for other resource intensive tasks as well. Just add shortcuts of resource intensive programs to the Gamebox to benefit from the same optimizations when running applications.

Game Booster is a software for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. Interested users can download it from the official program site over at IObit.

To begin, go to Start > Right-click Computer > Manage (or enter computer in the search and run box and select Computer Management from the results listing).

This is the computer management window which will open. Remember, this is a right-click to get the Manage option. Click on Storage > Disk Management. This is how you will be able to select the drive you want to partition. You should see a similar listing of all connected disks and drives after a scan of the system drives.

Choose which drive that you want to partition. There may be, of course, more hard drives on the system. External hard drives can be partitioned as well, but that is another matter. The focus will remain on partitioning an existing internal hard drive. Right-click on the drive that you want to partition and click Shrink Volume.

A query for available disk space will commence and next a window will be presented to demonstrate the size of the hard drive and what space is available for shrink. You will need to enter the amount that you want to shrink, or the size of the new partition. Obviously, it cannot be more than the amount of space available and the amount of space needed should have been carefully considered. There is no need to create an excessively large partition if it is not going to be used.

The “Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB value needs to be set. This basically cuts the selected amount of Megabytes from the current partition and makes it available for another one. Please note that you need to enter the amount in Megabytes in the menu. 1000 Megabytes are one Gigabyte, for 100 Gigabyte you would enter 100000 in the form.

Click Shrink after entering the values and the operation will take a period of time to complete, depending on the drive size and shrink amount selected. When it is complete, you will see an unallocated space representing this size selected.

Select this unallocated space and right-click and choose New Simple Volume. The setup Wizard will appear. Follow the steps and fill in the partition size. Typically, this is the same size as that selected for shrink, but may differ by a few megabytes.

Click Next and assign a drive letter of your choice. It is irrelevant which drive letter you choose as long as it is not already assigned. In this example, the drive letter M is chosen for this new partition, but you are free to select another free driver letter instead. Select NTFS and enter a name for the drive. Simply click finish and the partition has been created.

It is usually not necessary to use third party partitioning software under Windows 7 unless you run into error messages.

This article will walk you through some of the features of Springpad that set it apart from Evernote and OneNote, so if you haven’t already, you may want to jump over to Springpad’s website and sign up.

The first time you log in you will see one of Springpad’s most visually attractive features – your ready-made home theme. Make a selection, upload a profile photo if you think you need one, and then click next. Springpad will walk you through its unique organization system, which centers on the usual notebooks but makes them available through a graphical interface that you may find friendlier than that of OneNote and Evernote.

Where Springpad takes a sharp turn away from its competition is when you add notes to your notebooks by “looking things up.” For example, let’s say that you’ve just heard of a new album but don’t have time to look into it right away. By clicking the plus sign near the top of the screen and selecting Look it up, you bring up a search field which will crawl select sites for more information. By typing in the album and selecting the Album tab, Springpad presents you with a list of possible matches for your search. Selecting one adds it to your general notebook, where you can now find information about not only where the album can be purchased and for how much, but also when it was released and where the artist has been touring lately. You can even “Like” the album to Facebook, straight from your Springpad.

There are other quirks Springpad has that its competition does not. The checklist feature found in other note taking applications is streamlined in Springpad, and alerts can be set up to remind you to do things on the lists you create. You can sync your Google Calendar to your Springpad account, leaving the Google side of your calendar untouched but automatically providing additional information on Springpad’s side.

In conclusion, it is easy to see that Springpad is different from Evernote and OneNote is some distinct ways. These differences will not be right for everyone by any stretch of the imagination. Students will probably still find OneNote the best choice available, and computer users who are just trying to keep track of the bulky information they pull from the internet will still probably prefer Evernote. Yet if you are looking to add more organization to your life, if you are less interested in the information you are getting and more interested in putting it into arrangements that are more meaningful to you, then you may find Springpad the best possible option.

One fun change you can make is customizing your desktop in a pretty unique way – by changing the background image every so often automatically. While some programs exist to help you with this task, there is absolutely no reason why you cannot do it yourself with a few simple commands. Before long you can have your entire vacation album scrolling behind your open windows, changing photos every five, ten, or thirty minutes – it’s entirely up to you.

To begin, open a terminal window and open a new text file:

gksu gedit

You are going to insert a line of commands into this file, which you will later turn into a shell script. The function of each line is outlined below; you only need to copy and paste the big block of text further down. The individual explanations are so you can customize the code to fit your needs.

picsfolder=”/media/documents/photosfordesktop”

This line points to whatever folder holds the photos you want scrolling in the background. Be sure to change it to whatever folder holds yours.

cd $picsfolder

This changes the current directory to the new folder full of pictures.

files=(././.jpg)

This creates an array out of all your photos, allowing them to be mixed up for display later.

N=${#files[@]}

This simply identifies the number of pictures in the new array.

((N=RANDOM%N))

This chooses a random photo from those you made available.

randomfile=`echo ${files[$N]} | cut –characters=”1 2” –complement`

This identifies the name of the specific photo chosen.

Gconfigtool-2 -t str –set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename “$picsfolder$randomfile”

This sets the desktop with your new (temporary) photo as the background.

Now, take all those commands, put together below, and copy and paste them into the text editor you opened earlier:

picsfolder=”/media/documents/photosfordesktop”
cd $picsfolder
files=(././.jpg)
N=${#files[@]}
((N=RANDOM%N))
randomfile=`echo ${files[$N]} | cut –characters=”1 2” –compliment`
Gconfigtool-2 -t str –set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename “$picsfolder$randomfile”

Save your text document as /bin/timedwallpaper.sh and exit the text editor. Everything is ready – now you just need to tell your computer to do it. For this next part your distribution needs to have “cron” installed, a program which typically comes pre-packaged. To make sure you have it, type

sudo apt-get install cron

Once you have ensured it is installed, type

crontab -e

At the bottom start a new line and type

*/5 * * * * timedwallpaper.sh

This sets the time between pictures at five minutes. Change the number to whatever you see fit. Arrow down to the next blank line, and then type

@reboot timedwallpaper.sh

After that, press Control+x, then y, and finally enter. Exit the terminal and you are good to go. Not only will your script run however often you program it to, it will now reset each time you start your computer as well. Enjoy the scenery!

According to the official Gmail Blog, Google will drop support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3. Dropping support does not mean that users will be blocked from using Google services, but it does mean that Google may develop and implement features that no longer work in those browsers.

To put it in plain words: When Google develops new features and services, the company will not test them using the browsers they dropped support for.

Support will be dropped on August 1, and Google notes that “may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites” from that day on, and that users may notice eventually that “these apps may stop working entirely”.

From August 1 on, Google will only support modern browsers. For them, that is Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, and only the two newest versions of each browser will be supported. When Firefox 5 comes out, support will be dropped for Firefox 3.6, with Firefox 6 support for Firefox 4 will be dropped and so on.

Most features will continue to work in dropped browser versions for a long time to come. Chance is, users will be able to use those browsers indefinitely. Only features that require new technologies like HTML5 may not work in those browsers, drag and drop file uploading or desktop notifications come to mind.

No mentioning of Opera anywhere in the announcement, it is as usual ignored by Google.

What’s your take on this? Is this the right step to force users to update their browsers more frequently?

The main interface that you see after installation displays a globe and several controls on screen. you can use the mouse to rotate or zoom in and out of the globe which works on first glance similar to Google Earth or comparable programs.

You can use the mini map on top to quickly jump to a location on this world, or enter a search term under navigation to find a city or place of interest.

One of the interesting features of Marble is that it offers different map views. The default view is an atlas view which displays countries and important cities and locations. If you zoom in you will notice that it misses streets, highways and other landmarks.

You can change the default map view to nine alternatives, from Open Street Map and Satellite View over Earth at Night to a historical map or temperature and precipitation maps. There is also the possibility to change the projection from Globe to flat or mercator, or switch to a map of the moon instead.

A legend is available in the sidebar that describes some of the symbols on the map. Additional options are available to include places of interest, an accurate coastline or a coordinate grid.

A left-click on a location displays the longitude and latitude, with options to copy the information to the clipboard or to get address details, which usually reveals the next city, state and country.

A click on a city loads a data sheet with information, and a copy of that city’s article on Wikipedia.

Marble requires an active Internet connection for most of its functionality. It comes with an offline mode which basically cuts of Internet access. Already downloaded map information are still accessible, while new map information are not as they cannot be downloaded from the Internet while in offline mode.

A routing planer has been integrated that seems to tap into Google Maps. You can enter an address or search term and get routing information displayed on the screen.

Another interesting feature is the ability to load new maps or globes. A handful are offered as downloads on the developer website. These include a Hike and Bike map, Venus and Mars, additional historical maps or natural earth maps.

Maps have a small size of less than 100 Kilobytes and need to be unpacked and moved into the maps folder of the Marble installation. They become then available under Maps in the navigational sidebar of the program.

Additional features at a glance

• Map Creation Wizard – You can use the program to create your own map. The developers promise usability improvements in the next version update of the interactive globe software.
• Map Sharing – You can share maps easily now.
• Option to include photos right on the map.
• Earthquakes online service – A plugin that shows recent earthquakes on the world map.
• Map editing, options to edit and correct OnlineStreetMap tiles.
• Voice navigation, gps – Marble’s running on Nokia’s N900 smartphone, and it features voice navigation as an experimental feature.
• Supported file formats are KML and GPX
• Global online and offline routing

Marble is a very sophisticated software that combines many different features in an easy to use interface. You can download the latest version for all supported operating systems from the developer website. Versions are provided for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, Maemo and Linux.

Breaks are important to reload your batteries, to rest your eyes and fingers, to get something to eat or walk around a bit to relax your body after sitting in a chair for a longer period of time.

You are responsible for your breaks, especially if you work on your own. A program like Breaker aids you by monitoring your work time and break time.

The program can be easily configured on the first start. The work time, break time and loops are configured in the application settings. These values refer to the hours and minutes that you intend your work and break intervals to last. The loop refers to the times the work and break pairs are repeated on that day. Say you configured the work time to be 2 hours, the break time to be 15 minutes and the loop to be 4 times. This would mean that you would spend a total of 9 hours at your workplace, with four 2-hour blocks of work for a total of eight hours and four 15 minute breaks in between for a total break time of one hour.

You may have a different break pattern, say a 15 minute break in the morning, then a 45 minute lunch break and then another 15 minute break in the afternoon.

You can switch to pattern mode in Breaker to configure break patterns where work and break times differ throughout the day. You basically ignore the loop and add as many work and break time pairs as you want to the application.

A click on the start button begins the monitoring and minimizes the application to the system tray. You can move your mouse over the program icon to see the remaining work time before the next break and the number of loops that remain.

The program displays a visual notification at break time, and another notification when the break is over and work time begins again.

The program does not support audio notifications which is probably the biggest shortcoming. Breaker is an easy to use break monitor for the Windows operating system. The program needs the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and will run on 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.