Assuming you have some kind of headset or at least a cheap mike with speakers in the worst case, I bet you've already tried using some voice-over-IP services and you may have liked it except its being rather inflexible, heavy and maybe even complicated to set up.
Windows does not store wireless keys in a format that is readable by the human eye which becomes unfortunate when you have lost your key and want to access your wireless router. Without the key it is only possible to reset the router and create new keys which would mean lots of work.
Have you ever asked yourself how it is possible that users are tracked over months in P2P networks although their IP address is changing regularly ? We only hear reports about session based user identifications. Session based means that shared files of this session are analyzed and recorded opposed to tracking a user over months.
Icon Any Folder is another great application that I discovered at Donation Coder which is small, lightweight but oh so useful. There are numerous applications out there that let you pick a new icon for a folder that you specify. Most of the time though those icons are not really related and none of these tools offers a way to automatically add related folder icons to your folders.
In a move that can only be described as desperate the RIAA, or better Cary Sherman, its President, suggested at the State of the Net Conference to bundle filters that check for copyrighted data with programs that would benefit the user such as antivirus applications to counter the problem with encryption that they are currently facing. He did not stop there though and suggested that the ISP would monitor, ehm, filter, the user as well through the likes of the modem for instance.
If you want to find out which file type is opened with which application you normally take a look into the File Types tab in Tools > Folder Options. Unfortunately though this menu that is displaying all registered file types is not listing lots of information especially if you consider that you cannot resize the window which means that you can only see several file types there and have to scroll a lot.
HiJackThis
is a sophisticated security tool that checks a computer running Windows 2000 or higher for possible signs of hijacked applications. It does check lots of different elements like startup items, Browser Helper Objects, running processes and the like and presents a log of the results at the end. This log is hard to read for beginners because it contains "good" and possible "bad" elements in it and it requires knowledge of those elements to make a distinction between elements that you have to keep and those that are indeed malicious in nature.
Since Martin constantly manages to cover all ongoing news regarding cryptography and security I myself planned on writing about "any time soon", I had to look for other topics on the subject I could cover. So I decided to make good use of all the time I spend studying this kind of stuff and share this knowledge with you. And I would be very grateful, if someone could tell me in return how to defeat shirred fabrics with my sewing machine... but that's a whole different matter.
True Crypt 5 has been released yesterday and I'm very pleased with the new features that the developers have added to this awesome encryption tool. I have been using True Crypt for several years already to encrypt my external hard drives to ensure that no one without the proper password (or backdoor, hehe) would be able to access the data on those hard drives.
WinGuggle is a small application for Microsoft Windows Vista that can display the Windows Vista product key and the OEM information of the current installation. The product key might come in handy if you need to reinstall the operating system and can't find the original product key or if you want to check the product key in case you are running more than one computer with Windows Vista and don't know which computer is using which product key.
DisplayFusion 2 has just been released. The software can be used to manage multi-monitor systems with ease, the key areas are wallpapers and window management with a few extras thrown in. DisplayFusion 2 lets you easily set a wallpaper - either an image or solid color - for each monitor separately or one that spans across all monitors. Wallpapers can be set on timers to change after a certain amount of time has passed (pro version only) and the integrated Flickr search helps in finding new wallpapers. Images that are to large can be positioned to display the part of the image that the user wants.
For some time now I'm running several maintenance applications once a week to improve the performance, security and privacy of my computer. It usually takes less than two hours to run all of these applications and I would like to explain which programs I'm using, why I'm using them and what the benefit of using them is.
One of the visual effects that were introduced by Microsoft in Windows Vista was the task switching effect that displayed all open programs in a 3D environment with the user being able to browse them. I give you that, it surely looks nice and I know that some users would like to have a similar effect in a previous version of Windows.
It is sometimes quite handy to have a screen magnifier at hand to magnify part of the computer screen. This can be useful for reading small text on websites or for viewing images in greater detail. You might say that such functions, to increase the text size and to zoom into images already exists in those programs and while I have to agree with that it is sometimes faster and easier to use a screen magnifier.
The common way to create folders in Windows is to right-click the folder that you are in, select New > Folder from the menu and name the folder that appears. Creating several folders that way is a long process, that's where Make New Folder comes into play. The tiny application lets the user create folder names faster by providing a menu bar for as along as you need it.
Sometimes applications add icons to the Windows control panel. Ever wondered how they do it ? Wonder no more because you can now do the same with Your CPL, a small utility compatible with Windows XP, 2000, ME and Windows 98. The package contains two files that have to be moved into the system directory of the Windows installation. In the case of Windows XP it would mean that both files, YourCPL.cpl and YourCPLconfig.txt need to be moved into the system32 directory.
I never use a few of the keys on my keyboard, the caps lock key for instance or the pause key. Since they are not helpful in any way and can also pose a problem if accidentally pressed I decided to map those keys to another function. I was able to do that with the software Sharp Keys which makes it possible to remap any key.
You sometimes might want to create screenshots from a complete movie in a sequence so to speak. The result would be a screenshot with small thumbnails from the movie showing different scenes of it. The best program in my opinion is Image Grabber which is freely available on the Internet.
The news that European Internet Service Providers did not have to give up names of customers to members of the Music Industry and other organizations in civil cases hit the Internet by storm. Everyone seemed to think that this was a major victory for consumer rights. It probably is in some countries but let me explain how this is easily circumvented, at least in Germany.
The tiny software Vista Drive Icon changes the drive icons in My Computer when running a previous version of Windows - like Windows XP, Windows 2000 and even Windows 95 - to drive icons that resemble those of Windows Vista. They are not the same but look nice and add a new function displaying the free and used space of the drive in a horizontal bar beneath the icon.
Ink is expensive, I think we can all agree on this fact, yet programs with ink saving technologies are not available widely. Free programs that save ink are even rarer and it is nice to see that a program named Greenprint is now available in a free version which does have reduced functionality and ads.
Have you ever come across files with the extension cbr or cbz? These are the standard file formats for digital comic books. Whether you have a subscription to a comic book archive […]
If you would use an image host, put up some of your images and set them to private, would you expect them to be still accessible by anyone ? This is apparently the case over at Smugmug where a private setting simply means that the pictures and image galleries are not directly linked from the homepage anymore but can still be accessed by simply entering the url directly in the browser address bar or download manager.
The Windows clipboard can store a single text phrase in its memory, once a new phrase is copied to the clipboard the old one is lost. If you want to copy two different text phrases for instance you need to copy the first, paste it somewhere, copy the second and paste it as well. A tool that would save more than one record at a time would optimize the process considerably.
Quick Tool for the evening. The unfortunates who have to use Internet Explorer might find the following utility handy, it is called Faves Analyser and analyzes the favorites of the Internet Explorer. All favorites are scanned and tested to see if the links are still working.
Two, seemingly authentic, documents have been leaked to the German Pirate Party on Wednesday containing information about costs and technical information about a Skype trojan that could be used to eavesdrop on Skype communications. The documents contain indications of at least one operation of the Skype Trojan in Germany.
CDs and DVDs become faulty with time. If you do use them regularly they tend to become scratches and it happens that sectors on the disk fail and can't be read anymore. This happens usually in a very inappropriate moment. Before you trash the CD or DVD you could try to recover most of the data on it with a program like Iso Puzzle.
MP3 collections grow over time. You rip some CDs, record Internet radio, get some files from friends, download music from the Internet or purchase stuff in an online store. After a while you have got thousands of mp3 files from different sources and a problem. The problem is that the volume of these files does not appear to be the same. It happened before that I was constantly rising and lowering the volume when playing music on my mp3 player.
The business, RIAA, MAFIA, MPAA wants you to believe that putting content on the Internet is affecting sales of that content in a bad way, that companies sell less books, videos, movies, audio CDs because of pirates who download the media from the Internet. The funny thing is that more and more stories emerge that contradict this statement, one of these is the story about Pirate Coelho.
Downloading pictures from Flickr can be a time consuming task, especially if you find a collection that contains dozens or even more pictures that you like and would like to download. A mass downloader for Flickr would aid and help you a lot and reduce the time needed to download all the pictures that you want.
AT&T are currently evaluating if they should implement a system that would in effect monitor all traffic coming through their lines in an effort to stop sharing of copyrighted material on the Internet using P2P networks. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson came up with a weak analogy to prove his point: "It's like being in a store and watching someone steal a DVD. Do you act?"
I always knew that Lifehacker editors have created some software programs like Better Gmail, Better Google Calendar, but it was new to me that they have created a whole line of applications […]
Update: TUGZip has not been updated since 2008. While it still works for the files it supports,it is generally recommended to use a program that is updated regularly and supports new file […]
I have never seen that many shutdown options in my life. That was my first thought when I saw a screenshot of Dshutdown, a software created by the Italian programmer Dimio. It offers normal shutdown options like shutting down at a specific time or when a program is closed. These are normal shutdown options that many programs offer but here are some that you might have never heard of before.
I received an email after publishing the article about YPOPS that made it possible with all email clients to retrieve and send Yahoo Mail emails. If you are a Thunderbird user you might find the Webmail extension for Thunderbird a better choice. It adds support for more than just one webmailer. You get support for Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Lycos, Mail.com, Aol and Libero. By default the webmail extension and at least one additional component has to be installed to add webmailer support.
When I first discovered DSynchronize I could not believe that I never heard of this application before. This is probably the easiest way to synchronize files and folders in Windows. The software has a size of 161 Kilobyte and can be run from any location of your hard drive without having to install it.
Easy to use backup and sync utilities are in high demand and I would like to introduce one that's definitely easy to use. Toucan is a portable application which means it can be run from any location on a system. Two of its main functions are the backup and sync function. Backups are done with just a few clicks. Select the source folder(s) and destination file name, the format for the file name (zip or 7z), the backup type (update, incremental, complete and restore), add a password if you like, exclude files or folders and click on Go.
Keeping the installed software on your computer up to date can be a time consuming task considering that users tend to have 100+ applications installed on their computers at the same time. To make matters worse there is no general way - like in Linux - to update your applications. Some offer build in update notifications but most do not have this feature.
A vulnerability in uTorrent and Bittorrent, which is using uTorrent's core, was discovered today that effects the BitTorrent 6.0 client,
uTorrent 1.7.x, uTorrent 1.6.x and uTorrent 1.8-alpha-7834. The Denial of Service vulnerability is made possible by the way the clients handle user data.
Trend Micro RUBotted is a BETA program that scans your system for bot related activity protecting it effectively from being hijacked and misused for criminal activity. The computer is monitored for activity that is either harmful for the computer it is running on or other computers that are affected by actions from the monitored computer.
