Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Have you ever been on another computer and wished that you had an antivirus program? Maybe you were trying to clean up a computer for a friend, or maybe you received an email attachment while using a public computer? One thing is for sure, and it’s that having the best antivirus is important, but there are times where you just need something.

Today we’re going to present you with three portable antivirus solutions that can be used for scanning files in an emergency. They are all self updating, and require absolutely no installation. But remember, these are not replacements for installed applications as they are only made to do on-demand scanning.

–Portable ClamWin (Homepage)–

Click to Enlarge

ClamAV is an extremely popular open source antivirus application. It was recently ranked very highly in the quest for the best Linux antivirus, it even beat out many of the highly acclaimed commercial solutions. Shortly after that the makers of the application were acquired by Sourcefire.

To get Portable ClamWin up and running all I had to do was run the executable, which then extracted several files to a directory. The first time that I ran it I was forced to update the program because the portable version comes with no virus definitions. So you may want to make sure to run the program at least once before throwing it on your USB drive, because if you don’t have an Internet connection you’ll be out of luck.

This is my top recommendation for portable antivirus software because it frequently receives updates.

Portable ClamWin will occupy about 19.1MB of room on your drive.

–Portable Antivirus (Homepage)–

Click to Enlarge

This program appears to be relatively new, and from what I can tell it has been around for less than 7 months. My favorite thing about this generically named program is that it is composed of a single file. It even comes bundled with a set of virus definitions so that it is ready to go out-of-the-box. Although the included virus definitions are just a small set relative to the other apps mentioned here.

There is a real-time scanning option available on this application, but it will be disabled if you are running it from the standalone file. This makes sense though, because if you were to use this on a USB drive it would create insane amounts of overhead, and would greatly hinder your ability to access the drive.

One nice touch that the program offers is a useful System Tray icon. From there you can start a full system scan, check for updates, or close the program all together.

Portable Antivirus will occupy about 847KB of room on your drive.

–MicroWorld Free Antivirus (Homepage)–

Click to Enlarge

This is one of the last tools that I stumbled upon, and I thought it was just a virus scanner like the others that I’ve listed here. It does scan your memory, registry, files, and more for viruses, but it also has an extremely useful network activity monitor.

In the network activity monitor you’ll be able to keep track of any communication going in and out of the computer. It also shows the ID of the computer “on the other end” so that you know who you are communicating with. If you ever try to diagnose a friends computer that is plagued with unknown programs and files, this will be a good way to identify the software that is frequently communicating with the outside world.

MicroWorld Free Antivirus will occupy about 18.8MB of room on your drive.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on September 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

There are plenty of backup services available that offer small amounts of storage space at no cost, but very few offer unlimited storage. The first two that come to my mind is Allmydata which charges $4.99 a month for unlimited storage, and Mozy Home which charges $4.95 per month. So for about $60 per year you can walk away with all of your important data safely backed up.

There’s also another service called Carbonite that recently launched a much acclaimed version 3. Their unlimited service costs about $50 per year, and with that you get a backup solution that is heavily integrated into Windows. With Carbonite installed your files and folders will have some added options to the right-click menu to control the backup process, and the central backup center (pictured above) keeps you up-to-date with how the backups are going.

I haven’t tried Carbonite out myself, but they do offer a 15-day trial so that you can see whether you would like the service before you get knee-deep in it. It’s also supposed to be available in retail stores such as Staples, Best Buy, and CompUSA.

Note: Right now it is only for Windows, but a Mac version is scheduled for release in October.

News Source: eWeek
Image Source: Flickr
Thanks for the tip CoryC!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Web Browser Wednesday

It’s been a year and a half since Mozilla shipped Firefox 3 Alpha 1, and what we saw initially wasn’t very breathtaking. For this first milestone release Mozilla focused on backend improvements that would, in the long run, make the browser a better competitor in a world that is largely dominated by Internet Explorer. Fast forward to the final release of Firefox 3 yesterday and we’ve got ourselves a rich browser that I believe Firefox users will embrace with open arms.

Firefox 3 has its sights set on Internet Explorer as it comes barreling through with over 15,000 updates. There have been enhancements to performance, stability, rendering, security, bookmarking, and much more that makes this the best version of Firefox yet. For the first time we’re going to list out all of Firefox 3′s best features for those of you who are jumping on the bandwagon for the very first time, and we’ll even take a brief look at the browser’s performance.

–Table of Contents–

In this article we’re focusing on several different aspects of the Firefox 3 browser, and we thought it might be easier for you to navigate if you had a table of contents. Here are the main topics that we’re going to cover:

1. Themes
2. Performance
3. Security
4. Usability
5. Developers
6. Conclusion

–Themes–

One of the most frequently discussed aspects of Firefox 3 is the fact that it ships with a handful of different themes that are all customized to the operating system you’re using. They’ve got one for Vista, Linux (varies depending on distribution used), Mac, and Windows XP. Each one focuses on trying to make the browser appear as though it was designed specifically for that operating system. There is, of course, some debate as to whether Mozilla succeeded in doing so.

Firefox 3 themes, from top to bottom: Vista, Linux, Mac, XP

The theme changes go beyond just a few changed icons, too. As you can tell in the screenshot above there are some rather drastic differences between each of the themes. A good example of that is the address bar and search box which have rounded corners on some operating systems, and don’t on others.

As you begin to dive a little deeper you’ll notice that the OS-specific skinning impacts more than the browser’s main window. Everything from the settings to managing bookmarks have all been designed to fit in with the general appearance of your operating system.

–Performance–

We’re not going to dive deep into the performance realm today because that’s something we plan on exploring more in the future. One thing that we can say is that the performance hasn’t changed much since our last extensive test, especially in the memory usage department. Firefox 3 still knocks the socks off of the competitors when it comes to minimizing the amount of memory it uses.

But you know darn well that we won’t move on without giving you some sort of benchmarks. We decided to see how Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, and Safari 3.1 do on the SunSpider JavaScript test. We left Internet Explorer out of this because it is pretty much the only one not claiming that it has significant JavaScript speed improvements. Here are the results from the three browsers running on Windows XP (a smaller number is better):

1. Firefox 3: 3057.6ms (results)
2. Safari 3.1: 3464.0ms (results)
3. Opera 9.5: 4440.0ms (results)

What’s interesting is that on Apple’s Safari site they say that “it executes JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 5 times faster than Opera 9.” While that may have been true at one point, I think they’ll need to be updating their facts. Although you know darn well that they won’t admit defeat to Firefox 3.

–Security–

Security is normally one of the main ways that people try to “sell” Firefox to their friends and family. They talk about how vulnerable you could be if you’re not using Firefox, and it looks like this will continue to be a selling point even in Firefox 3. Take a look at some of the new security features it brings to the table:

• Enhanced Web Forgery Protection: Firefox will try and block any sites that are infested with malware (example site), or are trying to compromise your confidential information through a phishing attack (example site).
• Antivirus Integration: After you download a file Firefox 3 will automatically scan it using any antivirus software that you have installed on your computer.
• Vista Parental Controls: I wish Mozilla got around to integrating with Vista’s parental controls a little better, because the only thing Firefox 3 will honor are any download restrictions that have been established. That’s nice and all, but website blocking is something most parents are probably concerned about more.

–Usability–

While Firefox 3 has a lot of improvements that are constantly working behind the scenes, there are also some great things that you’ll want to start taking advantage of right away. Here are the main features that you surely don’t want to miss:

• Enhanced Address Bar (a.k.a. Awesome Bar): The address bar has received one of the biggest overhauls, and it now uses an intelligent algorithm to determine which results you’re likely looking for. It uses a combination of the recency and frequency of your visits to figure out what belongs at the top of the list.
  
• Better Download Management: The download manager in Firefox was revamped a bit, but what’s more important is that in the Status Bar of the browser you can now keep an eye on how much longer your downloads have. Plus you can resume your downloads after you’ve restart the browser.
  
• “Remember My Password” isn’t so annoying: I absolutely hate when a browser asks you if you want it to remember your password before you even have a chance to see if what you entered was correct. I use different passwords on different sites, and now with Firefox 3 it will popup with an information bar along the top of the browser asking if I want it to remember my password. What’s nice about that is it doesn’t interrupt the page from loading, which means you can actually see whether the login credentials you used were correct before having Firefox store that information in its database.
  
• Simplified Bookmarking: Bookmarking a page is now as simple as clicking on the star located in the address bar. If you click the star a second time it will let you edit details such as the name of the bookmark, the location, and even any tags that you think will help find it in the future.
  
• Smart Bookmarks: The Smart Bookmarks are kind of like the automatically generated music playlists that applications like iTunes create. These special bookmarks can show a listing of your most visited sites, places you recently bookmarked, and more. We’ve even put together instructions on how to create your own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3.
  
• Full Page Zoom: By default when you go to zoom in and out on a website it will now zoom the entire page instead of just increasing or decreasing the size of the text. This is more like what the other mainstream browsers do, but you can always go back to the old way of “zooming” only the text if you want.
  

–Developers–

There are also some great things that developers of websites and extensions alike will want to take advantage of. Here are some of my favorites:

• Offline support: Firefox has the ability to take a website offline so that users can still interact with it even when not connected to the Internet.
• Web-based protocol handlers: We’ve already shown you how Firefox can integrate with online services (here and here), and hopefully there will be more web applications looking to take advantage of this feature.
• Animated PNG graphics: Could this be the thing that drives animated GIF’s into the grave?
• Several new XUL elements for extension creators: Now add things like date and time pickers to your extensions.
• And much more!

–Conclusion–

Firefox 3 is undoubtedly a next generation browser, and I’m anxious to see how well this version can compete against the other top-dogs out there. Let us know in the comments what you think of it, what your favorite features are, and when/if you plan on making the leap to Firefox 3.

P.S. Keep an eye out for next Wednesday’s CyberNotes as we show you some tweaks that can help make the browser even better.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on September 29, 2006 by CyberNet.

The Google Reader just got a huge update yesterday which is simply amazing. It took an entire day but someone finally found the Easter Egg that they implemented.

Here is what you need to do if you want to see it:

1. Open the Google Reader.
2. Go to Settings->Goodies and drag the “Next” button (pictured above) onto your bookmarks toolbar. This button is designed to take you to the next unread item in your feed but you won’t view it in Google Reader…it actually takes you to the next website article.
3. After you have no more unread items and you hit the “Next” button you will see the Easter Egg…which can also be seen by going to this URL:
   
4. The “End of the Internet” link goes to this site.

It is always good to see that the Google team has a sense of humor. I wish they would put more Easter Eggs in their services because they are always fun to accidentally stumble upon.

News Source: Inside Google

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on June 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Windows only
When it comes to photo editors there is definitely no shortage of them available. It’s almost a guarantee that a Windows user can find a freeware application that will do all the things they want, and more. Some prime examples are Paint.NET, PhotoFilter, and the feature-rich Photoscape. Today we’ve got another one that we would like to add to our favorites: Photo! Editor.

What makes this application so special? Aside from being freeware it offers a lot of features that are often too complex for casual users, and presents them in a way that most people will understand. You can do all of the common tasks such as rotate images and remove red eye, but there are also several features you won’t find in most standard image editing applications.

Once you get the program fired up you should see something like this:

(Click to Enlarge)

–Click…Done!–

Photo! Editor doesn’t want to confuse you with settings that you won’t understand, and for that reason it has several auto-correct features that take only a single click. This includes removing the red eye, enhancing the colors, and removing noise (despeckling). You’ll find all of these options located on the main toolbar.

For those of you that want a little more control over the settings you can click the arrow located next to each of those buttons. Then you will be able to configure the details for each of those settings, and tweak them until you’re little heart is content. Each time you try to manually configure a setting it will provide “instant help” along the right side of the screen. That way you won’t have any troubles trying to figure out how a feature works.

I do want to say that the feature for removing the noise actually works well. Below is a portion of a photo that I took several years ago with a 1MP camera, and because of the lighting there was some significant noise. Take a close look at the left portion (unedited), and then look at the right half (with denoise applied). The program significantly improved the photo by smoothing everything out.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Make Up (Remove Blemishes)–

How many times have you wanted to touchup a photo before, but thought it was too much work? This photo editor has what’s commonly referred to as a healing brush, and it can remove blemishes from just about anything with very little effort on your behalf. To demonstrate this feature I snagged a photo of a car that had some rust on it, and gave myself 30 seconds to try and improve it using the healing brush in the program. Here are the before and after shots:

It’s obviously not perfect, but you also have to consider how large the areas were that I was trying to fix. In most cases the healing brush will be used to repair tiny blemishes on faces, and so this example is a little bit overkill. Oh, and there is even a special healing brush it includes that can be used to whiten teeth in a photo.

–Straighten Images–

Imagine that you just snapped an awesome photo of the sunset, but realized when you got home that you didn’t have the camera level with the horizon. What program would you use to rotate the image so that the horizon is beautifully level? Can’t think of one? Well, you can use Photo! Editor now.

In this app all it takes to straighten a photo is drawing a line that goes along the horizon. It will then take that information and straighten the image accordingly.

(Click to Enlarge)

–Caricature (Have Some Fun!!)–

I found this image of an adorable dog, and I just couldn’t hold myself back from using it with the Caricature feature. How this works is you open a photo with the Caricature setting, and then start warping it. Here’s what my initial screen looked like:

(Click to Enlarge)

I played with the photo for less than a minute, and all I used was a simple click and drag technique. After I was done I think it’s safe to say that the dog looked a little more interesting than it did before:

(Click to Enlarge)

I think this is actually my favorite feature of the entire application, and the best part is that it’s so easy to use. Go ahead, open up some photos of your friends and go to town! You know you want to.

P.S. You are 100% liable for any relationships destroyed with friends and family due to embarrassing photos created using this feature.

–Overview–

If you do decide to give this app a try I’m sure you will see why it’s so great. It’s very straightforward, and has all kinds of features I haven’t found in traditional photo editing applications before. Let us know what you think, and be sure to post links in the comments to some of the caricatures you make.

Get Photo! Editor
Thanks to Radu for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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