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Jun 12

PC Tools Firewall Plus 3.0 – A Free Vista Firewall

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, performance, Reviews, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 04, 2007 by CyberNet.

PC Tools Firewall Plus

As it stands right now there are not many Vista-compatible firewalls available. PC Tools is coming through by not only offering one, but they are even making it free! A comment by bloodsugarwilksm convinced me to try out the new Firewall Plus 3.0 that was recently released, and before I get into some of the details I want to say that this firewall works with Windows XP, 2000, and Server 2003 in addition to Vista.

We included Firewall Plus 2.0 in our list of free antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewalls post that was done back in April, and even then it was the only Vista compatible firewall available. Now they have reached another big milestone, but you won’t notice any difference in the interface.

–What’s New in Firewall Plus 3.0?–

The PC Tools developers made changes where it matters most in a firewall: under-the-hood. Here’s a list of what’s new in version 3:

New Smart Application Rules
Firewall Plus now incorporates a set of new smart application rules, designed to make it simpler and easier for you to continue working with minimal interference from your Firewall. Technically, using the Application Rules, you can create a heuristic set of rules that control how applications are allowed to connect to the Internet/network and their permissions on your PC. If an application attempts to connect to the Internet/network and there are no corresponding rules, Firewall Plus will allow you to choose how the application should behave.
Stealth Mode protection
Firewall Plus provides you with extra protection via its Stealth Mode feature which enables your system to appear invisible to other computers in the network. When in Stealth Mode, your computer is able to make connections to other computers in the network, but Firewall Plus will prevent other computers from connecting with yours.
Data Validation using SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection)
Firewall Plus validates data using SPI – stateful packet inspection – in which it performs a protocol handshake and if successful allows data transfer, otherwise all traffic is blocked – ensuring no unauthorized data is transferred onto your computer.
Application protection
Firewall Plus offers additional application protection by guarding all the applications on your PC from unauthorized access. Enabling this option will shield applications on your system from other applications attempting to take control of them and potentially use them for malicious purposes.

–What I think about it–

I’ve always been a big fan of the Comodo Firewall because of its exceptional performance and outstanding protection, but I give a lot of credit to PC Tools for creating a very strong competing product. Firewall Plus takes up a mere 5MB of memory on my Vista machine, which I don’t feel bad dedicating to something as important as a firewall.

By default Firewall Plus is configured to show notifications that are stripped down to only the information casual users would care about. If you’re a power user that likes to see every little detail then there is an “Expert” mode in the settings. Despite being a power user myself I have found that the basic notifications are nice, clean, and setup so that you can quickly respond.

Am I going to use it myself? Actually I think that I will at least until something better comes along. My heart is still with Comodo, but I’m a bit weary running a beta build of their Vista-compatible version, which has been causing some blue screens of death for some users. I’m guessing that Comodo 3 will be out within the next month or two, and at that time I’ll reevaluate my firewall needs. Right now, however, Firewall Plus is what’s protecting my PC.

–Screenshots–

I’ll go ahead and wrap things up with several screenshots of the different areas in Firewall Plus 3:

Get PC Tools Firewall Here

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Jun 09

PayPal Fighting Fraud with Virtual Debit Card

Posted in: Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 27, 2006 by CyberNet.

PayPal is entering the virtual world with their Virtual Debit Card, aimed at preventing fraud and keeping your account safe. This idea by no means is new. My CitiBank card has been offering this for quite some time now, and I’m surprised it’s taken others, including PayPal so long to follow. Regardless, it’s a great service, and one that a lot of people will benefit from. The screenshot below is what I saw when I logged into my account.

There’s more to it than just the virtual debit card. Here’s what you can expect from PayPal Virtual Debit Card after downloading it:

Fraud Site Alert: Warns you if you land on known or potentially fraudulent websites (And who hasn’t? They’re all over!)
Privacy and 100% Protection: Financial information you provide is never shared with any merchant. And you get 100% protection against unauthorized payments sent from your account.
Faster checkout: The form fill feature automatically completes shipping and billing details (you can customize what it will fill in).

PayPal Fraud Image One of the best features is the fraudulent site alert. There are so many scammers out there pummeling fraudulent emails out to unsuspecting PayPal account holders. The image to the right shows what you would see if you were on a fraudulent site. A message pops up letting you know that you shouldn’t enter in your personal information. Some browsers have protection like this built in, so this will be yet another safe-guard to protect your account.

When you go to pay online using your Virtual PayPal debit card, you’ll be issued a card number that is good for that transaction only. If someone steals your account information, it won’t matter! A new number is generated for each purchase that you make. This new service will be available to use anywhere that Mastercard is accepted.

For now, only selected PayPal users have been invited to try this service out. You’ll know if you’ve been invited by logging into your PayPal account. You’ll have a message letting you know, and a link for the download (4.8 MB). Now, in order to download the program, PayPal will call the phone number that is attached to your account and give you a security code to enter in. After you’ve entered in the correct code, you’ll be able to download the program.

After I downloaded the program, I went through the set-up process. I was asked to select an image(screenshot above). There were about 100 different images to choose from, and this image will appear on the screen every time that you use the Virtual Debit Card. If you don’t recognize your image, or don’t see any image at all, this means that you shouldn’t log into the system because it’s a fraud attempt on your account.

You’ll need to be using IE 5.01 or later for the application to be integrated into the browser, along with Windows 98, ME, 2000, NT, or XP (we tested on Vista, and it worked as well). You can still use it without IE to generate a card number, but features like the form fill and fraud detector won’t work. If you’d like to take the tour that PayPal has put together on their website, click here. If you’d like to view the tour that users will see when setting up an account, click here. The tours are essentially the same thing, however the second goes more in depth on how to use it.

News Source: Slashdot

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Jun 03

Use Yahoo! Mail or Gmail to Email Files Photos

Posted in: Email, Freeware, Gmail, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Yahoo

This article was written on July 07, 2008 by CyberNet.

Windows only
A few weeks ago I received an email from the developer of a Windows application called gAttach, and it looked pretty cool. At the time, however, the program was new and I wanted to give it some time to mature before I gave it a whirl. Since then it has had a handful of updates, and it is on its way to becoming a handy little program.

What is gAttach? It makes it possible to email attachments right from your Windows desktop using your Gmail or Google Apps email account. You can right-click on a file in Windows Explorer, click on email links in your browser, use the email option in Windows Live Photo Gallery, and much more for sending files through Gmail. It basically acts as your default desktop email client.

One of the nice things with this is that it can even handle multiple attachments, which means adding a dozen or so different files to an email isn’t such a pain anymore. Your attachments still have to be under the 20MB limit that Gmail imposes, but you can send quite a bit in that size. After it is done attaching the files all you’ll have to do is check the “Drafts” section in your Gmail account to finish sending it.

There are some downsides to the program though. The biggest one is probably that it uses Internet Explorer to log you in. If you’re not logged in Internet Explorer it will prompt you to do so, and sometimes it would tell me that I needed to login even after I already did. Plus there is no way to rapidly switch between multiple accounts. Hopefully we’ll see these things fixed for a future version.

Are you a Yahoo! Mail user? No problem. The developer has also created a version of the applications that works with Yahoo! Mail dubbed yAttach.

Get gAttach (for Gmail) or yAttach (for Yahoo! Mail)
[via FreewareGenius & Lifehacker]

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May 30

Opera for Nintendo Wii…I’m Speechless

Posted in: Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 22, 2006 by CyberNet.

Wii and Opera Comic

When Opera announced the other day that they were coming out with a Web browser for the Nintendo Wii I was pretty skeptical about how functional it could be. After all, I have used Web browsers on other devices other than a computer and it can be frustrating when you don’t have a mouse and keyboard. I don’t know why I ever doubted that Opera would make the browser truly amazing, but I was surely left in awe after watching the video below.

Now I don’t own a Nintendo Wii so I can’t vouch for how good it is first hand, but it looks pretty amazing. Entering text in using the on-screen keyboard is no where near as tedious as I thought it was going to be. In fact, I think the guy entered text in faster than most of the people I know who “hunt and peck” for keys on the keyboard.

I applaud the Opera development staff for their fine work at making a useful browser for a video game system. I can’t believe I was able to use the words “useful browser” and “video game system” in the same sentence. Before you know it something as simple as a flashlight will be connected to the Internet.

News Source: Opera Watch

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May 29

Microsoft Officially Launches OneCare

Posted in: Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 31, 2006 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Officially Launches OneCare

Microsoft has finally released Windows Live OneCare which is designed to be your PC’s one-stop solution for PC protection. They were actually intelligent when they priced the software at $49.95, which you may be thinking “I can go and get Norton for less than that!” You are right, however, Microsoft lets you install OneCare on 3 computers for each license that you purchase. I guess it is easy for them to lower the price on an antivirus solution since people will have to skip their mortgage payment for a month in order to afford Vista!

OneCare also has a 90-day trial available for those people that want to give it a test run without anything to lose. Micrososoft also made an interesting comment:

Redmond-based Microsoft has previously said that its main focus for OneCare was the 70 percent of computer users who, according to Microsoft estimates, have no additional protection at all.

That number seems a little exaggerated for me. I can see a lot of people having an out-of-date antivirus trial version that was supplied with their computer but they are still protected against any virus that was released before the software expired. I think that they are just trying to give themselves a nice pat on the back.

Windows Live OneCare Homepage
News Source: Yahoo

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May 18

uTorrent 1.8: Better Vista Support, IPv6, and More

Posted in: Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on August 11, 2008 by CyberNet.

Windows only
uTorrent is definitely one of my favorite BitTorrent clients on Windows, and after 9-months of development version 1.8 has finally been released. This new release includes full Vista support (including the Windows Firewall), Teredo/IPv6, and numerous other enhancements.

Back in December 2006 you may recall our concern as to where uTorrent was going to head since it had been acquired by BitTorrent. A lot of dedicated followers said that they would be switching clients, but here we are a few versions later and overall it still feels like the uTorrent we know and love. The new version uses just 9MB of memory when downloading a torrent on my machine which is even lighter than the previous version, and the interface is still easy to understand. What about you? After a year and a half are you still using uTorrent, or have you switched to something else because of the acquisition?

What does the future hold for uTorrent? The developers aren’t quite ready to move on to the next release of uTorrent as they will be focusing on a Mac version of the client. The first public Alpha release of uTorrent for the Mac is expected to be released in the coming weeks, and we’ll be sure to let you know once that becomes available.

Get uTorrent 1.8

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Apr 20

3D Virtual Desktop Manager for Windows

Posted in: Apple, Freeware, Microsoft, Newly Released, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on March 22, 2007 by CyberNet.

Windows Cube This isn’t quite as cool as what we’ve come to know (and love) in Linux with XGL, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Yod’m (Download Mirror)stands for Yet anOther Desktop Manager and is a new virtual desktop manager that’s available for Windows users.

The “claim to fame” for this program is that it tries to replicate what XGL offers Linux users. The program doesn’t require any installation so you can have it up and running in a matter of seconds.

Yod’m definitely has its limitations though, and anyone who has played with XGL in Linux will surely recognize some of the shortcomings:

The cube can only rotate horizontally.
You cannot have a window halfway on one desktop and then halfway on another desktop.

The application works in both Windows XP and Vista so it doesn’t take advantage of Vista’s advanced visual features, such as live previews. When I tried it out it was a little choppy switching between desktops, and while it looked cool it didn’t seem as useful as some of the other virtual desktop managers that I have used in the past.

If you do decide to try out Yod’m, these are the shortcuts (which are customizable) that you’ll want to know:

Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right – This will take you to the previous or next desktop.
Ctrl+Shift+Up – Activate and show a “far” view of the current desktop
Ctrl+Shift+Down – Activate and show a “near” view of the current desktop

To move a windows to another desktop:

Click and hold the title bar of the window.
Press and hold Ctrl+Shift to activate the cube, move the cube left or right using the mouse or arrow keys.
Release the Ctrl+Shift keys.

Yod’m Homepage (Download Mirror)

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Mar 31

Comodo Firewall 3 – They Did it Again!

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on November 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

Comodo Firewall 3 Summary

We’ve always been a relatively large fan of the Comodo Firewall Pro software, not only because it is 100% free but also because of its award-winning reputation. The new version pulls out all stops bringing full support for both XP and Vista 32-bit and 64-bit versions! After playing with this for a few hours I would have to say that they did it again … they created another amazing firewall that has won my heart, and my computer. We’ve got a ton of screenshots for you at the end of the article, so make sure you stick around.

Before I get started I wanted to send out a quick warning to everyone running both Vista and Avast! antivirus. There seems to be a critical issue with Avast! that prevents Vista from loading at startup, and in order to uninstall Comodo you’ll need to boot into safe mode. Updating to the latest version of Avast! will help ensure that Vista can load properly, but the startup time will be significantly longer than normal. For a status update on this issue keep your eyes peeled on this post in the Comodo forum.

I finally ended up getting Comodo Firewall Pro installed after that little ordeal with Avast!, and aside from that rather critical bug the program is stellar. During normal use of my computer Comodo only consumes 3.5MB of my memory, which is amazing when you compare that to some of the other firewalls out there. And I ran several bandwidth tests both with and without the firewall enabled, and I came to the conclusion that the firewall had very little effect on the speed of my Internet.

At first I wasn’t too sure about the redesigned interface, but it is definitely starting to grow on me. The old one was much more vibrant and lively, but the new one makes Comodo feel more like a professional app. And the popup alerts will surely grab your attention.

Personally I’m the type of user that prefers to see what Comodo is doing, and I want to see any alerts that it feels would be good for me to scan. When finishing up the Comodo setup process it will ask whether you want to run the advanced firewall filled with all of the alert goodness, or whether you just want the basic protection where it does most of the authorization itself (there is a screenshot of this below). If you’re installing this for someone else who isn’t tech-savvy I recommend sticking to the basic mode so that they aren’t bombarded with popups that they don’t understand.

Alright, lets take a look at some of the new security features, and then we’ll move over to the plethora of screenshots!

–New Features–

Clean PC Mode – This feature takes a profile of a new PC and all the applications in it and registers them as safe. Then, any new application trying to gain access to a computer will be denied access to the PC unless the user expressly permits it since it is assumed to be potentially unsafe. This feature prevents most types of malware and rootkits from getting installed and keeps a new PC virus and malware free.
Defense+ Host Intrusion Prevention System – Defense+ is one of the most advanced Host Intrusion Prevention Systems available in any desktop security program. This new addition helps to secure desktops and servers against rootkits, inter-process memory injections, key-loggers and more.
Advanced Network Firewall Engine – New features such as Stealth Mode to make your PC completely invisible to opportunistic port scans; Wizard based auto-detection of trusted zones; Password protection of firewall settings; Diagnostics to analyze your system for potential conflicts with the firewall and much more.
Security rules interface – Users can quickly set granular Internet access rights and privileges on a global or per application basis using the flexible and easy to understand GUI. This version also sees the introduction of pre-set security policies which allow you to deploy a sophisticated hierarchy of firewall rules with a couple of mouse clicks.
Training Mode – By selecting ‘Train with Safe Mode’, the firewall will learn how your trusted applications work and silently create rules for them.
Application Recognition Database – Includes a proprietary and continually updated white list of nearly 1,000,000 safe executables. The integrity of every executable is checked against this database to determine whether or not it is genuine before it allows it installation rights. Firewall Pro will alert users of potentially damaging applications before they are installed.

–Screenshots–

(Click to Enlarge)

Comodo Firewall Pro Homepage

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Mar 08

Microsoft Private Folder Protects Your Documents

Posted in: Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on July 10, 2006 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Private Folder Protects Your Documents

Microsoft Private Folder 1.0 is a big step in privacy for Microsoft. After downloading the software you will receive a locked folder in your user account that can only be opened with the proper password. If you try and access any files in the folder, even with an external application, you will have to provide the password.

After using The Private Folder for a little while you will notice that the folder can lock itself back up if your computer is idle for a length of time. Microsoft also places a shortcut on the user’s desktop that will link to the folder which prevents people from having to “wander” around their computer looking for the folder.

This is actually a nice concept and I think it should be a feature incorporated directly into Windows. Many people don’t take enough precautionary measures to make sure that their documents are free from being accessed by outside sources. This Private Folder can protect your information so that it isn’t susceptible to a virus or other malicious attacks. Microsoft has definitely done something right this time.

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Feb 24

Wine 1.0 CrossOver 7.0 Released Today

Posted in: Freeware, Linux, Mac, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

wine birthday Mac; Linux
It took an astonishing 15 years to complete, but Wine 1.0 has finally been released! Wine, for those of you that don’t know, serves as a way to run some Windows applications in Linux without the need for an emulator. The team has done their best to recreate the Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL’s) that are used in Windows, and it all had to be done without an ounce of code from Microsoft.

The project has been very successful, and Wine 1.0 brings thousands of Windows-only applications and games into the Linux world. Take a look at the different rating systems they’ve come up with for the different applications, along with how many programs fall into each category:

Platinum (1300+ programs): Applications which install and run flawlessly on an out-of-the-box Wine installation (ex. Half-Life 2, Photoshop CS2)
Gold (1500+ programs): Applications that work flawlessly with some special configuration (ex. World of Warcraft, Command & Conquer 3)
Silver (1000+ programs): Applications with minor issues that do not affect typical usage (ex. Call of Duty 4, StarCraft Brood War)

Similarly CrossOver 7.0 for Mac and Linux was released today, and it now supports Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook) in addition to the Adobe CS2 line of products. CrossOver 7.0, unlike Wine, will run you at least $39.95, but might be well worth it if you really want to run Office 2007.

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Hasta La Gadget!