February 22nd, 2012
These days, this type of application is only useful for aesthetic purposes … but not so long ago, there was a time when animated GIF files were sometimes used to hide viruses …
Animated Gifs are still popular on today’s Internet, albeit for different purposes. Back in the beginning days of the public Internet, webmasters used them to add animated contents to their websites. This soon died out when they realized that repeating ten second animates had a damaging effect to their website’s reputation.
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Tags: animated gif, firefox, gif, gif block
Posted in General News, software evaluation | No Comments »
February 22nd, 2012
I’m not sure if I agree with this or not, but the author definitely raises some interesting points …
This week, Google was found out to have been bypassing privacy settings in both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari web browsers, as Martin reported here. In a statement on their blog, the Corporate Vice-President of IE blogged “IE blocks third-party cookies unless the site presents a P3P Compact Policy Statement indicating how the site will use the cookie and that the site’s use does not include tracking the user. Google’s P3P policy causes Internet Explorer to accept Google’s cookies even though the policy does not state Google’s intent.”
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Tags: cookies, facebook, google, microsoft, privacy, security
Posted in General News, privacy, security | No Comments »
February 21st, 2012
This should go without saying, but it’s important to pay close attention to every single menu that pops up when installing freeware …
Bundling software with third party offers to generate revenue is one of the ways that software development companies and developers make money. The system has its advantages if you look at it from a neutral point of view. Instead of going the commercial ro
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Tags: adware, bundling, freeware, installation, installer, third party offers
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February 21st, 2012
I’m kind of surprised that there are still Vista users out there; between those who moved on to Windows 7 and those who still cling to XP, it seems like the current Vista user base would be pretty darned small at this point.
Microsoft initially planned to end support for some Windows Vista versions, Windows Home Basic and Ultimate for example, in April 2012. The effect would have been devastating for customers running those editions of the operating systems, as they would not receive patches, both normal and security related, anymore after that date. It would also mean that Windows XP would outlive these Vista editions thanks to its extended support end date.
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Tags: microsoft, support cycle, Vista, Windows Vista, xp
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February 16th, 2012
Flash users should probably check this out; it looks like a fairly important security update …
Adobe has released a new security update for Flash Player that fixes several critical security vulnerabilities in the product. The vulnerabilities affect all platforms Flash Player is available on. Affected software versions are Adobe Flash Player 11.1.102.55 and earlier for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems, as well as Adobe Flash Player 11.1.112.61 and earlier versions for Android 4.x, and Adobe Flash Player 11.1.111.5 and earlier versions for Android 3.x and 2.x.
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Tags: adobe, android, chrome, flash, google, security
Posted in security | No Comments »
February 16th, 2012
I’m not sure how well this will work after YouTube’s upcoming site redesign, but the “Download” feature looks particularly interesting …
There are quite a few things that you cannot do on YouTube due to lack of controls. It is for instance not possible to repeat videos automatically or stop videos from automatically playing if you load it on the video hosting site. Most of the annoyances and missing features on YouTube become available through add-ons or userscripts that you can install in the web browser. Some target a specific feature like the ability to download videos from YouTube, others add a bunch of features to the site.
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Tags: download, greasemonkey, mp3, scriptish, youtube, YouTube Center
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February 15th, 2012
Here’s an interesting trick that seems like it would come in handy in any application where security was a concern …
A Single-Site browser serves a very specific purpose. You use it to access one, and sometimes a handful, of websites and services on the Internet. This can be financial sites, your email accounts or other sites with personal information like a medical related sites. The basic idea is to block access to all other sites to protect the account and information from certain attack forms like cross site scripting or clickjacking.
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Tags: chrome, firefox, google, mozilla, security
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February 15th, 2012
Come to think of it, I could use a new router at home too …
Recently Netgear sent me their new DGND3700 router for review, which was very lucky as mine was playing up at the time. Now on the face of it you might not think the arrival of a router for review would be anything exciting, in this case you could very well be wrong. This model is one of the company’s top-end N600 range and it somehow manages to pack in just about every feature you could ever want in a router. The big question though is, is it any good?
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Tags: Cable, fiber, Fibre, Netgear, router
Posted in hardware evaluation | No Comments »
February 14th, 2012
Scanning protection sounds helpful … but I think I’d disable the prerendering feature myself …
Google has just released an update for the Chrome browser’s stable branch that fixes several security vulnerabilities and adds several new features to the browser. The two most prominent feature additions in Chrome 17 are Omnibox Prerendering and Download Scanning.
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Tags: cache, chrome, exe, google, msi, Prerendering, Scanning Protection
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February 14th, 2012
For a free email client, Hotmail does do a pretty good job of filtering out the spam …
Spam is one of those things that you never can get rid of completely, it seems. Email providers like Hotmail, Google Mail or Yahoo Mail are battling on the spam front ever since they opened their door for the first users. And while they managed to cut down significantly on spam in past years, there is still work to be done in that compartment. Providers are currently working together to eliminate most of the spam once and for all. Until then though, users will receive spam fairly regularly in their inboxes.
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Tags: google-mail, hotmail, microsoft, Spam, yahoo mail
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