May 16th, 2012
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when a search engine tries to figure out what I’m searching for before I tell it what I’m searching for.
Google Web History is an automatically turned on service for Google account users who use Google search while being logged into that account. According to Google, it contains information about the searches users do, and the pages that get clicked on. Users can access the web history online, and Google uses the information to personalize the search results. (If you are a Google user, and logged in while using the search engine, you may want to consider turning off the Web History feature).
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Tags: chrome, Chrome History, google, Web History
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May 16th, 2012
Most digital photo files contain a lot more information than just the photographic image. If you’re concerned about privacy, then here’s a handy tool for stripping out that extra info.
The majority of photos that you take with your smartphone or digital camera do not contain only information about the scenery that you have just taken a picture of, but also metadata (also known as Exif data). Depending on the configuration, this may include location-based information, technical details like shutter speed as well as information about data and time the photo was taken.
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Tags: digital photography, Metadata, Metanull, privacy
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May 15th, 2012
More fun with overly zealous copyright protection, AKA, “Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater, Part 3,952.”
Times are rough for file hosting sites, with some being shut down by the authorities or in a lengthy legal dispute, while others are ceasing their business operations or changing the way they do business. We have seen all of this began at about the same time the Megaupload incident happened. Megaupload, one of the most popular file sharing sites back then was taken down back then on request of U.S, authorities. The gap was soon filled by other file sharing services, even though only a few saw such a rapid growth in popularity as Rapidgator.net.
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Tags: copyright laws, file sharing, hosting, megaupload, rapidgator
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May 15th, 2012
If you’re unhappy with Firefox’s new PDF Viewer, here’s how to get rid of it …
Before I take a look at how you can remove the PDF Viewer extension in Firefox, I’d like to spend a moment talking about why it is necessary to write about it. Add-on removals should be straightforward operations after all. The big issue here is that you can’t remove add-ons installed by third party software from within Firefox. And third parties in this regard also means Mozilla, if the company decides to add an add-on to Firefox automatically. While you can disable those add-ons, you can’t remove them.
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Tags: firefox, firefox add-ons, mozilla, pdf viewer, PDF.JS
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May 14th, 2012
This program doesn’t really do anything new that Windows itself doesn’t do already … but it does provide a simpler means to select which programs will be blocked.
Microsoft has improved the firewall in the Windows 7 operating system, and while that is a good thing, the firewall is still nowhere near as feature complete or comfortable to configure than its third party counterparts. The blocking of programs is for instance overly complicated.
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Tags: Firewall App Blocker, program blocking, windows 7, Windows firewall
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May 11th, 2012
Here’s a new Firefox feature that you’ll either love or hate …
In their effort to do away with all extra windows in the Firefox web browser, Mozilla has landed in-content preferences in the latest Firefox Nightly builds. What this basically does is move the preferences, which previously were displayed in a preferences window, into their own options tab in the browser when they are opened by a user. This is pretty much the same way Chrome handles its preferences, and while it does not sound like too bad of a feature to begin with, its current stage leaves something to be desired. More about that later.
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Tags: chrome, firefox, In-Content Preferences, mozilla
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May 11th, 2012
If you’ve noticed that Facebook or Grooveshark aren’t behaving the way that they used to, this might explain why:
If you have been one of the five hundred thousand or so Grooveshark app user over at Facebook, you may have noticed that the app is not working anymore. Or, maybe you are one of the users who used a Facebook account to log in to the account at the Grooveshark website. Then, you also may have noticed that the login is not working anymore.
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Tags: copyright infringement, facebook, Grooveshark, login
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May 10th, 2012
This looks like a handy tool for Windows users who need to custom tailor the Windows interface to fit their computing needs …
The program formerly known as Windows 7 Tweaker is no more, it is now known as Windows Tweaker. Its developer has just released version 4.0 of the software that Windows users can use to tweak certain features and parameters of their operating system. Windows Tweaker 4.0 supports all client side Windows systems from Windows XP up to the soon to be released Windows 8.
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Tags: microsoft, windows, Windows Explorer, Windows Tweeker
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May 10th, 2012
When you add those 20 seconds of unskippable warnings to the five or ten minutes worth of unskippable ads at the beginning of a DVD, the pirated stuff starts looking better and better all the time.
If you are living in the United States, and like to watch a movie from time to time, you are in for a new treat courtesy of the government, the FBI, ICE, and six major movie studios. According to an Ars Technica, new movies will soon carry two unskippable government warnings, that legit buyers will have to look at before they can actually start watching the movie.
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Tags: copyright, entertainment industry suicide, pirated media, pointless warnings
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