The iPhone 4 case and screen protector giveaway sponsored by MobileFun.co.uk is over. Thanks to everyone who participated. Up for grabs was an iPhone 4 case/screen protector worth up to 20 GBP ($30 approx.).
As always, I used Random.org to pick the winner. And the lucky reader is Miguel Gonzales. I have already contacted him by e-mail.
If you missed out this time, don’t worry. I have more giveaways and contests coming your way. You can subscribe to my RSS Feed to always stay updated.
The final build of Opera 10.60 is out. Within a month, Opera Software has managed to go from alpha to final release quality. I had reviewed Opera 10.60 Beta when it was released. Since then, there haven’t been any significant changes. However, as expected, numerous existing bugs and stability issues have been fixed.
Opera 10.60 features the new Presto 2.6 rendering engine. Carakan has also been optimised to introduce further speed improvements. The result of the Peacekeeper benchmark (carried out by Opera Software) is embedded below.
Developers will be pleased with the improved standards support. With the latest release, Opera becomes the first (stable) browser to support the WebM video platform. Other new standards supported include AppCache, Web Workers and Geolocation. You can give Geolocation a spin on Opera’s special Geolocation demo page, which shows real-time downlaods of the browser on an interactive map.
Opera 10.60 has also received numerous minor visual facelifts. The ungainly O-Menu button has been replaced with a more decent looking counterpart, speed dial page adapts better to widescreen resolutions, hover tab thumbnails are cleaner and internal tabs (like Mail, Notes and History) now display icons instead of thumbnails.
Other changes include addition of the Bing search engine, live search suggestions for Wikipedia and inclusion of AVG’s services in Opera’s antimalware and anti-phishing feature. The latest build can be downloaded from opera.com/browser/download.
The 10.60 release builds upon the revolutionary Opera 10.5 and takes things up a notch. The latest update just solidifies Opera’s position as one of the best browsers out there. Unfortunately, the lack of an API still sticks out as a sore point. Opera is the only major browser which is yet to support add-ons. Firefox, Chrome, Safari and even Internet Explorer have add-ons/extensions. So Opera, what’s taking so long?
The supremely hyped iPhone 4 has just been launched across the US. The latest iteration boasts of not only an improved software (operating system) but also new hardware and a brand new design. One of the highlights of the new design is the all-glass front and back, which is made out of toughened, supposedly scratch resistant glass. Unfortunately, Engadget found that tiny yet noticeable scratches began to appear within just five days. So, while iPhone 4’s glass might be durable, its certainly not scratch-proof.
Continue reading “iPhone 4 Case and Screen Protector Giveaway”
I have always believed that it’s hard to get infected with a malware, as long as you are sensible. Obviously, this turns out to be a bit more difficult when you are constantly connected to a hostile environment, like say a hostel LAN. But, any decent antivirus should be more than enough to keep malwares at bay. Yet, I got infected with a malware, after a long long time (I mean really long). And it happened because I was careless.
What happened was that I had temporarily disabled my antivirus and forgot to reactivate it before inserting a foreign USB device. The end result was simple; I got infected with Virut (Virus.Win32.Virut.ce).
Continue reading “How I Got Infected With Virut and How I Removed It”
With the browser war at full swing, Opera is determined to claim its fair share. The Norwegian browser firm has just released Opera 10.60, which, you guessed it correctly, introduces further speed improvements, along with a host of other stuff.
Christen Krogh, Chief Development Officer at Opera Software claims that “Opera 10.60 beta is so fast, it will blow you away”, and he is right. The new build provides more than a 50% speed improvement in some benchmarks and outperforms the latest builds of Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer by a fair margin.
But, speed is not all that Opera is showcasing. The new beta sports a further refined interface and most of the rough edges present in the Opera 10.50 redesign have been ironed out. Speed dials are better adapted for widescreen monitors, internal tabs (such as Feed Reader, Mail, Chat and History) have their own thumbnail icons, thumbnail tab previews look cleaner and the Menu button looks a lot less clunky.
New technologies supported by Opera 10.6 include:
WebM video: WebM is Google’s new video codec, which is being proposed as an open and non-proprietary alternative to H.264 for web videos.
Geolocation: It is a standard API, which can be leveraged by web applications to guess a user’s location, without having to rely on GPS devices.
Web Workers: This is a new technology which enables web applications to improve performance by spawning background processes in your JavaScript applications to perform computationally expensive tasks.
AppCache: ApplicationCache or AppCache is a HTML5 standard, which enables execution of web applications offline. In some ways it’s a standards based alternative to Google Gears.
Improved Search: Opera has also introduced search suggestion for Wikipedia and Bing is now the default Speed Dial search engine.
As indicated by the version number, Opera 10.60 isn’t a vast improvement over its predecessor, but it features plenty of nice little changes, which make it a worthwhile upgrade. Although, I strongly believe that Opera needs an API to become a complete browser, it’s still a worthy option on its own. Opera boasts of an impressive array of features including Turbo, Unite, Link, Mail, Feeds and Widgets, packaged in an intuitive and appealing interface. Opera 10.60 is available for Windows, UNIX and Mac.
Earlier this year, I reviewed a tiny utility called TweakUAC. What it did was simple – it turned off all the annoying UAC (User Account Control) prompts for administrators without disabling UAC completely.
Why would anyone want to do this? Firstly, it makes sure that users without administrative privileges still gets UAC prompts. Moreover, some of the other features offered by UAC like applications being executed without admin rights (by default) or Internet Explorer running in sandbox mode will also be retained.
In my original post, Erik suggested that I try out another similar app called UAC Controller Tool. It does pretty much the same thing as TweakUAC. You can turn off your UAC entirely or switch to quiet mode and suppress the annoying UAC prompts. Another additional option offered by UAC Controller Tool is something called “friendly mode”. In friendly mode, you will be notified only when a process tries to make changes to your computer and your desktop won’t be dimmed.
Once again, UAC Controller Tool doesn’t do much that you couldn’t already do with a bit of tinkering. But, it’s nice to have a simple, no-fuss, portable, and one click utility to do the needful.
Download UAC Controller Tool (134 KB)
Cost: Freeware
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Operating System: Windows 7
Public DNS services are becoming a dime a dozen these days. OpenDNS is still the market leader, but others giants like Google are determined to mount a challenge. Norton DNS is the newest player in this segment.
Norton is trying to sell its DNS product by focusing on security. Norton DNS leverages Norton Safe Web to block known phishing and malware sites. Norton SafeWeb is Norton’s take on WOT (Web of Trust). It rates sites based on how trustworthy they are expected to be.
Continue reading “Norton DNS Protects You Against Malware Infection and Phishing”
It’s a well known fact that the performance of a Windows system (yes, even Windows 7) degrades with time. This is chiefly due to the junk that accumulates due to day-to-day activities like installing new software. Most applications modify the registry, add system files and make other miscellaneous changes that aren’t completely undone even when they are uninstalled. At best, you can use registry cleaners, third party uninstallers and system tune up utilities to limit the damage.
Nevertheless, you can improve some aspects of system performance like boot time by putting a leash on the installed utilities. A good number of applications have a habit of unnecessarily adding themselves to the Windows Start-up list. Experienced users can play around with msconfig to do the needful. However, the aforementioned utility’s unintuitive interface will probably leave normal users utterly confused. This is where Soluto steps in.
Continue reading “Soluto Speeds Up Windows Start-up and Promises to Make Your System Less Frustrating”
You have heard about tinyurl.com, you have heard about tinypic.com, and now we have tinysong.com. At its core, TinySong is somewhat similar to TinyPic. It provides a quick and easy way to share songs with your friends over Twitter, Facebook, email and so on. However, there is one critical difference.
TinySong doesn’t allow you to upload your own audio file. Instead, you are restricted to the songs already available in its database. It uses GrooveShark as its backend. Thanks to Grooveshark’s vast library, this limitation isn’t likely to be a limitation for most people. Almost all the popular songs are present in TinySong’s database. All you have to do is type a song name and TinySong would throw up a short URL to listen to that song in GrooveShark. You also have the option to instantly share a song on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon etc.
TinySong’s simplicity is its biggest asset. It’s just one of those services, which everyone should know about, as it’s bound to come in handy at some point.
It appears that Reliance NetConnect is blocking the popular file hosting service RapidShare. I am not sure if this is being done intentionally, but I can confirm that Rapidshare has been down (inaccessible) for the past couple of days. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to bypass Reliance’s measures.
Reliance is simply employing DNS poisoning. So, switching to a public DNS service will alleviate your troubles. Here is how to change your DNS server.
Click on Settings in the Reliance NetConnect dialer application.
Tick the box net to use DNS and enter 208.67.220.220 and 208.67.222.222 as your primary and alternate DNS (OpenDNS). You can use 8.8.8.8 and 4.2.2.2 if you wish you use Google’s public DNS.
Apply the changes and reconnect.
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