Add ProEject to your USB drive toolkit
Once you’ve finished working with a USB flash drive then it’s easy just to unplug it right away, but of course that’s usually not a good idea. If the Windows cache contains changes that haven’t yet been written to the drive then removing it may result in lost data, so it’s always best to eject the drive first.
And if you find the standard Windows eject option isn’t as easy as you’d like, then there are plenty of capable alternatives around. RemoveDrive, for instance, which we wrote about back in November, makes it easy to eject drives from a shortcut or a custom script. But ProEject takes the idea considerably further.
Everything you need to know about e-textbooks before Apple gets involved
Apple is holding an education-themed event this week, and the usual gamut of unnamed sources and rumor-mongers have come to the consensus that the event will focus on Apple's plans to enter the e-textbook business, and possibly unveil a new interactive e-book publishing platform.
This rumor springs from the best-selling biography of late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in which Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson said textbooks were "the next business [Jobs] wanted to transform," and that the company had already had several series of meetings about making Apple e-textbooks a reality.
Mount disc images with ISO ToolKit
ISO images have been a popular means of distributing software for a very long time, so it was good to see Windows 7 finally introduce a tool to burn them to disc.
It’ll probably be Windows 10 before we get to see the operating system provide all the ISO handling features you’re likely to need, though, so if you regularly need to work with disc images then a quicker solution might be to download the ISO ToolKit.
Will your website go dark to protest SOPA?
Jan. 18, 2012 is designated SOPA blackout day, with prominent websites planning to go dark in protest of two bills working through Congress -- Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). If you've got a big school project due Thursday and plan on using Wikipedia, get your research done today. The community-based encyclopedia plans to go dark tomorrow, and it's not alone.
The proposed legislation has generated gigabytes of negative responses, which included a Go Daddy boycott for supporting SOPA (since retracted) and culminates in tomorrow's blackout. Two months ago, I posed poll: "US Congress is considering two new copyright bills: PROTECT IP and Stop Online Piracy Act. Do you support them?" More than 3,500 responses later, 95 percent answered "No". You're not alone.
Pokki creates desktop apps from websites
You have undoubtedly noticed that an ever-increasing amount of the time you spend using your computer is online. The same is true of your phone, and when you’re out and about it is quite usual to use dedicated apps to access services such as Facebook and Twitter. But when using a desktop or laptop, the vast majority of people will head straight to the website of various online services. Thanks to Pokki this may change.
Pokki is a platform for a series of applications that can then be used to transform a range of websites and online services into desktop apps. The value of being able to access the Internet through the desktop rather than a browser is something that has been recognized in the past -- even Microsoft noticed the potential early on with its Active Desktop component in older versions of Windows. Pokki is somewhat more advanced than this and other similar options that are available, offering you a series of specially designed apps, each of which have been built from the ground up with a particular web service in mind.
Got USB device troubles? Try BusDog
When a favorite USB mouse stopped working last week, I tried all the usual techniques to try and get it running again: so I unplugged and reconnected it, looked for driver updates, checked Device Manager for clues, and so on -- but with no success.
Could the problem be something more fundamental? I downloaded BusDog, an open-source USB traffic sniffer to help me find out.
Game Manager 3.0 -- the Windows Media Center of fun
In the world according to Microsoft, the Windows Games Explorer should provide everything you need to organize, update and manage your favorite games. And it’s not too bad: with a little work you can get a display that includes game information, ratings, cover art and more.
If Game Explorer just isn’t powerful enough for your needs, though, you might find the free Game Manager useful. It also provides a database of games that you can organize and view in several ways, but can do this via a Media Center-style full-screen interface, and includes plenty of extra functionality as well.
Zappos hack exposes personal information of 24 million customers
Data on up to 24 million customers of online shoe retailer Zappos was compromised according to an email sent by its CEO Tony Hsieh on Sunday. While Hsieh says that full credit card information is safe, hackers may have the last four digits of the cards.
Hackers accessed names, email addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers. Passwords were also compromised, however in encrypted form. As a result, the company sent out an email to all its customers, advising them to change their passwords as a protective measure. Zappos is also asking customers to reset their passwords elsewhere where it may be the same.
10 years after Bill Gates' Trustworthy Computing memo: What it meant for Microsoft and why every tech company needs one
I joined the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) in April 2001 and left the company in December 2010. During that time I was involved in security and privacy at Microsoft, culminating in my role handling worldwide crisis communications for security and privacy incidents. I am one of a handful of people who knows what the security world was like at Microsoft before Chairman Bill Gates' Trustworthy Computing memo on Jan. 15, 2002. I was also part of the growth and transformation that memo brought about over the years.
As Microsoft marks the tenth year anniversary of that memo, it seems a good time to share a former insider’s view of what it really meant and accomplished. As well, I'll share thoughts on why, in the next 10 years, it’s critical that other technology companies follow Gates’ lead.
Samsung's Bada will merge with Tizen. Just WTF is going on here?
According to a Forbes report, South Korean consumer electronics heavyweight Samsung is integrating the still-new, still-unreleased open source operating system Tizen into its surprisingly popular Bada mobile operating system.
Tizen is the latest incarnation of the seemingly ever-changing mobile Linux distro formerly known as MeeGo; which itself was the combination of Nokia's Maemo and Intel and the Linux Foundation's Moblin projects.
Motorola fends off Apple's patent attack, Microsoft next
Is Apple a victim of its own success? After a considerable string of patent wins in the courts against Android through much of 2011, the tide has turned. The International Trade Commission ruled that Motorola Mobility does not infringe on three patents that Apple sued over in October 2010.
Motorola filed an ITC complaint at that time targeting the Macbook, iPad, and iPhone. Apple retaliated by filing a suit of its own, accusing the Libertyville, Ill. phone manufacturer of infringing on its own patents, two of which deal with touchscreen technology.
8 CES tech trends that will change your life
We're just back from the consumer electronics extravaganza in Las Vegas where we saw some amazing new gadgets and gear including new TVs, tablets, smartphones and new high tech automobiles.
Much of the technology we saw may not be available for some time (if at all) but we did see some trends that will sooner or later make many of your high tech possessions obsolete.
Keep apps current with UpdateScanner 2.0
Staying on top of software updates can be tricky, particularly if your favorite apps have no means of telling you a newer version is available. What feature updates, performance tweaks and bug fixes could you be missing out on?
This is where the Downloadcrew UpdateScanner, from BetaNews' sister site, comes into play, giving you a single, convenient location for software update checking -- and we’ve just released version 2.0, packed with lots more useful features too.
SKTimeStamps -- so your boss won't know when you finished that document
If you want to view the created, accessed or last modified dates of a file from Explorer then that’s easy enough (right-click, select Properties).
Windows doesn’t provide any easy way to directly modify these values, though. Which can be a problem, as they’ll sometimes reveal more information than you might like. So if you don’t want your boss to know that the presentation you’re about to hand in was actually completed in a panic only 10 minutes earlier, say, then you’ll need a little third-party assistance --and SKTimeStamp could be the ideal choice.
Rule your social life with Zimbra Desktop
Managing even just the day-to-day basics of your online life can be a challenge, these days, with work and personal email accounts to monitor, Facebook and Twitter to check, calendars, task lists and more to be monitored.
But if you’re tired of navigating a raft of interfaces just to do essentially the same thing - check for, or send messages -- then the free Zimbra Desktop may be able to help, as it integrates many useful services into a single application.
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