Month: November 2006

It seems these days that computer users fear spyware more than they do creepy crawlies or ghosts – perhaps with good reason. No one wants their system to be overrun my malicious code that detects and tracks your online activity. Of course, there are plenty of anti-spyware tools available that are designed to keep your machine free of intrusive spyware.

Although usually very effective, traditional anti-spyware software has a tendancy to slow down your system and leave you hanging around while it works its magic. However, the latest release from Max Secure Software, Max Spyware Detector 2.0 is designed to eliminate prying applications in seconds thanks to its built-in Smart Scan technology.

“Consumers have been asking for an anti-spyware product that can detect spyware and doesn’t take all day to do it,” explains Sanjay Pradham, CEO of Max Secure Software. “Before Max Spyware Detector was available, consumers were spending an average of 25 or more minutes waiting for their anti-spyware product to do its job, but now as a result of Max Spyware Detector, we’ve been able to cut consumers’ scan time down to only a few minutes at the longest.”

You would think that skipming on scanning time would allow certain spyware apps to go through undetected, but MaxSpyware seems to deliver a thorough scan and picked up virtually everything we could throw at it in terms of installing known spyware apps. While not as thorough as Ad-Aware, the application is great for those who want to ensure they’re not being watched while at the same time saving on scanning times.

Now that Adobe has successfully monopolized the graphic design market following its aquisition of Macromedia, insight into the company’s bumper software portfolio is becoming increasinlgy sought-after. Whether you’re looking to build websites, design posters or produce magazines, Adobe now rules the roost over the best packages available.

Thankfully, the corporation is far from being a big, bad money-making machine (well, maybe to some extent) and has always made the effort to foster a community of users and educate them on how to deliver the best results through its software. Whether you’re using Photoshop, GoLive or Illustrator, the Adobe Creative Suite Video podcast provides a great way to extent your skills with these programs. With professional demonstrations of how to manipulate the apps to produce wonderful creations, the site is perfect for anyone who wants to get away from merely Photoshopping their mate’s head onto a gibbon.

The more popular Mozilla Firefox gets, the more aggressive it is becoming about protecting its product – as any Linux user will tell you. Linux users have been denied the massively popular navigator due to Mozilla’s refusal to allow Linux to bundle it without using its name and logo. This obviously goes against the anti-commercial ethos of the Linux community who refuse to carry any commercial software on their operating system.

GNU users have therefore come up with their own version of Firefox called “IceWeasel” – a name that was coined by GNU developer Nathanael Nerode as a parody of “Firefox”, changing “fire” to “ice” and “fox” to “weasel”. The logo isn’t much more imaginative either (pictured right) – it looks identical to the Firefox logo except its ice blue and the fox has been replaced by what looks like a giant Ferret playing with a giant ball. This has become known as the Gnuzilla project which runs in parallel to another being prepared by Debian whose logo follows the same colour scheme but looks like a dead rat that’s been steamrolled by the same blue ball (pictured above left).

Gnuzilla IceWeasel removes Firefox’s artwork and plugins whilst Debian IceWeasel has also removed most of the Firefox branding, but still uses the Mozilla plugin finder service to download and install plugins. There are plans for the two projects to collobarate in the future which might result in the creation of just one browser.

IceWeasal is already available as a free download whilst Debian enthusiasts will have to wait until sometime in December when the next version of the Debian Etch operating system will be released. Only then will the battle of the rodents commence.

It looks as though the venerable British comedy troop, Monty Python, had it right all along. In the ongoing saga of inundated inboxes, an article on CNN reports that going into this holiday season, “9 out of 10 emails are spam”. While this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has recently abandoned yet another email address, what did catch our attention is what they state as the real source of the spam problem: us.

Dave Rand, of Internet security firm Trend Micro states “It will only end when people stop buying diet pills, herbal highs and sexual performance enhancers”. Of course, how silly of us. We just need to stop buying things and then the good upstanding net citizens identified in the article as “200 illegal spam gangs” will stop sending us emails. Unfortunately, we have enough trouble getting legitimate companies to stop sending us unsolicited emails no matter how many times we tell them we don’t want their products.

Spam hillarity ensues after the break.

Continue reading “Spam, spam, spam, spam and spam”

Phishing has nothing to do with a rod, a bag of maggots and a bucket of mackerel. It’s a technique used to obtain confidential data by masquerading as something else – such as supplanting someone’s ID or claiming to be a legitimate institution (generally via spam, fraudulent electronic message, or falsification of web pages).Up until now, one of the big advantages of the Firefox browser was its enhanced security over Internet Explorer but a new hole in the popular browser has been discovered. The vulnerability in Firefox, is caused by a backdoor in the Password Manager function which does not verify URL’s before automatically completing user data in pages that request passwords. A URL (Uniform Resource Locator or Uniform Localizador of Resources) is a “pointer” to the location of any file such as a page of HTML (i.e a web address such as http://www.softonic.com).

The flaw can be exploited by an attacker to rob the credentials of the user (name and password) without their knowledge through a fake form when the website is visited. The vulnerability has been confirmed in version 2.0 upwards and previous versions could also be affected too. There has been no official patch issued by Mozilla as yet but obviously, the best way to avoid any risk is to deactivate the Password Manager function and enter passwords yourself manually. Don’t let those phishers fool you with their bait.

Most mobile phone networks now recognise that the next big leap in phone functionality will be towards instant messaging, Push-To-Talk and VoIP internet calls. Programs like Talkonaut give you the opportunity to try these next generation features even if your phone isn’t the latest model.

Talkonaut includes several ways of staying in touch with your contacts. You can chat with buddies on MSN, Google Talk or Jabber, send SMS to Skype or other VoIP contacts or make VoIP calls. It is these last two features which are perhaps the most exciting as they bring some seriously new and interesting features to that mobile phone you may have been thinking about replacing.

Technically speaking, Talkonaut does not offer true ‘Voice Over IP’ calling. That is to say, because of network-related problems, any VoIP call made with the program is not conducted entirely over the internet. What happens when you choose to call a Google Talk contact is that Talkonaut’s network calls your phone, and then connects via the internet with your contact’s Google Talk client. You pay the price of one ‘leg’ of the call (the call-back which Talkonaut’s network establishes with your phone).

This all sounds very complicated but in fact the technology behind this feature is very simple. What’s more, Talkonaut is really easy to use, making all these different steps into a single, seamless process. We did encounter a couple of issues while testing the VoIP feature but saw enough of it working to be pretty impressed. The other features of Talkonaut worked perfectly, making traditional IM chats with your buddies a piece of cake.

Despite our slight problems making all of its features perform as expected, Talkonaut is a well designed and robust application. We’re impressed that it works on such a large number of phones and look forward to even more features as the program evolves.

You often see lists of the top ten or top fifty babes in glossy magazines, professing to rank the world’s most beautiful women. However, to get an idea of who the average person deems the hottest babe you only need take a look at the download stats in Softonic’s ‘Women‘ desktop wallpapers section. Here’s the full run-down of the most popular models, actresses and singers on the site:

1. Jessica Alba
2. Elisha Cuthbert
3. Angelina Jolie
4. Tara Reid
5. Vida Guerra
6. Paris Hilton
7. Adriana Lima
8. Josie Maran
9. Katie Price (Jordan)
10. Jennifer Love Hewitt

In the interests of equality, we also have a ‘Men‘ wallpapers section, where Vin Diesel and Bratt Pitt prove the most downloaded.