Prevent spam reaching your inbox

spam_blockerYahoo’s recent announcement that they are to offer unlimited e-mail storage will come as good news to users but equally good news to those evil spammers. E-mail spam is one of the biggest problems on the internet, causing headaches for users and costing businesses billions of dollars each year filtering it from inboxes. We can’t offer you any billion dollar solutions but there are a few useful utlilities out there that could help you if you are sick of spam. Note that these only work if you’ve got your own POP3 account such as with Outlook – they won’t work with web based e-mail programs such as Hotmail or Gmail.

K9 AntSpam is an email filtering application that works in conjunction with your regular POP3 email program and automatically filters spam without the need for dozens of rules or constant updates. Over time, it uses statisitical analysis to ‘learn’ which e-mails are spam and which aren’t. The downside of this is that you might not notice results immediately but in the long-run, it should prove effective.

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The easiest way to create photo slideshows

memories_on_tv_review-2.jpgWith the increasing popularity of digital cameras, the need for programs that help us share our pictures is also growing. As digital photos cannot be stuck onto the pages of traditional albums, the perfect solution is creating a digital album, something you can do very easily with MemoriesOnTV. Even if you’re not the computer-savvy type, you’ll find yourself very comfortable when using this application and the results are really attractive.

MemoriesOnTV divides the process of creating a digital photo album into five easy steps, represented in the menu bar located between both panes: import, music, effects, menu and burn. To begin with, simply drag and drop files from the bottom pane onto the top one to add content to your photo album. The only downside would be the fact that you cannot resize the bottom pane, so if you have a large directory structure you’re going to be scrolling a lot.

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Help filing your tax returns

taxactonline.jpgFilling in your tax return can often be a headache – comparing the software available to help you do it equally so. This interesting post on the Getting Finances Done blog gives some really useful tips on software to take the pain out of making your tax declarations.

As the author points out, it’s a nightmare trying to find out the difference between various packages available, so he’s kindly put together his own comparison of the best programs for US residents.

The good news is that, if your gross income is below $50,000 a year, then most of the tax software developers out there provide a free ‘standard’ edition. However, if you have a small business or earn over $50,000, he recommends ‘TaxCut’s Premium + State + E-file Online.’ The reason being is the overall cost of the package is excellent for the comprehensive investment, real estate and business ownership aspects that it covers. TaxCut are also one of the biggest and most reputable developers in the tax return industry.

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Review: Microsoft Photo Story

microsoft-photo-story-1.pngThose of us with digital cameras are spoilt for choice for when it comes to software and there are literally hundreds of programs that allow you to edit, manage and share your pictures. Let’s face it, most of the software that comes bundled with the camera is usually pretty limited, so it’s always worth hunting around for a third-party app to ensure your images are at their best. If you’re a Mac user then you really don’t need to look further than iPhoto, which comes thrown inbundled with most new systems these days and allows you to present your snaps in a number of unique ways. Windows users were bereft of such a decent built-in photo app until XP Media Center Edition 2005 came along, which introduced advanced slideshow features to XP.

Since then, Microsoft has refined the program in order to keep up with Apple’s iPhoto, resulting in this latest release, which promises much more than ever. Essentially a photo presentation tool, Photo Story lets you drag photos onto a window, arrange them as needed, then provide custom narration, transitions, zooms, pans, audio soundtracks and/or custom auto-generated music and then your WMV file is ready.

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Dell will sell computers with Linux

dell-linux-preinstalled.gifSome weeks ago I read a fun article where companies were compared to bad marriages. While dating (that is, before you become a customer) they’re nice, attentive, generous and willing to please you. But once the contract is signed, most companies start treating you like a simple number on their list and tend to ignore your feedback.

I believe Dell was thinking about this whole issue when they launched Ideastorm last February. Ideastorm is an online community focused on gathering all kinds of ideas from Dell users.

According to the company’s words:

Ideastorm brings all of us closer to the creative side of technology by allowing you to share ideas and interact with other customers and Dell experts.

In this way Dell has opened a communication channel between the company and its users, which is really positive. They’re free to express their opinions about their Dell experience or general technological developments. But above all, they can suggest new products and services to the company.

So far Ideastorm has gathered more than 3,000 ideas, the top suggestion being a better support for Linux on Dell computers. Bearing this in mind, the company launched a Linux survey which was taken by more than 100,000 people. The results showed that at least 70% of them would happily use Dell computers with Linux.

Today these users should feel proud of themselves: they have made their voices heard. Dell just announced that they’ll be offering Linux pre-installed on certain desktop and notebook computers. There’s no information about release dates yet or which Linux distributions will be available but, still, it’s definitely an important step towards a better relationship between companies and customers.

Securing your wireless router

wireless_router.jpgWith wireless routers becoming the norm, security is becoming an increasing concern for users. Protecting your router with a WEP key or hiding your router’s ID (SSID) are two basic measures you can take but they’re not impossible to crack. One way hackers break WEP codes is by ‘sniffing’ data streams from your router for long periods of time until they have enough data to crack your code. So how do you know if someone has managed to hook into your connection?

Although all router admin systems differ, they key is to look at the router’s DHCP table. Here, you will see the name of each machine connected (host name) and most importantly, the MAC address, the IP address and the expiry time of the IP lease. If you see an entry (other than your own computer) listed on there, then someone else is using your connection.

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Review: Yahoo! Widget Engine

yahoowidgetengine.jpgThe term ‘widget’ has traditionally been used to describe some kind of contraption or piece of technology that improves the overall functionality of a particular product. Mac OSX and Microsoft Vista users will be all too aware of how software widgets can bring more power to your desktop, as they now come as standard on these operating systems. For the benefit of the uninitiated, a widget is basically a small application that provides you with easy access to a particular function. These applications are docked on a ‘dashboard’, and you can add as many widgets as you like, giving you instant access to anything from a simple clock to a weather forecasting tool.

Yahoo! was one of the early pioneers of widgets, and this application is likely to intrigue anyone who hasn’t come across the technology before. The package sits on your desktop and allows you to download and install widgets from the Yahoo! site. There’s a healthy range of widgets available here (almost 4,000), each of which are installed automatically as soon as they’re downloaded. Although this helps to keep things simple, it’s frustrating that you cannot change the destination folderwhich folder the widgets are stored in here.

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Free antivirus apps part 3: Clamwin

clamwin.jpgOn to the third of our five part series on free antivirus applications, today we cover Clamwin the only open source program in our selection. You would be mistaken to dismiss Clamwin just because of its unattractive interface. Using up only 26 MB of memory, Clamwin can smoothly scan without interrupting the flow of your other applications. That’s a good thing, because a full scan took us nearly two hours and a half. Surprisingly, with only 45,475 files scanned, half as much as Avast!, Clamwin still managed to find 6 different pieces of malware that neither Avast! nor AVG picked up.

The default configuration of the antivirus means it will only report viruses; you’ll then have to choose between removing or quarantining them. The progress window will inform you of malware it picks up, but there’s no way of knowing how far in the scan you’ve progressed. However it’s good to know that Clamwin automatically unloads infected programs from your PC memory, lightening up your CPU usage. During the process, the program will give priority to executables and it will also check mail in your Outlook for any viruses. Taking a look at the different features in the program, we liked the scan scheduler and filters you can set to exclude files from your scan. Overall, we were very satisfied with the way Clamwin performed and, although it looks quite unattractive, we believe it’s a very good solution to protect your PC.

Clamwin test results:

  • Uses 26 MB of memory
  • Full scan time: 2:21:00
  • Scanned objects: 45,475
  • Scan scheduler
  • Set filters to exclude files from scanning
  • Ugly interface
  • No information on scan progress
  • Default only reports virus; you can then remove or quarantine it
  • Automatically unloads infected programs for Computer Memory
  • Automatically scans EXEs and emails

Free antivirus apps part 1: AVG

Free antivirus apps part 2: Avast! Home

Sling comes to Palm

sling-media-icon-1.pngLast year, the word on the street was that Palm seemed to be losing ground to its competitiors when it came to bleeding-edge multimedia applications. Remote TV viewing app, Sling, wasn’t realeased on Palm initially and it looked like its developers, along with other big firms, were abandoning Palm despite its large user base.

Yesterday, Slingmedia did something to dismiss fears of Palm’s total demise by finally releasing the public beta of their Palm client, which was confirmed at CES in January. Designed to run on the popular Treo 700p, Sling for Palm includes the same features as the Windows Mobile edition, released last year. Performance is pretty good: averaging at 15 frames per second and 150kbs bitrate.

Chris at Uneasy Silence probably has the best insight into the client, having been testing the private beta for several weeks. He’s done a nice walkthrough with a video showing the client working on his Treo.

Working with Flash video files

flash-icon-1.gifIt’s now firmly established that the quickest way to stream video on the net is with Flash’s FLV or SWF formats. All the major video sites, including YouTube and Google Video use Flash to reproduce uploaded content. But what happens if you download a video and want to edit it? Most major video editors won’t accept Flash videos as a valid format to edit with so today we’re giving you a low-down of some of the best ways to turn your Flash clips into something to work with.

The most popular program for converting from Flash to all major formats is CinemaForge. This program allows you to convert to AVI, MPEG, WMV, Real Media and Quicktime formats amongst others. CinemaForge also allows a limited amount of editing if you don’t want to import into another editor, including cropping, interlacing footage and even taking stills and building them into a montage.

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