Monday, December 28, 2009

Mozakerty is now online

Mozakerty is now online: "





What is Mozakerty ?

A new tool for communication, collaboration and interactivity between student members and the teaching staff.





What is Mozakerty for ?

  • Establishing studying community to ease studying online and Share information.
  • Discover a new way of studying, scheduling, and organization of study materials.
  • Making resources available for every one.
Why Mozakerty ?





  • Tired of papers ?
  • Tired of unorganized documents everywhere ?
  • Some questions are repeated over and over again ?
  • Is there new lectures ?
  • What will be delivered this week ?
  • Want to be notified of new events and lectures ?
  • What is tomorrow schedule ?
  • Want to share questions, answers, notes ?
  • Want a new way to study ?
Here is the solution: Mozakerty





What exactly does Mozakerty stand on ????

  • Model ? we already have one.
  • Forum ? we already........etc.
  • Group ? we ....bla bla bla
  • Social community ? we have facebook, twitter, ....etc.
What about All of these features in a new way to study ? Moakerty.













Mozakerty is developed by me and 5 of my friends (5 months working)

for more technical info on Mozakerty visit this site's page here.


"

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Microsoft Security Essentials Ranks as Best-Performing Free Antivirus [Antivirus]

Microsoft Security Essentials Ranks as Best-Performing Free Antivirus [Antivirus]: "

Anti-malware testing group AV-Comparatives.org not only gave Microsoft Security Essentials a top rating for malware removal, but now they've given it their best ranking in their performance test as well.

AV-Comparatives.org ran a series of real-world tests running through common scenarios like downloading, extracting, copying, and encoding files, installing and launching applications, and they also ran through an automated testing suite as well. Once the dust had settled, it became clear that not only is MSE one of only three products that both blocks and removes malware well, but it's also very light on system resources.

Out of all the products tested, Microsoft Security Essentials was the best-performing free antivirus solution, and one of only two that received 'very fast' on each of the real-world tests, earning it their top award: an 'advanced+' ranking. We've been telling you for a while that you don't need to pay for Windows security, and now with MSE ranked alongside the top paid apps in both malware removal and performance, you might want to consider making the switch.

Hit the AV-Comparatives link for the full report in PDF form, or check out the PC Mag story for the overview—if you can deal with some irritating in-text ads.


Saturday, December 12, 2009

Google Chrome Gets an Adorable New Ad [VIDEO]

Google Chrome Gets an Adorable New Ad [VIDEO]: "

chrome osWith Google Chrome now available on the Mac, there’s more buzz than ever around Google’s speedy, lightweight browser. Now Google in the UK has created a 4-minute introductory video for would-be Chrome users, featuring pin-boards, graffiti and even some knitting.


We think it’s fantastic; clearly huge amounts of effort went into what could have been another boring introductory video.

What do you think: Is this better than a screencast? Let us know in the comments.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Faster apps for a faster web: introducing Speed Tracer

Do you ever wonder what's going on inside the browser when a webpage doesn't load or respond as quickly as it should? Many developers do, especially when trying to build powerful web applications for their users.

But up until now, it's been difficult for developers to identify problems in a slow-to-respond application. So, tonight at Google Campfire One, we're happy to announce that we're adding a new tool to Google Web Toolkit called Speed Tracer.

Speed Tracer is a Google Chrome extension that enables developers to identify performance problems in their web apps using a 'Sluggishness Graph,' in combination with many other metrics. In the spirit of clean, simple design, developers need only look at the Y-Axis of their application's Sluggishness Graph to see how they're doing:
  • If the y-axis is close to zero, then the app is fast
  • If the y-axis registers around 100%, then the app is, well, sluggish
And in either case, Speed Tracer provides lots of additional data to help diagnose any particular performance issue.

We think developers will find that Speed Tracer looks under the covers of web applications like never before. In fact, we even used Speed Tracer to optimize the performance of Speed Tracer itself! (It's really an HTML5 application after all, built with Google Web Toolkit, and deployed as a Google Chrome extension.) If you're a web developer, download and install Speed Tracer on the Google Chrome Developer Channel.



This is one of many other improvements in GWT 2.0 — which we released at this evening's Campfire — that make building web applications fast, and the applications you build run even faster. Check out the Google Code Blog for more information and to watch our Campfire One developer announcement.

Posted by Bruce Johnson, Engineering Director

Join this group: Google Groups joins Google Apps

Blogs, wikis, social networks, YouTube and Twitter are changing how many of us connect with others. Yet within most businesses, especially large corporations, the software hasn't evolved much over the last decade. While traditional business technologies give companies the necessary security and controls, they do so at the expense of rapid innovation. Businesses shouldn't have to make this compromise.

This is one reason why customers are so enthusiastic about Google Apps. It offers enterprise-grade security and control while letting businesses instantly tap into a swift stream of innovation, based on services tested by hundreds of millions of people around the world. We've launched over 100 improvements to Google Apps in the last year, and the pace of innovation continues to increase.

Today, we're happy to announce the launch of Google Groups to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition users. Google Groups is one of our most widely used applications, enabling everyone from the local hiking club to the family next door to create mailing lists and discussion forums. Now employees within a company can create groups for their departments, their teams or their projects. Employees can use these groups as mailing lists, but they can also share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, calendars, videos and sites with groups, instead of many individual recipients. They can choose to receive communications directly to their email inbox, in a digest format, or in the Groups forum view, and can access all the information in the groups archive, without the intervention of an IT administrator.




Google Groups is a boon for IT administrators too. After enabling the new service from the administrative control panel (add 'user-managed groups'), users can start managing their own groups without burdening administrators for support. Administrators can still set group policies and manage other group settings. If you want to learn more, check out our post on the Enterprise Blog.

Google Groups is just one of the many consumer features that we've tailored for the enterprise since we launched Google Apps for businesses nearly three years ago, and we're looking forward to bringing more innovation to our customers in the months and years ahead.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

Friday, November 20, 2009

YouTube Audio Transcription

YouTube added a feature that generates video captions. 'We've combined Google's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video.'

The feature only works for English and it's been enabled for a small number of channels that usually feature talks and interviews: UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke,UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic.



Another new feature is auto-timing, which lets you upload the transcription of a video and it automatically generates the time codes. 'All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and we'll use Google's ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video.'

Since Google's speech recognition technology is not perfect, it would be useful to generate the captions and then to manually edit them to correct the mistakes.

Automatic captions make YouTube videos more accessible: you can watch videos with the sound off and you can translate the captions into another language using Google Translate.

Releasing the Chromium OS open source project

In July we announced that we were working on Google Chrome OS, an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web.

Today we are open-sourcing the project as Chromium OS. We are doing this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source community and developers. As with the Google Chrome browser, development will be done in the open from this point on. This means the code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions. The Chromium OS project includes our current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development. This is the initial sketch and we will color it in over the course of the next year.

We want to take this opportunity to explain why we're excited about the project and how it is a fundamentally different model of computing.

First, it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.

Second, because all apps live within the browser, there are significant benefits to security. Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn't trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code. If your system has been compromised, it is designed to fix itself with a reboot. While no computer can be made completely secure, we're going to make life much harder (and less profitable) for the bad guys. If you dig security, read the Chrome OS Security Overview or watch the video.

Most of all, we are obsessed with speed. We are taking out every unnecessary process, optimizing many operations and running everything possible in parallel. This means you can go from turning on the computer to surfing the web in a few seconds. Our obsession with speed goes all the way down to the metal. We are specifying reference hardware components to create the fastest experience for Google Chrome OS.

There is still a lot of work to do, and we're excited to work with the open source community. We have benefited hugely from projects like GNU, the Linux Kernel, Moblin, Ubuntu, WebKit and many more. We will be contributing our code upstream and engaging closely with these and other open source efforts.

Google Chrome OS will be ready for consumers this time next year. Sign up here for updates or if you like building your operating system from source, get involved at chromium.org.

Lastly, here is a short video that explains why we're so excited about Google Chrome OS.



Update at 8:55PM: Watch the video of our Google Chrome OS event, which took place earlier today.


Posted by Caesar Sengupta, Group Product Manager and Matt Papakipos, Engineering Director

Thursday, November 12, 2009

The World’s Top 50 Most Attractive Employers

The World’s Top 50 Most Attractive Employers World's most attractive employersUniversum, the employer branding company, presents the world’s Top 50 most attractive employers. From the world’s leading economies, nearly 120,000 students at top academic institutions chose their ideal companies to work for.

This is the first global index of employer attractiveness and highlights the world’s most powerful employer brands, those companies that excel in talent attraction and retention. The global rankings are based on the employer preferences of students from US, Japan, China, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia, Spain, Canada and India.

see the link for details .. http://universumglobal.com/IDEAL-Companies-Rankings/Global-Top-50-Rankings

Monday, November 9, 2009

Microsoft's COFEE Spills All Over Internet, First Exclusive Images On Internet

Microsoft's COFEE Spills All Over Internet, First Exclusive Images On Internet: "

COFEEAs quite expected Microsoft's automated computer forensic utility COFEE (Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor) meant for law-enforcement agencies got leaked on internet and is now readily available on torrent portals and file-sharing websites.



These Are The First EXCLUSIVE Images Of COFEE Utility

Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor

How Cofee Works


The utility is designed EXCLUSIVELY for crime-investigators allowing quick and fully-automated extraction of forensic data from computers suspected of containing criminal activity evidence letting investigators search through data on-site, the utility is provided for free by Microsoft to law-enforcement agencies world-over in a USB device which executes more then 150 commands to collect forensic data offering features such as the ability to decrypt passwords, search the computer's Internet activity, and analyze the data stored on it even including the data stored in volatile memory.


read more

"

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Windows 7 already bigger than Snow Leopard and Linux combined

Windows 7 already bigger than Snow Leopard and Linux combined: "It's only been a couple of weeks since Windows 7 was released, but Microsoft's new OS has already captured a larger percentage of the market than Apple's OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Linux (yes, all of Linux). This doesn't come as a huge surprise, considering how many Windows users were clamoring for Win7 after the flop that is Vista. Microsoft says Windows 7's launch outdid Vista's by 234%. Those brisk sales have already netted Windows a 2% share of the world's OS business, compared to just over 1% for Snow Leopard, and just under 1% for Linux.

Despite the strong sales of Win7, Windows as a whole dropped a quarter of a percentage point in October, with Mac and Linux both making small gains. That quarter of a point hardly matters when you've got 90% of the OS market and your new operating system is being adopted quickly, though.

I expect to see Windows swing back up after Windows 7's been available for a while. I mean, we're talking about an operating system that outsold Harry Potter in the UK. Right now, it's only got a 2% share, compared to 19% for Vista and 70% for XP, but that's after only two weeks. Expect that number to zoom upward by the end of November.

[via Ars Technica]

Windows 7 already bigger than Snow Leopard and Linux combined originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Introducing Closure Tools

Millions of Google users worldwide use JavaScript-intensive applications such as Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Maps. Like developers everywhere, Googlers want great web apps to be easier to create, so we've built many tools to help us develop these (and many other) apps. We're happy to announce the open sourcing of these tools, and proud to make them available to the web development community.

Closure Compiler
Closure Compiler is a JavaScript optimizer that compiles web apps down into compact, high-performance JavaScript code. The compiler removes dead code, then rewrites and minimizes what's left so that it will run fast on browsers' JavaScript engines. The compiler also checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about other common JavaScript pitfalls. These checks and optimizations help you write apps that are less buggy and easier to maintain. You can use the compiler with Closure Inspector, a Firebug extension that makes debugging the obfuscated code almost as easy as debugging the human-readable source.

Because JavaScript developers are a diverse bunch, we've set up a number of ways to run the Closure Compiler. We've open-sourced a command-line tool. We've created a web applicationPage Speed to conveniently see the performance benefits for your web pages.

Closure Library
Closure Library is a broad, well-tested, modular, and cross-browser JavaScript library. Web developers can pull just what they need from a wide set of reusable UI widgets and controls, as well as lower-level utilities for the DOM, server communication, animation, data structures, unit testing, rich-text editing, and much, much more. (Seriously. Check the docs.)

JavaScript lacks a standard class library like the STL or JDK. At Google, Closure Library serves as our 'standard JavaScript library' for creating large, complex web applications. It's purposely server-agnostic and intended for use with the Closure Compiler. You can make your project big and complex (with namespacing and type checking), yet small and fast over the wire (with compilation). The Closure Library provides clean utilities for common tasks so that you spend your time writing your app rather than writing utilities and browser abstractions.

Closure Templates
Closure Templates grew out of a desire for web templates that are precompiled to efficient JavaScript. Closure Templates have a simple syntax that is natural for programmers. Unlike traditional templating systems, you can think of Closure Templates as small components that you compose to form your user interface, instead of having to create one big template per page.

Closure Templates are implemented for both JavaScript and Java, so you can use the same templates both on the server and client side.


Closure Compiler, Closure Library, Closure Templates, and Closure Inspector all started as 20% projects and hundreds of Googlers have contributed thousands of patches. Today, each Closure Tool has grown to be a key part of the JavaScript infrastructure behind web apps at Google. That's why we're particularly excited (and humbled) to open source them to encourage and support web development outside Google. We want to hear what you think, but more importantly, we want to see what you make. So have at it and have fun!

that accepts your code for compilation through a text box or a RESTful API. We are also offering a Firefox extension that you can use with
By the Closure Tools team

source : http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/11/introducing-closure-tools.html

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Microsoft Security Essentials rated best free antivirus for Windows

Microsoft Security Essentials rated best free antivirus for Windows: "


Thousands of downloads. Countless positive reviews on software blogs around the Internet. It's been quite a ride so far for Microsoft Security Essentials.


In AV Comparative's most recent report on malware removal, MSE was the only free antivirus rated Advanced+. That ranking placed it alongside big names like Norton, Kaspersky, and F-Secure. Security Essentials also beat out technician favorite ESET, which managed only an Advanced rating.

It's also worth noting that only three antivirus apps - Norton 2010, eScan, and Security Essentials - scored marks of good or better in removal of malware and removal of leftovers. So not only has MSE beaten free competitors like AVG (version 8.5 tested, not 9.0), Avira, and Avast, it also posted test scores equal to or better than a dozen antivirus programs you'd have to pay for.

Well done, Microsoft!

[via Ars Technica]

Microsoft Security Essentials rated best free antivirus for Windows originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

SkyDrive Explorer - Lets User's Add 25 GB Of Secure Online Storage To Windows Explorer

SkyDrive Explorer - Lets User's Add 25 GB Of Secure Online Storage To Windows Explorer: "

SkyDrive StorageMicrosoft SkyDrive offers a generous 25 GB of free online-storage but lacks the simplicity of having the online-storage mounted as an local disk-drive for easier access like the one offered by ZumoDrive and LiveDrive, however, the same can now be achieved by using free Windows utility - SkyDrive Explorer.



SkyDrive Explorer Extension

SkyDrive Explorer enables users to use SkyDrive online-storage like a local disk-drive attached to the computer, user's can perform all the actions as they are working on a local disk-drive including full drag-n-drop support and multi-operations like renaming objects or deleting a group of files/folders.


read more

"

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Integrated Interface for Google's Services

Integrated Gmail is a Firefox extension that adds Google Calendar and Google Reader to Gmail's interface. It's a simple way to switch between the three Google services without opening multiple tabs.

The extension is customizable, so you can add other Google services, reorder them and delete the ones you don't use. The interface for each service loads in a collapsible box and it's preloaded when you open Gmail.


You can add events or check your agenda while composing messages, read your feeds and chat with your friends from the same interface or copy some text from an email to a notebook.

The extension is not perfect, it might slow down browsing, but it's an interesting experiment and a good starting point for an official unified interface for Google's services. iGoogle, Google's iPhone interface and the support for gadgets in Gmail show that this idea has a great potential.

Monday, October 12, 2009

How to Secure Your Wireless Home Network

How to Secure Your Wireless Home Network: "

This article describes how you can secure your Wireless Network from hackers and you’ll also learn about free tools that people generally use to intercept your Wi-Fi signals.


Wireless networks (wi-fi)Wireless Networking (Wi-Fi) has made it so easy for you to use the computer, portable media player, mobile phones, video game consoles, and other wireless devices anywhere in the house without the clutter of cables.


With traditional wired networks, it is extremely difficult for someone to steal your bandwidth but the big problem with wireless signals is that others can access the Internet using your broadband connection even while they are in a neighboring building or sitting in a car that’s parked outside your apartment.


This practice, also known as piggybacking, is bad for three reasons:



  • It will increase your monthly Internet bill especially when you have to pay per byte of data transfer.

  • It will decrease your Internet access speed since you are now sharing the same internet connection with other users.

  • It can create a security hazard* as others may hack your computers and access your personal files through your own wireless network.


[*] What do the bad guys use - There have been quite a few instances where innocent Internet users have been arrested for sending hate emails when in reality, their email accounts where hacked though the unsecured Wi-Fi networks that they had at home. Wireshark is a free packet sniffing tool for Linux, Mac and Windows that can scan traffic flowing though a wireless network including cookies, forms and other HTTP requests.


How to Secure Your Wireless Network


The good news is that it is not very hard to make your wireless network secure, which will both prevent others from stealing your internet and will also prevent hackers from taking control of your computers through your own wireless network.


Here a few simple things that you should to secure your wireless network:


Step 1. Open your router settings page


First, you need to know how to access your wireless router’s settings. Usually you can do this by typing in “192.168.1.1” into your web browser, and then enter the correct user name and password for the router. This is different for each router, so first check your router’s user manual.


You can also use Google to find the manuals for most routers online in case you lost the printed manual that came with your router purchase. For your reference, here are direct links to the manufacturer’s site of some popular router brands – Linksys, Cisco, Netgear, Apple AirPort, SMC, D-Link, Buffalo, TP-LINK, 3Com, Belkin.


Step 2. Create a unique password on your router


Once you have logged into your router, the first thing you should do to secure your network is to change the default password* of the router to something more secure.


This will prevent others from accessing the router and you can easily maintain the security settings that you want. You can change the password from the Administration settings on your router’s settings page. The default values are generally admin / password.


[*] What do the bad guys use - This is a public database of default usernames and passwords of wireless routers, modems, switches and other networking equipment. For instance, anyone can easily make out from the database that the factory-default settings for Linksys equipment can be accessed by using admin for both username and password fields.


Step 3. Change your Network’s SSID name


The SSID (or Wireless Network Name) of your Wireless Router is usually pre-defined as "default" or is set as the brand name of the router (e.g., linksys). Although this will not make your network inherently* more secure, changing the SSID name of your network is a good idea as it will make it more obvious for others to know which network they are connecting to.


This setting is usually under the basic wireless settings in your router’s settings page. Once this is set, you will always be sure that you are connecting to the correct Wireless network even if there are multiple wireless networks in your area. Don’t use your name, home address or other personal information in the SSID name.


[*] What do the bad guys use - Wi-Fi scanning tools like inSSIDer (Windows) and Kismet (Mac, Linux) are free and they will allow anyone to find all the available Wireless Networks in an area even if the routers are not broadcasting their SSID name.


Step 4. Enable Network Encryption


In order to prevent other computers in the area from using your internet connection, you need to encrypt your wireless signals.


There are several encryption methods for wireless settings, including WEP, WPA (WPA-Personal), and WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access version 2). WEP is basic encryption and therefore least secure (i.e., it can be easily cracked*, but is compatible with a wide range of devices including older hardware, whereas WPA2 is the most secure but is only compatible with hardware manufactured since 2006.


To enable encryption on your Wireless network, open the wireless security settings on your router’s configuration page. This will usually let you select which security method you wish to choose; if you have older devices, choose WEP, otherwise go with WPA2. Enter a passphrase to access the network; make sure to set this to something that would be difficult for others to guess, and consider using a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters in the passphrase.


[*] What do the bad guys use - AirCrack and coWPAtty are some free tools that allow even non-hackers to crack the WEP / WPA (PSK) keys using dictionary or brute force techniques. A video on YouTube suggests that AirCrack may be easily used to break WiFi encryption using a jail-broken iPhone or an iPod Touch.


Step 5. Filter MAC addresses


Whether you have a laptop or a Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone, all your wireless devices have a unique MAC address (this has nothing to do with an Apple Mac) just like every computer connected to the Internet has a unique IP address. For an added layer of protection, you can add the MAC addresses of all your devices to your wireless router’s settings so that only the specified devices can connect to your Wi-Fi network.


MAC addresses are hard-coded into your networking equipment, so one address will only let that one device on the network. It is, unfortunately, possible to spoof a MAC address*, but an attacker must first know one of the MAC addresses of the computers that are connected to your Wireless network before he can attempt spoofing.


To enable MAC address filtering, first make a list of all your hardware devices that you want to connect to your wireless network**. Find their MAC addresses, and then add them to the MAC address filtering in your router’s administrative settings. You can find the MAC address for your computers by opening Command Prompt and typing in “ipconfig /all”, which will show your MAC address beside the name “Physical Address”. You can find the MAC addresses of Wireless mobile phones and other portable devices under their network settings, though this will vary for each device.


[*] What do the bad guys use - Someone can change the MAC address of his or her own computer and can easily connect to your network since your network allows connection from devices that have that particular MAC address. Anyone can determine the MAC address of your device wireless using a sniffing tool like Nmap and he can then change the MAC address of his own computer using another free tool like MAC Shift.


Step 6. Reduce the Range of the Wireless Signal


If your wireless router has a high range but you are staying in a small studio apartment, you can consider decreasing the signal range by either changing the mode of your router to 802.11g (instead of 802.11n or 802.11b) or use a different wireless channel.


You can also try placing the router under the bed, inside a shoe box or wrap a foil around the router antennas so that you can somewhat restrict the direction of signals.


Apply the Anti-Wi-Fi Paint – Researchers have developed a special Wi-Fi blocking paint that can help you stop neighbors from accessing your home network without you having to set up encryption at the router level. The paint contains chemicals that blocks radio signals by absorbing them. "By coating an entire room, Wi-Fi signals can’t get in and, crucially, can’t get out."


Step 7. Upgrade your Router’s firmware


You should check the manufacturer’s site occasionally to make sure that your router is running the latest firmware. You can find the existing firmware version of your router using from the router’s dashboard at 192.168.*.


Connect to your Secure Wireless Network


To conclude, MAC Address filtering with WPA2 (AES) encryption (and a really complex passphrase) is probably the best way to secure your wireless network.


Once you have enabled the various security settings in your wireless router, you need to add the new settings to your computers and other wireless devices so that they all can connect to the Wi-Fi network. You can select to have your computer automatically connect to this network, so you won’t have to enter the SSID, passphrase and other information every time you connect to the Internet.


Your wireless network will now be a lot more secure and intruders may have a tough time intercepting your Wi-Fi signals.


Who is Connected to your Wireless Network


If you are worried that an outsider may be connecting to the Internet using your Wireless network, try AirSnare – it’s a free utility that will look for unexpected MAC addresses on your Wireless network as well as to DHCP requests. Another option is that you open your router’s administration page (using the 192.168.* address) and look for the DHCP Clients Table (it’s under Status > Local Network on Linksys routers). Here you will see a list of all computers and wireless devices that are connected to your home network.


*It is also a good idea to turn off the router completely when you are not planning to use the computer for a longer period (like when you are out shopping). You save on electricity and the door remains 100% shut for wireless piggybackers.


**If you ever want to let a new device connect to your network, you will have to find its MAC address and add it to your router. If you simple want to let a friend connect to your wireless network one time, you can remove his MAC address from the router settings when he or she leaves your place.


How to Secure Your Wireless Home Network

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Facebook Twitter Technology Blog

"

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Web Browsers for Dummies

Considering the amount of time everyone spends online today, it is funny that many people still don't know what a web browser is, even though they use it every day.

The following video is a questionnaire conducted by Google while promoting their browser Chrome, and it shows that many people don't know what a browser is, or they confuse a browser with a search engine. Only a few people answered correctly.



It also seems that Google is determined to educate people on what a browser is. The latest post on the Official Google Blog has a quick comparison showing that people spend way more time on the web than they spend in their car. However, they are more likely to know which car they are driving than to know which browser they are using.

The author of that post, Jason Toff, created a small video clip explaining what a browser is. It is intended for those who know almost nothing about the computer's technical terms. Take a look:



In addition, Toff has also created a simple site, WhatBrowser.org, that gives even more information about browsers. On this site, you can see which web browser you're using, explore links to browser diagnostic tests and read some useful tips for getting the most out of your browser.

So, do you know which browser you're using?

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Keep Track of New Email with Gmail Notifier

Keep Track of New Email with Gmail Notifier: "

Opening a web browser and checking your Gmail account several times a day can become annoying. Today we look at a cool free utility that runs in the background and notifies you when a new message is received.


Using Gmail Notifier


Installation is quick and straight forward and once complete click on your language.


2-gm


Then sign into your Gmail account.


3-gm


Notice above there is a message to verify you have IMAP enabled. Log into your account and under Settings and Forwarding POP/IMAP section.


4-gm


You can add multiple accounts to keep track of.


multiple mails


It sits quietly in the taskbar until you get a message.


7-gm


Right-click on the icon in the Taskbar to get a menu of different options.


6-gm


In Preferences you can change the way it notifies you and also notice that you can use Gmail for Mailto: links.


5-gm


From the interface you can navigate your inbox, read email, mark it as read, and delete messages.


8-gm


9-gm


Hover over the sender to get their email address while reading the message.


10-gm


If you are looking for a way to easily keep track of your Gmail accounts you might want to try this out.


Download Gmail Notifier

Microsoft Security Essentials is a Free Antivirus Utility

Microsoft Security Essentials is a Free Antivirus Utility: "

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free utility that provides real-time protection to identify and eliminate harmful viruses and other malware from your PC. Today we’ll take a look at how it performs and the protection it has to offer.


Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is free Anti-Malware protection that replaces their previous “pay for” utility One Care. It has left beta and version 1.0 was released to the public yesterday. As with the beta we showed you before, this version provides real-time protection and runs quietly in the background. It actually runs a lot like the beta version and the user interface is the basically same.


66-sec


Before installation make sure there is no other Antivirus or spyware application running on the machine. However, you don’t need to turn off Windows Defender, because MSE takes care of it for you.


1-sec


You will have to validate your copy of Windows to be able to install and use Security Essentials.


2-sec


The user interface is basic, simple, and easy to use. After installation it will update the virus definitions right away. After that it will update itself automatically in the background so once installed it truly is a “set it and forget it” process.


3-sec


After the database is updated the computer status turns green. There are 4 tabs at the top that allow you to control different functions.


6-sec


Under Settings you can choose what actions it should take with malware based on its threat level.


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By default Real-time protection is enabled but if you want to disable it you want. The Real-time protection is light on system resources and doesn’t slow down other processes at all.


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It shows a green icon in the notification area letting you know your system is protected.


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Progress is displayed while a manual scan takes place and tells you the amount of time it takes. Scan times will vary between systems based on amount of files and hardware performance.


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It works like most other Antivirus apps and lets you scan a single file.


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If a threat is detected a red attention screen pops up in the Notification Area and you can clean the threat right away based on your recommended actions or find out more detail about the threat.


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If you want more details, they actually provide a good amount of information on a threat. When in the details screen you can change the recommend action if you want and clean it from there.


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During out tests we tried to download an infected file, but MSE stopped it and wouldn’t allow the download to continue unless manually selecting to ignore it. This is very nice so someone doesn’t ignore the warnings, click out of the screens, and try to download and install the app anyway.


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For testing we ran this on the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium but it will also work with XP and Vista. It is light on system resources and runs quietly without constantly popping up messages and annoying you. It does pop up a message when it matters though. If a threat is found it will pop up a red alert to let you know about the malware and decide what actions to take. It’s nice to have a free anti-malware utility that is easy to use and effective. While Microsoft doesn’t always offer the best security solutions, they seem to have gotten this one right.


Download Microsoft Security Essentials