Blogs

If you're a user of OpenOffice, a free office suite, you'll know that it takes quite a long time to open up the provided applications (such as OpenOffice Writer) even if you have good hardware. While the suite comes with a Quick Start tray application, I personally feel that I shouldn't have to have an other application clogging up both my system an RAM. Therefore, I searched for an alternative; I found Go-oo. Simply Go-oo is a polished up OpenOffice with many little extra features like better multimedia embedding, foreign language text rendering, rich text support, but most importantly for me, the package has been optimised to start up quicker. Before installing to be safe I would first uninstall your current installation of...

For years I have been searching for the best checksum verifier and finally I think I may have discovered it. The little program is called HashTab. It usefully adds an extra tab/page to any file's properties window, where it quickly calculates hashes from a large variety of algorithms including...well just look for yourself: HashTab offers a wide variety of different cryptographic hash algorithms which it can calculate. Another cool function of HashTab is that you can compare files/hashes to verify their integrity, but my favourite function is the ability to easily copy a hash to your clipboard. Unlike the vast majority of license agreements today, the agreement for this program is short and sweet... The program is free, supports...

Multiple Tab Handler adds some extremely useful tab handling functionality to Firefox. My favourite function being an extension to the context menu when you right click a tab. Currently in Firefox, if you have multiple tabs open you can right click a tab and choose 'Close other tabs', but that's about it. Multiple Tab Handler enables you to be able to close tabs either to the left or right of the current tab - something I've always wished for. You can download the add-on from the Mozilla Add-ons site: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4838 Enjoy! :bigthumb:

Wallpaper Generator is a simple program that generates random gradients which then can be set as wallpapers for your desktop. There's no installer, just a single .exe file and its only a 61kb download! Wallpaper Generator is as easy as pie to use. For more info and download link: http://wallpaper.codeplex.com/ Enjoy - honda

When iTunes 8 was released I wrote a blog post spelling out my thoughts for iTunes. So, did iTunes 9 add any of my feature requests? Watch Folder Support - Yes, Apple did listen, kinda. Hidden deep in your Music folder lies a folder that if music is placed into it, music will be automatically added to your library. You can read more about this feature here FLAC Support - Nope, still no support for our favourite lossless format. You can petition for Apple to support it here Less Bloat - If Apple could do it with Snow Leopard, why not with iTunes? Yet again, iTunes has grown in size to a massive 89 megabytes. Tired of iTunes? Check out these free alternatives: Foobar2000 Songbird Mediamonkey Free - honda

The complexity of malware is causing new challenges for anti malware software every day. Randomized malware that has thousands of new variants out calls for loose heuristics, detection patterns need to be slightly adjusted all the time, and new technologies call for new methods of reaction. The standard approach to store malware detection patterns has been databases for decades. We've been using databases ourselves for the past ten years, with just slight adjustments (like subfunctions, jump instructions and variables) to boost the performance. While speaking about the evergrowing challenges, our team has come up with another idea - we reached the point where we decided that it would be a waste of time to add more and more features of...

Going beyond the last blogs topic on error dialogs, we wanted to go a bit further with these Vista style dialogs and use them in assisting the user in non-error situations as well. This gets a bit more critical for the advanced user, since he might get annoyed by this, so the option inside each dialog to not show this message again is extra important here (they can be re-activated at any point on a dedicated tab of the new Settings dialog). One example of this approach is the Immunization start dialog on Vista: Vistas UAC might be annoying to some users, but as an advocate of the concept (just maybe not in the realization of its support in many end user software), we want to support the user in using it properly. The key here...

What has the big G been up to this year? CADIE (Cognitive Auto-Heuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity) has taken over all of Google's products and has increased product innovation ten fold. Take a look at what she has done: Chrome with 3D Notice the print-out 3D glasses with the 'filled' in blue and red eyepieces 3D browsing = amazing Note. AFAIK, you cannot download Chrome 3D from Google's servers now, since April Fools has long past. However, I do have a copy of the installer - which I can 'lend': http://www.mediafire.com/?nnmzymfo3nz (Mediafire hosted, 9.02mb, Windows Vista/XP SP2) EDIT: Turns out you can still download it from Google: http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/cadie/ I had a play around with it but...

GMail - Brilliant webmail with loads of space (7305MB and counting at the time of writing). So much space that Google actually encourages you to not delete any email! Email however, does not take up much space, so even when following Google's marketing, a huge amount of space is left sitting around collecting virtual dust. However, there is a way to make better use of all this free space Google has given us - GMail Drive. GMail Drive does exactly what is says on the tin - It makes use of that free space by adding a virtual drive to your computer To use GMail drive is really simple: After installation, just double click on the GMail Drive icon in your 'My Computer', then type in your Gmail username and password and login (you tick the...

I guess I might do one of this for the forums :santa:. This entry basically summarizes a majority of the functions and what it does. When you start Spybot-Search&Destroy you'll be presented with options such as: Scan for Problems Immunization Search for Updates Recovery The primary function of Spybot-Search&Destroy is to serve as a spyware scanner, eliminate threats, potential or not from your machine. Spybot does not scan file by file on the computer as it will take too long. How Spybot scans is briefly described in the FAQ below: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/1.html How Spybot protects you is using Immunization (Passive protection against malicious sites) and TeaTimer (Resident Shield) that actively disables known malware...

With the rising of rootkits and professional malware, cleaning those away got more and more important and should earn a more prominent position next to scanning. The cleaning concept in Spybot-S&D 1.x is already doing a lot, like for example trying more than a dozen methods to get rid of files. It's a bit one-dimensional though, and one of its worst disadvantages is the need to do sometimes do a complete rescan on boot to cleanup some files. Cleaning in Spybot 2.0 will therefore be separated into multiple stages, of which only the necessary ones will be performed of course: Direct Cleaning (stage 1): right after an on-demand scan, you will be able to remove malware much as you're already used to. Items that cannot be removed...

It's been on various tech news recently that the great SysInternals tools by Mark Russinovich have now been made available as live versions on http://live.sysinternals.com/ . They're a great set of tools, very useful when hunting for problems, and I have to admit the Web 2.0 idea is quite tempting here. Web 2.0, or it seems to be called Live in Microsofts terms, surely is a tempting thing in general - having your applications wherever you go, right there on the Internet that's available everywhere. But with standard Web 2.0 applications, you do run them in the relatively safe, more or less sandboxed, browser environment. Sure, you're probably one belonging to the majority of users running the browser from an adminstrator account, but...

Update: The bug has been fixed in version 8.0.233 - I have recently installed AVG anti-virus Free 8.0.176 on a machine when I discovered a pretty big GUI (general user interface) bug. Look here: To replicate the bug. just go into the license section and you will see that the 'Register' button overlaps the 'Back' button To be quite honest, I was surprised that even though this software is used by '80 million users'*, obvious bugs like these are still not ironed out. Subsequently, I reported the bug on the AVG Free forums, but was surprised to hear that no employees from AVG Technologies actually actively take part in the forums, only oversee. Anyway, I was later told my comment should have been seen by the AVG Team and that it...

This is about a serious issue that disables users from logging on to their computers. The cause for this issue may be one of the following: Spybot S&D 1.3 with current detection rules without HellzSpy infection. Spybot S&D 1.4 with current detection rules and HellzLittleSpy infection These are errors caused by dated versions of Spybot S&D in combination with detection rules designed for the current Spybot S&D 1.5.2. Symptom: Logoff will occur directly after login. Now the important part: How to regain login to the computer without the need for a reinstall. Please note that there are more methods to do this, the following have been chosen by me because they do have some advantages over other approaches. 1.Method: Remote Registry The...

In the next weeks, I'll try to use the blog to announce a few things of Spybot - Search & Destroy 2.0, on topics where we would love feedback. One important change in Spybot-S&D 2.0 will be that the functionality will be much more modularized. Not just one big .exe, but various smaller ones. A few arguments: Resources: you do not need everything Spybot offers all at the same time. By loading only those parts you need when you need them, Spybot can run faster, use less system memory, and on older 9x/ME systems, can use less of the precious GDI/user handles. Speed: the app will simply show much faster. Interaction: a challenge is to present it to the user in a way that is not affecting his ease of use; on the contrary, it should...

I've read it mentioned as a request for 2.0, and it's been a controversial thing for a long time, so I thought this earns its own 2.0 blog entry. The standard AV (antivirus) approach at scanning is filesystem based, iterating through all or selected file partitions or folders. Extend that to AS (antispyware), and you'll add a full registry iteration as well. Each file/registry entry will be compared to a set of detection rules. Our "current" (1.x) approach is mostly pattern-based, iterating though a list of definitions and trying to find malware that way. It's actually quite a bit more complex than that, but I'll leave it there for the introduction. Going back in time, the reason we chose the pattern based access is clear. A few...

With all the hype of over Windows 7, many people wonder how they can get Windows 7 functionality into previous versions of Micro$oft's operating systems. One of my favourite (but not really talked about) feature of Windows 7 is that you are able to set your background the change at a user defined time interval. If you are like me, you quickly get bored of your desktop wallpaper. With Windows 7, you can be pleasantly 'refreshed' after a long period of browsing the web! :present: "So, how do I get this functionality for my desktop?", you ask. Introducing, John's Background Switcher! *** Ok, so the name isn't exactly earth-shatteringly original, but it does a fine job of replicating Windows 7's background switching functionality +...

Updating is an area where we feel quite torn, because it just cannot be solved perfectly. On the one hand, privacy paranoia should require all Internet connections to be established on explicit user request and choice. Background downloads are often among malware criteria, and as such, we wanted to avoid them for a long time. On the other hand, there's user comfort. The average user does not want to be disturbed by having to actively care about his security software too much, and we can't blame him for that. Allowing an application to download at will requires (or at least should require) a lot of trust really. Of course, allowing a software to tell the user what it thinks is malware means a lot of trust as well already, so the trust...

No direct 2.0 blog post this week, the next one will be discussing the differences between various scanner models, a topic I need more time to write about since its far from easy. Instead, an older entry I had saved as a draft but never published so far, and looking for an excuse to use it in the 2.0 blog posts line, which is kind of important at least for error reporting on the 2.0 beta ;) --- Many might have noticed that I set a high value on proper bug reporting, but what exactly is it that I tend to see as proper? Are these universal standards or personal approaches? I decided to blog a few guidelines and my own opinion on them including some reasoning. 1. Versions. If you report an older version, whoever is going to help can...

Anti-Malware Obviously, you'll find us positive about our own software for this purpose, Spybot - Search & Destroy, which should protected you well. A very important advice when downloading any anti-malware application is to check the source of the file and the validity of the application twice. Do not use sponsored links on search engines for example - cheaters often try to sell inferior software "trials" labeled with the name of well known other products. Others are rogues that have only superficial functionality and might even install malware themselves to show they would detect something others are missing. A list of known fake or rogue applications can be found at Spyware Warrior. Also, make sure the manufacturer of the...