Archive for: December 12, 2007
December 12, 2007
RogueRemover FREE is a utility that can remove various rogue antispyware antivirus and hard drive cleaning utilities Rogue applications are applications that rather than remove spyware provide false positives distribute malware or spyware advertise or provide useless uninstallers The main point is that rogue applications are useless and eat up system resources
RogueRemover FREE has the ability to completely remove WinAntiSpyware WinAntiVirus SpyAxe VirusBlast VirusBursters and many more
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Changes in Version 1 23 12 11 07
1 Fixed minor bugs in scanner
2 Minor optimizations to database loading
3 Packaged new database
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Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC includes all previously released updates for the operating system This update also includes a small number of new functionalities which do not significantly change customers rsquo experience with the operating system
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Many of us who work in the media are weary of consolidation. Every time a News Corp. or Clear Channel scoops up another independent outlet, it makes us a fear for the state of journalism in the world today.
Apparently not everyone out there jumps to the same conclusions. Sometimes what people need is a little coercion. Sometimes the best coercion involves taking an analogy to a popular children's book series about a school for wizards and stretching it as far as it will go.
StopBigMedia.com has recruited the Harry Potter Alliance for just that purpose.
"The Harry Potter books offer a vivid example of what can happen when too much media rests in the hands of too few," said creator and director of the Harry Potter Alliance Andrew Slack in a release issued today. "In the series, Wizarding newspapers like the Daily Prophet put the magical community in serious jeopardy by denying Voldemort's return, failing to cover abuses from the Ministry and ultimately becoming a mouthpiece for Voldemort."
The two groups have teamed up to create Potterwatch, a site aimed at raising awareness about FCC chairman Kevin Martin's plan to drastically change media ownership rules a week from today.
"Potterwatch is the independent media movement formed by Harry Potter's allies to oppose Voldemort," added Slack. "StopBigMedia.com and the Harry Potter Alliance have come together to create a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against 'Voldemedia' -- the handful of companies that control most of what we see, hear and read every day."
Joining the Potterwatch cause are 10 "Wizard Rock" bands, including Harry and the Potters, the ...
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 If you're like me, you often find yourself wishing there were more hours in the day to finish all of the things you'd like to accomplish. The best way to make sure you're making the most of your time is to keep track of what you do and how long you spend on each task. Unfortunately, doing that takes even more precious time. Rescue Time, a new time-management utility, will keep track of what you do and how long you spend on different tasks without you having to lift a finger.
Rescue Time is a new time-management utility for people who want to know where all the hours went at the end of the day. The best thing about the app is that you don't have to spend hours or precious time writing down what you're doing and how long it's taken you to do it, because Rescue Time can keep track of it for you. The worst thing about the app is that in order for Rescue Time to keep track of your productivity habits, it needs to look over your shoulder while you do everything.
When you sign up for your Rescue Time account, you're given an app to download that keeps an eye on what you're up to. The app watches what programs you're running and which one has "focus," meaning the one you're using at the moment.
Rescue Time keeps track of how long you're using the focused application, and records it on your dashboard. At the end of a day or week, you can review ...
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In a move that could spell trouble for Google's OpenSocial, Facebook on Wednesday announced that it will be making its platform architecture available to other social networking sites.
"We'll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms," Facebook senior platform manager Ami Vora wrote in a blog post. "By enabling other social sites to use what we've learned, everyone wins--users get a better experience around the Web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications."
The 10,000 developers currently building Facebook applications on the social networking site can now move them to other sites "with no extra work," according to the Facebook developer page.
The Facebook Platfrom API made its debut in August 2006. It allowed developers to incorporate shared user data into their own sites or applications. In May 2007, Facebook opened the program up to the Facebook Web site itself.
Several networking sites have recently released developer platform offerings, including Bebo, LinkedIn, and Friendster.
All three have announced plans to participate in Google's OpenSocial, which has yet to launch. OpenSocial, which also allows for the creation of moveable apps, was seen as a direct challenge to the relatively closed nature of Facebook's offering.
    
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The House dealt a blow to telemarketers Tuesday when it approved two bills that would strengthen the do-not-call list.
Under current law, numbers entered into the do-not-call list are automatically deleted every five years, so the database does not become clogged with non-working or reassigned phone numbers. Most people are not aware of this caveat, however, and face being inundated with telemarketing calls beginning next year unless they re-register as soon as their phone number is deleted. To prevent this, H.R. 3541 would ensure that entries remain in the database permanently.
To prevent a list full of bogus phone numbers, the bill also calls for the FTC to periodically check numbers in the database to make sure they are legit.
The FTC has said that it will not begin purging any numbers pending congressional action on the bills. If you don't remember when or if you registered your phone number, the agency has a form on the Web site where you can enter your phone number and e-mail address to see the status of your entry.
The other bill approved by the House, H.R. 2601, authorizes the FTC to continue collecting fees for the do-not-call list through 2012.
    
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For the most part, I like iTunes. I think the interface works well, and the tie-in to the iTunes music store is a winner for me. It probably helps that I own an iPod. What I don't like about iTunes is that when I add files to my New Music folder, they aren't automatically imported to iTunes. Enter iTunes Folder Watch, a free Windows app that monitors a folder or folders of your choice and automatically updates your iTunes library when the contents of the folder change.
The fact that iTunes doesn't automatically scan certain folders for new music (like my downloads folder) is the only thing about iTunes that really bothers me. I have to manually drag the new songs to my iTunes library and wait for it to update, in order to listen to my freshly downloaded tracks or ripped CDs. With iTunes Folder Watch, I won't ever have to do that again. The best part is that it's completely free.
iTunes Folder Watch is very simple. The app, currently in beta, requires .NET 2.0 to run, so make sure that's installed first. Because it requires .NET, don't expect it to go light on the memory usage, either. At the same time, iTunes Folder Watch can be told to run in the foreground while you set preferences, or in the background as a taskbar process, automatically scanning your selected folders for new additions or deletions.
You can set up iTunes Folder Watch to keep an eye on a single folder or multiple folders on your system. Additionally, you can tell it to update iTunes automatically when changes are made or when iTunes is open, or ...
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Penthouse wants to give back this holiday season and help hook you up with your next indiscriminate sex party.
The porn mag snapped up the rights to Various Inc., which owns adultfriendfinder (AFF), a "personals community for swingers and sex." Penthouse reportedly shelled out $500 million for Various, which owns 25 sites, including Italianfriendfinder.com, gradfinder.com and, oddly enough, bigchurch.com--a site intended to connect people of the same faith. Altogether, the sites attract about 260 million users, approximately 1.2 million of whom pay for subscriptions.
AFF recently settled with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that it violated the law by using sexually explicit pop-up ads.
The goal in purchasing Various is to attract 18-to-34 year old men willing to fork over some of their cash for some Penthouse-quality porn online, in the magazine, and via videos, Marc H. Bell, chief executive of Penthouse Media, told the New York Times.
The mag seems to have recently become aware of a little thing called the Internets. "The rationale here is, it's an online world," Bell said.
Way to be on top of things, Penthouse.
That's what she said.
    
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 For the past few months, NBC has been running around the Web like ex-spouse recently freed from an oppressive long-term relationship, playing the field with reckless abandon, hooking up just about any old media distributor who happens to cross its path. First there were free episodes on NBC.com, then it was Hulu, and a couple of weeks ago, they announced a partnership with Netflix.
Yesterday, the company announced a deal with SanDisk, offering up shows like The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock, and Battlestar Galactica, with a couple of wins for NBC, including the flexible pricing options (which are set to run from $.99 to $3.99) and the chance to have a hand in copyright protect, both of which Apple refused to offer.
The downloads are designed to work with SanDisk's TakeTV device, a hard drive that users use to transfer files between their PC and TV.
However, TechCrunch reports, this latest deal might be eclipsed shortly, thanks to plans currently being hatched around NBC headquarters. The network is expected to start employing Pando's P2P technology, in order to distribute hi-def downloads via its own NBC Direct site.
This, the blog posits, is all part of a larger trend--Web video seems to be moving toward HD in a big way, and as such, many users may be getting higher-def videos on their PC before their TV sets.
Will that be enough to drive more viewers to the much-hyped world of Web video?
    
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For much of 2004 and 2005, that screen above was how I manoeuvred around England, as it were. That's the old interface of Multimap, a mapping service that Microsoft purchased today, on Wednesday, for an undisclosed sum.
Multimap will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, as part of the Virtual Earth and Search teams in the Online Services Group.
In some ways, Multimap summed up my initial impressions of England quite well: efficient and ordered, but just not in a convenient way.
What I loved and hated about the old Multimap was its anachronistic design: while Google Maps is essentially a visualized database that one can zoom in and out of, zooming in and out of Multimap essentially takes you to different maps of the same area, so that there was always a small reorientation period. And since the old Multimap wouldn't allow scrolling and there was no tool to obtain directions, looking at the map through the relatively small map window was like peering at a road map through a hole in a fence. When Google Maps arrived for the UK, it was like the advent of color television.
But Multimap also did some things right, features that so far Google hasn't duplicated. Of course, there was the breadth; even when Google started providing U.K. users its wealth of detail, most of Europe was just a blank spot on the Google Map. But Multimap -- at least in the U.K. -- recognized that public transport was an essential part of people's lives, and would indicate the closest tube stop, motorway junction, airport, and rail station. Small details, ...
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I feel like an old crank every time I get the urge to launch into a diatribe about l33t speak and the downfall of the English language. The fact that Merriam-Webster chose w00t (yep, zeros and all--it did, to its credit, choose not to include the superfluous exclamation mark) as its 2007 word of the year should surely be the perfect excuse to launch into cranky-old-man mode.
But I'll save it this time, for two reasons. First, Merriam-Webster didn't actually chose the word--Time Magazine's Person of the Year did. You did. Second, no one really takes these things too seriously, do they? Did anyone really expect last year's winner, the Stephen Colbert-coined "truthiness," to find its way into the Oxford English Dictionary?
Hang on--the Macmillan English Dictionary has something to say on the subject of one of its 2006 words of the week:
Though Colbert exploited the non-intellectual, made-up character of truthiness for humorous effect, the word was not his own invention, and in fact dates back as far as the 1800s. The Oxford English Dictionary contains an entry for the adjective truthy, which is defined as "characterised by the truth" and includes the derivation truthiness. Truthy and truthiness were originally used as straightforward variants of truthful and truthfulness.
If that's the case, perhaps w00t has roots in past centuries. Wasn't it Percy Bysshe Shelley who penned the romantic poetry classic w00t! The Skylark?
This AP story dates the word back as far as 1990. "For technophobes, the word also is familiar from the 1990 movie "Pretty Woman," in which Julia Roberts startles her date's upper-crust friends with a hearty "Woot, woot, woot!" at a polo ...
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