Proxy Checkers on the other hand can automate the process so that the proxies can be verified in a fraction of the site that a manual process would take.

The Free Web Proxy Checker has been specifically designed to test so called web proxies. A web proxy usually consists of a form on a website that a user can use to access another website from. This is different from standard proxy servers that need to be added to a program’s proxy settings before they can be used.

The web proxy checker has lots of settings of which most are not needed for basic verifications.

All that is basically needed is to paste a list of web proxy urls into the application’s interface. The program will test the proxies against the Gmail website to see if it is displayed correctly. This can be changed to any other website if necessary.

A click on the Start button will initiate the web proxy scan. Good proxies will be saved in the goodprox.txt file while bad proxies in the badprox.txt file.

Advanced users can tweak many different settings in the program from simultaneous threads over timeouts and retries to whitelist or blacklist specific countries, changing user agents and running a distribution web server.

Feature Overview of Free Web Proxy Checker

Check SOCKS4/SOCKS5/HTTP/HTTPS proxies with and without authentication.
Format of proxies with authentication: proxy_user:proxy_pass@proxy_host:proxy_port.
Format of proxies without authentication: proxy_host:proxy_port
Check for connect to the specified host:port.
Check for URL.
Load and combine proxies without checking.
Multithreaded.
Handle redirects.
Download proxy lists from the web.
Customizable User Agent.
Customizable HTTP Headers (Accept, Accept-Encoding).
Built-in proxy distribution web server.
Proxy country detection.
RBL (DNSBL) check.

Free Web Proxy Checker can be directly downloaded from the developer’s website

Not all Internet users that use Windows 7 on the other hand like the tab preview feature, especially those who regularly open many tabs in the web browser at once. The number of thumbnails are limited based on the screen resolution of the computer monitor.

Once a certain threshold is reached the thumbnail previews will be changed to a list mode which eventually will make use of a scrollbar to display all open tabs on the screen.

Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera have options to disable the taskbar preview feature in Windows 7. Only Google Chrome does not seem to have an option to disable the Aero Peek feature but it might be introduced at a later time by the developers.

Disable taskbar previews in Firefox

Firefox users can disable thumbnail previews in their web browser in the about:config configuration screen. All they need to do is to type about:config in the Firefox address bar and filter for the parameter browser.taskbar.previews.enable (users who have entered this for the first time need to confirm that they know what they are doing first).

The feature is disabled by default in the web browser. It might have been activated in the past. The value true indicates that the taskbar preview feature is active while false indicates the opposite.

A double-click on the parameter or a right-click and the selection of Toggle will change the parameter to either false or true depending on its initial value. The parameter needs to be set to false to disable the taskbar preview feature.

Disable taskbar previews in Internet Explorer

The tab previews can be disabled in Internet Explorer in the Internet Options. A click on Tools > Internet Options will open the configuration window. Locate the Settings button under Tabs in the General tab of the configuration window.

This opens the following menu:

Uncheck the option “Show previews for individual tabs in the taskbar” to disable the feature in the Internet Explorer web browser.

Disable taskbar previews in Opera

Opera users need to enter about:opera in the address bar of their web browser. There they need to locate User Prefs and the Use Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnails option. Unchecking that option will disable the taskbar previews in the Opera web browser.

Are you using the taskbar previews? Let us know in the comments.

The latest versions of Chromium, the Open Source core of Google Chrome, outline another interesting feature that will be available soon in the web browser as well: Allowing extensions to run in incognito mode.

Incognito Mode is the private browsing mode in Google Chrome. This mode prevents that data from that browsing session will be recorded in the web browser so that no traces of it can be found after ending the session.

No extensions are enabled by default and in previous versions of the web browser. The main reason for this behavior is that some extensions do record data which could interfere with the incognito mode.

The latest Chromium releases now give the user the choice whether to enable an extension in incognito mode. It would for instance be no problem to activate extensions that do not record data so that they can be used in incognito mode as well.

The option to allow extensions to run in incognito mode is available in the Google Chrome extension manager. Placing a checkmark in the “Allow this extension to run in incognito” box will enable that extension in the private browsing mode.

The feature is currently only available in Chromium with the likelihood that it will be implemented in one of the next Google Chrome development version updates.

The reason for this is to give their users an option to use the Windows XP mode to run software that is not running on Windows 7. Windows XP Mode required a processor with hardware virtualization support when it was introduced which meant that some computer users were not able to make use of it.

Users can find out if their PC is supporting hardware virtualization by downloading Microsoft’s Hardware Assisted Virtualization Tool.

Microsoft announced that they had removed the hardware virtualization requirement of Windows XP Mode two days ago and that they would make a patch available so that ever Windows 7 user with the right edition could make use of Windows XP Mode in the operating system.

The patches have now been made available for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7. Once installed they remove the requirement of hardware virtualization which gets rid of error messages like “Unable to start Windows Virtual PC because hardware-assisted virtualization is disabled” and “Cannot start Windows Virtual PC Host Process. Check the System event log for more details” which users experienced previously.

A genuine validation check is performed before the download becomes available.

Update for Windows 7 (KB977206)
Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB977206)

Install this update to remove the prerequisites required to run Windows Virtual PC and XP mode

Have you been making use of the Windows XP Mode in Windows 7? If so how was your experience?

In this article I will show you how to install Ubuntu Tweak and how easy it is to tweak your Ubuntu desktop to your hearts content.

Installation

You might be tempted to install the version included in Synaptic. Be warned, that version is older than the latest stable version on the web site. I highly recommend you download the latest version and install from that. Just click the Download button on the front page, which will open up the GDebi installation tool. Okay that installation, enter your password, and Ubuntu Tweak will install. Simple as that.

Of course, if you prefer, you can add the repos to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. Before you do this add the repository key with the command: sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com FE85409EEAB40ECCB65740816AF0E1940624A220 and then add the repo with the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tualatrix/ppa. Once you have done that enter the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

You are now ready to start tweaking.

Features

Ubuntu Tweak offers the following features:

• Basic System Information(Distribution, Kernel, CPU, Memory, etc.)
• GNOME Session Control
• Easy addition of Auto Start Programs
• Quick installation of popular applications
• Third-party sources for keeping applications up-to-date
• Package and cache clean up (to free disk space)
• Show/Hide/Edit Splash screen
• Show/Hide desktop icons or Mounted Volumes
• Show/Hide/Rename Computer, Home, Trash or Network icon
• Tweak Metacity Window Manager’s style and behaviour
• Compiz Fusion settings
• Screen Edge Settings
• Window Effect Settings
• Menu Effect Settings
• Quicker access your favourite applications
• GNOME Panel Settings
• Nautilus Settings
• Advanced Power Management Settings
• System Security Settings
• And other tweaks in the works!

That’s quite a number of tweaks. Now let’s take a look at how the tweaks are handled.

Usage

Figure 1

When you fire up Ubuntu Tweak you will be treated to a nice, simple user interface (see Figure 1).  If you don’t want to be treated to the Welcome screen every time you open the tool, you can click on Preferences and select which “tweak” you would like to set as your “welcome” window.

Ubuntu Tweak is set up so that some configurations happen in real time (So when you click a check box or select from a drop down, the configuration is immediately applied), whereas some require the click on an

Figure 2

Apply button.  In Figure 2 I have the Nautilus Settings window open. This was a good configuration to illustrate some options that aren’t easy to find. Here you can see the ability to open Nautilus with root privileges. Not something you would want to use carelessly (or in an insecure setting), but it’s still a feature not easily found.  There is no actual configuration setting for this. In order to open Nautilus as the root user you would have to open it using the command sudo nautilus. Of course, I don’t really recommend setting this option as it can be a security risk (if the wrong person gets their fingers on your machine). This was just to illustrate what Ubuntu Tweak can do.

Final thoughts

Spend some time going through Ubuntu Tweak. You will find TONS of handy configurations that would take quite a bit longer to track down without this tool.

Microsoft has introduced so called taskbar thumbnails in Windows 7 which displays a list of open pages or tabs in supported applications. Many Microsoft applications like Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer support this feature, as do new versions of Mozilla Firefox and several other applications.

The latest to support Windows 7 taskbar thumbnails is Google’s Chrome web browser. Hovering the mouse over Chrome’s icon in the Windows 7 taskbar will display a list of open tabs in the web browser. These tabs can be directly accessed by left-clicking on them in the thumbnail windows which is a very comfortable way of activating the websites quickly in the web browser.

The new feature to display thumbnail previews in the Windows 7 taskbar is automatically active in the latest Google Chrome developer releases.

The Chrome developers have now added an autofill feature to the Google Chrome 5 browser which is enabled by default but can be disabled right away in the web browser if it is not used by the Internet user.

Autofill is basically another feature that – just like the Google Translate option – has been offered in the Google Toolbar for quite some time.

There are two options on how to add profile information so that the data can later be used to autofill web forms. The first option is to fill out a form. This is recognized by Google Chrome which then suggests to store the entered data for future uses.

The second option is to create a profile right in the options of the browser. The autofill feature supports multiple profiles which each can store names, email addresses, addresses, phone and fax numbers as well as separate credit card information. The information can naturally be deleted as well in the same menu.

The profile information that can be stored by the Autofill option are not as sophisticated as those that the extension Last Pass offers. Last Pass can for instance save bank account information and custom fields which Google Chrome Autofill cannot.

Last Pass users might therefor prefer to turn off Chrome Autofill to continue using the autofill provided by their extension.

Autofill is only available in the latest development releases of Google Chrome 5. Those can be downloaded from this page. (via Techie Buzz)

Between ten and twenty new Mangas are added everyday to the website making it one of the most frequented websites for Manga lovers.

It hosts many of the most popular Manga series from Naruto and Bleach over One Piece and Fairy Tail to Full Metal Alchemist, Hunter X Hunter and Kenichi.

Users can visit the website to find out what’s new, subscribe to an RSS feed or use the recently reviewed Google Chrome extension Manga Lover which displays the latest releases directly in the web browser.

One Manga Reader is an alternative to the options described above. What does it do? For starters, it displays a list of all Manga series that are hosted on One Manga. That alone is not that spectacular but the following options are.

One Manga will add all Mangas that are read by the user to the reading list. The reading list will keep track of the latest chapter that has been read by the user and display the latest published chapter as well as links to all chapters of the Manga that are hosted on One Manga.

The extension provides a few options that can be configured in the Chrome extension manager. It is possible to remove ads from the One Manga website, display the Manga on one page instead of only a sheet per page ordisplay two sheets which is helpful for widescreen monitor users.

One Manga Reader can be downloaded from the Google Chrome Extension gallery.

Monitor ES is a small portable software program for the Windows operating system that can be used to perform that operation and some additional ones. It can be configured to automatically turn off the computer monitor if the computer system gets locked by the user. An alternative to that would be to enable the screensaver instead of turning off the computer monitor.

But turning off the computer monitor or enabling the screensaver are just two options offered by the Monitor Energy Saver.

It can perform various additional options after the user locks the computer system. This includes setting a custom away message in compatible instant messengers or stopping the playback in popular media players.

Monitor ES basically helps computer users save money (and the environment) by reducing the amount of energy their computer systems consumes.

The portable software program is offered for Microsoft Windows operating systems and Ubuntu Linux. It can be downloaded directly from the project website over at Codeplex.

A friend of mine for instance bought a new PC recently with a hard drive that had not the advertised size. While that can be easily discovered there are components that make the identification process much harder. Think of processors for instance.

The recent news that a major US online hardware store sold fake Intel cpus indicates that everyone should make sure that the hardware purchased is the hardware delivered.

The Windows device manager is usually a good starting point but the information presented there are limited. It is usually better to use a third party program to identify computer hardware.

The Intel Processor Identification Utility has been created by Intel to provide owners of Intel processors with a tool to check if their cpu is the one that they have ordered.

The tool displays the information about the Intel processor in three tabs that are called Frequency Test, CPU Technologies and CPUID Data.

The frequency test will display the reported and expected frequencies of the processor. Small variations do not necessarily mean that the processor is fake.

CPU Technologies lists the supported technologies of the CPU while the CPUID Data tab displays in depths information about the CPU.

The Intel Processor Identification Utility can be downloaded directly from Intel. A version for Microsoft Windows PCs and a bootable version are provided on the Intel website.

Enter Mozilla Contacts, a prototype add-on that aims to achieve just that for the web browser. The add-on basically provides Firefox users with an option to manage and access their contacts in the web browser.

Contacts uses a browser based database that “stays in sync with your address books”. It currently supports Gmail, Twitter and the Mac OS address bar with additional address books to be included in the future. A generic importer for computer address books is also provided.

All contacts can be viewed directly in the web browser. More interesting than this feature are the two following ones that have been implemented into the add-on.

The add-on offers an email auto-completion option whenever an email address needs to be entered into a web form. Suggestions will be displays on screen that the user can use to speed up the process.

Security conscious users will like the ability to restrict website access to contacts. Think of the “invite your contacts to our service” options on sites like Facebook. Instead of letting the service retrieve all contacts it is now possible to select the contacts from a list that the service should have access to.

Check out the announcement post over at the Mozilla Labs website for additional information about the add-on and a download link to install it in your Firefox web browser.

With Windows 7 that seems unnecessary. Rumors about the Windows 7 service pack 1 have made their rounds in the last weeks with most suggesting a release in the fourth quarter of 2010, around a year after Windows 7 has been released.

Microsoft employee Brandon LeBlanc yesterday revealed additional details about the upcoming service pack for Windows 7.

For Windows 7, SP1 includes only minor updates, among which are previous updates that are already delivered through Windows Update. SP1 for Windows 7 will, however, deliver an updated Remote Desktop client that takes advantage of RemoteFX introduced in the server-side with SP1 for Windows Server 2008 R2.

The announcement confirms that Windows 7 Service Pack 1 will be anything but spectacular. This also means that companies and organizations do not need to wait for the service pack to be released before they start migrating to the new operating system.

The service pack will be delivered through Windows Update and as a download that will be made available on the Microsoft website. Brandon promised to post additional information about the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 shortly before the development team reaches the next milestone. So, no release timeline at this point.

Two Finger Scroll tries to change that by adding to the functionality of Synaptics touchpads. The portable software program just needs to be executed for the new functionality to become available.

Most laptops have Synaptics touchpads which means that Two Finger Scroll should work on most that are sold with Windows.

The software program currently adds two features to the touchpad that allow the laptop user to do the following:

• Two finger scrolling – scroll vertically by sliding two fingers anywhere on the TouchPad
• Two finger tapping – tap with two fingers to simulate a selected mouse button

The application places an icon into the Windows System Tray upon startup that can be used to configure it. A right-click and the selection of Settings from the menu will display the settings of the software program.

It is here that the user can define specific scrolling settings from speed and acceleration to the scroll type and mode.

The tapping menu contains additional configurations to configure other finger gestures from one plus one finger to three fingers which can be set to mouse buttons currently.

Two Finger Scroll adds the functionality to the Windows laptop without installing new drivers for the touchpad. That is its greatest strength. The portable software program can be downloaded from the Codeplex website of the project. (via Lifehacker)

Subtitle Search is another program for finding and download subtitles from the Internet. It supports several subtitle databases including the popular sites Open Subtitles and Subtitle Resource.

The main program basically works by entering a movie title or partial title into the search form in the program’s interface.

Subtitle Search will then perform searches on various supported websites to find the movie and corresponding subtitles.

The subtitle downloader usually populates the results listing quickly. Each result is listed with its title, language, number of CDs, rating and source.

Subtitle Search will also pull information about the movie from IMDB including its cover, votes, rating and link. All it takes to download a specific subtitle is to left-click it in the results. It is also possible to open the page it is hosted on by right-clicking the subtitle instead.

Users can also perform a search on IMDB right from the program’s interface which might come in handy if a movie title cannot be remembered.

There are two additional features that we would like to mention in this short review. The first is the ability to automatically download movie trailers if they are found on supported websites. The second to monitor the subtitle databases for subtitles that are currently not hosted there.

Subtitle Search is an Open source software program for the Windows operating system that can be downloaded directly from the project’s website at Sourcefoge.

Several security companies are currently warning their users about a widespread scam that is targeting Facebook users per email.

The attackers are currently sending out emails that claim that the Facebook password has been changed and that a new password can be found in an attached document.

Facebook Password Reset Confirmation! Customer Support

Dear user of Facebook,

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed.
You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team.

Experienced users will quickly realize that the email is a scam. There are several indicators for this. Indicators are the non personal tone of the message (no name is mentioned in the email), the email attachment and the fact that Facebook will never send out emails that automatically reset password.

Both McAfee and Sophos have put out warnings about the scam. The attachment’s name is Facebook_details_.zip. It contains a trojan and should therefor not be opened by the user. McAfee reports that the trojan steals computer passwords from the PC when it is executed and not blocked by security software.

Facebook users should take a look at our Facebook Login security information for further tips on how to improve the security on the network. (via Download Squad)

Hotmail Watcher is a Firefox add-on that can notify the user whenever new email has arrived in a Hotmail account. The extension does not need to be configured with the Hotmail username or password as it takes the information directly from the cookie that Hotmail sets.

The user needs to be logged into the Hotmail website before the extension can start showing notifications of new emails in the email account.

The extension places an icon with a counter in the Firefox status bar upon installation. The counter will be updated as long as the user is logged into the Hotmail account. A left-click on the icon opens the Hotmail website and resets the counter, a right-click displays the add-on’s options and a middle click to check for new emails directly.

The extension is configured to check every 20 minutes for new emails. This can be changed to a timeframe between every 5 minutes and every 4 hours. It is furthermore possible to disable the automatic checks and check only on the user’s request.

Sound, display and blink alerts can be displayed to the user whenever new emails have been found in the Hotmail email account.

Hotmail Watcher is an experimental add-on for the Firefox web browser that can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

Pageaddict is a time tracking add-on for the Mozilla Firefox web browser that uses a different measuring technique. It records the total time that the user spent in the web browser as well as the time spend on individual websites.

The developer of the add-on has created it to inform Firefox users on their browsing habits. This can help in a self analysis of those habits, maybe to cut the time spent online by reducing the time spend on some sites that are listed by Pageaddict.

It can however also be used to record the times spent on websites for business or educational purposes.

Pageaddict is active right after the installation of the add-on in the web browser. The statistics of the time spent online can be accessed in the Firefox Tools menu or by directly visiting the Pageaddict website.

Tags can be defined to sort websites into categories to make the identification easier. It is for instance possible to create the tags work, research, downloads and entertainment to see how much time is spent on those activities. The websites need to be linked to tags after their creation.

Pageaddict does not store information about the websites that are visited by the user remotely. All information are stored locally according to the developer of the extension. The Firefox add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

The developer mentions experts-exchange.com in the description of the Google Chrome extension. The website could be a good example if they would really block the results from users coming from search engines. We have already shown that it is possible to access all experts exchange content without paying for it.

But assuming there is a site that is protecting their content, or a malicious site or spammy site then it could be in the best interest of the user to block those results from the search engine.

The websites on the other hand are not blocked if they are opened directly making the extension not suitable as a website blocker, but that was never the intention of the developer.

New websites can be added to the Google blacklist by clicking on the Tools icon in the Google Chrome toolbar and there on the Extensions menu entry.

A click on Options next to the Google Blacklist extension displays the configuration options. Urls can be added and removed in here easily. It is furthermore possible to make blacklisted results transparent instead of removing them completely from the search results.

Interested users can download the Google Blacklist for the Chrome web browser at the Google Chrome Extensions gallery. The developer plans to include two interesting new features in future versions. The first is the ability to add websites to the blacklist directly from within the search results, the second to whitelist websites so that they are highlighted in the results.

Well, I was correct. The English support wasn’t dropped from the distribution. I did, however, have to make my way through to the install in order to select English as the language. In this article I will show you how to do that, and then I will highlight what makes this distribution good for the new user.

Installation

Figure 1

After you have downloaded and burned the ISO (Of course you can just use the ISO in VirtualBox, if you don’t have a blank CD or DVD handy). Put the CD (or DVD) in the drive and reboot your machine. When the live version of Greenie finally is loaded you will notice everything is in Slovakian. No problem. Notice (in Figure 1) the highlighted icon on the desktop (the one that says “Instalovat Greenie”), I was fairly confident that translated roughly into “Install Greenie”. I was correct. Double click that icon to begin the installation.

You will also notice (in that same image) that the very first step is the language selection. Saved! Scroll around until you find your language of choice (mine being English).

Figure 2

Ah, but youi’re not completely out of the woods yet. Although the language has been set, your keyboard has not. Greenie still thinks the default keyboard is Slovak. So (as shown in Figure 2), when you reach the keyboard selection, make sure you select the right keyboard layout. If you do not, you will have trouble using Greenie Linux once installed.

Outside of making sure you select those two items, the installation is fairly standard. It is based on Ubuntu so you should find it an incredibly easy installation.

How does it differ?

Figure 3

There are a few, instantly, noticeable changes that Greenie has made to the standard Ubuntu. One of the first things you will notice is that there is a heck of a lot more icons on the desktop and panels than on the standard Ubuntu. The panels are practically bursting with icons and monitors. The two icons on the right side of the lower panel are of particular interest (one of which was mentioned by PeterB). Take a look at Figure 3. The far right icon (the big X) is basically an icon for the xkill command. This command will fire up a special cursor that will kill any application you click on. It’s very handy when an app is not responding. The other icon (the odd green and white “gear” next to the xkill icon), when clicked, opens up the run dialog. Handy…but for new users? Not so much, seeing as how you need to know the command you wanted to run to take advantage of this tool.

What is most impressive about Greenie is that they have really jammed a lot of good applications into this distribution. In fact the more you poke around the more you start to think this distribution is just as much for experienced users as it is for newbies. Greenie even includes a cool tool called Ubuntu Tweak. This tool allows you to configure a ton of otherwise hidden settings, configure templates, clean up unneeded packages, and a lot more. After using Ubuntu Tweak, I’m thinking this tool needs to be included in every Ubuntu release! In fact, Ubuntu Tweak needs an article on its own (it’s that good).

Final thoughts

PeterB was right. Greenie Linux is one outstanding distribution. All you have to do is get beyond the language barrier (by simply installing the distro) and you will find a flavor of Linux that has something for just about everyone. Give this distribution a try. You won’t be disappointed.

That’s an interesting preview feature which comes in handy whenever there is no other way of finding out which window contains the information that need to be accessed. A practical example would be multiple Windows Explorer windows that are open. To access a specific one the user would need to click on them until the target was found. Windows 7 makes the selection process easier thanks to the preview thumbnails.

The information that are displayed cannot be customized in Windows 7, at least not in the Control Panel or by looking at the properties of the taskbar.

The Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer program changes that. It can be used to change several parameters of the taskbar thumbnail in Windows 7 including the minimum and maximum size, spacing, delay time and margins.

Sliders next to each parameter can be used to change the values. It is for instance possible to increase the thumbnail size from the standard value of 200 pixels to a maximum of 512 pixels.

The parameters are self-explanatory and the Restore Defaults button ensures that the default values can be restored if needed.

The portable software program can be downloaded from The Windows Club website.