While it is quite possible for a new browser to succeed in the market by handling some of the things differently, it is the unique features that may make a bigger difference. Maxthon for instance supports two rendering engines, and excels when it comes to the HTML5 test.

Lunascape on the other hand, a browser that has been around for quite some time, ups that by integrating three browser engines into the program. The web browser supports the rendering engines of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome / Safari.

When you first start the browser you may feel that it is a bit on the messy side of things interface wise. It starts with lots of icons in the main header, and even a news ticker that is automatically displaying headlines from sites like the New York Times, CNN or the BBC. When you look closer at the interface, you will notice that the developers have taken inspiration from a couple of browsers. The panel on the left for instance resembles that of the Opera browser, while the header itself looks more like that of the Firefox web browser.

Bookmarks, add-ons and settings can be imported at any time from web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and a handful of lesser known browsers like Maxthon or Sleipnir.

Please note that Firefox imports are only supported for versions 3 or older, and not from newer versions of the browser. The reliance on three engines opens up some interesting options. You can for instance install Firefox add-ons in the browser and use them, provided that you have set it to use the Gecko engine. The add-ons simply become unavailable when you switch to WebKit or Trident instead. Once you switch back, they are available again.

You can customize the interface of the browser, for instance by adding or removing buttons or toolbars in the browser. If you feel the menubar is missing, you can add it right away to have it displayed all the time. Virtually every button or toolbar can be moved or removed from the browser.

The browser handles several actions different from other browsers. It is for instance opening websites that you enter in the browser’s address bar in a new tab automatically, leaving the active page untouched in the process. Another interesting feature are the extensive customizations that it makes available. You can for instance configure mouse actions on tabs extensively in the browser settings.

The very same options are available for links, and clicks in the browser interface. Other interesting features are:

• Automatic and manual profile backups
• Options to switch engines automatically based on the page you are visiting
• Ships with myriads of bookmarklets and scripts
• Define tab behavior extensively, for instance when a new tab should be opened, when to show the tab-title bar, or if you want to display multiple rows automatically when the number of tabs exceed the space.

Check out this video for a short introduction:

Three browser engines may feel like overkill, but it makes sense after all. You have got the IE rendering engine for pages that only display properly in that browser, you got Firefox and Chrome which both provide speed and performance, with Firefox’s Gecko engine even supporting the incredible add-on system of that browser. It is definitely a solid browser with some interesting features that other browsers do not offer (yet). It has a few quirks here and there, but nothing that one can’t get used to after a while of working with the browser. All in all an interesting alternative to the established five.

We have also looked at MiPony, a viable alternative that is featuring much of what JDownloader is offering but without the Java requirement.

And now there is ochDownloader, a alternative for Windows and Linux. The program is not as sophisticated as JDownloader or MiPony yet, and you will notice that it only supports a handful of file hosts. The list does read like the who is who though, with Mediafire, Rapidshare, Filefactory, Depositfiles and Oron all supported by the program. Another restriction is that support is limited currently to anonymous accounts. If you want to make use of premium accounts, you can’t use the software for that.

Once you start the application you will see a clean interface. The adding of files works exactly like in other programs of its kind. You can copy individual links to the Clipboard from where they are picked up automatically, or paste a list of files that you want to download into the application’s add links window directly. From there you can start the downloads directly and enter the captcha codes if required.

The program lets you configure a download slots limited (to a maximum of 20), and a speed limit. A click on the settings icon displays options to configure IP renewals, the auto extraction of contents and shutdown settings. Other than that there is only the option to configure a proxy that you want the program to use when connecting to and downloading from file hosts.

For now, ochDownloader is mainly limited by its low number of supported hosting sites. This is not an issue for users who only download from supported hosts. If you switch between many different hosts, you may however find the program not suitable for your situation. For now, it is a program to keep an eye on, especially since it is regularly updated by its developer.

Microsoft notes that Visual Studio 11 will only be available for Windows 7 or higher (which at the time of writing means Windows 8), and not for Vista, XP or other Windows operating systems.  According to the official announcement, this is due to the leveraging of core capabilities that only those operating systems offer. Microsoft unfortunately fails to mention what these core capabilities are.

The company notes further that the default target for applications will be set to .Net Framework 4.5 when it comes to managed apps, which means that those will run on Windows Vista or higher, and not on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. If compatibility is an issue, developers can target new or existing applications to the .NET Framework 4.0 to ensure compatibility with those operating systems. I guess that is also official confirmation that the next iteration of the .Net Framework will not be compatible with Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

But that is far from the only changes that will affect lots of Visual Studio users. Microsoft is a bit ambiguous in the blog post when it comes to Visual Studio 11 Express, and its support for desktop app development.

For example, the Express edition for Windows 8 allows developers to use C#, Visual Basic, C++ and JavaScript. It also provides best-in-class tools for creating Metro style apps for Windows 8, including tools such as Blend, app profiling, unit testing and more.

The Visual Studio 11 Express website on the other hand offers the following information that make it a lot clearer:

Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 provides tools for Metro style app development. To create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher. In addition, Visual Studio 2010 Express products – Visual Basic 2010 Express, Visual C++ 2010 Express, and Visual C# 2010 Express – will remain available for free download.

This basically means that Windows 8 users who install Visual Studio 11 Express will only be able to develop Metro apps with it. And Windows 7 users? It is likely that they can continue developing desktop applications with the programming environment, as it would not really make much sense to only give them the option to create Metro apps – which they can’t test or use on the system – in Visual Studio Express 11.

Update: It seems that Windows 7 users won’t be able to use Visual Studio 11 Express at all, only Express for Web and Team Foundation Server Express.

Users who want to stick with Visual Studio when it comes to developing applications need to download and use the previous versions of the program which have been available for a while.

What’s your take on this?

If you have a shortcut of your own that you hit by accident, or that you wish would be mapped differently, then you may be interested in the Customizable Shortcuts extension for the Internet browser. The add-on gives you full power over the browser’s keyboard shortcuts. While I have not checked if it is making available all, the list of shortcuts that you can change is long and feels complete.

The Firefox add-on Customizable Shortcuts adds a new entry to the Firefox preferences as you can see on the screenshot above. Please note that it is only compatible with the original preferences menu, and not the new in-content preferences feature. If you have enabled it, you need to disable it to access the Shortcuts tab in the preferences. You can then easily switch back to the new preferences style once you have finished editing the browser shortcuts.

You can either go through the list of shortcuts manually, or use the search at the top to find a specific shortcut or function. The shortcuts are divided into actions that make navigation a tad easier. A double-click on a shortcut lets you change the shortcut right away. Just tap on the new keyboard combination that you want to use and watch how it appears in the field afterwards. The new shortcuts are active right away and I would suggest to test them to make sure that they work as intended.

Modified shortcuts are highlighted with bold text, making them easier to spot, and modify or reset.  The reset option lets you reset individual shortcuts to their default value. It is however not possible to reset all modified shortcuts at once.

The extension handles conflicts by disabling the shortcut for the existing action, so that the new action is triggered exclusively. Disabled shortcuts are marked in the listing, but not brought to the top. It is therefor a good idea to look through the listing after changing shortcuts to make sure that you have not disabled a feature accidentally.

You can however use this to your advantage, for instance if you want a shortcut to be disabled. Just assign the same shortcut to another action to disable the original shortcut. While you may still trigger an action, you may select one that is not interrupting your workflow at all.

Proxy use has increased significantly in those countries, and rather surprisingly, The Piratebay’s traffic has actually increased when it comes to users from those countries. The political Pirate parties in the U.K and the Netherlands have for instance created proxies that users can use to access the Piratebay website.

It is not an ideal solution though, which may be one of the reasons why another IP address was added to the Piratebay’s server. This, at least for the time being, allows anyone to access the site again normally. It is likely that the ISPs will catch up eventually and block that new IP address along with the existing ones.

Users then need to go back to using proxy servers to connect to the website in question, which is the main reason why the site administrators have made changes to the Piratebay website to better serve users who are using a proxy to connect.

This includes hiding login, register, comment and upload functionality due to security concerns, and the exclusive display of magnet links. Since every bit is send through the proxy, the maintainers of the proxy have theoretically options to record or analyze the traffic. While that’s not the case with the majority of servers out there, there may be some malicious ones that have been set up for exactly that purpose.

The blocking of member functionality may however impact Piratebay users who only connect to the site through proxies as a security precaution of their own.

Recap: The music/movie industry probably did not expect the Piratebay’s traffic to increase after being blocked by major ISPs (with the remaining to block before June 1 in the UK). It is actually now the top 50 site in the UK, according to Alexa in front of BT, eBay or ITV.

With thousands of web proxies available, and the site optimized for them, it is unlikely that people from countries where the Piratebay is blocked will run out of options any time soon to access it.  (read more at Torrentfreak)

Windows 8 users have 200ms to hit that key during boot. If they miss by one second, Windows 8 will skip the advanced boot menu and boot right into the operating system. To put this into perspective, users who type fast manage to hit four times the F8 key in a second, which results in individual key press intervals of 250ms. If you do not get the timing perfectly right, you will bypass the boot menu.

That’s obviously an issue that Windows 8 users will have to deal with, and Microsoft has decided to change the boot experience to reflect those changes.

Probably the biggest change is how the new boot menu is launched. While you can still press the F8 key frantically on boot, you may need multiple times to get the timing right.

When your in Windows 8, you have multiple options to configure the operating system to display the advanced boot menu on startup.

You can click open the Settings charm and load the PC settings here to configure the option. You reach the Settings charm for instance by moving the mouse in the lower right corner of the screen.

You can alternatively hold down the Shift key before you click on the system’s Restart option, or run the command shutdown /r /o for the same effect.

Microsoft furthermore has integrated automatic options to display the boot menu, for instance when errors are noted during boot, or when the operating system is running.

This in itself is a pretty big change, but that’s not all of it. The advanced boot menu has been redesigned completely, to match the Windows 8 theme.

As you can see, the menu looks completely different from the advanced boot menu in previous operating systems. From here you can reach the repair and recovery options, as well as configuration options. The menu is now divided into multiple screens, which veteran Windows users will have to get used to at first.

What’s your take on the new boot menu, and the options to load it? (via Everything Microsoft)

System Security Guard is a free portable program for the Windows operating system that you can run to check core system processes and files for security issues. The program requires an Internet connection though as it checks the files using a remote server.

I’d like to point out at this stage that the program is developed by the same company that brings you System Explorer, a great program that provides a task manager, process explorer and startup manager capabilities. You will actually notice that what System Security Guard has to offer, is also included in System Explorer. If you start System Explorer, you can have the program perform the same security check (or a very similar one).  So, if you use that program, there is not really the need to run System Security Guard as well on your system.

When you start the program the program loads the results of the last scan, if a scan has been performed previously. You can click on the start security check button to run a new scan, which usually takes less than a minute to complete. Once that is done you will receive a summary report in the program interface, just like the one on the screenshot above.

The program rates all scanned files into safe, suspicious, threat and unknown files. It does not list them in the program window though, which is bit of a nuisance. You can click on the show file report link to open a detailed report on the System Security Guard website.  Here you finally see a list of all files that have been scanned, their rating, and an option to display details about the file.

It is a good idea to concentrate on threats first, then suspicious files, and finally the unknown files.  You may be able to eliminate some files right away, for instance browser files or other applications that you are confident about.

The detailed file information use the System Explorer process library, which is another indicator that both programs share the same technology.

I personally prefer to use System Explorer over System Security Guard. Both programs are available as portable versions, with System Explorer providing access to a larger feature set that is actually pretty useful in itself. Still, if for one reason or the other you do not want to use that program, System Security Guard may be an alternative to have your files checked out.

Please note that the program’s scan is limited to select files and locations, and that you should use another program that is providing ongoing protection of the system.

I recently had a chat with a friend of mine about this and he told me that he was using Windows 7′s snap feature to snap two windows next to each other on the operating system. He did that either by moving the windows to the left or right side of the screen, or activating the windows individually, and using the Windows-left arrow or Windows-right arrow shortcut to place them in those locations.

When I told him that there was another way to do that, one that would even work with more than two windows, he was puzzled at first. Take a look at the following screenshot and see for yourself.

A right-click on a blank spot on the taskbar displays the context menu that you see above. When you select show windows side by side all windows that are currently not in minimized state will be aligned next to each other, so that each window gets the same amount of screen estate on the desktop. If you have two windows, each gets 50% and is displayed next to each other vertically. Three windows get 33.3% each, and are displayed vertically on the system, and four windows vertically again with each getting 25% of the available screen estate.

All you need to do therefor is to open the program windows that you want to displayed side by side, right-click the taskbar, and select the show windows side by side option. It may not be much faster for two windows if you run Windows 7, but it is definitely faster if you want to display three or more windows side by side instead.

This option should be available – maybe under a different name – in previous versions of Windows as well.

And this is but one of the advantages that MediaPlus gives you once you have installed it in the Google Chrome browser. You will notice that it adds an icon to Chrome’s address bar, which you need to click on to activate the extension’s feature set on the active page. When you do that, it will automatically scan the page for Flash or HTML5 elements, to display its context menu when you hover the mouse cursor over them.

It offers the following features:

• Close this panel
• Resize the element, or move it on the page
• Turn off the lights, darken every other element on the page
• Maximize the element to full screen (and hide all other elements as a consequence)
• Remove the element from the page
• Pop out the element to a new window. This moves the selected element, a game or video for instance, into its own window.
• Download contents on the page to the local computer. This links to a page pointing to three free online services that you can use to download the element.

While you may have seen some of the functionality in other browser add-ons, like the recently reviewed lmnpop for Firefox, you usually do not find extensions that add all of the functionality to a browser. It is especially interesting to note that it will work not only with Flash contents, but also some HTML5 contents, like HTML5 videos that some sites use of.

It is a pretty useful extension for Chrome users who regularly come into contact with Flash or HTML5 elements and prefer to have more control over the element and its surroundings. If you want to play flash games in full screen, now you can. The same is true for web videos or apps that may not offer those options.

The core benefit here is privacy and full control over the data. This can be extremely useful for businesses who do not want to or can’t host files on third party services, and individual users who want full control over the whole hosting and synchronization service.

The developers have just released a new version of ownCloud which raises the version of the program to 4. The new version introduces several requested features that improve the service significantly.

• Versioning – With this feature enabled, it is possible to restore an older version of a file. A core advantage here is that you can configure the versioninig feature, which you can’t do at third party cloud hosting and synchronization services.
• Encryption – You can now configure file encryption so that all files stored on the server are encrypted, and thus only accessible with the correct password.
• Drag and drop upload – The ownCloud web service now supports the dragging and dropping of local files to a directory on the server.
• ODF Viewer – Open Document Format files are now supported by the viewer, and can be read right in the web browser without the need for plugins or programs.
• Themes – If you do not like the look and feel of the ownCloud site, you can now theme and style it yourself, or install a theme created by others.
• Application Store – This makes it easier to install new applications, like the encryption or versioning application on the server.

There is more though to the new version. Here is a list of additional changes and improvements:

• External Storage – This is an experimental feature that allows you to mount Google Drive and Dropbox storage as folders inside the ownCloud structure
• Syslog support – OwnCloud can now write to syslog log files, and of course the service’s own log files
• LDAP / Active Directory – Admins can manage users and groups from LDAP and AD.
• Migration – Options to migrate user accounts between different ownCloud instances, for instance between a primary and backup server.
• Tasks – A to do list that is synchronized automatically.
• Share Calendars – You can now share your own calendar with other users or groups
• File Notifications – Users can now be notified when files are shared with them.
• Galleries – Control over galleries have been improved, including sharing per email options and sort oders.

You can check out the version 4.0 feature overview here on this page. All in all some excellent new features. Have you tried ownCloud yet? If so, what is your impression so far? (via Caschy)

The Firefox add-on Suspend background tabs tackles the issue by suspending actions in background tabs. The author of the extension notes that it currently won’t take action on sites with Flash or media contents, but that a future version may introduce the – in my opinion much needed – feature.

Once you have installed the extension in Firefox it works automatically from here on out. This extension works best for users who have dozens of tabs open in the Firefox web browser. If you limit your tabs to less than ten, you will probably not notice a big difference unless your computer is a bit on the low side resource-wise.

The add-on suspends automatic actions by websites, for instance the automatic updating of messages on Twitter or Google Mail, until you activate the tab again. You will notice on these sites that the messages will only get refreshed once you activate the tab again.

It is unfortunate that the extension does not cover Flash related contents as well, as they can draw lots of resources even in the background. While you could deal with the issue differently, for instance by installing NoScript or a Flash blocker, the solution may not be as comfortable and automatic as what Suspend background tabs has to offer.

The Firefox extension comes with an option to not suspend pinned tabs in the browser. I’d like to see an option to whitelist particular domain names so that they won’t be suspended as well. Despite that, it can be an interesting add-on for Firefox users who run many tabs in the browser and notice that Firefox is not as responsive as it should be.

The extension should not be confused with Firefox’s Tabs on Demand feature. Firefox from version 13 on will only load the active tab on startup when session restore is active, and all other open tabs only once they have been selected. (via Techdows)

Another reason for downloading files in priority is if you want to have them available at the very earliest moment. Instead of download files left and right without order, you might want to download files one by one instead so that you have the complete file on your hard drive. This may be important for accessing as soon as possible, but also if you fear that the original seeder might shut down the seeding. Instead of being left with incomplete files, you would have at least some finished files on your computer.

The Bittorrent client uTorrent offers several configuration options, some automatic, some manual, that you can use to prioritize file downloads in the client.

Probably the biggest option that you have at your disposal are only available manually, unfortunately. You can highlight specific files in a torrent and change their priority. The client by default supports the three priority ratings high, normal and low, which you can increase to 15 with a click on Options > Preferences > UI Settings > Use fine grained file priorities.

The second option, still manual, is the Prioritize by file order option that you see in the screenshot above. This basically prioritizes downloads based on the order of files in the file listing. If you select all files, uTorrent will try and complete the first file before it jumps to the second, then third, and so on. There is unfortunately no option to automate this setting in uTorrent.

Open the preferences again, and select Advanced this time. Here you find several advanced configuration options. Locate bt.prio_first_last_piece here and set its value to true. This is an automatic setting that makes uTorrent prioritize the first and last piece of a file over everything else. Keep in mind that this does not necessarily mean that the whole file will be prioritized. It is mainly there to provide users with a way to preview media files as soon as possible.

The article continues with a set of design goals for Windows 8′s multi-monitor system support:

• Better desktop personalization features for multi-monitor systems
• Improve app accessibility across monitors
• Improve the system’s user interface accessibility
• Allow metro and desktop to run side by side

The remaining parts of the article address each of the goals in detail.

When it comes to personalization, Microsoft is making changes to the way the desktop is personalized on multi-monitor systems.

Some of the changes include:

• The ability to display a different desktop background on each connected monitor, with options to automatically switch through sets, or between wallpapers on monitors individually
• A slide show that picks the best suitable wallpapers size-wise for each monitor. This can be especially useful if different sized monitors are connected to the PC.
• The ability to span a background across all monitors, even if those monitors have different sizes.

Another change comes to the taskbar on multi-monitor systems. Microsoft points out that Windows users who work on multi-monitor systems have different ideas about how the ideal taskbar should look like on those systems. That’s the main reason why Microsoft is making available three different display options when it comes to that.

• By default, all taskbar buttons will be displayed on all monitors, so that they are accessible right away without having to move the mouse cursor to another monitor to access one of the programs.
• Main taskbar and taskbar where window is open. The main monitor displays all open windows, while all other monitors only the windows and programs that are displayed on them.
• All taskbars displays taskbar icons individually for each desktop. If a window or program is open on a monitor, the icon is displayed on that monitor’s taskbar, but not on other taskbars.

Microsoft then provides a sneak peek of features that multi-monitor users may notice in the upcoming Windows 8 Release Preview. This includes some important changes like the ability to bring up Start, charms and app switching from the corners of any monitor. The company furthermore has improved mouse targeting on the shared edge. It is not uncommon on multi-monitor systems to overshoot the mouse and land on another monitor because of this.  Microsoft is introducing an improved model in the Release Preview that is helping multi-monitor users target the shared edges in a better way.

Are you working with multiple-monitors? If so, have any tips for starting users?

Wise Disk Cleaner is a free program for the Windows operating system that PC users can make use of to remove unnecessary files from their system that take up disk space. The program uses a clean interface that is divided into three tabs at the top.

The Common Cleaner tab resembles CCleaner’s functionality. It is basically a list of locations where temporary files or files that leave traces are saved in. A click on a group opens up a detailed selection list. You find the usual file locations listed here, from web browsing cookies and history information to temporary file locations that Windows uses automatically.

The list is nowhere near as comprehensive as that of CCleaner, but it covers many major locations. It needs to be mentioned that only Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome are covered by the cleaner.

The Advanced Cleaner basically searches select hard drives for temporary file types, invalid shortcuts and empty files, and offers to remove them.  It is possible to add custom file extensions here to have them included in the cleanup automatically from that moment on.

Wise Disk Cleaner offers to run these two cleanup modes manually or on schedule. It is for instance possible to run an automatic cleanup once per week.

The Slimming System options offers interesting options to cut down on the size of the Windows installation folder. Here it is possible to remove components that you may not use at all. This includes Windows Help files, language packs, or the Windows Installer Baseline Cache which usually has quite a large file size.

On a one month old installation of Windows 7, the slimming system option offered to free up 1.3 Gigabyte of disk space.

The program settings offer some interesting options. You can first add folders here that you want emptied regularly. Whatever is in that folder, will be cleaned by the program when you run it. You can furthermore add folders to the list of exclusions, so that they are not targeted by the cleaner at all, and have the program create a one-click shortcut on your system to run cleanups manually with a click on that shortcut. Non-SSD users can furthermore enable secure deletion here to make the data unrecoverable after deletion.

Closing Words

Slimming System feels like a genuine feature, especially since it usually frees up more disk space than the other cleaning options. This feature sets it apart from other cleaners that do not offer it.  Please note that you can download a portable version of the PC cleaner by clicking on the Alternate Download link on the program website.

It is rare to see Wikipedia go down, but it can happen. But that is not the only reason why you may want to include other encyclopedias in your online research. Maybe Wikipedia does not have an article yet on the topic that you are interested in, or the article that is available on the site is not providing you with the answers you are looking for.

Sometimes you may also need a specialized encyclopedia instead, for instance when it comes to medical research. While you usually find the topic covered on Wikipedia, you will also notice that it is usually not as thorough as it is covered on specialized sites. Please note that we have only included free alternatives in this list, so no Britannica Online for instance.

Citizendium is a much smaller site than Wikipedia is. The encyclopedia offers more than 16,000 articles at the time of writing, of which 159 have been approved by experts.  Everyone can join the site as an author, but only some will be recognized as experts in a particular field. Rules are a lot stricter when it comes to writing articles, with authors having to use real names and abide by the site’s rules.

Debatepedia is a site catering to pro and contra arguments. It calls itself the Wikipedia of debates and offers an interesting approach to information that you may want to look up online.It is a great source for topics that you can debate about, and not so much for other topics.

Encyclopedia lets you search over 100 encyclopedias and dictionaries. It is a meta search engine that is providing you with links and contents from a variety of sources.

Google Scholar, a search engine for scholarly literature. While not an encyclopedia itself, it can find articles, theses, books, abstracts or court opinions about the research topic.

Infoplease is maintained by Pearson Education, one of the world’s largest educational book distributors.  Like The Free Dictionary, Infoplease republishes articles from source such as the Columbia Encyclopedia on its site. The benefit here is that the articles are usually correct, but less often updated than articles on free to edit encyclopedias.

Scholarpedia uses the same software that Wikipedia uses to power its encyclopedia. The editorial process is much stricter though, as article updates need to be approved by experts before they are visible on the live site. While this has an impact on the availability of articles and updates, it also ensures that information are correct, and that false information or even vandalism is not a big issue.

The free Dictionary contains over 100,000 terms drawing from The Columbia Encyclopedia, the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, the Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, and the Collins Discovery Encyclopedia. It does not offer user generated contents, nor the option to alter or modify existing items.

Wikia is a wiki-hosting service that anyone can use to create Wikipedia-like sites for specific topics they are interested in. The main focus lies on popular culture, which includes video games, TV, movies, sport, fashion and current events.

This is just a small selection of available Wikipedia alternatives. If you know of another service that should be in this list, feel free to add it to the comments below.

Burn Note offers to do that, sort of. You can start writing the note right away once you have opened the Burn Note homepage. Keep in mind that you can only add plain text to it, and no media or formatting. Once you have written the note you should check out the options before you click on the send button.

The options let you configure the time the note will remain visible on the screen, the type of the note, and assign a password to it for additional security. When it comes to type, you have the option to have it set to plain text, which allows copying, to short phrases which does not allow copying, or to spyglass mode which also does not allow the copying of the note. The difference between the two modes that do not allow copying is the following: short phrases divides the note into different parts that are shown individually on the screen, while spyglass hides all of the note except for a small area that is underneath the mouse cursor.

A click on send displays the unique message url on the screen. It is now necessary to copy it, and send it to the recipient. The recipient then needs to enter the password if set before the message is displayed on the screen for the selected time.

It should be obvious that this is not a high security method of exchanging information. The reasons for this are that it is still necessary to communicate with the message recipient, and that the recipient can still copy the message, for instance by taking screenshots of it. For personal use though, this can be an interesting option. Registered users get read confirmations, which appears to be the only difference to unregistered ones.

For this guide, I have analyzed the system requirements for the following web browsers: Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera. The latest browser versions were analyzed, with the exception of Firefox, where I looked at Firefox 13 and not Firefox 11 due to the change in operating system support in that version.

Key Findings

• Opera is the only browser in that list that is still supporting Windows 2000
• Opera, Firefox and Chrome are the only browsers available for Windows, Mac and Linux systems
• Opera has the lowest system requirements, with the exception of IE8 on Windows XP

System Requirements Table

A blank field means either that the operating system is not supported, or that no information have been provided by the company developing the browser.

Resources

• Internet Explorer 8
• Internet Explorer 9
• Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Opera
• Safari

Closing Words

With Firefox ending support for Windows 2000, it is only the Opera browser that is still supporting that operating system, at least when it comes to the five most popular browsers in the world market share wise. If you look beyond those five, you will find other browsers, like Maxthon for instance, which supports Windows 2000 as well.

Are you looking through a browser’s system requirements before you install it on a computer system, or is that something that you do not care about at all?

Box is an established service that is making its content management and work collaboration features available for regular people, and businesses. While business and enterprise customers of Box had access to the Box Sync desktop client for almost two years, personal users did not have access to the software until now.

The three core features at the time of launch were:

• Selective synchronization. This basically lets you select folders that are already stored online that you want to sync with the desktop computer.
• Sync of collaborative folders
• Sophisticated conflict management.

Take a look at the introductory video that Box released in 2010 to introduce Box Sync for business customers.

And it is exactly this client that will make be offered to personal customers of the service as well. For now, select Box users have been invited to beta test the client.

Box Sync for business is only available for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. To be precise, it is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7.

It is not clear yet when the Box Sync client will be made available for all Box users, but it is likely that this is going to happen sooner than later. Free users at the time of writing get 5 Gigabyte of storage space which they can increase to up to 50 Gigabytes. Box has run several promotions in the past that allowed users to increase to that size for free. The maximum file size is linked to the available storage. 5 Gigabyte storage users can upload single files with a size of up to 100 Megabytes. Users who have purchased more storage have a limit of 1 Gigabyte per individual file.

Box furthermore offers document editing capabilities in the cloud and file sharing for free users of the service. (via Caschy)

Google is currently rolling out a similar feature called Knowledge Graph, that is limited to people, places and things at the time of writing. If you are a Google user at heart, or sometimes use Google in addition to DuckDuckGo or another search engine, then you may be interested in a new Chrome extension that is adding DuckDuckGo’s Zero-Click Information at the top of relevant Google search queries.

DuckDuckGo Zero-click Info is a new extension for Google Chrome that works immediately after it has been installed. When you search for something on Google Search that the DuckDuckGo search engine can provide an instant answer for, you will see those answers displayed in a box on top of the regular results. Good news is, the box is displayed even on top of advertisement that Google usually displays at the top of the results.

These instant answers work for many different queries, including people, places and things, but not restricted to that like Google’s Knowledge Graph technology is.

You can for instance have the search engine display a random number in that box, compute the average of several numbers for you, or get information about the HTTP 404 error code. You can check out the goodies page over at DuckDuckGo for a feature overview. Keep in mind though that not all of the searches work on Google Search. You can also check out our previous coverage of the feature here.

If you are a Chrome user and like at least some of the options that DuckDuckGo offers with its instant answers page, then you may like the Chrome extension. It would obviously make more sense to switch to DuckDuckGo as you will have access to all of the features and not only some of them. Support is solid however and you will find that many will work.

Now it is So.cl, which happened to be activated earlier accidentally, and then pulled again by Microsoft. The service as of today is accessible again, which may be another accident, or a silent launch. Regardless of why it is now available, it is not the best of starts, considering that users do not really know about the service, and do not see the service plastered over all of Microsoft’s hot properties on the Internet.

Interested users can sign up for So.cl with their Windows Live ID or their Facebook account. Once that is out of the way you see the usuall assortment of first steps laid out in front of you. You see some suggested topics that you may be interested in, popular users who are already using So.cl, and if you used your Facebook account to sign-up, your Facebook friend’s who have signed-up already.

According to Microsoft, socl combines web browsing, search and social networking with each other. Lets see what your options are:

• You can obviously befriend users on socl by following them. If you do that, you see their posts in your feed
• You can also browse through the global feed. I’m not really sure how this will work out when millions of users are posting on socl, for now though.
• When you see a post of interest, you can like it, comment on it, tag it, share it or riff it. The latter requires some explanation. If you riff a post on socl, you basically post a response to that post. If you see a post full of photos of Jerusalem, you might want to riff it to add your own photos or notes that relate to the original post. A link to the riffed post is added to the original post and vice versa. This works similar to YouTube’s video response feature.
• You create new posts by entering a topic of interested into the form at the top of the page. Socl uses Bing as its search engine, and you will find image, video and text, as well as results from feeds in the results listing. You can now add contents to your post, and add links and tags manually to it as well.
• You can also join and create video parties. This basically allows you to create a chat room and add videos to it from various video hosting sites. Other users can then join the room, and chat about the videos that they watch, and add videos of their own to the room.
• A bookmarklet is available that lets you share contents that you find on the Internet to So.cl directly.

The search to post and video party ideas are neat, but I’m not really convinced that they are enough to help the service take off, let alone compete with the heavyweight social networking sites.

New users may want to check out the settings first to make sure the notification and privacy settings are to their liking. By default, emails digests will be send out on a weekly basis, and notifications will be send out when someone comments on a post or search, tags the user, invites or sends a private message.

What’s your take on So.cl? Will you give it a try, or wait to see how it fares first?