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Microsoft Security Essentials Free Antivirus App Leaves Beta

2009-09-29T15:35:00Z

Windows only: We took a first look at Microsoft Security Essentials, the free antivirus application from Microsoft, back in June, but today Microsoft Security Essentials has left beta and is ready for your PC.

The application hasn't really changed much since we took our first look from what we can tell, meaning this release is most likely filled with bug fixes and stability improvements rather than new features.

We've been impressed with Security Essentials so far, though it may not be enough of an improvement or change that'll make it worth switching to from your current favorite antivirus application. If you've been testing it out since the beta release, or you've just played around with it a little this morning, let's hear what you think of it in the comments.

Microsoft Security Essentials [Microsoft]

How India became the fastest continent

2009-09-28T15:00:11Z

This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.

You don't normally hear continents described as speedy, but it's now clear that some are much faster than others. India, in particular, is the Ferrari of continents and now, scientists have discovered why.

Rewind 150 million years and the Earth looked very different. Most of the land in today's southern hemisphere were united in a single super-continent called Gondwana, including Africa, Australia, South America, Antarctica, India and Arabia.

The Earth's crust is not a stationary shell but an ever-shifting mosaic of tectonic plates that constantly (albeit slowly) reshape the face of the planet. Underneath the crust lies the much hotter mantle, and plumes of super-heated rock occasionally erupt out of this layer, causing hotspots of volcanic activity.

Geologists believe that a particularly large 'mantle plume' kick-started the break-up of Gondwana. Now, Prakash Kumar and colleagues from the National Geophysical Research Institute in India have found that the plume also gave India a turbo boost.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

To Fly Free in Space

2009-09-28T13:29:19Z

At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was farther out than anyone had ever been before.

A Free Utility that Really Does Speed Up Firefox

2009-09-23T13:16:57Z

Shock! Horror! Gizmo flabbergasted! He's discovered a freebie that claims to make Firefox load faster that actually works.

Waves of Twitter attacks erode trustworthiness of Tweets

2009-09-26T18:54:03Z

How much should you trust Tweets?

Much less so, after a swarm of tainted micro-postings inundated Twitter this past week. Popular social networks have become a major focal point for cyber scammers.

“We’re definitely seeing old email scams migrating over to Twitter and generally being adapted to all of the popular social networks,” says Matt Marshall, VP of Security at Redspin, told LastWatchdog.

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and other social nets have also been hit hard by corrupted messages and postings. But Twitter has increasingly bore the brunt – and is likely to remain a top target of hackers and cyber thieves, especially as the 2009 holiday shopping season rolls around.

“New media will likely continue to be used as a conduit to deliver misleading messages to unsuspecting users,” says Gerry Egan, Director, Symantec Security Response.

Tweets spread fake AV promos

It appears there were at least three Twitter attack waves launched by two separate criminal groups since Wednesday, 23-Sept-2009 .

One wave keyed off of the top ten Twitter “trending topics” — subjects generating the most micro-posts globally.

This is the technique PandaLabs researcher Sean-Paul Correll first discovered in the wild last June, now much refined. The attackers have gone through some lengths to make their Twitter accounts and tainted micro-posts more believable.

“When I first discovered this in June, the malicious Twitter accounts used the stock background and avatars provided by Twitter,” says Correll. “The latest attack harnessed the ability to upload custom backgrounds and avatars before spamming out the malicious links. I’m sure it was the same crew.”

Another wave made copies of Tweets sent by real people — and resent them with links triggering fake antivirus pitches. The attackers “mass-created new Twitter accounts, probably with the help of CAPTCHA farms,” says Mikko Hypponen, senior analyst at F-Secure. “These accounts then took real Tweets sent by real people, changed the link to a malicious one and Tweeted them again.”

These two waves carried links that, if clicked on, triggered promotions for worthless antivirus protection. You can read more about the teeming scareware industry in LastWatchdog’s 10-June-2009 USA TODAY investigative cover story.

These two waves of Tweets spreading links to fake AV, as of this writing, were still ongoing.

So Twitter users need to be alert for accounts with names like biedermann1963, leibold989, schwalbe556, reiner938, Ulrick Olschewski or Bannan Lohrmann, originating from a U.S. city — with no followers. “It’s a fake account,” says Hypponen. “All links tweeted by these redirect to rogue sites.”

The fake AV software being pitched: Windows PC Defender. “We believe the same people behind this attack are also behind the major Blackhat SEO campaigns and the Koobface worm,” says PandaLabs’ Correll.

‘rolf’ DM Tweets steal passwords

In a separate attack, private micro-posts, called Direct Messages, were blasted out to individual Twitter members. In a refined variation of spear phishing, these DMs used a familiar social engineering ruse and distributed links designed to phish the recipient’s Twitter account password. The dangerous DM micro-blog looked like this:

Clicking on the shortened link takes the victim to a faked Twitter login page that looks like this:

The goal: to get the victim to type his or her account password. The account is then used to replicate the DM to all of the victim’s followers. This, of course, is the latest variant of the address replication technique pioneered by David Smith, author of the hallmark Melissa email worm, back in 1999.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an increase of these types of attacks, given the seeming success of this one,” says Sophos researcher Beth Jones. “On the surface, the DM attack seemed to be relatively successful, as I saw a lot of people tweeting that they fell for it.”

PandaLabs’ technical director Luis Corrons created a Twitter account to test the fake sign-in page. Corrons entered his login username and password. Later, he account began sending money mule recruitment messages to others via DMs.

“That does not mean this was the only use of those accounts, but that is what we saw,” says Corrons. ” Unfortunately, the page was closed before PandaLabs could take a screenshot of the Web site. The message read: ‘Would you like to work from home? Get $800 a week!’ plus the link.”

A money mule gets paid to set up online bank accounts into which crooks can extract funds wired from stolen hijacked financial accounts. (Two examples: a German gang working with the ZeuS banking trojan creator, known as A-Z, pulled off an Ocean’s 11-like heist of $11 million, which LastWatchdog chronicled here; and another gang has been deploying the Clampi banking trojan to wire funds out of small business accounts into multiple mule accounts.)

Enigma Software researcher Natalia Alcantara archived Tweets (clarification: mashable.com actually gathered the Tweet samples, not Enigma. LW 30-Sept2009) referencing the DM attacks:

“I got this, but I just deleted it and unfollowed who sent it to me.”
“I just saw one of those in my message box.”
“Already hit the link. Now what to do?”
“I fell for this about an hour ago.”
“Ugh — anything you can do if you did, stupidly, click on said link?”
“I fell for it too about 90 minutes ago.”
“I think this worm made a mess on my # of followers, I noticed it declined dramatically over the past hours.”
“Did a quick who is lookup — it’s from China and was registered today.”
“I fell for it 3 times.”

Alcantara has compiled this list of best practices for Twittering safely. It’s well thought out. And, necessarily, extensive.

Twitter’s culpability

Twitter’s media contact, Jenna Sampson, and co-founder, Biz Stone, declined to respond to requests to be interviewed by LastWatchdog. Perhaps Stone has decided that his 20-minute TV interview with PBS talk show host, Tavis Smiley, fulfills his duties for public disclosure about Twitter’s posture on security.

But we’ve arrived at a point where email spam filters, email black lists and general public wariness are generally keeping email scams in check. Meanwhile, Twitter could not have delivered a more tailor-made, fresh attack vector for cyber criminals.

Tweets slip across the Internet in real time with an intrinsic aura of trustworthiness. Web links are shortened so that the originating domain is obscured. And Twitter’s Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, by design make it super easy for anyone to attach coding to its basic service.

Twitter declines to disclose how many active Twitter accounts exists. But it has become a media darling, and estimates of its user base range from 30 million to 45 million.

“Besides Facebook and its millions of members, you have Twitter with even more sparse requirements for a profile and easily incorporated APIs,” says Jamz Yaneza, Trend Micro researcher. “There are obvious good things that come out of ease of use, the bad guys however just as easily twist this for their own purposes.”

Forget about ‘warm and fluffy’

Sophos’ Jones says she has seen social media sites described as a “warm fluffy places on the internet where nothing bad happens; It’d be wonderful if that were the reality. I’d want to go there!”

The reality: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Linked In and other popular social sites are “really kind of the new frontier for cybercriminals,” says Jones. “It’s like the old days of emai when you trusted your friends, your family, etc. You never dreamed anything malicious would come from them. People simply are trusting everything they see on these sites right now.”

Symantec executive Egan opines that Twitter is not at fault. “Twitter hasn’t done anything wrong and I’m sure is taking active steps to research what more they can do to protect its users,” he says. “This is simply another case where malicious attackers are using a neutral technology as a means to their deceptive ends.”

What side of this debate do you fall on? Please comment below.

Twitter graphics by Landon Acohido

–Byron Acohido

RSS fans rejoice: FeedDemon 3 is out

2009-09-25T21:24:00Z

FeedDemon 3 is ready for public use, after months spent in a beta version that saw a confusing migration from proprietary online syncing to Google Reader.

That rough patch sorted, FeedDemon remains one of the best desktop RSS and Atom feed catchers. This version contains a lengthy list of changes, including greatly enhanced Twitter connectivity, a tweaked interface that's a bit easier to use, and better tagging and sharing.

My Twitter stream in FeedDemon 3.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

FeedDemon has dumped its proprietary synchronization site, Newsgator.com, in favor of syncing with Google Reader. New users won't notice, but older users are likely to lose many unread feeds, since Google can't import feeds with more than 10 unread items. Once synced with Google Reader, unread feeds can again include more than 10 items.

There's also a new, persistent ad placed in the lower-left corner of the interface, and FeedDemon's performance could be a lot better--RAM usage was hefty, and 3GB of RAM didn't prevent occasional program hang-ups.

Twitter feed reading has been baked in because FeedDemon supports authenticated feeds. Hyperlinking and short-URL expansion are automatic, and if you use Twitter as a live news stream, FeedDemon's Twitter link sharing should appeal to you. To set that up, you need to subscribe in FeedDemon to your Twitter feed here.

Tagging, tag clouds, and item sharing get a massive overhaul in FeedDemon 3, with all three features added to the item view and a tag cloud added to the Subscriptions Home view. The interface will look similar to FeedDemon 2.8, but there are many little tweaks to improve its usability.

Flags have been renamed Stars for Google Reader consistency, for example, while the Home page features videos, pictures, and content from your feeds. One smart improvement over Google Reader is that you can view your starred feeds in the folders they came from, instead of in a single "starred items" folder.

We'd like to see performance addressed in future versions, but overall, FeedDemon remains a favorite option for desktop feed management. Let us know your thoughts on the new FeedDemon in the comments below.

Environmental Conscience: Not Just For Liberals

2009-09-20T19:15:37Z

Spearheading the world’s battle against climate change, Denmark’s Climate and Energy Minister Connie Hedegaard has all the markings of a liberal – she’s a die-hard environmentalist, a former newspaper columnist, a woman and a Scandinavian. But the young Hedegaard is a staunch member of Denmark’s center-right Conservative People’s Party, and as she moves rapidly toward the Copenhagen Climate Conference, she’s the ultimate proof that climate change is an issue that transcends political ideologies.

For better or worse, rarely has Hedegaard’s political alignment been emphasized in media coverage of her crusade against climate change until yesterday’s New York Times piece called “Danish Conservative Prepares for Climate Debate.”

“I’ve never understood why the environment should be a left-wing issue,” Hedegaard was quoted in the article. “In my view there is nothing as core to conservative beliefs – that what you inherit you should pass on to the next generation.” Hedegaard contradicts two potentially destructive stereotypes that overwhelm the environmental debate in America: that of the environmentalist as a tree-hugging liberal idealist, and that of the conservative as someone who favors political ideologies to the grim reality of scientific observation. She's also been recently named as one of Time's "2009 Time 100" as a "Scientist and Thinker."

Hedegaard, a conservative who is rigid in her commitment to set ambitious goals to combat climate change, might be the perfect woman to host the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December. It was the American conservatives who posed one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the Kyoto Protocol – and while the Obama administration appears to have advanced from that mindset, lingering hesitations still cloud the American desire (or non-desire) to save the environment. Perhaps Hedegaard can strike the right balance in Copenhagen with those who haven’t been able to get on board. But it won’t be easy.

For science bloggers like Fred Bortz, the knee-jerk pairing of environmentally friendly policies with the liberal agenda is a dangerous one. “Any proposal to limit carbon dioxide emissions will require changes in the way people do things, but life is always changing,” Bortz wrote to one of his conservative friends in 2007. “You look at the changes and see their costs today. I look at them and see their value in the future … When I put it that way, I can’t understand why my view is not considered ‘conservative.’”

Antivirus suites fail more often than not

2009-09-18T15:07:59Z

Reactive, signature-based antivirus suites provide only partial protection. Everyone knows that. But just how much protection? LastWatchdog recently heard a major AV vendor claim its flagship suite repels 90% of threats.

Now comes Cyveillance with this new report showing anti-virus programs fail more often than they succeed in protecting you from bad things on the Internet.

Cyveillance, which was recently bought out by British tech firm, QinetiQ, crawls the Web 24 X 7 X 365 looking for corrupted and malicious sites, especially servers dishing out malware and collecting stolen data.

It’s report for the first half of 2009 outlines in detail how traditional antivirus suites and Web browser scanning tools lag behind online criminals when it comes to detecting and protecting against quickly evolving online threats. Cyveillance says more than half of the active threats on the Internet routinely go undetected.

Cyveillance also ran an interesting test on the anti-phishing technologies used by the major Web browsers and found they, too, were only about half effective — particularly in the first 24 hours of the deployment of a freshly tweaked phishing attack.

“Cyber criminals have become more adept, operating globally and leveraging worldwide resources in order to evade enforcement efforts,” says Cyveillance CEO Panos Anastassiadis. “With the influx of increasingly sophisticated attacks and social networking sites as targets, antivirus engines are finding it difficult to keep up with and protect against morphing malicious attacks.”

Anastassiadis says it’s in the first 24-hour time period when the most damage occurs.

Cyveillance also tested two popular Web health check tools: McAfee SiteAdvisor and Symantec’s Norton SafeWeb, and found both lagging.

“Organizations must embrace a combination of reactive and proactive security measures if they intend to stay ahead of today’s dynamically changing threats,” opines Anastassiadis.

Illustration: Sam Ward, USA Today

by Byron Acohido

Troubleshoot and Manage Addons in Internet Explorer 8

2009-09-08T06:00:00Z

A good way to get more functionality out of Internet Explorer is to install Add-ons. Today we take a look at how to manage them and also determine if they are causing Internet Explorer 8 to launch slowly.

Managing Add-ons

To start managing your IE Add-ons click on Tools and go to Manage Add-ons.

The Manage Add-on screen opens and from here you can do several things like view the Add-ons installed, their status, version, load time and more.

Narrow down the information about different Add-ons based on their type.

There the ability to search for more information about each Add-on.

To make navigation easier they can be easily sorted according do different criteria.

On the lower left side of the Manage Add-ons window click on the link which takes you to the IE 8 Add-ons Gallery.

Troubleshoot Slow Load Times

If Internet Explorer 8 starts to load more slowly than normal this is a good place to determine why. You can view how much time is taking to load under the Load time column.

If you find one is taking more than an appropriate amount of time to load you can disable it.

Sometimes other Add-on features won’t work if it one is disabled and you and can cancel the operation if you want.

Disabling an Add-on is only temporary and you can easily re-enable one by going back into the list and Right-click Enable.

If you haven’t upgraded to Internet Explorer 8 yet, it is included with Windows 7 and this should help you out in managing its Add-ons feature.

Find IE 8 Add-ons

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CMBR Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe

2009-09-07T05:35:41Z

CMBR Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe

ANN: FeedDemon 3.0.0.32 Pre-Release

2009-09-05T03:15:28Z

FeedDemon 3.0.0.32 Pre-Release is now available.

If you're using an earlier FeedDemon 3.0 pre-release, just stop by the FeedDemon Beta Site to get v3.0.0.32. As always, if you run into any problems with this build, please let me know by posting in the FeedDemon 3.0 Beta Forum, and be sure to include the build number (3.0.0.32) in your subject line.

BTW, if you haven't used a recent build, you may be surprised to discover that you can now purchase a serial number to get rid of the ads. For the record, we never planned to offer a paid ad-free version – we were blown away when so many people asked for one. Because of the demand for a paid ad-free version, we've partnered with eSellerate to make it possible to purchase a serial number that will turn off the ads. If you don't mind the ads, no worries – FeedDemon will remain free (and we won't make the ads more annoying later on, just to "force" you to pay). But if you really hate the ads, there's now a way to turn them off.

Copy Path: copy file and folder paths via right click

2009-09-04T21:04:02Z

Copy Path is a small, free Windows shell extension that adds the ability to copy the path, folder path, or filename within the right click shell extension. Works on individual or multiple selected files and folders.

This is a simple shell extension that allows you to copy the path for files and folder via the right click menu. Interestingly, there are at least two other utilities on the internet with the same exact name that do the same thing; also, this function is offered in other utilities bundled-in with other functions (see here, here, and here for example). It is also built into Vista if you press shift while right clicking on a file, but I nonetheless really like this program for several reasons:

Path, folderpath, or filename: you can specify whether to copy the entire path, the filename only, or the folder path only.
UNC: can generate a UNC (Uniform Naming Convention) path, which can be very useful. For example “\\YOURCOMPUTER\C$\File.txt” instead of “C:\File.txt”.
Multiple items: select multiple files and folders and copy the path for all at once into the clipboard.
I like that it’s an individual download not bundled with other functions.
Will display the path in the context menu itself (see screenshot above). Note that this is optional and can be switched off.

The verdict: really nice. Recommended.

Version Tested: 1.1

Compatibility: WinAll. There’s a fix that allows it to run on 64 bit machines. Read the comment section on the program page (read all the way to the end).

Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 348K).

Using the Mouse to Copy Command Prompt Text to Clipboard

2009-09-03T15:32:25Z

A useful tip for mousers. Earlier we saw how to copy Command Prompt output to the Windows Clipboard. Did you know that you can accomplish the same using your pointing device (mouse)? Also, you can select a particular section (word or line) and copy it to the Clipboard. Here is how to do so. 1. Create [...]

Google Lets You Jump From a Location to Its Street View

2009-08-28T16:48:20Z

Locations on Google Maps, like restaurants, may now show a direct link to their Street View imagery. Inside Street View, you will then see one of the red markers placed at the location to help you. (Well, the marker may also be missing due to erronous positioning: when I tried this with the Jaiya Thai Restaurant in New York, I was placed at the side exit or so of the building, and the marker was not in sight – it was around the corner, at the restaurant’s front.*)

*Compare the type of pictures a Google car sometimes makes with the type of photos included in a restaurant’s self representation.

[Thanks Mbegin, via Google.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Lets You Jump From a Location to Its S ... | Comments]

[Advertisement] Google books on Amazon

Find great stuff to read in Google Reader

2009-08-29T03:48:00Z

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Have you ever clicked the "Reader" link at the top of your Gmail inbox and ended up in Google Reader, kind of unsure about what to do next?

We realize this happens from time to time, so to help people get started with Reader, we asked a bunch of prominent journalists, techies, fashion critics, and foodies for their lists of favorite sites and blogs. We compiled their reading lists and made them accessible to everyone at google.com/powerreaders, where you can explore and subscribe to lists from Thomas Friedman, Arianna Huffington, Paul Krugman, the editors of Lifehacker, Boing Boing, Kottke.org, and many more.

Whether you're new to Google Reader or already have an extensive reading list, we hope this will be a good place to find great stuff to read. And if you want to create your own reading list to share with others, you can do that too.

Giant Cluster Bends, Breaks Images

2009-08-25T04:05:44Z

What are those strange blue objects?

GoOo – Faster Open Office

2009-08-12T21:41:51Z

Features Overview Faster than OpenOffice.org Good functionality in a nice user interface Can import Microsoft Works files and Word Perfect graphics. Review GoOo is a free open source office suite, providing all the functionality that Microsoft Office does, but for free! GoOo is based on the OpenOffice.org source code but it claims to be a...

This in only a summary, visit the website for the full post, related articles, downloads and much more. http://www.freewaremission.com

SmillaEnlarger Enlarges Your Images without Artifacts

2009-08-05T19:00:00Z

Windows/Mac OS X: Enlarging images, especially from lower resolution source images, can be dicey business. Want to enlarge an image and you don't want it to look like an 8-bit video game sprite? SmillaEnlarger can keep things smooth and artifact free.

Photo by 512 Photography.

SmillaEnlarger is an open-source and portable application designed to help you intensively massage an image enlargement to keep it from looking jagged and filled with artifacts. You can select the level of zoom using the zoom slider and the location of the zoom via the selection box.

Once you have the selection you're after, you can begin tinkering with the sharpness, flatness, dithering, noise levels, and more. The preview function is quite speedy so don't hesitate to preview often to check how the various settings effect the outcome of your image.

When your enlargement is satisfactory, hit the Calculate button to render it—a process only slightly longer than the preview. From our testing, the results achieved with SmillaEnlarger are on par with other—usually pricier—methods.

If you know of any other tools—freeware, web-based, or otherwise—for easy photo enlargements, let's hear about it in the comments. SmillaEnlarger is portable freeware, Windows only.

SmillaEnlarger [via FreewareGenius]

Greenland

2009-08-07T16:21:11Z

After almost 300 years under Danish rule, the island of Greenland has just taken a big step toward sovereignty. Greenland passed a referendum last year requesting more powers from Copenhagen, and it was granted, taking effect on June 21st, 2009. Denmark still retains control of finances, foreign affairs, and defense, but will phase out an annual subsidy, and give over control of most of the islands natural resources. Additionally, Greenlandic is now the sole official language, and Greenlanders are now treated as a separate people under international law. Although the island is massive - with an area of over 2 million square kilometers (825,000 sq mi), its population is small, with just over 57,000 residents, 88% of Inuit descent and and 12% of European descent. Collected here are some recent photographs from all around Greenland. (34 photos total)

Scientists Jason Box of Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center and polar expedition expert Eric Philips, both members of the Greenpeace Arctic Impacts tour, assisted by experts in ice logistics, set up one of a series of time-lapse cameras surveying the 16km wide Petermann Glacier, in northwest Greenland on July 29, 2009. The Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise has arrived in the area, to carry out several weeks scientific research into the impacts of climate change, and to bear witness to the glacier's disintegration. (NICK COBBING/AFP/Getty Images)

The Complete Guide to Going Paperless

2009-08-05T16:00:00Z

You already pay your bills online and get electronic statements, but there are even more ways you can stop killing innocent trees and wasting time and money dealing with paper. It's time we went paperless.

Reduce Unnecessary Postal Mail

Junk mail and catalogs are two of the biggest sources of annoying and unwanted paper. Instead of contacting every company who sends you a catalog or piece of mail and asking to be removed from their mailing list, there are services who help you opt out en masse.

Credit card offers and direct marketing mail
At Optoutprescreen.com, you can request to be permanently or temporarily removed from credit and insurance offer mailing lists. At DMAchoice you can register to opt out of direct marketing mail you don't want as well. The Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Alert also includes information on how to stop receiving unsolicited mail and telemarketer calls.

Catalogs
For a cheap $20 per year, the Mailstopper service (formerly known as GreenDimes) will help you get off catalog mailing lists and they'll also plant five trees in your name. I haven't used Mailstopper personally, but several of my friends have. In fact, Googler Matt Cutts blogged about how he reduces junk mail using Mailstopper and other services like CatalogChoice.

"Print" and Scan to PDF

Instead of printing documents onto paper and filing them away, "print" them to PDF files. Mac users already have a "Save as PDF" option built into every Print dialog by default. Windows users need a little extra software.

I use the free CutePDF Writer, which adds a PDF "printer" to your options. Choose it and you'll save the document to PDF (instead of printing it on paper). Adam likes doPDF, which serves the same purpose.

Most desktop search software, like Google Desktop or Mac OS X's Spotlight can search inside the contents of PDF files, so you don't need any extra software to find PDF's you've saved. See also Lifehacker readers' picks of best PDF readers.

If you've already got an important bit of paperwork in your hand but you want to digitize it, you need a good document scanner. I'm still loving my Fujitsu ScanSnap, a portable document scanner that I bust out for contracts, legal agreements, and other already-in-paper-form documents.

Here's more on how to scan paperwork to PDF in one step.

A Word on Backing Up Your Data
Of course, once you start digitizing important paperwork, you've got to have a good backup system in case your hard drive fails or computer crashes. While fires, flood, and coffee spills can just as easily happen to paper, computer disasters are always possible. Be sure you've got automatic local and remote backup for your data just in case.

Digitize Your Signature and Email Instead of Fax

The biggest source of paper in my work life is contracts and client agreements that need to be signed and returned. While people generally say "sign this and fax it back to us," you can do it without getting paper involved. First, create a digital version of your signature with a transparent background. Then, get the documents via email, and email (or eFax) them back with your signature added to them. (While there are lots of different kinds of electronic and digital signatures, this type will work for common consumer scenarios. It won't work if you need something notarized or to appear with an original signature.)

Bypass Paper Entirely and Capture Information Electronically

Many of us walk around with mini-computers/digital cameras in our pockets thanks to smartphones, and we can use them to bypass paper entirely. Instead of jotting your grocery shopping list on a scrap of paper, use Gmail Tasks, Remember the Mlik or your list manager of choice on your phone. Transcribe whiteboards to PDF or even fax documents using previously-mentioned Qipit. Also, popular note-taking application Evernote makes it dead easy to capture ideas, lists, and notes without killing a single tree.

What Little Paper You HAVE to Keep

Getting rid of ALL the paper in your home or office still isn't possible in a world where receipts, birth certificates, house deeds, marriage certificates, and other important information still needs to be in-hand. To keep your financial paperwork volume down to a minimum, check out Get Rich Slowly's guide to what money records you need to keep and for how long. Then, keep your filing cabinet's contents lean, mean, and organized.

In addition to the paper-reducing techniques mentioned above, folks on Twitter had more ideas for how to reduce paper:

fitzwillie says, "evites. Video holiday cards."
rossm says, "print on both sides of paper, refuse paper (and plastic) bags when shopping, print to pdf whenever possible"
NoahGK says, "for mail-in rebates, I scan to PDF (for my records) and mail the originals (if there's no online option)."
danielzev says, "I never ask for a receipt when using my debit card"
thompsonpaul says, "Put a No Junk Mail block on mailbox - get online versions of grocery, electronics, hardware flyers instead."
norageddon says, "Mint.com for bank/credit/loan management, online bank statements, shoeboxed.com for receipt management"
deadparrot101 says, "I've switched two Magazine subscriptions to PDF file transfers!"
rickhuizinga says, "Reduce paper? Fujitsu SnapScan and Evernote. All paper documents are scanned to PDF w/OCR, saved to Evernote, and shredded."
Dave_RI says, "re: Paperless-online shopping (not catalogs), Kindle (no books), News sites (no newspapers/fewer magazines), Email (less mail)"
jesseGlacken says, "How I use less paper: News, bank statements & bills via web. eBooks. Cloth napkins & dishtowels vs paper. Canvas grocery bags."
khstapp says, " Have the post office hold your mail for a few weeks. They stop dumping circulars and junk mail in your mail after a while."

How do you reduce the amount of paper in your life? Give up your tips in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, never wants another piece of unnecessary paper in her life. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

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