Microsoft Security Essential will replace Windows Live OneCare and is designed to fight viruses, rootkits and other malware. Firewall and anti-spam protection is not covered in the package, but that can be justified since Windows Firewall and Windows Defender are now shipped with Windows.

Independent testing done by AV-Test.org has proved Microsoft Security Essential to be very accurate. Here’s an excerpt of what they had to say:

"We scanned a set of WildList malware (on-demand test) and we also tested the on-access guard with the same set of samples. Our set included 3,194 common virus, bot and worm samples from the most recent WildList 05/2009, released about one week ago.

All files were properly detected and treated by the product. That’s good, as several other AV scanners are still not able to detect and kill all of these critters yet. (Extensive testing of the entire collection of malware files we have will take a lot more time, but we will do this in the coming days.)

We’ve also tested the product against a large set of false positives, but none of the clean files were flagged as being malicious - very good."

Microsoft Security Essential lacks behavior based virus detection, which means the security software relies on definition updates and can’t detect new worms and Trojans based on their generic behavior.

How to install:

You can download Microsoft Security Essential from Softpedia (Size: 4.7 MB). The installation will ask you to validate your copy of Windows before installing. It will automatically update virus and spyware definition and real time protection is enabled by default. You can choose between Quick, Fill and Custom scans.

Screenshots:

The user interface is crispy and clean, and it resembles a lot with the UI of Windows Defender.

Microsoft Security Essential is due for public release in September 09. When I pick any antivirus, I want it to be reliable, quick and consume fewer resources on my computer. I can undoubtedly say MSE passes all these criteria.

No matter where you are, you can always be online. With 3G capable handsets and network carrier, you can access blazing fast internet on-the-go. Some ISPs even give free Netbook/Notebooks along with the modem, if you sign a contract.

Broadband Expert is a service that helps you choose the right broadband deal for your needs. At present, the service is limited to Australian ISPs, but gives you an in-depth comparison like maximum download speed, download limit, monthly price, minimum contract and setup fee, if any.

If you are located in Australia, just take a look at their site before signing up for a broadband deal.

Link:http://www.broadbandexpert.com.au/broadb

History of Text Editors starts from early 70’s era. With very basic functionality, those editors didn’t have many features to format your text. Time has really changed now. Editors like XEmacs and Notepad++ are one of the favorite text editors due to their exhaustive features, customizations and support for extensibility.

Okay, let’s not dig deep in to the history. Below are the list of 9 oldest Text Editors (sans Emacs and Notepad) and brief history about them.

Ed

Ed is one of the oldest and standard Text editors of UNIX operating system. Ed is the first Text Editor to have implementation of regular expressions. Without any visual feedback, its error messages were in the form of a question mark (”?”).
With coming of so many advance editors, nobody uses Ed these days but sometimes it is very useful when there is no support available for any other Text Editors or you are writing some simple shell script.

JOE

JOE is an acronym for Joe’s Own Editor. It is a terminal based text editor for UNIX. It was the first text editor which incorporated built in help system which had a reminder on the screen of how to use it.
In many Linux distributions of that era, JOE was the default editor which is the reason why it was so popular then. The editor is still available with advanced features. You can download it from its sourceforge project page.

SlickEdit

SlickEdit was the first advanced editor that supported features like syntax highlighting, refactoring code and keyboard shortcuts customizations. It is a cross-browser platform which is still available with much more advanced features. Latest version of SlickEdit was released in March 2009. You can download it from their website.

CRiSP Editor

CRiSP is yet another cross platform text editor popular among programmers. Early features of CRiSP also had syntax highlighting, keyboard bindings and code navigation and refactoring features.
CRiSP can also handle huge multi-gigabytes of files. The editor is still very much available for download with improvements. You can download it from their website.

Epsilon

Epsilon was the popular text editor among programmers. It was a shadow of Emacs with its default key bindings and layout too. Epsilon is supported on MSDOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and OS/2 and has support for Unicode too.
Epsilon is not free. It can be bought from its website.

VEDIT

VEDIT is a text editor for MS Windows and MS DOS. It was one of the first Visual Text editor which could also handle files of huge size. Since it is written in Assembly Language VEDIT is extremely fast Text editor when compared to other editors.
It also supported editing of remote files via FTP and was able to detect DOS, Unix and Mac files before editing them.
VEDIT is also commercial software and you can buy it from its website.

Sam Editor

Sam was the first editor that supported multiple files editing. Initially it was designed for UNIX terminals and was later ported to other systems too. Sam is the favorite text editor of many distinguished people like Bjarne Stroustrup, Brian Kernigham and Ken Thompson (Ed editor)
Sam Editor is also available for Windows. You can download Sam directly from Bell Labs’ website’s software
directory.

NEdit

NEdit stands for Nirvana Editor. It was another popular visual text editors as well as source code editor used by programmers. Its interface quite resembles to Mac and Windows editors. It was one of the first editor that supported automatic indentation on the basis of code language that you are editing.
You can download the recent version of NEdit from their website

mined

Mined stands for MINIX-Editor. Min-ed is a terminal based editor that is available for Unix, Linux, Windows and MSDOS. It was one of the first text editors to support Unicode inside a terminal. It also had implementation of smart quotes and had extensive support for Unicode.
You can download mined from its sourceforge project page.

This is a guest post from Himanshu, who writes about Tech Tips and Internet on WHibb.com

At the time of writing this post, she had around 14,067 followers with 33 updates. It’s not very important if she is the oldest user on Twitter or not, but it’s really hard to find someone of her age willing to learn and try new online services. She is a source of inspiration to all those who say they are too old for the internet. Kudos to Ivy Bean!

In an interview with Reuters, Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, acknowledges that Twitter’s rapid growth cannot last forever. He said that his company is working on a revenue stream by building paid add-ons or services for professional or business users of Twitter.

"Twitter would remain free for consumers and businesses, and that the company’s main focus at the moment is developing new features for commercial users, such as "lightweight analytics" and a directory of commercial accounts that would verify that businesses on Twitter are legitimate"

Twitter can also strike a revenue sharing deals with cellphone carriers to make Twitter work on cellular network. I’ve read stories about how local business profited by using Twitter. Twitter’s upcoming revenue model seems reasonable enough!

You don’t really need any hardware upgrade for Office 2010. It runs on any machine which runs Office 2007. They’ve worked on the user interface, and from the screenshots, I must say, it really looks well. Microsoft seems to be having tough time with all these software leaks, but I think it’s doing more good than bad by giving them the much needed publicity.

Screenshot courtesy: DS

Some might consider using phones while eating as bad manners, but surprisingly 70 percent of those who were surveyed admitted to have used the phone while eating in restaurants. Women are more likely to use phone in restrooms or restaurants than men. Females are eight percent more likely to make phone calls, and five percent more likely to send text messages in restrooms. Likewise, females are four percent more likely to make phone calls and seven percent more likely to send text messages while eating.

This survey also shows that age is a factor. Elderly consumers not likely to make phone calls or send text messages while eating or while in loo. Handset users between 18 to 24 years of age are 38 percent more likely to make calls and 66 percent more likely to shoot text messages in restrooms than average consumers. Do you use phone while eating or in loo? Answer this poll:

[Via: Cellular News]

How different is this from taking a camcorder inside a movie theater to record movies for educational purpose. Why would anybody buy a camcorder, cables, and tripod and go through the pain of setting it up instead of just ripping it? Doesn’t make any sense!

BoingBoing puts it up in a better way:

“In the words of media literacy researcher Martine Courant Rife, that’s like typing up a quote from a book, taking it outside, chiseling the words in a rock, photographing the rock, scanning the photo, and running OCR on it. And for what?”

To download and generate product key: Head over to this link, scroll down and choose which version of Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit), select your language. Sign-in with your Windows Live Account and you’ll be given your product key, write it down somewhere and start your download. Windows 7 installation documentation can be found here.

Limitation: The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010.

System Requirement:

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Mirrors are available in TechNet and MSDN. You can download from those servers, if you experience slowdowns in the main server.

Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be experimenting with the new Kindle by giving the e-book reader to some students pre-installed with chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar. They’ll then compare the experience with students who use traditional textbooks. Pace, Princeton, Reed, Darden School at the University of Virginia, and Arizona State are also involved in the latest Kindle project.

To back this rumor, Amazon has sent invites for a press event to be held somewhere later today at Pace University in New York City. Few notable newspaper and magazine publishers like New York Times and Time Warner will be attending the press event as well. So ideally speaking, Amazon will unveil Kindle DX today!

Kindle for textbooks and newspaper sounds like a fabulous idea. Its greener compared to traditional newspaper or textbook publishing. But in the end, it all comes down to whether the consumers will adopt it.

Update: Engadget has some leaked pictures of Kindle DX, have a look at it.

After activating this feature from Gmail Labs tab, you’ll notice a nifty little Google Search box to the left of your Gmail Inbox. When you search Google, the results will be displayed in a box to the lower-right hand side of your inbox. When you move your mouse over the results, you’ll find a small arrow icon which can be used to bring the pull-down menu.

Depending upon what you are doing, the pull-down menu shows you different option. For instance, if you are chatting with someone, you can send the search result to your friend over chat. If you are reading an email, you can start a reply with the search result or you can even compose a new email with search result.

With keyboard shortcuts turned on, you should be able to skip to the search box directly by pressing G + /. While composing an email, Ctrl + G would do the same thing. This experimental feature certainly adds up to my convenience, neatly implemented!

This offer is only available to residents of continental US, and you need to create an iPrint.com account or login to an existing account to place your order.

Even though I don’t live in US, it tried logging into my Google Profile but the offer wasn’t available. Turns out that you need to make your profile visible to public to avail this offer. Link: http://www.google.com/profiles/me/bizcards (You’ll get a 404 error, if your profile is not publicly visible)

Along with security and performance upgrades, SP2 will also come with several new features:

• Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches
• Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology
• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista
• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration
• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones.

Windows Vista SP1 Service Pack Blocker Tool which was released along with SP1 will no longer block SP1 from automatic updates. However, you can still use the same tool to block SP2 from Automatic Updates. If you are running out of patience, SP2 is already up on BitTorrent for download.

Once installed, you can either choose a layout or create your own fence. Once your create fences, adding icons is as easy and drag and drop. You can relocate a fence by just dragging it over to a new place or resize it by holding the outer edge and dragging.

It also takes snapshots of your desktop to give you the before-after view and adds the ability to restore your desktop. The default color of the fences is grey, but it can be customized to any color and you can also change the transparency to make your desktop look neater.

Overall, I think this is a bright idea and this is something I’d like to see running in windows out-of-the-box. You can download Fences for free from here (6.35MB).

According to Webware, Skype for iPhone will have the look-and-feel of Apple’s sleek interface rather than having Skype’s branding. Calls can be made on Skype for iPhone only if you are under coverage of WiFi, and it will not work over cell phone network, but chatting can still be done over cellular network. The application makes use of iPhone’s inbuilt camera to snap pictures and use them as your profile avatar. You’ll be able to join conference calls, but you won’t be able to initiate one.

I think the necessity of a WiFi connection to make a voice call is a big negative. However, the carriers will be very happy about this drawback since it wouldn’t bite their phone call revenues to the extreme extent. SMS and file-sharing are two things that are missing out, but I think it’ll eventually make its way into the application. Let’s keep our fingers crossed until Tuesday.

[Image Credit: Webware]

1. Open iTunes and go to iTunes Store
2. Navigate to App Store by clicking “App Store” link on the left-hand side menu.
3. Next step is to purchase a free application by clicking on “Get App” link
4. Create a new account, agree to the terms and condition, fill-up whatever they ask you.
5. Now you should be able to see a new payment option “None”.
6. Verify your account by clicking on the link sent through email.

You should be able to use Genius (depending on whether or not, it’s available in your country), and download album art for your library. I learnt of this trick on Apple Support Forum.

PS: Sorry for the irregular posting intervals. My board exams are on, and I’ve got lots of educational overheads to fulfill. I’ll be back with full enthusiasm within two weeks of time.

While installing IE Collection, certain versions of IE which are incompatible with your operating system will be automatically disabled. They regularly update their application adding newer versions of IE as and when they are released.

Internet Explorer Collection contains the following versions of IE:

• Internet Explorer 1.0 (4.40.308)
• Internet Explorer 1.5 (0.1.0.10)
• Internet Explorer 2.01 (2.01.046)
• Internet Explorer 3.0 (3.0.1152)
• Internet Explorer 4.01 (4.72.3110.0)
• Internet Explorer 5.01 (5.00.3314.2100)
• Internet Explorer 5.5 (5.51.4807.2300)
• Internet Explorer 6.0 (6.00.2800.1106)
• Internet Explorer 6.0 (6.00.2900.2180)
• Internet Explorer 7.0 (7.00.5730.13)
• Internet Explorer 8.0 (8.00.6001.18372)

If you are a web developer, then this is a must-have tool for you, else… there is nothing much to play with.

CamSpace appears to quickly map the size and shape of the object before allowing to be used as a controller. CamSpace is free and it’ll work on any machine running Windows which has webcam properly installed. You can download it from here.

I don’t think CamSpace is something I’d use on a regular basis to play games, but it looks both funny and ultramodern at the same time. It’s something console manufactures and game makers should look into before designing their next unique controller! What do you think?

Source: The Register

When offline, you’ll still be able to read retrieved emails, compose, and search. As and when internet comes online, Gmail will automatically sync the changes you’ve made with Gmail servers. For instance, send unsent messages or check for new messages and retrieve them to your local cache. Take a look at this video tour:

Google is working on rolling this experimental feature to users. I can’t exactly tell you how well it works because Google has not blessed me with this feature, but if they do, I’ll be able to activate it from “Labs” tab under the settings page. If you got a chance to play with this new feature, let us know what you think through comments.

After Google’s acquisition of YouTube, Google Videos became redundant, so it was transformed into a video search engine. Uploads were still allowed, but from this point onwards, that’ll be stopped as well. However, existing video content can still be viewed. We’ll miss Google Videos as it had no limit on video length (YouTube limits the videos to be under 10 minutes)

Jaiku microblogging service was a rival to Twitter, it was under invite-only beta when acquired by Google. Jaiku’s code will be made open source and will be available on Google Code for anybody to develop their own microblogging platform. Jaiku will be shifted to App Engine, where it will continue to run under the support of volunteer Googlers. This announcement makes Twitter, the only surviving microblogging platform (Pownce was closed down last year).

I’m wondering about the fate of other less-popular Google services, such as Knol. Any thoughts on this one?

Via: Search Engine Land