Following up on the last point, you might have written ‘killer posts’ sometimes which indeed is worthy of more attention and somehow it passes your front page and goes under the rug, and not necessarily on a low traffic blog. Thus, the archives page can bring these posts back to life if a curious soul happens to find it and maybe submit it to a social bookmarking site.

There are a few Wordpress plugins which add more functionality to your Wordpress blog, there’s one plugin that I really would recommend which is the Clean Archives plugin. The plugin’s development was passed over to another, however it hasn’t affected the plugin whatsoever.

It displays a list of all months and comprises of expandable lists on just a single page thus allowing you to display the entire archive on one page and making it a lot easier to navigate, you can see the plugin in action in the Computer Realm archives.

Clean Archives Plugin Home Page.

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While I’ve never been a fan of fancy themes ( I prefer the XP default theme to Vista) I’m also aware of many people who prefer a completely customized interface with as much color as possible, no matter, it’s a matter of taste and individuality. So if you are one of these folks, you might want to try out Personas for Firefox.

Personas is a Mozilla Labs project that lets you add light weight ’skins’ to your Firefox browser. Like all Mozilla projects, Personas is highly community driven as well, where skins can be developed by users as well. Distributed as an addon, it comes with tons of skins available addons categorized accordingly. Switching between ’skins’ is made easy by allowing preview by hovering over the skin name once the addon is installed.

This project pretty much gives it another edge in the browser wars, in terms of interface, if you are a fan of eye candy, you should be looking to try Personas out.

• Personas Website
• How to create a Personas ‘Skin’

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Image Credit: gonzales2010

While, damage can get this far rarely, at any scale viruses and spyware affect computers in some way, for a personal, home computer, it could go as far as to display a message prompt that you are a loser, or it could result in you having to reformat your computer completely. Spyware can be a privacy threat as it’s more of spying (as the name suggests) on the victim’s computer and retrieving information without their consent. On a more commercial level, viruses and spyware could spread across a network of thousands of computers resulting in thousands of dollars spent on getting rid of the malware.

Sometimes though, you might be infected by either of these without even being aware of it, ignorance could result in your computer running a lot slower, or information from your computer being tracked without you knowing, or the scenario could be a lot worse than that, so below I have outlined the most common ways to identify if your computer is infected with a virus.

This is aimed mainly towards the Windows OS, while Mac is catching up with viruses in recent times, viruses are still far from a threat for Macs.

1. Computer Performance Degrades

If you notice your computer performing degrade with time, it is probably a virus issue, as viruses accumulate they drain CPU resources and tie up your usual tasks resulting in your computer running a lot slower. If it’s been a low performing computer ever since you remember though I think it’s time for a hardware upgrade.

2. Takes forever to startup

If you notice your computer taking forever to startup without any significant modifications to your system (installing a CPU heavy application like an antivirus is a significant modification) it’s probably because your malware are starting up too. One way to check this is to open Start > Run > “Msconfig”>Startup and check the applications on startup, if you notice anything you don’t recognize in the list, it could be malware, however you can’t be too sure as it could be a third party process of a trusted installed application.

3. Toolbars and Tray Icons out of nowhere

This could be either a virus or spyware, usually malware toolbars installed are usually spyware, installed into the browser to track user browsing habits and information. Tray icons, which is again malware (as it was installed without the user’s consent) could be viruses or spyware, they could be harmless, meant to drain your computer off its resources or spyware to track your usage again.

4. Your computer is infected!

This is another common form of tricking the user to install a malicious software tool. Usually, a malicious script is installed into your system or hijacks your browser (another form of spyware) and continually prompts the user that the computer is infected and needs to be scanned for issues, users who are tricked by this message, install the apparent anti malware tool which in itself is a virus.

5. Your browser keeps crashing and/or you get a new home page

This is a definite case of spyware, where the browser is hijacked and results in your browser crashing and your home page being modified to a malicious website as well.

6. You can’t access your task manager

This is typical of a virus, the virus while creating a background process to exploit the victim’s computer, disables the task manager as well via a registry key so that the running virus process cannot be ended. This can be fixed using Disk Heal if the virus is no longer active.

7. You can’t access your folder options or the preferences are read only.

The Folder Options (My Computer > Tools > Folder Options) controls numerous functions on the windows operating system. One of the main functions controlled is whether files given the ‘hidden’ or ’system’ attribute should be displayed in your file explorer/My Computer. Viruses usually sit somewhere in the hard disk with these attributes appended to them to prevent the user finding them, therefore it also disables the Folder Options or makes its preferences ‘read only’ where when preferences are changed and applied, you’ll notice them revert to the previous settings right away. This can be fixed using Disk Heal if the virus is no longer active.

8. You can’t access the Windows Registry Editor

The windows registry editor (Start > Run > “Regedit” ) is your system’s ‘headquarters’. This is where most of your operating system and application software preferences are stored. Viruses after penetrating into a system, usually disable the registry editor to prevent system administrators manually reverting settings like the previous two points. This can be fixed using Disk Heal if the virus is no longer active.

9. Your CPU Usage is 100% all the time.

Open the task manager (Ctrl + Alt + Del / Ctrl + Shift + Esc). If it’s disabled, you have your answer, you have a virus (unless you are not the admin of the computer and the administrator has disabled this feature). If you notice the CPU usage is 100%, arrange the processes by by CPU usage and check the process taking up the bulk, if it has a weird name (you should be able to figure or else leave a comment below) chances are it’s a virus.

10. Autorun.inf in your local or external drive

Take the letters of the active drives in your computer now, replace it in the letter field in the following location and open it in the My Computer address bar: “[letter]:/autorun.inf”, if it opens a notepad file with a reference to an EXE or any unidentified file it is probably another sign of a virus, unless that drive has a designated autorun program on startup however this is unlikely on local or even external hard drives unless manually done.

So there you have it, these are 10 of the most popular ways to know if your computer is infected by a virus, of course there are plenty of other symptoms to determine if your computer is infected and also the above factors may not necessarily mean you could be infected, but if you find more than a couple of the above familiar maybe, you should be looking to switch to a better antivirus and antispyware or get a new one if you don’t use them.

I’ve tried several antivirus and antispyware programs and concluded that Kaspersky and Ad Aware are the best in the market. I’m currently another two similar products as well, await the reviews of them.

• Kaspersky Review
• Ad Aware Review

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Over the past few days, this blog has gone Firefox crazy with several posts on the popular web browser, today I help you make another decision with your browser.

Twitter has exploded over the past year and mainly over the past few months, as mainstream media, celebrities and techies slowly embrace Twitter, there comes the issue of using the right tools to make use of this network. With their handy API, several twitter tools are developed each day, be it for usual tweeting with the features provided via Twitter Web with a few additional supplements to make it worth a primary client or other tools to track content or users on the network.

The ability to perform as much tasks as possible from within your browser using addons is what makes Firefox a lot more productive and handy over its competitors. Thus, being able to tweet with a fully featured twitter client from within your browser is a lot more efficient than using an external client or Twitter web.

There are a handful of Twitter clients for Firefox which lets you perform all or some of the functions of Twitter, a while back I was sieving through the Firefox Addons database and after much testing and researching figured that Twitterfox was the best client for Firefox.

Looking at some of the popular addons, there’s Twitkit, Twitbin, Twitterbar and of course Twitterfox which I picked at best. While Twitkit and Twitbin are also pretty good, I prefer a floating window or extension rather than a sidebar addon which cripples the width of the interface. Other available addons have crippled features or aren’t compatible with the latest Firefox builds (like Tweetbar).

First up, looking at Twitterfox, it’s pretty much a counterpart of Twhirl in terms of interface as well as features which is one of the primary 3rd party twitter clients. Twitterfox is compact (separated into tabs) and expands when the Twitter logo on your status bar is clicked. It offers extensive features, update, reply, retweet, shorten URL, multiple accounts, etc.

The latter feature, multiple accounts is one of the easiest things to manage with Twitterfox, just right click the icon and switch to another account. It also display optional notification balloons for updates, replies, etc. (which can be annoying for some while surfing).

As it’s part of the browser, there’s no need of wasting time copying items to the clipboard, shortening the link and pasting them into your client when sharing useful websites, just one click and the URL in the active tab will be shortened and appended to your tweet, thus making tweeting a lot more faster and easier.

One of the main issues with Twitterfox is memory usage, when tweets ‘build up’ and you open the timeline it could momentarily freeze Firefox, with their latest build this got worse, with Firefox momentarily freezing each time the timeline updates even if you don’t open it. The latest build has a better interface with trandparency and colors to choose from for the interface however resulted in more memory strain.

Apart from that it’s pretty much perfect and still the best Twitter client around, if you beg to differ on which is the best, please leave it in the comments below.

Twitterfox Website

Download an older version (1.7.7.1) of Twitterfox (before memory issues as stated above)

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Portable applications are pretty much becoming a standard feature with most applications today, several of the popular software have a separate portable version which differs in the standard version usually by saving the application settings in an ‘INI’ file instead of in the registry.

Portable application doesn’t necessarily have to be used if you need the applications to be used elsewhere on a different computer, even if it’s your own computer shared with others or a family computer you could benefit from these software and this is exactly how you could use your very own Firefox on a shared computer.

You can download a portable version of Firefox from the popular PortableApps, extract it anywhere on your hard drive or personal external drive and you are ready to go, you now have your own personalized version of Firefox with the bookmarks, extensions and a theme you’d prefer.

Once you are done, just exit without any concern of private data as it’s all stored in that version of Firefox and the other users would have the usual Firefox untouched by you. One of the things to note is that two separate Firefox versions (the portable one and the installed one for example) cannot be simultaneously run.

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The point is, currently Disk Heal and System Vault are available in very handy sizes of 400 and 275 KB, with the move to .NET, the .NET framework will need to be installed as well, which is an additional 20MB approximately.

Does the requirement of .NET framework in other applications bother you?

Currently, while I had to manage with a ‘windows classic’ interface for Disk Heal and System Vault, I used background images to optimize the skin of the application (at least with Disk Heal) as most software today are released with a sleek skin and effects as well, as operating systems like Vista started the trend.

Please leave your feedback in the comments.

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Review Details

Company – FreeTime
Version – 1.90
Operating System – Windows XP

Summary

A while back I wrote on this great free media converter, today I thought I’d write a full review on the software. Format Factory is an ‘all-in-one’ free media converter that lets you convert files among all popular image, audio and video formats.

Ratings

• Interface (9/10)
• Ease of use (10/10)
• Memory Usage (8/10)
• Features (10/10)
• Price (10/10)
• Help and Support (5/10)

Review

• Interface (10/10)

Format Factory comes with 4 skins, with a bunch of new age icons and color combinations for its skins. Personally I like the ‘Obsidian’ skin, with the massive inventory of features, the interface is arranged with a sidebar menu to convert video, audio, images or to burn it in separate expandable menus. The interface is pretty much perfect however I don’t like the occassional weird blurring of the header ‘effect’ which wasn’t seen in previous versions. It also supports 48 languages so if you are viewing this with Google Translate the application should have native support for your language too!

• Ease of use (10/10)

Format Factory is very easy to use, at a glance, even though it has plenty of features, you have access to each of them mostly with a click of a button or with 2 or 3 at the most, all the icons are supported with text below it so all the features are pretty much self explanatory.

• Memory Usage (8/10)

Format Factory takes very little memory in comparison to its competitors. While on standby it takes an efficient 25MB of memory and doesn’t consume much of CPU resources. During conversion, the computer is still very usable with room for enough multi tasking, it does drain the CPU a bit while converting as all other converters however comparatively it allows for some alternate processes to be run.

• Features (9/10)

Format Factory is packed with all the features you’d look for in a media converter. It supports a massive inventory of file formats in all forms of media (images, video, audio), burning from a CD or DVD, and also little features like tray conversion reducing clutter, shutdown after completion, pausing of conversion (in case another heavy process needs to be run while conversion) and more. It also supports merging of files and addition of subtitles to converted video files. The only feature it lacks is the ability to burn to CD/DVD, while this is a feature of a dedicated burning tool, the addition of this feature could well make it the ‘ultimate’ media conversion and burning tool. It also does not support any appending of effects to a converted image, video or audio while images maybe appended with text.

• Price (10/10)

This is arguably one of the best freeware products around. Freeware has a broad base of software products and giving it a title of ‘one of the best’ in that niche is giving it a lot of authority, however I could safely say it deserves it, for the perfection in the program, the vast number of features and in comparison to the rest of the products in this category of software which are usually shareware, Format Factory is indeed one of the best freeware around.

• Help and Support (10/10)

Format Factory comes with a fully compiled help file complete with screenshots in English and Chinese and pointers on how to use the application, thus even the completely clueless newbie can get the software to work, this help file coupled with the self explanatory interface makes using this application a breeze even for the novice. There’s also a support Email if you are unable to click a mouse and still can’t get things to work.

• Other Notes

The application is highly portable, while a separately labeled portable version is not available, the application has handlers to create preferences even though it might be stored in the registry (I didn’t see an INI file) without running into an error thus the folder can be copied on a portable drive and on launch it would seamlessly ‘install itself’ into the local system.

The program displays two links within the application to eBay and BrotherSoft, making it ‘adware’ however it troubles no one and actually makes the interface cooler with the two logos, a small price to pay for all the benefits of the application.

Overall

Reading the review, you’d see I have no complains except for a little thing here and there, however if you would be converting a file at any point, close your eyes and pick Format Factory right away and you’d save yourself time and thank me afterwards.

Format Factory Website

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Conduit is a service that lets you build a powerful free toolbar with your brand and they make it pretty much a walk in the park! Once you sign up you get to select from an array of features to append to your toolbar, these include standard toolbar features, popular services today as well as some other interesting toolbar features. Some of them are:

• RSS
• Twitter
• TV
• Games
• Search

This is a snapshot of the features you get to add to your toolbar:

The toolbar is hosted at [yourtoolbarname].ourtoolbar.com and lets you have a customized landing page. Apart from using the toolbar as a means of promotion and providing an alternate stream of keeping your site visitors in touch with your website, they also have a Rewards Program which pays you per install, since I haven’t extensively used the service yet I’m not aware of what the PPI (pay per install) rate is, however this thread on the forums gives a reason to be a bit skeptical.

However the service alone, without the rewards program still helps get your name out there. Backed by almost $10 million dollars of funding with 38 million users (based on the Conduit website), I guess it’s worth a try. I’m hoping to test drive this service and I’d be sure to post the results so stay tuned for that.

Another alternative service worth mentioning is iToolbar, they offer a similar service to Conduit however Conduit is the market leader for this niche. Either way comments on both the services would be appreciated below.

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The next major release is about to take it away and it looks like it’s another ‘major’ major release like the previous major update. A couple of days back I updated to the RC of Firefox 3.5 which is pretty much stable while it’s still not a stable release as yet. Running it first up there were three things I noticed right away.

• Faster

The new Firefox 3.5 has ‘Chrome like’ speed, I really noticed the considerable difference in speed compared to version 3, Google search results appear in a flash, as opposed to the tiniest of delays in Firefox 3, and in overall all websites loaded a lot faster.

• The Add Tab Button

One of the little things that Chrome had that I’d liked to see in Firefox was also sitting there in Firefox 3.5. The Add Tab button next to the tabs, while this isn’t really a major feature comparatively, it greatly increases navigation and productivity, as opening new tabs are a lot faster (even though it was still pretty quick earlier as I used Gestures).

• Addon Incompatibility

There’s a heads up if you are looking to upgrade, some Addons aren’t compatible as yet with the latest 3.5, 2 of my Addons ; Tempomail and Duplicate Tab ( I didn’t know I had that installed) weren’t compatible with 3.5. Thankfully I don’t need the addons on a daily basis.

If you are looking to upgrade to the RC, make sure any addons you use, atleast the frequently used ones are compatible with 3.5.

Other Features

Apart from what I noticed first up, the highlight of 3.5 is Private Browsing mode, while I’m not as excited about this feature, there’d be plenty of users who surf on shared or public computers concerned about their privacy (and concerned about people finding out their porn habits). While privacy can be cleared using the ‘clear private data’ feature manually, Private browsing takes it a step further by letting you start a new session which does not record ANY private data namely, history, form history, passwords,  cache, downloaded items and site preferences/active logins (cookies).

The other useful feature is the ‘undo closed window’ feature, previously if you close a tab by accident you could go to History > Recently Closed Tabs and retrieve them, if you close a window of tabs though you are a goner, 3.5 lets you restore closed windows as well.

The above highlighted features should make Internet Explorer users upgrade to Firefox and of course increase its browser share further. You can read more about Firefox 3.5 covered by other websites below.

• Highlights of Firefox 3.5
• All new features of Firefox 3.5

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Product Company – FreeTime Soft
Version – 6.0
Operating System – Windows XP

Summary

WinX DVD Author is a basic application in the highly competitive DVD authoring tools software niche, offering the standard features of a DVD authoring tool with a reasonable price tag, WinX DVD Author is an average tool and nothing spectacular, it does its job efficiently however making it a walk in the park with its user-friendliness.

Software Aspects

• Interface (9/10)
• Ease of use (10/10)
• Features (6/10)
• Price (9/10)
• Memory Usage (5/10)
• Speed of Conversion (8/10)
• Help and Support (9/10)
• Other Notes

• Interface (9/10)

The highlight of the application along with its ease of use, Winx DVD features a classic metallic look with a greyish silver combo, the various links to the parts of the program are presented with minimal clutter emphasizing the second point, the ease of use. It also consists of a multilingual interface supporting 9 languages.

• Ease of use (10/10)

Using this application is quite straight forward. The application consists of 3 applets, namely ‘Convert Video to VOB’, ‘VOB to DVD compiler’ and ‘DVD Disc Burner’. Each applet consists of a two step process, firstly where all the required details are defined, and the second step consists of a mini window to monitor progress of the action. The buttons are supported with tooltip text however the icons are pretty much self explanatory.

• Features (6/10)

This is the aspect (and the most important) which this application lacks. As mentioned in the summary, it consists of all the basic features of a DVD authoring tool however nothing more. Getting to the interesting features, WinX DVD Author supports virtually any video format which makes it more versatile. It provides single layer/dual layer conversion, wide screen/standard, supports batch conversion, etc.

However, it does not provide features like additional effects to the video with conversion, importing and exporting preference files (or project), menu effects, and only a few available menu backgrounds (while custom images maybe imported) Also conversion of a file cannot be paused during conversion, this feature is particularly necessary as it uses up a lot of CPU resources when converting (see below)

• Price (9/10)

Relatively, WinX DVD Author is very reasonably priced, they have currently priced the application at a ‘limited time discount’ of $22.90, this price is low in comparison to others in the market, most DVD Authoring tools are usually above the $30 range.

• Memory Usage (5/10)

In background usage WinX DVD consumes approximately 30MB of memory, very efficient and manageable, however while converting, memory usage increases to 50MB, still manageable, however drains the CPU off its resources (with the normal setting) making other tasks difficult to perform, this is another aspect that needs to be worked on.

• Speed of Conversion (8/10)

Speed of converting files is pretty decent, it works on a 1:1 ratio with duration of video converted with time it takes to convert.

• Help and Support (9/10)

The application comes bundled with a help file (*.chm) providing step by step details on how to perform the various function the software provides complete with screenshots as well. In addition they provide customer support as well.

• Other Notes

By default the language is set to Chinese, and needs to be changed at first use. Also there is a tiny visual glitch, with the main window image and help file showing version 5.5 while the product is a version 6 (the About window shows it correctly).

• Overall

While features and memory usage may need some work, the very competitive price, interface and ease of use of the application compensates for it making it a considerable option to use as a DVD Authoring tool.

• Download Trial
• Buy Winx DVD Author

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