Eraser

It is a common misconception that when you choose to delete a file, and empty the recycle bin, that file is permanently removed from your computer system. It is easy to see why this mistake is so often made. After all, once you choose to empty the recycle bin, you can no longer “see” the file anymore, leading to the presumption that it has vanished into the ether. What has actually occurred, however, is that your operating system (most likely a flavor of Microsoft Windows) has simply decided to “forget” about this file.Now eventually this file may be overwritten with a new file; in this case, the old file will truly have been erased. Yet, until that occurs, your old file remains on your machine and is subject to revival by any number of freely available file restoring software applications.

We realize that most individuals do not have extremely sensitive files upon their computer; consequently, the difference between an invisible file and a deleted file are negligible. Nonetheless, if you are ever in a situation in which you need to ensure that particular data is removed (perhaps, if you are going to give your computer away to a friend or relative) we recommend that you go download and install Eraser. Eraser is a small, free application which specializes in securely and permanently removing data from your computer, using a series of specialized algorithms.

So how does one use Eraser to completely delete a piece of data? We are glad you asked. Begin by loading up the program, clicking on the arrow next to “Erase Schedule”, and selecting “New Task”. Click on the “Add Data” button and select one of the options (you can choose to delete a file, all the files in a folder, or even all the files within the recycle bin); one completed, click the “ok” button. Make sure to repeat the above step for each piece of data you would like to delete. Once you have selected all of the appropriate files, click on the “ok” button to return to the main window. At this stage you should see a single row of information, corresponding to all of the files you would like to permanently and securely remove. When you are ready to get rid of the files simply right click on this row, and choose “Run Now”. At this stage Eraser will use a special algorithm and safely remove those files. At this stage it is best to right click on the row once more and select “Delete Task” so that you know it has been executed already.

There you have it, an easy way to remove sensitive information. Just be forewarned, information removed with Eraser is, for all intents and purposes, irretrievable. So be careful when using it! The last thing you want to do is delete critical information.

If you have any further questions about Eraser feel free to visit Computer Repair Vancouver where I touch on a whole host of computer topics, including how to repair an infected machine.

WordPress started in 2003, and has quickly become one of the most popular self-hosted blogging and CMS platforms. Traditionally, e-Commerce websites required a large amount of time and technical knowledge to create, but WordPress has made creating an e-Commerce platform easy. Let’s take a look at why WordPress is a great e-Commerce platform and how it is done.

Why Use WordPress as an e-Commerce Platform

1. It’s Free

While there are some commercial options available, WordPress is a free platform that has proven to be extremely customizable and easy to use. It is now being used by everyone from first time bloggers to Fortune 500 companies. Since it is free, you can avoid licensing fees, upgrade fees, support fees, and even installation fees.

2. Flexible and Customizable

One of the reasons that WordPress continues to gain popularity points is because it is easy to customize and flexible enough to meet everyone’s needs. In fact, you can change the entire layout by simply switching themes. Additionally, you have the power to modify every theme to make it look exactly like you want it to. There are also a number of excellent free and commercial plugins that allow you to add a variety of features with a click of a button. With so many ways to extend the functionality of a WordPress website, your options seem endless.

3. Search Engine Friendly

WordPress has a number of excellent search engine friendly e-Commerce plugins. This will ensure that all of your products get indexed and show up in the major search engines. WordPress also makes it easy to have keyword friendly URL’s which can boost your SERP’s.

How to Use WordPress as an e-Commerce Platform

WordPress does not come out of the package with e-Commerce abilities, however by simply adding one or two plugins you will be able to create an online store and process payments from any gateway. It is important to note that not all e-Commerce plugins include a payment processor, which means you may require two plugins instead of one. Additionally, it is important to make sure that you choose a e-Commerce theme. This will ensure that the plugins display everything correctly, as well as give your website the look and feel of an e-Commerce website.

1. Best e-Commerce Themes

There are a number of great e-Commerce WordPress themes, however some that have been more popular and easier to customize than others. . is a very popular theme because of its built-in functionality. Not only does it integrate with more than 20 payment gateways, but it is completely browser based so that it will work from everywhere. It features 20 different shopping cart designs and Amazon, eBay, CSV, Datafeeder import abilities, along with simple Google Analytics and Adsense integration.

Vanilla Cart is another popular theme because it is designed minimalistically so that you can easily customize it. It was designed specifically to be integrated with the WP e-Commerce plugin. Another popular theme that was designed to be integrated with the WP e-Commerce plugin is CraftyCart. Another great WP e-Commerce compatible theme is Storefront. Storefront was designed with existing WP e-Commerce code already integrated with some custom coding to give you the best results possible.

2. e-Commerce Plugins

Most recognized plugin is definitely WP e-Commerce. This plugin is a fully featured shopping cart application that allows you to sell not only products, but services as well. It was designed as a Web 2.0 application to make it not only usable, but also looking great. This plugin is often referred to as the most complete and powerful WordPress plugin available.

Yak Shopping Cart is another solid WordPress e-Commerce plugin. It is a very simple shopping cart plugin that allows you to associate products with specific posts. Because of its simple design, it is very easy to modify and customize to fit your needs.

Quick Shop is another unique WordPress plugin. It adds a sidebar widget that will show the user what they currently have in the cart. This plugin also has a number of payment gateway options as well as TinyMCE button to make adding and deleting products from the shopping cart simple.

It is important to note that many, though not all, shopping cart plugins have certain payment gateways specifically integrated with it. This is important to keep in mind because if you use Google Checkout and the shopping cart plugin that you want to use isn’t designed to be compatible with it, then making the necessary modifications may be difficult. Additionally, some e-Commerce plugins have no payment gateways pre-configured, which means that you will need to do this on your own.

WordPress has proven to be an excellent e-Commerce platform for online stores of all sizes. However, it is important to choose a theme that is compatible with an e-Commerce platform. Some themes are fully functional WordPress store, whereas others are meant to compliment specific WordPress plugins. It doesn’t matter which option you choose, they can all create a great looking, functional online store.

Booting Ubuntu...

When you boot up your computer, at first.. your OS (Windows or Linux) should load and prepare itself to work! After that, your OS always loads some applications which is set to load at the system startup. For example, your anti virus is always loaded at the system boot! But, sometimes, there may be a lot of useless startup apps fighting to load at your system boot. Because of this problem.. you will get a very slow system startup making you more and more impatient! Any medicine for this? Yes there is..

Actually, this is my first Linux article after a long time! I don’t know whether our Linux fans are angry or not.. but to tell you the truth.. I was unable to use Linux for a while because I went for graphic designing (which needs Windows) for a while and also got some problems with my PC! So.. here we go again with more Linux posts…

In Windows, most of us use several system utilities to tweak our startup apps and allow the system to boot more faster. But the biggest question is.. can we do it on Uubuntu? And what are the software that we need to use for this tweak?

The good news is that you don’t have to install any software in Ubuntu to do this job. Ubuntu already have a built in startup manager which will allow us to easily control our startup applications! So.. how to use this feature?

• In the main menu, go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications
• After that you’ll see the “Startup Applications” window as shown below :

Startup Applications

• In here, you can un-tick the apps that you don’t use. For example, I have removed some apps like Bluetooth Manager, Remote Desktop and Ubuntu One because I don’t use them. But remember.. Never remove apps that you don’t know!
• If you want to add more startup apps, for example.. if you want your browser to start with your system, then you can click on “Add” and add that app to the list.

Most of you might have been able to get a very fast system boot with this tweak! So.. what do you think? How fast did your system boot-up after making this tweak? Please feel free to share your ideas with us!

The Password

You use a password for your e-mail account, for your computer, your Facebook account, for your web site and for many other places where you have very important information to protect! But.. what will happen if someone hacks your mail account and send spam to all of your friends? What will happen if some one hacks into your website and inject some malware into it? I know.. you don’t want to think about it.. So.. what if some one can tell you how long will it take for a hacker to crack your password?

There are several ways to hack a password! By using key loggers, by using dictionary attacks, by using brute-force attacks, etc. Among all these methods, the brute-force attack is very popular because it can give you very good results and also a bit easier to use than the others. But.. if the password is bigger.. then you can’t even think about a brute-force attack because it will take a lot of time!

Most of the people don’t know about this fact or just don’t care.. so they use a very small password because they are lazy to remember long ones! If you put a small password to your well reputed website, your paypal account or to a place where you store valuable information like your credit card details, emails and stuff.. then its a fiesta for the hackers.

Now, to avoid this problem, the best thing to do is to use a very very strong password. A strong password will be :

• Longer in length
• Contain multi case characters
• Contain numbers or symbols

And they also should not contain :

• Common words in the dictionary
• Your name or a name of your family members or a friend

So, now you have created a stronger password.. But you need to check whether its strong enough to keep the hacker figuring it out for years. To do this.. the best way is to use HowSecureIsMyPassword.net. This is a very great website which tells you how long will it take the hacker to hack your password using a brute-force attack. It does a small calculation using the number of characters and the types of characters (letters, numbers and symbols) you have used in the password to determine how long will it take for a hacker with a normal desktop PC to crack your password.

Don’t worry.. they are not going to steal your password with this cool service. They have used JavaScript to do the calculations which is a language running on the client side. Thats means, it runs on your computer and no data is sent to any other server. So, if your not sure.. load the website and perform the check after disconnecting your internet connection!

How Secure Is My Password.com

But remeber… this will only think about a hacker with a normal desktop PC! Also keep in mind that we also have super computers in this world! So.. how many of you changed your passwords after checking with this service? Don’t be shy… just tell!

Link :

• HowSecureIsMyPassword.net

Fake AntiVirus

There are lots of threats and frauds scattered all over the net which are well armed to kill us. But there are also lots of security software which can protect us from most of these threats. But what if people start to create malware to look just like another security software? A bit scary isn’t it? Well.. here’s some more shocking news.. Even Search Engines can make us trust these fakes!

The biggest difference between these fake anti viruses and the genuine ones is that these fakes seems to have a very high detection rate which is completely abnormal! When my machine was first attacked by one of these threats, they detected hundreds of threats in my system! But they only can do the detecting (which is a complete fake) and they asks you to pay for removing these threats! Most of the people takes this bait and pays for a big malware to remove malware that doesn’t exist in your system. The creators of these fakes are said to be earning a lot of money from these apps. So.. have you also paid for them?

Now the latest story that I heard about these fakes is that they are even using popular search engines like Google to spread their virus. They are said to take the advantage of various SEO techniques to trick the search engines to think that this is a well reputed software.

Not only that.. they have also used to advertise their products on Google! Recently.. the Sophos Labs have seen some Google Sponsored links in a search result which leads to a fake anti virus! Watch this video..

Scary isn’t it? Well.. there are lots of ways to save our skins from these threats :

1. Use a good anti virus and a firewall software
2. Use tools like WOT to scan your search results and the websites you visit (http://www.techhamlet.com/2009/11/surf-the-web-safely/)
3. Use public DNS servers to stay away from bad sites (Surf the Web Faster and Safer With Custom DNS, Another Addition to The DNS Based Security World, A More Safer Web With Norton DNS!)

See what are the dangers that the web have for us? If you want to be safe from these threats… You need to be extra careful and always keep in mind that the web is one of the most dangerous places in the world!

Video Wallpaper

If you want to change the look of your desktop, you just find a good image, right click on your desktop, go to wallpapers and then apply that image to your desktop! Images Images! Have you ever thought of going beyond a still image? Have you ever thought of adding a video as your desktop wallpaper? Well.. now its time to think like that!

Everyday we have to stare on one single still image attached to our desktop. But there’s a very good reason to only put still images as your wallpaper. The major reason is the performance! A normal video will surely take more system resources than a single image. That’s why Microsoft never thought of allowing us to add videos as our wallpapers! That’s Microsoft…

But VLC thinks more differently than Microsoft. The major thing that makes VLC more different is that they never charge huge chunks of money for their products like Microsoft! Now, they have thought that, if we add a still image as our wallpaper.. then why can’t we add a video instead of an image?

So, to make this idea a success, they used their world famous media player. In VLC media player, there’s a small option which will allow you to set the video which your currently playing, as your windows wallpaper! Its very simple.. Want to know how?

• First Download VLC Media Player and install it
• Now open the VLC media player and go to Tools > Preferences
• In the “”Preferences” window, set “Show Settings” to “All” in the bottom left corner

Show all Settings

• Now go to Video > Output Modules and set the “Video output module” to “DirectX (DirectDraw) video output” and click save.

Video Output Module

• Now play your video. Right click on your playing video and and select Video > DirectX Wallpaper
• And then Enjoy!

For people who have Vista and Windows 7, VLC will automatically disable Windows Aero because the video wallpaper won’t be supported by Windows Aero. So.. what do you think? Planning to run a video on your desktop all the time? Please feel free to share your ideas with us!

These days everyone are waiting for the latest Firefox 4.0 to come out of the factory which is still under development. But still, the Mozilla foundation haven’t stopped thinking about their current version of the famous web browser Firefox 3.6! So, here comes Firefox 3.6.7..

I think you can remember that yesterday we told you about an update to Kaspersky Security Software which have added several fixes to their famous security apps. Today the Mozilla foundation have also released another patch to their famous web browser which is going to fix some security and stability issues. Even though they are very busy working with Firefox 4.0, they have never ignored their current version.

As I said earlier, this new update will fix several issues like cross domain data theft using CSS, miscellaneous memory safety hazards and remote code execution using malformed PNG image (The full list of bug fixes can be found here). As I always say.. keep your software up-to-date for maximum performance and maximum security! So, update your Fox to the latest version right now!

Download :

• Download The Latest Version of Firefox