This is a handy little program for those who wish to modify the W8 boot. As far as I can tell, it should live peacefully with Stardock’s W8 programs, but if not, it can be saved on a stick for times you’ll be asked to fix someone’s W8 computer. It’ll give you rapid access to legacy settings which you’ll need. I published another article today before I discovered this gem through gHacks (thanks, gHacks!). Hope the Wiz and others find this useful....

  Well, I didn’t buy W8, and am not using it, but there are folks here who do so, “This Bud’s for you!”. One of W8’s features is an amazingly rapid boot. Actually, it’s a “hybrid boot”: a cross between hibernation and booting. But, let’s say you’re having a problem which you need “Safe Mode” to solve. How can you do it in such a rapidly booting environment? F2 and F8 time periods are reduced to really tiny periods. According to the MSDN blog, “ the interval wherein Windows wa...

  Chasys Draw IES (CDIES) is as the title says, a new and free image editing suite for Windows. According to its dev it’s built on three pillars: “Character (no Photoshop imitations here), Performance (fast, efficient and stable) and Innovation (new techniques and out-of-the-box thinking).” – J.P. Chacha It’s made of four modules: “Chasys Draw IES is a suite of applications including a layer-based image editor with animation, icon editing support and sup...

  Computer scientists at the Technion (Haifa, Israel) have developed and actually constructed a molecular transducer: “Scientists developed and constructed a molecular transducer, which is an advanced computing machine. This molecular computer was built entirely of biomolecules, such as DNA and enzymes that can manipulate genetic codes. This unprecedented device can compute iteratively, namely, it uses the output as a new input for subsequent computations. Furthermore, it produ...

  Flickr has expanded the free storage to 1 Terabyte. If you need or want more, that will require subscription. If you have a Yahoo or Flickr account, there’s nothing you have to do. You’ve already received your 1 Tb. If you create an account? No problem. You receive 1Tb. Well played, Flickr. Flickr Pro while being continued, is no longer being sold as such. If you have it, it’s being continued, for now. Also, no 300 Mb/month limit anymore. What hasn’t chang...

  Was casting about for something which might help folks, when I ran across this in “How To Geek”. I compared Google with bing and ran into no differences, but I didn't test all the searches in the paragraph detailing them in Google. Turns out Google and bing have these instant answer things built in, and there will be times when they will help. Guaranteed. For instance, I was talking with my son on fb, and he asked me about the weather here (he’s in Tel Aviv). I...

  NSS Labs surveyed the five browsers with the most market share for security against “socially engineered” malware. The browsers tested were Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera. You can view the NSS report here: https://www.nsslabs.com/reports/2013-browser-security-comparative-analysis-socially-engineered-malware The test is aimed at mobile devices (however, syncing will affect the non-mobile machines as well). The results were pretty amazing: ...

  Will wonders never cease? I hope you remember my post at the end of last year regarding BitDefender AV Free. If you don’t, it’s here: http://drjbhl.joeuser.com/article/438717/BitDefender_AV_Free Following the post, problems cropped up: No “whitelisting”, no “quarantining”, etc. You might be happy to learn, as I was, that sometimes companies listen. I ‘m sure I wasn’t the only one to write to them concerning the defects you all found. I supplied them with the url of ...

  PC Magazine put out a ten question “quickie” to test your knowledge about key loggers, viruses, phishing, etc. It was fun to take…no stress. The nice thing? The explanations of the correct answers. You can find it here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418514,00.asp

  You probably don’t need it most days (but, you’ll never know which days). In fact, you might or might not encounter a “drive by” for days or weeks. But, AV-Comparatives (AVC) did an interesting test on AVs (Antivirals). They tested when the AV actually loads. That’s not to say they’re actually protecting you during boot, but AVC didn’t actually test that. Another caveat: They tested on new machines. That’s not exactly real world testin...

  A fantastic, feature rich file explorer/manipulator/zip-unzip/FTP manager is available at BitsDuJour for another 18 hours at a 50% discount – $44.50 (US). Worth it. http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/directory-opus-10/src=day?utm_campaign=2424403&utm_content=4144667414&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Emailvision

  A couple of points first. These programs don’t have the huge range of features available in CS6, or the number of programs available in the “Creative Cloud”. Also, although the “Creative Cloud” will cost a bit more, it will allow all updates and new features most prominent among them “unblur” which is an incredible new feature (not great video available here: http://youtu.be/xxjiQoTp864 ) which many are understandably excited about. If you ...

  MS is preparing to reverse its thinking on key elements of W8! Figured this was coming with its lackluster sales. Frankly? This is a brave move. It might also be Ballmer’s last one. “Key aspects” of how the software is used will be changed when Microsoft releases an updated version of the operating system this year, Tami Reller, head of marketing and finance for the Windows business, said in an interview with the Financial Times. – Financial Times I...

  EaseUS has asked me to review their software, and there are some free licenses for Forums viewers and commenters. To start, EaseUS is a well recognized firm. It provides freeware for ToDo Backup Home only, with limited features, and trialware (full featured). The payware is priced at about 50% of software like Acronis. Also, there are different versions with various additional features. These can be viewed and compared here (scroll to mid page): http://www.easeus.com/backup/ ...

  Maybe I'm too easily impressed. Maybe not. This impressed the folks at Guinness World Records enough to make it the world's tiniest video. A bit misleading...it's about a tiny subject. The video was made by putting together stop motion pics via a tunneling electron microscope. Truly impressive.   Here's a vid about how the folks at IBM made the above video:   This is the future of storage technology. Have a great Sunday!