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! 

  The time has come to upgrade to IE9 or 10 for all Windows users. A zero day attack started on a specific group of government workers government workers: "The target of this attack appears to be employees of the Dept of Energy that likely work in nuclear weapons research," Invincea researchers wrote in a separate report published Wednesday. cruising a Dep’t of Labor website which deals with illnesses observed in nuclear workers. This kind of attack using a ta...

  So what, you ask. The biggest news, though is that the app will do RAW processing. A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. “Tom Hogarty, Adobe's group product manager for Lightroom, appeared on Wednesday's episode of The Grid , a weekly online chat show, and showed off RAW processing on an iPad.” - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418470,00.asp ...

  Let’s face it. Despite LastPass (which has been hacked in the past) and all the other password managers, there’s just got to be a better way. About 70% of folks would rather have a single, go to multi-purpose identity verifyer instead of having the hassle of dealing with multiple passwords. The study below is worth a glance (41 pages). It was multinational, and covered a wide range of ages (18-65+). ( http://www.ponemon.org/local/upload/file/NokNokWP_FINAL_3.pdf ) ...

  I’ve written before on this topic ( https://forums.wincustomize.com/423486/page/1/#3140935 ). This is more of an update. The House of Representatives passed the bill last week, and it’s moving on to the Senate. So what? “CISPA would allow for voluntary information sharing between private companies and the government in the event of a cyber attack. If the government detects a cyber attack that might take down Facebook or Google, for example, they could notify th...

  I dislike toolbars and their propensity to track you and who knows what else. Many folks have a really tough time trying to remove them and their vestiges. This tool works. You can read about it and download it here: http://thisisudax.org/ and there’s a review here: http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/22/junkware-removal-tool-uninstalls-popular-toolbars-and-unwanted-software-from-your-pc/?_m=3n%2e0038%2e858%2ehj0ao01hy5%2evtf There’s no choice about which to r...

  The Marketplace Fairness Act… at least it used to be called that, is now being pushed through the Senate. Thanks for the “fairness”. They probably won’t even read it… as usual. “Proponents argue the proposal confirms the ability of states to charge sales taxes as they see fit, and they have begun to frame the issue as a matter of states’ rights. In a letter to the Senate, David French of the National Retail Federation argued the tax changes are needed to modernize the market...

    My take on this is that MS has seen its lackluster sales along with the popularity of apps like Start8 (and to be honest, others) and ModernMix along side Windows 8. These figures aren’t “worrisome” to MS. They are a “Gallup Poll” of sorts for MS and hopefully, MS will use the results correctly. I truly hope Stardock continues to offer up software which simply put, just makes it better and easier. However, MS hasn’t been blessed with the li...

  The update incorrectly identified Windows system files as being malware, and prevented these critical .exe and .dll files from running. As you can imagine, this caused serious problems. That faulty update has been yanked and fixed, so you can allow your software to update. A repair/fix tool was issued within hours.   Still, if anything has happened to you after an Antimalwarebytes update, here’s a link to the story: http://www.techspot.com/news/5229...