CNet News Article

Yahoo! Tech Advisors

Friday, March 21, 2008

Explore, Search n Discover

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New! Explore sky in Google Earth

Google Earth | Free

Google Earth combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

  • Fly to your house. Just type in an address, press Search, and you’ll zoom right in.
  • Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.
  • Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings, or look up to explore the sky
  • Save and share your searches and favorites.

Since Google Earth was launched, users have been exploring our world and creating content overlays (KML files) to share their explorations with others. We're now highlighting user-created KML files each week in the new Google Earth Gallery. You can also choose to add the gallery's Google Gadget to your iGoogle page.

Google EarthView a world full of 3D content

Google Earth gives you a wealth of imagery, and geographic and astronomical information. Explore destinations like Maui, Paris and the Milky Way, or browse content from Wikipedia, National Geographic, the Hubble Telescope, and more.

Learn More

Google Earth GalleryKML Gallery

View some of the most popular Google Earth content, published by many organizations and millions of users around the world. Open the files and browse them just like a document, but in a visually intuitive and interactive interface.

Google Earth Gallery

Google Earth PlusGoogle Earth Plus | $20*

Upgrade to Google Earth Plus to add GPS device support, faster performance, the ability to import spreadsheets, and higher resolution printing.

Learn More | Buy

Google Earth ProGoogle Earth Pro | $400*


Need Google Earth for your organization? Google Earth Pro is the ultimate research, presentation, and collaboration tool for location-specific information.

Learn More | Industry Uses | Buy | 7-day free trial

Google Earth Enterprise Solutions

Google Earth Enterprise Solutions are also available for on-site deployment of custom Google Earth databases within your enterprise. Learn more - Have a salesperson contact me

* subscription based annual fee


Google Earth Outreach

The Google Earth Outreach program supports everyone from passionate individuals to public benefit organizations who use Google Earth and KML to make the world a better place. Find out more and get started on the Google Earth Outreach website.

Flash Player



Experience Flash content and applications across desktops and devices


Strategic

ActionScript 3.0

ActionScript is the powerful object-oriented programming language of the Adobe® Flash® Player runtime environment. Based on ECMAScript, the international standardized programming language for scripting, ActionScript 3.0 further advances the language to offer developers a robust programming model for rich Internet applications (RIAs). Developers can achieve superb performance and ease of development to facilitate highly complex applications, large datasets, and object-oriented, reusable code bases. Executed within the new ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2) in Flash Player 9, ActionScript 3.0 delivers breakthrough performance for the next generation of RIAs. To accelerate the development of this standards-based approach for creating rich and engaging Web applications, Adobe has contributed source code behind AVM2 to the Mozilla Foundation who hosts the open source project, called Tamarin.

ActionScript 3.0 is compliant with the ECMAScript Edition 3 (ECMA-262) standard.

  • ECMAScript for XML (E4X) enables easy manipulation of XML documents using a familiar syntax.
  • Regular Expressions save coding time for string search and manipulation procedures.
  • DOM Level 3 Events help developers maintain better object-oriented code using the standard W3C event model.
  • Namespaces and Packages improve code organization and encourage logical application structure.
  • Enhanced debugging and profiling data reduce testing time and facilitate integrating Flash applications into automated testing environments.
  • Improved error handling and exceptions enable the development of more secure, robust applications.

New virtual machine

Flash Player 9 includes a new, highly optimized ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) known as AVM2. Built from the ground up to work with the next generation of ActionScript, the new virtual machine is designed to deliver the performance and features to support the needs of rich Internet application developers. AVM2 supports full runtime error reporting, built-in debugging, and binary socket support so developers can extend the player to work with any binary protocol. Flash Player 9 also contains AVM1, which executes legacy ActionScript for maintaining backward compatibility with existing content.

New H.264/HE-AAC options

Flash Player 9 includes H.264 video and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio codec support that opens up a broad ecosystem and selection of standards-based video — up to HD quality — that developers can leverage in their applications. Supporting a subset of MPEG-4 Part 12 (container) and Part 14 (H.264), including baseline, main and high profiles, Flash Player can play back existing MP4, M4A, MOV, MP4V, 3GP and 3G2 content.

Flash Player Cache

The Flash Player cache enables common components, such as the Flex Framework, to be cached locally and then used by any SWF from any domain. Use of the Flash Player cache can significantly reduce SWF file sizes and speed application download times.

Increased performance

Flash Player 9 builds on improvements in Flash Player 8 to execute content and applications faster than ever before with a number of performance improvements:

  • Experience up to ten times faster ActionScript 3.0 execution with the new virtual machine and optimized compiler.
  • Increase content and application speeds through faster application startup times and a 50% reduction in memory footprint.
  • Accelerate rendering performance through more efficient, cached vector graphics.
  • Improve text readability and get faster, smoother scrolling of large text blocks with optimized text rendering routines.
  • Speed the rendering of vectors, bitmaps, filters and video, including true 1080p video, with new multi-core support that takes advantage of up to 4 CPUs.
  • Improve the performance and quality of full-screen video through the use of hardware scaling.
  • Enhance the quality and rendering performance of downscaled images using a new algorithm for scaling bitmap images.

Enhanced security

Flash Player enforces security sandboxes for applications, content, data, and URLs to safeguard sensitive data and help ensure safe browsing for end users.

Innovative

Display API

Flash Player 9 introduces powerful ActionScript 3.0 methods for manipulating raw graphics and creating custom effects. Create, manipulate, and remove objects from the display list on-the-fly.

File upload/download

Flash Player enables the creation of sophisticated client-server applications using file upload and download APIs.

Enhanced expressiveness

Flash Player 9 includes the expressiveness enhancements added in Flash Player 8 that enable developers and designers to create breakthrough experiences.

  • Design immersive experiences for Flash video, content and applications with full-screen, hardware accelerated mode.
  • Deliver low-bandwidth, high-quality video with advanced compression technology.
  • Create high-fidelity text using the advanced text rendering engine.
  • Add real-time dynamic effects with filters for Blur, DropShadow, Glow, Bevel, Gradient Glow, Gradient Bevel, Displacement Map, Convolution, and Color Matrix.
  • Create innovative media compositions with 8-bit video alpha channels.
  • Expand your creative options with blend modes, radial gradient, and stroke enhancements.
  • Dynamically import additional image formats: GIF, Progressive JPEG, and PNG.

External API

Flash Player supports integration with HTML, DHTML, and Ajax applications through the External API.

Asynchronous communication model

Flash Player is based on an asynchronous client-server communication model, enabling rapid client interactivity without web page refresh.

Universal

Consistent experiences

Flash Player delivers consistent content and application experiences across a range of web browsers and platforms, including full-screen support with hardware scaling now on Linux.

Express Install

Flash Player enables a smooth, in-context upgrade experience using Express Install and improved Auto-Update functionality.

Input Method Editor (IME) support

Flash Player supports expanded integration with Input Method Editors (IMEs) for Asian-language Flash applications.

Lightweight footprint

Flash Player boasts a lightweight footprint of 1MB, enabling the adoption rate of new versions to consistently reach over 600 million Internet users within 12 months of release.

Accessibility support

Flash Player provides support for accessibility through support for Microsoft’s Active Accessibility (MSAA) API and by enabling developers to provide support for keyboard users, deaf and hard of hearing users, and users with other disabilities.

Adobe Reader

Free Adobe® Reader® 8 software can help you more securely communicate and collaborate. Reader 8 includes a new interface, new tools, more document viewing options, online meeting capabilities, support for more secure workflows, and a host of other new features to help you save time and money.

Get Adobe Reader



Leverage a simplified user interface

View information more precisely and efficiently with the redesigned, easier to use Reader 8 interface. Choose the reading mode to fit more content on the screen or the two-up mode to view page spreads without excess space in the middle. Zoom in, pan over, or leverage the loupe feature in Reader 8 to take a closer look.

Hold online meetings

Instantly collaborate with virtually anyone, anywhere, at any time. Use the Start Meeting button in Reader 8 to access Adobe Acrobat® Connect™ software and deliver online training and support or communicate with remote audiences in real time. Accelerate approvals with new Reader 8 features that include shared document reviews, a streamlined review tracker, and a simple RSS reader.

Realize more secure document workflows

Better protect documents, forms, and drawings by leveraging Adobe LiveCycle® Policy Server and the new Adobe Online Services Document Center. For the first time, use Reader 8 to digitally sign Adobe PDF documents, allowing recipients to more confidently view and verify the authenticity of PDF files. Learn more.

Save trees and time

For large volumes of information, such as technical manuals, use Reader 8 to condense any type of PDF file into a single booklet for printing. Print only the desired pages on two sides of paper or in a smaller type size to save time and natural resources.

Access learning resources

Immediately access help and product information. Use the new Beyond Adobe Reader start center in Reader 8 to review information, on demand, about how to use Adobe Reader more effectively. Also view regularly updated information about other Adobe products and services.

Search single or multiple PDF files

Find and retrieve any PDF document or a phrase in a document within a matter of seconds. Search for words in page content, annotations, bookmarks, form fields, or document metadata within any PDF file on a local machine.

Complete forms online as well as offline

Enable customers to confidently act on information: filling, saving, and electronically submitting forms. You can also verify document authenticity and reliability when this capability is enabled by the document author in Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional or Adobe LiveCycle software.

Enjoy support for 3D graphics

Accelerate design reviews. View and rotate 3D images within Reader 8.

Additional features for IT managers, architects, and developers

Deploy Adobe Reader using industry-standard tools

Quickly manage and control Reader 8 deployments using the Adobe Customization Wizard 8, IBM Tivoli, Microsoft Systems Management Server, Windows Group Policy Objects, or Active Directory. Centrally host Reader 8 using Citrix Metaframe Presentation Server or Microsoft Windows Terminal Server.

Support extended teams across operating systems

Deliver a reliable experience across operating systems. Reader 8 is supported on Microsoft® Windows® Vista; Windows XP Professional, Home Edition, or Tablet PC Edition with Service Pack 2; Microsoft Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4; Windows 2003 Server; Mac OS X 10.4.3 to 10.4.9. Future versions of Reader 8 will also work on Linux, Solaris™ 10, HP-UX and AIX.

Work with 2D GPU acceleration

Work faster with Reader 8 using the most popular graphics processing units (GPUs), which enhance scrolling and zooming for the rendering of 2D graphics.

Automate digital certificate administration

Reader 8 automatically validates certificates through its Certified Document Service to reduce IT time and costs.

Leverage existing security infrastructure

Enable fine-grained control of signature authority using the Reader 8 Roaming ID web service. Leverage your existing identity management infrastructure with Reader 8 and Adobe LiveCycle Pluggable Authentication.

Enjoy support for security standards

Reader 8 supports leading security standards, including SOAP/WSDL, XSD, Kerberos, W3C XML digital signatures, 128 bit AES, OASIS WS-Security, HTTP/HTTPS, RSA, XML encryption, and ECMAScript for XML (E4X) in the JavaScript interpreter. Reader 8 is also NIST PKI test-suite compliant.

Develop new capabilities

Extend the functionality of Adobe Reader using the Acrobat 8 SDK, now available free of charge from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/reader/.

Use improved accessibility features

Reader 8 helps meet the accessibility requirements mandated by Section 508 of the amended U.S. Rehabilitation Act. Try the improved read out loud capabilities in Reader 8 or change the reading order of pages or columns after PDF files are tagged to accommodate preferences.

Support international standards

Reader 8 adds support for PDF/A, the ISO-approved standard for the long-term preservation of electronic documents. Adobe Reader already supports PDF/X (printing), PDF/H, PDF/E (engineering), XMP/RDF, and ODBC.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Free Download Manager

What is Free Download Manager? It is a powerful, easy-to-use and absolutely free download accelerator and manager. Moreover, FDM is 100% safe, open-source software distributed under GPL license.
Increase you download speed
Increase your download speed and resume broken downloads
FDM accelerates downloads by splitting files into sections and then downloading them simultaneously. As a result download speed increases up to 600%, or even more! FDM can also resume broken downloads so you needn`t start downloading from the beginning after casual interruption.
HTTP/FTP/BitTorrent support
HTTP/FTP/BitTorrent support new
FDM lets you download files and whole web sites from any remote server via HTTP, HTTPS and FTP.
You can also download files using BitTorrent protocol.
Flash video download
Flash video download new
Download video from video sites, such as Youtube, Google Video, etc. The video can then be saved in native .flv format or converted to one of more popular video formats.
GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License new
Free download manager is now open source software released under GNU GPL.

Enjoy easy file sharing
Enjoy easy file sharing new
A built-in Upload Manager lets you upload your files easily to share them with other people. Upload manager can be easily integrated with your system (Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express).
Enjoy safer and more rewarding downloading
Enjoy safer and more rewarding downloading
You can read what other community members say about the file you are going to download, and also leave your own opinion about the file you downloaded. In this way FDM users are always warned against useless or malicious files.
More
In addition, Free Download Manager allows you to: adjust traffic usage; to organize and schedule downloads; download video from video sites; download whole web sites with HTML Spider; operate the program remotely, via the internet, and more!


For full features list, see the features section.

THREAT FIRE




"ThreatFire 3's ability to block installation of malware strictly by identifying bad behavior is phenomenal. It did a better (and faster) job than Norton AntiBot and even beat out Spy Sweeper, our current Editors' Choice for signature-based anti-spyware. This free tool is an excellent addition to your security arsenal."
- www.pcmag.com, October 2, 2007*

Traditional antivirus protection fails you when you need it most - That's when you need ThreatFire

Consumers spend over a billion dollars a year on security software to keep their PCs safe. Every month they spend countless hours configuring and updating their software. And yet every week millions of users are infected by new threats that their traditional antivirus does not stop.

Why? Traditional antivirus solutions cannot protect you until after they've discovered a new threat and produced a signature to counter it.

ThreatFire is different. It does not rely on signatures, but instead constantly analyzes your computer's behavior to detect and block any malicious activity. ThreatFire protects immediately so you know your PC and your valuable data is always secure.

ThreatFire Highlights

Persistent zero-day threat protection made easy for everyone - even novice users! Perpetually ready for the next malware outbreak, with no signature updates required. Runs in background without impacting system performance.
NEW! ThreatFire now includes advanced protection features including malware quarantine and removal, rootkit scanner and custom rules settings in both the Free and Pro versions. Patent-pending ActiveDefense technology intelligently scans and analyzes computer processes to detect and block any malicious activity - without false positives! Highest level of out-of-the-box accuracy. No need to configure baffling, technical security settings: just turn ThreatFire on and start blocking malware.
Protects against both known and zero-day viruses, worms, trojans, buffer overflows, rootkits and even some spyware. Works alongside your current security programs - there is no need to uninstall your antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall or other security program before installing ThreatFire. NEW! ThreatFire Pro includes PC Tools AntiVirus's on-demand AV scanner, giving you added peace of mind so you can quickly and easily scan your PC for known threats.

Protection Coverage

Traditional Security Product Solo vs. Tranditional Product with ThreatFire

*Results produced by testing over 1300 malware threats collected from the ThreatFire Security Community and secured from other 3rd party sources. Competitor products tested were Trend Micro Internet Security 2007, Webroot Spy Sweeper with Antivirus v. 5, CA Internet Security 2007, Norton Internet Security 2007, and McAfee Internet Security 2007, all with the latest available updates as of the date of test.

500 million Firefox downloads: complete; 500 million grains: in progress

Firefox just reached 500,000,000 downloads. This is an absolutely phenomenal milestone for Firefox. It is sort of hard to imagine what that number means. For some perspective, that’s roughly the audience size of 10,000 Rome Colosseums combined. It would be the weight, in kilograms, of 8,500 Boeing 747 airplanes. In dollars, for $500 million you and 15 of your friends can fly to the International Space Station.

sfx_needs_you_front.jpg

OR, you can affect change and invite 15 of your friends to play a game and feed 25,000 people. With your help we can break another milestone today with FreeRice.com –500,000,000 grains of donated rice in one day. Imagine helping to feed the hungry while picking up some new vocabulary too!

Gran Paradiso (FireFox 3)

[Mozilla announced Firefox 3 Beta 4 today, March 10th at approximately 5:30pm PT. See Mike Beltzner’s comprehensive post from DevNews, crossposted below. Please keep in mind that the Firefox 3 Beta 4 milestone release is intended for testing purposes only and is not for casual users.]

Firefox 3 beta 4 now available for download

Please note: We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 4 milestone release. It is intended for testing purposes only.

Firefox 3 Beta 4 is now available for download. This is the twelfth developer milestone focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

  • Improvements to the user interface: better search support in the Download Manager, ability to zoom entire page or just the text, continuing look and feel improvements on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux.
  • Richer personalization through: location bar that uses an algorithm based on site visit recency and frequency (called “frecency”) to provide better matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, as well as an adaptive learning algorithm which tunes itself to your browsing habits.
  • Improved platform features such as: support for HTML5’s window.postMessage and window.messageEvent, JavaScript 1.8 improvements, and offline data storage for web applications.
  • Performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimization resulted in significant gains over previous releases in the popular SunSpider test from Apple, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run much faster, and continued improvements to memory usage drastically reduce the amount of memory consumed over long web browsing sessions.

(You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.)

Testers can download Firefox 3 Beta 4 builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 35 different languages. Please be sure to read the full release notes before using this preview release. Developers should look at the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.

Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3 Beta 4 milestone announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.

Avast Home Edition: Free Antivirus with style

Ciaran Moore
October 26, 2006 @ 5:00 am

avast1.jpgIf you’re looking for a decent free antivirus program with a nice looking user interface, you could do a lot worse than to check out Avast antivirus. As well as the regular on-demand and on-access scanner, it protects most email clients and p2p programs against viruses, also has a web shield and network shield and it’s also skinnable!

This is my free standalone antivirus program of choice, as it’s easy to use, looks good, has regular updates, and has a very good reputation when it comes to catching and eliminating viruses. It regularly recieves 100% in the “virus bulletin” test, a very good sign it protects good , see https://www.virusbtn.com for more info. (Requires free sign up).

On a side note its worth checking out this site to get the latest ratings of how good various antivirus software is at doing their job, they throw a ton of “in the wild” viruses (virii?) at them and see how they deal with it. (This program has scored 100% every month in the last 2 years). After all what good are its looks and features if it ignores all the nasty stuff!

Speaking of which, its also got very good eye and ear candy, because as well as a nicely designed and skinnable interface, it announces with a voice when virus database has been updated or when it detects a virus! So if you like that kinda thing (and what computer geek doesn’t! oh come on, admit it!) it’s well worth checking out as it does its job great and with style!

More info and the free download here http://www.avast.com/.

Screen saver Update!

Skeleton Adventures - More Than Just a Screensaver

O. James Fagbire
November 8, 2006 @ 10:50 am

1234312.jpgIf you want a screensaver that is more than just a screensaver, you might want to consider getting this one, Skeleton Adventures. It has an incredibly rich 3D environment. Getting this screensaver is not like getting most screensavers; you are invited to join the adventures of Sly Slim while he passes time at his home in Shale County Cemetery. Believe me, it’s really cool, its like a movie on your desktop, but one with an ever changing ending.

Though it’s really cool, you’ll need to purchase the full version to enjoy the best of it. But before you commit your cash to it, you can check out the free demo download HERE.

One problem is that it’s really bulky. The graveyard settings may also put you off if you don’t appreciate such stuff. Let’s face it , great animation or no animation, not everybody would want to have a skeleton in a graveyard adventure as a screensaver.

But all in all to those who don’t mind, it’s really cool. The animation, the effects, all make it a must have. This is not just a screensaver, it’s more than a screensaver.

If you download it and you have problems with the playback (if it is very jerky and sometimes stops) make sure you have a good video card and turn up all the accelerator settings.

Because video cards sometimes combine the on board RAM with your PCs RAM, you may need to check under the Troubleshooting section of the Advanced properties on your video card to make sure “Enable Write Combining” is unchecked. You should get a better and smoother playback after confirming this.

NOTE: It is only compatible with Windows 2000 and above.

Click HERE for more info and demo download!

Laptop Alarm


Protect your Laptop from theft

Submitted by Ciaran Moore on Thursday, March 20th, 2008

This is a neat little program I found for preventing your laptop from being stolen. It’s called LaptopAlarm and that’s exactly what it is. The best way of describing it is, it’s like a car alarm for your laptop!

If you need to walk away from your laptop in an area where it there is a potential chance of it being stolen or tampered with, this is the program for you, as long as loud noise isn’t a problem, as the alarm sound on this is very noticeable! (Be careful not to try this out with headphones!)

You get the options to set it to sound if the AC power is unplugged, the computer is shutdown or logged off, the USB Mouse is unplugged, and/or even if the mouse is moved. To shut off the alarm enter your password that you entered in settings.

LaptopAlarm doesn’t even need installing as it comes as a small exe file and it’s free!

Check it out here

Bulletproof Public PC

Submitted by Ciaran Moore on Thursday, March 20th, 2008

When running a computer that is used by many people. such as at an internet cafe or library, it’s essential that certain system areas and settings are off-limits. This is in the interest of security as well as basically making sure things don’t get messed up!

Bulletproof Public PC does a good job of managing this issue. It can completely disable all access to any local files or settings, while allowing access to only the necessary specified programs such as a web browser. You can choose which sites to allow or disallow from being browse-able and can disable and lock down certain settings and even disable certain keys.

The amount of control it offers over the system is very detailed and can be customized for your needs. This is one program worth checking out if you run a publicly accessible computer.

Check it out at the homepage here

CNet

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Download.com

About Download.com

Download.com offers a huge library of free and legal software downloads, music downloads, and game downloads. We provide timely, relevant, and credible information about important software updates and game releases as they come available. Our editors write unbiased reviews and ratings for thousands of free downloads, and they are committed to maintaining coverage that is objective and accurate. All the downloadable software, music, and games in our library undergo a rigorous testing process to ensure it is safe and spyware free.

Download.com is free and requires no registration. However, registered users have access to additional features including the ability to write your own reviews, track favorite software, receive e-mail newsletters and product-update alerts, and participate in CNET forums and TalkBack discussions. Register for free right now!