Blends blog

Free Antivirus

AVG used to be the free antivirus of choice- to the point nobody minded that annoying sig it would place in your email to tell everyone how great it was. But now they not free and so instead I find a new king of the freebies Avast from Alwil software.

Now you would think that anything free might be mite crap. Not with Avast. It actually offer a decent set of features thought it doesn’t qualify as a full internet suite unlike Trend Micro, Symantec’c Norton or Kaspersky. It also does suffer a little amateurish voice warning. “Your Antivirus has been updated”! Warning! A virus has been found!” Good times, good times needed especially with the little bells and alarms that sound off in your head.

Usability took a bit of a hit as trying to use the scanner first-off was a bit confusing. There are no default scan regions for one setting – they make you a pick a region first and then scan which is a little bit irritating. Then there’s how it looks more like MP3 player than an actual antivirus program. A little bit disconcerting but well, I’ll live that for free.

Though it was active at cleaning most viruses we threw at it, Avast’s database seem a bit behind and in one case, could isolate and quarantine a virus but not clean the system from it. I had to manually clean up my machine and fix the Visual Basic errors the worm created in my system myself.

Does a pretty good job for free but it is just not as thorough as the other three and should probably be used with a good firewall and efficient spyware cleaner too. As far as free download go, the Home edition is pretty useful and if you want to give this or the professional version a try. Just download the 30 day trail version. Click Here To Download

Using a mobile phone software is very easy. Most of the computers software come with easy instructions. Some like microsoft office software install automatically. Rest require personalized preferences like a personal finance software. Similarly a tax software requires a few commands before getting installed.

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VLC Media Player

I always had a problem with video or audio file. My window media player, realplayer and winamp can’t play video, audio, movie clips, trailers, song, podcasting, videocasting and anything else that involves something more exciting than plain old text. This problem because the variety files from more common ones like DivX to those used on site like YouTube, which is flv or flash video.

I found VLC Media Player to fix all this problem. VLC is a free, highly portable cross-platform media player released under the GNU GPL license for various audio and video formats, it started as a student project at the French Ecole Centrale Paris but is now a worldwide project with developers from 20 countries. It supports a large number of multimedia formats, with out the need for additional codecs and it has some advance features such as being a fully functioning streaming server, with extended feature.

VLC Media Player supports DVD and VCD playback as well as all the popular types of streaming and media file such as :-

• MPEG(inc.MP3)

• AVI

• ASF/WMV

• MP4/MOV/3GP

• OGG/OGM

• Real

• WAV

• Raw audio and dv

• FLV(flash video)

VLC Media Player works on Windows, Mac, Linux, BeOS and WinCE/PocketPC

Here the VLC link http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

Installation Step

More »

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Now Google Custom Search Engine for businesses

Google Custom Search Engine for businesses has launched a paid version.

Features for paid version :-

• Take advantage of Custom Search Business Edition for added benefits, like enterprise-grade support, ads-free results pages, and the XML API
• Put your own logo on the search results pages
• Help customers navigate your site and find the products they want to buy

This Google Custom Search Engine Business Edition for as low as $100 per year.

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FeedBurner Now Free

Good news from Google. Google now make FeedBurner service free.

FeedBurner service that charged before like Stats PRO, a service that provides detailed statistics including subscriber numbers, item click through tracking, podcast downloads and aggregate item uses amongst other features, becomes free.

we also can use FeedBurner MyBrand, the service that allows we control the URL of feed is now free as well. http://feeds.feedburner.com/BlendsBlog.

I think Google will keep this service free for make Google on top reputation.

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Firefox eBay Edition And Addon

New FireFox addon Firefox eBay Edition. This Firefox eBay Edition and the alternative addon works for European eBay sites including the UK, France and Germany.

Function on Firefox eBay Edition

- An eBay sidebar that provides quick access and real-time updates on items users have bid on, are selling or watching
- Status alerts, including outbid notices
- Integrated eBay search
- Built in support for eBay’s Account Guard

This great news for Firefox and eBay user. You can get more information and download here.

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Window XP – 23 Hidden Applications

Windows XP have hidden application, it’s useful and you must know about it. Most of Window XP user doesn’t know about this and you maybe one from them. Here the list of 23 hidden application on Window XP program.

1. Character Map = charmap.exe. Searching special character such as ½, ©.
2. Disk Cleanup = cleanmgr.exe
3. Clipboard Viewer = clipbrd.exe. Look what you copy using Ctrl+C or Copy
4. Dr Watson = drwtsn32.exe. Troubleshooting tool
5. DirectX diagnosis = dxdiag.exe. Analysis voice and video card problem.
7. IExpress Wizard = iexpress.exe. Create self-extracting / self-installing package like WinZip program.
8. Microsoft Synchronization Manager = mobsync.exe. Appear to allow synchronization of files on the network when working offline. (Apparently undo*****ented).
9. Windows Media Player 5.1 = mplay32.exe. Retro version of Media Player, very basic
10. ODBC Data Source Administrator = odbcad32.exe. Something to do with databases.
11. Object Packager = packager.exe. To do with packaging objects for insertion in files, appears to have comprehensive help files.
12. System Monitor = perfmon.exe (very useful, highly configurable tool, tells you everything you ever wanted to know about any aspect of PC performance, for uber-geeks only.
13. Program Manager = progman.exe (Legacy Windows 3.x desktop shell).
14. Remote Access phone book = rasphone.exe Do*****entation is virtually non-existant
15. Registry Editor = regedt32.exe [also regedit.exe] For ha*king Windows Registry.
16. Network shared folder wizard = shrpubw.exe. Make shared folders on networking.
17. File signature verification tool = sigverif.exe
18. Volume Control = sndvol32.exe For who loose sound control on System Notification area.
19. Syskey = syskey.exe
20. Microsoft Telnet Client = telnet.exe
21. Driver Verifier Manager = verifier.exe (Monitor driver. Very useful for who have driver problem.
22. Windows for Workgroups Chat = winchat.exe. NT utility you can chat on LAN networking. Chat as long as you want with your girlfriend if you working on same office. : )

Do you have any hidden applications on Window XP not on my list? Let’s we share.

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