Thumb drives are a convenient and cool way to carry around your data, and with drive sizes in the gigabytes, you can store a ton of photos, files, music, and video in a very tiny space. Unfortunately, due to their small sizes, they are targets for information thieves. Think about it - all that personal data - your resume, email, password-files, and pictures of your girlfriend can be picked up and copied and returned before you even noticed it was missing. You want to have this data handy, but handy for you and not for that scumbag down the hall with the sticky fingers.
Like you, the US Military wanted portable but secure storage, and the guys at IronKey stepped up. They've developed the perfect solution that's one-part thumb-drive, and two parts Mission: Impossible. Their thumb drives hold up to 4 Gigabytes of data, but includes a hardware encryption chip that scrambles the data so as to be completely unreadable without a password.
Passwords can be hacked, but not the IronKey. It's built to withstand attacks both virtual and physical. 10 incorrect password attempts, and the encryption chip self-destructs, making the contents of the flash drive totally unreadable. The contents of the drive are filled with epoxy, so if a hacker tries to physically access the chips, he'd more likely damage them instead. Even if he did get access to the memory chips, they'd be worthless without the encryption chip. Electron-shielded, even a scanning electron microscope can't get inside.
Applications built right onto the IronKey help keep your personal data safe. For example, the password manager keeps your passwords safe. How? Your passwords are securely stored in a hidden hardware-encrypted area inside the device (and not in the drive's file system), being first locally encrypted with 256-bit AES, using randomly generated keys encrypted with a SHA-256 hash of your device password. All of this data is then doubly encrypted with 128-bit AES hardware encryption. Hack that.
A secure copy of Firefox included with your IronKey encrypts your browsing session through a VPN tunnel to IronKey's Secure Sessions Service. It works by tunneling your entire web browsing communications through the Tor-based Secure Sessions proxy on your IronKey. The Secure Sessions tunnel connects over an encrypted connection to their network routing servers, which in turn route your traffic between a number of servers, and then eventually out to your destination website. This approach protects your identity and your confidentiality, encrypting and anonymizing your Web surfing on almost any network or VPN (virtual private network).
These drives have already seen duty in Afghanistan, keeping US Military secrets safe from unsavory people. They're certainly good enough even for your most sensitive data.
All this goodness is demoed here. Go check it out!
* Fast 30MBPS Read, 20MBPS Write
* Drive contents encrypted with AES CBC-Mode Encryption
* Onboard IronKey Password-manager keeps all your internet passwords safe
* Secure version of Firefox included that encrypts all your web-surfing traffic
* Encased in a potted metal case, not plastic, making it one of the strongest USB keys around
* Exceeds MIL-STD-810F military waterproofing standards
* The encryption chip self-destructs if an invasive attack is detected
* If your Ironkey is lost, you can restore from a secure backup to a new Ironkey in minutes
* Dual channel SLC NAND Flash for high-quality and read/write speeds
* Windows XP and Windows Vista only, but Mac and Linux drivers are in development
jZip is a powerful and reliable compression utility. jZip is based on proven and reliable 7-Zip archiving technology by Igor Pavlov. jZip sports an elegant, easy to use yet powerful user interface.
- Create, extract and manipulate Zip, RAR, TAR, GZip, 7-Zip and other file archives
- jZip is absolutely FREE for everybody, home and enterprise users
- jZip is an easy to use and fast archiving software
- jZip is based on proven 7-Zip technology by Igor Pavlov
jZip
Office Mobile 6.1 is an upgrade to Office Mobile applications on Windows Mobile. The new upgrade supports the new Office 2007 file formats.Microsoft Office 2007 introduced new Open XML-based file formats for Office applications. These new file formats reduce file size, improve security and reliability, and enhance integration with external sources.
To allow Windows Mobile users to work with Office documents created in the Open XML formats, Microsoft has developed an upgrade for Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and PowerPoint Mobile applications. This upgrade to the Office Mobile applications allows viewing and editing of Word documents and Excel workbooks and viewing of PowerPoint slideshows created by using Microsoft Office 2007.
If your Windows Mobile device does not have a version of Microsoft Office Mobile prior to 6.1, you can purchase the full version of Microsoft Office Mobile.
The Office Mobile application suite includes Microsoft Office Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint® Mobile for Windows Mobile 6 powered devices, helping users manage and review documents. Microsoft Office Mobile includes support for rich reviewing and minor editing capabilities as well as support for rights-managed documents.
The primary user scenario enabled by Office Mobile is viewing e-mail attachments, performing minor edits, sharing document versions, and opening documents from an SD card or a SharePoint server. Office Mobile provides a high-fidelity document viewing experience, with capability to edit as well as fast performance in loading the first page of the document.
Note: This free upgrade works only for Windows Mobile powered devices that have an earlier version of Office Mobile. If your Windows Mobile powered device does not have Office Mobile applications, this upgrade will not work for you. You can purchase the full version of Office Mobile 6.1 online. For more information, click here -http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/mic...bileoffice.mspx.
Microsoft Office Mobile 6.1: Upgrade for Microsoft Office 2007 file formats
America Online is working on a critical patch for the company's highly popular AIM application. Researchers at Core Security Technologies Wednesday disclosed a bug that could enable a remote hacker to execute malicious code, exploit Internet Explorer bugs, and inject scripting code in the IE browser. The researchers noted that all of the vulnerable AIM clients include support for enhanced message types that enable AIM users to take advantage of HTML to customize text messages with different fonts and colors. "We have addressed the issues that Core Security has brought to us on the server side. We are comfortable with the server side fixes we have in place, but we are also working on a client fix," said an AOL spokeswoman.According to Core Security, the vulnerability affects AIM V6.1, as well as the V6.2 beta, which is the latest version of AOL's instant messaging application. It also affects AIM Pro, the instant messaging version for corporate users, and AIM Lite, a simplified version of the client application. "This vulnerability poses a significant security risk to millions of AIM users. Core Security has alerted AOL to this threat and has provided full technical details about the vulnerability so that they can address it in their products," said Ivan Arce, CTO at Core Security.
InformationWeek
According to Associated Press calculations, Sun Microsystems Inc. Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz received a compensation package which the company valued at $7.7 million for beating financial goals. The new CEO helped the server and software maker emerge from its prolonged dot-com-era-induced slump and return to consistent profitability. Schwartz, who replaced Sun co-founder Scott McNealy as chief executive in April 2006, saw his base salary increase 9 percent over his pay before the promotion to $980,769 during the latest fiscal year.
Schwartz's pay package included substantial bonus money - $2.5 million - for hitting certain financial targets, including boosting revenue and operating profit margin, which measures how much a company makes before interest and taxes on each dollar of revenue. In the fiscal year ended in June, Sun pulled in $13.87 billion in sales, a 6 percent increase over the prior year, and had $309 million in operating profit, which compared to operating losses of $870 million in the prior year. Improved profitability of its products and Schwartz's cost-cutting campaign, which has included cutting about 4,000 jobs through layoffs and attrition since June 2006, also helped lift Sun's financial fortunes.
SiliconValley.com
Although there are some very good programs for dvd ripping and dvd backup under Linux such as devede and k9copy many window users that have moved to Linux still prefer using dvddecrypter and dvdshrink. Therefore they have a dual boot system just to use those programs! In this guide I will explain how it is possible to install dvdshrink and dvddecrypter under Linux using wine. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. In other words think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs as it is described in its official home page.
For the following tutorial I will be using wine 0.9.45, dvd shrink 3.2.0.15, DVDDecrypter 3.5.4.0 and RipIt4Me 1.7.1.0. You must also find and download those 2 dlls, mfc42.dll and msvcp60.dll. They can also be found in a windows installation in C:\Windows\System32 folder. For the rest of the guide I suppose that you have all of these files under ~/downloads folder.
I have completed the installation and rip process in a Fedora 7 32bit system. Therefore I don't know if it works in other distributions. I believe it should. Please report if you achieve it under another Linux distribution.Full Tutorial...
The promise of open source software is best quality, flexibility and reliability. This is the updated list of the best open source software.
When trying these suggestions wisely use System Restore (or a suitable alternative)!
Reduce your boot time:
- Check the BootOptimizeFunction registry key: If the Enable string value is not set to Y, change it. (This is enabled by default.) Exit regedit and reboot. A boot up defragment will now take place. This will optimize the position of the boot files for a faster boot. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction.
- Purge Prefetch? I’ve found that after purging C:\windows\prefetch my system takes longer to boot. Admittedly, it is a delay of only few seconds and things normalise after the use of the computer over a few days. An exception is to clear out obsolete .pf files referring to programs that have been uninstalled. For more details, please see the March 2005 APC.
- Check the BIOS: Look for quick Power On Self Test (POST), and Boot Delay enabled. (On pressing the power button you will have to quickly press one of a number of keys. Esc, F1, F2, F10 and Delete are commonly used. It varies according to the BIOS manufacturer.) If you never use a floppy drive, turn off the option for seeking a boot up floppy.
- Completely defrag your boot/system drive: Unfortunately, the defragger provided in XP is a limited version of Executive Software’s Diskeeper. Opinions differ as to the best defragger for XP. Popular choices are Diskeeper, O&O Defrag and PerfectDisk. Worth investigating is a good, full-featured defragger available from: http://www.whitneyfamily.org/Hacks/?item=Defrag. This is a complete defragger. Multiple instances can be run simultaneously (if you have multiple disks). It features individual file defragging, with wildcards and recursion and will defrag NTFS, FAT and FAT32 file systems on any media (HD, Zip/Jaz, floppy, etc). Depending on the size of the hard drive, its free space and the number of files involved, this can take several hours. Planned for a future release is the defragmentation of NTFS metadata files.
- Remove the garbage and optimise the registry: Be very wary of know-all, do-all, and promise-all registry cleaners. Your choice should have an undo function. Norton One Button Check Up/Norton WinDoctor have their devotees. The freeware EasyCleaner available at http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm is more aggressive than these Symantec products, but when used carefully is beneficial.
- Use a Registry Optimiser: Download the excellent freeware program Erunt V. 1.1h from http://www.aumha.org/freeware/freeware.htm. This includes a tool for backing the XP registry and one (NTregOpt) for optimising it. NTregOpt optimises by compacting the registry hives to the minimum size possible.
- Malware problems: In addition to full AV scans, regularly use at least two recognised spyware/adware removal programs to check your system for nasties. The free Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta 1 is commonly regarded as an excellent product.
As was in news Highights recently ,”OpenOffice.org 2.3 is about to release” and finally it has been released.OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.It includes six products which are also free and open sourced:-
Writer – a word processor you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book.
Calc – a powerful spreadsheet with all the tools you need to calculate, analyse, and present your data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics.
Impress – the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.
Draw – lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations.
Base – lets you manipulate databases seamlessly. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, all from within OpenOffice.org
Math – lets you create mathematical equations with a graphic user interface or by directly typing your formulas into the equation editor
You can download the OpenOffice.org 2.3 version from here.You can also order the CD’s and even download it via P2P networks.
Technoworld
It seeks to provide an easy and fun-to-use windowing environment, allowing use of the graphics hardware to provide impressive effects, amazing speed and unrivalled usefulness. The first Compiz Fusion developer release was Compiz Fusion 0.5.2 on August 13th 2007, shortly after Compiz 0.5.2 was released.
Compiz Fusion, as well as Compiz, is an open-source software project, meaning anyone can use it and contribute to it freely.
It is important to note that Compiz and Compiz Fusion are not the same thing (see: Compiz Fusion Vs Compiz). Shortly said: Compiz Fusion is a community-driven extension pack for Compiz. There is close co-operation between the developers of Compiz and the developers of Compiz Fusion, though; in fact, many Compiz Fusion developers are also Compiz developers.
Features of Compiz and Compiz Fusion
- Hardware-accelerated window management and desktop compositing through OpenGL, using rendering paths like AIGLX, Xgl and direct rendering solutions on some hardware.
- Powerful and flexible plugin interface, allowing almost limitless extension possibilities.
- ARGB rendering, allowing true transparency when the applications support ARGB visuals.
- Compiz Configuration System
- Many community and developer contributed plugins
- Window Decorators, which provide window frames and titlebars
GTK Window Decorator - Window decorator that supports GNOME Metacity themes
KDE Window Decorator - Window decorator that supports KDE KWin themes
Emerald - Window decorator that is custom themeable and supports full Alpha blended themes.
Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.
Pidgin can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AIM, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.
Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.
Pidgin runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems.
Download Pidgin from here or visit the official site.
[via Technoworld]
Over the last few years, all of the major browsers have included support for a special set of 140 colors that are recognized by their color name within HTML or CSS code.
This means that rather than having to remember that the color orange is specified with the hex code “#FFA500″, you can simply type the word “orange” when specifying a color in your code and the browser will automatically translate it to its hex code.
Below link is a handy reference list of all 140 browser-supported named colors, which you can quickly sort by color family or name.
Color Schemer
Thumb drives are a convenient and cool way to carry around your data, and with drive sizes in the gigabytes, you can store a ton of photos, files, music, and video in a very tiny space. Unfortunately, due to their small sizes, they are targets for information thieves. 
