June 12th, 2010

Microsoft has traditionally been pretty lazy with updating the components that came with their Windows OS. Paint, Wordpad, Internet Explorer and others – all of them have remained unchanged for years (almost a decade, actually). And nobody really cared, because few people were actually using them. Those who needed better software, used paid versions, those who didn’t have the money, had no other choice but to use these outdated tools.

But later, when people became more savvy with their computers and operating systems, and a lot of free alternatives started appearing, more and more Windows users started replacing the standard tools with third party ones, which were most of the times better, faster, more stable and reliable and had a ton more features.

Such was the case with web browsers, too. Internet …

 June 09th, 2010

Whether you spend weeks meticulously planning, or the few hours before embarking on a summer holiday are fraught with misplaced booking references and arguing about preferable exchange rates – Most of us leave our place of habitation in a far from composed state. The old clichés of “Did I lock the door?” or “will no.16 find the spare key under the third geranium?” spring to mind.

It is at these times when home security should be of the utmost importance, but more often than not it is overlooked or in some cases totally forgotten. In fact, the 2008/2009 British Crime Survey (BCS) published by the home office showed that there were 744,000 burglaries reported across the UK in 2009, a quite frightening one burglary every 37 seconds.

Believe it or not, there …

 June 06th, 2010

Firefox is currently the most popular browser worldwide (installed by choice, not by being the default browser; in that regard, Internet Explorer still wins). It is used by more than 30 million people, most of them from the US, and it has over 5000 great and useful add-ons in the database.

This collection of constantly updated extensions is what keeps Firefox at the top spot. No other browser has such an amazing database of add-ons (though Chrome is slowly catching up). Since it was launched, technologies have changed and currently, Firefox is not the fastest browser, but we all hope that version 3.7 or 4.0 will change that.

Nevertheless, Mozilla’s Firefox is the most stable, reliable and secure browser that also respects users privacy and has done everything to ensure that any …

 June 03rd, 2010

While the security of Google has always been a threat from hackers, the new threat may come from within and is causing a lot of concern for the online community. Google has recently tightened its security and is continuing to do so as these threats continue to rise.

Cloud computing has changed the zones of computer use and the inside and outside models that were once clearly defined have become blurred. Google was recently hacked by China and there was an instant message sent that appeared to be safe, but was actually very harmful and this is the cause of such concern within Google. Google has maintained a stance of denial about this cloud attack, but there are many skeptics out there that think otherwise.

Google has made a great stride in …

 May 30th, 2010

Google has recently warned about the dangers of some of the anti-virus software out there that may actually load malicious codes onto your personal computer. This is a growing threat and it is estimated that around 15% of the anti-virus software out there could possibly malicious. This is a study that was conducted by Google over a 13 month period.

Many of the scams that are out there convince people that there is a danger on their computer and then they automatically download the prescribed remedy which may actually contain spyware. You may want to be suspicious of any of the anti-virus programs out there that want you to download a free trial. A popup is often used to entice the reader to perform a free computer search and then the …