15 Widgets for your Android Phone

One of the biggest advantages of Android over iPhone is widgets. Android has them, iPhone does not.
Widgets are valuable because they can provide an at-a-glance look at lots of different kinds of information and quick access to valuable apps and configuration settings.
To help you find some of the most useful widgets, I’ve put together my list of the top 15. The best way to way this list is in the screenshot gallery. But, you can also view it in list form below.
A couple things to keep in mind with widgets: 1.) They can sometimes hog resources, bandwidth, and battery life so you should make sure you’re using a task killer to regularly refresh your open apps; 2.) Widgets can take up a lot of screen real estate and so you may need to use an alternate home screen launcher, such as Launcher Pro, to give yourself some extra space.

The screenshots

The list

1. Extended Controls
Android comes with a “Power Control” widget (bottom) that I’ve always liked because it lets you quickly toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Brightness, and more. However, I recently discovered the “Extended Controls” widget, which allows you to create a customized version of Power Control with a lot more toggle options.
2. Battery Watcher
This widget provides a battery percentage visual. Since you can’t add the battery percentage to the notification icon in Android, I always anchor this simple widget on my primary home screen on any Android device. I like that it is the size of an app icon, so it doesn’t take up too much screen real estate.
3. Picture Dial
This is a smartphone speed dial app that allows you to set up your most important and most frequently-dialed people or numbers based on photos. You can see the two sizes of the widget, one with two numbers and one with four. You can also stack multiple widgets on the same page. The default configuration is that you select a contact and then assign phone, text, or email to the speed dial button.
4. Analytics Widget
If you use Google Analytics to track Web site traffic, this little widget makes it easy to get a get quick glance at your traffic metrics. It takes up the same amount of space as an app icon and you can set up multiple widgets to track multiple metrics.
5. 3G Watchdog
As most people are aware, “Unlimited Bandwidth” data plans are not unlimited. Most of them are capped at 5GB. Plus, companies like AT&T are moving away from unlimited plans altogether. That means people are going to need to be more conscious of the bandwidth usage. The 3G Watchdog is a widget that can track it for you. The widget is available in two sizes, as you can see in the screenshot.
6. System Info
This widget provides a great little system monitoring function for battery life, over-heating, memory, and storage.
7. Pure Calendar
There’s a built-in widget that can provide a quick glance at your calendar but Pure Calendar is far more detailed and customizable.
8. Pure Messenger
The cousin of Pure Calendar is Pure Messenger, which can provide a quick glance at your inbox. It can even integrate SMS messages, Twitter DMs, and Facebook mail.
9. Buzzbox
Buzzbox offers a no-frills widget for quickly glancing at the news. There are a bunch of pre-configured RSS sources (including some good ones for tech) and you can easily add your own.
10. SMS Unread Count
The basic premise here is that this widget replaces your Messaging (SMS) icon with a widget that looks like an icon but includes a little red circle in the upper right corner with the number of unread messages you have (mirroring the iPhone UI). The app can also do this for Gmail and Phone (missed calls).
11. Last Call
This widget provides a glance at your last call, which makes it easy to redial or to call back a missed call. You can also click on the widget to go to your full Call Log.
12. FlightView
For travelers, the FlightView widget is very handy. Rather than digging through apps or Web pages to get a flight status update, you can enter your airline and flight number into this app and it will track it for you.
13. Twitter
As I’ve said before, Twitter is a terrific real-time intelligence engine. Now that there’s an official Twitter Android app, there are also a couple Twitter widgets (large and small) for scanning your Twitter stream.
14. Scoreboard
This is a Google widget that lets you keep track of the scores from your favorite sports teams. It shows the last game and the next game (or current game).
15. Pandora
Pandora is a custom streaming “radio station” for the Internet age. You simply search by an artist or song and it will create a running playlist based on that one piece of information. This widget makes it easy to control Pandora, including play/pause, thumb up, thumb down, and skip-track buttons.
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How to install iTunes 10 without all the additional bloatware

One of the most popular posts I wrote in 2008 was a set of step-by-step instructions to help you do what Apple doesn’t want you to do with iTunes for Windows (see Slimming down the bloated iTunes installer). Now that iTunes 10 has been released, it’s apparent that nothing has changed in Cupertino. Apple still gives its customers a monolithic iTunes setup program with absolutely no options to pick and choose based on your specific needs.
Why is that important? When you run the iTunes setup program, it unpacks six Windows Installer packages and a master setup program, which then installs nearly 300MB of program and support files, a kernel-mode CD/DVD-burning driver, multiple system services, and a bunch of browser plugins. It configures two “helper” programs to start automatically every time you start your PC, giving you no easy way to disable them. It installs a network service that many iTunes users don’t need and that has been associated with security and reliability issues.
And you wonder why I dislike iTunes with a passion that burns like the fire of a thousand suns?
That’s where this post comes in. It contains detailed, up-to-date instructions for cracking open that gigantic iTunes installer and installing just the pieces you want and need. I’ve also updated my advice for individual scenarios so that you can make intelligent choices instead of simply settling for Apple’s defaults.
To get started, you need a copy of the iTunes Windows installer, which comes in x86 and x64 versions and is available via this download page. You also need a third-party file extraction utility. WinZip and WinRAR work fine, but I recommend the free and extraordinarily versatile IZArc utility. Use the File, Open menu to extract files from iTunesSetup.exe (or, on x64 Windows machines, iTunes64Setup.exe). This screen shows the contents of the 64-bit iTunes 10 installer.

Extract those files to a local or network folder and you can run them individually, using command-line switches to control their behavior. On the next page, I describe what is in each of those installer packages.
When you run the master iTunes setup program, it extracts the following files to a temporary folder and then begins installing all of them in sequence. In Windows 7 and Windows Vista, it interrupts you for two UAC prompts.
Here’s an unvarnished description of each installer:

• QuickTime is Apple’s multimedia framework, a collection of codecs, plugins, DLLs, and several players designed to help you play back digital media files in most popular formats. The big selling point is support for the QuickTime movie (.mov) format, via the standalone player or an embedded ActiveX control. QuickTime is required if you want to use iTunes. If you don’t have an iPod or other Apple-branded device and all you want is the ability to play QuickTime files, go to Apple’s QuickTime download page and choose the QuickTime-only option (don’t select the QuickTime with iTunes option, which includes the full, bloated iTunes installer). If you’d prefer an even lighter option, try the unofficial QuickTime Alternative, which runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
• iTunes (iTunes64 on x64 systems) is Apple’s all-purpose media player/device sync application. It is the only officially supported way to sync music, videos, and other content with Apple-branded devices, although third-party alternatives are available. iTunes also provides access to the iTunes store. If you own an iPhone or a 3G iPad, you must use iTunes to activate your device. For an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, you must use iTunes to update its firmware and sync its content with your PC.
• Apple Application Support was added in iTunes 9 as a framework for managing applications on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. It is a required component for both iTunes and QuickTime. If you remove it, or if you install iTunes without also installing this package, you’ll see the following error message.

That is, of course, a bogus error message. If you know where the individual installer package is located, you can install just that piece without having to go through the tedious full install.

• Bonjour (Bonjour64 on x64 systems) is Apple’s implementation of the open-source Zeroconf, a multicast DNS responder used to discover services on a local area network. It is installed by default with the iTunes download. I strongly recommend not installing Bonjour unless you need it. Bonjour has required patches for security issues in the past and has been known to cause a complete loss of network connectivity on Windows networks. (Yes, I’ve seen Bonjour disable local and Internet connections on Windows networks. It was not a fun troubleshooting exercise.) And a search of the Apple support forums finds dozens of recent complaints from Windows users struggling with iTunes 10 and Bonjour. Adding unauthorized peer-to-peer services on a corporate network is a distinct no-no, as a number of customers have told Apple on their support forums. (The response? Crickets.) If you want to share iTunes libraries over a network or use Apple TV, you need Bonjour. If you have a printer attached to an AirPort device, you should use Bonjour. It’s also required with AirPlay speakers and some remote control apps. However, if you simply want to play media files and sync your iTunes library with your iPod, you do not need Bonjour. iTunes will throw up an error message if Bonjour is missing. You can safely ignore that message, which will not reappear.
• Apple Mobile Device Support (AppleMobileDeviceSupport64 on x64 systems) is the synchronization framework for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad family of “mobile devices.” This package is not necessary if you use another member of the iPod family, including the Classic, Mini, Nano, or Shuffle, which sync just fine using just the basic iTunes app.
• Apple Software Update is a utility that checks for new versions of Apple software installed on your PC. It also pushes new Windows-compatible Apple software programs. Understanding how this utility works is crucial; it can and will install software you have explicitly rejected if you don’t monitor its actions carefully. Just today, for example, I updated iTunes on a Windows 7 system and Apple Software Update selected Safari and Mobile Me for installation, even though I had specifically hidden them previously. This is a behavior that Apple has been guilty of for years. It doesn’t happen on every system, but for some reason it’s an issue on this one.

The seventh file in the list is SetupAdmin.exe, the monolithic installer. You don’t need it, obviously. Oh, and thankfully, the MobileMe component, which was previously included with a full iTunes install, is now a separate option.
So how do you decide which programs to install, and how do you avoid inadvertently getting more than you wanted? Full details on the next page.
Performing a selective iTunes install involves three steps:
1. Extract the installer files you need to a local folder.
2. Run the installers with the proper command-line switches.
3. Prevent Apple Software Update from undoing your careful work later.
The exact steps vary, depending on what device you’re using.
If you want to use iTunes with an iPod Classic, Mini, Nano, or Shuffle…
Extract three files from the iTunesSetup installer and save them in a local folder. Open a command prompt window, navigate to that folder, and run the following commands:

• AppleApplicationSupport.msi /passive
• Quicktime.msi /passive
• iTunes.msi /passive (on a 64-bit Windows system, use iTunes64.msi /passive)

If you shudder at command lines, press the Windows logo key + R to open the Run box. Clear its contents, and then drag the extracted file into it. That will add the full filename, with path, to the Run box. Add a space and then type /passive after the closing quotation mark. Click OK to execute the command. Repeat for the other packages.
The /passive switch performs all installations in unattended mode. After you complete the installation, you can rip and burn CDs, play music from your collection, buy music tracks and TV shows from the iTunes store, and synchronize music and other media files with any Apple device except an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad. I tested this scenario with an older iPod Nano and it worked just fine. If your experience differs, please let me know in the Talkback section.
If you want to combine multiple iTunes libraries on a local network and/or connect to an Apple TV device…
Install the AppleApplicationSupport, QuickTime, and iTunes packages as described in the previous scenario, and also extract and install Bonjour.msi using the /passive switch. Note that Bonjour must be installed on any computer whose library you want to share. It’s not necessary if you have two iPhones, each with different accounts and connected to different PCs. In that scenario, Bonjour provides no benefit.
If you want to activate and manage an iPhone or iPad or synchronize with an iPod Touch…
In addition to installing the iTunes and QuickTime packages, you’ll need to extract and run AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi (on x64 installations, be sure to use AppleMobileDeviceSupport64.msi.)
And finally, decide whether you want to install Apple Software Update. Given the history of serious security flaws in QuickTime and iTunes, it’s crucial to remain up to date with patches for all Apple programs you choose to install. The trouble with Apple Software Update is that any attempt to “update” iTunes will install the other, unwanted packages as well. iTunes actually has its own update detector that doesn’t require Apple Software Update. You can check for a new version any time by clicking Help, Check for Updates. Regardless of how you check, when you see that a new update is available, be sure to download the iTunes installer manually and then extract and update only those components you want.
If you inadvertently install a component you don’t need, it’s relatively easy to undo the damage. All of the above components are available from the Programs option in the Windows Control Panel, where you can uninstall them individually. If you plan to uninstall Bonjour or Apple Mobile Support, be sure to stop the associated services first; if you don’t, you’ll need to restart to complete the uninstallation.
And finally, there are those two startup files, which slow down your boot time and add nothing to your iTunes experience. One is called iTunesHelper.exe; the other is QTTask.exe. You’ll find only a few lines of sparse documentation at apple.com. In my experience, neither is necessary for using any of the features in iTunes or QuickTime. Unfortunately, Apple does not offer a supported way to disable these start-up programs, so you’ll have to do it manually by using the System Configuration utility in Windows (Msconfig.exe), by editing the registry manually, or by using an external utility like AutoRuns from Sysinternals.
Update: As a commenter points out, you can prevent QTTask.exe from starting automatically by opening Control Panel’s QuickTime option, clicking the Advanced tab, and clearing the Install QuickTime Icon In System Tray option.
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Skype give customers some free money!!

On December 22nd, Skype experienced a 24 hour outage. This was a pretty big deal since people use Skype for work, and plenty of other people use it for pleasure. Today Skype posted a detailed technical explanation of what went wrong. In summary, there were a bunch of events that led to the P2P network becoming unstable, which then led to a critical failure.
The tech explanation is actually pretty cool to read through, but the part that I found particularly interesting is that Skype then sent customers a voucher as part of an apology.
I’m a Skype user and pay yearly for Skype unlimited. As a result I received an e-mail from Skype, with the aforementioned apology, and a a credit voucher. Being a person who never passes up a deal, I redeemed my voucher only to soon see that even though Skype was touting it as a

“voucher worth a call of more than 30 minutes to a landline in some of our most popular countries, such as USA, UK, Germany, China, Japan. Or spend it however you like on Skype …”

it was really just $1.00. Granted, $1 will get you far on Skype, but still, there was a lot of negative publicity around this outage, so if you’re going to offer up a voucher of some sort, it should probably amount to more than a $1.

Regardless, I’m happy that the service has been restored and I don’t know when I’ll use that $1, since I’ve already paid for the year.
If you are a skype customer, check your email
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Top 25 Android Apps for your Phone

The Android Market may not have as many apps as the iPhone App Store yet, but there are still enough to be overwhelmed, and it’s growing at a breakneck pace. To help you sort through them all, here’s my list of the best apps I’ve found on Android. Again, remember that this is a snapshot in time. The Android platform is developing so quickly right now that I guarantee my home screen look different a month from now.
The best way to view my list of the top Android apps is in the screenshot gallery. However, you can also view my top 25 in the list below.

The screenshots

The list

1. Google Voice
Google Voice is a service that is so useful I consider it one of the top benefits of Android itself, especially since Apple rejected the Google Voice app for the iPhone. It gives you a phone number that can ring to multiple places or devices and it allows you to access all of your voicemail and text messages over the Web. The Android app integrates even deeper. It can make outgoing calls look like they’re coming from your Google Voice number so that you can keep your real mobile number private.
2. Advanced Task Killer
One of the realities of having a multitasking mobile OS in Android is that you have to manage your apps so that they don’t hurt performance or battery life. Advanced Task Killer (or ATK) is my favorite. It even comes with a widget that you can tap once to kill all open apps.
3. Dropbox
Dropbox is a great cloud service that automatically syncs a folder of files between multiple computers (Windows, Mac, or Linux). This app extends Dropbox to Android and interacts with other apps (such as Documents To Go) to open the files.
4. Evernote
Once you get used to typing on a virtual keyboard (and it honestly took me over a year to do it), then these devices are great for note-taking, and Evernote is a great note-taking app. It is similar to Dropbox in that it saves data locally but syncs it across all your machines and devices.
5. DroidAnalytics
For some reason Google doesn’t have an official app (for either Android or iPhone) for Google Analytics. The best one I’ve found on Android is DroidAnalytics. Another good one is mAnalytics.
6. Documents To Go
The free version of Documents To Go offers a great little reader for Word and Excel files. You can upgrade to the full version (for $15) if you want to edit files and add PowerPoint files to the mix. If you do want editing capability, I’d also recommend taking a look at QuickOffice.
7. Amazon Kindle
I never warmed up to the Amazon Kindle e-reader, but I’m a big fan of the Kindle mobile app. Since it was released I’ve read a lot more books simply because my smartphone is always with me and I can pull it and read a few pages anytime I’ve got a couple minutes free.
8. Places Directory
This is an awesome app for finding shops and services near your current location. From restaurants to movie theaters to medical facilities to taxis, this app is very accurate and takes advantage of the business information from Google Local. This app is better than the info you get from a GPS unit (or app) and better than any of the similar apps available on the iPhone.
9. Tripit
I dig Tripit. It is by far the best app I’ve found for keeping track of all my travel itineraries. It runs on some great backend systems. You simply forward your confirmation emails for your flights, hotels, rental cars, and more to Tripit and it automatically organizes them into trips with all your details and confirmation numbers.
10. Seesmic
Twitter is an amazing instant-intelligence engine and it was made for mobile browsing. Although there’s an official Twitter app for Android now, Seesmic is still the best Android Twitter client.
11. FCC Speedtest
I’m obsessed with running speed tests to check my bandwidth in various places, both to see 3G fluctuations and to check the quality of Wi-Fi. There are a number of really good speedtest apps, but my new favorite is the FCC Test app.
12. Astro File Manager
Another one of the great things about Android (if you’re a geek or a tinkerer) is that you have lower-level access to the system itself. Astro is an app that lets you navigate the Android file system.
13. Got To Do
There are plenty of to-do apps to choose from on Android but I prefer Got To Do because of the solid interface and the fact that it can sync with the online service Toodledo.
14. Gist
Many of us have contact lists scattered across various computers, devices, and online services. Gist is a Web service that can bring them together and even pull in stuff from the Web to help you stay up to date with your most important contacts. There’s an Android app as well as an iPhone app.
15. TED Mobile
TED is a fascinating event that features a meeting of the minds of some of society’s most influential thinkers. You’ll definitely disagree with some of them, because there’s a large diversity of opinions, but many talks are worth listening to. What I love is that they’ve taken the videos from their conference and made them freely available on the Web. This app provides a great way to access the videos. I hope more conferences follow TED’s lead on this.
16. Pandora
Pandora is a streaming “radio station” for the Internet age. You simply search by an artist or song and it will create a running playlist based on that one piece of information. It intersperses an occasional ad between songs but the ads tend to be fairly localized and occasionally even useful.
17. Shazam
If you want to impress your friends with a mobile app, show them Shazam. Ever hear a song being played at a store or on the radio and ask yourself, “Oh, what song is that?” That’s where Shazam comes in. Just hit the button and let it listen for 15 seconds, query its database, and then return the name of artist and the song. It has about an 80% success rate.
18. Dial Zero
Are you one of those people who dials a customer service line and just keeps pressing zero until you get to talk to a real person? Then Dial Zero is your new friend. This app provides a directory of a ton of U.S. businesses and gives you numbers to help you get closer to a real person and instructions for which prompts to hit to speak to a human being as quickly as possible.
19. Google Goggles
This is a fun app that is a little but ahead of its time. It does visual searches. You can take pictures of things and then the app tries to tell you what they are. It’s limited in its scope but it is pretty cool, and it’s definitely a peek into the future. One of the coolest features is the ability to take pictures of text in a foreign language and let that app translate for you. In a foreign country, this can help you read street signs and avoid going into the wrong bathroom. :-)
20. Google Sky Map
Ever look up at the night sky and try to tell your kids the name of that constellation you’re pointing at, or try to remember which planet that is in the southern sky? Google SkyMap lets you point your smartphone at it and get the information. This is part of a new breed of apps called “Augmented Reality” apps that layer digital information on top of real world experiences.
21. Tricorder
A lot of geeks I know like to say that our smartphones are becoming more and more like the Tricorders on Star Trek. Well, here’s a fun app that turns your Android device into a virtual Tricorder. It even offers some useful environmental information, including GPS data, wireless data, and ambient sound measurements.
22. FxCamera
Honestly, the camera software on Android is an area where major improvements are needed, but this app is a great example of what’s possible. It has solid camera controls, full customization options, and offers some great effects for photos.
23. Photoshop Mobile
Photoshop is, of course, the best known photo editor in the world and its mobile app doesn’t do anything to hurt that reputation. But while the desktop version is know for having a zillion features, the mobile app is distinguished by its simplicity. It’s the best Android (and iPhone) photo editing app for simple crops, brightness adjustments, and sharpens, for example.
24. Bump
Bump is a fun (and useful) idea for sharing info between two phones using the accelerometer, and it works across Android and iPhone. You can use it to share contact info (yours and others), photos, and apps. You both simply open the Bump app, choose what you to share, and then hold the phones in your hands and bump your hands together.
25. Barcode Scanner
This app turns the Android camera into a barcode scanner. You simply scan a product’s UPC code and let the app go to work to find it in Google Product Search or a search on the open Web. You’ll be amazed at how fast it works. This is great for when you’re shopping retail and you want to check the price of a product online before buying to make sure you’re paying a fair price.
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Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcut Keys

Here is a list of keyboard short-cut keys for maximising your efficiently on Windows 7 Platform.

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Weirdest design of USB Thumb Disk Drives

As more and more different brands, capacities and designs of USB Thumb Drives become available on the market, it sometimes makes us stop and wonder where have we come from since removable storage was a 3.5" Floppy disks that held 1.14 MB in data. Now an average thumb drive comes with 8GB storage, which is 8000 MB in data. That is roughly 7000 floppy disks in total. Would it be easy to carry them in your pocket?
Well now you can, and some of the fancy designs can be shown below.

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Borrow books on the Kindle eBook Reader

Last year Barnes & Noble rolled out their Nook eReader with some unique features, including the ability to loan books to people for two weeks. Today, Amazon joined Barnes & Noble with this capability as they try to catch up with the functionality of the Nook. You can check out the Amazon help page for all the details on loaning Kindle ebooks.

As you can see on that help page, this is still a process under development as it appears you can only loan and accept loans for Kindle book through your Amazon Kindle webpage with no loan initiation or acceptance from within the Kindle devices or various Kindle applications.
The mechanics of the system work similar to the Nook system where you can offer books up for lending and the recipient has seven days to accept, they can borrow it for up to 14 days and you cannot read it during this time, and if the borrower has the book or is in a country without rights to the book you will get the book back in your library after the seven day period ends.
Websites have launched for the Nook to facilitate loaning books and I imagine we will see the same thing happen with the Kindle as well. I am still more of a Nook fan with support for free public library books.
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Skype video Call now available on iPhone Handsets

Skype has now being used for Video calling using the iPhone handsets. All new iPhone version 4 can allow users to have face to face video conversations on the move over both 3G Signals and Wi-Fi.
These calls are FREE!!!
Go to http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/get-skype/on-your-mobile/download/iphone-for-skype/
for more info
iPhone 4 owners already have the ability to make video calls over WiFi networks using the FaceTime feature, but the new video calling feature built into the Skype app now supports video calling to both mobile and desktop Skype apps
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New BitTorrent Client offers more

While BitTorrent is the most popular P2P protocol, it still relies on several centralized points for users to find the files they are looking. There have been several attempts at making BitTorrent more decentralized, and the latest Tribler 5.3 client is the first to offer the BitTorrent experience without requiring central trackers or search engines, according to TorrentFreak.
Tribler offers some very interesting technologies; the latest version enables users to search and download files from inside the client. Plenty of other clients offer search features, including the ever-popular µTorrent, but Tribler's results come from other peers rather than from a dedicated search engine. Users can search and download content without a server ever getting involved; everything is done among peers, without the need of a BitTorrent tracker or search indexer.
This is a little ironic because it means that the actual torrent file aspect of BitTorrent is no longer necessary. Normally, users have to find the torrent file corresponding to the content they want to download. The torrent file contains the BitTorrent tracker URL which, as its name implies, keeps track of everyone downloading and uploading the content in question. More recently, the need for a tracker has been replaced by technologies like peer exchange (PXE) and distributed hash tables (DHT). A replacement for BitTorrent search engines and indexers had yet to appear, until Tribler 5.3.
Since Tribler is still a rather new BitTorrent client, there are significantly fewer torrents to search from compared to popular BitTorrent search engines, but as it gains more traction, that number should grow exponentially. Furthermore, if competitors like µTorrent jump on board, we may have yet another P2P revolution on our hands.

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Mark Zuckerberg joins Richest people in Charity

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg will join some of the world's richest families and individuals in giving the majority of his wealth to charitable causes.

Mr Zuckerberg was one of 17 new signatories to the Giving Pledge, a project created by investor Warren Buffett along with Bill and Melinda Gates. The pledge asks that each billionaire signatory commit to giving most of their wealth to philanthropic causes or charitable organisations either before or after their death.

In a statement, Mr Zuckerberg said there was no reason for people to wait until late in their careers to give back.

''Why wait when there is so much to be done? With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts,'' he said.

In September, Forbes estimated the 26-year-old's personal wealth at US$6.9 billion and placed him at number 40 on a list of the world's most powerful people. Around the same time, the young billionaire gave US$100 million to Newark's public schools, sparking accusations he was attempting to preempt negative publicity stemming from film The Social Network, which had only recently been released.
Mr Zuckerberg is joined in the Giving Pledge by a range of high-profile billionaires including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Star Wars creator George Lucas and hotel heir Barron Hilton.
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Wireless networks not safe, change to AES

Japanese computer scientists have developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in around one minute.
The attack gives hackers a way to read encrypted traffic sent between computers and certain types of routers that use the WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption system. The attack was developed by Toshihiro Ohigashi of Hiroshima University and Masakatu Morii of Kobe University, who plan to discuss further details at a technical conference set for September 25 in Hiroshima.
Last November, security researchers first showed how WPA could be broken, but the Japanese researchers have taken the attack to a new level, according to Dragos Ruiu, organiser of the PacSec security conference where the first WPA hack was demonstrated. "They took this stuff which was fairly theoretical and they've made it much more practical," he said.
The Japanese researchers discuss their attack in a paper presented at the Joint Workshop on Information Security, held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan last month.
The earlier attack, developed by researchers Martin Beck and Erik Tews, worked on a smaller range of WPA devices and took between 12 and 15 minutes to work. Both attacks work only on WPA systems that use the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) algorithm. They do not work on newer WPA 2 devices or on WPA systems that use the stronger Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm.
The encryption systems used by wireless routers have a long history of security problems. The Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) system, introduced in 1997, was cracked just a few years later and is now considered to be completely insecure by security experts.
WPA with TKIP "was developed as kind of an interim encryption method as Wi-Fi security was evolving several years ago", said Kelly Davis-Felner, marketing director with the Wi-Fi Alliance, the industry group that certifies Wi-Fi devices. People should now use WPA 2, she said.
Wi-Fi-certified products have had to support WPA 2 since March 2006. "There's certainly a decent amount of WPA with TKIP out in the installed base today, but a better alternative has been out for a long time," Davis-Felner said.
Enterprise Wi-Fi networks typically include security software that would detect the type of man-in-the-middle attack described by the Japanese researchers, said Robert Graham, CEO of Errata Security. But the development of the first really practical attack against WPA should give people a reason to dump WPA with TKIP, he said. "It's not as bad as WEP, but it's also certainly bad."
Users can change from TKIP to AES encryption using the administrative interface on many WPA routers.
Smaller businesses in particular are being urged to move over to the newer standard, due to their reliance on Wi-Fi in place of wired networks.
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Already Sex is on the agenda with the new Kinect!!

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1800 FT Above the ground Scariest Job

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Would you like to hear what the referees are saying??

Rugby suporters will have the option of gaining some insight into the decision-making process of referees during the guinness Autumn Series through a new Ref Talk application available for iPhone and online at at www.bethedifference.ie.

Always a source of contention, users will be able to hear instructions to players direct from the field of the Irish rugby team's upcoming four-test series. A facility often used within the grounds by supporters, the addition of a live stream beyond the confines of the stadium is a first for Ireland.

Ref Talk is now available as an app on the iTunes App Store for €1.59 and also available to stream at www.bethedifference.ie at a price of €2.50 for the games against New Zealand and Argentina.

Jonnie Cahill, marketing director, O2 said: "Our Be The Difference campaign always works to get rugby supporters closer to the action. With Ref Talk now available to those not at the match both online and via an iTunes app, supporters can hear what's going on and be closer to the team even when they are at home".

Padraig Power, commercial and marketing manager for the IRFU, said: "These initiatives help us collectively to bring our rugby supporters closer to the action which we hope will significantly add to and enhance their match experience".

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Nokia N8 will be king of smartphones?

Apple's iPhone may be the dominant force in consumer smartphones right now, but it's arguable that it's only now that it has finally come up to spec with its competitors. When you look at the technical capabilities of the iPhone 4 - the 5MP front and rear cameras, video calling, multi-tasking - the argument has been made that Apple has not so much broken new ground but merely caught up with its eternal competitor, the Nokia N95. Granted Apple's CEO Steve Jobs knows industrial design, marketing and user experience, but the functionality of the latest 'Jesus phone' just about brings it to parity with a handset released in 2007.

Next month Nokia is expected to release a new range of smartphones divided up to target the business and consumer spaces. Backed up by a slick marketing campaign, the N8 looks set to be pushed font and centre as a potential iPhone killer, and it has the specs to prove it. A 3.5" touch screen, 12MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics, face detection and Xenon flash are top of the list, along with high definition video capture, HDMI and mini-USB connectivity. That a 3.5mm headphone jack, FM radio, video calling, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth come as standard show how far the market has come in the three years since the N95 first appeared.
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The N8 represents a great prospect for Nokia - it's vastly superior to the chunky N96 and sleeker than the just plain ugly N97 that came before it. More importantly Nokia's new CEO Stephen Elop's big chance to make an impression in a space rapidly slipping from the company's fingers. Industry observers have a right to be sceptical.

New money

A former Adobe and Microsoft man, Elop has a proven track record of product rollouts - Windows Office 2010 being his last major achievement. He inherits a company in the bizarre position of having consistently higher revenues consistently declining products. Nokia products are selling better than ever, but no money is being made off them. This points to strong sales of low value, low spec devices. To put it in stark perspective, in the first quarter of 2002 revenue from mobile phones alone accounted for $5.44 billion and $1.2 billion in profit. In the second quarter of 2010 revenues had risen to $6.8 billion, but profits dipped to $643m.

The rot took hold in 2008 - the year that iPhone enjoyed numerous international releases and the first round of handsets running Google's Android mobile operating system came on the market. A second consideration is the impact of Apple's App Store and the Android Marketplace. In comparison Nokia's Ovi store is hamstrung by limited selection and low traffic. An average day for Ovi pulls in 1.5 million downloads, a drop in the ocean compared to Apple's 30.5 million.

In this context Elop's position is at best unenviable, but the hardest part of the N8 to sell won't be the technology but the more ephemeral idea of the user experience. Whatever about the superior hardware, the use of a widget-based interface running a new version of the Symbian operating system looks positively antiquated beside the iPhone or HTC Desire.

Will the N8 re-establish Nokia in the consumer smartphone space? If it was about hardware alone the answer would be a firm yes. Looking at the limitations of the Ovi store and the user experience, one gets the impression this is a handset happy just to keep up when it should be blowing the competition away. 2007 was indeed a long time ago.

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Will MySpace survice

You might remember MySpace, for a while it looked like being the world's most popular social network. Of course things didn't quite work out that way. Arguably more of the more extravagant acquisitions of the Web 2.0 age, founder Tom Anderson's pet project was bought up by Rupert Maxwell's News Corp in 2005 for $580 million and never looked forward. As Facebook gained traction by spreading virally through university campuses, MySpace's uptake began to slow, turning it from a place to find people into a place to find music, magazines, TV shows and original Web series. While Google would outstrip News Corp with its $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube the following year, MySpace showed that communities could be commodities in and of themselves, proving themselves rich pickings for bands looking for their big break (Arctic Monkeys one case in point) or for marketers looking for a direct line to the youth market.

The post-acquisition years, however, have not been kind to MySpace. Hammered not only by Facebook but a proliferation of niche networks its user base has stalled at a grand total of 66 million users. While hardly out for the count, comparing this figure with 69 million users for European network Badoo, 117 million for the ailing Bebo; 100 million for Orkut; 91.6 million for Russia's Vkontakte; and 200 million for China's Qzone; you can't help but wonder where it all went wrong.

Ask anyone suffering from a bad case of the Facebook bug and they'll tell you they're not on MySpace because: a) none of their friends are there and b) there's not much to do if you bother joining. Part of the success of Facebook has been its developer-friendly attitude, especially in its embracing of third party applications and casual gaming. Believe it or not game developer Zynga's flagship titles Farmville and Mafia Wars are responsible for over $1 billion a year in revenue - and while users are buying virtual tractors and birthday presents on Facebook they're spending more time on the site, improving its ‘stickiness' and increasing the amount of time users will be exposed to ads based on the personal information they so willingly shared by setting up their accounts.
So how does MySpace make up for years of decline? It gets a makeover.

To be fair this is something of an oversimplification. Yes, MySpace has acquired a new logo and a fresh page design that looks considerably neater than previous iterations, but the current revamp goes much further than its previous strategy of mimicking the biggest player. Visually the new MySpace owes more to the likes of iGoogle and MyYahoo in its design. Each element is modular and can be moved about the home page and docked based on personal preference. Activity walls will be dynamically updated like a news feed to display friend activity in real time and trending topics from around the Web will be shown so users can keep up with the global conversation.

Bonus
What's more impressive about the new MySpace is the shift away from focusing on connecting people to people to connecting people with content, thus reinventing itself as a personalised entertainment platform. While some of the new features have yet to be fully explained - ‘content hubs' for example - it's safe to say that there's not actually much going on that hasn't been seen before. The absence of geolocation updates - all the rage since Foursquare came to prominence - is a notable absence, but if the direction is more about people as curators than people as actors this could be excusable. The one major criticism the content-based approach was tried before by a network on the verge of greatness and fell flat: Bebo.

Bought out by AOL for $850 million in 2008, Bebo had just about struck a balance between social network and content platform until a disastrous American launch failed to generate any traction in the US market. A busy press release section on Bebo.com shows there is life in the site yet, but AOL still sold up in June to hedge fund Criterion Capital Partners for a figure reportedly less than $10 million.

What MySpace doesn't have to worry about is a costly launch into a new market, but the rush to retain its membership base - let alone attract new ones - will have it straddling the gap between being hip while retaining a populist outlook attractive to marketers and media buyers. Still, with revenues of $385 million reported in 2009 it could be said MySpace is in a stronger commercial position than Bebo, despite having only about half the population.

Will the new MySpace work? Well, like everything to do with it since 2005 you can't say what it's up to hasn't been done before, but it's not a tried-and-tested formula. Can MySpace do it better? That's up to the members to decide. The ones that are left, anyway.

 

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Irish Software hooks up with NASA to aid space traffic

A collaboration by scientists from Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre, and NASA has been highlighted by prestigious publication New Scientist. NASA has filed a patent for control software that will be used to protect multiple spacecrafts from crashing into one another in future mission.
Prof Mike Hinchey, director, and Emil Vassev, research fellow at Lero, named as inventors of this software, have been working with NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland to create control software that will autonomously guide all of the space probes in a mission while continuously checking up on critical electronic systems for potential failures in each one.
Lero and NASA have predicted that future space missions will be undertaken by swarming formations of small spacecrafts as opposed to a single large spacecraft. All of these smaller probes would work collectively on the mission and would be more cost effective than one traditional spacecraft.
If one spacecraft in this swarm were to fail and possibly collide with another, this software would enable a dying spacecraft to sense it's impending failure and put itself on a course directed away from the rest of the swarm. In simple terms, the spacecraft would be able to self-sacrifice for the greater good of the mission. The work builds on prior work undertaken by Prof Hinchey and Roy Sterritt, Lecturer in Informatics at the University of Ulster.
This NASA owned patent designed by Lero has been widely welcomed by the scientific community. Richard Holdaway, director of Space Technology at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Didcot, UK told New Scientist magazine, "It's a clever move by NASA and it's one we're looking at for future missions."
"Having 10 to 100 spacecraft with optical, infrared and radar sensors swarming together offers great scope for science missions - but it's one hell of a technical and software challenge. A self-sacrifice mechanism that adjusts the constellation as a whole when units fail is a wise move."
Commenting on the patent, Prof Hinchey said: "This control software could potentially make it easier for space missions to survive in harsher environments, and in turn lead to some interesting developments in space exploration. Lero are delighted to be a part of such a huge development and we look forward to the next stage in the process."

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Mom pleads guilty to killing baby during Farmville game

A 22-year-old Jacksonville mother shook her baby to death while playing Farmville, and has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and could face life in prison.

Alexandra V. Tobias was arrested after her son, 3-month-old Dylan Lee Edmondson, was pronounced dead in a hospital around 10am on 19 January. According to The Florida-Times Union, "she told investigators that she became angry because the baby was crying while she was playing a computer game called Farmville on the Facebook social-networking website."

According to the arrest report, the baby started crying as she played an online game (identified as Zynga's social networking Farmville by prosecutor Richard Mantei), so she shook the baby to quiet it down. Police say that the baby's head may have hit the computer during this shaking.

Tobias, an unemployed high school graduate, then put the baby on the couch and stepped out to compose herself with a cigarette. While she was outside, the dog knocked the baby off of the couch and the baby started crying again. She picked the baby up and shook him again, before finally calling an ambulance when she realized he wasn't breathing.

According to court records, this arrest violated a 6-month probation she had been serving (beginning just a few weeks prior) after pleading "no contest" to a domestic battery charge. Tobias entered her guilty plea on 27 October before Circuit Judge Adrian G. Soud.

A second-degree murder charge is punishable by up to life in prison, though the state guidelines generally call for 25 to 50 years.

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Speed up your slow PC

ERIC A. TAUB, On Thursday October 28, 2010, 3:20 am EDT

As we get older, most of us tend to put on weight. We bulk up in all the wrong places. Over the years we ingest a lot of things that are bad for us. We may still suffer the effects of long-gone viruses. Our gait slows, and we’re not as sharp as we used to be.

If computers could hear, they would think we were talking about them.

Computers, like people, do not always age gracefully. What was once sprightly and limber becomes sluggish and bloated. Like an elderly person who moves through life ever more slowly, a once-speedy PC starts taking many minutes to boot up, days to display the printer menu and what seems like eons to get to a Web site.

But there’s hope. Most office supply stores will be happy to provide you with a PC tuneup. Staples offers one free. Others, like Best Buy’s Geek Squad tuneup, cost $49.99 and up.

But do PCs really need tuning up?

Definitely, say the experts. “Proper PC maintenance and tuneup is essential,” said Dan Ackerman, senior editor at CNet.com. “If you owned a car you wouldn’t go two to three years without maintaining it.”

But unlike a car, a computer has few moving parts that can fail, so what goes wrong? Among the factors that can contribute to your PC’s general malaise are downloading third-party applications and failing to remove all their bits and pieces when you are done with them, adding and deleting files, asking the computer to start up multiple programs simultaneously, and failing to completely remove viruses and malware.

Taking a PC to a store for a tuneup is an easy way to set things right, but most often you will pay for the privilege.

“This is a customer acquisition strategy,” said Bob MacDonald, a Staples vice president overseeing the company’s no-charge PC tuneup program. “We look forward to selling services and hardware. The analogy is paying someone to wash your car, versus doing it yourself. Absolutely, what we do could be done by a consumer.”

Since washing a car is a task that can easily be handled by most adults, it seems like a good idea to learn what tasks are involved in getting your Windows or Mac PC running like new.

The Same Tools

Just as an exterminator uses mostly the same chemicals a consumer could buy to get rid of insect pests, you can use the same software as the pros do to get rid of computer bugs.

For example, Staples runs a suite of cleanup tools that it licenses from Norton. “Tools to do everything that Staples does are built into Windows 7,” said Ben Rudolph, Microsoft’s Windows PC Evangelist. “It’s not that hard to change your own oil.”

What to Do

A few procedures should go a long way to getting your PC’s vitality back.

It’s important to run antivirus software regularly. Microsoft offers MS Security Essentials, free antivirus software available from Microsoft.com. Mr. Ackerman recommends another free program, AVG Free (free.avg.com).

To avoid leaving any fragments of applications on the drive after you remove a program, use the application’s own removal tool, rather than just putting the program icon in the trash. If you don’t have the tool, do an Internet search for “[program name] removal tool.”

Defragment your hard drive. After extensive use, large programs tend to become “fragmented,” meaning that critical files are scattered across multiple sectors of a drive. It takes the computer extra time to find and assemble all the pieces needed to run the program. Defragmenting the drive will retrieve the files and place them closer together, speeding up the response time when you run the program.

The preinstalled Windows Disk Defragmenter tool, (search for “defragment” under the Start menu in Windows 7, or look for it under Programs>Accessories>System Tools in most older Windows machines) will defragment your hard drive, either manually, or automatically on a schedule you can customize.

Defragmenting a hard drive can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the size of the drive and how cluttered it is.

Remove large files like movies that you are no longer using. One easy way for Windows users to do so is to download “windirstat,” ( windirstat.info ) a program that will help you identify and remove the space-hoggers. Mac users can try Disc Inventory X ( derlien.com ).

To save space on your drive, Mr. Ackerman recommends no-charge slimmed-down versions of popular programs. Instead of Windows Media Player, he suggests using VLC ( videolan.org/vlc ). And to avoid taking up any additional space on your hard drive, try cloud-based programs like Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office.

Most maintenance tools are easily found in Windows 7. Click on the small white flag in the bottom right of the screen to bring up the Action Center. If you haven’t installed antivirus software, you’ll be prompted to find such a program. You’re also given the option to back up your hard drive.

For Mac Users

In the early days of Mac OS X, Apple’s operating system for its Mac computers, users needed to manually run various maintenance tasks, many of which are no longer necessary.

“Most Mac users don’t need to run any cleanup routines,” said Neil Ticktin, organizer of next month’s MacTech Conference in Los Angeles, and editor in chief of MacTech Magazine. “If you do need to run some system optimization program, it’s because you force-quit programs and you don’t let the machine do its job.”

For example, the common practice of “repairing permissions,” — making sure that the correct part of the system or user had the right to open a file — rarely needs to be done any longer.

Based on the Unix operating system, the Mac OS commonly runs cleanup routines in the middle of the night, if you leave the machine fully on.

If you don’t, the computer will run most of those routines automatically the next time it is awake. Manually defragmenting a hard drive is not necessary, as the OS does it automatically.

To clean up unwanted parts of programs that are no longer on the hard drive, Mr. Ticktin recommends Smith Micro’s Spring Cleaning application.

Both Mac and PC users agreed that the computer’s operating system was not typically to blame for slowing things down. Rather, one of the biggest culprits lies in “feature creep,” newer and bigger versions of favorite software. With our penchant for wanting the biggest and newest, the real culprit of sluggish computing may actually be ... us.

 

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Limewire is at last shutdown!!

Limewire Bye bye
File-sharing program LimeWire has been permanently shut down after a federal judge found it guilty of assisting users in committing copyright infringement "on a massive scale."

The shut-down is the final chapter in a case brought against LimeWire LLC by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) over four years ago.

The suit, filed by the RIAA on behalf of eight major music publishers in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charged LimeWire with facilitating "pervasive online infringement." It also accused LimeWire of allowing and actively encouraging users to participate in music piracy.

During the court proceedings, the plaintiffs claimed that over 93 percent of the software's traffic was made up of infringing content.

In May 2010, federal Judge Kimba Wood found LimeWire LLC liable for copyright infringement. She also found LimeWire founder Mark Gordon to be personally liable. The RIAA then made two separate motions--one for permanent shut down of the company, and the other for freezing of the company's assets.

At least one of these motions has been upheld, as LimeWire stopped distributing its software on Tuesday. A legal notice on the company's Website reads:

"THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE THAT LIMEWIRE IS UNDER A COURT-ORDERED INJUNCTION TO STOP DISTRIBUTING AND SUPPORTING ITS FILE-SHARING SOFTWARE. DOWNLOADING OR SHARING COPYRIGHTED CONTENT WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION IS ILLEGAL."

The injunction states that LimeWire's software is used "overwhelmingly for infringement" and allows for infringement on a "massive scale." It also states that LimeWire "intentionally encouraged direct infringement" by users and marketed its software to Napster users, who were "known copyright infringers," by promoting LimeWire's infringement capabilities.

The case resumes in January 2011, when damages will be assessed. The statutory minimum for music copyright infringement is $150,000 per infringement, and the damages assessed may total up to as much as (or possibly more than) $1 billion.

LimeWire CEO George Searle said in a blog post that the company is "naturally disappointed with this turn of events," but is "deeply committed to working with the music industry and making the act of loving music more fulfilling for everyone."
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iPod 3rd Party repair issues. Be warned

As with all mobile products from Apple, my iPod does not have a user-replaceable battery (at least officially). But apparently it's not replaceable by my local Apple dealer, either. The technician there had difficulty getting the case apart -- and putting it back together.
I now have a new battery, but the device as returned to me has a gap between the black plastic top layer of the iPod and the chrome case underneath that's big enough to insert my fingernail into.
I was lucky, the tech said, that I had an older unit -- newer models can only be serviced by Apple authorized service centers. But occasionally, some units like mine get stuck together so tightly that they don't come apart easily. With my unit, "It was like it was fused together," the tech said. It appears that she was careful prying it apart. The only sign of the struggle are two barely noticeable rows of tiny pin marks -- a total of 15 almost microscopic pocks that run along the edges of the metal case.
But once apart, my unit refused to snap back together properly. So now I have a unit that's tightly fastened along the top and bottom but has a small gap extending down both sides. Not good, especially for a unit that goes to the gym, where moisture could kill it.
At this point, after spending $50 for the battery, I feel that I have no choice but to return it to Apple to fix the case. That will set me back either $59 or $129, depending on whether Apple classifies the work as a battery replacement or a repair.
I don't know what to think at this point.
On the one hand I'm feeling a bit foolish about my recent decision to bypass the Apple store and buy services from my local dealer. On the other, this tech works on hundreds of Apple devices, and I am sure she was being truthful when she said that every once in a while she gets one that just won't open -- and won't snap shut again. Certainly I'm glad that I didn't buy one of those do-it-yourself iPod battery replacement kits online.
But the experience leaves a bad taste in my mouth for another reason.
I love the sleek design of my iPod. I appreciate the fact that at the time my iPod was designed Apple broke new ground by designing a battery that could fit into such a tiny device. But I have to wonder why a company that can design the iPad and MacBook Air can't figure out how to create a device with a user-serviceable battery -- something the watch industry mastered decades ago.
Then again, there are probably well over 200 million iPods and 100 million iPhones out there that are still in use , all of which will need batteries replaced every two or three years. Multiply $59 by 300 million units and you get some idea of why Apple is unlikely to walk away from this model any time soon.published by pcworld

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Google snooping outside our homes??

Google last week announced plans to beef up its privacy and security practices and took another chance to apologize for mistakenly collecting unencrypted Wi-Fi data using Street View cars.
Sniffed data was mostly fragmentary but in some cases included entire e-mail messages, URLs, and passwords, according to a blog post by Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research.
"We work hard at Google to earn your trust, and we're acutely aware that we failed badly here," he says in his post.
Eustance provided a brief outline the company's privacy plans going forward, which include changes in people, training, and compliance.
Alma WhittenFirst, Alma Whitten was appointed privacy director for engineering and product management. She will be responsible for making sure effective privacy controls are included in Google products and internal practices.
Training and compliance changes include enhanced training for engineers which will have "a particular focus on the responsible collection, use and handling of data," Eustance says. Every engineering project lead will also need to have a privacy design document that will regularly be reviewed by managers and an independent audit team, he says. "We believe these changes will significantly improve our internal practices (though no system can of course entirely eliminate human error)."
In other words: You'd better learn how to lock down your home network, just in case there's a problem with Google's protective bureaucracy.
The data goof came to the public's attention earlier this year when the company admitted a faulty code made it into Street View car software. The code collected data from non-password-protected Wi-Fi networks and was allegedly the remnants of an earlier project to help improve accuracy of its location-based products such as Google Maps.
The company has since faced several class-action lawsuits in the United States and several overseas investigations.
Eustance says the world can rest easy.
"We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users," he says. "We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place."
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Why does my Pc slow down??

How to clean up your Windows PC

 

Your Windows PC is slowing down. Maybe it takes longer to boot up or shut down. Perhaps the hard drive grinds in the background constantly. Or maybe launching an application takes much longer than it once did.
 
And although Windows 7 is speedier than previous versions, it can still become sluggish, particularly if you install and uninstall a lot of applications.
Over the next few pages we'll look at what it takes to clean the junk from your system and get rid of the detritus that has built up over time. We'll specifically discuss boot times, hard drive issues and the mysterious Windows Registry. We'll also explain how you can help stave off potential future problems, not least by getting out of habits that are likely to lead you to create unnecessary files in the first place.

Mysterious PC slowdowns: the suspects

Sometimes a PC will start to crawl without warning and the reason isn't always obvious. Although the focus of this article is on cleaning and preventing operating-system gunk, we'll start by touch briefly on a few hardware problems that can cause sudden slowdowns.
Vanishing memory
If you built your system yourself, the Bios may on occasion reset itself without your knowledge. This can happen during a power failure, or if you shut down the system during the POST (power on, self test) process. During such a reset, the memory speeds may revert to something more conservative. You'll notice performance issues only when running memory-intensive programs.
Another possibility is that the apparent amount of memory might shrink. For example, on recent motherboards built with Intel's P55 and X58 chipsets, a heatsink that's too tightly mounted can bend memory circuit traces on the motherboard. The net result is that one memory module becomes invisible to the system, potentially reducing the amount of memory available to Windows by a third or a half. That hampers your system, particularly when applications and data are swapped to virtual memory on your hard drive.
Overheating
Modern Intel and AMD CPUs will automatically throttle down if they get too hot. This can happen if your system's CPU and case cooling fans become coated with dust and start slowing down. Make sure you check the system temperature in the Bios or using any utilities that may have been provided along with your motherboard.
Imminent hard drive failure
As hard drives begin to develop bad sectors, they try to copy data to safe sectors. Ordinarily this occurs rarely, but when a drive starts to fail, the behaviour could become more frequent. The net result is constant disk use – also described as disk thrashing - as the system attempts to find free, good sectors. If you suspect such activity, turn on the SMART feature in your PC's BIOS, which will pull diagnostic information from the drive and warn you if failure seems imminent
However fast your PC when you first buy it, over time its performance will only deteriorate. We look at how to undo the damage done by everyday computing use and claw back valuable disk space and processor cycles.

Windows entropy explained

Now let's move on to Windows itself. Windows slowdown has three main causes: the Windows Registry gets bigger, DLLs and other junk are needlessly duplicated, and hard drives become fragmented. On machines that have a lot of programs installed a lot of background services and applications can be running without your knowledge. This can also contribute to system slowdown.
These potential problems aren't mutually exclusive. The Registry can swell as you install more software, which in turn loads a lot of background tasks. Your hard drive may also fill up, making Windows auto-defragging harder. Let's look at these issues one at a time.
Windows Registry
You've got a lot of apps – essentially, this is what the Registry is. Windows maintains configuration settings, application install settings, and options in a database called the Windows Registry. As you install and uninstall applications or make changes to Windows, the Registry tends to grow larger and larger. For example, the Registry on my production PC, which has a ton of such 'apps' installed, is about 384MB – and that's just a backup.

As the Registry expands, applications and services that use it take longer to load. Searches conducted through the Registry by apps that may have written their data in multiple places also start to require more time. Some applications, such as security tools and certain media players (PowerDVD and the like), touch the data in a large number of locations.
The other culprit behind Registry bloat is incomplete uninstalls. Most users install or uninstall only a few applications per year, but some people (gamers and power users come to mind) tend to install and remove many programs.
Incomplete uninstalls leave residue in the Registry, which adds to its size. Windows 7 and its program uninstaller is much improved in this respect, but still not perfect.
As it turns out, however, Registry cleaners aren't really the answer. More on that later.
Application extras
When you install applications, sometimes they need various runtime modules to run.
See all those separately installed copies of the Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable? You really need only the latest version. If you're running the 64bit version, you might need two copies, one for 32bit (labelled 'x86') and one for 64bit (x64).
This is just one example of the kind of junk that can get installed on a system. It's hard to stop and track down, and determining whether removing it might break something is often difficult.
Unnecessary background services
The more items you install, the more the programs seem to install some kind of service in the background. Maybe that service will speed up an application launch. Maybe it's a Control Panel applet for a high-end gaming mouse. Either way, there's an awful lot of stuff in my system tray.
Do I really need Impulse Now running all the time? I use it only when I'm running a game downloaded from Stardock's Impulse digital-delivery system, or when I'm buying a game from there. I certainly don't need it. And I rarely use Microsoft OneNote, so that doesn't have to run either.
Hard drive issues
A machine's file system will become fragmented eventually. Windows 7 tries to minimise that by running the defragger in the background when the PC is idle. But if you frequently create and delete files (or use applications that create and delete files regularly), the file system is bound to become fragmented.
System performance issues can also crop up if the drive gets too full. If a drive is more than 90 percent full, swapping from main memory to the drive becomes very slow, which can drag down the system as a whole. It may be time to clean out your drive – or to buy a bigger one.
Incomplete uninstalls
The Windows uninstaller (and similar uninstall apps that ship with some software) doesn't always completely remove an application. This shortcoming causes the Registry to balloon, leaves extraneous files on the hard drive, and otherwise cruds up a system.
However fast your PC when you first buy it, over time its performance will only deteriorate. We look at how to undo the damage done by everyday computing use and claw back valuable disk space and processor cycles.

Diagnostic tools: tracking down the junk

You'll need some tools to help you unearth the excess files and other detritus clogging up your system. Here are a few.
Benchmarks
Benchmarks help you determine your system performance. It's worth running a systemwide benchmark, such as PC WorldBench (which we use to measure the real-world performance of PCs and laptops that enter our Test Centre) or PCMark Vantage, when you first build or buy your system. Save the results, then run the benchmarks again every few months. If the results decrease by more than about 10 percent, you may want to clean out your PC.
Useful widgets
Windows comes with tiny applets known as gadgets that you can keep on your desktop. However, if you have too many gadgets running, they may slow down the system. One useful gadget is the CPU meter – not so much for its CPU-activity reports, but for its memory meter. If the percentage of memory used over time seems to increase substantially, you may have background tasks loading that you don't need.
You might also want to grab some third-party system-monitoring gadgets from Microsoft's site.
Windows Resource Monitor
Gadgets are fun, but you'll probably find the Windows Resource monitor more practical for diagnosing potential issues. It's a substantial step up from the CPU-meter gadget and superior to the more commonly used Task Manager. You run Resource Monitor by clicking Start, Run, typing resmon, and then pressing the Enter key.
Check your PC memory usage
For monitoring system slowdown issues, there's always the actual system-performance monitor. Perhaps more useful than consulting this is the memory monitor.

This tracks memory usage. It even shows you, in a more granular fashion than Task Manager, how a particular program or service is consuming memory.
Windows Reliability Monitor
All those memory-hogging and performance-sapping modules can make your system less stable, so check the Windows Reliability Monitor, too. You may think your system is less stable than it once was, but the Reliability Monitor will give you the data to confirm that suspicion.

Do a reliability check
You can use the Action Center to check your PC's reliability history. Launch the Reliability Monitor from the Windows Control Panel. Click on the System and Security link, then select Action Center. You'll see a heading labelled Maintenance. Click on that and you'll see the link for View Reliability History.
To navigate the Reliability Monitor click on the columns representing dates. You can also see the trendline, which may be flat or downward-sloping. (On our PC the sharp drop around 9/16 in the screenshot shown here represents when we installed the Internet Explorer 9 beta. Pre-release apps often have reliability problems - no surprise there.)
This is a graph of a system's reliability history.

A sudden, sharp drop is worth checking out. If multiple programs are shown to be unstable, perhaps something you installed (or uninstalled) just before stability problems occurred is the culprit.
System boot diagnostics
It's amazing how many applications, tools and utilities attempt to preload something or another during the boot-up process. We used to have a high-performance Windows XP desktop system that would take 15 minutes before the mouse would become responsive.
Windows 7 has fixed many slow-boot problems, but we've still seen supposedly high-end systems take nearly five minutes to fully boot up.
One third-party program that's useful for assessing boot problems is Soluto. This is both a diagnostic program and a utility that can fix slow-boot issues.
However fast your PC when you first buy it, over time its performance will only deteriorate. We look at how to undo the damage done by everyday computing use and claw back valuable disk space and processor cycles.

More cleanup options

You can, of course, manually clean out a lot of the junk on your system. Here are some ways to tackle the job.
Disk Cleanup
The past few versions of Windows have shipped with the Disk Cleanup utility, which you can launch by clicking Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. When we used this tool on our test machine, we discovered 16.3GB of temporary converted audio files.

You can manually clean out old system files, but that can be perilous, so delete such files with care. Note too that Disk Cleanup allows you (under the More Options tab) to delete all but the most recent System Restore and Shadow Copy files. We recommend avoiding this though: you never know if you'll need an older restore point to get a usable machine back if you run into problems.
Defrag your drive
Defragmenting your hard drive is useful after you've performed a sweep with Disk Cleanup. During the defrag process, your system performance will slow down, since the defragger keeps the hard drives pretty busy. The Windows 7 defrag utility is somewhat smart about this, but your PC will still be less responsive during the process; it's best to run the utility when you don't need timely system access.
System Configuration Utility
This tool is more commonly referred to as Msconfig. You launch it by typing msconfig in the Start, Run bar. You can selectively enable and disable background services in Msconfig. Using Msconfig lets you manually specify services to run, as well as startup applications. It's far from perfect, however. It doesn't give you any advice as to what services can be safely disabled, though you can hide Windows services, which makes the Services tab a little more manageable.

This is all the stuff that launches on boot. The Startup tab is more useful. The caution here, though, is that if you disable everything willy-nilly, some of your applications (such as your antivirus software) may not work. Still, items such as the QuickTime Helper app and the Adobe Acrobat helper can be safely disabled.

Registry Editor
Use the Windows Registry Editor, aka 'regedit', with caution. You could easily delete keys from the Registry permanently and thereby render your system unusable. A less serious risk is that you could make applications unusable, then have to reinstall them. We've also had tales of woe from readers who have found a partial Registry edit makes it impossible to uninstall or reinstall an application but the program won't run. If you're going to edit the Registry yourself, back it up first.

Edit your system's Registry at your own risk. This screenshot of the Registry Editor shows only the first-level view; on lower levels the typical Registry contains many thousands of entries, often with arcane names such as HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\{9F5FBC24-EFE2-4f90-B498-EC0FB7D47D15}. Understanding what to delete and what to keep can be fraught with peril.
If you're trying to root out Registry entries for an incompletely uninstalled piece of software, the editor does allow you to search. If you do this, be very specific with the search string. The application name is much better than, say, the company name. Searching for Zune, for instance [does this work for a UK readership?], will probably yield much safer results than searching for Microsoft.

Useful third-party choices

Although you'll find plenty of useful third-party tools out there, don't go near anything called a 'Registry-cleaning tool'. The Windows Registry is an insanely complex database and no Registry cleaner can know every Registry key that an application may touch. We've had to help users who have run Registry cleaners that have rendered their applications unusable and unable to reinstall. That said, some Registry-related tools are useful.
Soluto
Soluto's main claim to fame is that it can shorten the time Windows takes to boot, sometimes by a substantial amount. You can download Soluto for free from soluto's website.
If you have a lot of startup apps, Soluto can help.The utility contains a database of known boot applications, and gives you advice on whether they're safe to remove from the bootup process. But Soluto doesn't just put boot items into 'run' and 'don't run' categories; it can also defer certain items that you may want to run at Startup but can afford to run a little after the desktop becomes responsive.

Soluto will show you just how much time you can save when booting up. The program depends on users to help develop the database of items that are safe to delay or pause. One malicious person's vote won't count for much, so it's not as if you'll see Soluto recommend that you pause an essential Windows service. By the same token, if you have as many items loading as we often do, you'll see a lot of entries for which Soluto doesn't have any advice to give.

Revo Uninstaller Pro
This handy utility is a little more complex than Soluto. Revo Uninstaller tries to be a more complete uninstaller. It generally works pretty well for that purpose. It also has an autorun (Startup) manager, but Soluto is probably better for that task. Similarly, Revo Uninstaller can act as a backup manager, browser cleaner and evidence remover, but I'll focus here on its main use.

Revo Uninstaller lets you purge every last trace of an old app.From a user perspective, Revo Uninstaller behaves pretty much the same way as the Windows uninstaller does. You just double-click on what you need to remove. Revo gives you the option of a safe, moderate, or advanced uninstall. After the process, you can scan for leftover files or Registry items specific to the application.
For uninstalling one or two apps, you can download Revo Uninstaller for free, but the full version costs $40 (£25) for a single licence or $80 (£50) for four computers. Revo Uninstaller helped us with a pesky iTunes 10 installation problem but we still experienced errors that prevented iTunes from completely installing. Revo Uninstaller managed to remove all the Apple residue and a complete iTunes install was possible after that.

Maintaining a clean system

Once you've cleaned out the crud, how do you keep your Windows system relatively clean? Here are several pointers.
If an application has an 'advanced' install option, use it. Go ahead and install to the default locations (if you want), but check what's being installed. Sometimes you'll have the option of telling the program not to run anything at system startup.
Always watch the installer dialog box. Many users merely click the Next button every time the application's installer prompts them to do so. But often the window will have checkboxes that install additional items, such as browser toolbars, quick startup utilities, or other junk.
If a window pops up in your browser asking you to install something, make sure you know what it is. It may just be a simple tool to help your browsing, or it may install something that runs at startup and saps your system resources. (Weatherbug, anyone?) In the worst-case scenario, it will install malware.
Use tools such as Soluto and Msconfig frequently to make sure useless junk isn't running at startup.
Clean your drive frequently, particularly temporary internet and temporary installation files.
It takes only a few minutes a week to keep your system relatively clean, and if you do that, you should be able to postpone the dreaded reformat and reinstall for a very long time.

published by pcadvisor
uploaded by
Niall Mulrine
Pc Clean
Navenny, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal, Ireland
www.pcclean.ie
sales@pcclean.ie
tel: 086-2377033