Note that Cooke is laying the blame for many recent security problems where it belongs: on users and companies who will not upgrade their software to block such threats. By continuing the recent policy of allowing users of non-genuine Windows to receive security updates, Microsoft is saying, in effect, 'don't blame us if unpatched systems are compromised.'

However, don't think that Redmond's turning a patched eye to either casual piracy or software counterfeiting. Pirated copies of Windows 7 won't be eligible for some of Microsoft's goodies, and Softpedia points out that counterfeit copies of Windows often come with a "free" bonus: malware.

You can download Firefox 3.5 beta 4 for Windows, Mac or Linux here.

If you’re not big on beta testing, you should know that the current stable, 3.0.x branch of Firefox has recently been updated to version 3.0.10, which brings several security and stability issues.

And yes, it is FREE. A great tool to increase your productivity. Have you tried software’s like these? If so , which one do you prefer ? Share your thoughts in comments.

Download Rocket Dock

2. sTabLauncer

I like to mention about all the Application Launchers that i come across because such programs can always make our work easier and increase productivity. RocketDock is a great utility to have if there are a few programs that you use everyday but if the program list is large, RocketDock can get filled quickly. sTabLauncher is an application launcher that offers something different by letting you create tabs in the dock. You can even group your programs this way and can even have a lot of programs in the dock.

Each tab can be populated with as many icons as you like. You can dock it along the top or bottom of the screen or anywhere you want along the edges. The launcher is highly customizable. You can modify each tab individually and select its colour, skin, font, size etc. The tabs can be arranged by dragging and dropping. The tab separators can also be customized by adding images or text. It also has Mini Browser which lets you browse folders. You can even drag and drop files over an application and the file will open with it. This is quite similar to the open with feature in Windows. You can even configure the transparency of the Launcher and make it blend with your Desktop.

This is a nice launcher and a good one for those who are not Satisfied with RocketDock or ObjectDock. It runs on Windows 2000/XP/Vista and requires .Net Framework 2.0.

Download sTabLauncher


[via whoismadhur.com]

1. If using Windows, run the file, select a distribution, floppy/hard disk image, or kernel/initrd to load, select a target drive (USB Drive or Hard Disk), then reboot once done.
   
   
   
2. If using Linux, make the file executable (using either the command chmod +x ./unetbootin-linux, or going to Properties->Permissions and checking "Execute"), then start the application, you will be prompted for your password to grant the application administrative rights, then the main dialog will appear, where you select a distribution and install target (USB Drive or Hard Disk), then reboot when prompted.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. After rebooting, if you created a Live USB drive by selecting "USB Drive" as your install target, press the appropriate button (usually F1, F2, F12, ESC, or backspace) while your computer is starting up to get to your BIOS boot menu and select USB drive as the startup target; otherwise if there's no boot selection option, go to the BIOS setup menu and change the startup order to boot USB by default. Otherwise, if you did a "frugal install" by selecting "Hard Disk" as your install target, select the UNetbootin entry from the Windows Boot Menu as the system boots up.

Requirements

1 GB or larger USB drive, formatted as Fat32 (most USB drives come formatted as FAT32 by default, but if you need to format it, on Windows, go to My Computer->right click your USB drive->format, or on Linux, use GParted or another partition manager)

Supported operating systems: Windows 2000 and above OR a modern Linux distribution

Additional dependencies (Linux Only): You will need the packages syslinux and p7zip-full installed (no dependencies on Windows)

2. Using Win32 Image Writer (Windows only)

Graphical Interface

1. Download the desired .img file
2. Download Disk Imager from https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download
3. Insert your flash media
4. Note the drive letter assigned to your flash media
5. Start Disk Imager
6. Select the downloaded file and target device, and click "Write"
7. Remove your flash media when the operation is complete

Command Line alternative

1. Download the desired .img file
2. Download flashnul from http://shounen.ru/soft/flashnul
3. Attach your USB drive
4. Run flashnul -p
5. Note the physical device number for the USB drive
6. Run flashnul -L \path\to\downloaded.img
7. Answer "yes" if the selected destination device is correct
8. Remove your USB drive when the command completes

3. Using usb-imagewriter (Ubuntu Only)

Graphical Interface

1. Download the desired .img file
2. Install the usb-imagewriter package
   • If your release does not include this, download it from Oliver's PPA
3. Open Applications -> Accessories -> Image Writer
4. Insert your flash media
5. Select the downloaded file and flash device, and click "Write to Device"
6. Remove your device when the operation is complete

Command Line alternative

1. Download the desired .img file
2. Open a terminal and insert your flash media
3. Look at the output of dmesg | tail -20 to determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/sdb)
4. Run sudo umount /dev/device/node
5. Run sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/device/node bs=1M
6. Remove your flash media when the command completes

Update: Ubuntu now includes "Startup disk creator". You can access it via System > Administration > Startup Disk Creator and it's a very easy to use tool. Simply enter your memory stick into the USB drive, then open Startup Disk Creator and select "Format" (the USB stick needs to be formatted first), then select the ISO image you want to write on the USB memory stick and click "Make startup disk". That's it.

4. Using Diskutil (Mac OS X only)

1. Download the desired .img file
2. Open a Terminal (under Utilities)
3. Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices
4. Insert your flash media
5. Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)
6. Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN
7. Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/diskN bs=1m
8. Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes

Sharing is optional, of course, but to get it, you'll need to make sure you've got a Yahoo profile set up. Then click 'Updates', then 'Manage my Updates' to pick share sites within Yahoo. To set up status-sharing from outside services, you'll need to add your login name via the 'Share More' tab. Set-up was fast and easy, especially with the search field that lets you enter a common username to find multiple accounts that share your log-in.

Is it notable? Not really. It's a small tweak that might take some work off the hands of obsessive status-updaters, but given Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's vow to whip Yahoo's engineering corps into shape, this isn't the kind of 'news' we expect to see going forward.

[via download.cnet.com]

• Enhancement: Links in tweets are automatically expanded and replaced with the target page title if available. Media like YouTube videos and Twitpic images are included in-line. Hashtags are converted to Twitter search links. Auto-pagination is enabled as you get to the bottom of the current page. The 'definitions' area is hidden. Last but not least, replies are included underneath the latest tweet, indented and smaller (great for those of you still using the default "include all @replies" in your settings!)
• Functionality: Hovering over a tweet shows default actions like star (save), reply, and retweet. Long URLs are automatically shortened if the tweet you are typing in exceeds the length limit. Twitter names get autocomplete launched by typing an @ in a tweet. Twitter bio text gets inserted into following/followers list.
• New Hotness: A new search field added to Twitter sidebar. Any searches performed from sidebar get saved and added to the sidebar (removable). A tiny smilie face is added to the Twitter icon of those people who are following you. When viewing a specific Twitter user, their social graph is inserted in the bio area. Notes can be added to any user's Twitter page. Local time is added if the user's time zone is in their profile. Map to user's location is inserted if location or geo coordinates are in their profile. Finally, the most awesome addition: Groups support in your followers/following tabs, you can add people to groups that show up in the Twitter sidebar.

Troy's Twitter script, in our opinion, is crazy awesome. If you find yourself in a memory crunch and prefer not to use a standalone Twitter application, and use Firefox, this script is a must-have. In fact, it's too bad that Greasemonkey scripts really only work well in Firefox, because it sure would be great to have all these features in every browser out there. To that end, you can try using Greasemetal (covered here) for Chrome, or GreaseKit for Safari on Mac OSX.

Update: There's a modified version of Troy's script that adds a link in the user profile to the Mailana user analysis app, Top Twitter Friends. This feature should be rolled into the main script in the next version.

The rest of us won’t know for sure until May, when it’s scheduled to launch. But if you want to catch a glimpse of how it will work, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard is hosting a webcast on Tuesday of an event with Wolfram and Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard. The sold-out event will be streamed live on the web at 3PM EST this coming Tuesday on this page

The program requires no installation. On running the exe file, the program will ask you to select a disk partition that you want to analyze. Select the drive and it will scan the drive present a Disk Map to you in real time. If you want, you can even open the files and folder or even delete files/folder from there itself and the Disk map will be automatically updated to reflect the changes. Files that are shown can also be filtered and you can customize the chart colours according to your taste. You can also configure it to show free space and unknown space.

The program is a freeware and very small in size. The interface is pretty good with some fancy animations. It works on Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista.

On running the program, it will quietly sit in the system tray icons. You can enable, disable or modify the settings by right clicking on the system tray icon. When this is enabled, you can simple rearrange your taskbar button or system tray or icons by dragging and dropping them according to your taste. You can also configure it to allows system tray icon shuffling on pressing a hotkey with the mouse. You can even use the middle mouse button to close a system tray button if you enable it from settings. You can even reorder tasks in the grouped button pop up menu in the same way.

If you run several applications at once, you might find this quite useful. I wonder why Windows didn’t;t have it in the first place. It is a freeware and works with Windows. It is very small and is also portable.

Features:

• Reorder your taskbar buttons by dragging and dropping them
• Reorder your tray icons in the same way
• Reorder tasks in a grouped button's popup menu in the same way
• Middle-click to close programs on your taskbar
• Tweak taskbar button grouping

• “deluge” – this plugin provides a breakdown of bit torrent information, when bit torrents are managed by Deluge. It can provide detailed and/or summary info.
• “email” - this plugin provides email account information, a count of unread emails and optionally details of the sender and subject of the emails.
• “exaile” - this plugin displays Exaile based song information, cover art, rating, progress etc
• “feedparser” - this plugin provides rss/atom feed information
• “forecast” - this plugin provides weather forecast information from weather.com for a given location. It includes weather, moon and wind images, detailing the weather.
• “googlecalendar” - this plugin provides Google Calendar event information.
• “null” - this plugin provides a means to use html, javascript and flash only content. By default is displays a javascript clock.
• “pidgin” - this plugin provides pidgin buddy information, telling you who is online and what their status is.
• “rhythmbox” - this plugin displays Rhythmbox based song information, cover art, rating, progress etc
• “shell” - this plugin provides a means to execute scripts and commands from within a template. Whatever can be done on the command line can be done here too.
• “tomboy” - this plugin provides information on Tomboy based notes, keeping most formatting from the notes intact in the output.

Note: The shell plugin will provide the equivalent functional to that used with exec/execi calls in Conky. The big difference however, is that it sources all the results from execs inside [] from within a template file, meaning that formatting of command line results is much simpler and neater. A lyrics scripts would work nicely in it for example

Current Limitations

Compiz wallpaper settings are not supported yet, however gnome, xfce, kde3, and kde4 are.

If tiling or simple background colours are used, the application will no handle these well.

I am attempting to find a better way to handle system wallpaper, independently from the window manager type, so that the only thing this application will be dependant on is gtk, webkit and python libraries. However this may be some time off. If you have issues with wallpapers and the fake transparency is not working, I suggest you use the –wallpaper option, as described in the guide.




Basic Install

Method 1: Using apt

1) Create the necessary list file for access to the repository by running one of these:

Jaunty Jackalope:

sudo wget -q http://www.kaivalagi.com/ubuntu/ppa/m-buck-gtk-desktop-info-jaunty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/m-buck-gtk-desktop-info-jaunty.list

Intrepid Ibex:

sudo wget -q http://www.kaivalagi.com/ubuntu/ppa/m-buck-gtk-desktop-info-intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/m-buck-gtk-desktop-info-intrepid.list

2) Add the gtk-desktop-info repository public key to your apt setup by running this:

wget -q http://www.kaivalagi.com/ubuntu/ppa/m-buck-gtk-desktop-info-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

3) Now that is done simply run the following to install

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gtk-desktop-info

Method 2: Using tar.gz file

Only go this route if you know what you're doing, you are not likely to get much help if you get stuck!

1) Go to https://launchpad.net/~m-buck/+archive/gtk-desktop-info and download the latest tar.gz files for gtk-desktop-info and gtk-desktop-info-data packages.

2) Extract all the contents of the tar.gz files to an appropriate folder of your choice, the default location is /usr/share/gtk-desktop-info

3) Copy the gtk-desktop-info and gtk-desktop-info.guide script files to /usr/bin, edit them to point to the folder you extracted everything to, and make them executable

There are several dependencies for the app to run, these are:

• Python Google GData API
• Python PyWebKitGtk libraries
• Python Imaging library
• Python Xlib Libraries

gtk-desktop-info.guide

gtk-desktop-info -h