eMusings

Offtakes on Web-related software, services 'n tips

Thu, 26 Jan 2012
by emus-admin
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New Google Privacy Policy and how it affects you

So Google new Privacy Policy effective March 1, 2012 is going to capture all your search behavior and use it for Google’s Greater Good. Big Deal! As a web user I find Google Search results not so great when looking for anything. Too much irrelevancy when time is short and user impatient :)

So I’ll let you into a a personal secret. Switch search engines. I have been using an amazing search engine called DuckDuckGo for the past year. And the quality of results is amazing.

What I like about DuckDuckGo is how easily you can add (and make it the default) it to your web browser. Even Google Chrome. The only browser where I had had problems adding it is Internet Explorer 9 Beta (on Windows 8 – my take on this new Windows version coming soon).Subsequent to adding this entry I decided to dig around the Net to see if I couldn’t hack the IE10 (yes, Windows 8 Developer Preview offers two versions of IE10 Beta). Unfortunately none of them worked. And then I decided to re-visit Microsoft’s IE Additions website. To discover that DuckDuckGo is now available as an add-in search engine option.

But on ye olde Internet Explorer 8 I added DuckDuckGo as a custom search engine.

DuckDuckGo is not just a search engine like Bing or Yahoo. It goes further (Hint: Click the MORE > Goodies link on its home page) and can do everything Google can without the clutter. I find it invaluable when looking for technology stuff, programming related results and more. I often wonder how I did without it until I did.

Mon, 24 Oct 2011
by emusings
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Free RAMDisk 3.5 updated

From my website statistics, I see that the most popular posts are “Free RAM Disk supports FAT, NTFS and disk size up to 3 GB” (951 views) and “Free RamDisk works on Windows 7” (48 views) — both about a wonderful free software that lets you reserve part of the installed system memory as a volatile RAM disk. Read the linked posts for more on what you can use the software for. The latest DataRAMDisk 3.5 version (3.0 MB MSI installer download) brings you

New Features:

  • Configuration option added to disable creation of a backup image file.
  • Image file is automatically compressed when saving to an NTFS file system. In addition to reducing the amount of disk space required, this also dramatically reduces image save/load times. (There is a configuration option to disable this if so desired.)

Along with some bug fixes:

  • Fixed uninstall issues under Windows 7.
  • Fixed start menu items not being deleted when uninstalled.
  • Improved multiple start reliability under Windows XP.

Fri, 21 Oct 2011
by emusings
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Watch Out! Your webcam may be watching you

About a day before this post a new security vulnerability has been detected in Adobe Flash player that causes Flash to switch on the webcam (if available). Of course you have to visit a website running the compromised code.

At risk are all versions of Flash released so far (Flash Player 11 is the latest build). And the exploit works (for now) on OS X Safari and Firefox. Windows browsers may be safe along with Google Chrome because of of a bug affecting opacity within CSS files. Wow! Imagine being saved by bad protocol.

Attackers exploits the bug by using a form of “clickjacking” where clicks on a seemingly innocuous webpage launch malicious functions. All you script kiddies have to do is hide the camera settings within an invisible iFrame. Once launched the clicks activating the webcam are hidden behind clicks in a simple Flash game!

But there’s a catch: for now the only page that allows an attack to work is hosted by Adobe “Websites Privacy Settings Panel” that controls the webcam and mic security settings. So all Adobe has to do is fix how this page works. Something its working to do immediately.

Tue, 4 Oct 2011
by emusings
2 Comments

PaleMoon browser is Firefox on speed

I’ve been meaning to write about the free Pale Moon browser. But didn’t get around to it until now. Yes, I still use Firefox. But it’s the Pale Moon edition that I use the most. It’s everything Firefox is as its built (re-compiled actually) from the same source code. But with significant differences.

Pale Moon is available in 32- and 64-bit versions. As well as a 32-bit Portable version. Actually 64-bit browsers are quite limited if you like visiting Flash-enabled sites. Installing the 64-bit Flash player on anything but Internet Explorer 64-bit is a nightmare that requires finding and copying files from the Windows System folder to your browser plugins folder. The hassle isn’t worth it.

Pale Moon has been “Specifically optimized for current processors. It makes use of enhanced instruction sets of newer CPUs” so if you insist on using a Pentium HT or an even older processor, I highly recommend Linux :) . It also supports “Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and Canvas, Firefox Extensions (add-ons) and Themes, Personas, CSS Downloadable Font support (including WOFF), HTML5 and advanced DOM support.” Resulting in “significant speed increases for scripting and page rendering compared to Firefox.”

Following the 80:20 rule (where most users standardize on core functions), Pale Moon re-introduces the status bar that was zapped from Firefox 4 in the regular Mozilla releases. And has done away with features few of us use or that aren’t supported by the Mozilla Firefox platform. Features like Accessibility (for visually or aurally impaired users). ActiveX as this doesn’t work on Firefox (included only for not clearly defined security reasons?). Also gone is Crash Reporter and Parental controls so if your children use your computer and you like to control what they do Pale Moon is not for you.

On a related note, isn’t it time you got your children their own computer? Because if they don’t learn responsible computing now, they never will! Mine have had access to their own system to use, modify or destroy since they were pre-teens.

Mon, 3 Oct 2011
by emusings
0 comments

Get Mozilla Firefox 7 NOW

If you are a Mozilla Firefox 6.0.2 user you may have seen an Upgrade to Version 7 prompt. Unless you are among the few (many?) who have disabled update notification because it breaks your plugins. My advice: Get Firefox 7 as soon as you can. Like NOW!

There’s lots of new stuff that makes the upgrade worthwhile. Better system resource (aka RAM) management for one. But this user found that now add-ons can be removed or added without needing to restart the browser. An ability to install extensions without a restart was the Google Chrome browser’s sole redeeming feature. But Mozilla Firefox has cought up now. And Firefox, unlike default Chrome, doesn’t ‘phone home’ with all kinds of data about your browsing habits.

Read the Firefox 7 Release Notes for the complete details including bugs fixed.

And if you are worried about sharing information online, consider installing the free Ghostery extension that blocks both web bugs and third-party cookies. It displays domain-specific services blocked in a overlay box. And is available for Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome browsers.

Another great extension to add to your Firefox is the multi-thread Down Them All download accelerator. It’s flexible enough to be used just for file downloads. But can also download images or the contents of all links on a web page. Plus controlling the download speed, the number of segments and the simultaneous download count too.