New Microsoft.com website launches

By Martin Brinkmann on September 28, 2012 - TAGS: None

Microsoft back in June 2012 launched a preview of the upcoming Microsoft.com website which looked fundamentally different from the old homepage. Today, the preview design went live onmicrosoft.com. If you visit the website right now, you will notice a clean looking site with less clutter than before.

The responsive design adapts to any screen resolution you display the homepage in. This is a fluent process that happens while you increase or decrease the size of the browser window. The dominant element on the new homepage is the large banner that is advertising Microsoft products and services. Right now, it is teasing Bing it on, Skype and Visual Studio.

It is interesting to note that designs differ depending on which web browser you use to access the Microsoft homepage. The above homepage is displayed to Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 10 and Opera users only. Firefox and Internet Explorer 9 and previous users see an entirely different design.

The design not only looks different, it also is static and not responsive like the design displayed when you open the web page in IE10, Google Chrome or Opera.

The top of the page is nearly identical though in both designs. The search is displayed prominently here, as are the links to products, downloads, security and buy. The first difference is the distinction between home and work on the Firefox and IE9 page. While you can switch between work and home on the IE10 and Chrome design page as well, it won’t change the teaser banner at the top.

It is not really clear why Microsoft decided to launch the site with different designs based on browsers. It is because of technical restrictions, market research or something else?

What’s clear though is that the new Microsoft.com is definitely cleaner and easier to navigate than the old homepage. Have you been to the new homepage yet? Did you see one of the two designs above, or yet another one?

Automatically sort Firefox bookmarks

By Martin Brinkmann on September 28, 2012 - Tags:bookmarks, Firefox add-ons

Firefox bookmarks are not sorted automatically, which may be fine as long as you do not add more than a dozen or so bookmarks to a folder. When the count rises to hundreds, you may however appreciate an option to sort bookmarks in the browser to improve the accessibility.

Bookmarks by default are unsorted in Firefox, which means that new bookmarks are simply added to the end of a folder.  Back in 2007 I explained how you can change the sort order of bookmarks in Firefox manually. For that, you need to load about:config in the browser and edit – or create if it is not existing – the preference browser.bookmarks.sort.direction there. The preference is a string value, and options include setting it to natural to sort bookmarks alphabetically from A to Z, or ascending to sort them from Z to A.

The Firefox add-on Auto-Sort Bookmarks handles the sorting automatically. Once you have installed the extension in the browser you will notice that all bookmarks in Firefox are sorted alphabetically from A to Z. The extension puts folders at the top and bookmarks below the folders by default.

You will also notice that you can’t change the order by dragging and dropping bookmarks into other locations. While you can still move them into other folders, you can’t change a bookmark’s position in its current folder anymore.

The extension has no options dialog. What you can use however are about:config parameters to configure some of its functionality. The following parameters are added to Firefox when you install the extension:

• extensions.sortbookmarks.sortbar – set to true by default. Defines whether bookmarks in the bookmarks bar will be sorted as well.
• extensions.sortbookmarks.foldersbefore – set to true by default. Puts folders on top of bookmarks in the same structure.
• extensions.sortbookmarks.autosort – set to true by default. Defines whether bookmarks are automatically sorted or not.

If you are working with lots of bookmarks, you may want to use the manual or automatic sorting options available in the web browser to put order into chaos. Bookmarks stay sorted alphabetically even if you remove the extension from the browser again.

Visual BCD Editor: edit Windows boot manager items

By Martin Brinkmann on September 23, 2012 - Tags:boot, Windows software

Visual BCD Editor is a free program for Vista and newer versions of the Windows operating system that is enabling you to edit the boot menu of the system. The program displays a visual representation of the BcdStore containing the operating system’s boot configuration data. It displays the structure in a tree-like view on the left sidebar, and the selected item in detail on the right pane.

Here you for instance see all boot loaders currently available with their specific data types allowing you to analyze, verify and edit all boot related parameters. This includes the system root directory and other parameters like the preferred localy or application path for the system loader.

More interesting than that may be options to backup and restore the boot storage. Especially the backup option may come in handy, for instance before you start to install a second or third operation system on the computer as it allows you to restore the previous setting if things do not turn out the way they are supposed to be.

To backup the boot information you simply click on store > backup store or press f4. You can then later import the store again by selecting store > import store or by pressing f3. This is also recommended before you make changes to individual boot parameters.

You can furthermore use the program to repair the BCD or boot records, which is an automated process, create missing Windows loaders in case boot loaders are missing from the boot menu, or add Linux/Mac, Windows NT or Vista/7 boot loaders to the list.The program offers capabilities to remove entries from the boot loader as well. This can be useful if you have reinstalled Windows and notice that the old operating system is still listed in the boot manager.

The latest version of Visual BCD Editor requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0. It is fully compatible with all versions of Windows Vista and newer editions of the Windows operating system. You can alternatively check out Easy BCD, another popular boot editor for Vista and newer versions of Windows.

Browser history spam from view.atdmt.com and other networks

By Martin Brinkmann on September 24, 2012 - Tags:spam

Browser history spam refers to scripts messing up the current tabs history by polluting it with script related entries so that the web pages that have been visited before are moved down the queue or even completely removed from the history when the limit is reached. It is not really clear if that is done on purpose, or if those scripts have a programming flaw that is causing the behavior. As far as I know, this is only happening in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and not in other web browsers at all.

A few advertising services are mentioned regularly when it comes to this kind of spam: http://view.atdmt.com/ belonging to Atlas Solutions which is part of Microsoft,  http://apr.lijit.com which is part of Federated Media, and http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net which is Google’s advertising network. All three are legit networks, which suggests that individual apps are causing the issue.

by Jason Shuler

It should be a temporary issue, as these kind of ads should get reported quickly to the advertising networks and then removed as a consequence from the network’s inventory.

So how can you overcome the issue in the meantime? There are several options:

• Switch to a different web browser, e.g. Firefox, Google Chrome or Opera
• Use an ad blocker like Adblock IE
• Block the ad networks using the hosts file
• Try reloading the page with F5. Users have reported that this removes the ad entries from the history
• Add the networks to the list of restricted sites in Internet Explorer. This is done with a click on the settings button and the selection of Internet Options from the menu (in IE9, may be different in previous versions of Internet Explorer). Switch to the security tab, click on restricted sites, then the sites button, and add the networks that are causing the issue to the list there.

I’d probably start with the reloading option and keep using it unless you run into history spam fairly frequently.

uTorrent 3.3 alpha randomizes Peer-ID during sessions

By Martin Brinkmann on September 22, 2012 - Tags:File Sharing

It is almost certain that public – and likely private – Bittorrent traffic is monitored to a great extent by companies that specialize in these kind of operations. Information such as IP addresses, downloaded files, date and time, program name and version, and other information are likely recorded by these companies. Most users know that it is the IP address that makes them identifiable, and some take great care to anonymize their online presence because of this. There are several options to do just that, from using virtual private networks or proxy servers to seedboxes or open wireless networks.

Fingerprinting techniques may however reveal connections even if an IP address is changed regularly. Bittorrent clients are for instance sending out a peer-ID on connects which may or may not get randomized automatically by the application. The popular uTorrent application for instance up until now randomized the peer-ID on every start of the program, but not during sessions.

The peer-ID in this case may reveal links between seemingly unrelated user sessions. This is for instance the case if you have changed your IP during a session but not restarted the uTorrent client.

To avoid this from happening, Bittorrent INC. has added a new feature to the uTorrent 3.3 client that is randomizing the peer-ID for public torrent downloads during sessions.  The feature has been enabled in one of the latest alpha builds of the client to mitigate tracking using the ID.

Feature: don’t use a consistent peer-id (to mitigate tracking)

Other Bittorrent clients have had implemented similar measures for some time now. The popularuTorrent alternative qbittorrent for instance supports an anonymous mode feature that is taking anonymity a step further:

• peer-ID without client fingerprint
• user-agent will be empty
• trackers will only be used if they are using proxy servers
• listen sockets are closed
• incoming connections only accepted though Socks5 or I2P proxy

It is not really clear when the current stable version of uTorrent will be moved to version 3.3. Considering that it is currently in alpha it may take a while before stable users benefit from the protection.

You find a download link of the latest uTorrent alpha build on the official forum where updates are regularly posted. Keep in mind that it is an alpha and may be less stable because of it. (via Reddit)

Check if a website is banned from Adsense

By Martin Brinkmann on September 21, 2012 - TAGS: None

You need to be very careful when you buy websites or domains. You not only need to verify the claims made by the current owner of the website but also do extra research to find out more about the owner, domain and website. Some of the things that you may want to verify are for instance whether the content on a website is unique, if the traffic and revenue figures are correct, or whether the website has previously been manually or automatically punished by Google or another company.

If you do not see Adsense ads on the site but plan to run them once you have made the purchase, you also may want to check if that is possible or not. Adsense ads don’t display on sites that have been banned by Google, even if you add code to the site that is working on other websites.

But how do you find out about it without relying solely on the owner of the site? The Google Adsense Sandbox can help you in this regard. Just visit the website, enter the domain name or website url that you want to verify, pick a country, and click on preview ads.

If you see advertisement then the site is not banned by Google and can display Adsense ads after all. If you do not see ads, it is likely that Google has banned the site from the Adsense program. If that is the case, you could still try and reapply, but that is usually only successful if you fix the issue that got the site – or Adsense account – banned in first place. Knowing that a website has been banned from Adsense can give you additional leeway in the negotiations on the other hand.

You can use the tool to display other Adsense related information, like previewing ads to make sure the ads are appropriate for the content a site is offering.

It is a great tool all in all that buyers should use to quickly check if they can’t see Adsense ads on a particular domain or website they are interested in.

Internet Explorer security updates released [September 2012]

By Martin Brinkmann on September 21, 2012 - Tags:flash player

A 0-day vulnerability affecting all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer except version 10 on all supported Microsoft operating systems was revealed recently. Microsoft, aware of limited attacks targeting the vulnerability, promised to release an out of band patch for the vulnerability to protect Internet Explorer users from exploits making use of it.

Internet Explorer users have to visit a specially prepared website where the attack is carried out on. A successful attack may give the attacker the same user rights as the user working locally on the computer. It became known that different types of attacks were carried out of which some dropped a trojan on the system.

Internet Explorer users can mitigate the issue by installing Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit and configuring it to protect Internet Explorer from exploits. Other options that Microsoft suggested to customers was to change the security zone of the Internet and Intranet to high.

A Fix It has been released yesterday that patches the vulnerability on Windows systems, with the promise to release a full patch today.The promised patch has now been released by Microsoft. Windows users can either use the operating system’s built-in Windows Update tool to check for the patch and install it on the system, or download the patch from Microsoft’s Download Center instead once it is released there.

This security update resolves one publicly disclosed and four privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted webpage using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Internet Explorer 9 on Windows clients and Moderate for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Internet Explorer 9 on Windows servers. Internet Explorer 10 is not affected. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.

The PC needs to be restarted once the update has been downloaded and installed on the system to apply it fully. You find additional information about the security update on the Security Bulletinpage on Microsoft.com.

Microsoft in addition has released an update for the integrated Flash Player in Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 that is also fixing security vulnerabilities. The update is available via Windows Update or on Microsoft’s Download Center.

Here it is available for Windows Server 2012, the Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate, the Windows 8 RTM release, and the Windows 8 Release Preview.

Takeover [Game Saturday]

By Martin Brinkmann on September 22, 2012 - Tags:flash games, game saturday

Takeover is a free strategic Flash game in which you take control of a tribe out of three that the game makes available to you. The game plays on small regional maps on which you usually start with one or two buildings under your command. The main task here is to conquer all enemy buildings with troops that you need to recruit. The game features half a dozen or so different types of troops, from basic foot soldiers to archers and cavalry, that have all their strengths and weaknesses.

Three types of building are available that determine the troops that you can hire. Towns for instance only let you hire foot soldiers and archers, while fortresses add cavalry and siege engines to that. The third building, the magic tower, makes available specialized units and access to an ultimate spell like cataclysm or summoning an avatar to the battlefield.

All buildings can be upgraded twice which improves their hitpoints and enables the recruiting of veteran or elite units that are sturdier in battle.

Up to three smaller buildings can be added to each larger building which increase the gold earned per turn (mine), the mana (obelisk), or the maximum number of troops (farm). Farms are especially important as you usually start with enough supplies for two unit types, not enough to defend and conquer the entire region.

Each of the three factions has access to different unit types and spells that you can make use of. The Duchy of Westaria for instance has access to a heal spell, while the Crimson Horde to bloodlust which increases attack power for a short period of time.

You will also find ogres on some maps that protect gold chests which add 500 or so gold to your treasury which usually is a welcome addition early on in the game as you need lots of money to improve buildings and recruit troops.

You move around the troops via drag and drop on the map, which works well most of the time. You can even draw a rectangle around troops to command multiple units at once. What does not seem to work is retreating once a unit has engaged another in battle which is a bit unfortunate as it would add another strategic element to the game. You can however move wounded troops back into your buildings were they recover their wounds over time.

You gain experience when you win a battle, which in turn awards you edict points which you can invest into power ups of sort. You can make your spells more powerful or last longer, turn basic troops into sturdier ones or reduce the recruiting costs of units.

Takeover is a fun game for a while. It lacks a bit in the diversity department as most battles play out more or less the same. You start with little money, recruit one or two units, try to defeat an oger or conquer a building, and go from there. Some challenges, for instance maps without buildings would have made a nice addition to the game. Still, if you like strategy games then this one will keep you entertained for an hour or two.

Move Facebook friends to acquaintance list for less news feed posts

By Martin Brinkmann on September 21, 2012 - TAGS: None

If your Facebook news feed is filling up daily with posts from friends that you are not really that much in contact with, if at all, you may want to do something about it to give messages from friends that you care about more exposure in your feed. While you could do that manually by going through the list of friends on Facebook to move friends to the list of acquaintances or restricted friends, Facebook may help you out with the initial sorting.

All you need to do is visit the friend’s organizer page on Facebook to have the site go through your list of friends to suggest friends that you have not interacted with lately. You can move some, all or none of the friends to the list of acquaintances.

Acquaintances are still friends but posts made by them will show up rarely in your news feed. You can also post messages that only friends, but not acquaintances, see.

Facebook in the first step looks at people in smart lists, and then in a second step at all of your friends on the site. Smart lists are automatic lists of friends based on common parameters such as location, job or school.

Please note that Facebook only lists about 30 of your friends per page, and that you need to click on the include link at the bottom to display all suggestions on the page.

The built-in tool is a little known feature that Facebook makes available to all of its users. If you think that your news feed is flooded with posts by friends that you are not that interested in, you may want to give it a try to reduce the number of news items that you have to browse through on the social networking site. This has the added benefit that it becomes less likely that you will miss an important update by a friend you are interested in or in contact with.

You can manually move friends to the list of acquaintances or restricted users with a click on the friends symbol on the friend’s profile page and the selection of add to another list from the context menu. (found at Caschy)

Software Catalogs appear in Windows Store

By Martin Brinkmann on September 21, 2012 - Tags:downloads, windows store

Up until now Windows Store offered a straightforward experience. The store front displays a number of categories that you could click on to be taken to app listings. Here you’d then see desktop and Windows Store apps offered in the store. While Windows Store has its issues, it works reasonably well most of the time.

If you have browsed the new apps listing recently you may have noticed that software catalogs, or store inside a store apps, have made their appearance on Windows Store.

Intel’s AppUP Center is an an app that makes available the same functionality as the website and desktop program the service has been offered on for the last couple of years. The Windows Store app lists free and paid programs that Windows 8 users can download to their PC. You will find several identical offerings in Windows Store, with games like Fruit Ninja being offered both in the Intel sub-store and the main Windows Store. There is a difference though; the Intel store redirects you to the Intel AppUp website where the apps are downloaded as program executables.

Why that is important? Windows Store apps get installed automatically, and when updates become available, the updates too. The programs offered in the Intel store app on the other hand are desktop programs that work on all recent versions of Windows. Payments too are not handled via Windows Store but using Intel’s own payment system integrated into the apps.

Intel is not the only company that has added a sub-store of sorts to Windows Store. The major software download portal Softonic too has added its own app to the store that uses a very similar system. The app highlights applications when installed and launched, some with reviews, others without, that all lead to the Softonic website where the programs can be purchased or downloaded, depending on whether they are commercial or freely available.

Both catalog apps highlight desktop apps exclusively. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely confusing at first, especially if you stumble onto dupes here. Users need to be aware that these store fronts act more or less independent from Windows Store. While they are available and installed in the store, that’s really the only connection there is.

It is likely that other download portals will push their apps to the store as well, and Microsoft should consider adding a separate category for these kind of apps to avoid confusion and intermixing with regular store apps.

The main question though is if anyone needs those store in a store apps. Only time will tell, but considering that they do not use the store ecosystem at all for downloading, updating and payments, and the fact that these stores are only a click away on the web, one has to ask whether there will be demand for these kind of apps.

Can’t decide what to watch? Try Pick Me for Windows

By Martin Brinkmann on September 20, 2012 - Tags:mp3, multimedia, Portable software, Video,Windows software

So you have got a hard drive full of movies, videos, music and all that good stuff and can’t really decided what you want to watch or listen to because there is simply too much stuff available on that drive? Instead of browsing the folders manually for some time until you find something that sounds interesting enough to watch, listen to, view or read, you can alternatively use Pick Me, a free program for the Windows operating system for the decision making process.

All you need to do is download the program from the Donation Coder forum, unpack it on your computer once the 60K file has been downloaded and start it afterwards. There is only four steps here that you need to complete.

• Select the source directory. Keep in mind that all subfolders are automatically processed as well.
• Select the file extensions that you want the program to include in the selection process. The program supports music, video, text, compressed and image file formats. You can even add your own to the list or remove some that you do not want included.
• Change the number of results if you do not want ten results to be displayed to you. You can for instance change it to 1 to get only one result.
• Click on the pick me button to create the list of random results.

The program scans all matching files in the folder and displays a list of results on the next page. A double-click opens Windows Explorer with the file selected automatically, so that you can start it with a tap on return or another double-click.

An option to automatically play the file directly on the system would have been nice, but is unfortunately missing. The purpose of the select all button is not really clear as well, as it does not seem possible to do something with multiple selected items. A double-click for instance opens only the selected file, and there is no right-click option or button to load all files in a playlist.

The program is ideal for media that you do not need to watch in a certain order. It is not really working for tv series or audiobooks because of that, but works really well for movies, music, images and documents.

Automatically use HTML5 players on Amazon, YouTube and Vimeo in Chrome

By Martin Brinkmann on September 20, 2012 - Tags:Amazon, html5, Youtube

While there are still many media sites on the Internet that only provide access to their contents via a Flash-based player, there are some that make their contents available both in a Flash version and a HTML5 version. Google’s video hosting platform YouTube for instance offers a HTML5 Beta option for some time now that users can join to watch the majority of videos on the site using a HTML5 player.

Why you’d want to use the HTML5 player and not the Flash-based player? The two core reasons for that are security and stability. Flash vulnerabilities are common and even if you are running Google Chrome with its auto-updating native Flash technology, you can still be vulnerable for the time it takes Google to implement the updates to fix the vulnerability.  And Flash Player is also known for causing all kinds of stability issues, including freezes or even crashes of the browser.

It is certainly not the case that all users are experiencing those issues, but if you do, you probably would like to resolve those issues for a better web browsing experience.

If you use Flash exclusively on YouTube, Amazon or Vimeo, you may want to take a look at theHTML5ify extension for the web browser as it is automatically enabling the HTML5 player on those sites. You can then go ahead and disable Flash in Chrome, by loading chrome://plugins and clicking on disable next to the Flash Player listing there. While you are there, make sure to disable all the other plugins that you may see there as the majority of them are likely not needed at all.

You may receive warning messages that you need Adobe Flash Player to play the contents. Amazon for instance displays those. You can however still click on the play button next to mp3 songs to preview them using HTML5 on the site without issues.

Please note that some YouTube videos won’t work. This seems to be especially true for videos that have been uploaded recently to the site as conversions may take a while before they are completed.

HTML5ify works really well otherwise. If you only use one or multiple of the supported sites you can use it to replace Flash in Google Chrome. If you use more sites then this is unfortunately not really a solution. The author should consider adding support for popular media sites to improve the reach of the extension.

Opera 7.5 Mini for Android introduces new social Smart Page

By Martin Brinkmann on September 20, 2012 - TAGS: None

If you are not using Google Chrome as your browser on your Android smartphone you may have at least looked at Opera’s offerings for the operating system. According to the statistics on Google Play, the browser has been installed on at least 10 million devices. Opera Mini 7.5 has just been released for Android phones running Android version 1.5 or higher introducing a new Smart Page and other features in the version.

You are probably wondering why Opera is making available two different browser versions, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile. The main difference is how pages are rendered using the browser. Opera Mini uses Opera servers to render pages while Opera Mobile renders pages on the smartphone directly. This makes Opera Mini ideal if a smartphone’s hardware is not the fastest as it removes the time it takes before the pages are displayed on the screen.

Back to Opera Mini 7.5. Smart Page is a new social tab in the browser that taps right into popular social networking sites to keep you updated with the latest activities. The browser supports Facebook, Twitter and vKontakte, and once you have signed in on the browser you receive the latest updates right on the page without having to visit the sites directly.

Another addition is the My News section which displays news from a variety of sources based on your browsing habits or your preferences. Opera Mini furthermore displays link suggestions on the start page based “on the region your Android phone is located” in.

The speed dial feature is just a tab away in the browser, and since data gets compressed when you use Opera Mini, you benefit from faster browsing and reduced bandwidth usage, which is especially helpful for people who pay per Megabyte or with a plan that is only providing them with a low amount of free bandwidth per month.

Opera Mini 7.5 is available for download on Google Play.

Here is a video by Opera Software highlighting the new features of Opera Mini’s Smart Page feature.