Software – Page 11

March 21, 2010April 2, 2010

Windows “AntiSpyware” 2009

Gina Trapani wrote up a great article on the infamous Antispyware 2009 and how to get rid of it. This software pretends to be legitimate antivirus software, but is itself a virus. There are many variants of the software and I wrote about one of them called Antivirus XP 2008.

How to Remove XP AntiSpyware by Gina Trapani

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with a malware-laden PC, but my long streak of luck ran out this weekend when a family friend–who describes himself as computer illiterate–called. “Every time I try to do anything on the computer,” he told me, “I get a message saying it’s infected, and I have to pay $69 to clean it, but I tried to do that and I couldn’t.” He couldn’t even navigate to the Mozilla site to download Firefox; Internet Explorer was completely hijacked.

Read the rest of How to Remove XP AntiSpyware

March 21, 2010

Move iTunes from PC to Mac

As of iTunes 9, it is pretty simple to move the iTunes library from one computer to another, even between Windows and Macs. These instructions detail a move from a PC to a Mac.

Update to latest version of iTunes on both systems. In Windows: open iTunes, then Help -> Check For Updates. On Mac: open System Preferences then Software Update.
In Windows: open iTunes’ preferences (Edit -> Preferences) and click the Advanced tab. Check both Keep iTunes Media folder organized and Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library. These settings keep all your media files in the main iTunes Media folder, which you will later copy to your Mac.
In Windows iTunes: Choose File -> Library -> Organize Library. Check Consolidate Files, then click OK. This moves any files that weren’t in the right folder and makes sure that the library file has the correct pointers to these files’ locations. If the Upgrade To iTunes Media Organization option is not dimmed, check this too; it sorts your files in separate sub-folders.
Copy the iTunes folder (in Windows 7 located in username\My Music\iTunes, in Windows XP located in Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes). You can copy by sharing the folder over the network, copying the folder to an external drive, or by pulling the Windows computer’s hard drive and attaching it to the Mac by a USB adapter (see picture). Pulling the drive is usually the fastest method if you have a huge library. Copy the iTunes folder to the Music folder in your user folder on the Mac. If there is already an iTunes folder, it means you’ve launched iTunes at least once on the Mac. If there’s no music there, you can just replace the folder. However, if you’ve already added music, you won’t be able to merge the libraries; in the iTunes Media folder, found in the iTunes folder, move the Music folder to your desktop and add those files into iTunes after you’ve completed this process. (Note that you’ll lose any playlists and play counts associated with those files. Alternatively, you can add the music from the PC to Mac’s iTunes by dragging it into iTunes, thereby losing the playlists etc of the PC’s music.)

March 12, 2010March 12, 2010

Learn Guitar or Piano with GarageBand

Music, Easily Learned with a Computer

A recent Washington D.C. client wanted to learn how to play guitar and asked what the best software was for the job. The clear winner here is GarageBand on Mac OSX. It is part of iLife ’09 and included with all new Apple computers. GarageBand has a series of free lessons for guitar and keyboard/piano that go through all the basics (e.g., chords, strumming, etc.). After completing each lesson, you can play along with a song related to what you learned. You can easily repeat sections or slow down the music if you are having trouble playing at the pace of the teacher. If you’re like me an not particularly good, you can save yourself the embarrassment of practicing a chord change twenty times in front of a real teacher.

Learn from the Artist

There are also Artist Lessons, costing $4.99 each to learn a song directly from the artist who wrote it. There are only 20 Artist Lessons currently available, but these include songs from Sting, Rush, Ben Folds, John Legend and many other popular names.

GarageBand Artist Lessons

March 2, 2010

Create Panoramas with Hugin

Hugin is free open source software for creating panoramas from a series of photos. It is not terribly difficult to use, but you should follow one of the tutorials such as the Lifehacker Hugin tutorial. This explains how to set control points between photos in order for Hugin to know where things line up.

There are downloads for Windows, Mac, and various flavors of Linux. For simplicity, download from the pre-compiled versions.

January 19, 2010January 20, 2010

Don’t Use Internet Explorer

I used to tell people that the newest Internet Explorer 8 was safe enough. But recent events have changed my mind. The Chinese attacks on Google over Christmas were perpetrated using a vulnerability that exists in all versions of Internet Explorer. Microsoft still hasn’t fixed this.

Because of security concerns, both the German and French governments have officially recommended that people not use Internet Explorer. One could attribute this to the EU’s dislike of Microsoft, but Mircrosoft has a more fundamental problem.

Closed Source

Many people say that Internet Explorer isn’t as safe because it has the largest market share (over 60%). Hackers want to attack the largest market they can. But I think that the real problem is that Internet Explorer is written with closed source code.

Unlike the Gecko engine powering Firefox or the Webkit engine powering Chrome and Safari, Internet Explorer has its own broswer engine that is closed source. This means that people can not look at how it is written. While you might initially think that this makes Internet Explorer more protected, it’s actually the opposite. Open source code can be reviewed and improved by the entire development community. Once a problem is seen, any developer can suggest a solution. The response time of Firefox for fixing exploits is typically days compared to Internet Explorer taking weeks or months.

Other Browsers

The fastest browsers use Webkit as their engine. These include Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browsers.

Mozilla Firefox is slower but remains the current leader among alternative browsers, largely due to its popular add-ons. Google is working on growing out its extensions to compete with Firefox add-ons.

Give one or more of these browsers a try.