What's New

I have a hard time understanding the concept of sharing photos or videos with other people. While I do understand that it can be useful at times, say wedding photos or special moments, the increase in shared media is what I don't really get.

There must be something to it though if you consider how popular applications such as Snapchat, Instagram or the recently released Skype Qik (pronounced Quick) are.

Facebook rolled out Saved a couple of months ago both on the web interface and Facebook apps on Android and iOS mobile devices.

The problem is that it is not really advertised on the web and if you don't know where to look you may not have noticed that the feature exists at all which makes it likely that the feature went by unnoticed largely.

The Saved link in the sidebar on the web is for instance only displayed after you have saved at least one item.

If you have had time to use the preview build of Windows 10 on a machine you may have noticed the new start menu right away.

While not identical to the Windows 7 start menu, it is a compromise that brings the old (desktop programs) and the new (apps and live tiles) together.

What you may have noticed as well is that you cannot move or remove apps when you open the all apps listing. Here you find listed all installed apps and desktop programs.

There are two core options when it comes to reading pdf documents on your computer that are hosted on the Internet. The first is to read the document right in the browser, either by using the browser's native option to to so or by using a third-party plugin or extension that adds the capability to the program. Google Chrome and Firefox support this for example out of the box.

When you visit the popular video hosting site YouTube in the recent version of Firefox, Adobe Flash is no longer being used by default to stream videos to the device.

HTML5 video is being used instead and there is no option on the site itself to change that. You were able to toggle between HTML5 and Flash video until recently on http://www.youtube.com/html5 but that option is no longer available when you connect using the Firefox web browser (it is also not available in other browsers such as Google Chrome).

The author of the popular ad-blocking program for Windows AdMuncher announced some time ago that he would turn the commercial program into a free one in the near future.

That day has come and as of today, AdMucher is available as a free download to everyone.

Firefox users have plenty of options when it comes to controlling what websites may load when the browser connects to them. Some of the options can be configured right within the browser natively while others come in form of add-ons.

Windows users have plenty of options at their disposal when it comes to protecting their system. Some solutions are recommended to all users, the installation of a good anti-virus solution comes to mind.

Others may be considered optional but they may improve the security in a way that anti-virus software can't. A sandboxing application like Sandboxie enables you to run apps in protected environments so that they cannot manipulate the system.

Anti-exploit software such as EMET or Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit mitigate specific attacks against the computer.

Just like many other native Windows programs, the Windows Services Manager is a basic application that is easy to use but lacks advanced features.

While you can use it to manage services, for instance by disabling services or starting services manually, it lacks features such as an option to filter services by name.

Advanced Services Manager for Windows is a free program that improves the native application. Please note that it requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 4.5 and needs to be started with elevated privileges on the target system.

We live in a connected world and each one of us has many options when it comes to connecting others. While it is still possible to use a phone for that, other types of communication such as messaging apps or video chat have become more popular and are widely used by millions each day.

The majority of these solutions have in common that you need an account to use them. This is true for services like Skype or Google Hangouts for example, WhatsApp or the Facebook application.