What's New

Mozilla changed the way the Firefox browser handles single word queries that are typed in the browser's address bar recently.

Firefox attempted to load a local host when you entered something like 867-5309 in the address bar of the browser previously.

The change redirects most entries that you type to the default search engine while doing a look-up in the background.

Opera Mini is a highly popular web browser that is available for various operating systems including Android. The initial release of the web browser dates back to 2005 and Opera has been working on it ever since.

The company released a beta version of a redesigned Opera Mini browser today on Google Play. The new version is available for download for all users and requires at least Android 2.3.

This is the third part of a mini series about privacy on the Internet. The other parts are linked below.

Last time we looked at what websites and sites on the Internet know about you when you connect to them. This time we are expanding on that and look at what you may reveal about your device and yourself if you are using private browsing mode.

Private browsing, Google calls this Incognito Mode, blocks information from being recorded locally.

One of the first things that I do after installing Windows on a PC that I plan to use or configure for someone that I like is to install VLC Media Player or SMPlayer to cover all media playing needs.

Windows Media Player is not really a bad program but it is very limited in what it can play and what it does not support. While it plays mp4 fine for example it does not know what to do with file types such as mkv, flac or flv.

Mkv is a popular format and flac is the format of choice for many audiophiles who dislike mp3 and its compression.

Piriform, the company behind the popular CCleaner program for Windows and Android, released a preview version of CCleaner 5.0 recently that showcased the new interface of the application.

Today, the company released the final version of CCleaner and along with it all the other changes that it did not include in the interface demo version of the application.

Several browsers based on Chromium came out shortly after Google released its Chrome web browser. Most had in common that they modified or removed privacy related information or modules.

Comodo Dragon was one of the browsers and while it did indeed remove privacy related information in the port, it did became clear fast that development of the browser was lagging behind in a serious way.

Selecting a random file in Windows Explorer / File Explorer can be useful. Maybe you want to play a random song or video stored in a folder full of them, set a new wallpaper or play one of the games stored in a folder.

While you can use third-party software for that, most media players come with options to randomize playback for instance, you may like a solution embedded in Windows Explorer as well.

Update:  It appears that the release is still an alpha for now. What has been added recently are the source codes of the release. It is not clear yet when the final release will be available.

7-Zip has been my archiving program of choice until recently. The main issue that I had with it was that its development was slow paced and that support for new archive formats such as RAR5 was not integrated as a result.

Web browser plugins are being used by many Internet users even though their use is in decline. Most companies that produce browsers try to get away from the plugin architecture, or at least the old one that has been in use since the Netscape days.

Reasons for doing so are security, stability and support for mobile devices.

Google announced in 2013 that it will start to block old NPAPI plugins in the Chrome browser eventually and started in January 2014 to reduce the impact that plugins have in the browser.

One of the things that I do all the time when I leave a computer I'm working on in an environment where others may access it is lock it or boot it down.

You might be working for a company that has a company policy to do so, locking down Windows is easily done by using the shortcut Windows-l which locks it immediately. This locks the PC and displays a login prompt instead which requires you to enter the user account password or switch to another user to use the computer.

Ever since the first webcams hit the market webcam hacking has been a topic. Hacks use security vulnerabilities, bad designs or carelessness to gain access to a cam's feed over a network or the Internet.

Webcam feeds of thousands of users were made available recently on a website on the Internet and this is just one public incident. It is likely that the majority of hacks don't get publicity at all.

There are counter-measures against hacks. From taping over the cam and microphone to not connecting it in first place.

If you want to know more about the connections that your operating system and the programs running on it makes, you have to look beyond what Windows itself is offering.

While you can use native tools to get some information, they are not easy to use and often not as useful as third-party tools that provide better information.

TCP Monitor Plus is a portable lightweight network monitor for Windows.

The program displays the various modules that it makes available in a tab row at the top.

When you play games in your web browser, one of the following four technologies is being used usually: Adobe Flash, Java, Unity or HMTL5.

There are exceptions to the rule but the majority relies on at least one of the technologies listed above. When it comes to Unity, it is necessary to install the Unity Web Player add-on on the system which web browsers pick up as a plugin.

DiskBoss refers to a line of hard drive management tools. This review looks at the freeware version of DiskBoss which is limited in comparison to the paid versions. More about that later.

After you have installed DiskBoss on your Windows machine and started it up, you get a list of all drives connected to the system.

Each drive is displayed with its letter and name, type, file system, total, used and free space, its status, and a quick tools link

Firefox users have several options when it comes to running searches. They can type a query in the browser's address bar, use the default search field, a search engine on a new tab page or open a search engine directly in the browser to use it.

Mozilla announced some major changes to the search component in Firefox. Not only did the organization decide to change from Google as the default global search engine to regional search engines, it also added the DuckDuckGo search engine as a default option to the browser.