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Review your Internet Security

United States Computer Emergency Research team, US-CERT, has issued a warning about a serious vulnerability of all the popular Browsers like IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari etc. They have warned about an an attack that inserts itself in the middle of a user’s interaction with a Web page through clicking buttons. As soon as a person clicks on a link on a web page, his browser can perform any arbitrary function, including redirecting the browser to a third-party site, and a totally unwanted function may get performed.

This is called ClickJacking

According to one of the reports, Clickjacking gives an attacker the ability to trick a user into clicking on something only barely or momentarily noticeable. Therefore, if a user clicks on a web page, they may actually be clicking on content from another page. A separate report indicates that this flaw affects most web browsers and that no fix is available, but that disabling browser scripting and plug-ins may help mitigate some of the risks.

And the worst part is that not only the malicious web pages, any legit site like Newsweek, Digg or BBC may carry this to you. The exact magnitude of risks is yet to come out, but is clear that present browsers are incapable of avoiding it.

In such a situation you can only hope to not come across it, while browsing.

So, right now, there are four options for you.

1. Stop Browsing the Internet, I know you can’t do it.
2. Suspend your browsing and wait till these browsers get updated, this is also difficult.
3. Start using Firefox, and install NoScript firefox plugin., You may not like it either, because this will make many of the sites you visit to appear as broken.
4. Pray, that you do not fall victim to the attack.

I think the only option is the last one.

Online Malware Detection - What it is ?

Internet is spreading fast. And with this, the online threats to your privacy and security are increasing day-by-day. Hundreds and thousands of innocent users are made victims by these spyware and malware programs every day. There is a continuous race between malware developers and security experts and vendors to stay ahead. HiJackThis, is a tool in the hands of a user, to detect malware and remove it from their system.

But Beware. HijackThis is not a tool, which is easy to use. Its use requires you to be able to fully understand and interpret its results and logs. Thankfully, there are lots of forums and platforms, where you can post the log files of HiJackThis, and the volunteers may help you after going through your logs.

HijackThis, sometimes abbreviated HJT, is a freeware spyware-removal tool for Microsoft Windows originally created by Merijn Bellekom, and later sold to Trend Micro. The program is notable for taking a heuristic approach to detecting malware - rather than relying on a database of known spyware, it quickly scans a user’s computer, creates a list of differences from a known spyware-free environment and allows the user to decide what from the list needs to be removed. HijackThis is used primarily for diagnosis of spyware, as blind use of its removal facilities can cause significant software damage to a computer.

Use HijackThis can generate a plain text logfile detailing all entries it finds, and most entries can be removed or disabled by HijackThis. Inexperienced users are often advised to exercise caution, or to seek help when using the latter option[1], as HijackThis does not discriminate between legitimate and unwanted items, with the exception of a small whitelist of legitimate entries — thus allowing a user to unintentionally prevent important programs from running, which may cause their system or its peripherals to stop working. HijackThis will, however, attempt to create backups of the files and registry entries it removes, which can be used to restore the system in the event of a mistake.

Visit HiJackThis Download

Accidental file deletion.

This happens with everybody, with you, with me, with that computer geek, or this average Joe.

You delete a file, thinking that it is just cluttering your hard dick, only to find later after a week, that it contained the all important information, you require today. BANG.

There may be other ways also to lost your files and documents. A hard disk corruption, a rogue virus or worm or even a well thought out partitioning or formatting a disk drive. You always think about that lost file.

But there are programs and software available, which can perform data recovery of that old file. There are many of those, and it will be difficult for you to choose the best one among them. Among them, there is at least one software, which delivers exactly what it promises.

Welcome to Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software.

This is a magical piece of file recovery software from renowned Steller Information Systems, which is a complete data recovery solution that helps you to search, locate and recover your lost, missing, inaccessible or deleted data. It is powered by ‘Raw File Recovery’ feature that recognizes & recovers more than 300 file types including documents, spreadsheets, web content & images.

The key features include…

• Advance Search: Helps recover selected files and folders
• RAW File Recovery: Recover more than 300 file types in case of severe file system corruption
• Enhanced Photo Recovery: Recover RAW camera format files.
• Compressed FS Recovery: Recover data from compressed NTFS file system
• Create Image of the Media: Recover files from storage media having lot of bad sectors
• File Preview: View the file contents and get an overview about the recovery results.
• Improved User Interface : It makes data recovery easier without requiring any technical knowledge. The interface includes options such as Find File, File Mask and File Filter to help you search, view or recover any specific file type.
• Multiple Recovery Options: Recover large volume of data as compressed file or to a FTP server.
• Live Update: Receive latest product enhancements and keep your application updated
• Save Scan: So that you are able to resumes recovery at a later stage

Yet another feature is that it is a flexible tool. If you want to recover a file type, which is not included in the standard list, you can add that to it using a wizard. It is meant for the Windows platform and works on all versions including Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista in all of the file systems like FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system.

You can download a demo version from their site, but the full version with the standard features will cost you $99 USD.

But this will an investment worth making, if you store sensitive data on your computer.

This review was done on request, but not on paid basis. We agreed to review the product on Webtools & Tips, because of the merits of the product. If you also want to showcase your product on Webtools & Tips, feel free to contact us.

Yes it is TRUE.

Now you can earn money by displaying contextual ads on your pdf documents. It has been made possible by a combined effort of Adobe with Yahoo. You have to use a special plugin "Ads for pdf" of Adobe PDF Acrobat 9, which will allow you to serve context based ads related to your content, when any user reads your pdf document in his PC. If he clicks on these ads, then a browser window opens and he is taken to the advertisers website. The advertisers pays money, and you are given a share of that.

Ads for Adobe PDF is a new opt-in service that enables publishers to monetize their PDF content through advertising. The advertising service, powered by Yahoo!, automatically matches and displays dynamic, contextual ads in Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat when a user views the PDF. Publishers that sign up to participate in this program are eligible to be paid for valid clicks on ads. In this unique advertising relationship, Yahoo! helps connect advertisers from its extensive network of online advertisers with publishers that are distributing content through Adobe PDFs. Yahoo! will incorporate this new advertising inventory into its portfolio of online advertising opportunities.

There are a total of 10 different ad sizes and a variety of ad color palettes, including a combination of border, background and text colors. The Ad formats are similar to hugely popular Adsense ads.

This will surely pave a new income stream for offline publishers and content developers.

Visit Ads for pdf

Regular Internet Users are today bombarded with boat-laods of Emails each day, and it sometimes becomes difficult to search for the important emails.

Last week Microsoft Office Labs announced a new MS Outlook addon, which  assigns priorities from 0 to 3, to the arriving emails. This priorities is assigned based upon your preferences. There seems to be many factors taken into consideration while deciding the priorities, including the name of the sender, whether the receiver is added in ‘To, or ‘CC’ or BCC’. You can also change or assign the priorities.

Email Prioritizer also has a DO NOT DISTURB feature, which allows you to restrict receiving new emails for a specifies time from 10 minutes to 4 hours.

The product is still in development stage, and Microsoft is collecting User Data to further improve upon it. 

Email Prioritizer is a plug-in for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (running on Exchange Server) that helps you manage email overload. This concept test provides a “do not disturb” button that temporarily pauses new email arrival, and prioritizes email with a 0-3 star rating system. We hope this prototype helps you focus on the emails that are most important to you.

Download Email Prioritizer

If you are on the lookout for a trusted source for advice or review of a computer item, then ComputerShopper.com is a useful website. Today it is one of the largest tech review sites on the web with daily reviews and blog entries about the latest entries in the computer industry. If you do a modest search, you will notice that there are lots of computer review sites on the Internet. The prime purpose of these sites to sell computers and related items, and make money by earning commissions on these sales. The review lets the viewer understand the intricacies of the product and allows him to compare its features and prices vis-a-vis other similar offerings in the market. This seems to the way to sell computers online and ComputerShopper.com seems no different from this model.

But a visit to them quickly tells that something is different here.

The reviews are in-depth. They are neatly arranged and categorized. There are multiple ways to search for a review on your desired product. The site structure is neat with easy navigation. And the best part is that they are not restricted to computers only. Here you can find the tech reviews on every thing techie, right from Computers to peripherals to Cellphones to GPS tools to Software to MP3 players and even HDTV and home theatre systems.

They seems to be having a special association with Dell Computers. Here you can find special mention of Dell Laptops including Dell XPS m1330. For the benefit of newbies, they have an extensive pool of How-To and Buying Guides, which are real helpful even for some of computer nerds. Like a true professional site, they are running a decently updated blog, where they discuss the latest trends and new products and also run a forum, with an active user participation.

Over a decent useful tech review site, which you may consider to visit, if you are seriously looking to buy online something techie.

If you are a music buff, and often search Internet for mp3, mp4 music clips, video for download, then you will surely love to have MP3Videoraptor on your desktop. This great tool is provided by RapidSolution Software AG, who are the leader in this field.

What is MP3Videoraptor: It is basically a music search engine, which allows you to search for your favorite music or video, by the name of artist or album, and allows you to download the same in your hard disk. Thus you can make a personalized album of your favorite music very easily. It’s an Internet media search program that records music and video from a number of websites, including, Last.fm, YouTube, and SoundClick. It also has a ringtone maker to generate ringtones for your cell phone, an ID3 tag editor, and a built-in CD burner.

[We have arranged a few license keys of MP3Videoraptor for our readers. To avail a FREE license key, just subscriber to our Email feed, and submit your request in the comments section below. Please do it fast, because we only have 10 keys left].

But isn’t it illegal: No, it’s not. Because when you search for a particular music, they actually search for the that music on the many Web 2.0 webradio sites and play that file in the background. While playing, they record it and then serve you to download. This way, you are not copying something and infringing upon somebody’s copyrights, but instead you are considered to be recording the personalized music of your own, and hence legal.

What are its feature:

• Music and Video Search: Just type the name of your favorite artists or album and start search. It is incredibly fast to search what you want. You can select the media type, whether music or video. You can also just click on the Artists button which brings up a list of genres and suggested artists. Once the list comes up, just click on any of the search results to start the download process.
• Autoload: If you want to avoid clicking and downloading each file individually, then it is ideal for you. It makes full use of your Internet bandwidth to quickly build your media library by downloading the selected files one by one on its own. If you are a bit worried about your download bills from your ISP, then you can configure the number of files you wanna download, default is a huge..100.
• Surf & Catch: This Tab lists links to many sites like Pandora, Last.fm, MySpace, and YouTube. When you click on them, they are opened in your Internet Browser. As you surf these sites and play some file, that file is automatically downloaded onto your hard-disk. This feature also has links to some adult sites, so parents are advised to use the parental control feature here.
• Built-in Player: Although it is just a basic media player, but still quite useful with all the basic features included.
• CD Burner: It makes it a complete tool.
• Ringtone Maker: This is the bonus feature. With the downloaded mp3 file, you can make cool ringtones for your mobile phones with just one click of your mouse button. You can download these to your mobile phones through WAP or through your hard disk.

The best part, which I liked about mp3videoraptor was the excellent quality of its downloads. It is really outstanding.

[This review was done on request. If you also want to showcase your products / services on Webtools and Tips, please do not hesitate to contact us]