Disable AutoRun to Stop 50% of Windows Malware Threats

Disable AutoRun to Stop 50% of Windows Malware Threats

According to a biannual Security Intelligence Report from Microsoft, AutoRun—the feature in Windows that automatically executes files when you plug in a USB or connect to a network—accounts for almost half of all malware infections. That's really damn high.

To be clear, these are infections that don't require any user-input from you, so it's kind of not your fault that your computer gets infected. By turning off AutoRun, you'll add an extra step to certain tasks, but it's worth it to cut down on malware 50%.

What's also interesting in this report is that Windows XP SP3 systems get infected about ten times as much as Windows 7 SP1 64-bit systems, and six times as much vs. 32-bit Windows 7 systems. That alone is one reason why you might want to upgrade your parents' machines to Windows 7.

The easiest way to disable AutoRun is to download a free utility like Disable AutoRun or previously mentioned Panda USB Vaccine, run it, and call it a day (these apps are made specifically to turn off AutoRun). On the other hand, if you're comfortable with editing the registry, here's a quick guide to doing it yourself.

Windows XP Has 10-Times The Infection Rate Of Windows 7 | Ghacks

Disable AutoRun to Stop 50% of Windows Malware Threats

Apps for Gardeners and Landscapers

Digital Tools for the Sheds of Persnickety Gardeners

By BOB TEDESCHI

   

          The Landscaper's Companion app.

                                                              The Gardening How-To app.

Scan through user reviews of the many gardening-related apps and you start to get a feel for this group’s exacting standards and their impatience with dilettantes. Software engineers who create these apps may know a good market when they see one, but judging from the reviews, many of them apparently know little about gardening.

Fortunately, a few apps for both Android and Apple users have generated positive reviews and the even better news is that two of the better ones are free.

The Gardening Guide from Mother Earth News (free on Apple and on Android, as Garden Guide), Gardening How-To (free on iPad and Android) and Landscaper’s Companion — Gardening Reference Guide ($6 on iPad and iPhone, $5 on Android) are all worth downloading.

The Landscaper’s Companion wasn’t created by a gardener, but the app’s developer, Dave Stevenson, and his researchers have landscaping and gardening experience with botanical gardens and the United States Department of Agriculture, among others.

The companion is an encyclopedia of sorts, with more than 20,000 plants and vegetables listed. You can browse an alphabetized index that is separated into 16 categories, including houseplants and vegetables, for instance, or you can search by name.

The search feature is nicely designed. You can enter “cucurbita pepo” or “zucchini” or “summer squash” and the software will find the same vegetable.

Each plant page includes a profile with the plant’s zone, growth rate, water and sun requirements, color and typical height and width. The descriptions are basic but include important elements — like whether the plant has thorns, for instance — that would help a gardener prepare for a planting.

You can also narrow the search criteria if you specify the zone, height or color of a plant, among other features. If you live in an area with deer, you can also filter results to show only plants that are deer-resistant.

On each plant page you can leave notes for yourself, e-mail the description or add photos of your own. In another section of the app, you can review only those plants that you marked as favorites, or review every note you have recorded.

Not every feature of the app is built with this same attention to detail.

You could spend hours perusing the 14,000 photos in the “Plant Images” section, for instance. Unfortunately, some of that time would be wasted, since you can sort the images to include only plants in your particular zone, but you can’t sort in other meaningful ways.

If you could filter out all but the plants that needed full sun, for instance, or those with red flowers, the images would be more useful.

While the Landscaper’s Companion is encyclopedic, it’s not highly useful as a how-to guide. On that front, the Mother Earth News Gardening Guide is considerably more helpful, at least for vegetable gardeners.

The app makes good use of archival materials from Mother Earth News, an environmental conservation magazine that publishes organic gardening tips, among other pieces.

The guide includes tutorials on growing about 20 different types of crops, like carrots and tomatoes, and the advice is excellent.

The carrot tutorial, for instance, offers overviews on the different varieties, how to plant them, when to harvest and how to generate and collect seeds. The “Growing Tips” section includes a range of information that will appeal to serious and more casual vegetable gardeners alike. (Carrots grow best in soil with a pH balance of 5.8 to 7.0, it says, then adds: “Before pulling carrots, use a digging fork to loosen the soil just outside the row.”)

The techniques section is equally helpful, with 23 in-depth tips on disease prevention and planting self-seeding crops, among others.

The app is free, which is great, but it wastes valuable space with advertisements for Mother Earth News. No ad-free option exists for current subscribers or those who would rather pay for the app.

Flower gardeners who own iPads have a solid option with Gardening How-To, which is built on content from the magazine of the same name, published by the National Home Gardening Club.

Users receive four free issues of the magazine in iPad format, which yields dozens of features and smaller stories on flower gardening and information for vegetable and fruit growers.

Unlike many other apps, Gardening How-To isn’t strictly confined to biology or design. Articles on new plant varieties and building flower beds sit alongside more conventional growing tips.

You can take the iPad into the yard for guidance, as long as the device is in a zippered plastic food storage bag. That way the screen is protected yet still reacts to your touch.

Graphically, Gardening How-To is far more polished than Mother Earth, with beautiful photography and interactive elements like animated graphics, audio and video. (All those interactive elements and glossy photos add up to a slow download, so start the download at bedtime.)

Unfortunately, I found nothing as good as this for iPhone or Android users, who must pick through a thicket of poorly rated choices — often for $1 or $2 — to get what they need.

Given that we are still in the early days of apps, this looks like a case of the software engineers grabbing some quick bucks before being crowded out by more established gardening publishers.

So until those publishers get serious about mobile technology, gardeners will have to pull lots of weeds to find something good.

A Review of Apps for Gardeners and Landscapers - NYTimes.com

Hooking Up a New TV: Which Wire Goes Where?

Hooking Up a New TV: Which Wire Goes Where?

Looking at the back of a modern television is like looking at a map of Eastern Europe in the mid-’90s — it’s always in flux. New connectors pop up, rendering older jacks obsolete. But since plenty of devices could be adapted to work with the older inputs, those features have to stick around for a while. The new ones can be baffling, if only because many do the same things as the old connectors. Here’s a map to navigating which cables go where.

1. USB

A data connection, often used to connect a wireless “dongle” that can get your TV onto your home’s Wi-Fi network. Once that’s in place, your TV can become a “smart TV,” pulling in Internet content (Netflix, Facebook) that you can access — most likely through a confusing and poorly designed on-screen interface.

2. Optical Audio

Also known as Toslink, this standard uses fiber optic cables to transmit high-quality audio from the display to a soundbar, home theater system or an amplifier. Some audio components have moved to the HDMI standard, but there are still many products old and new that use this cable.

3. HDMI

The current standard for high-definition video and audio connections. HDMI cables carry high-definition video and surround-sound audio in one cable. The content is transmitted digitally, so there’s little to no signal degradation, even over long distances.

4. Component

Before HDMI, the only way to send high-definition video from a device to a display. Component cables are divided into three plugs — red, green and blue — each carrying a part of the video signal. Component cables are video-only, so you still need an audio connection to hear anything. HDMI is rapidly replacing this standard

5. Composite

The most basic — and lowest in fidelity — video connection. Good for connecting older equipment like camcorders or game consoles that lack the newer, more capable standards. Composite video is often located next to stereo outputs (do not confuse this with Component plugs).

6. Audio Out

Also known as RCA jacks, these ubiquitous ports are either red or white, to represent the left and right channels of a stereo signal. They provide low-fidelity audio connections, in that they do not support surround sound. For a higher-quality audio connection, consider optical audio or HDMI.

7. LAN or Ethernet

A connector that looks like a telephone cable, but is a little bigger. Used to connect to wired local area networks (a k a “a home network”), the LAN jack is what you would use if you did not have Wi-Fi.

8. Ex Link

Used in some Samsung televisions, the ex link connection allows you to adjust the angle of certain wall-mounted TVs by using your existing TV’s remote control.

9. Antenna In

Also known as a coaxial cable connection. This threaded connection is used to attach an external antenna (to receive over-the-air broadcast signals) or, sometimes, a cable set-top box. Modern set-top boxes usually have HDMI or component connections for a higher-quality connection between devices, so it is unlikely you would use this port.

10. PC In

Also known as a VGA connector, this is a way to connect a laptop or other personal computer to a television. This connection is video only, so you would need to set up an additional audio connection to hear whatever was coming out of your computer (unless you were happy playing the audio over the computer’s speakers).

TEXT BY SAM GROBART; ILLUSTRATION BY FRANK O’CONNELL

Hooking Up a New TV: Which Wire Goes Where? - Graphic - NYTimes.com

Make Facebook Infinitely Better with One Browser Extension

Lifehacker: How to Make Facebook Infinitely Better with One Browser Extension

With each update, Facebook has gotten incrementally more cluttered, perplexing, and ornery—and I'm not even talking about all your annoying acquaintances flooding it with inane status updates. Yet, at the same time, it's become a tool few of us can live without. If Facebook has you on your last nerve, here's how to fix some of its biggest annoyances in a matter of minutes—and with only one new addition to your browser.

We've talked about Social Fixer before, back when it was called Better Facebook—heck, it was even our readers' favorite Facebook customizer. If you've ever installed it though, you probably got overwhelmed pretty quickly, and dropped it for something else (or just continued to deal with Facebook's ever-inflating annoyances). After sifting through all of its options though, we discovered it's actually very simple for Social Fixer to make Facebook a ton better, without turning it into a more confusing beast. Whether you want to make the font more readable, get rid of that pesky ticker, see who's unfriended you, and much more, here's how to make Facebook infinitely better with just one browser extension..

Step One: Install Social Fixer

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To get started, head over to Social Fixer's homepage and install it for your browser. It's available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, or as a Greasemonkey userscript. Once it's installed, open up Facebook, and you should notice a few different things right off the bat.

Social Fixer looks pretty cluttered at first glance, adding tabs to your news feed, extra columns to the side of the page, and more. These features can be pretty cool, but it's a lot to deal with at first, and a lot of these features aren't things you need, so to start out, we're going to disable everything and start with a clean slate. Then we'll walk through fixing Facebook's biggest annoyances, enabling one feature at a time as we need it. I do recommend browsing these extra features later on, but for now, we're going to keep it simple.

If you're greeted with the setup wizard after installing the extension, choose the Minimalist Installation. If you don't see the setup wizard (I personally could never get it to display), click on the new Wrench icon in Facebook's blue bar, go to Social Fixer Options, and start unchecking boxes. It's better to start off with a clean slate than with the default options, so I recommend unchecking everything and saving before continuing.

Step Two: Comb Through Social Fixer's Options

Now that you've got a minimal installation of Social Fixer, it's time to fix some of those Facebook annoyances you've come to know and hate. Again, I recommend looking through all of the options Social Fixer has to offer at some point, but to kickstart your efforts, here's a rundown of our favorite tweaks that improve Facebook's interface and functionality. We'll go through the settings in order of the tab they appear under in Social Fixer's options, so just navigate through using the tabs on the left hand side to follow along.

The Popular Tab

Disable Lightbox: This disable's Facebook's new photo viewer that overlays itself over the page you were viewing. We actually think this is a pretty great feature, but if you'd rather have the old school image viewer that displayed each image on a new page, you can check this option to get it back.

Change Font Size: Facebook made its font size smaller awhile back, and if it's still barely readable to you, this option can help. You can change the font size of posts and comments separately, to help distinguish between them. Facebook's default font size for each is 11. Note also that you can increase the readability of any page by using your browser's zoom feature (Ctrl+Plus Sign and Ctrl+Minus Sign), though this gives you a bit more control.

Force the News Feed to switch to "Recent Stories First": By default, Facebook only shows you the top stories rather than every post made by your friends. If you prefer seeing all your friends' posts, this option will make your News Feed default to Recent instead of Top Stories.

Hide the Ticker: If that new ticker annoys the crap out of you, you can turn it off with this option. You can technically hide it already with Facebook, but that will still leave the bar at the top of the page. This will remove that entire section of your home page altogether and just make it a bit cleaner.

The Layout Tab

Auto-Expand Left Panel Sections: This will automatically show the sub-sections of your Messages, Events, Photos, Apps, and more. I highly recommend auto-expanding the Messages section to avoid the whole second inbox problem—that way, no messages will ever go unnoticed.

Friend Tracker: This adds a handy little box in the right hand sidebar that lets you know who has unfriended you on Facebook. It won't show you who's unfriended you in the past, only who's unfriended you since you installed Social Fixer, but still—it's pretty handy to have there just in case.

The Posts Tab

Fix the Missing Cursor Problem and Fix the Line Wrap Problem: These are just a few tiny bugs in Facebook's interface when you make posts. If you've noticed them before, check these boxes, otherwise there's no harm in leaving them blank.

Disable Facebook's Auto-Loading of Posts: As you scroll down, Facebook automatically loads more posts for you. Some find this useful, others find it annoying. I have no problem with clicking "Show Posts" to see more, so I've checked this box to avoid unnecessary page loading.

When Clicking a Link in an Application Post, Open in a New Browser Tab/Window: Does exactly what it sounds like. This makes sure links don't lead you away from Facebook; instead, they open up in a new tab or window, whatever you have your browser set to do.

Auto-Expand "See More" Links in Posts: When people write particularly long posts, Facebook will condense it to the first few lines of text and add a "See More" box so you can expand it. It also does this with long strings of comments. This option automatically expands long posts, which I like since it doesn't make my News Feed that much longer. You can click the auto-expand collapsed comment threads on posts by pages above, but I don't recommend this, since it'll make your News Feed very, very long.

The Display Tab

There isn't a ton here that I like to tweak, though it's worth looking through. If you have a problem with that "Please update your email address" box, you can hide it with an option here, as well as avoid that somewhat annoying popup box that shows up when you hover over a person's username.

The Timeline Tab

If you can't stand Facebook's new Timeline interface, this tab provides a few options that clean it up. We've talked about this once before, so I won't go into too much detail here, but the options do exactly what they sound like they do. They wont' get rid of timeline altogether, and it won't change how other people see your profile, but it'll at least give the timeline a nicer, one-column view for you when you view it from your Social Fixer-enabled browser.

The Hidden Items Tab

From the main Facebook interface, you can hide certain sections by clicking the "x" that appears in the upper right hand corner of the box. There doesn't seem to be a lot of sections that allow for this anymore, but you can hide Facebook's ads, which is nice if you aren't using an ad blocker already. This section of Social Fixer's options will show you which sections you've hidden, and let you un-hide them.

The Chat Tab

Whether you use Facebook Chat religiously or sparingly, this section is a good one to visit. You can:

Turn off the chat bar: This gets rid of that unsightly chat bar that shows up when the page is maximized, and brings back the chat popup at the bottom of the window.

Show all online friends in chat list: If you want to see all of your online friends, and not just the one Facebook has deemed chat-worthy, check this box.

Group friends by status: This puts available people together at the top of the list, and idle people together at the bottom, just to keep it all better organized.

Use compact chat list: This is nice if you're showing all your online friends and don't want the chat box to get unweildy.

Hide the chat dock entirely: This won't log you out of chat, but it's great if you use Facebook chat in an external IM program and don't want the chat dock cluttering up your Facebook.

The Theme Tab

This seems to be deprecated, as it doesn't load for me—but that's okay, because this tab was essentially for turning Facebook into MySpace with themes.

The Filtering Tab

This is where things get really interesting. One of Facebook's biggest annoyances isn't, sadly, Facebook itself—it's all the annoying things people say. Even your closest friends occasionally stand on a soapbox that can get on your nerves. Whether your friends are too annoyingly political, overly emo, or just a little too in love with their cats, Social Fixer's filters can help you filter those posts out. Of course you could always hide those people from your news feed (or unfriend them, if you're really fed up), but sometimes you still want to hear from your friends—you just don't want to hear them rant about [insert political figure here] again.

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To create a new filter, go through the 5 columns and choose the filter's characteristics. Let's start with a very simple example. I'm pretty nervous about hearing Mass Effect 3 spoilers, since I play video games pretty slowly, so I want to hide any posts containing the words "Mass Effect" or "Mass Effect 3"—no matter who they're from or what type of post they are. All you'd need to do to create this filter is head to the "Other" column, add the words "Mass Effect" (without quotes) to the text box, and then check "Hide" under the Action column. This will automatically hide any post in which someone mentions Mass Effect. For extra security, you can use regular expressions to search for multiple strings of text—for example, adding /Mass Effect|ME3/ to that box will hide posts containing either "Mass Effect" or "ME3". If you don't know regular expressions, though, you can always just create multiple filters instead. When you're done, click the "Add New Filter at the Top" buttton above the filter columns to add the filter.

Now let's try something a bit more complicated. Say you have one or two friends who get a little too political on Facebook from time to time, and like to rant about presidental candidate Abe Froman. You don't want to block all posts about Abe Froman, just ones from your uber conservative/liberal/whatever friends that like to rag on him. Select those friends from the "Author" column, using the Ctrl key to select multiple people. Leave the Type field blank to include all post types in the filter, then add "Abe Froman" (without quotes) to the Other column (alternatively, use /Abe Froman|Froman/ to include posts which mention just his last name), and check the Hide box under Action. Then, click the Add New Filter button again to finalize everything.

You can do a lot more with filters, like hide specific post types, posts from applications, or apply advanced CSS to highlight certain posts, but we won't go too deeply into that here. Check out Social Fixer's Filter Documentation for more on how to use the Filter feature. And be sure to check the regular Facebook interface before you run to Social Fixer—it can already do a lot to hide specific post types and applications all on its own. Just click the arrow that shows up when you hover over a post in the news feed.

The Advanced Tab

This section mostly provides preferences for Social Fixer itself. From here, you can turn off many of Social Fixer's popups, warnings, and help messages, plus change how often it checks for updates, and more. There isn't anything here that I'd recommend turning off immediately, but if you find that Social Fixer is affecting your page in a negative way, this is the first place I'd head to troubleshoot it.

Step Three: Enjoy Facebook

That's actually all it takes. A few checkboxes here, a few there, and you've got yourself a much better Facebook. If you use Social Fixer on multiple computers, you can head to the User Prefereces section of its options and export your options for importing on another machine, which is nice. Other than that, just keep Social Fixer installed and keep on using Facebook. The developer is pretty good about updating it when Facebook's layout changes, so you shouldn't have too many compatibility issues down the road—and he's sure to fix any new annoyances that are introduced.

If you've been a longtime user of Social Fixer and you have a favorite preference we didn't mention, share it with us in the comments.

How to Make Facebook Infinitely Better with One Browser Extension

Camera Awesome for iPhone

Camera Awesome for iPhone

Zoltan Arva-Toth

SmugMug has released a free app for the Apple iPhone, called Camera Awesome. This app enables users to capture images faster, and offers features like a built-in electronic level and the ability to focus on one spot and set exposure on another. Additionally, it allows for a wide range of one-tap adjustments including filters, borders and special effects. Photos can then be shared via email, or uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SmugMug, Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket. Camera Awesome is free and available on the iTunes App Store.

Smugmug Press Release

Camera Awesome:  You Took That Photo on an iPhone®? Liar.

Free iPhone App Says “No!” to Ugly Smartphone Photos

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 29, 2012 – Camera Awesome captures special memories with the camera you actually own, not the dSLR you’d sell your soul for. It takes your photos to the next level by shooting faster and taking sharper, better-exposed shots. Make your memories come alive with gorgeous effects—and share them on all the sites you love.

To see its awesomeness in action, check out the product video here: http://youtu.be/jz2nrcsTpWg?hd=1

“The iPhone is revolutionizing photography by empowering us to invent the camera you never knew you always wanted. It only takes a few minutes to realize you’re holding the future of photography in your hands. The world will be a better place when everyone has an app worthy of the iPhone camera,” said Don MacAskill, CEO & Chief Geek of SmugMug.

Three Simple Steps

  1. Shoot: Camera Awesome is faaasst, and so simple anyone can use it. And yet, it has high-end features even expensive cameras lack, such as a level for the horizon and the ability to focus on one spot and set exposure on another.
  2. Awesomize: One tap makes your photos come alive with vibrant color.  Hundreds of professional effects, filters and borders transform your memories from forgettable camera phone snappies to gorgeous works of art.
  3. Flaunt: Share on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SmugMug, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, SMS and email with one simple tap.

At a concert?  Camera Awesome can automatically apply your favorite effect and share as you shoot so your friends who can’t wait won’t have to.

Camera Awesome’s breathtaking collection of filters, textures and frames includes exclusive filters created by Kevin Kubota. Named a Top 10 Wedding Photographer by American Photo, Kubota created the industry’s most popular post-processing actions for Photoshop and Lightroom.

“I was thrilled to create filters for Camera Awesome because of the power it places in the hands of iPhone photographers,” said Kubota. “Kubota filters are the standard for pro photographers around the world who use programs like Photoshop®, and now they are available to everyone via Camera Awesome.”

Camera Awesome is free and available on the App Store.  Learn more at http://www.awesomize.com/ or http://youtu.be/jz2nrcsTpWg?hd=1.

Camera Awesome for iPhone | PhotographyBLOG