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1. BEST TECH SITES AND RESOURCES

1.2 Outstanding List of Free Tools

I hadn't visited Nir Sofer's website [1] for a while and was surprised just how many new freebies he has added. You really must check this out; I can't imagine any techy or experienced user coming away empty handed. Make sure you also check out the "utilities" page [2].

[1] http://www.nirsoft.net

[2] http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/index.html

1.3 Find out Where any Telephone Number is Physically Located

This free service works for numbers worldwide. Thanks to subscriber Afridy Zaaman for the suggestion.

http://www.tp2location.com/

1.4 How to Remove the Arrow in Shortcut Icons

In Windows, shortcut icons have a little curly black arrow in the lower left hand corner. The arrow is there to indicate that the icon is a shortcut or pointer to a file or folder rather than the file or folder itself. That makes perfect sense to me but not to a lot of folks who seem hell-bent on removing the arrow. There are lots of techniques, but using the free Tweak UI program is possibly the easiest. Full instructions here:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/arrow.htm

1.5 Simple Web Filtering

Subscriber "Bernie" writes, "Gizmo I'm the network manager in a school and as such I have the onerous task of having to filter internet content for students. The best way I've found so far for doing this is a service called OpenDNS. OpenDNS simply gives you two replacement DNS servers to put into your router and then all requests go through them. They have made a great addition to this by allowing you to filter by category." Thanks Bernie. OpenDNS is great for simple filtering but it also has some other useful features such as preventing access to phishing sites and even correcting your spelling. On the other hand, expect to see advertisements every time you connect to a dead site, and you may also find performance issues. There have also been problems with some VPNs.

http://www.opendns.com/

1.6 Free Picasa Add-ons

Subscriber Paul Lawrence writes, "Gizmo, Google's Picasa is definitely a good photo organizer, and it can create some pretty nice galleries of your photos for use on the web. I ran across a website that offers 17 free very nice flash and html gallery templates for use with Picasa. There is also a demo of each on the site so you can see how great they look before you download them."

http://www.paulvanroekel.nl/picasa/index.asp

2.0 TOP FREEWARE AND SHAREWARE UTILITIES

2.1 Free Easy-to-Use Video Editor

Paul Lawrence, one the volunteer category editors for the "Best-ever Freeware" Wiki project, recently sent me this email:

"Gizmo, quality freeware video editors are hard to come by. Most are overly complicated, and hard to use, unstable, or lack a good set of features. VideoSpin (freeware) is a new software package created by Pinnacle Systems, the makers of the very popular Pinnacle Studio. It is very easy to use, has a slick well organized interface, a good set of transitions, a title creator, and other nice features. It creates video in several popular formats including .flv so you can upload your videos directly to the web."

Nice find Paul, but I have some reservations: First up, this is a big download - 149MB with all the Codecs. Second, it wouldn't install on my test PC - the installation just hung. Yet on another of my PCs it installed without problem. Third, the Codecs are not free, they are only provided on a 15 day trial basis.

But you are quite right; it is very easy to use and that is a real plus. I'm no video dude but I managed to edit two short videos a relative had sent me without even reading the manual. In fact, I'd rate VideoSpin as the most user friendly freeware video editor I've used.

However if you mainly process AVI files then you should also check out VirtualDub [2]. It's not quite as easy to use but it's free, has video capture and has a more established user base.

VideoSpin: Freeware, Windows XP, Vista, 2.3MB, 149MB with Codec pack.

[1] http://videospin.com/

[2] http://www.virtualdub.org/

2.2 Text-To-Voice Utilities

Wouldn't it be nice if you could press a button and have all the new email in your in-box read to you in a pleasant human sounding voice while you were doing other work? And wouldn't it be nice if I could tell you a free program that does just that?

Well, I'm sorry, I can't.

Yes, there are a few free text-to-speech utilities available but they are quite basic in their interface and outright crude when it comes to voice quality. That's because the really hard part in producing a good text-to-voice program is the "voice" and the best "voices" are commercial products. Most of the free text-to-voice programs use free voices such as those from Microsoft and these sound distinctly robotic.

However, if you are prepared to tolerate this you can get good results with the freeware text-to-voice program Speakonia [1]. It comes with about 20 voices and will either read text aloud to you in real time or record the spoken results to a .WAV file for later replay. It uses the Microsoft voices which I would describe as "clear but annoying" unless, that is, you actually enjoy listening to Robots. The user interface is simple but not particularly convenient; it plays any text you've copied to the Clipboard.

If you can afford to buy a commercial product, then TextAloud is my top pick. At $29.95 it's reasonably priced, though you'll almost certainly want to purchase a commercial voice, such as one of the impressive AT&T "Natural Voices," as well. That will set you back another 35 bucks and 600MB of disk space.

With the use of one of these commercial voices, the spoken quality from TextAloud is surprisingly good and much better than Speakonia. Indeed, it exceeded my expectations. TextAloud also has a much better interface than Speakonia. It will read directly from Word, PDF, and HTML files and has plug-ins for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Outlook. It can also record directly to either MP3 or WMA audio files.

So if you really want your email read to you then this is the sort of money you are going to have to pay. Thanks to subscriber "WILTON" for the suggestion.

[1] http://www.cfs-technologies.com/home/?id=1.4 Freeware, all Windows versions, 2.6MB.

[2] http://www.nextup.com/TextAloud/index.html Shareware, 20 day trial, Windows 98-Vista, 3.1MB.

2.3 Which is the Best Desktop of Them All?

It's a case of "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" when regular contributor "Briard" looks at Microsoft Vista, Apple Leopard and Ubuntu Linux to decide which operating system provides the best user experience. This is a long, well researched article but Briard's light and breezy style makes it a delight to read. Highly recommended.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/battle-for-the-desktop.htm

2.4 Free PDA Fits in Any Pocket

I mentioned this way back in #125, but I was recently reminded, by subscriber Caroline Begbie, just what a great product it is. Here's what I said then: "Some of the smartest people I know don't use a PDA but instead carry around in their shirt pocket little pieces of paper that contain just the information they need. This free web service uses Flash to create an 8 page paper PDA customized to your needs. Brilliant."

http://www.pocketmod.com/

2.5 Free Web Service Arranges Meetings Automatically

Anyone who has tried to schedule a meeting at a time convenient to all the participants knows what a hassle this can be. TimeBridge is a free web service that does the work for you. All you do is type in the participant's email addresses and a set of possible times, and TimeBridge does all the rest. To make things even easier, it integrates with your Outlook Contacts and Calendar or, indeed, any iCal based calendar including Google. Registration is required. Thanks to subscriber Douglas Baumwall for the suggestion.

http://www.timebridge.com

3.0 SECURITY PATCHES, SERVICE RELEASES AND UPDATES

3.1 Microsoft Security News

The Microsoft "Patch Tuesday" in March resulted in the release of four security bulletins each of which was rated "critical by Microsoft." The bulletins covered in total seven flaws in Microsoft Excel including patches for a number of exploits that were in active circulation.

If you are thinking that the problems with Excel are all now fixed then think again. According to security organization Secunia [1] there are still multiple vulnerabilities in Excel including some confirmed by Microsoft as being in active circulation.

Until Microsoft gets around to patching all known flaws, users should not open Excel files from unknown sources or, alternatively, they should open such files in a sandbox or other safe environment.

Further details of the Microsoft March updates can be found here [2]. All of the updates are distributed automatically via the Microsoft Update Service. Dial-up users in particular need to be aware that these updates are large files and will require a considerable period of time online to be successfully downloaded. If you are not certain that you have received the updates then visit the Microsoft Update Service [3] now.

[1] http://secunia.com/advisories/28506/

[2] http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-mar.mspx

[3] http://update.microsoft.com (Requires IE5 or later)

3.2 Malware Disguised as Freeware

Subscribers to this newsletter know I love freeware. They also know that I advise users to only download freeware from trusted sites such as download.com and majorgeeks.com, or from sites recommended by trusted sources. This article, sent to me by regular contributor JW, illustrates some of the dangers. The author downloaded a freeware Gmail accessory only to discover that the program emailed his Gmail username and password to the author. Read the gory details here:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001072.html

3.3 Spammers Defeat GMail

It looks like the bad guys have found a way to defeat the CAPTCHA graphics verification system used by Google. Google uses that system to ensure new Gmail accounts are created by real people, not spambots. Expect to see more spam originating from Gmail accounts. Thanks to subscriber Geoffrey Brown for the link.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143270/article.html?tk=nl_dnxnws

3.4 You Have More Investment in Online Data than you Think

This article, called "When the Internet Is My Hard Drive, Should I Trust Third Parties?" raises some very important questions about the information you have chosen to store on the internet. And we are not just talking about online data backup here. The author certainly got me thinking about just how much data I have online and I how much I have come to depend on it. A valuable and thought provoking article. Thanks to JW for this one.

http://www.wired.com/print/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/02/securitymatters_0221

3.5 Alternative to AutoPatcher for Updating XP SP2

Here's another way of updating Windows XP with all those post-SP2 Windows patches: RyanVM's Windows XP Post-SP2 Update Pack. It's a downloadable file of 52.7MB that includes all patches up to March 2, 2008. To install the patches you'll also need to download the RyanVM Integrator program. Thanks to subscriber AJ Averett for the link.

http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/updatepack-sp2.html

3.6 Is your ISP Selling Your Browsing History?

According to this report "three of the UK's top ISPs (Virgin Media, BT and TalkTalk) have decided to sell your private browsing history to an advertising broker. Yes, the entire list of every web page you visit gets sent to Phorm (the broker) in real time, as you click, so they can send you targeted advertising." Even more disturbing is the fact that the ISPs customers are not even being told about what is happening. And the problem is not only in the UK - it appears Phorn is in discussion with US ISP's as well! Better ask your ISP if they have a relationship with Phorn. If so, I suggest it's time to change ISPs or start using Tor, a VPN or other anonymizing technique. Thanks to subscriber "Paul" for the link.

http://www.badphorm.co.uk/page.php?2