FXChrome for Firefox is the first theme that I liked better than the default one provided with Firefox.

Annoyed when you are typing a document and accidentally the palm of your hand brushes the touchpad, changing the position of the cursor in your document or accidentally clicking on an option. TouchFreeze is simple utility for Windows NT/2000/XP that solves this problem. It automatically disables touchpad while you are typing text. Like syndaemon on x-windows.

Some Toshiba's I've worked on have a utility to enable and disable the touchpad. Some HP's I've worked on have hardware button near the touchpad to turn it off and on. This is a univeral solution and I think it's automated approach is the best solution to the problem.

TouchFreeze at Google Code

I thought I would revisit the virtual machine front to see if VirtualBox had progressed any since my last look (VMware vs. VirtualBox Jan '08).  My test system was an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2, Intel i7 940, 12GB DDR3, Raptor 300GB drives, and Vista x64 SP1.  VMware version 6.5.1 build-126130 and VirtualBox 2.1.4 were both installed on my C: drive and their respective images and virtual files located on D:.

I needed to generate an MD5 hash the other day, so I tried to find the best offering for Vista x64. I found Hash Tab which just might be the coolest thing ever (as the author claims). When you right-click a file and select it's properties, it creates a new tab that shows the files various file hashes including CRC32, HAVAL, MD5, RIPEMD-128, RIPEMD-256, RIPEMD-320, SHA-1, SHA-512, Tiger, and Whirlpool. It works perfectly on my Vista x64 box and I would recommend it to all.

Updated review here >>> VMware vs. VirtualBox Part 2

VMmare and VirtualBox are both virtual machine software suites for x86 and x64 computers. They allow you to run a "virtual" or guest operating system (OS) inside your main (host) OS. For example you could run Debian Linux as your main OS while running a complete version of Vista in a separate window on your desktop. Additionally, the guest system can comprise of different hardware. You could create three virtual hard drives and two optical drives on your virtual computer. Currently, the top three offerings in the virtual machine market are VMware, Virtual PC, and VirtualBox. I used to use Virtual PC, but felt it went downhill fast after Microsoft acquired the technology in 2003. At that point, I switched to VMware 5 and haven't looked back until today.

Uniblue ProcessLibrary.com, might aid you in identifying an unknown Windows process. They offer a searchable index of common processes, identifying them by the manufacturer, purpose, and security risk level. They also offer ProcessScanner and ProcessQuickLink.

ProcessScanner will compose a report on all the processes running on your system. It maintains a copy of the report on their website and gives you the URL so you can forward the output to someone else.

If you prefer to stick with good old Task Manager, their ProcessQuickLink will add an icon to each process reported in Task Manager. This simplifies looking up unknown processes, as it adds an icon to each process reported in Task Manager. Clicking the icon brings up the corresponding ProcessLibrary page.

I like the library but found it valuable only for reassurance that a suspicious-looking process is actually benign. When infecting a system with spyware, the process scanner could not identify the process. I like the process library and the two free utilities they offer, but scattered among the library and various utilities you'll find penty of links to launch the SpyEraser spyware scanner, which is a dud.

The computer virus has grown and matured over the past few decades. Its birth is considered by many to have been at the hands of John Walker in 1975. Walker created a subroutine called PERVADE as part of the program ANIMAL that ran on a UNIVAC. Animal was a computer program that would try to guess the animal you were thinking of by asking series of twenty questions. PERVADE was a subroutine that allowed ANIMAL to copy itself into another directory when played by someone. This sounds harmless enough. The only real potential for damage, so to speak, is that eventually the system would run out of space as more and more users played the game.

“Man arrested for accessing wireless network”, or something to that tune had been in the headlines a few times recently. Each time I read it, I question the validity of the laws used in these cases. I personally think the legal ignorance of technology is the problem. Around 6^th grade (stick with me here), I submitted a paper I had typed in Paperclip, my first word processor. I was stunned when my teacher wouldn’t accept it. I had printed it with a dot-matrix printer. Of course the paper’s computer generation was obvious and my teacher immediately conjured up the notion that my computer had clearly written my paper for me. My teacher’s position was that I need to do the paper myself, and consequently, she wouldn’t accept anything done by a computer. I reasoned that I had actually composed the paper, and the computer had not created the paper for me as she was implying. In the end I lost that battle but learned from the experience. She made a rule based in ignorance that was going to cost me – the price of a daisy wheel printer.

Someone I know recently had a brush with identity theft. Identity theft appears to be as rampant as ever. The thief had stolen various mail from their mail box or perhaps their trash. I’m told the pre approved credit card offers are their gold, as they often have enough information in them to be used to get a new credit card, in your name, mailed to a different address. You normally hear how you should invest in a personal shredder to destroy this type of mailings, but being the green guy I am, I began to wonder if you could just simply opt out of receiving the stupid things to begin with. Well you can. In the process of digging for that I found a few other places that can help you reduce the noise in your life. 

Keeping your computer kid safe has been next to impossible. Sure most of us need a virus scanner, but having the best virus scanner and firewall available doesn’t stop pornography sites from popping up on your screen. Solutions in the past have involved word filtering which is flakey at best. OpenDNS a relatively new service approaches solving this problem it in a different manner that works. I’ll briefly explain.