Google wants its virtual assistant in every room of your house

 San Francisco (Plusminus88)Google is teasing the future it thinks you want.

Inside a beautiful multi-million-dollar house in San Francisco on Wednesday, the company set up a model smart home outfitted with every Google device and connected home gadget imaginable.

The one-day demo highlighted an assortment of new Google Assistant features coming in the weeks ahead. There are recipe recommendations on smart displays and custom alarms for children recorded by actors from popular cartoons.

The tour was also a chance to see how Google (GOOGL) imagines people living, parenting and even sleeping surrounded by its products.

Smart speakers have given new life to the smart home market, which was struggling to move past its early-adopter beginnings before Amazon's (AMZN) voice assistant Alexa came along. Now the major companies, including Amazon, Samsung, Apple (AAPL) and Google, are fighting to lure customers into their own ecosystems.

The assistant personalities are different, but the applications are mostly the same.In Google's model home, most appliances are either internet-connected or plugged into a smart plug that lets you turn them on with a voice command. Communication is constant and everywhere — between rooms and family members who aren't in the house.

A feature lets a member of the household broadcast a message to every room, such as "I'll be home in 20 minutes, start the rice maker." It'll now let the person at home reply, so it's like a phone call or text message conversation but through speakers.

In addition, Google smart displays will now show recommended recipes based on the time of day and year. If you make a mess while cooking, just ask Google to send out the robotic vacuum.

Parenting is the newest hot area for voice assistants, and the Google house was set up to show how it could work for a family with kids. Ask Google Assistant to read your children a bedtime story, and it can tell them stories about Dora the Explorer and PAW Patrol. If you'd prefer to read your kids a book yourself, you can ask Google Assistant to "read along" with a book it knows and it will play matching music and sound effects in the background.

Parents are increasingly using alarms to help time kids' screen time, tooth brushing or studying. To build on this, Google Assistant is adding alarms voiced by characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and LEGO City. If you want to wake up your children without walking to their room, you could ask Google to turn up the lights or play music in their room while you sip coffee downstairs.

Upstairs in the master bedroom, adults can unwind by asking Google to put their phone on silent mode. The next morning, an alarm will go off and trigger a routine, automatically starting a coffee maker near the bed and reciting the day's weather and headlines.

Voice assistants may have started in a single room for playing music, but Google's house previews a future where almost every room has an always-listening microphone, a speaker, camera and a screen of some sort. (There was no bathroom demo on the tour, but it's safe to say they'll be there soon too.)

The future Google is selling can seem unnecessary and sometimes pricey, but it could be incredibly convenient for a busy family. Unless the power goes out. Then they'd just have to sweep and parent on their own.

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Why we need Windows Phone 7

For a slow holiday news week, there's been plenty of chatter over the last few days about Windows Phone 7.

It all started Tuesday when several tech blogs posted editorials on why Microsoft's operating system was failing, a fact that Mobile Burn's Dan Seifert wryly pointed out on Twitter. And then, almost as if in response, a leaked memo on WMPoweruser spilled details on the next software update, the Windows Phone Marketplace hit the 50,000-app mark, and WinSupersite reported that AT&T will be the first carrier to offer LTE-enabled Windows Phone 7 devices.

I'll spare you another musing on why I think Microsoft's operating system is failing (though I think "flailing" is better word), since I doubt that I'd have anything new to add to the discussion. By all means, stronger carrier support, more devices and apps, and faster software updates are crucial to Windows Phone 7's success. That's exactly why I hope the above rumors are true. And if you care about the future of smartphones, you should too.

Though I played with Windows Phone 7 quite a bit shortly after the first handsets were introduced in October, 2010, I used an HTC HD7 as my primary phone for a few months last autumn to really get to know the OS. To honestly see its merits and drawbacks, I couldn't view it through iPhone or Android-tinted glasses. And, frankly, I quickly understood why it was winning a high user satisfaction rating.

To me, Windows Phone 7 offers the best elements of both iOS and Android. The hub-based interface is clean, customizable, and completely original (I really love the notifications); you can choose from more than one handset design; updates arrive directly from Microsoft (though some also consider that a liability); there's real multitasking and great integration with apps (even if there aren't many of them), and I never had to hard reset a phone. In many ways, it's a great middle ground.

That's why we need a third viable smartphone OS, despite what warring Android and iOS fanboys might argue. At the moment, RIM certainly isn't it up to the task and HP's sad decision to pull the plug on WebOS has left with one less viable player. So I really hope that Microsoft can step up its WP7 game and prod the iOS and Android teams to do better. Do you really think Apple and Google would continue to be as innovative if the other wasn't around? Of course not, which is why we need strong competition to continue.

Like I've said before, we shouldn't want to live in a world with no choice in smartphones. Having just one OS would abysmal, but even two isn't enough. So in addition to actually trying to use the OS for once, I hope that knee-jerk Windows Phone 7 detractors--maybe you'll find some in the comments section for this blog--think twice before denouncing the OS as dead and dancing on its grave. Choice is fun. No choice is boring.

Yeah, we've heard a few times now that Windows the glory days of Windows Phone 7's success are just around corner. I pretty much said as much in my 2012 CES preview, and I said it a few times last year like when Nokia announced its Microsoft partnership. Maybe it won't come at all, but with Nokia designs, LTE phones, more apps, and bigger updates coming down the road, anything is possible.

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Arab Parliament urges end to Syria monitors' mission

An advisory body to the Arab League has called for the organisation's observers to be withdrawn from Syria because of the ongoing crackdown on protests.

The speaker of the Arab Parliament said the monitors had to leave "considering the continued killing of innocent civilians by the Syrian regime".

There has been no let-up in the violence since the observers started their work on Tuesday.

Their mission is to monitor a peace plan drawn up by the Arab League.

The Speaker of the Arab Parliament, Salem al-Diqbassi, said in a statement that the continuing repression "in the presence of Arab monitors has roused the anger of Arab people and negates the purpose of sending a fact-finding mission".

"This is giving the Syrian regime an Arab cover for continuing its inhumane actions under the eyes and ears of the Arab League," Mr Diqbassi added.

The parliament is an 88-member advisory committee of delegates from member states. Its recommendations are non-binding and it operates separately from the league.
'Nothing frightening'

Correspondents say many demonstrators are becoming frustrated at the league's inability to stop the violence.

About 60 monitors are in the country to verify the implementation of the Arab League plan, which calls for an end to all fighting, the withdrawal of troops from the streets and the release of political prisoners.

Although some tanks have reportedly pulled back, snipers have been visible during demonstrations and rallies.

The Local Co-ordination Committees, a network of anti-government groups inside Syria, said at least six people had died in various parts of Syria on Sunday.

More than 150 people have been killed since the monitors arrived in the country, according to activists. The UN says puts the number of deaths in the 10-month uprising at 5,000.

There has also been criticism of the head of the monitoring team, Sudanese Gen Mustafa al-Dabi - who is regarded by some as biased towards the Syrian government.

On Saturday he appeared to contradict one of his officials who was quoted as saying during a visit to the southern city of Deraa that he and other monitors had seen government snipers "with our own eyes".

Gen Dabi later told the BBC that the observer had made no such claim and was only speaking hypothetically.

On Thursday, after a visit to the restive northern city of Homs, Gen Dabi said that "some places looked a bit of a mess but there was nothing frightening".

The general has held a number of senior posts in Sudan, including in the troubled Darfur region.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad says it is fighting armed groups and that 2,000 security forces personnel have died.

Casualty figures and other information are hard to verify as most foreign media are barred from reporting freely in Syria.

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Iran 'test-fires medium-range missile' in Gulf

Iran has successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile during military exercises in the Gulf, the official Irna news agency reports.

Iranian naval commander, Mahmoud Mousavi, was quoted as saying the missile was equipped with the "latest technology" and "intelligent systems".

The test comes a day after he denied earlier state media reports that Iran had test-fired long-range missiles.

He said on Saturday missile launches would take place "in the coming days".

Iran's 10 days of naval exercises began last week and are taking place in international waters to the east of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

They come at a time of increased tensions between the West and Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

Tehran reacted angrily last week to reports that Western nations were planning to impose further sanctions targeting Iran's oil and financial sectors.

Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, which links the Gulf - and its oil-producing states - to the Indian Ocean.

About 20% of the world's oil passes through the narrow strait.

The US and its allies believe Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons - a charge Iran denies.

Tehran insists its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes. Iran has maintained that it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity to meet growing domestic demand.

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China seeks to combat hi-tech crimewave

The Chinese government is cracking down on home-grown cyber thieves seeking to steal online banking details.

The crackdown combats phishing by ensuring that the websites of legitimate banks appear at the top of search results.

The move comes as the personal details of more than 45 million Chinese people were stolen in separate attacks.

The government is investigating the thefts and said that the wave of attacks "threatened internet safety".

Crime spree

The 10 biggest search engines in China have signed up to the anti-phishing scheme to ensure that users looking for bank websites go to the right place.

Phishing attacks involve messages that look like they come from a bank or other organisation and direct people to a website that mimics the real thing.

When people visit the fake site and enter their login details these are recorded by cyber criminals who may loot the account soon afterwards.

By ensuring that the websites of banks appear first, the government hopes to limit the numbers of people falling for phishing scams and visiting the fake sites.

Some of the search engines will put a special icon next to the bank links in lists of results to flag them as legitimate.

Hacked accounts

The anti-phishing initiative comes at the end of a week in which the personal details of almost 10% of China's 485 million web users were stolen.

On Christmas day, the hugely popular Tianya chat site revealed that the login names and passwords from 40 million of its users had been stolen. All risk being plundered by attackers as the information was held in plain text.

Scammers regularly create fake websites that mimic those of legitimate banks

Tianya has contacted the affected users and urged them to change their passwords as soon as possible.

Soon after, CDSN, one of China's largest forums for programmers, reported that the details of all its six million users had been stolen. The attackers got away with email addresses, login names and passwords. Again, all the details were stored in plain text.

The scale of the attacks prompted government action and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it would investigate who was behind the attacks.

"The department believes the recent leak of user information is a serious infringement of the rights of internet users and threatens internet safety," the Ministry said in a statement.

The Chinese government is known to have put in place technology that monitors online chat rooms for controversial topics but the far-reaching measures have not stopped all nefarious cyber activity.

As well as criminal hackers, many activists are turning to the web to make protests more visible.

The website of Menginu, a firm at the centre of a tainted milk scandal, was vandalised and its homepage image replaced with text that read "Do you have a conscience?".

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Andrew Lloyd Webber predicts 2012 theatre 'bloodbath'

The Olympics will cause "a bloodbath of a summer" for London theatres in 2012, Andrew Lloyd Webber has predicted.

"Nobody's going to go to the theatre at all," the composer told Radio 4's Today programme, predicting that "most of the theatres in London will shut".

"It's going to be very tough," he said, revealing advance bookings were "about 10%" of their normal level.

Three major musicals, he added, "are not going to play over the Olympics" - but he would not name them.

Lord Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group owns seven London theatres which are currently hosting shows including War Horse, Matilda and The Wizard of Oz.

The impresario said "big, big, big hits" like his own The Phantom of the Opera would continue during the Olympics period.

But he said some of his other theatres "will have to" close because of a drop-off in the "ordinary West End tourist audience".

On a brighter note, the 63-year-old said a host of new musicals would arrive in the West End after the conclusion of the 2012 games.

Shows heading into London include a Spice Girls musical, a Bridget Jones stage show and the Tony award-winning The Book of Mormon.

"They've never been so commercially popular," he told PM arts correspondent . "The appetite for musicals is insatiable in a way.

"I don't think I've ever had so many musicals being offered to our theatres in London as there are for the end of next year."

The capital's promotional organisation London and Partners added that 29 shows would be running next summer, with an "unprecedented" number booking through to the autumn.

A spokeswoman said that a whole series of experiences would be on offer next year, including London's "world-beating theatre".

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Samsung still doMinates mobile phone market, but Apple is gaining

Samsung is still the biggest maker of mobile phones, but Apple is gaining ground, according to data released today by market researcher ComScore.

Samsung accounted for 25.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers for the three months ending November 11, a slight increase of 0.3 percent over the previous three months. While Apple came in fourth with 11.2 percent, its 1.4 percent increase was the greatest market share increase for the previous three months.

Samsung and Apple were the only mobile phone makers in the top 5 to boost their share of the market during that period. LG came in at No. 2 with 20.5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, a decrease of 0.5 percent, followed by Motorola, which lost 0.3 percent to finish the period with 13.7 percent of the market.

In the No. 5 spot, beleaguered handset maker Research In Motion logged the greatest percentage loss, dropping 0.6 percent to 6.5 percent.

Android, meanwhile, continues to dominate the mobile OS landscape. Apple's iOS also made headway, though not at Google's expense.

Google's mobile operating system controlled 46.9 percent of market, up 3.1 percent over the previous three months, while Apple's iOS came logged an increase of 1.4 percent to finish in second with 28.7 percent. The rest of the top 5 platforms all lost marketshare: RIM lost 3.1 percent to finish with 16.6 percent, Microsoft lost 0.5 percent to finish with 5.2 percent, and Symbian lost 0.3 percent to finish with 1.5 percent.

Today's data does not reflect the 700,000 new Android devices Google says it is activating on a daily basis, or the 4.2 million iOS devices and about 2.6 million Android devices activated on Christmas Day.

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Pattinson inspires Australian win

(PM88) -- Young paceman James Pattinson led the way as Australia hustled out India for just 169 to win the opening Test in Melbourne by 122 runs Thursday.

India were left to chase 292 for victory in their second innings at the MCG, but fell well short as their highly-rated batting order collapsed on the fourth day.

Pattinson finished with figures of four wickets for 53 and also played a crucial role with the bat as he shared a battling 43-run last wicket stand with Ben Hilfenhaus earlier in the day.

That helped Australia to reach 240 all out, having been 27 for four wickets on the third day, and leaving the tourists with a testing target.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men promptly collapsed to 81 for six wickets with Peter Siddle's dismissal of top scorer Sachin Tendulkar a body blow for the Indians.

Still searching for his 100th international century, Tendulkar had made a battling 32 when he sliced the paceman to Mike Hussey in the gully.

With his departure, India's hopes were effectively over and they were all out in just 47.5 overs to suffer their fifth straight Test defeat overseas after suffering a 4-0 thrashing to top-ranked England earlier this year.

It's fantastic to get a win against India, who we love beating, and put the disappointment of the New Zealand loss in Hobart behind us
James Pattinson

"It's fantastic to get a win against India, who we love beating, and put the disappointment of the New Zealand loss in Hobart behind us," Pattinson said as he collected his second man-of-the-match award in his three Tests.

"We should have been able to chase 300 with the kind of batting we've got, so another bad start to a Test series," said Dhoni.

Australia had resumed overnight on 179 for eight wickets and quickly lost Hussey for a battling 89.

But Pattinson, who made an undefeated 37, and Hilfenhaus (14) frustrated the Indian attack and paved the way for Australia's eventual victory.

Hilfenhaus claimed the early wicket of the dangerous Virender Sehwag for seven, and five wickets fell for 93 in the middle session, capped by Siddle's removal of Tendulkar.

Indian skipper Dhoni was bowled by Pattinson for 23 and Umesh Yadav was the last wicket to fall, caught superbly on the boundary by David Warner off spinner Nathan Lyon for 21.

The second Test starts in Sydney next week.

In other Test action Thursday, Sri Lanka wrapped up a 208-run victory over South Africa on the fourth day at Kingsmead in Durban.

Man-of-the-match Rangana Herath took three wickets in four balls, bowling Marchant de Lange to complete his team's first Test win in 2011.

They had lost the first match of the series by an innings and 81 runs, but set 450 to win, South Africa were always struggling.

Herath took five wickets for 79 and nine wickets in the match, but AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn threatened to extend the Test into a fifth day with a battling seventh wicket partnership of 99.

But when Herath trapped de Villiers for 69 it sparked a dramatic late collapse.

Sri Lanka were all out for 279 in their second innings earlier in the day, losing their last three wickets for 23 runs. Steyn took five for 73 for his 17th five-wicket haul in Tests.

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Al Qaeda leader sends veteran jihadists to establish presence in Libya

(PM88) -- Al Qaeda's leadership has sent experienced jihadists to Libya in an effort to build a fighting force there, according to a Libyan source briefed by Western counter-terrorism officials.

The jihadists include one veteran fighter who had been detained in Britain on suspicion of terrorism. The source describes him as committed to al Qaeda's global cause and to attacking U.S. interests.

The source told CNN that the al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, personally dispatched the former British detainee to Libya earlier this year as the Gadhafi regime lost control of large swathes of the country.

The man arrived in Libya in May and has since begun recruiting fighters in the eastern region of the country, near the Egyptian border. He now has some 200 fighters mobilized, the source added. Western intelligence agencies are aware of his activities, according to the source.

Another al Qaeda operative, of dual European-Libyan nationality, was arrested in an unnamed country on his way to Libya from the Afghan-Pakistan border region.

The individual now trying to establish a bridgehead for al Qaeda in Libya is known as "AA." His name has not been made public because of UK law on terrorist suspects who are detained but not charged.

"AA" has been close to Ayman al-Zawahiri since the 1980s and first traveled to Afghanistan in the early 1990s to join mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation -- as did hundreds of Arab fighters.

"AA" later moved to the United Kingdom, where he began spreading al Qaeda's ideology to younger Muslims. He was an admirer of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who emerged as leader of al Qaeda in Iraq after the U.S. invasion and who led an especially brutal campaign that targeted civilians and promoted sectarian hatred between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

After the terrorist attacks in London in July 2005, heightened concern about terrorist activities in the UK led to the arrest of a number of Libyans resident in England.

"AA" was detained under what was termed a "control order," a mechanism used to detain terrorist suspects -- usually under home arrest -- without charging them. Control orders have been used in dozens of cases where the government does not want to reveal evidence in court for fear of compromising security sources. Those subject to control orders are not named by authorities.

"AA" also spent some time in Belmarsh high-security jail in the UK in 2006-07, possibly because he was seen as a flight-risk. It is also possible, according to the source, that he was resisting legal moves to have him deported to Libya. At the time, relations between the Gadhafi regime and the United Kingdom were improving, and Libyan authorities were seeking the deportation of opponents.

At some point the control order lapsed, and "AA" left Britain late in 2009 and went back to the Afghan-Pakistan border area -- taking two teenagers with him. One was subsequently killed.

Western intelligence agencies have voiced concern in public and privately about the potential for Islamist extremists and especially al Qaeda to gain a foothold in Libya.

The al Qaeda leadership has included several Libyans -- among them Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who was killed in August, and Abu Yahya al-Libi.

In a video message to fellow Libyans distributed on jihadist forums earlier this month, al-Libi said: "At this crossroads you have found yourselves, you either choose a secular regime that pleases the greedy crocodiles of the West and for them to use it as a means to fulfill their goals, or you take a strong position and establish the religion of Allah."

Militant groups have long had a presence in eastern Libya, even if they were ruthlessly suppressed by the Gadhafi regime. Al Qaeda documents discovered in Iraq in 2006 showed that many of the fighters who had joined the insurgency had come from eastern Libya.

And a U.S. diplomatic cable from 2008 -- published this year by WikiLeaks -- told of support for extremist Islamist views in the town of Derna, which is close to where "AA" has established a presence.

Entitled "Die Hard in Derna" the cable describes the town as a "wellspring of Libyan foreign fighters" for al Qaeda in Iraq.

The diplomat who traveled to Derna quoted a local businessman who had "likened young men in the town to Bruce Willis' character in the action picture 'Die Hard,' who stubbornly refused to die quietly. For them, resistance against coalition forces in Iraq is an important act of 'jihad' and a last act of defiance against the Gadhafi regime."

High youth unemployment, discrimination by the Gadhafi regime and the influence of veteran Libyan jihadists from Afghanistan all played a role in radicalizing a new generation.

"It's jihad -- it's our duty, and you're talking about people who don't have much else to be proud of," the businessman said.

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Ad-Aware Pro Internet Security Free

Ad-Aware 9 Pro is a One of the first applications built to find and remove malware and spyware, . The latest version continues the publisher's tradition of adroitly addressing user concerns, yet Some annoyances Remain.

Ad-Aware 9 Pro continues the development progress that publisher Lavasoft began in the previous version. No longer content with offering only malware protection, Ad-Aware now includes antivirus protections licensed from Sunbelt, the makers of Vipre, as well as interesting in-house improvements.

Lavasoft first started changing Ad-Aware's protection engine more than a year ago in version 8.1, when it introduced Genotype. This heuristics-based technology identified identical snippets of code across multiple threat mutations. In version 9, Genotype receives support from what Lavasoft calls "Dedicated Detection." This tech looks inside files, analyzes the code, and creates a loose pattern for finding families of related malware. The company touts that a single dedicated detection signature can detect hundreds of thousands of threats. More importantly, Lavasoft expects that dedicated detection will lower false positive rates by creating more points of comparison.

Ad-Aware 9 debuts new tech

The second new engine, MagmaShield, is proactive. It emulates processor instructions, comparing approved processor-level operations against those that are undefined in the application layer. This means that it aggressively looks at how a file interacts with the CPU and uses that to call out threats faster.

Installation
Ad-Aware 9 Pro has a fairly straightforward installation process, simple in procedure. The installer file is a small 9 MB stub that then downloads the large main file, so users who are on slower connections ought to prepare for a lengthy download wait. Ad-Aware has no toolbars and won't attempt to commandeer your default browser's search engine, an irritation that some competitors still believe in. Installing does require a reboot, which is expected for security software. The install itself was a bit slow, taking more than five minutes including the reboot, yet still noticeably faster than it used to be.

Interface
Ad-Aware's interface hasn't changed much since version 8, which means that it's still in dire need of a refresh. The main window offers three icons that you can click on to update your virus definition files and engines, scan your system, or check your status on Ad-Watch Live, Ad-Aware's real-time protection engine. Below the main icons there's a button for updating your scan schedule and accessing support, while a toggle button to jump between simple mode and advanced mode sits in the bottom left corner of the interface. The interface's simple mode merely makes some otherwise visible options disappear, hidden behind an extra click. All but the newest of users ought to feel comfortable using Ad-Aware's "advanced" mode.

As you can tell, it's sort of a mess, and we're not done yet. At the top right of the interface are a series of buttons that replicate the three features in the main window, as well as a fourth for accessing "extras." A Settings button sits below those four.

Tapping the Scan button will run a full scan, and there's no way to change this behavior to Smart scan or Profile scan, the Ad-Aware term for a custom scan. Within the Scan window there are tabs near the top for jumping into the scheduler, the quarantine, and the ignore list.

The Ad-Watch Live window will show you which kinds of real-time protection you have running. Process protection defaults to on, while File, Network, and Registry protection are available only in the Ad-Aware paid upgrade. Some competitors, such as Avast, offer all of these in their free version.

Features
As mentioned above, the "Dedicated Detection" and MagmaShield engines are the biggest feature improvements in Ad-Aware 9 Pro, although there's no direct interaction between them and the user. Lavasoft has tweaked the scheduler behavior a bit in version 9. Users can schedule Smart scans, Full scans, custom scans, and can set them to run daily, weekly, monthly, or at Windows startup.

In addition to virus and malware scans, Ad-Aware 9 Pro offers a browser track sweeper. Accessible from the Extras button, it can wipe your cache, cookies, history, last-typed URLs, and tabs from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. The Toolbox, a second tab under Extras, contains options such as additional process-protecting features that are restricted to the paid upgrade.

Ad-Aware has some limitations that make it hard to compare favorably to its competitors. You can't view other parts of the program while running a scan, and the scan itself lacks a progress meter or a pause button.

Free version restrictions are largely absent in this version, so Pro users get a silent/gaming mode called "Do not disturb," advanced rootkit removal, and real-time threat blocking of blacklisted IP addresses, malicious processes, Registry changes, and malicious files. The Pro also offers a start-up process cleaner, to help your machine boot faster, and the offered support includes in-product access to the Lavasoft Support Center.

Performance
Ad-Aware 9 Pro performed scans on a real-world computer quite slowly, taking close to 2 hours for its first Full scan. The quick, "Smart" scan took about 4 minutes, slightly slower than the quick scan under version 8.3.

Full Labs' benchmarks benchmarks will be added to this review as they become available, as will independent third-party efficacy test results. For now, though, while Ad-Aware's new detection and prevention engines sound effective, they are largely untested in the real-world.

Conclusion

Longtime fans will notice the changes to Ad-Aware, and the program continues to grow in the right direction after several missteps in recent years. However, given the gains that Ad-Aware's paid competitors have made, and at similar price points, we're hesitant to recommend Ad-Aware 9 Pro any more than we have.

To Download Click Here

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ActiveX Download Control Free

ActiveX Download Control is a client ActiveX control, you can use this downloader in the Web project or application project and easy to realize the batch download batch files from Internet/intranet. ActiveX Download Control also downloads YouTube video and saves it to your local disc. Don't worry about unreliable, slow connections, network hang, or interrupted download. If a download interrupts before completion, it will resume from the point of failure so time and bandwidth are never wasted. Support the VB, Visual C++, PowerBuilder, Delphi, Asp/Asp.Net, Jsp, and PHP. Has a intelligent dynamic file segmentation and safe multipart downloading technology to accelerate your downloads. Split the download files into several portions and download the every portions in the different threads to realize multi-thread download while download a file. so it means that you can save much download time. For Download Click Here

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Advanced SystemCare V.4. Free

Keep your computer with Advanced SystemCare Free 4 because the program's Quick Care option includes the ability to clean your Registry, perform a rudimentary malware scan, fix and remove broken shortcuts, delete junk files, and erase browsing tracks. It's no accident That to make the process even faster, with even less of a need for user input, that you cans configure it to run on system start-up.

The Deep Care installments option adds features to the Quick Care. These include a deeper Registry clean, disk defragmenting, a "Windows vulnerability fix" and a "Passive Defense" that do not readily define what They do, and a system optimization options Optimization installments with presets. Advanced SystemCare Free has a fantastic range of features, but its Quick Care options are most transparent with how they'll affect your computer. Fortunately, the program's log records all of its activities. We'd just like to find out how a program like this is going to change our computers before it effects those changes.

Scan times vary depending on the which will of options you choose, although Deep Care We found a scan with all the options activated is to be blazingly fast. It completed in Less than 10 minutes, the which Is not a long time for a system-invasive programs like this. Much of the performance is owed to the new scanning engine, the which up to 10 cans fix problems simultaneously. The previous version Could only handle eight.

There are a new installments skins in version 4, along with a new performance-monitoring bar so you cans Observe and more readily gauge the program's progress. The Utilities section has been Replaced with IOBit Toolbox integration, the which is sort of confusing. Some of the options take you to the download page IOBit's programs, Such as the Disk Defragmenter options. Other choices simply open a power user's configuration window.

One part of the program Avoid We recommend new users, or at least use with Extreme Caution: the Turbo Boost. Turbo Boost will of disabling core system services in an attempt to Accelerate your computer's performance. Some of these include Windows Update and keyboard hot keys, and We Wish That this section of the program was more explicit about how it cans affect your computer.

To its credit, though, Advanced SystemCare Free includes a Rescue Point creation tool, so it's not hard to undo changes if you've Had the foresight to make a rescue point. A Smaller problems Is That Some of the program's options open in new windows, while others open in the Same Window. Those in the Same Window have Convenient back-navigation buttons in the upper left; those in new Sometimes windows are overlaid directly on top of the previous window and make it hard to see how to return to the previous screen.

Overall, We like Advanced SystemCare Free's toolset, performance, and convenience, yet still wish the program was more explicit about how it changes your computer.

To download click here :: Download Advanced SystemCare Free 4

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Google's and WebM now have agreed to share

These days, patent lawsuits have become the big guns that tech companies use to battle their competitors. But when it comes to Google's WebM video technology, the company is trying to establish a neutral zone of patent peace.

Today, Google is announcing a program called the WebM Community Cross License initiative designed to dispel patent-related threats looming over freely usable video technology for the Web.

Under the effort, members who join agree to license any WebM-related patents to each other, a move that offers mutual reassurance that the technology is royalty-free in practice as well as in Google's aspiration.

"Each grants to the other members a patent license for any patents that may be essential to WebM," said Mike Jazayeri, Google's director of product management for WebM.

So far Google has signed up 16 other organizations for the effort, some of them obvious allies such as browser makers Mozilla and Opera Software. But other allies, such as Samsung and LG Electronics, have video-related patents one could judge as commercially viable by virtue of their relevance to H.264, WebM's biggest video encoding technology rival.

The effort is an attempt to counter doubts raised about the patent purity of WebM by MPEG LA, which licenses the H.264 patent pool and is investigating the creation of a similar pool for VP8, the video encoding technology that along with the Vorbis audio codec is the core of WebM. MPEG LA has said it believes VP8 violates others patents, though it hasn't revealed any details.

Google hopes the WebM Community Cross License, combined with its own usage of WebM, will allay concerns.

"We felt comfortable in including it in our own products and services," Jazayeri said, mentioning its YouTube video site and Chrome browser. "We're hopeful the CCL will bring clarity and confidence" to those considering using WebM themselves.

If MPEG LA offered a VP8 patent pool, it might be convenient for some companies interested in using VP8 that are worried about potential lawsuits from patent holders. But it also would severely undermine Google's ambition to create a patent-free technology. For example, it would preclude it from inclusion in open-source software such as Mozilla's Firefox and in standards such as HTML5 that seek to sidestep patent encumbrances.

"We genuinely believe the Web is as ubiquitous today as it is because the early founders made the core technologies of the Web open and freely usable," Jazayeri said. "That's critical."

Many important video patent holders such as Microsoft, Panasonic, Philips Electronics, Sharp, and Sony aren't on the list, though--at least yet.

"This is just the beginning," Jazayeri said. "We are in active discussions [to] engage those who benefit from the Web ecosystem."

The full list of partners so far is:

• AMD
• Cisco Systems
• Google
• HiSilicon Technologies (for itself and on behalf of its parent, Huawei)
• LG Electronics
• Logitech
• Matroska
• MIPS Technologies
• Mozilla Corporation
• Opera Software
• Pantech
• Quanta Computer
• Samsung
• STMicroelectronics (for itself and its affiliate, ST-Ericsson)
• Texas Instruments
• Verisilicon Holdings
• Xiph.Org Foundation

Google has taken other measures to promote WebM. It's removed H.264 support from Chrome, putting its browser in the Mozilla and Opera camp rather than the Internet Explorer and Safari camp when it comes to HTML5 video built straight into Web pages. It's also begun transcoding all uploaded YouTube videos into WebM--a mammoth task from a computing standpoint--and already has transcoded the most popular videos such that 99 percent of what's seen on YouTube can be seen in WebM.

It remains to be seen how effectively Google can counter MPEG LA. Google is hoping to marshal allies under the banner of an unencumbered Internet.

"I think the comments they've made at this stage aren't helpful to innovation on the Web, and I think others share that concern," Jazayeri said.

To prevail, though, Google and its allies will have to convince others that the commercial value of a livelier Web outweighs the commercial value of any WebM-related patents they have. Today's explosion of patent suits suggests that tech giants with big patent portfolios might not be so eager to lay down their weapons.

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Wrap Firefox in a Cocoon of privacy

Web browsers are ground zero for Internet security threats, and the debate over responsibility for preventing those threats has resulted in a Gordian knot. The people behind the new add-on for Firefox called Cocoon (download) want to cut through debate by serving the entire Web to you via proxy. (Cocoon is also available at GetCocoon.com.)

Cocoon's Web site, with the Cocoon add-on installed. It adds a toolbar to the top of the Firefox interface, and adds buttons to the Add-On Bar at the bottom of the interface.

(Credit: Cocoon)

Made by Santa Barbara, Calif., start-up Virtual World Computing, Cocoon's goal is to put the Internet on a server to prevent individual users from having to touch it, Cocoon Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Jeff Bermant said in an interview today at San Francisco offices. The add-on, which has about 4,000 users since it entered into private beta 18 months ago, creates a safe state in which the user can browse the Internet by forcing all interactions between the computer in front of you and the Internet to occur over protected SSL connections to Cocoon's servers. Those servers, in turn, are guarded by Security-Enhanced Linux, which was developed by the United States' National Security Agency.

Cocoon opened its beta to the public in January of this year.

Cocoon installs as a toolbar just below the location bar in Firefox 4, although the add-on supports the browser back to Firefox 3.6. You can turn it on or off using the universal power button icon on the left of the toolbar, or "pause" Cocoon lock/unlock button that's next to it. Settings are available from a hard-to-see drop-down arrow just next to the lock button.

On the right are buttons for your Cocoon history, mailslots, and help. Next to those are real-time site-function buttons, so you can bookmark sites on the fly with the thumbtack--similar to the bookmark star in other browsers--or jot down a note attached to the site that only you can see using the notepad icon.

When running Cocoon, the browser will open into Private Browsing mode, although you can switch back to normal mode while still using Cocoon. It will also redirect your Home button to the cocoon:home site, and it installs a Cocoon toolbar as well as Cocoon-specific buttons on the Firefox add-on bar. Note that Cocoon doesn't work with the Google toolbar because of the competing interests of Google search and Cocoon's emphasis on privacy.

Cocoon's features are laudable, the most important being the subtlest: whatever you're looking at in Firefox with Cocoon is being shown to you remotely. You can test this after installing Cocoon by checking your IP address with Cocoon on, and then again with it off: you will see two different addresses, which means that your Internet connection is being routed through Cocoon's servers.

One of the side benefits of this, said Bermant, is that Netflix users will be able to watch streaming content from outside the United States since Cocoon's servers are in the U.S., and Netflix blocks streaming content to IP addresses that indicate a non-U.S. server.

All your personal browsing data is stored in the cloud and encrypted, so only the user can access it, and you can view it only over a secure connection. This is similar to how LastPass functions. All your interactions with the Web are opt-in, not opt-out, so that your privacy gets elevated above all other concerns.

Another excellent feature in Cocoon is that it comes with an unlimited number of on-demand e-mail "mailslots" are provided to help you keep your primary e-mail address private. If you've installed Cocoon, you can see how it works by navigating to any site that requires an e-mail address to log in, such as Twitter, Facebook, or Gmail. If Cocoon has been activated, the mailslots feature will ask you if you want to create a new e-mail address to register a new account for that site.

Cocoon Chief Technical Officer and co-founder Brian Fox added that the mailslots function like traditional brick-and-mortar mail drops. "You can not send e-mail from a Cocoon e-mail, but you can forward it to a Gmail account, for example," he said.

Cocoon offers a visual history, not unlike Opera's Speed Dial, of sites you've visited when logged in to the service. It stores the data remotely, so you can access it from any browser.

(Credit: Cocoon)

There's anti-cookie tracking that prevents advertisers from stalking you as you jump from one Web site to the next, much like Internet Explorer's tracking protection. Cocoon also incorporates support for Mozilla's new "Do Not Track", although Bermant remains skeptical of its effectiveness because, he said, "It requires advertisers to play nice, and they've never done that." Fox said that Cocoon uses ClamAV for its core antivirus engine, which it uses as part of its protection mechanisms.

Since you're browsing remotely, threats like cross-site scripting attacks and drive-by downloads are blocked. You are still vulnerable to social engineering, however, and short of full-frontal lobotomies, there's little to be done about that besides education and awareness.

Cocoon also comes with a note-taking feature that allows you to type up notes on Web sites as you visit them.

Bermant and Fox have big plans for Cocoon. They want to include features such as browser history and settings importation; implement granular controls for better whitelisting and blacklisting; and provide some level of parental controls. A version of Cocoon for Internet Explorer 9 is in the works. They're also looking at small businesses, anticipating interest from companies that want to strike a better balance between privacy and Web access. Fox noted that mobility is likely to play a major role in Cocoon's future, too. "Security and privacy are two important aspects of mobile browising," he said, "And they are sorely lacking."

Cocoon looks like a serious contender for one of the best add-ons of the year. It's a smart and effective tool, easy to toggle on or off, and plugs nearly all of the security holes the average user will encounter. The big hang-up, however, is price, and that many users simply do not pay for add-ons.

Right now, Cocoon is available as a free trial for the first 30 days of use. After that, it costs $6.95 per month, or $55.00 for a one-year subscription, a 35 percent discount. Bermant and Fox say that "a freemium option is not off the table". As important as security is, and as affordable as $55 per year sounds, it's hard to imagine widespread adoption of Cocoon's safety wrapping until it's made more accessible.

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Adobe Photoshop in the IPad

Adobe Systems, with a Photoshop-like demo on an iPad yesterday, is beginning to show more of the fruits of its tablet-computing labor. And it's a good thing, too, because there's no guarantee the company's power in desktop software will extend to tablets.

It's no secret Adobe Systems is working on graphics programs for tablets--indeed, John Nack, the leader of Adobe's tablet work, has been soliciting advice about exactly what to do since last year and Adobe has demonstrated other Photoshop features on Android and iPad tablets. But the fact that the company is shedding more of its reticence now about the projects could indicate Adobe is more willing to raise expectations in anticipation of an actual project.

At the Photoshop World conference, John Loiacono, leader of Adobe's Photoshop and other Creative Suite software, showed some of what his company has in mind. Specifically, he demonstrated an iPad-flavored incarnation of a flagship Photoshop feature, layers, that arrived on personal computers with Photoshop 3.0 in 1994.

Loiacono was quick to call it just "technology we're looking at," and to not commit to shipping anything, but it's clear Adobe is getting closer to offering something besides the somewhat stripped-down Photoshop Express application for phones and tablets. Photography Bay caught video of Loiacono's demo.

Clearly Adobe is moving from concept toward reality. What's also clear is that a huge number of upstarts also are staking claims in the new tablet realm, where new arrivals have a chance to unseat entrenched players from the PC era.

At the casual end of the spectrum, programs such as Hipstamatic, FX Photo Studio, Instagram, and Picplz let people play with their photos and share them, becoming embedded into people's online lives. For those with a more serious creative bent, Zen Brush, Brushes, Inspire Pro, and Inkpad provide a wealth of imaging options. And for the even more serious, applications like LRpad and Photosmith have the potential to step into serious photographers' lives.

Photosmith is designed to let photographers sort, label, check focus, and add keywords before importing images to Lightroom.

It's not clear yet how far tablets will encroach onto the turf of personal computers, especially when it comes to heavy-duty computing jobs, but it is clear that tablets are finding a prominent place in many people's electronic lives and that their hardware is becoming less feeble.

Layers, which require a lot more memory and processing power, are a staple of photo editing.

They can be used to merge elements of different photos or to adjust the degree to which effects are applied across an image. Parts of one layer can be made selectively transparent, revealing the contents of the layer below, an approach that enables sophisticated and adjustable compositing.

Loiacono showed just that in his demonstration, using, of course, a touch interface. He also showed an image being rotated and scaled quickly with multitouch, though it wasn't clear how large the original image was.

"This is just a concept about how do we take technologies we found in Lightroom and Photoshop and actually extend those to these devices as they become more important to your workflows," he said.

It's good to see Adobe producing something that could bring some of the company's image-editing clout to a mobile-device world world more characterized by quick-effect apps such as Hipstamatic and Picplz. Full-fledged Photoshop or Lightroom is an impossibility today, given the constraints on the processing, memory, and storage of current tablets and phones.

But these devices are growing up, and a host of software companies are finding something useful to do with them even if they're not an eight-core workstation with a dozen gigs of RAM.

One example is LRpad, a $10 app that essentially offloads some Lightroom controls to an iPad's touch controls. It connects over Wi-Fi to a PC that's the brains of the operation.

LRpad, connected to a PC running by Wi-Fi, acts as an auxiliary control panel for Adobe Lightroom.

(Credit: LRpad)

Another example of innovation around Adobe is Photosmith, in beta testing now. With it, photographers can do some of the Lightroom photo management chores before they bring photos into a PC.

"Photographers can take their pictures in the field, download them to the iPad, and use Photosmith to review their images, add to custom collections, filter by certain criteria, assign metadata, and filter by that data. Photosmith also fills a critical gap in the photographer's current mobile workflow, allowing full 1:1 zoom of even 21-megapixel raw images," the developers say of the application.

Taking photos an extra round trip through a tablet sounds a bit like extra work to me, even with Apple's Camera Connection Kit and the arrival of CompactFlash and SD memory card readers for the iPad, but perhaps it need not be such a hassle. Tethering--in which photos are sent directly to a computer rather than to a memory card--is getting more sophis

ticated as computers get integrated into photography work patterns. And Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are becoming more common in devices, as well. With this sort of technology, a tablet could perhaps become an automatic way station rather than a side trip.

One profound change, of course, is that tablets use a touch screen. That can provide artists a more direct connection to their work, but it also misses the precision of something like a relatively expensive screen-enabled Wacom Cintiq tablet that uses a pen. Even there, though, options exist, such as Ten One Design's Pogo Sketch stylus to improve tablet precision beyond the finger-painting level.

In addition, for travelers for whom weight is a problem, a tablet could be a lighter but still capable alternative to a laptop for screening photos--not to mention the fact that it's more useful for e-mail, apps, and Web use than a portable hard drive that merely stores your photos until you get to a computer.

I'm expecting Adobe to bring more than one product to this market--not a more grown-up alternative to Photoshop Express, but more. What exactly the company will come up with remains to be seen, but Nack has hinted there's work afoot.

One person earlier this year remarked of Photosmith, "It's tough not to ask why this wasn't something Adobe created."

Nack responded, "Indeed, but the time is not yet right to answer." With all the challengers to Adobe's stronghold, it looks to me like now would be a good time to supply that answer.

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