Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – August 22, 2011

Favorite Free Windows 7 Themepacks – A fresh new look can brighten your perspective…especially when it’s on the Windows 7 desktop you stare at day and night. Sweet tooth or salt craving? Nature or pets? Sci-fi or fantasy? Check out this free buffet to satisfy your appetite for pretty pictures.

File Expert Combines Android Wireless Sharing With a Great File Manager – Manage files on your Android phone and share them wirelessly with your PC with this awesome free app.

Bitdefender 2012 five license give away – For a chance to win one, simply download the trial version, share your thoughts of the trial version here, your blog, Twitter, or even Bitdefender’s Facebook page, then share the link to it in the comment section below and get a chance to win the full product.

Six stages of malware response: Streamline your approach – Dominic Vogel is a rookie security guy making his way in a corporate setting. Here, he offers his streamlined approach to malware response, and the important things you can learn from this routine support call.

Keep device drivers updated with Windows 7 Device Installation Settings – In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report, Greg Shultz examines the benefits of allowing Windows 7 to detect and install updated device drivers and shows you how to enable or disable this feature.

Turn Your iPad Into the Ultimate Game Machine – With tens of thousands of game titles in the Apple App Store, your iPad can be a very effective way to pass the time. These add-on accessories will help up your game, and transform your tablet into a killer on-the-go fun machine.

Cyber attack hits 350,000 Epson Korea customers – An official at the South Korean affiliate of Seiko Epson Corp. said the company has reported the case to the communications regulator. It said personal information, including phone numbers, email addresses, names and coded data of customers registered on its website had been compromised.

Google Adds More Sitelinks, Like Them or Not - Google has boosted its sitelinks links to Website pages to 12 and improved the ranking algorithm. With that, the 10 blue links argument becomes a 100 blue links argument.

GingerMaster Is First Malware To Utilize A Root Exploit On Android 2.3 – New attack can successfully avoid detection by antivirus programs, university research team says

Company News:

Apple Files Suit in New York Over Knockoffs – Fake Apple stores are not just a Chinese phenomenon. Apple has filed suit against several New York retailers for selling fake Apple products out of stores in Flushing.

Groupon Talks Privacy, Always-On Location Tracking – In response to a congressional inquiry about its privacy policies, Groupon this week provided more details about how it collects and stores its users’ personal data, particularly as it relates to location-based data and opt-in versus opt-out.

Short Story of the Week:

Paul Andrew Russell’s – A Slip of the Tongue

Marjory Attwater had it all. Millions in the bank, a stellar career as a best selling novelist and a coveted position teaching creative writing in one of the country’s leading universities. Was she happy? Not this morning she wasn’t. Strewn around her, on the floor of the opulent living room in the faux Gothic mansion, were the remains of the Sunday newspaper.

“Bitch!” she screamed as she threw another page into the air and watched it flap down on to the rug. “What does she know, god-damned hack!”

Off Topic (Sort of):

30 Years of PC Operating Systems – Not a lot of people know more about PC OSes than our software lead analyst, Michael Muchmore. In honor of the 30-year anniversary of the PC, he takes us on a nostalgic trip all the way back to DOS 1.0, chronicling all the important software milestones along the way.

10 Most Ridiculous Tech Lawsuits of the 21st Century – A woman sues Google for bad directions, another claims she’s allergic to Pentium processors. These are real lawsuits from our tech-obsessed 21st century. We sifted through the dockets to find ten examples of weird litigation.

TouchPad’s Lesson: Tablets Cost Too Much – HP’s fire sale brings out the bargain-hunters, but it may offer another hint about the appropriate price of tablets.

10 things you shouldn’t believe about freelancing – If you’re thinking about going freelance, be forewarned: Much of what you hear — about the freedom, the money, the work itself — is just plain wrong.

Today’s Quote:

“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”

-    Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876

Today’s Free Downloads:

7-Zip (32-bit version) – When people talk about file compression, they usually mean ZIP. 7-Zip supports ZIP, but also the much-improved 7z compression format. Its user interface will probably not blow you away. Its impressive compression ratios, however, just might.

Hamster Free Zip Archiver – If you’re not satisfied with the basic Zip archiving built into Windows, you’ll want to give Hamster Free Zip Archiver a try. It offers far more capabilities than what you get with Windows, and does it for free.

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