PandaLabs Says the Facebook “Like” Option May Scam You

PandaLabs, the anti-malware laboratory of Panda Security, the company responsible for Panda Cloud Antivirus, the  antimalware application that should be high on every users list of installed antimalware applications, reported today on the increasing number of scams that utilize the Facebook “Like” option.

According to Panda, in one particular attack –

“The attack uses eye-catching messages related to the popular game Farmville, the “Sex and the City 2” movie, or the keyword sex to grab the attention of logged-in Facebook users as they browse Web pages with the “Like” button, the Facebook wall feature or messaging system.”

If you are a Facebook user, and you want to keep your “friends” happy, use extreme caution in using the Like option. In a  “clickjacking” attack, you’ll end up recommending your “Like” to all your friends, who may not be at all impressed with your choice, since you have potentially made them part of the clickjacking attack. Probably not a good way to keep friends and influence people.

If you’re wondering why clickjacking is important to cyber-criminals, I’ll let Panda CEO, Luis Corrons explain it –

“Cyber-criminals can make money just by tricking you into visiting a Web page with ads. Or worse still, they can spread malware and infect you. This possibility has not yet been exploited, but it would be relatively easy and effective to do it.”

Additional information is available in the PandaLabs blog.

About PandaLabs

Since 1990, its mission has been to detect and eliminate new threats as rapidly as possible to offer our clients maximum security. To do so, PandaLabs has an innovative automated system that analyzes and classifies thousands of new samples a day and returns automatic verdicts (malware or goodware). This system is the basis of collective intelligence, Panda Security’s new security model which can even detect malware that has evaded other security solutions.

Currently, 99.4 percent of malware detected by PandaLabs is analyzed through this system of collective intelligence. This is complemented through the work of several teams, each specialized in a specific type of malware (viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, phishing, spam, etc), who work 24/7 to provide global coverage. This translates into more secure, simpler and more resource-friendly solutions for clients.

This explanation of how Panda manages its enterprise, is one reason I’m so high on Panda Cloud Antivirus as a first line of defense against malware infection. If you haven’t tried it yet, then check it out here.

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Download RKill – Free Antimalware Specialty Removal Tool

Multiple antimalware developers are now reporting, we are currently being exposed to approximately 70,000 new malware threats EVERY day!

Unfortunately for those of us who have to deal with this onslaught, much of this malware is smart – very smart. So smart in fact, that in many cases malware will recognize that the infected user is attempting to launch an antimalware application, and abort the launch.

At this point, many users give up and resort to more drastic measures, including a disk wipe, reformat, and an OS re-install. Thankfully, there is another option.

Larry Abrams over at BleepingComputer, perhaps the best web site of its type, where free help is available for many computer related problems, including the removal of rogue software, has developed an excellent free tool to deal with this problem.

Here’s how Larry describes RKill –

“RKill is a program developed at BleepingComputer.com that was originally designed for the use in our malware removal guides. It was created so that we could have an easy to use tool that kills known processes that stop the use of our normal anti-malware applications. Simple as that. Nothing fancy. Just kill known malware processes so that anti-malware programs can do their job.”

Graphic courtesy of Bleeping Computer.

If you deal with malware removal on a regular basis, or you’re a “super user”, and I know many of you are, I highly recommend that you add RKill to your antimalware toolbox.

RKill is available at the following download sites:

RKill.com Download Link

RKill.exe Download Link

RKill.scr Download Link

eXplorer.exe Download Link

iExplore.exe Download Link

Note: Because RKill may exhibit behavior similar to the malware it is designed to shut down, your AV may recognize it as malware. This condition is not unusual when dealing with antimalware specialty tools. RKill is a safe application.

Before using RKill get more complete instructions here.

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Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – June 17, 2010

Lifehacker: Set Up a Foolproof and Fireproof Automatic Backup Plan – The sweet spot of a foolproof hard drive backup plan includes local backup to an external drive and off-site backup to the cloud. The problem: Most people don’t do it. Here’s a set-it-and-forget-it, step-by-step guide to backing up your data.

Opera 10.6 beta unveiled – A new beta version of the Opera browser that is 50 per cent faster than its predecessor has been made available to download.

Web fraud claims a victim every seven seconds – Over a quarter of surfers have fallen victim to cybercrime with one losing money every seven seconds, says report. In the past year Brits have been targeted by 3.7 billion phishing emails designed to steal personal information or account details.

YouTube Now Has Online Video Editing – Google has just unveiled a new feature of their popular video sharing site, YouTube. The YouTube Editor will allow users to perform some rudimentary video editing entirely online. It’s not going to challenge desktop software in the feature department, but it will serve the needs of many people.

Hackers Exploit Windows XP Zero-Day, Microsoft Confirms – Bug, revealed by Google engineer, now being used in drive-by attacks.

AT&T Lied about iPad Attack Threat, Hackers Say – The hackers who harvested more than 100,000 Apple iPad 3G owner e-mail addresses blasted AT&T as “dishonest” today, and said the group has an exploit it or others could have used against all iPad owners.

Quick Tip: Add Internet Search to the Windows 7 Start Menu – If you have a version of Windows 7 that includes the Group Policy Editor, you can add the option to search the Internet directly from your Desktop.

Five tips for taking advantage of Windows 7 file management features – Greg Shultz highlights some of Windows 7’s file management enhancements and explains how they can save you time and effort.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Why the current computer security paradigm is analogous to fixing a leaky dam – I’m always trying to find new and innovate ways to explain the realities of computer security and hacking to people. It’s not that easy. Many people’s perspective and ideas are “hard coded” into their minds, so they are very resistant to accepting new ways of looking at the problem. I hope you’re not one of those people.

Why is Canada reluctant to adopt cloud computing? – With many universities and educational institutions opting for an outsourced, external email system usually provided by a major software company, with cheaper costs and less overall maintenance, one could easily assume it to be a wise, money saving move. But equally, one could ask – as students who actually indirectly benefit from the services – where does our data actually go, and is it safe where it is?

Gulf of Mexico Deja Vu- video using 1970’s ‘solutions’ – The most outrageous thing about the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico – fully enabled by the federal government – is they KNEW this could happen. They also knew that none of the idiotic “solutions” they attempted had a prayer of working. (submitted by Dar)

Dinosaur Sightings: Windows splash screens from 1.01 to 7 – Check out the splash screens that have graced various Windows operating systems!

Hilarious web addresses revealed in new book – A list of the internet’s most inadvertently amusing web addresses – such as the home page for celebrity agent database Who Represents, or http://www.whorepresents.com – have been compiled in a new book.

Today’s Quote:

“Education is learning what you didn’t know you didn’t know.”

–    Daniel J. Boorstin

Today’s Free Downloads:

FREE License Giveaway: FLV Converter for Windows – iSkysoft FLV Converter for Windows is designed to convert popular videos to YouTube FLV or convert FLV video to popular video formats.

Notepad++ – Notepad++ starts with the basic text editing provided by the Windows Notepad program, and adds a slew of features to help programmers and scripters. The program provides many features not available in Notepad.

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Neosites – A Professional Website Builder to the Max!

WordPress went off the air last week, for the second time this year. But, since WordPress is a free site service, I felt it was not really appropriate to whine about it. Nevertheless, I am not inclined to accept assurances that it won’t happen again, and this has led me to consider alternatives.

One of the reasons I was drawn to WordPress initially was WordPress’ stated policy of limited, or no ads – “At WordPress.com, we sometimes display discreet AdSense advertisements on your blog to help pay the bills.” Recently however, it seems every article on my site has advertising attached to it.

I have no problem with helping to “pay the bills”. But, I do have a problem with becoming a profit center for someone else. The situation reminds me of what my father said years ago – “If you work for nothing, you’ll never be out of a job”. So, now I had two reasons to research alternatives to WordPress.

There are more than a few sites on the Internet that offer similar free services , but frankly; most of them suck. Who needs a website that looks like it was created with an old version of MS FrontPage? Who needs a website so filled with advertising that your page content loses focus?

I need a website that looks highly professional, and polished. A website where I control the advertising – assuming, that in fact, I want advertising on the site.

As luck would have it, as I was going through this decisions, decisions, process, I received a “check me out” invitation, from a new player on the block Neosites, which offers both a free service, and layered fee services.

According to Neosites there approach is “a revolutionary on-line tool that lets you build and manage a website quickly and easily. You can create a professional looking site in just a few minutes.”

So, being the adventurist type, I jumped right in.

The following screen captures illustrate just how easy it is to work with Neosites.

Sign Up

Choose your plan

Choose your theme

Work through the Setup Wizard

Then, manage your site pages

Fast facts:

Choose a design from our gallery of over 2000 templates. They can be modified at any time and all the content will adapt to the new design.

Instructional wizards allow you to build a professional website without technical know-how. Edit the homepage with just a few clicks while you navigate the site. In minutes you can have your site up and on-line!

With Neosites you can create a website and domain name, e.g http://www.yourname.com. Have the advantage of webmail with corporate e-mail accounts, e.g. corporate@yourname.com.

Neosites offers SEO tools that let you position your site inside browsers, send promotional e-mails to your contacts, and integrate your contacts into your Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

Online shopping! Make sales through your site with different payment options. Receive payment on-line from credit cards, cash, or money transfers.

Upload a logo or start from scratch with our flash logo editor. The image editor allows you to select and edit images that will always fit right into place no matter what design you chose.

Make the site more dynamic by adding effects to your images. If you lack a photo for your site, browse our image bank of more than 1500 images.

Create pages that incorporate images and video.

Make sales through an on-line shopping catalog and shopping cart.

Show off your portfolio with our image gallery.

Receive orders or subscriptions with our customizable forms.

Instigate debates with forums.

Display videos organized into albums.

Have visitors download files from your site.

Measure your site’s web traffic and effectiveness by analyzing number of visits, page hits, location and source of your visitors.

I’ve only been testing this new service for a few days, but I like what I see. It’s too early to tell if I’ll choose this route, or even if I’ll make the switch from WordPress, but should I do so, Neosites is at the top of my list of alternatives.

If you’re looking to create that first web site, including web hosting,  using a WYSIWYG visual website creator, and you want to do it for free, (or as in my case, using the fee based plan), then this service from Neosites will fill the bill admirably.

Sign up at: Neosites

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Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – June 16, 2010

How To Remotely Control Your Windows Desktop for Free with LogMeIn – We’re going to show you how to use remote-desktop software to control your PC from another PC or mobile device. There are several programs that let you remotely control a computer, but in our experience LogMeIn offers the most useful and consumer-friendly software in the category.

Dell says Ubuntu is safer than Windows – So, does this end the debate over what the safest OS is? Not by a long shot. Nice bragging rights, though.

T-Mobile: Every Phone is Free June 19 – It’s true: every phone in every T-Mobile store in the U.S. will be free on June 19…but folks will have to pay for the required two-year service plan.

How to: Force Windows to Shut Down, Fix XP/7 Networking Woes, and More – Learn what to do when a shutdown freezes, plus downloads that let you easily network between Windows XP and Windows 7, and customize the OS.

Windows Tips: DIY Repair Disc, System Tray Tweak, Icon Fixes – Learn how to create a system repair disc for XP or Vista, add icons to the Windows 7 System Tray, and keep desktop icons in their places.

Raise Your Windows IQ: Advice for Newbies – Are you new to Windows, or new to computing in general? Read this guide to the basics.

Poll: How often does the Windows patch process hose your systems? – The TechRepublic Microsoft Windows Blog member poll: How often does the Windows patch process hose your systems?

Lifehacker: Turn Your Old Router into a Range-Boosting Wi-Fi Repeater – If you’re upgrading to a faster, stronger wireless router, don’t chuck your older Wi-Fi box. With the magic of DD-WRT, you can turn your older wireless router into a range-expanding Wi-Fi repeater to cover everywhere you need a connection.

Five tips for improving Linux security – Protecting a networked computer is a never-ending challenge — even in Linux. These simple measures will help protect your Linux box.

Off Topic (Sort of):

What your email address says about you – An email address can be a great indicator of how capable you are with a computer.

Nexus VCT-9000 or How Not to Make Coolers – This article is devoted to a new Nexus cooler that turned out full of problems, which unfortunately ended up ruining a very interesting design idea… (submitted by Dar)

San Francisco to require cell phone radiation warning labels – Let’s see, is my iPhone more likely to fry my brain than this BlackBerry?

Why evidence needs to drive approval – Doctors will use what they can get paid for using. Once the decision to pay is made the horse is out of the barn, and it can’t be put back in unless the treatment in question is shown to be dangerous.

Today’s Quote:

“If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee – that will do them in.”

–   Bradley’s Bromide

Today’s Free Downloads:

Free Nuance PDF Reader Displays and Converts PDFs – Nuance PDF Reader is a simple, straightforward free PDF reader with a twist–it does the best job of any PDF program I’ve tried at converting PDF files to Word, Excel or WordPerfect files. For that alone, this free program is well worth the download.

Glary Utilities – This powerful application offers extensive utilities to improve your system’s performance and protect your privacy. Glary Utilities’ well-organized interface allows users to easily choose from several tools. It cleans unwanted junk files and removes invalid and broken shortcuts, freeing up valuable disk space.

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Does a Blogger’s Opinion Really Matter?

As social beings, it seems to me that we have an insatiable need to offer our opinions (often unsolicited opinions), on virtually any topic – whether the topic is open to discussion, or not.

In an ideal world, one would form opinions based on experience, knowledge, and thoughtful consideration of the question at hand; without interference from any built-in prejudices.

But, the very definition of “opinion”, indicates that opinions are not always based on experience, knowledge, or thoughtful consideration.   The question of “who is right, or who is wrong?” is often not addressed – and prejudices, unfortunately, do get in the way.

We deal here frequently, with the state of Internet security, and I rarely hesitate to offer my opinion on this issue – it’s a mess, and it’s getting worse. And yes, I’m prejudiced. But that prejudice  is the result of years of experience, knowledge, and a developed analytical process dealing with the state of cyber space.

But, does my opinion really count? Is any one really listening? And, if so – who?

Recently, I wrote a piece – Canada’s Super Spies “Discover” Cybercrime is a Threat, a satirical article, which pointed fingers at the Canadian Government. A government, which continues to be lackadaisical in implementing a robust plan to address cyber crime; an industry of crime which is continuously being taken to new levels.

Not surprisingly, a combination of regular readers, and casual readers passing by, offered an amazing assortment of thoughtful and supportive comments. I can clearly state, that my opinion had impact with these readers. The question of “who is right, or who is wrong”, was adjudicated in my favor. And, that’s enough for me.

But, can a Blogger’s opinion have broader impact? In this particular case it seems it may well have.

In the weeks following the posting of “Canada’s Super Spies Discover Cybercrime ……”, the article was accessed by a surprising number of Members of Parliament, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (and a number of other International Police agencies), but most surprising of all – the Privy Council Office, which, “provides essential advice and support to the Canadian Prime Minister and Cabinet.”

As to what whether the article had the hoped for impact, there is no sure way to know. But, as I stated earlier, my readers were very supportive and shared my opinion – and that’s enough for me.

If you’re already a Blogger (no matter the audience you write for), keep on blogging – you’re making a difference. Your views and opinions do matter; they do count. If you’re not yet a Blogger, consider becoming one – make your views and your opinions, count. Get them out there for others to consider.

WordPress, which offers perhaps the easiest, and most robust free Blogging platform available, makes it easy to blog. Check it out here.

Just a quick note: I noticed that the Mounties continue to use IE 6 – often referred to as the most hacked application of all time. Sad!

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Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – June 15, 2010

12 Tips to Speed Up Windows 7 – Windows 7 performance blows away Vista’s easily enough, but the truth is it could still be a faster. PCMag.com Software Analyst Michael Muchmore runs down a few of his tips for giving Windows 7 a little more kick. And for the most part, he avoids the easy fixes like, Turn off Aero Effects. It will take you five minutes to read his advice.

Lifehacker: Picrap Offers No Hassle TV Show Streaming in and Outside of the US – If you just want to watch your favorite TV shows and you’re sick of restrictions and messages that inform you you’re outside of the viewing area for the site you’re trying to stream from, Picrap is a hassle-free TV streaming site.

WinPatrol PLUS License Giveaway – WinPatrol 2010 PLUS. To enter the drawing, simply click on “comment”, and enter a name and a valid e-mail (so we can send you the key) in the form.

Linux infection proves Windows malware monopoly is over – Every time I write about Windows security software, I get a predictable flood of responses from Linux advocates who claim that they don’t need any such protection. Today comes a shining example of why they’re wrong.

Video: Add Copy To and Move To commands to Explorer context menu in Windows 7 – Bill Detwiler shows you how to put the Copy To Folder and Move To Folder commands on the Windows 7 right-click menu with a quick registry edit.

101 Hottest Women in the World clickjack Facebook users – A worm spreads across Facebook disguised as a link to photos of the “101 hottest women in the world”, and hijacking users’ mouse clicks without their knowledge.

Rogue Facebook App on the Loose – Facebook users beware: A new rogue Facebook app is spamming newsfeeds and tricking users into handing over profile access. The bit.ly link redirects users to a Facebook Page that then prompts users to allow an application called “Teacher nearly kills 13 year old boy. SHOCKING!” access their profile information and permission to post on their wall.

Off Topic (Sort of):

New Tool Helps You Find a Job Through Facebook – Simply Hired, a search engine and recruitment advertising network, recently launched a personalized job search tool that integrates with Facebook to help you find jobs based on the current or previous work titles you list on your Facebook profile. It also lets you browse your friends’ employers and search for job openings at their companies.

Oil Volcano Pressure Too Strong For Containment – It has been estimated by experts that the pressure which blows the oil into the Gulf waters is estimated to be between 20,000 and 70,000 PSI (pounds per square inch). Impossible to control.

Everybody Hates Apple – While Apple will always have a contingent of loyal followers flung far and wide across the technology universe, not everyone views the spawn of the Turtlenecked One quite as favorably as the fanboys. In fact, mention Apple in the deepest, darkest corridors of campuses for these vendors and you may be met with furrowed brows.

Wireless electrical power soon a reality? – Imagine if power could be beamed around a room in the same fashion WiFi signals are transmitted. This may seem far-fetched, but is getting closer to reality.

World Cup Fever sends Internet usage to record levels – World cup fever has hit the Internet, reaching new traffic records for news sites and easily unseating President Obama’s election victory as the busiest online news event.

Today’s Quote:

“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.”

–    Tom Robbins

Today’s Free Downloads:

Shareaza – Shareaza is a multi-network peer-to-peer ( P2P ) file-sharing client supporting Gnutella2, Gnutella, eDonkey2000 ( eMule ), HTTP, FTP and BitTorrent protocols. Using C++, MFC and ATL, for Windows.

Hotspot Shield – Feeling safe when you connect to a hot spot at cafe, airport, or some other public location? You shouldn’t. There are plenty of potential dangers lurking there, including nearby hackers who may try to sniff your packets, or figure out other ways to snoop at what you’re doing online. Particularly dangerous is if you visit any Web sites and type in your user name and password–they could be hijacked.

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For Added Internet Protection – Virtualize Your System with Free Wondershare Time Freeze

At the end of 2009, many of the premier security application developers projected, that 2010 would see an increase in the the use of virtualization applications.  Specifically, controlling malware intrusion through the use of a ‘”virtual” environment, rather than operating in a “real” environment.

This prediction made sense, and so this year, we’ve focused somewhat more on operating system virtualization. We’ve looked at Shadow Defender, Returnil Virtual System, Sandboxie, GeSWall, and a number of other similar applications.

I’ve just recently completed testing Wondershare Time Freeze, a relatively new and easy to use, free (at the moment),  intrusion prevention system, that is non intrusive, and after initial setup, requires a minimum of user intervention – perfect for the average user.

Installation was hassle free – it was just a matter of  following the on-screen instructions.

The interface is the usual tab and check box layout, and is self explanatory with no learning curve involved.

Once system protection is enabled, a popup reminder will warn you that system changes will not be saved to disk. All downloaded files, all created documents, and all system changes will disappear on reboot. However, you do have another option – see the following.

If you do want to save system changes then, before rebooting, open the application and turn off system protection. You will be warned that your system may “stop responding” for several minutes. In fact, I noticed a lag of less than 20 seconds.

Fast facts:

System protection

Keep the actual system in a constant state, prevent the computer from getting slower and slower with time.

Put the actual system under protection to prevent malicious threats.

Traces of surfing the Internet and computer operation will disappear after reboot. (You have the flexibility to save changes to the actual system.)

Test software and game installations safely on a virtual system.

Folder protection

Mode 1: Disable access to the protected folders.

Mode 2: Prohibit changing files in the protected folders.

Protect your files from being infected by viruses or Trojans.

Protect your privacy more effectively.

Access protection

Manage the program with a custom password setting.

Keep inexperienced users from making changes to your settings and configurations.

System requirements: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Win 7 (32 bit only).

Download at: Wondershare

This test was fairly brief (a couple of days), but I did not encounter any problems, and ran Time Freeze successfully alongside GeSWall with no difficulty. Wondershare Time Freeze worked just as advertized – not always the case with this class of software.

Note: This application requires registration within 30 days in order to keep using it. Getting the registration code though, is a snap. Just click “Get Keycode”, and you’ll receive the registration code by email.

In previous reviews of virtualization applications, a number of readers made mention of Comodo Time Machine, a worthwhile free system restore utility. Popular guest author, Rick Robinette, has a very informative article over on his site, What’s On My PC – Comodo Time Machine – A Powerful System Restore Utility. I encourage you to read this article.

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Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – June 14, 2010

Four apps that will/might keep your wife from killing you – Since I’m sure a lot of our loyal readers are “the friend that knows about computers,” I thought I’d share some programs that I should’ve used long before my wife’s hard drive took a dirt nap.

OpenOffice.org – Don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for an office suite–and don’t want to settle for a Web-based office application? Then get the latest version of OpenOffice.Org, a full-blown office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, database, drawing program, and math program.

How do I use a Windows 7 Virtual Hard Disk as a backup device? – Because the technology is built right into the Windows 7 operating system, you don’t have to install Windows Virtual PC to create a VHD – you can do it right from the Disk Management Console or even from the command line with the Diskpart command. Let’s take a look at the procedure using the Disk Management Console.

Why Ubuntu Netbook fails in real life – On paper, Ubuntu Netbook Edition looks great. I mean, what’s not to like? It’s got a sexy launcher, a lean and mean footprint, fast boot times, … and it’s free! So, I decided to take the plunge. I didn’t use a virtual machine to just “review it,” though. I actually took an old Acer Aspire 1650 laptop — which was running XP — and switched it to Ubuntu Netbook Edition.

10 Reasons Why Google Is Still Better than Bing – News Analysis: Microsoft Bing has come a long way since it was released a year ago. But that doesn’t mean that it’s better than Google. Whether Microsoft likes it or not, its search engine has a long way to go if it wants to compete with Google Search.

5 Tips To Transition From A Free To A Paid Service – Have a website and want to convert your exist base of free users to ‘paid’? These 5 tips will help make sure you maximize your conversion process, and minimize your mistakes. Ignore them at your peril.

Test your knowledge of Windows XP performance again – Back in 2005, TechRepublic published a quiz on tweaking and troubleshooting the performance of Microsoft Windows XP. The results of the quiz were very revealing. It turned out that many taking the quiz failed to answer the majority of the questions correctly. Now, some three years later, it is time to see just how well you know your Windows XP performance.

Create Your Own Windows 7 Desktop Theme – Turn your digital photos into a Windows 7 wallpaper slideshow to share with friends and family.

Microsoft App Cuts PC Energy Use – Microsoft researchers have slashed desktop energy use with a sleep proxy system that maintains a PC’s network presence even when it is turned off or put into standby mode.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Ten New Linux Distributions Inspired by News Stories (Humor) – I’ve run across ten new Linux distributions inspired by current news stories. Some, of course, are better than others and a few just have no practical use or purpose whatsoever but still are worth a mention. (submitted by Dar)

Facebook Facts (some of which) You Probably Didn’t Know – Love it or hate it, you have probably heard of Facebook. You have visited the site, seen if it’s for you, and made the decision to either try it out or dismiss it as a fad or worthless time-drain.

War on Drugs: $1 Trillion Wasted – Nothing Accomplished – Back in 1970, President Nixon was having a lot of trouble trying to get something (anything!) accomplished in Vietnam. So he decided to wage a war that he thought he could win, and most of the American populace would support — a war on drugs. He signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act.

Fighting Food Fascism (Video) – It’s pretty clear that the US (and Canada) are ruled by Wall Street and the oil companies, but there’s a third closely related member of this unholy trinity that presents an even more sinister threat… (submitted by Dar)

Today’s Quote:

“A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.”

–    Wilson Mizner

Today’s Free Downloads:

TMPGEnc Instant Show Presenter – TMPGEnc Instant Show Presenter provides one of the fastest, easiest workflows from photos to shareable slideshow we’ve seen. This download is the free version of the $50 program–it’s functional, but offers only one template.

Apple Safari – Browse the Web with speed and an elegant interface.

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Download Photoscape – Intuitive Photo Freeware

Most of us don’t need the power of a high end (read: expensive), photo editor like Adobe Photoshop, the trendsetter/innovator for all photo editor and image manipulation software.

Instead, we’re looking for an application that’s small, fast, and hopefully free, with an intuitive interface that’s easy to use; especially for those with only modest previous experience.

Photoscape, last updated May 29, 2010, is a free photo editing application with a drag and drop interface, that meets, and in fact, exceeds those requirements.

You don’t have to take advantage of all of the powerful features built into this impressive application of course – see fast facts below. You can just stick to those tools you are most familiar with, including resizing, cropping, correcting red eye, .…………

As well, you can perform a wide variety of additional image adjustments, including brightness, contrast, and applying a host of special effects.

An unusual aspect of the Photoscape opening screen interface is its circular layout, as this screen capture illustrates. A very cool presentation!

Photoscape offers feature rich online help, supplemented with video for those of us who are into, “show me how” mode. The following screen capture illustrates the video running the Bright/Contrast help feature. I give this a big “thumbs up”.

Photoscape Fast Facts:

Viewer: View photos in your folder, create a slideshow

Editor: resizing, brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal, blooming, clone stamp

Batch editor: Batch edit multiple photos

Page: Merge multiple photos on the page frame to create one final photo

Combine: Attach multiple photos vertically or horizontally to create one final photo

Animated GIF: Use multiple photos to create a final animated photo

Print: Print portrait shots, passport photos

Splitter: Slice a photo into several pieces

Screen Capture: Capture your screenshot and save it

Color Picker: Zoom in on images, search and pick a color

Rename: Change photo file names in batch mode

Raw Converter: Convert RAW to JPG

Paper Print: Print lined, graph, music and calendar paper

Face Search: Find similar faces on the Internet

Languages: English, Korean, Chinese, Traditional Chinese, German, Dutch, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Mexico, Latin America), French, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Colombian), Thai, Hungarian, Turkish, Catalan, Slovak, Czech, Norwegian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Swedish, Estonian, Danish, Romanian, Hebrew, Galician, Finnish, Indonesian and Arabic.

System requirements: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista/Win 7.

Download at: Download.com

For the Geeky Photographer:

Image Analyzer 1.30

If you’re a geeky photographer, then Image Analyzer could be just the program you’ve been searching for. This small (1.24MB), free, advanced, feature-rich image editor, comes complete with serious enhancement and analytical tools.

At the advanced level, this is not a program for the faint of heart, and requires a good understanding of photographic techniques. Check it out at “Free Image Analyzer 1.30 -Professional Photo Editor” on this site.

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