Ashampoo Database Hacked – What You Need To Know

I could spend all day, every day, reporting on nothing more than the latest cyber criminal targeted intrusions into enterprise IT systems.  Two reports from my today’s Tech Net News column illustrate that we are barely scratching the surface of this significant, continuous, and rapidly expanding problem:

European Space Agency website and FTP servers hacked

Dramatic increase in cyber attacks on critical infrastructure

If you’re an everyday reader here, then you may recall that I regularly recommend that you take advantage of the German software developer Ashampoo’s, occasionally offered free application multipacks.

The downside (for some) is, you must register and provide an email address. Additional benefits can be gained by registering as an  Ashampoo member, which includes creating a password.

Unfortunately, Ashampoo has become a victim of a cyber criminal targeted intrusion aimed at their customer database. According to the company:

“Hackers gained access to one of our servers. We discovered the break-in and interrupted it instantly. The security gap through which the hackers gained access was closed immediately.

The stolen pieces of information are data of addresses such as name and e-mail address. Billing information (e.g. credit card information or banking information) is definitely not affected … it is not stored on our system.”

If you have taken advantage of Ashampoo’s offers, then it’s important that you exercise extreme caution with any future emails sent by the company and, any unsolicited email sent by any company, for that matter.

As well, if you have registered as an Ashampoo member, it’s important that you change your account password. Additionally, if you have used the same password elsewhere (you’d be surprised how often this occurs), it’s imperative that you change these passwords immediately.

My thanks to my buddy John B. (a great Scot!), for bringing this unfortunate incident to my attention this morning.

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Microsoft Disparages OpenOffice – Validating OpenOffice As A Competitor

I’ve often wondered just how many users actually run a fully licensed version of Microsoft Office – one that they’ve paid for. I wonder, because Microsoft Office is so outrageously expensive.

Here in Canada, the Home and Student version goes for $160.00, with the Office Home and Business costing $350.00. At the top end, Office Professional 2010 will set you back a mind bending $670.00. (Sharp shoppers may be able to buy any version at a discounted price, however).

I will admit, that I run a licensed version of MS Office 2010 on one of my machines, and a licensed version of MS Office XP on another. But, I also run OpenOffice 3.2 on a Linux (Ubuntu 10.04) machine.

If you’ve been around computing for a while, then you’re probably aware that OpenOffice is the leading open-source (FREE) office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and …..

Since I now spend 70% of my computing time in Ubuntu, more and more I find myself using OpenOffice 3.2. While not a perfect replacement for MS Office, OpenOffice 3.2 more than meets my business needs. As well, OpenOffice offers me a big plus – it can read and write files from other common office software packages, including Microsoft Word.

I’m not going to write a review on OpenOffice 3.2 today, in an attempt to convince you that this free office suite can effectively go head-to-head with MS Office (I’ve recommended O.O. here, numerous times) – I’ll let Microsoft do the convincing.

Most of us are pretty familiar with negative political ads. You know the type – the candidates disparage each others accomplishments, experience, ability, fitness for the job, and on and on.

Microsoft has taken a page from this playbook, and has recently begun a campaign to tear down OpenOffice by focusing on what Microsoft considers to be the downside of working with OpenOffice. Watch the following YouTube video then you be the judge.

While watching this video, keep in mind that it is sound business practice to go after only those who are considered competition – why waste time on those who can’t hurt your sales.

Obviously then, Microsoft now considers OpenOffice to be a threat to their core MS Office product line. If OpenOffice wasn’t every bit as good as most observers consider it to be, it seems to me Microsoft wouldn’t be making any effort to convince consumers otherwise. They would simply ignore OpenOffice.

But no, they see the threat and are reacting to it.

OpenOffice is available for the following operating systems: Windows, Mac, Linux, and others.

To learn more about this outstanding open source Office Suite, go here.

There is some discussion at the moment as to whether Oracle will continue to support OpenOffice, but according to an Oracle statement dated October 13, 2010, it appears that they will.

Oracle’s growing team of developers, QA engineers, and user experience personnel will continue developing, improving, and supporting OpenOffice.org as open source, building on the 7.5 million lines of code already contributed to the community.

If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article.

Backup and Reinstall Drivers – Free Uniblue Scan

Still running your computer with outdated system and peripheral drivers? Well now you can do something about that.

The fact is, computer products/peripherals are often distributed with under tested device and system drivers, which can cause real mayhem including intermittent system crashes (one of the hardest problems to diagnose), poor system performance, or buggy peripheral performance.

Manufacturers of course, are not slackers when it comes to improving previously released drivers in order to fix bugs, errors and conflicts with other programs, (more common than you may think), or to increase peripheral functionality. For example, my HP home printer has had three improved drivers released in the past two years that have increased stability and functionality somewhat.

If you want to take a trip on the “Frustration Express” then you can try to update your drivers manually. Believe me; you’ll be in for a long and frustrating ride.

You’ll start by Googling the driver name, then investigation available drivers, many of which will have a disclaimer stating that it was not written specifically for your system/device, you’ll try it – then delete it and then your back to Googling again. Repeat the previous frustrating experience as many times as necessary and you might get lucky.

Uniblue Systems, a Microsoft Gold Certified provider and one of my favorite socially conscious software developers, who are noted in the computer tech community for freely providing, as a public service, the invaluable system tools ProcessLibrary, ProcessQuickLink, and ProcessScanner, has just released a terrific utility that takes care of all these problems for you.

(Click pic for larger)

DriverScanner will quickly scan your system, determine the drivers that have updates available, and will download and install the updated drivers which can provide you with increased system stability and more reliable system and peripheral performance. On my test bed system, DriverScanner found, in seconds, seven drivers that needed updating. Considering what I do for a living, and how fastidious I am in system maintenance, I was very impressed.

(Click pic for larger)

DriverScanner doesn’t stop there though.

Consider the last time you had to do a full re-install of Windows, (if you haven’t yet you will), and you discovered that the most frustrating part of the process was the installation of all those device drivers. The hassle you had searching high and low for the original install CD’s or worse, spending hours on the Internet tracking down those hard to pin down drivers.

DriverScanner makes it easy to backup and reinstall all your Windows drivers. Using DriverScanner, you simply backup and restore to and from external devices.

This is a great little application that should be part of your system and recovery toolbox.

Quick facts:

Driver scanner engine works via a single click

Identification of drivers requiring an update

Download of updated drivers specific to the hardware and OS

Comprehensive driver download history

Driver backup and restore to and from external devices

Triggering installations of the upgrades

Backup of current drivers and restore feature

Use of restore points as a backup plan in case of faulty drivers

Reporting of defective drivers directly from the interface

Clear and simple to use interface

This is a great little application that should be part of your recovery toolbox.

Requirements: Windows XP, Vista

Download the free scan at: Uniblue

Update Your Outdated Drivers – Free Uniblue Scan

Still running your computer with outdated system and peripheral drivers? Well now you can do something about that.

The fact is, computer products/peripherals are often distributed with under tested device and system drivers, which can cause real mayhem including intermittent system crashes (one of the hardest problems to diagnose), poor system performance, or buggy peripheral performance.

Manufacturers of course, are not slackers when it comes to improving previously released drivers in order to fix bugs, errors and conflicts with other programs, (more common than you may think), or to increase peripheral functionality. For example, my HP home printer has had three improved drivers released in the past two years that have increased stability and functionality somewhat.

If you want to take a trip on the “Frustration Express” then you can try to update your drivers manually. Believe me; you’ll be in for a long and frustrating ride.

You’ll start by Googling the driver name, then investigation available drivers, many of which will have a disclaimer stating that it was not written specifically for your system/device, you’ll try it – then delete it and then your back to Googling again. Repeat the previous frustrating experience as many times as necessary and you might get lucky.

Uniblue Systems, a Microsoft Gold Certified provider and one of my favorite socially conscious software developers, who are noted in the computer tech community for freely providing, as a public service, the invaluable system tools ProcessLibrary, ProcessQuickLink, and ProcessScanner, has just released a terrific utility that takes care of all these problems for you.

DriverScanner will quickly scan your system, determine the drivers that have updates available, and will download and install the updated drivers which can provide you with increased system stability and more reliable system and peripheral performance. On my test bed system, DriverScanner found, in seconds, seven drivers that needed updating. Considering what I do for a living, and how fastidious I am in system maintenance, I was very impressed.

DriverScanner doesn’t stop there though.

Consider the last time you had to do a full re-install of Windows, (if you haven’t yet you will), and you discovered that the most frustrating part of the process was the installation of all those device drivers. The hassle you had searching high and low for the original install CD’s or worse, spending hours on the Internet tracking down those hard to pin down drivers.

DriverScanner makes it easy to backup and reinstall all your Windows drivers. Using DriverScanner, you simply backup and restore to and from external devices.

This is a great little application that should be part of your system and recovery toolbox.

Quick facts:

Driver scanner engine works via a single click

Identification of drivers requiring an update

Download of updated drivers specific to the hardware and OS

Comprehensive driver download history

Driver backup and restore to and from external devices

Triggering installations of the upgrades

Backup of current drivers and restore feature

Use of restore points as a backup plan in case of faulty drivers

Reporting of defective drivers directly from the interface

Clear and simple to use interface.

This is a great little application that should be part of your recovery toolbox.

Requirements: Windows XP, Vista

Download the scan at: Uniblue

DriverScanner from Uniblue – Update Your Outdated Drivers

Incredibly, computer products/peripherals are often distributed with under tested device and system drivers, which can cause real mayhem including intermittent system crashes (one of the hardest problems to diagnose), poor system performance, or buggy peripheral performance.

Manufacturers of course, are not slackers when it comes to improving previously released drivers in order to fix bugs, errors and conflicts with other programs, (more common than you may think), or to increase peripheral functionality. For example, my HP home printer has had three improved drivers released in the past two years that have increased stability and functionality somewhat.

If you want to take a trip on the “Frustration Express” then you can try to update your drivers manually. Believe me; you’ll be in for one hell of a ride.

You’ll start by Googling the driver name, then investigation available drivers, many of which will have a disclaimer stating that it was not written specifically for your system/device, you’ll try it – then delete it and then your back to Googling again. Repeat the previous frustrating experience as many times as necessary and you might get lucky.

Uniblue Systems, a Microsoft Gold Certified provider and one of my favorite socially conscious software developers, who are noted in the computer tech community for freely providing, as a public service, the invaluable system tools ProcessLibrary, ProcessQuickLink, and ProcessScanner, has just released a terrific utility that takes care of all these problems for you.

DriverScanner will quickly scan your system, determine the drivers that have updates available, and will download and install the updated drivers which can provide you with increased system stability and more reliable system and peripheral performance. On my test bed system, DriverScanner found, in seconds, seven drivers that needed updating. Considering what I do for a living, and how fastidious I am in system maintenance, I was very impressed.

DriverScanner doesn’t stop there though.

Consider the last time you had to do a full re-install of Windows, (if you haven’t yet you will), and you discovered that the most frustrating part of the process was the installation of all those device drivers. The hassle you had searching high and low for the original install CD’s or worse, spending hours on the Internet tracking down those hard to pin down drivers.

DriverScanner makes it easy to backup and reinstall all your Windows drivers. Using DriverScanner, you simply backup and restore to and from external devices.

This is a great little application that should be part of your system and recovery toolbox.

Quick facts:

Driver scanner engine works via a single click

Identification of drivers requiring an update

Download of updated drivers specific to the hardware and OS

Comprehensive driver download history

Driver backup and restore to and from external devices

Triggering installations of the upgrades

Backup of current drivers and restore feature

Use of restore points as a backup plan in case of faulty drivers

Reporting of defective drivers directly from the interface

Clear and simple to use interface.

This is a great little application that should be part of your recovery toolbox.

Requirements: Windows XP, Vista

Download the trial version at Uniblue

Free Process Quick Link 2 – Improve Windows Task Manager

Windows Task Manager is a bit of a tease. Sure it provides you with some usable information, but it falls far short of providing you with the information that you really need. It is most commonly used to display information on all processes running on your computer, as well as advising you of the CPU and memory usage stats for a giving process. Additional selective information on running applications, performance, local area connection, and on users is also available.

Most importantly, from within Task Manger you have the option of selectively killing processes. But how do you determine which processes are safe to kill based on the limited information Task Manager provides?

If you’re a skilled computer user, it’s probable you’re aware of every process running in the background, the application or service that is responsible for launching it, and the function it performs. Better yet, you probably have the know-how to selectively kill processes to optimize memory use and trim your machine for maximum performance.

But what if you’re a novice or casual computer user? Where can you get the information on running processes so that you can make an accurate assessment on whether to kill a process or not?

Fortunately, there are a number of free tools available that will help any computer user, novice or not, to determine which process/processes can be safely shut down.

One such free tool is ProcessQuickLink 2, a small application (413 KB), from Uniblue Systems, the company which provides the indispensable process listing database ProcessLibrary.com, to the computing community free.

After downloading and installing ProcessQuickLink 2, the latest process information will be available to you directly through Windows Task Manager. Simply click on the Icon next to the process you are querying, which will now be visible in Task Manager’s process tab, and the ProcessLibrary.com website will be accessed where the essential information on the selected process can be viewed. The information provided is extensive enough to allow you to make an educated decision on the process.

If you’ve always wondered just what all those processes running in the background on your computer are up to, this cool little application will give you all the information you need.

Quick facts:

Instant one click access to process descriptions and advice through the Task Manager

Quickly and easily search 9000+ entries in processlibrary.com database

New process descriptions are added on a weekly basis

System Requirements:

Windows 2000 / 2003 / XP / Vista

Internet connection and an Internet browser

Download at: Uniblue Systems

Free Windows Dictionary and Thesaurus! – WordWeb Free Version

Looking for a powerful, but free, English Thesaurus and Dictionary that can instantly find definitions, synonyms, sets of related words, and pronunciations for words in virtually any Windows program?

Then checkout WordWeb, a one-click English Thesaurus and Dictionary for Windows that includes a data base of over 150,000 root words and 120,000 synonym sets that can be used to instantly find definitions, synonyms, and pronunciations for words in virtually any Windows program. What’s more, it can connect to the Internet enabling you to look up words in web reference encyclopedias and dictionaries including Wikipedia, Chambers Reference Online, Encarta, and OneLook.

The straightforward interface has the look and feel of your word processing program’s dictionary tool, so there’s no learning curve involved here. Simply launch the application and you’re good to go. A great feature is the hot key function which allows you to find definitions from within virtually any application, with a single keystroke.

I have been using this neat little application for ages and I find it invaluable. If you’re a student, a writer, a Blogger, or you just want to choose a better word in your correspondence, then download and install this neat little freeware utility.

Features of the free version include:

• Definitions and synonyms
• Antonyms
• Proper nouns
• Related words
• Word types and parts
• Spoken pronunciations (love this feature!)
• Translation support – French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
• Hot key support
• USB compatible

Note: The author is a concerned environmentalist, so this free version of WordWeb comes with some ecological restrictions; read the license agreement for details.

Download at: Download.com

Boost Windows Task Manager! – Free ProcessQuickLink 2

Windows Task Manager is a bit of a tease. Sure it provides you with some usable information, but it falls far short of providing what you may really need. It is most commonly used to display information on all processes running on your computer, as well as advising you of the CPU and memory usage stats for a giving process. Additional selective information is also available.

From within Task Manger you have the option of selectively killing processes. But how do you determine which ones are safe to kill based on the limited information Task Manager provides.

If you’re a skilled computer user it’s probable you’re aware of every process running in the background, the application or service that is responsible for launching it, and the function it performs. Better yet, you probably have the know-how to selectively kill processes to optimize memory use and trim your machine for maximum performance.

But what if you’re a novice computer user? Where can you get the information on running processes so that you can make an accurate assessment on whether to kill a process or not?

Fortunately, there are a number of free tools available that will help any computer user, novice or not, to determine which process/processes can be safely shut down.

One such free application is ProcessQuickLink 2, a small application (413 KB), from Uniblue Systems, the company which provides the indispensable process listing database ProcessLibrary.com, to the computing community free.

After downloading and installing ProcessQuickLink 2 the latest process information will be available to you directly through Windows Task Manager. Simply click on the Icon which will now be visible in Task Manager’s process tab and the ProcessLibrary.com website will be accessed where the essential information can be viewed. The information provided is extensive enough to allow you to make an educated decision on the process.

If you’ve always wondered just what all those processes running in the background on your computer are up to, this cool little application will give you all the information you need.

Quick facts:

• Instant access to process descriptions and advice through the Task Manager
• Quickly and easily search 9000+ entries in processlibrary.com database
• Free – new process descriptions are added on a weekly basis

System requirements: Windows 2000 / 2003 / XP / Vista

Download at: Uniblue Systems