How in the TECH » The Techfiles

Testing your Antivirus/Firewall for Leaks

Adam Myers — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:28:35 +0000

It’s good Internet sense to be running some sort of antivirus and firewall protection – everyone knows that and most heed the advice. But how well does your security software perform? Most of us would like to believe that our software does an excellent job of protecting us but how can you be sure? There are numerous online reviews of many competing products or anecdotal accounts by friends or colleagues, but at the end of the day they are all subjective and opinionated. Testing methodologies can skew the results and make any security suite behave poorly or not. This is not an attempt to call out bias in reviews but rather an attempt to explain the difficulty in ranking the suites.

Comodo Leaktest is a free application that tests your antivirus/firewall software for leaks. By simulating different methods of attacks or exploits, Leaktest can determine your level of vulnerability without causing harm to your computer. The software runs a set of 34 tests with variants of rootkits, invasion, injection, info send, impersonation, and hijacking tests. Each test is scored with a simple pass/fail where a pass is worth 10 points that results in a perfect score of 340. The specifics of each test can be access from the ? button in the interface. However, the software does not provide any solution to the problems it uncovers so further research will be necessary if you were going to attempt a fix yourself.

So you might be asking now why this leak test is any better, or even different, than any other online review. Leaktest does not test against specific exploits or viruses like most of those reviews focus on. Instead, Comodo focuses on common behavior of malware – such as opening random webpages or injection of a new auto-start application.

You can see that my antivirus scored an abysmal 120 out 340, which goes to show you that you are never as well off as you think!

Safely Disable Unnecessary System Services in Vista

Adam Myers — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:11:50 +0000

In the days when processing power was measured in megahertz and memory counted by the megabytes, PC users were always striving to eek every little bit of performance possible. Microsoft Windows has long had the stigmata of being a bloated and heavy operating system and a lot of that stems from the sheer amount of processes running in the background, typically unbeknown to the user. In the Microsoft world, background processes are called services and chances are, you have a number of services running that you don’t even need. Don’t have a printer? You still have the Print Spooler service running unless you actively disable it. For most, the days of performance squeezing are long gone but that doesn’t mean it’s completely dead.

Vista Services Optimizer is a free Windows utility that aids in the ability to streamline your Windows system. There are plenty of articles on the Internet that describe each and every service but often times you are still left confused on whether or not the service is truly necessary. Vista Services Optimizer takes the guess work out of the entire process by analyzing your running system and providing suggestions on what to disable. It will never lead you down the path of disabling a vital Windows service.

A system scan and recommendations thereafter is great but Vista Services Optimizer takes it a step further by asking easily answered questions about your system. Do you have a scanner or digital camera? Have you installed anti-spyware software? The answers to these questions will help the software further pin down your requirements.

If you end up getting yourself in trouble still by disabling something you actually needed the Rescue Center can revert to a previous snapshot of the system services state. Additionally, you can have multiple profiles defined and applied on a whim. If you are playing a resource intensive game, it may make sense to disable different services.

Vista Services Optimizer requires the .Net 3.5 framework and, of course, Windows Vista.

Hide that Running Application with Dad’s Around

Adam Myers — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:52:08 +0000

Historically, the Boss Key or Panic Button is a piece of software running in the background that can be triggered to obstruct parts of the screen on demand, typically by a predefined keyboard shortcut. The logic is pretty simple to deduce; if you are running or viewing something you should not be, perhaps a video game or a YouTube video, and your boss walks by you are likely to get caught in the act. Rather than hastily fumbling with the mouse in order to hit the minimize button, you quickly execute your boss key, and thus save the day or even your job.

Dad’s Around is one such panic button application and was an entry in the Donation Coder NANY 2009 programming challenge. The software performs just as describe above and requires no installation – meaning it’s portable and leaves no remnants on the host computer. At just over 5MB of memory use when running, it is also lightweight and hides away in the Windows tray while running.

By default, Dad’s Around actions are initiated with Windows Key+Z and kick-starts four functions: mute audio, close out the active application window, minimize all windows, and black the screen. You may configure the software to do any and all of the previous actions as well as rebind the shortcut key to whatever is most convenient for your sneaktivity!

Shutdown your PC at the End of iTunes Playlists

Adam Myers — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:13:21 +0000

Many people need help winding down at days end before ultimately falling asleep. Some read, some watch TV, while others listen to music before the eyes close. As most music collections now live on the computer, iTunes is the logical playback system for satisfying the musical night time ritual. The problem in this going green society is your computer remains powered on long after you’ve fallen asleep and your play list has completed.

NightTunes is a Windows-based iTunes plugin that can automatically turn off your computer upon the completion of the play list. If you choose to pay a few dollars, the plugin functionality is expanded; allowing your system to go into stand by or hibernate.

Installation is straight forward and the integration causes NightTunes to run upon launch of iTunes. Execution is equally as simple – select the Active checkbox from within NightTunes, conveniently situated in your tray. Once active, begin playback from an iTunes play list and NightTunes will handle the rest. Simple and effective.

Regain Screen Real Estate with WinRoll

Adam Myers — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:43:38 +0000

Costs on high resolution displays for your computer are constantly falling all while the size and resolution increase. It’s difficult to think back on the days of the 15″ CRT and 800×600 resolution – both available if you were lucky – and not shudder at the hit your productivity would take if you were forced to return. Back then applications were almost always run maximized to fit as much as possible on your screen. Today, the idea of running every application full screen is rather foreign. We’ve all become multi-tasking demons with many windows open at once, overlayed or staggered across our 23″ wide-screen display.

One unique solution to the limited screen real estate of yesteryear that was popularized, at least for me, by Linux window managers was the ability for open applications to roll-up into their title bars. This left just the thin sliver of the application displayed and was a boon for serious multi-tasking.

WinRoll 2.0 brings this functionality to all modern versions of Windows. The free opensource application, written in assembly of all things, is extremely light weight – taking just over 500K of memory when running. The utility resides in the tray and can be toggled on and off with a simple click of it’s icon. When enabled, applications can be rolled-up with a right-click on their title bars. To apply the affect to all open applications you can hold down ALT while clicking. To me, this is less obtrusive than minimizing applications to get to a buried application window or a file on your desktop.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Adding Version Control to your Documents in Word 2007

Adam Myers — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:33:37 +0000

If you are a power user in Microsoft Word you’ve likely suffered at least one catastrophic failure that resulted in hours of lost editing. Moving forward, you’ve learned from that tragic event and now you save early and save often. You may even take it one step further and create copies or iterations of your document on each save – just in case the document somehow becomes corrupt. It’s a fantastic habit to have but unfortunately, and maybe even understandably, not one you acquire until after your first disaster. Having multiple versions of a file that you can go back to is the basic principle behind version control. This practice is pretty user-intensive however, at least with respect to Microsoft Word.

AutoHistory for Word 2007 is an extremely useful tool for all users that lessens the burden of version control. Once installed, the free plugin creates backups of your .doc files on each save. Each save is timestamped so that you can quickly rollback to that version when necessary. This is really a feature that should be standard in Office; it’s that useful.

Download and install AutoHistory.
Enable the functionality in Word 2007 but clicking the View tab on the ribbon. Enable the checkbox next to Show/Hide History.

From the AutoHistory side panel you can then: View, Recover, Compare, or Delete the selected history file.

Partition USB Thumb Drives with BootIt

Adam Myers — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:05:15 +0000

Were you aware that Windows is unable to partition a USB thumb drive? It’s true, if the USB device is identified by Windows to be of the removable media type the flash drive will not show up in any of Windows partitioning tools. The obvious solution is to convince Windows that the drive is not removable, but rather a fixed device, so that it will then treat it like any other attached harddrive. Sounds simple enough, but simple is not always easy – especially when it relates to computers. As you’ve hopefully imagined, simple is easy in this case!

BootIt, a free utility from Lexar, allows the user format, label, mark as bootable, and flip the removable media bit on USB thumb drives. The last feature, flip the removable media bit, is the answer to our problem. The bit controls whether the device appears as fixed or removable to Windows – introducing functionality appropriate to either situation. As the tool is developed by Lexar for their brand of thumb drives, it may not work for every device out there. However, in my testing of a few non-Lexar brand flash drives, the software worked flawless. So, just ensure you’ve done a bit of testing to verify BootIt is behaving correctly before you begin truly using the partitioned USB thumb drive.

Determining the Effectiveness of Windows ReadyBoost

Adam Myers — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:49:21 +0000

Windows ReadyBoost was a much discussed new feature introduced by Microsoft for Windows Vista. The idea is simple enough; use USB thumb drives as additional system memory to boost overall performance, sort of. Sort of because adding a 1GB flash drive isn’t exactly like adding an additional 1GB of RAM – actually it’s a fair bit away from that idea. Instead, memory sticks act as another layer of memory cache – it’s more in line with the pagefile and virtual memory than physical RAM. The idea is solid enough but in practice, the results aren’t overwhelming significant. The effects are most noticeable on very memory intensive applications such as video editing or encoding. Even then, the results are more subjective and difficult to quantify. The system feels more responsive.

Given that thumb drives are basically free nowadays it might be worth your while to determine if ReadyBoost has any impact in your usage patterns. Unfortunately, Microsoft has no built in monitoring capabilities as to when or if ReadyBoost is being utilized. However, the developers when left to their own devices rarely fail to deliver. ReadyBoost Monitor is a free Windows application written in .NET for Vista that visualizes the impact of ReadyBoost. Specifically, ReadyBoost Monitor graphs the read/write speed, read/write data, and cached data over time.

Additionally, the application can also be minimized to the tray where the information is displayed via a pop-up balloon on mouse over.

Userscripts Updater for Greasemonkey

Adam Myers — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:04:31 +0000

Greasemonkey is easily one of the best Firefox extensions available and is often the one extension that keeps everyone coming back to Firefox, in my opinion. Greasemonkey provides a mechanism to customize, which usually entails added functionality, a website via javascript components. There are literally thousands of Greasemonkey scripts available that can all sorts of things. Users can find many of javascript snippets at Userscripts, an online repository that Greasemonkey script developers can upload and share their creations. Unfortunately, and unlike Firefox extensions themselves, Greasemonkey scripts have no ability to update themselves to new versions should the author provide a new release. Taking a step back further, you don’t even know a new version is available without visiting the Userscripts site manually.

As is commonplace on the Internet, someone will see a problem and work towards addressing it. Userscripts Updater is a Greasemonkey script that is designed to search the Userscripts repository for new updates for any installed scripts you may have with the slight caveat that it only maintains updates on scripts installed after it’s initial installation. Meaning, if you have four Greasemonkey scripts installed you must reinstall them after installing the Updater in order for them to be managed correctly. This is only a minor issue to most I feel.

Once installed you can search for updates via the script by visit the Userscripts website. You will see a new option added to the upper right portion of the site aptly titled Update Scripts. Clicking the link will initiate a manual scan for script updates; handy but not ideal. Thankfully, clicking the Options icon to the right will allow you to configure for automated checks anywhere from every hour to every couple of days. Now that is something to be exicted about if you are a heavy Greasemonkey junkie!

Exporting iTunes Playlists with iExporter

Adam Myers — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:16:52 +0000

iTunes is likely the top music library manager available for Windows and OS X, unfortunately it’s generally not because of the quality of the product – especially on the Windows platform. Rather, the iPod’s dominance in the portable music player market dictates iTunes success. Savvy users may be aware that the iPod is not exclusively bound to iTunes but for the general populace it’s the only application in town. iTunes works well enough that most don’t actively seek out alternatives but that also isn’t typically a glowing endorsement of the product either.

A glaring omission in iTunes’ functionality is the inability to export all of your playlists, at least in a usable fashion, to other devices – devices that can’t directly interface with iTunes. If you are someone who has taken hours to construct the perfect playlist for every possible occasion this can be quite a drag when you hit this wall. Thankfully, with each problem there often exists a solution and here is one where that rings true.

iExporter is a free Windows .NET application that interfaces with iTunes and facilitates the exporting of any and all assembled playlists. It’s usage is as straightforward as one would suspect; launch the application and click Connect to iTunes. The software will query a running iTunes instance or launch iTunes if isn’t already running. Secondly, select a folder you wish to export the playlist to. It is unfortunate that iExporter can not export a .m3u playlist; the software will simply copy the MP3 files referenced in the selected playlists into the folder of your choosing from step 2. For some, this oversight could be a deal breaker but also something that hopefully can be solved in future releases.

iExporter does the job with little frills, which is generally something I like to see in a product.