Acronis True Image Home 2012 is worthy
Most backup programs specialize in a particular form of data protection: file-based backups, continuous data protection, online backups, whatever it might be. Acronis True Image Home 2012, though, takes a different approach, cramming just about every backup type and feature there is into a single, straightforward interface.
The program can create images of partitions or entire hard drives, for instance. If this is more than you need then you can simply point True Image Home 2012 at the files or folders you’d like to protect. Alternatively, aim the program’s Nonstop Backup module at a key location – your Documents folder, say -- and it’ll monitor that folder for you, backing up new or modified files as they appear.
Next to cyberattacks, well-meaning insiders pose greatest security risk
Businesses are concerned about security, but which are the biggest and what are their strategies. Symantec explores these questions in their 2011 State of Security Survey.
Symantec commissioned Applied Research to conduct the survey in April and May of 2011. Thirty-three hundred organizations worldwide, across a range of industries and sized from 5 employees to many thousands were surveyed. Sixty-five percent of the organizations had 500 or more employees, weighing the survey heavily towards large organizations in terms of total seats.
Finally, Samsung Galaxy S II is here
For months Apple has been firing off patent lawsuits against Samsung's newest smartphone and tablet. Despite this barrage of mortar fire, early this evening Samsung landed the Galaxy S II on these shores.
The smartphone many reviewers are calling the "iPhone 5 killer" debuts ahead of Apple's next-gen handset. If you're on AT&T, Samsung's beaut can be yours on September 18. Sprint subscribers can grab the smartphone two days earlier.
Dell wants to find 'America's favorite small business' [sponsored]
There are nearly 27.3 million small business in the United States -- the majority farms or sole-proprietorships, which have no payroll employees, according to the US Census Bureau. There are 5.9 million small businesses with payrolls, and 3.62 million employ fewer than five people. Are you one of them?
The continuing economic crisis is causing more small businesses to close and the survivors aren't able to hire at pre-2008 levels. Companies with fewer than 20 employees generated only 38,000 net new jobs in fourth quarter 2010, according to the Small Business Administration (those are the latest stats available). Many small businesses are finding that they can't replace aging computers, phones and other devices or invest in tech that could make them more competitive. Is your business among them?
HP: We'll do one more run of TouchPads, and that's it
HP announced it would cease production on its WebOS tablet, the TouchPad, just two months after releasing it because of a lack of consumer interest and because of an overall move by HP away from the consumer hardware space toward enterprise services, hardware, and printers.
But when HP slashed the price of the two TouchPad models to $99 and $149, they suddenly became the most desirable tablets on the market.
Remember when we tested Zite last year? CNN owns that now
Fifty Betanews readers and I were among the very first people to test a content discovery engine called Zite last year. It was a solid idea --harvesting keywords from your Twitter feed and Delicious bookmarks to learn the things you might be interested in, and subsequently finding and suggesting news articles to you-- but it still had a long way to go.
That service eventually grew into an iPad magazine in the vein of Flipboard, but with the underlying content recommendation engine that we saw very early on in the Zite beta. After the positive reception it received as a standalone iPad app, CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton today announced that CNN has acquired Zite.
Google, Microsoft block DigiNotar for fake SSL cert, company halts all certification sales
Users of some of Google's SSL-encrypted services in Iran were the subject of man-in-the-middle attacks earlier this week, the search giant reported. The attacker was using fake SSL certificates from certification authority DigiNotar who does not officially certify Google sites. Google and Microsoft promptly blocked DigiNotar's certificates, and today it has suspended its sale of SSL and EVSSL certificates.
"We plan to disable the DigiNotar certificate authority in Chrome while investigations continue. Mozilla also moved quickly to protect its users," Heather Adkins, Google Information Security Manager said yesterday. "This means that Chrome and Firefox users will receive alerts if they try to visit websites that use DigiNotar certificates."
Be an email voyeur with POP Peeper 3.8
Mortal Universe Software has updated its free email preview tool, POP Peeper, to version 3.8. The latest version, the first update for almost a year, includes a number of major new features as well as the expected slew of minor tweaks and bug fixes.
POP Peeper is designed to allow users to safely preview mail while it’s still on the mail server, allowing them to cut download time and improve security by deleting unwanted messages, including spam and virus-laden emails, before they’re downloaded to the user’s computer.
Download.com responds to angry devs, removes bloatware wrapper
Last week, we heard a report that CNET's Download.com had recently begun enclosing all its downloadable software in a proprietary "wrapper" unless the developer paid a premium subscription to have his software available unaltered.
In my brief article about the issue, I quoted a comment posted by independent developer Stephen Greenberg, maker the GSpot Codec appliance (a five-star application in Fileforum), who said he was pulling his software from Download.com because of the change.
'Windows Ribbon is like an overstuffed refrigerator, a maze only navigable by your home's primary cook'
Daniel Havens shared that sentiment in a Google+ comment yesterday. His viewpoint reflects that of many others. The votes are in -- 1,204 as I post -- and the majority of respondents to our poll either hate or dislike the Ribbon.
Yesterday, I expressed my strong negative reaction to something long rumored but definitely confirmed by Steven Sinofsky, Windows & Windows Live president, in a wave of usage statistics: Microsoft is bringing the Office Ribbon to Windows, as primary means of navigating the file system. Microsoft has its stats. We have ours. I posted a poll last night asking you about the Ribbon.
Apple rolls out beta of iTunes Match for developers
iTunes Match, the iTunes portion of Apple's iCloud was rolled out as a developer beta last night. The service scans a user's local library of music files and mirrors the content on an iCloud server so it can be accessed on any connected device. The service will cost $24.99 per year and let users store as many as 25,000 songs.
In the message Apple sent to developers last night (embedded below), the company noted that developers participating in the beta of iTunes Match will receive "an additional 3 months for free with their 12 month paid subscription."
Anti-Malware 6 beta is 450% faster
Austrian security company Emsisoft has launched a public beta test of Anti-Malware 6, its flagship antivirus tool. And the focus this time around has clearly been performance, with the company claiming a new multi-core optimised scanning engine is on average 450-percent faster than the previous version.
The next benefit comes from a new scheme for identifying trustworthy files. These then don’t have to be scanned in the future unless they’ve changed, providing another speed boost. And, the company claims, further optimizations have “drastically” reduced Anti-Malware’s impact on the boot process.
Amazon tablet will 'completely disrupt the status quo'
If Amazon's rumored Android tablet ever indeed becomes a reality, it could quickly become one of the bestselling tablets on the market. That's the claims of Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, who expects the tablet to sell up to five million units in the fourth quarter of this year.
At that rate, sales of the Amazon tablet would surpass the 4.19 million iPads that Apple sold in the first full quarter of its availability from July through September 2010. Amazon would roughly be doing that in about two to three months.
Microsoft killed my Windows 8 enthusiasm
The cardinal rule in good user interface design: Keep it simple, stupid. Windows 8 will break that rule in the worst ways, unless Microsoft customers and developers knock some sense into the company's product managers. They'll have their chance next month, at the Windows BUILD conference.
In early June, I sang Windows 8 praises, posting: "It took 4 min 34 sec to get me really excited about Windows again". The video introducing the new user interface stunned me, as it did many other people. Finally, Microsoft achieved the kind of simplicity, elegance and good taste more typically associated with Mac OS. But beneath the breathtaking desktop is a file-system nightmare: The Office Ribbon is taking over Windows.
Could Samsung save webOS from HP executioners?
Despite its denials, Samsung still appears to be making a move for HP in some form. Reports had surfaced last week that the South Korean electronics maker was interested in purchasing HP's consumer PC business. The company quickly denied the rumors in a terse statement, calling the reports "not true".
The same publication that first published those rumors -- Taiwanese technology daily DigiTimes -- has come back saying that Samsung has hired a former HP executive to head its PC business, and also may be interested in HP's WebOS platform.
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