The Tech Daily

It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.



Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

Source: Google Blog

The websites of two major providers of security products have been hit by hackers.

The website of Russian IT security provider Kaspersky Lab was hit at the weekend by a Romanian ‘white-hat’ hacker.

A group calling itself ‘the Romanian Security Team’ claimed that the hackers achieved full access to the database supporting the websites – which includes customer data – by simply altering a parameter in the URLs. They could also perform SQL injections to remotely introduce harmful code into the database.

The group also claimed to have hit the Portuguese site of US anti-virus provider BitDefender, with the personal details of thousands of users viewed. The hackers said that they alerted the two companies of the security flaw and did not expose any of the data they found.

Kaspersky Lab said in a statement: “On Saturday February 7 2009, a vulnerability was detected on a subsection of the usa.kaspersky.com domain when a hacker attempted an attack on the site.

“The site was only vulnerable for a very brief period, and upon detection of the vulnerability we immediately took action to roll back the subsection of the site and the vulnerability was eliminated within 30 minutes of detection. The vulnerability wasn’t critical and no data was compromised from the site.”


Gunter Ollmann, chief security strategist at IBM’s Internet Security Systems, said: “I hope that Kaspersky administrators fix this vulnerability rather quickly as they no doubt have a large customer base, and it would appear that all those customers are now exposed

“On top of that, this type of critical flaw can probably be used to usurp legitimate purchases and renewals of their products - which could include the linking to malicious and backdoored versions of their software - thereby infecting those very same customers that were seeking protection from malware in the first place.”

1. Download DVDx archive file to your computer (DVDx_2_10_setup.zip), open it and double-click on "DVDx Setup". Complete the installation of DVDx.

• Ensure you have XviD (and/or DivX) drivers by installing AutoGK or downloading codecs separately.
• Download the latest Avi Rip free from Avi Rip
• Download the latest DivX free from divx.com

2. Now run the DVDx software. The program window will appear.

You should insert the DVD you wish to rip into the DVD drive. Alternatively, if your DVD is saved as files on your computer, you can rip from there.

On the DVDx window, there are three menus available, File, Settings, and Tools.
A file window opens, and you can browse to your DVD.
Alternatively, to open DVD files which have been previously saved to your hard drive, click "Open IFO" to select your hard disk files as source.
In the folder selection box, select the file VTS_01_0.IFO in the DVD target directory on the hard drive.

Your movie is now loaded as source.

The Input Settings dialog automatically opens.

3. If you have more than 1 movie on the DVD, select the file that shows up in the popup box and then choose which movie you wish to encode by selecting it from the pull down menu in the upper left corner. You will have to choose the root menu and file for each one on the DVD, if there is more than 1 movie on the DVD.

4. Notice that the Input Settings dialog will show, in the Program Chain Index section at top left, the length of the movie to be processed. Check a suitable audio track is shown in the Audio section.

• Other settings can be left at default.
• Note: If during conversion you get an error "DVD drive could not be locked", you should install ASPI drivers, and then select the "Use ASPI" option. Otherwise this will not be necessary.
• Now click OK.

5. Navigate to the Output Settings dialog box (shown below) through the Settings menu. Here you can choose output options such as movie format (AVI or MPG), and set the screen size (resolution) and audio quality.

6. Change several settings in the Output Settings dialog box:

• Choose an output format (AVI is suitable for playback in Media Player).
• Now choose an audio compression method. Lame MP3 is capable of excellent sound at small filesize (AVI only). If Lame is not available, choose the MPEG video compression, or download Lame MP3 drivers.
  
• Choose the XviD video codec in the dropdown menu. Click 'Enable Video', but leave 'Enable 2nd' unchecked. You can choose an alternative video codec (such as DivX or Mpeg4) if you prefer.
• Across in section Export Settings, choose a screen size (resolution) for encoding.
  
  
  • For widescreen monitors (size ratio 16:9) choose 720x576. Any multiple of 16 is acceptable.
  • For normal monitors choose (size ratio 4:3) choose 720x544. Any multiple of 16 is acceptable.
    
    
• Next to the Max Frame number, click the button named Whole. Make sure you press this button for each new DVD movie or DVD file that you choose.
• Other settings can be left at default.

7. To rip full movies without splitting the last few minutes into another file, Set the maximum file size to infinite in the Output Settings and rip away.

• Click the Apply button.

8. Finally, under the File menu, click the menu item called Destination.This button is also found next to the red Record button at the bottom right.

• Browse to a suitable destination folder, and type a filename into the box. Click on Save, then OK.
• You are now ready to convert a DVD to an AVI.

9. Click the red Record button at bottom right.
10. Wait for encoding to complete and then enjoy your movie.

Source:WikiHow

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Now you can find out when your email has been read by the recipient! No more guessing: "Has he or she read my email yet?"

SpyPig is a simple email tracking system that sends you a notification email as soon as the recipient opens and reads your message.

It works with virtually all modern email programs: Outlook, Eudora, Yahoo Email, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Email and many others.
Best of all, SpyPig is FREE! No spam, no virus, no adware, no spyware. You can use it as often as you like, and there's no catch. Just introduce the Pig to all your friends! The system is very easy to use. In just few minutes, you'll be able to use it like a real spy!


Use It with Classified Ads
SpyPig is especially useful when you respond to a classified ad such as that on Craigslist (for an employment, for example) and wonder if your email reaches its target.

Basic Requirement
Both you and the recipient must use an HTML email, not plain-text or rich-text email. Visit the Requirements & Limitations page to learn more about SpyPig.

For more details, visit SpyPig

Panda has released Panda USB Vaccine with NTFS Support. It is out of it's beta stage and a full version has been released (v.1.0.0.50).

Some of the most notable improvements are the following:

• Support for vaccinating NTFS drives. This uses a completely different technique than the vaccination of FAT/FAT32 drives.

• Executing USBVaccine.exe launches an installer which allows you to configure whether you want USBVaccine to start automatically with Windows.

• Configuration option during setup to hide the tray icon.

• Configuration option during setup to automatically vaccinate any new USB drives inserted into the PC.

• Fixed bug on PC shutdown when USBVaccine was running in the background (Vista).

• Other bug fixes reported by users on certain types of USB drives.
  
  

The download is available on CNET here.