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Microsoft had little choice but to relabel its SkyDrive cloud service after losing a trademark dispute with BSkyB, and it's now ready to make that name switch. The newly rebadged OneDrive is functionally identical for existing SkyDrive users, who can go about business as usual. However, there are also promises that this is more than just a cosmetic change. The curious can register at a preview page to be notified when OneDrive launches with "more" than what they've known with SkyDrive. Microsoft isn't saying exactly what users can expect, but it won't hurt to sign up. Source: Engadget View the full article

In November, online backup provider Backblaze published some interesting statistics on hard drive mortality based on over 25,000 units in active service. It found that failure rates were higher in the first 18 months and after three years. Those conclusions matched the findings of other studies on the subject, but frustratingly, they didn't include information on specific makes and models. Today, Backblaze is naming names. The firm has posted details on failure rates for 15 different consumer-grade hard drives, and the numbers don't look good for Seagate. See for yourself: And that doesn't even tell the whole story. In Backblaze's storage pods, Seaga…

There is something to be said for the cloud and web-based services. However, when you rely on these things, sometimes it goes a bit wrong. That's not as bad as it sounds. It can go very wrong with your home computer and network as well. Today, Google is experiencing one of those "glitches". As of this writing, the Gmail service seems to be restored for all users, and I've inquired with writer friends around the US and the world to verify that. However, there is a rather bizarre side-effect, but it's only affecting one poor user. Sadly, that person is getting the bulk of the email being sent since the outage relented. It seems that when you search Gmail in Google, …

Google Chrome extensions are designed to improve or modify functionality that the web browser offers. Some extensions in the official Chrome Web Store have millions of users who all rely on the functionality their add-ons provides them with. While not as powerful as Firefox add-ons, Chrome extensions are easily powerful enough to manipulate websites that you visit, or communicate with a remote server. News about extension abuse reached the mainstream press recently. It all started when Amit Agarwal confessed that he sold a Chrome extension he created to a company that approached him via email. The company modified the extension and released the update to all e…

Internet Explorer is no longer just the browser you use to download other browsers (even though, for many people, that will always remain the case). These days it’s a decent, fast and standards compliant offering that you don’t have to be embarrassed to admit to using. Microsoft’s clever, self-deprecating Browser You Loved to Hate campaign did a great job of challenging people’s views and getting them to take a second look at Internet Explorer, and today the software giant launches a new initiative and website, called Rethink, which aims to showcase how Internet Explorer is helping to "create a web that is fast, beautiful and perfect for touch" while also, Mic…

California-based password management software specialist SplashData has released the results of its annual list of the internet’s worst passwords. For the first time "password" has been knocked off the number one slot. This doesn’t mean people are getting more security minded, however, as it's been replaced by the equally obvious "123456". SplashData compiles the list from files containing stolen passwords posted online during the previous year. This year's list is heavily influenced by the large number of Adobe user passwords posted online following the company's 2013 security breach. Morgan Slain, CEO of SplashData says, "Seeing passwords like 'adobe123' and…

PC manufacturer Alienware has clarified an earlier report that its upcoming Steam Machine cannot be upgraded by users. Owners will not be locked out of modding, the company has now explained, but making alterations to the hardware will not be "easy". "Enabling customers the opportunity to upgrade components has been a core tenet for Alienware since the company was founded, and that remains true today," Alienware boss Frank Azor explained to Eurogamer in a statement today. "The Alienware Steam Machine, announced at CES, is designed to deliver a great gaming experience in the living room and we will enable customers to upgrade components. Considering we've purpos…

foobar2000 is a comprehensive, easy to use audio player for Windows. Featuring full Unicode support, advanced tagging capabilities, customizable hotkeys, ReplayGain to help correct your audio and many more useful utilities to assist your media library. There are multiple ways to configure and customize your user interface. foobar's developer also includes an open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player. foobar2000 allows you to easily use multiple playlists and utilize features to remove both duplicates and dead items. foobar handles multiple popular audio formats, including: MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis…

We've of course seen no limit to the complaints by users that YouTube videos often get stuck buffering, despite blisteringly-fast connections. Most customers blame their ISPs, while most ISPs (or companies paid by ISPs) blame Google. The real reason is often the power and cash struggles going on behind the scenes over CDN and peering links, with last-mile ISPs, core network ISPs, and content companies like Google all sometimes playing a role in making your YouTube performance suck. With that in mind, Google has posted a new video quality report. Right now the report is simply a series of slides explaining how video gets delivered to you, but ultimately Google is going…

The Innovation Act, a bill with measures aimed to stop "patent troll" lawsuits, passed the US House of Representatives this morning on a 325-91 vote. Several amendments that would have stripped out key parts of the bill were defeated. Passage of the bill is a big step for patent reformers, which would have been hard to imagine even one year ago. However, patent trolls going after "Main Street" businesses like grocery stores and coffee shops have made headlines and enraged politicians from Vermont to California. Majorities of representatives in both parties supported the bill. On the Republican side, 195 representatives voted in favor of the bill and 27 voted again…

Microsoft has released a Windows 7 update that adds a new option in the Disk Cleanup tool called Windows Update Cleanup. With it, you can free up several gigabytes of hard drive space from the bloated Windows Updates folder. Windows Updates can be terrible space hogs. Windows saves every security update and hotfix—even if they're superseded by new updates—in the WinSxS directory. You can't just manually delete everything in that folder, because some files are needed just in case a system file gets corrupted or you need to roll back a Windows Update. So that's where this new Windows Update comes in. Released yesterday for Windows 7 SP1 machines, KB 2852386 add…

Microsoft has released a Windows 7 update that adds a new option in the Disk Cleanup tool called Windows Update Cleanup. With it, you can free up several gigabytes of hard drive space from the bloated Windows Updates folder. Windows Updates can be terrible space hogs. Windows saves every security update and hotfix—even if they're superseded by new updates—in the WinSxS directory. You can't just manually delete everything in that folder, because some files are needed just in case a system file gets corrupted or you need to roll back a Windows Update. So that's where this new Windows Update comes in. Released yesterday for Windows 7 SP1 machines, KB 2852386 adds…

Last week, AOL announced the impending death of Winamp, saying that the 16-year-old media player would be shut down within a month. "Winamp.com and associated Web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date," AOL announced. But fans of the venerable software have launched a "Save Winamp" website and petition asking AOL either to keep Winamp alive or to open source its code. View the full article

It seems that DDR4 isn’t as far away as we thought . According to Crucial Memory’s promo page it’s going to come out late 2013. There is just one month left till the years end. So that being said, we are going to have DDR4 in our PC’s hopefully by next month. Of course DDR4 has a different architecture, meaning we are going to need a different motherboard, we can’t just put them in our old DDR3 systems. But, is it worth upgrading to DDR4? Crucial Memory also provided a comparison chart with some specifications of what DDR4 will offer, just to show you the difference. The DDR4 will only eat up 1.2Volts as stated by Crucial , while having twice the speed…

Firefox (referred to as Fx) is an open source browser developed by Mozilla. The second most popular browser worldwide, Firefox features a customizable user interface that allows you to enhance it using custom themes and Personas. Personas change the appearance of the user interface without rearranging the elements. Themes however, can completely change the UI ranging from the types of buttons to the color sceme used. Add-ons allow you to customize Firefox to your liking to make a more enjoyable web surfing experience. Some examples of popular add-ons that you can use to customize Firefox are AdBlock Plus, DownThemAll!, TabMixPlus and many more. Firefox has tabbed brow…

Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) is available worldwide in 95 languages for download today. We will begin automatically updating Windows 7 customers to IE11 in the weeks ahead, starting today with customers running the IE11 Developer and Release Previews. With this final release, IE11 brings the same leading standards support--with improved performance, security, privacy, and reliability that consumers enjoy on Windows 8.1—to Windows 7 customers. And with Windows 8.1, IE11 delivers the best experience of your sites and apps together. IE11 on Windows 8.1 delivers an experience that is fast, fluid and perfect for touch - the best Web experience on any tablet. View the f…

When you're sent an email with an attachment you probably do one of two things. You might preview the file in your browser, or you might download it to your hard drive. If you want to be able to access the file on other computers without having to track down the original email again, you may then take the extra step of uploading it to Google Drive. But it's all too easy for attachments to end up getting lost on the desktop or a catch-all Downloads folder. This is something Google may be able to change with the latest addition to Gmail. Now there is no need to click an attachment to view a preview -- supported file types (including images, PDFs and videos) are automati…

Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu, has been fending off criticism from privacy advocates because the desktop search tool in recent versions of the operating system also searches the Internet. That means if you're searching your desktop for a file or application, you might also see results from Amazon or other websites. One person who dislikes Canonical's search tool is Micah Lee, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who maintains the HTTPS Everywhere project and is CTO of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Lee set up a website called "Fix Ubuntu," which provides instructions for disabling the Internet search tool. "If you're an Ubuntu user and you'r…

Cloud storage and sharing service Dropbox has been looking to grow its footprint in the business industry, adding Dropbox for Business, along with a steady stream of new features for the service. Now the company is attempting to consolidate its enterprise efforts with those for home users. "On one hand, people wanted to access their personal stuff at work; meanwhile, IT admins wanted to keep company data separate and free of personal files. Both needs were real, but people had to choose between two Dropboxes", claims the company. Your separate Dropbox accounts will now appear in the same location, allowing you to choose which you wish to access at any given time -…

Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky says the International Space Station was infected by malware installed through a USB stick carried on board by a Russian cosmonaut. Speaking to reporters at a National Press Club event in Canberra, Australia, last week, Kaspersky also said the infamous Stuxnet virus infected a nuclear power plant in Russia and "badly damaged" their internal infrastructure. Kaspersky refused to provide details or elaborate on how badly the virus affected ISS operations or how engineering crews cleaned up the mess left behind. Space can be scary enough when the system protecting you isn't infected with malware. This situation was probably even wo…

The date may not mean much to you, but it was rather big in the land of Mozilla. It wasn't the 'start' of the Firefox web browser, but it was the official ship date of version 1.0. That makes today a birthday celebration for the browser that dared to take on the Internet Explorer-giant. "In the nine years since we first launched Firefox, we have moved and shaped the Web into the most valuable public resource of our time", the organization announces. You may not get a slice of cake for the big celebration, but Mozilla is offering up what it calls "nine of our favorite gifts we’ve given the Web over the past year". Mozilla proceeds to outline milestones such as t…

Dropbox is a name that's usually associated with online storage where it finds itself pitted against the likes of Google Drive and Microsoft's SkyDrive. But now the company could be branching out in a new direction with the purchase of Sold, one of the simplest online selling services ever invented. Sold existed as an iOS and Android app and the idea was that a user uploaded a photo and brief description and everything else was taken care of by Sold -- no worrying about determining the best price or calculating postage. Or as Sold put it "doing all the dirty work for" users. There are no details about what will happen to Sold now that it has been, er, sold, but for no…

Today, TeamViewer announces a new beta version of its popular remote control software for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs. The latest release, named TeamViewer 9 Beta, introduces new features aimed at businesses, developers and end-users as well as security improvements. The most noteworthy security addition in TeamViewer 9 Beta is two-factor authentication. It allows users to add an extra layer of protection to their accounts by using security codes, that can be sent to their mobile devices and, alternatively, generated by dedicated mobile apps. On Macs, TeamViewer 9 also adds the option to increase the password strength in QuickSupport. "TeamViewer has always been fo…

CCleaner - also known as Crap Cleaner - is a disk cleanup utility that goes beyond the scope of the built in Windows Disk Cleanup tool. Featuring the ability to clean up temporary files, browser history and cache, the Recycle Bin, along with Windows applications that you install. There is also a registry cleaner, uninstall helper, startup manager, System Restore manager and disk wiper. You can choose to have your data cleaned with a single pass or range up to the Gutmann 35 pass data cleaning sequence. There's even a cookie manager and free space wiper. One of the great things about CCleaner is that it automates all of these cleanings so you don't have to hunt down these …

Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. This project, based on the Scintilla edit component, written in C++ with pure win32 api and STL that ensures the higher execution speed and smaller size of the program. Notepad++ supports the following languages: C, C++, Java, C#, XML, HTML, PHP, javascript, RC resource file, makefile, ASCII art file, doxygen, ini file, batch file, ASP, VB/VBS source files, SQL, Objective-C, CSS, Pascal, Perl, Python and Lua. Download: Notepad++ 6.5.1 Homepage: Notepad++ View the full article