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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…

Today the long awaited service pack for Windows 7 has been released to the world. This is the very first service pack for the Windows 7 OS. As we have previously reported, there will be only a few new features that many users may not notice. One of those features is RemoteFx, which provides rich 3-D graphical experience for remote users. Ready to download SP1 for Windows 7? As of this news post, only the ISO which contains the service pack installers for x86, x64 and ia64 is available. As the others become available, we'll be sure to update this post with the links. Until such time, the ISO is available and we'll provide the link. It's highly recommended to get the …

Google today announced 2-step verification for account holders. The new security feature is rolling out gradually; I haven't received the update and so couldn't test the new feature. I like the concept but wonder how many people will bother to set it up or will cringe at the steps required to use it. Like so many other cloud services, Google requires a username and password to login @gmail.com. The new mechanism adds a verification code received by cell phone. Additionally, there are 16-digit app-specific codes for e-mail clients and other applications. The extra layer of security is compelling, but is in some ways daunting. In a blog post, Nis*** Shah, Google sec…

Raw first-week sales numbers are often used to indicate the efficacy of a product's launch. But really, the thing these numbers best represent is the level of user excitement. Today, Microsoft revealed that users were very excited about Internet Explorer 9 RC, which launched last week. According to Microsoft, IE9 RC was downloaded 2 million times in the six days following its launch. While a big number, it's doubly significant because these were users who actively downloaded the software without a Windows Update auto update, or a system alert telling them an update was available. These users knew the update was there and went out and got it. View the full artic…

Windows 7 SP1 RTM is now available to MSDN and TechNet customers. Microsoft posted its final build of Windows 7 SP1 to MSDN and TechNet customers on Wednesday. Copies of Microsoft’s Windows 7 SP1 RTM update leaked last month to file sharing websites ahead of its release. Microsoft has confirmed 7601.17514.101119-1850 is the final RTM. The software giant will offer the build to the public on February 22 and it is expected to be released to Windows Update shortly afterwards. Work on Windows 7 SP2 has already begun as early as fall 2010. Microsoft is reportedly planning 132 updates for x86 Windows 7 SP2 and 171 updates for x64 Windows 7 SP2 at the time of w…

Microsoft has informed close partners that SP1 has hit the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone. MSDN and TechNet customers will receive the bits on February 16, followed by a general web release (RTW) on February 22. According to sources close to the matter, Microsoft sent out internal announcements to mark the RTM of Windows 7 SP1 in January. Russian site Wzor confirmed the RTM too and has leaked several versions of Windows 7 SP1 for various languages. Microsoft has yet to announce the RTM milestone publicly. WinRumors previously asked Microsoft officials multiple times to confirm whether Microsoft had reached the RTM milestone for Windows 7 SP1 but company offic…

Raw first-week sales numbers are often used to indicate the efficacy of a product's launch. But really, the thing these numbers best represent is the level of user excitement. Today, Microsoft revealed that users were very excited about Internet Explorer 9 RC, which launched last week. According to Microsoft, IE9 RC was downloaded 2 million times in the six days following its launch. While a big number, it's doubly significant because these were users who actively downloaded the software without a Windows Update auto update, or a system alert telling them an update was available. These users knew the update was there and went out and got it. View the full ar…

Windows 7 SP1 RTM is now available to MSDN and TechNet customers. Microsoft posted its final build of Windows 7 SP1 to MSDN and TechNet customers on Wednesday. Copies of Microsoft’s Windows 7 SP1 RTM update leaked last month to file sharing websites ahead of its release. Microsoft has confirmed 7601.17514.101119-1850 is the final RTM. The software giant will offer the build to the public on February 22 and it is expected to be released to Windows Update shortly afterwards. Work on Windows 7 SP2 has already begun as early as fall 2010. Microsoft is reportedly planning 132 updates for x86 Windows 7 SP2 and 171 updates for x64 Windows 7 SP2 at the time …

Google today announced 2-step verification for account holders. The new security feature is rolling out gradually; I haven't received the update and so couldn't test the new feature. I like the concept but wonder how many people will bother to set it up or will cringe at the steps required to use it. Like so many other cloud services, Google requires a username and password to login @gmail.com. The new mechanism adds a verification code received by cell phone. Additionally, there are 16-digit app-specific codes for e-mail clients and other applications. The extra layer of security is compelling, but is in some ways daunting. In a blog post, Nis*** Shah, Google…

I gave up on Internet Explorer way back at IE7. As a user interface developer, the CSS and JavaScript workarounds created way too much unnecessary work. So I turned my attention to the next best thing at that time, which was Firefox. It was the most standards-compliant browser on the market at that time. Its plugins (e.g., FireBug) made my work easier and much more enjoyable. So as I spent more time with it as a developer guess what happened? I also became a regular user. The IE9 Release Candidate, which Microsoft posted today, may change all that again. IE9 is the first Microsoft browser in years that has me excited about UI development. Finally, I can see a future…

I gave up on Internet Explorer way back at IE7. As a user interface developer, the CSS and JavaScript workarounds created way too much unnecessary work. So I turned my attention to the next best thing at that time, which was Firefox. It was the most standards-compliant browser on the market at that time. Its plugins (e.g., FireBug) made my work easier and much more enjoyable. So as I spent more time with it as a developer guess what happened? I also became a regular user. The IE9 Release Candidate, which Microsoft posted today, may change all that again. IE9 is the first Microsoft browser in years that has me excited about UI development. Finally, I can see a future v…

Agnitum has released version 7.1 of its flagship product, Outpost Security Suite FREE. It's a maintenance upgrade for the most part, with under-the-hood bug fixes and minor tweaks, but there are some notable exceptions. Top of the list is the inclusion of a second anti-malware engine. The suite now includes one antivirus engine, and a second focused on spyware, adware and trojans. The company claimed in a blog post that this offers "double the protection" and "more targeted security for Windows users"; there are no related controls or options exposed in the interface, though, so you can continue to use Outpost Security Suite as you always have. View the full ar…

Agnitum has released version 7.1 of its flagship product, Outpost Security Suite FREE. It's a maintenance upgrade for the most part, with under-the-hood bug fixes and minor tweaks, but there are some notable exceptions. Top of the list is the inclusion of a second anti-malware engine. The suite now includes one antivirus engine, and a second focused on spyware, adware and trojans. The company claimed in a blog post that this offers "double the protection" and "more targeted security for Windows users"; there are no related controls or options exposed in the interface, though, so you can continue to use Outpost Security Suite as you always have. View the full…

The last IPv4 addresses have been allocated, highlighting the need for companies and organizations to move to a new system amid the ever increasing number of net-connected devices. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) made the announcement at an event in Miami on Thursday. Each of the five regional Internet registries has been allocated a single block of around 16 million addresses. While true exhaustion would be hard to gauge -- a small number of IP addresses will be held for several years for the transition -- the rate at which the different registrars will burn through their allocations will likely vary. APNIC, the registrar in the Asia-Pacific region, …

Pidgin is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr networks. Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time. Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many u…

VLC (VideoLAN) is a multi-platform multimedia player. It can read DVDs, VCDs, MPEG, and DivX files and from a satellite card. It can also read a stream from a network sent by the VideoLAN Server or another source. The stream can be MPEG 2 TS in UDP or HTTP packets unicasted or multicasted on an IPv4 or IPv6 network. Download: VLC media player 1.1.7 | Other Versions Changes: Changes Homepage: VideoLAN View the full article

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++ 5.8.7 Homepage: Notepad++ View the full article

CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. CCleaner can also clean very quickly, usually taking about ten seconds to run. Download: CCleaner 3.03.1366 (Slim install, 32 and 64 bit) Screenshot: Image Previews View: Version History Homepage: CCleaner View the full article

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,…

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is a full-blown anti-malware program that has recently left the labs and can be considered the next step in the detection and removal of malware. Malwarebytes Team put together a host of new technologies that were specially designed to quickly detect, deter and destroy any malware that could reside in your computer. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware monitors every process and actually stops malicious processes before they even start. It uses an impressive technology that is in fact a completely novel way of heuristic scanning and it is the teams response to the increasingly complex malware threats. And, as they did with Malwarebytes' RogueRemover we…

Today Sigma Designs announced(pdf) that they are working to bring XBMC to their popular line of system-on-a-chip models (their new SMP8670 in particular). For those not familiar with Sigma, they are a major player in the set-top box market and their SOCs are the heart of many products from Popcorn Hour and WDTV, as well as countless other consumer media devices We believe this could lead to many interesting things for XBMC. Not only do we benefit from the source code from their port, but any company interested in developing hardware for XBMC now has another fine choice. Judging by the amount of times we’ve heard the question "does XBMC work on Sigma hardware?"…

Dropbox allows you to sync your files with an online cloud that can be shared between other computers that you log in on. Just place your files into your Dropbox folder on your computer. They'll automatically appear on your other computers that have Dropbox installed. Even if you're editing a file on one computer, it will sync across all computers with Dropbox. Sharing files, folders, photo albums or more is made easier. Your free account entitles you to 2GB and if you refer your friends you can have up to 8GB for free! Best of all, thanks to the online sync you can even revert files. Your data is protected with military grade encryption too. No more emailing file attachm…

Scientists have created an ultra-fast 1,000 core computer processor which could speed up machines and make them greener. Originally, computers were developed with only one core processor, the part of a computer's central processing unit (CPU) which reads and executes instructions. Nowadays processors with two, four or even 16 cores are commonplace. However, Dr Wim Vanderbauwhede, of the University of Glasgow, and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Lowell have now created a processor which effectively contains more than a thousand cores on a single chip. To do this, the scientists used a chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which like all mic…

What do the US market share leaders for cell phones and smartphone operating systems have in common? Android. Yesterday, ComScore released September to November US mobile subscriber market share. Yes, I initially thought to cover it then, but there was simply too much news from the first official day of the Consumer Electronics Show. So here we are a day later. Most of the news reports about the data has focused on Android passing iOS for smartphone market share. But there's more interesting in the numbers than Android's ascendence. Comparing the three months ending in August and ending in November, Android's US market share rose from 19.6 percent to 26 perc…

Google admitted this week that an issue with how the Android OS handles contacts and text messaging is causing phones to sometimes randomly send or misdirect SMS messages to the wrong users. The issue was first reported in late June of last year, but was not confirmed as a legitimate bug until now. Engineers have been able to recreate the issue, and now say that they believe the problems stem from two different issues with the Android OS. That said, the company stressed occurrences of the bug are rare, and a fix for the problem has been developed and would be released soon. According to bug reports in a thread on the Google Code website, in one case an SMS message a…