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Tomato is an excellent firmware to replace the default Linksys firmware. The Tomato firmware will work on the following routers: Linksys' WRT54G/GL/GS, Buffalo WHR-G54S/WHR-HP-G54 and other Broadcom-based routers. The GUI is very responsive in terms of speed and the firmware is quite stable. It works using AJAX and most commonly used browsers work just fine with the firmware. Tomato includes great features such as a new bandwidth usage monitor, more advanced QoS and access restrictions and it enables new wireless features such as WDS and wireless client modes. On top of that, it raises the limits on maximum connections for P2P, allows you to run your custom scripts or tel…

One of these is a photograph taken by the Hubble space telescope on December 17, 2002, featuring the variable star V838 Monocerotis. The other is the same photograph overlaid with a familiar logo. Can you tell which is which?Below is another photo of the same star, from the Wikipedia entry on V838 Monocerotis. If the above photo has been photoshopped to look more like the Firefox logo, the editing seems minimal: it's been rotated relative to the photo below, and some of the gas cloud may have been edited out around the "tail" of the fox. If you've got a link to the original Hubble photo used above, let us know in the comments so we can compare. UPDATE: An eagle-eyed co…

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. Changes: Fix crash bug while a "New 2" is in session.xml. Fix the Drag N Drop text bug between 2 views. Fix th…

Symantec's comprehensive security report on the malware industry from July 1 to December 31, 2007, is now available (PDF) in its 100+ page glory. While some parts of the report simply reiterate data we're well aware of - it's no surprise to read that the majority of malicious activity originates in the US - there's also a great deal of new information here that we'll examine below. OS/software vulnerabilities Symantec broke down information on patch development time by operating system and by the type of vulnerability encountered. Surprisingly, Microsoft had the shortest time-to-patch over both halves of 2007. In the first part of the year, Microsoft released 38 pat…

Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a sma…

foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats including MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, and CDDA. foobar2000 also has full Unicode support, advanced tagging capabilities, ReplayGain for both playback and calculation, customizable keyboard shortcuts and more useful features. There is also support for transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component (requires external commandline encoder executables for different output formats). foobar's developer al…

A European Commission advisory body has suggested that search companies delete data collected about their users after six months -- a far cry from what most companies currently do. The recommendation arrived in a 29-page "opinion" (PDF) published Friday by a European Commission body known as the Article 29 Working Party. Backed by privacy groups, it has been pressuring Internet companies on the search data front for months. The report focused on advertising-supported search engines, as opposed to search functions embedded in Web sites. The Working Party's suggestions don't officially have the force of law yet, but they are expected to be adopted by the EC. The EC al…

Microsoft has announced that there will be a total of sixteen updates on the upcoming Patch Tuesday. Five of the updates are labeled as Critical and designed to address security vulnerabilities that could leave Windows or Explorer open to remote code execution. Three updates are labeled as "Important" and will resolve vulnerabilities that leave Windows open to spoofing and unauthorized user privilege elevation, and a vulnerability that could expose Microsoft Office to remote code execution. The remaining eight updates are labeled as high priority but non-security related updates on Windows Update and Windows Server Update Service. The updates apply to Windows Vista, Wi…

Have you had problems receiving e-mail from Gmail users recently? If so, you're one of thousands. Over the past month, major anti-spam vendors have had to apply scrutiny to Gmail in a way they haven't had to before, and the result is reduced delivery performance and sometimes outright blocking of Gmail. Some messaging hosts are being instructed to reject SMTP connections from Google. Ars Technica has independently confirmed this.It all began when Google's bot-busting CAPTCHA for Gmail was defeated sometime in February. According to sources around the anti-spam industry, the result has been a marked increase in spam originating from Gmail SMTP servers. Some say the spam in…

The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool checks Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 computers for and helps remove infections by specific, prevalent malicious software - including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom. When the detection and removal process is complete, the tool displays a report describing the outcome, including which, if any, malicious software was detected and removed. The tool creates a log file named mrt.log in the %WINDIR%\debug folder.This tool is not a replacement for an anti-virus product. To help protect your computer, you should use an anti-virus product. Download: Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool 1.40 Homepage: Mi…

Back in February, we posted about the release of a couple of prerequisites for Windows Vista Service Pack 1. While several million customers installed the updates successfully, you may have read that a few customers experienced an endless reboot cycle while installing one of the prerequisites: KB937287, the Servicing Stack Update (SSU), which contains the Service Pack 1 installation program. As posted last month on the Windows Vista blog, we suspended automatic distribution of the SSU while we investigated the problem. Over the past few weeks, we’ve learned a lot more about the problem and have taken steps to address the issue. Today, we’d like to let yo…

Process Explorer is much like the Task Manager found in Windows but far more comprehensive. Every process can be identified by signature verification. If you don't recognize a running process there is a feature to search for the process online through select search engines. There are options to highlight new objects, deleted objects (processes terminated), services, your running processes, packed images, jobs, relocated DLL files, and .NET processes all in their own customizable colors. Process Explorer is a very useful tool for looking at the running objects on your computer. There is also an option to replace the existing Task Manager with Process Explorer. Download:…

Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a s…

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is a full-blown anti-malware program that has recently left our labs and can be considered the next step in the detection and removal of malware. We put together a host of new technologies that were especially 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 our impressive technology that is in fact a completely novel way of heuristic scanning and it is our response to the increasingly complex malware threats. And, as we did with our Malwarebytes' RogueRemover we also hav…

FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. Some of the useful features include drag and drop support, filename filters, network configuration wizard, powerful site manager, transfer queue, and it even supports resume and transfer of files larger than 4GB. When FileZilla v3 was released a built in updater was introduced. This allowed users to update their FileZilla Client faster and easier. Included are options to check for nightly and beta builds of the FileZilla Client. Download: FileZilla 3.0.9.1 Homepage: FileZilla on Source…

Microsoft Corp has won a battle to have a key document format adopted as a global standard, improving its chances of winning government contracts and dealing a blow to supporters of a rival format. The OpenDoc Society, which had argued Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format was unripe for ratification by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), published the results showing Microsoft's win on its Web site. Microsoft welcomed the decision, which was leaked on Tuesday ahead of an official ISO statement expected on Wednesday, saying it created a "level playing field" for OOXML to compete with other standards. Supporters of rival Open Document Fo…

Today Microsoft announced the worldwide extension of the availability of Windows XP Home for an emerging, new class of mobile personal computers commonly known as ultra-low-cost PCs, or ULCPCs. Windows XP Home for ULCPCs will be available until the later of June 30, 2010, or one year after general availability of the next version of Windows. Microsoft has heard from partners and customers that they want Windows broadly available for this new class of devices, because they want the familiarity, compatibility and support only available on the Windows platform. Extending the availability of Windows XP Home for this category reflects Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to deliver…

A new lawsuit goes to show be careful what you promise. Be careful your product lives up to what you advertise it to be and be careful it does what you say it will do; that's the lesson that many tech companies are learning the hard way. Microsoft recently found that out as its facing an uphill battle to fight against a class lawsuit alleging it intentionally deceived using "Vista Capable" stickers to sell chipsets. Now Apple is mired in a similar mess, based on some of its a bit exaggerated claims. Apple's bold advertising claim that its MacBooks support "millions of colors." The only problem -- MacBook LCD are only 6-bit TN models, only allowing for only 262,144…

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. Changes between 0.8.6e and 0.8.6f: Security updates: Really fixed subtitle buffer overflow (CVE-2007-6681) Fixed Real RTSP code execution problem (CVE-2008-0073) Fixed MP4 integer overflows (CVE-2008-1489) Fixed cinepak integer overflow Various bugfixes: The Mozilla plugin registers a usable range of MIME-types on Mac OS X Improved VLC's video outpu…

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware is a full-blown anti-malware program that has recently left our labs and can be considered the next step in the detection and removal of malware. We put together a host of new technologies that were especially 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 our impressive technology that is in fact a completely novel way of heuristic scanning and it is our response to the increasingly complex malware threats. And, as we did with our Malwarebytes' RogueRemover we also hav…

FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. Some of the useful features include drag and drop support, filename filters, network configuration wizard, powerful site manager, transfer queue, and it even supports resume and transfer of files larger than 4GB. When FileZilla v3 was released a built in updater was introduced. This allowed users to update their FileZilla Client faster and easier. Included are options to check for nightly and beta builds of the FileZilla Client. Changes for 3.0.9 RC1 (2008-03-31): Automatic resume on …

IE7Pro is a must have add-on for Internet Explorer, which includes a lot of features and tweaks to make your IE friendlier, more useful, secure and customizable. IE7Pro includes Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins and many more power packed features. You can customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need and taste using IE7Pro. Download: IE7Pro 2.2 View: Changes Homepage: IE7Pro Link: …

Firefox is an award winning preview of next generation browsing technology from the Mozilla company. Firefox empowers you to accomplish your online activities faster, with a higher degree of safety and more efficiently than any other browser. Built with Tab browsing, popup blocking and a number of other seamless innovations, Firefox stands out ahead. Firefox allows you to customize the browser by using Addons to enhance the browser to your preference. Downloads: Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 | All builds View: Release Notes Homepage: Mozilla Firefox Link: Lunarsoft Frontpage

ImgBurn is a free tool that enables you to burn CD/DVD images with ease. All the latest drives are supported (including booktype / bitsetting on many of the major ones). Advanced functionality can be found in the ImgBurn context menus. ImgBurn supports a wide range of image file formats - including BIN, CUE, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG and PDI. ImgBurn is also Unicode compatible. It's a very flexible application with several advanced features that are often lacking in other tools, especially when it comes to burning DVD Video discs. It supports all the latest drives without the need for updates (including booktype / bitsetting / advanced settings on many of the ma…

With the release of Firefox 3 imminent, the rest of the Firefox team is cooking up some crazy ideas for Firefox 4 While Firefox 3 pushes the boundaries of a browser, delivering a cleaner graphical interface, numerous security upgrades, and a variety of new features, it still is far from the "perfect browser". Of course no browser on the market could earn such a distinction, be it Opera's "Kestrel" 9.5 browser, which is shaping up to be very nicely, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, which is sure to deliver top end performance, or Apple's Safari v3.1 browser, which although plagued with bugs of late is still one of the fastest, most compatible, browsers around. Howev…