ATI also expects to complete its transition of its GPU manufacturing process to 40nm and GDDR5 memory by that time. These upgrades would unlock a new breed of eye candy and mind blowing graphics in games.

Along other expectations, it is also expected for Windows 7 to boost the sales of GPUs along with DirectX 11. Consumer applications for GGPU would also arrive at that time to unlock their true potential. The input and output technologies will also get a face lift, thanks to digital walls, televisions with higher than HD resolution, arriving next year.

ATI is also working hard on 3D stereographic technology, and predicts the arrival of holograms sooner than we think. This would mean any visual experience could be converted to holograms.

All this means that visual technologies are going to get a breath of fresh air, but then again, DirectX 10 promised the same. Gamers report little to no noticeable visual differences between DirectX 9 and 10 modes in games such as Crysis, with the former mode providing better frame rates than the latter. So don’t throw away your DirectX 10 GPU yet. As we learnt from DirectX 10, it’s better to wait rather than be an early bird for a new graphics technology. Also, with Fusion being the future, it’ll be interesting to see how things shape up for future GPUs.

What do you think? Will DirectX 11 provide a significant improvement in our visual experiences when compared to DirectX 9 and 10?

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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Well today I share a technique I have used for a couple of years now. The basic idea is to gain admin access to a restricted system to which you only have physical access (you can’t install programs or run scripts etc). This will be a long (but interesting) article and may have information that doesn’t apply to every case. It is also highly recommended that you have some knowledge of computers (more than just surfing the web, writing documents or playing games) and lots of patience.

Background

Disclaimer: If your purpose is just install malicious, non productive software or retrieve personal/illegal information then please do not read this. I or anyone else from Sizlopedia will not be responsible for any harm (intellectual or otherwise) caused by this information.

I would start the article with a little background of why I (or anyone else) would want full access to a system. I’m a student of computer engineering studying at Bahria University, Islamabad. We are subjected to torture worse than Guantanamo Bay, as the systems in the computer labs have no such things as Firefox, Flash Player, Windows Media Player, Photoshop/Fireworks, Messenger, or any other useful software for that matter. We only get 100 MB of a shared network drive for storage of personal files (assignments, notes etc) which also get wiped every couple of months. We are subjected to limited Internet, no social networking, video streaming or downloads (even though we have 4 and 8 Mbps servers).

The above reasons are enough for any technology lover to revolt and find means to get full (sometimes unauthorized) access to the systems. I just want to surf the web more securely, while streaming some tunes and interacting with my friends on Facebook. So after some time (actually my 3rd day in the university) I started looking for ways to gain access to a secure system. I met with random success and new challenges, and share my discoveries with you.

Resources

If you try to search online, there is a little chance that you would find technique that is almost 100% effective in all situations. Even after a certain limit, Microsoft suggests that you should reformat your drive and reinstall windows if you can’t remember your credentials.

The tools we would use here are available on the Internet. Actually its a combination of various techniques from various sources, some from Microsoft, some from the hacker and open source community, and some I engineered myself. This will probably be one of the most complete guides to recover your passwords.

Alternatives

Alternatives to this technique do exist but they have their limitations. Here is a quick list of some of the best tools I have used successfully to achieve a similar result:

• Emergency Recovery Disk: If you are the legitimate owner of the system then you must have an emergency recovery disk with you. Its intended for system failures but will work in this case too. Just boot from that disk and restore your system.
• Windows Password Recovery: This is the fastest recovery method I have seen to date. Provided everything goes right, you can recover your password within 10 minutes. Their limitation is that their priority service is not free and they don’t always work on all types of passwords.
• Offline NT Password & Registry Editor: Though this doesn’t recover password, its a fast dirty way to access a restricted system.  Just download and burn the Linux shell onto a disc or a flash drive and boot from it. You can do hordes of other stuff besides resetting the password. I use this, the most.

While these alternatives do work, they are usually not applicable to the core reason this article focuses on. At some other time, I will discuss techniques about how to use them with a clean operation.

What you would need

Ok now getting to the main topic. You would need to put together a few things before you can recover the passwords. Here they are:

• Full access to a good PC - At least a Pentium 4 equivalent processor, but a Core 2 is recommended. If you plan on using Celeron or Atom series then don’t. Ideally, you should have something as powerful as a Core i7. If you have full access to more than one PCs connected over a network then use them all (more on this below).
• A CD-R/CD-RW if your board can’t boot USB flash drives.
• A USB 2.0 Flash Drive, if your board supports booting from it, consider a 512 MB drive to directly boot from it.

That’s all for the hardware you need. On the software side, you will have many options, some shareware and some free. Continuing the tradition of Sizlopedia, we will be using free software only, though I would mention all the names.

• A Pre Environment, either Microsoft Windows PE (very rare) or BartPE, both would work. Even though it is recommended, you won’t need this if you can access the registry files some other way (another operating system).
• A Hash Decryptor. One powerful tool is SAMInside, but it isn’t free. The best alternative is to use LCP, a free NT and LM hash decryptor with lots of similarities with SAMInside.
• A Windows XP installation disc to build the pre environment.

It would be worthy to note here that SAMInside can ease a lot of pain in some situations due to its superior features over LCP, but they aren’t always required. Both tools can bypass SYSKEY protection as well as pause and resume attacks. SAMInside can only speed up tasks thanks to its little extras (a bonus attack, dictionary tables, and option to select which passwords to recover) but that’s nothing LCP can’t handle given a little more time.

Step 1: Building the Pre Environment

I am assuming that you have downloaded BartPE Builder, and you have a system with full admin rights and a Windows XP installation disc to work on. Making sure that your Windows XP installation files are already on your hard drive (the i386 folder) or the CD is in the CD-ROM. Start pebuilder.exe, it will ask you to search for installation files. Its a waste of time, so just choose no, and then click the button next to the Source textbox. Browse to your i386 folder (L:\i386 in my case, on the CD) and select it.

In the media output group box, select Burn to CD/DVD and choose StartBurn from the drop list. It will automatically select your burner. Click on Build to start building the PE image, which would burn to the disc. This will take some time, and if everything goes successful, you will get a success message.

You could also make a USB boot drive if you like (and are willing to risk it). Its not a 100% guarantee but it has worked for me. You would need at least a 512 MB of flash drive and a couple of files from Windows Server 2003 SP1. This USB Pre Environment builder gives more details on this.

Step 2: Getting the Registry Files

This is the hardest part of the process. Partly due to the fact that now you would be stealing user information and also because that its not easy to locate and access the registry hives. Actually depending on your operating system and settings, the registry information may be stored at a number of places. What you are looking for are three files; SAM (Security Accounts Manager), SYSTEM (Local System hive) and SECURITY (SYSKEY encryption information).

By default, in most operating systems, they are located at Windows\System32\Config. They are locked by the NT Session Manager and WinLogon so you can’t access them from within Windows. If you have System Restore active, then they would also be located in System Volume Information\(restore point image)\(restore folder) but its not always accurate.

They safest way is to boot from a non NT Operating System (which supports NTFS) and get the files from there. This is where BartPE comes into play.

• Boot from BartPE by inserting the CD or the USB drive into the target system.
• When Bart finishes loading, click on the Go button and look for the A43 Filemanager. Its location changes with different versions but its easy to find (usually in Accessories, the menu is small).



• This is like the Windows Explorer. Navigate to Windows\System32\Config and copy the files SAM, SYSTEM and SECURITY to any other folder you can access from within windows. If Bart detected your USB Flash Drive, then you can paste there.
• You are done with Bart. Quickly remove the boot medium and reboot the PC.
• If you haven’t already, retrieve the files you copied from within Windows and leave the system.

Remember if you are doing this on a public PC, then be extremely careful not get caught. This whole process may take about 10 minutes depending on the system speed.

Step 3: Hash Decryption

This is the final and longest step in our process. It would take anywhere from 30 minutes to thousands of days based on the complexity of the password. You should continue this on the most powerful computer you have access to. By that I mean a system which you can use (you don’t need full privileges to run the software). I’d advise you to at least use an Intel Pentium 4/AMD Athlon 64 processor. Anything below that would be a waste of time. Plus you can double your performance if you use a multi core system like the Intel Core 2 or the Intel Core i7.

I’ll assume that you want to continue with the free LCP software, and not SAMInside. They are mostly similar in functionality and provide all the basic set of tools you may need. SAMInside has an added advantage of having an extra attack and some better options for decryption and password prediction. It can reduce the total time you need to crack a password, but anything you can do with SAMInside, you can do it with LCP (it will take a little longer in some cases).

Simple Attack

Start LCP by extracting/installing the files you downloaded (Note: you don’t have to install LCP in order to run it). LCP has an excellent documentation that comes with it while a little help material is also available on its website. While I will guide you for making the most straightforward attack, it may often help to know what else you can do with the configuration and this may dramatically reduce the time you need to crack a password.

There are a lot of ways to import the hashes into LCP, but we will use the Load from SAM file option. Click on Import > Import from SAM file… in the main menubar. You will be presented by the dialog depicted in the image to the right. There are a few things you should be careful of, like selecting the right files. Usually people mostly screw up in this part.

For the first textbox, click the browse button and navigate to the SAM file you retrieved earlier. Next, if SYSKEY was enabled, then you need to check Additional encryption is used checkbox. If you are unsure that whether SYSKEY was enabled or not, then a rule of thumb is that if you are using anything after Windows XP Service Pack 2, then SYSKEY would be enabled by default.

Even if you don’t know exactly, you can still provide a SYSKEY file, and the program would alert you if it couldn’t detect a SYSKEY. There are three ways you can provide the SYSKEY.

• From a SYSTEM hive of the target system.
• From a known password of the target system.
• From a recovery disk (virtually obsolete).

We will use the SYSTEM registery hive, we retrieved earlier because its our best bet to uncover the SYSKEY. So click the Browse button and choose the SYSTEM registry hive. Click Ok, and if everything went fine, you should now see the following screen.

This basically is the list of all the user accounts extracted from the files along with some account information. The most important one here is the NT and LM (LAN Manager) hashes. The passwords would appear here when they are decoded. Another interesting set of information here is the length of the password.

If the password you desire is indicated as being less than 8 characters long, then you are (usually) in luck. It would take between 30 minutes to about 2 hours to decode them on a decent system. If they are between 8 to 14 characters, it would take up to 2 days. If its anything above 14 characters, then you should stop right here and go for a distributed attack approach. Otherwise you could be waiting for a thousand years for the password to decrypt successfully.

If you know any details about the password, then its the best time to LCP in on them. By this I mean, if you know something about the length of the password or its complexity, or even if you know a part of it (some characters) then you should configure LCP to take full advantage of that knowledge. This can dramatically reduce the time required to decrypt. I’ll show this by an example:

Suppose that you want to decrypt a hash which would result in “ilovepizza”. The password has 10 UTF-8 characters, and there are a possible 1.54814008760175e+16 combinations of the UTF-8 character set. If each combination takes 1 micro second to process, then you would need 1.54814008760175e+13 seconds (that’s millions of millions of years) to get that password. Now if you know that you’re not going to need all the UTF-8 characters, and use just the lowercase English alphabet, then the total number of possibilities is reduced to 70607460 combinations and the time required to 70607.460 seconds (under 24 hours).

Of course the above figures are just an assumption and don’t reflect any actual time required. IT was just to give you an idea of importance of making the right settings. A pretty much evolved race of humans would eventually see the password coming out at a galaxy far far away, but sadly, they wont know if pizza was a religious food item or a homosexual homicidal lunatic.

Back to the topic, we are now all set to start the attack. Make sure that Hybrid attack is selected from the main toolbar, and click the blue Play button to start. Your password is now being cracked and LCP will show you how much (just an estimate) time is left until the full password is unveiled. This is pretty much it for what you could do with the simple attack. All you have to do now is to be patient.

You can pause/resume your progress anytime on any computer. This is probably the best feature  in these software and this forms the basis for the Distributed Attack technique (below).

Distributed Attack

What if you have 10 computers with similar specs at your disposal? Now if you took the above password example, and split it evenly on 10 computers, your work would have been completed in 7060.746 seconds or about a little under 2 hours. This sure beats waiting for an entire day for a simple (but long) password like that.

LCP makes it very easy to distribute your attack load on multiple computers, and you don’t have to connect them physically. They are not requred to be on a network. I basically always use the distributed attack to uncover my paswords and last time, 7 computers got the work done in three days (which would require up to weeks if I just used one PC).

To start a distributed attack, you have to follow up to the point where you loaded the registry hives into LCP. From there you just have to configure LCP as you normally would, and then do an extra step to setup the distributed attack. Click on File > Distribute Sessions and the distributed attack manager would open up.

It will automatically load your basic configuration which you had setup. Select a naming prefix for your files, and the number of distributions you want to create (the number of PCs you are going to use). Click the distribute button and the distributed files will be generated. Click Save to Folder to save them in a specific folder.

Now you have run an instance of LCP on each computer and load one of the distribution files there and simply start the process. Once the attack on each machine finishes, you will see the respective results on one of the system (one of them will have the password).

This technique can also be used on the same processor if you have a multi core architecture (best for Core 2 Quad or Core i7). Simply make distributions as you have cores (make it double for Core i7) and run that many instances of LCP on the same computer. Then start your process manager (Task Manager or Process Explorer) and right click on each instance of LCP. What you want to do here is to set the process affinity of each process to a different core. It will work as a separate process on that same system.

Conclusion

No matter which path you will take, you will get your password after some time. The process may take long but it is worth the wait. You can always use the faster (less subtle) alternatives I listed above. If you have any further questions or comments, then you can ask them below (via comments). As stated above, I or anyone else from Sizlopedia for that matter, will not be responsible for any harm/damage this may bring. So use at your own risk.

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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The participants of the PDC would each get a 160 GB hard drive pre-loaded with all the developer documentation needed for Windows 7, along with a possible “alpha build” of the OS pre-installed. We already know that huge enhancements would be made to the desktop and the native applications, while there will also be new APIs to play around with.

The above image is from Microsoft Paint, which would see a major facelift since its Windows 95 installment. Similar enhancements are expected in a lot of applications while the Sidebar may be omitted from the design. But that doesn’t mean, that the Widgets would be gone altogether. You can now add them to the desktop directly.

In built support for Cloud Computing is also expected thanks to “Windows Cloud”, as well as a preinstalled version of .NET Framework 4.0. We will keep you updated with further details as they are unveiled so be sure to stick around.

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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And as a worth, it is an Open Source software so it will not cost anything to your pocket.

The developer folks behind GIMP have released new version of application today. GIMP 2.6 includes both some of major and minor changes to the UI, tools and plugins.

The visible change in the user interface is that toolbox menubar has been removed and merged with image window menu to give you the swift access to various options. Along with this it now gives you the ability to pan beyond the image border. The free select tool has been enhanced with the support of polygonal selections. Brush dynamics is the new addition in the options family, lets you play with size, opacity, pressure and velocity of brush strokes. Detailed information about all the other minor changes can be found in the release notes.

Download GIMP 2.6. GIMP 2.6 is also available for Windows OS

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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A lot of organizations offer “cloud” services, and Microsoft plans to join them soon. At Student Technology Day in London, Steve Ballmer announced that Microsoft is working on a new operating system, and no its not Windows 7. “Windows Cloud”, the internal name for the operating system will be announced with its official name along with some of its features at Microsoft’s Professional Developer’s Conference in Los Angeles on October 27.

Ballmer says,

…Just like Windows Server looked a lot like Windows, but with new properties, new characteristics and new features, so will Windows Cloud; it’ll look a lot like Windows Server…

He also said that today’s environments are not very friendly for developers to write cloud computing applications.

Ballmer stressed that Microsoft believes that the future is Software + Service, indicating that the same service would be available across a range of platforms, including mobile devices. This is a very welcoming move by Microsoft, which would also be introducing its next version of Windows Mobile next year. Putting services in the cloud seems the be the major objective of Microsoft which is evident from the development of Office Live, .NET Framework 4.0, Windows Cloud and Windows Mobile 7. Suddenly now, “Life without walls” is starting to make sense to me.

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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When questioned about the future Office Live, He said that the current goals for Office Live are to enhance collaboration, while giving a streamlined mobile computing experience. While a part of this is already offered by Microsoft in the form of Office Life Workspace, and SharePoint server, he said that Microsoft wanted to bring a more streamlined, user oriented version of the product to the Web.

According to Ballmer:

…we want a solution that not only runs in a browser (Google Docs), but gives a feel and functionality of the full blown service, giving you access to full Office documents and programs to be able to share them…

Further details about the new service will be revealed at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles on October 27, along with the official details on Windows Cloud and the alpha release of Windows 7.

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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We already have the official Win 7 blog to keep us updated with all Windows 7 news and we have also managed to get our hands on some of the leaked screenshots of Windows 7 that confirm a lot of new and upcoming features.

These screenshots exhibit the Windows 7 Milestone 3 (M3) build and are 100% authentic, unliked the Windows 7 Screens we posted earlier.

This is the new window for Display Settings which we will hopefully see in Windows 7. As you can see, it is more well organized and gives you a new option to select your screen orientation.

This is the new Calculator in Windows 7. I am pleased that Microsoft decided to revamp its look as the old Calculator looks too ancient.

The sidebar gadgets gallery in Windows 7 will most probably be the same as the one in Vista with only minor changes in functionality.

The ‘Application-specific Aero Theme’ in Windows 7 is one of the most unique features yet to come. It will allow users to select a specific theme for a particular application.

Better options for games allows the user to automatically or manually update all game settings and download information about particular games from the web.

Microsoft Windows Paint now comes with Ribbon UI just like in Microsoft Office 2007. As the Microsoft developers say, the new Paint is somewhat a cross between the native Paint application in Windows and Paint.NET

WordPad has also got a Ribbon UI in Windows 7 along with Paint.

Windows Media Player has got a new and better minimized mode.

The new Windows Solution Center keeps you informed about all the tasks that require urgent attention such as security, updates etc and also suggests solutions to problems.

Thats all for now! from what we knowso far , it can be assumed that UAC in Windows 7 won’t be as annoying as it is in Vista (thats a very good sign!). High five to ThinkNext for sharing all this.

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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Before you give Explorer the boot, check out some first-rate add-ons that turns Windows’ tired file browser into the information manager of the future.

Explorer Breadcrumbs

If you’re using Windows XP, you may need a few add-ons to update that OS’s version of Explorer to match Vista’s file manager. An example is Vista’s “breadcrumb” style of displaying folder paths. Click any folder name in the path to navigate back to that folder instantly. Click one of the arrows separating folder names to see a pop-up menu of subfolders to navigate the other direction.

Explorer Breadcrumbs from Minimalist lets you add an Explorer toolbar with this same feature to Windows XP, 2003, or 2000. In Vista, breadcrumbs replace the previous path notation in the address bar (click to the right of the path to see and select the old style). But since Explorer Breadcrumbs simply adds a new toolbar, you can keep both path styles visible in your Explorer windows at once, if you wish.

Download [ Explorer Breadcrumbs ]

Folder Size

Windows Explorer, by default, doesn’t show the size of the folder when you opt for the ‘Details’ view. This is one of the little things that users will find lacking in Windows Explorer. Well, this is when Folder Size comes in as a handy tool that adds the ‘Folder Size’ column to Windows Explorer Details View. Here’s the details column after installing Folder Size:

Download [ Folder Size ]

Total Copy

Total Copy is an improved version of Windows’ copy-function which copies slightly faster than Windows. With this app you can pause the copy-processes, and continue later. The best part of this app is that you can resume the copy process when you restart your PC. This is really helpful especially in case of power-loss or system-crash.

When you normally copy something in Windows, you drag the files from one folder to another using your left mouse button. If you drag the files using the right mouse button, you will get a menu like the one to the right. Now, select Total Copy here instead of Window’s Copy here.

Download [ Total Copy ]

QTTabBar

If your screen is cluttered with Explorer windows, consider replacing them with tabs similar to those in Internet Explorer 7. Giving your windows tabs would let you switch from one folder location to another with a single click or by pressing Ctrl, Tab. That’s the idea behind QTTabBar. It took me a while to figure out how to use the program to create a new tab. (One way is to right-click a tab and choose “Clone this”)

Once you get the hang of the tab-creation process, however, the program becomes very handy. In addition to the tab toolbar, you can show or hide a toolbar for managing the tabs themselves. Since all of that toolbar’s features are also found on the context menu for the tabs, you can save space by turning that option off and right-clicking the tabs instead.

Download [ QTTabBar ]

Folder Guide

Folder Guide is a free handy utility that provides fast access to your frequently used and favorite folders. It can operate as the part of your context menu in your Windows Explorer. After quick install it will appear in context menus of Windows Explorer and Open/Save dialogs as “Folder Guide” item.

With Folder Guide, you no longer need dozens of mouse clicks to navigate to your desired folder. Now reach your favorite folders in just 2 mouse clicks. Select from right click menu “Folder Guide” then click on your desired folder. Folder Guide runs automatically as part of the Windows Explorer context menu, so you will never need to start the program otherwise you want to edit the list of folders.

Download [ Folder Guide ]

This is a guest post by Addictive Tips Team at AddictiveTips. For more tips and tricks please visit their blog.

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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Windows Live Wave 3 Installer, which rolled out this Thursday, brings a whole new pack of applications and software for the Windows users coupled with a new elegant and eye-candy design.

Below I have reviewed some of the unique features of Windows Live Wave 3 applications which make it different from the Live Wave 2 Installer.

Windows Live Messenger

The new elegant looks of Windows Live Messenger BETA 2009 makes every other IM look an amateur. The new messenger allows user to make Messenger windows more personal and stylish.

Users can change the color and style of the conversation window, plus they can even add Favorite contacts which can be accessed instantly.

One of my favorite new features is the ability to ‘Change your scene’ which allows you to colorize your Messenger window and your contacts see the same color and scene that you choose.

My other favorite feature is the ‘Updates from Contacts’ which runs a slideshow of all the updates from your contacts such as change of display picture, personal text and updates from their Live Spaces.

Windows Live Writer

The UI of the new Windows Live Writer has been completely revampe. It is now much more smooth and pleases the eye.

The new feature in Windows Live Writer is that it now supports more blogging platforms and the ‘Insert Video’ option now allows you to add video from MSN Soapbox and YouTube directly.

Features like the live preview, WYSIWYG editor and in-built photo manipulation still retain themselves like before.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

The new Windows Live Photo Gallery makes photo sharing more fun and exciting. Users can now upload photos directly to various photo hosting websites such as Flickr etc and can also add them to an online album, send them in email or order prints online.

The new and the very interesting feature is the ‘People Tagging’ which allows you to tag people using the face recognition technology in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Windows Live Toolbar

I didn’t dare install the new Windows Live Toolbar as it is nothing but more than a screen termite for me.

However as the Windows Live website states, the new Windows Live Toolbar comes with a new smart menu which allows users user to select any text on a webpage and use shortcuts to get information like maps, weather, definitions, stock details, and more on the go.

Windows Live Mail

The new Windows Live Mail client allows for easy to mail online and even in offline mode. It supports all major e-mail services like Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail and can be conifgured for POP and even IMAP.

The new features include event reminders, syncing with web calendar and full-featured offline access.

Windows Live Movie Maker

The new Windows Live Movie Maker comes with Ribbon features and allows for easy importing, editing of videos and allows them to be published directly to the web.

The new interface brings a very neat design and layout and features some cool new visual effects. Photos and music can now be combined easily with videos to create masterpieces of art.

Windows Live Family Safety

With the new Windows Live Family Safety, tracking and keeping your kids safe on the Internet is no big problem anymore.

Web filtering helps you protect your kids from the online content they shouldn’t have to see. Create different filters for each child. Parents can set web filters to keep their children away from content which is not suitable for them to read or watch.

Parents can also access and adjust each child’s safety settings from almost any computer on the web.

Thats all for now! I hope you enjoyed using the new Windows Live Wave 3 applications as much as I did.

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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These new ‘I am a PC’ ads by Microsoft follow the two Bill-Seinfield ads launched lately which failed to promote Windows the right way. The motto of this new campaign is “Life without Walls” and the motif is to bash Apple Mac just like Apple bashed Vista with its ‘Get a Mac’ ad campaign.

The ‘I am a PC’ campaign is much more interactive than other ad campaigns in the sense that it allows users to make their own ‘I am a PC’ video and upload to the official Lifewithoutwalls site. This video is then displayed live on the Microsoft Website and even on the NY Times Square (live video feed provided by Labnol).

The real controversy begins where AppleInsider claims that the ‘I am a PC’ ad created by Microsoft were actually produced using Macs running Adobe Creative Suite 3.

However there is no proof whether the above image is 100% authentic or not and there may also be a possibility that AppleInsider is being secretly funded by Apple just to spread the false rumor.

For so far as I know for myself, ‘I am a Human’.

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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Windows Live Wave 3 suite of applications has been in works for long and now ensures a better stability and security for all Windows Live applications, not to mention the new stylish user interface.

The following Windows Live products are available in the new Windows Live Wave 3 suite of applications:

• Windows Live Writer Beta
• Windows Live Toolbar Beta
• Windows Live Mail Beta
• Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta
• Windows Live Messenger Beta
• Windows Live Movie Make Beta
• Windows Live Family Safety Beta

All these software come with extended functionality and the new updated UI is supposed to give more eye-candy to the users.

The combined installer can be download using the link below which will allow you to choose, download and install the application of your choice.

Download Windows Live Wave 3 Installer

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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iTunes 8 features a slightly improved UI with some major new features such as the Album Art Grid View for easy browsing through the library and a new smart sidebar called Genius.

The new Genius Sidebar automatically makes playlists from songs in your library and also makes recommendations from the iTunes store.

As for the new browsing, users can select albums in Grid View and iTunes 8 displays your entire music library using cover art. Select Artists, Genres, or Composers and iTunes automatically creates groups of albums based on your selection.

iTunes 8 also introduces enhanced accessibility and a new visualizer. Download iTunes 8 now using the direct link below.

Download iTunes 8 Direct Link

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While some users are frustrated by the bugs, others are annoyed why Google does not provide a direct installer for Google Chrome.

To help users run Google Chrome out of the box, the folks at Portable Freeware have already come up with a  new portable version of Google Chrome.

It behaves as though it is a natively installed program (i.e. it saves history and cache in the default Local Settings path) and can be run on Windows without any need for installation. Just download the ZIP, extract and run.

Download Portable Google Chrome ( Box.net | Rapidshare )

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As I have explained already, Google Chrome is an experimental browser by Google based on the WebKit engine which introduces a new tab concept and is meant for fast browsing.

Some very noticeable features of Google Chrome BETA are.

• The address bar, called omnibox, gives you suggestion for both searches and web pages.
• Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed.
• Make desktop shortcuts for your favorite web applications.
• Enjoy safe and private browsing using Incognito tabs.

Web Developers shouldn’t worry about making their sites compatible with Google Chrome as long as they render fine in Safari 3.1+. As both use the same rendering engine, so there won’t be any compatibility issues. It is however recommended for webmasters to give a read to the Google Chrome FAQ.

Users can head over to the Google Chrome website and download it. Please don’t forget to share your views on this new browser. It is currently available to Windows users only.

http://www.google.com/chrome

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I have been using Photoshop myself for most of the image editing stuff but in some cases its just impossible to live with it. Issues such as high RAM usage, long loading times and complexity of tools make Photoshop unbearable.

Today! what I have for you is probably one of the best free image editors for Windows. It launches instantly, uses a very negligible amount of RAM and provides easy yet powerful image editing tools. Its Paint.NET.

Paint.NET features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

It is Free, it is powerful and above all it is supported by an active online community and plugins.

It is only 2MB and features the same power and ability of other famous image editing tools like Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw and GIMP.

Download Paint.NET

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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Much like other program launchers, it was designed to provide a more powerful alternative to native Windows Run but what makes Executor more unique is the extent to which it can be customized using various skins and settings.

All you have to do is use a hotkey to launch Executor and then fire-away a keyword. Any programs matching the keyword would show up in the list and you can launch the program instantly.

Executor even lets you open a link in your default browser by just typing it into the Executor command window. Much more that comes with Executor is the optional choice of hard-drive indexing which makes it easy for user to index specific files or folders or leave them undiscovered.

The keywords and hotkeys can be manually configured through the settings dialog.

Download Executor

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I wouldn’t already compare it to Firefox 3 because IE8 is just in its beta 2 phase but the new features suggest that Firefox 3 is soon going to get a tough competition by its arch-enemy.

Below is a features preview of the new Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 which will allow you to preview and discover some of its amazing new abilities.

Smart Address Bar

The smart address bar in IE8 makes it easy for users to open previously browsed sites by just typing in a portion of the URL. The results are then grouped and the matching text is highlighted.

Furthermore, while browsing a site only the root domain is focused in the address bar while rest of the URL is grayed out.

Improved Tabbed Browsing

Tabs in IE8 have been improved to provide a much more easy browsing experience. In IE8 tabs are automatically grouped together using color codes belonging to the same site. This is much like the Colorful Tabs for Firefox.

Opening new tabs appends them to the group rather than adding them to the end of all the tabs.

Streamlined Finding Option

The new finding option in IE8 is in-line and streamlined much like that of Firefox. Kudos to Microsoft on getting rid of the annoying Find On Page popup dialog which has been bugging users in IE6 and IE7.

Accelerators and WebSlices

Accelerators are services that you access directly from the webpage in the context of what you are doing, letting you bookmark, define, email, map and more with a simple selection.

WebSlices, on the other hand, are Web 3.0 form of RSS Feeds. WebSlices allows user to subscribe to a portion of a website or blog and track any changes in the content.

Unlike web feeds, WebSlices in IE8 allow to track content changes for a part of a website rather than whole. I will be soon posting a tutorial on how to make a WebSlice.

Search Suggestions

The new Search (text) suggestions and Visual Search Suggestions make IE8 even more interesting.

As user searches for a keyword, relevant images and text is displayed which allows user to get single-click access to the web page without having to leave the Search box.

That was a review of some of the features I liked most in Internet Explorer 8, though there are lots more. Please share any of the features you like in the new IE8. Internet Explorer 8 can be downloaded using the link below.

http://www.microsoft.com/ie8

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Unlike Internet Explorer Beta 1, the new IE8 Beta 2 is focused more towards users than developers and brings a whole new set of extremely unique features for consumers and enterprises.

Microsoft has been trying hard to regain its lost dignity after other browsers like Firefox and Opera smashed Internet Explorer in terms of usability and features. As it seems, Internet Explorer 8 might be powerful enough to hold back and stay stable in the ever growing browser wars.

IE8 focuses on everyday browsing, safety and platform and introduces some amazing features such as Tab shortcuts, Accelerators and InPrivate Browsing. I will be covering the features in detail in an upcoming post.

IE8 Beta 2 can be downloaded using the link below. Currently it supports 32bit and 64bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008.

http://www.microsoft.com/ie8

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Photosynth gives users the ability to view and create 3D Panoramas and virtual tours. Basically it takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment.

Photosynth is potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.

The Photosynth viewer allows user to zoom in/out, view in 3D/2D and circle through next and previous frames. Below you can see some screenshots of 3D panoramas of Taj Mahal, Smith Tower and the Sphinx.

View Taj Mahal

View Smith Tower

View Sphinx

Apart from providing a library of 3D Panoramas for users to explore, Photosynth lets users create their own Synth and upload them for others to view in 3D.

It is a Microsoft Labs product so don’t expect it to bug-you-not. To get started with viewing or creating your own 3D Panoramas, hop on to Photosynth and enjoy the tour.

It is currently available only to Windows users.

http://photosynth.net/

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To be honest, it is not much different to Twhirl except for the fact that Twitch is very clean, simple and low on features.

Twitch currently only allows you to update your Twitter status, view friend’s timeline, reply to tweets and view highlighted replies which makes it a perfect client for new Twitter users who do not want to play with the complicated features such as the ones provided by Twhirl.

Moreover it even supports embedding of URLs using the TinyURL system.

To install Twitch, simply download the latest version of Adobe Air from here and install the Twitch Air File.

If you wish to install a Twitter client for Ubuntu, please see our list of Twitter Clients for Ubuntu Linux.

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