Thursday, February 22, 2007

Cobian Backup open source

Last year, we mentioned that Luis was looking for a developer to take over Cobian Backup. The right person must not have come along, since he has released the source code. It would be hard to make this app any better (aside from perhaps cleaning up the interface and icons a bit), but don't let that deter you from trying!

from TinyApps



Thursday, February 15, 2007

Titanize: the forgotten online backup utility

The forgotten online backup utility: Titanize
Titanize competes with services like Mozy and Carbonite. But it offers features that the others don't, and it is worth serious consideration if you're looking for an over-the-Net backup service.

For basic backups, it's much like Mozy and Carbonite. It's easy to set up, and it runs in the background, sending your new and changed files to its secure servers. But Titanize also will back up your files to local storage like an external hard disk or a drive on your home LAN. This makes it a very good solution if you're looking to set up layered backup, using local drives for convenience and speed and off-site backup for disaster protection.



Wednesday, February 14, 2007

HP Beta Software

HP's Beta Software website is at: http://www.hp.com/pond/ljbeta/. Only beta because it hasn't been put on the distribution cds yet. A lot of drivers here will do stuff that the installation cds won't. Also has fixes. HP maintains similar unadvertised websites throughout their system... [link]



Thursday, February 08, 2007

Each PC attacked 2,244 times a day

from One Stop Thought Shop

Every 39 seconds every computer connected to the Internet is attacked.

A study by the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering is one of the first to measure hacker attacks.
"Often they set up 'back doors' - undetected entrances into the computer that they control - so they can create "botnets," for profit or disreputable purposes." A botnet is a collection of compromised computers that are controlled by autonomous software robots answering to a hacker who manipulates the computers remotely. Botnets can act to perpetrate fraud or identity theft, disrupt other networks, and damage computer files, among other things.
Poor usernames and passwords give attackers more chance of success. They discovered the vast majority of attacks came from relatively unsophisticated hackers using "dictionary scripts," a type of software that runs through lists of common usernames and passwords attempting to break into a computer.
Use more difficult and less obvious passwords with combinations of upper and lowercase letters and numbers that are not open to brute-force dictionary attacks.
story at Phyorg



Freeware drive scanner

DriveLook scans a drive or a partition of a drive for text strings and stores them in a table.

After completion of the scan you can browse this table and view the locations where the words have been found. The search function allows you to do fast inquiries for combinations of words.

Runtime.org
offers several data recovery tools.

via the excellent freeware vault xtort.net