Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14: faster, adds Windows 8.1, Bitlocker support

German developer Paragon Software Group has announced the release of Hard Disk Manager 14, the latest edition of its drive partitioning, backup, copying and management suite.

New features this time include the introduction of pVHD, an optimized container format, and its greater efficiency makes for smaller backup files, improved performance and stability.

Improved compatibility sees support for Windows 8.1, BitLocker and Windows Storage Spaces. There’s complete uEFI support, including a bootable GPT/uEFI-compatible Backup Capsule. And if you need to restore a backup to a drive with a different section size (512-byte, 4KB), that’s no longer an issue: it just works.

The Linux Recovery Environment has been enhanced with support for more hardware devices. It works with uEFI systems just as easily as any other, and can now connect to virtual disks as though they were regular physical drives.

The interface has seen an upgrade, too. The old Express Launcher now has a Windows 8 look, but if that’s not your favorite style, don’t worry: the full program is more familiar, the only major change being the introduction of a ribbon.

As before, the package is available in two flavors. Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14 Suite (x64 version) is the starting package, and delivers all the core functionality you need from around $39.96. Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14 Professional (x64 version) goes further with dynamic disk and Bitlocker support, enhanced backup, performance and virtualization tools, and is priced from $59.96.

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Avira Savings Advisor -- holiday shopping cost savings and fraud prevention

When it comes to holiday shopping, I am a bit of a scrooge. I love the holidays and I love gifts, but the actual shopping is a chore. While online-shopping has reduced my need to leave the house and interact with other humans, even that can be problematic. After all, there are so many online retailers nowadays, that it can be hard to choose. Not to mention, if you find a good price, how can you know it is a reputable website?

Luckily, Avira, the often-trusted security company, has unveiled a solution called Avira Savings Advisor. The company says, "just in time for the holiday shopping season, security expert Avira announced today the release of Avira Savings Advisor -- a free browser add-on that helps shoppers find the best prices and the most trustworthy e-commerce sites to buy online".

In other words, this free browser plugin will help you save money by finding you better deals, but also keep you safe from fraud by monitoring information about the retailer. Avira claims the software works by performing the following checks:

• Positive average of user reviews


• Presence of email and telephone support contacts


• Certificates and Trust-marks (Bizrate, NexTag Trusted Seller, etc.)


• Encrypted payment systems and at least two trusted payment options (major credit card & PayPal)


• Stated return policies


• Stated shipping and delivery costs


• Company history (more than 1 year active in business)


• Positive credit score (via Creditreform Check)

If you would like to try it yourself, Avira claims it works with "any browser", so it should be compatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. You can download the plugin here. If you try it, tell me in the comments if you like it. Hopefully it will save you some money.

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Apple buys PrimeSense: Could Macs or AppleTV get their own Kinect?

Using a peripheral to interact with your computer is so passé. Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners have the Kinect to dance in front of, and PlayStation gamers have a camera that can be used in much the same way. PC users can turn to the likes of Leap Motion if they like the idea of eschewing traditional forms of control, and an increasing number of smartphones can recognize eye and hand movements. Now it looks as though Apple is joining the party by buying 3D motion detection specialists PrimeSense.

This may not be a firm that sounds all that familiar, but you're almost certainly aware of the Israeli company's work -- Kinect for the Xbox. Yep, you read that correctly. Apple is buying the firm behind one of the most interesting and innovative features of Microsoft's game console. While no details of the purchase have been revealed, and no mention made of any money that may have swapped hands, PrimeSense has confirmed that the purchase is going ahead.

We asked whether the sale was happening and what we could expect to see in the future from the joining of forces. In a brief statement, the company responded with "We can confirm the deal with Apple. Further than that, we cannot comment at this stage".

So what can we expect to see as a result of this purchase? Well the most obvious result would be the addition of gesture-based control to Apple TV, but it needn't end there. The same technology could also find its way into iPhones and iPads -- Samsung has implemented facial and motion detection into various handsets, and it would make sense for Apple to follow suit. Motion detection has, thus far, been mainly implemented for living room devices, so it will be interesting to see whether Apple continues down this route or decides to concentrate on mobile device, or even Leap Motion-style desktop control.

How would you make use of 3D motion technology? Have the big players missed any tricks that would make your life easier?

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FastKeys is an ultra-versatile PC automation tool

When writing about new programs we’ll normally start with a general outline of what they do, but FastKeys ($9.99) makes that unusually difficult. It’s a highly versatile Windows automation program with support for several time-saving technologies, but how these are used is very much up to you.

The program could be a simple Start Menu replacement, for instance; move your mouse to the top edge of the screen and a basic Start menu appears. This starts off with just a few links (Office, system applets, Documents folder, a few web shortcuts, shutdown options), but can easily be expanded to add more.

Perhaps you’d prefer some new global keyboard shortcuts? There are plenty. Press Alt+T to make a window transparent; Alt+G to run a Google search on the selected text; Alt+Q to display the Recent Documents menu; Ctrl+Alt+V to paste text without any annoying formatting.

FastKeys has text expansion and auto completion options. Work in Notepad, say, and as you type you’ll find new autocomplete menus popping up, allowing you to correctly enter lengthy words without typing every character.

The Text Expander meanwhile looks out for shortcut strings and expands them to something useful. Type ,cl , for example, and you’ll see a menu of common closing phrases: "I look forward to your reply", "I look forward to hearing from you" and so on. There are others, and you can customize these or add your own as required.

For all this, FastKeys is mostly an extremely capable scripting and keyboard macro tool. Take that "Google search for the selected text" example. It’s not just some black box function, you can actually look at, and change the AutoHotKey code which makes it work:

Send, ^c

Sleep 50

Run, http://www.google.com/search?q=%clipboard%

Even if you’ve never done any programming in your life, you can probably guess what that means. Ctrl+C copies the text to the clipboard; there’s a brief delay, then FastKeys launches Google with your selected text. Easy. And of course it’s very quickly tweaked to launch any other website (or program) you like.

You may not have to start programming just yet, though, because FastKeys includes plenty of built-in commands you can use. There are simple tasks ("Convert Text to Capitalized", "Eject Disk Drives", "Turn Monitor Off"), window manipulation functions ("Move Window Right One Monitor", "Resize Window To", "Hide Other Windows"), gaming macros ("Fire x Times", "Auto Fire Hold", "Jump x Times and Crouch"), audio commands ("Volume Up", "Volume Down", "Mute Sound"), cursor movements ("Character Left/ Right", "Word Left/ Right", "Paragraph Up/ Down"), and more. Choose the ones you need, then edit and combine them to suit your needs.

Perhaps the best part of FastKeys, though, is that it caters for just about everyone. PC novices can use the Start Menu and global shortcuts right away. Experienced users will be trying out various preset commands within a few minutes. As we’ve seen, they can be customized very easily, and Windows experts can take this further by authoring brand new scripts of their own. If you’re looking for smarter ways to boost your PC productivity then go take the (feature complete) trial version for a spin, see what it can do for you.

Photo Credit: Yellowj/Shutterstock

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Bitcoins can now be used to buy a trip into space

Bitcoin is rarely out of the news these days. There have been stories about Bitcoin thefts, its use by cybercriminals, the first Bitcoin ATM, and most recently the virtual currency’s value soared to over $900 after the FBI told a US Senate committee hearing that it offers "legitimate financial services".

If you’re a bitcoin miner or collector, and are wondering what to do with your stockpiled virtual currency, you’ll soon be able to add "buy a trip into space" to the list of possibilities.

Virgin Galactic has announced that customers can use bitcoins to pay for a seat aboard its commercial space flights.

Writing on his Virgin blog, Sir Richard Branson says:

Bitcoin, the virtual currency, has really captured the imagination recently as one of the world’s most innovative businesses looking to the future. So we think it is about time Virgin Galactic customers can choose to pay with bitcoins.

One future astronaut, a female flight attendant from Hawaii, has already purchased her Virgin Galactic ticket using bitcoins, and we expect many more to follow in her footsteps. All of our future astronauts are pioneers in their own right, and this is one more way to be forward-thinking.

There are a lot of companies under the Virgin umbrella and it will be interesting to see if more of those start accepting the virtual currency as a form of payment.

via BetaNews http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/aAMGn_iQS0M/

Generate spectacular 3D fractals with Mandelbulber

Most fractal programs are entertaining for a while, and capable of producing some amazing abstract pictures. But the constant focus on 2D Mandelbrot imagery means that boredom will inevitably set in, and sooner rather than later. What you really need is something more interesting – and we have the ideal candidate.

Mandelbulber is a fractal program with a difference. Forget the usual 2D pictures, this brings you amazing ray-traced 3D images, with complex shading, full lighting and camera control, even the ability to create custom animations where the camera flies around and into your chosen view.

All this configurability does make for a complex interface, with more than 200 settings and controls spread across multiple tabs. But don’t let that put you off: most of the options can be ignored, at least initially, and you can create some great images with very little effort.

Just clicking "Render" gets the process started, with Mandelbulber using its default settings to produce your first fractal. Click the View tab and you’re able to manipulate this in 3D space: the left-hand buttons rotate the fractal; the right-hand buttons move your viewpoint; "Forward" zooms in; "Back" zooms out; clicking somewhere on the fractal moves the camera and zooms in, and if you get lost, "Reset view" returns to the starting point.

Click the "Fractal" tab and choose a new "Fractal formula type" to produce different images. "Polynomic power 2", "FoldingIntPower2", "Smooth Mandelbox" and "Tglad’s formula" are great places to start, while "Generalized Mandelbox Fold" manages to create Borg cube-type designs entirely mathematically. (Changing fractal type doesn’t alter your view settings, so if you don’t see the new fractal after it’s been generated, click View > Reset view.)

As you zoom into these images, so you might want them to become more detailed. Click the Engine tab and try increasing the "Detail level" and "Max iterations".

The "Image" tab is useful, too. Here you can increase the image resolution, tweak brightness and contrast, as well as save your fractal as a JPG or PNG for sharing with others later.

If you’re working on a really interesting fractal but have run out of time, click "Save Settings" to save the current program configuration, and "Load Settings" next time to restore it.

Mandelbulber’s real power comes in its ability to produce 3D animations, though. This is far from easy to master, but once you’ve seen what can be done then maybe you’ll think it’s worth the effort. Take a look at this.

via BetaNews http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/GtlaG3twbYY/

Evernote begins warning customers about Adobe hack

The repercussions of the recent Adobe hack continue to echo around the internet. The attack exposed the user information for a huge number of customers, and data leaked online displayed email addresses, passwords and hints. The final tally of affected users ended up at 150 million, and the dump has since been parsed by security researchers, such as those at Sophos.

Now Evernote is the latest to warn customers of the far-reaching possibilities that could result from Adobe's misfortune. The note-taking service has been checking the database of email addresses and comparing it to its own customer list. When a matching email address is discovered, a message is generated to warn the potential victim.

There were published reports recently of a security breach at Adobe that may have exposed private information, including Adobe passwords, email addresses and passwords hints of millions of users. The list of compromised Adobe accounts has been uploaded to the web. We compared this list to our user email addresses and found that the email address you used to register for an Evernote account is on the list of exposed Adobe accounts.

Evernote has not been compromised and is not connected to this incident, but if you used the same password for Adobe and Evernote, then you should change your Evernote password now.

The warning goes on to explain the basics of creating a secure password. Evernote also has the option for two-step authentication for all customers.

It should go without saying that a strong password is needed, and it should not be used on any two sites. However, the Adobe breach showed this warning falls on deaf ears for most users -- the top password was "123456", followed closely by "password"

Photo Credit: Pavel Ignatov/Shutterstock

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