Tech toolbox: Malware tracker is reliable and easy
ThreatFire3.5 is a new and free malware tracker, developed by PCTools, a company that typically charges between $14 and $30 for most of the Windows products it sells through its Web site.
Something free and something worth using are two concepts you don’t usually put together with Web software.
This time we’d say yes, ThreatFire 3.5 is reliable despite costing nothing to use. (It doesn’t even produce nagging pop-ups urgnig the use of other products.)
The main claim by the company is that ThreatFire3 does active monitoring and identifies malware or Trojans based on behavior. Most malware tools use signatures that are something like Web-activity footprints to identify problems.
ThreatFire 3.5 can be downloaded from pctools.com. No configuration is required, making it simple to use. We’ve tested it and so far, it seems useful.
New Word plug-in for blind users
It’s estimated 1.5 million Web users who are blind mostly rely on a Microsoft tool called Narrator, which lets them hear or navigate through documents or Web files.
Microsoft has admitted its Narrator service is not that useful. So it just released a new plug-in, called DAISY. The new tool was developed through the DAISY Consortium, a nonprofit group serving the vision-impaired.
The DAISY plug-in, available through openxmlcommunity.org, works only with Office 2003, Office XP and Office 2007.
Get an RSS feed for your TV favorites
Mytvrss.com lets users create a regular RSS (really simple syndication) feed that provides updates on when new episodes are scheduled for favorite TV shows. This might be helpful for fans of “Law and Order” who need to keep track of which version of that show they’re most addicted to – L&O: Criminal Intent, L&O Special Victims Unit, whatever….
The site is a substitute for TV watchers who don’t have a DVR, or who don’t know how to program their DVRs so that recordings are only made for new shows of a given program.
DisplayFusion.com
Assorted Web tools let you download a stream of changing wallpapers to your desktop. We’ve tested DisplayFusion, from Binaryfortress.com, and think it has a lot to recommend it.
If you have more than one monitor in your workspace, the tool lets you control which images are loaded in each.
If you want to configure your desktop to load images from Flickr, DisplayFusion has several choices: search Flickr by user name, group, topic or keyword.
Other configuration options let you choose how images are displayed and how often they change.
The full version costs $15.