Everyone of us likes watching movies and if a movie is worth keeping in our collection, we also look forward to its official DVD/Blu-ray release. After we’ve brought the movie DVD, we either want to keep a copy of it in our computer for archival purpose or want to watch it on our growing collection of portable media devices.

Now, you might be wondering how to rip and encode your DVDs for keeping them safe and watch them on your iPod, iPad, Android, iPhone or other portable device? Handbrake is one such good free tool to rip and encode your DVDs for keeping them safe.

Handbrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multi-platform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. Let’s take a quick read and know more about Handbrake.

How to use Hadbrake? Quick Overview

First of all you’ll need to download Handbrake. For downloading the software, visit www.handbrake.fr and click on download for Windows/Mac OS/Linux. After download completes, install the software. The installation process is easy and fast.

Now, insert the DVD you want to rip, into your computer. Click on “Source” and choose the video folder on the DVD. Handbrake will now scan the DVD for titles and chapters. After the scan is complete, choose the encoding preset (about which we’ve talked later in Functionality) and click on Start.

Depending on the preset chosen by you, length of the movie and speed of your machine, in a few minutes or hour, you’ll have the movie saved on your computer as a file. You can now sync this file to your portable device and watch the movie.

Handbrake User Interface

The user interface of Handbrake is very clean and is well laid out. You’ll find all the important functions available in the form of buttons at the top. The presets are organized in expandable lists, available at the sidebar. The outputs are organized in clean labelled tabs.

Handbrake Functionality

Handbrake is a very good tool for both novice users as well as advanced users in video encoding. Novice users will like the encoding presets offered by the software. Though we found most of the presets are for Apple devices optimized for the highest quality, screen size, and file type.

Advanced users will find Handbrake very useful because of the control it offers when you mess around with the encoding settings. You can customize everything, from file container settings to the videos aspect ratio and size, which is really overwhelming. Further diving in, you’ll be able to choose the video filters, video quality and codec, audio codecs, mix down settings, bit rate, and sample rate settings. If you’re really want to take control, check out the advanced tab!

Handbrake options lets you configure all the aspects of the software.

Conclusion

Once you start using Handbrake and see the results, we’re confident you’ll fall in love with Handbrake just like us. Handbrake is the best video transcoder we have used till date and offers the best features and performance. The icing on the cake, its open source, free and available on all platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux)! Thanks for reading.

February 1st was “change your password day.” Did you changed your passwords? When you’re managing your various accounts, passwords and other sensitive data, it becomes very difficult to keep them secure while accessible. You can easily find many efficient password managers but most of them comes at a premium.

Here, we’re going to take a quick look at Dashlane, a user-friendly and secure password manager for Windows and Mac. The app promises to cut the hassle of managing your accounts, passwords and other sensitive data while keeping the data safe from prying eyes. Let’s see if the app can keep its promise of providing better security while revolutionizing the way we login to websites today.

Exclusive Dashlane Invites for all My Technology Guide readers!

Dashlane is now in a private beta stage. But you don’t have to wait for an invite! Thanks to the great folks behind the software to set up an exclusive page for My Technology Guide readers with some exclusive invites.

Simply click on the link below to try Dashlane without waiting to get an invite!

Dashlane Beta Invites

Getting Started with Dashlane

After you click on the above link, enter your email address and download Dashlane. Launch the setup process, which is simple and quick. In Mac, Dashlane supports Safari in addition to Chrome and Firefox, both of which is also supported in the Windows platform. But if you’re using Internet Explorer, you’ve to wait a little more as IE is not yet supported by the app.

Now, when you’re going to set up your Dashlane account using the app, you’ll notice a window, which informs you that there is absolutely no way to recover your password if you forget it since it is not stored anywhere. It may sound very hard but it is perfect for an app like this.

If you’ve used an app like 1Password, you’ll see the same policy about password retrieval. LastPass though has a way to retrieve/reset your password if you forget your master password but the process they follow is pretty secure in our opinion and is a little different from how Dashlane works. So, we will not give any negative points to Dashlane for this.

How to use Dashlane?

Once you’re completed the setup, you’ll get into your dashboard where you can start entering your information. The user interface is elegant, easy to use and navigate. We loved the simplicity and gradient white color of the user interface.

All your information is categorized into three primary categories: Personal Data, Internet Accounts, Internet Shopping. These three categories are further expanded into following: Under Personal Data, you’ll find Contact, IDs, Payment; under Internet Accounts, Logins and Passwords, Security Dashboard; under Internet Shopping, Purchases.

Entering, Importing, Exporting and Saving Information

Dashlane developers have made the task of entering all your information super easy. Simply click on the little round “+” buttons, present under each category and a form pops out for you to fill in and save.

The Personal Data category can be filled up manually while the app intelligently saves your account details for different sites as you log into them using any supported browser. Here, you’ll notice a unique feature of Dashlane about which we haven’t talked yet. Whenever, the app saves any account details, it shows a dialog box to organize your accounts. In that very same dialog box you’ll notice a check box which says “Always log me into the website.” This feature is an exclusive feature of Dashlane.

So, the next time you open that website, the app automatically takes over and logs you in. If you have saved multiple accounts, suppose your Gmail, clicking on the username field will display a pull over menu with all the saved credentials. When you click on the username you want to login to, the app automatically logs you in without any further typing or clicking anywhere.

Dashlane also lets you automatically speed up your online purchases by filling up all the details and even saves the information about that purchase (total spent, retailer name, etc.) back in the app.

Another great feature of the app is its import facility. The app lets you import all your previously saved information from your favorite browser, LastPass, 1Password, Roboform, Password Wallet and Keypass. The app also lets you easily export all your saved data.

Login and Passwords

Under the Login and Passwords section you will see a grid of all the websites login credentials. Upon hovering on any of the tile, a play button appears at the corner. If you click on it, the app automatically loads the website and logs you in. A very convenient and innovative way to login to your favorite website.

Security Dashboard

The Security Dashboard provides a quick overview of the safety level, that is strength of each passwords that you’ve saved with Dashlane. A little bar displays password strength on a scale of 1-100% and a simple interpretation of the score such as “Super Safe,” “Safe” or “Very Unsafe.”

Dashlane Browser Extension

Dashlane during installation also installs the browser extensions. This extension helps capture the login credentials and helps you fill up data. We’ve already mentioned earlier how conveniently it helps filling up online forms through a pop-up menu for each field.

If you’re filling up a long form which needs your personal data like sign-up forms, you just need to choose your saved information with Dashlane and all the fields are filled out automatically.

Syncing

Dashlane saves all your information to your local hard-drive. But, if you’ve multiple computers, you’ve the option to sync all your information to the Dashlane servers. So, when you login to your Dashlane app in your other computer, it automatically syncs all your information.

Syncing is not enabled by default and is completely optional. Even what is getting synced is completely in your hands and for your safety, your financial information is never synced.

Conclusion

Dashlane, even though is in private beta, is already a very solid app with a lot of potential. With some of its unique features like automatic sign in, the app intelligent solves a lot of short comings present in currently available password managers. If you still don’t use any password manager, we highly recommend you to start using one and feel the difference. If you’re already using a password manager, you should definitely try Dashlane.

If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, don’t hesitate to comment below and get a discussion flowing! Please share your favorite password manager and if you don’t use one, please tell us why you don’t use one. Thank you so much for reading!

Every operating system user faces the problem of accumulating temporary/junk files eating up disk space. As you go on using your operating system, you suddenly realize that the system partition is having less amount of free space. Since, the operating system doesn’t automatically deleted these unneeded files, the files takes up gigabytes of disk space. At the end system performance takes the toll and you notice computer running slow.

Windows users have some good utilities like CCleaner for cleaning up the junk and temporary files. Mac users also have CCleaner for Mac, but it’s still under development and is in beta stage at time of writing. If you don’t want to try out a beta product for your Mac, check out MacCleaning, developed by EaseUs, the developers of many good hard disk utilities.

MacCleaning is a freeware, all-in-one Mac OS based menu bar utility which lets you clean junk files and features disk space monitor and drive ejection. The disk space monitor lets you monitor the amount of disk space being used and left. Whenever any drives in your Mac is running out of space, MacCleaning will recommend you to clean out the junk files to free up some space.

MacCleaning Free by default empties system and user caches, and system and user logs. If you also want to clean the Trash and the contents of your personal Downloads folder you can do so by selecting them under Preferences of the application.

The application sits unobtrusively in the menu bar. The program is configured to start with your Mac. The application shows a bar chart revealing the overall free space available. If the amount of free space dips below 10 percent, the application starts an alarm. If you click on the menu bar icon, you can watch each chart for each drive or external partitions connected to your Mac. You also have an option to eject removable drives, so that you can quickly and safely unmount them from your computer.

Download MacCleaning

Adobe Flash Player 11 and Adobe Air 3 has been released by Adobe software.

Adobe Flash Player 11 features hardware accelerated graphics rendering support through Stage 3D. According the Adobe, the support for hardware accelerated graphics rendering improves the rendering times by a factor of up to a 1000 times over Flash Player 10. The new technology also enables playing high quality games on the Flash platform. To show the new features and capabilities of Flash Player 11, Adobe has published two sample videos.

You can watch the demo videos below:

As you can in the demo videos yourself, The capabilities of the new Flash is very impressive.

Another important feature of Flash Player 11 is the native 64-bit support. The new version of Flash also offers theater-quality HD video and high-quality HD video conferencing support.

How to get Flash Player 11 for your supported system?

Check the version of Adobe Flash Player installed on your system by visiting Adobe Flash Player’s About page.

Online Installation

If you want to update to Flash Player 11, simply download Flash Player installer from Adobe’s website. The website automatically detects your operating system and offers an online installer. When this installer is executed, it automatically downloads the correct Flash Player 11 edition and installs it.

Adobe Flash Player 11 Offline Installer

If you want to download the offline installer of Flash Player 11, which you can use to update all your computer systems, simply download the correct version of Flash from the links below. So if your system is 64-bit, download Flash Player 11 64-bit, else download the 32-bit edition.

• Windows OS:

• Internet Explorer: 32-bit | 64-bit
• Other web browsers: 32-bit | 64-bit
• Mac OS: 32-bit | 64-bit
• Linux OS: 32-bit | 64-bit

If you want to download Adobe Air 3, you can get it from here.

Grooveshark is one of the popular streaming music service. You just have to visit their web page and start listening to your favorite music for free. We will not go into too much details about Grooveshark as we think everyone here knows about them. Earlier we have seen Grooveshark desktop application for Windows users.

For Mac OS X users, who love to listen to music using Grooveshark, here is an application, which they will like a lot. The application aptly called Grooveshark Desktop for Mac which is also known as gsfluid, lets Mac users enjoy music without having to launch a web browser and visit the website. Grooveshark Desktop for Mac is a freeware application which is very simple to use. Developed by Jake Teton-Landis, it’s an unofficial Mac desktop client for the Grooveshark.com website.

Some of the key features of gsFluid (or Grooveshark Desktop) are:

• Bowtie-like miniController with fully customizable themes
• Media key support
• Growl notifications
• reduced pixel waste
• native Last.fm support
• miniController, minify, and full-screen view modes

The app is available in installer format as well as a disk image for convenience. The developer recommends the use of the installer package but you are free to use whichever of the two to install the app.

After installing, simply launch the app and listen to your favorite music. If you want to clear your preferences from this application, simply run the following commands in the JavaScript console (accessible via Window → Show Error Console…)

gsFluid.pref.clear()

gsFluid.pref.save()

You can download Grooveshark for Mac or gsFluid from the developer’s page.

iSkysoft iTube Studio for Mac lets you download and convert videos (HD videos supported) from YouTube, Facebook, TNT, BREAK, Google Video, and many other video-sharing sites from Safari web browser. After download, you can convert videos to use with iPhone, iPod, iPad, PSP and mobile phones; or to any video and audio format of your choice.

iSkysoft iTube Studio supports the following websites: YouTube, Facebook, TNT, Bing video, Yahoo video, Google video, BREAK, TwitVid, TeacherTube, RuTube, Photobucket, VEVO, Funnyordie, Expotv, Engagemedia, Archive, CNN, Metacafe (Hulu video excluded) etc.

The software lets you convert the downloaded videos into formats compatible with Apple Devices, Apple Software, Game Console, Portable Video Players, HD Movie, Mobile Phone, Video Formats, Audio Formats.

How To Download Videos from YouTube or Other Video-Sharing Sites?

After downloading the application, launch iTube Studio for Mac installer and a wizard will guide you through the setup process. iTube Studio for Mac will automatically launch when installation finished.

Launch Safari web browser and visit YouTube.com. The Download button will show up at the top left corner of the video when detected on the webpage. iTube Studio offers three options for you to download videos:

• Click the button and let the YouTube download wizard to do the thing for you.
• Drag the URL to the iTube Studio for Mac dock icon to start downloading.
• Go to Download menu and choose Enter a URL, then click OK.

How To Get iTube Studio for Mac License?

iSkysoft Studio the developers of iTube Studio for Mac has launched a giveaway promotion. Through this giveaway, you will be able to get a free license of iTube Studio, the YouTube Downloader Mac.

To receive the license, simply visit the promotion page at: http://www.iskysoft.com/itube-studio-mac/giveaway.html

Fill up the request form and click on Get Key Code button.

You will receive the license code in your email address. Use the license code to register the product.

Apple Mac OS X Lion is now available for download from the Mac App Store for $29.99.

Apple has released the eighth major release of the Mac operating system, Lion. Lion includes over 250 new features compared to the earlier version of Mac, Snow Leopard. The flagship operating system is now available as a $29.99 download in the Mac App Store. Those who wants to buy Mac OS X Lion Server should have the Client version of Lion, server version costs $49.99.

Some of the new features include are: new Multi-Touch gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control, an innovative view of everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store, the best place to find and explore Mac software; Launchpad, a new home for all your apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app.

Lion is the best version of OS X yet, and we’re thrilled that users around the world can download it starting today,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Lion makes upgrading a Mac easier than ever before; just launch the Mac App Store, buy Lion with your iTunes account, and the download and install process will begin automatically.“

Additional new features in Lion include:

• Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;
• Auto Save, which automatically and continuously saves your documents as you work;
• Versions, which automatically records the history of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, revert and even copy and paste from earlier versions; and
• AirDrop, which finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection to make transferring files quick and easy.

Mac OS X Lion Requirements:

• Your Mac must have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor and 2GB of RAM to run Lion. You can easily find out which processor your Mac runs on by clicking the Apple icon at the top left of your screen, then choosing About This Mac.
• You must have Snow Leopard to install Lion. Click on the Apple icon and choose Software Update to install Snow Leopard v10.6.8, the latest version to update to Lion.
• A broadband connection is recommended to download the update since the download size is at 4GB. Apple states in its press release that Lion will be available for purchase for $69 on a USB thumb drive in August at Apple retail stores. Apple also confirmed that users who don’t have a broadband Internet connection will be able to download Lion at Apple retail stores.

Download Mac OS X 10.7 Lion | Download Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Server

Those who purchased a new Mac on or after June 6, 2011 are eligible for a free upgrade. The offer is live 30 days from Lion’s release in the Mac App Store. Customers must manually apply for their eligibility within August 19, 2011. Additional information about the program can be found at apple.com/macosx/uptodate.

A word about branding, Apple’s website and in some marketing materials, Apple has referred the new Mac operating system as “OS X Lion.”

Piriform, the makers of the popular Windows system cleanup software, CCleaner, has released a Mac version of it. CCleaner for Mac is in beta stage now, so it might have bugs. Also, the OS X version isn’t nearly as full-featured as its Windows counterpart, but it does promises to gain the same amount of popularity.

The beta version of the freeware application can clean up junk files that takes up a bit of disk space, from all corners of your Mac OS X as well as some popular web browsers with a single click.

The app can free up disk space and maintain privacy by emptying out the trash as well as clearing out the temporary folder and logs such as recent documents, applications and servers. The app which is at beta stage, only supports Firefox and Safari. It can erase caches, browsing history, cookies and download history. In case of Firefox, it can also wipe out the saved form information.

You can control all the options by simply selecting the check boxes. So, if you want to keep some data which you need, such as form data, simply leave the option unchecked in the application and it will not touch it.

How to use CCleaner for Mac?

As usual, like CCleaner for Windows, using CCleaner for Mac is very simple.

1. Start by selecting the check boxes to tell the app which parts of the Mac system you want to clean up
2. Click on the Analyze button to find out which files will be removed and how much disk space will be gained after the operation.
3. If you are happy with the analysis result, click on the Clean button.

The freeware application only works on Apple Mac running OSX 10.5 or 10.6. You can read more and download a free copy of the application by visiting the CCleaner for Mac webpage.

Oracle’s decision to give OpenOffice.org (OOo) assets to the Apache Software Foundation and not The Document Foundation (TDF) has not stopped TDF to roll out a major release of LibreOffice (LO), a fork of OpenOffice. LibreOffice is widely adopted now and is becoming very popular. Major Linux distros including Ubuntu, Fedora and Linux Mint has dropped OOo for LO.

LibreOffice 3.4.0 is the second major release of the suite since the announcement of TDF in September 2010. LO 3.4.0 is a major release of the open-source free office suite now incorporates the contributions of more than 120 developers (six times as many as the first beta released on the launch date).

LibreOffice was created as a fork of the OpenOffice.org productivity suite back in September, of course, due to uncertainty over the future of OOo after Oracle acquired the project.

“We care for our developers, and it shows,” noted Italo Vignoli, a steering committee member and The Document Foundation official. “Our core developers have invented the mechanism of the easy hacks, which makes it simple and enjoyable for volunteer contributors to get to know LibreOffice code, challenging their development skills with basic or elementary tasks.”

“Once they have completed the first easy hacks, contributors are ready to scale to more difficult tasks”, says Michael Meeks, a senior developer working for SuSE. “We spend quite a lot of time mentoring new contributors, in order to increase the number of people working on bug fixing, patches and features. This is soon going to be reflected in the quality of the software and the number of new features of future releases”.

Improved Features of LibreOffice

1. Updates to Calc
   Calc spreadsheet now boasts faster performance and an improved compatibility with Excel spreadsheets. Pivot Table — the new name of DataPilot — now offers support for unlimited numbers of fields and named ranges as data source.

2. UI Improvements
   The user interface of Writer, Impress and Draw has been improved with many new features, and several cosmetic changes have been applied to the Linux version, with a better text rendering engine and an improved GTK+ theme integration.

3. Support for Unity
   LibreOffice’s latest release adds initial support for Unity, the new user interface of Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal).

4. Linux Performance
   LibreOffice 3.4.0 now offers smoother startup on Linux with a splash screen before starting to read all the application’s data, giving a faster time to splash and cleaner code.

5. A Smaller Windows Installer
   Shrink LibreOffice Windows installer download by more than 30 Mb using better compression schemes.

6. Parallel Installations on Linux
   LibreOffice 3.4.0 can be installed in parallel with LibreOffice 3.3 on Linux. Note that the user configuration is shared and both versions cannot be started at the same time.

7. Better Code
   Code wise, several thousand lines of German comments have been translated into English, and over 5.000 lines of dead code have been removed from Writer, Calc and Impress.

Interested users can view a complete list of new features and fixes on the LibreOffice Website.

LibreOffice Version Naming Clarification

The first release of the 3.4 series, LibreOffice 3.4.0, is targeted to community members and power users, and should not be implemented in a corporate environment. The Document Foundation has explained that following its time based release schedule – the best strategy for a distributed and cooperative development environment – the best releases for such deployments start from x.x.1. Because of this, LibreOffice 3.3.x is going to be maintained for several months to come, until the end of calendar year 2011, for the most conservative users.

LibreOffice 3.4 can be downloaded from http://www.libreoffice.org/download.

Avast has announced availability of the beta version of avast! Free Antivirus for Mac.

“The new version has been almost totally reworked compared with our previous solution for the Mac OS,” said Vlk, in an announcement at Avast official forum. Avast Free Antivirus for Mac features three shields and an on-demand scanner. The Web Shield together with the Mail Shield checks incoming data from the Internet for malware. While the File Shield scans all programs stored and executed from your Mac hard drive.

It was earlier thought that Mac doesn’t need any anti-virus. With the recent Mac Defender malware outbreak, users are thinking otherwise.

Features of Avast Free Antivirus for Mac

• On-demand scanning: It’s possible to scan the (whole) file system, network volumes or a mounted removable volume. You can also run a custom scan. Scan reports are automatically archived and are accessible from the GUI at anytime.
• On-screen alerts: Alert messages are displayed on-screen when a threat is detected.
• File Shield: The File Shield scans the binaries of started applications and all files when they are modified.
• Web Shield: The Web Shield monitors and filters all HTTP traffic coming from web sites on the Internet. Connections from your web browser are redirected to the Web Shield module. The Web Shield in turn connects to the requested web server and while downloading the content, it simultaneously scans it for viruses and Trojans. Only clean data is delivered to the browser, all malware is stopped before it gets saved on your Mac.
• Mail Shield: The Mail Shield monitors and filters all POP3 and IMAP traffic coming from mail servers on the internet. It does not prevent saving of infected files (doing so could lead to irreversible data loss), it just detects them. The File Shield prevents any infected attachments from causing harm to your system.
• Automatic updates: The scanning engine is automatically updated with our regular VPS database updates.

If you want to test the beta version on your Mac, simply download it from: http://public.avast.com/dev/mac-beta1/avast.dmg

To know about the present issues and bugs about the beta version of the antivirus, visit their forum here.

Simpo PDF to Text Converter for Mac is a simple and easy-to-use, standalone PDF to text converter for Mac users. It is able to perform the PDF conversion process without the need of Adobe Acrobat Professional. The developer of the application claims that the PDF to TXT conversion tool will accurately retain original PDF layouts and formatting even though it’s extracting plain text from PDF to text document files, thanks to its ability of automatically aligning text columns in table.

Features of Simpo PDF to Text for Mac:

• Batch conversion from PDF to Text aiming to save your precious time
• Easily convert specific (selected) PDF pages from PDF to text
• Preserve all text contents with high accuracy
• Encrypted PDF file is supported

How to get Simpo PDF to Text for Mac with free promo License

Simpo PDF to Text for Mac usually retails for $19.95. As part of Simpo Technologies ongoing promotion, interested users are now entitled to download the full version of the PDF to Text for Mac free of charge. This time-limited giveaway promotion exclusively available for Facebook users, will expire on May 31, 2011.

To grab a free license of Simpo PDF to Text for Mac, please visit Simpo Tech Facebook page and submit your email address.

Later, download Simpo PDF to Text for Mac OS X: http://www.simpopdf.com/download/pdf2text-mac.dmg

Once installed, type in your received license serial key to activate the PDF to text conversion software to full version. Simpo PDF to Text for Mac is fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 or newer operating system.

Thanks to Angela of Simpo Technologies for sharing about this promotion for our readers.

Mozilla has released the Beta version, Firefox 5. Firefox Beta channel will let you experience cutting edge features but with more stability. Adapting themselves to the Google Chrome’s rapid release cycle, Mozilla devs have released their flagship web browser in three versions; Firefox 4 (which is the stable version now), Aurora (Chrome users can relate this to Google Chrome Dev version) and in between both, Firefox Beta (can be related to Google Chrome beta).

The beta version of the web browser is little more polished and stable than the Nightly and Aurora channels, but lets you test some of those cool new features before they’re released to everyone else, released to the stable version of the browser.

Mozilla Firefox 5 beta includes the much waited fast channel switcher along with performance and stability improvements.

Mozilla recently introduced the Firefox Aurora development channel to support more frequent releases. The shift to a rapid release development cycle delivers cutting edge Firefox features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users faster.

After five weeks of testing on the Firefox Aurora channel, the next version of Firefox is ready for the beta channel. This release includes the Firefox channel switcher, performance and stability enhancements and support for the new CSS Animations standard to allow developers build more amazing Web experiences. The new Firefox channel switcher lets users move between Firefox Aurora, Beta and Release channels to test features at various levels of development, quality and polish.

First Rapid Release Firefox Beta Now Available – Mozilla Blog

Mozilla Firefox Channel Switcher lets you effortlessly switch between your current stable version of the web browser, Aurora build or the Beta version. You can change channels without affecting your Firefox profiles, right from within the About Firefox menu.

If you’re already using either the Aurora or Beta channel, simply click on the Firefox Menu > Help > About > Click on the “Change” link next to where it tells you what channel you’re running. Now, from the drop-down menu, you can easily switch to the Aurora, Beta, or Stable channel.

We have earlier covered in detail about how to change Firefox channels here.

[ Download Firefox beta version ]

AVG has resurrected LinkScanner as a free plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer. AVG LinkScanner technology is also a part of AVG Anti-virus 2011 Free. It works by analyzing web links in real-time. This enables it to deliver far more accurate and relevant protection than other, usually database-driven, safe-surfing solutions.

The “Search Shield” returns search results from both Google and Yahoo with flags next to them. Green flags shows a result is safe to click-through to, while links that are unsafe will return red flags. Orange and Yellow flag represents a warning, meaning “surf that site with care.”

Hovering over a flag provides further details. Green flags show the IP address, the amount of time the scan took, and the date and time of the most recent scan. Red flags highlight the same information, as well as the risk category and the site name.

It’s notable that LinkScanner didn’t slow down search results or click-through page loading times in any perceptible way, and that the new independent version functions just as well as the old independent version.

If you try to click-through to a red-flagged page, LinkScanner will take you to a warning screen–called the “Active Surf-Shield.” A small link at the bottom of the red-blocked screen will let you click-through, although it cautions users that it will continue to block potentially harmful content.

You can download AVG LinkScanner from its homepage but it will download the web-installer instead of the complete package. A web-installer basically downloads the full software from the server and installs it to your machine. It might be user-friendly to some extent but if you are not having a stable internet connection, than you might be looking for a way to download the complete LinkScanner package for offline install.

Below you can find direct download links to the LinkScanner offline installer package for hassle free installation experience. (Links updated on December 7, 2011)

AVG LinkScanner for Windows (32bit) (73 MB)

AVG LinkScanner for Windows (64bit) (88 MB)

AVG LinkScanner for Windows Online Installer (If you want to download the web-installer!)

AVG LinkScanner for Mac OS (28 MB)

Important! Help us keep the offline links working and updated and Help you.

As AVG Technologies keeps on updating their products, these offline links may stop working after some time. If that happens, we will need your help. Simply, comment below that the links are not working and we will update the links with the fresh updated working links!

Image courtesy: LinkScanner website

Rovio Mobile, the makers of smash hit mobile game Angry Birds, have unleashed a HTML5 version of the popular game that’s designed to run in Chrome (or Chromium) on any operating system. This release came after an announcement by the makers of the game at Google I/O event. This made Angry Birds, one of the most popular games already available on mobile phones and tablets, available for almost all platforms.

The new release was built using WebGL and uses local-caching so players can continue to cause mayhem even when not connected to the internet.

The survival of the Angry Birds is at stake. Dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds’ eggs. Use the unique destructive powers of the Angry Birds to lay waste to the pigs’ fortified castles. Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, and lots of replay value. Each of the 70 levels requires logic, skill, and brute force to crush the enemy.

If you use Google Chrome web browser, you may be delighted to know that Angry Birds is available for free as a Chrome app. The game features all-new Google Chrome inspired levels. The Mighty Eagle add-on will be available via the new Google Payments in-app purchasing feature at a later date.

You can however play the game online using any browser at chrome.angrybirds.com.

Rovio now have native support for Angry Birds on a number of mobile and desktop platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Amazon Kindle, Mac OS X and Windows, but have never supported Linux natively. With the launch of the HTML5 version of the popular game, Linux users can now enjoy the game on their desktops!

Angry Birds is now so much popular that now a Hollywood movie is in production. You can watch its official movie trailer below:

AutoCAD WS is an innovative mobile application which allows you to work on your designs while on the go. You can use AutoCAD WS to view, edit and share DWG files on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Android device.

This mobile application is so much flexibile that it even allows opening DWG and DXF files directly from email attachments. You can also synchronize the files by uploading the drawings directly to your free AutoCAD account, which you create upon first use of AutoCAD WS application.

Features of the AutoCAD WS:

• Open DWG drawings uploaded to free AutoCAD WS online workspace.
• Work offline with local version of designs when don’t have an online Internet connection.
• Upload files sent as an email attachment directly to AutoCAD WS account.
• View all aspects of DWG file, including external references, layers and image underlays.
• Use Multi-Touch zoom and pan to more easily navigate very large drawings.
• Tap objects to select, then move, rotate and scale.
• Draw or edit shapes with accuracy using Snap and Ortho modes.
• Add and edit text annotations directly on your device without require for paper mark-ups.
• Validate distance measurements in the drawing while you are onsite at the actual location.
• Save edits to your AutoCAD WS online workspace, so your drawings stay up to date.
• Share designs with others directly from your device.
• Work with other people on the same DWG file simultaneously.
• View edits to drawings in real time: AutoCAD WS immediately captures changes made by you and others in your online workspace.

AutoCAD WS mobile app is available free for both iOS and Android platform. You can d download AutoCAD WS for free from Apple iTunes store and Android market.

Microsoft has released the first major service pack for, Office for Mac 2011. This update fixes critical issues and also helps to improve security. It includes fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.

Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1 adds some minor features like the ability to author Alt Text for objects like shapes, pictures, tables, charts, SmartArt, and movies in any of Office 2011′s programs. In addition, Excel 2011 users can now install the Solver analysis tools while PowerPoint users can password-protect their presentations.

It is also said to improve speed and overall reliability but perhaps the most notable changes are within Outlook. Outlook now supports syncing with devices and applications using Apple’s Sync Services. You can now sync your Outlook calendars, as well as your contacts, notes and tasks with the iPhone and iPad. Outlook has also added support for server-side rules on Microsoft Exchange servers, as well as the ability to resend an email to the same or new recipients, and the ability to redirect an incoming email message to other recipients.

How to install Office for Mac Service Pack 1?

1. Quit any applications that are running, including all Office applications, Microsoft Messenger, and Office Notifications, because they might interfere with the installation.
2. Make sure that your computer meets the minimum system requirements.
3. Click Download, or click the link for the language version that you want.
4. Follow the instructions on the screen to save the file to your hard disk. If you are using Safari, the downloaded file is saved to the desktop unless you specified a different location in the Preferences dialog box of Safari. To check your preferences, on the Safari menu, click Preferences, and then click General.
5. Double-click the file that you downloaded in step 5 to place the Office 2011 SP1 Update (14.1.0) volume on your desktop, and then double-click the Office 2011 SP1 Update (14.1.0) volume to open it. This step might have been performed for you.
6. In the Office 2011 SP1 Update (14.1.0) volume window, double-click the Office 2011 SP1 Update (14.1.0) application to start the update process, and then follow the instructions on the screen.
7. If the installation finishes successfully, you can remove the update installer from your hard disk. To remove the update installer, first drag the Office 2011 SP1 Update (14.1.0) volume to the Trash, and then drag the file that you downloaded to the Trash.

Note This update is also available from Microsoft AutoUpdate, an application that can automatically keep your Microsoft software up to date. To use AutoUpdate, open an Office application, and then on the Help menu, click Check for Updates.

To remove this update

This update does not include an uninstall feature. To restore your application to its original state, delete it from your hard disk, reinstall it from your original installation disk, and then install the updates that you want.

The 246MB update is available from Microsoft’s website or any Office application on your Mac under Help > Check for Updates. Service Pack 1 will bring your version of Office up to 14.1.0 and requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later.

SP1 applies to: Office 2011 for Mac, Office 2011 Home and Business Edition, Word 2011, Excel 2011, PowerPoint 2011, Outlook 2011, Communicator 2011, Office for Mac Standard 2011 Edition, Microsoft Office for Mac Home & Student 2011, and Microsoft Office for Mac Academic 2011

File Name: Office2011-1410UpdateEN.dmg
Date Published: Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Size: 246  MB

Download Office for Mac 201 Service Pack

LibreOffice is a fork of the popular open-source office suite, OpenOffice. LibreOffice is a free power-packed Open Source personal office productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. It provides six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. LibreOffice is a free software office suite developed by The Document Foundation. The Document Foundation maintains LibreOffice release schedule thanks to a growing and vibrant community of developers. Its developers’ goal is to produce a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support and without any copyright assignment requirements. The name is a hybrid word with the first part Libre, which means free (as in freedom) in both Spanish and French, and the English word Office.

The Document Foundation has recently announced the release of LibreOffice 3.3.2, the second micro release of the free office suite for personal productivity. The latest update improves the stability of the software and sets the platform for the next release 3.4, due in mid May. The community of developers has been able to maintain the tight schedule thanks to the increase in the number of contributors, and to the fact that those that have started with easy hacks in September 2010 are now working at substantial features. In addition, they have almost completed the code cleaning process, getting rid of German comments and obsolete functionalities.

“I have started hacking LibreOffice code on September 28, 2010, just a few hours after the announcement of the project, and I found a very welcoming community, where senior developers went out of their way to help newbies like me to become productive. After a few hours I submitted a small patch removing 5 or 6 lines of dead code… enough to get my feet wet and learn the workflow“, says Norbert, a French developer living in the United States. “In a short time, I ended up removing the VOS library – deprecated for a decade – from LibreOffice, and finding and fixing various threading issues in the process“.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 Final release notes:

• This release is bit-for-bit identical to the 3.3.2 Release Candidate 2, so you don’t need to download or reinstall if you have that version already.
• The distribution for Windows is an international build, so you can choose the user interface language that you prefer. Help content is available via an online service, or alternatively as a separate install.
• For Windows users that have OpenOffice.org installed, we advise uninstalling that beforehand, because it registers the same file type associations.
• If you run Windows 2000, you may require this update before being able to install LibreOffice.
• If you run Linux, the GCJ Java variant has known issues with LibreOffice, we advise to e.g. use OpenJDK instead.
• LibreOffice contains all the security fixes from OpenOffice.org in 3.3.0, and perhaps more as a side-effect of the code clean-ups.

There are a few non-critical issues still contained in this release, which will be addressed soon with upcoming bug fix versions:

• If you install third-party extensions that bring their own help, you may only be able to view that after installing the separate help packs on Windows.

LibreOffice 3.3.2 is being released just one day after the closing of the first funding round launched by The Document Foundation to collect donations towards the 50,000-euro capital needed to establish a Stiftung in Germany. In five weeks, the community has donated twice as much, i.e. around 100,000 euros. All additional funds will be used for operating expenses such as infrastructure costs and registration of domain names and trademarks, as well as for community development expenses such as travel funding for TDF representatives speaking at conferences, booth fees for trade shows, and initial financing of merchandising items, DVDs and printed material.

Italo Vignoli, a founder and a steering committee member of The Document Foundation, will be keynoting at Flourish 2011 in Chicago on Sunday, April 3, at 10:30AM, about getting independent from OpenOffice and Oracle, starting The Document Foundation, raising the capital and the first community budget, organizing developers and other work, and outlining a roadmap for future releases and features.

Recently, LibreOffice have been accepted as a Google Summer of Code 2011 organization.

You can download LibreOffice from the official website.

Earlier, we have covered few promotions related to PDF converters including PDF to word converters. These promotions were mostly for Windows users. We did reviewed one for Mac owners but sadly it wasn’t free. Mac users who need to convert a PDF file to an easily editable file format can try out Simpo PDF to Word Converter for Mac from Simpo Technologies. This application can easily convert PDF to an editable Word file while preserving exactly the format, table, layout, graphics, hyperlinks, etc from PDF.

It is an easy to use software. All you need to do is run the converter, import the PDF file(s) you like to convert and click on theConvert button. The conversion process is completed in seconds. If you have a lot of PDF files that need to be converted to Word formats, this application also has batch conversion. You can even convert the PDF file to Text format if you like. For PDF files with multiple pages, the speed with which it converts the files is commendable.

How to Get Simpo PDF to Word for Mac free?

Simpo PDF to Word Converter for Mac costs $39.95 to buy. However, the developer is currently having a promotional campaign and giving away free license. Mac users who are keen to get a copy of this conversion tool worth $39.95 can go to the giveaway page and provide their email address.

After clicking on the Submit button, users will receive an email with valid registration code to activate the application.

Download pdf2word-mac.dmg

Thanks to “Angela” of Simpo Tech for sharing the news. If you want to contact us with news, tips, etc, contact us here.

TheNextWeb has published two interesting infographs presenting a balanced info about whether you should buy a Mac or you shouldn’t.

Check them out below yourself and decide whether you should go for Mac or Not!

The infograph below describes why you shouldn’t buy a Mac. Visit source for full size image: TheNextWeb

Next, check out the infograph below describing why you should buy a Mac. Visit source for full size image: TheNextWeb

Opera Software has released Opera 11.01 final version, which is an update of Opera 11. The latest updates fixes many security issues and improves overall stability of Opera, one of the popular web browser. This final version of Opera has come up after many snapshot releases and two RC (release candidates) updates. Opera 11.01 is a highly recommended update for every Opera 11 user.

The full change logs for Windows, Mac and Linux and FreeBSD are linked from the blog post announcing about the new version release.

The security issues fixed in Opera 11.01:

• Removed support for “javascript:” URLs in CSS -o-link values, to make it easier for sites to filter untrusted CSS.
• Fixed an issue where large form inputs could allow execution of arbitrary code.
• Fixed an issue which made it possible to carry out clickjacking attacks against internal opera: URLs.
• Fixed issues which allowed web pages to gain limited access to files on the user’s computer.
• Fixed an issue where email passwords were not immediately deleted when deleting private data.
• Fixed an issue which could cause the wrong executable to be used to display a downloaded file in its folder.

Users can update to the latest version of Opera web browser directly by clicking on Help > Menu > Check for Updates.

Users can also download the latest version of Opera directly from Opera Software.