Software

Firefox Firefox 3.6.13 and Firefox 3.5.16 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.13. Firefox 3.6.13: http://firefox.com Firefox 3.5.16: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to these latest releases. If you already have Firefox, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This updates can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu. ...

Adobe: The Adobe Photoshop 12.0.2 update (Mac|Win) speeds up painting performance and fixes a number of problems discovered after Photoshop CS5 was released. The most significant fixes in the update include the following: A number of potential security vulnerabilities have been addressed Crashing bugs related to typography & fonts have been addressed Performance of various features has been improved Crashes related to opening 3D layers, sharpening, color management, and scanning via TWAIN devices have been fixed Problems with brush cursors, the histogram progress bar, the display of selection boundaries (“marching ants”), scrolling while using the shift key, and the use of action droplets have been addressed Intermittent file format problems have been addressed Metadata-related bugs related to focus distance and Orphea Studio JPEGs have been fixed In addition you can download a TWAIN plug-in update that includes fixes for multiple document scanning, and a that fixes a crash that could occur when attempting a second scan. ...

Google just released version 8 of its web browser Chrome. It fixes 13 security vulnerabilities of which 4 got rated “high”ly critical – the people reporting these all got rewarded with 1.000 US-$ and 500 US-$, respectively. Additionally to these security fixes, the update to Chrome 8.0.552.215 contains more than 800 bugfixes and stability improvements according to the Google developers. The new version officially includes and uses the built-in, stripped-down PDF reader which is additionally secured with a sandbox. This feature, tied together with Googles sandboxing of the browser processes in general and including and updating the Flash Player automatically makes Chrome one of the most secure, yet full-featured web browsers currently available. ...

Google Earth 6 doesn’t have too many new features. You can now use Street View just like in Google Maps by dragging the pegman icon. “To view street-level imagery for a specific location, zoom into an area at an altitude of approximately 500km. You will see a pegman icon appear at the top right below the navigation controls. Click and drag the icon across the 3D viewer. A blue border will appear around roads that have street-level imagery available,” explains Google. ...

One of the greatest setbacks of the Android platform has been the absence of a killer media player, as its native media player is simply lacking. To date, DoubleTwist has been the best option, but Winamp for Android is a powerful new alternative. Before the turn of the century (a.k.a. the Wild West of file sharing), Winamp reigned supreme for MP3 playback on Windows. Now I haven’t used a Winamp product since I learned about foobar2000 back in 2002, but it’s often nice to see the resurgence of a familiar face in tech. ...

For those who missed this update on Nov 18: 7-Zip 9.20 was released. 7-Zip for 32-bit Windows: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z920.exe Mirror: http://www.filehippo.com/download_7zip_32/ 7-Zip for 64-bit Windows x64: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z920-x64.msi Mirror: http://www.filehippo.com/download_7-zip_64/ What’s new after 7-Zip 4.65 (2009-02-03): 7-Zip now supports LZMA2 compression method. 7-Zip now can update solid .7z archives. 7-Zip now supports XZ archives. 7-Zip now supports PPMd compression in ZIP archives. 7-Zip now can unpack NTFS, FAT, VHD, MBR, APM, SquashFS, CramFS, MSLZ archives. 7-Zip now can unpack GZip, BZip2, LZMA, XZ and TAR archives from stdin. 7-Zip now can unpack some TAR and ISO archives with incorrect headers. 7-Zip now supports files that are larger than 8 GB in TAR archives. NSIS and WIM support was improved. Partial parsing for EXE resources, SWF and FLV. The support for archives in installers was improved. 7-Zip now stores NTFS file timestamps to ZIP archives. Speed optimizations in PPMd codec. Speed optimizations in AES code for Intel’s 32nm CPUs. Speed optimizations in CRC calculation code for Intel’s Atom CPUs. New -scc{WIN|DOS|UTF-8} switch to specify charset for console input/output (default = DOS). New -scrc switch to calculate total CRC-32 during extracting / testing. New additional “Open archive >” item in context menu allows to select archive type for some files. It’s possible to specify Diff program in options (7-Zip File Manager). 7-Zip now can open/copy/compress disk images (like \.\c:) from \.\ folder. 7-Zip File Manager now doesn’t use temp files to open nested archives stored without compression. The console version now doesn’t show entered password. New small SFX module for installers (in Extra package). Disk fragmentation problem for ZIP archives created by 7-Zip was fixed. Some bugs were fixed. New localizations: Hindi, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Tatar, Uyghur, Kazakh.

Adobe Reader X is now available! Download Reader X for desktop at http://get.adobe.com/reader/ or access the mobile app on the Android Market via your Android device. With over one billion downloads, Adobe Reader continues its leadership as the global standard in PDF viewing and interaction. Reader X for desktop enables an even greater level of interaction with the ability to share feedback through the use of Sticky Notes and Highlighter tools, as well as view a larger variety of content types including drawings, email messages, spreadsheets, videos, and other multimedia elements. You can also take advantage of the added security of Protected Mode in Reader X, which helps ensure safer viewing of PDF files. ...

Avira started shipping the Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Avira AntiVir 10 yesterday! This Service Pack fixes plenty of minor bugs we found in version 10 and thus makes AntiVir 10 more stable. Also, the developers added some optimizations to improve the speed a little. After installing SP1, all currently known issues should be gone. Since yesterday at 11:30 O’clock a product update is available for AntiVir Personal Free, Premium and Premium Security Suite in English and German over the automatic update. ...

VLC Media Player, an app that lets you watch videos in several formats that aren’t natively supported by the iPhone, has arrived in Apple’s iTunes store. The app originated on the iPad and is now compatible with iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and “recent” versions of the iPod touch. The features include quick decoding of “almost every” video format, playback in landscape and portrait mode, as well as deleting files directly from the application (bypassing iTunes). Check out an early video review of the application over at 9to5Mac. ...

Panda Security has announced the launch of Panda Antivirus for Mac. This new solution delivers comprehensive protection against malware affecting Mac OS and Mac OS X; it also prevents Mac users from transmitting malware to other users of Windows and Linux operating systems. Panda Antivirus for Mac scans files and email, detecting and eliminating or blocking many types of threats, including viruses, Trojans, spyware, keyloggers, adware, hacking tools, botnets, dialers, scareware and other threats that have traditionally targeted Windows users. ...