protect

McAfee announces 'triple play' in its consumer releases

McAfee on Monday released its 2008 line of security products, including McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008, McAfee Internet Security 2008, and McAfee Total Protection 2008.

In a move that McAfee hopes will distinguish it from the competition, the company is now offering three user licenses for all its desktop products, and is including its SiteAdvisor site-rating software in each product to protect against online fraud. Finally, McAfee is also including VirusScan mobile protection with its desktop Internet Security and Total Protection products.

This "triple play" perhaps makes McAfee's products more economical, but it remains to be seen if … Read more

Folder Lock's interface should be locked up

Folder Lock does a lot of things right, but its interface makes me want to rip out my eyes. It's great for 1998, but nearly 10 years on you'd think that since we'd all gotten away from animated icons on Web pages, that the goofy UIs publishers try to foist on us would be gone, too.

But you'd be wrong.

… Read more

SLR skins encase Sony Alpha, battery grips

Camera Armor has a sensible idea--form-fitting silicone rubber skins to protect your high-end camera gear against shocks, muck and water. You can buy these for cheapo iPods, so why not your $3,000 SLR?

Camera Armor got its start with the most mainstream SLRs from Canon and Nikon. It's extended its product line since the last time I checked in, with products to encase the Sony Alpha A100 SLR and a much broader array of Canon and Nikon models. Prices range from $50 to $80.

In addition, the company now sells $20 skins for Canon and Nikon add-on battery grips, … Read more

Non-lethal defense from 40 feet away

The problem with Tasers and Mace is that they often still require you to be at an uncomfortably close distance to an attacker to work most effectively. And with the general population getting taller all the time--with accompanying wing spans--the art of self-defense can be all the more difficult.

The Avurt IM-5 aims to change all that, quite literally, as a "personal protection launcher" that can incapacitate a would-be perp from a distance of 40 feet, which Gizmodo says is 25 feet more than a Taser's range. The $300 flashlight-sized device can fire five pellets containing PAVA … Read more

Virtues of the iPhone's password lock function

One of the beauties of the iPhone is its supposed near-ubiquitous access to a huge amount of your personal information from one access point. Think about it: your contacts, text messages, e-mails, music, photos, stock portfolios and bookmarks, even to what you're doing and when, are all in your hand or pocket.

Over iced tea on a sunny day in San Francisco, a friend who is quite the entrepreneur noted that if you ever, god forbid, dropped your iPhone or lost it, or if it should get stolen, the next person who picked it up would have access to … Read more

Power Downloader's safe getaway

With the weather getting warmer, Power Downloader decided that it was time to get away from his computer and take a little vacation with his niece, Kitty Kilobyte. Of course, the thing he worries about the most when leaving the Power Lair unattended is some would-be criminal getting in and stealing his top-secret documents.

Power Downloader is especially concerned about certain items on his desktop, which need to remain top secret when he and Kitty Kilobyte go on vacation. His plans for thwarting villains, programs that map secret locations, layouts of evil lairs, or other top-secret stuff could mean disaster if they get into the wrong hands.… Read more

Windows Vista Update & Full Screen Audio Fix

Thanks for all your feedback. We have fixed the audio problem that many of you reported with the full screen video mode. On the Windows Vista + IE = Choppy Video problem the fix that I previously posted about has worked for a lot of you, though not everyone. We are actively working with Adobe to solve this problem. In the mean time user toms_ has a fix that might work for you: "Adding www.cnettv.com to 'Trusted sites' worked for me but had to uncheck 'Require server verification...'"

Vista + Flash + Protected Mode = CNET TV w/Choppy Video

In the last two weeks we've gotten a large number of reports of choppy video on CNET TV. The symptoms were so odd that I had to reproduce them myself before our engineers would believe them. Users have reported that they hear the audio on CNET TV just fine, but to get the video to play smoothly, users reported, "I have to move my mouse in circles."

The good news is we have narrowed this down to a bug that occurs in earlier versions of the Flash Player when running Windows Vista, with IE 7 in Protected … Read more

Just another bulletproof Rolls Royce

It may have been awhile since we've seen a wave of highway shootings (thankfully), but some people apparently can never have too many bulletproof cars--especially if one of them is a Rolls Royce. The legendary automobile house has released the "Armored Phantom" in partnership with an "unspecified security company," Sybarites says rather cryptically, adding to the uber-vehicle's 007 appeal.

"The Phantom features VR7-level security which includes thickened glass, heavy-duty steel body panels and run-flat tires," it adds, though the weight of the additional security means that it won't be as … Read more