I was looking for a tool that is able to create thumbnails of images in a folder. Although FILEminimizer Pictures is really good, but I am looking for something that is small, free, portable and supports command line. Preferably free so that everyone can use them and don’t need to resort to any cracks or keygens or spending money on it. I also wanted it to be small and portable unlike a lot of bloated batch image resizers which requires installation that you can easily find in Google. Most importantly, I wanted it to be automated without showing the graphical user interface.

I really had a hard time searching for it because the Google SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) was showing a lot of shareware or they are really bloated software that needs to be installed. After flipping through a lot of search results pages, I finally found what I wanted and it’s called Picture Resizer. I guess what took me so long to find it is because I kept searching using the keyword “thumbnail” but not the word “resize”. This tool is pretty amazing on how it works.
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I am still around and been busy testing out a lot of stuff. One of the things which I’ve tested and noticed is that when you install Norton 2010, it also automatically installs plugins to Firefox. If you have Norton Antivirus 2010, you should have a plugin called Norton IPS 2.0 and if you have Norton Internet Security 2010, it also comes with Norton IPS 2.0 together with Norton Toolbar 4.5. The IPS plugin is the Norton Intrusion Prevention System which guards against malware being delivered to your system via an exploit of a software vulnerability. The Firefox add-on specifically looks for attacks using security holes that may exist in the browser. This feature is not really essential because other functions of Norton will be able to deal with any malware that tries to run, regardless of its method of installation.

Sometimes we have too many things going on in Firefox and we don’t need extra those extra plugins. Unfortunately you cannot easily uninstall both Norton IPS and Norton Toolbar plugins by clicking the Uninstall button because it is disabled or grayed out. If you’ve searched around, most of the methods to remove the Norton plugins is by deleting the extension folders but that doesn’t work in the latest Norton 2010 products. Here is how to remove the Norton IPS 2.0 and Norton Toolbar 4.5 from the latest Firefox 3.6.
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I’ve recently reformatted my laptop’s hard drive and reinstalled Windows because it was getting a bit slow and also unstable. Well I normally install and test software on my desktop computer but sometimes I am too lazy to boot it up so I ended up installing it on my laptop. This time I am very careful on what I install because I do not want to slow it down and then had to reinstall windows and set it up all over again. It’s not difficult, just time consuming…

Weirdly after using the laptop for a few weeks, a problem started to appear that is the computer sort of hangs for a while about 10 seconds whenever I right click on a file or folder. I checked Windows Task Manager and there isn’t any process that shows any high CPU usage during that 10 seconds. I didn’t think it was virus because I could not find any suspicious autostart entries.

Then I figured perhaps it was some shell extensions that is causing the problem. For example, if you install WinZip on your computer, you’ll see a special WinZip menu when you right-click on a Zip file. This menu is created by adding a shell extension to the system.
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I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year, I hope you enjoy it with your family and friends, and may all your wishes come true for 2010 to bring prosperity and happiness to you. I have a few things lined up this year for this site which is to upgrade the site and forum design to a custom one that looks more professional. The X-Ray project is coming up really good. The coding of the prototype version is out and I am testing it out extensively to make sure it works well without bugs and also adding more features and options. The latest vBulletin v4.0 is also out and I guess the best time to upgrade it is when I change the blog theme so both section will look the same.

As for the daily post, I still don’t think I will be able to cope up with daily postings but I will try my very best. Reason is my time is pretty much stuck with my full time job and also I prefer to test stuff then write it based on experience. I do not want to post something blindly just because I need something to be posted at the blog by 3-4PM everyday.

Another thing is I have 30 genuine Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 license keys that is already activated but unused and I am giving them away. Actually this is supposed to be for Christmas but seeing that IDM has generously sponsored 30 license (the IDM license were sent to 30 winners on 29th December), so I had to delay this one until today. Same thing, leave a comment at the end of this article and I will pick the 30 winners via lucky draw tomorrow.

Thank you all for your continuous support. I appreciate any suggestions or comments on how can I improve this site.

Here are the 30 lucky winners for KAV 2010. You should be receiving an email from me shortly.

I got to know Hitman Pro last year but didn’t post it out because I find it a little ridiculous to install it on a computer. Imagine that it installs ESET NOD32, Webroot Spy Sweeper, PC Tools Spyware Doctor, McAfee VirusScan, Ad-Aware, Spybot, TrendMicro CWShredder, Ewido Microscanner and SpywareBlaster to your computer then it updates and scans. Normally a computer that has been infected by malware would be running very slowly, installing all the software would definitely make it even slower. Moreover we haven’t even taken a look at the time needed to download the latest definition and also running a full scan…

The latest version of Hitman Pro 3 has changed and uses scan cloud. First Hitman Pro 3 will try to detect virus and files that have a suspicious behavior. Then it uploads to Hitman’s server to have it scanned with 5 antivirus engines that always scores very high in virus detection (GData, NOD32, Avira, PrevX and A-Squared). If the uploaded files are being detected as malicious, it will be removed.

I wanted check out Hitman Pro 3 myself because I read quite a lot of good comments on it from Wilders Security forum.
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I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Thank you all for your support and kind wishes.

Perhaps you are wondering why haven’t I wrote anything on the new Returnil Virtual System 2010 which was released 2 months ago? The simple reason is I was very disappointed with their version 2008 because it failed to protect the computers from certain virus. This is the story…. I wanted to propose to one of my customer to use Returnil because the computers in the lab has never ending computer virus infection problem and I had to look for another technology that might be better than the traditional antivirus. Of course before doing that I need to do a test run to make sure it can really protect those computers from being infected by virus or else my customer would be wasting his money and I am definitely going to lose my job.

I installed a trial version of Returnil 2008 on a computer lab with 40 computers and within a few days, at least half of them ended up unable to boot in Windows which I am pretty sure it’s caused by virus again. I wished I could get a copy of that virus but I couldn’t since I can’t boot in to Windows in both normal and safe mode. Even if I can use Windows PE to boot in, I wouldn’t know where the virus is hiding.

Then when the 2010 version came, I wasn’t really excited about it since I’ve already found an alternative called Shadow Defender. Anyway, for this past 2 months Returnil has been promoting their new 2010 version very aggressively by giving out free license all the time. The giveaway was published in GiveAwayOfTheDay, FaceBook, DotTech and now Softpedia. Maybe there are more which I am not aware of but we can definitely see that Returnil wants everyone to use their software.
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