Software Updates
Software Geeks will provide latest updates and upgrades on Softwares.
- Last build:
- Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:44:06 GMT
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RSS FEED IDEMS: Software Updates
- Internet Explorer 6 software update and its effect on ActiveX controls
Microsoft has released a software update to Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1). This update changes how Internet Explorer handles some Web pages that use ActiveX controls and Java add-ins. Examples of ActiveX controls include the following:
Adobe Reader
Apple QuickTime Player
Macromedia Flash Player
Microsoft Windows Media Player
Real Networks RealPlayer
Sun Java Virtual MachineAfter you install this update, you cannot interact with ActiveX controls from certain Web pages until these controls are enabled. To enable an ActiveX control, manually click the control. There are also techniques that Web developers can use to update their Web pages.
When you install this update, the Plugin.ocx binary is completely removed from Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. The Plugin.ocx binary is a private component of Internet Explorer without any public interfaces. Plugin.ocx is used to host Netscape plug-ins as ActiveX controls. The functionality of Plugin.ocx was disabled in 2003 in Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP for security reasons. This update removes the nonfunctional Plugin.ocx code completely.
As part of this Internet Explorer update, Microsoft will release updates to the current versions of Windows XP and of Windows Server 2003. All client operating systems will be updated. These client operating systems include the following:•
Windows XP Starter Edition
•
Windows XP Home Edition
•
Windows XP Professional Edition
•
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
•
Windows XP Media Center Edition
•
Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems
Currently, Microsoft has not released updates for earlier versions of Internet Explorer, Windows Server 2003, or Windows XP. However, Microsoft may release updates for these earlier versions in the future. More information about release schedules will be posted in this blog when the information becomes available.
Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:44:06 GMT - Step one is software maintenance
As SAP and Oracle go toe-to-toe in court over alleged intellectual property misappropriations via the SAP-subsidiary TomorrowNow, I think it's a good time to review the four main levers that buyers should use when negotiating maintenance payments with software vendors.
Maintenance renegotiation. Though many software vendors state that their maintenances charges are fair and just, it is hard for many buyers to take such statements at face value. For example, many software vendors have gross margins for maintenance above 85 percent—the main driver of profitability for the vast majority of software sellers.
There also has been an increasingly vocal and negative voice by CIOs as to the value of maintenance. While many vendors state that maintenance payments are not negotiated, their claims are as hollow as that of any company stating that they must sell at “list” price. Significant discounts are garnered by savvy buyers.
Inventory and portfolio management. As in manufacturing, inventory control and management is one way to keep IT maintenance costs down. Shelfware continues to be a large challenge in companies. Realizing there is a lot of potential waste to be found in software assets, buyers are starting to actively manage their solution suites.
The ultimate challenge for companies is their inability to track the number of licenses they have contracted, as well as how such licenses actually are used—and tie that back to maintenance charges. A new generation of asset management companies is emerging to help buyers better manage and track IT assets. Think of them as ERP for IT.
Using third-party maintenance providers. While the current SAP-Oracle lawsuit will temporarily dampen enthusiasm for third-party maintenance providers, this area is well-positioned to grow. Until recently, software buyers have had little opportunity to purchase maintenance from third parties, thereby relying on the selling software vendor to provide such services, or managing the software themselves—if permitted by the terms of contract.
Companies including Rimini Street, NetCustomer, and TomorrowNow offer services that permit customers to maintain their current solution sets at a lower maintenance price point—50 percent or more off standard list price.
Upgrade slowdowns. After many years of painful and expensive projects, buyers are slowing the pace of enterprise software upgrades. Often such delays prove beneficial. By extending the life of a release that is working well and serving the needs of users, corporate IT groups can spend upgrade revenue on initiatives that have a greater impact on corporate profitability. In response, software vendors have been forced by buyers to offer longer-term support for older software releases.
In the 1990s, vendors typically supported releases for three to four years. Today support time frames have doubled or tripled to accommodate the needs of buyers, as well as to ensure a steady stream of maintenance payments.
By using a combination of these four techniques, CIOs can cut wasteful maintenance spending while maintaining the integrity of their enterprise software packages. During a time of slight budget increases and increased desire for innovative IT solutions, it is a strategy that is finding favor with many corporate technology groups.
Source: Manufacturing Business Technology
Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:20:12 GMT - Internet Explorer 7Pro 1.2
IE7Pro is a must have add-on for Internet Explorer, which includes a lot of features and tweaks to make your IE friendlier, more useful, secure and customizable. IE7Pro includes Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins and many more power packed features. You can customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need and taste using IE7Pro.
IE7Pro Features
Enhance Internet Explorer's Tabbed Browsing Capabilities
1. Double click to close tab.
2. Open new tab from address bar.
3. Enable/disable tab browse history manager.
4. Enable/disable crash recovery
5. Move the IE menu bar above the address bar
6. Hide search bar.
7. Modify the maxium number of parallel connections to the web server.
8. Select the external program to view page sourceSuper Drag and Drop
With Super Drag and Drop enabled, you can open new links by simply dragging and dropping the link on the page. You can also Drag and Drop to search selected words with the default search engine or save the selected photo when Shift is held down.
Mouse Gesture
Mouse Gesture allow the user to execute commonly performed tasks (open/close a tab, go back, go forward , print , scrolling page etc.) by drawing a simple symbol on the screen.
Crash Recovery
Crash Recovery automatically restores all opened pages after a crash happened.
Save Page to Image
Flexible and easy-to-use tool that converts html page from any URL to image. It captures the whole web page's content into JPG, BMP , GIF , PNG or TIFF on the fly.
Quick Proxy Switcher
Different internet connections do often require completely different proxy server settings and it's a real pain to change them manually.
AD Blocker
Blocks all forms of advertising, including Flash ads, rich media, fly-ins, slide-ins, pop-ups, pop-unders, spyware and adware ads, and messenger ads.
Greasy monkey alike User Script
IE7Pro Script is to Internet Explorer7 as Greasemonkey is to Firefox. It lets you remix the Web via scripts.
Inline Search
Adds the inline search bar like firefox has, finds as you type, use the F3 and Enter Key to cycle between multiple results, highlight all results.
Spell Check
IE7Pro Spell Check will check any text you enter and alert you to possible errors by adding a red underline to any potentially misspelled words.
Mon, 19 Nov 2007 08:36:10 GMT - Optimize Memory
Memmory Tubro is a Memory Manager and Optimization tool that increases your system performance by making more RAM available for your applications and the operating system. It also Defragments your physical RAM and Virtual Memory file increasing the efficiency of your CPU and PC caches. Virtual memory, available in Windows, is a way of simulating memory by using available hard disk space as if it were extra RAM. Optimize Memory optimizes memory based on system to system configuration instead of a general principle which is used in other programs thereby preventing cache compromise.
Optimize Memory strives to increase your system performance by performing four critical functions:
- Defragmenting your physical RAM
By defragmenting your physical RAM, the layout of your virtual memory more closely matches the layout of your physical memory. This increases your memory cache hit rate and improves locality of reference for data, thereby increasing the efficiency of the L1 and L2 caches present on your processor or motherboard.
- Increasing the amount of RAM available
Optimize Memory attempts to reclaim RAM from the operating system and applications, so that when the application you are currently using needs memory, it is readily available. This avoids costly swap file access and paging, decreases load time and improves application performance.
- Recovering memory leaks
By recovering memory that was allocated and forgotten (leaked) by the operating system and poorly behaved applications, Optimize Memory can increase the amount of both physical and virtual memory available for use.
- Flushing unused libraries and DLLs
Many applications and portions of the operating system load libraries that are infrequently used or not used at all; to improve performance, Optimize Memory safely flushes these DLLs and libraries out to the system paging file, freeing up the RAM normally used by them. While in this state, they are immediately and transparently reloaded if needed.
ScreenShot
How to Use
- Simply click on the "Free Memory" button to make more RAM available.
- Defragmenting your physical RAM
- AutoRuns for Windows
This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP.
Autoruns' Hide Signed Microsoft Entries option helps you to zoom in on third-party auto-starting images that have been added to your system and it has support for looking at the auto-starting images configured for other accounts configured on a system. Also included in the download package is a command-line equivalent that can output in CSV format, Autorunsc.
You'll probably be surprised at how many executables are launched automatically!
Autoruns works on all versions of Windows including 64-bit versions.
Screenshot
UsageSee the November 2004 issue of Windows IT Pro Magazine for Mark's article that covers advanced usage of Autoruns . If you have questions or problems visit the Sysinternals Autoruns Forum.
Simply run Autoruns and it shows you the currently configured auto-start applications as well as the full list of Registry and file system locations available for auto-start configuration. Autostart locations displayed by Autoruns include logon entries, Explorer add-ons, Internet Explorer add-ons including Browser Helper Objects (BHOs), Appinit DLLs, image hijacks, boot execute images, Winlogon notification DLLs, Windows Services and Winsock Layered Service Providers. Switch tabs to view autostarts from different categories.
To view the properties of an executable configured to run automatically, select it and use the Properties menu item or toolbar button. If Process Explorer is running and there is an active process executing the selected executable then the Process Explorer menu item in the Entry menu will open the process properties dialog box for the process executing the selected image.
Navigate to the Registry or file system location displayed or the configuration of an auto-start item by selecting the item and using the Jump menu item or toolbar button.
To disable an auto-start entry uncheck its check box. To delete an auto-start configuration entry use the Delete menu item or toolbar button.
Select entries in the User menu to view auto-starting images for different user accounts.
More information on display options and additional information is available in the on-line help.
Autorunsc UsageAutorunsc is the command-line version of Autoruns. Its usage syntax is:
Usage: autorunsc [-a] | [-c] [-b] [-d] [-e] [-h] [-i] [-l] [-m] [-n] [-p] [-r][-s] [-v] [-w] [user]
-a
Show all entries.
-b
Boot execute.
-c
Print output as CSV.
-d
Appinit DLLs.
-e
Explorer addons.
-h
Image hijacks.
-i
Internet Explorer addons.
-l
Logon startups (this is the default).
-m
Hide signed Microsoft entries.
-n
Winsock protocol providers.
-p
Printer monitor drivers.
-r
LSA providers.
-s
Autostart services and non-disabled drivers.
-t
Scheduled tasks.
-v
Verify digital signatures.
-w
Winlogon entries.
Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:33:04 GMT - 20 tools for web application development
One of the main reasons we started the One Month App is because people always seem to be interested in our development process. One of the aspects of our development process is naturally the software and tools we use. The following is a list of the tools that we have used on this project and others, covering our full technology stack that includes desktop, hosted and server applications. We would be very interested to hear about any tools that you use in your development process as well.
Ruby On Rails
Rails is an open-source web application framework that is geared towards developer happiness and sustainable productivity. This is currently our preferred framework and we have been using it for the past couple of years.
Textmate
Textmate is a text editor for Mac OS X. I found this editor a few years ago. Soon after that, I started seeing it used in a lot of screencasts that showcased various web development technologies. It appears like a simple editor, but it packs a lot of useful features under the hood.
Skedit
Skedit is another text editor for Mac OS X. We'd argue that Skedit is more designer friendly than Textmate because some of it's default features sets such as special characters helpers and remote file capability. Skedit makes writing clean markup a breeze for a web designer.
Adobe Creative Suite
A standard suite of software for any designer, we use Adobe Creative Suite for everything from design mockups to slicing up graphics for the web.
SnapNDrag
A very simple piece of software for Mac OS X that allows you to take screen captures and simply drag them from the software to another piece of software (such as Adobe Photoshop). This is great when you are considering a UI change and you want to take a quick screenshot, pull it into Photoshop, and make a quick mock-up.
Parallels
Parallels is an essential tool for allowing cross platform/browser development. We use this as we are testing our web applications in various web browsers and platforms.
Firebug
Firebug is a plug-in for Firefox that has many web development tools. The main use that I have for it is the inspect feature. This allows me to inspect the HTML at any time including after AJAX calls have taken place.
Basecamp
We use Basecamp to communicate and collaborate on all of our projects. It allows us to set up a schedule with milestones and keep our messages and to-dos all in one spot.
Lighthouse
Lighthouse was developed by our friends at Active Reload. It's a reasonably priced web based hosted tool for dealing with bug/issue tracking in software projects.
Subversion
Subversion is an open-source revision control system. I'm not really sure how we developed websites without using subversion in the past. What I do know is that I do not want to go back. Not only does subversion keep track of our revisions and protects us while multiple people are working on the same things, but it is also the reason that I hardly ever open up an FTP client. Sorry Transmit, I still love you.
Warehouse
Warehouse was also developed by Active Reload. It is a web based tool that lets you browse through your subversion repositories. Unlike Lighthouse, you can install this software on a server of your choice.
Terminal
Terminal is my second most used application. I use it while working in my local environment as well as interfacing with our servers. I have always liked Linux over Windows, but I felt that some of the user experience was a bit lacking. When OSX came around with its BSD foundation a lot of us web developers started making the switch. It has great user experience, but you can open up the terminal and feel at home.
Incubator
I found this great piece of software about 3 years ago when it was known as pyramid. We use it for all sorts of various tasks that require organizing thoughts.
SQLEditor
I have been lightly searching for a simple Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) tool that was native to OSX for the past few years. This is a tool that I found when I started this project. It certainly fits what I am looking for.
MySQL
MySQL is an open-source database that we use for most of our web applications. Another great package that we occasionally use is Postgre SQL
MySQL Query Browser
MySQL Query Browser is a GUI application to help you take a quick glance at your queries. With features that allow you to save and bookmark queries, as well as built-in documentation on the available features of MySQL, this tool makes developing and working with schemas an easy process.
Linux
Linux has been my preferred server operating system for nearly a decade or as long as I've been developing web applications. All of the tools that I use are at home on this platform.
Mongrel & Mongrel Cluster
Mongrel is a fast HTTP server for Ruby applications. Mongrel Cluster is a GemPlugin that wraps the mongrel HTTP server and simplifies the deployment of web applications using a cluster of Mongrel servers. Mongrel Cluster will conveniently configure and control several Mongrel servers, or groups of Mongrel servers, which are then load balanced using a reverse proxy solution.
Nginx
Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server that we use as a reverse proxy for our Mongrel Cluster. It also serves up our static and cached files.
Monit
Monit is a utility for managing and monitoring, processes, files, directories and devices on a UNIX system. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair and can execute meaningful causal actions in error situations. We mostly use monit to keep track of our Mongrel processes. If one fails or starts using too much ram, it will automatically restart it.
Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:16:02 GMT - Windows Update with Windows Server 2003 Group Policy
Windows Windows Update is a wonderfully useful application that allows central management and automatic installation of updates for Windows Server 2003. There are other solutions that do this, but Windows Update and Windows Server Update Services Server are cost-effective solutions that work well in many cases.
However, there may be times when we don’t want a balloon to pop up notifying users of the updates. Configuring a few Group Policy settings will allow you to control the update process in your environment and ensure that users cannot load updates using Windows Update.
Administrators should be the only ones who can load updates using Windows Update. You can prevent users from accessing Windows Update by managing the Windows Update Access settings; this does require you to configure Group Policy. If you want to give some users access to Windows Update, you can manage who gets access through these settings.
We can remove access to the Windows Update features in separate steps — one which prevents updates using Windows Update, another which removes links to Windows Update items, and another which disables or configures automatic updates. Using the Group Policy configurations discussed here will disable Automatic Updates for the users or computers to which the modified Group Policy objects apply. Keep this in mind when configuring these items.
To prevent Windows Update from updating the operating aystem, complete the following steps:
- Open the Group Policy Editor.
- Create a new Group Policy object, for example, NoUpdates.
- Select the User configuration.
- Click Administrative Templates.
- Click System.
- Click Internet Communication Management.
- Select Internet Communication Settings.
- In the right pane of the Group Policy Editor, double-click Turn Off Access To All Windows Update Features, select the Enabled radio button, and click OK.
To disable access to Windows Update commands, such as links in the Start menu or Internet Explorer, complete the following steps:
- Click User Configuration.
- Click Administrative Templates.
- Click the Start Menu and Task Bar.
- In the right pane of the Group Policy Editor, double-click Remove Links And Access To Windows Update.
- Set the policy to Enabled and click OK.
To prevent the use of Windows Update entirely, complete the following steps:
- Open the Group Policy Editor.
- Select Computer Configuration.
- Click Administrative Templates.
- Click Windows Components.
- Click Windows Update.
- Double-click Configure Automatic Updates.
- Select the Disabled radio button and click OK.
- Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007
Microsoft announced Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007, which Microsoft deems a "complete event management solution" and they also announced the core feature-set for Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007.
Microsoft is offering both a hosted model for Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 as well as a CPE (customer premise equipment) solution, namely Office Communications Server 2007. In addition to Microsoft directly hosting Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007, hosting partners will also offer Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 as a fee-based service. Whether attendees use the Live Meeting service or the Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007) to power their web conference, they will use the same client to deliver a seamless meeting experience. Microsoft espoused the benefits of this release when they stated, "Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 is a major release in development since 2005 with enhancements spanning every aspect of the service. Some of the most notable major investments include: a fully integrated media experience, deeper support for Training & Events, and a more streamlined user interface."
The new Live Meeting client integrates multiple communication channels for a unified experience. These channels include VoIP and PSTN audio, live and recorded video, screen and document sharing, chat, and audience feedback tools. Microsoft has developed their own adaptive audio and video codec (RTAudio, RTVideo) for the VoIP and video to handle packet loss without losing quality. For whatever reason, Microsoft developing their own adaptive codec hasn't received nearly the media attention it should.
In any event, check out this chart comparing Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005 vs. Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007:
Feature
Live Meeting 2007
Live Meeting 2005
Integrated Media
Rich media presentations (incl. Windows Media and Flash)
NEW
Live webcam video
NEW
Integrated Microsoft® Office PowerPoint viewer
√
√
"Drag and drop upload" to view a wide range of document file types
√
√
"Panoramic video" with Microsoft RoundTable
NEW
Multi-party two-way VoIP audio
NEW
PSTN and VoIP audio integration
NEW
Audio conference call controls
√
√
Active speaker indicator
NEW
Training & Events
Polling
√
√
Shared recording
√
√
Microsoft event services
√
√
Event and class registration
IMPROVED
√
APIs for integration with e-Learning systems
IMPROVED
√
Public events page
NEW
Advanced testing and grading
NEW
High fidelity recordings
NEW
Personal recordings
NEW
Virtual Breakout Rooms
NEW
"Handout" distribution (File Transfer)
NEW
As for scalability you can have up to 1,250 participants for connecting to Microsoft's hosted Live Meeting 2007 service. For the enterprise the maximum meeting size is 250 per server for the enterprise-based solution (Office Communications Server 2007). It's worth mentioning that SIP is the base protocol for OCS 2007 and SIMPLE is used for the instant messaging.
One key feature in Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 is the ability to have rich media presentations -- letting you share Windows Media video files and Flash content. In some tests I was able to share an 8MB .wmv video file. It took awhile (2 min) for the content to download to the other participant test PC I setup. During my brief tests I determined that the content isn't sent to the participants until the moderator actually "views" this content. It would be nice if the participants download all the shared content in the background so it is available quickly on demand.
Related to the rich media content, you can record this rich media for future playback. In fact, the recording functionality is probably the "secret sauce", which gives Microsoft a "key" advantage over their competitors. It records the entire multimedia interaction of the meeting, including the PowerPoint presentation, the instant messages, the videoconferencing, and any video files (Flash, .wmv files) that you share during the meeting.In Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007, they improved the registration functionality, including automatically notifying users of any scheduling changes. The previous version Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005 also had online web registration, however Windows Live 2007 improved upon this with the addition of a public events page and improvements in the email notifications. Also, the survey feature is a major new feature in Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007. You can query the participants and have the results automatically emailed. Internal reports are available on the survey questions but can also be exported into CSV for use in Microsoft Excel or other reporting packages.
In addition, LM 2007 features Virtual Breakout Rooms and Handout Distribution to increased flexibility and more organized training sessions. Another new feature is virus scanning using Microsoft Forefront technologies to automatically protect meeting documents before they are distributed to meeting attendees.
Live Meeting Web Access (MWA) was redesigned in this release to provide a user experience that is nearly identical to the new Windows-based Live Meeting client. One huge benefit is that Live Meeting Web Access is a Java applet and therefore is available on non-Windows operating systems such as Linux, Macs, etc.
Although Office Live Meeting 2005 has recording, the new version (Office Live Meeting 2007) adds the ability for "local recordings". The moderator can choose whether to allow participants to select the recording function from their Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 client and have the meeting (audio, video, collaboration screen data) saved locally on their PC. The recordings include everything, including slide transitions, application sharing, images, and audio. Interestingly, even with compression of the of Office PowerPoint slides and other meeting content, the original fidelity/resolution is kept while keeping the size of the recording to a minimum. The frame of the recording is simple HTML and XML-based information. All of the video images are recorded in WMV format. If you use rich-media clips, such as Flash, it preserves the original format.
Importantly, you can also search the content in the presentations.
Microsoft also pointed out the Microsoft Roundtable product which is a 360 degree video camera optimized to work with Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007. One nice feature is that the Microsoft Office Live Meeting client will automatically switch the larger video window to the actively speaking participant. This auto-switch feature isn't specific to the Microsoft Roundtable product - it will work with any USB-based camera. The main advantage of Roundtable is its 360 degree camera view, which is great for conference rooms with several participants. With specially designed microphones, Roundtable is able to determine the location of the active speaker and then tell Microsoft Office Live Meeting which camera angle to focus on.
With comprehensive VoIP, video, and collaboration capabilities, Microsoft Office Live Meeting could dramatically shake up the online collaboration space which includes WebEx, Interwise, Raindance, and several other players.
Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:57:14 GMT - Updatestar check if Software Updates are available
Updatestar seems to be the most comprehensive software to scan your system for installed applications and check whether updates for those found are available. I did try several similar applications like Secunia Personal Software Inspector in the past but was somewhat disappointed by the small amount of softwares that could be detected.
Updatestar us currently able to detect more than 80000 softwares (Secunia detected 4000). The scan on my system took less than a minute and detected 115 installed applications which is way more than the other softwares were able to detect. Thirteen updates were found for the 115 installed applications. Those 115 are still not all the softwares that are installed on my system. For instance, all those softwares that don’t require an installation at all have not been detected.
The product list lists all installed softwares that have been found with information about the installed version, the current version, news and a download link. If you left-click an entry you will see a detailed description of the product below the product list with additional information such as publisher, a possibility to uninstall the software and a link to the website of the software.
Updatestar is by far the most complete program in the category of softwares that automatically scan your system and check for updates on the Internet. It is by no means perfect but since this is a beta it could very well improve in the coming months.
Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:20:24 GMT - 7 Ways to keep on top of your Software Updates
Keeping your software up to date is the best protection for your computer. Software is usually updated for 2 reason. The first being to improve and enhance the functionality of the software. The second being to close any known system bugs. These bugs can range in everything from open access points for hackers to use and abuse your computer and information to system stability issues.If you don’t know this by now, you should learn this immediately, keep your software up to date. Here are 5 methods to aid this task.
1. UpdateStar (Win)- Still in Beta, but highly functional, downloadable software that scans your computer, including your "Add or Remove Programs" area for all installed software. Not only does UpdateStar analyze all of the installed programs on your windows system, it also displays all available updates for the product. The information regarding the software and the information is very thorough. The only draw backs are that they "recommend" programs (that cost money) that they think "you would be interested in".
2. AppSnap (Win)- Gaining recent popularity with it’s latest update, AppSnap is configurable program that scans your computer for all installed applications. Appsnap then guides you through the software that needs updating (incl. size and version #). You can download and install several updates in just a few clicks. Only criticisms are that the database is not as large.
3. AppUpdate (Mac) - AppUpdate is a free Mac Dashboard Widget that combines Apple’s Software Directory, MacUpdate and Version Tracker. "It will present you with a tidy link list of all the updates found, enabling you to read release-notes and download the the updates quickly and painlessly."
4. Individual Feeds - Many software products, especially open source, will have their own feed/news section to subscribe to. This is always the best way to keep on top of your software without having to download any program to tell you what you need to download. In addition, the feeds usually offer explanations and the reason behind each new release.
5. Sourceforge Feed - Sourceforge feeds are a great way to keep on top of individual software projects/programs, and to learn about new software. Especially Open Source software, my favorite kind.
6. Filehippo Feed - Same as Sourceforge, but it is not limited to just open source software. Filehippo includes open source, freeware, shareware and commercial software. Once again, another great way to learn about other programs and software.
7. Version Tracker (Mac or Win) - Version Tracker tarcks updates for thousands of software products (Note: many programs are shareware (free trial) or commercial). Similarly to abov, you can subscribe to their feed and monitor updates for relevant programs. Version Tracker is very comprehensive, I’ve learned about some great programs through their feed.
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 04:01:43 GMT
Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:25:51 GMT
Thu, 25 Oct 2007 03:39:33 GMT
