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People serving in the U.S. military now have their own Web site where they can upload, share, and watch videos.

Announced yesterday, the new MilTube site has been set up as a safer, more secure alternative to YouTube, with content protected behind firewalls. As such, it's designed to serve the interests of military personnel who want to share videos but also satisfy the concerns of the Department of Defense (DOD), which has never been comfortable with access to commercial social network and sharing sites.

"Video is an extremely powerful tool for storytelling and sharing information among personnel,&… Read more

ZIP files are a great way to compress larger files into a format that's easy to store and share. Although Windows comes with a utility for creating ZIP files, it's pretty basic and doesn't offer a lot of options. ZipGenius Suite is a full-featured program that lets users easily create, edit, and share ZIP files.

The program's interface is plain and intuitive, with large, graphical buttons across the top. The opening screen lets users go straight to the program's major features, which include creating a new archive, opening an existing archive, extracting files from an … Read more

Twitter is trying out a new feature to display ads, or promoted tweets, directly in a user's Twitter stream, but the company admits it's watching carefully to see how people react.

The site expanded its "promoted tweets" feature yesterday, starting slowly by displaying the ads only for those who use HootSuite, a third-party Twitter client. Promoted tweets are tweets that advertisers pay to show to a large number of people, similar to the way advertisers pay for sponsored links that appear among search results at Google.

Those who access Twitter through HootSuite will begin to see … Read more

As I noted in a tweet yesterday, Microsoft's Office unit has scheduled an event for Tuesday in San Francisco. But folks hoping that the company is ready to move its productivity software to the iPad may be disappointed.

Instead, I'm hearing that the event will likely be focused on Microsoft's hosted online services, which today center around the awkwardly named Business Productivity Online Suite, a bundle of hosted Exchange and SharePoint. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley says the next version is in testing and may also be getting a less cumbersome name--possibly the moniker "Union." (… Read more

The bottom line: Although AVG has flagged a little in the past few years, AVG Internet Security 2011 breathes some new life into one of the most popular security programs around with a shorter install, better usability, and faster scans.

Review: The never-ending mantra chanted by security suite vendors sounds a lot like "faster scans, easier to use, better performance," and AVG has released a new version that it says accomplishes all three. Certainly, the scans are faster, it does install more quickly, and some tweaks to the interface have made it easier to use. However, changes to … Read more

There are plenty of options--from iTunes to DoubleTwist to Windows Media Player--that will keep the average consumer satisfied in terms of basic multimedia organization and playback. However, if you count yourself among those creative or persnickety enough to delve into the realm of audio and video editing, you may want to consider some more fully featured media tools.

That's where Nero's latest products come into play. Today, the company announced Nero Multimedia Suite 10 Platinum HD and Video Premium HD, two solutions for "creative enthusiasts" that will be available October 15 for $129.99 and $… Read more

In spite of being viewed as the "other guys" in some Mac users' minds, Microsoft has generally put out an excellent productivity suite for the Mac with Microsoft Office. Though the latest package is still not on par with the Windows version (you get only the four main programs--a big difference when you consider the Windows version has 10), Microsoft made a big leap with this latest version for the Mac in several other ways. Not only has it nearly reached feature parity (and cross compatibility) with the Mac counterparts to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but it has … Read more

Microsoft announced today it will be taking preorders for Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. Microsoft says this major update will bring the Mac version of its office suite almost on par with the Windows version of the product. With significantly better cross-platform compatibility, several added new features, and some impressive interface elements exclusive to the Mac version, Office 2011 for Mac might be the best in its class.

Over the past couple of weeks, we had the chance to check out the entire suite--including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook--and we think there's plenty to be excited about. New and … Read more

"Most impressive" is one way to describe the latest Norton updates from Symantec. After three years of progressively better versions and significant improvements, Norton Internet Security 2011 and Norton AntiVirus 2011 look incredibly sharp. Gone are the days of crippling system behavior and debatable security efficacy.

Instead, Norton gives people blazing installs and quick scans, useful system-managing tools and security extras like the capability to scan your Facebook wall for malicious links, and most importantly, extremely high ratings in threat detection and prevention. With a 30-day trial that has no other restrictions, anybody who's willing to pay … Read more