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Wife exposes chief spy's personal life on Facebook

It is always a case of some considerable concern when a lady reveals too much on Facebook. The site has standards, after all.

The lady in question this time is Lady Shelley Sawers, the wife of Sir John Sawers, the new head of British spy agency MI6.

According to reports in the Mail and numerous other media outlets, the fair lady may not have been quite aware that Facebook can be seen by a rather large number of people if you don't specify that you want to keep your information vaguely private.

Lady Sawers saw fit to wander onto … Read more

Top toolbar

If you're into toolbars, Internet Explorer, and Google, the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer does more than give IE a mere shot of nitro. With a set of features both useful and self-promoting, Google Toolbar 6 feels like it adds eight cylinders to IE's engine, turning it into a powerhouse of personalized functionality for both IE 8 users and those who are stuck on earlier versions.

There's the dedicated Google search window, the effective pop-up blocker, the form autofiller, the translation utility, the spell checker, and the map tool that automatically links addresses in Web pages to … Read more

Three smart Outlook add-ons

As someone who parses through a prodigious amount of e-mail every day, I'm constantly working with Microsoft Outlook to find e-mails and recipients, add new contacts, write myself reminders, and make sure I actually see those reminders even after I've left the office.

Three free or free-to-try add-ons are a constant help. There's Xobni, a search tool, Gwabbit, a contact management helper, and Google Calendar Sync beta, which helps keep calendar items current in Outlook, Google's Calendar, or both. Read more about the three killer Outlook add-ons here.

If Outlook is too conventional (or expensive) for … Read more

Mass e-mail creator

e-Campaign provides users with a chance to design and send their e-mails to countless recipients. With a layout that caters to both HTML experts and e-mail novices alike, this is a fantastic choice for practically anyone.

The program's interface will remind many people of professional quality software like Microsoft Outlook. One major difference is the tabs for viewing HTML code and some additional word processing applications that help create unique e-mails. The program also provides a Help file for anyone feeling overwhelmed. Creating and sending e-mail was surprisingly simple, with very few roadblocks. Designing an e-mail to send was … Read more

Microsoft's antivirus try

Last week Redmond offered alert PC users a proposition: a limited beta test of its latest security application, called Microsoft Security Essentials to the first 75,000 fast-acting users in the United States, China, Israel, and Brazil. We hardly have to tell you that spots for the freeware antivirus tool that will replace Live OneCare were snapped up less than 24 hours after we posted our story.

If you weren't quick enough to join the testing herd, or if you live in one of the 191 other countries worldwide, Download.com Senior Associate Editor Seth Rosenblatt has all the … Read more

Custom barcodes

Barcoding inventory, patient charts, customer files, and more is easy as pie with this handy app. Using it with Excel files for multiple items, or simply creating single barcodes is as simple as printing labels from your own printer.

Universal Barcode Maker launches a drab but very functional interface. Although it displays a number of fields, drop-down menus and radio buttons, the items are cleverly arranged in categories according to the steps to follow in creating barcodes, so understanding how to use the app requires only a minute or so. This neat little app performed nicely in our tests, responding … Read more

Cluttered interface

Video and audio fans can capture and manipulate files in a variety of ways with this application, which offers a strong array of capabilities, but novices will be intimidated by the cluttered interface.

Breeze Standard Edition launches a medium-size window that--surrounding the video-viewing pane--is cluttered with buttons, icons and fields. Nothing about this application is designed for novices, for its design is not intuitive, and the Help feature, while it presents a lot of detail about the app's features, doesn't include a tutorial that would most benefit new users. That caveat aside, the app performed well in our … Read more

Music, now lyrics

If you're never exactly sure which words a singer screams, mumbles, or sighs throughout a song's stanza, a brand-new add-on released this week was meant for you. TuneWiki (review), a free plug-in for Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows Media Player, can stream lyrics in time to songs you play from your local library. You'll also be able to spool lyrics for the YouTube music videos you initiate within TuneWiki, watching them appear in a pane below the player.

The heart of the application is TuneWiki's lyrics Wiki, an online database whose contents are driven by community contributions, … Read more

Simple video downloader

Arc Soft Video Downloader helps users download movies directly to their computer, but there's a second step (and another program) if you want to watch your videos.

This freeware program is incredibly simple to use. Opening the program leads to a small rectangular screen with simple instructions for downloading a video. Little action is required on the part of the user. As soon as a video is viewed online, an ArcSoft icon appears with the ability to download the movie. Simply clicking on this icon initiates the process, and you can see the files for download on the program'… Read more