finder

Ask yourself this: Should a hacker leap over your firewall and duck your antivirus to successfully deliver a rootkit and poke around your system, what would the thieving perp find?

Unless you've painstakingly encrypted every instance of your driver's license, bank account, and mother's maiden name there's a good chance your privacy jig could be up were someone to apply the right kind of malicious script. Identity Finder seeks out, and shreds or encrypts personal data sprinkled throughout your computer files, Web tracks, e-mail, and registry. Ahem. That is, if you're a registered, paying customer.

If you're not, Identity Finder will constantly point to your deficiency with nag screens galore and crossed-out circles where interface functions should be ("Demo users--No outlet!"). Until you pony up the cash, Identity Finder won't let you undo your data show-and-tell, or even supply the location of those files which are overly inviting. However, even if scanning with the trial version is all you do, you'll get an idea of how often you hang on to sensitive data that's best hidden or removed.… Read more

Choosing gifts for Jesus' birthday is a nightmare. Unless you're a sock-giving grandparent, you almost always end up choosing pointless presents that get binned or swapped in the January sales. We could start buying present before 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, we suppose, but where's the fun in that?

There's help at hand, thanks to that t'Internet. Gift Finder is a Web site that helps you decide which gifts to give, and which gifts people should give you. Log on, answer a few short questions by clicking one of 15 images per topic, and it … Read more

One of the nicest additions to Leopard is the incredible improvements to Finder. And while the OS still allows you to navigate through your computer in the old style (column view was always my favorite), Cover Flow just works.

Now, before we get into just how nice Finder really is, why can't we view the menu options beneath cover flow in column view? So far, Apple only allows you to view desired paths in list mode. And while it gets a little annoying, it's not a deal breaker by any stretch of the imagination.

Sure, it may be … Read more

Recently a friend of mine asked me about good programs to find duplicate files. She had important files on two different drives and knew she had a significant amount of duplication, but didn't want to lose newer files in either location. Moreover, she wanted to transfer all of her files to a new computer she had just bought.

I knew of one program that worked for me in the past, but did a little research to find several programs that quickly scan drives and let you compare files to know which ones you can delete. Not only do these applications offer a solution to my friend's problem above, you can also free up a significant amount of hard drive space by getting rid of duplicates.… Read more

In an effort to retool the way users get to the applications on their profile, Facebook has added a new feature in the form of a quick finder for profile apps. If you're used to the row of icons on the left side of Facebook's navigation, this idea isn't too far off. Any apps that have been installed on your profile will show up as small icons in a cluster. Clicking on any of them will jump you down to where the app's box is located, as well as briefly highlighting it with a dark blue … Read more

Have you ever been on a road trip trying to find a good radio station only to sift through tons of static before finding anything? With Griffin iTrip StationFinder for iPhone, random radio scanning is a thing of the past. To find the music to fit your mood on the FM dial, just touch the state you're in followed by the city to get a list of FM stations right on your iPhone. We would have liked a small description of each station along with the genre to get a feel for what we're choosing, but knowing which … Read more

Want to know where the Wi-Fi is? Check out Jiwire Wi-fi Finder, which lets you use your iPhone to enter your location and then displays a list of Wi-Fi hotspots. Choosing a location from the list brings you to a screen where you can get more information, view the location on Google Maps, or call the location immediately. We especially like the ability to only search Wi-Fi locations for free.

iPhone link: http://iphone.jiwire.com/

Web site link: http://www.jiwire.com/

As any avid--and increasingly, non-avid--gamer can tell you, the Nintendo Wii is harder to find than an urban square mile without a Starbucks. Up until recently, I was one of those people vainly rechecking Amazon.com and calling every Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA within a 30-mile radius to see if they had any in stock. It was frustrating, of course, but not for the reasons you may think. Constantly hearing "not in stock" wasn't the problem; rather, it was annoying because the whole process took a lot of work. And this was after I thought … Read more