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The bottom line: The new owners of Lavasoft have revamped Ad-Aware to the point where it has almost nothing in common with its predecessors besides function. It's a good reboot, but it's not out of the woods yet.

Review: While the name Ad-Aware remains the same as it has for the past 13 years, everything from the user interface to the code powering Ad-Aware 10 is entirely new.

More so than any recent version of Ad-Aware, the suite is usable, lightweight, and worthy of your attention.

Installation The installation is straightforward, although it still does opt you in … Read more

The bottom line: The new owners of Lavasoft have revamped Ad-Aware to the point where it has almost nothing in common with its predecessors besides function. It's a good reboot, but it's not out of the woods yet.

Review: While the name Ad-Aware remains the same as it has for the past 13 years, everything from the user interface to the code powering Ad-Aware 10 is entirely new.

More so than any recent version of Ad-Aware, the suite is usable, lightweight, and worthy of your attention.

Installation The installation is straightforward, although it still does opt you in … Read more

The bottom line: The new owners of Lavasoft have revamped Ad-Aware to the point where it has almost nothing in common with its predecessors besides function. It's a good reboot, but it's not out of the woods yet.

Review: While the name Ad-Aware remains the same as it has for the past 13 years, everything from the user interface to the code powering Ad-Aware 10 is entirely new.

More so than any recent version of Ad-Aware, the suite is usable, lightweight, and worthy of your attention.

Installation The installation is straightforward, although it still does opt you in … Read more

Like something out of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" where "Big Brother is watching you," Google is trying to patent technology that could pick up on background noise during mobile-phone calls and then promote related ads.

The title of the patent application is "Advertising Based on Environmental Conditions," and it was first reported today by tech-news site The Next Web. Apparently, the technology will be able to listen in on background noise, like rain, music, or a baseball game, and then serve related ads, such as a spot for an umbrella, a new album, … Read more

Midway Arcade offers classic games from the '80s arcades and gives you touch-screen options that work pretty well, but it's not perfect. This 99-cent game features Joust, Defender, Rampage, Spy Hunter, Arch Rivals, Root Beer Tapper, and then some other more-interactive games one would usually find at classic arcades, like air hockey, basketball quick-shot games, billiards, and Roll Ball (a skee-ball clone). You have the option to buy two more 99-cent packages of games through in-app purchase. The Adventure Game Pack includes Gauntlet 1 and 2, and Wizard of Wor. The Action Game Pack comes with NARC, Total Carnage, … Read more

One of the great things about having grown up with video games and then writing about iOS apps is that all my favorites seem to eventually be playable on my phone. I wrote about Atari's Greatest Hits some time ago, but even though I liked seeing some of the old classics on my phone, the controls were flawed. Though they were playable, most of the games didn't really live up to my memory of them.

Yes, I know I'm probably looking at my youth through rose-colored glasses, but in this case it's true--the control issues really took away from the games.

Today, another group of classic arcade games were made available on iOS, and this time they might have the control schemes (mostly) worked out. Midway Arcade (99 cents), out today, takes a lot of those classic games from the '80s and gives you some touch-screen options that work somewhat better, though it's still not perfect (Rose-colored glasses again? Maybe). This 99-cent game features Joust, Defender, Rampage, Spy Hunter, Arch Rivals, Root beer Tapper, and then some other more interactive games one would usually find at classic arcades like, air hockey, basketball quick-shot games, billiards, and Roll Ball (a Skee Ball clone). You have the option to buy two more 99-cent packages of games through in-app purchase. The Adventure Game Pack includes Gauntlet 1 and 2, and Wizard of Wor. The Action Game Pack comes with NARC, Total Carnage, and APB.… Read more

A father-and-son team of private investigators charged with crimes relating to Hewlett-Packard's infamous spy scandal entered a plea yesterday in federal court, but that plea was immediately placed under seal by the court.

It's unclear why the pleas were sealed, as related court documents have not been posted publically. But in general, a court has the right to seal documents if they contain issues of confidentiality that outweigh the public's right to access court proceedings and records. In this case, the parties requested the proceedings be sealed, and presiding U.S. District Court Judge D. Lowell Jensen … Read more

Score one for old-school aircraft against the upstart drones.

Perhaps it's just a brief respite from the seemingly inevitable winds of change propelling unmanned aircraft ever higher in the Pentagon's airpower depth charts, but the venerable U-2 spy plane has won a key vote of confidence over the unmanned RQ-4 Global Hawk. That victory came not in a head-to-head aerial dogfight, but in a more bureaucratic conveyance: the draft of the federal budget for the U.S. government's fiscal 2013.

"The Administration proposes to end production of the Global Hawk unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle," says … Read more

OneShar.es can make anyone feel like a spy.

Using the Web site, you can send-self destructing messages to friends, colleagues, or anyone else you may be sending personal information to. The messages are only accessible through a unique URL, and as soon as the URL is viewed once, it is no longer valid.

Using a service like this may seem a bit gimmicky at first, and it is to an extent, but it can come in extremely handy when you want to send personal information and don't like the thought of that information sitting in some e-mail account … Read more