totals

McAfee announces 'triple play' in its consumer releases

McAfee on Monday released its 2008 line of security products, including McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008, McAfee Internet Security 2008, and McAfee Total Protection 2008.

In a move that McAfee hopes will distinguish it from the competition, the company is now offering three user licenses for all its desktop products, and is including its SiteAdvisor site-rating software in each product to protect against online fraud. Finally, McAfee is also including VirusScan mobile protection with its desktop Internet Security and Total Protection products.

This "triple play" perhaps makes McAfee's products more economical, but it remains to be seen if … Read more

Can you trust that file?

Earlier I had a trilogy of postings about DropMyRights (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) that included the warning to run Microsoft Office applications in restricted mode in case a file (Word document, Excel spreadsheet, etc.) carried a virus or some other type of malicious software.

But what do you do if a Word document or Excel spreadsheet doesn't display or work properly when the application is run in restricted mode? A decision needs to be made whether to trust the file and open it in unrestricted mode.

If the file was sent to you by e-mail, you'… Read more

Yeah. No, Totally. (iPhone App)

This interestingly named program for iPhone is one of the better apps we've found for searching multiple popular sites for news and information feeds. An intuitive interface lets you quickly search the latest headlines at CNN, New York Times, Digg, BBC News, Engadget, and many others. Results show up with headlines and short blurbs before you go to the full story.

iPhone Link: http://www.yeahnototally.com/iphone/

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

Anatomy of a Buzz Report screwup

So, I came in to work today to this e-mail in the CNET TV Feedback mailbox, about last week's Buzz Report:

"The segment with Molly 'playing' video games was horrible. The 360 was upside down and the game playing was Resistance, which is a PS3 game."

Er. D'oh. Yes. Yes, all that is true.

Now, let me explain. I am using my Xbox 360-to-PS3 adapter. See, I love Resistance: Fall of Man, but I have an Xbox 360, and I just really prefer that controller. So, I use my adapter to play cool PS3 games. Oh, … Read more

Warner Bros.' dual-format disc delayed

Total HD, the Warner Bros. solution to the Blu-ray/HD DVD face off for high-def home video supremacy, won't be rolled out in late 2007 as promised at CES, a Warner Bros. official said Wednesday.

The first discs, which will feature Blu-ray on one side and HD DVD on the other, will not appear until early 2008, according to Dan Miron, the studio's vice president of sales and planning, who made the comments at an entertainment business conference in Los Angeles.

The studio didn't provide further details, other than to say that it wants to avoid confusing … Read more

A gadget to improve your memory

Ever heard of Gary Small? He's the neuroscientist who wrote the The Memory Bible, the best-seller that claims to improve your memory with five mental exercises. But what if you forget what to do?

Dr. Small has an answer for that too with his "Handheld Brain And Memory Fitness Trainer," which includes the brain games necessary to execute his program. On its LCD, the memory-challenged can play games that "simultaneously exercise the left-brain (verbal memory and logical skills) and the right-brain (visual memory)." It also monitors progress automatically along the way--a good thing, because that … Read more

Total Immersion demos new augmented reality tech [video]

Total Immersion, which wowed the Demo crowd two years ago, has technology that lets you merge computer-generated objects into live video. At Demo 07, the company showed off how a small PC with a camera could add a little dancing cartoon character to a live video of a newspaper. In other words: the newspaper was flat, but the live video of it on the PC's screen had real-time characters dancing around on it. And when the camera moved, they moved, so they almost appeared to be connected to the paper.

This technology will be great for navigation apps, and … Read more

HP Total Care Advisor set to help you keep your PC healthy

We've already reviewed HP's new, Vista-equipped TouchSmart PC, announced here at CES 2007, but what we didn't talk much about was the new custom support application that HP sent with it, and which will come in all new HP laptops and desktops. We sat down with HP this morning to talk about it, and we came away more than a little impressed.

Total Care Advisor is an HP-made suite of support tools designed to help you stay proactive in maintaining the health of your HP system. The software clearly breaks down the various areas of your system … Read more

A mutant flat-screen monitor

Remember those grotesque photos of that poor mouse with the human ear growing out of its back? We had successfully managed to suppress those memories for a decade until seeing, of all things, a new LCD.

The dual-screen monitor from Korean company Woojin, proudly dubbed the "Tenbuno," looks like the digital equivalent of a genetic mistake. It has a 19-inch LCD monitor (mouse) with an 8.4-inch screen grafted to its top edge (ear). It's supposed to facilitate multitasking, but we think it would probably just contribute to ADHD.

Technological convergence can be a good thing in … Read more