Adeona: open-source protection for your laptop

Presenting Adeona, your free software driven laptop angel from The University of Washington. The great thing about Adeona is that it doesn’t rely on any centralized web service or any 3rd party. Shortly, this means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and…that’s it.

How does Adeona work?

Adeona is designed to use the Open Source OpenDHT distributed storage service to store location updates sent by a small software client installed on an owner’s laptop. Adeona monitors the current location of your laptop, collecting all types of informations such as IP addresses and network details.

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Rooms: Chat on IRC with your iPhone!

While the iPhone software market is full of almost any program you can think of, it seems that there weren’t any real IRC clients. Rooms is the first IRC client for the iPhone and while it’s not your average mIRC clone, it has the basic features you need to get yourself connected to your favourite IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels.

The interface is pretty straight forward, when you open Rooms for the first time, you will be prompted to choose your server, port and nickname.

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World of Warcraft makes you more smart..or not

World of Warcraft is one of the most played MMORPG games of our times, with million subscribers monthly. In some recent studies, some researchers discovered that WoW actually improves some human skills such as perception. I won’t argue with the good old doctors now, but history has showed me that people go in different directions to achieve some marketing goals and this is happening now with World of Warcraft.

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How To: Record streaming media files

Media streaming has become very popular in the past few years, allowing users to watch or listen to their favorite media without downloading the full files. While many streaming sources don’t allow users to record the streaming or apply a small fee for this service, users can capture media streamings easily using dedicated software. There are many available streaming software out there, most of them requiring a small fee (below $40) but there are some free software available for download.

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Internet Explorer 8 looks for beta testers

Allison Burnett, the Program Manager for IE8, stated in a blog post that is looking for people to beta test their upcoming version of Internet Explorer 8. The development team promises a new revamped version of Internet Explorer, with less memory problems, better functionality and extended compatibility with the current standards.

Also, Microsoft states that IE8 is focused on delivering a better user experience and an overall improved functionality. 

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How To: Recover the Boot Record in Windows XP

What is the Boot Record?

Every partition has its own boot record. The boot record is used to store the first bits of software executed. Also, the boot record holds instructions needed to start Windows XP.

In some occasions, the boot record can be altered or damaged by an user error, damaged software or different types of malware or viruses.

The boot record can be fixed easily via the Windows Recovery Console using the “fixboot” command.

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Another Google Search Engine rival? Here is Cuil

While THE search engine, Google, has little competition in this market, former Google employees are developing a brand new search engine with a stylish name, Cuil (pronounced “cool”). Cuil has a more Web 2.0 oriented interface and a styled result page (too much style if you ask me). The people behind Cuil are Anna Patterson, her husband Tom Costello and some other former Google engineers.

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Microsoft becomes sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation

Lately, Microsoft has embraced the open-source community in a rather unusual manner. Now, Microsoft begins supporting the Apache Software Foundation with an annual donation of $100,000. It’s clear that Microsoft will slowly go away from its own IIS Web Server platform but raised alot of speculation within the industry.

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