System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista; Windows XP 64-bit; Windows XP Service Pack 3

Additional Information

• The DirectX redist installation includes all the latest and previous released DirectX runtime. This includes D3DX, XInput, and Managed DirectX components.
• The DirectX runtime cannot be uninstalled. We recommend Windows Me and Windows XP users create a “System Restore” point before installing. For information on creating a restore point, please refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles: Windows XP: Microsoft Knowledge Base article 310405.
• This update is recommended for users that do not have internet connection during installation
• If you would like the websetup version of the runtime package, please click here.
• Starting with Febraury 2007 SDK release – The redist no longer supports Win9x

Download DirectX End-User Runtimes (February 2010)

Google Inc. is taking a swipe at Facebook Inc. with a new feature that makes it easier and faster for users of Gmail to view media and status updates shared by their friends.

Google could announce the new Gmail feature as soon as this week, said people familiar with the matter. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

The change will add a module that will display a stream of status updates from people that a Gmail user chooses to connect with, said one of these people—a format popularized by Facebook and Twitter Inc.

Yahoo Inc. added a similar feature to Yahoo Mail last year, allowing users to see whether their friends have uploaded a photo to a site like Flickr, for example, while looking at their email inbox.

Google, too, is trying to get users to turn to Gmail as place they can go to see what’s up with their friends, in addition to one they use to send and receive email. But whether Internet users will want to blend sending email with browsing friends’ content is unclear.

Google has been trying to fashion Gmail into more than an email service for years. The service currently lets users set an “away message,” which can be a link to a Web page, that their friends see when they instant-message them. Now, it plans to launch a new interface that will aggregate updates from more friends in a stream.

The new stream will also eventually include content that a user’s connections share through its YouTube video site and Picasa photo service, according to one person familiar with the matter. But whether those features will also be announced in the coming days remains unclear.

Google’s moves come as Facebook last week rolled out a new design with a shortcut to make it easier to view different types of messages. The social-networking company said last week it had roughly 400 million users. Gmail, the fastest growing of the major email services, had 176 million unique visitors in December, according to comScore Inc.

Source ~ The Wall Street Journal

While traditionally the purview of computer enthusiasts and gamers, graphics are becoming increasingly important as everyday computer users start watching movies and playing games on PCs.

Optimus works by automatically shutting off the graphics card in a computer when it isn’t in use. For instance, if a computer user is surfing the Web or checking e-mail, Optimus will turn the card off, letting the chipset attached to the computer’s main processor deal with these simpler tasks.

When a user decides to watch a movie, Optimus flips the chip on to deal with the larger data load. By shutting off the graphics card, Optimus could potentially increase battery life five-fold.

Previously, users would have to manually turn off the graphics chip, interrupting whatever programs had been running.

Optimus is expected to be included with an upcoming line of notebooks from Asustek Computer Inc later this year.

Full Story ~ The Wall Street Journal

NASA’s humans-in-space program may be on hiatus following dramatic recent budget cuts, but the agency’s robots-in-space program is alive and well.

In conjunction with manufacturing partner General Motors, the space agency has unveiled the latest generation robotic astronaut, dubbed Robonaut 2. NASA says that the robot is designed to work side by side with people; its leading edge control, sensor and vision technologies could assist astronauts during hazardous space missions.

“This cutting-edge robotics technology holds great promise, not only for NASA, but also for the nation,” said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “I’m very excited about the new opportunities for human and robotic exploration these versatile robots provide across a wide range of applications.”

NASA points out that the first generation of the robot was built by the software, robotics and simulation division at Johnson in a collaborative effort with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) 10 years ago. That generation was designed to be controlled by astronauts inside the International Space Station using a virtual reality interface: helmets and gloves wired to record their motions and immediately transfer those intentions and actions to robots outside the station.

Robonaut B, the second generation model unveiled in 2004, was built with human-like hands and television camera eyes, and gained the option of rolling around Earth on a modified two-wheeled Segway scooter or grappling the International Space Station (ISS) with what researchers call a “space leg.”

“We’re looking at other lower bodies for the moon, with a four-wheel or six-wheel base,” Robert Ambrose, Robonaut project lead at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston,Texas told SPACE.com in 2004. “We’re not going to take a Segway to the moon, but it’s a good way to emulate the idea on Earth.”

NASA and GM, with the help of engineers from Houston’s Oceaneering Space Systems, developed and built R2, the latest generation of the androids. It’s faster, more dexterous and more technologically advanced than the first generation creations.

Source ~ Fox News

Police in central China have arrested three people and seized money and equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a crackdown on the country’s biggest commercial operation to train computer hackers, state media reported over the past two days.

But Western specialists in cybersecurity were skeptical that the arrests signified any broad commitment by China to halt the assaults on computer security that Google and other Western companies have endured in recent months.

China has not shut down the well-known servers that have been used in these attacks or arrested their operators, so the detention of three people in central China is unlikely to make much of a difference, said Ronald J. Deibert, a cybersecurity expert at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto.

“Their crackdown on this apparent hacker group needs to be placed in a broader context,” Mr. Deibert said. “I would characterize it as window dressing.”

Public security officers in Hubei province also shut down a Web site said to be used to raise more than $1 million in membership fees from 12,000 paying members, according to the Wuhan Evening Post in Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei. The members received software tools for penetrating computer security systems and online accounts.

The Web site, the Black Hawk Safety Net, was started in 2005 and had another 170,000 free members, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.

Full Story ~ The New York Times

• Creation and burning DVD video with interactive menus
• Provides several templates for DVD menus v1.8.0
• Support of AVI, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGG, WMV and other file formats
• Support of MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, Xvid, MP2, MP3, AC-3 and other audio and video formats
• Support of multi-core processor
• Allows using MPEG and VOB files without reencoding, see FAQ
• Allows put files with different audio/video format on one DVD (support of titleset)
• User-friendly interface with support of drag & drop
• Flexible menu creation on the basis of scalable vector graphic
• Import of image file for background
• Placing of buttons, text, images and other graphic objects anywhere on the menu screen
• Changing the font/color and other parameters of buttons and graphic object
• Scaling of buttons and graphic objects
• Coping of any menu object or whole menu
• DVD scripting

Download DVDStyler 1.80 Final

K-Lite Codec Pack Changelog:

• Updated Media Player Classic Home Cinema to version 1.3.1595.0
• Changed default video renderer in MPC-HC on Vista/7 to “EVR Sync”
• Changed default H.264 decoder from “ffdshow (libavcodec)” to “DivX H.264″
• This gives better decoding performance, certainly on computers with multiple CPU cores
• Updated Gabest MP4 splitter to version 1.3.1572.0
• Updated AC3ACM to version 1.5
• Updated Codec Tweak Tool to version 4.2.0
• Updated Win7DSFilterTweaker to version 2.8
• Minor changes

Downloads (32-bit):
K-Lite Codec Pack 5.7.0 : Full
K-Lite Codec Pack 5.7.0 : Mega
K-Lite Codec Pack 5.7.0 : Standard
K-Lite Codec Pack 5.7.0 : Basic

Download (64-bit):
K-Lite Codec Pack 3.2.0 : 64-bit

This is a bundle of 64-bit DirectShow filters that can be used together with 64-bit players, such as Windows Media Center. This pack can co-exist without problems with the regular (32-bit) K-Lite Codec Pack.

The 64-bit versions of Windows can run 32-bit software perfectly fine. So it is recommended to use the regular K-Lite Codec Pack when possible. That one contains more, better and faster decoders. You only need 64-bit filters for use with 64-bit applications.

Contents of version 3.2.0 : 64-bit

• ffdshow [revision 3158]
• AC3Filter [version 1.63b]
• AC3File [version 0.7b]
• Haali Media Splitter [version 1.9.63.13]
• MP4 splitter (Gabest) [version 1.3.1572.0]
• FLV splitter (Gabest) [version 1.3.1572.0]
• RealMedia splitter (Gabest) [version 1.3.1572.0]
• MPEG splitter (Gabest) [version 1.3.1572.0]
• CDXA Reader (Gabest) [version 1.3.1572.0]
• DirectVobSub [version 2.37]
• Codec Tweak Tool [version 4.2.0]
• Win7DSFilterTweaker [version 2.8]
• GraphStudio [version 0.3.2.0]

In fact, it is a great time to run a defragmenter, as its impact on system resources won’t disturb your work at all. Furthermore, due to its ability to run automatically, Auslogics Disk Defrag Screen Saver doesn’t require any user interaction.

Disk Defrag Screen Saver will perform defragmentation automatically while you are away from your computer. Once you resume your work, defragmentation stops immediately, allowing you to continue your work uninterrupted. Disk Defrag Screen Saver will wait until your next break to proceed with disk defragmentation.

While running, Auslogics Disk Defrag Screen Saver generates a well designed real-time fragmentation map. It allows tracking disk fragmentation level and overall defragmentation progress, as well as the name of currently defragmented file and its path.

Download Auslogics Disk Defrag Screen Saver 1.1.1.50

• Improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS
• Resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instances
• Fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard

Products compatible with this software update:
• iPhone (all models)
• iPod touch (all models)

For feature descriptions and complete instructions, see the user guides for iPhone and iPod touch at:
http://support.apple.com/manuals/iphone
http://support.apple.com/manuals/ipodtouch

For more information about iPhone and iPod touch, go to:
http://www.apple.com/iphone
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch

To troubleshoot your iPhone or iPod touch, or to view additional support information go to:
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone
http://www.apple.com/support/ipodtouch

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

Social media is increasingly becoming fertile ground for hackers to attack companies with spam and malware, according to a report released Monday by a security firm.

According to a Sophos survey of nearly 500 companies worldwide, the number of firms that reported attacks through social media increased by 70 percent compared with the year before.

IT professionals became more concerned that employees’ everyday actions on social-networking sites are exposing companies to attacks. Sixty percent of interviewees said they were most concerned about security vulnerabilities in Facebook.

Criminals banked on the inherent trust people have on their contacts, said Sophos senior security adviser Chet Wisniewski.

“Social media provides criminals with an opportunity. When I get a message on Facebook from my wife and I see a link, I’m going to click it,” Wisniewski said.

Online lures known as phishing schemes and malware attacks – malicious programs that aim to steal private information or control a victim’s computers – expanded their presence in social media sites by around 10 percent in the past eight months.

Sophos identified 50,000 variants of existing viruses in 2009, almost twice as much as the previous year.

Spam reports, an epidemic that e-mail providers have been considerably effective in staving off through filters, rose 23.6 percent in the same period.

“People reporting spam went from a third to half of all companies. Two out of five are having issues of malware coming from social media,” Wisniewski said.

The troublesome Koobface worm also continued to evolve in sophistication. In 2009, the worm became capable of automatically registering a Facebook account, befriending strangers and posting malicious content on the walls of potential victims, the report said.

Other smaller, regional social-networking sites are also at risk of becoming attack platforms for the theft of consumer or corporate information.

Although a third of the firms said they have blocked Facebook from employees’ computers because it hampers productivity, barring social media entirely is no longer an easy choice as many professionals regularly use social media to stay connected to their customers.

Source ~ San Francisco Chronicle