Monday, November 12, 2001		Downloads of the week

This is a complete and comprehensive tool for diagnosing and benchmarking the computer. It supplies information about, hardware and software system of computer, its multimedia system, devices installed and resources. Also included are several benchmark tests to find out really, reliably and exactly the capability indexes of your hardware. It also supports printing and saving in multiple format — plain-text, html, rtf and doc. It has several information modules. These include Operating system, Advanced power monitor, CMOS, User and locale info, Timezone, Shell folders, Engines, Fonts, System Files, Workstation, Processor, Resources, Processes, Memory, Drives, Display Adapters, Keyboard, Mouse, Printers, Ports, Plug and Play, Internet Settings, Network, Winsock, Internet Explorer, Multimedia Devices, MCI, DirectX, DirectDraw, DirectSound, Interrupt Requests (IRQ’s), DMA Channels, Ports I/O, Memory Resources. The benchmark modules included are Processor Benchmark, Multimedia Benchmark, Memory Benchmark, Harddisk Benchmark, CD Benchmark and Network Benchmark. The program has been tested under Windows ’98, Windows ’98 Second Edition, Windows Me and Windows 2000 and should work in later version of Windows too. Download Fresh Diagnose from www.freshdevices.com

Web bugs are hidden surveillance devices in Web pages. Like cookies, they can be used to track your movements throughout the Web but are harder to spot. Bugnosis can help you find them. Bugnosis operates by analysing the Web pages that you visit while surfing. When it discovers a Web bug, it alerts you with a sound ("uh-oh!") and pops up a window containing details about the Web bug. It also makes visible the Web bugs hidden on the page, so that you can see where they are placed. By revealing Web bugs, Bugnosis makes it possible for ordinary Web users to "watch the watchers." Bugnosis is an educational tool, not a Web bug blocker. Bugnosis has been designed to work on PCs running a Microsoft Windows operating system and the Internet Explorer Web browser, version 5.0 or higher. Bugnosis tags each image it encounters with a list of properties. The properties are described below. Each property is just one additional piece of information — normally, an image will have to have several of the properties below in order to be designated a Web bug. Tiny means that the image takes up a small amount of visual space on the screen, suggesting that the Web designer who placed it intended to hide it from view. Generally speaking, an image will have to be tiny for Bugnosis to designate it a Web bug. But tiny images are also used by Web developers to control the visual layout of a Web page so an image can be tiny without being a Web bug. Once means that the image is only used once within the document. This property helps to distinguish tiny images that are used for tracking of users and those that are used to control the visual layout of the Web page. Domain means that the image comes from a different domain than the original Web document. This suggests that a third-party computer may be tracking the users that visit a particular Website. An image usually has to come from a different domain to be identified as a Web bug. Cookie means that the URL for the image overlaps significantly with information stored in a cookie. This may suggest that a Website is "synchronising cookies," that is, sharing data about you with another Web server. Lengthy means the URL for the image is unusually long and may contain more information than is usually necessary for simply retrieving the image from the Web server. Protocols mean that the URL for the image contains more than one protocol field (i.e., http://). This may suggest that multiple server requests are being made or data is being shared between different servers. TPCookie means that the image comes from a different domain than the document and manipulates a cookie (Third Party Cookie). Third party cookies can be used to track users across multiple Websites. Recognised site means that the URL for the image is in Bugnosis’ list of "well known" Websites. You can download it from www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,15783,tk,hsx,00.asp

Wisdom of other person attracts us. We are always curious about wise phrases and expressions and get even more excited, if these clever announcements were made by the great persons. PC is the virtual world we live in every day, so we couldn’t avoid such curiosity inside it as well. WizQuote will give wisdom to you, quoting expressions of Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Erica Jong, Fran Lebowitz, David Friedman, Franklin P. Jones and George Burns. You can add own quotes by your favourite authors or other famous persons as well. This program has an intelligent, fashionable interface, which is good enough because of its simplicity. All you have to do to see WizQuote in action is to choose the necessary quote and then to add it into the screensaver, using the special button. The idea is simple – quotes will be shown as a text of the screensaver. Probably, you would like to type quotes on your own, using the special parameter of the standard MS text screensaver, but if you want to do this automatically, without any limits and in the most convenient way, WizQuote is for you! Grab pearls of wisdom from www.gemx.com/wizquote_download.php

— Raman Mohan