AOL has released, get this, an actual useful & interesting tool Their new Active Security Moniter, which is free to everyone, quickly scans your computer to see how secure it is. After its done it'll give you a percentage of how secure it really is, as well as tips of how to improve it. Mine got a 91%, with its only major short coming being that my wireless conection isn't password protected. The tools pretty useful. Check it out today:

http://free.aol.com/tryaolfree/index3.adp?promo=766187&service=asm

Windows Vista Beta 2 is now fully open to the public! Now anyone can download the newest Windows OS & test it out. If your computer's poweful enough to handle it, & if you can handle an OS that's still in beta, than hop on over to the Microsoft website & get it now! You can bet that I'm gonna do it. ^_^ Get it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/preview.mspx

PC World has published on its website the 25 worst tech products of all time. From the article:

At PC World, we spend most of our time talking about products that make your life easier or your work more productive. But it's the lousy ones that linger in our memory long after their shrinkwrap has shriveled, and that make tech editors cry out, "What have I done to deserve this?"

They listed AOL as the #1 worse product of all time, & RealPlayer followed at #2. The rest of the list is pretty interesting too. Read it for yourself:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125772,00.asp

Office 2007 isn't the only Beta 2 that Microsoft has just released. Add the Windows Vista OS to that list as well. Earlier the Nebs Blog reported on the requirements of Vista, which seems to be the talk of the town. But now the newest Beta version is available to developers. Check out what PCWorld had to say about it here:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125843,00.asp

Computerworld has posted a review & visual tour of Microsoft's Office 2007 Beta 2. One of the biggest differences in Office 07 is that menues & toolbars are no longer used, but have instead been replaced by "ribbons." The interfaces & graphics are a lot nicer looking too. Check out the complete review & tour for yourself:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9000690

Ever wanted your Firefox browser to have a more anime feel to it? Well a small group has come up with Lolifox, which feels & IS pretty much the same thing as Mozilla's Firefox, except with an anime-like twist. I checked it out, & while still in beta it does show a lot of promise. Check it out for yourself:

http://www.lolifox.com/

Slashdot has got a thread going about the best free anti-virus choices on the web to download. Slashdot's own iamjoltman has listed 3 good choices to choose from, & the reply thread is full of a bunch of other choices to look at. If you're looking for some good free anti-virus protection, this is the page for you. Check it out:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/22/1310211

Windows Media Player 11 isn't due to be released for a couple more days, but today it was found out that a download of it was leaked early. If you don't wanna wait any longer to use WMP11 to watch Nebs TV shows, then the hit the site below to get it now:

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Microsoft-Windows-Media-Player-11-Download-39801.html

The Chicago Sun-Times newspaper had an interesting articel a few weeks ago about free goodies for our cellphone. If you got a cell with Internet access, than you might wanna take a look at what columnist Andy Ihnatko has to say. An online version of the article can be found here:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/worktech/cst-fin-andy30.html

Microsoft has released a 2nd beta version of their new IE7 browser, but this time ANYONE can download it. I've been anticipating this for awhile, so I downloaded it right away.

( View Images of IE7 Here )

The most notable changes are the adding of tabbed browsing & RSS Feeds. The tabbed browsing is what'd you expect, & it's about freaking time Microsoft came outa the stone age & added it to its browser. It feels bulkier than Firefox's tabs, but one unique addition is the ability to see all your tabs in one window at once. That's kinda cool.

The next much needed addition is the inclusion of RSS feeds. IE takes a different spin on this than Firefox does. Instead of having drop-down menues in a BookMark Toolbar, IE7 has all of the feeds lumped together in a new RSS side-window. It's just like their History & Bookmark side-windows, which incidently are also lumped here as well. It's definetly different, but to be honest I like Firefox's drop-down menus a lot more. This isn't to say tha t what Microsoft has done here isn't cool in its own way. When you click on a feed, you're treated to a unqie feed webpage that features the most recent updates on that page. So it's just different than Firefox's method, not worse so to say. While I still do like Firefox's better, let's just see how IE's approach goes.

There's also the new search bar feature, which doesn't have as many plug-ins as Firefox, but does at least have the basics (Google, Amazon, eBay...). Remember that this is still in Beta testing (I've already run into one problem that hinders me updating my site trhough IE7, so some of that will have to be done through Firefox for the time being). But over all this is a welcome update to the ancient IE6 browser. You can get the program at Microsoft's site here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/default.mspx