Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Our personal choice for low-cost, well actually free Windows anti-virus has been AVG for a long time now, which as you can imagine is directly related to the price. There are lots of great alternatives and I cannot or will not attempt to tell you which is the best, however if you are looking for another alternative to AVG, that you can also get for free, check out Microsoft OneCare 2.0, which currently is free after rebates. Amazon is offering OneCare 2.0 for $30 along with a $30 mail-in-rebate, which will in turn lower the cost to $0. Similar to other subscription based services, this $30 will offer one-years worth of protection, after which it will have to be renewed.

Product [Amazon] Via [jkOnTheRun]

Are you proud of everything on your office computer? Are those items you might not be so eager to display really hidden from the view and scrutiny of others? Alas, for the answer is now unequivocally “no.” Your office PC, thanks to Microsoft’s new Big Brother-style software, may now be considered a weapon loaded with ammunition!

This new software is a lazy, ineffectual office worker’s nightmare, for it is capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical well being and competence. This monitoring system would enable computers to wirelessly pick up on a user’s heart rate, galvanic skin response, brain signals, body temperature, facial movements and expressions, blood pressure, and respiration rate. Previously, this technology was only the headache of pilots, fire fighters and NASA astronauts. This patent from Microsoft marks the very first time a company has proposed such a software for use in mainstream offices. 

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James Bond had Q to make all his spy gear function and fashionable.  It seems one company has figured out the functional part.  Meet the Ajoka Buckle Cam, which slips around your waist and transforms itself from a mundane belt holding up your pants into a full color, sound-enabled digital video recording device (DVR).

While the fashion police would probably arrest you on the spot, no one else will

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For the hunter and/or assassin (or both) on your gift list, you might want to consider the very cool Night Scope Illuminator from Xenonics. This company is known exclusively for the development and production of advanced, lightweight and ultra-high intensity illumination products that serve the military, law enforcement, public safety and private sectors.

Their new SuperVision Illuminator was specifically designed for commercial and military applications. It makes it impossible to miss an unsuspecting prey in the dark (even if the stalker is a terrible shot).

This infrared illumination device, when used in conjunction with

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McDonalds recently ran a contest for winning a free MP3 player for text messaging a code. It appears that 10,000 people won an MP3 player and couple free songs. What they didn’t account for was winning some free spyware with their player. It seems that McDonalds didn’t think to carefully when choosing the vendor that supplied their McDonalds branded MP3 player. The MP3 player when plugged in, automatically installed the spyware QQPass that sends password information to a web site as well as other information. It also opens up the computer for backdoor access that can cause even more problems for the infected computers.

We all heard about the Sony rootkit issue with playing Sony CDs and them restricting users from burning to CD as well as opening up the computer to a new vulnerability which spawned even more viruses that compromised the infected computers.

This new McDonalds spyware causes even more problems including the user/password sending to a set server for collection from the developers. This issue is becoming increasingly worrisome for regular computers users, it seems that the playing field isn’t as clear as it used to be. Not only do you have to worry now about playing games online, downloading anything from anywhere or attempting to listen to a CD but you have to worry about what you plugin to your computer and risk losing by doing such.

This story is early in its bad media cycle so it will be interesting to see how badly it gets spun and how McDonalds will deal with the issue.

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