Many people have never even heard of this browser, despite the massive amount of press it received late last year. I randomly asked about 200 people yesterday what their thoughts are on Lunascape 6.0 ORION – their newest beta version. There were only four people who replied that they have ever tried it, and only two of those who currently use it. Both of those people are, not surprisingly, developers.

Lunascape makes use of all three major web rendering engines: Gecko (Firefox), Trident (Internet Explorer) and WebKit (Safari and Chrome). People who use the browser can instantly switch between the three different engine modes by right-clicking a browser tab or by clicking on the engine switch button that you’ll find at the bottom-left of the screen.

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If you’ve ever tried to lookup the location of an IP address, check the status of DNS propagation, or wanted to check the health of your DNS or mail server,  you’re probably familiar with DNSstuff.com. It used to be an incredibly useful site – when it was free. While DNSstuff.com does still offer a selection of free tools, full access has now reached $79/year! While no free site offers every tool available on dnsstuff.com, here are 10 free sites that offer a good selection of alternatives.

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The forums are still available at a new domain: http://www.spywareinfoforum.com

Looking for spywareinfo.com and getting a GoDaddy parking page? Or, looking for the forums at forums.spywareinfo.com and getting a 404 error? You’re not alone. Try the new domain name, and you’ll find the old forum we’ve come to respect and admire. Why the change? Mike Healan the founder of the site has not been heard from in many months, and the spywareinfo.com name appears to have expired. However, the good people running the spyware removal forums didn’t want to let such a valuable resource die, so they planned ahead and registered a new name, spywareinfoforum.com. The change was actually made a couple of months ago, so most search engine results should point to the new domain. However, there are thousands of links from other sites to spywareinfo.com, and who knows how many bookmarks.

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Google is expected to release their own version of a web browser today, titled Google Chrome. Chrome is an open source web browser, introduced with a comic book.

Mozilla’s Firefox is funded almost exclusively by Google through a deal that runs through 2011. This agreement defaults Google as Firefox’s homepage, and search. While Mozilla ought to be worried, Google Chrome is an assault on the entire browser market. With 60% of the search market share, Google has plenty of opportunity to promote its own browser. This places not only Firefox, but also Internet Explorer, Opera, and other browsers in it’s crosshairs.

This surprise announcement, has also lead many to wonder if Google might also have its sights set on a bigger target. A Google operating system. Maybe Chrome is Google’s operating system?

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The first thing that comes to mind upon hearing the word spam, for most people, is an email advertising certain enhancements to the male body, not the cheap pork brand – which is actually the source of the word. This is not surprising: in 2006, 40% of all e-mails sent – 12 billion per day – were classified as spam emails, and that figure continues to grow constantly as spam vendors evolve and develop their spamming practices.

Many people have had their personal email boxes completely flooded with spam emails – but just how massive is this phenomenon is in real life, for a real person? What websites send the most spam? How do your actions influence the amount of spam sent? Finding answers to these is just the purpose of the recent McAfee research, the results of which have been posted last June. McAfee took spam surveys on a whole new level. 50 volunteers from around the world have been given a computer and email accounts and participated in this research, creatively named Spammed Persistently All Month (SPAM). They have been asked to submit their email addresses to as many websites as possible, including ‘get rich quick’ plans, ‘work from home’ websites, ad clicking websites, and free giveaways: iPods, vacations, etc., and similar.

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Many Yahoo Mail users report been getting a Google search results page that continuously pops up when trying to check their Yahoomail. The page title contains http://ad.yieldmanager.com/st?..

Since the first result on the search page is often for a topic in the malware removal forum of this site, some people even think we’re somehow responsible. While we’re not yet sure why these users are being redirected, we can tell you how to fix it.

• Download Trend Micro’s HijackThis
• Close your browser and Install HijackThis
• Open HijackThis, Select Do a system scan only button
• In the results, find this line:

O2 – BHO: Browser Address Error Redirector – {CA6319C0-31B7-401E-A518-A07C3DB8F777} – c:\windows\system32\BAE.dll

• Tick the checkbox next to that line, and select the Fix Checked button (DO NOT select any other lines without assistance).
• Restart your browser and navigate to Yahoomail. You should now be able to access it.

UPDATE: Thanks to Chris’ comment, it seems a number of people may be having this problem after Spybot Search & Destroy modifies their hosts file after using the “immunize” feature. Since editing your hosts file can be tricky for some, here’s an easy method to restore your hosts file:

Please download HostsXpert

1. Unzip HostsXpert.zip
2. Double click on HostsXpert.exe
3. Then click on “Restore Original Hosts” to restore your Hosts file to its default condition.
4. Click on Make Hosts Read Only to secure it against further changes.
5. Close program when complete.

If you have any questions, or need further assistance, please read our malware cleaning guide.

Sugarsync (www.sugarsync.com) is one of the online storage system offerings that are out there, and I recently had the opportunity to test the service out. This feature-rich product is more than just an offsite storage system; Sugarsync not only allows you to sync your computer with the online backups, but allows you to sync files across multiple computers, access your data from anywhere, including your mobile phone, and provides both dynamic and static storage spaces.

Everyone knows the importance of keeping good backups of your computer data, especially anyone who’s ever lost data due to a hard drive crash, natural catastrophe, or any other reason. Many people, however, don’t back their data up regularly; it can be a time-consuming process that’s not always easily automated. This is one of a series of articles we’re doing on ways to backup your data. Read our previous article for an overview of different backup strategies available.

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Over the last few years, Mozilla has taken quite a large slice of the internet browser market.  Its community-developed Firefox, is now already in its 3rd version, which has been released today.  Firefox has been praised for its security features, and often declared safer than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer by security experts. The new Firefox boasts, in addition to a comprehensive redesign of its looks and a host of new features, several new security enhancements which promise to make it even more secure.

But Firefox isn’t the only player in the web browser game. Another recent player is Opera. Actually, it’s not new, per se. Several years ago, before Firefox’s breakthrough into the market, Opera was a paid browser. Later, Opera released an ad-supported free version, and then finally released a fully free version, without any advertising whatsoever, in order to try and capture a larger market share. The release of various beta versions of Firefox 3 took most of the attention of the media, however, and the news about the release of the new 9.5 version of Opera was overlooked. Along with an update of its appearance, the addition of several new gadgets and features, and speed optimization, Opera added a security feature which is very similar to one offered by Firefox 3; both of these enhancements will be described later in this article.

So, is Opera a real player in the browser scene? Can it beat the unbeatable? Let’s find out.

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Opera 9.5 was released yesterday (June 12, 2008). Firefox 3 final will be released next Tuesday (June 17, 2008). Among the many new features that each browser is touting are beefed up security enhancements.

Both browsers now have mechanisms that enlist the help of your web browser to prevent a malware infection from known malicious sites, or fraud from known phishing sites. While browsers have offered phishing protection for a while, malware protection is something new.

How does it work?

Attempting to access a site with Firefox 3 that’s known to infect visitors with malware will offer a warning like this:

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While Google may continue to be everyone’s favorite search engine, Windows Live Search has made some recent improvements in their number of results, and relevancy. The Microsoft search engine continues to see updates that make it an attractive alternative.

Today the Live Search blog announced Search and Give.

After you sign in you simply select a charity or school. They will receive a donation of one penny each time you search the web. According to my web history, I’ve totaled 20,039 searches this year. Had my searches been through Search and Give, my charity or school would have received $200. Not bad!

http://www.searchandgive.com/