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July 2014

A first look at Vuze Leap, a lightweight torrent client with search built-in

The makers of the popular BitTorrent client Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, have released a first public beta version of a new lightweight client they call Vuze Leap.

Why another torrent client? The company addresses that question in a blog post that it published to announce the beta.

Development focus was to create a lightweight modern client that is simple to use but offers all the privacy and security features users would expect from such a client.

MUJI to Sleep is a free relaxing-sounds app for Android

I'm somewhat of a fanatic when it comes to optimizing sleep. While I have not convinced myself yet to try and reduce it drastically, I have tried different things to make it better and improve my overall health in the process.

I don't sleep well most of the time which I attribute to a couple of things including working long-hours in front of a computer monitor and being rather noise sensitive.

I hear things that others don't hear or don't mind hearing which is one of the things that is keeping me awake at night.

The Best VPN extensions for Google Chrome and Chromium-based browsers

Virtual Private Networks, short VPN, serve a variety of purposes. From providing unfiltered access to contents on the Internet over privacy and security benefits to bypassing country-locks of select services.

Regardless of for what it is used for, it works always in the same way. A secure connection is created from the local computer system to a remote server that is maintained by the VPN company. From there, connections to the Internet are established.

Why files may take up more disk space on Windows

If you check a folder's properties on Windows, values for the data's size and the data's size on disk are displayed to you.

These values may differ slightly or a lot, depending on the file system used and the type of files stored on the drive.

It can happen that you see a Gigabyte or more of a difference between the two values.

You can test this by right-clicking any folder or drive letter in Windows Explorer and selecting the properties option from the context menu.

How to deal with Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUP)

If you are running a modern security suite, chance is that you may have received notifications about so-called PUP or PUA on the PC.

Companies use their own definition and list of programs that fall into the category which makes it difficult to come up with a catch-all definition.

Generally speaking, any program that is distributed as part of another but not needed for its functionality can be considered a potentially unwanted software.

How to play 1080p videos on YouTube in Firefox

Firefox users who visit Google's video hosting site YouTube may have noticed that the site limits the resolutions that videos are made available in.

In particular, any video resolution higher than 720p may not be made available. Other video resolutions that are available may not be provided as well including 144p, 240p or 480p.

It does not really matter if Adobe's Flash Player is being used to watch videos or if YouTube's HTML5 video player is used: resolutions are limited, usually to 360p and 720p, with all other resolutions are missing from the selection menu.

How useful is SUPERAntiSpyware’s new System Investigator tool?

Support.com has released version 6.0 of the anti-malware software SUPERAntiSpyware recently. One of the main new features of the application is the new System Investigator tool which scans key locations of the system and provides you with suggestions based on its findings.

This sounds a lot like what tools such as HiJackThis do, on paper at least.

How to backup and restore Winamp

Winamp Backup Tool is a lightweight program for Windows that enables you to backup your Winamp configuration to restore it at a later point in time.

AOL announced in 2013 that it would close Winamp and all associated services such as the Shoutcast directory.

Plans changed eventually and Winamp was acquired by Radionomy instead ensuring that development of the player continued. It also meant that services such as Shoutcast would remain accessible on the Internet.

SyncNet is a decentralized web browser that uses BitTorrent Sync

When you connect to a website or service on today's Internet, connections to servers hosting site contents are established. If a server is not available at the time, some part of a website or all of it may not be displayed in the program you are using.

While there are some options to grab the data anyway, caching for instance, you would still rely on a limited amount of servers and companies to deliver those contents to you.

Mozilla to improve address bar behavior in Firefox, may impact some add-ons

Mozilla has enabled a new feature in the most recent Nightly version of the Firefox web browser, version 34 at the time of writing, that introduces changes to Firefox's address bar behavior and backend.

Firefox's auto-complete functionality, which powers suggestions displayed to the user when text is inserted into the address bar, has been powered by two components, history and urlinline up until now.