January 2016

Kaspersky has been toying with a free version of its widely respected antivirus solution for a while now on the company's own Dev Builds server.

Recently, the company released Kaspersky Free to the public. While not the first free product that Kaspersky has released, it is the first free full-blown antivirus solution the company has released.

The main caveat at this time is that the product has only been released official in Russia and the Ukraine.

Dashlane 4 is the latest version of the popular password manager for desktop and mobile devices. The new version features a re-worked and redesigned interface, improved Password Changer site support and more.

Existing users can update the password manager directly, or download the latest version instead from the official website if they prefer that method.

Changes made to the interface of the Windows version of Dashlane become apparent right on start after log in.

The latest Opera Developer version highlights upcoming changes to the web browser's new tab page.

Probably the biggest change is the introduction of news directly on the startpage below the speed dial listing.

While some users of the browser may find the listing there useful, others have probably little use for it considering that only general news are displayed there by default.

Microsoft really, really wants you to upgrade to its new operating system Windows 10. The company uses various strategies to achieve that goal, and one of them is to expand the upgrade offer to small businesses.

The company announced yesterday that it plans to make available the "get Windows 10 app" to small businesses and small organizations as well soon.

Video Time Reversal 2 is a specialized video conversion program for the Windows operating system that enables you to convert video files so that they run backwards.

From Led Zeppelin to the Beatles and Eminem, big artists seem to have a thing for adding secret messages to their songs, and if you are a fan of an artist, you may want to discover those by playing songs or videos backwards.

Sophos Home is a free antivirus solution by Sophos Group, a UK-based company that is most known for its Enterprise market security offerings.

The free antivirus solution market is quite crowded but it seems to have gone downhill a lot in recent time with companies adding more and more features to their products that are not always in the best interest of users.

A new product entering the market, even if backed by a known company, will have a hard time getting traction unless it is offering something new or improvements to traditional protection methods or features.

Netflix Super Browse is a browser extension for Google Chrome that adds an option to the popular streaming service to browse hidden categories.

When you open the Netflix frontpage in your browser of choice, a selection of genres is displayed when you click on the browse menu.

There you find a good dozen genres such as adventures, horror or children & family that you can select to browse Netflix's selection.

While these genres cover a lot of ground on Netflix, you may notice rather quickly that they are far from ideal.

Welcome to the Microsoft Security Bulletins overview for January 2016. It is the first patch day of the year by Microsoft and also the last day Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system is supported by the company.

This means that Windows 8 systems won't receive any more security updates, and that systems that are still running the operating system need to be updated to Windows 8.1 to continue receiving these important updates.

Google researcher Tavis Ormandy discovered a major flaw in the password manager component of TrendMicro Antivirus for Windows recently that had several major security issues that would, among other things, allow websites to run arbitrary commands, expose all stored passwords, or run a "secure browser" that is not secure at all.

It seems that Google is currently investigating security products on Windows, and there especially those that interact with the Chrome web browser or Chromium in one way or the other.

When Mozilla introduced the then-called BrowserID system as a new authentication system for the web in 2011, it had big plans for it.

Designed to be a privacy-focused "one login to rule them all" services, it offered pretty much what similar authentication systems offered by the likes of Facebook or Google offered but without the privacy implications.

Things became complicated quickly when Mozilla decided to rename BrowserID to Persona, and the main reason for that the term Personas was already being used to describe lightweight themes for the Firefox browser.