How to Enable What U Hear Recording

For those of you who want to record what you are hearing over your speakers/headset.

You will need to un-hide and enable recording options. If you are using a Creative Sound Blaster sound card this option will be called "What U Hear" if you are using another audio device such as Realtek on-board or generic sound devices this option will be called "Stereo Mix".

For the tutorial I am going to show how to un-hide and enable the "What U Hear" option. The same steps may be followed for the "Stereo Mix" option also.



Here's How:

1. First open your audio options. "Start/Control Panel/Sound"

2. Now go to the "Recording" tab.

3. You will need to right click and check the following options:

5. Now that the hidden options are visible, right click on each of them and click on enable. 

6. Right click on the What U Hear option (Stereo Mix for non Sound Blaster devices) and click on Set as default device.

7. Once the device is set as default you will be able to use the "What U Hear"/"Stereo Mix" option in your applications to record the audio you are currently hearing over your speakers/headset.

If you wish to record from the mic or use it in a game you can come back to this tab in the audio options and right click the mic and set it as default again.

I am sure there is probably a way to use both the "What U Hear"/"Stereo Mix" while still using the mic but I have not gotten that far since I only need to record audio once in a while. So I generally just leave the mic default until I am ready to record audio then I switch for that operation.

I hope this helps all of those who have had issues recording audio being played back over the speakers/headset.

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How to Enable or Disable Autorun for Removable Media in Windows 7

Information :

This tutorial will show you how to enable the AutoRun feature of AutoPlay in Windows 7, which is disabled by default, for external drives.

Note :

Autoplay feature enable Windows to pop up the default options when a removable drives like USB flash drive or CD ROM is inserted.

By default in Windows 7, Vista, and XP now, the only [Autorun] keys available for USB/removable drives are below. The rest of the keys are ignored. This tutorial has no affect on this.

• label - This key is responsible for displaying a custom name (label) for a CD/DVD or USB drive in Computer when a CD/DVD is inserted or a USB drive is connected.
• icon - This key is responsible for displaying a custom icon for a CD/DVD or USB drive in Computer when a CD/DVD is inserted or a USB drive is connected.

Warning :

Autoplay feature is, by default, disabled in Windows 7 due to security reasons. Many malwares like Conficker Worm can autorun on your computer if an infected USB drive or CD is inserted.However, its useful to enable autoplay as it gives quick access to default choices when any removable drive is inserted. Anyways, use it at your risk.

EXAMPLE: AutoPlay

Method 1:

1. Go to Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\AutoPlay.

 

To Enable:
At the top, check Use Autoplay for all devices and Click Save.

To Disable: 
Uncheck Use Autoplay for all devices and Click Save.

Method 2:

1. Click Start and in the Search box, type gpedit.msc and press Enter.
Now browse to Computer Configuration\ Administrative Templates\ Windows Components\ Autoplay Policies\ Turn off Autoplay. 

To Enable: 
Change the value of Turn off Autoplay to disabled.

To Disable:
Change the value of Turn off Autoplay to enabled.

That's it,

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New Mac Defender variant "requires no password"

The Mac Defender virus that has plagued Apple since the beginning of May has mutated into a more dangerous strain, according to security firm Intego.

Several variations of the fake antivirus malware have appeared since Mac Defender first emerged, but Intego claims the latest is more of a threat because it no longer needs an admin password for installation.

Unlike the previous variants of this fake antivirus, no administrator’s password is required to install this program

“Unlike the previous variants of this fake antivirus, no administrator’s password is required to install this program,” the company said on its blog.

“Since any user with an administrator’s account – the default if there is just one user on a Mac – can install software in the Applications folder, a password is not needed," the post said.

“This package installs an application – the downloader – named avRunner, which then launches automatically. At the same time, the installation package deletes itself from the user’s Mac, so no traces of the original installer are left behind.”

Intego said it was grading the issue as a medium-level threat, partly because the widespread attention to the virus had led to SEO poisoning, with malware sites appearing high in search results.

According to Intego, the new variant comes in two parts. Firstly, a downloader and installation package called avSetup.pkg downloads automatically from poisoned websites.

The second part of the malware is a new version of the MacDefender application called MacGuard that avRunner downloads from an IP address that is hidden in an image file in avRunner’s Resources folder.

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Skype hit by global crash

Skype has been knocked offline, with users reporting the app is failing to login and crashing.

Reports suggest the problem is global, and affects the app on any platform. The VoIP firm has confirmed the problem, but wasn't offering much detail at the time of publication. Skype's "heartbeat" status page is not showing any problems.

Microsoft haven't even signed off on the Skype deal yet and it's already down

"Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype and making calls," spokesman Peter Parkes said in a short message on the Skype blog. "We're investigating and hope to have more details to share soon."

The VoIP service's website was also down, possibly from a traffic spike as users hunt for information.

"Looks like our server is down," it reads. "This usually means that we’re doing maintenance work or there are too many visitors at skype.com and we cannot cope with the popularity. In any case — we’re already fixing it and everything should be back to normal in a few minutes."

That Microsoft recently bought Skype has led many to joke that the Redmond firm is already bringing its influence to bear.

"Microsoft haven't even signed off on the Skype deal yet and it's already down," said one user on Twitter.

"It didn't take long for Microsoft to work its usual magic," added another.

"Skype crash is global," said another. "Now it's officially a Microsoft product."

Update: Skype has offered a solution to get the service back up and running here.

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Google unveils Wallet NFC payments system

Google has announced its mobile phone payments system – a near field communication (NFC) technology that the company touts as turning a phone into a wallet.

The company said it was trialling the Google Wallet system with retailers and a trio of payment card companies, and planned to release it to the public soon.

The announcement is the latest in a flurry of activity in the contactless payment arena, with Orange and O2 bringing similar NFC payments to the UK this summer.

It’s aimed at making it easier for you to pay for and save on the goods you want

Google said the system would combine a payment platform for consumers with marketing tools for retailers.

“Google Wallet is a key part of our ongoing effort to improve shopping for both businesses and consumers,” Rob von Behren and Jonathan Wall, engineers on the project, wrote in a company blog.

“It’s aimed at making it easier for you to pay for and save on the goods you want, while giving merchants more ways to offer coupons and loyalty programs to customers, as well as bridging the gap between online and offline commerce.”

The company said phone owners would be able to store credit cards, offers, loyalty and gift cards, and claimed that “someday even things like boarding passes, tickets, ID and keys could be stored in Google Wallet”.

It would make losing your handset a nightmare, but Google said it would address security issues through a PIN code that must be entered before making a purchase to prevent unauthorised access and payments.

The company touted the launch as the beginning of “an open commerce ecosystem”, with plans to develop APIs that would enable integration with numerous partners.

However, big question marks remain, such as the fact that the payments system doesn’t work when mobile phone batteries are flat – a regular occurrence with current handsets.

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Internet Explorer hit by "cookiejacking" flaw

A flaw in Internet Explorer could let hackers steal credentials to access FaceBook, Twitter and other websites, a researcher has said.

Rosario Valotta, an independent security researcher based in Italy, called the technique "cookiejacking."

"Any website. Any cookie. Limit is just your imagination," he said.

Any website. Any cookie. Limit is just your imagination

Hackers can exploit the flaw to access cookies, which hold the login name and password to a web account, Valotta said via email. Once a hacker has that cookie, he or she can use it to access the same site, he added.

The vulnerability affects all versions of Internet Explorer, including IE 9, on every version of the Windows operating system.

To exploit the flaw, the hacker must persuade the victim to drag and drop an object across the PC's screen before the cookie can be hijacked.

That sounds like a difficult task, but Valotta said he was able to do it fairly easily. He built a puzzle that he put up on Facebook in which users are challenged to "undress" a photo of an attractive woman.

"I published this game online on Facebook and in less than three days, more than 80 cookies were sent to my server," he said. "And I've only got 150 friends."

Not high risk

Microsoft said there is little risk a hacker could succeed in a real-world cookiejacking scam.

"Given the level of required user interaction, this issue is not one we consider high risk," said Microsoft spokesman Jerry Bryant.

"In order to possibly be impacted a user must visit a malicious website, be convinced to click and drag items around the page and the attacker would need to target a cookie from the website that the user was already logged into," Bryant said.

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FREE Download ESET NOD32 Antivirus 5 and ESET Smart Security 5 Beta

ESET has released Beta versions of NOD32 Antivirus 5 and Smart Security 5 to public.
These new versions introduce a batch of new technological improvements coupled with advanced features to protect your PC from all types of threats, including viruses, worms, rootkits and spyware.
ESET Smart Security 5 lets you start working on your computer immediately after booting, without compromising your security. This new version of ESET Smart Security detects all types of Internet-borne threats. These including social media scams and social engineering, to which your family members and kids are exposed daily.
The UI has also undergone a number of usability and design modifications with the aim to enhance the overall user experience. The most frequently used actions are available from all screens. "Tools" pane now provides a dashboard-like look that is now even more intuitive and transparent.
These versions can be installed in Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are available.
You can download the free Beta versions using following links:
Download Free ESET NOD32 Antivirus 5 Beta
Download Free ESET Smart Security 5 Beta

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Review: HTC Flyer

HTC is well known for ploughing its own furrow when it comes to mobile devices. It insists on using its custom Sense UI on Android smartphones, and its first tablet, the HTC Flyer, is no different. Where most modern tablets are opting for Android 3, this device plumps for a Sense-enhanced version of Android 2.3.

If that sounds strange, just wait until we get to the rest of the Flyer’s quirks. Instead of joining the 10in herd, it’s a 7in device like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it doesn’t have a dual-core processor either – in its place there’s a fast, single-core 1.5GHz CPU. It comes with a stylus for old-school pen operation, augmenting the usual finger-driven tapping, swiping and pinching. And in another interesting move, there won’t be a Wi-Fi-only version of the Flyer – only 16GB and 32GB models equipped with 3G.

It’s definitely different, then, but the key question is: does this make it any better? Well, it certainly looks the part, and the 7in 1,024 x 600 screen is lovely. Anyone worried the stylus might mean reverting to resistive technology can breathe easy; it’s a capacitive unit, and a pretty bright one at that. We measured it at 379cd/m², considerably brighter than the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Contrast isn’t bad either at 654:1, lending movies, games and pictures real punch and vigour.

We like the idea of the stylus, too. Tap anywhere on most screens and the Flyer takes a screenshot that can then be annotated using a series of pens and brushes. Hold down one button on the stylus and you can highlight text; hold the other and you can erase what you’ve just scribbled down. The selection of brushes and nibs, plus HTC’s Notepad app, will give your absent-minded doodles a whole new lease of life.

Build and design

As with most HTC devices of late, the Flyer is nicely put together. It’s hewn from a chunk of aluminium with white plastic bumpers at the top and bottom of the rear panel, and feels better made than the Galaxy Tab, which is built mostly from less classy, shiny plastic. It’s light enough to hold comfortably in one hand and use as an eBook reader, something you certainly can’t say of the 10in Android tablet crowd.

In fact, as it’s running Android 2.3.3, the Flyer feels more like a phone than the recent tablets we’ve looked at, and that’s an impression underpinned by the presence of the HTC Sense UI with its handy widgets and apps.

You get Friend Stream, the familiar flip clock on the homescreen, plus – as it’s a new version of Sense – a host of useful tweaks and enhancements targeted specifically at the tablet format. Flip the Flyer into landscape mode and the desktop rearranges itself appropriately (which HTC smartphones don’t do), and most of the Sense applications have a split-panel landscape view. Extra apps include HTC Watch, which adds a movie purchase and rental portal in a similar vein to Samsung’s Movies portal, while My Shelf adds an eBook store, courtesy of Kobo.

Churls may suggest that the Flyer should be roundly criticised for its decision to stick with Android 2.3, but on this evidence we’ve no problem with it all. If anything, the Flyer feels more rounded and mature than any of the Android 3 devices we’ve yet tested.

Performance

Our tests suggest performance is fine, too, with scores of 2,094 in Quadrant; two seconds in the SunSpider JavaScript test; and six seconds in our BBC homepage load test – all reasonably speedy scores, if not groundbreaking. The UI feels responsive, with transitions from desktop to desktop feeling snappy and immediate, but web page scrolling and panning operations judder occasionally.

Battery life is middling: our looped podcast video played for 8hrs 4mins before draining the life out of the Flyer. That’s on a par with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, but a long way behind the huge battery life of the iPad 2, or even the Motorola Xoom.

There are bigger problems, however. The 5-megapixel/720p camera on the rear has no flash or image stabilisation, plus quality is poor, with heavy over-compression ruining shots in all conditions and noise spoiling video and stills in low light. Although you can add a micro-USB card to the device, there’s no upstream USB port and, surprisingly, it also lacks an HDMI output.

All this pales into insignificance next to the fattest fly in the ointment, however – the Flyer’s frankly ludicrous price. The 16GB version will set you back £480 and the 32GB £600, prices that hover around the level of a 3G iPad 2 and exceed the Galaxy Tab by a long, long distance. Perhaps if the price had been £100 lower we’d have been able to give this tablet the thumbs up; as it is, though, it’s a tough, tough sell.

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Review: Nero Kwik Media

Nero’s latest media management software is lightweight, modular – and, for the basic package, free. But it really is basic. The Kwik Media front-end (a rebranded version of Nero MediaHub) looks like a cross between Windows Media Player and Windows Live Gallery, but it’s less versatile than either. The music browser is arranged around albums, rather than tracks, which makes creating playlists a pain. And the rating system is flatly binary – files are either “favorites” or they’re not.

In Kwik Media’s photo and video modules you do find a few features that go beyond the bare rudiments: these include basic photo enhancements, one-click uploading to online services and slideshows with music.

But the point of Kwik Media isn’t the features it comes with: it’s the ones you can add. Click on the Nero Store link and you’re taken not (as you might expect) to an iTunes-like media store, but to a list of purchasable plugins that give Kwik Media new capabilities.

The first hit, proverbially speaking, is free. The Kwik Burn plugin, which lets you burn music and data discs, is a free “purchase” – a clever incentive for new users to sign up to the store. There’s also a 99p Kwik Faces plugin that adds face recognition to the photo management module.

After this, the price goes up. The free package can import files from removable drives and players, but if you want to sync the other way you’ll need to shell out £5 for the Kwik Move it extension, which also includes transcoding abilities. To watch and burn video DVDs you’ll need to add the Kwik DVD extra, which costs another fiver.

Other plugins add extra video and audio codecs (£5), extra slideshow themes (£8) and Blu-ray playback (£30). There’s no audio or video editing module, no Blu-ray authoring and no backup module. But if you need those advanced features you can buy the full Multimedia Suite directly from the store, within Kwik Media.

In principle, the idea of paying only for features you require is appealing. And Kwik Media’s various components come mostly at pocket money prices. The trouble is, most of what they do can be achieved for free with other packages – in many cases, ones bundled with Windows. Effectively, you’re paying for little more than Nero’s simplistic integrated interface – a pretty poor deal, in our view.

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Review: Patriot Supersonic Magnum 64GB

Patriot is best known for its solid-state drives and aftermarket RAM upgrades, but it does have other strings to its bow, as the Supersonic Magnum demonstrates. It’s a USB flash drive, but with a difference: touting USB 3, write speeds of 120MB/sec and read speeds of 200MB/sec, it promises to be the fastest flash drive we’ve ever seen.

It all comes sealed in a good-looking, slim aluminium enclosure, and weighs a pocket-friendly 24g. It feels sturdy enough to survive rattling around in a bag or pocket, and our only practical complaint is that the lid has a tendency to come off rather too easily.

Within the Supersonic Magnum’s dainty housing, Patriot has squeezed in a single-chip, eight-channel USB 3 controller, plus 64GB of MLC NAND flash (a 128GB version is also available). This contributes to very quick performance indeed.

Our Windows file-copy tests saw the Patriot write large files at 114MB/sec and read them back at 169MB/sec, much faster than the SSD-based Iomega SSD Flash, and streets in front of bog-standard USB 2 drives. AS SSD told a similar story: sequential write and read speeds just exceeded Patriot’s claims, with results of 121MB/sec and 205MB/sec respectively.

Taxing the Patriot with smaller file sizes saw those figures tumble dramatically. Writing 15,000 small files in our own Windows file-copy tests dropped the transfer rate to only 4.6MB/sec, while reading those files back from the Patriot gave an average throughput of 24.1MB/sec. Pushing the drive even harder with AS SSD’s 4K tests saw the Supersonic Magnum flounder, with write speeds of 0.2MB/sec and read speeds of 7MB/sec. In both tests, the drive became noticeably toasty to the touch.

Still, it’s worth emphasising that these small file transfers aren’t the kind of scenario you’ll regularly meet under real-world usage; by any standards, this is comfortably the quickest thumb drive we’ve reviewed.

The more pressing question is one of cost: at £138, the Supersonic Magnum finds itself in a rather tough position. The ultimate in pocket-sized performance was never going to be cheap, but at £2.49 per formatted gigabyte, it will be more than most people can stomach.

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Review: DrayTek Vigor 2830Vn

It’s been a long time coming, but DrayTek’s Vigor 2830 family of business routers makes some much needed improvements, as evidenced by the huge feature list. Taking the old 2820 as a starting point, the top of the range 2830Vn crams in an SPI firewall, triple WAN ports, an integrated ADSL2+ modem, VoIP support, 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless and optional web content filtering.

The LAN ports have been upgraded to Gigabit speeds, and for WAN connections you have the ADSL2+ modem, a fifth Gigabit Ethernet port and USB for an optional 3G modem. Failover can be applied to each of those, and if all three are active you can use load-balancing policies to direct specific traffic and protocols to selected interfaces.

Along with 3G modems and printers, the USB port now supports storage devices, presenting their contents as network shares and as an FTP site. You can create users and decide on their read and write privileges, and each has a home directory on the device.

However, it’s a USB 1.1 port, so performance is excruciatingly slow. Using a USB stick, we connected to the router using the FileZilla FTP client and saw read and write speeds of just 2.1MB/sec and 1.5MB/sec.

For wireless, the 2830Vn supports the 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrums, but not simultaneously. However, it can now present up to four SSIDs, each with their own encryption schemes. You can apply black and white MAC address lists to each SSID, and clients can be isolated so they can’t see users on the other wireless networks. Different upload and download rate controls can also be applied to each SSID.

VoIP features are basic, but it’s easy enough to add a SIP account and create dial plans for the router’s phone ports. Two phones can be connected via a port-doubler cable (which isn’t included) and the second RJ-11 port is used to route calls over PSTN.

DrayTek partners with Commtouch for web content filtering, and once licensed you get a list of 64 URL categories to play with. During testing it delivered a clean sheet, with the gambling and games categories blocking our attempts to visit these types of sites.

Draytek’s controls for IM and P2P are a cut above the rest, letting you control precisely what can be done with them. We tested this with Windows Live Messenger and were able to control the login process, chat, file transfers, video and game playing.

And a final new feature is user management, which can be employed to control Internet usage. The router can manage up to 200 accounts, where each defines an authentication method and a policy, including QoS settings, a time schedule and controls for web, IM and P2P usage.

All that’s lacking is some kind of antivirus and anti-spam feature. If that’s a must, we recommend Cyberoam’s CR15wi for around £100 more – it also uses Commtouch and has more security features than you can shake a stick at. That omission aside, however, the DrayTek Vigor 2830Vn offers great value and some welcome improvements.

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Report: Google to unveil mobile payments this week

Google will take the wraps off a mobile payment system tomorrow that lets consumers pay at checkout with phones instead of cards, a source said, hoping to beat Visa and others to the punch.

The move comes after Orange and O2 announced plans to bring similar NFC payment systems to the UK this summer.

Google will work with MasterCard, to launch the system, the source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Google has teamed with MasterCard and Citigroup to develop the system, earlier reports said.

The experience of buying things will be better, faster, cheaper

Google invited reporters to attend a "partner event" on Thursday in New York to demonstrate what it called its "latest innovations." It plans to unveil a mobile payments system that will run on the Android, Bloomberg added.

A source familiar with the matter confirmed Google would launch the program. Citigroup did not respond to requests for comment. Google and MasterCard declined comment.

Shoppers abroad, especially in Asia, can already wave phones at the check-out counter to pay for everything from groceries to gasoline, while Orange is allowing payments via an NFC Barclaycard system at some shops and cafes using a Samsung handset.

"There's room for more than one competitor," said Google Ventures Managing Partner Bill Maris, speaking about the industry in general.

Such services would appeal to consumers if they can help them save money or shorten their time in line at the supermarket check-out, he added. "The experience of buying things will be better, faster, cheaper," he said.

Details are sketchy, but the Wall Street Journal reported Google was unlikely to get a cut of transactions, focusing instead on benefiting by helping retailers target ads and discount offers to Android users close to stores.

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