Interesting Software and System News

[bob3160]

David,
I was hoping this would catch your eye.
Thanks for taring into it. 

[bob3160]

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photofunia.com

Who needs Photoshop

This online site allows you to create some really neat effects.
You can even use it to create an Avatar.
I just created this small example of what can be done with this service:
Before

   
After
   

Avatar


Have Fun.

You can also use Photoshop -  ON LINE:
https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html
Setting up a Free account is required and also includes 2 gig of free storage for your masterpieces.

[DavidR]

I'm looking at the email side of it now ant it is very basic almost like the changed needed with old OSes, changing the email account pop3/smtp server to 127.0.0.1, etc. and in this case setting the Toonel Mapping tab to the actual server address.

Now this I'm sure might mean an interaction with the internet mail provider I haven't tested that bit yet. The other thing is I don't think it can easily handle multiple email accounts on different servers. But there is an option there for new port mapping so I think it will work but everything is very basic.

I just checked my firewall logs to see what it gets up to and you can see that it uses the javaw.exe (sun java runtime) file and the servers it accesses are on serverloft.com

[bob3160]

David,
Are you getting a noticeable benefit out of this program ?
Is it worth the extra work in order to gain the speed benefit this program is supposed to render ?

[Lisandro]

Would you care to expand, I see no sign that this is a hoax

Hmmm ... this is a program that has not been updated in three years.

I wonder what is the business model that allows it to run the servers needed by its users completely for free. 

It does mean that everything you do is going through their servers controlled by who knows.

[DavidR]

David,
Are getting a noticeable benefit out of this program ?

It really is too early to say one way or the other. The one thing I have done is abandon the attempt to integrate it into email as with that proxy the web shield proxy changing the email account server to localhost, it just seems to be in a loop and nothing getting sent and there is no way I would disable avast email scanning just to get it to work.

[bob3160]

there is no way I would disable avast email scanning just to get it to work.

Fully agree.

[DavidR]

Would you care to expand, I see no sign that this is a hoax

Hmmm ... this is a program that has not been updated in three years.

So what, if it doesn't need to be updated is no indication that it is a hoax. http://www.tfd.com/hoax

I wonder what is the business model that allows it to run the servers needed by its users completely for free. 

It does mean that everything you do is going through their servers controlled by who knows.

Again none of these points Alan mentions means it is a hoax, perhaps your choice of word is incorrect.

Business Model:
We don't know the business model of many applications that we use, e.g. you use Moxy for free I use photobucket and there are many others that we have an idea what their business model is, for most they are trying to do get you to buy the premium product. 

Whilst this is currently free there is a possibility that if they spend some time developing it (not once in a blue moon) into something more user friendly with a cuddly GUI, etc. then they could charge for the service and there is such a clause in their terms of use had you read it, which I did before I used it.

That is also why I monitored my firewall logs to see what servers it used and did the usual google search on the domain name.

So other than Alan's comments you don't have any on why you feel it is a hoax.

[alanrf]

Continuing the Toonel saga ...

Unable to resist a peek I downloaded it.   

It looks like it was someone's project that has not gone much further. That is not intended to be critical ... it does what it says.  However, as David reported, it does require the user to set up a separate definition and assign a unique localhost port for each email account's POP/IMAP/SMTP connection.  Most users are not going to understand this let alone the need to create manually a startup entry to run a .jar file.  It would also require corresponding modifications to the avast Internet Mail provider for those ports to get avast to scan the mail.  

Nevertheless, it does work and  I just used it as a simple little alternative to STunnel to get my GMail received in Thunderbird and scanned by avast along the way.   

[DavidR]

I created the Toonel SMTP and POP3 entries in mapping, but left the port at 25 and 110 as they were set by default (which would mean avast would redirect).

I tried modifying the Internet Mail provider, basically in the same way as for the addition of another proxy, by unchecking the, Redirect, Ignore Local Communication option and having set up the Outlook Express account details Server to 127.0.0.1.

Whilst Toonel reported the SMTP and POP3 status as active and x number of open tunnels open, nothing ever came through the tunnels, everything just hung.

So I don't know if avast redirection on the standard ports is happening before toonel so nothing happens or if I should check the Ignore Local Communication, but that would defeat the object of as the toonel traffic wouldn't be scanned.

Since I normally pre scan my email on the server (mailwasher pro) and filter spam, etc. at source, very little actually gets downloaded to my system/inbox. So I didn't expend much time trying other options to get it to work.

As you say there are very few who would be prepared for this amount of manual setup to get it working and that is with the added complication of having other localhost proxies to co-ordinate with.

[bob3160]

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Registration required.
Once registered, you can go to the following large and well laid out
editing website:
http://www.sumopaint.com/app/

There are more options here then you'll find in many dedicated and expensive
photo editing programs and, it's free.

Version 1.0 has just been released with even more features than before.
http://www.sumopaint.com/web/

[.: Mac :.]

http://www.macworld.com/article/138412/2009/01/trojan.html

People should have enough sense not to pirate software. But it will always happen and therefore malware comes included.

[.: Mac :.]

WD Introduces 2TB HDD

2TB  on a single Hard Disk. The first computer I used didn't even have a hard disk (5 1/4 in Floppy )

[DavidR]

My first PC had 'twin' 5¹/₄" floppies, real hot

The first custom built PC had an HDD had 512MB and the guy said I would never fill that, well it took about a year and I was using on the fly compression software.

Now I have the smallest 8GB USB flash drive, well it was when I bought it last year.

[bob3160]

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I would not use my primary email.