Norton Solves Windows Vista UAC Woes

Norton has created a great little utility that attempts to solve the Windows Vista User Account Control (UAC) woes.

Albeit annoying, Windows Vista’s UAC feature is a great security tool that alerts the user before any potentially damaging system actions are taken. The problem is the user is frequently prompted with UAC dialog boxes on various actions that may otherwise seem trivial and sometimes even confronted with multiple prompts for a single action.

Although Microsoft has reportedly addressed the concern in the upcoming Windows 7, users have resorted to either silencing UAC altogether with a registry hack or TweakUAC or disabling it altogether in the mean time. Both not very secure alternatives.

Norton has seen the need for a solution and has provided a great, free utility that provides the same security benefits of Windows Vista’s UAC prompts but with the added functionality of remembering previous confirmations and providing more detail on the action to be taken. In addition to this, Norton’s UAC Tool will also optionally report confirmations from users and create a white-list to be distributed when the app gets out of beta to minimize unnecessary prompts.

Check out Norton Labs’ UAC Tool.

Windows Live Writer

I just downloaded the latest version of Windows Live Writer. It has a really awesome interface that will allow you to post to various weblogs, not just Microsoft's Spaces.

For anyone that has a weblog, be sure to check out the latest version of Windows Live Writer that apparently fixes a few bugs with Blogger.com. Great stuff, really.

You can download it here.

I'm never gonna give this up! :)

Floola

Ever wanted to transfer your music from your iPod to your computer? No, you can't do that with iTunes... believe it or not. What seems to be a relatively simplistic task is otherwise impossible without using some third-party application.



Here comes Floola to the rescue! Despite the otherwise goofy name, this little application is a life saver for many who would like to spread their digital music collection love... or are just recovering from a hard drive failure.

In addition to allowing manipulation of your music collection on your iPod, Floola will also import incompatible song or video types and convert them to a format the iPod will recognize. But the fun doesn't stop there, Floola can also import YouTube and even MySpace videos by just supplying the URL.

The best part? Floola requires no installation, which means that if you enable your iPod for Disk Usage (an option selectable from within iTunes) then you can place Floola in its own directory on your iPod. Now, next time you connect your iPod to your computer, or a friends computer, you won't even need to open iTunes up to view, play or copy songs. Good stuff, good stuff in deed.

Even better? It's free!

Floola

How to Get Windows Defender to Stop Blocking Startup Programs

Finally an answer! I'm so sick of the "Windows has blocked some startup programs" message and I have been searching for quite some time for how to get Windows Defender to stop blocking certain startup programs from running. I think it's a little ridiculous how difficult Microsoft makes this seemingly popular task. I have searched several times and have found several different proposed solutions, but none as elegant as the one I just found recently.



A simple program written by Jimmy Brush will analyze all of your startup applications and detail which ones are being blocked upon startup. From there, you can select to run the program as an administrator and say good bye to the incessant Windows Defender blocked startup prompts.

Download JB's Startup Program Unblocker

Nero Lite / Micro

It's disgusting how bloated Nero has gotten lately. Especially with version 8. There are so many useless tools bundled in with the installer that it rivals the bloat of AOL since the version 7+ days. Ugh! Even choosing a custom installation and unchecking everything but the Nero Burning Rom still adds bloat to your system with the Nero ControlCenter and Nero Scout. No thanks, Ahead, I do not need yet another indexing service slowing down my PC. The built-in Vista search indexer works just fine.

But I still do like the Nero Burning Rom. I have tried others, but none offer the flexibility and versatility of the Nero Burning Rom engine. Now, how do I get that without all the bloat? Well, I could modify the MSI installation package and remove all entries that I don't need, but why should I go through the hassle when the lovely people at Updatepack.nl have done it for me?

Yeap. Never again will I download over 400MB of "trial" bloat from Nero's servers. Instead, I'll opt for a slim 41 MB of Nero Lite goodness.

http://updatepack.nl/

Launch Apps

Today's post is focused on command-line-esque launch applications. Both are essentially replacements for the Windows run command (WinKey+R) and help you get to your applications quicker by using command-line names instead of having to browse and click through for shortcuts.

Launchy
Launch is an open-source Windows application launcher. It has built-in features to search Google and other websites. It can lookup weather forecasts and it indexes your Start Menu to provide quick access to everything registered there. Of course, it's completely free and has a great interface to boot.



Executor
Executor is very similar but expands on the features list a bit; such as drag and drop functionality. It has commands to manipulate the current window and can even override the Windows Run command.



Both are skinnable and both provide some great added functionality to your system. Definitely recommended.