Hiding your files in images steganographically helps protect your important files from being accessed with pirating eyes even if your laptop or PC were stolen, since all what any pirating eye will find at the end is an innocent picture!

Installing Ultima Steganography was quite easy and didn’t require any special interaction from us. Following the installation of the program we conducted a small test were we tried to hide a test file in a BMP image, so we started the program, followed the wizard steps which were quite easy to understand and follow and finally were able to hide our test file in the selected BMP image

While using the application it is highly recommended that you pay full attention while using your keyboard ESC button, as clicking multiple times on this button can make you loose all efforts done through the wizard steps by closing the whole application even if you were in the last step of the wizard!

The application is being sold through the developer website for $24, which we found to be literary expensive price for the features included inside the application

Well in a way we must agree that this is a good solution, but we also must remember that Anti Virus and Anti Spyware products can only protect us from malware components which ‘they know’! We must also remember that by the time ‘they know’ a lot of things could happen starting from infecting important files, messing up with Windows files and up to stealing sensitive information!

We believe the best way to protect yourself from any potential malware attacks is simply by following the old proverb “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”, in other words by installing some essential tools that will help prevent malware components from reaching your PC in the first place.

Below are three essential software programs which we believe can help prevent malware components from reaching your PC

1. Sandboxie
Sandboxie offers a complete isolated space on your PC where you can download, install and run any browser, IM tool, game or program without having to worry about any of those programs accessing or changing other programs and data on your PC.

This way even if any of the program you were installing contained malware component, this component will remain on your Sandboxie isolated area.

2. Oracle VirtualBox
Oracle VirtualBox is a free open-source virtualizer which you can use to build Windows virtual environments on your PC. Windows virtual environment is like having another Window running under your Windows, yet this time it is totally isolated from your main Window and files.

Whatever you do on the virtual environment remains on the virtual environment. Similar to Sandboxie if any of the programs you were installing inside your Windows virtual environment contained malware component, this component will remain on your Sandboxie isolated area.

3. TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt is a free open-source disk encryption software, offering strong files and disk encryption. Using TrueCrypt you can securely protect your private and important data, drives by encrypting them.

This way even if your files were accessed, no one will be able to capture their content.

Any screenshot captured can easily be uploaded on one of five pre-defined websites for a specific period of time. After uploading the tool offers you a link to the uploaded screenshot which you can later use to share the screenshot with your friends, colleagues or family.

While using the screenshot hosting feature, you might want to double check what and where are you uploading, in order to prevent uploading images you might not wish to get out of your machine, especially that once you’ve uploaded an image it will be there until its expiry date is reached!

A small image editing tool is available through Shotty screen capture which makes your job even easier, when sharing those screenshots as you can write notes, highlight specific areas and much more.

By all means Shotty screen capture represents a new era of screen capture tools, especially if we compared it to currently available competing tools. Thus we strongly recommend you give Shotty screen capture a try

January 15, 2011 SmartSoft, the leading provider of innovative optical character recognition (OCR), document capture and conversion software solutions, has revealed SmartOCR, an innovative software application which delivers SmartSoft’s top-notch optical character recognition technology.

SmartOCR enables users to turn scanned paper documents and screenshots into fully editable and searchable digital files. The application’s convenient interface allows users to perform conversion easily with minimum training. The patent-pending SmartOCR technology delivers accuracy rates of over 99.8 percent and features intelligent layout recreation capabilities to make sure all details from the original document (including text and paragraph formatting, images, bullet lists, headers and columns) are preserved in the resulting file.

SmartOCR recognizes low-quality documents, screenshots and fax documents and supports various image formats, such as BMP, JPEG, TIFF, GIFF and more. The application features a convenient built-in text editor with a spell-checker to allow users to correct any errors quickly and effortlessly. Batch OCR conversion is also supported, allowing users to convert multiple documents simultaneously. In Manual Mode, people can select only specific areas of a document for recognition, or adjust images and text regions. SmartOCR offers multiple output formats, including DOC, RTF and HTML.

“We have been working on improving our optical character recognition technology to provide our customers with next-generation software of the highest standards,” said Nedelcho Georgiev, SmartSoft founder and CEO. “SmartOCR is the result of years of hard work. As with other SmartSoft applications, SmartOCR is very simple to use and produces excellent results.”

A free trial of the application is available at www.smartocr.com.

About SmartSoft
SmartSoft is one of the world’s leading conversion software developers. The company specializes in conversion and OCR software with customers all over the world. Its top-selling products, such as Smart PDF Converter, Smart Protector and Smart PPT Converter, have received appreciation by millions of users in more than 150 countries. SmartSoft clients include Adobe, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Inc., J.P. Morgan, Fedex Express Corp, Honda Motor Co, General Motors, and many others. Visit SmartSoft at www.smart-soft.net

Using this tool it is now easy to replicate your UFD as much as you want.

ImageUSB does not require any installation and comes with an easy to use, self-explanatory interface

Click Here to download your ImageUSB copy now

In addition the Blu Ray Ripper can extract your audio files from DVD discs and convert them into MP3, AAC, M4A.

The products also offers a movie capture feature which allow you to capture pictures while previewing any Blu Ray movie, then save those pictures as either JPG, GIF or BMP

You can get Aiseesoft Blu Ray Ripper for $39 USD from Aiseesoft website OR you can get it today only for FREE from the Giveaway of the day website

But what if you found a way that will simply prevent malware from reaching your PC while giving you freedom in what you download, install and run on your PC?…Wouldn’t that be safer, easier and cheaper way to protect your PC? Especially if we took in consideration that anti-malware products can always scan and protect your PC from malware components which they already know!

Sandboxie allow you to run your programs, web browsers, instant messengers, games, mail and news readers in a totally isolated area on your hard drive in order to prevent those programs from making permanent changes to your Windows, data or other programs on your PC. This way now you can download, install and run any program, open any email attachment, visit any website you wish, run any game without having to worry about your PC getting invaded with malicious malware. All for the cost of 40 Euro (lifetime license), which we consider to be very good price if compared it with anti-malware products yearly subscriptions.

Review
- During our tests we found Sandboxie installation to be quite easy. Upon installation Sandboxie automatically creates one default sandbox (Sandbox DefaultBox) which you can use to download, install and run any program, read your emails and news, surf the web or run any game your wish. You can later create as much sandboxes as you wish, yet you can only use the default sandbox while you are using the trial version of Sandboxie.

Through each sandbox, you can select which programs, browsers, instant messengers, games, mail and news readers you wish to run. Any content saving or access operation done by any of those programs are done ‘inside’ the sandbox which acts as a separate layer that has no effect what so ever on your Windows or files

Having said that, there are always an exception when there is a program or a game which you trust and need it to have limited access to some of your files, folders, registry or other programs outside the sandbox. For those exceptions Sandboxie ‘programs resource access options’ is a great companion, as it allows you to define which files, folders, registry and/or other programs outside the sandbox you need your sandboxed program to access.

Even though all programs and games running inside your sandbox can never harm your system or personal files residing outside the sandbox, If at any moment you felt there is a suspicious activity which you wish to terminate, you can instantly terminate any or all of the programs running in any of your Sandboxes, clear all content created by them without having to worry about what they did those programs do inside your sandbox

Help and support
Help materials offered through Sandboxie website include a getting started tutorial, some usage tips, known conflicts, FAQ, error and warning message reference.

Any support requests not covered through the online materials mentioned above can be handled only through Sandboxie forum, where the program developer reply to all support requests as fast as he can. So don’t expect a prompt reply when posting your problems there

Even though we were not impressed by the level of support Sandboxie offers its users, we still believe the product represent a must have tool in any Windows users machine