Don’t believe me? Think about it: Abba. Ikea. Dynamite. GPS. Green-living communities. Lord of the Rings-inspired metal music. Statuesque blond ski instructors.

And Spotify.

Way back in 2008, a software development company in Sweden kicked back and thought about how great it would be to offer DRM-free, streaming music to the masses. Granted, lots of people have had this thought. I’m sure you’ve all spent some time on websites like Pandora, last.fm, and maybe even Grooveshark. But you probably don’t have an iTunes-like desktop client that will do what those sites will do. That’s what Spotify is all about.

Spotify lets you pick and choose what music you want to hear from their seemingly bottomless catalog, track by track, album by album, or artist by artist. It will also automatically import any existing audio files on your computer into its directory, so can play those songs along with stuff from Spotify. You can drag things directly into your play queue or create custom playlists. The stuff you make is saved to your account, so you can access the same playlists and history from any computer. You can also link your Spotify account to your Facebook, so you can share playlists with your friends and subscribe to their playlists in turn. Lists are also provided from time to time by the Spotify staff, and other commercial interests like Rolling Stone magazine and various record labels.

All for free.

That’s right. Free. You’ll get an ad or two for every 15 minutes of playback, but even those are easily muted with free apps like Blockify (Windows) or Smutefy (Mac), or you can shell out for an unlimited or premium membership ($5-10 a month) that will get rid of the ads. It will also allow you to stream that same music to your smartphone or mobile device, play music even when offline, and more.

And up until last month, Spotify was only available in a few select countries in Europe. But now, it’s our turn. Spotify has finally come to the US. And I highly recommend you give it a shot as a means of welcome. It’s still on an invite-only basis right now, but it only takes a day or two for your invite to arrive. You can sign up for one here. And once you’re all set, check out their automated playlist site suggestions to get yourself started with some great lists, or use Spotiseek to create some of your own using artist seeds like you would on Pandora or iTunes Genius.

And if you come up with any good ones, let us know! We’re looking for summer party music!

Your Windows system may come with software to tell you all about your hardware or play video, and nearly everyone has a PDF reader program on their computers these days. But we’ve selected this handful of programs because they truly go above and beyond—either by improving upon the standard performance of other “utilities,” or by outright changing the game in how you interact with your computer.  We hope that you’ll find at least a couple of them (if not all!) useful in your everyday computing.

System Information for Windows – download

SIW is a portable freeware program you can use to obtain, among other things, a complete software and hardware inventory of your computer system.  It will detail all the components of your machine, from brand to speed to size, and every program you have installed, whether good or bad.  It’s also got some handy tools for recovering lost passwords and optimizing your network connections. It will even export the data it collects to easy-to-share formats like CSV and Excel. If you have multiple computers, or tend to inherit machines with suspect pedigrees, you might get a lot of use from this nifty utility.

Speccy - download

Speccy is another system inventory tool, but unlike SIW, it focuses on a more concise presentation of your hardware specifications.  The interface is a little more user-friendly and easy to read, and it will also export to other text-based formats like CSV or HTML for sharing or taking to-go. Unless you really want the software and license inventory that comes along with SIW, Speccy is the softer, nicer inventory software for the slightly less technically inclined among us.

SequoiaView – download

Even if your middle school Biology days are far behind you, you’ll probably remember that the cross-section of a cut tree shows rings of varying widths that correlate to years of the tree’s life.  SequoiaView does something similar for your computer’s hard drive.  It scans all the files and folders in your system and then arranges them in a color-coded and scaled graphical representation, so you can see exactly how much space your collection of funny LolCats images takes up.

Recuva - download

Don’t lie, it’s happened to you. You get to your computer to open up that super-important file that you were working on before you decided to clean up your desktop in a fit of good intentions, and—oh no. It’s gone. You’ve deleted the super-important file, and now life as you know it is effectively over.  Of course it’s happened to you. It’s happened to me three times already today. Luckily, I use Recuva. It’s a nifty little program that will search the depths of your directory for those files that “accidentally” got erased. You can use it on your computer’s hard drive, but also on any external drives, cameras, memory cards, or even your iPod. It’s also got a “secure erase” feature to make sure the files you really and truly want to delete will get gone for good.

DriverEasy – download

Anyone who’s used a Windows system with new hardware before knows what a pain it can be.  Even so-called “plug and play” accessories require a minute or two of setup to begin working, and the worst ones might never work at all if you don’t have the proper device drivers or know where to get them. Enter Driver Easy. This program will scan your system to get a gander at all your hardware peripherals, search the web for the most up-to-date or applicable drivers, and present them for your convenience. What could be better? Your stuff will work better with the most current software and bug fixes, and you won’t have to worry about a thing!

VLC – download

VLC is the do-it-all video player. This fabulous open-source software runs without ads or junk, and will play pretty much anything you can throw at it without the need to download endless codecs. It’s famously virus-safe, fast, and powerful.  You can say goodbye to skipping video, or opening six different programs for all  your different media filetypes.

Foxit Reader - download

While Adobe might have developed the PDF filetype, most people these days will agree that their program for reading these useful files is bloated, buggy, and not very functional (unless, of course, you shell out the big bucks for Acrobat Pro).  That’s where Foxit Reader comes in.  It’s a lightweight PDF reader that starts and loads in a flash, but not before making sure the file you’re trying to open isn’t carrying some extra baggage in the form of unwanted malware. It will print without crashing Print Spooler, and opens multiple documents in handy tabs to keep your desktop clear. It’s compatible with interactive forms, and allows you to comment, bookmark, and even validate digital signatures on your PDF documents.

Sumatra PDF - download

Sumatra is another alternative to Acrobat that deserves a recommendation. I admit its desktop view before you open a file is maybe more yellow than anything ever should be. But viewing actual files is an elegant and minimalist experience. Sumatra is a great option for big multi-page files, since its presentation view just fades into the background and lets you focus on the content without distraction. While it does not have as many security or comment features as Foxit, you can view and print your documents speedily and with no crashes.

FileHippo Update Checker - download

If you run a lot of third-party software on your computer, you’re either constantly annoyed by alerts to update, or are running significantly out-of-date versions of most of those programs.  If you’d rather download and install those third-party updates in one fell swoop, then FileHippo’s Update Checker is the program for you. It will scan your installed software in a flash (as little as a second or two!) and contact the FileHippo website to check for any available updates. It then presents them to you in an easy-to-access list, and you can pick and choose the updates you want to run. Quick, simple, and ever so convenient.

Thanks to Income Insiders for the image. And yeah, we know it’s a MacBook Pro. But it looked cool.

Viruses, worms, malware, and spyware all pose a very real threat to your computer’s security.  And even if you’re very careful, you’ll probably suffer an infection at some point. At best, these troublesome bits of programming will make it hard for you to use your computer without their interference. At worst, your personal information might become compromised.  It’s important to take the proper precautions to avoid infection when you use your computer (like keeping all your software up-to-date, only opening email attachments that come from trusted sources, and avoiding risk-taking behavior and downloads online). But on top of all that, you need a good antivirus. Here are our top picks for the various places you might be computing.

Best overall: eSet NOD32

Whether for your home or business, NOD32 is the best antivirus software out there. It’s lightweight, so you won’t notice it running or slowing down other operations on your computer. It’s fast, so full scans take a fraction of the time that they take with other softwares using older engines. And the best part? NOD32 uses traditional virus “definitions” to keep your computer safe, but it also uses what’s called heuristics, which means it proactively watches for certain types of behaviors that can be classified as malware rather than waiting around on a string of code it can match to a potential threat.  It’s got built-in protections to keep bugs from disabling its processes, and it even searches “secure” encrypted channels that tricky viruses sometimes use to enter your system. If you opt to use NOD32 for your business, the license even includes server-side monitoring and maintenance so your IT professional (ahem) can keep an eye on your system’s health for you. And the real kicker? It’s very reasonably priced, including discounts on multiple licenses and renewals.

Best for the whole family: Kaspersky PURE Total Security

Computers are a big part of life these days, and lots of households have more than one.  In some cases, there might be one for mom, one for dad, and one or two for the kids. If that’s the case in your house, you might want to consider PURE Total Security. It bundles its antivirus software with a two-way personal firewall and excellent spam protection to keep your computers safe on all fronts. It has a password manager, automatic backup and restore functions, and a “file shredder” so you can delete sensitive files with confidence.  It’s also built for your home network, so you can manage the scans and settings of all the computers you’re covering from one machine. There are built-in, customizable parental controls, so you can check up on your kids’ activity from the comfort of your own PC.  It’s also got lots of options to customize your safety profiles, like running suspect programs in a “Safe Run” mode, as well as “Gamer Mode” for when you need to optimize system performance without compromising your protection. The box version covers 3 PCs, but if you choose to download, you can get coverage for 3 or 5 PCs. And like NOD32, you get a lot of bang for your buck.

Best for Mac: eSet Cybersecurity for Mac

Macs have a great reputation for safety.  Since the company was such a small share of the personal computer market for so long, not many people bothered to write malevolent programming for them. But eventually the bad guys will catch up with Macs, and even the excellent security features built into OS X may not be enough to deflect their attacks.  That’s where Cybersecurity comes in. It’s specifically tailored for OS X, so it runs quietly in the background of your normal tasks without slowing everything to a crawl like a lot of antivirus programs do. Like NOD32, it uses both conventional virus definitions and the heuristic method to trap threats to your Mac, but it also eradicates PC viruses that may not be affecting your computer that you could inadvertently pass on to your PC-owning brethren.  It will even scan virtual machines, so if you have Windows installed on your Mac though Fusion or Parallels, it can keep that safe for you too! And again like NOD32, the pricing structure is excellent for covering multiple machines at a discount.

Best for on-the-go: VirusTotal.com

Every once in awhile, you may find yourself on an unprotected computer: you’re staying with relatives, or you just got a new machine and haven’t installed your antivirus solution yet.  Whatever the reason, it’s nice to know there’s a place you can go to perform a quick check for safety on individual files or URLs.  Simply upload the file or copy and paste the site address, and Virus Total will tell you if there’s anything there to worry about.  It’s a handy little tool even if you already have an antivirus installed and just need to verify something right this second, since it saves you from scanning a whole folder or drive. And best of all, it’s free!  Just bookmark the site and you’re good to go.

Thanks to allGeektv for the image

In spite of all the wonderful things computers have added to modern life, they’ve given us some pretty rotten things too: sentient AI along the lines of HAL and SkyNet, diminished capacity for social interaction, FarmVille. But of all these modern inconveniences, repetitive strain injuries have to be the most prevalent, persistent, and downright annoying. From headaches to hand cramps, there are myriad ailments you can blame on your PC.

Including sleeping poorly.

Ever since computers stopped using interfaces made up of neon green fixed-width type on an empty black screen, the light emitted by your PC’s display was meant to mimic daylight. Specifically, the color temperature of most displays is set to around 6000K by default.  And if you leave your display’s brightness setting at the higher end of its range, it means your eyes are getting bombarded with an awful lot of photons.  Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to stare into the sun?

And burning holes into your retinas aside, staring long and hard at your computer screen after dark can actually affect your circadian rhythms—the biological clockwork that tells you when it’s time to eat, time to wake up, and time to sleep.  Since your body interprets the cooler temperature light coming from your display as sunlight, it thinks computer time equals party time, even if it’s actually nighttime and you want to retire shortly after that last round of Spider Solitaire.

So what’s a self-respecting technophile to do? Luckily, the kind folks who designed F.lux made it just for you.

F.lux is a simple, free application (for Mac, Windows, and Linux) designed to run in the background on your computer and create a gradually changing color overlay for your display to affect the temperature of the light it emits. It’s tailored to your geographic location and the kind of indoor lighting you already have to make its changes in time with the sun’s movements and to create overlays that look like the artificial lighting you already have. You can make the transitions a quick 20-second flip, or an hour-long fade. There’s even an option to disable the whole program for an hour at a time when you need to do color-sensitive work like photo editing or graphic design.

While F.lux doesn’t affect your display’s brightness settings, the less intense contrast from the overlays helps reduce eye strain in addition to helping your body clock remember what time it is.  It’s a sneaky utility.  You will barely notice it’s there, but take stock a week or so after installing it.  If you’re anything like me, you’ll notice you haven’t had nearly as many headaches as usual and your eyes don’t feel like they’re made of sand after hours in front of the computer.

And hey, maybe you’ll even sleep better!

Thanks to IRPC on Flickr for the image!

There’s been a lot of talk about Windows 7 since it’s launch, most everything has been positive (which certainly wasn’t the case after Windows Vista launched).  In this tough economic client people are asking themselves, “Why should I upgrade and what benefits will I see if you do?”  I’ve been running Windows 7 since August with their Release Candidate and installed the full version as soon as Technet offered it and I’ve found many improvements over previous versions.

(Be warned, this is a long post.  I wanted to get as much information in as possible.  The short story is if you’re getting a new computer definitely get it with Windows 7, if your computer is less than 2 or 3 years old I would recommend the upgrade).

Mainstream support for Windows XP is ending soon

Let’s face it, Windows XP was released in 2001 and although Microsoft has been pretty good about fixing bugs and releasing updates we all knew that at some point they would stop supporting XP just like they did with 2000, ME , 98, 95, etc.; however, Windows XP has had the distinction of being the most widely used operating system for such a long time I think many of us assumed it would last forever.  Unfortunately all things must come to an end and Microsoft’s mainstream support for Windows XP ends in April 2010, unless they release another Service Pack before then (we haven’t heard anything a 4th service pack, though).

Critical security patches will be released through 2014, but no new functionality will be added nor will any bugs get squashed.  It’s time to move to their newer operating system to get full support.

Faster boot

There’s been a bit of controversy over Microsoft’s claim that Windows 7 boots faster than previous versions.  A fresh install of Windows 7 does boot much faster than Vista or even XP, although some people have noticed it slowing down over time.  Of course if you have dozens of programs that start when you turn on your computer that is going to slow you down.  I’ve found that Windows 7, unlike Vista or XP, is actually usable once you get to the desktop.  I’m not sure how they did it but the boot time from pushing the power button until you can actually do work has significantly reduced and that just makes the system feel faster.

Beyond that, sleep and hibernate modes both work faster and more reliably, with my computer coming out of sleep in seconds.  I only reboot when there is an update that needs it, but I’ve found that even after several months of use it still boots quickly.

Aero Peek

Aero Peek is a really handy feature.  Just hover your mouse over your taskbar and a live snapshot of all the active programs pop up, from there you can click on the snapshot and that will bring that window to the front.

If you hover your mouse pointer over one of the snapshots all other windows will temporally become transparent (you can see below the outline of the other two Firefox windows around the center one), highlighting the windows you are looking for and allowing you to easily find it.

Aero Snap

Another great addition is Aero Snap.  Aero Snap allows you to grab an open window and instantly re-size it so it takes up the left side, right side, or all of your screen.  Just click and hold in the title bar (about the menus) and drag the window to the far left, right or top of the screen and it will “snap” into place.  If you click and hold and drag the window out of that position it will remember it’s last size as well. You can also “snap” the window into location by using keyboard shortcuts.  Holding down the windows key and pressing the left arrow on the keyboard snaps the window to the left side of the screen, right arrow to the right, etc.  It’s really a time saver when working on a computer with one monitor, but the shortcuts are even useful when working with multiple monitors (you can move a window from one screen to the other using the windows and left and right keys).

Keyboard shortcuts

We’ve covered them before, but Windows 7 added a bunch of new shortcuts that can save you time, effort and mouse clicks when trying to get things done.

To see Microsoft’s list click here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Keyboard-shortcuts

Check out of other blog posts on them here: http://blog.nyctechguys.com/tech-blog/2009/10/windows-7-is-now-available/ and here: http://blog.nyctechguys.com/tech-blog/2009/07/useful-keyboard-shortcuts-in-windows/

Great backup service

Windows 7 comes with a really useful backup utility built in.  As long as you have an extra hard drive (external or internal) you can configure Windows 7 to make snapshot and incremental backups of your computer.  What this means is that your computer will make a copy of everything on your system and then at regular intervals make backups of anything that has changed.  What is really great is that it saves the backup as a drive image meaning that you can actually boot off your backup!!  Also, if your system dies you can restore from your backup and retain all your files, programs, settings and preferences.  Your computer will be exactly as it was before you had to recover!

Windows Search

The newest Windows Search is built into Windows 7 and has become really useful.  By default it indexes everything on your computer (email, files, etc), but also indexes all programs, control panel settings and other hidden options making it much easier to find whatever it is you are looking for.  Simply click on the start button (or press the windows key) and then start typing.  For instance, if I want to run Word, I can click the start button and start typing “word”.  Before I even get to the third letter in the name Windows Search has already found it and I can hit enter and start working.

Better memory usage and support for more than 4 GB of RAM

Windows XP (unless you were one of the very few people that ran the 64 bit edition) only supports a maximum of around 4GB of RAM.  Windows Vista 64 addressed more, but had many other issues related to RAM.  Windows 7 64 bit can support up to 196GB of RAM, although there aren’t any motherboards in the consumer market that can do that currently.  I have 12GB in my system and have never run out of RAM, no matter how many programs I have open.  Of course if you run Windows 7 32 bit you will run into the same 4GB limit as on Windows XP or Vista 32, however there really is no reason to run the 32 bit version unless you install Windows 7 on an old system that doesn’t support a 64 bit Operating System.

You can check the compatibility of your system for free using a tool on Microsoft’s site here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/en-us/default.aspx

Themes and personalization

Themes aren’t my cup of tea, but they can make your otherwise bland computer much more interesting looking and sounding if you are into that kind of thing.

The default themes that come with Windows 7 range between beautiful scenery and somewhat bizarre cartoon characters.  One thing that is really nice with Windows 7 is the built in ability to set a group of photos as your background and have them run as a slideshow.  Many vendors have also started coming out with themes (as well as small developers) and you can find many, many different styles of themes to give your computer the look and feel that’s right for you.

You can check out a nice sized gallery of themes at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize

UAC vastly improved

If you used a computer with Vista, you know one of the most annoying things about (and most often disabled) was Microsoft’s User Access Controls or UAC.  It’s that popup that asks if you want to allow your computer to do something you’ve likely done many times in the past (or legitimately when installing a new program, changing system settings, etc).  UAC was implemented to help keep your computer safe, however it was so annoying that most people disable it within the first week of owning their computer or just mindlessly hit yes whenever it pops up, totally negating its benefits.

Windows 7 still has UAC, but by default it is much more under wraps and only really asks for permission when you’re running a program as administrator, installing new software or making changes to the system settings; all good things.

XP Virtual Machine

A really cool feature that Microsoft added to Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate is the Windows XP Mode.  It allows you (after a download or two) to run a copy of Windows XP within a virtual machine and install any software that won’t work with Windows 7 (to date I’ve found very few programs from the last 5+ years that won’t run under Windows 7).  Sure, a program ran within a virtual machine will run a little slower than one ran natively, but if your company uses a custom application that is business critical and they don’t plan to upgrade it anytime soon, Windows XP Mode is a perfect concession.

When it comes down to it Windows 7 actually *is* good.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/registry.htm

Generally if you like to tweak with your services and/or registry , you can sometimes forget to set them back. Or if things really go off kilter , you can just set them right back. Of course you are making backups of anything you change first …right? Generally I have used it when a computer has been hit by a Trojan. The new ones will disable as much as possible , creating havoc  for any administrator to get the system back up and running. I am also of the mindset that formatting is not necessary …..most of the time.

What is the registry-

The windows registry is a database that stores configuration settings for the windows. Services that run in windows can be configured in the registry. The files that are on the previously mentioned site are .reg files in a zip file. All you have to do is double click on the .reg file to import it into the registry proper.

I thin that the website has a slew of useful information and worth the read, check them out!

The vulnerability was used in the cyber attacks against Google, yahoo and others over the last couple weeks. If you’re running any versions of Internet Explorer please install any updates from Windows Update that are pending on your system or grab the update manually from Microsoft’s site.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-002 – Critical

Like many people, you may have received a new computer for the holidays.  If you’re already an avid user you know how to set it up, install your favorite apps and get to work/play.  But if you’ve just moved to a new operating system (Windows 7, OS X or even Linux) you may be a little lost as to the new functionality in your new toy.  Luckily lifehacker has put together a great list of tips and tools for whatever system you’re baffled over.  Take a look at this list and let me know if you have another cool trick you’d like to share.

image from bolti22 on flickr