Facebook adjusts homepage after criticism

Caving to pressure from a horde of often irate users, Facebook Inc. today announced changes to the unpopular redesign of its home page earlier this month. The popular social networking site has been hammered hard by users revolting against the new Facebook design. The updated home page added, among other things, a real-time news feed stream and a highlights section. The redesign also allows users to share their information with an unlimited number of friends — making the social network a lot more like Twitter. The revolt against the redesign came just a month after Facebook users expressed outrage over changes made to the company’s terms of use. The redesign started rolling out shortly afterward, roiling users again. Some user-created groups on Facebook make it clear just how unhappy and frustrated users are with the new design. According to Vote on the New Facebook Layout, more than 1.3 million people have voted, and only 80,400 support the new design.

Intel Ships New Tools that Boost Game Performance

Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers Suite Launches as Part of Visual Adrenaline Program to Advance Visual Computing Software

GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE, San Francisco, March 23, 2009 – Intel Corporation today announced the release of Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (GPA), a suite of software tools created in support of the Visual Adrenaline developer program.

Offered worldwide, GPA enables PC game developers to analyze and optimize game performance on Intel® Integrated Graphics. The Visual Adrenaline program, launched at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco in August 2008, provides tools, resources and information for game developers, artists and animators.

Windows Touch coming to a PC soon

The multi-touch controls familiar to Apple iPhone users will be built-in to Microsoft's Windows 7.
Windows Touch will be a "first class way to interact with your PC alongside mouse and keyboard," said the firm.
Microsoft believes multi-touch PCs will become popular in retail, public spaces, on laptops and "kitchen PCs".
Some Windows machines already feature rudimentary touch input and Apple is also reportedly adding touch for displays in its Snow Leopard OS update.

Pidgin 2.5.5

Pidgin (previously called Gaim) is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks.
Pidgin users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.
Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, typing notification, and MSN window closing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

Download from here.

Orbit Downloader 2.8.6

 

Orbit Downloader, leader of download manager revolution, is devoted to new generation web (web2.0) downloading, such as video/music/streaming media from Myspace, YouTube, Imeem, Pandora, Rapidshare, support RTMP. And to make general downloading easier and faster.
Orbit Downloader is written with efficiency in mind, it typically uses less than 3MB of memory and 3% of cpu when downloading. Additionally, the installation package is less than 2MB.

Download from here.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 4.70

K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs, DirectShow filters and tools. Codecs and DirectShow filters are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video formats. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular audio and video formats and even some rare formats.
This download is for the Mega package and is aimed at pro video users.
The K-Lite Codec Pack has a couple of major advantages compared to other codec packs:

• It it always very up-to-date with the newest (and/or best) versions of the components.
• It is very user-friendly.
• The installation is fully customizable, meaning that you are able install exactly those components that you really want.
• Uninstallation removes all files and registry entries created by the pack.
• It is extremely easy to make a fully customized unattended installation.
• It has been very well tested, so that the package doesn't contain any conflicting or buggy codecs.
• It tries to avoid potential problems with existing codecs and even fixes some problems. The pack is able to detect broken codecs and filters on your system, and remove them for you.
• It is a very complete package, containing everything you need to play your movies.
• There are different packages. From small to extra-large.
• Suitable for both novice and expert users. 

Download from here.

a-squared Free 4.0.0.46

Security must not be a privilege. Under this motto, Emsi Software provides the Malware scanner a-squared Free completely free of charge for private use. But it is not a very limited version, it is a full tool to clean your computer from Malware. Not only Spywares, as detected by classic Anti-Spyware programs, but also especially Trojans, Backdoors, Worms, Dialers, Keyloggers and a lot of other destructive pests, which makes it dangerous to surf the web.
a-squared removes reliably:

• Trojans, Backdoors, Keyloggers, Rootkits
• Worms, Bots
• Dialers
• Spyware, Adware 

Download from here.

Miranda 0.7.16

Miranda IM is a multi protocol instant messenger client for Windows. Miranda IM uses very little memory and is extremely fast. It requires no installation and can be fitted on a single floppy disc. Its powerful plugin system makes Miranda IM very flexible. Only the most basic features are built in, but there are currently more than 350 free plugins available for download that allows users to extend the functionality of Miranda IM.
Available Protocols

• ICQ
• AIM
• MSN
• Jabber
• Yahoo
• IRC
• Gadu-Gadu
• Tlen
• Netsend 

Download from here.

PowerDVD 9.0

PowerDVD allows you to playback DVDs on your computer. CyberLink's second-generation dynamic video technology (CLEV-2) delivers DVD movies with greater luminance and more natural colors. Intelligent frame-by-frame analysis produces ultra-smooth DVD playback by eliminating ghosting, feathering, and other elements.

• Experience the best in video and audio entertainment
• Feel the vibes with true home theater DTS and Dolby audio
• Maximize your Notebook's on-the-road performance
• Get the smartest movie playback features available
• Connect to your UPnP Network and playback media files

Download from here.

Ubuntu 9.10 Release Schedule

Announced by Mark Shuttleworth on the 20th of February, Ubuntu 9.10 (codename Karmic Koala) will be released this year on October 29th. Make sure that you visit our website regularly, starting with May 14th when the first alpha will be released, as our hard working people, here at the Softpedia Labs, will do a full coverage of the Ubuntu 9.10 development process. Without any further introduction, let's have a look at the release schedule:

May 14th, 2009 - Alpha 1 release
June 11th, 2009 - Alpha 2 release
July 23th, 2009 - Alpha 3 release
August 13th, 2009 - Alpha 4 release
September 3rd, 2009 - Alpha 5 release
September 17th, 2009 - Alpha 6 release
October 1st, 2009 - Beta release
October 22nd, 2009 - Release Candidate
October 29th, 2009 - Final release of Ubuntu 9.10

For the Karmic Koala, the development team will focus their efforts on the "first impressions," which means that they plan to change the old brown desktop with a whole new look and the current Usplash with a smooth and flicker-free boot splash, such as Red Hat's Plymouth. Also, the boot times will decrease even more in Ubuntu 9.10, as the team plans to make it boot in less than 25 seconds on a netbook! Moreover, they even plan to change the login screen in Ubuntu 9.10, with a very nice one.

Ubuntu 9.10 will be the eleventh release of the Ubuntu operating system. But, until then, we have another version that should catch our attention and invade our computers, Ubuntu 9.04 (dubbed Jaunty Jackalope), which will be released on April 23rd.

About Ubuntu:
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop or server, with a fast and easy install, regular releases, a tight selection of excellent packages installed by default, every other package you can imagine available from the network, and professional technical support from Canonical Ltd and hundreds of other companies around the world.

Source:softpedia.com

Opera 9.64 Plays Nice with Vista SP1 and XP SP3

While Microsoft, Mozilla and Google are laboring to finalize Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.1 and respectively Chrome 2.0, Opera is cooking Opera 10.0, the next iteration of its proprietary browser. But at the same time, the Norway-based security company is delivering updates for its current release of Opera, namely version 9.6. In this regard, Opera 9.64 is now live and available for download. Opera 9.64 is a security upgrade designed for all end users running versions of the browser prior to 10.0 Alpha.

One important aspect of v9.64 is that the update will make Opera play nice with security mitigations specific to Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. “Starting with this release, Opera on Windows supports the security measures "Data Execution Prevention (DEP)" (available in Windows XP SP2 and newer) and "Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)" (available in Vista and newer),” revealed Claudio Santambrogio, Opera QA Desktop Test Manager.

By taking advantage of the default layers of protection introduced in Windows by Microsoft, Opera is ensuring that its browser offers even more security to end users. In this context, Opera 9.64 boosts the security offered to users running the browser on top of Vista SP1 and XP SP3, which by default offer mitigations such as DEP and ASLR. In addition Opera has also enhanced version 9.64 in relation to the way the browser handles trusted certificates.

“These security measures are a kind of second line of defense once an application runs into a serious fault, which would normally cause it to crash sooner or later. Of course that should just not happen in the first place, but you can never completely rule out programming errors. Depending on the exact nature of the fault, an attacker can sometimes exploit it and try to take over your system. DEP and ASLR make that a lot harder,” Santambrogio added.

Download from here.