If you have just bought a new computer you might have noticed that there’s a lot of programs on it you don’t use. Also, these programs are very likely to slow things down. So what do you do? Re-install? Fortunately the solution is much simpler, and you don’t have to pay companies like Sony an additional $50’s to clean it for you.

The PC Decrapifier will uninstall many of the common trialware and annoyances found on many of the PCs from big name OEMs. Below is the current list of software and items that the PC Decrapifier can detect and remove. You get to see the list of items it detects and then choose what will be removed automatically.

If you know about any other useful tool that does this for you please share in the comments below.

Shrink O’Matic is an AIR application to easily (batch) resize (shrink) images. It handles JPGs, GIFs and PNGs.

Simply drag and drop images and they’ll be resized as you wish! Options allow you to choose the output sizes, names and formats. Note! The resized images will be stored in the same directory as the originals (in case you wonder where they went…).

A very handy tool for all bloggers and on-line publishers.

To install visit their website. If you want to play around with the code the developers have also made some classes used in this project available.

As you probably know Opera beat Firefox to the finish line this time (see yesterdays post). However, the long wait is finally over. Mozilla announced Wednesday that Firefox 3 will be available as of 17th June - that’s on Tuesday next week

Great news and really big expectations. 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, this should be the greatest release ever from Mozilla and maybe also the best browser…

In the meanwhile you can play around with the 3rd release candidate, or sign up for the Guinness WR download attempt and hope for an even earlier release date…

Opera Software today released to the world the final public release of its flagship Web browser, Opera 9.5. Opera’s cross-device expertise, support for open Web standards and commitment to speed and performance culminate to create the most powerful Opera browser yet. Making its desktop debut in Opera 9.5, Opera Link blurs the boundaries between computers and mobile phones by enabling a seamless Web experience from device to device. Opera 9.5 for Windows, Mac and Linux systems is available free from www.opera.com.

What’s new in Opera 9.5 according to themselves:

Opera Link: Your bookmarks, Speed Dial and even notes taken in the Opera browser can follow you anywhere. Opera Link keeps you synchronized between any Opera 9.5 desktop browser and Opera Mini, Opera’s free browser for your mobile phone.

Find anything: If you can remember a word from a page you’ve read earlier, you can find that page easily with Quick Find. Just enter a word in the address bar to find matching text from any page you have visited.

Looking sharp: Opera makes a move to modernize its look and feel to a sharp new skin with clean lines and clear icons. The ‘New Tab’ button and other elements have been modified to make the switch to a better Web experience more intuitive. Also supports platform-specific skins.

Strengthened defence against malware and phishing: Powered by Haute Secure, Netcraft, and PhishTank, Opera’s Fraud Protection technology automatically blocks offending Web pages to keep you out of harm’s way.

Speed: Opera continues to lead in performance. Opera 9.5 makes dramatic speed improvements to the e-mail client, RSS feeds and the browser itself, so you can spend more time getting things done online.

“Opera 9.5 represents the culmination of two years spent listening to our community and transforming our browser to add features and capabilities they have requested,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. “Opera 9.5 offers new possibilities and capabilities. It’s faster, lighter and pushes us further out in front of other browsers, by blending the mobile and desktop worlds together in new and powerful ways. We invite everyone to join us as we continue to shape the way the Web will evolve.”

My first impressions according to myself:

The bookmark thing is probably a good thing but I tend to get reminded of important things by my wife, through twitter, news feeds etc. Also the Quick find thing doesn’t seem as fantastic as I’m not comfortable having the browser keeping track of all the pages I’ve visited…

However, my biggest disappointments are design and speed. The browser still uses WAY TOO MUCH space to display the most useful toolbars. Almost twice the space compared to Firefox. Also it appears that rendering fast also means rendering inaccurate. If image size is not set you will have to reload the page several times before it looks “normal”.

Browser security is definitely a good thing, but if you have a decent anti-virus program and firewall it might just be slowing things down. Most threats are directed against IE anyway, so until Opera’s market share grows this doesn’t seem too important.

The most positive news is that it scores 83/100 on the new Acid3 test - congratulations Opera!

Feel free to comment, disagree, argue and share

More info here, here and here.

After 8 security fixes last year (according to Secunia) the Danish security company CSIS named Apple Quicktime as the biggest isolated security risk of 2007. Today Apple announces its third major fix this year.

The main 5 is listed below (source: Secunia):

1. A boundary error when parsing packed scanlines from a PixData structure in a PICT file can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow via a specially crafted PICT file.
2. An error in the processing of AAC-encoded media content can be exploited to cause a memory corruption via a specially crafted media file.
3. A boundary error in the processing of PICT files can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow via a specially crafted PICT file.
4. A boundary error in the processing of Indeo video codec content can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow via a specially crafted movie file with Indeo video codec content.
5. An error in the handling of “file:” URLs can be exploited to e.g. execute arbitrary programs when playing specially crafted QuickTIme content in QuickTime Player.

As the “trend” seems to continue I’ll use alternative media players (as I’ve always done), and it appears you should do it too…