Review: MAGIX Movie Edit Pro MX Plus

Opting for a consumer video editor doesn't necessarily mean going short on features, especially if you choose MAGIX Movie Edit Pro MX Plus. The program comes packed with high-end functionality, from the full HD support, to the 99 editing tracks, the multicam and 3D editing options, powerful sound editing tools, and wide range of output options: file, DVD, Blu-ray, YouTube, Facebook and more. And this latest version has more than 60 new features. Movie templates make it easy to create professional trailers; image interpolation delivers smoother slow motion effects; export presets help ensure you produce the precise video file you need; and a host of performance optimisations deliver major increases in speed, from faster load times, up to 10x faster image stabilisation, or 3x faster AVCHD export thanks to CUDA and OpenCL support. Sounds impressive - but what would all this mean in practice? We took a closer look. Interface After a straightforward installation MAGIX Movie Edit Pro MX Plus presents you with a familiar three-pane interface: video clips, transitions and effects top-right; preview window top-left; and your movie timeline displayed across the bottom of the window. Which works for us, although if you prefer another arrangement then panes can be dragged to rearrange them, or you can output your preview to a TV or a second monitor, leaving more space for the timeline and general editing tasks. The media pool is similarly well designed. You can jump straight to a common media folder (Videos, Pictures, Music), use an Explorer-type view to browse elsewhere, or launch a search tool to locate particular clips, and you'll see their thumbnails displayed right away. At least, that's the idea, although we found the program wouldn't generate thumbnails for all our .MOV sample files. Explorer and other programs displayed them correctly (even Movie Edit Pro did once we added them to the timeline), though, so we're not sure what the problem was. All our other media files were clearly visible, though, no real surprise as the program supports all the main formats (including Stereo 3D videos, audio files and images). MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital Stereo licences have to be activated manually, but there's no charge, the small licencing fee last time has gone. Better still, in one notable addition to this version, you're no longer restricted to the default tiny thumbnails. A Zoom button immediately above the media pool allows you to choose from 6 thumbnail sizes, anything from 48 pixels wide to a giant 240, which makes it much easier to spot some videos. And once you've chosen a clip, a Jog button allows you to preview it frame by frame, and a quick double-click will add it to the storyboard or timeline. The missing thumbnails were annoying, but if you're not working with similarly affected source files then you should find the core interface intuitive and easy to use. The basics Getting started can be as easy as dragging and dropping any clips you need onto the timeline, then right-clicking a clip of choice to perform some action on it. There's capable scene detection, for instance. You get configurable image stabilization, which MAGIX claim is up to ten times faster than before; we didn't test this specifically, but it is quick, just a few seconds for short clips (under a minute). And the versatile audio cleaner includes a DeClipper, DeHisser and excellent DeNoiser, a 10-band equaliser, compressor and stereo tweaker, all of which are both highly configurable and easy to use. A "Find and remove ads" option tries to remove adverts from recorded TV. Results can be good for 16:9 movies as Movie Edit Pro will detect the presence (and absence) of the black stripes at the top and bottom of the screen, though it's less reliable with other material. And if you want to quickly apply some simple effects then you can add a pan or zoom, or maybe insert the movie's date as a title in the opening few seconds, in just a couple of clicks. There are some complexities here. The trimmers, in particular, are less than intuitive and it takes a little experimentation to figure out how they work. But for the most part MAGIX Movie Edit Pro MX Plus offers a good set of features which will have you producing your movie right away. Effects The download version of MAGIX Movie Edit Pro MX Plus only includes a few effects, to keep its file size down. And while there's plenty of additional content available for free, downloading could take a while. The transitions pack is 135MB, for instance; extra title effects are 44MB; there's more than 1GB of menu templates in three different files, and the list goes on. A fast internet connection is a major plus here. With everything downloaded (eventually), we found more than 100 transitions under the oddly-named "Fades" tab. These are categorised a little vaguely - instead of "Slide" or "Spin", say, you get sections like "Standard", "Movement" or "Effect fades" - so at first it can take a while to find what you need. But there are plenty of stylish choices (which now include sound), they're easily applied by dragging and dropping them onto the appropriate transition point, and right-clicking this later allows you tweak details like the transition length. Clicking the Effects tab reveals plenty of additional options. There are a host of corrections, for instance: brightness, contrast, gamma, colour, sharpness, red-eye and more. Movement effects allow you to size, move, zoom, rotate, mirror and otherwise manipulate the movie. You can add fun effects from rain and snow, to thought bubbles, animated fish and other objects. Advanced options include an effective chroma key, many picture-in-picture options, collages and more. And the Titles tab is just as packed with options, with over 200 styles on offer (including many 3D effects). The sheer volume of possibilities is initially overwhelming, and a poor effects viewer doesn't help. You can't resize the effect thumbnails to better see what they do, for example, and the thumbnails won't always rearrange themselves to fill the available space, so there's some unnecessary scrolling. The effects themselves are easily applied, though, and once you start work it won't take long to figure things out. With the titles, say, you just choose a title style to see a preview, double-click to apply something you like, type your text in the editor, and that's it - you're ready to go. Authoring Once your movie is finished, then MAGIX Movie Edit Pro MX Plus can export it in many different ways. You're able to save it as a 2D video in MP2, MP4 or WMV formats, for instance; as a 3D movie in WMC anaglyph or side-by-side formats; or ready for use on a mobile device (iPod, iPhone, iPad, Android phones or tablets). Format and device support isn't exactly extensive, but it covers the basics. The program can also upload your creation to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, or MAGIX own Online Album, ready for sharing with others. Selecting "Export as media player" saves the movie in a web-ready form, both a video and HTML file linking to a video player, so it's immediately ready for use on your own website. Though, bizarrely, there's no progress bar, so after clicking "Save video" the program appears to have locked up until it finally finishes. And of course there's the usual ability to author DVD and Blu-ray discs, complete with a selection of animated and HD menus. There aren't many of these, but they can be customised quite easily, and you can buy more online if you like (a typical price might be $1.99 if the disc is solely for private use). More new features MAGIX Movie Edit Pro MX Plus includes many new features, and the claim that it's "on average 3x faster" (thanks to support for GPU-based acceleration) seemed particularly appealing. It's true, too - the program is noticeably more responsive in just about everything it does. But of course the competition is also accelerating, and in particular we found CyberLink's PowerDirector 10 outperformed Movie Edit Pro in most areas, from launch time to rendering. This new version can still improve your productivity, though, especially with the new Movie Templates. Choose from multiple styles (Action, Adventure, Love Story, Travel etc) and an appropriate storyboard appears, with soundtrack, effects and animations already added. Drag and drop your own clips onto the various placeholders, enter your own credits, and you could have a professional movie trailer ready in minutes. The revamped travel route animation is another highlight, a great way to produce TV-quality animations showing your travels around the world (or just your local neighbourhood). New frame interpolation support means that you can slow down a clip considerably, but still deliver quality results, as the program will generate intermediate images for you. And there are many smaller additions dotted around, like the ability to view the EXIF data of images in the media pool, or the option to resize the heights of individual tracks according to your editing needs. Most of these are well-judged and genuinely useful, though, and they all play their part in creating what is a significant step forward for the Movie Edit Pro name.

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A change is gonna come: see what's stewing in the Firefox cook pot as pre-release channels are updated

Following on from the release of Firefox 12 FINAL, Mozilla has updated its developmental branches to versions 13 (Beta), 14 (Aurora) and 15 (Nightly/UX) respectively. Those looking for major changes in version 12 will have been disappointed, but future builds promise a number of radical new features, including redesigned Home and New Tab pages, plus panel downloads manager and inline preferences screen. Get a head’s up on what’s coming and discover which build is best for your personal needs with our essential guide to what's coming up in the near future for Mozilla's open-source, cross-platform browser. Firefox 12.0 FINAL This is the recommended release for most users, being as it is the latest stable build available. That said, version 12 will not go down in the annals of Mozilla folklore as a notable release, with a minor refresh of the HTML5 controls and the move to silent updates on Windows machines being the only two changes of note. Ordinarily we’d caution against moving rapidly on to the next version, but read on to discover why you may not be able to resist taking the plunge and moving to the beta channel. Check out the new Home page, which makes its debut appearance in Firefox 13. Firefox 13.0b1 Beta Last August, Mozilla unveiled a presentation of how it saw the Firefox user interface changing in the months ahead. A few minor tweaks have already landed in Firefox, but version 13 sees two noticeable new features making their first appearance: a new Home page, and a New Tab page. Firefox’s new Home page (type about:home into the Address bar) provides users with a customised page that includes shortcuts to bookmarks, downloads, add-ons, history, sync, settings and an option for restoring the previous session. This latter feature is another new addition to Firefox’s feature set, and restores all open tabs from a previous browsing session. The home page, which can be pinned permanently as an app tab for easy access, is fully functional already, but will evolve further in time – Mozilla plans to use it as a portal to the upcoming Apps Market, for example. Firefox 13 also introduces a redesigned New Tab page that will be familiar to Chrome and Opera users: thumbnail previews of frequently visited sites. On first visit these will appear blank, but as time goes on and you visit said sites, they should start to populate themselves with thumbnail images of the site itself. Sites can be permanently removed (click X), pinned to the list and even dragged and dropped into a new order, and those who hate the new feature will find a small button in the top right-hand corner that toggles between this new view and the traditional blank tab page. There’s one other major change in version 13: smooth scrolling is now enabled by default, despite the acknowledgement of one bug that may cause issues on certain web pages. Meanwhile, Android users will be pleased to learn that support for Flash is finally being enabled in version 13 of the mobile app, but only if you’re running Android 2.x or 4.x. In the absence of anything visually new in Aurora, we thought we'd show off the New Tab page, also accessible in Firefox 13 Beta. Firefox 14.0a2 Aurora Aurora is an “alpha” build of Firefox, which means it’s undergone minimum testing only. As such it’s not suitable for everyday use, which is why Firefox Aurora is installed as a separate build alongside the stable or beta build, allowing you to test its features without affecting your day-to-day browsing. Settings are shared between Firefox Aurora and your other build, however, so again caution should be exercised before installing it. After all the excitement of Firefox 13 Beta, you’d think the Mozilla developers would rein things in for v14, but none of it. The most exciting features planned are currently listed as in definition, design or development, which means there’s no guarantee they’ll appear in Firefox 14. These include a version of Firefox that runs in Windows 8’s new Metro interface, support for desktop apps (which can be installed and used independently of Firefox, even when offline), and the panel-based download manager that’s been a staple of the UX build for a long time. One other tweak in development is an extension to the silent updates feature introduced in Firefox 12, and that’s the ability of Firefox to update itself in the background, so the user will never have to worry about manually updating again. This is slated for version 14, but may yet slip to version 15 due to a current slew of issues undergoing fixes. The inline autocomplete function remains stubbornly part of Aurora, where it’s been since version 12 was released. This is designed to anticipate what URL is being typed into the Address Bar, pre-loading the web page in the background before the URL has been entered. Other “landed” features are minor, and behind-the-scenes tweaks. These include incremental garbage collection, hang detector and reporter, and cycle collector performance improvements, some of which were slated for Firefox 13 Beta and may yet be implemented in this version. As things stand, there’s nothing visible to get excited about in Firefox Aurora, which makes us think it’s probably best to wait until it gets to Beta before seeing if any of the more exciting new features mentioned above are ready for their move to primetime. Preview the new inline preferences screen in Firefox 15 UX. Firefox 15.0a1 Nightly/Firefox 15.0a1 UX Firefox’s two Nightly channels give users access to code hot off the press, but while you’re looking at the latest bleeding-edge version of Firefox, you’re also venturing into uncharted waters because much of this new code has had no testing at all. Nightly builds update regularly, so once installed you’ll find your build updating on a much more frequent basis than other unstable releases. After the excitement of features being developed in versions 13 and 14, Firefox 15 looks like being a more minor release at this early stage in its development. At the present time only three new improvements are in the pipeline: two performance-related (faster start-up times for Windows users, and tweaks to session restore so it doesn’t slow down the browser restart process) and one that’s being developed by students at Michigan State University. This latter feature, “in-content preferences”, will see Firefox’s Options dialogue box removed and the program’s preferences moved into a browser window, similar to how Chrome’s preferences currently work. This is currently accessible in Firefox 15.0a1 UX, the parallel nightly build of Firefox where interface improvements such as the panel-based downloads manager and New Tab pages first made their appearance. When selecting Options, you’ll see the old pop-up window is replaced by a new tab with a series of buttons to choose from. Click one to access that section’s settings – at present this feels a little clunky, but we suspect it’ll evolve into something sleeker in time. Windows and Linux 64-bit users may be interested in trying Firefox 15.0a1 Nightly 64-bit and Firefox 15.0a1 UX 64-bit. We’d recommend all but developers and serious, knowledgeable enthusiasts avoid the Nightly builds of Firefox. So, to summarise Which version of Firefox should you try? Stick to the most stable version you feel comfortable with, although the temptation to sneek a peek ahead is actually quite compelling with these latest developmental builds. That said, it’s hard not to recommend people check out Firefox 13 Beta – the new features will make a difference to the way you use your browser going forward, and it’s a shame one or other couldn’t have been made ready to provide version 12 with a little more pizzazz. If you do plan to take a look into the future of Firefox, back up if you plan before installing Beta or Aurora builds of Firefox. And If you do decide to give the Nightly or UX builds a try, consider using a non-critical machine or virtual setup (try VirtualBox) instead of your main computer, just in case

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Review: Xara Designer Pro 6

There are many different ways to get creative with graphics, and satisfying all those needs can require an entire library of applications. So you'll open one program for photo editing, another for web graphics, a third for desktop publishing, and the list goes on. Maybe, though, there is a another way. Xara Designer Pro 6 is a photo editor, yes. But it's also a vector drawing tool. A web graphics creator. An excellent desktop publishing tool, with templates to help you build calendars, greetings cards, brochures, business cards, CD covers and labels, newspapers and more. An easy to use and very capable WYSIWYG web designer, a useful collection of 3,000 clipart items, and more. There is a down side to this level of graphics power, of course: the interface can be confusing, at least initially. Open a photo to edit it, for instance, and the toolbars remain packed with options that you probably don't need right now (extrude and transparency tools, "snap to objects", link properties and more). The menus offer little help, too, so it'll probably take some exploration before you find the options you require. This isn't an issue for too long, though. After a little time spent pointing and clicking, or maybe consulting the excellent Help file, you soon learn where everything is and are ready to start using the functions on offer. Photo editing Designer Pro 6 opens images in all the main formats (including PSD and many RAW variants), then provides an "Enhance" toolbar for quick tweaks. Brightness, contrast, saturation, temperature, and blur/ sharpness can all be adjusted separately through sliders, or if you prefer the easy life, then just click the Enhance button and the program will optimise them all automatically. There are a reasonable number of filters here, too, and they're mostly very configurable. You don't just get a locked "Emboss" option, for example - this one lets you set direction, light colour, luminous intensity, shine, angle of incidence, depth, smoothing and reflection. And support for Photoshop plugins means it's easy to find and add any other effects you might require. Importantly, a new Mask feature finally allows you to apply these effects to a selected area of an image. And there are a host of other useful additions. Content-aware zoom allows you to get a closer look at the focus of your photograph, without changing its overall dimensions. A Perspective Correction tool provides a simple way to fix many common perspective problems. The Levels dialog now lets you construct a manual brightness curve for detailed brightness control. An EXIF viewer displays basic image metadata, and this is now preserved when JPEGs are exported. Xara is playing "catch up" here, to an extent, and the new features aren't always as easy to use as we'd like. Still, the various improvements do mean that Designer Pro 6 can now be taken seriously as a photo editor - you may never have to use anything else. Design Designer Pro 6 is, at heart, a vector drawing tool, and the program provides plenty of useful options to help you get creative. It's easy to create freehand lines, curves and shapes, for instance. If a curve isn't quite right then you can have the program smooth it out. The Quick Shape, Rectangle and Ellipse tools help you draw shapes, and everything you draw has handles for easy resizing and rotation. New to this version is live shape drawing, where you see a solid shape (not just an outline), with the correct fill and line colours, as you drag. Which means there's no guessing how a particular idea will turn out, as you can the results immediately: it's a far more WYSIWYG approach and helps you work more quickly. And if you use pressure-sensitive tablets then you should find Designer Pro 6 delivers better results, producing accurate real-time variable-width lines as you draw with a pressure pen. Elsewhere the design tools are mostly as they've always been (which isn't really a problem, as they've always been impressive). The Extrude tool makes it easy to turn any shape into a properly rendered 3D object, and you might then add soft shadows or bevels to objects in a click. Variable transparency, clever contouring and a host of fills provide even more creative possibilities. There is one appealing addition, though, in the shape of the new opacity masks, which will quickly create an irregular transparent shape around any object, or group of objects. They're easy to create, just draw a shape around your subject and Designer Pro does the hard work. Then paste it into your image, and admire the results: they're perfect for creating a vignette or soft fade around the subject of a photo, for instance. And useful text improvements include the text tool's new ability to handle bullets, numbered lists and indents, as well as a search and replace option. If you're upgrading from Xara Xtreme then this may not seem quite enough. If you're a newcomer to the package, though, Designer Pro 6 provides plenty of creative power and could be enough to handle all your illustration and design needs. Web tools If you've used the drawing tools to create web graphics then you'll appreciate the GIF, JPG and PNG (including alpha channel) support. You get full control over the palette, including the ability to lock particular colours so you can be sure they're always present. You're able to choose colour depth, dithering and transparency options, minimise apparent anti-aliasing effects, and more. There's good support for image slicing and image maps, with Designer Pro 6 doing most of the hard work. If you assign a URL to each object within a document (or an area within that object), perhaps, then you can export it as an image map and the program will generate both the image and the necessary HTML for you. And it's reasonably easy to create simple animations in GIF or Flash formats. The real star in Designer Pro 6, though, is the revamped web designer. If you like to take control yourself then you'll appreciate the new NavBar object, which helps you quickly create horizontal or vertical NavBars, while DHTML submenus provide their own animation and transparency effects. Or, if you're in a hurry, maybe just use one of the bundled web templates - there's plenty, they look great, and you even get a few fully-linked 8-page sites. Insert your own content and they're ready to go. It's now much easier to add all kinds of files of files to your site. Drag and drop an MP4 video onto the page, say, a Flash video player will be embedded, and the video uploaded to your web server. You'd prefer a slideshow? Just drag and drop the photos onto the page, set the appropriate options and Designer Pro 6 will build the necessary code for you. And easy-to-use Widgets allow you to add all kinds of interactivity and features to your site: contact forms, e-commerce options, YouTube videos, Flickr slideshows, Google maps, RSS feeds, Facebook and Twitter comment, and more. Just drag and drop whatever you need onto the page, configure it accordingly and once again Designer Pro 6 will handle all the difficult bits. Experienced web designers may be frustrated by the lack of low-level control. And the HTML code generated here isn't always as efficient as it could be (though it's generally good enough). If you just want to generate an attractive site at speed, though, Designer Pro 6 does the job very well, delivering feature-packed and professional-looking pages even if you've no previous web design experience. More features Designer Pro 6 also comes with a sizeable collection of document templates in an easier-to-use hierarchical Designs Gallery (no more hunting around for the examples you need). There are calendars, photo albums, greetings cards, brochures, CD and DVD labels, a new "interactive presentations" category and more. The designs are generally high quality, and in some cases deliver notably more than you might think. Open the Business Cards and Letters category, say, and along with the standard fax cover, invoice and statement, you'll find almost 50 themes providing matching business cards, compliments slips and letterhead designs. Customise the content and you'll have a complete business stationery set in minutes. And while you can get most of this functionality in the much cheaper Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6, Designer Pro does have plenty of features that are all its own. The website creator is strictly Designer Pro-only, for instance. Photo editing improvements include HD Photo/ Windows Media Photo import, and an enhanced Panorama Studio for stitching together any number of photos, and even creating 360 degree web panoramas. Multi-core CPU support improves performance, while the option to reconfigure shortcut keys may help your workflow. PANTONE libraries can be used as spot and process colours. And when you've finished your work, Designer Pro 6 can now export the results as colour separations, XPS or even PDF/X files, the latter providing complete control over every aspect of the finished PDF file.

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MediaMonkey 4.0 now plays friendly with video as well as music

Ventis Media has overhauled its music management tool to add full support for video. MediaMonkey 4.0, available in free and Gold editions, allows Windows users to manage and organise their media collection with a set of powerful tools. Version 4.0 also adds support for library sharing to and from UPnP/DLNA devices, improves automatic synchronisation capabilities with Android mobiles and introduces a new portable installation option, allowing MediaMonkey to be run from USB drive. The standout feature in MediaMonkey 4.0 is the fact it now supports video as well as music – the media manager currently supports AVI, MP4 and WMV videos only, with support for MKV promised at a later date. Video support is exactly the same as music support, allowing the user to quickly play, sync, tag and update video art and metadata over the internet. As with music files, video files will also be capable of being quickly renamed and organised according to their metadata, and there are video-conversion capabilities too. Additionally, video libraries can be segmented into separate collections, allowing the user to organise video into various categories such as recorded TV, movies and home video. Version 4.0 also adds support for library sharing with UPnP/DLNA devices such as xBox, PS3 or compatible televisions and media streaming boxes. Automatic sync support allows you to sync with a wide range of compatible devices via profiles, which can be fine-tuned as required. Other changes in version 4.0 include a new “secure ripping” system, that aims to improve CD ripping accuracy by slowing down the disc’s rotational speed whenever inaccuracies have been detected. The software also claims to offer improved audio quality via the Windows Session Audio API. The app’s user interface has also been tweaked to make it simpler to use, with a number of improvements that start with a setup wizard after installation and include a new tabbed interface and integrated file monitoring features. Version 4.0 also includes a wide number of bug fixes that resolve a number of issues. MediaMonkey 4.0 is available now as a free download for PCs running Windows XP or later. A Gold license, which includes a number of additional features and performance improvements, is also available, with prices starting from $24.95. The upgrade can be performed within the Free edition of the software.

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Hurry! Get Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6, worth $89, for free with Downloadcrew Giveaway!

Have you been keeping an eye on our amazing software giveaways this year? Hot on the heels of our first two amazing deals comes this, a free and fully functional copy of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6. This universally acclaimed design tool runs on Windows PCs and is capable of photo-editing, drawing, graphics design and even desktop publishing, all rolled into one super program. And the best news of all? For a 48-hour period from midday GMT, Saturday December 29th, you’ll be able to download this amazing app, worth $89, for free thanks to Downloadcrew Giveaway. Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 basically becomes your one-stop shop for design, allowing you to do away with a hotchpotch of tools and concentrate on honing your skills within one easy to use program. Version 6 debuted a brand new interface, attractively styled in dark and grey, boasting new icons, flyout tools, dockable panels and a much more intuitive feel than previous versions. Get a multitude of design apps in one with lightning fast Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6. What tools you see depend on what you’re doing with the application. Open a photo, for example, and you’ll find the usual gamut of photo-editing tools from red eye correction and other adjustment options to clone and perspective correction tools. Fancy doing something creative? Fire up the Designs Gallery and take your pick from a range of projects from greetings cards and brochures to Flash animations and photo albums. Pick one you like and then download it to your hard drive for use now and in the future. And then there’s the vector design tools, with 3D extrusions, transparency and blending controls, shadows, bevels, contours and more. A Page and Layer Gallery replaces the old Objects gallery, providing you with an easy way to order your objects by hierarchy, helped with the thumbnail previews. Look out for the Solo mode, which makes it easy to isolate elements for working on without affecting the rest of your image or publication. One of Xara’s standout features is its raw power and speed, delivering amazing results even on older machines. Even complex drawings don’t slow it down, so you can go to town on your designs without worrying about your PC grinding to a halt in the background. It’s so fast Xara is even capable of filling and stroking objects and paths as you add them. One final standout feature: Content Aware Scaling. This basically lets you focus in on the important parts of a bitmap image when scaling, while Xara automatically – and intelligently – removes distracting and unwanted elements. Upgrade offer If you’re suitably impressed with Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6, then you’ll love the latest version of Photo & Graphic Designer 2013. New features include support for text styles, a new Share menu for quickly sharing your content online and improved colour selection, hue adjustment and shape eraser tools. Still undecided? Check out our review for a more indepth look. Suitably impressed? Excellent. You can upgrade your copy of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 to 2013 for just $59, a saving of $30 on the MSRP. Just visit the Xara upgrade page. So there you have it. Download Giveaway continues to amaze and excite with the very best in free software giveaways this holiday season. Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 requires a PC running Windows XP or later, and registration for your free product key is handled within the program, so all you need to do is make sure you visit Downloadcrew Giveaway from  midday (GMT) Saturday December 29 until Monday December 31 to download your free copy.

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LastPass launches Windows 8 app, provides automatic security score with LastPass 2.0.20 update

Browser password manager LastPass 2.0.20 has been released for all major web browsers. The new release, also available for 64-bit versions of Windows is accompanied by the LastPass for Windows 8 app, which gives users access to their Lastpass account directly from the Modern UI interface in Windows 8. Version 2.0.20 now automatically calculates the user’s security score and displays it next to the Security Challenge link in the user’s vault. It also extends support – albeit in beta – to the Maxthon web browser. The new build also adds a new preference that permits users to clear login credentials filled in automatically by LastPass on logging out of the service. Also added is faster login through performing hashes through binary components of the app, while password iterations are now recommended to be at 5000 for greater security. LastPass for Windows 8 works in much the same way as iPhone and Android apps. Also improved is accessibility to the Generate Secure Password tool from the LastPass toolbar, while the LastPass Sentry online test now offers an option for checking usernames to see if they’ve been used as part of browser hacks. There’s also a fix for NTLM authentication in Internet Explorer. A number of new Enterprise features have been added, including the extension of SAML Support to include Box.com, Zendesk and SalesForce among others. Enterprise users can now see security scores for all users in the organisation to see which ones aren’t following the best practices. The new Windows 8 app works in much the same way as the standalone LastPass Tab Browser app for iPhone and iPad, providing users with full access to their vault, plus bundling a built-in browser for quickly accessing websites on the go. Users can also opt to copy passwords to the clipboard for manually logging into other web browsers. LastPass 2.0.20 is a free download for all major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. Also available are standalone tools, LastPass for Windows 8, LastPass for Android and LastPass Tab Browser for iPhone and iPad. Users can upgrade for additional tools, including the ability to access their LastPass vaults from mobile devices.

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Quick Tip: Speed up and maximise your web search results

Most of what we do on the web involves searching for information, whether it’s through a web site’s own search bar or using one of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! or Bing. Web browsers have evolved to make searching the web that much quicker and easier, It’s easy to stick with the status quo when it comes to web searching, but if you find yourself frequently using multiple engines it can be a little frustrating having to switch between them. In this quick tip we’ll show you how to quickly access your search engines of choice using the tools provided by Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox. 1. Use your favourite engine Set up the search bar in IE8 or Firefox to point to your favourite search engine and enter your search terms from there; IE9 and Google Chrome users can simply type their search terms into the Address Bar itself (IE9 users will first need to select Turn on search suggestions from the drop-down menu that appears when you start typing). 2. Create search engine shortcuts All three major browsers enable you to create shortcut keys to your favourite search engine, but they work in different ways. In Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox, click the down arrow button in the search bar to start; IE9 users should start typing some search terms, then click the Add button that appears. 3. Set up Firefox Either browse to your chosen site and see if an option to add it appears when you click on the down arrow button in your search bar, or choose Manage Search Engines and click Get more search engines to see if your favourites are available from the 550-plus on offer. 4. Configure Internet Explorer In IE8, choose Find More Providers and either pick from the list or click Create your own Search Provider and follow the instructions given. Once done, switch between search providers by clicking the arrow key to the right of the search box and selecting your provider from the list. Things are a lot quicker in IE9: first, you’ll be taken to a page listing various search providers: click Add to Internet Explorer to add one to your selection, ticking Make this my default search provider if you want it to be the default choice when typing your search terms. Once done, as you type your search terms you’ll see your installed engines appear as a series of icons beneath the search suggestions – just click one to view the suggested search terms from that engine. 5. Add engines to Google Chrome Browse to the search engine in question, enter “dummy” as your search term and click Search. Copy and paste the address from your browser into Notepad. Locate the term “dummy” in the URL and replace it with %s. Click the Spanner icon in Chrome and choose Options, scroll down and click Manage next to Default search. Click Add to set up your shortcut using the URL you’ve created.

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Malwarebytes announces Secure Backup service

Malwarebytes has unveiled its new Secure Backup product, an online service created in conjunction with SOS Online Backup, which automatically scans your files before they're uploaded to the cloud. This ensures that, if you're ever hit by a virus, you'll know you can restore a backup without any danger of reinfection. And if you want to share a file with others, then, again, you can all be confident that it's clean. The current Secure Backup download is a beta offering 5GB of online storage, which will expire after 14 days. If you like the idea and decide to upgrade, though, there are 100GB ($59.95 per year), 200GB ($119.95) or 500GB ($299.95) packages available. The backup client is simple and easy to use. It automatically scans for documents, pictures, music or videos on your system, and can upload those in a click or two. But if you need more control, there's also an option to select whatever individual files and folders you'd like to protect. Backups may then be scheduled to run at intervals of anything from an hour to a month, with an option to receive email reports whenever a backup job ends. A clean and simple interface ensures the program is very easy to use A Secure Backup console provides some useful configuration settings, including include and exclude settings. (No option to limit bandwidth use, though, which we always like to see in online backup tools.) And there's also a web portal which allows you to access and restore your files from anywhere, as well as share particular files or folders with others. How useful might this service be? In an ideal world your PC would be set up to detect malware as soon as it arrived, not just before you're despatching it elsewhere. In practice, though, it's not uncommon common for people to reinfect their systems via backups, so having this second layer of protection certainly isn't a bad thing. And if you regularly share files with others, then using Secure Backup should reassure everyone that their downloads are clean. We'll need to run more intensive tests to see how Malwarebytes Secure Backup performs as a backup tool, then, but in principle this could be a useful service. If you'd like to try it for yourself then a 14-day trial version is available now, but keep in mind that it is still flagged as a beta: don't rely on it as your sole backup program just yet.

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Which is the best cloud-based sync service?

Computing has become increasingly portable and mobile, with the internet playing an ever-increasing role in allowing people to avoid being tied to a single computer or location for work or personal purposes. One key factor in working here, there and everywhere is being able to access the latest version of your data quickly and promptly: if you work on a document in one location, will you be able to access those changes later on from another? The emergence of the cloud has seen an opportunity for online backup services to evolve to meet the needs of people who need to either access their data from multiple locations, or who wish to be able to share files quickly and easily over the internet. We take a quick look at three such services – Dropbox, Wuala and Windows Live Mesh – in this feature. The basics of synchronisation While tools for synchronising folders are nothing new, the likes of the Windows Briefcase or a file-sync tool like Allway Sync rely on either both computers being switched on and connected to the same network, or an intermediary device such as a USB drive. It’s workable, but it’s not intuitive and relies on you remembering to synchronise each time. Far better then, to utilise a cloud-based service: this automatically backs up or synchronises selected folders to the internet as they’re updated. Then, when you log on at another machine, the service in question silently downloads those updates to your current computer, ensuring you always have access to the latest versions of your files without having to remember they’re there. An added bonus of this approach is that your files are also being backed up to the cloud, so they’re in a minimum of three places at once, making it less likely you’ll suffer from data loss. The downside is how much online storage space you get as part of your service. Windows Live Mesh There are both free and paid-for services offering this cloud-based sync feature. Windows Live Mesh is the most visible free service, offering 5GB free online storage that can be shared across both Windows and Mac computers. Folders can be synced directly between computers as well as via the cloud, thus allowing you to rationalise your storage space for those folders you access frequently. Windows Live Mesh also allows you to access your files from the web – giving you universal access to them – and it features Remote Connection, allowing you to access your computer from another location if it’s switched on and connected. It’s installed as part of Windows Live Essentials, so make sure you choose the selective option unless you want all the other Windows Live apps too. It also requires Windows Vista or 7 on the PC, so XP users are locked out. Dropbox Dropbox offers a cross-platform solution with mobile and Linux options in addition to Windows and Mac. It offers similar features to Live Mesh – online backup, sync, web access – but only provides 2GB storage space as part of its free Basic package. Paid-for solutions are expensive (US$9.99/month for 50GB, US$19.99/month for 100GB). Dropbox does have several features not found in Windows Live Mesh, and these are available to Basic as well as premium accounts. First, online backup stores multiple revisions of files, allowing you to restore older versions. And second, you can share folders or photo albums with selected people or the wider internet, allowing others to not just access your files but collaborate on them too. There’s also an “undo” option – as all changes are quickly synchronised with the Dropbox server, you might find you’ve accidentally deleted the wrong file or made a change you’re not happy with. Don’t worry: Dropbox stores up to 30 days of revision changes, allowing you to undo them quickly and easily. Wuala Wuala’s service comes in free and professional versions. The free version offers a rather basic 1GB package, principally for media streaming and sharing. Other features – backup, sync and file revisioning – are restricted to Pro accounts, but these cost a lot less than Dropbox, with prices starting from just €19/year for 10GB storage space. There's no undo feature as found in Dropbox, but all deleted files are sent to the Trash, so you can recover anything you accidentally delete. Wuala also boasts a rather unique feature: the ability to trade storage. If you’re online for a set number of hours per day, Wuala will offer to give you a Pro account with a set level of storage in return for using the equivalent amount of storage space on your hard drive for encrypted backups. Once you’ve been running Wuala for a short while – and assuming you pass muster – this offer will be made to you or you can click the “Go pro” link within the main program window and select Trade. This way, it’s possible to get all the pro-level features without having to spend a penny in hosting fees, but read all the terms and conditions before you start. Which service is for you? Windows Live Mesh will appeal most to those with relatively small demands who merely want to synchronise files between two or more computers without having to pay a penny. Dropbox's 2GB account is enough to get familiar with the service, but the high cost of upgrading to its professional features will be off-putting to many, particularly when compared to Wuala. It does, however, support multiple mobile devices including Android and iPhone, something neither Wuala nor Live Mesh currently do. Ultimately, however, we’d have to say that Wuala is currently our cloud-based sync and sharing service of choice: the desktop application works well, and its range of features and comparatively good value (exceptional if you’re able and willing to trade storage space on your computer) make it well worth considering if you’re looking for online backup, sync and sharing in a single service.

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Flutter gives you (basic) gesture control of media via your web cam

Gestures are here it is at these days, with the Kinect add-on for Xbox 360 and the motion controls of the Wii allowing for direct interaction with games and other software. Even mobile devices such as Android and iOS phones and tablets are making more and more use of gestures rather than menus and buttons. Touch screen displays are available for Mac and PC that make this possible in Windows and OS X, but Flutter enables you to use your web cam to interact using gestures. As you can tell from the version number (currently 0.1.185), this is a very early version of the software and thins are a little limited at the moment – but that’s not to say that it is not still worth taking a look at. At the moment Flutter can be used to control your media player, enabling you to use basic hand gestures to start and pause music or video playback. Flutter Currently this is the only supported gesture – a simple holding of the hand in front of your web cam is used to both pause and resume playback – but there are plans to add more. It can be used with Spotify, Windows Media Player, iTunes. QuickTIme and VLC, and in future releases support will be added for YouTube, Netflix, Pandora and Hulu. The great thing about the app, despite its obvious limitations, is the fact that the program you are controlling does not have to be in the foreground. Next time you receive a phone call while you are working and listening to music, there’s no need to bring to media player in front of every other running app before hunting for the pause button. Instead you can just hold you open palm in front of your web cam and playback will pause until you repeat the motion. Once gestures for track skipping and volume control are added this will be a great app, but for the time being it is still a curiosity that’s worth investigating. You can find out more and download a free copy of the app by paying a visit to the Flutter review page.

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