The mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks that killed 10 in the Washington, D.C., region has been executed.

Last week we asked you to share your favorite antivirus application and then we rounded up the five most popular candidates for your review and a final vote. We’re back with the results, and this was one very close race.

In the end AVG came out on top as the most popular antivirus app with 23 percent of the vote, barely beating out Microsoft Security Essentials (22 percent), which in turn beat out ESET NOD32 (19 percent).

If you’re unfamiliar with Microsoft Security Essentials, the newest kid on the antivirus block, check out our feature on Microsoft’s security tools for a little more on why we think most users should stop paying for their Windows security applications. For more information on the winner and runners up, check out the full Hive Five.

Windows only: Planning an upgrade soon? Save yourself the web searches for your specs and download Speccy. Speccy does a quick scan of your machine and gives you a complete rundown of every piece of gear that’s in your computer.

Upon first glance, Speccy seems like something that’s only attractive to power users, but it can be useful for anyone. When the Device Manager doesn’t give you enough information about what kind of RAM you have (say, if you’re looking to upgrade), Speccy will give you all the information you could possibly need, including the RAM type, how much you currently have, and even the number of slots used so you can buy with confidence.

You can view your computer’s information in a brief summary (as shown), or click on any of the categories for a very, very detailed report. Speccy gives you detailed information for CPU, motherboard, graphics, hard drives, optical drives, and audio, all so you don’t have to go searching somewhere else to find out what you have. In addition, it also gives you real-time information on things like bus speed, DRAM Frequency, and temperature, to name a few.

We’ve featured one or two different tools like this in the past, but thus far, this is the cleanest and most detailed one we’ve used yet. Speccy is a free download, Windows only.

Windows only: Free application Comodo EasyVPN creates a virtual private network between your computers for a hassle-free, secure private network. That means you can access, for example, anything on your home computer from work as though you’re on the same local network.

Comodo EasyVPN, like previously mentioned VPN app Hamachi, is simple to set up. Just install the application, register for an account, and then log in. Once you’ve got the app running on a couple of computers, you can easily (and securely) access one computer from the other as though you’re on the same local network.

As we mentioned in our guide to Hamachi, a VPN comes in handy when:

• You’re on the road with your laptop and want secure access to your PC’s files.
• Your office or dorm room computer is behind a restrictive firewall that doesn’t let you reach it from the internet.
• You want to add encryption to insecure network protocols like VNC.
• You want to set up a shared folder of files for friends and family to access.

We showed you how to set up secure VNC with Hamachi, and the same basic steps would apply with Comodo EasyVPN. So is EasyVPN better than Hamachi? Not necessarily, but since LogMeIn bought Hamachi, it’s only free for non-commercial use. If you want or need to use a VPN for work purposes and don’t have the extra budget, Comodo EasyVPN will do the job nicely. Update: Apparently EasyVPN is also only available for non-commercial use. This information was not on the main page, but I missed it on their download page. Apologies for the confusion. Apart from the basics, EasyVPN also comes with a built-in, secure chat tool.

Comodo EasyVPN is a free download, works with Windows XP and above with support for 32- and 64-bit systems.

Windows: Panda Cloud, the constantly updated, cloud-run antivirus app that promises almost real-time protection from burgeoning web threats, is out of beta and available for a free download.

As the How-To Geek detailed in his beta write-up, Panda does most of its computing, file-checking, and threat updating on its servers, leaving a very light and agile app presence on your system. It caches its threat database offline with a minimal bit of hard drive space, and the interface is far from cluttered, as you see above. In general, it's a very polite anti-virus app, and if the Geek considers it worth mentioning, well—he's far from calmly objective on the topic of anti-virus apps, so consider it a recommendation.

During the beta process, Panda appears to have focused on tightening up CPU and memory usage even more, as well as fixing the “stuck” errors encountered by some users. If you’re already running a beta, Panda recommends uninstalling that, and installing the 1.0 final.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is a free download for home users and educational groups on Windows systems only.

Crutches. In a thousand years, their design hasn’t fundamentally changed. And for something as minor as a sprained ankle or broken foot, the Freedom Leg looks like a welcome alternative.

A light, 2.5lb exoskeleton, the Freedom Leg moves all of your body weight from your injured foot to the prosthesis frame and your upper leg, meaning that you can walk pretty much like your used to while you heal up. And while I welcome resident doctors to list all of this product’s flaws in the comments, to my pea brain, the idea seems so obvious and simple that it just might work. [Forward Mobility via medGadget via OhGizmo!]

I’ve started to buy vinyl records again. It’s not because of the sound. It’s the touch and the pretty pictures. Obviously, vinyl is not why CDs are dying. Zoom-zoom in, digital boys and girls.

What surprises me about these facts and figures—apart from iTunes skyrocketing again after the introduction of variable pricing—is the fact that CDs are not completely dead yet. They are clearly going down, but I had this mental image in which all of those round mirrors were destroyed, melting like Dali clocks in a desert of indifference. [Mint]

330 million users and 7,000 add-ons

Calgary’s Jarome Iginla was named the NHL’s first star of the week Monday after scoring five goals in three games, helping lead the Flames to three consecutive victories.

Google has bought VoIP service Gizmo5, according to tech news weblog TechCrunch. If that’s true, we’re thinking it could mean some seriously cool things for Google Voice.

We detailed a few months back how to make free VoIP calls from Google Voice with Gizmo5, so connecting Google Voice with Gizmo5 seems like a no-brainer. Right now when you sign up for a Google Voice account, the service can only ring phones you’ve already got. As TechCrunch points out, Gizmo5 integration could give your Voice number its own endpoint.

That said, none of this is confirmed at this point. Let’s hear your thoughts and pie-in-the-sky predictions for Gizmo5 and Google integration in the comments.

We just received a set of screengrabs from an anonymous source giving us a glimpse at what appears to be Google’s (and thus, the world’s) future interface to its web applications, Gmail in particular. While we were originally tempted to ignore them, communications with the tipster would indicate genuine insider knowledge. Regardless, we can not independently confirm the authenticity of these images. Having said that, the pics demonstrate a more unified apps interface based on Google’s Wave and accessible from any browser (as they are now). Specifically, we’re told that “the goal is to provide a consistent experience throughout all Google Apps and blur the line between the browser and the website (e.g. drag and drop, right-click, etc.).” Something that certainly makes sense to us based on what we know about Google’s tender approach to its Chrome browser and its future “lightweight” Chrome OS. If true then this “work in progress” also hints at the importance of Wave to the future of Google. Then again, it could be just one of many possible interface concepts from Google’s burgeoning developer’s sandbox.

Filed under: Software

Google making Waves across all its Apps? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A second person has been fired for allowing members of the Calgary Flames to receive the swine flu shot while Albertans had to line up for hours at vaccination clinics.

The Yorkton, Sask., doctor at the centre of a review of thousands of medical tests does not have the skills or knowledge to practise radiology, the College of Physicians and Surgeons announced Friday

Microsoft’s research division is doing tours across college campuses and rather than turning them into snoozefests they’re showing off a prototype straight outta Iron Man fantasies. It’s a clear glass display which accepts input through voice-control, touch-less gestures, and eye-tracking.

iStartedSomething has videos showing the prototype in action, and it looks like it’s got quite some potential, whether genuinely useful for manipulating data or for just plain fun. I can’t wait until displays like this come out so that I can control my computer by staring it down after some foolish hand waving. [iStartedSomething via Slashgear]

Consumer Market Research firm NPD has confirmed that initial sales of Windows 7 have surpassed those of the Windows Vista launch. According to NPD's weekly tracking service, Windows 7 software unit sales in the U.S. were 234 percent higher than Vista's first few days of sales. The most popular choice for consumers was the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade followed by the Pro upgrade and Home Premium Family Pack. According to NPD, software sales of Windows 7 were strong compared to Vista's sales partly due to early discounts on pre-sales and a wide range of promotions.

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When Apple TV 3.0 came out, we were unimpressed. Readers asked what else they could use to play their many videos. Here are five nice ones to suit different needs—nearly all cost less, and do more, than ATV.

The goal here is simple: Play all the videos that I have ripped from DVD, downloaded from the web, shot with my own cameras or obtained in some other manner, no matter what the format. It sounds simple, but Apple TV can’t do it. Neither can the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Video codecs and containers are a nightmare to keep track of, and even more of a nightmare to convert.

This isn’t about photos and music. Apple TV is better at both of those than any of this stuff. It’s also not about renting movies or buying movies, or even streaming movies from Netflix. Roku has a nice cheap box for that, and Apple TV is suitable if you just want to live inside Steve Jobs’ media store. This is about playing non-DRM movies, pure and simple.

The names might be familiar to you: The Popcorn Hour C-200 by Syabas is quickly gaining cult status (and has its own hacker wiki), while the other four smaller boxes come from brands you probably have experience with, including WD, Seagate, Netgear and Patriot. None have built-in wireless, but they all have Ethernet ports.

My two main tests were simple—I loaded PC and Mac formatted external hard drives with a variety of files ranging from H.264 MP4s to WMVs of several vintages, from raw AVCHD files in MTS wrappers to the hot new DivX 7 MKV. Then I browsed through my local network to a NAS that had a cache of similar files. Could I see them? Could I play them? These shouldn't be issues, but they're big issues.

Here’s a rundown of each machine, and how they fared in testing:

As you can see, there were clear leaders given my criteria above, but what struck me was how each one differed. Truth is, depending on who you are, any one of these might be the best fit. Here’s what really separates them:

WD TV Live – $150

I would have given this thing the solo spot at the top if it weren’t for a few dings that might very well be fixed in a firmware update: It won’t show you DVD menus on ripped DVD images, and when you play files with the suffix .m4v, it won’t fast forward or rewind. Weird bug, and can be fixed if you just change .m4v to .mp4, but since that’s the default file naming for Handbrake’s “Apple TV” profile, it could be a problem for people, like me, who spent months ripping their entire DVD collection that way.

WD’s strengths include a friendly user interface with handy video previews, some promising early online services (including Pandora), and the most reasonable photo and music handling I’ve seen in this cluster of gadgets.

Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ – $150

I loved this when I tested it a few weeks ago, despite its fugly interface, and it holds up under testing. It does better with ripped .ISO files than WD, doing both DVD menus and chapters (and it doesn’t have that weird .m4v bug either). Video was better, especially when running 1080p content. And when it came to browsing my Linksys NAS in search of movies, it could reach more and read more than the WD.

The tradeoff is that the interface is bad, and there’s almost nothing in the way of online services. It gets points for making an attempt at sorting music, and displaying photos, but if that’s a priority, WD is the better call.

Popcorn Hour C-200 – $300

Hardcore AV nerds love this thing, and I understand why. There are more ways to get at video content than in any other set-top box I’ve ever seen, and if you really know how to hack, there’s really not much it can’t do.

It's a big ole thing—they call it a "network tank," and despite remind me of the far cooler ones in Tron, I get it. It has an internal BitTorrent client and you can plug in a Blu-ray drive, for God’s sake. I found very few video formats that it wouldn’t support (FLV was one) but I had to take major points off because for being so big, it has a lame interface, and it comes with an RF remote that only worked when I stood within 3 feet. They even mention that there might be problems with interference, and that if people experience that, they can buy the IR remote. Great, thanks.

My only question—and, commenters, it's not rhetorical—is why spend $300 on this (plus extra for the optional internal HDD and the IR remote) when you can just buy a home-theater PC?

Patriot Box Office – $130

This was the dark horse of the group, being a late entry by a company known only for computer memory. I was surprised at how well it held up. It actually could decode more tested formats than any other device in this lineup—it did Flash video (FLV), which the three above can't render. Only the WD and the Patriot show you video previews, too. As small as it is, there's a space for a 2.5" SATA drive in there, and even a BitTorrent client. You can copy files to and from different drives and the network, and it's the cheapest of the lot, at $130.

So why did it come in a distant 3rd? Unlike the three above, it can’t read Mac formatted hard drives, and its video quality was noticeably the worst of the batch. That said, if you are a hacker sort and want something to play with that doesn’t cost as much as Popcorn, set your sights on this.

Netgear Digital Entertainer Live

As you can probably tell by now, Netgear had the most disappointing box of the lineup, despite its Apple TV ripoff of a look and feel. Lack of Mac media support and the inability to read key file formats, like DivX 7 and AVCHD, meant it couldn’t pass muster with real video fanatics. Its biggest point of woe was the fact that it didn’t support any file over 720p in resolution—whether that's a software thing or a hardware thing, it's sure not future-proof, and probably best to stay away.

I also didn't like the fact that its interface is laid out entirely for retail, like an Apple TV without the panache, or a Roku box that costs more and doesn't do Netflix. Local files were not a priority, and despite the friendly interface, it doesn't even make an attempt to differentiate photos and music. I did give it a gold star for online services, but only because it had the most in this group—if online services are what you love, buy a Roku, or a TiVo, or an Xbox, or a friggin' Apple TV.

Still not sure what you’re looking for, check the spec comparisons here: