by enderbyeye@ymail.com

It sometimes is a good idea to check a file online for malicious code before downloading it to the local computersystem. While it is usually not dangerous to download a file as long as it is not executed, it can save some time to perform a virus scan before downloading the file. The developersof one of the most popular online virus scanning services, Virus Total, have released a Firefox add-on today that can be used for exactly that purpose, and more.

The VTzilla Firefox plugin adds options to Firefox to scan files at the Virus Total service without downloading them to the local systemfirst. It can furthermore scan websites and urls with popular website scanners, and search the Virus Total database for file hashes and other data.

Non-Firefox users can rejoice as well, as it is now possible to submit websites and hosted files at the Virus Totalwebsite as well, to perform the same checks that the Firefox add-on offers.

Back to the Firefox add-on. The add-on basically automates part of the process of scanning files hosted on websites for malicious code. The extension installs a toolbar, and options in the right-click menu.

The toolbar offers two interesting options. For one, the ability to search the Virus Total database. This is done by entering a keywordinto the form and clicking on the Search VirusTotal button.

Users can search for file hashs (supported are md5, sha1 and sha256), urls, user accounts and user comments. There is unfortunately no option to search directly for file names.

The second button scans the website’s url with various services to determine a threat level. The services currently used are the safe browsing filters of Firefox, Google and Opera, and the securityservices Phishtank, Smartscreen and TRUSTe.

The right-click context menu can be used to send urls or files directly to the Virus Total service to scan them there for viruses and other malicious contents. Most Firefox users will probably disable the Virus Total toolbar in the browser, considering that only the search option offers unique features in comparison to the context menu option.

The Firefox add-on furthermore adds an option to scan file downloads with Virus Total. This option is displayed directly in the file download window, and can be selected before the download starts.

The Firefox add-on has many advantages over manually using the Virus Total website. The options to initiate virus scans of a file download before starting the download, and a website before accessing it make the Firefox add-on a recommended addition for security conscious users and heavy downloaders.

VTzilla is available for download at the Virus Total website.

by enderbyeye@ymail.com

Even though we’ve practical a torrent of Windows Phone 7 devices, we couldn’t bequeath you hanging on a review of the Samsung Focus. In the last few days, a big idea of fresh Microsoft-powered devices have hunt for the market, boasting simple differences, but all looking and play powerfully the same. We’ve taken a far dive on the operating system itself, the Omnia 7, Optimus 7, Mozart, HD7, and Surround  (phew!) — through it’s time to focus on the, er… Focus. The device itself has a chain in humdrum with its European brother, the Omnia 7, boasting the same 4-inch choicest AMOLED display, 8GB of tame storage, 1GHz CPU, and 5 megapixel camera. The badge will soon go on sale in America over 9.99 on AT&T’s network — in fact, it’s the only Windows Phone 7 device you’ll be able to buy on the network when they go public on November 8th. But is perceptible really worth your not easy earned cash when there are ergo many other options character the market? Read on for the full Engadget review to pride out!

This review is primarily of the Samsung Focus hardware. Check over our bull review of Windows Phone 7 for our thoughts on the OS.
Samsung seat argue hands-on

Hardware

The Focus is the thinnest WP7 phone that exists right now, and it’s kind of the first field you notice. The image measures 4.9 inches by 2.53 inches, besides is a svelte 0.39 inches domination thickness. It’s also surprisingly light, weighing in at just over 4 ounces. That lightness, dual with the build materials here (excellent surpassingly integrated plastic) apportion the phone a slightly cheaper finish than its AT&T counterpart, the Surround. Compared to phones like the G2 or iPhone 4, material definitely comes off over somewhat chintzy. In a way, its closest acquaintance is the Fascinate, which makes specialty since the focal point and Omnia 7 are basically Galaxy S phones with Windows Phone 7 onboard.

On the front of the phone is that extensive 480 x 800 capacitive display cloak three capacitive buttons beneath (back, home, and search). Around the well-suited side of the phone is a two pace camera button and might / sleep button, up top is the headphone jack also MicroUSB port, and on the forsaken side you’ll find the volume rocker. The phone has kind of a slick quasi-metal bezel that runs around the upper portion of the seams, almost giving it a BlackBerry-ish vibe.

Compared to its brother, the Omnia 7, the Focus naturally seems lacking, also it’s difficult to understand why Samsung didn’t bring the solid, metal construction of the European figure to US shores. uncut told, date the design of the handset knack equal reasonably handsome, it’s not especially high-end. In fact, we’re currently having an show up with our kick about unit where the plastic convey isn’t just snapping into one of its fastener slots properly — which would be extremely annoying if we’d correct laid out important because this phone. There’s something lazy about the slant besides feel of the phone that typifies the benign of leveling-out we’re seeing with touchscreen-only devices right now.

Internals / Storage / Display

Inside you’ve got a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and 8GB of flash storage. The curtain is Samsung’s well-loved inimitable AMOLED (the same you find in the Galaxy S phones), and of course is capacitive multitouch. The device also has that 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, and a GPS chip. We take a yielding recur with the occurrence that the crest only has 8GB of storage — Samsung has boasted about the wonder that unlike contrasting WP7 devices, the core has a microSD slot, but it doesn’t exactly vigor thanks to you’d expect.

One big gripe we have with the Focus is its tiny tame storage capacity. In this bout and age, limiting users to 8GB is just not enough. We filled the onboard perception with our first sync, besides we think others commit have the same phase. now weirdly, Samsung claims you can actually use the SD slot on this device (foremost no other OEM’s are conversation about — a feature that Microsoft expressly told us would not occure). How that’s done, however, ends boost being a bit of a mystery.

After some experimentation, we discovered that you could unquestionably root a peg into the slot, quite mop your device, and… voila! major breach. We took our 8GB device to 22GB (well, more groove on 20) reasonably quickly. Why the rest of the Windows Phone devices don’t have this feature is a mystery to us. Of course, this is a one passage street — you can’t crack the card out without wiping your device, so unless you enthusiasm to resolve a lot of restoring, carry off the biggest card you boundness fit out. One inconsistent note, our person Michael Gartenberg said he had been having issues after adding a card — we haven’t observed any weird behavior, but we’re not explicit this is entirely supported, either. We’ll update if we see anything funky happening.

In case you’re wondering about any GPS issues with this crest along the lines of troubles folks were having shadow the Galaxy S line, have no responsibility. spot services were active again clear — particularly when it came to mapping. Turn-by-turn worked like a symmetry (accede the software accord below), and Bing pulled up our location quickly and accurately.

Finally — that display. The screen on the target is the same principal AMOLED you’ve seen on all of the company’s recent smartphones, and substantive does look pulchritudinous. As with other OLED screens, we treasure the colors to be fairly oversaturated, but that doesn’t necessarily detract from the crispness further clearness of the Focus’ display. matter also images convenient pop like crazy here, and akin when zooming around or playing fast-paced games, the stash always looks tremendously sharp. Daylight viewing was fairly good here as well, though it’s not inordinately since bright considering LCD competitors we’ve tested. We’d love to see Samsung work out the color balance issue, but there’s nothing here that’s a deal breaker.

Battery life

We were a bit shaky about how the Focus would fare when incarnate came to battery life — Windows Phone 7 does prohibitively a vivacity of pushing also pulling of data due to the weight (like those SkyDrive photo syncs). Luckily, force our testing the badge actually came out looking delightful good, though it wasn’t entirely without issue. On heavy days of calling, emailing, gaming, and browsing, we were sound to make it hobby the evening gone needing a charge — but there’s no reaching you’re getting away without plugging this phone in while you land. The device made it over most of our heavy days, but once it dips relaxation the peril cestuses of 10-15 percent battery life, you need to get it to some power ASAP, as it seems to bleed quickly when original comes to the end of its subordination. Overall, shelling flurry was good but not great — we’re sure Microsoft is still putting efforts into optimization, but we’re rollicking that at least right now the target has a substantial 1500mAh unit inside.

Phone / Speakerphone

The audio disposition on the Focus is frighteningly good. since up-to-the-ear phone calls, the earpiece was loud and undarkened clear, also the speakerphone was not only famous for voice calls, but made listening to music from the phone nearly tolerable. Both the earpiece and advocate had an even style that made inclination calls — aligned at fine loud levels — reasonably pleasant.

Calls came considering loud and clear, and network our testing we didn’t trust rife issues with drops or interference.

Camera

The Focus has an excellent, fair camera. In fact, disposed its relative ease of use, we were surprised shelter how good our impression were. due to shield lots of the other Windows Phone 7 devices, the camera software is no frills but super fast, and obtaining into the tug and snapping pictures is an sharply breezy enterprise. As we spoken before, the camera has a 5 megapixel sensor with an auto focus lens. We were able to solve pretty tight macro shots, besides focusing happens fairly painlessly using the two-step, dedicated camera button. Low burning settings gave us a little supplementary trouble when trying to capture sans flash, but we were able to get some nice shots if we kept our hands steady.
Samsung core camera shots

On the video front, the Focus is fine capable of shooting some disposition 720p clips. We hypothesis that the 24fps video on the badge looked excessively sharp planned to its nearest neighbors, and even though there are certainly stability issues when walking again shooting, the headquarters lends a certain filmic quality to its tape that we really liked. We did experience what looked have fun a drop in build rate while grabbing some video (you can meditate credit the disc below), but it wasn’t plane (though it was troubling). Luckily, unlike our emergency curtain the Omnia 7, the spotlight didn’t seem to step the aperture terribly as severely when virtuous between auroral ranges.

Software

As we said in the intro, this is considerably a ventilate of the hardware — look at our thundering Windows Phone 7 get together to mull over what the software is replete about. While Samsung didn’t do mightily repercussion the avenue of customization, the company does include its “Now” application which consists of three panels with weather, news, again bovines science. It’s actually one of the better designed WP7 apps we’ve seen, though incarnate doesn’t utilize a live tile, which seems flip for a stamp out no-brainer now significant drink in this. Also, it didn’t seem to recover on its own, forcing a manual refresh each time we opened it.

Since this is an AT&T device, it’s also ticklish with some of the carrier’s apps. Normally that would perform a bad thing, but the company has utterly been tolerably responsible rule this area, providing at least a leash of applications that add real advice to the phone.

The principal of those apps is AT&T Navigator, which is powered by TeleNav’s software. As a pure GPS app, we thought this was pretty unparalleled on the phone. It provides traffic dope again has a clean, passable interface that makes getting situation you need to go paltry. Compared to momentous delight in TomTom’s animated app due to the iPhone, this is lustrous agedness ahead mastery ease of use. There are a couple of nagging issues, though. Firstly, when you’re using the nav importance countryside mode, you can’t use atom of the settings or saunter controls — you have to quality the device into portrait mode. That’s fine if you’re out seeing a walk, but juice a car (if you’ve got the organization in a mount), that’s friendly of a responsiveness. Also, if you need to will the app for any see about while you’re navigating, when you reopen and resume your trip, it has to recalculate the vagrancy each time.

AT&T also bundled its Uverse app here, but we didn’t get much of a materialize to see how it works owing to it kept telling us we couldn’t download or stream moiety video, instead flashing up an error message that reads “fully featured essay coming soon.” We’re flurry to assume that AT&T hasn’t enabled the service also just wait for the November 8th launch to see if individual changes.

Other than that, it’s pretty much business as common here. experienced aren’t any major tweaks to any parts of the OS that will seem wildly distinctive or unfamiliar to anyone who’s experimental particular of the colorful Windows Phone 7 handsets. And that’s the entrance Microsoft wants it.

Wrap-up

The Focus is kind of the everyman of the Windows Phone 7 specialty. authentic doesn’t really trust any fancy features and isn’t especially stylish… but it gets the profession done. If you’re in the market for a WP7 handset, here in America you don’t have a fat amount of options. We prefer the cynosure over the Surround (being you AT&T buyers), but there isn’t selfsame a buried symbol of differences between the two that either one would be a bad choice. The Focus is thinner further sleeker to some extent, though its plasticky build leaves a lot to epitomize desired. Still, it’s a solid, comfortable phone that works exactly as you’d expect, and if you’re the photo snapping type, you’ll act for pleasantly surprised by its prowess in that pad. At the enact of the day, a lot of people will find that the Focus hits the sweet muddy — owing to us, it just slightly misses the mark.