TopChoiceReviews Blog

Minnesota and Ohio get $500,000 Grants To Combat Sexual Predators.

Mike — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:58:01 +0000

The U.S. Department of Justice has recently awarded The Minnesota Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension a half million dollars to help combat sexual predators and internet child predators. Ohio also received the grant. The Minnesota BCA says that the money will help bolster their task force and forensic efforts which should take several dozens of sexual predators off the street.

Thumbs up to the Department of Justice, but what about the other 48 states? Are their sexual predators less dangerous than those in Minnesota and Ohio?

Microsoft OneCare to be replaced with “Morro”

Mike — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:43:21 +0000

Microsoft has recently announced that it’s popular PC security and maintenance service, OneCare, will eventually be replaced with a commercial product currently known as “Morro”. Although they plan to stop selling OneCare in June of 2009, they will continue to provide customer support for it throughout the term of the license contract. Morro is supposed to use less system resources but remain just as effective as OneCare. Morro, however, will not include many of the maintenance utilities that OneCare has such as system backup and restore. Morro will be supported on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Stolen identities sold online for $120.

Mike — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:12:58 +0000

I recently read a somewhat shocking news article about the increasing problem of identity theft. Internet fraudsters and hackers are now buying and selling people’s identities like they are toys. You can find the article here:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Stolen_identities_sold_online_for_%A380&in_article_id=405334&in_page_id=34

Considering the economic law of supply/demand, imagine how many stolen identities are out there if they are selling this cheap. If you don’t know what can happen to you if your identity gets stolen, just watch the movie ‘The Net’. Sure, it’s a movie, but why couldn’t it realistically ruin somebody’s life?

Unfortunately, most people are unaware of the dangers online and the relative simplicity involved in collecting someone’s personal information. If you shop or do banking online, it is absolutely imperative that you protect yourself with privacy software, anti spyware software, a firewall, antivirus software as well as maintaing a strict password policy - keeping them difficult to guess as well as changing them on a regular basis.

Review sites update - design makeover

Mike — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:42:45 +0000

I’ve recently made some changes to the design of the review sites. More specifically, the right navigation bar has been changed as well as the color of the links throughout the sites. I think it looks a bit crisper and cleaner. Let me know what you think.

101 Most Popular Spanish Words Article With Audio Clips

Mike — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:37:03 +0000

I’ve just posted a new article on our Spanish courses review site. It’s worth checking out, if you are at all interested in learning Spanish or just want to see and hear the most commonly spoken words. You can find it here:

101 most common Spanish words

Feel free to comment and let us know what you think.

PowerDirector review site launch

Mike — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:57:18 +0000

I have recently reviewed a very popular video editing program from Cyberlink(a software developer/vendor who specializes in multimedia products) called PowerDirector. I’ve used other video editors in the past and this one blows them away in all aspects - features, performance, and price. If you do any type of video or slideshow creation, I highly recommend that you check it out. Please note that PowerDirector comes in 2 versions - Deluxe and Ultra. The only difference being that the Ultra edition supports AVCHD and Blu-ray DVDs.

You can read the full review of PowerDirector here.

Also, here are a couple screenshots:

Teenagers and online cyber bullying

Mike — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:43:58 +0000

According to the September issue of the Journal of School Health, around 75% of teenageers who use the internet have been a victim of online bullying. Of those, about 50% of the incidents came from schoolmates and about 45% came from someone they only knew online. The bullying typically involves name calling, insults, password theft, threats, sending inappropriate photos, and spreading rumors.

According to child psychologists, most teens who are bullied online rarely tell their parents for fear of getting on trouble, or having their internet access being taken away or restricted. In turn, most child bullying victims suffer in silence. Psychologists have also found that victims of bullying (whether online or offline) are likely to become depressed, withdrawn, and develop a general disliking for school. This makes them a greater target for further bullying and harassment and also interferes with the ability to concentrate on schoolwork, and in extreme cases, genuinely hate anything associated with school.

As the prevalence of online social networking grows, I would expect the numbers above to grow.

Learn & Master Guitar now has 20 instructional DVDs

Mike — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:04:39 +0000

The popular Telly award winning Legacy Learning Systems guitar course, Learn and Master Guitar has recently added 10 new DVDs to their course, making a total of 20 DVDs. This means twice the songs, exercises and even more detailed instruction. This further solidifies it’s position as our Top Choice for the guitar lessons category.

Here are some sample screenshots from the DVDs:

Google street view and child security

Mike — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:59:12 +0000

This website - Stopinternetpredators.org - holds the opinion that Google Map’s street view feature is a danger to the security of children and families. They say that the street view feature can be misused by child predators to target children. They have unleashed a campaign in which the sole purpose is to ban Google street view.

Sample Google street view image:

What do you think? Are they being too overprotective? Is this a valid concern?

What is clickjacking? How to disable clickjacking.

Mike — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:34:26 +0000

A recent new browser security exploit has surfaced dubbed ‘clickjacking’. All operating systems including Windows, Mac operating systems, and Linux are all vulnerable as well as all browsers including Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari - basically any browser that supports Flash and iFrame. What’s worse, is that these exploits are coming from Flash ads from legitimate sites.

What does clickjacking do:

Once an infected ad has been loaded into your browser, your clipboard (where you copy and paste text) becomes overwritten with a URL. The exploit may also take over your browser and visit links without you knowing.

How to disable clickjacking:

Because this is an internal flaw within the way browsers work, there is currently there is no patch to remedy this. The only surefire way, is to disable flash. For Mozilla/Firefox, you can get an extension called Flashblock which disables Flash scripts. It will leave a placeholder where the Flash script was in which you can click and enable the script. For Internet Explorer, you will have to make changes to the Windows registry. You will find how to do this here.