The last time Windows’ System Restore failed on me, I didn’t blink an eye. I gave up trusting Microsoft’s own Registry safety net a long time ago. And considering the quality Registry freeware available, there’s no reason you should rely on Windows to repair and recover from Registry-related problems. These four freebies will keep the Windows engine purring like a kitten.

The free ERUNT utility lets you back up the Registry for all users or only the current user.

Search your Registry keys in a jiffy with NiriSoft's free RegScanner utility

Tomorrow: maximize your Office workspace.

(Credit:
Sysinternals)

(Credit:
NiriSoft)

Keep an eye on the Registry with Process Monitor
Sysinternals combined its FileMon and RegMon system-monitoring utilities into this program, which gives you a snapshot of your PC’s activity in real time. In fact, Process Monitor provides so much information that it’s difficult to keep up with the file and program activity it tracks. You can view your system activity in a simple graph, and display a summary of file and Registry accesses. There’s even an option to log activity during the next Windows boot to help diagnose startup problems. A geek could easily kill the better part of an afternoon just rambling around the many monitoring options provided, though the program is most valuable when it’s used to track down a system problem.

(Credit:
Lars Hederer)

Clear out the clutter with CCleaner
Piriform’s popular Windows-optimization utility includes a Registry-scrubbing component that clears out old application paths, ActiveX controls, shared DLLs, fonts, icons, and other Registry detritus. The program gives you the option to fix some or all of the problems it discovers, and before it starts the cleanup you can create a Registry backup so your system can be rolled back if something goes wrong. Two nice extras are CCleaner’s options for uninstalling programs on your system, and for clearing the temporary files and recent-file lists from
Firefox, Office, Windows Media Player, and other popular apps.

Find your keys faster with RegScanner
NiriSoft’s Registry-scanning utility makes it easy to navigate to a specific Registry key, and then open it in Windows’ Registry Editor by double-clicking the entry, or by clicking File > Open In RegEdit (the keyboard shortcut is Alt-F, R). Other time-saving features let you copy a Registry key to the Clipboard and then open the Registry Editor to that key automatically, and to scan for all keys containing a specific value. You can also search by data length, value type, or date modified.

The free CCleaner utility improves your PC's performance by removing unused and duplicate entries from the Windows Registry.

ERUNT out-restores System Restore
Windows’ built-in Registry backup utility is better than having no Registry backup at all, but just barely. It seems the times I need it most are the times System Restore is most likely to crap out. Lars Hederer’s Emergency Recovery Utility NT program has been saving Windows users’ bacon for many years. Despite the program’s name, it works with Windows 2000, XP, and Vista as well. You can set the program to back up the Registry every time Windows starts, or create backups manually to the folder of your choice. The accompanying Registry optimizer is just as quick and simple to use as the backup program. ERUNT lets you back up the Registry for all users on the system, or selected users, and it even provides command-line switches for automating backups and restores. It works when Windows fails to load, though doing so may require a boot disc (which you can create with the great BartPE freeware).

Get a real-time view of your system's file and process activity with Sysinternals' free Process Monitor utility.

Report: Spam now 90 percent of all e-mail

Facebook sued by user over virus

Kumo to be dubbed Bing, AdAge says

Facebook gets $200 million from European firm

Businesses call for shift to low-carbon economy

Nokia’s Ovi Store opens for business

Webware editor Rafe Needleman talks about what a $200 million investment from Digital Sky Technologies means for Facebook, Facebook’s place in a global market, and its financial productivity.

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Mac clone maker Psystar files for bankruptcy protection

“HuffPost Green will focus on eco news and trends–from style and eco-conscious celebrities to green lifestyle tips and the latest scientific findings and expert analysis,” a release from the company explained, hinting that we will likely see photos of Leonardo DiCaprio with his shirt off in addition to the latest grim findings on climate change. “The section will also feature advice on sustainable investing and highlight eco-friendly businesses and sustainable business sectors such as renewable energy, green building, recycling and organics.”

The company announced Wednesday that it will be launching HuffPost Green, a site division specific to “green” content through a content partnership with Discovery Communications’ Planet Green channel as well as TreeHugger, the popular eco-news blog that Discovery acquired last year.

The new section of the site is set to launch June 4. Huffington Post representatives said the effort was spearheaded by current Editor-at-large Willow Bay, a TV journalist who currently hosts programs on the Lifetime women’s cable network.

If you’re like me, your reaction to this news might’ve been, “What? You mean there isn’t a ‘green’ section already?” The New York-based Huffington Post got its start as a liberal answer to the wildly popular Drudge Report news site, and while it’s since branched beyond its political roots, it remains targeted toward a well-educated, left-leaning audience.

But although it runs sections pertaining to politics, media, entertainment, business, and “living,” as well as a comedy site called 23/6 in conjunction with IAC, there still hadn’t been a section devoted to the unavoidably trendy niche of environmental media. Until now.

And you thought the Furby was creepy-looking.

Well, here’s Karten Design’s explanation for creating Epidermits:

“In a world where the value of life decreases daily, where boundaries between real and artificial are increasingly blurred, comes the toy that will truly confuse kids and rob them of any remaining sense of the natural.”

(Credit:
Karten Design)

Another Seth Brundle teleportation experiment gone awry? Nope. It's a toy. For kids. Ones you might even like.

So when I get the chance to see a new toy concept, I’m all over it. While perusing various Web sites–purely for work, I assure you–I came across Karten Design’s bizarre concept for a toy it calls Epidermits (presumably because OMGWTFBBQ?!?! was already taken).

If caring for Epidermits is too much to handle, or if you have to go to the store, you can also force them into hibernation by popping them in the fridge. Handy, no?

These techy toys are fully functioning organisms that can be customized with tattoos, piercings, hair, Sharpie marker, what have you.

As the father of two, I see a lot of toys. And as I’m accused of being slightly immature (I like to think of it as boyish charm), I take great interest in really cool toys.

I showed it to a handful of co-workers, and the unanimous reaction was, “What the hell is that?”

(Via Boing Boing)

Well, you can’t argue with that, now can you? Imagine the look of absolute horror when a child opens up one of these at a birthday party. Imagine the terrified cries. Imagine how much the bills for therapy will be.

Previous systems with integrated graphics were only able to connect one additional display. Now via DisplayLink and with these new Intel-specific optimizations, users with PCs based on the Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family can easily connect to up to four monitors at once without the need to buy additional graphics cards. In addition, users who run four monitors on the Intel chipset will enjoy a 20 percent performance improvement, which includes smoother video playback, according to DisplayLink.

Three displays are connected to one system all via USB only.

DisplayLink–which makes technology that allows multiple monitors to be connected to one computer through USB–announced this week that it’s now optimized its technology for the Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family for desktops and notebooks.

Users who have an Intel Series 4 chipset-based system should be on the lookout for the drivers to be implemented via Windows Update.

Why you should care
Why does all this matter? A few reasons.

(Credit:
CNET News)

(Credit:
CNET News)

Correction 12:00 p.m. PDT:
This report has been updated to reflect
Firefox performance with the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine enabled, in which case Firefox is fastest at the SunSpider test.

Second, for the more avant garde, JavaScript powers many sophisticated Web sites and Web-based applications, endowing them with features such as drag-and-drop, pop-up dialog boxes. Faster JavaScript means companies such as Zoho, Google, and Yahoo can build more features into the Web applications and that users will find those applications easier to use. And these more interfaces are spreading to mainstream sites, too.

Last, on the programming front, JavaScript is vying with other technologies for building rich Internet applications. Microsoft steers developers to Silverlight, Adobe Systems continues to improve its Flash and Flex technology, HTML itself is getting more powerful. And of course there’s the larger competition between Web-based applications and those that run directly on the PC, such as Microsoft Office.

A final note: The same benchmark caveats apply this time around, too. Your mileage may vary–my tests were on a dual-core Lenovo T61 with Windows XP. There are other performance attributes that affect Web browsing besides JavaScript performance. And even in the narrower realm of JavaScript, benchmarks like these don’t necessarily represent the workloads that will have you pining for a faster machine.

Running the same test on the latest developer version of Chrome, 0.3.154.3, boosted the browser’s score to 2,265–a 22 percent increase. And Firefox jumped 15 percent to 235. Firefox 3.1 beta 1. However, that test measures Firefox without its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine enabled; a bug in TraceMonkey trips up the test by invoking a print dialog box. (There aren’t any new versions of Safari or IE to test, though Safari likely will see a boost from its earlier score of 170 from the SquirrelFish Extreme JavaScript engine.)

The newest Chrome beta is 22 percent faster on Google's own JavaScript benchmark. Firefox's performance score increased 15 percent–but that doesn’t factor in TraceMonkey, because a bug breaks this test.

Mozilla’s Mike Shaver said the bug that impairs the Google JavaScript test–one reason TraceMonkey isn’t enabled by default–should be fixed “soon.” For those who want to try the their own tests, Tech-Recipes has useful instructions on how to enable TraceMonkey.

The SunSpider test shows Tracemonkey-enabled Firefox leading the newest Chrome build in JavaScript performance–for now at least. Test results reported in seconds, so smaller is better.

In September, Firefox backer Mozilla countered Google’s benchmark suite, spotlighting Firefox’s superior results using the SunSpider speed test. Here, TraceMonkey works, and Firefox maintains its lead over Chrome and the others.

First of all, JavaScript is widely used in innumerable ordinary Web sites, and Internet companies have found that even small improvements in Web page responsiveness increases user interaction with their sites. A snappier response is better for everyone.

I couldn’t run SunSpider when Chrome was released because the site was out of commission that day, but it’s up and running again now, so here’s the latest results for the four browsers–and bear in mind here that a smaller score is best for SunSpider: TraceMonkey-enabled Firefox led with a score of 2,257; Chrome was second at 2,904; Firefox 3.1 beta 1 with no TraceMonkey next with 4,233; Safari 3.1.2 followed at 6,351; and
IE 8 beta brought up the rear with 9,025.

With new beta versions out for Firefox and Google Chrome, I thought I’d see how things have changed when it comes to testing the speed of JavaScript, the programming language that powers many cutting-edge Web applications such as Gmail and Google Docs. The answer: both browsers made big strides, but Firefox still beats Chrome on one widely-used performance test.

The New York Times is reporting that HBO is launching its own online distribution service for a portion of its content both past and present. Starting this week, lucky residents of Green Bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin will be the first to get dibs on the new software application that can be set up to download and stack episodes old and new that can be watched on their PCs. Cable provider Time Warner (the same folks working on the lovely bandwidth metering down in Texas) is sending out the application on an CD to current HBO subscribers “soon.”

HBO Subscribers are getting a slightly better end of the deal than their Showtime counterparts as long as they’re willing to watch the shows on their PCs and forgo bringing the programming with them on portable devices. I’m still interested to see how much legacy programming HBO intends to offer in its first few months, as two of the key reasons for piracy are people simply not wanting to buy DVDs or missing the episode within its initial TV window. Isn’t this what they created on-demand programming for in the first place?

The Times notes competitor Showtime’s foray into digital distribution that started with iTunes back in 2006. Showtime currently has just over a dozen shows on iTunes and Amazon’s Unbox service at $2 a pop, although unlike HBO’s standalone downloading media player, both services are on a purchase model that allow users to repeatedly watch episodes on their computers, TVs, and in the case of iTunes–iPods and iPhones.

Visible Measures calculates that in the week that ended Friday, Boyle’s “I Dreamed A Dream” attracted 47.7 million views and more than 125,000 comments.

But she hasn’t quite caught up with the “Evolution of Dance,” which may have enjoyed as many as 300 million views over the years.

I know there will be very many among you who, inspired and never satiated by the YouTube video of Susan Boyle, wonder whether this is the most popular viral video of all time.

The shoe thrower and Palin were in the 30 millions. While President Obama achieved around 18 million.

How will the online community bear not having new Susan Boyle material to get them through their mundane cubicled days?

Perhaps a video of Simon Cowell singing “You’re So Vain”? Just a viral thought.

It is my duty to bring you an answer (as well as a Boyle interview with Scottish television that has already enjoyed more than 1 million views).

Visible Measures, a company that clutches the pulse of the online audience and refuses to let go, has identified more than 200 unique videos of Boyle’s performance. According to Visible Measures, the combined figures seem to have exceeded the performances of George Bush’s shoe thrower, Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin, and President Obama’s victory speech.

People have been Googling it, too. The search query “Bigfoot press conference” hit the top three on Google Trends.

“Starting Monday I should have assembled some fine scientists that will do the autopsy to find the origin and death of this creature, and at that point in time we will make it known and hopefully we’ll get somebody to come in and film it,” Biscardi said to listeners, “to show it to the world as it’s being done. I want to get to the bottom of it.”

“We just decided to have a little fun with it,” Whitton said. When asked why he didn’t call authorities when they claimed to have found the body in early June, he answered, “I didn’t see any need to at the time. It seemed like it would create a frenzy.”

On the Web it was equally chaotic. Twitter users went nuts, with Twitter Search (formerly Summize) bringing up dozens of posts per minute from users who were watching the press conference online or expressing their opinions within the site’s 140-character limit. Third-party analytics site Twitscoop showed a barrage of Twitters that included the word “Bigfoot,” and determined the word to be the hottest term on the microblogging site at the time.

It’s the ultimate summer Friday news story: CNN Webcasting a press conference hosted by the men who claim they nabbed a dead body of the legendary creature known as Bigfoot.

That didn’t do too much to appease the skeptical audience of the press conference, who were on the verge of heckling.

But most of the Twitter observers tuned into the press conference seemed to take the whole thing as entertainment. “I’m actually fearful to enter these Bigfoot infested woods in Georgia!” one exclaimed. “He’s a Bigfoot dressed up as a Bigfoot, playing another Bigfoot,” one wrote in a nod to a line spoken by Robert Downey Jr. in the just-released satire flick Tropic Thunder.

“R.I.P. Harry. The Hendersons will miss you,” one Twitter user said jokingly in reference to the ’80s comedy Harry and the Hendersons, about a family that adopts a Bigfoot. Others were more skeptical, given the dubious nature of the photos. “That Bigfoot in the box looks so totally fakey, like a bad Halloween costume,” another Twitter user said.

And if Twitter is to be believed, the Internet still doesn’t.

“I didn’t believe in Bigfoot at the time,” Whitton said.

Most Twitterers didn’t seem to believe the contents of the conference, probably because there were enough gray areas in the press conference to paint the walls of my office a nice foggy hue. Biscardi denied that he’d participated in a money-scheming Bigfoot hoax in 2005, saying that he’d been duped by a deranged woman who claimed she had two “Bigfeet” in captivity; he claimed he refunded those who’d charged to see a Webcast of the creatures when he realized it was fake. And Whitton shrugged off a series of goofy YouTube videos, most of them now pulled from the video-sharing site, in which he and Dyer reportedly claimed the Bigfoot was a fake and featured Whitton’s brother dressed up as a scientist analyzing it.

Bigfoot hunter Tom Biscardi held the press conference in Palo Alto, Calif., in conjunction with Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the two men from Georgia who claim that they found the corpse while hiking. Biscardi wouldn’t actually show the body, saying that he had invited Fox News reporter Megan Kelly to show it on-air and that a number of scientists would be performing an autopsy on Monday.

“I want to protect the species,” Whitton continued. “Everyone would be up there hunting for Bigfoot and disturbing the habitat.”

If anyone had any remaining doubts that Rep. Joe Barton has it in for Google, fresh evidence arrived in the mail Wednesday.

In fact, Barton has a long history of embracing more, not less, surveillance. Bills he voted for include the Real ID Act, the Patriot Act, and a proposal to expand Internet surveillance performed without a court order. He opposed a proposal to disclose federal agencies’ data mining to Congress. (Rep. Ron Paul, a true privacy advocate, voted opposite Barton on each of those bills.)

This follows two more letters that Barton sent late last year before the DoubleClick acquisition was complete. (In one, Barton complained that his staff wasn’t receiving the royal welcome at the company’s Mountain View, Calif. headquarters; that sub-dispute has since been resolved.)

Two more explanations for Barton’s animus come to mind. One dates back to the Net neutrality wars from three years ago, when he was hoping to rewrite telecommunications laws and Google assailed his proposal as too heavy-handed. Barton opposed extensive Net neutrality regulations and has received millions from like-minded telecommunications companies; Google was on the other side. Google’s penchant for hiring Democrats probably hasn’t endeared it either.

Another demanded information about filtering out cross-side scripting attacks from search results. The letter asks for a response by June 6.

The Texas Republican sent a letter to Google on Wednesday with 15 interrogatories, mostly demanding answers about how it will merge its operations and procedures with DoubleClick. As an example, one interrogatory says “please identify the data that will be merged, including, but not limited to, cookie data.”

And this is coming from a politician who boasts in his official bio that he, Barton, was the “founding co-chairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus.”

(Disclosure: Declan McCullagh is married to a Google employee.)

It would be one thing if Barton were a principled privacy advocate who was also assailing Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and so on. But he’s not.