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Demonoid torrent was shutdown last fall. For those who don't already know, Demonoid is back up. Looks like they found a new host for the Web site and the tracker is functioning properly as well. For those with old accounts, all the old data has been saved. It's almost as if they never left.

Demonoid is an invitation only community. You can only register by invitation. So, we are giving free invites to all our readers. Just add your comment and I will contact you. Hurry, there's no many invites left ;-)

Some of them work with information you supply, letting you manipulate, track and share data, such as your schedule or your to-do list. Others, so-called mashups, draw data from different sites and reassemble it to make something new. They're all part of how the Web is evolving beyond just a bunch of point sources for information. Here are 11 examples that show what the new Web can do, from helping you organize your life to adding some personalized fun to it.

Personal assistants

GrandCentral

Ever wish you could exercise the same control over incoming phone calls as you do over e-mail? GrandCentral — now a Google operation — gives you a new phone number and forwards incoming calls to any other number or numbers you specify. More...

The 3D printer works by building components up in layers of plastic, mainly polylactic acid (PLA), which is a bio-degradable polymer made from lactic acid. The technology already exists, but commercial machines are very expensive. They also can’t copy themselves, and they can’t be manipulated by users, says Olliver.

RepRap has a different idea. The team, which is spread over New Zealand, the UK and the US, develops and gives away the designs for its much cheaper machine, which also has self-copying capabilities. It wants to make the machine available to anybody — including small communities in the developing world, as well as people in the developed world, says Olliver. More...

Live coverage of the Google App Engine launch event is here.

Google isn’t just talking about hosting applications in the cloud any more. Tonight at 9pm PT they’re launching Google App Engine (Update: The site is live), an ambitious new project that offers a full-stack, hosted, automatically scalable web application platform. It consists of Python application servers, BigTable database access (anticipated here and here) and GFS data store services.

At first blush this is a full on competitor to the suite of web services offered by Amazon, including S3 (storage), EC2 (virtual servers) and SimpleDB (database).

Unlike Amazon Web Services’ loosely coupled architecture, which consists of several essentially independent services that can optionally be tied together by developers, Google’s architecture is more unified but less flexible. For example, it is possible with Amazon to use their storage service S3 independently of any other services, while with Google using their BigTable service will require writing and deploying a Python script to their app servers, one that creates a web-accessible interface to BigTable.

What this all means: Google App Engine is designed for developers who want to run their entire application stack, soup to nuts, on Google resources. Amazon, by contrast, offers more of an a la carte offering with which developers can pick and choose what resources they want to use.

Google Product Manager Tom Stocky described the new service to me in an interview today. Developers simply upload their Python code to Google, launch the application, and can monitor usage and other metrics via a multi-platform desktop application.

More details from Google: More...

Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.

The drink has already been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and a study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation may explain why. More...

How do I contact the owner of a website? How popular is my site on Digg or Delicious? What other websites are hosted on my web server ? Is my competitor using WordPress or Drupal? xyz.com is loading fast, what is the name of their web hosting company ? Is my blog accessible from China or Japan ?

If you got questions like these in your mind, here are some of the most useful online tools to help you know each and every detail of any website on the planet.

Just-Ping.com - Just Ping help you know whether your website or blog is accessible from different cities of the world. Unlike other online ping services that run from one location, Just-Ping.com runs the ping command on your website from 26 different locations spread across the globe so you have a better idea about your site availability in different regions.

They even have a checkpoint in Shanghai so you can easily find out if some particular website is blocked in China or not. More...

Adobe today launched a basic version of Adobe Photoshop available for free online. Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. According to Yahoo! News, Adobe says providing Photoshop Express for free is part marketing and part a strategy to create up-sell opportunities. It hopes some customers will move from it to boxed software like its $99 Photoshop Elements or to a subscription-based version of Express that's in the works.

http://www.photoshop.com/express

Productivity

AbiWord (download)
Tired of expensive, slow, bloated word processors? Download this surprisingly powerful freebie, which includes sophisticated features such as mail merge and advanced layouts. The program handles a wide variety of document formats, including those of Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, OpenOffice.org, and other programs.More...

When you install Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on your computer, the SP1 installer will not remove the older versions of Vista files from the hard drive. This is because the older files may be required in case you decide to uninstall SP1 later from the system.
Naturally, these files occupy important disk space. If you are satisfied with the performance of Windows Vista SP1 and unlikely to remove it later, why not reclaim some disk space by removing all the older Vista files.
There are no manual steps involved. Just open your Windows command prompt and type vsp1cln.exe (short for Vista SP1 Cleaner). It takes less than a minute to execute.

*vsp1cln.exe is added to your Windows Vista System folder after you install Vista SP1.

This will make  Windows Vista Service Pack 1 permanent on this computer. All the older files are deleted now and your hard disk has tons of extra space for other important files like videos and photos.
You computer need not be connected to the Internet for running the Vista SP1 cleaner tool. And you won’t be able to remove Windows Vista Service Pack 1 later.

"Today, you can now download Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update," Microsoft Product Manager Nick White wrote on the company's Vista blog Tuesday morning. "For those of you eager to receive the benefits of Windows Vista SP1 -- you can now do so!"

The release was not unexpected; text on Amazon.com discovered this weekend implied the download would be available March 18, with the retail product being released March 19, although the mention of the download has since been removed from the shopping site.

Microsoft has released Vista SP1 for five languages: English, Spanish, German, French and Japanese. Updates for other languages are expected to start rolling out in April.

SP1 releases are typical milestones for Microsoft products as many IT shops wait until the first update before deploying. Vista's update comes a little more than a year after its initial release.

According to Microsoft, the SP1 update is designed to improve Vista's reliability and application compatibility, among other changes.

In his post, White also commented on the driver issue that initially delayed the early release of SP1 to IT professionals. "We've completed our analysis and are happy to report that many of these issues were fixed between the release candidate (RC) and the final version," he wrote. "We identified a small number of device drivers that may be problematic after an update from Windows Vista to Windows Vista SP1."

A list of drivers that may still cause problems with the upgrade is available here (scroll down). White also recommends reading Knowledge Base article 948187 before installing the upgrade.

For now, Vista SP1 is an optional download; it will become a forced upgrade starting in "mid-April" on any computers that have Windows Update set to automatic download.

Zone-H have recently posted the statistical breakdown of the collected website defacements from the last few years. Surprisingly, in 2007 more Linux servers suffered a successful attack than all versions of Windows, combined. Similarly, more Apache installations were successfully attacked than all IIS versions combined. A day after posting this data, Zone-H have questioned the appropriateness of continuing to operate the archive. Despite the valuable information that can be gleaned from the service, it may soon be lost to the world. The natural successor to the now-defunct Alldas archive of defaced websites, Zone-H's archive maintains records of over 2.6 million defaced sites but may be shut down due to the continuous accusations of impropriety leveled against them any time they disclose and mirror a reported defacement.

http://www.zone-h.org/

Microsoft's Singularity operating system is now open to the public for download, under a Microsoft academic, non-commercial license. Inside is a fully compilable and bootable version of what could be the basis for the future of Windows, or maybe simply an experiment to demonstrate .NET's capabilities. Singularity, if you'll recall, has gained wide interest from researchers and users alike, by claiming to be a fully managed code kernel (with managed code drivers and applications as well), something that would finally revolutionize the operating system research arena. The
project is available on CodePlex.

http://www.codeplex.com/singularity

Adobe Stakes New Claim To Rich Web Apps With Release Of Air

Adobe and its partners announced a number of Air applications for consumers and businesses, including Nasdaq Instant Market Replay and Business Objects' BI Desktop.

Adobe took another shot in the emerging competition for rich Internet applications on Monday by releasing the first version of Adobe Integrated Runtime or Air and the third iteration of the Flex development framework, which is used to create Flash and Air applications.
Rich Internet apps, or RIAs, could be loosely defined as software with engaging user interfaces that typically bridge the connectivity of the Web with a graphical richness and custom user interface that used to be reserved for client software.
"With Air, we're making that leap between the Web and the desktop," Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief technology officer, told InformationWeek. "This is about enabling Web apps to work the way people expect them to work."
Air, a cross-operating system platform that was code-named Apollo, attempts to bridge the gap between the Web and the desktop by allowing developers to create Internet-connected applications that aren't restricted by the form and functionality of Web browsers. More...

Microsoft will shortly make available the test version of Internet Explorer 8, which is set for final release in the first half of this year.

The Web site ActiveWin on Monday published the contents of a beta invitation, which said Microsoft is nearing a launch date for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, which will be available for download and testing.
According to the Internet Explorer blog, the next version of Microsoft's Web browser is set for release in the first half of the year.
Microsoft executives are expected to reveal further details about the browser's features at the software maker's upcoming Mix conference in Las Vegas next week.
Last year at Mix, Microsoft outlined some of the features planned for IE 8, including standards compliance and tools to ease Web development.

Product review: Windows Server 2008 is the host with the most, and the perfect guest

Microsoft's slimmer and stronger server OS, bolstered by virtualization, networking, and security advances, is an upgrade that IT can't refuse, a 200-pound gorilla that eats commercial Linux

A standing complaint about Windows Server is its resource footprint. Those in IT just take as rote that it requires lots of memory, lots of CPU, and lots of disk to put any substantial services on the air with Windows Server 2003. I think it's safe to say that the typical x86 rack server's characteristics reflect the requirements of Windows Server. Microsoft's big OS has always been designed under the presumption that it will have a full physical server to itself.
In Windows Server 2008, Microsoft delivers a 64-bit server OS with a smaller minimum resource footprint than Windows Vista. It varies by edition; Windows Server 2008 Datacenter doesn't focus so much on shedding the pounds, but it, too, picks up the speed benefits from the slimmer Server Core, which was created to be a practically weightless virtualized guest OS. IT shops are likely to use Windows Server 2008 the same way they use Windows Server 2003 now, only now they can run lots of independent virtual Windows Servers that scale in features and footprint across a broad range of options. More...

Microsoft has increased: storage on Windows Live Skydrive to 5GB, up by a multiple of five from its previous limit of 1GB (the 1GB having doubled the original 500mb in October).

The more notable point is that Microsoft continues to grow its online storage offering when Google simply hasn’t launched the fabled Platypus online storage solution despite years of speculation and rumors. This is one space where Microsoft has the upper hand, and a 4gb storage jump will further increase the appeal of the product.

On top of the extra storage, Windows Live Skydrive has dropped the beta tag, and is now available in the following additional countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

The Cult of the Dead Cow hacking group has released a free tool that turns Google into a point-and-click vulnerability scanner.

Cult of the Dead Cow, or cDc, an old-school hacking crew famous for its anti-censorship stance, has shipped a new tool that turns the Google search engine into an easy-to-use vulnerability scanner.
Taking its cue from Johnny Long's Google Dorks—search queries that reveal sensitive information—cDc's new Goolag Scan pushes the envelope even more, offering a stand-alone Windows GUI-based application to power the searchers.
The open-source program comes with about 1,500 custom Google search queries embedded by default to run searches for vulnerable Web applications, misconfigured Web servers with open backdoors, sensitive user names and passwords, and other documents accidentally exposed on the Internet.
"It's no big secret that the Web is the platform," said Oxblood Ruffin, a spokesperson for the hacker think tank. "This platform pretty much sucks from a security perspective. Goolag Scanner provides one more tool for Web site owners to patch up their online properties.
"We've seen some pretty scary holes through random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe and the Middle East. If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large Web site, I'd be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday. The vulnerabilities are that serious," Ruffin said.
The utility ships as a .Net program that can be manually configured to power Google queries for specific servers or for an entire set of domains.
For example, a business can ask Goolag Scan to search for vulnerable servers or "files containing juicy information" on all its Web sites, turning the scanner into a useful auditing tool.

As of press time, the products are:

Blocked from Starting

• BitDefender AV or Internet Security, version 10
• Fujitsu Shock Sensor 2.1.0.0
• Jiangmin KV Antivirus 10
• Jiangmin KV Antivirus 2008
• Trend Micro Internet Security 2008
• ZoneAlarm Security Suite 7.1

Do Not Run

• Iron Speed Designer 5.0.1
• Xheo Licensing 3.1
• FreeAllegiance 2.1

Loss of Functionality

• NYT Reader
• Rising Personal Firewall 2007
• Novell ZCM Agent 10.01

As Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing and IT professionals this month, the list may grow -- especially after the update goes live for consumers in March.

Windows Vista SP1, which began rolling out via Automatic Update, has left some users' machines unbootable. The update loops forever on "Configuring updates: Stage 3 of 3 0%
complete. Do not turn off your computer." "Shutting down"... restart and loop. Echostorm notes having found traces of what sounds like the same bug in early beta releases of SP1. It's unclear how many users are affected. So far there is no word on a fix from Microsoft.

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/showpost.aspx?postid=2848906&siteid=17

Windows Vista, whether the source setup files and after installation system files, took up a lot of hard disk drive space. Just try to imagine from the fact that Windows XP fits into a CD (maximum 700 MB), while Windows Vista requires a DVD (max 4.7 GB). Windows Vista is fat and obese, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to ’slim’ down the Vista to make it uses less disk space and reclaim some storage for larger and larger media and date files. The tips below suggests several not system critical files that can be safely deleted and removed from the system without causing instability.

More...

Project Dakota is a easy way to update Windows XP.
It is a CD that contains all the updates found on the Windows Update Website, including Service Pack 2, with a small standalone programs that run the updates in the order specified by Microsoft according to the order set by Microsoft.
It also includes common programs found on most computers such as Adobe reader, Spybot S&D and Quicktime.

http://www.theatticnetwork.net/dakota.php

There's a growing revolt among Microsoft TechNet & MSDN subscribers who are frustrated that they can't yet get Vista SP1 and test their software on it. This can't be good news for anyone hoping that SP1 will have better compatibility. While SP1 has been released to manufacturing, and pirate copies are easy to find, Microsoft is withholding it from subscribers until early March. According to the article, some frustrated users are upset enough that they plan to abandon TechNet entirely and turn to piracy.According to the Technet blog, they have pushed up the date to before the end of February, though no exact date is mentioned.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9061838
http://www.google.com/search?q=vista+sp1+tpb
http://blogs.technet.com/technetplussubscriptions/archive/2008/02/11/technet-plus-sp1-availability-update.aspx