Vicky's Zone

Vicky's Zone’s regular readers are smarter than the average bear when it comes to software. You're familiar with the apps we review -- or brave enough to go try them out if you haven't. Your friends and family probably aren't quite as up to speed, and they should be. There are loads of excellent free programs out there that could be saving them time and preventing headaches -- if they only had the right tools!

Let's check out five programs that they should know about...

How much do you really know about viruses, spyware, scareware, trojans, and worms? Here's a helpful guide to understanding all the different types of malware.
The point of today's lesson, of course, is to help you teach your friends and family more about the different types of malware, and debunk a few of the common myths about viruses. Who knows, maybe you'll learn a thing or two as well.

What is Malware?

The word Malware is short for malicious software, and is a general term used to describe all of the viruses, worms, spyware, and pretty much anything that is specifically designed to cause harm to your PC or steal your information.

If you haven't just gone through a reformat, these are great applications and well worth installing. If you have, then hopefully this list will provide you with a solid base of programs to get you started with your fresh, new Windows install!



Web Browsers: Chromium, Firefox
They excel at different things, so I install both browsers by default. Chromium is great for all-purpose surfing, while I use Firefox and my favorite extensions to tackle my daily web-based work.

Windows only: Soluto bills itself as an "Anti-Frustration Software", and it's not hard to see why—it tracks all the applications in your system boot process, and tells you exactly which ones are slowing you down.
Once you've installed the software and rebooted your PC, Soluto springs into action, tracking every single process that runs during the boot process, and then allows you to easily drill down into the list of processes to see exact times for each one. To make it easier for the layman to understand what processes can be removed, the applications are grouped into "No-brainer" or "Potentially removable" groups.

Google started to show a special OneBox for the FIFA World Cup, the international football tournament that will start Friday in South Africa. If you search for "world cup", you can see a list of the teams and the upcoming matches.

The 2010 World Cup starts on June 11^th, and one of the best ways to keep up on the soccer will be to watching it streaming live. Here's where you can find the World Cup soccer matches streaming online:
Photo by CLF.

Live Streaming Sites

ESPN 3 is the online streaming version of the popular sports network in the U.S.A. Their upcoming live