The new Home landing screen for Ad-Aware 10. It doesn't look much like the old one.

While the name Ad-Aware remains the same as it has for the past 13 years, everything from the user interface to the code powering Ad-Aware 10 is entirely new.

Ad-Aware Free Antivirus Plus (download), Ad-Aware Personal Security (download), and Ad-Aware Pro Security (download) are substantially new programs. More so than any recent version of Ad-Aware, the suite is usable, lightweight, and worthy of your attention.

That may sound preposterous given how bloated and unwieldy the suite had become, but this is a new animal entirely. Ad-Aware's parent company, Lavasoft, was sold in January 2011 by its Swedish founders to a Canadian investment company. Daniel Assouline, the new chief executive officer of Lavasoft, wrote in an e-mail to CNET that the biggest goal of the new Ad-Aware was to get out of people's way.

"We've put a lot of focus on delivering protection that won't slow our users down," he said. "It was our most comm... [Read more]

An animated model of the black hole in the Andromeda galaxy is one of many spectacles to behold in Wonders of the Universe.

Wonders of the Universe -- based on the BBC series of the same name from HarperCollins -- is an elegant and visually gorgeous app that lets you explore our known universe on your iPad. The app comes with more than 2.5 hours of HD video, dazzling 3D graphics of everything from subatomic particles to galaxies, and tons of information to read as you explore, and it offers an excellent use of the iPad's touch-screen interface to browse all the content.

We got a sneak peak at the app, but Wonders of the Universe will not be available until tomorrow in the iTunes App Store. HarperCollins says the app will be at the discounted price of $6.99 initially, but will go up to $9.99 sometime after the launch.

Swipe to read content, or situate the video (top) in the middle of the screen to start the movie.

The app starts you off by explaining the touch-screen interface and how to navigate through all of the content. While looking at an animated celestial body, you can touch and swipe to look around, or touch a named star or planet to zoom in and get more information. Wh... [Read more]

Recently new Trojan variants for OS X were found that take advantage of old and patched vulnerabilities to install and execute information-stealing code on affected systems. One of the newest ones uses Office documents as an installation vector and may be called OS X/Lamadai.A or OSX/Olyx depending on the malware scanner being used.

When this malware was found, security company AlienVault issued an initial analysis of the threat, describing it as a Command and Control (C&C) based Trojan that originates from China and is being used to target non-government organizations based in Tibet.

In light of this new malware development and following AlienVault's analysis of the threat, security company ESET has investigated the Trojan further.

While one can analyze malware threats by dissecting the binaries and picking out strings and other clues as to its functions, another approach is to install and run it and see what it does. This is exactly what ESET did, and in doing so found... [Read more]

Google Maps for Android (download) got a nice face-lift and new features today, as it jumped to version 6.5.

The first thing worth noting is that maps are now quite a bit crisper. While many users may not notice this, anyone with a high-pixel-density screen like that on the Galaxy Nexus or Droid Razr get to see much more clearly defined roads and higher color contrast on their maps. Also, Google rearranged map labels and reduced their size to create a less cluttered map view overall.

Previous map style on the left, with the clearer, less cluttered version 6.5 style on the right.

If you have an Android device running Ice Cream Sandwich, then you'll be happy to know that you actually get a bit more of an update, in the form of a shiny new Navigation home screen. The basic controls like Speak destination and Type destination are front and center, and recent destinations are on bottom. And now, you can swipe left or right to go to Starred locations and Contacts.

The new Navigation home screen, as seen on a device running Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

Lastly, Google Maps 6.5 didn't just step up its looks. The new update offers a couple of new features that let you prioritize a transit mode and route option w... [Read more]

Google Chrome 18 brings two methods of improved graphics support to both newer and older computers. Released today, Google Chrome 18 stable for Windows (download), Mac (download), Linux (download), and Chrome Frame improves both WebGL and Canvas2D.

To help along WebGL in Chrome on older Windows and Mac computers, it now gets a boost from a software rasterizer called SwiftShader, licensed from TransGaming. SwiftShader only works when Chrome's baked-in graphics processor acceleration doesn't run, and in the blog post announcing the update, Google said that it sought out this third-party solution so that "more users will have access to basic 3D content on the web."

The Canvas2D changes will allow the same older PCs to process game and animation graphics faster. When Google originally debuted the improved Canvas2D in Chrome beta, the company noted that the multitude of ... [Read more]

(Credit: Screenshot by Sharon Vaknin/CNET)

At some point, we'll all experience being sucked into the black hole that is YouTube. Minutes or hours can go by as you browse through videos uploaded by everyday people like you and me. Some are funny, others useful, or (believe it or not) thought-provoking.

Whether you consume most of your videos on YouTube or another service like Vimeo, downloading a favorite video for offline viewing or personal use has probably crossed your mind.

Before we continue, note that the legality of downloading videos -- even for personal use -- is up in the air. In its terms of service, Google insists that YouTube is intended to be an in-browser experience. Policies for the many video Web sites will vary, so review those policies, and move forward at your own risk.

With that out of the way, here are three tools that let you download video from just about any video-sharing site.

Download video fro... [Read more]

VideoLAN (VLC) is an awesome media player that offers many features to its users for no cost. One of these features is the ability to stream videos across the same network. The steps are a little lengthy your first time through them, but are totally worth the time. So here's how to watch a synced video at home or work so everyone can enjoy it at the same time.

If you don't already have it, you can download VLC for free.

Setting up the server:

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)

Step 1: Open VLC and then open the Media menu. Select Stream from the list of options.

Step 2: Click the Add button under the File tab. Browse to the file you'd like to stream. Note that if you wish to stream multiple files in a row, you'll first need to create a playlist file. If this is the case, you'll want to select that playlist here.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)

Step 3: Press the Stream button in the bottom right-hand corner of the window.

Step 4: In the new window that appears, click the Next button.

Steps 5 and 6.

Step 5: Open the drop... [Read more]

IE10 in Metro mode

For better or worse, IE10 is one of those Windows 8 apps with a split personality--part Metro and part desktop. Microsoft dubs it a "Metro style enabled desktop browser," which means that technically it's a single app that offers two different "experiences."

That sounds cool in theory. But in reality, bouncing back and forth between the Metro browser and the desktop browser can be clumsy and jarring. Both flavors do share the same history list, but otherwise there's a lack of consistency and standardization between the two.

I like the design of the Metro version. It's clean, quick, and simple. No fiddling with menus, toolbars, or other items. The browser opens to display a blank screen or your previous page with no distractions. Right-clicking in the browser window then reveals the navigation bar at the bottom with the address field, backward and forward buttons, and other options.

Clicking in the address bar displays thumbnails of frequently used sites and pinned sites, letting you easily return to any previous site. If the site you need isn't listed, you can start typing the first few characters in the address field. IE10 will search its database of popular sites to try to find the right one. Any site you visit then becomes part of the browser's history. The address field also serves as a search field, so you can enter... [Read more]

Adobe Systems released Flash Player 11.2 today -- along with a plan to make the browser plug-in a direct source of revenue for the company.

In the past, the Silicon Valley company has charged programmers to use development tools such as Flash Pro. But for any games published August 1 or later that use premium features in the new version of Flash Player, Adobe will require programmers to pay.

More specifically, Adobe will require developers to share 9 percent of net revenue beyond $50,000 for using the premium features, Adobe announced today. The premium features are Stage 3D for hardware-accelerated graphics and domain memory for better conversion of games previously written in C or C++.

There are two notable situations where programmers won't have to pay, though. First, Adobe grants a royalty-free license for any apps using the software that's released before August 1. Second, it's free to use the features in AIR 3.2, software released today that makes it possible to package a Flash game as a standalone app for iOS or Android. And for ordinary folks actually just using Flash in their browsers, Flash Player remains free.

Programmers accustomed to getting Flash Player feature for free can console themselves that, at least in Adobe's opinion, the payments will make things better for Flash. Adobe's Emmy Huang explained the move thus:

We've desig... [Read more]

What's new in Opera Mini Next 7 and Opera Mobile 12

Opera ports its WebGL hardware acceleration from Opera Mobile to the Android version of Opera Mini 7, which first debuted last month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Opera Mini 7 for Android (download) improves the lightweight browser's compressed browsing feature called Turbo with hardware acceleration, and expands the Speed Dial landing page beyond nine Web sites.

It does not include the new home screen that is coming to Opera Mini 7 for feature phones, which will bring interactive social-networking to people who have those lower-powered phones.

Phillip Gronvold, Opera's product manager for mobile, told CNET before the Barcelona event that Opera Mini's data-compressing Turbo makes the browser an important option for people on plans with tight data restrict... [Read more]