automatic

T-Mobile is aiming to fortify the Android smartphones and tablets it carries by offering users free protection against malware and viruses.

The company announced today that it is partnering with mobile security company Lookout to help T-Mobile customers protect their devices with a product called Automatic App Security. The software will come preloaded on certain devices this year, and then T-Mobile will roll it out to most Android devices in 2013.

"As we rely more on our mobile devices, for everything from business to social to banking, it is increasingly important that we protect them from threats," CEO … Read more

The Internet Download Accelerator is designed to help you quickly find and download videos, music, games and more. While it proved very easy to user, but the search feature didn't always find files even when we searched for videos we knew were on the site.

The interface presents as a file directory, much like Windows Explorer. In the left pane, you can see the main categories, All Downloads, Top Downloads, and Status, and easily drill down to see items in these categories. You can also set up your own categories to help you manage the files you download. All … Read more

Download managers can make it much easier to grab and save video from the Internet. There's a lot of them, both freeware and shareware; but then, there's a lot of video clips to download, and not just from YouTube but hundreds of other sites. Nuclear Coffee's VideoGet is shareware that's designed to make downloading video files and clips as easy as possible. While it's not much different from other tools of its type, it has enough options to satisfy a wide range of users. It's free to try with a 20-download limit.

VideoGet's … Read more

Avast Free Antivirus for Mac is Avast's answer to concerns about how to browse safely. The application is packaged with a brand-new, easy-to-understand graphical user interface, with access to all features available at single click.

The application's onscreen tools are well-organized, and its live graphics enhance the feeling of safety -- you can see that the antivirus software doesn't sleep and is always working to protect you from any viruses circulating on the Web. Avast's free software provides three shields to protect your computer: a file system shield, an e-mail shield, and a Web shield. With … Read more

While the use of the log-in window at startup in OS X is the more secure option to use, often people may prefer to have their systems automatically log in to a specified user account, especially if they are the only user on the system and the system is in a relatively safe location such as a locked study or office. However, there are times when users may enable automatic log-in for systems in more public areas, and you might wish to ensure this setting either remains off or can be quickly reverted with a script or command that can … Read more

Topping my list of Microsoft Excel pet peeves is the program's automatic conversion of two numbers on either side of a hyphen into the date and month the numbers correspond to, such as "1-1" becoming "01-Jan."

The change occurs even when you choose any of the options available when you select Paste Special. I have looked high and low for a way to disable this setting in Excel, to no avail.

You can make the change for an entire worksheet by clicking the small box above 1 and to the left of A in the … Read more

A confusing aspect of OS X for those who regularly use other operating systems like Windows, is that quitting an application is separate from closing all of its windows. As a result, people used to Windows may simply close all windows and end up with numerous applications open at the same time, which can hog resources like RAM, use CPU time, and potentially result in slowdowns and reduced battery life.

In OS X Lion, Apple dealt with this problem in part by implementing a feature called automatic application termination, which will quit applications that are not in use. I covered application termination in a previous article, … Read more

Drivers in the United Kingdom will have another thing to worry about every time they pull up to the pump. In addition to wondering if they'll have enough money in the bank to pay for the exorbitant price of fuel, they may need to check if they paid their car insurance premium on time.

In an effort to crack down on auto insurance scofflaws, the British government wants to team up with gas stations to identify drivers who haven't paid their premiums, and prevent them from filling up. The proposed plan will use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) … Read more

You may recall the violinist who played the Nokia ringtone after a member of the audience forgot to silence his phone. Luckily, this gentleman had a sense of humor and decided to make light of the situation. Unfortunately, not everyone is so forgiving of interruptions. If you don't want to be that person, your best course of action is to completely silence or turn off your phone. But what if you forget?

Most people don't turn off their phone notifications until they arrive at their destination. This is likely why many movie theaters show a cute animated feature … Read more