virtualization

Recover data and partitions with VirtualLab Data Recovery

VirtualLab Data Recovery is a modular data and partition recovery tool from BinaryBiz. VirtualLab recovers lost, damaged, or deleted files and partitions, including Mac partitions, as well as deleted e-mail and photos. It can also recover CD and DVD data in many cases. This powerful suite even includes a RAID Recovery tool. It works on regular hard drives as well as removable and flash drives. While the program is free to try, it won't recover any data. The least expensive licensed version recovers up to 100MB of data. License upgrades are available, depending on how much data you need … Read more

Create PDFs from any app using Virtual PDF Printer

Virtual PDF Printer is an app that lets you create PDF files on your iPad or iPhone. Available through iTunes for $19.99, Virtual PDF Printer installs easily.

Creating PDFs from files on your iPad or iPhone often means saving documents in a common file format, then opening another app to convert the file to PDF. With Virtual PDF Printer, you tell your iDevice to print to the virtual printer instead, which creates a PDF file directly from your office productivity or other app. For many people, this shortcuts the process and leads to a PDF file more quickly, and … Read more

Google's JAM with Chrome lets users play in virtual rock bands

Google is trying an experiment: it's letting armchair musicians shred virtual guitars and bang animated keyboards with a new interactive Web app called JAM, which is on its Chrome browser.

"If you ever dreamed of playing in a band, now's your chance to be a rock star," Google Creative Lab's marketing manager Emma Turpin wrote in a blog post today. "No matter what your level of talent -- from daydreaming air guitarist to music pro -- you can JAM together in real time over the web."

The way JAM works is it lets … Read more

Expand your desktop with the easy-to-use Virtual Desktop Assistant

A useful tool for the multitasker, Virtual Desktop Assistant lets you create multiple virtual desktops on one computer, and can help busy people stay organized.

Virtual Desktop Assistant has an intuitive layout that makes it easy to get started. It sits in the taskbar for quick access and displays the numbers 0 through 3 on the bottom-right corner of the user's window. Zero represents the default system desktop and 1 through 3 represent virtual desktops that can be navigated to simply by pressing the Alt key and the number that represents the virtual desktop you want to switch to.… Read more

Facebook sued over social-gaming currency

Kickflip has sued Facebook, claiming the social-networking giant broke antitrust laws in the social gaming currency market, according to a report.

The company, operating as virtual currency and payment-processing provider Gambit, said Facebook's decision in 2009 to offer its own similar services to developers killed a "vibrant and competitive market," according to federal court papers examined by Bloomberg.

Such a service allows gaming providers to issue currency to players in exchange for real money or advertising offers.

Kickflip's complaint says that Facebook marginalized its competitors by "blacklisting" Gambit and forcing developers to use only … Read more

City builder simulation that works well

SimCity and its updates have captivated simulation fans for the last thirty years. Building a city and managing it is a never-ending challenge. If this sort of game appeals to you, Virtual City Playground is worth checking out. A 125MB download, the free app allows you to build and run your own cityscape.

The Virtual City Playground interface is quite simple to use. Lay out roads and other transportation means, zone areas for residential or business use, manage the economy by ensuring produced goods get to consumers, and make sure your citizens are happy with attractive city spaces and special … Read more

Manage CD/DVD discs

MagicISO's MagicDisc Virtual CD/DVD-ROM is a free tool that lets you create and use virtual CD and DVD discs that play just like the real thing, only you don't need to open and close the disc tray. You can create up to 15 virtual discs, which you can configure like any real disc: audio CD, DVD, game disc, or rewritable disc. You can create audio programs, save them as ISO images, and play them like an audio CD without having to burn them to disc. The tool offers versatile compression, encryption, and mounting options, too. It supports … Read more

Create virtual optical discs with Virtual CloneDrive

Once upon a time, CD-ROMs and other optical discs provided the much-needed storage space that hard drives lacked, but with terabyte drives, shuffling disks in and out of your tray is just a nuisance. SlySoft's Virtual CloneDrive is a free tool that creates up to 15 virtual CD and DVD drives in Windows. You can copy your CDs and DVDs to your hard drive as ISO disc images and run them normally with Virtual CloneDrive. Instead of swapping disks in and out, you can simply mount and unmount disk images with a few clicks. Virtual CloneDrive works with any … Read more

Bromium secures computers by holding apps in isolation

Some of the minds behind virtualization technology used by Amazon Web Services are launching new security software today called Bromium, which is designed to protect against attacks by keeping apps and their individual tasks separate from the operating system.

While traditional antivirus software prevents known malware from infecting machines, and firewalls block unauthorized packets from getting into the network, there isn't really a good solution for the biggest problem in security today -- the naive end user. An unwise click on a malicious attachment or URL is often the easiest way into an organization's network.

"We're … Read more