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The time has come to give away the October 2008 iPod Touch. This month's requirements were simple - be subscribed to the newsletter. Simple enough, especially because it's free. In past months, I've given away a Toshiba laptop and an 80GB Zune, so I decided it was time to give away something from the Apple universe this month. It turns out Dave was the lucky recipient of the iPod Touch. Dave has been notified by email and will be receiving his shiny new iPod in the mail shortly. Stay tuned for the November giveaway in the first newsletter of next month.

When Microsoft's Zune team released the Spring 2008 Zune 2.5 software update, I touted it as the natural upgrade to Windows Media Player 11. Zune 3.0 further extends my recommendation to dump WMP 11 for the Zune software because it adds still more features over the now languishing Windows Media Player offering.

The software updates are interesting even if you have no interest in ever owning a Zune device, but many of the benefits are more meaningful if you also own a Zune. Mixview is a new feature with Pandora like characteristics. When you're listening to an song and switch to Mixview in the Zune software, you get a visual map of artists related to the current artist, artists influenced by the current artist, and top listeners to the current artist (who have given permission to show up in Mixview). This is an interesting way to find new music you might have forgotten or never heard of before.

Channels is one of the features anyone can benefit from. As the name suggests, this feature is pre-programmed selections of music, sorted by genre. So if you want to listen to popular tracks in a given style of music, with reasonable confidence the songs will all be good, channels are the way to go. I've already found several artists I like simply by listening to some of the channel offerings.

One of the new features with the biggest potential is Picks, which is essentially recommendations based on what you listen to. Picks get more accurate the more you listen to music and really make having a Zune Pass worth it because you can download and sample hundreds or thousands of songs without spending any extra money. In some cases, I'm reminded of old favorites not currently in my Zune collection, while other recommendations are for artists I'm not familiar with. The potential weak link here is sharing you music collection with other people in your household because the recommendations can get radically skewed by the person who listens most. I certainly don't tend to listen to anything that would cause Britney Spears to show up in my recommendations and yet there she was in the list when I first tried out the feature. I'm hoping rating her songs with a broken heart (which means I dislike them) helps avoid a similar experience in the future.

The buy-from-FM feature is really handy for the Zune Pass subscriber too. Since Zune hardware has FM radio built-in, I frequently use my Zune to listen to KEXP. When they feature a new band, I can now simply mark the track for download as I'm listening and have it show up in my collection later.

One of my biggest gripes about Zune is finally addressed - both the software and the Zune hardware now support Audible audiobooks. I have an Audible subscription going back many years and found this to be a key reason not to buy a Zune. I'm happy they finally listened. This signals that Zune is no longer targeting the 18-25 crowd, who are a tiny fraction of the audiobook market.

If you like toting around games on your portable player, Zune 3.0 adds Hexic and a poker game to the device. It will be interesting to see if more games start showing up in the next release. I'm also seeing more download-to-own tracks available as MP3, which means if you spend money on a song it will work anywhere, not just on a Zune.

I hesitate to suggest Zune (or anything) will dent the iPod's dominance in the portable player market. I will go so far as suggesting Microsoft is doing many things right with the Zune software, focusing more on making the music experience better, rather than focusing on trying to sell you more tracks. Apple's iTunes software feels like a commerce platform. Zune software feels like a solution for managing your music library and finding more music to listen to. The net result will likely be selling more music to Zune owners, but I don't feel like I'm being sold anything each time I launch the Zune software. It will never happen, but Zune would make a big dent in market share simply by adding support for iPod sync in the desktop software. Once again, I highly recommend replacing Windows Media Player by downloading Zune 3.0. If you're an iTunes user, this might be the time to check out Zune as a possible alternative.

With the release of the Zune 2.5 desktop software, I'm officially declaring Windows Media Player dead. It's not, of course, you still need WMP to playback any of the PlaysForSure DRM stuff you've purchased in the past, like Amazon Unbox videos, but Windows Media Player might as well be dead because Microsoft has created something so much better with the Zune app. You can benefit without ever buying a Zune device or purchasing a single track from the Zune Marketplace. Starting with existing support for h.264 content that WMP only plays after installing additional codecs, Zune software only got better in the current release.

The Zune UI team has succeeded where both Windows Media Player and iTunes have failed, eliminating the confusing folder > sub-folder hierarchy that's traditionally defined the desktop media player. The experience of browsing for music in the Zune software makes finding music in a large library relatively easy. Zune Marketplace integration is useful (for finding albums you may not own) without being invasive. The reason I consider this the real breakthrough release for the Zune software is because it adds back in some features that any media player needs to be useful. Key new features include advanced tag editing for correcting metadata on your tracks, a seemingly improved ability to identify tracks in compilation albums, and smart playlisting (this last feature still needs to re-add mood-based playlists, but most people won't care). Some other new features are a bit more obvious - like integration with Live Messenger. If you have both apps open you can post recently listened to songs to your Messenger status.

Another important addition is the new video store is working toward achieving parity with iTunes. Zune did manage to score some NBC programs that aren't available from iTunes, but I really see the Zune Marketplace video selection as the eventual replacement for (or merger with) the Xbox Live Video Marketplace. The Zune store has the key advantage of delivering videos that work on your PC, on a Zune and on the Xbox (streamed from the Zune software), while Xbox videos are trapped in your Xbox. I'm still more interested in what's available from Amazon Unbox because I don't watch much video on any portable device, but it's nice to see another option.

If you do own a Zune device, another key reason to give the new Zune software a spin is that "The Social" Microsoft has marketed for ages finally makes sense. You can sample the listening tastes of your friends and get dynamically updated playlists based on what your friends are listening to. For me this is a highly interesting way to both discover new music and discover that my friends have lousy taste in music (sorry Andru, but Jordin Sparks?). As someone who already belongs to too many "social networks" I like the Zune experience because I can sample music from people with opinions I tend to trust without needing to go to a site and continuously interact with it. I'd like this feature to go farther so that I can see how many of my friends are all liking the same songs, but it's off to a good start.

There's a solid round-tripping feature for podcast listening in their too. If you start listening to a podcast on your computer and need to hit the road, you can pick up where you left off on the Zune - a feature I haven't seen work on any other device.

With those last two features, I'm not trying to get you to throw out your iPod (or whatever you currently use), just pointing out some key advantages of the Zune experience. There are still things I don't like. Microsoft really should make Amazon Unbox work with the Zune at a minimum. There's no technical reason it can't work, it's intentionally broken. The other inexcusable oversight is Audible support. If Zune had a comparable alternative, I'd forgive them, but they don't and there's really no better library of downloadable audiobooks.

Download the Zune Software

Scott Dunn over at Windows Secrets provides a list of the nine must-have freeware apps, based on the overlap in reviews from four respected publications. To make Scott's list, an application had to appear on the list of three out of four of publications. You can read Scott's methodology in picking the software, then download the apps. Most have been mentioned here before.

Avira AntiVir Personal is one of the most frequently updated free antivirus apps.

Comodo Firewall Pro is a solid upgrade to the Windows Firewall, providing protection for both inbound and outbound traffic.

TrueCrypt is my favorite disk encryption software. If you want to make sure files on your disk are locked down, use TrueCrypt with an external key on a USB drive.

CCleaner is a favorite registry cleaner and temp file remover.

Lightning for Thunderbird is a must-have because Thunderbird lacks a calendar.

Foxit Reader is a lightweight alternative to the slow-loading Adobe Reader for PDF browsing. It is free but the terms are confusing because Foxit tries hard to upgrade you to their "pro pack".

Audacity is the best free multi-track audio recorder period. I've written several tutorials for audio recording and podcasting based on Audacity.

Wavosaur is the audio editor I affectionately think of as "Sound Forge lite". It's a great two-track audio editor with most of the functions you'd need from a pro app like Sound Forge.

Pidgin is my favorite unified instant messaging client. Since Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Google, and numerous other messaging apps refuse to collectively play nice, Pidgin bridges the gap for you.

My own lists of best freeware solutions are much longer, but it's excellent to see Scott's distilled list of freeware featuring nine overlapping greats.

If you've had an email account for longer than 5 minutes, you've likely encountered at least one Phishing attempt. These are the emails that look like they are from your bank, or Paypal or eBay asking you to verify some sort of security problem by logging into your account. Places that have your financial details will NEVER send you emails like these. They are fake. The emails are attempts to steal enough of your personal info to ultimately steal your financial assets.

But the email looks real, right? I know I've had a few I was tempted to trust. So how do you make sure you don't accidentally end up losing money and screwing up your credit rating for someone else's personal gain? Here's a handful of ways that should make sure you never get tricked.

Don't Click Links - Don't click links asking for your personal information in email messages. Your bank won't send you an email like that ever. SOLUTION: Type in your bank's Web address in the address bar of your browser (or add it to your favorites and click the favorite). From there you can login and verify that your account is as it should be.

Don't Trust Threats - Your bank, the IRS, Paypal, etc., will never contact you via email with any threat of legal action or security breach. They also won't offer you found money via email. If there's some threat for in action in an email message, assume it's bunk.

Use the Phone - If you're still not convinced the email isn't real, call the business who supposedly sent it and get customer service on the line. Customer service people are paid to provide you information about your account and will be happy to make you comfortable with your account status.

Don't Use the Same Password Everywhere - One of the worst things you can do is use the same password everywhere. If you get tricked into revealing your password at one site, the email address and password combination could get the same thieves into every account you hold if you routinely use the same email address and password at all locations. If you need help picking passwords, something like Roboform comes in handy, because it will generate a password for you and store it securely so you won't forget it later. (And it's free for up to 10 passwords).

It is also wise to use different usernames when possible. Pick a unique username for your bank, ebay, your credit card company's site, and any other site that has personal financial data about you.

Tools to Help You Fight Phishing

Use visual cues in software to help identify potential phishing attacks.

Look for the lock in Firefox:

Look for the Green address bar and the Lock in IE.

It's worth pointing out that the secure certificates required to make the address bar turn green are expensive and even many legitimate financial institutions aren't currently using them. IE does a much better job of telling you when a site has a problem with its security by warning you with red in the address bar:

Watch for Warning Signs in email - For instance, Outlook will tell you if links in a message look suspicious.

Use additional software to help secure against phishing attacks. While IE and Firefox offer rudimentary warning signals, you can get additional protection by using one of the internet security software packages.

The best rule of thumb is to assume the messages are fake and verify your account by going directly to the financial institution's site. Your data will stay safe and you still get the peace of mind knowing your account info is up-to-date and secure.

Like most other people, I suffer from information overload. Instead of using some kind of sorting system like the one recommended by Getting Things Done, I prefer to automate filtering so that I read the items I want to see when I'm ready to deal with them. I track information from a ton of places, but I don't pretend to try and read it all - there's just too much information to follow everything. Instead of wading through stuff I don't care about to get to the interesting stuff, I use some simple search tricks to help filter what I consider the cream that I don't want to miss. These tips save me at least an hour every day by eliminating information grazing and getting me straight to the details I need to be more effective. Here's a handful of free solutions that will help you do the same thing.

Saving Time with FeedDemon

Prefetching Web Pages - I use the Prefetch feature of FeedDemon to load the pages behind news items, which allows me to do other things while my computer does the heavy lifting of pulling in all the graphics and stuff that slow down page load times. By the time I'm ready to read, pages load instantly when I click through from an article in FeedDemon. The other advantage to automatic prefetch is always having the articles on hand for offline viewing if I want to catch up on reading while I'm on the plane (Web apps like Google Reader or Bloglines can't do this).

Custom Watch Lists - Custom watches are a big key digesting more information quickly. I use Watches to filter through thousands of posts from hundreds of sites to get to the point quickly. This can even be great for keeping track of my own writing - say for instance that the only thing you care about in my writing is Windows freeware. You can use a custom watch in FeedDemon to filter all your feeds into a Watch that only shows you the items with Windows freeware.

Watch the video to see how to set up both of these features.

Fast Feed Searching - A third way I use FeedDemon is as a search engine to help me find things. Most of what I read starts in FeedDemon, so I get much more accurate results when trying to find something I'm looking for by starting the search in FeedDemon. I don't get junk in my results because there's no way to game the listings in FeedDemon, saving me even more time in wading through results that don't pertain to my needs.

Download FeedDemon and start saving time

Bonus reading tip - subscribe to feeds from Brijit.com to get great summaries of lengthy articles from places like the Economist, New Yorker, and more.

I get emails from people trying to recover files from a computer crash several times a week. The emails generally start with something like, 'my hard drive failed...' and end with, '...how can I get the photos of my kids back? these were the only copy I have.' I empathize with these emailers because even with a backup plan, I've suffered data loss from a failed computer. After providing a few data recovery suggestions, my first question is always, 'where was your backup plan?' This is followed by, 'what are you going to do to prevent something like this in the future?' I often feel like I'd see blank stares if I could watch someone open my replies.

We insure our homes against loss. We insure our cars against loss. Insurance against data loss is making a back up copy - very few people do it; don't be one of them.

The best second copy you can make is one that's offsite and automatic. That's where a service like Roxio's new BackOnTrack Online comes in. You install BackOnTrack Online software once, choose which files and folders you want to back up, and it takes care of the rest. Your files are backed up over your Internet connection to a secure server, covering the offsite portion of back up process. The software on your computer automatically watches for new items in the folders you protect, or changes to files, backing up as necessary. If you delete a file, the online backup keeps a copy for 30 days, so you can even change your mind and recover a deleted file.

I've been testing BackOnTrack Online for about a week and so far I'm impressed. The software provides visual indicators on my desktop when something is being backed up, is backed up, or is scheduled to be backed up. You can right click a file or folder to tell BackOnTrack you want it backed up. Deleting a file on your desktop does not permanently remove it from your world - recovery via BackOnTrack Online is easy. I currently have 1GB of files backed up, which is certainly not a huge number, but I consider it a large enough number to feel like an accurate test. If your computer crashes, you can recover your files to any computer via the recovery mode.

Here's a video demo where I show how I deleted a file from my hard drive and recovered it using BackOnTrack Online:

BackOnTrack is powered by Carbonite, which is an online backup service I reviewed in May of 2006. One thing I like about BackOnTrack versus going straight to Carbonite is having the Roxio brand behind it. Roxio and Sonic have been around for a long time. Backing your files up to a service run by them likely means you can feel reasonably secure that your backup will be available for a long time. As a side note, Carbonite also powers the online backup for Microsoft Money.

While BackOnTrack isn't free, it's highly affordable, with an annual subscription running $49.99 or 2 years for $89.99. That's cheap insurance - far less expensive than any software I've purchased to recover data from a failed hard drive. While storage is theoretically unlimited, most broadband connections will result in a limit of backing up 3GB of new files per day.

As a point of disclosure, Roxio sponsored my coverage of CES 2008. I'm recommending BackOnTrack Online as a solution because it works. If you don't choose to use BackOnTrack Online back your stuff up with something else. It's far easier to recover data from a copy than pray that data recovery software can dig it out from a failed drive.

Two days into CES 2008 I'm rapidly compiling a ton of video footage and photos of new products from the show floor. Much of the show is hard to get excited about because like last year, many of the products are simply evolutions over previous offerings. One thing I'm particularly excited about is the number of digital cameras and camcorders that are designed to work under water without needing a special housing. I have some demo video of the new waterproof Sanyo Xacti shooting underwater that will be posted later in the week, along with a rundown of all the various underwater camera options.

Canon's new high definition camcorders are particularly interesting, with the HV30 offering both feature upgrades over the HV20 as well as backward compatibility with HV20 accessories. Two new flash recording HD camcorders offer some excellent features, but still leave me leery of the AVCHD format.

If you house is a cell phone deadzone, you might be interested to check out the zBoost Cell Phone Range Extender, which is meant to eliminate dead spots in your coverage up to 2500 square feet. Alienware has an amazing new 2880x900 OLED display that will be available later in the year according to recent updates. More updates to come throughout the week.

Toward the end of every year I like to do a rundown of what's been popular over the previous 12 months. This particular list consists of the 15 most downloaded apps from Top Drawer Downloads over the past 12 months. What's interesting is that most of these apps have been in the top 20 every month since the beginning of the year. 13 of the 15 are free. The two paid apps, Mixcraft and RM Converter, don't have competitive free alternatives.

Warner Brothers is the first company that gets the new distribution model. If I can pay for a DVD and easily get a copy of movies I can play on my computer and portable device, I won't need software to rip copies for me. The Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix DVD I got in the mail today includes exactly this. Right on the front of the box, there's a sticker reading "Bonus Digital Copy of the Film included".

There are actually two digital copies on the disk:
1) A 320x166 widescreen version for PlaysForSure devices and Zune playback.
2) A 3.6Mb 720x306 widescreen version for PC Playback
Both look great on their respective devices. And both eliminate the need to rip DVDs, without adding any additional price to the disk. The only thing better than this would be a disk that came with a download code for Amazon Unbox. In the meantime, you just validate and copy the files to your PC for playback or transfer to your portable device.

With any luck, the Harry Potter experiment will work well and we'll see many more disks like this one in the near future. Maybe this is the HD-DVD managed copy concept only a year or two late?