Like previous editions, the latest Media Creator suite offers a set of highly effective tools for preparing video, audio, and data prior to actually burning anything to disc. The short list of capabilities includes editing and transcoding video, music, and photos; backing up; creating and burning ISO and other images; authoring and burning CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs; recording and cleaning (Pro version) audio; and playing and streaming multimedia.

Media Creator 2011 still feels a bit like a hodge-podge of separate apps (many retain their old, individual names, too), but Roxio has extended a consistent (and handsome) look and feel to virtually every application and tool in the package. I was hoping that the company had finished enfolding most of the functionality within the friendly Roxio application launcher, but for some basic tasks (such as label creation) you still have to wait for external applications to boot. Also, the suite still suffers from offering too many ways to accomplish the same task. Does anyone need two label creation programs?

The biggest news here is the 3D. Media Creator 2011 can transcode 2D media to anaglyph 3D, RealD, and Real 3D, for viewing through those funky red and blue filter and polarized glasses-as opposed to the active-shutter glasses used with newfangled TVs and games and dual-stream 3D that requires dedicated hardware. Roxio even puts a pair of the throwback paper glasses into the box, and sells a plastic pair of anaglyph glasses, too (though they won’t work over your eyeglasses). The transcoding results are surprisingly effective, adding a depth-of-field effect to images and video that fans of 3D will like. My personal reaction to 3D tends toward dizziness, but your mileage may vary.

Setting up the program to convert 2D images and video to 3D is simple. You have the option of converting a single image, two images that are shot a couple of lateral inches apart (as far apart as your eyes), or any type of video. Load the images or video, click the Save button (video is transcoded to 3D on import), and you’re done. You can export to almost any 3D format, including 3D to DVD and AVCHD.

The suite complements its 3D centerpiece with a small number of welcome improvements. The backup app has been reworked to provide a better workflow. Video handling is improved with one-click video rotation (a huge boon for cell-phone camera videographers, who can easily-and inadvertently-snap an entire video in vertical mode). Other upgrades include support for the open-source, royalty-free .MKV media container format; new project templates; improved social networking with direct Facebook uploads; and a DLNA-certified media server component for streaming content from your PC to other devices.

The Pro version of Media Creator adds the BackOnTrack 4 image backup program, the SmartSound Sonicfire Pro soundtrack editing app, Bias SoundSoap SE audio restoration software, the Roxio Blu-ray video authoring plug-in ($20 separately for the regular version), and Secure Burn disc encryption. Both versions require a $50 plug-in to play back Blu-ray movie discs-including 3D.

Unwieldiness aside, Roxio Creator 2011 remains the premier media-handling and disc-burning suite. It lets an artistic know-nothing like me produce high-quality movies, slideshows, and other projects with minimal effort. Still, if 3D isn’t big news to you, you can probably stick with whatever recent version of Roxio Media Creator you already use, since the other improvements are minimal.

Both the semiconductor and security industries are both trying to understand what the proposed combination of Intel and McAfee will mean, as Neil Rubenking’s poll of security vendors and my own Intel-McAfee analysis point out.

Intel invited analysts to sit in on a conference call on Thursday, and one of my sources, chip analyst Nathan Brookwood of Insight 64, participated. It’s possible that Intel representatives may be hyper-sensitive to the proposed FTC antitrust settlement; in any event, they took pains to emphasize that the antivirus industry as a whole may actually reap the rewards of such a combination.

The thinking, according to Brookwood, is that over time Intel will begin to integrate more and more security logic into the microprocessor itself. (This has been done to some extent within Intel’s vPro corporate chipset line, although more and more functionality is being sucked into the microprocessor itself.)

This, in turn, will create a degree of security within Intel processors that rivals, including AMD and Via, lack. (AMD has been suspiciously quiet since the announcement.) Intel’s argument is that those security vendors will be able to charge more for a «increased security» version of their products that ties into that security logic. And that implies that a «generic» version of the software will be left for AMD-based machines.

Keep in mind that this is Inte’s own pitch, though filtered through another source. It’s a lovely piece of marketing, when you think about it; by convincing antivirus vendors to develop «premium» products for the Intel chips, Intel can use the antivirus vendors as free marketing, planting the seed that «Intel Inside» is itself a premium brand.

But that’s the consumer retail market. Within the enterprise market, such a move almost seems like a fait accompli.

«To say that enterprise antivirus is competitive is a great understatement — it is one of the most competitive segments in technology,” Alex Eckelberry, president and chief executive of McAfee competitor Sunbelt Software, points out in Neil’s story.

If that’s true, then eking out a few more dollars per seat will certainly be worth it, especially if Intel is helping to fund development with «marketing dollars» or merely development tools. And any IT director worth his salt will surely investigate the possibility of improved performance, especially if he has already committed to a stable of Intel-based PCs.

Granted, this could all be taken out of context. Naturally, I put a request for comment in to Intel. Representatives said Thursday that they did not have any executives available for comment, possibly because I wrote about Intel’s security focus months before.

Still, it’s an interesting future direction for the company, and a direction that Intel might have to carefully walk, given the FTC’s scrutiny.

Besides, the fake application will also try to remove legitimate packages from the likes of Microsoft, AVG, Zone Labs and Norton even if users fail to comply with the bogus request to uninstall authentic quality security software. Certainly, the true anti-virus application will black such activity. But if your definition bases are obsolete the attack may work.

If successful, AnVi Antivirus will download fake anti-virus software that warns of multiple imaginary security threats in a bid to trick victims into purchasing worse-than-useless software.

Kaspersky Lab has raised the bar once again. Kaspersky^® offers a thoroughly new approach to keeping you safe. Along with new enhancements to our top-rates detection technology, we’ve added important new layers of security designed to provide the greatest possible protection. And we did it while making version 2009 up to 7 times faster. It’s all about premium protection that lets you make the most of your computer’s power.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 Features
# Proactive Protection monitors all activity into and running on your PC to block malicious behavior.
# Application Security Rating System — Our unique Intrusion Prevention System ranks all applications like shareware and freeware as trusted, untrusted or restricted using the world’s largest registry of more than 6 billion applications.
# Vulnerability Assessment informs you of any applications that do not have their most up-to-date security patches and directs you to where to find them.
# Parental Controls limit online time and access to forbidden sites (with tracking).
# Automatic Hourly Updating of known malicious threats and recognized patterns of unacceptable behavior
# Fast & Light System Performance Exceptional scanning speeds that adjusts to your usage, with the option to scan only new or modified files. Great for demanding gamers!
# Anti-Spam Protection with an advanced self learning system to block unwanted e-mail.
# Two-Way Personal Firewall checks all incoming data and prevents any outgoing data leakage to hackers

Dr. Web CureIt is one of those antivirus programs that can be used to scan a Windows operating system. The program requires no installation and can be run right from the location it was downloaded to.

Dr. Web CureIt can detect and remove viruses, rootkits, trojans and other malicious or infected files from the system. Three types of scans are available. A quick, full and custom scan. A quick scan will only scan the most important locations of the Windows operating system including the boot sectors, startup objects, the Windows system folder and the user documents folders.

It is usually recommended to perform a full scan instead to scan all files and locations of the operating system. Objects that have been found as malicious during the scan can be cured, renamed, moved or deleted from within the program’s interface.

Dr.Web CureIt is an interesting program for users who want to quickly scan their computer system without having to install yet another antivirus software. The product is quite renowned for its detection and cleaning capabilities and a solid on demand scanner to catch malicious software that regular antivirus misses. The only downside are the popups that are displayed by the program that advertise the commercial version of the program.

Version 2 is available for Visual Studio 2008/Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with ASP.Net 3,5, said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president in the Microsoft Developer Division, in a blog entry on Thursday evening. A release candidate for ASP.Net MVC 2 was offered last month.

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«ASP.Net MVC 2 is the next significant update of ASP.Net MVC. It is a compatible update to ASP.Net MVC 1 — so all the knowledge, skills, code, and extensions you already have with ASP.Net MVC continue to work and apply going forward,” Guthrie said. «Like the first release, we are also shipping the source code for ASP.Net MVC under an OSI-compliant open source license.”

Features in version 2 include improved Visual Studio tooling support, strongly typed HTML helpers, and enhanced model validation support across client and server. Other improvements include auto-scaffold UI helpers with template customization and support for splitting large applications into «areas.”

Support also is included for JavaScript validation in the browser. In addition, developers can use DataAnnotation support in the .Net Framework to declaratively define and add validation rules to business objects and properties. Additional capabilities include asynchronous controllers support for executing long-running tasks in parallel, support for rendering subsections of a page/site using Html.RenderAction, and new helper functions, utilities, and API enhancements.

The MVC framework, according to Microsoft, encourages developers to maintain a separation of concerns among the responsibilities of applications, including UI logic via the view, user-input handling using the controller, and domain logic using the model. ASP.Net MVC applications can be tested using techniques such as test-driven development. The framework is built on ASP.Net 3,5 Service Pack 1, enabling developers to leverage features such as authentication and authorization, profile settings, and localization.

Version 2 can be installed side-by-side with ASP.Net MVC 1, so applications built with version 1 can run on the same computer as applications built with version 2, Guthrie said.

ASP.Net MVC 2 can be downloaded using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer and is also available for download at the Microsoft Download Center.

In a presentation at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, Microsoft CFO Peter Klein said that the Office 2010 Technology Guarantee program would kick off before the end of March.

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Last month, details of the free Office 2010 upgrade program leaked to the Web when a Microsoft technology specialist posted information to the firm’s partner community site. The site said that Microsoft would launch the Office 2010 upgrade deal on March 5 and run the program through Sept. 30.

According to the leaked information, customers who purchase an eligible copy of Office 2007 during that period will be allowed to download a corresponding edition of Office 2010 for free when the new suite launches in June. Users who want a DVD installation disc will have to pay a small shipping-and-handling fee.

Buyers of Office Home and Student 2007 will receive a free copy of Office Home and Student 2010, while buyers of Office Standard 2007 will be eligible for a free copy of Office Home and Business 2010, a new addition to the Office lineup. Purchases of either Office Small Business 2007 or Office Professional 2007 will be eligible for a free copy of Office Professional 2010.

Although Klein did not specify a launch date for the offer, it will come this month, and likely earlier rather than latter, since he told Wall Street analysts today that Microsoft would defer $300 million to $350 million from the quarter that ends March 31 to cover the costs of the upgrade.

Klein cited the increased integration of SharePoint and Exchange with the suite as a reason why enterprises should upgrade to Office 2010, and pointed to the integration with the impending free Office Web applications as a boon for consumers. “[An] Office [launch] is always a big deal for our company,” Klein said. «There’s something for everybody in [Office 2010].”

Free upgrade programs are nothing new for Microsoft. Last summer, Microsoft used the Windows 7 Upgrade Option to maintain sales of Vista, giving customers who bought a copy of the soon-to-be-replaced Vista between June 26 and Oct. 22 free copies of Windows 7 when it launched. The company also offered similar deals prior to releasing Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac.

Office 2010 is set to ship in June, and will be the first of its suite line to forego less-expensive upgrade editions. Some analysts have argued that Microsoft dumped upgrades to prevent business customers from using a loophole to avoid paying Microsoft’s pricey software maintenance fees.

Office 2007 Home and Student currently sells for $104 at Amazon.com, $45 less than the planned $149 list price for Office Home and Student 2010.

According to security researcher Aviv Raff, Download Manager — a small program Adobe users to speed up the initial installation of its products — can be misused to force victims to install unwanted software on their computers.

Because of an undisclosed flaw in the way Download Manager works, the «attacker can force an automatic download and installation of any executable he desires,” Raff wrote in a blog post. «So, if you go to Adobe’s Web site to install a security update for Flash, you really expose yourself to a zero-day attack.”

Adobe said Thursday that it was working with Raff and the third-party developer of the Download Manager product to fix the issue. Download Manager includes an executable program and an ActiveX control or Firefox extension file, depending on which browser is used.

However, it would be hard for a user to install unwanted software without realizing it, because «the user has to accept a number of prompts before being taken through the installation process,” said Wiebke Lips, an Adobe spokeswoman, in an e-mailed statement.

The Download Manager is different from Adobe’s Update Manger, which is used to patch Adobe software. Download Manager only runs on the computer when software is downloaded, and it removes itself on the next restart. So Raff’s attack would only work before that restart removed the Download Manager software.

Still, he believes it is a serious security risk. «This is the kind of scenario that’s common when skilled, motivated attackers are going after select targets,” Raff wrote on his blog.