Textured graphics can be captured in a flash

• NewScientist.com news service
• Colin Barras

The virtual worlds in computer games provide a realistic backdrop to the action. But step too close and the effect is lost – you'll see that textures and patterns are usually displayed on flat surfaces that look dull and artificial.

A simpler way to add depth to textured surfaces could change that.

The new technique can reconstruct the depth of a surface simply by taking two photos of it – one with a flash and one without (see video, right). Merely analysing the resulting shading patterns can capture the surface's 3D texture.

Until now making realistic textures required the use of bulky and expensive laser scanners, says Mashhuda Glencross at the University of Manchester, UK. And the process is really time-consuming, she adds.

3D in a flash

Glencross and the Manchester team worked with Gregory Ward at Dolby Canada in Vancouver to develop their quick and cheap alternative.

At the heart of the technique is the assumption that the brightness of a pixel in the image is related to its depth in the real scene. Parts of the surface deep in a crack or pit receive light from a restricted area of the sky, and appear relatively dark.

By contrast, protruding parts of the surface receive more light and appear brighter in a photo.

Correct colours

But the colour of the surface also affects its brightness in a photo. With the same illumination, light-coloured spots appear brighter than dark ones.

Taking a photo using the flash removes that effect. The surface is flooded with light and the camera can record the true colour of every part it can see, even those in cracks and pits.

The flashlight image is paired up with a photo taken without extra lighting. Software then compares the brightness of every matching pair of pixels in the two images and calculates how much of a pixel's brightness is down to its position, and how much is due to its colour.

That information is used to produce a realistic rendering of a surface's texture. By altering the direction of illumination on the virtual surface the system can generate realistic shadow effects.

Spot the difference

To test the realism of the results, the researchers asked 20 volunteers to compare images of a surface made using two photos to versions of the same surface rendered using lasers. The volunteers couldn't tell the difference.

The new technique is already being used to add depth and realism to the ancient carvings that will appear in Maya Skies – a full-dome digital projection for planetariums that tells the story of the Mayan people. Maya Skies will be released in 2009.

Glencross and Ward presented their results at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles last week.

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Kevin Mitnick Tells All in Upcoming Book -- Promises No Whining

By Kim Zetter

Now that the statute of limitations has lifted on many of his crimes -- as well as a seven-year court ban prohibiting him from writing about them (the ban ended midnight on January 28, 2007) -- former hacker Kevin Mitnick is telling his story in a book to be published next year.

Mitnick, the Mumia Abu-Jamal of the hacker world who inspired a "Free Kevin" movement, was imprisoned for four and a half years, beginning in February 1995, before he was finally sentenced to 46 months in 1999, with some credit for time already served. Part of that time he was held in solitary confinement and without bail because the government feared he had the ability to detonate a nuclear weapon simply by whistling a tone through a phone. He was released in 2000.

But don't look for Mitnick to whine in his book about the government's unfair treatment of him or his long-standing feud with New York Times scribe John Markoff, whom Mitnick accused of inflating his stories about Mitnick to get a book deal. Instead, he tells Forbes, he plans to set the record straight about his hacking spree.

Kevin Mitnick: It's pretty much my autobiography, the story of my years as a hacker and a fugitive told from my point of view--starting out from my younger years in telephone phreaking when I was 11-years-old, to my arrest, to my post-arrest career as a security professional. There's going to be a lot of information revealed about hacks I pulled off. The statute of limitations has lifted on a lot of that stuff, so now I can talk about it publicly.

Forbes: Can you give us a preview of the exploits you're going to recount in the book?

I'm trying to save that all for the book. What I can tell you is what won't be in the book--I won't be whining about my trial or my mistreatment by the government or [Mitnick-chronicling] John Markoff.

This book is going to be a kind of Catch Me if You Can in cyberspace. It's going to be what's real in my history and what isn't, what I did and how I did it and how I've since turned my life around.

Forbes: What are some of the myths about Kevin Mitnick that just aren't true?

I never wiretapped the FBI, though I did wiretap an informant who was working with the FBI and chasing me for the bureau. Some other myths: that I hacked into the National Security Agency, that I hacked into NORAD.

Forbes: And some things you did do?

Well, I compromised all the phone companies, essentially. Even when I was a kid I had the capability to disrupt the telephone systems for entire states.

I hacked into the systems of all the major software companies at the time: Digital Equipment, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Silicon Graphics. Also most of the companies that made cellular phones at the time, like Nokia, Motorola, Fujitsu.

Mitnick, whom the government had deemed "the most wanted computer criminal in United States history" was charged with 25 counts of wire and computer fraud and causing nearly $300 million in damages. He eventually pleaded guilty to 7 counts and was ordered to pay only about $4,000 in restitution after his release.

Photo: Neon Samurai

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Gaping hole opened in Internet's trust-based BGP protocol

By Joel Hruska

For all the viruses, malware, and exploits that crawl around the web, fundamental flaws in the system are supposed to be few and far between, but the last two months have proven to be an exception to the rule. In July, Dan Kaminsky revealed his discovery of a DNS flaw that could be exploited to direct unwitting users to malicious web addresses, Now, practically on the heels of that announcement, a hacker team that presented at DEFCON has demonstrated how a fundamental design error in the Internet's border gateway protocol (BGP) can be used to invisibly eavesdrop on all traffic originating from a particular set of IP blocks.

Neither of these attack vectors are hacks in the typical sense of the word, as Wired's own report explains. Instead of injecting malicious code into a system or systems, the DNS and BGP assaults take advantage of inherent structural weaknesses in the Internet itself. When the ARPANET was under development in the late 60s and early 70s, its designers chose to implement trust-based protocols. At the time, this made sense; ARPANET was a communications network between a relative handful of university and government institutions. The Internet of today has grown beyond the projected size of ARPANET by multiple orders of magnitude. The fact that it has scaled as well as it has is a testament to the engineers who built its foundation as well as those that came later, but the trust-based protocols that made sense in the 1970s don't make sense today.

The flaw in BGP's "trust everyone" system isn't new. In 1998, hacker-turned-security-expert Peiter Zatko (aka Mudge) testified to Congress that the entire 'Net could be brought down via an attack on BGP, but the issue received no serious attention, and development of a safer replacement to BGP that won't break the 'Net has been slow. Earlier this month, Anton Kapela (data center/network director for 5Nines Data) and Alex Pilsov (CEO, Pilosoft) demonstrated an attack that Zatko told Ars is "similar" to his, though some of the particulars differ. In both cases, the fundamental assumptions BGP makes regarding trust are exploited to snoop data within a given range of IP addresses. The first part of their attack is a standard IP hijack, but before we talk about that, let's look at how the BGP system is supposed to function, if everyone plays by the rules.

BGP and IP hijacking

When a router receives a request for information, it responds with an IP address—that's DNS in action. Once the IP address has been received, the router is tasked with finding the best route to that particular location. In order to do this, the router scans its BGP table, where information on routes is stored. The "best" route is the one that corresponds as closely as possible to the address the router is actually looking for.

For example, say that a router is looking for IP address 123.255.189.25 It might find a dozen routers advertising that they connect to 123.xxx.xxx.xx, but that's a very broad location. Presented with its options, the router will choose to send its data to the ISP or other network that's advertising itself as connecting to 123.255.xxx.xxx over sending it to an ISP that just advertises itself as 123. Once the data reaches 123.255, the new router checks its BGP table, and forwards the packets along to the closest address it can find.

This system only works as long as trust is maintained. The router that's requesting information from its BGP table has no way of verifying that the address its forwarding data to is actually the best path. It assumes that it is, because it assumes that the announcements its receiving (ASes) are valid. The first step in an IP hijack is to break that trust, and advertise false information. If a hacker wants to see all of the traffic that's headed towards 123.255.189.25 (or towards that block of addresses), he advertises himself as a router specifically aimed at those addresses. His announcement is picked up, retransmitted, and presto, he's now receiving the information that he wants.

The reason IP hijacking isn't more common is because its pretty darned noticeable. When Pakistan attempted to block YouTube from its citizens, it did so by routing the YouTube addresses into a black hole—a nondestination destination. Unfortunately, that routing information got out into the Internet, circled the globe, and left the entire world without YouTube access. YouTube itself was still there, but no one could see it. This, perhaps, is the most obvious case of (unintentional) IP hijacking ever, but smaller attempts are typically just as obvious to the companies or organizations affected by them. Up until now, interception was easy, but so was detection.

Pilosov and Kapela, however, have found and demonstrated a way to intercept communication and then forward it back along to its original intended recipient. This is normally impossible; having established himself as the most direct router for a given address, any data the hijacker attempts to follow is promptly returned. Pilosov and Kapela bypass this issue by prepending the IP address they feed to certain routers. Prepending refers to attaching additional numbers to their own advertised route, in order to ensure that certain routers reject it. Once a router has rejected their address, the hacker feeds the data to be forwarded on to it. The data is processed and sent to where the router thinks it should go, which means it ends up forwarded on to its intended recipient.

The result? The end-user has no idea anything is happening—and neither does anyone else. According to the team, the redirect method they use leaves virtually no evidence, and would require expert analysis to find. The only way to solve the problem is to develop a system that would allow each step in the process to be signed and certified. There are several different working groups that have tried to develop such a system, and at least one of them, Secure BGP (S-BGP), has been demonstrated as a proof-of-concept solution. Processing the additional certificates, and validating their authenticity, however, would require current-generation routers to devote a significant amount of horsepower to that task, and would impact their ability to handle traffic (assuming they could even handle both tasks simultaneously). Cisco and the various other networking vendors would love to sell new equipment to customers, but first that equipment has to be developed and tested, the new protocol has to be adopted, and the businesses and companies in question have to shoulder the burden of replacing a significant chunk of their own network infrastructure.

Ars spoke to Zatko regarding the seriousness of the BGP vulnerability, and asked whether or not this issue was being blown out of proportion. "I'd put the BGP and DNS attacks at least on par with each other," Zatko told us. "You really need both protocols and infrastructure for everyday use of the Internet. But without DNS, packets can still get from IP address to IP address. The converse does not hold. My friend Dan Kaminsky recently made the well-known DNS cache poisoning trick very easy to pull off. So on that aspect I think the DNS attack might be a bit more accessible to many people."

Unfortunately, Kaminsky's DNS flaw and the BGP exploit Zatko, Pilosov, and Kapela have worked on are different in one very important way. Kaminsky's flaw was not revealed to the public until July, by which point a solution had already been devised and patches were being pushed out to those that needed them. This BGP attack vector, on the other hand, has no hope of an immediate patch, and, as yet, no vendor agreement on which secure protocol to back. SBGP is one option, but Cisco has proposed its own solution (soBGP), and there are several others. Until a protocol is agreed upon, there's no chance of fixing the problem, which means this is one hole that's going to stay open for the foreseeable future.

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Judges consider whether FBI violated free speech

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A panel of federal appeals court judges pushed a U.S. government lawyer on Wednesday to answer why FBI letters sent out to Internet service providers seeking information should remain secret.

A panel of three judges from the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on whether a provision of the Patriot Act, which requires people who are formally contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for information to keep it a secret, is constitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in 2004 on behalf of an undisclosed Internet service provider against the U.S. government challenging the so-called National Security Letters (NSL) as well as gag orders placed on the recipients.

The appeals courts on Wednesday questioned a lawyer representing the U.S. government on whether the FBI violated free speech rights in placing the gag orders.

The government argues they are in place for national security concerns, such as keeping terrorists from learning what they are investigating.

"You can't tell me that any terrorist is going to make anything out of the fact you issued NSLs to AT&T and Verizon," said Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor, using a hypothetical example.

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Gregory Katsas said the FBI "assesses the need for secrecy in each particular case."

Between 2003 and 2006 nearly 200,000 national security letters were sent out. Of those about 97 percent received gag orders.

ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer said the gag order had prevented the small Internet service provider the ACLU was representing from speaking out "against an FBI investigation that he believes is illegitimate."

The government is appealing a lower court ruling that said the gag order violated the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and was unconstitutional.

The judges will rule on the issue in the coming months.

(Reporting by Christine Kearney, editing by Michelle Nichols)

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20 Tech Habits to Improve Your Life

Artwork: Chip Taylor

Technology is supposed to make life easier, but it doesn't seem that way when you're struggling to wrangle 289 new e-mail messages, dealing with a hard-drive crash, or suddenly realizing that you left an important file on the office computer. Thankfully, plenty of tools can help. We'll tell you which ones are worth trying, and we'll also suggest some practices that you can incorporate into your workday to use tech tools more effectively and efficiently.

1. Telecommute by Remotely Controlling Your Office Computer

You can work from home--but use the computer in your office--through remote control software such as LogMeIn (free version available) or TightVNC (free). You can view the remote computer full screen, launch and close programs, read e-mail, copy and paste text between PCs, and access any files you left behind. Save money on gas, claim home equipment on your taxes, and convince your boss that you'll be more productive without leaving your house. Even the iPhone has some VNC clients, such as Mocha VNC and Teleport.

If you don't need full remote control but you do require access to your office or home files, set up Microsoft's free file-syncing tool, FolderShare. Your files will always be up-to-date, no matter where you're working or where you last updated them.

2. Schedule Automatic Hard-Drive Backups, Locally and Remotely

Backing up your critical files is as exciting as purchasing home insurance, but just as important, too. Don't risk losing your irreplaceable digital photos by making empty promises to yourself to burn a couple of DVDs every few months. Instead, set up software and services to do the job for you while you concentrate on more-exciting projects. First, save yourself from an "OMG my hard drive crashed!" catastrophe with a top backup program. Or get started now with a free copy of SyncBackSE, and schedule regular backup jobs to your external FireWire drive, thumb drive, or network drive. (If you have FTP-server access, SyncBack can back up to that as well.)

Of course, local backup isn't enough. To protect your data against fire, lightning, theft, or other disasters, you want to back up your data to a remote server over the Internet. Both Carbonite and Mozy Home offer affordable unlimited server space and utilities that quietly back up your data in the background while you work.

3. Work Faster and More Efficiently Without a Mouse

Streamline your computer work by teaching yourself keyboard shortcuts for your common actions, such as Ctrl-S to save, Ctrl-T to open a new tab in Firefox, and Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste (see our list of additional shortcuts). Then, become a keyboard master with the help of a keyboard launcher such as the free Launchy (Windows) or Quicksilver (Mac). You can start programs, open documents, and even do advanced actions such as resizing images and moving files without moving your hands from the keyboard.

You can also assign key combinations that automatically type out common phrases--such as user names, passwords, addresses, and e-mail signatures--with utilities like TypeItIn (Windows) or TypeIt4Me (Mac OS X).

4. Lose Weight, Get Fit, Save Money, and Increase Your Mileage Online

A new crop of social self-improvement sites help you monitor how much you've eaten, exercised, and spent, to motivate you and keep you on track.

Web services such as FitDay and Weight Watchers log and guide your diet and fitness regimen.

If Quicken or Microsoft Money has become too complicated to update, you can track your spending, balance your checkbook, and run charts on expenditures versus income at personal-finance sites Mint.com and Wesabe.

As for your car, avoid online gas scams. Additionally, you can squeeze the last bit of mileage out of every expensive tank of gas with a miles-per-gallon tracker like Fuelly or MyMileMarker. Entering your information into such sites gets you personalized suggestions, comparisons, and a community of like-minded people who can offer support and suggestions.

5. Clear Out Your Inbox Every Day

Beat e-mail overload once and for all by emptying your inbox completely--and keeping it that way. The "Inbox Zero" philosophy says that e-mail messages are just calls to action--not clutter that we need to hang on to. Create three folders or labels in your e-mail client: Action, Later, and Archive. Each day when you check your e-mail, make a decision and do something with every new message you've received until you've moved them all out of your inbox and reduced your message count down to zero. Ruthlessly delete the messages you don't need, on the spot. Respond to the ones that will take under 2 minutes. File messages that you want to keep for future reference in the Archive folder, those that will take longer than 2 minutes to reply to in Action (and add those to-do items to your list), and messages you need to follow up on at a subsequent date (such as Amazon shipment notifications) in Later. Then breathe a sigh of relief when you see that glorious declaration: 'You have no new mail.'

6. Get Your Cables Under Control

When you have a tangled mess of dust-coated cords knotted into a bundle under your desk, disconnecting a laptop or setting up a new printer can be impossible. The cords for power, USB, speakers, and FireWire all look the same. Simple labels can help you avoid accidentally killing your entire rig by pulling one wrong plug. Print out your own with a label maker, or buy a prefab pack of Pilot ID labels to stick on your home-office or living-room plugs. When the cat knocks one out or it's time to rearrange, you'll be glad you did. Then, get cords up off the dusty floor with an under-the-desk cable tray such as this $10 Ikea model. To keep gadget and laptop cords from falling off the back of your desk when they're not plugged in, affix a simple cable catcher (or a binder clip) to the edge of your desk to hold them. Finally, plug your workstation and your collection of peripherals into a single power strip or UPS to shut down the energy hogs with a single switch when you're not using them.

7. Stay on Task With the Right To-Do List

The key to staying on track with the stuff you need to get done is writing it down and checking it off--whether you do so online, on your desktop, on your smart phone, or in a plain text file. PC World has tried a number of online task manager sites, and our pick is Remember the Milk. It provides all the bells and whistles you'll ever need in a to-do list online, on your desktop, and on your phone. RTM offers task categories (such as Work and Home), file attachments, notes, priorities, tags, due dates, and even "honey do" items (you can send tasks to other RTM users, such as your spouse or assistant). RTM also offers a Firefox extension that integrates the service with your Gmail inbox, so you can turn e-mail into tasks. Of course, no matter how good your software is, nothing can replace the visceral satisfaction of crossing off a line on your paper to-do list with the stroke of a regular old ballpoint pen.

8. Replace Your Laptop With a Thumb Drive or iPod

Instead of lugging a laptop on your next trip, save your aching back by taking your computer's desktop with you on a thumb drive or iPod. Portable Windows software offerings such as MojoPac and U3 put a full desktop on your USB thumb drive (or disk-use-enabled iPod), letting you run applications like Microsoft Outlook and save documents all on that drive. All you need is a host computer: You can plug the MojoPac drive into your in-laws' PC or a coffee-shop workstation, for instance, to access your documents and applications without leaving a trace behind. Alternatively, you can save and run free portable applications--like the Firefox browser, Pidgin IM client, and Sumatra PDF reader--from your thumb drive. Download those and other programs for free at PortableApps.com.

More: 23 Things to Do With a Thumb Drive

9. Use Your Camera Phone as Your Digital Photographic Memory

Almost every cell phone model now includes a built-in camera, and they're good for more than just snapping pics of your buddies' bar shenanigans to blackmail them with later. Use your phone's camera and memory card to capture the spot where you parked, the label on a bottle of wine your spouse loved, the price on a new gadget to look up online, or an amazing meal you'd like to try to cook at home. A new crop of Web services can turn digital photos of whiteboards and documents into searchable PDF documents, too. E-mail your camera-phone shot of a whiteboard or document to Qipit, and the service will recognize the text and e-mail you the resulting searchable PDF.

More: Six Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do

10. Create Your Own Price-Protection System

Deal search engines such as RetailMeNot.com or SearchAllDeals.com and social sites like BeatThat are great at finding the best prices before you buy, but PriceProtectr.com and similar services will save you money afterward by monitoring over 130 stores that have price-protection policies. If the price goes down after your purchase, that store might owe you money, but knowing whether the price went down is the trick. You can take advantage of Amazon's 30-day price guarantee by going to RefundPlease.com, or by using the free Amazon Price Watch software. Travel sites like Farecast and Orbitz also have price-protection systems and e-mail alerts for when prices reach a certain low point.

11. Consolidate Multiple E-Mail Addresses With Gmail

You have more e-mail addresses than you do pairs of socks--so it makes sense to keep them all in one drawer. If you have mail coming to your ISP's account, your work address, your school address, and your throwaway Yahoo account from 1998, and you're having difficulty juggling everything, it's time to consolidate all those messages into one inbox. Google's free Web-based Gmail service is both an e-mail host and an e-mail client. Use Gmail's built-in Mail Fetcher to retrieve messages from up to five external e-mail accounts using the POP3 standard. In Gmail's Settings area, visit the Accounts tab to set up your external e-mail addresses, and you'll then receive all your mail in one roomy inbox. You can even send mail from your non-Gmail addresses via Gmail's Compose screen, too.

More: Get Organized in Gmail

12. Never Forget a Birthday, Teeth Cleaning, or Oil Change Again

When you're tired of scrambling to send Mom flowers at the last minute every year, set up a scheduled e-mail reminder for her birthday--and for any other long-term recurring tasks. Google Calendar can send upcoming-event alerts via SMS ("Pick up the dry cleaning at 3 p.m. today") or e-mail ("Schedule a hair appointment; it's been six weeks!"). Most Web-based calendars (like Google Calendar) and task managers (like Remember the Milk), as well as Web sites such as HassleMe and Sandy, support e-mail alerts.

More: 26 Tricks to Help You Tame Google Calendar

13. Never Forget a Password Again

Your Web browser can save your user name and password for sites you log in to often, but you still have lots of other passwords to remember--Wi-Fi network names and passwords, computer log-ins, PINs and passphrases, even security questions and answers. Instead of writing everything down on a sticky note tacked onto your computer monitor, lock up your store of sensitive passwords in a secure, encrypted password database. The free KeePass works in Windows, Mac, and Linux, and assigns one master password to your database. Park your passwords, PINs, and software serial numbers in your personal secure database, and save yourself the hassle of having to call the IT department the umpteenth time to reset your password.

More: 15 Great, Free Privacy Downloads

14. Encrypt Your Private Files

Everyone has a folder or two of private files that thieves, children, competitors, coworkers, or casual passersby should never see. Whether you want to secure your stealth startup's business plan or some personal photos, the free, cross-platform TrueCrypt encryption software (review; download) is ideal for storing sensitive files in a password-protected virtual container. Only someone with the master password can open that container and read or write the files within; to everyone else, it's a nondescript single file full of jumbled-up junk. TrueCrypt can secure a single folder on your hard drive, or an entire disk--it's great for a thumb drive carrying precious data that could be exposed if the drive is lost or stolen.

15. Stream Content From Your PC to Your Tivo, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii

You don't need yet another box under your TV in the living room to enjoy your digital music and videos. If you own a game console or TiVo box, you're ready to start streaming media from your PC today--no Apple TV or set-top media box needed. Find out how to get started.

Microsoft also recently announced that, by this holiday season, Xbox 360 owners who are also Netflix subscribers will be able to stream "thousands of movies" using just their game console. In the meantime, you can stream Netflix movies from your PC to your Xbox 360 with the vmcNetFlix plug-in.

16. Get Your TV and Music Fix Online

Forget basic cable--there's plenty of free TV available to watch online. If you don't want to catch your favorite shows at the networks' own Web sites, hit up sites such as Hulu, Joost, and Comcast's Fancast to get your full-episode TV fix. Also: Stream music for free to your computer from Last.fm, Pandora (both available on the iPhone), Deezer, or Slacker.

If you're on the road and missing your TiVo, use a place-shifting device such as the Sling Media Slingbox or Sony LocationFree to watch your own DVR content online.

More: The Best TV on the Web

17. Reach Favorite Sites and Searches Faster With Firefox Keywords

You probably hit the same Web sites and search engines several times a day. Why not get to those pages as quickly as possible? Instead of typing out long URLs by hand or hunting down the right search box, use Firefox keyword bookmarks to navigate to your favorite Web haunts instantly (here's how to set them up).

To search Wikipedia for George Washington, for example, you could key up to Firefox's address bar (Ctrl-L), type w George Washington, and press Enter to go directly to that topic page. You can use the same technique for Web pages that don't involve searches, too--for example, try setting the compose keyword to open a new Gmail message. To associate a keyword to a bookmark, enter a short, easy-to-remember keyword in the bookmark's Properties dialog box. Once you've set up a few keywords, you can use your Firefox address bar as a powerful, customized command line.

Bonus tip: Sync your Firefox bookmarks from home to the office to the laptop using the Foxmarks extension; it will keep your keyword vocabulary up-to-date wherever you're working.

More: 15 Undocumented Firefox Tips

18. Tweak, Monitor, and Extend Your Wi-Fi Network With a Firmware Upgrade (or Aluminum Foil)

Extend your router's signal, throttle your bandwidth, review usage charts, and more with an open-source router-firmware upgrade. The free DD-WRT and Tomato firmware each offer advanced features for managing your wireless network, including bandwidth monitors, quality-of-service graphs, and even router overclocking to extend your signal.

Want to make your Wi-Fi router's signal reach the attic and the basement the low-tech way? Some sites say they've achieved gains by fashioning a foil "windsurfer" parabola and attaching it to the router antenna.

19. Master Search Techniques to Pinpoint Files or Web Sites

Drill down through millions of search results for popular Google search terms by mastering advanced search operators. Enclose phrases and proper names in quotes (as in "Don't tase me bro" or "Michael Phelps") to get exact-phrase matches. Use the + and - signs to specify meaning, especially for words that have more than one definition (for example, salsa -dance), and use the filetype: operator to find certain kinds of documents (as in budget filetype:xls).

You can even search for all the ingredients in your fridge with the word recipe to figure out what to have for dinner tonight.

Then, take your search chops to your desktop, where organizing files in an elaborate folder scheme is no longer necessary. Use Windows Vista's Saved Search folders to build a dynamic store of all the files that contain the term "NYC," for instance, or all the digital photos taken on your birthday.

Gmail's built-in e-mail search capabilities are also killer. Use the from:, to:, and subject: operators to find specific messages, as in from:"Bill Gates" subject:"dinner date".

More: Advanced Google: Search Faster, Find More

20. Print Smart to Reduce Costs

You've already paid an arm and a leg to refill your home printer, so get into some smart printing habits to save money on ink and paper. Wherever possible, preview your document before you print, and shrink the selection down to fewer pages, or print only the pages you need in the document. Set your printer to the lowest quality (draft mode) when possible, and opt for double-sided printing or print several pages per physical page (when you're printing out PowerPoint slides, for example). When you're printing Web pages, use the Aardvark Firefox add-on to delete big colorful advertisements and other unwanted elements before you print. When you don't really need a hard copy, opt to print to a PDF document instead. Mac users can do this by default; Windows users can download the free CutePDF to print any document to PDF.

Original here

Microsoft Pulls on Firefox’s Tail

Microsoft fired the latest volley in the new browser wars on Wednesday, releasing the latest version of Internet Explorer to the public. Our quick take: Microsoft wouldn’t need an ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld if it came out with more products like this.

The new Internet Explorer

Earlier this summer, Mozilla, a non-profit software-development group, released the latest version of its Firefox Web browser. Mozilla made the launch the centerpiece of a campaign to set the world record for most software downloads in a 24 hour period, which it achieved in part because the record didn’t exist previously. Firefox now has about 19% of the browser market, according to Net Appliances Applications, up from 11% in June 2006. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still has the lion’s share of the browser market – 73% according to Net Appliances – but that’s slowly eroding.

Microsoft isn’t letting its market share disappear unchallenged, though. The company released Internet Explorer 8.0 as a so-called beta, a version that’s not quite complete but still available for anyone to download. We’ve been testing it today and (to go all Mossberg for a moment) can report that it’s full of features that make Web browsing easier.

Confession: The Business Technology Blog uses Firefox whenever possible, mainly because it has “tabs” that allow us to open multiple Web pages in one window. IE 8 has tabs as well, plus a handful of other cool features. One we particularly like: Microsoft has added “accelerators” that facilitate common tasks like emailing a Web site, mapping an address, or looking up a word. Just highlight text on a Web page and a accelerator displays the map or definition in the same window. The bad news: The accelerators that Microsoft includes are Microsoft products – the software giant’s mapping software, email program, and encyclopedia – none of which are our preferred tools.

There’s also a nice feature that makes tabs that are related to one another the same color and a button that shows miniature versions of all open tabs on one screen. Considering the number of tabs we usually have opened at any given time, these features could be real time savers.

We aren’t willing to switch just yet, but we’re impressed with IE 8 and we’ll definitely keep testing it out. We also can’t help but think that one reason there’s real innovation in the new version of Explorer is that Microsoft is facing real competition. Just imagine how cool the Windows or Office would be if Microsoft had real competitors nipping at its heels.

You can download IE 8 here. And when you do, let us know what you think.

-Ben Worthen

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Linux jumps to 13.4 percent of the stalling server market

Posted by Matt Asay

According to a recent IDC report highlighted by ZDNet, Linux is booming. At just 9.4 percent of the overall server market in terms of revenue in 2007, Linux has now climbed to 13.4 percent of the overall server market, with Unix at 7.7 percent and Windows at 36.5 percent. If Linux server vendors want to continue to grow, at some point they're going to have to come to grips with Windows, rather than eating into the low-hanging Unix fruit.

The big winner in the quarter was IBM, with 33.2 percent of the market. Hewlett-Packard is not far behind, but is moving the wrong way on market share:

(Credit: IDC)

Despite the healthy 6.4 percent growth in the overall server market, however, IDC suggests a softening in the server market, as The Wall Street Journal points out:

...(T)he growth came, in part, because manufacturers cut prices on popular product lines. That worries IDC because cutting prices is how companies typically react when faced with softening demand. With economic conditions showing few signs of improvement, price cuts "are a concern, as they may foreshadow a slowdown in market demand," said Matt Eastwood, an IDC group vice president.

Perhaps this softening is one reason that while Linux server growth topped 10 percent, Unix only grew 7.7 percent and Windows struggled to achieve 1.7 percent growth. I actually would have expected a stronger showing from Windows but then, HP, IBM, and Dell all have a vested interest in getting out of Redmond's shadow. Linux points the way to greater independence.

It will be instructive to see if Linux server growth will continue to outpace the rest of the market and, in particular, Windows server growth. In a down economy, Linux may find its direction is up, up, and away. Red Hat and Novell will be the beneficiaries, and perhaps a bit more Ubuntu?.

Original here

Linux Systems Being Hit By SSH-Key Attacks

By Thomas Claburn
InformationWeek

US-CERT on Tuesday warned of attacks against Linux computers using compromised SSH keys.

SSH (Secure Shell) is a network protocol designed to provide secure network communication via public-key cryptography.

According to US-CERT, the attack appears to rely on stolen SSH keys to gain access to a system. It then uses a local kernel exploit to gain root access, whereupon it installs the "phalanx2" rootkit, derived from the older "phalanx" rootkit.

"Phalanx is a self-injecting kernel rootkit designed for the Linux 2.6 branch that does not use the now-disabled /dev/kmem device," explains computer security group Packet Storm on its Web site. "Features include file hiding, process hiding, socket hiding, a tty sniffer, a tty connectback-backdoor, and auto injection on boot."

Once in place, the rootkit steals other SSH keys and sends them to the attacker to facilitate further attacks.

SANS Internet Storm Center handler John Bambenek in a blog post said that the weak key vulnerability identified in Debian-based systems a few months ago could be one source of compromised SSH keys. Debian's flawed random number generation, fixed in May, led to keys that were predictable.

Bambenek and US-CERT both recommend using keys with passphrases. Keys used in automated processes often do not have passphrases or passwords. Reviewing server logs to identify unknown accessed from remote machines is also recommended.

To detect the "phalanx2" rootkit, US-CERT suggests, among other things, looking for instances where the directory "khubd.p2" can be entered using the "cd" command but not seen using the "ls" command.

Original here

UK banking giant de-pants irate customer over password

By Joel Hruska

Lloyds TSB is the fifth-largest banking group in the UK, but the bank's recent actions prove it still cares about the little guy. When it isn't partnering to sponsor the London Olympics in 2012, or recognizing the contribution of Asians to British society via the Asian Jewel Awards, the banking giant enjoys rooting through customer records and changing passwords it finds offensive, then refusing to change them back.

Steve Jetley of Shrewsbury discovered this firsthand, after he changed his telephone banking password to "Lloyds is pants" ("rubbish" to us American sods on the wrong side of the pond). Upon calling in, Jetley discovered that his "pants" password didn't match what was in the system. Instead, his password had been changed to "no it's not." Initially, this was no big deal.

"I thought it was actually quite a funny response," Jetley told the BBC. "But what really incensed me was when I was told I could not change it back to 'Lloyds is pants' because they said it was not appropriate. I asked if it was 'pants' they didn't like, and would 'Lloyds is rubbish' do? But they didn't think so."

"Barclays is better," didn't meet with approval either, seeing as how Barclays is another, even larger UK bank and a Lloyds competitor. At that point, Jetley was suddenly told that passwords had to be one word. When he offered "censorship" up as an appropriate password, he discovered passwords were required to be just one word, and no more than six letters long (not terribly secure, that). This undoubtedly came as something of a surprise, since his previous password had been accepted by the system, but the staff manager in question was apparently adamant.

Lloyds has since apologized, and told Jetley that the staff member had been let go. The bank also clarified its password policy, stating, "Customers can have any password they choose and it is not our policy to allow staff to change the password without the customer's permission." Lloyds did note that it is "disappointing" that Jetley chose to express his dissatisfaction by changing his password, indicating, perhaps, that he should have expressed his satisfaction by finding a different bank.

There's no word on whether or not Jetley got his "pants" back, but this isn't the first time Lloyds has come under public scrutiny for how it treats its customers. Earlier this year, Lloyds customers mounted a campaign to have certain charges refunded after the bank refused to do so. Oystar, a British group, released a parody of "I Fought the Law," called "I Fought the Lloyds." The song detailed the customers' struggles, and was popular enough to hit number 25 on the UK singles chart. Given these sorts of cases, we'd suggest Lloyds give Jetley back his coveted pants, and perhaps take a Carnegie course or two.

Original here

Trial Against The Pirate Bay Delayed

Written by Ernesto

The upcoming trial against ‘The Pirate Bay Four’ has been delayed and at its earliest will begin at the end of this year - maybe even next year. Stockholm District Court initially said that the trial would start by the end of the summer, but gathering damage claims and serving summons took longer than expected.

After a two year investigation into The Pirate Bay, Swedish authorities filed charges against four people. Now, eight months later, there is still no date set for the trial.

“The process has taken a lot of time. First, it took time serving judicial summons to the defendants and then we had to gather damage claims from the complainants,” Anita Thimberg, a clerk at the Stockholm District Court, told DN.se.

Several of the lawyers, defendants and complainants apparently have fully-booked agendas, and it is difficult to schedule a date when everyone can participate. At the moment, it is still unclear how many days trial it will take once it starts. “We’re approximating between six to ten days,” Anita Thimberg said.

January 31st, four individuals - Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and businessman Carl Lundström were charged with facilitating copyright infringement. The prosecutor asked for a $188,000 fine for each - and the confiscation of their computers. The four also face up to 2 years in prison, but this is very unlikely based on the evidence gathered by the authorities.

That’s not all though, as the entertainment industry has also filed for damages. This spring, the MPAA demanded $15.4 million from The Pirate Bay, to cover the damages they suffered from 4 movies and 13 TV-episodes that were made available via the BitTorrent tracker. In addition, the IFPI claimed $2.5 milion in damages and Antipiratbyrån asked for $1.1 million.

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has always been positive about the outcome. Even in the worst case scenario the tracker and the site will remain online, Sunde told TorrentFreak. “In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many more.”

For now, the wait continues.

Original here

It's official: Comcast starts 250GB bandwidth caps October 1

By Jacqui Cheng

Comcast has announced that it will in fact be introducing bandwidth caps to all residential customers. The cap, which will go into effect as of October 1, will be 250GB per month. Comcast justifies the decision by saying that it's "an extremely large amount of data," and that a very large majority of customers will never cross it.

In fact, according to Comcast, this is actually the same policy that is already in place, except with more explicit numbers as to what is allowed and what isn't. "As part of our preexisting policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage," the company said in a statement sent to Ars. "If a customer uses more than 250GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use."

This announcement has been widely expected since at least May of this year, after the whole brouhaha went down with P2P throttling and the FCC fallout. Comcast had originally argued that that the FCC had no authority to block Comcast's process, but ultimately decided on its own to stop interfering with P2P traffic. The company also joined in with other ISPs in trying to devise a P2P user's bill of rights and contemplated the use of P4P software.

Comcast customers that make heavy use of their Internet connections—myself included—are sure to find themselves somewhat alarmed at the prospect of being capped. After all, perfectly legal things like movies from iTunes and Netflix, online music stores, massive software updates, and other media-heavy applications do suck up a lot of bandwidth. Comcast insists that the 250GB cap is enough to send some 50 million e-mails, download 62,500 songs, or download 125 standard-definition movies. Okay, so if a cap is going to be enforced, 250GB isn't that bad. It beats the 60GB caps and lower caps seen elsewhere in North America and it's a nice change from the company's previous etherial and mysterious caps. Still, investing in the infrastructure necessary to alleviate the need for caps is a better option for everyone involved.

In a statement e-mailed to Ars, Free Press called the caps "relatively high," but said they were also an indictment of current US broadband policy. "If the United States had genuine broadband competition, Internet providers would not be able to profit from artificial scarcity‚ they would invest in their networks to keep pace with consumer demand," said Free Press research director S. Derek Turner. "Unfortunately, Americans will continue to face the consequences of this lack of competition until policymakers get serious about policies that deliver the world-class networks consumers deserve."

In May when the cap was first rumored, there was also buzz that Comcast might try to charge customers $15 for every 10GB they went over the limit. As far as we can tell from Comcast's announcement and the accompanying FAQ page, that is not the case... yet, anyway. Even so, Comcast's honesty with the 250GB cap will probably only go so far, and customers with the option to do so may end up turning to an ISP such as AT&T, Verizon, or Qwest that has the infrastructure available to offer broadband without bandwidth limits.

Original here

City-In-a-Pyramid Could House a Million Dubaians, Power Itself

A particularly optimistic design firm in Dubai called Timelinks has proposed designs for the Ziggurat, a complete city to be layered inside of a massive pyramid that could serve as home for a million people at a time. Timelinks is currently seeking patents for a variety of technologies that would make such a building possible, including a three axis public transportation system that would run residents up, through and across the pyramid. They've also claimed that with a hybrid wind, solar and steam power the Ziggurat would be able to meet its own power needs, and that there would be enough room to allow for some minor agriculture in designated "green spaces."

Before you just write this off as another wacky internet design concept, consider the absurdly ostentatious structures that Dubai has already built, and the fact that unlike the hyperluxurious ego-boosters currently under construction, the Ziggurat might be a viable housing solution for people who don't have a natural resource-infused trust fund. [World Architecture Review via Inhabitat via Dvice]

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75 Powerful Adobe Fireworks Extensions - It really can be as Great as Photoshop!

We all know how powerful and how great Adobe Photoshop is, we know that all the best graphic designers use it, we also know that Photoshop when mastered lets you create amazing art.
Sadly, we also know it is very, very expensive. Its also very difficult for the novice to master and it takes a hell of a lot of your PC/MACs precious memory and storage. What is the answer?
The answer is Adobe Fireworks CS3, Photoshops lesser used and lesser known little brother. Its far cheaper, easier to learn and reasonably light weight. But, can it be as powerful? Of course, it can. Just like Photoshop the volume of extensions available are extensive, and with the correct extensions can be almost as powerful.
So, what are you waiting? Give Adobe Fireworks a try, I promise, you won’t go back.

I started using Adobe Fireworks a long long time ago, I also use other software (Photoshop, Illustrator…), but have always fallen back on trusty Adobe Fireworks (I miss Macromedia, remember them).
I started collecting extensions, spending many hours scowering the web, with the intention of making Fireworks as powerful as Photoshop. Some will certainly improve your productivity, some are so useful you couldn’t live without, others a little pointless, but a hell of a lot of fun to play about with.

This article came about because of lack of time to maintain my Fireworks site (FW Extensions), I hadn’t gone near it for a couple of months and I had recieved over 11,000 spammed comments, and I just thought, I can’t be bothered. Apologies to anyone that used the site.

Anyway here are below the best 75 Adobe Fireworks Extensions (MXP), nearly all are compatabile with Fireworks MX, 8 and CS3 (and quite a few with Fireworks 3 and 4).

Update Symbols

Importing symbols from another file is one of Fireworks’ most powerful functions. But if you have a lot of files that use imported symbols, it can be a hassle to update them in every file. The Update Symbols extension lets you batch-update the imported symbols in multiple files with just one step.
Running the extension displays the “Files to Open” dialog. In this dialog’s “Files to Process” menu you can choose to update all of the open files, some or all of the files in the Project Log, or a manual selection of files. To select the files manually, click the … button to display a file selection dialog. Use ctrl and shift to select multiple files. When you’re done, click Done, and then OK.
The command will open each selected file in turn, update its symbols, save it, close it, re-open it, save it again, and then close it one last time. The double open and save is necessary to force the preview that’s saved in the PNG file to be in sync with the updated symbols.
Download: Fireworks Log from source ( johndunning.com ).

Harmonia

Harmonia generates harmonious color schemes with ease. Simply select a color from the color spectrum and Harmonia gives you its complementary, split-complementary, triad and analogous colors.
Great color picker.
Note: This is an extension I downloaded a while back, when I try to visit its homepage its a dead link. If anyone can help, so I can give credit.
Download: Harmonia 1.0 (Source: Project Fireworks).

Color Glow v.2.2.1

Version 2.2.1 adds a Flash GUI, and a more accurate control of the effect to be applied on the selected image, to the previous version, which, with “Soft Glamour”, has been featured as one of the best Fireworks extension on September 2002 issue of Computer Arts Special. “Color Glow” is a non-destructive image effect for Fireworks MX that can be employed to colorize and glow selected part of an image.
Download: Color Glow v.2.2.1 (Source: Aftershape).

Extrude Paths

Extrudes a single selected vector path vertically at a specified height. This does not alter the original path but, instead, creates 2 new objects representing the extrusion: 1) a copy of the original as the cap or top of the extrusion (the original remains in its place at the bottom of the extrusion) and 2) a group of paths making up the extrusion walls.
Note: depth sorting for the extrusion wall paths is not perfect due to varying sizes of paths. After extruding, you may need to manually adjust arrangement for more accurate results. Also, complicated paths (such as paths converted from text) could cause slow results.
Run Extrude Path from your Commands > Paths menu.
Download: Extrude Path (Source: Senocular).

Kinesis v.1.0.1

Kinesis allows you to copy or move an object-based selection, using Cartesian or Polar coordinates in a relative or absolute manner. The package includes a user’s manual in PDF.
Note: This is an extension I downloaded a while back, when I try to visit its homepage its a dead link. If anyone can help, so I can give credit.
Download: Kinesis 1.0.1 (Source: Project Fireworks).

Watermark 1.0

Watermark 1.0 is a Fireworks command which allows watermarking with 4 main features : position, message, date and time.
Features
1. Watermark position: Watermark gives you the choice between 9 positions in your file.
2. Name: can be a message, name, symbols or text you want to insert.
3. Date formats: you can select either the European format : Date/Month/Year or the American format: Month/Day/Year.
4. Time formats: you can select to insert: hour : month :second or hour :minute or just hour.
5. Preview window: in Arial 12 black.
6. Close button: close the command which tells Fireworks to keep the changes.
7. Apply button: click Apply and it creates the watermark as set by the Commands options.
8. Watermark order : name-date-time or date-time-name or time-date-name.
9. 2 type of separators or line by line : dash or comma separators or each information on one line.
10. In features 2,3 and 4 you can hide or display: text, date and time with a checkbox.
Download: Watermark 1.0 (Source: Fireworks Zone).

Simple Link

Simple Linked Selection is panel allowing you to add simple object linking functionality into Fireworks. What it does is, when enabled, allows you to add links between a selection of objects so that when one object is selected, the other objects linked with that object become selected too effectively having the images “linked.
Download: Simple Link (Source: Senocular.com).

Annotations

This Annotations panel lets you view and edit simple text annotations for any fireworks PNG document and any individual object within it. When an object is selected annotations are displayed for that object. When no object is selected, document annotations are shown.
Plus icon [+] saves an annotation*
The Minus icon [-] clears the current annotation
*Note annotations can only be added to a single selection or no selection (document) and not multiple selections (in other words, to add an annotation to a selection, make sure you have only one object in that selection; a multiple object selection will not save).
** Warning: With auto update applied (annotations update for selections as they are selected, FMX 2004) you may experience problems when working with some tools. The option for disabling this has been added to help get around those issues. With auto update off, you can manually obtain a selection’s annotations using the Update button.
Download: Annotations (Source: aftershape).

Select Points

To manipulate vectors with a high degree of control it’s often necessary to subselect individual points on the path. But selecting lots of individual points on a complicated path can be awkward, especially if it’s hard to use the marquee to select them. The commands in this extension can reduce the amount of clicking required to select those points.
Four of the commands will select all the points on the top, bottom, left or right half of the path: Select Points - Top, Select Points - Bottom, etc. This can be helpful when you want to resize the path in one dimension by moving half of its points.
Compound paths with interior holes present a special challenge. It’s possible to move an interior hole by selecting all the points on it, but doing this over and over becomes tiresome. The Select Points - All command simplifies matters. If you subselect just one of the points on the interior hole’s path and run the command, all the other points on the path will be selected as well. You can do this with multiple objects at the same time.
Download: Select Points (Source: John Dunning).

DistriFusion FW8

DistriFusion FW8 is an innovative command to help you organize your objects which are inside your documents’ layers. Its two main features is to distribute and to combine objects. DistriFusion FW8 can be used with Fireworks 8 (and lower versions) and with Fireworks CS3. What does DistriFusion do?
Let’s take a Fireworks document with 5 objects (on different layers or not) DistriFusion FW8 will take all objects or those selected and create 5 new documents with one object per document. That is the Distribute feature.
On the other hand, if you have 5 documents with one object per document with DitriFusion you can re-group or combine the 5 documents into one with 5 objects in it. Multilingual application
DistriFusion FW8 is a multilingual application that displays the appropriate language strings depending on the Fireworks language. For example, with the English version of Fireworks you will get the English version of DistriFusion FW8. So far, it has been translated in 4 languages: English, French, Japanese and Spanish. Support
Inside the zip file you will find an MXP file with a comprehensive and illutrated Instruction Manual included.
Download: Distrifusion FW8 (Source: Fireworks Zone).

Crop Assistant v.1.0.0

Crop Assistant enables precise but flexible cropping of objects or the canvas.
Download: Crop Asst Zip(Source: Project Fireworks).

Twist and Fade

Twist and Fade 3.1.1 is an interim release to fix a couple of issues that were raised after Fireworks MX was shipped. These changes are to allow a greater granularity regarding slider control. Updates include Dual Direction Sliders allowing input via the slider or the keyboard for increased control of output, and faster algorithms for the preview pane (85% to be exact). This means overall performance of the command has been ramped up by ~60%.
Download: Twist and Fade (Source: Phireworks).

BEND 1.0.2

Bend distorts a path by adding a bloated or spiked effect to it. It offers enough variation controls for maximum creative freedom. This package includes a user’s manual in PDF.
Download: BEND 1.0.2 (Source http://www.projectfireworks.com).

CANVAS SQUEEZER

Allows direct resizing of the canvas for those times when you run out of screen real estate.
Download:CANVAS SQUEEZER. (Source http://www.phireworx.com).

CHANGE TEXT SIZE

This package consists of two commands, one of which increases the font size of the selected text block(s) by 2, and other which decreases it. If the text block consists of multiple sizes, then the size of each run is increased or decreased by 2. So if your text block contains text with sizes of 12, 18, and 14 when you run “Text Size - Increase by 2″, then afterwards the sizes would be 14, 20, and 16. You can run the command repeatedly to keep increasing or decreasing the font size.

These commands will be more convenient if you assign a keyboard shortcut to them.
Download: CHANGE TEXT SIZE 1.0.1. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

COMMANDS / PANELS

Are you tired of selecting your favorite commands from the Commands menu? Don’t want to create a keyboard shortcut for each one? Well, then, the Commands panel is for you. It’s a toolbar that provides one-click access to your commands. Switch to the “All” tab to find a list of all of your installed commands. Click a command to run it, or add it to your favorites list by clicking its star icon. Then switch to the favorites tab, where you’ll find a shorter list of starred commands. Pretty simple, but pretty convenient, too.
Download: COMMANDS / PANEL 1.2.1. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

COPY MERGED

Fireworks is great because you can create lots of individual objects on multiple layers and then easily export a single merged image. But what if you want to simply copy the flattened pixels onto the clipboard and then paste them into another application?
You could export the image, open the file, select all, and then do the copy, but that’s not very convenient if you’re modifying your image a lot and have to copy each change. Or, you could select all the objects in you document and then copy, but only objects on unlocked layers get copied that way, forcing you to unlock every layer first.
With just one step, the Copy Merged command copies onto the clipboard the entire document as a flattened image. It even copies the objects on locked layers, without affecting your document.
If you want to copy just a portion of your image, first select an object that encompasses the area you want to copy, and then run the command. Slices work well for this purpose. Copy Merged will copy only the area covered by the selected object.
Download: COPY MERGED 1.0.0.(Source: http://johndunning.com).

FILE EXPLORER / PANELS

Envious of Dreamweaver’s Site panel? Wish Fireworks MX had something like Photoshop 7’s image browser? While far from complete, this panel is a step in that direction. File Explorer offers a view of your files that’s similar to Dreamweaver MX’s Site panel. When you’ve found a file you want to open, just double-click it, select it and click the Open button, or press return.
This command panel is still very much a work-in-progress (as denoted by its 0.6 version number). Its biggest current limitation is that there’s no way to refresh the file view—you have to close and reopen the panel. It also works only on Windows, but Mac support is coming.
Download: FILE EXPLORER 0.6.0. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

FILL AND STROKE UTILITIES

Have you ever wanted to select several objects, each with a different stroke color, and change all of their stroke widths to a new value? If you try this with the Properties panel, you’ll find that all of the selected objects get the same stroke width, but also that their other stroke properties are changed to identical values as well. This is generally not what you want, but unfortunately, the only way to avoid this bug is to change each object’s stroke width invidually.
That’s where the Fill and Stroke Utilities come in. Choose Commands > Stroke > S - Width, enter a new stroke width in the dialog box, and each selected object’s stroke width will be set to that value—without affecting the other stroke attributes. This package contains a separate command for each stroke and fill attribute in the Properties panel. There are also shortcuts to some of the commonly used stroke types, like Soft Rounded and Hard Line.
Download: FILL AND STROKE UTILITIES. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

FILL HANDLES ASSISTANT 1.0.0

Fill Handles Assistant allows precise and easy manipulation of fill handles.

Download: FILL HANDLES ASSISTANT 1.1.0. (Source: http://www.projectfireworks.com).

FIREWORKS CONSOLE

Fireworks has a dauntingly powerful JavaScript API, and and understanding it all can take quite a lot of work. To try out a new function, you have to write a little command script that uses it, put the script in the Commands folder, run it, tweak it, run it again, etc. I used to find myself writing a lot of commands in the form of “alert(Files.getDirectory(dom.filePathForSave))” to see what kind of data these functions would return.
Well, the Fireworks Console simplifies this process considerably. Instead of writing and running an entire command, you can simply type code snippets into a Fireworks panel and immediately see the output. It’s a little like having a command line prompt for Fireworks. You could even ignore the GUI altogether and create your web graphics via JavaScript (not that I’d recommend it).
Using the console is straightforward. Type JavaScript in the Code field, press Execute or type ctrl-Enter, and the code’s return value is displayed in the Results field. Pretty much any JavaScript is valid, including comments, if-then’s, for-loops, etc. Two variables have already been defined for you: “dom” is equivalent to “fw.getDocumentDOM()” and “sel” is equivalent to “fw.selection”.
Be careful not to write code that might return a lot of information, such as simply entering “dom”. It may take several seconds to transfer all the data from Fireworks to the Flash panel. And don’t do something silly like writing an infinite loop. You’ll have to force-quit Fireworks if you do.
The Fireworks Console is still very much a work in progress, hence the 0.1.0 version number. But I hope you find it useful nonetheless.
Download: FIREWORKS CONSOLE 0.1.0. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

FIX ROUNDED RECTANGLE CORNERS

While the rounded rectangle tool is handy, it’s not very flexible. Once you’ve created a rectangle with rounded corners, you can’t easily resize the rectangle without distorting the rounded corners. You can scale the rectangle proportionally, but what if you want to change the rectangle’s proportions? You can sub-select the corner points and drag them to a new position, but that’s an awkward solution. You can also grab the rectangle’s corner points, but they’re hard to click on, and resizing the rectangle that way changes the radius of the corners.
This command eliminates these problems by fixing distorted rounded corners. After you create a rounded rectangle, adjust the Roundness value to set the corners to the desired size. Then use the Scale tool to freely resize the rectangle, or use the Info panel to change the size numerically. (If you subselect the corners and move them or just drag a single corner, then this command will have no effect.)
After resizing the rounded rectangle (and thereby distorting its rounded corners), select it and run this command. The rectangle’s corners will be re-rounded according to their original pixel radius. The Roundness percentage will be different, since the rectangle’s size has changed. You can select more than one rectangle and run this command on all of them. You may find it convenient to assign a keyboard shortcut to the command.
Download: FIX ROUNDED RECTANGLE CORNERS 1.0.1. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

FRAME LAYER UTILITIES

Working with lots of frames and layers can be tedious, because many frame and layer menu commands that you perform over and over again don’t have keyboard shortcuts. And other actions, like hiding a layer on every frame, aren’t supported at all by Fireworks’ built-in tools.

The scripts in the Frame and Layer Utilities extension are intended to remedy this situation. Many of them, such as L - Rename (rename the current layer) or F - Duplicate (duplicate the current frame), simply replicate existing functionality. Their only advantage is that they enable you to create shortcuts for these actions through the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog, which doesn’t list their built-in equivalents.
Other commands offer completely new functionality. For instance, L - Hide in Other Frames, hides the current layer in every frame except the current one. In a document with many frames, this is an otherwise very tedious process. With L - Delete Visible, you can quickly delete all of the visible layers, instead of doing it one by one.
Download: FRAME LAYER UTILITIES 1.0.0. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

KNIFE ASSISTANT 1.0.0

Knife Assistant allows pecision-cuts with the Knife tool.
Download: KNIFE ASSISTANT 1.0.0. (Source: http://www.projectfireworks.com).

MERGE FRAMES

The “Distribute to Frames” command will distribute the selected elements to frames, one element per frame. But how do you undo this operation? With the “Frames - Merge Back-Front” command. This extension performs the inverse of “Distribute to Frames”: it merges all the frames in the document on to one frame, putting the contents of the last frame on top. The remaining frames are deleted.
The “Frames - Merge Front-Back” command does the same thing, but puts the contents of the first frame on the top, and that of the last frame on the bottom.
Download: MERGE FRAMES 1.0.1. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

PATTERNS AND TEXTURES

The Patterns and Textures panel displays installed patterns and textures in a scrollable interface allowing for easy selection.
Download: ANNOTATIONS AND TEXTURES. (Source: http://www.senocular.com).

PINWHEEL AUTO SHAPE

The Pinwheel Auto Shape creates a “Pinwheel” consisting of 2 to 16 consecutive spirals placed revolved around a common center. It consists of 5 control points to control size (inner and outer radius), rotation, spiral count, spiral style (solid, checker, and wire which can be cycled through by clicking the Style and Count control point) and spiral curvature. As an additional feature, you can use the sub select tool to alter the path of the primary spiral (the one previewed when altering the shape that is formed between the control points) and have all other consecutive spirals mimic the change. Altering the shape with control points after doing this will undo the effects
Download: PINWHEEL AUTO SHAPE. (Source: http://www.senocular.com).

RESIZE 9-SLICE BITMAP

This command lets you resize a bitmap using 9-slice scaling. Before running this command, you need to define your slice grid using the marquee tool. A single rectangular shape drawn using the marquee tool represents the boundries used by the scaling process. With the marquee applied, run this command to provide new size values in either or both width and height.
Download: RESIZE 9-SLICE BITMAP. (Source: http://www.senocular.com).

RESIZE SELECTED OBJECTS

This panel ships with Fireworks MX, so you should already have it. Resize Selected Objects lets you make precise, single-pixel adjustments to the size of a selected object without using the Scale tool. It resizes each selected object independently, which the Scale tool cannot do.

Download: DRESIZE SELECTED OBJECTS. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

SELECT POINTS

To manipulate vectors with a high degree of control it’s often necessary to subselect individual points on the path. But selecting lots of individual points on a complicated path can be awkward, especially if it’s hard to use the marquee to select them. The commands in this extension can reduce the amount of clicking required to select those points.
Four of the commands will select all the points on the top, bottom, left or right half of the path: Select Points - Top, Select Points - Bottom, etc. This can be helpful when you want to resize the path in one dimension by moving half of its points.
Compound paths with interior holes present a special challenge. It’s possible to move an interior hole by selecting all the points on it, but doing this over and over becomes tiresome. The Select Points - All command simplifies matters. If you subselect just one of the points on the interior hole’s path and run the command, all the other points on the path will be selected as well. You can do this with multiple objects at the same time.
Download: SELECT POINTS 1.0.0. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

SIMPLE ORB

A nice and simple Smart Shape creating a glassy orb, with control over shadow opacity, base color, overlay color and globe shadow color.
Download: SIMPLE ORB. (Source: http://www.phireworx.com).

TRANSFORM PANEL

A persistent panel for inspecting, resizing, and rotating selected objects or selected vector points. Values can be specified as being absolute or relative. Objects can be transformed as a group or individually. For more information about the panel and its functions, click on the help icon located at the top right of the panel.

Download: TRANSFORM PANEL. (Source: http://www.senocular.com).

TWISTER 1.0.4

Twister provides highly configurable means of rotating paths, resulting in practical convinience and creative freedom. The package includes a user’s manual in PDF.
Download: TWISTER 1.0.4. (Source: http://www.projectfireworks.com).

WEDGIE

The (perhaps unfortunately named) Wedgie command breaks the selected object into 2 or more wedges. This can be handy if you need to create, say, 4 rounded corners for a table frame by splitting a circle into 4 parts. The wedges are centered on the middle of the selected object. If you select several objects, they are merged into a single bitmap that is then sliced into wedges. The wedges always start at the 12:00 position and then work their way around the object clockwise.
Note that the selected object is deleted in the process of breaking it into wedges, so you may want to clone it before running the command.
Download: WEDGIE 1.0.0. (Source: http://johndunning.com).

Another 41 Smaller Extensions…

Fillet ( .zip" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/file/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/fireworks3_4/_br_/_.zip?ref=http_//digg.com/design');">Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
FireFrame (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Paste In Place (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Curvia (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Duplicate Path Segments (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Reflect (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Center Vertically or Horizontally in
Document (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Repeat History Steps (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Open and Close Path (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Convert Selection to Symbols (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Guides On Anchor (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Precise Circle (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Dynamic Canvas (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Resize Rectangle (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Knife Tools (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Make Rectangle From Selection (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Anchor Power Tools (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Round Bitmap Corners (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
360 Text Loop (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Add Arrowhead (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Anchor Power Tools (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Animate Opacity (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Append (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Auto Slice (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Bend Path (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Canvas Sizes (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Close All Documents (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Center Vertical Horizontal In Document (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Convert Selection To Symbols (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Dotted Line (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Draw Path From Points (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Edit Rectangle Corners (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Edit Rectangle Corners In Pixels (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Fade Live Effects (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Export To Director (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8. Guides Pack (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Mirror (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
MotionGuide (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
Mirror (Download Zip File). Fireworks 3, 4, MX and 8.
MotionGuide (Download Zip File)

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