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Antivirus prevention isn’t anywhere near as necessary for Android devices as it is for Windows computers just yet. As Android’s market share grows, though, so will the attacks. More importantly for the here and now, Lookout Mobile Security provides key security options that are unique to the mobile market. Along with the antivirus and anti-malware tech, there’s a lost and stolen phone locator service, an application privacy adviser, and a backup service.
Installation

Lookout’s installation is smooth and simple. The free account registration requires a valid e-mail address, which is important because several of the app’s features require communication with the user.
As a security app, it’s not surprising that Lookout will grab with some fairly deep hooks into your Android device. Lookout has permission rights to your personal information, messages, location, network communication, accounts, storage, phone calls, hardware controls, and system tools.
Interface
Lookout’s interface is helpfully simple to navigate. At the top right of the app, a status notification tells you if you’ve got security problems or if, “Everything is OK.” Below that, the four main features are presented as buttons. Tap one to reveal a button that will run the feature, if it’s the Security scan, the Privacy scan, or the Backup.
The Missing Phone option is less intuitive. It merely tells you to go to myLookout.com to locate, lock, scream, or wipe your phone. The scream option sets off a high-pitched alarm to annoy phone thieves and alert others. Of course, you’re not going to require any of those options if you know where your phone is. But it’s a good reminder that the feature is there, even if it’s only for Web use.
You can access Lookout from the app or a notification bar icon that also informs you of your status. The Settings hardware button reveals a reasonable although not robust selection of options to configure, presented in the standard and familiar Android style.

Features and support
Lookout’s features are robust and comprehensive, at least for what’s known about the still-developing field of mobile security.
It’s difficult at the moment to verify whether the antivirus and anti-malware feature actually does anything, since there are few if any labs that test mobile antivirus and anti-malware apps. At this point, we know it’s there, and we know that Lookout says it does proactive things to keep you from getting infected. Those infections are not something you’re likely to come across, so we’ll just acknowledge the feature and file it under “incomplete.”
Lookout has provided reviewers with access to a demo malicious app, which gets blocked by Lookout when you attempt to install it. Though the app worked in that instance, that kind of test is hardly verifiable. However, Android-based threats do exists and as they occur with more frequency, it’s highly likely that standards for testing security apps will emerge.
The other security features in the app are quite effective. Most notable among them is the phone tracker, which uses your GPS to track your phone’s location. Again, if it’s been lost or stolen, you can log in to MyLookout.com to find your phone. From its online interface, you can also set off the screaming alarm designed to annoy your phone’s thief enough to abandon it, as well as remotely wipe or lock the phone.
The MyLookout site is also where you can initiate a backup and restore, run a security scan, and toggle settings, although those features can be run directly from the phone. The site contains logs of its activity that you can browse to keep tabs on the app’s behavior. The logs are quite detailed: for example, the app scan log will tell you how many apps were searched.

Once you begin a scan, you can continue to move about the app.
The Backup feature covers your contacts, photos, and your call log, and is encrypted for security during transfer. Restoring allows a full restoration of all backed-up data as well as granular control over which specific calls, photos, and contacts are restored.
The Privacy adviser rounds up all the permissions from your apps and lets you know which apps have access to the different parts of your phone. This is an excellent, simple tool for checking out what your apps are doing, because, let’s face it: when installing a new app, most people just aren’t reading deep into the permissions list.
Another smart feature of the app is the ability to control which of the modules you use. You can toggle all four of the main features on or off, which is great for users who prefer to use alternate backup options, for example.
Like many other apps that rely on a free and clear signal to function properly, Lookout’s backup and locator features can fail when signal-throttling apps, such as JuiceDefender, interfere with Lookout. What’s sorely missed here is a notification, either by e-mail or natively on the phone, that warns you that there’s been a failure to communicate.
There are some key features that Lookout only makes available in its premium upgrade, which costs $2.99 per month or $29.99 for a one-year license. The Privacy adviser, photo backup, call backup, data transfer to a new phone, remote wipe, remote lock, and premium support are all restricted to the premium upgrade.
Performance
As noted earlier, Lookout’s performance is hard to gauge on a purely antivirus-based scale. What we did look at is how the phone start-up times are affected by the app. When looking at “cold booting” the phone, in which the phone is completely shut off, started, and then timed until the 3G connection has been established, the Droid 2 we tested without Lookout averaged 58.46 seconds to boot over three attempts. With Lookout installed, the phone averaged 1 minute, 9.83 seconds to boot over three attempts. It would definitely be an improvement if the app caused less of an impact on a phone’s start-up time, as an addition of nearly 10 seconds can feel much longer on a phone.
When tested on a different handset following the same procedure, Lookout’s performance was much improved. When tested on a LG Optimus U running Android 2.2, the phone took an average of 51.12 seconds to start up over three cold boots when Lookout was running. Without Lookout, the phone started in an average of 48.31 seconds. An impact of about two and a half seconds on startup time is completely respectable, and indicates a minimal impact on the phone. It also highlights how different hardware, different app installations, and different cellular networks can affect a phone’s boot time.
Once logged in to MyLookout.com, you can track your phone if it’s on, as well as remotely lock it, wipe it, or have it emit a piercing siren designed to annoy the thief and alert others.
Lookout will also add a couple seconds to the installation of any app, as it scans newly installed apps to ensure that they’re safe. Depending on which apps are running in the background, this can be inconsequential or feel like tedium in a handset. It’s an essential part of Lookout’s protective behaviors, although that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like to see it shortened.
Overall, Lookout’s performance impact on Android’s speed is the app’s weak point. It will improve as hardware improves, although for now it seems to be a necessary evil for the app’s features.
Conclusion
Lookout adds a necessary security net to your Android phone. Even if you disable the antivirus protection, its other features make it more than worthwhile by providing essential features not otherwise available in one package. Either the free version or the premium upgrade is worth having, since both contribute significantly to keeping your phone and your data on it safe.

License: Free

Limitations: No limitations

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DsNet’s aTube Catcher provides a simple tool for watching video from the Internet and converting existing video to another format. While this would be more than adequate for most uses, it also provides a neat feature.

The program’s interface was a treat, breaking both its primary functions into a few simple, intuitive command icons. At no point did we feel the urge to go to the Help file for clarification. All you need to do is give aTube Catcher the URL of any online video, and the program will converted it into the file type of your choice. While this is a simple process, the conversion nevertheless took longer than we expected, several minutes for a relatively short four-minute video. Once converted, the video played flawlessly, and it retained all its original material. The program also takes existing video and converts it to another file type. This function was much faster, and it also retained all the specifications of the original. The program is relatively light on features, though it does provide templates for conversion so that, for example, iPod users don’t have to know exactly what file type they need to watch a video. The program automatically chooses the proper configuration. We enjoyed aTube Catcher’s simplicity and its excellent results.

 
Download videos from web sites like YouTube, and YouTube (HD), Xtube, Dailymotion, Megavideo, Google, Yahoo!, Metacafe, Spike, Megarotic , Pornotube, Yahoo!, MTV, Comedycentral, Globo, RTVE. Download Videos from thousands of Web Sites like YouTube. YouTube HighDefinition 1080p, 720p, and 480p support. Download and Merge videos. Turbo Mode, upto 600% faster than other YouTube Downloaders. Integrated Audio and Video Converter. DVD, VCD and Audio CD Burning support. Audio Recorder mode, to capture Audio from any input to MP3, WAV, WMA. Profiles Editor, to create and share custom encoding output profiles. IE Cache Browser, search FLV’s and SWF’s on Internet Explorer’s cache. Video Search Tool, thousands of videos in just seconds (adult content sources supported). Stream Catcher Mode, to capture any video directly from the network interface. MP3 Downloader, to search more than 150,000,000 millions of mp3′s from social sites. URL Monitor helps to you monitor your web browser windows to get the links.

Create GIF’s with your downloaded videos. Clip board monitor, helps to keep a history of links from your clipboard. Batch download support. Downloads List, to manage and download multiple videos at the same time. Create playable home DVD’s with your downloaded videos in just a single click. YouTube/Megavideo Login support to download private and original files. Screen Recording support, capture any area of your screen, so you can capture video presentations, video conferences from messenger, games. Video Joiner to merge your existent files. Create high quality Audio CD’s capable with any player, just drag your video/audio files to aTube. Burn DVD/CD ISO/MDS images previously created with aTube or with any software. Create Ring Tones for your mobile phone. Multi-Language Interface. Optimized for multicore processors and low memory usage. Formats supported WMV, MP4, MPG1, MPG2, 3GP, 3G2, AVI, DIVX, XVID, MP3, MOV, FLV, WAV, WMA, GIF, IPOD, IPOD TOUCH, PSP, FLAC, OGG, MP2, VOB.

This free program installs desktop icons without permission. While it could have downloaded faster, this slight negative was outweighed by its simple operation and impressive results. We recommend this program. 

License: Free

Limitations: No limitations

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There are plenty of downloadable defrag utilities to choose from, but it’s hard to beat the ease of use and helpful extras in IOBit’s Smart Defrag.

With this utility you can quickly analyze your hard drive to check the level of defragmentation before committing to a scan. The interface shows you different colored blocks representing fragmented files, frequently used files, and more, with a helpful key to show what each colored block represents.

When you’re ready to pull the trigger, you can choose from a straight defragmentation (fastest), or have Smart Defrag perform either a fast or “deep” optimization after defragmentation. Our test machine has a rather full hard drive, so even using the fast optimization took close to 40 minutes. Depending on your hard drive and level of defragmentation, your mileage may vary.

In addition to the solid defragmentation tools, you can have Smart Defrag automatically defrag the files you use the most without significantly slowing down your system. Even while performing a full defragmention and optimization run, the program barely uses as much as 25MB of RAM, and with just the auto-defrag running continually, it uses about half that amount.

Smart Defrag offers a few extras, including a scheduler so you can set it up to only defrag during downtime on your computer. You can set it to run scans on bootup or even have the app shut down your computer when it’s done defragging selected hard drives or partitions.

It’s important to note that Smart Defrag is not as essential for those running Windows 7 because the OS defrags continually on it’s own. But if you run external drives connected to a Windows 7 computer, this utility will still come in handy for keeping them running smoothly.

Overall, if you want a quick and solid defrag utility to make your computer run more smoothly, with added options for scheduling and other extras, you should definitely download this program. Both beginner and advanced users will have no trouble operating this solid utility.

Disk fragmentation is generally main cause of slow and unstable computer performance. Smart Defrag helps defragment your hard drive efficiently. Smart Defrag not only defragments computer deeply but optimizes disk performance. With ‘install it and forget it’ feature, Smart Defrag works automatically and quietly in the background on your PC, keeping your hard disk running at its speediest. Smart Defrag is completely free for home, organization, and business.

License: Free

Limitations: No limitations

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WinMend Auto Shutdown is a free tool that will shut down your Windows PC at a scheduled time. It can also place your PC in hibernation or standby mode, or log you off when it’s unattended. You can use Scheduled Tasks to do all that in Windows, but it’s a complex and time-consuming process. That’s where Auto Shutdown shines: it’s easy enough for anyone to use.

WinMend Auto Shutdown normally runs in the background; clicking the program’s system tray icon let us show the main view as well as restart or shut down our PC immediately. The program’s brightly colored interface is efficiently configured for the task, with a brief description of what it does and a current date and time display above sections labeled Task and Time. In Task, check boxes let us select Shut down, Log off, Sleep, and Hibernate commands. The Time section offered selections for Daily operation, with a spinner for hours, minutes, and seconds; Specified date and time, which adds a scrolling pop-up calendar view; and From now, which counts down in hours and minutes. We started by selecting Shut down and Daily and setting the time for a minute later. After a minute, a 30-second countdown popped up with an eye-catching flasher icon and a Cancel button; in 30 seconds and following a few more notifications, our PC shut itself down. We ran the process again, only this time we clicked Cancel, which ended the countdown and prompted us to verify the command. The other commands worked equally well. The main interface has two extra tabs, Our Products and About Us; the former listed shareware and freeware products, and the latter linked to the developer via Web and e-mail.

If you don’t like using the Windows Task Scheduler but want to schedule an automatic shutdown or other system commands, WinMend’s free tool can do the deed for you: all you have to do is tell it when and how.

License: Free

Limitations: No limitations

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Dubai based start-up Infinitec prepares to launch the world’s first “Infinite” USB Memory (IUM), and before the name gets you excited, it’s a wireless USB device that works by allowing access to data using an ad hoc stream from your Windows-based PC.
Originally unveiled at CES in January, the IUM is set to launch on March 1. Preordering is available and is, according to CEO Ahmad Zahran, building quite a demand, “After five minutes we started to get sales. This happened at 1am … and since then we’ve got more than I expected.”
Going for a little under US$ 130, some are finding some of the features to be quite bland, (sharing between PCs and the like), but the reason I would part with my money is for the support this little gadget has with gaming consoles such as the XBOX 360 and PS3. Some other features include the capability to stream content directly to an HDTV or Blu-ray player.

If you really want to understand how it works and what you can do with it check out this video the marketing people from Infinitec prepared:

The more I think about the IUM, the more I think, “What are the security implications of such a device?”, or “You could probably send someone a gift laptop with the hard drive pre-shared using IUM and if it’s good software, the user won’t realize a thing”. But hey, it’s probably just my skeleton-riddled closet that’s doing the talking. I mean, does anyone really keep confidential data on their laptops?

Yesterday Verizon finally unveiled their LTE pricing and caps, which were fairly underwhelming: $50 for 5GB of usage and $80 for 10GB of usage -- and a whopping $10 per additional gigabyte. Sascha Segan at PC Magazine has been giving the service an early run, and notes that speeds on the network with nobody on it are quite impressive at 21 Mbps. Segan also notes that were you so inclined, you could burn through your 5GB cap in around 32 minutes under impractical sustained use, or a few hours with just one long HD film viewing: While we've posted leaked screenshots highlighting how Verizon may be testing a residential home LTE hybrid solution, their initial LTE service clearly isn't aimed at residential, video-hungry users -- it's initially aimed at business users whose companies won't blink at higher prices. Still, since Verizon appears dedicated toward marketing LTE service as a premium service, it makes sense to ask whether Verizon's 5-10GB caps are reasonable given the improvements LTE brings to the mobile broadband table. We'll turn your attention to something long-time industry analyst Dave Burstein noted earlier this year, after talking with network engineers about how LTE advancements should impact caps: So, do you think Verizon's cap and overages are economically sensible? read comment(s)

The last twenty-four hours have seen a renewal in the cap and meter billing debate, after investors like Craig Moffett proclaimed the FCC's new neutrality rules are a giant green light for the kind of low cap, high overage pricing models cable execs have lusted after for years. As we noted this morning, the cable industry wants people to believe these kinds of pricing models are "inevitable." They also want people to conflate real usage-based billing (which might actually be good) with the kind of punitive, high per GB overage models investors and execs would like to implement. Not coincidentally in lock step with Moffett's missive, cable's top lobbyist Kyle McSlarrow today took to the National Cable And Telecommunications Association blog to give perhaps his last sales pitch for the cable industry's dream broadband pricing paradigm. McSlarrow takes industry rhetoric to new heights, insisting that imposing new, expensive per gigabyte overage fees isn't about making more money, it's about best serving customers and "innovation." McSlarrow goes so far as to suggest that the cable industry's experimentation with such pricing, which thus far has included high flat rate pricing with overages up to $5 per GB layered on top, is about helping the poor: This is, with no hyperbole intended, all a coordinated con. For lack of being redundant given our last two posts, I'll just reiterate the fact that ISPs are very profitable under a flat-rate pricing system, they're just not profitable enough to please investors, who demand quarter over quarter improvements. McSlarrow's love letter to consumers is disingenuous dreck. Neither Moffett or McSlarrow have any interest in offering lower cost broadband tiers, because the significant majority of cable broadband users (who just check e-mail and Weather.com twice a day) would downgrade to it, costing the industry billions. The industry has repeatedly shown they have absolutely no interest in offering low cost alternatives. What Moffett and McSlarrow want is to artificially constrict the pipe and jack up costs with a complete disregard for the falling cost of bandwidth and hardware. What they want is to further monetize every bit and increase the per household cost of already expensive U.S. broadband, providing cable operators with economic protection from Internet video -- and massive new leverage over the content ecosystem. Of course McSlarrow can't just come out and say this is simply a money grab and protectionism, so what we get instead is phony altruism, which as we saw with Time Warner Cable's failed metered effort doesn't pass the smell test among consumers -- and only adds insult to injury. read comment(s)