Windows Tools

From time to time, I run across Windows tools. I'm NOT recommending any of these but just giving you a place to start looking.

O&O AppBuster

O&O AppBuster shows you which of these Microsoft-supplied apps with Windows 10 are installed on your computer and which you can install on request - even hidden apps are displayed here.

Remote Utilities

You can view screens remotely, send keystrokes, control the mouse pointer, transfer files and do any other operation just as if you were physically sitting in front of the remote PC.

Win10 All Settings

The main aim of the application is to help users customize Windows 10 in all circumstances with alternative configuration interfaces, and it can also perform some hidden settings.

Winaero Tweaker

Winaero Tweaker is a freeware app created by Sergey Tkachenko. It is an all-in-one application that comes with dozens of options for fine-grained tuning of various Windows settings and features.

It also includes most options which were available in free standalone apps at Winaero.com and extends them as much as possible.

 I will continue to maintain this list. Leave me a comment if you have suggestions.

Social Engineering Risk

Recently I posted about Accenture Strategy's assessment on "Securing the Digital Economy."

My closing advice was:

Worry. React. Invest.

This week I want to share a real world example of the risk.

Waterloo Brewing Ltd. is a brewery in Kitchener, Canada. Their 2019 annual revenue was just under $50M.

Then in November 2019 they got hit with a social engineering attack.

The Ontario brewery says the incident occurred in early November and involved the impersonation of a creditor employee and fraudulent wire transfer requests.

They lost $2.1M! That's more than 1/2 their quarterly EBITDA.

How would that look on your balance sheet?

Teams in the Tank

Shortly before the Coronavirus hit the world in early 2020, Microsoft had it's own crisis.

Microsoft was pushing its Teams platform heavily, even running TV commercials during the NFL playoffs.

Then just after 9AM EST on February 3, 2020, it all stopped.

We've determined that an authentication certificate has expired causing users to have issues using the service.

Microsoft let a certificate expire.

Around noon, Teams was mostly back up. Microsoft confirmed the fix was successfully deployed around 4:30PM.

Maybe they should have put a reminder on their Outlook calendar.

Chrome Tab Hover Cards

Google's Chrome 85 has lots of new bells and whistles. One I've been playing with is Tab Hover Cards.

Although I have Chrome 85, this specific feature is not enabled. Google tends to roll these out in waves.

If you want to see it now, go to chrome://flags and search for "tab-hover-card". I intentionally omitted the "s" at the end so you'll see both flags.

For each entry, click on the blue box and change the setting to "Enabled".

"Tab Hover Cards" has choices for "Enabled", "Enabled B", and "Enabled C". These affect how quickly the preview pops up.

Then you'll need to relaunch Chrome.

This is what the preview looks like.

Not all of the previews come up immediately. It seems that Chrome is building them in the background. It may take a few minutes before all the previews are ready.