Nobody likes staring at a boring desktop when they fire up their computer every morning. Keep your wallpaper fresh with the five most popular sites Lifehacker readers use to satisfy their wallpaper needs.
Photo by goincase. Wallpaper on monitor available here.
Anti-malware testing group AV-Comparatives.org not only gave Microsoft Security Essentials a top rating for malware removal, but now they’ve given it their best ranking in their performance test as well.
Windows/Mac/Linux: Previously mentioned Songbird, the open source, Mozilla-powered, supposedly iTunes-killing media player has updated to 1.4.2, bringing a host of new features, including AAC metadata support, a new feather (skin), CD ripping, and support for many mass storage devices.
VirusTotal is a service that analyzes suspicious files and facilitates the quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines.
Specs:
- Free, independent service
- Use of multiple antivirus engines
- Real-time automatic updates of virus signatures
- Detailed results from each antivirus engine
- Real time global statistics
Our Hive Five asks readers to identify five of the best tools for any job, then vote for the absolute best. Here’s a look back at the winners from each week in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Every week we pose a question to you, the computer savvy readers of Lifehacker. Tirelessly we search for the next “Which is best?” question and through the hive mind we distill down your thousands of nominations into a list of the top five candidates. You vote on the best of the best and we return the next week to declare a champion.
The following list showcases the winners in each of the categories we covered in the fourth quarter of 2009. If a particular category catches your eye and you’d like to see the other contenders, click on the name of the category to jump to the original Hive Five post, clicking on the name of the winner will take you directly to the winner’s web site.
Just a few weeks remain in 2009, so it’s time to publish the list of the top 25 BitTorrent sites that pulled in the most traffic this year. The Pirate Bay leads by a wide margin, followed up by Torrentz and isoHunt. KickassTorrents is the highest ranked newcomer in 11th place.
2009 has been an eventful year for several well-established torrent sites, with The Pirate Bay, isoHunt and Mininova all battling in court against the entertainment industries. For the latter, this legal action has resulted in a partial shutdown of the site, a painful decision after years of loyal service.
Understandably, Mininova’s traffic took a huge hit in the last week which is likely to continue in the months to come. For most other torrent sites, however, 2009 has been a successful year with growing visitor numbers all around.
Written by enigmax on December 13, 2009 
As millions of people wait for the arrival of Christmas in just a couple of weeks time, the festivities have come early for BitTorrent fans. A few hours ago the mighty Demonoid fully returned and the good news is that there appears to be little data loss. Users are feverishly uploading fresh torrents right now. Continue reading »
- Namebench Helps You Find the Fastest DNS Server for Your Computer (Windows/Mac/Linux)
Windows/Mac/Linux: Last week Google announced a free DNS service designed to speed up your browsing, but just because Google wants to be fast doesn’t actually mean they’re the best option for you. Namebench finds the fastest DNS server for your connection.
- Thunderbird 3 Officially Released with New Features, Improved Look (Windows/Mac/Linux)
A whopping two years at its second major release, Mozilla’s popular desktop email client Thunderbird is now available as the new and improved Thunderbird 3.0, and there’s a lot to love in the new Thunderbird.
Last month a judge ruled that similar to Mininova, The Pirate Bay has to remove a list of ‘infringing’ torrents from their website and block access to Dutch users. Lawyers for the founders said the trio were considering filing an appeal, but according to anti-piracy outfit BREIN, that did not happen. The site now has until March 1st 2010 to comply.
The Pirate Bay Will Not Appeal Order to Remove Torrents | TorrentFreak.