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Ashampoo HDD Control 3 – The Software

Hard disks are the long term memory of your PC. And just like your memory, they degrade over time. Fragmented file systems cause longer access times and mechanical wear and tear inevitably leads to data loss and drive failure. Nearly 10% of all hard disks already wear out in their third year of operation.  Ashampoo HDD Control 3 jogs the memory of your PC. Lower access times, remove resource hogs, prevent data loss and detect signs of failure early on.

I’m pretty sure you’d agree there is no worse experience for a computer user than massive data loss, and the most prevalent cause of data loss is hard drive failure. So, how would you like a professional software that’s constantly monitoring and analyzing your hard drive(s) for potential disk failure and prevention? That’s exactly what Ashampoo HDD Control 3 is designed to do. However, coming from Ashampoo, you’d expect that it does a heck of a lot more than that, and you’d not be disappointed.

As well as monitoring and analyzing, Ashampoo HDD Control 3 includes a host of additional features to maintain your hard drive(s) at optimum performance. Indeed, as one reviewer recently noted… “ Ashampoo HDD Control 3 is an all-in-one suite that works wonders when it comes to hard drive maintenance. ”

All that, as well as providing detailed technical information for your disks, S.M.A.R.T support, SSD support, benchmarking, and surface testing. Ashampoo HDD Control 3 really is the Swiss Army Knife of hard drive maintenance. And if you think Ashampoo HDD Control 3 is only suitable for more advanced users, think again. As usual, Ashampoo’s interface is surprisingly intuitive with an easy to understand layout and straightforward descriptions.

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Fifa’s Sepp Blatter with President Vladimir Putin during his visit to Moscow in October. Photograph: Klimentyev Mikhail/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

Cut through his meandering, condescending waffle and fondness for endless “roadmaps”, regulatory processes and other diversions, and the ultimate will of Fifa’s overlord to hang on to his job tends to prevail. So it was with the summary, from the ethics committee judge, Hans-Joachim Eckert, of the findings of Michael Garcia’s long-awaited investigation into the contentious and chaotic bidding processes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Russia and Qatar were effectively cleared – with the former insisting their email evidence had been wiped and despite a long list of questions over the latter – and Blatter hurried to close the book on the investigation.

Those bidding countries that took Garcia at his word and turned over all their emails and evidence, such as England, saw it used to castigate them for comparatively minor infractions of the rules. Those who refused to talk were cleared. The whistleblowers who were supposed to be protected by Fifa producing a 42-page summary, rather than publishing the 430-page investigation, had their reputations trashed.

Even with a respected US attorney leading the investigation and an eminent German judge handing down his summary ruling, it has not been difficult to conclude that Blatter, again, managed to subvert the process for his own ends. That is not to paint him as an omnipotent puppet master. Rather, he has become expert at turning events to his own advantage, subverting Fifa crises for his own ends, and using football as the canvas for his personal fiefdom.

That is true of the last Fifa meltdown, in 2011. Then, Blatter’s one-time co-conspirator turned presidential rival – the Qatari former Asian Football Confederation president, Mohamed Bin Hammam – was cast from football for life and some of the longstanding frenemies who had become more trouble than they were worth followed him out the door.

The journalist Andrew Jennings, a long-term thorn in Blatter’s side, likes to cast Fifa as a mafia family, with the 78-year-old as the Don and those beneath him constantly scrapping for power and patronage. It is hard not to agree. So where others see crisis, Blatter usually spies an opportunity.

Just as the former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner and company were finally, belatedly, forced out once they were no longer useful, so Blatter has been endlessly weighing up how to turn the explosive decision, in 2010, to take the World Cup to the tiny Gulf state of Qatar to his advantage.

Thursday’s farce, when Garcia dramatically upset the attempt to close the book on the bidding process by claiming Eckert had misrepresented his conclusions, had its roots in the near collapse of the Fifa house of cards three years ago. That was when a rattled Blatter set in train his supposed “reform roadmap”.

“Fifa does not need a revolution. What Fifa needs is iron-clad laws that are implemented forcefully and allow world football’s governing body to conduct its affairs transparently, properly and professionally in every respect,” he said, with a straight face, in the wake of his uncontested re-election in 2011.

By the time he ascended to the presidency in 1998, Blatter had been at Fifa for 23 years. He was as bound to Warner, Nicolás Leoz, Julio Grondona, Ricardo Teixeira, Chuck Blazer and the rest as they were to each other. If they were motivated by money and power, for Blatter it was always all about the latter.

An earlier investigation into the ISL affair, long seen as a ticking timebomb for Blatter, can be seen as a dry run for the 2018/2022 investigation. Slipped out in summary form, it found that Blatter had been “clumsy” rather than “criminal” in allowing a $1m bribe meant for João Havelange to cross his desk, and dumped on some of those aforementioned rogues who had already left the building. Close the case, job done, move on.

Watching Blatter as he toured the various confederations before the Fifa Congress, in São Paulo, in the summer – even as his organisation was again besieged by corruption allegations – was to see a master at work. Dripping honey by promising an ever-increasing flow of football development cash, generated by booming World Cup sponsorship and broadcasting revenues, all bar some in Europe rushed to acclaim him.

It is always interesting to see the reaction of those exposed to the Fifa circus for the first time. The Football Association chairman, Greg Dyke, no ingenue given his battles with the BBC and the government, wore the bemused air of a man who had been teleported into a 1960s banana republic.

Fifa’s twin-headed ethics committee was born of Blatter’s botched reform process. Mark Pieth, a respected academic hired to oversee it, came to the end of the confusing “roadmap of reform” mired in frustration that he had not been able to finish what he started. Respected organisations such as Transparency International walked out.

The 2018-2022 investigation – which has taken 18 months and cost more than £6m with Garcia travelling the world to talk to representatives of the nine bidders – was always going to be up against it. Of the 11 men who have left the executive committee since 2010, many under a cloud, Garcia was able to speak to five. Of the remaining six, two could not be located. He had no power to compel anyone no longer in football to talk; no power to seize evidence; no leverage.

Even some of those still in football loftily dismissed him. The joint Spain-Portugal bid, overseen by Ángel María Villar Llona, still involved in football and theoretically obliged to help, did not even feature in Eckert’s summary. It was Villar Llona who was said to have brokered a vote-swapping pact with Qatar that delivered seven votes. It is barely mentioned.

Blatter can tolerate Jeffrey Webb, Moya Dodd and Sunil Gulati – part of the new broom on the Fifa executive committee who are helping give it a sheen of respectability – calling for the report to be published, safe in the knowledge that he has the rulebook of the ethics committee on his side, and that Eckert will resist. Yet he might still have some cause to be worried before the presidential election in May, which he is expected to win comfortably.

The ongoing FBI investigation into tax and money-laundering allegations that centres on some of those old rogues, and forced Blazer to turn supergrass and bug his colleagues at the London 2012 Olympics, is one such unknown.

Garcia’s position is another. By his own admission, he had few links to football before he agreed to take on the role. What concerns him is maintaining his professional reputation – if he is seen to have presided over a high-profile whitewash, that does him no good at all.

Meanwhile, the very real problems surrounding the Russia and Qatar World Cups cannot simply be wished away with a Fifa press release. They will dog Fifa until the final ball is kicked in 2022. Yet, in recent pictures of the Fifa president visiting Vladimir Putin in Russia, to check on progress, and receiving the emir of Qatar in Zurich, Blatter looks pretty satisfied. Certainly far more at home than he was in Brazil in the summer, when he was ferried around behind dark glass in constant fear of a public that had come to hate Fifa and all it stands for.

By the time of next spring’s election, Blatter will have been at Fifa for 40 years – perhaps they will get him a watch – and for all those obstacles on the horizon, history suggests that Blatter will find a way around them and continue to sail on as the captain of his own bloated, warped and leaky ship. For the game, for the world.

One of the first things I noticed with the new interface is the lack of navigation on the left side of your screen. Previously this was where you selected your Home page, Groups, Profile, Inbox and various other options. This has moved to the top of the window in the form of an horizontal menu bar. This is good from the perspective that you are now able to have a larger area for content. Moving the navigation to the top also brings all option to the top of the screen and now you don't have as great of an area to scan for your choices.

Another aspect of the menu that I like is the "More" menu. This allows a quick access to your various applications like Box, Events and the Reading List by Amazon. No more scrolling down on your profile to make a change in this area.

Another change to the navigation is the addition of a Jobs menu. This looks like it is a great addition for those that are posting jobs, but does have the one option for Find Jobs. While looking at the other options it was interesting to see that they listed the price for posting a job at $195 for a 30 day posting.

"Account & Settings" link has been renamed to "Settings". While we are looking in that area at the top you will also see a new link for Add Connections now sporting a new bold green color.

There is now an Advanced People Search under the Search drop down Menu. I think this was previously a beta feature that was being tested by all once you did your initial people search you had the option to go into an advance search.

I have also noticed that moving the navigation up to the top has now increased the width of the profile viewing area causing my e-mail address to now be on the same line as my title in the Professional Headline area. So if you are doing this as a way for people to more easily contact you, you will need to add some additional characters to separate the two items. I personally have chosen to use two hyphens.

When looking at someones profile I also noticed a feature that I had not seen before. It is a link on the right for "Search for references" looks like this brings up a summary of your common links. Will need to work with this a bit more but might be a cool option for establishing a list of informational interviews to network into talking with a hiring manager. Time will tell on this.

Overall, I really like the way LinkedIn has updated the interface. It is a much cleaner and organized experience and I believe that it will be a decreased for new users.

If you want to learn more about LinkedIn and up to use it as a tool for professional networking check out one of my upcoming presentations found on my LinkedIn Profile. www.linkedin.com/in/jnosal

Also keep in mind that NosalCentral is your central source for web solutions in SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing and Web Design.

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