As you have probably heard, there's a new e-threat pestering the Delphi programmers' community. Called Win32.Induc.A, the piece of malware only infects systems with a pre-installed copy of Borland Delphi (now Embarcadero) versions 4 through 7. Although the virus does not come with an actual payload (it does no damage beyond infecting the system), it is pretty persistant. The virus searches for the ...

It's been quite a while now since we started development on the (back then) new CrocLock application, so I think it's time for some update on its status. We've been working hard on SleepWalker in the meantime, and our efforts were not wasted in vain. The application was a real success on Softpedia (the only authorized source for Sleepwalker's distribution). Back on CrocLock, we've achieved sign ...

Hi there, It's been a while since our last post, but rest assured, as we've been breaking our bones developing the next generation of SphynxSoft applications. While both CrocLock and Magic Wand are being developed, we decided to give the good-old burning utility called One Click CD & DVD Burner another go. It is by far our most popular software product, but as we got caught in development, ...

We have performed yet another major redesign for the upcoming CrocLock desktop locking application. The new interface offers some extra ergonomics and functionality. The old, already-implemented core technology will remain unchanged as of the official release, except for some minor tweaks to the Bluetooth sub-section. The Yahoo Messenger section is also subject to improvement. Until the applicatio ...

There are cases when you would like to have Task Manager disabled, for instance, when you wouldn't want your users to kill the application by terminating its process. This is a feature we have implemented until now in both SleepWalker and CrocLock and we'd like to share some high quality code with you. What's noticeable about the code below is the fact that the Task Manager option does not appear ...

Early this year I started working on a security application called CrocLock. Don't expect too much from such an application,as it is a lightweight, blazing-fast utility that allows users to instantly block their active desktop when leaving the computer for a couple of minutes. Given the short timespan the legitimate user is away from the machine,shutting down the computer proves to be inneffective ...

Security is a critical aspect you should consider when discarding or sending for donation your old hard-disk drive. During the years of operation, you may have stored quite a few important documents, not to mention e-mails, sensitive banking data or other critical data that should not leave the office. Well, you could always trash the hard-drive using a hammer or a high-power drill, but this appro ...

During the latest development stage of our Magic Wand sub-component that deals with processes and their additional icons we had to write a snippet to take icons from their resapective executables, and then to push them in a ImageList component. I came across an already-written piece of code that seems to work just fine. Credit for this nifty unit goes to an unknown programmer; we could not trace i ...

During this week, we have performed a major design update for our new software project, called Magic Wand. The old interface has been baked in a hurry, just to give us a starting point, as well as a logical foundation to support the entire architecture. However, a couple of reasons (including aesthetics and functionality) pushed us to re-think and re-build it to the ground up. The results are more ...

I find it extremely annoying when you have to perform a Windows reinstall, along with all the necessary software you might use. That's why Windows optimization software produced by third parties are selling so well. Please note that "selling" is the keyword here: don't expect to find a good utility for free. They all come with pretty salty prices that rage for about 1/5 of the entire OS. ...

There are three different types of users around. First of all, there are those who would like your application worked flawlessly with the keyboard, as they would never set hands on the mouse. Secondlu, there are people who manage to do everything by using the mouse. Last (and probably least) there are people who would rather use a combination of keyboard and mouse in order to perform the desired a ...

New update to the Automatic Update software. I redesigned today the auto-update feature for the SleepWalker software, along with other extra features. The previous version of the auto-upgrader was designed as a stand-alone application that would kick in from time to time, check the website then report back if it found a new version available. However, the approach had a lot of shortcomings that wi ...

Today I resumed working on the Chronos project. Since I was all bored with developing interfaces and I had to switch to something new, I started designing its Auto-Update feature. After a coffee and two hours of thinking / surfing on the web, I finally managed to pull together a decent interface, as you can see below. I'm sure you're dying to know juicy details about it (in fact, I strongly doubt ...