Facebook users can lean on a new app to help them fight spam and malware.

Designed by a team of students at the University of California at Riverside, MyPageKeeper is a free Facebook app that continually monitors wall posts and news feeds for malicious content. If the app suspects that any content may contain spam or malware, it alerts you and gives you the ability to remove it.

Beyond protecting your own Facebook account, it can also protect the accounts of friends who may get infected by viruses or hit by spam just by viewing your page.

The app was the effort of Md Sazzadur Rahman and Ting-Kai Huang, two Ph.D. students in computer science at UC's Bourns College of Engineering. The two also worked with a Web protection service called StopTheHacker.com, which was created by Anirban Banerjee, a Ph.D. alumnus from UC Riverside, and Michalis Faloutsos, a professor of computer science and engineering at UC, according to a university press release sent out yesterday.

"Facebook is the new Web," Rahman said in the release. "It provides a fertile ground to spread malware, since users trust links and posts that are seemingly from their friends. Hackers have realized this, and they have started using it to distribute malware and conduct identity theft."

You can install MyPageKeeper by adding it to your Facebook account from the app's page. Once installed, the app gives you the ability to send a message to any of your Facebook friends inviting them to install it too.

In this episode, we explore code snippets, an underappreciated feature of Visual Studio.

Code snippets are existing pieces of code. All you have to do is type the snippets shortcut and Visual Studio writes the code for you. Watch as we first use a couple of snippets that ship with Visual Studio. Then, see how to use the Snippet Designer extension and create your own snippets. With this extension, you can highlight code, right-click, and Export as Snippet. Very cool!!

Today, at the D9 Conference, we demonstrated the next generation of Windows, internally code-named “Windows 8,” for the first time. Windows 8 is a reimagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface. A Windows 8-based PC is really a new kind of device, one that scales from touch-only small screens through to large screens, with or without a keyboard and mouse.

The demo showed some of the ways we’ve reimagined the interface for a new generation of touch-centric hardware. Fast, fluid and dynamic, the experience has been transformed while keeping the power, flexibility and connectivity of Windows intact.

Here are a few aspects of the new interface we showed today:

We also showed effortless movement between existing Windows programs and new Windows 8 apps. The full capabilities of Windows continue to be available to you, including the Windows Explorer and Desktop, as does compatibility with all Windows 7 logo PCs, software and peripherals.

Hot Apps will feature 5 of the hottest apps each week for the Windows Phone 7. In this episode Laura takes a look at:

• Hydro Thunder GO
• DNA Roulette
• Easy Animator
• Apple Bin
• Grandma's Secrets