Extensions and more coming to Firefox 3

Firefox 3 development keeps going on and more details of what features are at least being considered for inclusion keep appearing as well.

Source: 'Mozilla Links' Magazine

A major topic is the revision of some currently available extensions for their possible inclusion in Firefox 3. The list of candidates includes Print Hint (a printable version notifier), URL Fixer (web address typos) and Table Sort (sort and filter web tables).

Two more, Locationbar2 and Content Preferences can be considered proof of concept. The first one aims to make the location bar a more informative resource to prevent phishing attacks by highlighting the domain name while providing easier navigation within a web site. An ongoing discussion on what is needed can be followed at Google Groups. Content Preferences is an experiment on saving some settings for a specific web site. Currently it only saves text size but I guess dictionary language, block images, enable JavaScript, etc. could be set as well in the future.

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Taking steps to squash daylight-saving bug

A law that moved "spring forward" three weeks earlier brings problems for software that automatically changes time.

Source: Chicago Tribune / Brian Bergstein - Associated Press

For three weeks in March and April, Microsoft Corp. warns that users of its calendar programs "should view any appointments ... as suspect until they communicate with all meeting invitees."

Wow, that's sort of jarring--is something treacherous afoot?

Actually, it's a potential problem in any software that was programmed before a 2005 law decreed that daylight-saving time would start three weeks earlier and end one week later, beginning this year. Congress decided that more early-evening daylight would translate into energy savings.

Software created before 2005 is set to automatically advance its timekeeping by one hour on the first Sunday in April, not the second Sunday in March. (That's March 11 this year.)

The result is a glitch reminiscent of the Y2K bug, when cataclysmic crashes were feared if computers interpreted the year 2000 as 1900 and couldn't reconcile time appearing to move backward. This bug is much less threatening, but it could cause head-scratching episodes when some computers are an hour off.

The problem won't show up only in computers. It also will affect plenty of non-networked devices that store the time and automatically adjust for daylight saving, like some digital watches and clocks. But, in those instances, the result will be a nuisance (adjust the time manually or wait three weeks) rather than something that might throw a wrench in the works.

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Microsoft May Have Mistakenly Pegged Half A Million As Pirates

While false positives are less than one-half of 1%, that adds up to a lot when you find 114 million counterfeits.

Source: InformationWeek / Gregg Keizer

Microsoft's anti-piracy tool has marked more than one in every five copies of Windows as bogus, the Redmond, Wash., developer said Tuesday, while more than half a million users may have been mistakenly pegged as pirates.

As it beats the drum about the danger of pirated software, particularly Windows, prior to the release of Vista, Microsoft released some figures from its Windows Genuine Advantage program. WGA uses software downloaded to the PC to authenticate Windows XP before allowing a user to retrieve automatic security updates and other software.

In the 30 months since WGA's 2005 launch, 512 million have tried to validate their copy of Windows, Microsoft said. The "non-genuine" rate, or the fraction pegged as counterfeit, stands at 22.3%. In other words, 114 million users who ran the audit software were labeled pirates by Microsoft.

"That's actually lower than the piracy rate overall," explains David Lazar, the director of Microsoft's Genuine Windows. Research done by the Business Software Alliance, an industry group dedicated to combating piracy, puts the global piracy rate at 35%.

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22 Ways to Reduce Eye Strain at Your Computer

Take the Stress Out of Your Head.

Source: The Lightening Blog

Do you spend a lot of time in front of the computer?

Ever rub your eyes and want to stop working?

You may be experiencing Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), the official diagnosis given to a range of symptoms that include:

    * burning
    * dry and strained eyes
    * headache
    * neck ache
    * blurred vision

CVS, more commonly known as computer eyestrain, is due to over- or misuse of computer monitors, bad lighting and other environmental and ergonomic factors.

Stubborn, persistent, and regular physical discomfort due to one or more of these symptoms cuts your productivity sharply over time.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has found that 75% of computer users surveyed “reported occasional aching or burning eyes at work,” while another “39% reported blurred vision.”

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T-Mobile CEO: VoIP will have no major impact

Don’t expect new mobile phone services based on the Internet Protocol to become nearly as prevalent as those running over PCs. That’s the view of Hamid Akhavan, CEO of T-Mobile International, one of Europe’s largest mobile phone operators.

Source: Macworld / John Blau, IDG News Service

VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) services provided over mobile phone networks will have "far less impact" than those offered over fixed-line networks, Akhavan said Tuesday on the sidelines of a news conference at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona.

"There are all sorts of technical issues that make mobile VOIP services difficult to implement," he said. Technical issues related to how networks pass on IP addresses of mobile users have not been completely resolved, he noted. "Take reachability, for example: How can the call come to me?"

Akhavan also said emergency phone service and "always on" connectivity are also big issues, since staying online takes up bandwidth on pricey mobile networks.

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Patch Day Yields a Dozen New Fixes From Microsoft

This month's Patch Tuesday event from Microsoft is a bit heftier than in previous months, with half of the dozen security bulletins fixing issues outside of the operating system. All of the operating system-related vulnerabilities are confined to Windows XP and Windows 2000.

Source: 'Internet.com' Magazine / Andy Patrizio

The trend toward non-OS vulnerabilities has been increasing in recent months thanks to a combination of Microsoft hardening the operating system and the advent of "fuzzers," hacker programs that automate searching for vulnerabilities, like buffer overflows. This allows less technically-savvy people to search for exploits.

"Typically attackers will focus on the low hanging fruit. The OS was a target all of these years, but with all of these service packs and patches, it has become increasingly harder to find weaknesses," Amol Sarwate, manager of the vulnerabilities lab for security vendor Qualys told internetnews.com.

Also, some of these applications are newer and haven't been as widely tested. Among the dirty dozen of security problems, one of the most glaring is in the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine. This single engine powers Windows Defender, Live One Care and Antigen, which guards the Exchange and Sharepoint servers.

The issue was an exploit in PDF files. A malformed PDF with malicious code could cause a buffer overflow, and instructions hidden in the PDF could take over the machine.

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Yahoo! Integrates Messenger with Mail

Source: VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Starting yesterday, Yahoo! Mail users will be able to chat in real-time using a new instant messaging feature that is integrated into the Mail beta. Sweet! This new integration will allow users to see their friends' statuses and Avatars, and exchange messages with their Yahoo! contacts who are online without ever leaving their inbox or installing any additional software.

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Phishing attacks get personal

Phishing is getting up close and personal. Once upon a time, phishers were an opportunistic bunch of fraudsters who randomly bombarded innumerable in-boxes with emails purportedly sent from a legitimate organisation.

Source: 'Webuser' Magazine / Lisa Kelly

Counting on a tiny proportion of recipients responding to their spam, they lured a victim through a link in the email to a spoofed website of a legitimate retail or corporate site.

By using misspelled URLs, and faking the appearance of the genuine site with the same design and logos, victims could be tricked into 'verifying' personal information such as credit card details or log-in information which could be used by criminals for financial gain.

"In the old days, phishers made rudimentary mistakes copying the legitimate sites, but now they are much more professional in terms of language, spelling and embedding the right graphics. They are also much better at targeting their intended victims," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for security company Sophos.

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Spam makes 85 per cent of email

Nearly 17 out of 20 email messages sent are spam, according to a survey.

Source: Webuser Magazine / Ben Camm-Jones

Network and email monitoring company Ipswitch has released it's sixth 'Spamometer' report, in which it details findings about the frequency and content of unsolicited email messages or 'spam'.

The company found that 84.4 per cent of all email sent in the last quarter of 2006 was spam. According to Ipswitch many of us are falling for the messages too, especially those that recommend buying shares in certain companies.

"We have seen a lot of 'hot stock tips' spam... such stocks have been measured to increase five per cent in days following massive spam output which unfortunately proves their effectiveness," said Chris Greaves of Ipswitch.

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Five Things To Do With A PC When You Have No Internet Connection

Source: Speaking Freely

I had no connectivity at all yesterday but since it was Monday, I wanted to remain productive ...

Clean out and categorize your bookmarks. I don’t know about you, but I tend to just click ‘bookmark this page’ and call it good. Yesterday, when I hit the little ‘down arrow’ on Firefox to let the bookmark list scroll down I counted. Not sites, but seconds. 11 seconds worth of scrolling bookmarks is way too many. If you haven’t visited a site in a month it’s not important.

Create categories and organize the list of bookmarks after you’ve eliminated all those links you don’t need. Do not create a miscellaneous category. Catch-all categories do exactly that and soon become difficult to use.

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Tips for Cleaning & Securing Your Website

Source: StopBadware.org

This page is a starting-point resource -- one we expect to evolve and grow over time -- to provide webmasters with tips for ways to remove badware from your website and to keep it free of badware. Please note that this resource is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive, and is intended only as a first step for webmasters concerned about badware. We encourage webmasters and hosting providers to research website security independently, beyond the suggestions offered here. It is the responsibility of individual webmasters and hosting providers to stay informed of news relating to website security issues.

There are three basic steps to maintaining a clean site:

1. Identifying badware on your site
2. Removing badware from your site
3. Preventing badware in the future

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26 Tips to Keep Your Computer Up and Functioning

When I loose productive time at work it is usually because of a problem I have encountered with my computer. And any time I have a computer problem it is usually related to one of the following items.

Source: Lifehack.org

Open Loops blogger Bert Webb and I often collaborate on projects, include guesting at each others functions. At a recent presentation I did on "Effective Workplace Communication" the laptop I was using to run my PowerPoint presentation became possessed by evil juju and began a spontaneous series of automated functions ending in a system shutdown. Bert and I had different theories about why this occurred at this particular moment in the great cosmos. But, one thing we did agree on is "technology is a great thing --- when it works!" And Murphy’s’ Law can be suspended.

Based on that I have put together the following list that usually keeps me functioning.

I have automated as many of them as I can and if much of your livelihood depends on your technology functioning smoothly I suggest you consider doing the same.

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Before you go Vista: Advice from nine experts

Not all experts are created equal. In the Windows world, there are a handful who really live and breathe Microsoft operating systems --- and whose opinions influence everyone from Microsoft's developers, to its customers.

Source: ZDNet / Mary Jo Foley

I asked some of the best known of the bunch for one — just one — piece of advice they'd give to users who have decided to take the Windows Vista plunge. Not the fence sitters. Not Mac users. Not Linux champions. But individuals who have decided they are going to go with Vista, and probably some time soon (if they haven't already.)

Given that a number of Windows experts have been working with Vista for months, if not years, they've already found a few "gotchas" and potential pitfalls to avoid, as well as some hints that might help make the lives easier of Vista users, be they newbies or well-versed techies.

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Safer Searching Update

Several months ago we entered into a new phase here at StopBadware.org. Google – which is one of our partners – began creating warning pages for websites they found that hosted or distributed badware. They would then report those sites to StopBadware.org, and we would investigate and create quick reports explaining the badware that we found.

Source: StopBadware.org / Christina Mon

In the past couple of months, our focus at StopBadware has shifted from reviewing and writing quick reports on the sites that Google reported to us, to instead handling appeals from sites that have fixed the badware problems that led them to be flagged in the first place. Although all of the quick reports we previously did will still be accessible on our site, we thought it was time to let everyone know of our new focus.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out a list of all the sites that Google has reported to us, and hopefully other partners will step forward an add to this new Badware Website Clearinghouse.

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A safe Vista PC is a sterile Vista PC

Just hours after Microsoft launched its latest operating system, Windows Vista, experts have questioned the long-term protection it will offer.

Source: 'Webuser' Magazine / Ben Camm-Jones

Kaspersky Lab, while praising Vista as the most secure version of Windows yet, points out that the only truly secure Windows Vista PC would be one that is locked down to the extent that it is left sterile.

"Vista is undoubtedly more secure than previous operating systems from Microsoft. And, a system which is configured in such a way that everything is blocked except for access to designated sites could be regarded as being absolutely secure," said Alisa Shevchenko of Kaspersky Lab, in an article entitled Vista vs Viruses.

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Tagging Vista at Amazon.com

DefectiveByDesign.org successfully campaigned to add tags to DRM-laden products being sold via Amazon.

Source: BadVista.org

You can now find over 775 crippled products tagged with "defectivebydesign".

Unsurprisingly, the various versions of Windows Vista are already on that list. 14 people have gotten the ball rolling by tagging "Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium" with "defectivebydesign".

How about we get some more up there? Take a minute to visit the page for each of the Vista versions and leave tags that express your opinion about the software, so that other potential users will have a chance to learn about the unadvertised Vista "features" that lock you out of your own computer.

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