Without getting into details, this looks to be a biggie..

The link is here. and TheInquirer has covered it here.

Basically, in certain circumstances, a machine with XP and Service pack 2 can be completely compromised with no real effort.

Regards

Franki

HTMLfixIT has been pushing Firefox for a long time now, as have many other such sites. The good news is that the quest for a better browser is working.

News.com have an article detailing how both w3schools and Cnet themselves have seen Open Source browsers like Firefox jump in usage from 8 to 18 percent this year alone. Both sites are very popular and are good indicators for how the Firefox revolution is going. Although it should be noted that both sites (and HTMLfixIT itself, which also shows similar figures) are more tech related sites, and therefore the visitors would be more informed then the general net population. Still, it’s fantastic news.

There is an interesting quote from that article, from Martin Taylor, the general manager of Microsoft’s platform strategy:

Firefox isn’t yet a focus for Martin Taylor, the general manager of Microsoft’s platform strategy, who is in charge of Microsoft’s response to Linux and open-source software. But he suspects it will come under discussion in coming months.

“Firefox is creeping up, getting more attention,” Taylor said in an interview on Wednesday.

Hmm, I guess that means Microsoft plans to do a smear campaign ? who knows, and who cares? With Internet Explorers security record, I doubt anyone would believe them anyway.

So, now to plug the best browser on the net. Get your free copy of Firefox here, and learn how to really enjoy the net.

Regards

Franki

News.com have the story and you can find the new search engine here. We are already in it, so I’m happy regardless, but I won’t be giving up on Google any time soon. 🙂 Time will tell if the new engine steals users from the other big guns. It does have some cool features not found in other engines, like the images that are displayed in the search results.

The problem as I see it, is that I’m not sure how much I’d trust a search engine owned by one of the worlds biggest online shopping companies. To me that is kind of like asking Microsoft if their products are better, cheaper or more secure then their oppositions, meaning that nobody in their right mind would believe their answers without checking it out for themselves.

Regards

Franki

This first tip comes courtesy of TheInquirer and is about a new scam involving Google’s new Gmail service. Basically you get an e-mail from someone purporting to be a Gmail admin asking you to log into your account, and providing a link. The link is not Gmail and if you follow the prompt, you end up giving them your user details.

Next, also from TheInquirer is the news that Sun and Microsoft have a deal going whereby Sun has agreed to help Microsoft start legal action over the Open Source OpenOffice.org office application suite in exchange for some cash and a promise from Microsoft that Sun is exempt from legal action themselves. Goes to show, you can’t believe anything Sun says about supporting Open Source software. Microsoft-watch have also covered this, and you can find their take here.

Yet again from TheInquirer, in short 90 percent of Chinese computers are infected by worms/trojans/virus’s. Perhaps the government should spend more time fixing that instead of finding new and inventive ways to block their people from seeing anything useful on the net.

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As Firefox is fast approaching the version 1.0 status, (a preview release of 1.0 is available now), the guys at Mozilla have created a new site to “spread the word” . Apparently Firefox 0.9 was downloaded nearly 5 million times and it wasn’t even classed as a final release.

The purpose of the new site is to encourage as many users as possible to test the 1.0 preview so that it can be as “clean” as possible before release.

Firefox is a fantastic browser, I’ve been using and following it since it was first released, and it has been my main browser for most of that time. I’ve found it to be faster, more secure, better looking and far more feature filled then any other browser on the market, and best of all, it’s totally free. Support these guys, they are doing their best to help you.

I’ ve written about the upsides to using Firefox, and the downsides of using Internet Explorer many times this year, and you can find many of those stories here, so this isn’t a ball I’ve just picked up to run with.

Note, I just clicked the “spread the word” link above and it directed straight to the Firefox download page (which makes sense I suppose), so for anyone wanting to see the SpreadFirefox site itself, the link is here, but I’d appreciate people clicking on the link or the image above as well, because it gives me brownie points when people do. (I’m not sure what that actually means, but it sounds good, so I’m giving it a go.)

Regards

Franki

When I am approached to design and write a new site, the hardest part of the process for me is to choose a colour scheme, my meagre talent lies in coding, not the artistic aspects.

A recent discovery of mine has alleviated this problem somewhat. This simple Javascript online tool allows you to choose a colour from a palette, and it will show you a heap of compatible colours in a mini page type display so you can see how they go together. This is not the first such tool I have seen, but it is definitely one of the best ones.

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The Incredibles — The Official Movie Website is up and running counting down the days til the movies release. If there is one thing I like better than Google, it is probably Pixar. I really enjoy so much of what they do, the hidden humor, the attention to detail, even in the early “films” they did, some of which I have as trailers/extras on dvd’s such as Monster’s Inc.