In what must be a big surprise to everyone (not), another big flaw in IE has been found that effects even XP SP2 systems that can have you infected just by looking at a malicious web site. Secunia have upgraded its advisory to “extremely critical”, which is their strongest warning.
Read more about this nasty flaw at Techworld.

Also recently discovered are a couple of security flaws for older versions of Firefox, Mozilla and Thunderbird, so if your not running the most recent releases, you should update. The current versions of all apps are apparently unaffected by the flaws.

This article on TheRegister details the recent release of the MS anti-spyware software that Microsoft just bought from Giant and released as their own. As the Register guys point out, and as I have previously done here, it is somewhat ironic that MS might be planning to profit from a solution to a problem they mostly created in the first place.

A good read.

I saw a neat tip the other day in an article by David Leffler. If you click on start/run on a Windows machine, and type a web address you have been to recently it ties into your history and will offer a drop down list of pages on that site. Pretty handy for those times when the browser isn’t up and running. You can also do it for sites you have not been to, but in that case you need to use the http:// string when you enter the address. I found this faster than starting the browser, and using bookmarks or history to get going. Hope this is helpful to you.

MySQL, one of the worlds most popular open source databases, is about to release the first beta of MySQL 5. This new version has many new features that have traditionally been the staple of enterprise class databases from the likes of Oracle and IBM.

When the beta of MySQL 5 is released, you’ll be able to get it here, however at present only the alpha release is available.

Beginning in January of 2005, Firefox has been added to WC3 Web Browser Statistics. We have been seeing the growing trend for quite some time now and this is a big step forward for the Firefox movement. Mainstream has been achieved and it already surpasses all Netscape and Mozilla browsers.

Don’t be left out in the cold unsecure world of Internet Explo(der), get your copy of Firefox Browser today and see why all the growth! It is free.

Jeff Barr announces that Syndic8 (one of my favorite web places) is co-sponsoring the Blog Business Summit in Seattle later this month. This article explains the explosive growth potential for blogs as the underlying content management system. We see the potential … and wish we could attend. Blogs are also rapidly advancing the RSS explosion on the web.

Netcraft have released what appears to be a free toolbar for IE users on Win2000/XP, and it’s purpose is to protect users from phishing emails. Phishing is when you get an email purporting to be from your bank, or e-bay, or Paypal or some other institution and the email will contain a link they try to get you to follow. The link looks like it is to the banks servers, but it’s really pointing to some nasty site determined to collect your username/password and steal all your cash.

Firefox already has some protection against this, but if you must use IE, this toolbar might save you some money. Get your toolbar here.