Archive for September, 2005
Friday, September 30th, 2005
Firefox’s early inroads against Internet Explorer are beginning to show signs of losing momentum, according to web analytics firm WebSideStory. The firm reckons the open source browser has increased its market by only a single percentage point - from 6.75 per cent in April to 7.86 per cent in September - over the last five months. This compares to a one percentage point gain in market share per month that accompanied Firefox’s initial release last year.
Internet Explorer’s market share is holding up after suffering badly to Firefox in the period immediately after the browser’s November 2004 release. WebSideStory put IE’s market share at 88.46 per cent on Friday, 23 September only slightly down on 88.86 per cent in late April. The modest gains Firefox has made in the last five months are largely at the expense of other alternative browsers such as Opera and Apple Safari, according to WebSideStory.
Read more: The Register
Posted in News | No Comments »
Friday, September 30th, 2005
‘Only a matter of time,’ says Motorola boss Ed Zander
Apple is going to make its own smartphone, according to Motorola boss Ed Zander, who told news website News.com that it is “only a matter of time”.
Zander claimed that Motorola has information suggesting that Apple is planning to build its own mobile range.
But he downplayed his earlier comments about the iPod Nano and notably his statement: “What the hell does the Nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?”.
In a candid aside Zander also said that there was some tension between the two companies because they are a competitors as well as partners.
Full article: vnunet.com
Posted in Mac OS X | No Comments »
Friday, September 30th, 2005
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer have finally entered the millionaire’s club.
Although the duo have long been billionaires, last year they both cracked the $1 million annual-pay threshold, up from about $900,000 in total pay the prior year. For fiscal 2005, Gates and Ballmer each received a $600,000 salary and $400,000 in bonus pay.
“The compensation of Messrs. Ballmer and Gates reflects their status as significant shareholders of the company,” Microsoft said in its annual proxy filing Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Their salaries are significantly below competitive levels elsewhere in the information technology industry and large market capitalization U.S. companies, and they do not participate in the company’s equity compensation program.”
Full story: ZDNet
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Friday, September 30th, 2005
Adware.Istbar is an adware component, which does one or more of the following:
Installs an Internet Explorer toolbar
Acts as a Home page and search hijacker
This risk is often distributed with Adware.SideFind and Trojan.ISTsvc and can be downloaded from a Web page using an ActiveX installer.
Symantec Security Response has developed a removal tool for Adware.Istbar. Use this removal tool first, as it is the easiest way to remove this threat.
Download: Symantec Adware.Istbar Removal Tool 1.1.0
Posted in AntiSpyware | No Comments »
Thursday, September 29th, 2005
Who’s been looking at my spreadsheets?
Unattended PCs are becoming the focus of insider attacks, according to Gartner. It reckons “someone else must have used my PC” has become a typical defence to accusations of improper online behaviour.
Gartner advised businesses to implement ‘timeouts’ for all PCs to ensure that users are automatically logged out of application sessions or that PCs are locked in order to minimise the risk of attack. Let’s be honest, the risks Gartner highlights would be obvious to anyone with anyone with a modicum of commonsense. But since commonsense often flies out the window where computers are concerned it’s perhaps worth enumerating the potential problems.
Full story: The Register
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Thursday, September 29th, 2005
Google is following in the high-tech footsteps of many Silicon Valley companies before it by dreaming big and building or leasing large new offices to accommodate a swelling employee roster.
The search giant announced on Wednesday plans to build a 1 million-square-foot campus at the NASA Ames Research Center, not far from its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, which is dubbed the “Googleplex.”
Of course, some Silicon Valley companies are easily identified by their buildings. Oracle’s shimmering green towers, for example, are a landmark for drivers on the Valley’s Highway 101. And Sun Microsystems turned a historic mental-health facility just a 20-minute drive south from Oracle into a major office park.
But numerous others with grandiose plans overspent in the valley’s boom years, only to be humbled when the tech bubble burst. That includes Silicon Graphics, whose former offices Google is now subleasing.
Full article: C|net
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Wednesday, September 28th, 2005
Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2 contains significant security enhancements, in addition to stability and performance improvements. Some of the fixes included with SP2 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one update.
System Requirements
• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 3; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP
Download: Office 2003 Service Pack 2
Posted in Office | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 28th, 2005
The next version of the General Public License may tackle the issue of Web companies that use free software in commercial Web-based applications but don’t distribute the source code.
At present, companies that distribute GPL-licensed software must make the source code publicly available, including any modifications they’ve made. Though the rule covers many businesses that use GPL-licensed software for commercial ends, it doesn’t cover Web companies that use such software to offer their services through the Web, as they’re not actually distributing the software.
GPL 3, the next version of the free software license, a draft of which is expected to be released in early 2006, may close this loophole, GPL author and Free Software Foundation head Richard Stallman said in an interview with publisher O’Reilly Media.
Stallman said developers may be encouraged to add a command to their GPL-licensed Web application that lets users download the source code. The inclusion of this command in modified versions of the program will then be enforced by an additional clause in GPL 3.
Full article: ZDNet Australia
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Wednesday, September 28th, 2005
Screen problems occurred with ‘one particular batch’
Apple has broken its silence in the face of growing anger from consumers about faults in its iPod Nano music player.
Launched earlier this month the Nano is the replacement for the iPod Mini and is exceptionally small and light. But users have complained that the screens are very easy to scratch and crack, and have raised doubts about battery performance.
Apple is claiming that the screen problems occurred with one particular batch of Nanos that suffered a manufacturing flaw affecting “less than one-tenth of one per cent” of its stock.
Full story: vnunet.com
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Wednesday, September 28th, 2005
Find stuff…
Yahoo! is set to push its Desktop Search program into general availability on Wednesday.
Yahoo! Desktop Search includes a new feature called LiveWords, which allows people to highlight text within documents and click a button to search for those words in other documents on their hard drive.
The free program searches emails, attachments, Word documents, music files, images, video, Yahoo! address book entries and Yahoo! Messenger archives.
Yahoo! Desktop Search, released in beta in January, competes with similar products from Google and MSN.
News source: silicon.com
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Tuesday, September 27th, 2005
Microsoft will officially launch its first backup and recovery product late Tuesday, a near-continuous data protection (CDP) application.
Data Protection Manager (DPM) is loaded onto servers running Windows Server 2003 or Windows Storage Server 2003. The server is then added to the storage environment for greater data protection.
DPM can work with just about any standard disk or storage configuration, said Ben Matheson, group product manager for Data Protection Manager. “If it works with Windows Server, we’ll work with it,” he said.
After an initial set-up and backup, DPM saves only byte-level changes, making it “very efficient and very fast,” said Matheson. Microsoft released test results from VeriTest showing that DPM is four to 12 times faster than tape-based data protection for backup and recovery.
DPM continually logs changes, but replicates data at most only once per hour, leaving as much as an hour of data vulnerable to loss. Still, Matheson takes issue with those who claim they can deliver the CDP ideal of continuous backup and recovery to any point in time.
Full article: internetnews.com
Posted in Microsoft | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005
New device to ship in early 2006
Palm has unveiled a version of its Treo smartphone running Windows Mobile.
At a media event in San Francisco, Palm chief executive Ed Colligan joined Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Verizon Wireless’ Denny Strigl to demonstrate the new device that is set to start shipping in the US early next year.
The unveiling coincided with the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association Wireless tradeshow that kicked off in San Francisco today.
The switch marks the first time that Palm has released a device that runs an operating system other than Palm OS.
Full article: vnunet.com
Posted in Pocket PC/PDA | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005
In a move that counters Google’s successful advertising programs, Microsoft’s MSN unit on Monday launched its own paid-search advertising program in France and said it plans to begin testing the system in the United States next month.
MSN AdCenter, which debuted in Singapore at the end of last month, allows advertisers to launch highly targeted online keyword search-based campaigns, with the ability to include or exclude target customers based on geographic location, gender and age and to run ads only during certain times and days.
The system competes with Google’s AdWords program and will eventually replace a keyword-based advertising program MSN contracts out to Yahoo. It has a simple user interface and is notable for its use of customer profiling, taking advantage of the data MSN gathers from its more than 9 million subscribers.
“With the competing products you buy a word. On ours you go into detailed level and see who is searching for words,” said Eric Hadley, senior director of advertising and marketing for MSN. “You can plan an (ad) buy based on the people and say, ‘I’m willing to pay this much for this demographic, and I don’t want these people in the mix.’”
Full article: CNET News.com
Posted in Live | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005
Keelhauled client
LimeWire developers are working of code modifications that will prevent users of future versions of the popular P2P client from sharing copyrighted works. Future versions of the software may check to see if material presented for sharing is copyrighted before blocking sharing if no suitable license can be found, Slyck reports. Users would still have the ability to trade their own work or files they have permission to distribute via a Creative Commons license.
According to Slyck’s secret squirrel, a Limewire beta tester, the feature is ready to go and developers are simply waiting on a decision by Limewire chief Mark Gorton to integrate the feature.
Full story: The Register
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Monday, September 26th, 2005
Jonathan Schwartz keeps singing Sun’s favourite tune - that Web services, not desktop apps, are the future
Increasingly, the personal computer is a relic.
So asserted Jonathan Schwartz, president of server and software maker Sun. Instead, what has become important are Web services on the Internet and the mobile phones most will use to access them, he argued at a Friday speech in San Jose, California, at a meeting of the American India Foundation.
“The majority of the applications that will drive the next wave of innovation will be services, not applications that run on the desktop. The real innovation is occurring in the network and the network services,” Schwartz said.
Sun, which sells the back-end infrastructure that powers such services, has promulgated variations of this message for years. But there’s evidence the idea has some merit.
Full story: ZDNet UK
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Sunday, September 25th, 2005
PassReminder is a free password manager. It keeps password secure.
A master password is used to encrypt/decrypt each database. PassReminder is highly customizable with about 50 options. You can use PassReminder password manager under Windows and Linux. Next releases will include macOS support.
Present Features include: random password generator, searching, merging, import / export, drag and drop…
To make secure your database, PassReminder uses the blowfish encryption algorithm. “It takes a variable-length key, from 32 bits to 448 bits … Since then it has been analyzed considerably, and it is slowly gaining acceptance as a strong encryption algorithm.”
There is no adware, no spyware. Moreover the PassReminder uninstallation leaves no trace on your operating system.
Download PassReminder 0.6.2 for: Windows, Memory Stick and Linux | Screenshots
Posted in Security | No Comments »
Sunday, September 25th, 2005
FeedExplorer is a Free RSS Reader.
Features:
• Office 2003 Screen Style
• Integrated Search
• Watch for special words
• Built-in tabbed browser
• Fast
• Rss Reader
• Freeware
Download: FeedExplorer 1.0.15
Posted in Web/internet | No Comments »
Sunday, September 25th, 2005
Internet Explorer 6 SP1, the latest version of Internet Explorer for users not running Windows XP, provides a flexible and reliable browsing experience with enhanced Web privacy features for all Windows users. This version includes a full installation of the Web browser and the most recent version of Outlook Express, the e-mail client that is included with Internet Explorer.
System Requirements
• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows 98; Windows ME; Windows NT; Windows XP Service Pack 1
• 486/66 MHz processor (Pentium processor recommended)
Download: Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1
Posted in IE | No Comments »
Sunday, September 25th, 2005
Download Service Pack 1 public beta for Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0. There is no expiration date for the SP1 beta of Visual FoxPro 9.0 beta, and release of the final version of SP1 is scheduled for sometime around the end of 2005. Because this is a pre-release build of SP1 for Visual FoxPro (VFP) 9.0, the quality of it will not be of the same caliber as that of the final release.
The bug fix list for SP1 is contained in the separate download file VFP9BETA_BugFixList.txt here on this download page.
System Requirements
• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 3; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP
Download and install, requires Visual FoxPro 9.0.
Download: Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP1 Beta
Posted in Microsoft | No Comments »
