Blog

Google Operation System: After Google released Chrome, Google Toolbar’s development slowed down. That’s because Google Toolbar is no longer the primary vehicle for adding browser features and Google mostly focused on improving Chrome. Google Toolbar 8 is a completely new version of Google’s add-on that was available as part of Google Labs. “Google Toolbar 8 is actually built and runs on top of the Google Chrome Frame platform. This means that Toolbar 8 will run more like a web app in that it can be customized and updated much more frequently and easily. It also means that Google Chrome Frame is installed at the time of Toolbar 8 installation,” explains Google. ...

Google Operation System: Internet Explorer 9 will be released later today and one of the many new features is the native support for videos. Unfortunately for Google, Microsoft decided to only support H.264 videos by default, so you can’t watch WebM videos without installing additional software. To solve this problem, Google developed a WebM plugin for IE9. “They said elephants couldn’t ride flying dolphins. They said that one of the world’s most popular browsers couldn’t play WebM video in HTML5. They were wrong,” mentions Google half-jokingly. ...

isc.sans.edu: Microsoft released version 9 of its Internet Explorer web browser. You can download IE 9 from windows.microsoft.com. Microsoft also set up a domain dedicated to the new browser: www.beautyoftheweb.com. Unfortunately, that site isn’t hosted under the microsoft.com domain, nor does it have an SSL certificate to confirm that it belongs to Microsoft. Using this site to distribute the browser goes against the advice of downloading software only from known vendor websites. Copycat malicious sites claiming to distribute IE 9 will probably appear shortly, if they aren’t around yet. ...

I just read an interesting post in ThinkVitamin.com and wanted to share with you: I just signed up for a new Twitter account and as I was going through the on-boarding process, I noticed Twitter has introduced a bit of Gamification to encourage you to follow more people. They use a simple progress-bar metaphor to encourage you to follow 10 people. I like it.

Pinguy OS an out-of-the-box working operating system for everyone, not just geeks.This OS is for people that have never used Linux before or for people that just want an out-of-the-box working OS without doing all the tweaks and enhancements that everyone seems to do when installing a fresh copy of Ubuntu or other Linux based Distro’s. Read Full Story here: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/pinguy-os-11-04-pre-alpha.html

A new study shows that Gmail users are more likely to be young, thin, career-minded men, while Yahoo! is more typically home to overweight, older women Web curator Hunch.com asked its 700,000 users which email service they use, as well as a series of questions about their lifestyles. With 75 million answers to work with, the site was able to discover some striking differences between users of Gmail, and those who have stuck with older web clients like Yahoo!, Hotmail, and AOL. For instance, Gmail users are more likely to be young, Yahoo! users are often extroverted, and AOL users have typically been in a relationship for more than ten years. Here are four other takeaways from the study: ...

Avira TechBlog: A vulnerability within the current versions of Adobe Flash Player on all supported platforms has been found, warns the company. Affected are not only the Flash Player installations, but also Adobe Reader and Acrobat via the “authplay.dll” Flash Player integration. Currently there is no mitigation which will help against the exploitation – so only opening expected documents from trusted sources for the time being is a good advice. ...

Yahoo Mail Blog wrote: Greetings, Yahoo! Mail Beta users! Some exciting updates to Yahoo! Mail Beta that we’re in the middle of rolling out: “Hello, my name is Stephanie and I’m a Facebook addict.” To all you fellow Facebook addicts out there, you might already know that we provide Facebook integration in our downloadable Messenger client. Now you can chat with your Facebook friends in Yahoo! Mail too! On the left, you’ll see “Facebook Friends” under “Online Contacts”. If you click on the thunderbolt, you will be prompted to authenticate on Facebook Connect (if you haven’t already). Once you’ve authenticated, your online Facebook friends will appear below “Online Contacts” and you can chat freely. As if Facebook was not addictive enough on its own, right? 😉 ...

Symantec: Only a few days ago, Japan experienced one of the worst earthquakes in its history. The earthquake registered 8.9 on the Richter scale and triggered an enormous tsunami. The heart-wrenching images on television have left the world shaken. It was the worst earthquake and tsunami in the past century and at least 50 countries have since received related tsunami warnings. As the death and injury tolls continue to rise, one must not forget those who awake to exploit such delicate situations—spammers continue to maintain the guise of charitable institutions and governmental organizations! Don’t be surprised to suddenly see an email message in your inbox marked as URGENT and pleading with you for “monitory help” [sic] or a phishing mail urging you to donate to the rehabilitation of those affected by the quake and tsunami. Use prudence in finding out the genuine intent of email senders before you reach out or respond. ...

Sophos Labs Blog: If you’re interested in computer security, you’ve probably heard of PWN2OWN. It’s a competition which has become an annual fixture at the annual CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. The competition gets its name because, as the CanSecWest organizers explain, “If you can execute arbitrary code (PWN) on these [laptops or mobile phones] through a previously undisclosed browser (Firefox, IE, Safari) exploit, you can go home with one (OWN).” ...