Updates

The Chrome OS Beta channel has been updated to R10 release 0.10.156.46 including the new Chrome 10 Beta, new trackpad and several stability and functional improvements over the previous release. This release contains the following security fixes: Scratchpad application security vulnerability fix In addition to all Chrome 10 new features (see Chrome 10 blogpost), there are several Chrome OS great improvements including: 3G modem activation fixes 3G connection to the carrier fixes Wi-Fi connectivity/Out of the Box fixes New trackpad and sensitivity setting adjusted Auto update engine and debugging improvements Power optimizations GTalk video/chat optimizations Audio CPU utilization improvements Improved on screen indicators: brightness, network status, update icon There is one known issue: ...

http://windowsteamblog.com: Today we officially handed off the final release (RTM) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to our OEM partners. On February 16th Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 will be available for MSDN and TechNet Subscribers as well as Volume License customers. On February 22nd, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 will become generally available for folks to download via the Microsoft Download Center and available on Windows Update. ...

Before IE developers held a press conference in San Francisco to unveil the RC version of IE 9 this morning, Microsoft has released the RC for download here (x86) and here (x64). As expected, the release candidate includes much improved tab functionality, from the new square-ish visual elements, and moveable tab bar elements to increase customization. It also includes features that enable a user to refuse tracking from advertisers. It also promises to fix a number of remaining bugs and minor annoyances that plagued the Beta and developer previews of the browser. The newer, more stable version of the browser needs to be pretty picture perfect if MS wants to regain its market share lost to Chrome and Firefox since IE8 started faltering. ...

MSDN Blog: On Tuesday, December 14, we released an update (KB2412171) for Microsoft Outlook 2007. We have discovered several issues with the update and want to inform you about problems you might encounter and what corrective steps we recommend. As of December 16, this Outlook 2007 update has been removed from Microsoft Update. This Outlook 2007 update was distributed via Microsoft Update. Many of you receive updates automatically and if you installed the update between Tuesday, December 14, and Thursday, December 16, it is likely that you are affected. ...

Newest Opera browser features tab stacking, extensions, visual mouse gestures Oslo, Norway — December 16, 2010 Opera Software debuted the newest version of its award-winning browser today. Opera 11 combines elegant design, smart updates to some of our most popular features and new ways to customize Opera to your preferences. Download it today for Windows, Mac and Linux computers from http://www.opera.com/. What’s new Tab stacking Tab stacking is a better way to organize your open tabs. Simply drag one tab on top of another to create a stack. Here is a short video to introduce tab stacking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hqSGGk1YTI ...

As announced Friday last week, Microsoft delivers 17 security updates on the December 2010 Patchday. The Updates close 2 highly critical security holes which allow for remote code execution and several privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow attackers to gain administrative rights on Windows PCs. Overall, the 17 Updates deal with 40 vulnerabilities. Affected are the Windows operating Systems, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, SharePoint and Exchange. Users and administrators should apply the patches as soon as possible!

Avira TechBlog: Next Tuesday is going to be tough for administrators: The Redmond company announces 17 security bulletins which are supposed to fix 40 security vulnerabilities. Only two of the bulletins deal with “high”ly critical rated security holes within Windows and the Internet Explorer. The rest of the updates fixes the Windows operating systems, Microsoft’s Office, SharePoint and Exchange.

This week Apple announced the availability of QuickTime 7.6.9 for OS X 10.5 and Windows platforms. This release fixes 13 vulnerabilities in QuickTime for OS X Leopard and 15 vulnerabilities on the Windows platform. Keep in mind that if you use iTunes it requires that you install QuickTime as well, so be sure to check for updates. Apple has provided a direct download link for IT folks at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/. All 13 vulnerabilities for OS X can cause unexpected application termination (what you and I call a crash, but you can’t say crash on a Mac) or arbitrary code execution (make QuickTime run programs… BAD). ...

Firefox Firefox 3.6.13 and Firefox 3.5.16 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.13. Firefox 3.6.13: http://firefox.com Firefox 3.5.16: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to these latest releases. If you already have Firefox, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This updates can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu. ...

Adobe: The Adobe Photoshop 12.0.2 update (Mac|Win) speeds up painting performance and fixes a number of problems discovered after Photoshop CS5 was released. The most significant fixes in the update include the following: A number of potential security vulnerabilities have been addressed Crashing bugs related to typography & fonts have been addressed Performance of various features has been improved Crashes related to opening 3D layers, sharpening, color management, and scanning via TWAIN devices have been fixed Problems with brush cursors, the histogram progress bar, the display of selection boundaries (“marching ants”), scrolling while using the shift key, and the use of action droplets have been addressed Intermittent file format problems have been addressed Metadata-related bugs related to focus distance and Orphea Studio JPEGs have been fixed In addition you can download a TWAIN plug-in update that includes fixes for multiple document scanning, and a that fixes a crash that could occur when attempting a second scan.

Avira programmers spent a lot of work and drastically overhauled the Avira AntiVir Rescue System which is now available in version 3.7.16. Next to a much better usability due to the redesigned user interface and 11 supported languages the new version offers even improved detection and removal capabilities. Avira AntiVir Rescue System uses Linux as operating system. The new kernel has much better and wider hardware support. The bootable CD can not only be used to analyse the system for malware infections and remove them, but also enables the user to get access to data on the system in case the operating system won’t start anymore so it can be backed up onto a USB drive, for example. ...

Google just released version 8 of its web browser Chrome. It fixes 13 security vulnerabilities of which 4 got rated “high”ly critical – the people reporting these all got rewarded with 1.000 US-$ and 500 US-$, respectively. Additionally to these security fixes, the update to Chrome 8.0.552.215 contains more than 800 bugfixes and stability improvements according to the Google developers. The new version officially includes and uses the built-in, stripped-down PDF reader which is additionally secured with a sandbox. This feature, tied together with Googles sandboxing of the browser processes in general and including and updating the Flash Player automatically makes Chrome one of the most secure, yet full-featured web browsers currently available. ...

Google Earth 6 doesn’t have too many new features. You can now use Street View just like in Google Maps by dragging the pegman icon. “To view street-level imagery for a specific location, zoom into an area at an altitude of approximately 500km. You will see a pegman icon appear at the top right below the navigation controls. Click and drag the icon across the 3D viewer. A blue border will appear around roads that have street-level imagery available,” explains Google. ...

One of the greatest setbacks of the Android platform has been the absence of a killer media player, as its native media player is simply lacking. To date, DoubleTwist has been the best option, but Winamp for Android is a powerful new alternative. Before the turn of the century (a.k.a. the Wild West of file sharing), Winamp reigned supreme for MP3 playback on Windows. Now I haven’t used a Winamp product since I learned about foobar2000 back in 2002, but it’s often nice to see the resurgence of a familiar face in tech. ...

For those who missed this update on Nov 18: 7-Zip 9.20 was released. 7-Zip for 32-bit Windows: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z920.exe Mirror: http://www.filehippo.com/download_7zip_32/ 7-Zip for 64-bit Windows x64: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z920-x64.msi Mirror: http://www.filehippo.com/download_7-zip_64/ What’s new after 7-Zip 4.65 (2009-02-03): 7-Zip now supports LZMA2 compression method. 7-Zip now can update solid .7z archives. 7-Zip now supports XZ archives. 7-Zip now supports PPMd compression in ZIP archives. 7-Zip now can unpack NTFS, FAT, VHD, MBR, APM, SquashFS, CramFS, MSLZ archives. 7-Zip now can unpack GZip, BZip2, LZMA, XZ and TAR archives from stdin. 7-Zip now can unpack some TAR and ISO archives with incorrect headers. 7-Zip now supports files that are larger than 8 GB in TAR archives. NSIS and WIM support was improved. Partial parsing for EXE resources, SWF and FLV. The support for archives in installers was improved. 7-Zip now stores NTFS file timestamps to ZIP archives. Speed optimizations in PPMd codec. Speed optimizations in AES code for Intel’s 32nm CPUs. Speed optimizations in CRC calculation code for Intel’s Atom CPUs. New -scc{WIN|DOS|UTF-8} switch to specify charset for console input/output (default = DOS). New -scrc switch to calculate total CRC-32 during extracting / testing. New additional “Open archive >” item in context menu allows to select archive type for some files. It’s possible to specify Diff program in options (7-Zip File Manager). 7-Zip now can open/copy/compress disk images (like \.\c:) from \.\ folder. 7-Zip File Manager now doesn’t use temp files to open nested archives stored without compression. The console version now doesn’t show entered password. New small SFX module for installers (in Extra package). Disk fragmentation problem for ZIP archives created by 7-Zip was fixed. Some bugs were fixed. New localizations: Hindi, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Tatar, Uyghur, Kazakh.