Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

Yahoo, just like Google, has decided that they need to start taking steps to protect users from malicious search results that they might be serving up. They’re calling the new feature SearchScan, and it is powered by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor. You can actually get a SiteAdvisor browser add-on yourself that will do almost the same thing, but the people who are actually aware of SiteAdvisor’s existence are probably not the ones that need it the most. Yahoo’s implementation, on the other hand, will reach out to anyone that performs searches on their site!

As seen in the screenshot above the warning that Yahoo displays is a lot less discreet than Google’s, although Google does take users to a warning page before letting them actually visit the site. Plus I found that Yahoo was actually flagging more sites than Google. Many of the ones Yahoo/McAfee deems dangerous seem to slide by whatever kind of detection system Google is using.

What’s really nice is that Yahoo not only checks to see whether a site contains malicious downloads, but it also flags those that sell your email address. Here are the three different warnings that you’ll possibly see in the search results:

• Browser Exploits — These are sites that can stealthily harm a user’s computer or install malware simply by visiting the site. Beginning today, any such sites or pages included in McAfee’s data will be removed from search results automatically.
• Dangerous Downloads — SearchScan will display warnings next to search results for sites that offer potentially dangerous software, such as viruses, spyware or adware. Users often may be unaware that these can be passed along with the screensavers, games and other software downloads.
• Unsolicited Email — SearchScan will alert users to scanned sites that send unsolicited emails or inappropriately share email addresses with third parties.

There are a few SearchScan settings that you can configure as well. Optionally you can disable the service all together, or you can even have it remove any results that have been flagged by McAfee for one of the above reasons. Yup, you can have it hide the malicious sites so that you never even have to see them.

Kudos to Yahoo for adding this much needed system, and now I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that people actually listen to the warnings.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on April 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

The rumors were right, Leopard has been delayed again. This time, until at least October. Apple’s official announcement says:

“The iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS® X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones.”

You can definitely tell where Apple’s priorities are right now. Maybe that shift in focus came when Apple dropped “computer” from their name back in January. When Apple released their first quarter results in January, 48% of their sales came from the iPod alone.  Add in iTunes sales, and the soon to be iPhone, and their computers will definitely be last on the totem pole.

Their focus tends to point towards potential new customers that they’ll scoop up in the future instead of an equal focus on both the past loyal customers who are just waiting for new software, and the new ones.

If you’ll recall, Leopard was originally supposed to ship before Vista, and then it got moved to right around when Vista was going to get released.  After that didn’t happen, it was pushed to Spring 07’, and now at the earliest, it will be an October 07’ release.

What’s also ironic is that two weeks ago, rumor had it that Leopard was going to be pushed back to October 2007, but because of Vista.  It was said that Apple wanted the new operating system to support Vista through an integrated version of Boot Camp.  But then a week later, Boot Camp 1.2 was released to work with Vista. The rumor was at least half correct.

Or maybe there is more truth to that.  Users are reporting problems with the new Boot Camp 1.2 software, even though it’s supposed to support Vista.  It sounds to me like there’s a lot going on that Apple needs to iron out before Leopard will be ready for its grand entrance.

Also funny: Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet says that if she were Microsoft, she’d start a new campaign – “Cupertino, start your photocopiers!” This of course, mocks Apple’s previous campaign, “Redmond, start your photocopiers.”Their excuse is that they pulled their engineers from Leopard to the iPhone project, much like what caused the Vista delay when Microsoft pulled engineers to work on XP Service Pack 2.  Their campaign would go something like, “Who’s copying who now, huh? We thought of the not-enough-engineers excuse way back in 2004!”

Source: eWeek.com (Thanks for the tip CoryC)

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This article was written on October 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

Pidgin is an extremely popular open source instant messenger, but have you ever thought to yourself what it would be like if Mozilla created something similar? It would be possible to make the instant messenger do almost anything you want with the use of extensions … you could even add more networks! Well, there hasn’t been any signs that Mozilla is working on such an application, but Florian Quèze and Quentin Castier took it upon themselves to turn the dream into a reality.

Let me introduce you to Instantbird, an XUL application that uses the libpurple library to connect to other networks. That’s the framework used by Mozilla, and the same library that both Pidgin and Meebo run off of.

–Current State–

The Instantbird 0.1 download is about 13MB in size, and there is no installation required to test it out. With that being said you may want to do a quick read through of this article before you spend the time setting it up.

Right now Instantbird is about as simple as it gets, but it does let you connect to several different networks: AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, QQ, XMPP, Yahoo!, and more. There is a tabbed interface for your chats and a decent account manager, but there are absolutely no options for you to configure. This screenshot that I took just about demonstrates the entire extent program:

–What’s to Come–

The exciting part, however, is still yet to come. Here’s a brief look at the plans for future versions of Instantbird:

• Instantbird 0.2 – status handling (away, busy, etc…), contact management, extensibility, notifier, and more.
• Instantbird 0.3 – richtext for outgoing messages, buddy icons, file transfers, preferences, sounds, and more.
• Instantbird 1.0 – should be close to what Pidgin offers
• Instantbird 1.0+ – video and voice support

–Oh the Possibilities–

I’m really excited about the future of this project because of how it plans to use extensions. In fact the theme and extension manager has already been implemented into Instantbird:

The add-ons site hasn’t launched yet, but when it does we might see some truly awesome features roll out. Think about being able to send files to friends no matter what network they are on! The thought of having addons in an instant messenger is extremely appealing to me, and if developed well enough could cause its popularity to rise very fast. Pidgin’s plugin system just doesn’t cut it in my mind.

I wish the best to the developers, and I can’t wait to see what future versions have to offer!

Instantbird Homepage [via David Ascher]

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This article was written on June 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

One of the the most frequent comments I hear from new Ubuntu users is that the default theme for the operating system is a tad too brown. I kind of like the current Ubuntu theme, but it was supposed to get an overhaul with the last release. The new default theme has got pushed back to Ubuntu 8.10, and we’re getting our first glimpse of the new theme now that Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 1 has shipped. The verdict: it’s even more brown!

To show you what I mean here’s a screenshot that PhoroLinux provided showcasing OpenOffice.org fully skinned by the new theme:

(Click to Enlarge)

What do you think? There is always the option to go back to the lighter Ubuntu theme, but I find it interesting that they might be shipping Ubuntu 8.10 with an overall dark theme. Personally the dark theme is not at all something I would use, and I was hoping for a theme more along the lines of this mockup.

We’ll keep an eye on the progress of the new theme, and we should have a better idea what will ship with Ubuntu 8.10 as we get closer to the October 2008 launch.

Grab Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 1

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This article was written on April 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft has created a new bar code system that replaces the standard black and white vertical bars with specific patterns of colored triangles. By doing this they are able to pack in more information into such a small space.

The High Capacity Color Bar Code should start appearing on DVD’s already by the end of this year. Once implemented the bar code would be able to store information like URL’s and other information that could be related to the CD/DVD. This would be especially useful when deciding whether to purchase a movie or music CD because it can be attached to a computer at a store so that you can visit the homepage.

This does, of course, require special hardware to scan the bar code so the transition could be costly for companies. It even takes more costly hardware to print the bar codes which is something else that could drive the price of goods up.

Having worked at a retail store I can see real value in such a system. We came across people all of the time who tried to print their own UPC’s for products and place them over an item’s UPC. That way when the cashier rings up the item it is for something else at a much lower cost. Being able to replicate these new color bar codes could spell disaster for scammers utilizing this method of “bar code switching”.

Source: CNet

Thanks for the tip CoryC!

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