Archive for the ‘General News’ Category
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
These days, this type of application is only useful for aesthetic purposes … but not so long ago, there was a time when animated GIF files were sometimes used to hide viruses …
Animated Gifs are still popular on today’s Internet, albeit for different purposes. Back in the beginning days of the public Internet, webmasters used them to add animated contents to their websites. This soon died out when they realized that repeating ten second animates had a damaging effect to their website’s reputation.
(more…)
Tags: animated gif, firefox, gif, gif block
Posted in General News, software evaluation | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
I’m not sure if I agree with this or not, but the author definitely raises some interesting points …
This week, Google was found out to have been bypassing privacy settings in both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari web browsers, as Martin reported here. In a statement on their blog, the Corporate Vice-President of IE blogged “IE blocks third-party cookies unless the site presents a P3P Compact Policy Statement indicating how the site will use the cookie and that the site’s use does not include tracking the user. Google’s P3P policy causes Internet Explorer to accept Google’s cookies even though the policy does not state Google’s intent.”
(more…)
Tags: cookies, facebook, google, microsoft, privacy, security
Posted in General News, privacy, security | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
I’m kind of surprised that there are still Vista users out there; between those who moved on to Windows 7 and those who still cling to XP, it seems like the current Vista user base would be pretty darned small at this point.
Microsoft initially planned to end support for some Windows Vista versions, Windows Home Basic and Ultimate for example, in April 2012. The effect would have been devastating for customers running those editions of the operating systems, as they would not receive patches, both normal and security related, anymore after that date. It would also mean that Windows XP would outlive these Vista editions thanks to its extended support end date.
(more…)
Tags: microsoft, support cycle, Vista, Windows Vista, xp
Posted in General News | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
For a free email client, Hotmail does do a pretty good job of filtering out the spam …
Spam is one of those things that you never can get rid of completely, it seems. Email providers like Hotmail, Google Mail or Yahoo Mail are battling on the spam front ever since they opened their door for the first users. And while they managed to cut down significantly on spam in past years, there is still work to be done in that compartment. Providers are currently working together to eliminate most of the spam once and for all. Until then though, users will receive spam fairly regularly in their inboxes.
(more…)
Tags: google-mail, hotmail, microsoft, Spam, yahoo mail
Posted in General News | No Comments »
Thursday, February 9th, 2012
Although the convenience of an online storage solution is kind of tempting, you could buy a pretty decent external hard drive for about the same price as a one year subscription to Google’s 400 GB storage option.
Rumors of Google Drive, or GDrive as it was named in the beginning, started to emerge at around the same time that the popular file synchronization and hosting service Dropbox opened its doors to the public (that was 2007). All went quiet shortly thereafter and it appeared as if the project had been canceled by Google.
(more…)
Tags: android, dropbox, google, Google Drive, windows
Posted in General News | No Comments »
Thursday, February 9th, 2012
I’ve read a couple of different reviews that labeled Windows 8 as, “Son of Vista” … it will be interesting to see if Microsoft responds to customer concerns or not.
The beta “Consumer Preview” version of Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system could be released on Wednesday 29th February. Microsoft have announced a “Windows 8 Consumer Preview event” in the city, that is also home to the Mobile World Congress expo that week.
(more…)
Tags: consumer preview, Metro, microsoft, windows 8
Posted in General News | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
Patch or no patch, this sounds like extremely bad news (publicity-wise) for both Symantec/pcAnywhere and Norton Antivirus …
Back in 2006 hackers managed to download source codes of Symantec software after successfully gaining access to Symantec’s infrastructure. The hackers managed to obtain Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Utilities, Norton GoBack, pcAnywhere and Norton Internet Security source codes during the operation.
(more…)
Tags: hacking, norton antivirus, pcAnywhere, security, source code
Posted in General News, security | Comments Off
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
It’s kind of cool that Google is at least offering to pay people for this information … but also kind of sad to watch the internet slowly morph into a gigantic market research tool.
As soon as you start using the Internet, your actions are tracked by specialized companies. This not only includes web server logs but also third party tracking through advertisement, social networking scripts and other third party scripts.
(more…)
Tags: browsing habits, google, internet usage, market research, privacy
Posted in General News, privacy | Comments Off
Monday, February 6th, 2012
Given the recent shutdown of Megaupload, it wouldn’t be surprising if more BT sites that offer copyright material start closing their doors … I just hope that the BT sites that focus on sharing non-copyright stuff don’t get caught up in the trend.
Users of the popular Bittorrent indexing website BTJunkie who try to access the site’s content in a web browser are not seeing the usual site layout, but a goodbye message instead. The message states that the site operators have decided to close down the service voluntarily after more than seven years of operation.
(more…)
Tags: Bit Torrent, bittorrent, BT, BTJunkie, megaupload
Posted in General News | Comments Off
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
My wife will be interested in this; she uses Skype to save on long distance calls to her family in Japan …
Microsoft today has released an update for the popular voice over IP, messaging and video calling software Skype. Skype 5.8 for Windows is currently only available on the Skype homepage and not via the program’s update checker. Existing Skype users who click on Help > Check for Updates are receiving notifications that they are running the latest version. It is likely that the updater is going to pick up the new version later today.
(more…)
Tags: Skype, update, voice over ip, VoIP
Posted in General News, software evaluation | Comments Off
