Confiker – April Fools????

Take precaution, the Conficker virus, or variants of the virus, will attack to the masses on April 1st. Or is is a Joke? The Conficker virus is a worm that shuts down your defenses on your computer, i.e. security updates on both Windows update and virus software, making it difficult to detect, much less remove. The worm in turn connects to the Internet connecting with other infected computers, creating a botnet, or a network or computer collaborating in an effort. Botnets are used as servers to send spam email, or send DOS (Denial-of-service) attacks. Much like the “I Love You” Bug or similar virus attacks have capabilities to maliciously bring down servers or super computers in banks, stock firms even government offices. If you are infected, your computer will seem slow, especially the Internet speed.

It’s not recommended that you search for Conficker protection or “FREE” protection software, for those site may already by contaminated. I recommend to take extreme measure and follow these few steps:

Update virus software (If you don’t have virus software, get Norton Security Scan from Google Pack.)

Update you operating system (Microsoft Update) – if you’re a Mac or Linux user, ignore this step.

Don’t open email from unknown senders .

Permanently delete Junk Mail, don't leave in the Junk Mail Box or on the Trash Bin.

Scan ALL attachments, with your updated virus software.

Don't accept friends on instant messengers or IRC chats that you don't recognize.

Don't click on ANY pop-up screens.

Chrome Problems

I been browsing the Web looking for problems on Chrome that I have encountered, and frankly, Google search doesn’t have any recent results in problems with Chrome. I’m not a huge social network kinda guy, but I find that Chrome does not do too well on Facebook or Flickr, for me in this case. If you recall, I defaulted Chrome as my main browser, and since then, I been pretty happy at the speed of it until now. Google Chrome has crashed or frozen on me on sites such as Facebook and Flickr and music site Pandora. I’m still on the latest build, 2.0.169.1. I will continue testing Chrome, while searching for the problem and posting an update whether this is a patch problem or a simple configuration issue.

Earth Hour

Being that today, Earth Hour will be celebrated, I figure I put my two cents in. I still don’t know what I will do at 8:30 tonight. It’s Saturday night, the kids like to sleep late, usually watching new episodes of Zack and Cody or Phineas and Ferb. The good thing is that my boys (6 and 8 yr) are interested in being Green. We recycle plastic bottles, and recently began collecting organic left over's to create our own compost for our trees and plants. I hope our baby (9 mo.) will sleep during that time, but we will turn off all our lights, and TV for one hour. In addition, from work, I will turn off our neon signs, and all the lights from 7 pm. on until tomorrow.

IE 8 Hacked…. as was Safari and Firefox

The CanSecWest Conference in Vancouver going on now until tomorrow, March 20th, 2009, reported the IE 8 has been hacked by a hacker who calls himself Nils. Soon, Nils successfully hacked the latest versions of Safari and Firefox. A competition called PWN2OWN was put on yesterday to exploit IE 8, Firefox and Chrome on Windows 7 platform and Safari and Firefox on Macintosh. Along with desktop browser, the competition includes exploiting mobile devices of the following popular platforms; Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Nokia and Windows Mobile.

Based on the information from this article and as of this post, the only successful hacks were IE 8, Safari and Firefox. Hackers at the conference state there is less research on mobile devices to find possible bugs to exploit the phone.

Whoa! Google Chrome

This September, Google released an open source web browser, Chrome. A comic posted by Google, “Google Chrome – Behind the Open Source Browser Project” explains the browser in it’s entirely – read it. Based on my messing with the browser, it is faster, more secure, and most importantly, free and open source. Google states instead of rolling out one version with tons of features having to wait a year for a release candidate, they update two version as often as possible. Of the two releases, being stable and developer versions, I've use build 1.0.154.48 without a problem. Chrome didn’t need add-on installation or configuration at first run. Flash and PDF’s easily ran on sites with those files.

With the release of the developer Beta, I decided to make Chrome my sole default browser yesterday, utilizing version 2.0.169.1. The new Beta is 25% faster than the previous, and reports it was 35% faster than the first release. I didn’t see much of a difference between my now version and previous builds. However I did see a faster reaction in Chrome compared to Firefox (my old default browser), and defiantly faster than IE 7. Did someone say Internet Explorer? This week will probably be a busy browser testing week, with IE releasing version 8 today. So far, comparing Chrome to Firefox, both are open source, however, as you install add-ons to Firefox, it slows performance. Chrome renders quicker resulting in faster loading times. JavaScript processes quicker as well in Chrome.

Chrome also release Chrome Experiments, 15 projects showcasing complex JavaScript on Chrome, versus other browsers. When Apple released its public beta for Safari 4 last month, it claimed that Safari was "the world's fastest and most innovative browser." Today Microsoft’s IE 8 was released, and it previously reported to come out on top of Chrome 1.0 and Firefox 3.05 loading 12 out of the top 25 Web sites. Check out Google Experiments, I think Google Gravity was the best, using JavaScript to shatter the Google Homepage, shifting and shaking it around as you resize or move your window. I tested them myself on Chrome and Firefox…. I yet to install IE 8 to try this. Another favorite, was DOMTRS, utilizing the Document Object Model and JavaScript for an old favorite.

I did manage to to stall Chrome, for some reason, while trying to import my bookmarks from another browser it crashed. I realized it only imported my IE bookmarks and not Firefox.

iPhone News; apple + x and apple + v

Does anyone get tired of iPhone news? And here it is, more news about the iPhone. What is the BIG news now, cut and paste. That’s right, cut and past (ctl + x and ctl + v) or for you Apple fans, (apple + x and apple + v). Now I’m a mobile device user myself, Windows Mobile, and I know how that can be useful, however, enough to make news of it is uncalled for. Although the announcements of iPhone changes include peer-to-peer networking, which might makes any device connect directly to other devices. The more intriguing news of iPhone 3.0 take a back seat to cut and paste.

Kumo

If you haven't heard by now, Microsoft is renaming their search engine service to Kumo. Moving into the buzzword era of “Cloud Computing”, the word Kumo means “cloud” in Japanese. The giant who is infamous for codenaming projects, claims Kumo is a test program. Since http://kumo.com can not be accessed yet, nor can Microsoft confirm Kumo, I took the liberty to Whois the domain:

Registrant:

Microsoft Corporation

Domain Administrator

One Microsoft Way

Redmond, WA 98052

US

Email: domains@microsoft.com

DNS Servers:

ns1.msft.net

ns4.msft.net

ns5.msft.net

ns2.msft.net

ns3.msft.net

Based on Whois information, Kumo sits on the same domainname servers as live.com.

Since Microsoft failed to buy Yahoo, Kumo is meant to compete with Google head on. It claims its search results will include three pane results. Why panes, in a for instance, if the search was for a music artist, the panes would include categories such as lyrics, discography or biography. Still, the question remains, will MSN still be around.

When Live was launched, I figured it would replace MSN, yet, Internet browser IE will automatically homepage MSN in all versions to date, correction, I haven't seen IE 8. So how will Microsoft compete with Google and Yahoo when IE users, when searching, will use their homepage to search, and most cases MSN homepage? If Microsoft wants my 2 cents, I think IE 8 should tie in more with Kumo, or in the current case, Live.com, having the option to having the search service as it’s homepage and their search being the default search engine.

New Blade Servers…. from Cisco?

I’m not a big hardware guy, we recently switched to three new Dell PCs in one office, all to connect via Terminal Services to our Dell Servers. With the lingering login, error messages and printer problems, the news about Cisco Systems entering the server market caught my eye.

Cisco Systems, Inc. revealed that in the past two years have been developing and designing servers in secrecy. The Wall Street Journal published today that Cisco will start publicly building its own “blade” servers, putting Cisco head on with it’s own partner, HP co. The effort is in conjunction with Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS), a platform design for next generation datacenters. In the simplest terms, the servers were the missing piece necessary for Cisco to unite networks, data storage and virtualization. Already with a large market share in Cisco routers and switches, dominating the majority of the hardware components needed for UCS, Cisco on Monday partnered with software giants, Microsoft, VMware and BMC Software to name a few. Cisco will hold a BladeSystems summit in Las Vegas in April focusing on data center technologies.

Gnawing Back

I revived an old blog post that wasn’t time sensitive, and after a hiatus, I’m gnawing my way back into technology. I simply write about tech news that inspire me. I might do this daily, weekly, I don’t know. I had a good run of post before, then I fell off the technology world.

I traveled a lot this week, back and forth from Roswell, NM…. yes Roswell.

View Larger Map

So I was saying, I heard about the new iPod Shuffle. I didn’t like the new generation shuffle. The controls are on the headphone. Meaning, proprietary headphones, more money for Apple, and you can’t use your own headphones until some third party hardware company creates an adapter so you may comfortably use your favorite ear candy. Of course, the price is up a little, to $79. With it comes 40 gigs of space, and the ability to import playlist unlike the old shuffle I have. It’s still available in a variety of colors.

So I already mentioned I have a 1st generation shuffle, and I once had a 1st generation iPod, but I switched to Zune. It’s not too different from the iTouch, however, I hate the software companion. Which brings me to an iTunes hack I came across. I give iTunes two thumbs up vs. Zune software and lame “Marketplace”. . There’s scripting involved, which I can’t wait to dig into, but for now, that’s all I got. Like I said, I been traveling a lot, I yet to tried this out.