While I’m away, you can catch up on what I’ve been doing lately, with a 20% discount on the new, significantly expanded edition of Windows 8 Head Start, which covers the Consumer Preview release. The book is available in DRM-free PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats, which will work on any Kindle, Nook, iPad, or PC.

You can buy the new edition directly. The normal price is $9.95, but while I’m away you can use this code to get a 20% discount: BottNet20. (It’s OK—this BottNet is perfectly safe to join.)

That purchase gives you all three formats in a convenient single download, with EPUB and MOBI files optimized for different devices and a PDF format that is ideal for reading on a PC or Mac.

Microsoft will have one final beta—a Release Preview—in early June, and I’ll have a free update shortly thereafter to help you make sense of the changes. That update will be available exclusively to buyers of this book.

Questions or comments? Leave them here, but don’t expect an answer for at least a week. See you then!

http://learn.gotoassist.com/042412-NA-G2A-IT-WBRARC-SM

(A brief sign-up is required in exchange for free access to my presentation, which is about 45 minutes long including Q&A.)

If you have any questions or comments I didn’t answer here, please feel free to leave them in the comments below.

A big thanks to GoToAssist for their sponsorship.

It has the germ of a good idea. I check in occasionally because the results are occasionally interesting and sometimes outright hilarious. In the latter category: Klout says, and many of my friends agree, that I am an expert on Typos.

So today, when I signed in after receiving a weekly summary email from Klout, I got a pop-up window asking me to connect with my Facebook credentials. Fair enough—if it’s going to assign me a score based on my Facebook activity, it needs to see what I’ve been doing, right?

But this is what I got instead:

Yes, Klout had gone through my Facebook address book, found 50 names that didn’t appear to already have Klout accounts, and offered to send a “Klout request” on my behalf. I clicked Cancel.

It offered to do the same thing yesterday, and I clicked Cancel then too.

At least they asked, and to their credit it was clear exactly what they wanted to do.

I hate this crap. I am annoyed when one of my Facebook friends spams me with requests like this. I would be horribly embarrassed if something like ever went out under my name.

So, Klout, please tell me you understand that this is really stupid behavior and you won’t do it again.

Until you do, your Klout score has dropped to 0 for me.

PS: Yes, I know about Klouchebag.com.

During the course of that conversation, several of us who are in the business of blogging started an animated conversation about how we create and publish blog posts.

So my question to you is this: What tool (or tools) did I use to create this blog post? Can you tell from what you see on this page?

Here’s the long version:

Flashback malware exposes big gaps in Apple security response

Apple’s been astonishingly successful with its Mac hardware in recent years. The dark side of that success is the attention they’ve begun to attract from online criminals.

Apple and its customers got a hint of what was in store with last year’s Mac Defender outbreak. This year, a much larger and more disturbing outbreak has infected more than 600,000 Macs with a piece of malware called Flashback.The entire Flashback episode has in fact exposed Apple’s security weak spots.

A lot of what Apple is learning about security today will show up in future editions of OS X and iOS, as the company presumably gets smarter about writing code. But what about the 60 or 70 million current Mac owners?

They have a right to expect much more of a security response from Apple than they’re getting now. As an Apple customer myself, I believe Apple deserves four key criticisms of its current approach to security.

Pretty tough dilemma for Apple, actually. In order to deal with current security threats, they have to communicate about them with customers. But a key piece of the Mac image is that this just doesn’t happen to them.

So far, protecting the Apple brand has won out over protecting Apple’s customers.

It’s available in DRM-free PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats, which will work on any Kindle, Nook, iPad, or PC.

If you bought the previous edition, this is a free update. Go to FTDXBooksOnline.com, log in to your account, click your order history, click the order number for your previously registered purchase, and download the new edition. (You’ll find instructions for adding it to your device here.)

You can buy the new edition directly from us for $9.95:

That purchase gives you all formats in a convenient single download, with multiple EPUB and MOBI files optimized for different devices.

If you own a Kindle device, you can get the Kindle edition from Amazon.com:

The Amazon download is also DRM-free, and you can download it directly from Amazon onto any Kindle device you own, with no restrictions. Register your purchase at our website to download the other formats.

The new edition is now available on the Nook store as well. Look for it on Apple’s iBookstore very, very soon. I’ll update this post when it’s ready.

Thanks for your support.

Mac users have only the rare virus to contend with, while Windows users must worry about hundreds of thousands of potential attacks.

Me, earlier this week:

How many distinct strains of malware are in circulation today? If you said hundreds of thousands or millions, you’re way off.

Guess which one of us actually has facts to back up our statement?

It seems to be a chronic problem at that establishment, where facts are in perilously short supply.

CAPTCHA is short for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart. The term was coined in 2000 at Carnegie Mellon University,where these little challenges you face when you try to do something on a web site were born.

The idea is to build a test that proves you’re a human, not a machine, by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot.

That’s essential, in a world where bots (no relation) are trying to take over everything on the Internet that involves money.

The trouble is, captchas are frequently too hard for mere mortals, with text so distorted that even the most human of humans can’t pass.

Here, for example, is a Ticketmaster captcha that I saw just seconds ago:

I can kinda sorta make that out, but it’s not easy. And that’s one of the easier captchas I’ve seen lately.

It’s gotten to the point where I frequently have to refresh the captcha three or four times before I get to one that I can actually read.

Which is why I was so glad to see this program from Microsoft Research:

ASIRRA

Asirra is a human interactive proof that asks users to identify photos of cats and dogs. It’s powered by over three million photos from our unique partnership with Petfinder.com.

Asirra (Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access) … works by asking users to identify photographs of cats and dogs. This task is difficult for computers, but our user studies have shown that people can accomplish it quickly and accurately. Many even think it’s fun!

Here’s what a typical test looks like:

I had no trouble with this test, in stark comparison to text captchas.

Which do you prefer?

If you’re a search geek, you’ll be impressed at the level of attention that goes into this stuff. And the codenames are interesting and diverse: “Blackboard,” “Cosmos Newsy,” “IceMan5,” and “Maestro, Maitre,” for example.

But this entry stopped me cold.

More relevant image search results. [launch codename "Lice"] This change tunes signals we use related to landing page quality for images. This makes it more likely that you’ll find highly relevant images, even if those images are on pages that are lower quality.

Yeah, the codename for this project was Lice. Ewwww. Was the team working on this feature being punished?

As I note over at ZDNet, this is the 21st such update in the last 22 months, and the third in the last six weeks.

For most of us, being completely Flash-free isn’t an option, and ignoring those update prompts can be hazardous to your personal security.

Fortunately, help is at hand.

What makes this week’s release different is that it finally includes an automatic updater, so you no longer have to worry about manually updating this ubiquitous utility.

The new feature is included in version 11.2.202.228. Here’s what you see in the Flash settings Control Panel app after installing the latest update.

To check which version of Flash Player is installed on your PC, visit this page:

About Adobe Flash Player

If you don’t have the most recent version, download it here:

Flash Player Download Center

But watch out for extras that Adobe might try to install along with Flash Player. The manual installer often includes browser toolbars, virus scanners, and other potentially unwanted software. And these days Adobe is selling ad space for a “system optimizer” that will find nonexistent “critical problems” on your PC and try to scare you into paying to “fix” the errors.

I’ve got the ugly details here:

Adobe’s latest critical security update pushes scareware

One way to avoid the entire sordid mess is to use the free Flash installer at Ninite:

https://ninite.com/flash-flashie/

Adobe gets enough bad press for the security flaws and performance problems associated with Flash. The fact that they pull stunts like this suggests they just don’t care about their reputation.

Pottermore, the store that will be responsible for selling the new titles, is taking some genuinely innovative approaches, according to this report in Futurebook. This is my favorite part:

[T]he e-books will be DRM free: DRM will only be applied once they are pushed through to a Kindle, or Nook device, or loaned to library users via the OverDrive system – but customers will also be able to download a basic DRM-free ePub version.  Readers will be able to securely "push" the digital books to up to eight devices concurrently. That’s pretty flexible and shows that the Pottermore folk want to digital reading experience to be as seamless as the print example.

[…]

[Pottermore CEO Charlie Redmayne said]: "Harry Potter books are already pirated extensively: my view is that the one thing we [should] learn from the music industry, is that one of the best ways of fighting back against piracy is making content available to consumers at a platform they want to purchase it on, and at a price they are willing to pay, and if you do that most people will instinctively want to buy it."

The company also has done “groundbreaking deals” with Sony, Google, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Amazon’s official announcement has details:

Customers will find it easy to search and find books in the Harry Potter series in the Kindle Store. They can visit the detail pages for the books and will be directed to the Pottermore Shop where they will have the option to purchase the titles and seamlessly push them to their Kindle Library, and to every Kindle device and Kindle app a customer has.

The only company that refuses to budge is Apple. What a surprise.

It’s mostly a laundry list of setup work that has to be done before the actual project can begin. But this line jumped out at me:

Firefox on Metro will not simply be Firefox desktop copied into the Metro environment, we are embracing the framework instead of fighting it.

That’s a promising start.

Regulators worldwide have been busy in that time collecting data of their own.

From a report in the Wall Street Journal (paid subscribers only) this morning:

Regulators in the U.S. and European Union are investigating Google Inc. for bypassing the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple Inc.’s Safari Web browser, according to people familiar with the investigations. Google stopped the practice last month after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

[…]

In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission is examining whether Google’s actions violated last year’s legal settlement with the government in which Google pledged not to "misrepresent" its privacy practices to consumers, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The fine for violating the agreement is $16,000 per violation, per day. Because millions of people were affected, any fine could add up quickly, depending on how it is calculated. The FTC declined to comment.

A group of state attorneys general, including New York’s Eric Schneiderman and Connecticut’s George Jepsen, are also investigating Google’s circumvention of Safari’s privacy settings, according to people familiar with the investigation. State attorneys general can have the ability to levy fines of up to $5,000 per violation.

In Europe, the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, has added the Safari circumvention technique to its existing pan-European investigation into Google’s privacy-policy changes, according to a person close to the investigation.

There are hundreds of millions of users of mobile Safari, which is the default browser on every iPhone and iPad. At $16,000 per user per day for a practice that has gone on for several years, the fines could be gargantuan. Expect Google to settle quickly.

BrowserYouLovedToHate.com

In many ways Internet Explorer is superior to Chrome—in my experience, it depends on the relative value you place on privacy and speed, respectively. But getting the tech press or Silicon Valley crowd to take it seriously? Good luck with that.

So putting the word hate right out there is a good idea. Yes, yes, IE6 blah blah blah. A lot has happened in five years. If you don’t like Internet Explorer today, why not?

And the site positions Internet Explorer as the scrappy underdog: “Comebacks come in many shapes and sizes.”

Bonus: This is really clever and funny and not in a cringing way.

I was intrigued to see four updates available that were targeted specifically at the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The package didn’t include the Critical MS12-020 fix, which Microsoft says is available via Windows Update for anyone still running the Windows 8 Developer Preview. That suggests that the vulnerability is already fixed in the Consumer Preview code.

So what’s there?

2680330 An update to improve the performance tracking data for the Windows Store in Windows 8 Consumer Preview

This article introduces an update that improves the accuracy of the performance tracking data that is collected for the Windows Store on a computer that is running Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The performance tracking data helps us analyze and address potential performance issues. The tracking data is more accurate with this update. However, this issue does not affect the normal function of the Windows Store.

2683474 You cannot start an application from the tile in Windows 8 Consumer Preview

You cannot start an application from the tile on a computer that is running Windows 8 Consumer Preview. This problem may occur when the following conditions are true:

• This application was previously started.
• This application then became suspended.
• The Windows shell crashed and restarted when the application became suspended.

2680826 Some apps may stop working several days after installation in Windows 8 Consumer Preview

If you install a new app from Windows Store on a computer that is running Windows 8 Consumer Preview, the app may terminate unexpectedly several days later.

2683430 Application Compatibility release for Windows 8 Consumer Preview

A Windows Application Compatibility Update is available that improves the compatibility experience in Microsoft Windows Consumer Preview. Microsoft regularly releases application compatibility updates for Windows operating systems.

When you install Windows 8 Consumer Preview and then install a ZTE Mobile Broadband device from VIVO and TeliaSonera, some of your applications may not start.

It’s encouraging to see bug fixes like this rolled out so quickly.