The first problem is an XSS vulnerability in Press This discovered by Benjamin Flesch. The second problem, discovered by Dawid Golunski, is an issue with sanitizing uploaded file names that can be exploited in certain Apache configurations. Thanks to Benjamin and Dawid for finding and reporting these.

The upgrade is as usual available through various means with the two most popular ones being through an automatic update in the Wordpress admin interface and the second trough a download from the official Wordpress website. The first is faster and more comfortable while the second offers more control to the user especially if something goes wrong.

This Wordpress update does not require an update of the Wordpress database. It is however recommended to perform a backup of both the Wordpress files on the web server and the MySQL database to be prepared if the update should fail for any reason.

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For Linux there are plenty of possible RSS feed readers. One of my favorite readers is Liferea. Liferea is a feed aggregator for Gtk/GNOME that is fast, stable, works with most feeds, and takes up very few precious CPU cycles. And Liferea offers numerous features other, simpler, RSS feed readers do not have. In this article you will be introduced to this outstanding aggregator tool for the Linux desktop.

Features

Liferea offers the following features:

• Easy subscription addition/management.
• Bookmark using sites like Zurpy.
• Fast.
• Easy to use email-like thread pane.
• Import/Export of feeds.
• Script manager.
• Subscribe to your Google mail feed.
• and much more!

Installation

Liferea is very simple to install on any modern Linux distribution. In Ubuntu 9.10 you can open up the Software Center, do a search for “liferea” (no quotes), and install. The same steps can be followed with Synaptic. If you are using a Fedora-like distribution you can open up a terminal and issue the command (as the root user):

yum install liferea

Once installed you will find the Liferea menu entry in your Internet sub-menu of the Applications menu.

Using Liferea

Figure 1

When you first fire up Liferea (see Figure 1) you will notice a number of already configured feeds for your enjoyment. Reading an entry from one of the pre-configured feeds is simple:

1. Click on the feed from the right pane.
2. Click on a story in the upper right pane.
3. Read the story in the lower right pane.

If, within the story, there is a link or comments you want to read you only need click on the Comments link or the url link within the article. The nice thing about Liferea is that you can read the entire story from within the application, so no other application is necessary. You are not just given a snippet of the article to preview.

Adding a new feed source

Of course you will most likely want add your own feed sources. Liferea has made this simple as well. Follow these steps:

Figure 2

1. Click the “New Subscriptions” button.
2. Enter the address of the source in the resulting new window (see Figure 2).
3. Click OK

That’s it. Now you will have noticed the Advanced button in the New Subscription window. You will want to go to the advanced configuration options if you need to:

• Change the source type from URL to either Command or Local file.
• Use a proxy.
• Use a conversion filter.

Other than that, just entering the source address is all you need.

Google

As I mentioned earlier, you can also subscribe to your Google mail. To do this follow these steps:

1. Click the New Subscription button.
2. Enter https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom as the source.
3. Click OK.

When prompted enter your Google username/password. Once authenticated Liferea will download your Gmail as a feed.

If you want to add your Google Reader feeds you can do this as well. Follow these steps:

1. Right click an empty spot in the left pane and select New.
2. From the resulting menu select “New Source”.
3. From the Source Selection window choose Google Reader.
4. Click OK.
5. When prompted enter your Google account username and password.
6. Click OK.

The Google feed will automatically update for you, but might take a bit of time to update depending upon how many feeds you are subscribed to with Google Reader.

Final thoughts

Liferea is one of the best RSS solutions available for the Linux desktop. Not only is it easy to use, it’s flexible enough to satisfy even the more critical users.

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The program will display the stopwatch window after startup. First start might be a bit confusing as the program starts to count right away. The F5 key on the keyboard will stop the count. Another press on the same button will start a new countdown while F6 will continue where the last count was stopped.

That’s actually the whole stopwatch program. The only settings that are available can be used to switch the language from English to German, to remove the milliseconds and to prevent the stopwatch program from automatically starting the count after program startup.

Only Stop Watch is ideal for users who need a lightweight tiny and free stopwatch program. The software program uses less than 1 Megabyte of computer memory while running actively on the computer desktop.

Only Stop Watch can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It is compatible with most versions of the Windows operating system.

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It improves on three major points and one of them is better stability for third-party plug-ins. Good to see Apple doing that.

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ZFlick is just one of those applications. It has been designed for Adobe Air and can be executed from the local computer system after startup. The interface displays just a search form at the beginning which can be used to initiate a search for photos at Flickr.

The application will then display 50 thumbnails of photos that are related to the search term entered by the user with the option to browse additional pages with the controls on top. The exact number of matches and pages is displayed next to the controls to give the user an overview of the photos that have been found.

A click on a thumbnail will load a larger view of the photo in the application. It is from here possible to open the photo on Flickr directly or drag and drop it to download it to the local computer system. A left-right click will return to the thumbnail view again.

The photos that can be downloaded are not of the largest size which is really the only criticism that users could have. An option to change the default photo size that gets downloaded would be appreciated.

ZFlick requires Adobe Air which makes it a compatible with different operating systems including Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

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Apple Adds App Approval Status Tracker

Apple now allows app developers the peace of mind of at least knowing what stage of the approval process their app is in. A new feature added by Apple gives the status of apps as they go through the approval process.

You and I might not think much of it but this translates to a bit more clarity for the developers. They have always complained about how tough it is to communicate to the iPhone app reviewers. So instead of leaving them in the dark, this tracking feature tells them how tantalizingly close they are to approval. Hopefully, Apple is feeling the pressure to streamline and organize the process now that the app count has reached 100,000. As more developers race to get a piece of the action, Apple will be forced to make the process easier on them to and that means having to handle less complaints and queries and clarifications. [read]

Punch Him In The Face With Your iPhone

We all have that annoying friend who we would love to haul over and roundly beat up. But you obviously cannot do that in real life without falling out with your friend and/or getting thoroughly beaten up yourself in the process. The answer is in a new stress/anger/frustration management iPhone app called FaceFighter.

The app lets you kick, punch and block your opponent, all the while seeing bruises and bandages appear on his face. You can also knock out his teeth. To get started, you have to take a picture or choose one from your camera roll. Then you follow the app’s instructions to line up the face with the cut out, zoom in, zoom out and all that. Then you are ready to knock the living day lights out of that guy, virtually of course.

This is not much of a game although it is not as simplistic as that app that lets you shoot things that your camera is seeing. Still, if you do not want to spend $0.99 for the paid version, you can download Face Fighter Lite, which is free. [read]

Universal Studios Can Has iPhone App Too

Universal Studios Home Entertainment is the latest big name to have released its own iPhone app. This is not a stand-alone app that lets you borrow their titles online but it will enhance your Blu-ray movie viewing experience.

The latest group of Blu-ray releases from the company – American Pie Presents, 9, Inglorious Basterds, etc. are going to come with two BLU apps. These BLU apps can be used by iPhone and iPod touch users in conjunction with certain Blu-ray players.

The pocket BLU app allows you to remotely interact with your Blu-ray player through a sleek iPhone interface. It features advanced remote control features, a pop-up keyboard and more. Social BLU allows you interact with Facebook and Twitter if your Blu-ray player is connected to the Internet.

Premiere League On iPhone Via Sky TV

You can now watch the Premier League and more on your iPhone through the newly launched Sky TV app for the iPhone. For £6 per month, users will be able to access live TV channels that are part of the Sky Sports bundle including Sky News, Sky Sports channels and ESPN channels.

The app currently works only over WiFi and not 3G and that is because O2 forbids its customers from using any such app in its T&C. That’s because the carrier has their own similar services to protect. Existing Sky subscribers will have to pay separately for this service and new customers will have to apply for a Sky customer ID. [read]

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Windows 7 users who want to remove, edit or add entries to the Windows 7 boot menu have two basic options. The first is available in form of the Msconfig utility that ships with every version of Windows 7. Msconfig might help but it can happen that it is not displaying the other operating systems as was the case with our Windows 7 Pro test system which we upgraded from Windows XP Pro.

The second and more reliable option is Easy BCD, a boot menu editor for Windows 7.

The software program comes with the means to remove, edit and add operating systems in the Windows 7 boot menu. It is for instance easy to remove an existing entry by opening the Add/Remove Entries menu in the program, selecting the operating system that should be removed and clicking on the Delete button.

The application does provide access to extensive settings ranging from configuring the bootloader timeout to advanced options like configuring DEP/NoExecute settings, debugging options or limitations to the cpus and physical memory. The boot menu manager offers a backup option so that the previous settings can be recovered in case of an emergency.

Easy BCD is exactly what the name implies, easy to use. It can be downloaded at the developer’s website where it is available for Windows Vista and Windows 7.

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UDPixel is such a software. The free software program can not only aid the user in locating stuck pixels but does come with the means to fix dead or stuck pixels as well. There is no guarantee for success but it cannot hurt either to give this program a try.

UDPixel, which is short for undead pixel, comes with two main options. The first is to display the computer screen in one solid color. Available are standard colors like red, white, black and blue with the option to pick custom colors from the Windows color palette.

The second option will try to fix dead or stuck pixels by rapidly changing the color of the stuck pixel or stuck pixels for some time. The user can configure the number of flash windows (one for each stuck pixel), the size of the window and the flash interval (should be set to the monitor’s refresh rate). The selected number of flash windows (small pixels actually) will appear on the screen after pressing Start. These now have to be moved to the right location (that is the location of the stuck pixel) with the mouse.

The developer suggests to keep the program running for several hours. The stuck pixels might have been fixed after that time which can be verified again with the first option of the program.

UDPixels is available as a portable version and installer at the developer’s website. It is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems including Windows 7. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2 to be installed on the computer system.

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Google now has implemented an option to lock Safe Search and it sounds good on paper. A Google account owner can lock Safe Search so that the filter cannot be modified by future users. Even better is the fact the Google will display colored balls on every search result page which are a visual indicator that Safe Search is still on and locked (good for parents for example to verify that in a glance without giving their children the impression they are snooping on them).

The feature itself is limited however. Google locks Safe Search by placing a cookie on the computer system. This means the lock is only valid for that one operating system and web browser. A user with access to another web browser could bypass the filtering. As could a user with the ability to delete cookies could also bypass the filtering although this would be noticed by the user who configured it in first place.

A simple switch to another web browser will also do the trick. It is a nice effort on the other hand and there is always a loophole to avoid filtering. And if everything fails kids can still visit their friend’s house where the parents might not be as strict.

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Ding! First Round Of UK iPhone Battle

As you might know, Orange UK has recently started selling the iPhone and in response to this new competition Vodafone and O2 have gone in to defense mode. To keep more customers on its side, Vodafone sent out an email to all those who had registered with the carrier prior to the iPhone release, in which they claim that their’s is the network that is the fastest for the iPhone.

In a slightly surprising move, O2 has begun offering an unlocking service for the iPhones. No, they are not going to hack any iPhone you bring in but they will unlock their own iPhones at the end of a contract. They are going to charge a £15 fee for it and they are also warning that the process might take some time, as long as up to 14 days. Even though they are charging for it, it would seem like they are trying to ring up some customer good will by doing this. Once they have unlocked the iPhones, the customer can insert any SIM card in to their iPhone and start using it legitimately.

O2 has also asserted that they have seen tremendous growth in their data network. According to the company — data usage on their network has grown 20 times in the last 12 months, doubling every 4 months. They are also offering free home broadband to people who buy into the tethering option to use their iPhone as a wireless modem.

Analysts have also been quoted saying that the iPhone is the best way to make customers pay more, even in this recessive market. But Vodafone is surely on the right track because what iPhone users mainly want is network strength. They are paying an awful lot to get the connectivity and hence they expect a lot in return. [read]

Orange has only just started selling the phone, so it is too early to say anything about them. But as far as the response goes, it has been extremely positive. The company has tweeted saying that they have recorded more than 30,000 iPhones on the very first day. For a phone that has been launched months back, this is really good indeed. The Droid has sold 100,000 units through the first week and it is a newly launched phone that has gotten positive reviews. Orange’s free film-themed app has also received a lot of success, hitting the number on spot in the entertainment category and the number two spot on the free apps category.

Hilton iPhone Apps To Give You More Choices

Guests of the Hilton hotel might soon be able to check in remotely and have food waiting for them when they arrive through multiple apps being launched by Hilton. I say might because once they reveal the app, it will still have to go through the App Store’s approval process. These apps are going to give you many more options and will “help you manage your stay.” [read]

Taptu Goes Real Time

Taptu is already well loved for their friendly mobile-searching app and now they are about to kick things up a notch. They have partnered with the real time search engine OneRiot to bring you search results as they are unfolding across the web. [read]

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First iPhone Worm Rickrolls Jailbroken iPhones

This has been the main worry about everything Mac, They do not have viruses now, true but as they start to get more popular they will attract the attention of malware creators. So in that vein of paranoia, we have news of the first ever worm for the iPhone.

You can cut out the screaming and the deep breathing exercises because it is a) completely harmless and b) only effective on jailbroken iPhones. It does things like change the wallpaper and rickrolling users, so it is not exactly destroying your iPhone yet. A worm on a jailbroken phone is a worm on a device that has already been tampered with. So you can wait for the first ever worm on legit iPhones before you hit the panic button. [read]

Complete Car Control Via iPhone

Okay, this is certifiably crazy. In fact, we should probably start a ‘gHacks Certifiably Nuts’ award just for these fellas. But I must admit that what they are is doing is pretty cool. We know that the iPhone can already be used to start your car remotely but fully driving with the iPhone kinda takes the cake.

So what you do is you take some electronic control circuits, hook them up to control your steering, acceleration and brakes and then control them wirelessly. If you want a less vague and more accurate description, check out the videos. It is quite nicely done and I especially love the fact that they are using the accelerometer to control the steering.

The result is pretty 007-ish — that you can drive your car through your iPhone. Look M(a), no hands! [read]

HD Radio Comes To The iPhone Via Gigaware

Now that the Zune HD is out, your least favorite co-worker who loves to make fun of your liking for Apple has probably been going on and on about how his Zune HD does HD radio and your iPod Touch does not. Setting aside the all important the question of how many good HD radio stations are there near you, you can now get back at him saying “there’s an app for that!”

But that would be kinda half true because even though iBiquity has made an app that plays HD radio on your iPhone, you still have to get an additional hardware for accomplishing the feat. The device is called Gigaware Navigation Controller and is essentially an HD tuner with iPhone integration. It allows you to seek and auto tune as well. Plus there is Facebook tagging and iTunes tagging.

Works with the latest iPhone and the iPod Touch. Available on RadioShack. [read]

Sparkz Projector For Your iPhone

Do you want to spend a lot of money on a pico projector that will work with your iPhone/ iPod Touch/iPod Video? If you do, you can now have the Sparkz dock that lets you connect any of those devices and more to it so that you can project your favorites onto a nearby screen. It will support a/v and VGA inputs too.

Other than this extended support for inputs, it has a resolution of 640×480, stereo speakers and a 60-inch viewing area. It charges your docked device while it is projecting and it comes with its own tripod. The price so much goodness? A mere $495. Hey, I did say a lot of money. [read]

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Bing Videos for one got a new interface making use of a sidebar navigation for a better and faster browsing experience. Other improvements to the interface include the option to dim the surroundings when a video is played to be able to better focus on the video. New content providers have been and will be added to Bing Videos making the service a very comprehensive source for videos and tv shows from all over the web.

Most of the US tv shows can only by viewed by US users on the other hand which puts a dent to the service for users from outside the US. Read the announcement here for additional information.

Today was also the beginning of the next chapter of Bing Search with improvements to travel, weather and shopping options. One of the interesting options is a search for events in US cities. The search term city events will lead to a standard Bing search results page with the difference that the first result will list events in that city and link to a bigger event listing in case that short listing is not enough.

Other additions include “better results for health conditions, medications, and even hospitals”, search sharing with friends at Facebook and Twitter or better help to plan and book travel. Most of these additions seem to be targeted at US visitors at the moment with the likelihood that they will eventually become available for visitors from other countries as well.

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But is GNOME office and alternative that you should overlook? More than likely most readers didn’t even know there was a GNOME office. And of those that have heard rumors of this suite, many probably didn’t even know it was ready for installation. It is. But the big question…is it worth try? In this article I will highlight the tools that make up GNOME Office and help you to decide if this suite is worth your time.

Installation

The first thing I should bring up is the installation. Previous incarnations of GNOME Office required the user to install the pieces separately. That has changed and now you can open up the GNOME Software Center and follow these steps:

1. Search for ‘gnome office”.
2. Select GNOME Office.
3. Click the right-pointing arrow.
4. Click the Install button.
5. Enter your password.
6. Sit back and watch the installation happen.

What GNOME office installs is the following (some may already be installed):

• Abiword: Word processor
• Gnumeric: Spreadsheet
• Evolution: Email, contacts, calendar
• Planner: Project manager
• Inkscape: Vector graphics
• XSane: Scanning

There are other tools that are supposed to be included with GNOME Office, but are not installed:

• Gnucash: Finances.
• gLables: Label designer
• Glom: Database designer.

Why the above tools are listed on the GNOME Office official site and not installed I have no clue.  Of course those are simple enough to install, just by going to the Software Center and going through the same steps above.

Value of the applications

Instead of taking each piece apart and showing you how they work, I want to spend a little time on whether or not each application is a worthy usurper of your current tool. And since I do not know the tool you are using, the usurper is going to have to be pretty good.

Abiword: I have always wanted to like Abiword. And, in some instances I do. But the problem is that Abiword really stinks at document exchange. Abiword’s idea of formatting doesn’t always gel with another Office Suite’s idea. But I will say that Abiword has come a long, long way. And if you are just needing a simple word processor that is lightweight and fast, Abiword is a great alternative. Does it match the skills of OpenOffice? Not so much.

Gnumeric: Another tool that I have always wanted to like, but have been prevented from doing so because of its poor ability to work with other tools. Any spreadsheet that uses complex formulas or formatting will most likely wind up a bit of a mess in Gnumeric. But for basic spreadsheet use, Gnumeric will get the job done.

Evolution: If you are looking for a groupware suite to take the place of MS Outlook, this is where you need to go. Evolution is, without question, the best groupware suite available for Linux. It’s power, easy to use, reliable, and includes everything you need for a groupware suite. This is, by far, the best tool of the GNOME Office suite.

Planner: Because most office suites do not generally include a project management tool, planner is a surprising addition to the suite. Not only does planner bring a much needed tool to the office suite, it does so with aplomb.

Inkscape: There is only one office suite that includes a vector graphics application – OpenOffice. Inkscape brings to GNOME Office one tool that the competition can not touch. Inkscape is the best vector graphics tool for the Linux operating system. There is, however, a rather steep learning curve that comes with using Inkscape. So don’t expect to just jump into this tool without any idea of what you are doing.

XSane: You can read my article on Xscane (”Scanning in Linux with iScan and XSane.”) I think most readers will agree that XSane is an overly complex tool for a simple task. However, XSane can be made simple by simply closing all of the unnecessary windows.

The verdict

Although GNOME Office makes a valiant attempt at replacing your current office suite, it fails in too many categories to actually usurp the big dogs in this space. Now, if are in a situation where you are not having to trade documents with others and you do not need the power features of tools like Excel or Calc, and you don’t need a tool for presentations then GNOME Office might be your go-to suite of tools. Otherwise, stick with OpenOffice or MS Office.

What do you think? Is GNOME Office a worthy entry in the office suite category?

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The performance of Bing Maps was improved in several ways. Microsoft is now serving maps from seven different locations in the world making it faster for the user to access the information requested. The default Bing Maps homepage has seen a size reduction as well from nearly 700 Kilobytes to less than 500 Kilobytes which should be noticeably by and beneficial to low bandwidth connections.

The full list of changes includes:

• Draggable Routes – Yes! This is a great (and much requested) feature added to Bing Maps allowing you to generate a route, then in the case that you need to change the route, you can simply grab any part of it and drag it to where you want the route to actually go. To use draggable routes, click the directions link in the welcome pane or the car icon near the bottom of the welcome pane. Enter a start and end, generate a route, then grab anywhere on the route to move the route line. The route will regenerate for you.
• Zoom Bar – No longer just a zoom in and zoom out button, the zoom bar allows you to jump to specific zoom levels within predefined settings.
• Command Parsing – Want driving directions? Enter “Bellevue, WA to Space Needle” in the Bing Maps search box. Want traffic info? Enter “Seattle Traffic” in the Bing Maps search box.
• Embed a Map – You can now take a map view right from Bing Maps and embed it into your site. To do this, you’ll want to click the Share button once your map is where you want it to be. You can copy the embed code from there; or, you can click the Customize View link which will take you to the embeddable map customizer (EMC). The EMC allows you to set a map to the map height and width (small, medium, large or custom); the map type (static or draggable); the map styles (road, aerial, aerial w/ labels); and, add links to Bing Maps for Viewing a Larger Map or Getting Directions. Once you’ve set everything the way you want it, click Generate Code and boom! there’s your code. You copy it, then paste it into your web page and you’ll have the map you wanted.
• Dynamic Compute – We’ve moved the processing power closer to the user. Using Microsoft’s ECN, we now have Bing Maps running in data centers in 7 locations around the world. This means wherever you are around the world, you will access Bing Maps from the closest geographic node to where you are physically located.
• New Navigation – We also added a subset of features to a button bar along the bottom of the welcome pane. Each button loads features on Bing Maps. Welcome loads the welcome pane; the car loads the route planner; the star loads My Places, formerly called Collections; the envelop loads the ability to share the map with someone via email, copying a URI or embedding the map into a web page (more on that below); the printer icon is for printing; and, stoplight will load a traffic overlay with flow and incident information.
• World Wrap – no longer will your Bing Maps experience stop at the international date line. Keep going around, and around, and around…
• Diet Bing Maps – The default Bing Maps home page dropped from 678kb to 484kb. It zips through the pipes much faster now.

Bing Maps is a service over at Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

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This includes information about the cpu, computer memory, motherboard (including manufacturer, type, socket and chipset, graphics, hard drives, optical drives and audio.

A sidebar like menu contains links to sections that contain detailed reports about the selected hardware that has been listed in the summary.

These sections contain very detailed reports on the PC hardware. The computer memory section for example contains information about the type, size, channels, DRAM frequency, command rate, frequencies and dozens of additional parameters that go into extreme details.

The program provides excellent information for users who want to find out detailed information about connected and installed PC hardware. The beta version had problems identifying the Ati Radeon 4870 video card that was installed in the test PC system.

Speccy is available as a beta for most Microsoft operating systems including the latest Windows 7. It is available as a portable software and installer.

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Interested users can check out the list of changes in the release over at Bugzilla sorted by severity of the fix.

Firefox 3.6 beta 2 is available for download at the official Mozilla Firefox beta download page. It is available there for all supported operating systems and languages. Users who are already running an earlier version of Firefox 3.6 can also perform an update check in the Help menu to initiate the download and installation of the latest beta version directly from within the web browser.

The release notes are posted below:

What’s New in Firefox 3.6 Beta (revision 2)

Firefox 3.6 Beta is built on Mozilla’s Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering platform, which has been under development for several months and contains many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers and users. This version is also faster and more responsive than previous versions, and has been optimized to run on small device operating systems such as Windows CE and Maemo.

* More than 190 bug fixes from the last beta to improve performance, stability, security and features.
* This beta is available in more than 45 languages – get your local version.
* Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
* Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
* Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
* Support for the WOFF font format.
* Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
* Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

Have you been trying out Firefox 3.6 already? If so, what is your impression so far?

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The solution for these users is to buy extra storage space for both Gmail and Picasa as these web services share the extra storage.

Gmail users can visit the purchase storage page to take a look at the pricing for extra storage. Prices start at $5 per year for a 20 Gigabyte increase in storage space, 200 Gigabytes are available for $50 per year and the maximum currently is a whooping 16 Terabytes for $4096 per year.

Another solution that is more cost effective is to transfer old emails from the Gmail account to a desktop email client to create a backup of the emails and attachments and to be able to delete the transferred emails afterwards in Gmail. While that is not always practicable it could be a solution for users who do not want to buy extra storage space.

How much storage space are you currently using in Gmail or Picasa?

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Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office users are encouraged to update their computer systems as soon as possible to protect the PCs from possible exploits that could attack the systems successfully. The usual options to download the patches are provided including automatic updates, Windows updates, Microsoft update or manually by following the links posted in the different security bulletins.

• MS09-063 Vulnerability in Web Services on Devices API Could Allow Remote Code Execution (973565) – This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the Web Services on Devices Application Programming Interface (WSDAPI) on the Windows operating system. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an affected Windows system receives a specially crafted packet. Only attackers on the local subnet would be able to exploit this vulnerability.
• MS09-064 – Vulnerability in License Logging Server Could Allow Remote Code Execution (974783) – This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Windows 2000. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sent a specially crafted network message to a computer running the License Logging Server. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of the system. Firewall best practices and standard default firewall configurations can help protect networks from attacks that originate outside the enterprise perimeter.
• MS09-065 – Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel-Mode Drivers Could Allow Remote Code Execution (969947) – This security update resolves several privately reported vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel. The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user viewed content rendered in a specially crafted Embedded OpenType (EOT) font. In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker would have to host a Web site that contains specially crafted embedded fonts that are used to attempt to exploit this vulnerability. In addition, compromised Web sites and Web sites that accept or host user-provided content could contain specially crafted content that could exploit this vulnerability. An attacker would have no way to force users to visit a specially crafted Web site. Instead, an attacker would have to convince the user to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link in an e-mail message or Instant Messenger message that takes the user to the attacker’s site.
• MS09-066 – Vulnerability in Active Directory Could Allow Denial of Service (973309) – This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Active Directory directory service, Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS). The vulnerability could allow denial of service if stack space was exhausted during execution of certain types of LDAP or LDAPS requests. This vulnerability only affects domain controllers and systems configured to run ADAM or AD LDS.
• MS09-067 – Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution (972652) – This security update resolves several privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.
• MS09-068 – Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Word Could Allow Remote Code Execution (976307) – This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Word file. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Detailed information are available in the security bulletins linked above or at the security bulletin summary page here.

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It is still in beta and I haven’t gotten around to using it much yet (just noticed it a while ago!) But is this cool or what? Will retweet a few tweets and test it out.

Update, okay, did it. screen shot below. Nice eh?

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Bandwidth could be an issue but it is in fact not. Why? Because files do not necessarily have to be uploaded to the cloud if they are already known. And new files usually are known pretty quickly thanks to the millions of users that use Panda Cloud Antivirus. Privacy is ensured by scanning some file types locally including Word and Excel documents.

And version 1.0 introduces additional improvements over the beta versions and conventional antivirus software.

Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.0 introduces further improvement to its 100% cloud-based architecture protection model, which processes and blocks malware more efficiently than locally installed signature-based products, while minimizing the impact on PC performance. The 1.0 version boasts both improved bandwidth and performance impact over its already lightweight beta version. Traditional antivirus solutions consume approximately 15% of a PC’s resources (memory, disk space, etc.) while Cloud Antivirus 1.0 consumes a mere 3%.

Users who are interested in trying out Panda Cloud Antivirus can download it for free at the Cloud Antivirus website where it is available for most Microsoft Windows operating systems. Panda Cloud Antivirus was recently rated best free antivirus software at blocking known malware over at PC World.

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