Well I do!

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Bring me to the survey!

Now I needed to solve a little problem with my girlfriends computer. Her laptop was infected by the so called XP Antivirus 2008 malware/virus and it was a real pain in the ass to remove!

It also was a real pain to find a proper solution to remove the virus and hijacking software, almost every solution I found online seemed not to be working and after every reboot her antivirus software found new threats.

The Antivirus 2008 XP Virus works as follows;

• it replaces your desktop background with an image that your computer is infected
• it replaces your screensaver
• it disables the possibilities to change your background/screensaver etc.
• it gives you popups / warnings that your computer is infected and that you can buy the software to clean your computer
• you need to enter your creditcard information and credentials to continue, and of course, this is where you get scammed.
• Also, her browser was hijacked, it only affected IE/Chrome and not Mozilla Firefox, although a lot of webpages (hotmail f.e. ) were crippled.

I was able to remove the virus and all side effects using AVG Free and Spybot Search & Destroy.

Still the browser hijack remained! and in the background there were some processes running, the browser was still hijacked and search engine results were redirected to really ugly and non useful affiliate websites.

I tried everything from safeboot, manually removing strange files, while looking at network traffic using the commandline command ‘netstat -B’ to determine which programs were issuing internet requests.  Even SmitFraudFix, which was set to solve this problem, wasn’t able to fix it!

A better Google search led me to this Yahoo Answers thread where the same question was raised and it provided the ONLY workable solution using the Malware Bytes Anti-Malware software. This software package really solved the problem and I can recommend it to all of you being infected by this hijacking and malware software XP Antivirus 2008.

Recently. I started having troubles with my Apple iPod Nano 2nd generation, 8GB (black). I didn’t have a clue what happened at first. I took it out of sleep mode and I got this strange white screen.

I didn’t hear any sounds as well because I disabled all the clicksounds etc. I used to experience some hangups before with some older firmware versions so I dediced to give the ipod a hard reset, switching on and of the hold button and then pushing menu+select.

rebooting the ipod

a working LCD, showing the ipod menu

Remarkably, it rebooted and the menu was backup again. I was happy! Untill I decided to put it into sleep mode and put it back on again. WTF! Again a white screen. My iTunes was still able to see the device and I was able to copy files to and from it.
So I thought, OK, lets reinstall the firmware, backup all my mp3s and wish for glory. I was proven wrong. The device repeatedly gives me the so called ‘White Screen of Death‘. I found this term/description during my Google quest for solutions.


I decided to get a little deeper into the problem. A lot of people were saying that it was the LCD that was broken but that made no sense. The LCD was working perfectly! I even managed to put the iPod into software debug mode (ipod diagnostics). To get into debug/diagnostics mode; reboot the ipod (hold on/off, menu+select) and before the apple logo appears, press select and LEFT, your iPod should now start debug mode. The menu the tech savvy people use to determine the problems your iPod might have. All tests ran fine.

ipod diagnostics menu (debug mode)

iPod though, after rebooting, Still the white screen of death.

the infamous “White Screen of Death“

All sound is working, you just have to know your menu by heart or hard reset your device EVERY time it goes into sleep mode. Of course my 1yr warranty has expired, Apple is not admitting any problems and I’m stuck with this really expensive 8GB pendrive. Because I see no other use for the device than that.

The only thing I haven’t tried yet is to restore the ipod manually and unluckily, I think rockbox or those other opensource music solutions don’t fit on the nano 2nd generation, otherwise I would have tried that because I believe this is an Apple software problem causing the device to suddenly malfunction.  If you know otherwhise, please let me know! Or you encountered a similar problem, have a solution that worked for you, have any contacts in Apple that are willingly to send me a new one (the new 4th. generation will do guys!) or want to rant about the fast product cycle of Apple iPods and how much they basically suck at providing customer support in these cases, you are welcome to comment on my blog!

The full flickr set of images you can find here

First of all; Plugin Central. Install this plugin and from that point on you are able to install any plugin with using your FTP client. Works like a charm.
From there on I install many of the following, depending on the type of blog/website.

Akismet (default)
Blog Metrics
Breadcrumb Navigation XT
Comment Redirect
Crawl Rate Tracker
Enhanced WP-ContactForm
FeedBurner FeedSmith
FlickrRSS
Get Recent Comments
Google Analytics for WordPress
Google XML Sitemaps
HeadSpace2
Lightbox2
Lightbox gallery
Limit Posts
Lighter Menus
My Page Order
Redirection
Robots Meta
RSS Footer
Search Excerpt
Search Reloaded
Search Suggest
SEO friendly images
Simple Tags
Sociable
Subscribe to Comments
Theme Test Drive
Upcoming
What Would Seth Godin Do
WordPress Automatic Upgrade
WP-SphinnIt

descriptions will follow later;)

Firebug with Yslow
Greasemonkey (nofollow display, tracking code display, wordpress version display)
PicLens
PDF Download
View Source Chart
CSSViewer
Delicious
Live HTTPheaders
Link Diagnosis
Mahalo Share
Remember Mismatched domains (in case you have problem with server certificates and are tired of clicking the dialog windows. )
Seolinkanalysis
Session manager
SearchStatus
Customize Google
ColorZilla colorpicker

Toolbars:
Stumbleupon
Google Toolbar
Web Developer Toolbar addon (toolbar disabled, using context menu)

If you are in search of more tools, especially also those for SEO, you might want to check out this website where you can find some free tools.

Some more research in the .com/movies engine and the results are really thorough. Ofcourse, there are reviews available on the movies, which Google has taken from various news and/or trusted sources.

Great feature! wondering when it will be available in other countries as well. Have you seen these search results before? or any other newly added feature? Google might just be testing this feature for a while, because they add features all the time.

“Those with a high need for affiliation need harmonious relationships with other people and need to feel accepted by other people. They tend to conform to the norms of their work group. High nAff individuals prefer work that provides significant personal interaction. They enjoy being part of groups and when not anxious make excellent team members, though sometimes are distractible into social interaction. They can perform well in customer service and client interaction situations.”

Does this model apply to our current web 2.0 generation? What do you think?

If you are interested in reading the whole book (the achieving society), you can order it here.

just wanted to share…

This should be the year of mobile! , errr, wasn’t this the story from last year as well? Because mobile use of the web isn’t very popular, perhaps until now? Is this the killer application we were all waiting for?
Yahoo onePlace will make sure that a user’s web interests are finally available in onePlace (hence the name), including their mail, RSS, stock quotes, contacts, Flickr photos and other important stuff we deal with on the web . It dynamically updates all the necessary information in a single location, where it’s accessible via the mobile web. It’s fully personalized and contextual.

Yahoo! also announced that at the end of the 2nd quarter, European users can use Yahoo! Mobile Widgets to access localized information through Yahoo! partners, which include Eurosport Football, Myspace, Xing and Dopplr.

Yahoo!’s mobile arsenal currently includes:

• Yahoo! onePlace (just released!)
• Yahoo! oneConnect (their mobile IM tool aka communications aggregator for sms/mail/im, released at WMC 2008)
• Yahoo! Go 3.0 (their all-in-one mobile application)
• Yahoo! Mobile Widgets
• Yahoo! oneSearch (web and mobile search, also localized search in 19 countries!)
• Yahoo! Mobile Developer Platform
• Yahoo! Mobile Advertising

Yahoo! states that their services that are available for mobile include:
Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! Maps, Flickr, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Movies, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo! Address Book and Yahoo! Music. Just in case you are using all of them

If you are interested in some snapshots, click here. In the meanwhile, feel free to discuss, is this really going to be a killer app?