Archive for September, 2007

This is the reason I deactivated my Facebook account.

Social network Facebook will soon make the listings – the name and photo – of its 40 million active members available to anyone who searches the Internet on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. But in its pursuit of building a bigger audience, Facebook has set off privacy alarms among customers who don’t necessarily want their listings to be an open book.

Some Facebook users say they are perturbed because they joined the service so they could choose whom they communicate with – and not be exposed to the Internet at large.

When I signed up for Facebook, I only added people I knew personally, face to face, or had communicated with for a long time online. Period. That’s it. I had no desire for the information I entered at Facebook to be accessible to everyone on the Internet.

The way it stands now, unless you adjust your own privacy settings, your Facebook info will be accessible to non-Facebook members in early October. Why should we have to opt-out?

Shouldn’t they automatically opt everyone out of new features that impede on privacy, then allow users to opt-in if they so desire?

Yeah, me too.

Skype users beware!

Skype users are under attack from a new worm that spreads through the peer-to-peer Internet phone application’s chat feature.

The attack begins when a user receives an instant message containing a link from someone in their contact list or an unknown Skype user, said Villu Arak, a Skype spokesman based in Tallinn, Estonia.

There are several versions of the chat messages, which are “cleverly written” to fool users, Arak wrote on the Skype heartbeat blog. The link appears to contain a JPEG photo file, but if clicked causes the Windows run/save dialog box to appear, which asks whether the user wants to save or run a “.scr” file.

The file is malicious software that can then access a user’s PC via Skype’s API (application programming interface). The malicious file has been named W32/Ramex.A.

“Users whose computers are infected with this virus will send a chat message to other Skype users asking them to click on a web link that can infect” their computers, Arak wrote.

To avoid trouble, users should not download the file. At least two security vendors, F-Secure and Kaspersky Lab, have updated their software to detect the worm, Arak wrote.

Once again, the easiest defense is not opening items in the first place. When will people learn?

Wow, how exciting. Microsoft is going to make it easier for businesses to buy in bulk.

Microsoft continues to tweak its volume licensing programs to make it easier for business customers to purchase the company’s software in bulk.

This week, Microsoft said it was reducing the length of three of its volume-licensing agreements between 10 percent to 50 percent, changes that affect the Enterprise Agreement, Enterprise Subscription, Select License, Open Value, Open Value Subscription and Open License volume licensing agreements. Microsoft also has made it easier for customers to navigate license information and sign up online, the company said. The changes will be implemented in the course of its fiscal year 2008, which began July 1.

Something tells me their doing this for their benefit, not the customers who rely on volume licensing. Then again, if Microsoft was in it to make the customers happy, we never would have seen Windows ME, would we?

I downloaded the latest beta earlier this week, and installed it last night.

Eudora, a pioneering e-mail program named after author Eudora Welty, is rising from a technical grave as an open source program after owner Qualcomm Inc quit selling the product in May.

Eudora routinely got strong reviews from computer magazines and had a loyal user base, but commercially it was overshadowed by software that Microsoft Corp included with new personal computers, International Business Machine’s Lotus software and Web e-mail programs.

Qualcomm donated Eudora to the open-source community, which means that anybody is free to download and use it without paying for the product. Developers can also access the code, change it and share those changes.

On August 31 the Mozilla Foundation started distributing a test open-source version of Eudora, which was developed in the late 1980s as one of the first e-mail programs by a student at the University of Illinois.

I am so loving Eudora again (of course, it’s just Thunderbird with an Eudora skin but I am still loving it).

When I to take an extended break from programming, I love to look at the hobby shop. Whether it’s model railroads, telescopes, kites or science experiments, I can always find what I am looking for.

With my workload I am always willing to step away and completely immerse myself in my hobbies. Lately though, my problem has been stepping away. I get so carried away with my software I sometimes forget that I have been sitting here for 12 hours straight.

What a bunch of whiners. Everyone knows, you’re always going to shell out more money to be on the cutting edge of technology.

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs apologized and offered $100 credits Thursday to people who shelled out up to $599 for an iPhone this summer and were burned when the company chopped $200 from the expensive model’s price.

In a letter on the company’s Web site, Jobs acknowledged that Apple disappointed some of its customers by cutting the price of the iPhone’s 8-gigabyte model and said he has received hundreds of e-mails complaining about the price cut.

Jobs added that “the technology road is bumpy,” and there will always be people who pay top dollar for the latest electronics but get angry later when the price drops.

Steve Jobs went out of his way to appease those who were left bleeding by that cutting technology. Now, who is going to buy me an iPhone?

As you may have noticed over the past two months, I have been adding some sponsored posts here and there. The “static” ads in the sidebars just don’t generate enough revenue at this point, so I decided I needed to monetize the site in other ways, and sponsored posts have been the most fruitful way of doing so.

One of the best Blog Advertising and income generating sites is PayU2Blog. They pass out assignments on a weekly basis, and they have a lot of reviews where you get an item free to review.

My wife got a great set of blinds for my office window last month, which are totally awesome.

If you’re interested in making money on your blog, let me know and I will fill you in on which companies I recommend!

Last year, I worked up the nerve to turn off the water to the house and cut our water lines in the basement. I figured, it wasn’t rocket science, and if I needed any help I had the Internet at my disposal.

The house we moved into four years ago has a full sized unfinished basement and it was stubbed for a bathroom. With the kids’ classroom and playroom, as well as my wife’s sewing room being in the basement now, it only made sense that we run the plumbing for the bathroom down there.

We called around and every plumber we talked too wanted an outlandish fee to do the work, so, having done small plumbing jobs around our old house, I thought, “How hard can it be”? and we bought the materials we would need to bring the water down to the toilet and sink. That was a scary day. I got the work done, without the aid of the Internet, and we now have a toilet and sink in the basement, but the finer finishings have not been completed.

All we have left is purchasing the bathroom fixtures and the Taps. I told my wife she could pick whatever she wanted for that bathroom, and she’s been looking ever since. Who knew deciding on bathroom fixtures could be so difficult?

Taps4Less.com has a great assortment of bathroom taps and shower enclosures. My wife loves those super shower things with a thousand jets and all that jazz, but I may have to hire a plumber to put something like that in, if she decides she needs one of those.

Has anyone grabbed these yet? Me? I really don’t have an interest in any part of it, that’s why I ask.

Microsoft Corp introduced on Wednesday a suite of Windows Live online services bundled into a single download in its latest effort to compete with Google Inc’s growing array of applications delivered over the Web.

Microsoft released a test, or “beta,” version of a free online software package available in a single download that includes versions of e-mail, instant messaging, photo gallery, blogging software and a security program.

The suite of Web services — available at http://get.live.com/wl/all — will also automatically update with improvements or new versions of those applications.

If you have grabbed this new package, let me know what you think.