Archive for March, 2009

Fresh out the door, users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 are complaining of glitches one day after the IE8 final build was made available at noon Eastern time on Thursday. Dozens of posters are complaining about printing from Web sites, search functions, and disappearing images.

The browser, which was supposed to make navigating a Web site easier and faster by adding a new favorites bar, address bar, and tabs bar, is instead making the user experience not so easy.

And this surprises who? Anyone, who’s anyone, especially anyone who enjoys the wine of the month knows that this is just another typical Microsoft release.

Ack!

The Center for Disease Control has issued a medical alert about a highly contagious, potentially dangerous virus that is transmitted orally, by hand, and even electronically.
This virus is called Weekly Overload Recreational Killer (WORK).
If you receive WORK from your boss, any of your colleagues or anyone else via any means whatsoever – DO NOT TOUCH IT!!! This virus will wipe out your private life entirely. If you should come into contact with WORK you should immediately leave the premises.

Take two good friends to the nearest liquor store and purchase one or both of the antidotes – Work Isolating Neutralizer Extract (WINE) and Bothersome Employer Elimination Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system.

You should immediately forward this medical alert to five friends. If you do not have five friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.

Of course this is important information, so take a moment after your next microdermabrasion to make sure you are not afflicted.

Developers just got used to all the quirks of IE7 and now they have IE8 on their hands. Wonderful.

Microsoft publicly launched Internet Explorer 8 on Thursday, the latest version of its market-dominating Web browser.

The application, an integral part of Microsoft’s eagerly awaited Windows 7 operating system, could be downloaded from Microsoft’s Web site beginning at 9 a.m. Pacific time, free for people using licensed Microsoft operating systems.

IE8, as it is commonly referred to, has been in public beta testing for about a year, but Thursday’s launch marks its full public rollout.

If you didn’t know it already, the crew over at Download Squad is really good at pointing out some of the coolest (and most useful) applications.

Though Adobe Reader has come a long way in the past couple versions, there are other good options available for displaying PDF files. For Windows users, Perfect PDF Reader may be an enticing alternative.

My wife will love this one. The Adobe Reader locks up her system all the time.

Cut and Paste finally comes to the iPhone.

Apple Inc. is updating its software for iPhones so that users can cut, copy and paste text — a basic computing feature that was missing from the gadget that seems to do everything.

At an iPhone event for journalists Tuesday at Apple headquarters, the company also pledged to broaden the way that third-party software programmers can build and sell content for the device.

That’s not all they announced either. I’ll post more tomorrow or the next day.

After the last beta release, I have been hesitant to try any Firefox beta for a while.

Mozilla on Thursday released the third beta version of Firefox 3.1, aka Shiretoko, one of the frontrunners in the current race to improve Web browsers.

According to the Firefox 3.1b3 release notes, the new version includes better “Web worker” multitasking abilities, a faster Gecko rendering engine for showing Web pages, and upgrades to the TraceMonkey engine for faster, more stable execution of Web sites’ JavaScript programs. (Follow these links to download Firefox 3.1b3 for Windows and Mac OS X.)

I’ll wait for the full release, and until then, I will keep testing Safari 4, so I can compare the two when the time comes.

Are you using the beta? If so, how is it working out for you?

In today’s increasingly communicative world, businesses face a dilemma. They have to find ways to be more engaging and communicate more directly to their customers and the public, while retaining close control of sensitive information.

The most convenient way for both business users and their customers to share information has been through blogs. Over the last three years blogs have sprung up everywhere. It’s hard to find a major corporation that doesn’t have a host of blogs on different subjects all aimed at getting more relevant content out to the marketplace faster and more effectively.

Um… Isn’t it common knowledge that blogs make communication for companies easier? What is this? 2002? The next thing you know they will tell me I am overweight and I need a diet pill to help me lose weight.

Mac users long ago discovered the incredible power of Adium, the open-source, multiprotocol instant-messaging application for the Mac. The next time someone suggests that open source can’t innovate, is not user-friendly, etc., point them to Adium. It’s simply incredible.

What Adium isn’t, however, is a good Twitter client. That’s about to change, starting with Adium’s next version (1.4), when sophisticated Twitter functionality will be integrated into Adium.

Wow, this is awesome news. I use Adium on my Mac, and having Twitter built in will make my daily life that much easier.

Apple updated its iTunes music jukebox and device-management software to version 8.1 on Wednesday, adding support for the new line of iPod shuffles released earlier in the day, and adding several other new features, most notably adding Genius Sidebar support for movies and television shows.

I just thought you would like to know.

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) released three updates in its Patch Tuesday report, plugging a total of eight security holes, including a critical image flaw that allowed hackers to launch malicious attacks remotely.

Altogether, the March patch bundle addressed critical vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel and errors ranked “important” in the DNS and WINS servers and Secure Channel that could enable hackers to commit identity theft by redirecting users to spoofed Web sites.

However, the March patch bundle did not include a fix for an actively exploited Microsoft Office Excel vulnerability that allowed hackers to launch malware attacks via infected spreadsheet files.

Why is there always one thing Microsoft forgets to fix?