Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category

I received a few emails the other day, and no they weren’t for weight loss pills, but they were about the “Daily Top 10” from CNN. In fact, I have received three emails every day for the past four days or so. Of course, I know I am not subscribed to anything from CNN (oh, and the emails are not from CNN anyway), so I knew to mark them as spam and not pay them any attention.

Others might not know, so…

Thousands (possibly millions) of users are receiving what looks like an innocuous daily missive from CNN.com (it sailed right through my spam filter), offering links to the “Daily Top 10″ stories and videos. Flag these emails as spam, and do not click the links inside. The links will direct you to a malware website and attempt to install dangerous software on your PC.

Thanks to Christopher Null, I now know, and so do you, that the emails are nastygrams from pathetic hackers hellbent on destruction.

Saturday night, I sat here fixated on my web browser. I was visiting SpaceX to watch the launch of one of their rockets. If it involves space, I love it. Whether it’s NASA, space travel, astronomy, or just simple stargazing, it doesn’t matter. I love everything space.

As the countdown hit zero, nothing happened. Then there was a poof of smoke. I heard them saying that the launch had aborted…Umm. yeah, I saw that. We all saw that. What surprised me the most though, was the fact that they were ready to try again within the hour. How awesome was that?

The countdown hit zero, and the rocket launched. It was amazing, really. Simply amazing. I am always in awe when I watch rockets launch. When we lived outside of Las Vegas when I was a kid, I had broken my left femur and was in a cast from my hips down. My dad carried me out onto the front lawn so we could watch a rocket take off from Southern California. I felt the same wonder Saturday night watching that rocket launch (except now I am not in a body cast).

Almost 2 minutes into the launch the camera went blank. They announced there had been an anomoly. I had no idea what happened, and was wondering all night…

A privately funded rocket suffered a launch failure Saturday night, the third launch failure in as many attempts for an Internet entrepreneur who is hoping to develop private space delivery and transportation.

The failure occurred about two minutes after the launch of the two-stage Falcon 1 rocket, which was manufactured by Space Exploration Technologies, also known as SpaceX. A failure prevented the two stages from separating after the launch from a central Pacific atoll, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a company blog. Musk said an investigation into the cause of the failure is under way, but he called the launch itself as “picture perfect.”

I have no doubt they will get it right. No doubt at all. Once they work out the kinks, and start offering flight deals, SpaceX is going to rock the world.

It’s pretty sad, that in the year 2008, when most people monitor their bank accounts online, that 75% of the banking websites have issues that could cause serious problems.

A new study from the University of Michigan has found that more than 75 percent of banking websites are not completely up to snuff when it comes to security.

The study looked at 214 financial institution websites and focused on both design flaws and improper security practices. None of these flaws represent catastrophic security issues, but many could allow for easier access to your password and user name should a malicious hacker come calling.

From insecure login systems to redirecting you without any notice, banks are leaving themselves, and your account, vulnerable to hackers. Make sure your bank passes the test before you end up putting your money in the pockets of others.

Your money should be in your pocket, and you should have a couple talking watches to remind you of that fact.

Say what? A Communist country has declared they intend to monitor every move reporters make and filter content on the internet? Someone call Yahoo! or Google. We need to get this cleared up asap.

The Beijing Olympics were plunged into another controversy on Wednesday as China announced a backflip on Internet freedoms for the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games.

China’s decision to reverse a pledge on allowing unfettered web access proved an embarrassment for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had repeatedly said foreign press would not face any Internet curbs in Beijing.

What will they allow through? Will they allow criticism of other governments? What about diet pill reviews? Are they going to crack down on the mundane, the popular, or all of the above?

Give me a break people. This is what happens when you put faith in a government that doesn’t have faith in it’s people. Were you really shocked?

Apparently, there are a couple of bugs in the RealPlayer that need to be patched. Funny, I had no idea. This is the first I have heard of it, and like many people, I have yet to patch my system.

RealNetworks has issued four critical patches for several versions of its RealPlayer running on Windows, Linux and Apple’s Mac OS X.

The flaws could allow a hacker to run malicious code on a PC or cause the computer to reveal information, according to an advisory from Secunia, a security vendor based in Denmark.

RealPlayer is an application that plays audio and video streamed over the Internet.

Wow. I just remembered why I haven’t patched my system. Because RealPlayer hasn’t been installed on my system. That’s right. I have never installed Real Player on this computer, and I won’t.

In fact, I haven’t installed RealPlayer on any system in over four years. Why? Because I think their software is a piece of crap, I don’t like everything it installs on my system, and when I did run it, it crashed my system or bogged it down so bad, it wasn’t worth my time.

In fact, I remember the last thing I watched on the RealPlayer. It went something like this.

[buffering][buffering][buffering] blah blah blah [buffering] blah [buffering] blah blah [buffering] blah blah [buffering][buffering] blah blah blah [buffering][buffering][buffering][buffering][buffering][buffering][buffering]…

I used to have it installed on a flash drive, but decided to remove it to make room for something much more important. Sudoku.

Personally, I am waiting for the patch that reduces the amount of crap it installs on my system, and makes it run the way software should. I know, that day may never come.

I can wait.

Not much to post here today, other than the fact that I have been ultra busy on the next version of Stuffr.

I am adding support for SmugMug to the interface, to make it ultra-easy to manage galleries, upload images, and link to them from within posts written in Stuffr.

As I get closer to releasing the next version I plan to write a post on why I chose to integrate the SmugMug API, and not some of the more “popular” free services.

In fact, the following screenshot is hosted on SmugMug.

I was thinking of looking for someone to work with me on this part, but I can’t even decide what I want to do, let alone put together job descriptions for the things I need done.

This will probably change a bit before I release it though, so don’t get too excited.

Earlier today, Nick Bradbury asked a good question about the features included in free software…

Yesterday I wrote about killing unused features. But what about killing a feature that people do use?

He’s talking about FeedDemon, and he really wants to kill a feature that I use every day. As a software developer, however, I understand where he is coming from.

The News Item List in FeedDemon is not the most popular of features and apparently not too many people use it. I have used that feature since day one, but it is now “inactive” by default so many people don’t even know about it. As a longtime FeedDemon fan, I use that feature everyday. In fact, removing the news item list would change the way I use FeedDemon, and it would be quite a shock for me to get used to.

As a developer though, I think he should remove it. The feature slows things down and is a pain in the butt for him to maintain. If I was the developer of FeedDemon, I would remove it. If a feature is a drain on the system and would improve overall performance it needs to be pulled for the benefit of the software package.

I recently pulled a few features from Stuffr. It no longer works with Twitter or Pownce, and I pulled the “technorati tagger” because I felt it was no longer adding value to the application. I’ll never make much money by riting and maintaining Stuffr. The donations that have come in thus far won’t pay for a trip to the dollar store, let alone a trip to the Outer Banks, but I do it because I enjoy it. I needed a good blogging application that worked the way I wanted it to, and I wrote Stuffr to fill that need. I certainly hope other people find it useful as well.

There are a lot of people saying they will “never use FeedDemon again” if Nick removes the feature and people are really fired up. It’s going to be a tough decision for him, but whatever he decides, I will still be a FeedDemon fan, and more than likely, I’ll be using the product for a long time to come.

With internet and computer security always being tested, are you shocked that a human, you know, a non-perfect creature at best, accidentally slipped and let the cat out of the bag?

A computer security company on Monday inadvertently published details of a major flaw in the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) several weeks before they were due to be disclosed.

The flaw was discovered several months ago by IOActive researcher Dan Kaminsky, who worked through the early part of this year with Internet software vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco and the Internet Systems Consortium to patch the issue.

Just for the record, it’s not nice to hold cats in bags. Or shipping boxes. Not at all.

The newest version of Stuffr is here. While you thought I was sitting around doing nothing, I was planning a complete overhaul behind the scenes as well as making several changes to Stuffr’s streamlined design.

Over the course of the last couple months, I received quite a bit of feedback. Many of you asked for changes in the interface to make it look less cluttered. So I took some time and re-designed the look and feel to make it more user-friendly, if that was even possible.

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Combinations don’t always make something good. Sure, cookies and cream are good together, but what about cookies and sour cream?

Seriously, what’s worse than hearing about Microsoft and Yahoo all hours of the day?

Microsoft is meeting with AOL executives Wednesday to talk about the two companies combining AOL and Microsoft’s online division, according to a news report.

Yikes. All this talk of mergers here and mergers there. I think it’s high time some of these companies started focusing on fence installation. There is no need to consolidate or join forces to make your companies better. Just stick to what you do well and everyone, including your shareholders, will be happy.

Ugh. Combining with AOL? Do they still do anything? I mean seriously. What exactly does AOL have that would make Microsoft better?

I doubt anyone will be able to convince me that this is a good deal for either side. Hey. Get your chocolate out of my peanut butter you nut!