Know software vulnerabilities as they are found using Zero Day Initiative

The following is a list of vulnerabilities discovered by TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative researchers that are yet to be publicly disclosed.

Link:
http://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories...

ThinkAll (CD Earth) must pay 2.2 Million in fines

A Texas company that offered supposedly free software on CDs, but then billed customers for a software continuity program they didn't sign up for, will pay nearly US $2.2 million to settle charges levied by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the agency announced.

Read my original post on ThinkAll:
http://...thinkallcom-think-again.html

Read the whole story:
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/06/12/...

Get the results of the court ruling:
http://www.ftc.gov/...thinkallmanaystlmt.pdf

Is CD Earth (who is owned by the same guy as ThinkAll was, Yuri Mintskovsky) going down the same road?

Video: Hacking PHP Mail

Google Map Maker

Google Map Maker is a Google Maps service that allows you add or edit features, such as roads, businesses, parks, schools and more. Using Google Map Maker tools, you can visually mark locations and add detailed information about these locations. Once you have submitted content, this information may be edited by other users or moderators. At a later time, this content may be published in Google Maps for others to see and use.

Link:
http://www.google.com/mapmaker

Windows Update thought I was running a Mac

I got the above error message (This website is designed to work with Microsoft Windows operating systems only) when trying to run Windows Update. A Mac, really?. To fix the issue, and get Windows Update working again I deleted the following two registry keys:


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]


Once deleted, I rebooted the computer and all was working again.

If you want to see what your Agent string is check out:
http://www.veign.com/tools/reflection/
(look at Browser information)

Find the perfect name for your company

WordLab brands itself as the "The Wordboard Naming and Branding Discussion Forum" where they have forums for naming a company, naming a product, tag lines, band names, club names... See where I'm going with this? If you need a name for something, anything, then check out WordLab.

Link:
http://www.wordlab.com/wordboard/

CitySense tells you where the people are

Like a Doppler weather map with red blotches tracking the paths of major storms, a new tracking software service co-developed by Columbia University computer science professor Tony Jebara instantly shows people where the hottest clubs or hangouts are, in real time.

Link:
http://www.physorg.com/news133192373.html

Form W4 Assistant

Link:
http://paycheckcity.com/W4/...

Firefox 3: 8.3 Million downloads in 24 hours

Despite getting off to a slow start yesterday, the official release of the Firefox 3 browser was downloaded 8.3 million times (that’s the unofficial tally as of 11:16 AM PT today). Mozilla beat its goal of 5 million downloads by 3 million and set a new world record! All right, there was no previous world record, but it still represents a massive one-day adoption rate.

I looked at the stats for Veign.com and Firefox 3 covered over 4% of my traffic on download day.

Link:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/18/...

Media Management in Gmail with Xoopit

Firefox extension Xoopit turns Gmail into a robust, searchable media management tool for every piece of media that comes through your inbox. By indexing every attachment as well as every link to photos and videos from sites like Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube, Xoopit allows you to easily search for and find any picture or video and view it from directly inside Gmail.

The only thing that makes this questionable is they want your Gmail login password. Not sure how many people are comfortable with that, but I'm not.

Link:
http://lifehacker.com/374651/...

Reddit goes open source

We've always strived to be as open and transparent with our users as possible, and this is the next logical step. When we say 'open-source' we mean specifically that the code behind reddit is available to the public for download, and we're inviting the public to submit code to help improve the site.

Get the code here:
http://code.reddit.com/

Matt Cutts Translated: 8 SEO Tips I Heard Him Tell Eric Enge

Eric managed to get Matt Cutts to tell us some juicy info and he did it all so nonchalantly. ;-)

Link:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/...

Duplicate content due to scrapers

Since duplicate content is a hot topic among webmasters, we thought it might be a good time to address common questions we get asked regularly at conferences

Link:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/...

2008 Design Trends

So what’s hot now? Pencil sketches, handwritten notes, card stocks, watercolor effects, collage art, script fonts, grungy and splatter ink backgrounds (glossy gradients are not "in" this year). Another trend to be on the lookout for are the vintage and retro styles which I’ve posted earlier this year. Here is a list of 82 sites picked from Best Web Gallery that show the current design trends.

Link:
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/...

15 Tools to Help You Develop Faster Web Pages

Response times, availability, and stability are vital factors to bear in mind when creating and maintaining a web application. If you’re concerned about your web pages’ speed or want to make sure you’re in tip-top shape before starting or launching a project, here’s a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications.

I’ve tried to include a wide variety of tools that are easy to use, and have tried to keep them as OS and technology-independent as possible so that everyone can find a tool or two.

Link:
http://sixrevisions.com/tools/faster_web_page/

Field Guide to Firefox 3

Link:
http://www.dria.org/wordpress/...

SEO Tip roundup

Five Takeaways from SMX Advanced: How the Engines Handle rel=”nofollow” Links, Interesting Matt Cutts comment #1, Interesting Matt Cutts comment #2, Speaking of PageRank…., Too Much Analytics is Never Enough

Seven Short SEO Scribbles: Is NoFollow Really NoFollow?, Domain-Level PageRank, Are SEO Flags a Bad Thing?, When Will Knols Rule the Index?, Internationalizing on Domains Back in Vogue, Yes, Matt Cutts Said All Links to a Domain Help Every Page on That Domain Rank Better, Is There Still a Debate on Nofollow?

Ransomware Encrypts Victim Files With 1,024-Bit Key

Now more than ever, it's important that Windows users ensure their machines are safe from hackers. A dangerous new strain of malicious software that holds the victim's computers files for ransom has been unleashed, and Kaspersky Lab is warning that security researchers have yet to crack the encryption key.

The malware in this case is the latest version of Gpcode (Kaspersky calls it Gpcode.ak), a nasty piece of "ransomware" that scrambles all of the victim's data files with an encryption key known only to the attacker(s). Victims are told via a pop-up message that they need to purchase a special decryption program to regain access to their data.

Link:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/...

Find even more deals at TechDeals

Techdeals has been a grassroots site, keeping our audience updated on where to find the best deals on technology products and services while also never taking ourselves too seriously.

Link:
http://www.techdeals.net/

Also read "5 websites to save you money on your next purchase"

Scientists develop fastest computer

Scientists unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer on Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise.

The computer, named Roadrunner, is twice as fast as IBM's Blue Gene system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which itself is three times faster than any of the world's other supercomputers, according to IBM.

To put the computer's speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today's most powerful laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world's 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.

Link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080609/...

iPhone 3G is finally official, starts at $199, available July 11th

It's been a long, leak-filled wait, but Apple finally took the wraps off its 3G iPhone. Thinner edges, full plastic back, flush headphone jack, and the iPhone 2.0 firmware -- Apple's taking a lot of the criticisms to heart from the first time around. Obviously 3G is at the forefront, but they're also making sure it's available all over internationally, works with enterprises, runs 3rd party apps... and does it all for cheaper. Apple claims its 3G speeds trounce the competition, with pageloads 36% faster than the N95 and Treo 750 -- and of course it completely trounces the old EDGE data. Battery life isn't getting put out to pasture though, with 300 hours of standby, 8-10 hours of 2G talk, 5 hours of 3G talk, 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio. GPS is also a go. Apple is using A-GPS, which supplements regular satellite GPS data with info from cellular towers. WiFi data is also worked into the mix, which should give users a pretty solid lock on where the heck they are on this planet. Unfortunately, there's no front-facing cam, which syncs with what we were hearing, but is still a little disappointing. Apple hopes to launch in 70 countries this year. 8GB is available for $199, 16GB for $299 -- and the 16GB comes in white. Apple will be hitting the 22 biggest markets, including the US, on July 11th.

Lots of pictures if you read the story.

Link:
http://www.engadget.com/...

Microsoft's Search 4.0 for desktops

No, it's not WinFS, the file system that was supposed to revolutionize the way files and documents are stored in Windows. But if it gives users tools that accomplish the same things WinFS was supposed to provide, does Search 4.0 come close?

Link:
http://www.betanews.com/article/...

Get a free copy of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite with MSDN Premium

DonationCoder and Veign have teamed up to give away a free copy of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite with MSDN Premium. What we decided is to hold a 1 month contest where someone enters by simply submitting a new application built with one of the free versions of Microsoft Visual Studio Express. A great opportunity for any developer.

Oh, the subscription is valued at over $10,000. How does that sound?

This is no-joke and there are no catches.

Read all about it at DonationCoder:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/...

Code Snippet search result from Google

New to me.

Our MilkyWay

Pretty large image.

Link:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA10748_fig1.jpg

New report identifies dangerous Web domains

McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are ".hk" (Hong Kong), ".cn" (China) and ".info" (information).

Of all ".hk" sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of ".cn" sites and 11.7 percent of ".info" sites that way.

Link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080604/...

Asp2Php

asp2php will take web pages written for Microsoft's ASP and convert them to PHP. asp2php works mostly on VBScript, but some JScript support has been added.

Better than nothing for your PHP start. If you are still using ASP to develop websites then you really need to check out the many advantages of PHP.

Link:
http://asp2php.naken.cc/

Windows Live SkyDrive

Password-protected online file storage. Always available where you need it.

Offers:

• 5 GB of free online storage, available from any computer with Internet access.
• Create personal, shared, and public folders -- you decide who has access to each folder.

Personal

• Use personal folders to back up important files that are only for you.
• Get to your files from any computer with Internet access by signing in with your Windows Live ID.

Shared

• Shared folders make it easy to collaborate with coworkers or classmates.
• You decide how much control each person has over each shared folder. Some can just read what's there: others can add and delete files.
• Everyone who is sharing uses their own Windows Live ID.

Public

• With public folders, anyone on the Internet can view your files, but they can't change them.
• Want to show your public files to others? Just send them a link! Each folder and file has its own web address.

Link:
http://skydrive.live.com/welcomemoreinfo.aspx

Test websites in IE6, IE7 and IE8 with IETester

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

Link:
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/...

Safari Flaw Worse Than First Thought, Microsoft Warns

Microsoft is warning that a previously disclosed flaw in Apple's Safari browser could have dire consequences for Windows users.

The Safari bug, originally disclosed on May 15 by security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani, allows attackers to litter a victim's desktop with executable files, an attack known as "carpet bombing."

It turns out that if this flaw is exploited in combination with a second unpatched bug in Internet Explorer, attackers can run unauthorized software on a victim's computer, according to Aviv Raff, a security researcher. Raff says he originally reported the IE flaw to Microsoft more than a year ago, and then told them about how it could be combined with the carpet bombing bug just over a week ago.

Link:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/146537/...