We are a bunch of tech geeks, coders and designers. Fake Firefox Adobe Flash Player »
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File this under the ‘Yikes’ category: According to a post on Sophos website, there is a Firefox plugin masquerading as a legitimate Adobe Flash Player add on.
Recently, Sophos analysts have discovered a piece of malware masquerading itself as a flash player plugin for the Firefox browser (detected by Sophos as Troj/FFSpy-A).
When the file runs, it pretends to install the adobe flash player for your browser.
However, instead of giving you a Flash Player, you get a piece of malware that spies on your Google searches, sends that data to a remote server and then displays ads into what you are viewing based on the keywords you entered.
According to the post on Sophos’ website, this malware seems to be spreading via Internet forums. You probably won’t have to worry about things like this if you download any plugins directly from Mozilla’s website (but you should still be cautious).
On Sophos’ website, there are some screenshots that illustrate the difficulty you would have trying to determine whether or not you were installing a legit plugin versus one containing some type of malware.
If you want to test your installed version of Flash, you can visit the test page setup on Adobe’s website and you can download the current version of Flash from Adobe’s website as well.
Rockmelt: Yet Another Web Browser »
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Just when you thought the web browser market was saturated, someone found a spot where another one could be squeezed in.
Make a little room between Google Chrome and Opera and you can shoehorn RockMelt into the mix. Yes, another way for people to view web pages and possibly another set of standards for which web designers have to prepare.
Rockmelt does have some pretty good backing, however. Do you remember the Netscape browser from the 1990s? The founder of that company, Marc Anderson, is a backer of Rockmelt.
Not much is known about Rockmelt at the moment and their website only has a spot where you can provide your email address to be sent more information. So we will have to wait and see.
At any rate, it faces a pretty packed market that already includes the likes of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and Flock and a few others.
Microsoft Plans Stores To Tranform PC Buying »
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In an attempt to change their image as not being appealing directly to consumers, Microsoft plans to open up stores around the U.S. in an attempt to create a environment where they can have trained retail associates on duty to better help the buyers get what they need from the computer. Alongside selling computers we can expect them to have all the latest Microsoft Zune players and accessories all in one place which will help for those who do not like dealing with Best Buy.
Really appealing directly to the consumer is the main concern for Microsoft here, in recent market changes they lost a full percentage of the market two months in a row while Apple grew to have 10% of personal computer sales. This is not the first attempt by Microsoft to open a retail store in 1999 they had a store in downtown San Francisco however it closed not long after due to the blue screen on death, er, I mean to say due to other shops in the area closing down as well (area desirability?.)
Personally I am excited to see what the stores will look like, Apple has unveiled some pretty cool stores and now it is Microsoft’s turn. I expect to see Xbox 360′s blaring and Zune advertisements everywhere and hopefully on the desktops of the latest of what Microsoft has to offer in the handheld/personal computer category. Microsoft has already hired a retail lead to head the project, David Porter, who is a dreamworks exec with 25 years under his belt as a Wal-mart’s VP and general merchandise manager of entertainment. All I can say is lets hope the service received at the Microsoft store chains is better than finding out what all these error codes mean in Vista.
p.s. I am new to the staff here you can check out my personal blog the details (wip) for the latest in the blogging community, or my bloggersbase for more posts by me.
Quick Tech News »
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Here are couple of tech news tidbits that I ran across recently (translation: I am too lazy to do a real blog post):
- According to Nielsen, by the end of the 2008, an estimated 20% of U.S. households will have ditched the phone company and will only have mobile phones (they will be years behind us because we have exclusively used mobile phones since 2003
). - A recent software update for the Microsoft Zune gives its owners the ability to use Wi-Fi connections at 9,800 participating U.S. McDonald’s restaurants. Microsoft partnered up with Wayport to help make that possible.
Sony Recalls Vaio Laptops »
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Well, it has been a while since there was a significant laptop recall, but you knew it would happen again.
Sony has issued a voluntary recall of 438,000 Vaio laptop computer due to the possibility of overheating that could potentially burn the user.
According to the statement by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Sony gotten 15 reports of laptops overheating and one of those resulted in the owner receiving a minor burn. Here are the Sony Vaio laptops included in the voluntary recall:
- VGN-TZ100
- VGN-TZ200
- VGN-TZ300
- VGN-TZ2000
The laptops can possibly short circuit and overheat due to what the CPSC states is an “irregularly positioned wires near the computer’s hinge and/or dislodged screw inside the hinge”.
Shares of Sony are down about 30 percent this year, so this information probably will not help. If you have one of these laptops, contact Sony toll-free at (888) 526-6219 anytime, or visit Sony’s Web site.
