Animal Planet Hoarders »

Last year, when we donated the new website for the Carteret County Humane Society Animal Shelter in Newport, NC, we did so because we wanted to give the Shelter a tool they could use to help the animals and Oh, how the community has responded! The shelter has begun receiving regular online donations and lots of offers to volunteer from animal lovers with a little time to spare. Kudos to everyone that is helping out!

Candice sent me an email this week regarding a hoarding situation in Jacksonville, NC. Animal Planet is developing a new documentary program about how hoarding affects the animals and was in Jacksonville to cover an example. A well-meaning individual had taken in so many animals that she was unable to properly care for them and the animals were suffering without food or adequate care. Rescuers from the Humane Society of the United States, Saving Grace Animals for Adoption and Collie Rescue put out a call to local organizations alerting them to the situation and the Carteret Humane Society was one of the organizations to respond by sheltering 7 dogs, 5 puppies, 3 cats and 20 kittens.  Now the animals need our help.
Due to the economic issues that many are facing, many owners are turning in their pets and this is causing tremendous challenges for the Shelter. Now, with the addition of 30 animals, the task of finding homes is daunting. If you can help, a page of their website outlines some suggestions ranging from volunteering to making a tax deductible donation right through their website. Anything you can do will be EXTREMELY helpful both to the Shelter and to the animals.  Even if you are not in a position to donate or volunteer, alerting others to this situation is a great way you can help.

Commercial Project Interior 3D Rendering Completed »

We recently wrapped up a 3D interior rendering for a commercial client in Winston Salem, NC. Interior Solutions is an interior design company and a repeat client. We are really glad to work with Emmy and her staff – they are great!
They are proposing the project to their client and we are very appreciative that they chose us again to help them out.
We custom modeled most of the furniture as well as placed custom patterns for the fabrics as well as the floor covering. Thanks again Emmy!

Mozilla Recommends Bing Search Engine for Best Privacy »

When I saw the CNBC special ‘Inside the Mind of Google‘ I, like a lot of other people, was pretty surprised at Google’s statement about the privacy of users of its Search Engine:

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time…

O…..K. That is one way to answer the question, I… guess. Although that kind of elicits a surprised response similar to the dad that gets hit in the crotch when tossing a baseball for his kid’s batting practice.   (Google Bing it – its a hoot ).

Personally, I think it is slightly odd that Google would feel that way, especially when they don’t seem to respond the same way when the privacy tables are turned.

In a response, Mozilla is telling Firefox users to switch to Bing which is also surprising, since Mozilla has an agreement in place with Google through 2011.  I think that says a lot about how important Mozilla feels about privacy.

Perform Your Automatic Windows Update »

If we had a nickel for every time we see the Windows Update Shield icon in the system tray of a client’s computer, we would be retired by now. That little icon means you must take action to protect your computer with the latest updates from Windows.
Microsoft releases security patches on the second Tuesday of each month (called Patch Tuesday) so make sure you are performing Windows updates at that time. A good indication that you need to apply a patch is the little, yellow icon you see in the lower right corner of your screen. If you see that, click it and follow the prompts.
This month’s patch Tuesday sees Microsoft releasing a Security Update addressing 12 vulnerabilities and one of which is a patch for a Zero-Day issue in Internet Explorer. Check it out and if you see the little yellow icon, click it! It is there for a reason
Another step you can take is telling Windows to apply the security updates automatically. Then, you will not even see the Update icon in the system tray. The updates will be applied and you will not even know, which is handy if you have ever said, “Hmm. What does that little Yellow Shield mean? Oh well. It is probably nothing important.”
So, if you are a Microsoft Vista user and want to setup Automatic Updates, here is the information to get you going with that. If you are still on Windows XP, here is the information for checking your Update status.

Fake Firefox Adobe Flash Player »

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.