Mac OS X Vulnerabilities

Mac OS X is losing its reputation for being a safe and carefree place with reports of a virus and vulnerabilities making the news these days (which seems to be the iChat trojan from February that really has nothing to do with a vulnerability but just careless / clueless users). But Tom Ferris has reported a number of actual vulnerabilities to Apple. What I found interesting was his assessment that Apple is in the same situation Microsoft was in a few years ago: increasing security problems but not really knowing how to deal with security issues (source: AP via Wired and CNN).

Amazon Cuddles Up to Microsoft

Without much fanfare, Amazon has switched from Google to Microsoft for search results for A9 and Alexa (http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/04/amazon-drops-google-from-a9-and-alexa.html).

Poor RIM

Looks like Research in Motion (the Blackberry folks) are in for a new round of patent lawsuits. And the plaintiff-to-be has already won a patent infringement case.

Firefox Patch / New Feature Dropped

An update for Firefox to fix a known security issue is coming this week. And a completely rewritten bookmarking feature called Places is being dropped from Firefox 2.0, which is supposed to come out this year. Apparently it just was not going to well-baked enough to include in 2.0. Presumably we'll see it eventually. What I've heard is that without Places the new release should just be Firefox 1.6 since the other changes are just incremental. (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125598,00.asp)

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I often see things online that are interesting but not quite worthy of a dedicated post so I'm starting the Signal Catalog.  These posts will be lists (catalog) of interesting tidbits (signals).  Enjoy:

Mashup Camp

On Monday (Feb 20, 2006), 300 or so folks are gathering in Mountain View for the first Mashup Camp.  A mashup, according to Wikipedia, is "a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience".  In other words, combining the results from multiple services or APIs.  There's a whole slew of mashups listed at http://www.programmableweb.com/matrix, including the Ontario Beer Hunter.  The Mashup Camp is most interesting because API consumers and producers will be there.

Yahoo Hacks

The major search engines have lots of features that you can tap into using the right search phrases.  Things like define:, site:, and link: are old favourites of mine.  CNET has a little video available showing some Yahoo tricks from the Yahoo Hacks book (O'Reilly).  A lot of Yahoo hacks apply to Google as well (there's also a Google Hacks book).  One I had not seen before that is quite cool is searching for "showtimes" followed by your zip/postal code:  http://www.google.com/search?q=showtimes+E1C+1W1.  The first hit on Google shows me movies playing near my postal code.  Cool stuff.

Jane Austen Action Figure

While making sure the term "Signal Catalog" was not going to infringe on someone's trademark, I came across this:  a Jane Austen Action Figure complete with a miniature "Pride and Prejudice", writing desk, and quill.  The silly thing even has movable arms...  I guess it wouldn't be an action figure otherwise.

Million Dollar Homepage

I may be the last person on the block to hear about this month-old story but in case you missed it as well...  A 21-year old student in need of money for college sold advertising space at http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ for $1 per pixel (with a promise to keep the site up for 5 years).  Thanks to lots of media, word-of-mouth, and online hype, he sold over $1 million worth of pixel space in just 5 months.  Here's what the site looked like in Feb 2006:

Be Careful With Old Hard Drives

If you're paranoid like me, you would not dream of parting with a hard drive (in or out of a computer) without a low-level bit-cleansing ritual.  This article is just a reminder that bad people are out there looking for your old data: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177105357.

How To Save $2.43 Million Per Day

http://www.itworld.com/Man/2699/060125mslicense/

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