smart computer use?

Mac users have been able to avoid the virus hoopla that surrounds Windows users for years. This period of calm might be coming to an end.

Be warned: Apple’s comeback in the world of personal computing brings with it a heightened level of security risks for its customers, not unlike those Microsoft Windows devotees have faced for years. Reports surfaced earlier this week of a malicious new Trojan horse–like piece of software found on several pornography Web sites that has the potential to let cyber thieves take control of infected Mac computers so they can steal personal information.

Read the article here.

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Lots of speculation is being thrown around about what the Google Phone will be like. Here’s yet another interpretation:

It seems like the only people who know for sure are those who work for Google, and they aren’t talking. But that hasn’t stopped analysts, journalists and bloggers from writing about what they think Google has planned for the mobile device market. But before we venture into wild guesswork, let’s look at what we know for a fact.

Read the rest of the article here.

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There is currently an easy way to exploit Google duplicate site content handling using proxy sites. There are also ways to defend against the Google proxy exploit if you feel the need to implement preventative measures into your website(s) or need to fix an issue already affecting your site.

From the article at SiteProNews.com, written by Sophie White:

There is a current and active way to knock a website out of Google’s search engine results. It’s simple and effective. This information is already in the public domain and the more people that know about it, the more likelihood there is that Google will do something about it. This article will tell you how it works, how to get a website knocked out of the search engine rankings, but most importantly, how to defend your own website from having it happen to you.

If anything, this is just a latest example of the ongoing evolution of search engine technology. There will always be exploits for ranking site and and un-ranking sites on various search engines. The good news is that the people behind the search engines are always working on their algorithms to ensure that exploits do not have a major impact on natural and organic search results.

Talk about an ongoing battle.

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If you’ve used a laptop to any extent in your career as a computer user, you understand how much it pretty much sucks that laptops batteries need to be charged A LOT.

The day when you have a laptop that can run without charging for up to a month may be near.

Puiu Tiberius from Digitpedia.com writes:

Samsung SDI has presented, at one of their own shows, a new notebook prototype feeded by a “fuel cell” system, which apparently would have a autonomy of no less then one month(yeah, as in 30 days!).

Of course, being a fuel cell, there is re-fueling involved. This wouldn’t be a simple “plug into the wall to recharge” type of scenario.

Read the article here.

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It is amazing that it’s taken this long for this simple yet useful security to get put to use for the masses, in the form of a PIN Protected USB Flash Device. John E. Dunn of Techworld writes:

Memory company Corsair has come up with an ingeniously simple way to secure USB flash drives without having to remember a password – build a PIN-based ‘padlock’ into the drive itself.

Read the article here.

I’ll probably pick up one of these if I see them on the shelf somewhere. I can see lots of use, particularly for business purposes, for this type of USB Flash device. I never really carry around sensitive data on a flash card, but sometimes I do transport information that pertains to website ftp access and such. Even a password file gets transported every now and then.

A small security measure to make a device more inaccessible to those that like to dig into data for kicks sound just fine to me.

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