Over the past several weeks, virus researchers worldwide have been tracking a high volume of fake emails purporting to come from UPS. These emails include an attachment, with a zip file that includes a malicious executable typically named something like “UPS_Invoice.exe”.
This Trojan was highlighted in a recent article in Security Center Magazine:
The emails typically include text similar to the following:
“From: United Parcel Service
Subject: UPS Tracking Number xxxxxx
Unfortunately we were not able to deliver postal package you sent on July the 1st in time because the recipient’s address is not correct. Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office
Your UPS”
Generally, anti-virus engines have been able to keep up with this threat through new definition updates or heuristics. However, ongoing analysis of this Trojan shows that it continues to propagate in the wild due to highly aggressive methods used to evade detection. Test have also seen a marked increase in propagation over the past 24 hours.
Recommedation:
Do not open or forward these emails! If your virus software is up to date it should catch them, but that is no guarantee. The best course of action is to be on guard.
I have already received at least one copy of this, so it is out there. If you have any questions, please ask!
The first Apple store in South Carolina is officially scheduled to open this Saturday, July 25th, at 10 am on King Street in Charleston. I can tell you that I for one am extremely excited. I will be there waiting for those doors to open!
Who else is going to be there? And the big question – how early do we need to start lining up? Damn I wish I hadn’t placed my iPhone order last Saturday.
Just a quick pointer to those of you using the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iTunes. And for those of you who know and / or care, I ordered my iPhone today from AT&T! The rep at the store, who was very friendly and helpful, said that they are told to tell people 14 to 21 days to come in, but that he expects it to be more like 5 to 10 days. Total price with tax and such was just over $213. And now I wait…
But anyway, for those of you who store your music and videos in iTunes and want to know how to back it all up, Apple has posted an article on just how to do so. iTunes 7 offers a new way to back up your iTunes library, playlists, and iTunes Store purchases (including Applications purchased from the App Store) for safekeeping. The Back Up to Disc feature saves your media to a blank disc (CD or DVD) and once backed up, iTunes can use your backup disc(s) to automatically restore your iTunes library. If you have iTunes 5 or 6, click here. Note that this is for both Windows and Mac computers.
I don’t need to tell you that you should be backing up your entire computer and all of your documents, but if you want to know just how to backup iTunes, this is a great article. But please, backup everything. External hard drives are quite inexpensive these days and make backing up quick, easy, and painless. For a few examples of them, look here or here.
The other article for you Apple users out there is one on how to synchronize Microsoft Entourage, Mac Office’s Outlook counterpart, with your iPhone or iPod Touch. I have posted that full article on my site at MacDeveloper website. So, if you are using Entourage and want to sync up, be sure to check that one out.
You know that song that keeps going through your mind? No you don’t do you? That is the problem, the tune or words keep going through your mind, but you just don’t know the name of the song. In my case it is a song that I keep hearing on the radio but the annoying DJs never tell me who performed the music or what the title of the track is. Now there is a solution.
I just stumbled across a Midomi. It is so simple that it is amazing that it works. You simply go to the site, click on the button and then sing some of the song that you know or hum the tune. Midomi will then search its database and tell you what the song is. Of course, so that they can provide this service and earn some money, they will then off your the opportunity to buy the song, videos, and such by linking directly to the iTunes music store.
Now honestly I had mixed results with the service. Obviously it works better the clearer your singing or humming and the longer you can do it for. At least 10 seconds is required for any kind of read at all. I also found that the more popular the tune you are searching for the more likely the service is to find it. Whether this is a factor of the accuracy of their database or due to the linking to iTunes, I have no idea.
The coolest thing though, at least in my mind, is that the service can be used from the new iPhone – if, unlike me, you are lucky enough to have gotten one. That being the case, you can just pull Midomi up on your iPhone, hold it up to the radio for a short while, and then have it tell you what the song is that is playing. Now that is cool.
So, if you want to get that song out of your head and on to your iPod or MP3 player, give Midomi a shot. Then please come back here and let us know how it worked for you. Tell me, did it find your music?
I am a Macintosh fan, user, and evangelist. Gotta admit – I love them. On the other hand I earn my living on PCs and Windows machines, am Microsoft certified, and admire a lot of the software. And yes, I have used Linux too and continue to use it from time to time. But truth be told, they are all a pain at some point or another and each one has its positive points and drawbacks. You have got to admit it — no matter how fond you are of the machine you use, at times you just want to scream at it.
You need to take a look at this video from YouTube. Basically a Southpark style remake of the famous Mac / PC ads from Apple, it hits the nail dead on the head. And in the end I do mean dead.
OK, I don’t know how I missed it, but the best RSS news readers for Mac and PC are now free! Honestly I can’t say a lot about the Windows software, but NetNewsWire for the Mac is, in my opinion, the best way to stay up-to-date with your news feeds. And now NewsGator has made all this software available for free. No more need for me to use the “lite” version of their products, these are the full blown versions that have been unleashed.
One of the best things about their products is that when you use them in conjunction with their on-line account, which is free, your readers on different computers can stay in sync. That means that I don’t have to reread at work what I read at home. Also, if I am totally away from my machines, I can just use their web-based version which also stays in sync. So all my subscriptions and the associated info go with me wherever I go. For free.
I have been saying for a good while now that Macs are great in business. They offer ease of use, less maintenance, and are less prone to attack by viruses or spyware. (I almost said they are immune from attack, but I don’t want anyone to prove me wrong.) Now, more and more people in the industry are agreeing with me. Take for example this article in Computerworld. They are saying exactly the same thing.
One of the interesting points the article brings up, and something that has happened in my office, is that because the corporate powers are starting to get Apple products for their personal use they are starting to see those same products as alternatives for company use. In my place of work the Macs are spreading from the top down. Actually I had the first one, but after that came the VP of Marketing and our COO. Now that there are three of us with them in the top tier of the company decisions about hardware open up and requirements for software change. Granted we still invest in software that will only run on Windows, basically because there is no alternative, but that software must be able to run either on Citrix or virtualized through a product like Parallels. No longer will we just buy a Windows based program to just slap on any old desktop. Through one means or another the product has to be able to work on a Mac. And that is good for OS X, Linux and Windows. The ability to interoperate makes all the products stronger.
Ok, lots of questions asked about these two products. The basic answer is that they are both good but not overwhelming. There is nothing wrong with either one of them. Both work just fine. And there lies the problem. The are “good”, “ok”, “fine”. They are not “amazing”, “revolutionary”, “compelling”, or even “must-haves”. At the moment at least, there is nothing that you can do with either of these products that you can’t do right now. Maybe the new software will allow you to do it in a different manner or with a prettier interface, but you can do it none-the-less.
Which then begs the question of why should you shift? If you are buying a new computer or have a way to get a free upgrade, then it is always cool to have the latest and greatest. But if you have a machine that is working just fine now and you would have to shell out your own hard earned money for that upgrade, there really is no reason to do so.
This is what most reviewers, businesses, and consumers all think. And besides, who wants the first iteration of a software release anyway?
Last month, revelation of yet another NSA surveillance effort against the American people rekindled the privacy debate. Those in favor of these programs have trotted out the same rhetorical question we hear every time privacy advocates oppose ID checks, video cameras, massive databases, data mining, and other wholesale surveillance measures: “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”
Some clever answers: “If I’m not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me.” “Because the government gets to define what’s wrong, and they keep changing the definition.” “Because you might do something wrong with my information.” My problem with quips like these
– as right as they are — is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It’s not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.
Two proverbs say it best: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who watches the watchers?”) and “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest
– or just blackmail — him with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers, and to spy on political enemies — whoever they happen to be at the time.
Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we’re doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.
We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.
A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It’s intrinsic to the concept of liberty.
For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that — either now or in the uncertain future — patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.
How many of us have paused during conversations in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on?
Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.
This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us.
This was life in the former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. And it’s our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.
Too many wrongly characterize the debate as “security versus privacy.”
The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that’s why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.
I seek to empower people by making technology a vehicle for driving businesses and communities. Just as you drive a car without worrying about how the engine operates, I will take care of your information systems as a data mechanic. This lets you drive the technology, instead of it driving you. I provide social media, web development and PC and Macintosh support services for small businesses and not-for-profits in Charleston and the surrounding South Carolina Lowcountry.
OK, I don’t know how I missed it, but the best RSS news readers for Mac and PC are now free! Honestly I can’t say a lot about the 
