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Showing posts from 2005

Google explains Off-Topic Ford Explorer Ads

Many Adsense publishers were not too happy with Google for serving Image and text ads featuring the Ford Explorer on websites that were not related to automobiles, trucks, SUVs. Since the Google Adsense program promises to serve only contextual ads, the Ford Explorer campaign annoyed many Google fans. Now in what looks like a PR exercise, Google Adsense Blog has tried to explain why the off-topic Ford Explorer ads were shown? And if you are still not convinced, Google is advising people to filter these ads by adding the destination URL of the ad to your competitive filter list. Some of you have asked, "How is an ad for an off-road vehicle targeted to my pages about hiking?" Excellent question! Contextual targeting, or targeting the text on your site (the primary targeting mechanism of AdSense), is only one form of targeting. With the launch of the site targeting program, advertisers can select sites that are relevant to their prospective visitors, thereby targeting an audien

Microsoft Office Templates for New Year Resolutions

Microsoft Office Online is offering free templates for various Office programs to keep track and meet your New Year goals in 2006. Slim down and shape up Fitness charts for men and women Keep a fitness log Keep a daily nutrition log Plan healthy meals Find more diet and exercise templates Be more creative Add designs to your clothes with clip art Use clip art to make your own greeting cards Have fun with arts and crafts templates Start something new Pursue a hobby Develop a project plan for new business Write a business plan Find more ideas for starting a business Boost your Office skills Beginner's training for Office 2003 Save time: Find urgent e-mail fast Demos: Learn new tricks in minutes Streamline your office tasks Get a better job Use Word templates for resumes and more Keep cover letters with your resume in Word Request an informational interview Send a networking letter Communicate salary requirements Find more job search letters and tools Find more tools and templat

Adsense makes Phone Verification mandatory

Google AdSense Introduces Phone Verification Google Adsense will accept new applications only if you provide a valid phone number. New Adsense applications will not be accepted if they do not provide their phone number. Google then verifies the phone number automatically. Google sends a phone verification PIN number to your email address. Click a link provided in the email to open the Phone Verification Setup page, from which you'll be able to initiate the call or set a convenient time for our system to call you. You'll need to key in a 6-digit personal identification number (PIN) using your touch-tone telephone. Google gives a limited number of PIN entry attempts. This Phone verification PIN is different from the Address verification PIN that is mailed by post to each AdSense publisher when earnings have reached $50 on their account. The Address PIN is to verify publisher contact address and is sent by snail mail. Source: Google AdSense Phone Verification

MSN Search Insider - Microsoft Zeitgeist

The MSN Search Insider website looks like Microsoft's answer to Google Zeitgeist . The MSN Search Insider website shows the top 200 search queries on MSN Search in random order, top movers in Music, TV and Sports. Though the website states that the data is updated weekly but I think they are not updating it any more. The MSN Search duels feature compares related queries over time like Private School vs Public Schools. It would have been really cool if MSN let users decide the two competing sides. The website fails to impress and looks like Microsoft too has abandoned the project midway. MSN Search Insider

Google replacing Ads by Goooooogle

Seems like Google adsense is planning to remove the Ads by Goooooogle with a more logical text description - Feedback - Ads by Google that is currently displayed only in Google Image Ads. I noticed this change in a 234x60 format Google ad on my blog (see the screenshot) The feedback link appears rarely so probably Google is still testing the change. What are Ads by Google? Site visitors can click the Ads by Google to send feedback to Google about the appropriateness of that specific advertisement or general feedback about the website displaying the Google ads or report a Google policy violation. Earlier, only Google Adsense Premium Publishers were able to display the "Ads By Google" text and non-premium Adsense publishers were served the "Ads by Gooooogle" link. If the website is displaying Alternate Ads, Google will not display 'Ads by Google.' link. If you see a Google image ad that you feel is inappropriate or misleading, click the Feedback: Ads by Go

How-to Protect your PC against WMF exploit

A recently discovered IE .WMF Exploit in Microsoft Windows can be used to infect a PC with spyware and currently there is no official patch available for the flaw. This is a so-called "0-day vulnerability" because exploits for the vulnerability appeared before any updates or patches were available. Windows WMF Metafile Vulnerability HotFix It is advisable to turn off automatic downloads of internet images in email messages. Microsoft recommends switching off the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer in Windows XP. Since Microsoft has not released an official patch, the best workaround is to disable all actions associated with WMF extension. Goto MyComputer -> Tools -> FolderOptions ->FileType Now select WMF (Windows Meta File) filetype and click Delete. To un-register the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (Shimgvw.dll) : on the Start menu, choose Run, type regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll Visiting an infected webpage with Internet Explorer on a fully-patched XP Ser

Google, Yahoo replicate Bill Gates' Revenue sharing idea

What if you you were searching for an IPod and the search engine decides to ship you an IPod for free. What if every time you searched the Internet, money went to your favorite charity? This is happening for real. People are winning IPods and DVD players just for searching on the internet. Read this to learn how you can win prizes by just doing a normal web search. Search engines make most of their money from companies that pay an advertising fee when users click on links during a search. Earlier this month , Bill Gates proposed that Internet Search Companies should share Advertisement revenues with Site visitors. In a virtual swipe at Google, Bill Gates said Microsoft’s search products may eventually give users software programs or even cash after they click on an advertisement. Seems like both Google and Yahoo loved Bill's idea. If you live in the United States, you can use actually Google Search technology and also win a prize. This is how it works. Google has partnered with

Visitor Click Tracking in Adsense, Chitika and YPN with Google Analytics

If you carefully analyze the Google Adsense Unit displayed just above, you will notice that the ad offers three exit routes where a website visitor can click. Route 1. Visitor can click on any of advertised products Route 2. Visitor clicks the Ads by Google link to submit feedback to Google Route 3. Visitor clicks the Advertise on this site link - maybe to sign as an adwords advertiser Of these three possible exit routes, only the first route converts into dollars. As an Adsense publisher, I am very keen to track what visitors are clicking while exiting your website. If lot of my visitors are exiting my website by clicking the "Advertise on this site" without signing up as an Adwords advertiser, I will probably disable the feature. So how do we track visitor clicks in Adsense units ? There are couple of commercial adsense tracking scripts but recently, Shawn earlier released a JavaScript snippet that allows you to track visitor clicks on products displayed in Google adsense u

Staples Easy Button - Relieve Stress

Staples launched a Staples Easy Button "That was easy" television commercial series featuring a large red push button marked "easy". The Staples Easy Button commercials highlighted that even the Gift Experts need assistance when it comes to Holiday Shopping. In one of the Staples christmas commercial, Santa Claus is shown pushing a "easy button" to order digital cameras from the Staples store, rather than have his elves sprinkle fairy dust on a wooden camera to create megapixels. The Easy Button promotional campaign was an instant hit and Staple is now trying to cash the popularity. People are hitting the Easy button after they complete a task or answer a question. When you press it, it says "That was easy." Staples is agressively marketing the easy button and asking customers to Press often to relieve stress . Proceeds from the sale of that item, up to $1 million, are donated to Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Staples will be soon releasing

Add an Adsense Referral button to your car

Adding a Adsense referral button to your website enables you to generate additional earnings by directing users to sign up for Adsense. But will Google pay for Adsense referrals that are generated from Car License Plates ? If you love Google, it's time to show off. Google Store is offering Google License Plate Frame for a cheap $1.20. If you're feeling lucky, let your fellow motorists know where things stand. Google logo highlighted in white raised letters on a sturdy black plastic license plate frame. Fits most cars. Looking at the price, the offer looks more like a promotion tactic. Buy here

Is anyone else reading your email ?

Is your boss or even some coworker secretly reading your email ? Are the Federal agencies snooping your email messages ? Following are two simple techniques that can help you confirm your suspicion - it detects snoopers and can track the address of the computer that is watching your email. Remember that for steps 3 & 4, you can create a free account on geocities.com, create a dummy HTML file that contains Statcounter or Google Analytics tracking script. 1. Set up a Hotmail account in US and and a second email account with a non-U.S. provider. (eg. Rediff.com or IndiaTimes.com) 2. Send messages between the two email accounts which might be interesting to the email snooper or NSA who may be monitoring your email. 3. In each message, include a unique URL to a Web server (link to the dummy file on geocities.com containing the tracking code) that you have access to its server logs. This URL should only be known by you and not linked to from any other Web page. The text of the messa

Delay Delivery of an Email Message

GMail, Hotmail or Yahoo user continue to miss one of the most amazing feature in Microsoft Outlook - Delay delivery of a message - If you use Microsoft Exchange Server, you can delay delivery of an individual message. The email message is held in the Outbox for a specified time after clicking Send. To enable sending emails at a specified time, Outlook users can select the Do not deliver before check box, and then click the delivery date and time they want. But thanks to some new websites, you can write a web based email from any address and schedule the time of delivery. Two Websites offering this service are MailtotheFuture.com and FutureMe.org. You can send yourself any kind of note, or as a future reminder of your dreams and aspirations. It is largely a motivational exercise. A large number of the messages sent do one of two basic things: tell the future person what the past person was doing at the time, and ask the future person if he or she had met the aspirations of the past per

Anonymous Email that Disappears forever

Sending an anonymous e-mail is quite easy. Advicebox.com lets you send e-mail anonymously and free through a Web-based interface. Anonymizer charges $5 monthly for a subscription that supports anonymous e-mail and Web browsing. Both it and QuickSilver also let you post messages anonymously to Usenet groups. Other anonymous e-mail software programs include Private Idaho and Potato, which make tracing an e-mail nearly impossible. But willselfdestruct.com is an anonymous email service with a difference. The email message disappears forever once the recipient has read the message. When you send an email through this site, it create a one-time secure web page for the message recipient. You can either choose to delete the email message immediately after viewing or after 'n' number of views or even set it to expire after a few days. The recipient will receive an e-mail with a link to a one-time secure web page which they will be able to view once and only once. Once the url has been

Take Screen Capture of Webpages in Firefox

How do I take a screen capture of an entire web page in Firefox ? The easiest way to take a screenshot of a Firefox window is to press the Print Screen key . This screen picture is copied to the Clipboard which can then be pasted in any graphic editor. But the Prnt Scrn key approach is quite limited since you cannot take screen captures of selected regions or a screenshot of a long webpage that scrolls across multiple pages. Another approach is to convert the webpage to PDF using Adobe CreatePDF service that takes a web address and converts the webpage to PDF. Then convert the PDF to any image format like TIFF,TIF,JPEG,JPG,BMP,WMF,EMF,PNG or TGA. Sounds complicated ? Yes it is. Fortunately, there are some excellent screen capture extensions (.xpi) for Firefox that eliminate the need of third-party apps. 1. ScreenGrab - As the name suggests, Screen Grab saves the entire webpage as an image. The screengrab plugin can capture the current browser window, any visible portion of the browser

How to Access Blocked Websites, Unblock Restricted Sites

How to access blocked websites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo at school or office? This article suggests workarounds to help you unblock access to restricted websites at universities, school and offices. Background: Blocking access to undesirable Web sites has been a common government tactic but China, Iran, Saudi Arabia are believed to extend greater censorship over the net than any other country in the world. Most of the blocked or blacklisted sites in Saudi Arabia are about sex, religion, women, health, politics and pop culture. They even block access to websites that sell swimming or bathing suits. In China, websites that talk about sex, Tibet or Democracy are blocked. Social sites that are often blocked include Google News, Typepad, ebay, Blogger blogs , YouTube , Facebook , Bebo, Myspace, Orkut , MySpace, Pandora, Bebo, Photobucket, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL AIM, Flickr , last.fm, etc. There are always legitimate reasons to bypass the internet filters and unblock websites. The follo

Microsoft should free up IE for Apple Mac

The Mac version of IE has not been updated since June 2003, and now Microsoft has announced that it is being dropped. Microsoft has advised Mac users of Internet Explorer (IE) to switch to rival browsers such as Apple's Safari. Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and will provide no further security or performance updates. Additionally, as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac will no longer be available for download from Mactopia. Since IE is not open-source, developers have no way of taking on the cancelled IE for Mac project and keep it going. Bill Thompson of BBC offers a proposal that could give Microsoft a massive credibility boost with the free/open source community - Give IE to the people - Let us work with its code and keep this useful product alive. I might even consider running an open source IE build on my laptop, if I knew that I wouldn't have to rely on Microsoft's support for a minority operating sy

How a Blogger can become a good journalist

Spencer Critchley writes some good tips for Bloggers an newsletter publishers on how good journalists do useful work. The best piece of advice I think is If you can't say something in plain speech, that may mean you don't understand it well enough yet. Here's more: Identify your sources Your audience needs to know where this information comes from, so they can judge its credibility. Respect the value of people's time Know your point, get to it quickly, and make your content dense with value. Use plain speech, and talk like a real person . If a simpler word can be used with no loss of meaning, use it. Same goes for fewer words vs. more. Reputable pro media outlets use professional fact checkers People may be citing you as a source, so try to get the details right. Related to this: spell-check! Opinions are not facts, even your opinions Opinions make personal journalism lively. But be sure you know the difference between opinion and fact, and make it clear to your reader

Redact Adobe PDF & Microsoft Word documents

Redaction is the careful editing of a document to remove confidential information. The document can be in paper or electronic format (Acrobat PDF, doc) Sensitive government documents, appraisals, legal documents, criticism, insurance contracts are often redacted before being made available to the public. Redacting is a pretty simple job with paper documents. Just take a black Magic Marker and color over the text and then make a photocopy of it. Some people used xacto knives to cut text from the paper and it was then photocopied with a black sheet of paper behind it. In the context of United States government agency documents, redaction generally refers more specifically to the process of removing classified information from a document prior to its publication, during declassification. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) mandates public access to many documents as long as sensitive content is not disclosed. According to US Court General Order 53 , parties must refrain from including

Military Streaming Software on Diskless Dell PC clients

The U.S. Air Forces in Europe are testing Ardence software streaming platform to stream the operating system and software applications. By streaming software applications, they hope to make the task of managing a PC as simple as managing a Television set. The issue of managing locally installed programs on individual desktops is eliminated. The Ardence Desktop creates and stores complete system images on a server and streams portions of the operating system and applications to desktop users at boot-up. Once the user is up and running, additional application and operating system components are fetched as needed. After the initial launch of a program, some products allow portions of the applications to reside in a local cache for faster subsequent loads. There’s no state left, there’s no fingerprint, and there’s no trail of data of what went on in that PC. Once you turn that PC off, all the data that was there has disappeared. Users simply plug in their PCs, which then request an operat

Om Malik gives an XMas Gift

Om Malik, the quintessential Broadband Blogger and writer for Business 2.0 magazine today released The Best of GigaOM - a collection of his top 20 posts. It is a mix of the most read, most commented posts ever. GigaOM hit the 5000 post mark earlier in 2005, the fourth year of blog’s existence! As a blog, it has been an amazing experience for me; writing and developing a very special bond with some of the smartest and most informed readers. With just over 5600 posts, it has been hard for me personally to keep-up with the archives. Om has also published a most interesting user comment associated with each of the story. Being a desktop search enthusiast myself, my favorite reads were Blink Blinkx and Desktop Search Cometh .

Convert Text To Images: Prevent Adsense PSAs

Google Adsense laid down some strict policies regarding content of webpages that serve Adsense ads. Google filters automatically do not serve ads on webpage that contain Adsense Stop Words . Instead they serve the non-paying PSAs (Public Service Ads). Normal ads are not display until you remove the Adsense Stop Words and Googlebot revisits your webpage. Randy has compiled a list of possible Adsense Stop Words here . If I put any of these Adsense Stop words in my story, my smart friend Google will immediately start to display the Huricane Catrina Releif HCR PSAs that have a zero CPM. [I have spelt HCR intentionally incorrect as these too can trigger PSAs] So how do I show Google Ads on this page that contains Adsense Stop Words ? Simple, I will convert the stop-word text into a picture so Google Adsense Robot will never read it. Ofcourse it is not the best solution but still works. This trick can be extended to prevent automated web robots from copying material from your blogs an

Million Dollar Homepage - Interview with $1m Boy

Alex Tew, a 21 year old student from Wiltshire, England tried a unique experiment to raise money for his university education. His thought processes went something like this: what if he set up a website called the Million Dollar Homepage which contained exactly one million pixels (the tiny dots that make up an image on a screen)? What if he then used that page as, in effect, an advertising noticeboard where advertisers could buy space at $1 per pixel? The Million Dollar Homepage is broken up into 10,000 100-pixel squares; Tew sells the 100-pixel squares off for $100 each, or $1 per pixel. The idea was an instant success. In the first four weeks alone, Alex sold more than 300,000 pixels at $1 each. As on today, Tew's Million Dollar Homepage has sold 900,400 pixels and the buyers are still flooding in. Here is a animated graphic displaying the Making of the MIllion Dollar Homepage . .NET spoke with Alex Tew, the mastermind behind milliondollarhomepage.com. He explains how he became

Microsoft Outlook 12: Feed Reader & RSS Aggregator

Michael Affronti, Program Manager for Microsoft Outlook just confirmed that Microsoft Outlook 12 will have an integrated RSS newsreader. Microsoft Outlook is installed on every corporate Desktop and this integrated Web Feeds reader support will increase the penetration of RSS in corporate world manifolds. Microsoft Outlook 2003 does not directly access or display RSS or Atom content. However, there are severaladd-ons by third-party companies that incorporate RSS and Atom viewing in Outlook. When Microsoft Outlook 2006 is released with RSS aggregator, companies like Newsgator, intraVnews and Attensa that develop Outlook RSS plug-ins may have to roll out more creative features soon to compete with Outlook RSS reader. Same holds true for standalone aggregators like Feeddemon or RSSBandit. According to this post , interacting with RSS feeds will be extremely similar to managing your [Outlook] mail items now. The RSS reader will keep the standard look and feel of Outlook folders, hierar

Life without Quintessential Microsoft Office

To evaluate the threat of Web-based software and services to Microsoft Office, an MSNBC reporter tries to do without Microsoft Office for a week relying on free software and services - available via the Internet - for everyday business tasks. (MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.) After spending a weeking without clicking any of the Microsoft Office Icons, the writer concludes it came down to the familiar question of what was worth more, my time or my money. While it was technically possible to perform most of my daily work without using Microsoft Office - or my credit card - it took considerably more time. Setting up the new systems was time-consuming, as I had expected. Here are some of the alternatives to MIcrosoft Office Program which he used in his research: Alternative to Microsoft Word ..And once I had OpenOffice's "Writer" on my machine, I found I didn't miss Microsoft Word at all. Many of the commands were the same, and I was able to easily open Word do

Embed Streaming Video in Web Pages

The Reuters news agency is now providing Breaking News video clips Live in streaming Flash Video format which can be placed on any webpage. Embedding video clips in web pages allows your site visitors to watch audio and video media files without opening a player like Quicktime, Realplayer, Windows Media Player or iTunes. You can either embed the Reuters media video player in your main website or embed the video player in a separate Popup Window. This gives more control to the blogger over the display of video player. To add Reuters video to your webpages, you can insert the following line of Javascript code anywhere in your HTML pages. The script detects presence of Macromedia Flash ActiveX plug-in and plays the streaming video by embedding a copy of the Flash player into the web page. <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <SCRIPT SRC="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/experience_util.js" LANGUAGE="JavaScript"></SCRIPT> <SCRIPT>  var config = ne

PDF Tracking: Adobe updates Acrobat & PDF Reader

Adobe updates Acrobat Reader 7.0.5 so that clients can decide whether they want the fact that they have read the document to be tracked or not. Users are shown a pop-up warning when a PDF document that is tagged for tracking attempts to make a connection to a Web service. A secret Sypware feature in Adobe Acrobat PDF Reader keeps track of how many times a PDF document has been accessed by the software. It can also log the number of times it was viewed from the IP address of the computer on which it was opened. The tracking was being done using JavaScript, support for which had been added as a default setting to Adobe Reader 7 for Linux and since version 6 in versions for other platforms. The tracking failed when the PDF was viewed by other readers such as Xpdf and Kpdf, and version 5 of Abode Reader. Clients were using the PDF Tracking service by Remote Approach to know whether their customers actually read or forward a client's PDFs after downloading them from the client's W

Yahoo! for Good - Cyber Giving Week

Yahoo, in partnership with Network For Good, launched a Cyber Giving Week website that provides donation links to a variety of charities as well as resources and tools for making decisions about contributions and maximizing annual tax breaks. Donations can made for a variety of causes like rebuilding houses in New Orleans and other hurricane-ravaged communities, Humane Society of the United States, for protecting pets, other animals and their natural habitats or for helping children out of poverty and crisis around the world. There is an online Giving Calculator to determine how much to donate given your income level.

Are you a Photoshop Widow

Photoshop Widow - A person (usually female) who finds herself abandoned by her significant other for the enticing and totally absorbing attributes of Adobe Photoshop . Interesting. Found via Photoshop World

India Tax Issues with Google Adsense Adwords publishers

Google India to pay tax for Adsense Adwords Service Google India had earlier asked for clarifications on whether providing selling space for advertisement on the Google website would be exempt from service tax or was classifiable as advertisement service, computer network service, business auxiliary service or any other taxable service. Google had argued that it was not providing any service involving 'making and display of advertisements but was merely engaged in space-selling activity' on Google's own website and other websites (through Google Adsense) with which it had entered into a syndication agreement. However, The Authority for Advance Ruling said that the proposed activity of Google India to sell space on its site tantamount to providing a service to advertisers and clients. Therefore Google India will have to pay service tax for selling advertisement space on its search site to Indian entities. The Commissionerate of Service Tax, in its argument, pointed out that

Switching to GMail ? Watch these Google tutorials

If you are looking to switch your email address from Yahoo or Hotmail to GMail, here are some Google tutorial movies done by Autodemo to help you migrate easily. Export contacts from Yahoo to GMail Import your contacts' information into Gmail Inform your Yahoo Contacts about your new GMail address Import Hotmail contacts' information into Gmail account Inform your Hotmail contacts about your new GMail address Switch to GMail from other email services - Just enter the domain for the email address you no longer want to use, and click "Help Me Switch". Contains detailed information on migrating to GMail from Yahoo, Hotmail, SBCGlobal, Comcast and .EDU addresses. You can also use your existing Yahoo or Hotmail email address from GMail . The trick is to customize the 'From:' field of any Gmail message you send so it appears to be from another one of your email addresses. Your outgoing Gmail messages will then display another one of your other email addresses in t

Embed Breaking News Videos in Website or Weblog - Retain Visitors

If you are blogging about a breaking news event, there is a high probability that your article links to a story on CNN, AP or Reuters. Your site visitors may read a few lines on your website and then quickly leave for the original source to read the full story. So how do you prevent this blog exodus ? Simply broadcast the news video from your website itself. Your visitors will watch the entire news video on your website without leaving. Embedding Videos is now simple. To broadcast breaking news stories live from your website or blog, you will need to sign up for the free Reuters Affiliate Network pilot program. If your website or blog gets approved, Reuters will send few lines of javascript for you to insert them in your Blog template where you want the video player to appear. The Associated Press is also teaming up with MSN to develop the AP Online Video Network. They will also be launching a similar program, providing AP members with news videos for their Web sites through an ad-supp

Yahoo Adsense Chitika Advertising Preview Software

Yahoo Publisher Network YPN and Chitika eMiniMalls offer interesting Adsense alternatives . We are happy to a announce "Digital Inspiration All-in-One Preview" tool that will help you compare the relevance of Contextual Advertising services offered by Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) and Chitika eMiniMalls. The All-In-One Sandbox tool will assist website owners and bloggers in evaluation of the Google Adsense, Chitika eMiniMalls and Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) Program to determine which Contextual Advertising service is more suited for their website or weblog. Enter any keywords or a website address (URL), choose a geographic location (for Google), customize ad colors or choose from an existing color set and click "Udate Ads Display". You can try the Adsense, YPN or Chitika Services without signing up for any of these services. Advantages of using this tool 1. Google provides a Official Adsense Preview Tool for Adsense Publishers but not Chitika eMin

Apple iTunes QuickTime players loopholes

A heap overflow vulnerability in Apple Computer iTunes and QuickTime media players is triggered when playing a specially crafted .mov file will cause the heap overflow. This warning was released by Tom Ferris of Security-Protocols.com # . Ferris said he flagged the issue to Apple more than a month ago but only received a cursory confirmation that the bug was being investigated. As per policy, Apple does not comment on security issues until a patch is available. Download and play these proof-of-concept [.mov files] to trigger the crash, showing the control of memory. Crash QuickTime Player Crash Apply iTunes and QuickTime Player Security alerts aggregator Secunia Inc. has slapped a "moderately critical" rating on the vulnerability and warned iTunes and QuickTime users to avoid opening ".mov" files from untrusted sources. The Ferris discovery is not the first QuickTime/iTunes bug that remains unpatched. eEye Digital Security, a research outfit based in Aliso Viejo, C

Free Convert PDF to Word, PDF to HTML or Text

How can I convert pdf to word ? What is the best way extract Text from Adobe PDF documents and convert it into words ? I want to convert PDF to HTML for free online. Option 1: Download Adobe Acrobat or other PDF conversion software, open your PDF document and choose save as Text. (Learn about some Adobe Acrobate Alternatives ). Option 2: Use GMail PDF conversion engine to convert doc, xls, ppt, rtf, pdf and OpenOffice documents to HTML. No software download is required. Option 3: This is straight from Adobe, the developers of PDF. Adobe has developed these conversion tools as a free service to allow blind and visually impaired users to read Adobe PDF files. You need to send the Adobe PDF as a MIME attachment in an e-mail message to Adobe: * For conversion to plain text, e- mail the PDF file to pdf2txt@adobe.com * For conversion to HTML, e-mail the file to pdf2html@adobe.com All converted Adobe PDF documents will be sent back to the sender as MIME attachments. This Adobe

Microsoft products for future homes

Dan Simmons of BBC take us on a magical trip to future, as Microsft sees it. He looks at some amazing Technologies that Microsoft is hoping to bring to our homes in the next few years. Post-It notes of the future - You can text or email your messages to a place rather than a person. Photograph Collages - This Microsoft application automatically creates a tapestry from your favourite snaps. This software takes, fully automatically, a large collection of images, then takes the important bit from each image by doing optic recognition.This process will typically take a user about one hour with image editing software, or even longer to get great results. And this software does it fully automatically for you. Personalized Facial Sketch Technology creates a caricature of any portrait snap. It identifies key parts of the face - like the edge of the lips or eyes - to automatically create a cartoon version. You can then use the results as emoticons for personalizing instant messaging or e-ma

Google Adsense Preview - Firefox Extension

The Google Adsense Preview Firefox extension brings the functionality of the Official Google Adsense Preview Tool in Firefox. The Google AdSense preview extension will add a Preview Google Ads menu both to the Firefox toolbar and the right click popup menu. Clicking on Preview Google Ads menu item will open a new Firefox tab displaying a set of Google ads that may show on that web page where the Preview was requested. Install Google Adsense Preview Tool 1.0 The Ads will be displayed in all official Google Ad formats. Both Text and Image Google Ads will be shown. Firefox 1.5 and greater are supported. Javascript must be enabled in Firefox to use GoogleAdsPreview. Visit GoogleAdsPreview on the Extensions Mirror website.

How to Test Google Safe Browsing Extension

Google today released a Firefox plug-in that alerts users about possible phishing webpages. Open Google Safe Browsing Test Page phish-o-rama.html in Firefox Browser(1.5). If the Google Safe Browsing extension is installed successfully on your machine, you should see the "Web Forgery" alert when you load that page. Google is blocking Non-US visitors from downloading the Anti-Phishing extension. You can however employ this Firefox hack to download and install the extension from any place on earth .

Convert PDF to HTML - Free Online Conversion

How to instantly convert Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, PDF documents to HTML without installing any third-party software like Adobe Acrobat or PDF2HTML. Extract Text from PDF documents. Convert doc, xls, ppt, rtf, pdf to HTML - Free Online Conversion that works on all platforms be it Windows PC, Mac or Linux. We will utilize the recently announced See it now feature in GMail to convert Adobe PDF documents into html files. In addition to PDF, you can also convert all Microsoft Office Document formats (MS Word .doc, Excel .xls, Powerpoint .ppt, Rich Text Format .rtf), OpenOffice.org Document Formats (Writer, Calc, Impress, Presentation) and WML Files (Wireless markup language) to HTML. Here's how to get this done with GMail: 1. Compose a new message in GMail. (If you are still without a GMail account, request a GMail Invitation code ) 2. Attach any PDF or Word document that you want to convert to HTML You can attach multiple files in this step by clicking Attach another File. 3. E

Download Google Phishing Warning Extension Outside US

Google Safe Browsing is a Firefox plug-in developed by Google that alerts users about phishing websites. Google makes use of a blacklist containing pages that have been identified as suspicious and/or misleading based on automated detection or user reports. Google also examines pages' content and structure in order to catch potentially misleading pages. Google Safe Browsing for Firefox is only available for download for users located in the US. Visitors from other countries are blocked from downloading the Google Safe Browing firefox extension (google-safebrowsing.xpi) and instead, they are redirected to a page saying Download Not Available . Here's a short guide to download and install the Google Phishing Extension for Firefox users outsite the US. 1. Open this page in IE and choose Save. 2. Start Firefox and drag the google-safebrowsing.xpi onto the Firefox interface. 3. Restart Firefox. Download link for US Visitors - Google Safe Browsing for Firefox GMail, Google's

Adobe issues Pink Slips, Macromedia Logo Disappears

Adobe Systems Inc. will cut 650 to 700 jobs as it folds recently acquired rival Macromedia Inc. into its operations. Adobe had 4,286 employees at the end of the third quarter, while Macromedia had 1,538. The 11 per cent to 12 per cent workforce reduction would reduce overlapping positionsand employees from both companies would be affected. Adobe Systems will record costs of as much as $US25 million ($33.3 million) to fire workers and close offices after its $US3.4 billion purchase of Macromedia. The expenses include as much as $US20 million in payments to sacked employees and $US5 million in fees to close offices, the company says in a filing it lodged last week with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Adobe will begin eliminating positions from the combined workforce. Layoffs will occur in jobs where there is duplication, says Pierre Van Beneden, Adobe's vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Other workers in Europe may be offered jobs in Nordic regions or

Google Desktop Search 2 for Non-English Users

Just a month after releasing the final version of Google Desktop Search 2 English version, Google today announced that the other international (multilingual) version of Google Desktop Search 2 are also out of beta. Google Desktop Search 2 is now in 16 languages for non-english users, including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Portuguese/Brazilian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. The International versions of GDS 2 includes an international Weather panel, a Google Maps panel and support for script Sidebar plug-ins for developing Google Sidebar panels using the Google Desktop Display API. Google Desktop 1 was available only in English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish language. The Sidebar was available only in English. Download Google Desktop Search 2 International [1.3 MB exe] Download the Google Desktop SDK The Google Desktop SDK provides documentation and sa