Got Acrobat 7.0? Get Patch.

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Adobe Systems rolled out patches for security vulnerabilities found in Adobe Reader 7.0 and 7.0.1, and in Adobe Acrobat 7.0 and 7.0.1. From Infoworld:

According to Adobe officials, the vulnerability is within the Adobe Reader control. If an XML script is embedded in JavaScript, it is possible to discover the existence of local files, according to a security advisory from the company. An attacker could then maliciously use the gathered information. But the statement pointed out that the local files can be found only if the attacker knows the complete file names and paths in advance of such an attack.

Get your update from:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads

Build your own Web command with YubNub

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I just found out about an interesting new service YubNub that allows you to use and create “command line” stuff for the Web.

So for example, if you do Google image searches, you simply type in “gim flower” into YubNub and you’ll get it.

What’s neat-o about YubNub is that it’s a “social” command line which lets you create commands that get added to YubNub’s dictionary.

In fact, I created a command too:

Google has this neat feature where you can search for the definition of a word by searching for “define:word”. So, I created a YubNub command for it, “gdef”. So if you want a definition of say, podcasting, you type in “gdef podcasting” and voila!

I don’t know if this will catch on or if it’s just a Geek Toy. For now it’s a Geek toy to me.

Your credit card number: it’s everywhere you don’t want it to be

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You should call your bank/credit card company and find out if your card was one of the ones recently stolen. This CNET article left me shaking my head for a few reasons:

The data security breach, possibly the largest to date, happened because intruders were able to exploit software security vulnerabilities to install a rogue program on the network of CardSystems Solutions, MasterCard International spokeswoman Jessica Antle said. The program captured credit card data, she said.

“install rogue program” is code-word for “some dumb*ss let a trojan horse get installed”.

The probe also found that the Atlanta-based payment processor did not meet MasterCard’s security regulations. CardSystems held onto records that it should have discarded, and it stored transaction data in unencrypted form, Antle said.

Now, whose fault is it that CardSystems continued (and continues) to operate? I caught a GMSV article quoting CEO John Perry that they retained all those excess records for “research” purposes? Research on what? To sell to whom? WTF!

MasterCard declined to disclose more information on the breach, citing an ongoing investigation by the FBI.

Oh, that’s nice. How convenient.

The data processor’s Web site runs on Microsoft’s Windows 2000 operating system and IIS Server 5.0, which has fueled speculation that its other set-ups may also be Microsoft-based.

So, what, did they forget to install a service pack or “security” update?

Now comes the really scary part:

MBNA, one of the largest U.S. credit card issuers, said it has received information from CardSystems about exposed customer accounts. The company won’t contact the individuals affected but is keeping a close eye on the compromised accounts, said Jim Donahue, an MBNA spokesman.

Well, isn’t that special? They won’t even tell their customers that their cards have been stolen. Is that to protect the innocent, help the FBI, or just not have to deal with freaking out their customers because they’ve contracted with a loser organization?

Lest we think that CardSystems is the only loser in the group let me remind you:

Two weeks ago, CitiFinancial said tapes containing unencrypted information on 3.9 million customers were lost by the United Parcel Service while in transit to a credit bureau. …data leaks have been reported by Bank of America and Wachovia, data brokers ChoicePoint and LexisNexis, and the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University.

Clearly, a new way of doing this has to be done. We simply can’t trust that those that hold the data can responsibly treat it.

Call your bank.

Will profit kill open source?

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I just listened to this well thought-out presentation by Kim Polese of SpikeSource talking about what her company does, which is to put a smart IT-management layer atop open source components and I walk away with a couple of thoughts:

  • Very cool idea.
  • What will OSS developers who are doing this for free start feeling when they see SpikeSource start earning money on the free code they wrote?
  • How long will important software continue to be free once somebody is sitting on top of it and making money?

This will be interesting to watch. If the OSS community was based on all the developers doing it for free and being broke all as a group, then the insertion of profit taking might spoil the soup for all.

If, however, OSS was built on the faith that “code it and we’ll figure out how to make money one day” and if SpikeSource can figure out a way to help all those volunteer developers, there could be something huge here.

What could happen when you put Apple and Nokia together?

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I just caught this Infoworld article that Apple and Nokia have opened up a browser partnership.

Nokia has announced that it using open source software in developing a new mobile Web browser for its Series 60 SmartPhone — and that this has been developed in cooperation with Apple.

What does this mean?

First, some obvious facts:

  • Apple knows there’s a company called Nokia.
  • Apple knows that Nokia is developing mp3 functionality.
  • Apple wants to expand iPod functionality.
  • Apple knows that pretty soon every competitor is going to get medieval on the iPod.

And now, the obvious conclusion:

  • Apple and Nokia will soon be delivering jointly-labled iPod uberphones.

(Don’t let the smoke screen of this Browser Partnersshp announcement fool you).

Podcasting is cranking

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Those of you that would like to see some hard numbers in terms of growth should check out this Feedburner report: Podcasting on the Rise

Some notable quotes:

On Growth:

It took us nine weeks to manage our first thousand podcasts, and we added our most recent thousand podcasts in under a month. As you can see, the rate of growth changes in bursts. We added about 800 podcasts per month initially, then 1000 a month, and now we’re adding about 1400 a month.

On subscribers:

Just as interesting, podcasts managed by FeedBurner have an average of 33 subscribers, up from an average of 15 subscribers in February. If you discount the feeds with less than 5 subscribers, the average number of subscribers per podcast is 65.

In February, we managed 20 podcasts with over 100 subscribers and hundreds of podcasts with more than 10 subscribers. Now we manage about 20 podcasts with over 1000 subscribers and hundreds of podcasts with more than 100 subscribers.

Just wait until iTunes integrates podcatching.

Blogging for Business

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I had the great honor of leading a panel of bloggers in Hawaii including Roxanne Darling, Burt Lum, and Ryan Ozawa for the International Association of Business Communicators.

We were lucky to record nearly the entire 1 hour presentation. If you want to know more about corporate blogging or business blogging, this podcast is really worth your time. I know that 1 hour is a long time to listen so I broke out the timing below in case you want to jump around:

Listen to this mp3 file Listen to this Panel Discussion

  • 00:00 Introduction
  • 03:55: Survey (out of 40) of who uses blogs, rss news readers.
  • 04:48: Context of blogging as part of the social revolutions in human history.
  • 06:38: How powerful are blogs? Clinton, Rather, George Bush, John Kerry, Howard Dean, Moveon.org, all affected.
  • 08:05: How blogging creates main stream media (MSM) reality .
  • 10:20: How blogging affected the Hawaii Duke Bainum campaign.
  • 12:18: What do blogs look like?
  • 14:00: How a blog is really just another Web site but it uses specialized tools and standards, like RSS, to publish its content.
  • 14:33: (low volume) viewing a blogging Web site through the eyes of a news reader and how RSS plays an important role
  • 16:19: Tracking different news sources with an RSS reader (Pluck)
  • 16:53: Question: what’s the difference between going through an RSS newsreader or a Google News Alert
  • 19:30: How your daily routine changes when you use news readers and blogging tools. You read blogs and write blogs.
  • 20:15: What’s different about this model. How blogs reach a very targeted audience and RSS feeds continue to review your content.
  • 21:26: Businessweek quote about 40,000 new blogs created per day and how even a small sliver of a targeted audience can make a blog worth it.
  • 22:36: Will blogging take over MSM or will they co-exist? Story about Clear Channel creating a false blog to talk about their own radio stations.
  • 24:20: Overview/ review of what a blog is.
  • 25:52: Question (low volume) that talks about and RSS news reader (hard to make out)
  • 26:20: Comments about copyrights and blogging. How bloggers can cut and paste, potentially violating copyright. Additional discussion of how the cut-and-pasting that bloggers do a lot of actually helps MSM.
  • 31:10: the wrong reason to use corporate blogs is to create a press release. The purpose is to increase transparency.
  • 33:10: The GM blog and Bob Lutz as a good corporate blogger
  • 34:00: How corporate blogging gives you great free market research
  • 35:20: The corporate cultural changes that one might need to be ready for. How the GM blog caught a lot of heat about bad cars, yet how they responded intelligently to the LA Times scandal.
  • 36:35: If you’re going to get involved with blogging you need to be ready for the truth and be prepared that in the blogosphere, you’re not in control of the message, although you are in control of your message.
  • 37:00: How blogging lets you create your own media so that you can respond instantly to events and not rely on MSM.
  • 38:00: What is the voice behind your company’s blog? It’s important to understand who the company bloggers will be and what their tone will be.
  • 40:00: How the blog can be just another good old fashioned tool to display information. It doesn’t have to be controversial.
  • 41:00: What should corporate HR policy be with respect to blogging? Employees have been fired for blogging. Hawaii is home to one of the first bloggers who lost his job due to blogging, Ian Lind.
  • 43:28: Question & Answer: Are there tools to find out how many subscribers you have to your RSS feed?
  • 46:00: Reviewing Feedburner statistics that show subscribers and how Sitemeter can track statistics.
  • 47:00: Using Google to track how many links are going to your site.
  • 47:50: You need to have a commitment to regular content publication. There is a major cultural change required for your company.
  • 48:20: How people will start linking more often to your site with good practices of publishing content on a regular basis.
  • 49:00: Question: How often should we be posting to our blog? Simple guidelines on posting to blogs. At least once a week and about an hour for that time, perhaps 20 minutes if you get efficient.
  • 51:00: Blogging is here to stay. Recognized by Business Week online means a lot. Blog now and get it or be left in the dust in 5 years.
  • 52:30: Others will be blogging about your company so it’s important to counteract and balance the grass roots blogging that might take place.
  • 53:00: You have to have information about your company going out, otherwise perhaps negative information about your company may be the published authority. How a scathing critique of a restaurant became the highest ranking page instead of the official company web site.
  • 54:42: Question: how do you get corporate folks up to speed with what’s going on with blogging? One way is to create an blogging Intranet.
  • 56:18: Another way is to get management that the blogosphere is part of the media that needs to be dealt with. Once that’s done, it’s easier to get corporate to pour resources. You should have google alerts working and be using newsreaders to get into the blogosphere.
  • 57:30: The corporate blogging efforts should be part of a package.
  • 58:00: What’s a good example of a corporate blog: besides the gm blog already mentioned, Microsoft has created a bunch of blogs at blogs.msdn.com
  • 59:41: What are the demographics of blogging?
  • 60:30: What’s the fastest way to get a blog started? Use blogger.com for free. Bizzycast.com is releasing a corporate blogging tool.
  • 61:48: How do you find someone’s blog? Just add “blog” on your google searches.
  • 62:30: What blogging software do you use? WordPress is a free software and bizzycast is also creating a solution. It’s really not a technical cost but rather a corporate organizational cost.
  • 64:10: What is podcasting? Here’s a video presentation on Podcasting you should look at.
  • 67:22: Question: isn’t podcasting like blogging? HawaiiUp.com is a good example of a blog that does podcasting.
  • 69:30: Why are hobbyists excited about blogging, podcasting, and video blogging?

The panelists also posted some of their own blogs on this:
Burt Lum
Roxanne Darling – Nice pictures!
Ryan Ozawa – contains video too!

Use your favorite Podcatcher to automatically download new video and audio tips as they come! Subscribe to the Podcast and automatically download new video and audio tips as they come!

Steve Job demonstrates new version of iTunes with Podcatching function

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When Apple launches iTunes 4.9, you will see a mambo explosion in the Podcast audience. There are about 60 million iPods on the market and they are all going to start download podcasts very soon.

You can read Steve Jobs presentation here, transcription courtesy of sick little monkey Ryan Ozawa, certified podcasting/iPod freak, who transcribed the whole thing.

The good guys at Make magazine also recorded the session here so you can listen in. There’s also some great screenshots of the product and it looks really great!

Good example of business blogging

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OK, so blogging is cool and makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside, but can you really use it for business?

Here’s one REALLY good example I found on businessweekOnline, Ice.com, a jewerly manufacturer, that has created 3 different blog Web sites:

http://www.justaskleslie.com/ “just ask Leslie”, apparently some heavy-duty jewelry chick that gives people advice on what to buy.

http://blog.ice.com/ a “corporate” blog that tells the whole world about their great accomplishments

http://www.sparklelikethestars.com/ “Sparkle Like the Stars”, a blog that covers what kind of Jewelry the celebs are wearing.

Very cool, very simple ideas here. Both justaskleslie and sparklelikethestars of course link EACH product to Ice.com.

I think we have a pretty good example of a great blog business model here. WhatChuAllTink? Post your comments please!

The world is flipping: Apple goes to Intel while MS goes to IBM chips

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I’m reading this CNET article “Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips” and I get the big “whoa”.

Apple is possibly moving to an IBM chip. So what does this mean?

The open-source FreeBSD operating system, of which Mac OS X is a variant, already runs on x86 chips such as Intel’s Pentium. And Jobs has said Mac OS X could easily run on x86 chips.

Us ex-Apple lovers really got pissed off at Jobs back in the ’80s because his religion (against the PC) blinded him to the opportunity of running on the PC and Sculley followed his suit. We all know that Apple would have killed MS if they ported the Mac OS to the PC. Well, here’s their chance.

I still don’t quite understand why Apple hasn’t seriously bonded with the Linux gang. Macs make the ultimate desktop workstation while Linux makes the killer server. I can’t be the only guy seeing this, right?

And now for something completely different:

IBM loses cachet with the end of the Apple partnership, but it can take consolation in that it’s designing and manufacturing the Power family processors for future gaming consoles from Microsoft

What a weird world we live in. Microsoft switches to IBM’s Power PC chip to run their graphics console while Apple drops the PowerPC to run on Intel (Wintel?) machines.