Are Handheld Computers Becoming Extinct?

This week, Sony announced they were getting out of the handheld computer business (PDA's) completely. This was no surprises as they stopped selling handhelds in the United States and Europe a year ago.

This, along with the fact that overall sales for PDA's have dropped for the third year in a row, leads one to ask the question if the handheld market is fading into the sunset. Last year, manufacturers only shipped 10 million PDA units worldwide.

Right now, there are two basic types of handhelds...the Palm-based system and the Pocket PC. Many observers claim that it is the Palm-based systems (like Sony) that are dead and that the more expensive Pocket PC is the winner of the category.

I, like other tech columnists, believe the whole genre is dying out. I base this not only on my own needs, but in the fact that sales for other portable devices are growing quite nicely.

For me, the biggest reason is that my cell phone will now do almost all of what my PDA (ironically it is a Sony) used to do. My phone hooks directly into my computer and Outlook to download phone numbers, to-d0 lists and appointments. Why carry two devices when one will do the same functions plus make phone calls and write e-mail's (not to mention take pictures)?

When I held a regular job, my PDA did carry some documents and spreadsheets, but then I went to using a laptop and I lost my need to carry a PDA. Sales figures show that many other users have been doing the same. Sales for laptops for the last few years have been booming.

The third device that just might kill off the PDA's for good is the rise of the portable media player. Devices like the i-Pod and video players are adding more and more features that just might make them the equal of PDA's plus play movies and music.

Many of you may disagree with me and say that you could not live without your PDA. That is fine. I am not saying that they don't have their useful functions and that they are still going to be around for a while. I am just saying that those of you who are contemplating buying one might think about if you really need it with all the other options available to you. Apparently consumers world wide have rethought their needs because they are not buying very many of them.

So many toys...so little time.

Netflix vs. Blockbuster Part 3

This is the final installation of our head-to-head comparison of the two most popular DVD mail order rental companies. If you missed the first two installments, the entire article can be found on my website.

Customer Service

It would not be fair to rate the two services side-by-side in this category as I only had Blockbuster for two weeks and Netflix for over three years.

I can just say that I did have some interaction with Blockbuster’s customer service and it went fine. They e-mailed me that after I cancelled to say that I had to return my movies in 6 days. I wrote them back saying their contract specifically calls for 10 days and with their slow shipping times, it would be impossible to get them back in six days. They wrote back and said send them back any time I wanted and that would be fine.

I also had one bad disk with Blockbuster, but I could do nothing about it as I had already cancelled my membership when I discovered it.

With Netflix, I have had the occasional bad disk. When you notify them, they immediately send you out a new one of the same DVD without waiting for the bad disk to arrive. Fortunately, I average about one bad disk every five months, so I don’t have much to complain about.

The other day, I asked Netflix to e-mail me my entire list of rentals since I have been a member. One day later it showed up.

While I won’t give an award here for the above-mentioned reasons, I will just say that the Netflix customer service has been nothing short of outstanding.

Miscellaneous

One nice thing that Blockbuster does is that it gives you two free additional rentals each month from one of their brick and mortar stores. For me, that meant a trip to Moses Lake to redeem my coupons. But, I did it one day when I had to go to Moses Lake on other business. Then, my wife returned them as her office is near the Port of Moses Lake.

Conclusions

For me, there is little doubt that Netflix is the superior mail order video rental service. While their price is $3 higher, they can supply you with more movies each month because of the inferior shipping times for Blockbuster. I ran the numbers, and the cost of each Netflix movie is actually significantly less per film than those from Blockbuster because of the turnaround time differences.

Netflix also has far more films truly available to you at any one time. Blockbuster’s service may get better in the future when they build more warehouses, but that may take some time. For now, I will stick with Netflix.

Netflix vs. Blockbuster Part Two

We now continue with out head-to-head comparison of the two most popular DVD mail order rental companies. If you missed part one, you can read yesterday's post on-line at http://jcorkrum.blogspot.com

DVD Selections

Having a large selection of DVD’s to choose from is extremely important to most customers. Netflix has over 35,000 titles, a number that is probably close to the total number of DVD’s ever made. Blockbuster says they have 30,000 titles.

But making a claim as to how many DVD titles one has in stock vs. actually having them available right now for a customer are two very different things.

For instance, right now in my queue at Netflix, there are 70 films listed that I want to see. Of those, 67 show that they are available right now. One shows “Short Wait” and two show “Very Long Wait.”

In my Blockbuster queue, I had 20 films listed. Only nine of them were available at that moment, the rest were listed as “Short Wait” and “Very Long Wait.” Of the films that were available now, most were newer releases.

In searching for films at Netflix, I always have found every film I searched for. Even if a film has not been released on DVD, it will tell you so and allow you to add the film to a special section of your queue called “Saved.” The films will then move into your queue when the film is released. It will also show you the planned release date, if there is one.

At Blockbuster, it is a different story. There were a few films that I searched for that they do not have at all, including some that are only a few years old. I also did a search on one film that is not on DVD yet and it put it in my queue as “Very Long Wait,” rather than stating that it wasn’t out yet and putting it a different section as Netflix does.

The clear winner in this category is Netflix.

Mailing Times

While many of us usually go to a local video store to pick up our selection, Netflix and Blockbuster mail customers must wait for the movie to arrive by mail…then wait after it is sent back for the film to arrive at the warehouse so another one can be shipped.

At Netflix, the wait is two days about 95% of the time in both directions. Occasionally, a film will take three days to arrive, but I usually attribute that to the post office. Lately, on occasion, the films arrive back at their warehouse in one day. Almost always, replacement DVD’s are sent out on the same day. The bottom line for Netflix is that you can almost always count on two day shipping in either direction.

For the longest time, the closest Netflix warehouse was located in Western Washington. I see now that they have also opened a Spokane warehouse, which explains the one-day shipping times.

As for Blockbuster, I can only tell you the facts for my two-week free trial period, and judging on this short time period may not be considered fair, but it was enough for me to not want to continue.

My first three movies were all shipped out on a Monday, according to the e-mail’s I received from Blockbuster. The first film took four days to arrive, showing up on Friday. The next two films arrived on Saturday, making it five days shipping time.

The first one was shipped back on Friday and the next two were mailed on Monday. The first replacement film was shipped on Monday and arrived on Thursday, for a three-day turnaround. The other two we shipped on Tuesday and arrived on Saturday for a four-day turnaround.

One nice thing that Blockbuster says they have is the ability to ship your next movie before the returning DVD arrives at the warehouse. They are somehow tied in with US Postal computers that scan the barcode at their facility and pass it on to Blockbuster. This system seems to work as the last three DVD’s were shipped prior to arrival at their warehouse.

But, it still takes far too long for the films to arrive, so that advantage is lost.

Clearly, Netflix again wins in this category.

In part three, I will finish up our head-to-head comparison and give you my recommendation. After reading this edition, you can probably guess which one I favor.

Netflix vs. Blockbuster - Part One

As long time readers know, I have been a Netflix subscriber for over three years. And during that time, I have been a very satisfied customer. Their selection of DVD’s is outstanding and their customer service has been exemplary.

I have watched their prices go from $19.95 per month to $21.95, to the current price of $17.99 per month. Recently, Blockbuster came out with the same kind of program for the price of $14.99 per month. As I wrote here in one of my blogs, I decided to stay with Netflix because I was so pleased with their overall service.

But after some consideration, I decided to try Blockbuster for two weeks because it was free for that time and I wanted to write a blog comparing the two services. What follows here is my head-to-head comparison of the two video rental mail services. I think you will find at the end of my review that the choice of which company is better is an easy one to make.

Basics – How the System Works

First of all, video rental services such as Netflix and Blockbuster that use the US Postal Service to transport your video selections, only rent DVD’s. Neither company (nor any others that I am aware of) rent videotapes. So, you must have a DVD player. As DVD players have become so inexpensive, videotapes are starting to fade away into the sunset anyway.

Second, you need to be connected to the Internet as all of your video selections are done online. Since you are reading this blog via the Net, this shouldn’t be a problem for you.

Third, your monthly fees are paid for automatically each month via credit card. For $14.99 a month with Blockbuster and $17.99 at Netflix, you get to have three DVD’s out at any one time. For a higher monthly fee, you can have more DVD’s out at any one time.

The first thing you do after signing up for the service online is to create a “Queue” of the films you want to rent. You keep this queue updated continuously as new DVD’s come out or as you hear about films or TV shows that you want to see. You just add them to your queue in order of preference that you want to see them.

After viewing a DVD and sending it back, the rental company will then take the next film at the top of your queue and automatically ship it off to you (if it is available). You can change the order of your queue at anytime and add and remove selections at will. I currently have 70 films in my queue at Netflix. My Blockbuster queue, which is now cancelled, had over 20 films listed.

As already mentioned, US Mail handles all shipping. Both companies us unique envelopes that allow you to mail back the DVD in the same envelope that it came in. All postage is part of your monthly fee so no additional postage is required. Both companies make it as easy as possible to get the movies back to them.

One thing that both companies encourage you to do is to rate the movies you have seen to help out other customers and to make yourself aware that you have already seen this film. I have found the latter to be very helpful, especially when dealing with DVD’s of TV shows that are released slowly over a few years. A long running show such as Midsomer Murders releases about 6 new episodes every six months, and having the previous episodes marked with my ratings tells me at a glance which ones I have seen so I won’t “double rent” one.

In the next installment, I will start comparing the two services head-to-head.

Three New Virus-Infected E-Mails

Three sets of e-mails which promise either nude pictures of Paris Hilton, a scary official-looking warning from the FBI, or a secret admirer who says "I love you" have appeared in the last two days.

They all deliver a package that could grind networks to a halt. Fortunately, none of these will reach "Anna Kornikova" worm or "Love" bug proportions but they will take away hours of productive work time. Be on the lookout!

In a statement released late Tuesday, the FBI detailed the threat, which attempts to lure e-mail users into opening an attachment containing computer virus.

The mail is disguised as correspondence warning people that their Internet use has been monitored by the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center and that they have "accessed illegal Web sites." The e-mails then direct recipients to open the virus-laden attachment to answer a series of questions.

The newest "I Love You" virus was discovered by antivirus company Sophos and has been dubbed Assiral. It mimics the earlier virus, which used the phrase "I love you" in subject lines to entice recipients into opening the destructive e-mail and attachment (which was typically titled "love-letter-for-you").

The Paris Hilton e-mail contains a new variant of the Sober virus and sends itself in German and English, using a variety of subject lines, including "Paris Hilton, pure!" and "Paris Hilton SexVideos."

Google Headed for The Dalles

Almost at the same moment that I was driving through The Dalles, OR, on my way to my first art show of the year in Corvallis, Google was announcing the they had bought 30 acres of land in The Dalles for a new technology infrastructure facility

Google, which is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, is expected to pay $1.87 million for a parcel of industrial-zoned land 85 miles east of Portland, with an option to buy three other area sites.

The new facility would be Google's second operations outpost up here in the Pacific Northwest. Last November, Google opened an office in Kirkland, WA, just a few miles from the headquarters of Microsoft, which recently launched a rival search engine.

Spokesmen for both Google and the Port of The Dalles declined to detail specific plans for facilities at the site. Construction is expected to begin soon, which is estimated to cost between $5 million and $20 million.

Google's search engine, which pulls data from an index of more than 8 billion Web pages, is run over a distributed network of computers housed in numerous facilities worldwide. The facility would likely create between 50 and 100 jobs over time, paying an estimated average of $60,000 annually with salary and benefits.

New High Speed Processors from Intel

Intel has introduced a new line of Pentium 4 desktop chips that contain 2MB of secondary cache, twice as much as current Pentium 4s, as well as technology from its notebook line that's designed to cut power consumption. Larger caches, a pool of memory located on the processor, generally improve performance.

The four new chips included in the new 600 series of Pentium 4s range in speeds from 3GHz to 3.6GHz, and all of them feature an 800MHz bus. As you might expect, the new chips are a bit pricey. The top-of-the-line 660 Pentium 4 sells for $605 in quantities of 1,000, while the 630 sells for $224.

Intel also unveiled another member of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor family, which runs at 3.73GHz and contains a 1.066GHz bus. These chips are used inside computers for gamers and serious hobbyists.

The new chips in some ways can be seen as some of the last of their kind. Starting in the second quarter, Intel will begin to sell dual-core processors. These chips won't run as fast as single-core chips (or at least won't continue to maintain the pace of the current speed increases) but they will contain two separate "brains," thereby improving overall performance.

Rival Advanced Micro Devices has said it will come out with dual-core chips in the summer and deliver a new family of energy-efficient notebook chips called Turion.

New Bank Transfer Phishing Scam

There is a new phishing scam making the rounds that you should know about. For those of you unfamiliar with "phishing," this is scheme whereby criminals trick you into revealing very pertinent information about yourself such as name, social security number, bank account and credit card numbers.

Most phishing schemes disguise themselves as being e-mails from your bank (or some other bank) asking you to update your account information. I have also seen them from scammers pretending to be e-Bay and PayPal. I usually get at least one per day and mostly from banks where I don't even have an account. They don't care that I don't have an account as they send out millions of them at a time hoping some will stick.

This new phishing scam takes a new path. It starts with an e-mail from a phony bank, claiming that a large amount of money has been placed into a new account opened in your name. A link to the bogus bank is included, along with an account number and a PIN. The message goes on to say that the recipient can transfer the money by logging into this account, which shows a large balance. Of course, then they want the information about your bank so the transfer can be completed.

Here is one example of the scam:

The text begins, "We have been directed by the Mega Magic Foundation of France to notify you that the sum of One Million Euros has been deposited in our bank, DBS Bank, in your name, awaiting immediate transfer to your personal bank account."

The message concludes with the kicker: "Once logged in to your account, you can transfer via wire directly to your personal bank account by clicking on the 'click here to transfer' link."

The logo displayed in the message is fake, although there is a holding company that goes by the name of DBS Bank.

I received a similar e-mail the other day saying that I had won a British Lottery and that the money was waiting for me to transfer it into my own account.

Of course, the best rule of thumb is never to provide any kind of information about yourself over the web unless you are absolutely sure that you are logged in to the correct place on the web. My banks, as well as e-Bay and PayPal have all sent out e-mail's saying they will never ask you again for any information that you have already supplied to them, such as SS #'s and account numbers.

There is also that famous adage to live by: "Anything that appears to be too good to be true, usually is."

New Google Toolbar

Google has released a fresh version of its Web-searching toolbar with a trio of new utilities. Available free in beta at Toolbar.google.com, the downloadable software lets people search the Web from a static box on the Internet Explorer Web browser and block annoying pop-up ads.

Version 3 of the software also lets people automatically check their spelling in Web forms; translate words in English into several languages; and add Web links to certain plain text. For example, an address could be enhanced with a hypertext link to its location on a map, with the click of a button on the toolbar.

The software joins a fleet of new toolbars from mainstream and niche Internet companies alike. Many such companies are trying to ingratiate themselves on consumer desktops for marketing purposes. Google, for example, makes money from sponsored listings that appear after people perform a Web search, whether it's from the desktop, the browser or its own site.

Last week, Yahoo introduced a version of its search toolbar for the Firefox Web browser, which has quickly become a contender to Microsoft's dominant IE. Google has not said whether they are developing a version for Apple Computer's Safari or Firefox Web browsers, but the search giant in recent months has developed deeper ties with the Mozilla Foundation, the open-source group that created Firefox.

Microsoft Anti-Spyware Will Be Free

In yesterday's blog, I talked about Bill Gates surprise announcement regarding a new version of Internet Explorer. But, Mr. Gates also made another announcement:

The consumer version of Microsoft's anti-spyware software will be continue to be free for genuine Windows users. The beta version, which we reviewed here last month, has been free, but it was unclear whether Microsoft would charge for future versions. Said Gates:

"We've looked hard at the nature of this problem, and made a decision that this anti-spyware capability will become something that's available at no additional charge for Windows users—both the blocking capability, and the scanning and removal capabilities. Those are features we think should be available to protect every system."

Gytis Barzdukas, director of product management in Microsoft's security business technology unit, said the free anti-spyware tools would only be available for a "personal edition" and made it clear that an enterprise version with management capabilities will carry a price tag.

"We're planning a refresh [of the anti-spyware beta] within the next few months. In the meantime, we're talking to enterprise customers, asking them about the management capabilities they need. Once we figure all that out, we will release a managed version."

Note: I am leaving shortly for Corvallis, OR for my first art show of the year. I may not be able to write my blog for a few days unless I can find a wireless connection. So, if you don't hear from me for a couple of days, now you will know why.

Microsoft's Big Surprise Announcement

Bill Gates shocked the tech world yesterday by reversing a longstanding Microsoft policy. Microsoft will ship an update to its Internet Explorer browser separately from the next major version of Windows. Gates made the surprise announcement at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.

A test version of Internet Explorer 7 will debut this summer. The company had previously said that it would not ship a new IE version before the next major update to Windows, code-named Longhorn, which is scheduled to arrive sometime next year.

In announcing the plan, Gates acknowledged something that many outside the company had been arguing for some time, that the browser itself has become a security risk.

The bad news for some of us is that the new browser will only work on machines running on Windows XP Service Pack 2, a security-focused update to the operating system that the company launched last summer. It has not been decided whether IE 7 will come with a different Windows update, such as a security revamp.

As recently as August, Microsoft said that no new stand-alone version was planned before Longhorn, and the company reiterated back then that its plan was to make new IE features available with major Windows releases.

Microsoft's decision to announce plans for IE 7 at a security conference was no coincidence. IE 6's security reputation has suffered over the years, dogged by a long string of security bugs, phishing schemes and patches. The company sought to allay security concerns last year by issuing the SP2 update for Windows XP, which included a number of changes to browser security.

But critics complained that the update would benefit only those people who either already owned XP or who had paid for an operating system upgrade, leaving about half the Windows world out in the cold.

There is a great deal of speculation that the success of Firefox has driven Microsoft to change its policy. I am sure that there is some truth to that. It will be interesting to see if the new IE will bring back users from Firefox...or will Firefox keep growing.

New DVD Copy Protection is Released

Macrovision has released a new DVD copy-protection technology in hopes of substantially broadening its role in Hollywood's antipiracy effort. Macrovision executives said that even if it's not perfect, the new RipGuard DVD technology can prevent much of the copying done with such tools and can help bolster studios' DVD sales.

The content-protection company is pointing to the failure of the copy-proofing on today's DVD's, which was broken in 1999. Courts have ordered that DVD-copying tools be taken off the market, but variations of the software remain widely available online. The best known tool is DVD Shrink which works extremely well.

Macrovision could be hard pressed to break into the DVD protection market, which has historically been managed by companies or industry groups closely associated with the Hollywood studios themselves. However, studios have been deeply concerned by the failure of today's DVD copy protection and may be willing to experiment with an alternative if it proves practical.

The original DVD copy protection tool, called Content Scramble System, was developed by a technology coalition that included studio representatives. The tool is licensed by a group with close ties to Hollywood.

A new coalition, which includes Warner Bros., Walt Disney, IBM, Sony, Microsoft and Intel, is working on another content-protection technology for next-generation DVDs. That technology called the Advanced Access Content System, which is not designed for today's DVDs, is being designed to let movies be moved around a home though a digital network.

Anti-Spyware Review

I have spent no small amount of time in this blog discussing anti-spyware. Why? Because spyware is everywhere and can sneak into your computer without you even noticing it. And if you get enough of it, your computer will slow to a crawl, if not crash.

The bad news that's now starting to come out is that most, if not all anti-spyware programs do not catch all the spyware in your computer. Now that is not a comforting thought! The reason is that new types of spyware are coming out far faster than anti-spyware software writers can keep up.

One software engineer did a test. He tried out the latest version of Spybot and picked up 14 instances of spyware. He then downloaded a 30 day trial of Spy Sweeper and picked up 56 instances (over 1,200 traces in all). Quite a difference. With two sweeps of Spy Sweeper (the second in Safe Mode), the computer was clean.

And just to show you how fast spyware multiplies, when this same engineer download Spy Sweeper, it came with 4,000 spyware definitions. At the end of his 30 day trial, the program had updated his software to include over 34,000 definitions.

PC Magazine has recently published a review of 9 different anti-spyware software packages. Because Microsoft's new software is still in beta, they did not include it with this round of testing, but you can click on a link in the article and see their first reaction to it. By the way, the Editor's Choice was Spy Sweeper.

You should strongly consider reading this article for yourself. To see it, go to:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1758380,00.asp

Bulletin - Update on Donobi Service

For those of you who live in Grant County and use the ZIPP fiber service, you should know that service provider Donobi has met all the requirements of the Grant County PUD and service will not be disconnected.

As you may have read in the newspapers over the last few weeks, Donobi had fallen way behind in their payments, according to the PUD. The PUD was demanding that Donobi pay in excess of $211,000 by today, including past due bills and a large deposit, or service would be turned off tomorrow. That would have disconnected over 1,200 customers.

I personally spoke with a representative of the Grant County PUD this afternoon and was told that Donobi just completed the PUD requirements earlier today and that service will continue on uninterrupted.

That is good news for me as I am still one of their customers and I would not like my web site or e-mail interrupted while I searched for a new provider and obtained a new IP address for my web site.

HP Chief Resigns!

The biggest story of the day in the tech world and on Wall Street is the resignation of Carly Fiorina from Hewlett-Packard. She served as both Chairman of the Board and CEO of this large company. Her controversial six years as head of Hewlett-Packard was highlighted by the company's purchase of Compaq Computer Corp. in 2002.

If you read my newsletters back then, you know that the Compaq merger was extremely controversial and was opposed by nearly half of the stockholders at one time, including the son of the company's co-founder William Hewlett. Members of the Packard family also were against the merger. Walter Hewlett immediately resigned from the board.

Fiorina said that the resignation was the result of disagreements on HP's future. HP Chief Financial Officer Robert Wayman will step in as interim CEO, while a search begins for a new CEO.

Board of Director's member Patricia Dunn said that the board reached a decision on Tuesday and asked Fiorina to resign. She agreed. Dunn also said that the board had been discussing options for several weeks.

Fiorina's resignation follows months of criticism from inside the industry and inconsistent results. In the third quarter last year, HP stunned analysts when it announced that its Enterprise Storage and Servers group lost $208 million, due to problems with order fulfillment and a migration of its order management operations.

Over the past year, Fiorina also has consolidated HP's businesses, last year combining its enterprise systems group with its services unit, and earlier this year folding its PC business into the highly profitable Imaging and Printing Group, which generates almost three quarters of HP's revenues.

For the past few years, one of the key issues debated in the industry has been whether HP should spin off a part of its business, in particular, the Imaging and Printing Group, to give HP a better focus. During a meeting with financial analysts in December, Fiorina said the board over the past few years had addressed that issue at least three times, and each time decided against it. Fiorina and other executives said one of HP's strengths was its large portfolio of products, giving customers a single place for most of their IT needs.

Wall Street seemed to approve of the move as the stock closed up nearly 7% in today's trading.

Music Industry Sues Dead Woman

In a recent issue, I told you about the latest round of lawsuits filed against alledged music pirates. One such suit was filed against Gertrude Walton, of Beckley, West Virginia, one of the worst sort of music pirates, according to the RIAA. By sharing 700 songs on the Internet, she was impoverishing artists and depriving the music industry of its rightfully earned profits.

The only problem with the RIAA's accusations and lawsuit is that Mrs. Walton is actually deceased and, even during her golden years, never ever owned a computer. Not only that...according to her daughter, she hated computers.

However the RIAA's embarrassment doesn't end there. The daughter said that she had sent a copy of her mother's death certificate to record company lawyers in response to an initial warning letter, over a week before the suit was filed. The RIAA says it will dismiss the lawsuit against Mrs. Walton.

While Mrs. Walton may have been the oldest person sued by the RIAA, the youngest was a 12 year old girl who was sued for having one MP3 of her favorite TV program on her hard drive. Her working class parents in a housing project in New York were forced to pay two thousand dollars in a settlement.

Only the unborn, it seems, have yet to receive an infringement suit.

New From Mozilla - Sunbird

First, there was Firefox; then came Thunderbird; now there is Sunbird. Mozilla has introduced the third piece of their open source software project...at least the first beta version of it.

Sunbird is standalone calendar application, for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The eventual goal of Sunbird is to integrate it into Mozilla's e-mail software,Thunderbird making that program very similar to Microsoft's Outlook. The project, code-named Lightning, is scheduled for its first general release in the middle of 2005, according to the Mozilla Web site.

However, according to some postings on the MozillaZine news site, some consumers don't believe that Sunbird is a viable alternative to Outlook just yet. Mozilla admits this, but says wait for the final product before judgment is made. But of course, the price point is going to be much better than Outlook since Outlook is only included in the entire Microsoft Office Suite. The Mozilla programs are free.

Sunbird 0.2 offers various features, including the ability to create scheduled events and to see an overview of events on a particular day, week or month.

The Sunbird application is available for free download on Mozilla's Web site.

Great Plugins for Firefox

If you have switched to the Firefox browser or are just experimenting with it like myself, you will want to to take a look at a short article in PC Magazine that lists 15 different plug-ins that you can download for free and use inside of Firefox.

I like the tool that allows you to check your bandwidth speed inside of the browser. I was also impressed with the weather tool and the dictionary search that allows you to right click on a word on the web page to get an immediate definition.

There is also a tool for using Mapquest without leaving the web page you are currently viewing and 27 different solitaire games.

If you have Firefox, take a look at the article. If you don't have Firefox, you might want to give it a try. It can also be downloaded for free.

Yahoo Searches Web Page While You Read It

In its latest move to expand the reach of its search results, Yahoo released a new service that provides related search results within the context of a Web page.

Yahoo launched a beta test of the service called Y!Q in an attempt to automatically provide users with relevant search results without requiring them to initiate a query. In other words, Yahoo will search for more information based on the web page you are viewing. By analyzing the content on a Web page, the service is able to display related results within a dynamic box on the page itself.

While Yahoo is demonstrating the functionality on a test version of its Yahoo News site, it also is offering it widely to other Web sites. Webmasters can embed Y!Q's contextual search results into their pages by incorporating code for the DHTML (Dynamic HTML) module. Because users receive the results within the Web page, they remain on a given site rather than being redirected to the Yahoo Search site.

Users also can download an Internet Explorer toolbar or one of several plug-in options for Mozilla Firefox to receive Y!Q results while browsing any Web page.

All the Y!Q installation options are available through Yahoo Next, the company's site for prototyping new technology.

Virus Writers Find New Delivery Vehicle

Always on the cutting edge of new techniques, virus writers have found a new way to slip their evilware into your computer. This new method is so foolproof, that no anti-virus software has yet to detect a virus when it comes into your inbox.

Late in December, administrators and service providers realized that virus-infected messages with a new type of attachment were hitting their mail servers: an .rar archive. .Rar files are similar to .zip files in that they are containers used to hold one or more compressed files. The .rar format is not as widely known as .zip, but it is used for a number of tasks, including compressing very large files, such as music and video.

Experts say .rar files carrying viruses have been sailing past commercial anti-virus products and finding their way into the mailboxes of users, who are often unfamiliar with the file format. Administrators who have seen .rar-packed malware say that none of the messages have been stopped by their anti-virus defenses.

Many of the messages in .rar virus e-mail are slick invitations to view pornographic content, which is part of the reason for the viruses' success, experts say. .Rar's compression algorithm is 30 percent more efficient than .zip technology, so it is often used to compress such content. E-mail purporting to deliver images and video in an .rar archive may well be taken as legitimate.

One recent .rar virus that appeared at the end of last week is disguised as a patch from Microsoft. Although the text of the e-mail is poorly written, users have often proved willing to fall for such pitches. Franklin said that he has seen about six or seven new .rar viruses each week this month and that all of them are getting past the anti-virus products installed on his network.

The emergence of .rar-packed viruses highlights the lengths to which virus writers are willing to go to evade anti-virus systems, as well as the limitations of these traditional signature-based defenses.

Anti-virus vendors have acknowledged the presence of viruses delivered as .rar files in the past few weeks and are scrambling to develop tools to identify and eradicate the malware. Let us hope they find a way soon. Until then, don't open any .rar attachments.


PS. Sorry about not writing in the last three days, but have been on the road on business and am feeling a little under the weather.