Anyone who has downloaded the latest version of Firefox should make sure to update all browser plugins…. The bad guys have written malware to automate attacks on security holes. The attacks exploit an Adobe Flash Player flaw from 2007 and a Microsoft ActiveX flaw from 2008. The flaws might be old, but they still impact the latest edition of Mozilla Firefox, version 3.5. It’s especially critical since many PC users are downloading Firefox 3.5, F-Secure added.

F-Secure: Flash, ActiveX Still Under Attack - InternetNews.com

Reviews of Verizon’s new Droid smartphone—-which has gathered attention as of late, are coming in….

The Verdict so far:

If you really, really like Verizon (and there is no doubt that Verizon simply has the strongest overall network coverage right now in the US)…..

Then get a Droid—-as it’s the best smartphone Verizon has to offer.

However—–if you want the best smartphone and are willing to put up with AT&T annoyances…..

Then the iPhone is STILL the way to go.

Two reviews here:
Mossberg On The Droid: The Best Verizon Has To Offer (VZ, MOT, AAPL)
If You Don’t Buy An iPhone, Buy A Droid (GOOG, AAPL, MOT)

I’m getting so I hate Twitter….there—I said it—–now you can throw stones…..

You daily see the articles about Twitter being the fastest growing social networking company and how their company value has raised into the billions of dollars…..

OK—that may be so…..and the problems I am going to speak of are probably a direct result of their tremendous explosion in growth and demand. But be that as it may—-the BOTTOM LINE is this: Twitter is a mess right now….

Many (far, FAR too many) accounts created since as late as mid September can’t be searched for and "found" making it impossible to "follow" someone’s tweets (Why have Twitter if you can’t "follow" someone??)
Email notifications are spotty at best.
SMS text notifications problems continue to bedevil the site
Site speed has become unuseable far too often
Too many error messages
Things just get "lost" far to often…..

Twitter Support replies to posts detailing these problems with a lot of "we are devoting a lot of engineering time to fix this" responses—and also a bunch of other cutsie little sayings on error pages like "Whoa—-something is wrong!"

Well DUH!

I have experienced all of these issues in trying to set up a Twitter site for a very progressive official in our public school system. Boards are rife with Twitter issues.

Problems stem from a new update, tremendous demand and also Twitter trying to shoe horn in, additional features…..

If you are trying to set up an official Twitter site for a person of stature, a school or a business—-you may want to hold off until Twitter’s technical abilities actually match what they promise. Heck—-if you re just trying to set one up for yourself—-I wouldn’t bother right now……

Why is it when a company has just ONE THING—-that it does REALLY WELL—–they AWAYS try to add a bunch of other things to the product which ultimately causes failure…..

Twitter—-today’s Billion dollar valued company…..tomorrow’s Blockbuster Videos…..

Have you had bad experiences as well?—-or quite the opposite?? I invite you to post your comments in this thread.

This may be of particular interest to those looking for a free, easy-to-use, wysiwyg ("what you see is what you get") web-page composer/editor program.

Today (October 27, 2009), the SeaMonkey project released version 2.0. Yeah version 2.0. We’ve got IE 8, Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4 which are all ‘younger’ projects in many ways, but SeaMonkey is at version 2.0, go figure….

Just like the Netscape Communicator and Mozilla Suites (that I personally relied on for many years), SeaMonkey includes a web-browser, advanced e-mail, newsgroup and feed client, IRC chat, and HTML editing capabilities.

With SeaMonkey 2.0, the project has now moved to a Firefox 3.5.x base for the underlying web browser.

Mozilla SeaMonkey FINALLY hits 2.0 - InternetNews:The Blog - Sean Michael Kerner

As recently as mid-August when I first bought my iPhone3GS there was just a shade over 70,000 applications or "apps" for short…..available for the iPhone and iPod. At that time I thought this number incredible and after many visits and long hours searching through the "App Store" I have walked away with the feeling that there truly IS an "App for everything"—-as Apple is so quick to claim. In the two months since, the App Store has grown to over 100,000 applications! With a growth rate of almost 15,000 Apps a month!! Staggering!! The closest competitor is Android with less than 14,000 total applications and although popular—no where near the projected growth rate of this Apple success story. Microsoft doesn’t have an available platform to sell PPC and smartphone applications but is said to be eying Apple’s success with envy and building plans to compete. To visit the App Store, you must have iTunes installed but there are a host of different independent web sites that review the myriad of applications as they are released. Whether you own an iPhone or not, the growth rate and popularity of the platform and applications is remarkable. Read the story here: App Store Crosses Milestone: More than 100,000 iPhone Apps Approved - iPhone Hacks

With options to cool from only a few degrees under freezing all the way to near absolute zero, in this article I will attempt to explain several of these extreme cooling methods. It will serve as an introduction to more in-depth guides on extreme cooling I will be writing in the coming weeks.

An Introduction To Extreme Cooling

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday started to sell its long-awaited Windows 7 operating system.
The estimated retail prices for full packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (Full): $199.99
• Windows 7 Professional (Full): $299.99
• Windows 7 Ultimate (Full): $319.99

Story here

If you are like me and have a BUNCH of computers that you’d like to upgrade to Windows 7 starting the 22nd. Then the Windows 7 Family Pack Upgrade may be the cheapest and easiest way to go if at least three of your machines are either Windows XP Home Edition or Windows Vista Home Premium Machines. The pack includes three licenses and will do either 32 or 64 bit machinces—-and the BEST part is the price!! I found online advertisements for the pack at $131 dollars no tax, shipping/handling included and both of my local Office Max and Office Depots have it for $150 (but you will pay tax). The Pack is available on the 22nd and from personal experience with TWO separate In-Place Upgrades from Vista (one high end desktop and one Tablet PC) the upgrade in place option is fast and painless. The boys in Redmond got it right this time! XP users must do a clean install—-but at $44 a computer—-for a completely licensed new OS—-it sure makes the cost of jumping to Windows 7 palatable!

Over the weekend, potentially tens of millions of users around the world booted their Firefox browser and were told that their Microsoft add-ons were being blocked. Specifically, Mozilla began blocking the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) add-on and the .NET Framework Assistant add-on. Both of those add-ons were added to Mozilla’s blocklist for security issues….

… Firefox users in my opinion should rest assured that Mozilla’s management is being aggressively pro-active at ensuring browser security — and that’s a great thing.

Mozilla blocks then unblocks Microsoft add-ons for Firefox

It appears that Microsoft is finally trying to do something about its sagging Windows Mobile Phone market. Lowering of licensing fees has encouraged many traditional vendors to offer a mass of new Windows Mobile Phones sporting the upgraded Win Mobile 6.5 OS. Too little, too late? Is MS serious about competing in the burgeoning mobile device market in the face of stiff new competiton from Google with Android, Nokia’s OS Symbian, and mushrooming sales from the iPhone which insiders claim has saved AT&T as a cell phone provider?? Or is Win Mobile 6.5 just a patch to an already creaky OS and this is simply a last gasp attempt by MS with no real future Win 7 Mobile in sight? You decide as you peruse the new phones available at this MS site: Browse and Buy Windows Phones | Find, Compare, Buy a Windows Phone | Windows Mobile