Pro IT Zone

Recently I found a news about an analysis elaborated Secunia (which is an IT security company) that indicated that in 2007 Mac OS X it presided over the list of serious vulnerabilities, surpassing with ample margin to Windows XP and Vista.

This year, Secunia has registered a total of 237 critic vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, versus 23 found in Windows XP and Vista.

In general, the Macintosh platform is considered like safer than Windows. Nevertheless, the statistics demonstrate in opposition to the detected more than five vulnerabilities in that platform than in Windows.

This does not mean, necessarily, that Mac OS X is more unsecure than Windows. According to Apple, the new version Leopard (10.5) incorporates greater mechanisms of security than the previous versions. Until now there are relatively few examples of code designed specifically to attack the Macintosh platform, whereas malware for Windows much more is propagated.

Indeed the fact that the Macintosh platform does not have the same degree of penetration that Windows implies that there is less interest to write malware specific for Mac. The conclusion seems to be that with this level of vulnerability, the Macintosh platform would be highly uncertain if it had the same number of users as Windows.

IBM has announced a landmark in the development of the technology for microprocessors of the future. The technology implies that instead of the small copper semiconductors in the core of the processors soon they will be replaced by optical connections. Thus, instead of electrical impulses, light signals for the exchange of data in the processor will be used. This will cause that such devices will be one hundred times faster, whereas the electrical consumption only is of a 10% with respect to the present models.

According to IBM, the technology will be in the production of processors integrated by tens thousands of cores, which will be able to contribute the same capacity of computing as the present super computers. In IBM words, it will be “a type of computer that will use the same electrical power as a small lamp”.

The idea is not new, but this is the first time that the IBM researchers have achieved to create a functional prototype of a small modulator that converts electrical signals to light and vice versa. The modulator has a size between 100 to 1000 times smaller than the previous prototypes.

IBM will use their own Cell processor, like the one found on the PlayStation 3. The processor contains 15 cores in a single chip. The Cell processors of the future will contain between 100 to 1000 kernels, which will have 100 times better capacity of communication to the present one.

Believe it or not, unwise blogging has derailed lives. At some point, the prevalence of blogging hit a tipping point and started a rash of job firings because of employee blogs. It’s not that blogging, per se, is illegal, but blogging is legally regarded as a public utterance. Therefore, saying the wrong things in a blog carries the same consequences as saying the wrong things in public or broadcasting the wrong things on a radio wave.

Many companies have implicit or explicit agreements with their employees that regulate how employees may talk publicly about the workplace. Company secrets, for example, generally cannot be divulged in any medium. Libelous or just offensive remarks about the boss or co-workers can be harshly punished. In fact, merely writing a blog could be against company policy, especially if the blog is about your job or your professional field.

For various combinations of the above offenses, several individuals have achieved blogging fame, or sorts, by getting fired. Ellen Simonetti was a flight attendant before getting sacked for writing behind-the-scenes blog entries (her blog continues at www.queenofthesky.com). Heather Armstrong’s blog, Dooce.com, won Web site awards before her confidential workplace revelations earned her a pink slip (the blog lives on). Even Google, a technologically hip company that is also one of the most secretive corporations, fired a young engineer named Mark Jen, pronto, when Jen disclosed aspects of his stock compensation in a blog.

The lessons in all this are several, and the course of action for bloggers with day jobs is clear:

• If you plan to blog about anything remotely connected to your office or your profession, find out what company policy has to say about it.

• No matter what your blog is about, ask at work whether employees are permitted to have blogs. Few occupations actually forbid blogging, but ask anyway.

• Don’t blog in secret. Tell your boss. Even a personal-diary blog, which might seem to be none of your boss’s business, is bound to touch on work. And that is your boss’s business.

• No matter how carefully you’ve prepared your supervisors and coworkers for your blog, do not amuse yourself by ratting them out in any way. Don’t voice your frustrations and dislikes in the blog. Any number of legal angles can lead to an individual or the company shutting you down or throwing you out.

This problem will get worse as blogging becomes more mainstream while its ramifications remain murky. Remember that no matter how cozy you feel with your regular readers, a blog is a publication with worldwide distribution. Don’t say anything in a blog entry that you wouldn’t say in a TV interview that you knew would be seen by everyone you work with.

One of the easiest cookies is kept by Internet Explorer, when you visit and log in to a website, IE will ask you if you want it to remember your username and password. If you say yes, it will download a small file with that information to your hard drive. Forever more, or until you clear your cookies in IE, whenever you visit that site, it will automatically fill in your log in information.Neat, huh? Well that’s okay. But what about the cookies that are downloaded that you don’t know about. That’s where the grey area of invasion of privacy comes in. That’s also where anonymous web surfing stops it dead in its tracks.

Sites use a variety of techniques to gather and collate this information, but the two most basic are examining your IP address and placing cookies on your PC. Matching your IP address with your cookies makes it easier for them to create personal profiles. If you’d like to see what kind of information sites can gather about you, head to these two sites, which peer into your browser and report what they find.

Analyze.Privacy.net gives a comprehensive report plus an introduction to privacy.net which shows you more about cookies, gives you a look at what others see when they look at your computer and more.

Browse Spy goes even deeper into your system and gives an eye-opening report on what’s on your system right down to the software you own.

Now that you know why you should surf anonymously and how easy it is for others to violate your privacy, how do you stop it? It’s actually easier than you might think.

There are a couple software packages out there for anonymous surfing. I personally like Tor and Vidalia. It runs in the background through my Firefox settings, and while it slows down my surfing a little, The Tor/Vidalia combination is a bit tricky to set up so if you don’t need heavy-duty protection, you might want to select one of the packages listed below. Either way, I no longer have to wonder who’s virtually following me around taking notes.

O, let’s talk privacy, and then let’s talk about how you haven’t got any. That’s right, if you are surfing the Internet, and you aren’t doing it through some third party proxy server, the sites you surf to can potentially learn everything about you-your habits, your likes and dislikes, your buying preferences and more.In this way, advertisers can serve up those annoying pop-up ads, spyware can quietly download to your computer in the background and track your every move, government agencies can watch you, and hackers can slither into your hard drive and steal your world.

Paranoid yet?

If you aren’t, re-read the the opening to this article slowly. While you are reading it, remember an advertiser’s spyware could be phoning in your private information for future use as you read.

What is anonymous surfing? Remember the old punchline, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog?” Well, if you practice Anonymous Web Surfing 101, nobody will know whether you’re Fido, the family pet out looking for the latest craze in dog food or the parakeet looking for warmer climes.

But seriously folks, put simply, anonymous web surfing erases any trace or trail of where you’ve been or going on the Internet.

Your private world remains private and no one, not even your Internet Service Provider (that’s the guy you pay $20 to $40 dollars a month to get on the Net) won’t have a clue about who you are. This is how it used to be, and this is how it should be. Period. End of story.

Beyond simple paranoia, people have various reasons to surf anonymously ranging from general terror about losing their privacy to wanting to keep their personal surfing sites that they go to on the job away from the prying eyes of their employers.

Beyond the obvious, what are spy websites looking for, and how do they accomplish it. Websites use a variety of methods to gather intel from the most basic which is your IP address to placing cookies on your website.

Your IP address is where you started from, like your home street address. Cookies are little bits of information placed on your computer that keeps track of your habits.

One of the easiest cookies is kept by Internet Explorer, when you visit and log in to a website, IE will ask you if you want it to remember your username and password. If you say yes, it will download a small file with that information to your hard drive. Forever more, or until you clear your cookies in IE, whenever you visit that site, it will automatically fill in your log in information.

Neat, huh? Well that’s okay. But what about the cookies that are downloaded that you don’t know about. That’s where the grey area of invasion of privacy comes in. That’s also where anonymous web surfing stops it dead in its tracks.

Sites use a variety of techniques to gather and collate this information, but the two most basic are examining your IP address and placing cookies on your PC. Matching your IP address with your cookies makes it easier for them to create personal profiles. If you’d like to see what kind of information sites can gather about you, head to these two sites, which peer into your browser and report what they find.

Analyze.Privacy.net gives a comprehensive report plus an introduction to privacy.net which shows you more about cookies, gives you a look at what others see when they look at your computer and more.

Browse Spy goes even deeper into your system and gives an eye-opening report on what’s on your system right down to the software you own.

Now that you know why you should surf anonymously and how easy it is for others to violate your privacy, how do you stop it? It’s actually easier than you might think.

There are a couple software packages out there for anonymous surfing. I personally like Tor and Vidalia. It runs in the background through my Firefox settings, and while it slows down my surfing a little, The Tor/Vidalia combination is a bit tricky to set up so if you don’t need heavy-duty protection, you might want to select one of the packages listed below. Either way, I no longer have to wonder who’s virtually following me around taking notes.

Like most anonymizers, it sends my information through a special series of computers called proxy servers which screen me from the websites I’m contacting.

My computer contacts a proxy server instead of the website directly. The website, in turn, doesn’t see me, it sees the proxy server’s IP address and proxy servers are like the aircraft carriers of the net.

They have so much armament to block cookies, popups and other web parasites that they don’t get infected or pass anything on to their clients.

Other programs that facilitate anonymous surfing include Guardster, SnoopBlocker, Mega Proxy and Anonymizer. My second favorite, anonymizer, is one of the four I just listed. Anonymizer is recognized as the leader of the pack and is relatively simple to use.

It’s where I started before I got involved with servers and such, and is really good for web surfing protection.

Last, if you are at work and can’t load a bunch of stuff to your workstation, simply surf to http://www.the-cloak.com/anonymous-surfing-home.html. It’s web based, easy and with nothing to download, a real godsend. Give them a donation and you can log in and surf to your heart’s content.

It’s not the prettiest site to look at, but it is functional and it hasn’t yet failed me for fast cloaking.

It’s done by having a special computer — called a proxy server — screening you from the websites you are contacting. Your computer contacts only the proxy server, which contacts the website for you.

The website, in turn, sees only your proxy server and not you. In addition to hiding your IP address, a proxy server will usually block cookies, pop-ups and other annoying web parasites.

With some systems you have to go to an anonymous service website and access your favorite website from there. With others, you download and install software which finds an anonymous server for you.

There are numerous services and programs that facilitate anonymous surfing such as Guardster, SnoopBlocker and Mega Proxy, but Anonymizer is the pioneer and recognized leader of the pack.

Last year saw the arrival of online social media. If you operate a website or blog, you would be well advised to realign your site to exploit the popular social media sites for increased traffic.You should also introduce social media components to your site because web users are experiencing these new forms of interaction on more and more sites and they will have an expectation of the same from your site too.

If you want to attract repeat visitors and want them to stay longer, your focus for the next few months should be on the social aspects of your site.

Social media uses technologies like RSS, blogging, podcasting, tagging, etc. and offers social networking (MySpace, Facebook), social video and picture sharing (YouTube, Flickr), and community-based content ranking (Digg, MiniClip) features.

The central theme of these sites is user generated content used for sharing amongst other users. The social aspects of these sites allow users to setup social communities, invite friends and share common interests.

You don’t have to change your site immediately to take advantage of these new technologies. Introduce small changes incrementally and you will be well on your way to measure up to your visitors’ new expectations.

Step 1. Declare who you are to the online community. People should be able to relate to you. Unless they know more about you, you will be just an unknown identity and most people don’t like to deal with people they don’t know. Create an About Me page to líst your achievements, skills and aspirations.

Step 2. Create a MySpace page and link your biography in the Profile of your MySpace page. Also provide a link back from the MySpace page to your website. Spend an hour every week to develop your online social network in MySpace. Invite a few of your new friends to write blog articles at your site about your products or services.

Step 3. Install a free blog and start publishing at least one article in your blog every week. Provide an easy bookmarking feature to social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. This is done by providing an action button for each article in your site. The action button takes users to the submission page of the bookmarking site.

Step 4. Provide an action button for direct posting of blog articles to Digg. Digg is a popular news ranking site. A well dugg article will bring thousands of visitors to you.

Step 5. Provide a forum at your site for users to discuss your products and services. Don’t delete negative comments because they provide insights into the improvements needed to serve your visitors better. However, censor hate speeches and meaningless bantering. Register your forum at BoardTracker. BoardTracker is a forum search engine.

Step 6. If you are offering products, allow users to review and rate your products. This will help you in inventory management because you may want to discontinue low rated products.

Step 7. Provide RSS feeds for your new products, blogs, forum postings, etc. An RSS feed provides teasers of your content. Users will use RSS readers to scan your teasers and visit your site for more information if the teasers interest them.

Step 8. Publish all your feeds at Feedburner. Feedburner provides media distribution and audience engagement services for RSS feeds. They also provide an advertising network for your feeds. If you have quality content, you will be able to monetize your content using their services.

Step 9. Create short how-to or new product videos and post these videos in social video sharing sites like YouTube and Google video. Provide a few start and end frames in these videos to introduce your site with your site URL. Post these videos using catchy titles, teaser descriptions, and appropriate tags to make them easy to discover.

Step 10. Provide embedded links to your remotely hosted videos on your site. This will save your bandwidth and storage space because the videos reside on the video sharing sites rather than on your site’s server.

Step 11. As well as videos, use social photo sharing sites like Flickr and SmugMug to share pictures related to content on your site. Use the same title, description and tag techniques discussed earlier for social video sites.

Step 12. Provide a “Send to Fríend” feature for all the products and services you provide. This feature is a link that sends the article, product description, etc. to a recipient via e-mail.

Social media is not a fad. It is here to stay and brings a profound change to web surfers’ experiences. Now is the right time to implement features that will make your site Social-Media-Friendly. Also, using marketing techniques that utilize popular social media sites, you will see a massive íncrease in traffíc to your site.