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Tech News
12-31-04
Update Available for AVG AntiVirus
An update is available for AVG Free AntiVirus and other antivirus programs produced by Grisoft. You can visit VersionTracker or you can start the program and update from within the application.

New Information on 1406 Error Messages While Installing iTunes
You can find more information on how to work around the 1406 error messages currently plaguing PC users trying to install Apple's iTunes by visiting the Answers page of Multiple Platforms.com/. This 1406 error message has been a common question to the web site over the past several weeks. I think maybe Apple doesn't want it to be to easy for PC owners to use their iPod, while using the iPod itself is quite easy; then PC owners may begin to consider an Apple for their next purchase... Maybe?!?

Virtual New Year’s Eve
Watch the events of the New Year’s Eve from the comforts of your home by surfing to Broadcast.com and viewing a live feed from Times Square. If that is not enough, surf over to CNET and find links to the Seattle Space Needle and more.

Alternative to Knoppix is a Parallel
Parallel Computing has released ParallelKnoppix according to a report in the Linux Gazette. The distro is based on Debian Linux and is a live CD like Knoppix. The kicker for this Knoppix system is that it is a time saver when configuring your computer. Read more about the release at the Linux Gazette web site.

Apple Pro Speakers Slowing Startup
MacFixIt has a reader that determined his Apple Pro speakers were the cause of his slow startups. He has a fix; you can remove a kernel extension from your System/ Library/ Extensions/ folder. Visit MacFixIt for the specifics on this work around.

Free Tech Support
Still having problems with that tech toy you got for the holidays? Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy on KFI answers questions on all things digital on the weekends from 12-3pm on 640AM in the Los Angeles area and the rest of us can listen on the Internet. Visit Leo’s web site to find links to the show, the chat room, and much more.

Apple Tip of the Day: See Your Cookies
The Apple tip of the day is a tip for Safari users on finding out which cookies are stored on your computer. Open your browser and click on Safari in the toolbar, then select Preferences and choose the Security tab. Choose the Show Cookies option to view the cookies collected on your computer. If you followed yesterday’s tip and chose the cookies option ‘Never’ you should delete all the cookies by clicking on a cookie file and then use the command-A shortcut to highlight all the cookies and click on Delete.

PC Tip of the Day: Clear Cookies
The PC tip of the day helps you check on and clear cookies with your Mozilla browser; first, open the browser and choose Tools and select options. Click on the Privacy tab and then click on Cookies. You can choose the Stored Cookies option to view all those cookies in the jar, or you can click on the Clear button to remove all the cookies.

What is a CPU Cache?
Wikipedia has this definition for, “A CPU cache is a cache used by the central processing unit of a computer to reduce the average time to access memory. The cache is a smaller, faster memory which stores copies of the most frequently used main memory locations. So long as most accesses are to the cached copies, the average latency to memory will be closer to the cache latency than to the latency of main memory.”

Happy New Year!!!



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MultiplePlatforms.com

Please visit Multipleplatforms.com for the links to these stories and more

Tech News
12-30-04

Help Tsunami Victims

If you would like to contribute funds to help the victims of the tsunami in South Eastern Asia, please click on the link at the bottom of this page. We donated and I hope you can help too.

High School Student Shift Gears at Web Site and Help Tsunami Victims

A web site dedicated to ‘The Simpsons’ and maintained by a Italian high school student has quickly shifted gears and is attempting to help victims of the tsunami connect with their friends and family. CNET reports that the site has had 82,000 hits in two days.

New Threat to PC - Phel is No Help

According to a report carried by CNET, the security flaw exposed last October is now a virus threat in the wild. The Trojan horse is named ‘Phel’ (help spelled side ways-sort-of) and the one bit of good news is there is a flaw in the code and it may not install in all computers. The bad news is that crackers will quickly correct their error and strike again. This threat effects PCs with Window’s XP Service Pack 2 installed, but only if they visit a malicious web site using Internet Explorer. Switch to another browser like Mozilla or Firefox and keep your computer safe from these types of attacks.

Take Our Survey

Did you get a new tech toy for a holdiay gift? Was it a good experience, or did you say some words you aren't exactly proud of? Take our survey to the left and then check the results against your experiences.

Update for Ad-aware SE

An update is available for Lavasoft’s excellent free spyware remover Ad-aware SE according to MajorGeeks.com/. You can visit their site to download the update manually, or you can activate your program and update using the automatic update feature.

Apple Tip of the Day: Close the Cookie Jar



The Apple tip of the day is another tip for Safari users on how to control those cookies. Open your browser and click on Safari on the toolbar, then select Preferences and choose the Security tab. You will be given several choices including never accept cookies, always accept cookies, and only accept cookies from sites you visit. Some sites require you to allow cookies to access their site including some educational sites.

PC Tip of the Day: Control Cookies

The PC tip of the day will help you control cookies with your Mozilla browser; first, open the browser and choose Tools and select options. Click on the Privacy tab and then click on Cookies. You will then have several options including enabling cookies with various conditions.

What is a Cookie?

According to Wikipedia, “An HTTP cookie (usually called simply a cookie) is a packet of information sent by a server to a World Wide Webbrowser and then sent back by the browser each time it accesses that server. They were invented by Lou Montulli, a former employee of Netscape Communications.

Cookies can contain any arbitrary information the server chooses and are used to maintain state between otherwise stateless HTTP transactions. Typically this is used to authenticate or identify a registered user of a web site as part of their first login process or initial site registration without requiring them to sign in again every time they access that site. Other uses are maintaining a "shopping basket" of goods selected for purchase during a session at a site, site personalisation (presenting different pages to different users), and tracking a particular user's access to a site.

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Tech News
12-29-04
US Bank Hoax Circulates
The security experts at Sophos issued a bulletin regarding a hoax email circulating that appears to originate from US Bank. The hoax is actually a phishing attempt from a Korean based web site. The text of the message includes: “Dear U.S. Bank account holder,
We regret to inform you, that we had to block your U.S. Bank account because we have been notified that your account may have been compromised by outside parties.”
Sophos recommends, “If you receive this or a similar message, you are advised not to reply to it or forward it to your friends and colleagues. The best advice is simply to delete the email.”

Accessories Galore for Your iPod
According to Insanely Great Mac and a story carried in the White Plains Journal News there are more than 200 accessories available for the popular iPod. You can rev-up your iPod and play it through your car stereo, you can use it as a backup for your home folder (see story below), or store medical data on them (see report 12-22 ‘Blinding You With Science’).

Use iPod as Backup Device
You can use your iPod as a backup device with a free application available from Versiontracker.com/. This little tool is getting great reviews from users and has an overall rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars! Find out more by visiting Versiontracker.com; the author does accept donation for this freeware application.

Hard Drive Installation of Knoppix
Desktoplinux.com has a how-to article on installing Knoppix on your hard drive. Knoppix is a great introduction into the world of open source and if you haven’t tried it this article will provide you with more background on this free and compact operating system.

Open Source Updates
Secunia has released security updates for the following Gentoo Linux 1.x (1, 2, 3).

Apple Tip of the Day: Block Pop-Up Windows
Safari has a built-in pop-up blocker and you can activate this handy tool and that is the Apple tip of the day; first, choose Safari on the toolbar and then select Block Pop-Up Windows. Then those annoying pop-ups will no longer bug you. Warning: if you take tests for school online, you may want to disable the pop-up blocker; at our university having the pop-up blocker activated will prevent you from taking the test.

PC Tip of the Day: Control Destination of Downloaded Files
The PC tip of the day will help you control the destination of your downloaded files if you are using Mozilla or Firefox. Open your browser and choose Tools then select Options. Click on the Downloads tab and choose where to save your files, or opt for the ‘Ask me where to save every file’ choice.

What is a Pop-Up?
According to Wikipedia, “Pop-up ads are a form of online advertising on the World Wide Web where certain websites open a new web browser window to display advertisements. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript, but can be generated by other means as well. A less intrusive variation on the pop-up window is the pop-under advertisement. This opens a new browser window, but in the background, so as not to interrupt the user's page-view.
For early advertising-supported websites, banner ads were sufficient revenue generators, but in the wake of the dot com crash, prices paid for banner advertising clickthroughs decreased and many vendors began to investigate more effective advertising methods. Pop-up ads by their nature are difficult to ignore or overlook, and are claimed to be more effective than static banner ads. Pop-ups have a much higher click rate than web banner ads do.
Most users regard pop-ups as a nuisance. In the early 2000s, all major web browsers except Internet Explorer (then the most popular browser and still as of 2004) allowed the user to block pop-ups almost completely. In 2004, Microsoft released Windows XP SP2, which added pop-up blocking to Internet Explorer. Many users, however, remain unaware of this ability, or else choose not to use it. Some users install non-Microsoft ad-blocking software instead. Advertisers continually seek ways to circumvent such restrictions. Many of the latest pop-ups are created using Flash and have extensive animation and trickery.




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MultiplePlatforms.com

Please visit Multipleplatforms.com for the links to these stories and more

Tech News
12-28-04
Santy Worm Shifts Target
Google acted quickly in squashing the latest security threat Santy, but a new variant of the worm is striking search engines at Yahoo and AOL according to a report in CNET. PC World’s story states that the worm targets web sites with bulletin boards created using phpBB; no worries here at Multiple Platforms, I haven’t included a bulletin board at this site for this a other reasons related to offering a secure visiting experience.

More On OS X Update From Apple
The latest update from Apple may not be recorded in history as the smoothes installation based on the ever-increasing reports recorded at MacFixIt. It seems that the problems if incurred are somewhat catastrophic in nature and if you have yet to install this update, wait; with this many problems (failure to boot, Firewire issues, and more), Apple will probably be issuing a corrective patch. Currently there are no major security issues that override the need to implement this patch for most Mac-heads.

Best Choice for iPod Case
Kirk McElhern, a writer, software creator, and Mac guru offers recommendations for the best iPod cases at his web site Kirkville. You will find Kirk’s web site packed with a variety of helpful information for Mac-heads and it served as an inspiration for the recent face-lift of this web site.

Free Tune From Apple
Tuesday is free download day at Apple’s iTunes Music Store and you can grab your freebie by clicking on the iTunes Music Store logo to the right.

Advice for New PC Owners
Leo Laporte, The Tech Guy on KFI has advice on security and safely connecting to the Internet for those of you with a new PC. If you do not follow that correct procedures, you can have a computer infected with the Sasser virus 5 minutes after going online. Visit Leo’s web site to learn how to get your PC on the Internet safely. Leo also has advice on spyware prevention and security software. Links to the same spyware and security products are also located at the bottom of this page.

Mandrake Update
Secunia released the following bulletin for Mandrake:
Mandrake update for samba
MandrakeSoft has issued an update for samba. This fixes a vulnerability, which can be exploited by malicious users to compromise a vulnerable system.

Apple Tip of the Day: Choose Where that Download Goes
If you are always forgetting where you downloaded a file, or want to store them in a special folder named “Downloaded Files” this Apple tip of the day will help you; to change the location of where your download is stored, open Safari and select Preferences from the Safari toolbar. Then under General tab you can change the location of the files you download.

PC Tip of the Day: Home Page Change, too
If you have taken the advice offered here and elsewhere and switched to Mozilla or Firefox, you can change your browsers home page just like Safari users can by following these steps: Open your browsers and navigate to the page you would like to use for your home page (like Google). Then choose Tools and click on Options. Select the General tab and choose the Use Current Page button to change y the home page of your browser.

What is the Home Page?
Wikipedia has this definition, “On the World Wide Web, a homepage is the starting point, or root of a website, a group of pages belonging to the same person, group, business or any other organization. The homepage usually includes basic information on the theme of the whole website, and links to other related pages. It has the shortest URL: just the domain name. For example the homepage for Wikipedia is the Main Page which outlines the project and gives links into the body of articles. Most web browsers allow a particular URL to be designated as the homepage for the browser. This was in fact the original meaning of homepage: The first web page to be automatically connected to (sent an http request) upon launch of the browser.”

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MultiplePlatforms.com

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Tech News
12-27-04
More Reasons To Install SP 2 Updates

The latest security risks for Windows users does not effect PCs that have been updated to Microsoft’s Service Pack 2 update according to a report carried by eWeek. The security bulletin from Secunia confirms that computers with the SP 2 update installed are not at risk with these latest attacks.

Amazon.com Loves iPod

Amazon.com loves the iPod, or at least they love selling the iPod after recording the busiest holiday marketing period in 10 years. During one period, the online retailer was selling 32 items per second according to MacDailyNews. If you feel the need to continue this shopping spree, please click on the Amazon.com link to the right and show your support for this web site.

Use PowerPoint to for Collage

This tip comes from Mac OS X Hints.com and is framed for use in an iMovie, but you could use this technique utilizing PowerPoint to make a collage for any project. According to the tip from Slacker, you can use the same method with OpenOffice with a slight tweak; visit the web site for more.

Free iPod Stories

MacMerc is carrying a comment on the FreeiPods.com offer and the confirmation of this deal as reported in the New York Times. The offer works if you can talk friends and families into joining you in this deal, but apparently, it is a legitimate offer. Rick, the Senior Editor at MacMerc isn’t signing-up but is inviting any readers to have to post comments on their web site.

Open Source Updates

Secunia has released update bulletins for the following open source systems: Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (1, 2), Linux Kernel 2.6.x/, and Fedora Core 2/3 (1, 2).

Apple Tip of the Day: Change Your Home Page

Today’s tip is for Apple users that want to change their home page for the Safari browser. To set a webpage as your home page surf to that site andchoose Preferences from the Safari on the toolbar. Then under the General tab, click on the Set to Current Page button. I like to use a webpage that opens quickly like Google for my home page.

PC Tip of the Day: Browser Advice for New PC Owners

If you are the owner of a new PC, the PC tip of the day involves an important choice you need to make: which browser should you use for your default browser. The advice from this column is to choose any browser but Internet Explorer. The favorite browser at Multiple Platforms.com comes from Mozilla.org/. Visit their web site then download and install either Firefox or Mozilla; both of these browsers are free. If you want a stripped down fast browser choose Firefox and if you would like to have an email client choose Mozilla.

What is Peripheral?

Did you get any new peripherals? Wikipedia has this definition for a peripheral, “A peripheral is a type of computer hardware that is added to a host computer, in order to expand its abilities. More specifically the term is used to describe those devices that are optional in nature, as opposed to hardware that is either demanded, or always required in principle. The term also tends to be applied to devices that are hooked up externally, typically though some form of computer bus like USB. Typical examples include joysticks, printers and scanners. Devices such as monitors and disk drives are not considered peripherals because they are not truly optional, and video capture cards are typically not referred to as peripheral because they are internal devices.”
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