Spy Journal Tech Tips

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Microsoft Patches re-released

Microsoft's security response unit is strongly urging Windows users to patch the vulnerabilities addressed in the MS06-025 bulletin because of the potential for a worm attack. This is particularly important for businesses running Windows 2000 where the flaws patched in the MS06-25 bulletin could allow direct attack vectors. Shavlik recommends companies apply the MS06-025 patch as soon as possible to protect their networks from potential attacks. It's important to note that this patch must be reapplied if deployed previously as Microsoft has reissued this patch.

Shavlik has also offered a free download and 1 yr trial of their NetChk Spyware.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Google Labs have a great new product called Google Page Creator.

You will need a gmail account to create a website using this service and it will be hosted at yourgmailname.googlepages.com/home.

I have created a sample Google Page website for you to check out.

Labels: google, website hosting

Monday, June 19, 2006

Resource Links

I came across a couple of awesome link sites.

This is full of goodies
MDGX Max Speed - lots of must have tech freeware

Labels: free, software, tech

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Picasa Web Albums

Today, I received an email fro Google - about Picasa.

We're excited to announce that we've begun testing a new feature for Picasa called "Picasa Web Albums."

Picasa Web Albums is designed to help Picasa users quickly and easily upload their photos to the web and share those photos with family and friends. Picasa Web Albums is intended for use with a new version of Picasa that has a "Web Album" button and includes web uploading and downloading capabilities.

As part of our test, we are offering Picasa Web Albums and the latest version of the Picasa software by invitation only. If you'd like to give Picasa Web Albums a try, please add your Gmail username to our first come, first serve invitation list at:
http://picasaweb.google.com

Once you receive your invitation, you can create a Picasa Web Albums account, and then download the new version of Picasa. This version of Picasa is not currently available for download from the Picasa site.

For more information on Picasa Web Albums, please visit:
http://picasa.google.com/web/help.html

Thanks for your continued support of Picasa! We look forward to receiving user feedback on this test feature, and to making both Picasa Web Albums and the new version of Picasa more broadly available soon

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Patch Tuesday

All Hands on Deck for Patch Tuesday

It looks to be a busy patch day tomorrow as Microsoft has indicated a release of twelve security bulletins.

For more information about June Patch Tuesday, please visit Mark Shavlik's blog.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Patch Tuesday - Seminar Wednesday

From Shavlik

Webinar for Professionals:

Minimize The Impact of Patch Tuesday - Defend your computer network from threats

The second Tuesday of each month, when Microsoft releases software updates is called "Patch Tuesday" And many experts suggest getting critical patches tested and deployed quickly to avoid exploitation by intruders, but how do you know if the patches are critical to your environment?

Register for this free security Webinar held once a month on the Wednesday after Patch Tuesday starting at 2:00pm, ET, and get information on the latest Microsoft patches and how they could affect you.

People who are using Firefox and wish to attend, register through Internet Explorer or email Jocelyn Schneider and specify date of webinar that you'd like to attend.

Details and Register

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Win World Cup Prize from Sharp

From GoodGearGuide.com.au
Less than 24hrs to go and already you can hear the chanting in the streets. As the whole of Australia eagerly awaits our first chance at World Cup glory in 32 years, we thought it only fitting to give our readers the opportunity to win some equally enthralling prizes.

Make the FIFA world cup in Germany an experience to remember by winning your very own 45 inch Sharp LCD television and home entertainment system worth over $10,000, or one of the other incredible prizes we have up for offer (over $12,500 in prizes).

Winning is easy but not a total walk in the park. Just like the Socceroos, you will have to work to gain entry to this competiton.

Click this link and you will be whisked over to the Sharp Web site where you will need to scour the LCD television section to find a special GoodGearGuide World Cup LCD TV button. Click on the button and you will shoot back to our site where you will be given your opportunity to enter.

Beauty is skin deep with Photoshop

From the J-Walk Blog I found this extensive Photoshop tutorial on beautifying a face

This Photoshop tutorial will show you how to beautify a face. The corrections that we're going to do will make the face look different, but at the same time we avoid to make the results look unnatural like we tend to see in other Photoshop tutorials. Of course, the face we're going to work on is not going to look the same when we're done, but we will only make necessary and subtle changes. We will use Photoshop to fix skin, remove blemishes and wrinkles, whiten and fix teeth, fix hair, fix eyebrows, increase definition in the eyes and crop and sharpen the image in the final steps.

Microsoft Office News

Courtesy of Slipstick - Outlook and Exchange News

CompanionLink for Google Calendar is a two-way synchronization tool which extends the Google Calendar onto your desktop calendar systems or mobile devices. It can synchronize Google Calendar with all the latest Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, Palm, and BlackBerry devices in addition to Outlook, Lotus Notes, Palm Desktop, and Groupwise applications. When you make changes to your calendar from any device or desktop program your Google Calendar will be updated automatically the next time you sync.

Courtesy of Doug from Unofficial Microsoft Office Stuff

Brian Friesen has created a web site called Freezerware.

One of the clever pieces of free programming on the site is named ZoomIn
ZoomIn is a screen magnification program allowing you to view any area of your screen under magnification. ZoomIn allows you to control the amount of zoom, view a pixels location and color, and save it as a bitmap.

Enter data in one place in a document and have it repeated elsewhere.
There comes the time when you need to enter a clients name at the beginning of a document and you know that it will be repeated again many other places.
Greg Maxey has collected a number of ways to make the task easier.
Repeating Data

Courtesy of J-Walk a preview of Office 2007 on Vista - using a screen effect called Glass.

Microsoft's Jensen Harris on Office 2007: Welcome to the New User Interface.
One of the questions people ask about the new user interface is "how much training is required to get up to speed?"
Well, our design goal was to require no training at all. From the earliest prototypes, we were trying to design an experience so that people could sit down in front of Office 2007 and be effective right away at getting their work done. One of the reasons we didn't go more radical on the overall design was that we wanted to make the product comfortable to use--after all, at the end of the day, it's still Microsoft Office.

John comments:

I may be wrong, but I think it's unlikely that many large companies are going to perform massive upgrades to Office 2007. Those that do will require training, regardless of what Microsoft says.

Are the new Office 2007 features worth the effort and frustration? For some, yes. For most, no.

Courtesy of Marc from The Office Weblog

Jensen Harris reports some very welcome news on his Office blog - Personalized Menus will no longer be switched on by default when Office is installed. Since the introduction of this feature, the default preference in Microsoft Office has been to have the Personalized Menus feature - one of Microsoft's most ill-advised attempts to be helpful IMO - turned on by default.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Cool stuff - link dump

A brief history of Ukraine
ICE - In Case of Emergency - add your emergency contact to your mobile phone with ICE as the contact name.
Gnoos - new search engine - built in Australia - register your web site or blog with gnoos

Monday, June 05, 2006

Website Overhaul Plans

I am planning a major overhaul of this website in the near future.

There are a number of reasons for doing this, in no particular order:
Its time for a change - this website is almost 2 years old in its current format
I want to use Drupal
I want to give users better access to archives, search functionality and categorisation and indexing
I want a better image gallery option
I want interactive polls and forums included
I want to allow users the ability to contribute also

However I also want to make sure that I involve my readers - thousands of them - thanks for coming and reading.
To achieve this I want you to assist me with the makeover by having your say about what you like, dislike etc about the site.
I am posting this article on each part of the Spyjournal website.

So email me or comment below this article with some answers please
Do you read by RSS or on the web page? (RSS Readers - please take the time to either email me or comment)
Which browser do you use?
Do you come regularly (book marked) or did you come from a search engine?
Would you like to contribute to this site?
What do you like most?
What do you hate the most?
Anything else you can think of?

Thanks and I will keep you updated. When I have a beta version up I will invite you to review it.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Counterfeit Windows

Starting today (Apr 27), the software giant will permanently flag personal computers that are not running a genuine copy of Windows. This move affects the six million Windows users in this country, as well as those in the United States, Britain, New Zealand and Australia.

Industry sources informed In.Tech that the software giant is giving Windows the ability to tell if a user's PC is running a genuine or pirated version of the OS, via an update patch that becomes available from [today]. The patch takes effect if a PC user has opted to automatically update Windows the moment he goes online. It will also take effect should a PC user manually download the latest Windows updates.

If the OS is an unauthorised copy, a pop-up dialogue box will appear on the Windows login screen, informing the user that his copy of the OS is counterfeit and that he should get a genuine copy.

Courtesy of J-walk

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Round up of Links to Tech stuff

Doug Klippert from Unofficial Office Stuff alerted me to these awesome CSS resources:
Arty Papers
CSS Help Pile
Doug also posts about how to Recolour images in Microsoft Word and Power Point image transparency options.

Send Individually for Microsoft Outlook

Need to send an email to many people but don't want to put in the work of performing a Word Mail Merge or risk having your email being flagged as spam using a BCC? Then Send Individually is for you. It sends an email that you create to each of your recipients, one at a time. Individually addressing emails allows those emails to make it through more spam filters and raises response rates. Don't you pay more attention to emails that are directly addressed to you? Now you can do it with ease. It's perfect for sending out your newsletters, press releases, business announcements, or other marketing emails.

Delete Duplicates for Windows is a tool for deleting duplicated files from the hard drives

Darren from ProBlogger links to Business Logs where Mark writes about his top 5 CSS tips. Great stuff including a starter template you can download.
Darren also links to a number of free blogger templates

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