I saw this ZDNet post today with a tantalizing glimpse of Gdrive. It comes originally from cocaman.ch where he found a login page for something called Google Platypus, which is essentially a remotely used file storage. Now, from the page there are a couple of items that can be gleaned. Currently it’s something that’s in use internally (by the Googler’s…) Also, there is a download client for Windows/Mac/Linux that is used to synchronize files somehow. The benefits of it as it is advertised in the screenshot….
Tag: public
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Scansafe tries to make web browsing safer…
Scansafe is launching a new free product called scandoo which aims to tag search results with Green yellow and blow widgets so you know which sites are safe (green), dangerous (red) or uncertain (Yellow). ZDnet had news of the scandoo service which is not the first attempt at making the web safe… Siteadvisor from McAfee attempts to do the same (with installed software) and Symantec is working on a competitor as well. Further there are toolbars that attempt to protect users from phishing scams, but I’m not sure that this service will be as successful as hoped.
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Late afternoon test run of Google Notebook
So, I finally got down to about 5 tabs left in my firefox window and decided I could kill it off and restart it without really losing my place so I could get a good look at the Google Notebook plugin. First impression is that it’s fairly unobtrusive and is in the notification bar with the rest of my plugins (google mail notifier, google calendar notifier, noscript, adsense notifier and adblock…) Clicking on it gives the chance to create a new notebook and then loads a little Web 2.0 looking box complete with resize/close widgets and an Add note button and Actions menu.
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Microsoft fixes security fix….
Well, for the second month in a row (I don’t recall one in March..) Microsoft has re-released a patch for Windows. This time it’s the Flash patch (which really falls under 3rd party software). They’ve re-worked the version detection of the update in an attempt to solve all the problems that people have run into with this update. The MS Security blog information is here.
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Oracle’s April patches late….
Oracle released 36 patches in mid-April as part of their quarterly patch cycle…. unfortunately, not all of the patches were released. Apparently they hadn’t finished testing and users were advised to look for the updates around the first of May. Well, guess what – they’re not out yet and the word is that they won’t be until May 15th. This is one example of why I think it’s unwise to say that patches will be released on X date on a regular schedule. They should be releasing them as soon as they have the patch tested and ready.
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Sky falls – bugs exist in the Linux kernel….
There have been several articles in the last few days breathlessly heralding the news The linux kernel is too buggy… Andrew Morton, the lead maintainer has said in the last week that the 2.6 kernel has gotten a bit out of hand with too many new features and too few fixed bugs. Of course, he’s probably right…. Linux founder Linus Torvalds agrees that a “bugfix only” cycle of kernel development would be a good idea.
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Epson Perfection 1650 scanner and Windows XP Limited User account
“We tried scanning and all that happened was the lamp moved back and forth…. Nothing else happened.” That was the description I had and the request to see why the scanner was broken. It hadn’t been long since the Epson scanner had been hooked up to a new XP Pro system. The machine sees quite a bit of public use so we had thought it would be best to divide accounts into Visitor which is an unpriviliged user and another account for the ability to work with software that was not as cooperative in an unpriviliged account.
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Google Calendar escapes into public use..
There have been rumors for (years?) a long time at least, that google was preparing something known as cl2 which would be a calendar with full gmail integration. There were screenshots, many of which were photoshopped from another web calendar, but there were others that were more convincing… well, as of late yesterday Google Calendar has escaped in to public view. http://www.google.com/calendar. I first tried logging in through my gmail account thinking I might see info there, but I didn’t, so I went to the above link and answered a question about what time zone I’m in, then got to see the main interface.
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Network Security – Arp spoofing series
I think I’ve wrapped up the series on arp spoofing and it’s implications for network security. I know there’s nothing earth shattering here, most network security types are well aware of the problems (and perhaps aware of more sophisticated solutions?). For some though, this series is likely an eye opener as there are myths that switches cannot be sniffed, that ONLY wireless data packets can be sniffed, etc. etc.
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Microsoft Patch Tuesday January
Sounds like this patch Tuesday will have a couple of updates in spite of the early release of the WMF vulnerability fix. Thanks to Microsoft for yielding that fix as soon as the testing was done. I would hope that it wasn’t just public pressure, but a sense of what the right thing to do is when there are exploits actively targeting a vulnerability.