Magazine: WINDOWS IT PRO

Windows IT Pro magazine Febuary 2006

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Prevent Attacks Aimed at IE and Windows

Plus: Clear up problems with seemingly corrupt Acronis True Image data backups.
Stuart J. Johnston
From the March 2006 issue of PC World magazine
Microsoft has fixed a nasty Windows security hole that could hand control of your computer to an attacker. The patch offers welcome relief, because dozens of exploits for this vulnerability have been in circulation for weeks. Download the patch from Microsoft.
The problem lies in the way the Windows graphics engine handles Windows Metafiles (WMF), particularly when those files are displayed in Microsoft's Picture and Fax Viewer. Microsoft created the WMF image file format to simplify the exchange of images between various applications. (This bug is unrelated to a WMF hole that I reported on last month.)

If you view a booby-trapped WMF file on a Web page--say, on a banner ad--or you click a link to a doctored image in an e-mail or instant message, your system could be infected, letting the hacker take over.
All Windows versions from Windows 2000 through XP are at risk. Moreover, XP and Windows Server 2003 are set to display WMF files automatically, according to security firm F-Secure. To change this default, you would need to edit the Windows Registry, a potentially risky process. You are better off installing the patch in order to display such files safely.
Two-in-One Patch for IE
Microsoft has also released a patch to take care of two dangerous holes in Internet Explorer that could leave you open to any number of diabolical actions. The flaws affect IE 5.01 through 6 running on Windows 98 SE through XP Service Pack 2. The first problem, similar to an earlier case (see "Defend Your PC Against Video Attacks"), involves IE's ability to run a type of software called a COM object, which wasn't designed to run in IE. Various Windows programs use COM objects to communicate with one another behind the scenes.
The one type of COM object that IE can run is called an ActiveX control. ActiveX controls enable IE to perform special tasks like playing a video in a browser window instead of, say, in a stand-alone media player. An attacker could take advantage of IE's ability to run this kind of COM object by creating one that, when run in IE, could commandeer your PC. You could launch an infection merely by reading an HTML e-mail message or visiting a Web page that contains the malicious COM object.

The patch for the bug described in the January column prevented all attacks Microsoft was aware of at the time, by modifying the Windows Registry to keep a set list of COM objects from running. This new patch does much the same, except that it blocks a new list of COM objects.
Exploits that take advantage of the second IE hole concern the way IE processes the JavaScript Web programming language. With the patch just mentioned, you'll be able to protect your PC. The bug had been known for months, but everyone, including Microsoft, thought it could at worst result in an IE crash. A UK-based researcher, however, discovered a way to use the flaw to take over a computer.

Another patch benefit: It blocks Sony's now-infamous copy-protection rootkit.

Google's Latest: Page Creator

by Harry McCracken
OK, I checked back--and Google Page Creator is indeed live, at least at the moment. It's a very, very simple Web-site designer that works in your browser. That's not a new idea (CoffeeCup did something along the same lines years ago), but Page Creator has a zippy, AJAX-y interface that feels like a desktop application. It offers a bunch of themes and a few different page layouts. And it does a nice job of eliminating the need to know anything about Web authoring. (You can edit in an HTML mode if you really want to, but mostly, you work in a WYSIWYG mode that saves everything to the Web automatically.)
Page Creator puts your site at a yournamehere.googlepages.com URL, offers a maximum of 100MB of space, and only creates simple, static pages without flashy features, interactivity, or structure. So it's best suited for folks with extremely basic needs who want to get something on the Web with a minimum of fuss--but for that, it's worth a look.
But it's a bit strange that Page Creator is a cutting-edge, extremely interactive Web service that...lets you create really old-fashioned, passive Web sites. But a jillion other services--like Yahoo's GeoCities, the granddaddy of personal Web publishing for the masses--offer similar tools with scads more features, albeit with less slick user interfaces. Like a fair percentage of "Web 2.0"-type services, Google Page Creator may be more interesting as a technology demo than for what it actually lets you accomplish. (Anyone remember when Google did a very few things, like the search engine itself and Gmail, but did them spectacularly well? It's now doing many, many things with erratic results. Let's hope that its next step isn't to do an infinite number of things badly--a road that any number of growing technology companies have taken, sadly.) It'll be interesting to see if Google builds out the service--which is in labeled as a beta (surprise!)--with more features. As usual with new Google initiatives, it's not entirely clear at this juncture exactly why it's launching this. (It's not putting ads on the pages, by the way.) But between this and Blogger and Google Base, it's obvious that Google wants to provide a home for lots and lots and lots of user-generated content.

They're presumably got a grand strategy in mind there somewhere...even if they're not talking about it yet. It's typical Google that Page Creator, Blogger, and Google Base feel so separate and unrelated; only recently has Google begun to take baby steps towards integrating its services. Right now, Yahoo is doing a vastly better job of building a bevy of services that feel like they relate to each other, although, come to think of it, GeoCities is still sort of an island unto itself. Side note: The Page Creator online help refers at one point to pages living at Pagetastic.com. Which is probably a glitch, since everywhere else, it talks about them living at Googlepages.com. But the test page I created is, indeed, also available at Pagetastic.com--even though that domain's WHOIS record says its owner is a company in Boise. Odd...

(Update: The Boise company, Data Docket, appears to be the registrant of record for a number of Google-related domain names. Not so odd after all...)

source:pcworld

Snow Shuts Down Athens's Acropolis

Fresh from hosting the Summer Olympics, Athens looked more like a Winter Games venue yesterday. The famously sunny city was struck by winter storms that shut down the Acropolis and its Parthenon temple, seen here through snow-laden boughs.

This week the ancient Greek city experienced its third subfreezing day in ten years. More than 400 Greek villages and towns were effectively snowed in—authorities in the Mediterranean country were having a tough time clearing the roads, according to the Reuters news service. (See a map of Greece.)

The southern European cold snap is only the latest sign of an Arctic weather front on the march. Having conquered Russia—Moscow has seen temperatures fall to -22°F (-30°C)— the cold front stormed eastern Europe and the Balkans last week and is continuing south and west. The onslaught has so far taken up to 300 European lives, according to the Times of London.

—Ted Chamberlain

Map Proof Chinese Discovered America?

Its owner says this map changes history. But skeptics say he's way off course.
Antiquities collector Liu Gang unveiled the map in Beijing on Monday, saying it proves that Chinese seafarer Zheng He discovered America more than 70 years before Christopher Columbus set foot in the New World.
The map depicts all of the continents, including a small Australia, a roughed-out North America, and Antarctica.
An inscription identifies the map as a copy made in 1763 of an original drawn in 1418.

If verified, that date would coincide with the voyages of Zheng He, an admiral in the Ming dynasty's imperial navy. Zheng is known to have sailed as far as Africa between 1405 and 1433.
(See National Geographic magazine feature: "China's Great Armada.")
A lab in New Zealand is radiocarbon-dating a scrap of the map's bamboo paper to determine its age.
Liu says he purchased the map from a dealer in Shanghai in 2001 but didn't suspect its importance until he read 1421, a book that claims Zheng discovered America.

The book, written by retired British Navy officer Gavin Menzies, also asserts that Zheng was the first to circumnavigate the globe and that Chinese settlers established now-vanished colonies throughout the Americas.
Many scholars, including Chinese historians, have dismissed these claims.

"I sincerely believe that other maps exist and books exist [that support the claims], but no one has been paying attention to them," Liu told the AFP news agency. "It is my purpose to try to wake these [scholars] up."
—Blake de Pastino

NEXT LiMiT MAXWELL RENDER v1.0 RC5

NEXT LiMiT MAXWELL RENDER v1.0 RC5

Maxwell is a new render engine based on the physics of real light. Its algorithms and equations reproduce the behavior of light in a completely accurate way. All of the elements in Maxwell, such as light emitters, material shaders, cameras etc., are entirely based on physically accurate models.

Maxwell's method of calculation always converges to the correct solution without introducing artifacts due to the fact that it is an unbiased renderer.
It can fully capture all light interactions between all elements in a scene. All lighting calculations are performed using spectral information and high dynamic range data.

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Arty Brushes for Photoshop

6 amazing Photoshop Brushes Sets

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Pantone Releases 125 New Specialty Colors

Pantone, Inc.,the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, today announced the availability of 125 new specialty colors. The new PANTONE metallic formula guide features 97 new metallic shades and the PANTONE pastel formula guide features 28 new pastel colors, making this the broadest collection of PANTONE Specialty Colors available today. Designers, printers and their clients now have more choices for subtle and shimmering tones to enhance the shelf-appeal of products and influence consumers' perceptions of quality.The new PANTONE metallic and pastel color palettes are available in fan guide format for convenience and portability, or as loose-leaf chips books with tear-out color swatches for easy color specification. In addition, replacement pages are available for both PANTONE metallic chips and PANTONE pastel chips, making it easy for designers to update their PANTONE Color reference books with the latest specialty colors.

"Designers are incorporating more specialty colors into their designs - especially metallic colors," said Doris Brown, vice president of marketing for Pantone, Inc. "Without them it would be impossible to reproduce the true luster and sleek shine of a new sports car or the pale rosy blush of a peach. Creative professionals know they can trust Pantone to give them the exact specifications for accurate and flawless color quality. The new metallic and pastel guides offer designers hundreds of new color choices."

For more than 40 years, Pantone has provided color formula guides to ensure that color reproduction adheres to exact industry standards. Pantone's flagship product, the PANTONE formula guide, sets the benchmark for color and provides a consistent method for the selection and matching of solid PANTONE Colors. In addition to solid colors, Pantone provides specialty colors such as those included in the PANTONE metallic and PANTONE pastel guides to accommodate today's product and package design trends.

PANTONE metallic formula guide
To reproduce the shimmer of a broad range of metallic colors, the PANTONE metallic formula guide now contains 301 dazzling colors on coated stock. Each of the chromatically arranged colors is displayed along with its unique PANTONE Number and ink mixing formulation for communicating these sophisticated shades with confidence. The corresponding chips book provides tear-out chips for accurate color specification.

PANTONE pastel formula guide
The PANTONE pastel formula guide gives professionals an easy-to-use reference tool featuring a full range of soft and subtle colors not found in the lighter shades of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM. One hundred fifty four pastel colors are chromatically arranged and available in a fan guide format along with their PANTONE Number and ink formula, or in book format with tear-out chips to ensure accurate color specification. The PANTONE pastel formula guide and chips book are both printed on coated and uncoated stock to show how different papers affect color appearance.

The new color guides are produced on the company's customized KBA printing press, which has been precision-engineered for improved color consistency. The press uses state-of-the-art printing technology with integrated color measurement controls to reproduce color with even greater consistency and tighter tolerances. This new technology greatly improves this critical process.

Pricing and Availability
The PANTONE metallic formula guide coated is available for a suggested retail price of U.S. $69 and the PANTONE metallic chips book coated is U.S. $169. The PANTONE metallic chips pages are available in a four-pack for U.S. $24. The PANTONE pastel formula guide coated and uncoated is U.S. $69, the pastel chips book coated/uncoated is U.S. $169 and the PANTONE pastel chips pages are also available in a four-pack for U.S. $24. The new PANTONE guides and chips books are available immediately from Pantone's Web site at www.pantone.com, or through PANTONE distributors worldwide.
About Pantone, Inc.
Pantone, Inc., developer of the globally accepted PANTONE Color Systems, is the leading source of traditional and electronic products for the selection and accurate communication of color. With over 40 years of experience, Pantone is recognized as the worldwide market leader in color communication and color technology for the graphic design, printing, publishing, textile and plastics industries. More information is available at www.pantone.com.

GOD FATHER Mp3 | A.R.Rahman

HARMONY

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MUSICIANS

MIRUTHANGAM - SEENU

GHATAM- KARTHIK

PAKAWAJ-SREENI

ADDITIONAL PROGRAMING: SANJAY

ADDITIONAL MIXING: SURESH PETERS

RECORDED AT PANCHATHAN RECORD INN & A M STUDIO

SSOUND ENGINEER: H.SRIDHAR, S.SIVAKUMAR

ASST.SOUND ENGINEER: ADITYA MODI, KARTHIK.V

All Music Composed, Produced and Arranged by AR Rahman

All Lyrics by Vairamuthu

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Sardar Jokes (( Please don't pass this on to any sardar one may get offended...!! ))

A sardar invested 2 Lakhs in a business and Suffered huge Loss. Do uknow what the business was? . . . .. . . . . .. . . He opened a Saloon inPunjab!

A sardarji photographer is focusing a dead body's face in a funeralfunction, suddenly all dead persons relatives beat him. why? He said"SMILEPLEASE"

Sardarji gets ready, wears tie, coat, goes out, climbs tree, and sits onthe branch regularly. A man asks why he does this.
Sardarji: "I'vebeenpromotedas branch manager."

Why is a Sardarji standing below a tube light with a openmouth................. Because his doctor advised him "Today's dinnershould be light"

One sardarji professor asked a plumber to come to his college. U knowWhy? Because he wanted to check where the question paper is leaking...

Sardar told his servant: Go and water the plants. Servant: It's already raining. Sardar: So what take an umbrella and go.

Sardar found the answer to the most difficult question ever -
What willcome first, Chicken or egg?
O Yaar, what ever u order first will comefirst.

Postman:- I Have To Come 5 Miles to Deliver U This PacketSardar: -Why did u come so far. Instead u could have posted it....

Sardar's wish: when i die, i wana die like my grandpa who diedpeacefully in his sleep not screaming like all d passengers in d bushe was driving..

A man asked sardarji, why Manmohan singh goes walking at evening not inthe morning. Sardarji replied ''Arey bhai Manmohan is PM not AM''.

Sardar visits Chinese friend dying in hospital. The Chinese friend justsays "CHIN YU YAN" and dies. Sardarji goes 2 china 2 find meaning of friendslast words. It is 'U R STANDNG ON the OXGN TUBE!"

Sardarji was standing in front of the mirror with his eyes closed. Hiswife asked what you are doing. He said-I am seeing how I look whilesleeping.

Why did Sardar cut the sides of the capsule before taking it? Guesswhat...---To avoid side effect!!!

Man: Sardarji where were u born?
Sardarji: Punjab.
Man: Which part?
Sardar: Oye part part kya kar raha hai, whole body is born in punjab".

IN COURT during a case: Lawyer to Sardar: Gita pe haath rakhkar kaho ke..... Sardar: yeh kya, Sita pe haath lagaya to court me bulaiya. abkehte hogita pe haath rakho.....

Sardar: For the past one week a girl is disturbing me. I don't know howshe got my no, She interrupts whenever I call someone and says "pleaserecharge your card"

he..he....

Adobe Photoshop CS Quick Tips

Photoshop CS Quick Tips

HARNESSING THE MIRROR TOOL
Liquify’s Mirror tool does a great job of flipping whatever is to the left of the cursor and pasting within the brush path. But to control the Mirror tool is another story! Use the Freeze tool to stabilize the area you want to copy first, then drag the Mirror tool along the edge of the frozen area to flip it into the brush.

SWITCH TO PERCENT
Before recording an action that adds artwork or text (perhaps copyright information) to the center of an image, change the unit of measure for Photoshop’s Rulers to Percent. Doing so ensures that you’ll paste into the center of the image, regardless of size or orientation. Make the change in Photoshop’s Preferences or by Control-clicking (PC: Right-clicking) on a Ruler.

SAVING FILE BROWSER SETUPS
In Photoshop CS, your custom File Browser setups can be saved as Workspaces, which opens a new way of working within the File Browser. For example, if you shoot a lot of portraits, you can double-click on the Folders tab (to roll it up out of the way, giving you a taller Preview palette), then drag the divider bar between the palettes area and the thumbnail area to the right to make your preview even bigger. Since your preview is so large, you can shrink the size of your thumbnails (go to the View menu in the File Browser and choose Medium Thumbnail). Once you’ve done all this, save this setup as a Workspace by going to the Window menu, under Workspace, and choosing Save Workspace (name it “File Browser Portrait”). Then, next time you’re looking through some proofs, you can have huge previews in just one click. You can do the same thing for wide photos—just drag the divider bar much farther to the right, until the preview of photos with a landscape orientation takes up most of the File Browser Screen. Now switching between huge portrait and landscape previews only takes one click.

OPENING MULTIPLE IMAGES AND CLOSING THE FILE BROWSER
Want to open multiple photos at once and have Photoshop close the File Browser for you? Just Command-click (PC: Control-click) on all the photos you want to open, then press Option-Return (PC: Alt-Enter). All the selected photos will open, and the File Browser will close.

HOW TO GET AN UNDO AFTER YOU’VE CLOSED THE DOCUMENT
As you probably already know, the History palette keeps track of the last 20 changes to your document that you can use for multiple undos when working on a project. The only bad part is that when you close your document, your undos (in History) are automatically deleted. However, there is a way to save an undo, as long as it’s a tonal adjustment (such as Curves, Levels, Color Balance, etc.), by creating Adjustment layers. Just click on the half-white, half-black circle at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose your tonal adjustment from the pop-up menu to create an Adjustment layer. These Adjustment layers are saved as layers, along with your file. That way, the next time you open the file, you can go back and edit your Curves, Levels, etc. adjustment by double-clicking on the Adjustment layer. The last applied adjustment will appear, and you can edit it live. If you decide you don’t want the original adjustment applied at all, you can drag the Adjustment layer into the Trash icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. You can also add a Gradient fill, a Pattern fill, and even a Solid Color fill as an Adjustment layer, giving you an undo at a later date, because again, they’re saved as layers with the file.

SCRUBBY SLIDER SHIFT-CLICK TRICK
Adobe borrowed scrubby sliders, a very cool feature from Adobe After Effects, and put it in Photoshop CS. You use it by clicking on a field’s name, rather than in the field itself, and the value in the field changes as you drag (scrub) over the field’s name. However, it scrubs in very small increments. That is, unless you hold the Shift key, which is ideal when you need to make big changes in the field (like from 0 to 256).

LOCK THOSE PIXELS AND FILL
This is a great timesaving shortcut when you have an object on a layer, and you want to fill just the object with the Foreground color (rather than filling the entire layer with color). Press Shift-Option-Delete (PC: Shift-Alt-Backspace). What this does is turn on Lock Transparent Pixels for the layer in the Layers palette, fills the object on your layer, and then turns Lock Transparent Pixels back off. What if you want to fill your object with a gradient? It’s a little more laborious. Turn on Lock Transparent Pixels by using the Forward Slash key (/) shortcut. Drag your Gradient tool through your object, and then press Forward Slash (/) again to turn off Lock Transparent Pixels.

Best Pals Tittle-Tattle.........

Best Pals Tittle-Tattle.........

2 best palz (Jay & Jinie) share all what they have to say.....about themselves, about others...and anything funny or weird under the sun.:) All of you...pls feel free to comment about anything on this blog...Let's have fun with the "tittle tattle"!!!:)

Happy Valentine's Day

Corel: Looking for Love Online?

Corel: Looking for Love Online? Put Your Best Face Forward with Corel Paint Shop Pro

As Valentine's Day draws near, millions of singles will go online in search of romance. So what's the secret to getting noticed online? Well, it's no surprise that those who post their photos receive twice as many emails as those without, according to a study published by economists at M.I.T. and University of Chicago. Not convinced? A Match.com survey revealed that profiles containing photos had fifteen times the response rate as those without them. If you're serious about finding that special someone online, it's time to fix up your photos and put your best face forward.Online dating sites are riddled with photos that are less than ideal - they are too dark, too grainy, or poorly cropped. These problems are all easy to fix if you have the right tools to help you. Corel® Paint Shop Pro® X is award-winning software packed with quick photo fixes that will make you look picture perfect. And with a new integrated Learning Center, Paint Shop Pro is easier to use than ever.

Try some of these quick tips and fast photo fixes before posting your photos online:Quick Photo Fix - In Just One Click! - Begin by clicking the 'One Step Photo Fix' button and watch Paint Shop Pro automatically
adjust the brightness and color of your photo. You will be amazed at how it quickly transforms a good photo into an outstanding photo.

Turn that Noise Down - "Digital noise" can cause photos to look grainy. To make your photos crystal clear, try selecting the 'Digital Camera Noise Removal' button and watch your photos become clearer in an instant.
Me, Myself, and I - Want to edit out your ex? Or maybe you just want to protect the innocent and crop your friends and family out of your photos. Select the Object Remover tool and trim unwanted subjects from your photos in seconds.
Blemish be Gone -
Have a photo of yourself that would be great without the blemish that is now long gone? Just select the
'Blemish Fixer' option, target the blemish and with one click it is gone forever. The Blemish Fixer is just one of many makeover tools included in Paint Shop Pro X.
"With 40 million Americans using Internet dating services, online daters need a better way to stand out from the crowd. Having photos that show the real you is the first step," said Blaine Mathieu, general manager, digital imaging at Corel. "You'll be amazed how you start standing out from the online competition after spending a few minutes making simple enhancements and adjustments to your photo collection."

To learn more about Corel's digital imaging portfolio or to download a free, fully functional trial version of Corel Paint Shop Pro X,
please visit www.corel.com/paintshoppro.

Pricing and Availability
Available for a suggested retail price of $99 US and $129 CAD, Corel Paint Shop Pro X includes Corel® Photo Album™ 6 - Standard Edition, Pixmantec® RawShooter™ essentials, two hours of free lynda.com video instruction and a printed user manual. Corel Paint Shop Pro X is now available from major retailers and resellers across North America including Amazon, PC Mall, Dell.com, Atomic Park, STAPLES, Business Depot, Office Depot, CDW, PC Connection, SHI and Software Spectrum.

About Corel Corporation
Corel Corporation provides innovative software solutions that help millions of value-conscious businesses and consumers in over 75 countries improve their productivity. Corel is renowned for its powerful software portfolio that combines innovative photo editing
and graphics creation, vector illustration and technical-graphics applications along with office and personal productivity solutions. Corel's flagship products include the CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite, the WordPerfect® Office Suite, the Corel® Painter™ Natural-Media® painting and illustration software and the Paint Shop™ Family of digital photography and image editing software.
Founded in 1985, Corel is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. For more information, please visit www.corel.com.

Cuts leave satellite grounded

US plans to award a multibillion-dollar satellite communications contract for a pivotal project are being delayed until 2008 following budget cuts.Teams led by Lockheed Martin and Boeing are vying to build an initial five laser-linked satellites to expand space-based communications systems for the military.

The program is designed to create high-bandwidth satellite links for US forces deployed worldwide. It would hook them into the so-called Global Information Grid, the Pentagon's voice, video and data network.

US President George W Bush's 2007 budget, sent to Congress on Monday, calls for spending $US9.8 billion over the next five years on the project, known as the Transformational Satellite Communications System, or TSAT, the officials said.
Last year, Congress cut planned spending on the program, the Air Force's costliest in space through to the 2011 financial year, by almost half to $US436.8 million, voicing concerns about costs and technology maturity.

The officials, who spoke on the President's space-related plans on condition they not be named, said the budget for the year starting October 1 was aimed at launching the first two TSAT satellites in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014, 18 months later than originally planned.
In addition, the US Air Force was scaling back the capacity it would seek in the first two as part of a "walk before you run" approach, the officials said.
In the past, the Air Force has been criticised for moving ahead with complex system-acquisition plans prior to proving that component technologies were sufficiently mature.
The new roadmap for acquiring TSAT is "less of a reach," said one official. It cuts the complexity and capacity of the system's two core technologies - laser communications and an internet-like router, they said.

On January 27, Lockheed Martin was awarded a 10-year, $US2.1 billion contract for the ground-based backbone of the projected system.
Mr Bush is seeking $US9.8 billion for Air Force space programs in fiscal 2007, or 19 per cent of Air Force modernisation spending, up from $US9.3 billion the year before, or 18 per cent of the total, the officials said.

Reuters

Take Pictures of Images on Your TV | winners gets a prize...

Taking pictures of a favorite TV show can be tricky. Here's how to do it right.

[Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.]
Like mixing chocolate and peanut butter, you've probably been tempted to try taking a picture of something on your CRT TV's screen with your digital camera. And while chocolate and peanut butter is a delicious combination, you may have had somewhat less successful results with your TV/camera experiment.

You probably got a picture that looked something like this. What happened? Well, a standard TV image is rendered from the top to bottom of the screen, one line at a time, about 30 times per second. So it's easy to see what went wrong: the picture was shot with a shutter speed that's too slow, so it caught the TV in the act of drawing the picture. Specifically, it caught the electron gun aimed somewhere in midframe, repainting the image, with a band of fading phosphors visible.

Shoot It Slow
Actually, the solution is simple. To catch a solid, complete image of the TV screen with your digital camera, you need to use a shutter speed of less than 1/30 second.
The easiest way to do that is to set your camera to its shutter priority mode (usually indicated by an "S") and use the camera controls to change the shutter speed until you see a speed of 1/15, 1/20, or 1/25 in the viewfinder. You'll probably find that choosing 1/30 on the nose is a little too fast; you'll still get a blank band somewhere in the frame. Go too slow, though, and the picture will start to blur simply from the motion in the video. I've found that 1/15 or 1/20 to be just about ideal for most situations. Here's a photo I captured at 1/20; it's a dramatic improvement over the first example, since I captured the entire image.

What if your camera doesn't have a shutter priority mode? Well, try the program mode. Usually, you can shift the shutter speed up or down by using the camera's controls--the aperture setting will change as well, ensuring that the exposure stays correct. Another alternative is to see if your camera offers a slow-shutter scene mode.
Mind the Details
That's the technique in a nutshell; now you know how to make a photographic record of the next time the Eagles concert airs. Then again, you could probably just buy the DVD instead. A better use of this newfound skill might be to add graphical punctuation on media commentary on your blog--or you could photograph your kid's high score while playing Zelda on the PlayStation.

But to get the best results while photographing images on your television, you should keep a few things in mind. A tripod will help get better results, for instance, since you're shooting at fairly slow shutter speeds and a shaky camera will make a blurry picture.
Also, shoot at night with the lights out, or draw the curtains during the day. Direct light on the TV screen will result in reflections and glare that can wash out the picture and create distractions.
Digital TVs Are Easier to Shoot
One last note about digital TVs, such as LCD and plasmas. These newfangled gadgets don't draw the picture on the screen in the same way as old CRT-based TVs. They create the picture using a mode called progressive scan, which means that the entire screen is refreshed simultaneously--no scan lines. So you don't have to worry about using a slow shutter speed on such TVs. Here's a shot of a plasma TV, taken at 1/60.

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.
This Week's Hot Pic: "Philly Hall," by Tim Young, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
About this week's photo, Tim says: "I took this photo of Philadelphia's city hall on a nice, cool summer evening back in September. I was out and about one evening to try out my new digital camera, a Kodak CX7330. I stumbled into this magic scene more or less by accident. The photo shows off how beautiful the city hall area really is at night in Philadelphia. It has a perfect symmetry of color--a blue sky, white fountain, green trees, colored flowers, yellow building lights, and a nicely lit stone tower. And, of course, there is our famous and historic William Penn at the top of the picture!"

source:pcworld

Google Puts Instant Message Service Inside E-Mail

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)—Google Inc. users will be able to conduct instant message chats from a Google Web browser window, alongside their e-mails, instead of requiring a separate application, the company said late Monday.

Google, known for its simple and powerful Web searching, hopes that by embedding new instant messaging software it calls "Gmail Chat" into its existing e-mail service, it can differentiate itself in a crowded market it was late to join.
The company is struggling to stand out in an entrenched field. Instant messaging was pioneered by America Online more than a decade ago. AOL, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. now have tens of millions of users each.
Google shares fell 4.2 percent to $369 on Nasdaq.
Google is fixing a decade-old technical divide between the generic Web browser that can check e-mail, search the Web or perform a host of other activities, and separate software used to converse in quick back-and-forth messages with buddies.

"We are breaking down some of the artificial barriers between e-mail and Web browsing," Salar Kamangar, Google's vice president of product management, said in a phone interview.
"We observed by talking with our users that there is no reason to think of IM as different from an e-mail message."
Gmail Chat complements Google Talk, a more sophisticated program the company introduced six months ago that combines instant messaging (IM) with free Web-based calling features. By joining IM to e-mail, Chat can reach a wider base of users.
"This is training wheels for Google Talk," said Greg Sterling, an analyst with Kelsey Group. "It is a way to introduce a broader population to instant messaging and give them exposure to Google Talk."
Gmail Chat requires no special software download. It is available to any registered user of Gmail e-mail. Existing contacts within the more advanced Google Talk program automatically show up in Google Chat, the company said.
Gmail Chat features include a Quick Contacts list on the left side of a Google e-mail page that automatically displays the people the user communicates with most frequently, not just via Chat but also via Gmail e-mail or Google Talk services.

Gmail users will start receiving offers to join the Gmail Chat service over the coming weeks, although some members received invitations as early as Tuesday.
In effect, Mountain View, California-based Google is easing the frustrations of millions of instant messaging users of having to install special software on each computer to hold instant chats.
While this presents little difficulty for computers users sitting at a PC they control, many office workers are restricted from downloading the special IM software required for their work machines. Casual Web users checking their e-mail on friends computers or Internet cafes hit similar roadblocks.
But the innovation is one of degree.

Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo all allow users to send instant messages from within a Web browser, although none of them puts special emphasis on the feature.
Last September, Meebo, a Silicon Valley-based start-up began publicly testing a simple-to-use service that allows someone to sign into the four major instant messaging programs at once—AOL, Yahoo, MSN and Google—from a single Web page, without any sign-up process or downloading any special software.
The trial software is available at http://www.meebo.com/.

Microsoft confirm that MS05-039 can affect Windows XP SP1 without authentication

Microsoft have confirmed that it is possible to exploit the MS05–039 Plug and Play vulnerability on Windows XP SP1 hosts that have not applied the patch with out authentication under specific circumstances.
The scenario only impacts computers that have not been upgraded to Windows XP SP2, are not part of a domain, are not protected by a firewall, have not applied the MS05-039 patch, and have enabled "Simple File and Print Sharing" in a home environment or in a workgroup. Under these conditions, the "Guest" account on the computer would then be available to remote users. As a result is possible to access the system without proper authentication and exploit the Plug and Play vulnerability.Just to reiterate, this scenario, does not affect Windows XP SP2 users or Windows XP SP1 users that are part of a domain and any user that has installed the patch.Currently Microsoft are claiming that none of the current exploits for the MS05–039 vulnerability exploit this scenario however it only a matter of time. Our advice to you is patch the vulnerability as soon as possible, and don’t forget to reboot your machine afterwards.

source:virus.org

Sankar's Weblog

Sankar's Weblog: "Sankar's Weblog
Ramblings on Formula One, music, bikes, books, philosophy, technology and God-Only-Knows-What-Else... My best wishes to you. Ciao!"

Vennarbank thinks !: Get your Hotmail beta invitation now.

Vennarbank thinks !: Get your Hotmail beta invitation now.

Motorola SLVR L7

The Motorola SLVR L7 may be the handsomest phone in America. But even though it runs Apple's popular iTunes music player, its feature set doesn't excite us.
(One example: Like the RAZR V3, but unlike the newer V3c, the SLVR L7 uses the primitive recorded-tag form of voice dialing.) Like the Motorola RAZR V3, this is a phone that will best satisfy voice callers who want a see-and-be-seen device. Everything about the SLVR's design is well done. The anodized-aluminum back, glass-infused plastic case, metal keypad, glass screen, and well-balanced heft of this half-inch-thick status symbol make it feel far more expensive than the $199 Cingular charges (and more expensive than its little brother the SLVR L6). The L7 is hard to keep in your pocket—you want to take it out, touch it, and show it off. Along with its RAZR cousins, the quad-band SLVR L7 gets excellent reception, though sound quality isn't quite as good. We found that voices, both sent and received, are sharp, and the earpiece volume is loud enough, if not very loud. But the speakerphone is quiet and picks up a lot of background noise. MP3 ringtones are loud (and you can upload your own with Bluetooth). The vibrating alert felt a bit weak, though. We hooked the phone up to Logitech, Jabra, and Plantronics Bluetooth headsets without problems. The metal keypad, with raised rubber numbers, has buttons that are bigger than those on the SLVR L6, but still smaller than the RAZR's. They're of acceptable size, though, and the rubber nubs tell you where the numbers are located. Physical buttons on the side of the phone activate the camera and the voice dialing. You get to iTunes by pressing a front-panel key from the home screen. Because of technical problems, we couldn't finish our battery tests by our deadline. We'll update the review soon with battery results.

If we were to guess, though, we'd bet this would have similar talk time to the SLVR L6, on the low end of average.The Second iTunes PhoneThe SLVR L7 is the second iTunes phone, but the ROKR E1 is actually a better music player. Both store up to 100 songs per microSD card in iTunes. The SLVR L7 comes with a 512MB card. Plug the phone into an iTunes-equipped computer, and it will appear as an iPod Shuffle to Apple's music software. Like the ROKR, but unlike all iPods, the SLVR connects to just one computer—plug into another, and all your music goes up in smoke. Also, files transfer over USB 1.1, which is painfully slow: A 25.5MB podcast transfer took 1 minute 45 seconds. Once on the phone, your music plays through the built-in speaker or a wired headset using the very easy, built-in iTunes application. The SLVR also follows the ROKR's lead by including Motorola's second, unrestricted MP3/AAC player, which accepts files via Bluetooth, lets you set your songs as ringtones, and doesn't have the 100-song-per-card limit. But that player is more difficult to use and doesn't sync with PCs the way iTunes does. Audio performance is adequate, as long as you're not into bass. On our frequency response test, it dropped off very quickly below 100 Hz, resulting in pretty weak lows. Overall, sound with the included earbuds was very muffled, yet it was a bit harsh through our high-end reference headphones because of a slight lift in frequency response in the treble register. The ROKR sounded better.

Motorola also made a fatal error by using the mini USB jack as a headphone connector. Listening to quieter passages with the included earbuds, we noticed some digital noise in the background. It disappeared when we used our high-end Etymotic ER4P headphones with the supplied USB adapter. The adapter doesn't have a microphone (unlike the adapters for the ROKR E1 or Sony Ericsson W800i), though, so if you use "real" earphones, you have to unplug them every time the phone rings—totally unacceptable. Attaching a Bluetooth headset also disables the music player—you can't listen to music over the headset, and you have to turn off the headset to use the phone's speaker for music. And although the single mono speaker on the phone itself is loud, it's still mono. Other than iTunes, the SLVR's feature set is pretty 2004. There's a basic POP3 e-mail client, an instant-messaging client that handles AIM and Yahoo!, a dim, blurry camera that takes VGA stills and 5 frame-per-second, 176-by-144 video, and a glacially slow GPRS data capability.

You can use the phone as a PC modem, though we can't understand why anyone would want to crawl along at 30-40 Kbps. Bluetooth support is pretty good, but it's the slower Bluetooth 1.2, not the newer, faster Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. You can sync your contacts and calendar over Bluetooth with Apple's iSync or Motorola's Mobile Phone Tools for the PC, and you can transfer photos to and from your PC with Bluetooth. You can't beam music into the phone's iTunes player, though. The SLVR L7 is available for $199.99 with a two-year contract from Cingular. An unlocked model, suitable for T-Mobile but lacking iTunes, is $359.00 from Dynamism (http://www.dynamism.com/). We'd recommend it to non–power users looking for a pretty, pretty phone.

Source:pcmag

Internet Explorer 7.0 (beta)

The beta version of IE7 released today by Microsoft is meant for developers and tech enthusiasts, and it's a good thing. This is not (yet) a browser for the faint of heart; in fact, if you've become accustomed to the minimalist approach of alternative browsers like Firefox, IE7 might actually feel like a step backward. The product's proper name—which should tell you most everything you need to know—is Internet Explorer 7.0 for Windows XP SP2 Beta 2 Preview. We'll refer to it simply as IE7 beta, though.

Though the browser is publicly available, we recommend that general users stay away for now and let developers identify the fledgling browser's foibles. (Microsoft told us to expect a consumer beta "soon.") To put this advice into context, six of the eight PC Magazine editors and analysts who tried the beta uninstalled it within two days.

While significantly trimmer than the most bloated configuration of IE6, the IE7 beta is still not the lean, mean, fast, and clean browser that Firefox 1.5 is, and with Firefox 2.0 due out by mid-2006, Microsoft may lose even more ground to the upstart. The core Firefox 1.5 application itself is less than 5MB, while this hefty hunk o' code weighs in at almost 11.5MB. By comparison, IE6 SP1 can range anywhere from 11MB to 75MB depending on the configuration you choose.
The most noticeable thing about IE7 beta is the lack of a traditional navigation bar. Both IE6 and Firefox use the upper left corner, where most Westerners first look when reading a book or Web page, for Back, Forward, Home, Refresh, and Stop buttons. IE7 breaks the mold, and that takes some getting used to. The Back and Forward buttons are still in the upper left corner, but the Stop and Refresh buttons are now in the upper right, and Home is two rows down on the right.
In fact, once you get down to the second row, it's a whole new ball game. Here you'll find a star-emblazoned button labeled Favorites Center. Clicking on it opens a side window with three tabs, one each for displaying your favorites, your current RSS feeds, and your history. Next to this is the add/subscribe button for adding RSS feeds. The RSS reader is functional if unexceptional, but because the vast majority of Internet surfers use IE, even without a lot of the bells and whistles of more advanced readers, IE7 could be a catalyst for widespread RSS adoption. And adding RSS feeds from your favorite site is simple—just two clicks.
We're happy to see that this release allow for tabbed browsing, and we like the Quick Tabs button that puts miniature versions of all your open tabs in a single window. You can also save groups of tabs for simultaneous launch, letting you load multiple home pages at startup, for instance. Zoom controls smoothly increase the size of both the text and images of the pages displayed. And IE7 beta is perceptibly faster than IE6, though we didn't notice much difference between IE7 and Firefox.
You'll also find more mundane improvements. We certainly applaud the shrink-to-fit option you'll find among the print choices. Quite a few trees have lost their lives to pages that had to be reprinted in landscape mode after printing in portrait mode cut off important text.
The Microsoft crew that showed us the latest IE emphasized that Redmond completely rewrote the code for its rendering engine. The new engine had a lot of glitches, though, and hampered our browsing abilities in some cases. While main pages for most Web sites loaded just fine, you'll notice that some specialty applications, blogs, and tools might be rendered incorrectly. For instance, the browser had problems when it rendered—or rather didn't render–the text within our own PCMag.com forums application. The browser lost all our formatting controls and also shrank the text box. And using the quote feature made the posts virtually illegible due to all the raw HTML code filling the window.
We also miss a search-as-you-type feature you can use when conducting a search of a Web page (also known as word-wheeling), something we've grown to love in Firefox, Yahoo! Desktop Search and X1. We thought the lack of word-wheeling odd, since you'll find it in many areas of the beta builds of Vista we've looked at thus far, and it's even available in IE7 when searching RSS feeds. For general page searches, though, you'll have to content yourself with a standard old-timey find/search dialog box.
Microsoft seems to be more open and solicitous about improving security in the new browser. The initial post-install load page asks you to turn on the automatic Phishing Filter and participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program, for instance, and most Active X controls are disabled by default. The company is touting a number of other security improvements, though several will only be available in the Vista version of IE7. One such advance is Protected Mode, which puts the browser into a limited-privilege state that prevents write to the IE7 cache without explicit user permission. We'll also have to wait for Vista for Parental Controls.
Stay tuned for update reviews. In the near term (read months) Microsoft expects to roll out a broad consumer beta of IE7. And look for the final version of IE7 sometime in the second half of 2006. We do like much of the look and feel of the new browser, even if a lot of it seems to be me-too features imported from competing products. Overall, given Microsoft's timeline and presumed budget for the new browser, it's disappointing that this first beta version of IE7 feels more like a catch-up than a truly innovative new product.

While we are only encouraging developers to download it at this point you can find the
IE7 beta download here.