This is a test post to show Robert. Here’s a picture. Notice I right-aligned it and downsized the pixel dimensions.

Hi Class,

Comment on this.

Hello everyone – I’m in the process of completely revamping the site again so bear with me.

If you are looking for my older blog posts, they are here:

www.smartergeek.com/blog

As I continue to develop plugins and additions to the site, I will begin adding more content.

Thanks for point this out to me Bill.

It’s a toss up on whether to post this here or on my political blog. I hate the Obama Administration and Congress (both sides of the aisle) – and people were worried about NSA wiretaps? Right.

Here is the summary: If you are dumb enough to agree to cars.gov, then you agree to let them do anything they want.

This application provides access to the [Department of Transportation] DoT CARS system. When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U.S. Government. Any or all uses of this system and all files on this system may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed… to authorized CARS, DoT, and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign.

 Here’s the EFF.org link with further information (actually slightly defending the TOS):
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/08/cars-gov-terms-service

While Glenn’s video is a little bit off the mark, why in the world would the Fed’s even release a terms of service that invasive? It points to the overarching need of the Feds to think they can encroach into everything we do. Wrong.

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It infects Windows machines via fake codec and fake Flash Player update packages planted on malicious Web sites.
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http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=3912&tag=nl.e550

I’ve been preaching about this for some time now – one of the worst things about sites such as MySpace is when users are prompted to download and install something to watch a video. It happens far too often-and not always through MySpace.

Today I had a friend and customer bring a laptop with this exact symptom. Whether you use MySpace or not, you need to be careful about clicking. Remember that your anti-virus does not stop 99% of these types of malware.

– Post From My iPhone

Initially I thought there may be some issues with the Farm games on Facebook as I had several customers experience malware issues (pop-ups, Antivirus 2009, etc) all within a short timeframe. The common denominator seemed to be the “farm” games on Facebook.

After reading up on the recently revealed zero-day exploit in Flash, I now know that I was close to correct. It is related to a similar vulnerability in Adobe PDF docs.Estimates are that 90% of all Windows users (and that is 90% of all computer users) are vulnerable.

90% of ALL Windows computers are vulnerable.

What is Flash? Most of the animations and videos that you see on websites, including the farm game, are developed using Flash technology. I use it for my tutorials and videos as well. It is what powers all YouTube videos – except the iPhone versions. Flash itself isn’t bad – but like most things, security flaws are found and exploited.

For a couple of years, I have tried to explain to clients and friends that websites, especially social networking ones such as MySpace, are dangerous since they pull in content from 3rd party sites – think about the “pimp my profile” junk. That content cannot necessarily be trusted as you didn’t create it.

It is becoming more common-place for the “bad guys” to exploit a server that pushes content into these sites, and that content can likely exploit your computer if you have a vulnerability – and in this case 9 out of 10 people are affected, essentially everyone.

Also, I have been preaching about the attack vector of opening email attachment videos, etc, that are forwarded through 10,000 people on a list – and nobody knows who created it.

How can you trust something that you have no clue who created it? That is like opening your door to a complete stranger just because they tell you a “friend” sent them over. You are asking for trouble.

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So What Can You Do?
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First, make sure you have a backup. Period. If something happens to your machine, do you want to risk losing your pictures and other valuable data?

Second, realize that your ANTI-VIRUS DOES NOT HELP. That is counter to what the marketing and ads tell you, but it is true. Your favorite a/v program (Norton, Trend-Micro, McAfee, etc) are a semi-good alarm system. What does an alarm system hopefully tell you – that someone is already in the house!

Third, be quit using Internet Explorer – use FireFox. While this vulnerability affects Flash and PDF’s in Firefox too, you are crazy to continue with all the risks of Internet Explorer.

Fourth, if Adobe prompts you to upgrade your Flash player or Adobe Reader, make sure it is really an Adobe update – and do it.

Lastly, call or email me.

Oh yeah – you can always go buy a Mac. They are aren’t affected by this.

It’s no secret that I really love (in a tech sense) my iPhone and iPod. I’m not a Mac user, but I have always respected Steve Jobs. He seems to have an insight into things that is not perfect – but very very good.

Here is a speech he gave at Stanford University in 2005. It’s worth listening to.

Just got my emailed invite from Google Voice! It looks like they might be rolling it out to the full public soon.

What is cool about a Google number? It gives you one central number that can ring mulitple devices (cell phone, home phone, office phone, etc). Think about the power of that for a minute. There are also features like SMS, voice mail transcription to SMS, and more.

My first attempt to update to the iPhone 3.0 software on Windows XP resulted in a “Hardware Not Found” message when the Windows Hardware Wizard attempted to install the new drivers.

Unplugging the phone and plugging back in didn’t help. Pointing the Hardware Wizard to the default driver location didn’t help. Apparently the driver was corrupted? I even tried downloading an alternate copy, but that didn’t help either.

C:\Windows\system32\drivers\USBAAPL.SYS

I plugged my iPhone into another laptop and iTunes recognized it as in “recovery mode”. Since I didn’t want to sync it to that particular laptop, I decided to reinstall iTunes on my main laptop. Once I downloaded and installed iTunes (without uninstalling first), it recognized my iPhone in as in “recovery mode”.

After following the prompts to restore it,  it popped up running the 3.0 software! However, it had none of my installed apps, etc. iTunes prompted for a restore from backup so I allowed it, of course. 


The restore worked perfectly and after several minutes of reloading my iPhone everything works great!


The cut/copy/paste is very elegant – good job Apple even if it seems like a simple thing.

At the suggestion of one of my blog readers (from this post), I have added some donation buttons to the right side of the blog. There are two choices: (1) Using secure PayPal and (2) using my secure Authorize.net payment form.

Donations are requested but not required. I post information here for the benefit of everyone, and because I love sharing information. If you do find that some of my information helps you, and you have a few extra dollars – anything is appreciated. After all, it does cost money and time to maintain this site.

Thanks again to everyone who subscribes and to everyone who has commented on posts or emailed me directly!