Net firms must do a better job of telling customers about broadband speeds or face stiffer regulation, Ofcom has warned.

The warning came out of research the telecoms watchdog carried out on how ISP’s sell broadband. It revealed that 74% of customers were not told that the maximum speed on their line was likely to be higher than the speed they would actually get.

Ofcom wants to make improvements to how broadband is sold later this year. It proposes working with ISP’s to ensure testing regimes are consistent and to amend the code of practice to make sure speeds are mentioned early on in sales conversations with customers.

Source: BBC Technology

Security firm Symantec released results of a survey on password management that showed 63 percent of respondents don’t change their passwords very often.

The survey results, released last Friday, also showed 45 percent use a few passwords that they alternate for all accounts, and some 10 percent don’t change their passwords at all. The survey also found that about 10 percent of respondents have used their pet’s name as a password. This is as bad as using words that can be easily guessed, such as your name, your significant other’s name, or your birthday.

The survey was done online at the Symantec Security Response blog over the course of a few days with some 400 responses from readers.

Symantec says that organizations as well as consumers can take precautions to lower their security risk and the first step is by using effective passwords.

An effective password is one that’s hard to guess and yet at the same time easy for the owner to remember.

Here are a few tips for choosing a strong password:

• Use a mix of numbers, letters, punctuation, and symbols.
• Take a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you and alter it.
• Replace the first few characters in your password with numbers or symbols.
• The longer the better – 10 to 20 characters are ideal.
• Avoid personal information, repetition, sequences, and dictionary words.

At a loss. Try the QBS PC help password generating tool. It’s safe and free to use.

Source: ZDNet

Google will be reviewing localities where it can build its experimental fiber network over the next few months.

Back in February, the search giant said it would build an experimental fiber optic network in an attempt to illustrate the ‘art of the possible’ in a small number of communities in the U.S. Since that news, Google has been pitched by 600 responses from communities. Individuals also chimed in.

Now the requests for information are about over, Google will make a selection. Google said in a post:

Over the coming months, we’ll be reviewing the responses to determine where to build. As we narrow down our choices, we’ll be conducting site visits, meeting with local officials and consulting with third-party organizations. Based on a rigorous review of the data, we will announce our target community or communities by the end of the year.

Google only plans to reach 50,000 to 500,000 people with its experiment, but you’d think every community would want to be involved. The press that Google’s ultra-fast network could generate would be great for local businesses and future development.

Source: ZDNet

Chancellor Alistair Darling has confirmed the government’s planned 50p per month tax on UK landlines will come into effect later this year.

The next-generation levy, announced last year, will help pay for the government’s pledge that at least 90 percent of the UK will get super-fast broadband services by 2017.

By charging landline owners £6 per year, the government hopes to raise up to £175m annually to help fund the extension of next-generation broadband services to areas where commercial providers are unlikely to take their rollouts, such as rural regions.

The tax will take effect from 1 October this year.

Source: Silicon.com

The chancellor’s decision to offer tax breaks to the UK gaming industry has been welcomed as “fantastic news” by those who work in it.

Tiga, the trade association that represents UK games developers said tax relief would create 3,500 more jobs over the next five years. It would allow the UK to “compete on a global stage,” said Tiga chief executive Richard Wilson.

The surprise announcement was made in the UK budget. “This is an inspired decision. Games tax relief is good for the UK video games industry, good for UK consumers and good for the UK economy,” said Mr Wilson.

He predicted it would allow £457m to be invested in new games over the next five years.

Source: BBC Tech News

Mozilla said on Tuesday that it is halting work on the creation of Firefox for Windows Mobile.

“Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don’t know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold,” Stuart Parmenter, mobile team technical lead for Mozilla, said in a blog posting.

Mozilla had been working on a version of Firefox that would run on Windows Mobile 6, part of a years-long effort to bring its browser to Windows CE. As for the new Windows Phone 7 Series, Microsoft has thus far said that applications for that operating system have to be written in either Silverlight or XNA, rather than in native code.

ZDNet

A number of BitDefender users, whose 64-bit Windows systems stopped working or were unable to be rebooted after updating their security programs, vented their frustration by flooding the antivirus (AV) vendor’s forum pages over the weekend.

According to an IDG report, users on forum boards started signaling the problem on Saturday evening. The complainants said several Windows files, and the security vendor’s own program files, were identified as “Trojan.FakeAlert.5″ malware after they performed an update for their BitDefender AV programs.

In an e-mail update Monday to ZDNet Asia, Vitor Souza, BitDefender’s global communications director, explained that “multiple” BitDefender and Windows files which comprise .exe, .dll and other binary files, were incorrectly detected as malware and “moved to quarantine”.

The faulty updates were applied to the company’s home user product line as well as BitDefender Business Client and BitDefender Security for File Servers.

Those using BitDefender’s products from 2008 to 2010, on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 platforms, were affected.

Intersetingly, back in In 2005, changes to BitDefender technology were blamed for the accidental deletion of thousands of GFI customers’ e-mail messages. Last year, CA also incurred the wrath of customers after its AV technology wrongly identified a Windows XP systems file as a virus, and quarantined the associated files.

ZDNet

Breaking its silence on the first service pack for Windows 7, Microsoft said on Thursday (18/03) that it will include only minor updates, including many already released.

“For Windows 7, SP1 includes only minor updates, among which are previous updates that are already delivered through Windows Update,” Microsoft blogger Brandon LeBlanc said in a blog post.

LeBlanc said that Microsoft is not yet ready to announce a time frame for either the beta or final version of the service pack. But, he said that businesses should not wait for the update.

On the server side, the service pack for Windows Server 2008 R2 will include two new virtualization features – Microsoft RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory.

Windows 7 SP1 will include the client-side support for RemoteFX.

Once finished, Microsoft said it would make the Windows 7 service pack available for download and through Windows Update.

Microsoft has unveiled the release candidate of its Silverlight 4 browser plug-in and outlined its developer strategy for Windows Phone 7 Series, which puts Silverlight applications at the heart of the company’s mobile application marketplace.

Silverlight is installed on 60 percent of internet-connected devices, Scott Guthrie, head of Microsoft’s developer division, said in a keynote speech announcing the release at the company’s MIX user experience conference on Monday.

“As the browser, server, web, and devices evolve, a focus on delivering consistently great user experiences has become paramount,” Guthrie said. “By extending our familiar platform technologies and tools to phones, Microsoft is delivering the… application development experience across a variety of devices and form factors.”

The release candidate of Silverlight 4 adds a handful of new features, getting the platform ready for an April launch. The most significant addition is a version of the Pivot visualisation toolkit, originally a Live Labs research project. Pivot is designed to help users explore large amounts of data, including large graphical databases such as photo and stock image libraries.

Applications will also have access to Windows mobile features such as Microsoft Location Service (with user permission), as well as a Microsoft Notification Service. The latter can deliver information to a phone from inside applications or from the cloud, even when an application is not running. That capability is essential, as Silverlight applications for Windows Phone 7 Series are suspended when users switch to another tool.

Applications will only be available through Microsoft’s new Windows Phone Marketplace, and there is no option for developers to use any tool other than Silverlight or XNA.

Microsoft also confirmed that not all the hardware APIs will be available in the first release of Windows Phone 7 Series.

Source: ZDNet

Mozilla has pumped out the first beta of Thunderbird 3.1, aimed at ironing out problems caused by the switch to the Gecko 1.9.2 rendering engine.

Gecko 1.9.2 is the same rendering engine powering Firefox 3.6, and while the change should bring a raft of improvements including interface tweaks, bug fixes and memory management improvement, the Thunderbird team acknowledges there could be “possible problems caused by the changes in the underlying platform”.

Among these problems are broken add-ons, “crashes and bugs and potentially data loss in profiles,” according to the release notes.

The beta, codenamed Lanikai, is available for PC, Mac and Linux, with a second beta expected to be available in early April, followed by a release candidate at the beginning of May.

The final release of Thunderbird 3.1 is targeted for 1 June 2010

Source: PC Pro

Microsoft could release the first Service Pack for Windows 7 by the end of the year, according to reports.

According to TechARP.com, Microsoft executives had internally scheduled a two-year development schedule for Windows 7 SP1, but have changed their mind in order to address “serious” performance problems.

The website reports that Microsoft will look to pump out the Service Pack in the last quarter of 2010, which would tally with the first Service Packs for its other operating systems. The software giant launched Windows XP SP1 around ten months after the release of XP, and Vista SP1 appeared 12 months after the Vista RTM. However, Windows 7 has proved a critical success for Microsoft and it’s difficult to identify the “serious” performance issues the Service Pack would target. Microsoft declined to comment on the report, or on a Windows 7 Service Pack in general, offering the standard “Microsoft has nothing new to announce at this time. We do not comment on rumour or speculation”.

Source: PC Pro

Microsoft says a serious zero-day flaw is being actively exploited by attackers, affecting Internet Explorer 6 and 7.

The vulnerability was announced on Tuesday (9 March), the same day that Microsoft released its monthly patches, distributing two patches to address eight vulnerabilities in Windows and Microsoft Office. Microsoft ranked both patches as “important”.

Microsoft said it is investigating public reports of the flaw in IE6 and IE7, which could allow an attacker to execute malicious code remotely on a user’s system – for instance, by tricking the user into visiting a malicious web page.

The latest version of the browser, IE8, is not affected by the flaw, nor is IE5.01 Service Pack 4 on Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Microsoft said in an advisory.

The company also noted that all supported versions of Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express and Windows Mail open HTML email messages in the Restricted Sites zone, meaning an attacker would not be able to carry out an attack via an email message.

Beginning in the year 2002, blogs moulded the online marketing world. While most people at that time started with various blogging systems, eventually most of them shifted to WordPress which has now become a powerful Content Management System in its own right. If you read any popular blogging tips online, WordPress is often the blogging platform behind those posts.

An increasing number of marketers are finding that you can also use WordPress as the perfect tool to build a profitable business. The most powerful function of WordPress itself lies in its ability to manage large amounts of text, audio and video content

After 20 pages or so it can become difficult to manage a static HTML site. Although you can use template-driven software or Server Side Includes (SSI’s), nothing beats the ease of WordPress.

Using WordPress you can easily create a static website, an article directory, a membership site system, a complete e-commerce site, an auction sites, a portfolio site and so much more. As a matter of fact, you can use it for just about anything.

Search Engine Optimization is another important element for any site. By default, WordPress is pretty good at optimizing and creating SEO friendly content. However you can also get more serious and utilise simple WordPress plug-ins to further increase your SEO rankings and get better Google, Yahoo or Bing rankings.

The best thing about WordPress is its flexibility. You can easily switch between WordPress themes, build a theme to match your existing web site pages and improve its functions by using plug-ins and even some custom programming.

WordPress is free! So if you aren’t using WordPress you should certainly think about using it. The learning curve has reduced substantially over the past three years. At the moment it’s so easy to use that almost anyone can figure out the basics. But are the basics enough?

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Windows Safe Mode is a way of booting up your computer so you can run administrative and diagnostic tasks on your Windows operating system.

When you boot into Safe Mode the Windows operating system only loads up the bare minimum of software that’s required for it to work. This mode of operating is designed to let you troubleshoot and run diagnostics on your computer. Windows Safe Mode also loads just a basic video driver so your desktop and programs will look somewhat different.

For all the versions of Windows the easiest way to get into Safe Mode is to quickly press the F8 key, sometimes repeatedly, just as your computer starts up and issues it’s beep. You should then be brought to a menu where you can choose to boot into Safe Mode. Select the option for Safe Mode using the arrow keys and then press the Enter key on your keyboard to boot into this diagnostic mode. If you first attempt does not work, reboot your computer and try again. You do have to be quick when you press the F8 key.

Note: On a computer that is configured for booting to multiple operating systems, you can press F8 when the boot menu appears and then choose the installation that you need to access using the arrow keys, and then press Enter. When you press the Enter key you will see a message stating that you need to reboot.

Once you are in Windows Safe Mode you can start to diagnose the problems you are having with your computer.

Safe Mode is a powerful tool for fixing problems in Windows. Here are some of the things you can usually do better in Safe Mode rather than on your full Windows desktop.

Use System Restore

One thing you can do in Safe Mode is to use System Restore to roll your PC back to a point in time when your it was working properly.

Note that you cannot create restore points in Safe Mode, only load them. Of course this will only work if System Restore is properly set up and has a series of restore points you can choose from.

Defeat Persistent Viruses

Often the only way to remove certain persistent viruses, spyware and malware is first to go into Safe Mode because many forms of malicious software will protect or reinstall themselves constantly if they are allowed to start up. These programs place themselves in one of the many autorun locations in the Windows Registry and file structure, so when Windows is started normally, so is the offending software, normally running as a process in the background.

When you start your PC in Safe Mode, these autorun locations are not used, and no software is started automatically. This can allow antivirus and spyware removal programs the opportunity they need to completely remove the malicious software.

Diagnose System Crashes

If your computer runs slowly, or fails to boot up, or just crashes and restarts what can you do? You need to determine what the cause is. You can do this by examining the way your system fails to boot. If it crashes during the loading process before the Windows interface appears, or gives you a ‘Blue Screen Of Death’, it’s likely you have a driver or hardware issue.

If the Windows desktop appears but then crashes or slows to an unusable crawl, it’s likely that your problem is with software that Windows is attempting to load on startup.

Starting your PC in Safe Mode will not load any programs. So successfully loading Safe Mode means that a program or a software device driver is causing your computers problem. You can use the System Configuration tool to selectively autorun programs and track down the offending entry. Go into Safe Mode and in the Search or Run field type msconfig. Press your Enter key or the OK button and the System Configuration Utility will start up.

Click the Start Up tab and starting from the top of the list, uncheck all the Startup items that you know you don’t need to run at startup – these are likely to be some of those with actual program names.

Depending on your Windows version It’s good to keep a tick in the box for any programs you want to start up like messenger, windows defender, your antivirus program and any software firewall you might have installed.

NOTE: not all PC’s are configured the same way and some or all of these programs may not appear on your computer.

Next for those Startup items that you are not sure about do a search for the file name using our Google Search page. The search results may give you the clues you need to identify the suspicious program and whether you should uncheck it’s tick.

When you decide on the core programs that must be loaded remove the tick from all the other boxes. Now exit Safe Mode and see if your PC reboots without any problems.

Now it’s a process of slowly adding back the other programs one by one. You need to place a tick in a single box and exit Safe Mode to see if your PC boots up without incident. If the computer is stable and working well you should enter safe mode and repeat the process of placing a tick into the next box, rebooting and testing. Keep doing these steps until the problem reappears. You will then now that the last program you activated is the culprit and needs to be un ticked again. If it is a badly written software title or one that is not compatible with your version of Windows you may even be able to remove it.

Running your antivirus and spyware removal programs in Safe Mode should clear out any problem files or viruses.

Video Driver Problems

If you download a faulty graphics driver this will cause your desktop to default to a VGA driver so images will look a bit ragged and everything on your desktop will be displayed at the default resolution of 800×600.

Go to Safe Mode, so that no drivers are loaded, and in the Search or Run field type Device Manager. Press your Enter key or the OK button and the Device Manager Utility will start up. Look in the list for Display adapters and click the plus sign to open the branch that will show the name of your video card. Right click on the cards name and select Properties and the Driver Tab. Now click Roll Back Driver and OK. This option will use the previously installed and working graphic drivers and should get your desktop looking beautiful again.

Other Startup options

For more information about Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Safe Mode with Command Prompt and the Last Known Good Configuration option see this Microsoft article – http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/boot_failsafe.mspx?mfr=true

Microsoft plans to finalize the code for Office 2010 next month and, as expected, it kicked off a program enabling those who buy Office 2007 in the coming months to get a free upgrade to the new version.

In a blog posting, Microsoft said that it will have a business launch for the Office 2010 products on May 12. The company has said it expects the software to be broadly available in June. As for the technology guarantee program, Microsoft says it will apply to those who buy Office 2007 between now and September 30 and will allow an upgrade to the comparable Office 2010 product. Though such programs are typical, this one had even less of an element of surprise after a Microsoft employee briefly posted details of the program last month.

Microsoft CFO Peter Klein confirmed the program earlier this week, telling financial analysts on Tuesday to expect the company to defer revenue this quarter to next to account for the upgrades.

Although Office 2010 doesn’t bring a radically different look or new file formats, as Office 2007 did, it introduces a number of changes, most significantly the addition of companion Office Web apps that work in a browser. Also, for the first time, Office will come in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

A beta version of the software has been available since November and Microsoft has also been doing limited testing of a near-final “release candidate” version of the software.

Source: CNET News

Besides being a good communication tool, blogging is also a great way to make some money.

If you’re new to blogging and yet want to start quickly, there are several business models you can try for maximum results in a short time.

This article discussed the three most popular methods.

The first method is get paid to blog. Using this method, you create your blog and add a few good articles to it. Then you signup with paid blogging networks like Pay Per Post or Review Me and see what “opportunities” are available. These networks are filled with advertisers looking for bloggers who can help them spread the word, and they are generally willing to pay. Accept the opportunity, write about it on your blog, and you get paid.

The second method is AdSense WordPress blogs and it requires a little more technical know-how. You need to build a WordPress blog on a specific niche topic, and start writing some good content on it. At the same time, try to get links from other blogs by leaving comment on the blogs or by doing a link exchange with the blogger. The objective is to get more traffic who will click on your AdSense ads and make you money.

The third and most sophisticated method is affiliate marketing with WordPress blogs. Again, you set-up a good WordPress blog but with this model the amount of content you publish is not as important as the “selling quality” of the content. Each post you write must pre-sell the web visitor and convince him to click on your affiliate links. When your visitor makes a purchase you will get credited for the sale and earn commission. The more vistors who click on your affiliate links and buy the products or services the more money you will earn

Ultimately, which model you choose depends on how much time and resources you can dedicate to creating and managing your blogs. Your best bet is to choose a low-investment option at first. When you get the hang of it, you can then venture into other blogging models as well.

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Apple Inc said the first iPads will be in U.S. stores on April 3 and hit nine international markets from Japan to the United Kingdom later in April.

The 9.7-inch touchscreen tablet, which is designed to surf the Web, play video and games, and read digital books, is the most anticipated product launch from Apple since the iPhone in 2007.

Chief Executive Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad in late January, but the company did not announce any international markets until Friday, when it said the tablet will go on sale in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

Apple shares rose 3.1 percent in early trading on the Nasdaq to $217.20, an all-time high for the stock.

Apple is seeking to tap an unproven market for tablet computers. The iPad, while admired for its sleek design, will have to compete for consumer attention with a myriad of more established device categories, including smartphones, netbooks and dedicated e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle.

The U.S. launch date for the iPad model with short-range Wi-Fi wireless links, starting at a price tag of $499 (332 pounds), is slightly later than the previously expected late March launch. Customers looking for versions of the iPad with third-generation (3G) high-speed cellular data links will have to wait until late April, said Apple.

Microsoft is re-releasing the patch that caused Windows systems to crash in February with a Blue Screen of Death.

The software maker has re-written the installation package for the update, MS10-015, and will push it out automatically to users. It has written logic into the update to prevent the fix from being installed if the Alureon rootkit is present, it said in a Microsoft Security Response Center statement.

The Alureon rootkit, which makes changes to the operating system kernel, caused the February crashes, according to Microsoft. “I am writing to let you know that we have revised the installation packages for MS10-015 with new logic that prevents the security update from being installed on systems if certain abnormal conditions exist,” wrote Microsoft’s senior security communications manager lead, Jerry Bryant, in the statement. “Such conditions could be the result of an infection with a computer virus such as the Alureon rootkit. If these conditions are detected the update will not be installed and the result will be a standard Windows Update error.”

Windows users, primarily those on XP, were hit by the Blue Screen of Death (a succession of system error messages) after Microsoft first released the update on 9 February. Microsoft soon suspected the crashes were due to malware, but delayed re-releasing the patch until it identified the cause.

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