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Facebook Phishing Attack

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 29, 2009 at 1:14 pm

A couple of hours ago I got an oddly terse message from a Facebook friend who I’m not used to hearing from:

Facebook phish

It wasn’t hard to identify it as a hoax, one that wasn’t really from the “sender” in question–especially when I noticed that the “Facebook” URL mentioned something called fbaction.net. Out of curiosity, I clicked anyhow–hey, I like living dangerously–and got a fake Facebook login screen. I therefore entered a fake user name and fake password, whereupon it sent me to the real Facebook (and, presumably, stole my fake credentials).

Over at TechCrunch, M.G, Siegler explains that I was one of many Facebook users who heard from these guys. Facebook blocked the site from being shared via Facebook, and reported it as a bad actor, so recent browsers with anti-phishing features could protect their users. But I’m sure some other random troublemaker will try precisely the same trick again soon.

Bottom line:

1) Be suspicious of odd Facebook messages, especially ones that demand you click on something without explaining why;

2) Be suspicious of messages you receive from random Facebook pals that don’t carry any clear indication they’re real and personal;

3) Be very suspicious of anything involving a URL that’s a variant on Facebook.

4) If you do click, watch the URL you go to very, very carefully.

5) Remember that none of this advice is Facebook-specific–it applies to…well, everything.

6) Be grateful that so many phishers really aren’t very good at their job–and paranoid about the possibility of being fooled by one who knows what he’s doing.

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Office 2007 Service Pack Boosts Performance

Posted by David Worthington on April 29, 2009 at 12:52 pm

Service Packs are usually limited to fixing bugs, but Microsoft has added some major pep to Office 2007 with Service Pack 2 (SP2). Microsoft says that SP2 is a “major performance enhancement,” and anecdotally, that is what I’m hearing from Office users.

Office 2007 SP2 became available yesterday, and will be available via Microsoft Update in August. It may be downloaded from Microsoft’s Web site.

Jane Liles, group program manager, Office Sustained Engineering at Microsoft detailed the performance tweaks in a prepared statement. “Outlook 2007 SP2 is 26 percent faster than its predecessor on a set of common e-mail tasks and is even faster, 35 percent, with larger mailboxes,” she said.

Further, she added that users now greater control over visual representation of data in Excel, and that Microsoft Office SharePoint Server was given security and performance updates in addition to support for the Firefox browser.

For what it’s worth, a friend that works for a financial company IM’d me today saying that Excel 2007 is now noticeably faster. I’m also seeing similar comments being made in forums across the Web. If you’ve already made the upgrade, feel free to leave a comment here.

Even more importantly, SP2 adds significant support for open document formats. The average user may not notice it, but SP2 makes great strides toward interoperability with support for non-Microsoft document formats such as OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.1, PDF 1.5, and PDF/A.

Now, I just wonder what the incentive will be to upgrade to Office 14. The only thing that I can thing of offhand are the forthcoming Office Web services. That, and Microsoft is holding off support for ISO International standardized Open XML until that release.

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A Brief History of AOL Annoyances

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 29, 2009 at 11:20 am

AOL FloppyOne of the longest-running rumors in tech (it dates at least to 2003) is finally fact: Time Warner has told the SEC that it plans to spin off AOL, thereby undoing the gargantuan, famously disappointing merger that put an aging dial-up service, AIM, Marvin Martian, and Sports Illustrated under one corporate roof. By way of unintentional celebration, let me steer your towards 20 Years of AOL Annoyances and Foul-Ups, a story I wrote for my pals at PC World. (Did you know that AOL took the name “AOL” in 1989? Neither did I, until PCW’s Anne McDonald told me. That was also the year that it first began telling users that They Had Mail!)

My story covers the ill-fated merger, outages and busy signals, cheesy marketing tactics, sleazy chat rooms, some really bad TV commercials, the infamous recording of an AOL rep refusing to cancel some poor guy’s service, the even more infam0us privacy problems relating to AOL’s publishing of search logs, and, of course, all those millions of demo disks. I had a good time writing it, but the experience left me feeling a little sorry for AOL, a service which, for all its self-inflicted wounds, did more than anyone to jump-start the online revolution. Maybe I’ll write a story about all the stuff it did right at some point.

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Is Sony's Next PSP a Go!?

Posted by Jared Newman on April 29, 2009 at 10:59 am

pspslimFirst off, that’s not me getting really excited in the headline. It’s just the dilemma you get when a product name comes with its own punctuation. Sigh.

Anyway, 1UP heard from unnamed inside sources that Sony’s next handheld console will ditch the UMD drive and get a spunky new name, likely the PSP Go!, but possibly the PSP Slide or PSP Flip. This story, of course, goes into the rumor pile at least until E3, when Sony will probably show its hand.

But it’s a juicy rumor. We’ve heard rumblings about a new PSP before, most notably from Acclaim COO David Perry, who said with certainty that the next model would lack a physical disc drive. This time, the proximity to E3 and the amount of detail in 1UP’s story lends greater credibility. Besides, the “Go!” name seems to be sticking in other reports around the Web.

The new PSP will reportedly include a choice of 8 GB or 16 GB of flash memory and a sliding screen with the controls hidden underneath. 1UP says the controls will not include a second analog stick as previously speculated, but will instead closely resemble the existing PSP’s combination of D-Pad, analog nub and buttons. If the story pans out, the new model will reach Japan in September and the US a month or two later.

The biggest change, of course, would be the lack of physical media. Recent announcements of download-only games for the PSP were billed as experimental, but perhaps Sony has already made up its mind. If so, its a pretty staggering change when you think about it. Sure, the iPhone’s App Store, et al, are carving out their own downloadable territory, but no major game console has shown the daring to drop hard copy games completely.

There are concerns to be addressed, of course. What would owners of existing PSPs do with their UMDs if they want to upgrade? And how does GameStop feel about this? Would the store carry boxes with download codes, as is planned for the upcoming Patapon 2, or would it somehow sanction Sony for gradually moving customers away from retail?

If only to see how the industry transforms, I hope this story comes to fruition, and that Sony finds success with the new business model. Shelf space only constrains the amount and type of games a console can offer, so perhaps a UMD-free PSP will attract new developers and audiences, and breathe life into the brand.

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Five Web Services You've Got to Try

Posted by Steve Bass on April 29, 2009 at 9:35 am

Steve Bass's TechBiteJunk and clutter: It’s the blaring banner ads and annoying boxes that slide across the screen that are ruining the Web. I avoid it all with a smart ad blocker–Ad Muncher, a miraculous tool.

But there’s still a problem.

Web pages aren’t designed for reading, and that’s one of my pleasures: Reading product and movie reviews, for instance, or devouring John McPhee’s lengthy pieces in The New Yorker, or James Fallows (read his old, but still valuable What Was I Thinking? in The Atlantic).

Up until now, I’d click the Print button if the site offered one. Then I discovered Readability, a site that reformats any page of text to conform to your reading style. Set up Readability by choosing a style, font size, and margin width, and then drag the Readability bookmarklet to your browser’s toolbar. The next time you’re on a Web page you want to read, click the Readability link and the transformation happens immediately. (You can get a better idea by watching the video.)

Continue Reading →

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Is Palm Planning to Pre-Empt (Get It?) the New iPhone?

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 28, 2009 at 9:37 pm

Nelson MuntzOver at MobileCrunch, M.G. Siegler engages in some speculation that’s entertaining–even if it turns out to be wrong. (And we don’t yet know whether even Palm knows a firm ship date for the Pre.)

It’s now just about May and there’s still been no official word from Palm when it comes to an official launch date or pricing for the Pre. All we know is what we’ve known for a long time — it’ll launch the first half of 2009; a window that is quickly closing. But a few pieces of new evidence today point to an actual specific date. And it’s a very intriguing one — June 7: The day before a likely Apple keynote address at its WWDC conference.

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New Online Mac Ad Rickrolls New York Times Readers

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 28, 2009 at 6:49 pm

Apple’s “Get a Mac” guys are back in another Windows-bashing ad–on NYTimes.com and PCMag.com and maybe elsewhere–in which PC claims that PCs are “as easy as one to twenty-three.” It involves a list of PC-related woes that captures the spirit of Windows irritations, although you can certainly quibble with the specifics. (I seem to have disk-related issues that cause mysterious glitches at least as often on Macs as I do on Windows machines.)

Mac Ad

Like other recent Apple online ads, this one involves a special page configuration and action going on outside of the banner ad’s real estate-PC unfurls the list of twenty-three items partway through the ad. But the list doesn’t cover up editorial content. It blocks two ads that were there already:

Fake Ads

Except the ads seem to be fakes–if you click them before the list falls down, you go to Apple’s Get a Mac page.

It’s a sort of innocuous-but-commercial form of Rickrolling. (I’m not sure if earlier Apple beyond-the-banner ads have done anything similar.) Wonder how many people looking for mortgages or European trips have unwittingly clicked on them, and if they’re more or less likely to buy Macs once they figure out what happened? Although I’m noticing now that Monn Credit Union’s rates are bizarrely uncompetitive–maybe Apple’s trying to ensure that nobody who actually knows anything about getting a mortgage will bother to click…

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Let the E3 Hype Begin!

Posted by Jared Newman on April 28, 2009 at 3:24 pm

e3logoWe’re a little over a month away from the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, more commonly known as E3, and Gamasutra has a nice create-a-story to get everyone excited.

If you ever read video game magazines or Web sites in the late 1990s or the earlier part of this decade, you know how huge E3 was for the industry. What started as a simple trade show for publishers evolved into a spectacle of huge announcements, flashing lights and hardly-dressed “booth babes.” For the last two shows, the Entertainment Software Association cut back considerably, stripping away much of the glamor and allowing press by invitation only. The restructuring didn’t go over well. Some publishers backed out of the second show, and Will Wright said the expo “almost feels like a zombie.”

This year is supposed to be a rebirth, with press registration restored, big announcements saved up and, yes, booth babes. The Entertainment Software Association, in addition to claiming that 150 companies will attend, gathered some hype from the big three console manufacturers for its story at Gamasutra.

The biggest hype comes from Microsoft, whose senior VP of the Interactive Entertainment Business, Don Mattrick, said the company’s presence “will completely transform how people think about home entertainment.”

Nintendo and Sony were slightly less restrained. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said the company promises its “full support” to the show, adding that it’s the place “where creativity is on display, and as a ‘sneak peak’ for our entire industry it helps generate excitement for gamers around the world.”

SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton simply said that the expo is an “ideal place for us to unveil the latest PlayStation news and products at our press event on June 2.”

Would anyone care to speculate what we’ll see at this year’s show? A streaming video solution for the Playstation 3? A new Mario game? Some new integration between the Xbox 360 and the Zune?

We’ll find out in June. (Shameless plug: I’ll be there to cover the show, so feel free to get your live coverage here.)

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People's Music Store Gets A Big Label Boost

Posted by Jared Newman on April 28, 2009 at 2:53 pm

peoplesmusicAs a concept, I like the People’s Music Store. It allows users to set up their own digital storefronts, in which they recommend music to other visitors through reviews, news and widgets on other Web sites. Aside from gaining cred as music buffs, these citizen salespeople earn store credit worth 10 percent of every sale.

It’s a solid system for word-of-mouth music downloads, and it’s certainly more personal than a recommendation algorithm, but two major problems are holding back the People’s Music Store from greatness. The lack of content, chief among these issues, is on the way to being solved, with Universal signing on to provide 300,000 tunes for download. The Killers, Abba and Amy Winehouse are among the newly-available artists.

The label will be the first major to climb aboard, and wisely so. Labels should jump on any sales opportunity they can, especially those that actively encourage more and more sales. “We are excited to have the Universal Music catalog on People’s Music Store because it shows that forward-thinking labels are willing to try new ways of connecting artists with fans,” said founder Ged Day, who also created the DRM-free indie boutique Bleep.com.

Now, about that other problem: Much of the content at the People’s Music Store is walled off for US consumers, including the new tracks from Universal. From reading earlier articles about the site, I see that consumers outside the US have run into similar problems with existing songs.

I know international licensing is complicated, but consumers should at least be able to filter out the stores and bands that are inaccessable to them. Really though, record labels should find a way to make their content available to everyone.

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