Microsoft Patch Internet Explorer (Again) - Is It Time To Switch?

You have probably heard of the AZN Trojan which has been causing havoc in the Internet world over the last week, but if you haven’t you really should so read on. But for those who have, you will be relieved to know that Microsoft has released a patch for the vulnerability which should stem the problems occurred when browsing using Internet Explorer (IE). This is great news for those IE lovers out there who have been using an alternative for the last week, or the more foolish ones that have been using IE regardless.

Those that are ignorant and righteous may be laughing at those stupid enough to download dodgy material, and thinking that it couldn’t happen to them. But they would be horribly wrong because this exploitation of invulnerability means that all you have to do is go on infected website to “contract” the virus, and suffer the consequences of it.

And the results of this have been fairly devastating; an estimated 10,000 websites are infected, and Microsoft says that over two million Windows users have succumbed to this Trojan. It has in fact been touring the web since the beginning of December, but was only last week that it was brought to the public attention due to its devastating consequences. The reason for this is that it can record keystrokes allowing the Trojan to record all your credit card details, any information about you and every password that you use. This is obviously a massive problem, and understandably has brought a very quick response from Microsoft.

The response comes in the form of a patch that contains more than 300 distinct updates which Microsoft hope will irradiate this threat, although they still retain that it is by no means over and are encouraging people to download and test this solution. Although so far we have only seen it effecting IE7, it would appear that its predecessor and successor aren’t safe either with them both being labelled “potentially vulnerable”.

So what are your options now? Well you could put complete trust in the Microsoft security department and continue to use IE regardless, but to be honest that isn’t a good idea until it has been proven to work. Personally I would advise moving to a different internet browser and this opens up a whole new world of choices.

You may be surprised at how many different programmes do the same job as Internet Explorer especially if you are the kind of person who only uses IE because it comes with Windows. You could use PhaseOut, Deepnet, Avant, Flock, Maxthon, Safari, Opera, Chrome or Firefox all of which have different strengths and weaknesses – Safari for example has slightly inferior security whilst Avant has a large start up time. But really that is too many to look at, so we will narrow it down to IEs biggest two competitors: Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

Google Chrome Browser is built on an entirely different system regarding tabs, meaning that one slow tab does not slow your whole window down, and also looks very nice and is dead easy to navigate. It is also very quick, but there is that niggling feeling that you are helping Google onto world domination, and it also doesn’t work very well with Hotmail.

Firefox also has a nice layout, and is normally rated slightly higher than Chrome due to the fact that you can customise it making it unique to you – a very nice feature. However make sure you get Firefox 3.0 and not 2, because following the recent update (aimed to prevent what happened to IE) they have promised not to continue support or patches for Firefox 2.

So maybe you were already using these, or maybe you are new to this world of choices, but either way it is probably best to steer clear of IE for a bit or you would end up out of pocket. If you want my personal opinion I would say you should install both and use Firefox for e-mail and Chrome for everything else – it is not a bad idea to have your details split over two internet browsers, it makes you less subject to vulnerabilities. Any way good luck and Merry Christmas!

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Hey Google…we don’t need to hear about everything you do..

Have you noticed recently how everything that Google ever does, however minute it may be, seems to be coming out in the press. Today - Google indicated that they’re making some revisions to their homepage as they’re adding a “video” link on the top. Now is that really necessary to hear about every small thing that Google does?

I understand that when Google has a large product or enters into a new business, it’s definitely worthy of some press. Their overall stature in the market and ability to shake up a market sector creates a stir in any company. Google Checkout, their new payment platform for buyers created a large wave among PayPal, as PayPal was the reigning e-commerce platform champions for the past 4-5 years. Issues like that are worthy of news - a simple integration change on their website is not.

Google Local for instance came out with saved address location last week which was also worthy of the press - something that Microsoft, Yahoo and most other maps had done a year ago. I understand that Google is a large player but every change they make is not going to shake up an industry.

Which brings me to my next point sparked by a fantastic article I read in business weekregarding Google products. I love google and I love the way they have simplified the web - but their products do not gain as much traction as expected. The reason I liked this article was not because it was simply putting down Google, but because it actually took an accurate snapshot of what is going on in the market right now. It’s very simple to praise the companies that are doing very well - but to find fault in them is a much different ball game. Let’s look at some of their product which got an extremely large welcoming…but not too large following:

• Google Spreadsheets - deemed to be the “excel killer” has yet to really get any traction - reasoning? I think when you’re using a spreadsheet you’re looking to make complicated calculations…the simplicity model just doesn’t work.
• Google Writely - This is the word processor unit which came out recently - I think this has some functionality if integrated with blogger - a straight to webpage posting through the browser - without that however, it could be a nice way to alleviate the concerns of using word-pad.
• Google Checkout - considered the PayPal Killer - this app has gotten some heads to turn because of its rebate offers - it has ways to go and the initial feedback is showing that there are many delays with the user experience. Announced today however, you can get a free t shirt if you make a $20 purchase or more using it
• Google Video - YouTube seems to have taken this market - when it first came out, it really was big with the top 100 videos.
• Google Talk - Stats recently came out that only 44,000 users use Gtalk on a consistent basis - MSN has almost 10 times that number

I guess what I’m getting at is when you step back and look at the Google products, they really haven’t done as well as the reception that they get. How will this affect their bottom line? Well we’ll have to see soon.

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GooglePlex - The new headquarters for the autobots

It’s been no secret the Google has been building a new headquarters building to keep up to speed with their thinking and their beliefs….let’s have fun and improve search. Recently, they started to really begin to up the ante by hiring a designer for their new office which, in my opinoin, rivals some of the houses you see on MTV Cribs. This office building is more of a children’s playpen that you see in the malls rather than really an office building…but what can I say as I stare at the bare walls of my cube…if I hitch my head a tad, I can kind of see the sunlight coming through. That’s not the point, the point is the this company never ceases to amaze me. Not only do they just have some pretty freaking awesome products, but now they can do it in style. If you want to see some pictures of it, here they are:

That’s right…they have a meeting room with Grass on the outsides….this is called their brainstorming room where they get most of their “work” done. As you may know, Google goes by the philosophy of working 70% of the time on Google related work and they spend 30% of their time on innovation. This new facility strives to say that over anything else:

As much as I would love to have something like that as a cube…I guess the issue of privacy never comes into play….for the time being, I’ll stick to my closed quarter and lovely half cube because at least I can have that space to myself.

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