Category Archives: Computing & Internet

‘Bom Sabado’ Worm Attacks Orkut

Orkut is a property of Google and is suffering from a major XSS (cross-site scripting) attack. The worm is called “Bom Sabado” which means “Good Saturday” in Portuguese, an official language in Brazil, where Orkut is still big in the country.

I don’t use Orkut and never registered with the social networking service before but if you have an Orkut account, you are advised to stay away from the site until the worm has been isolated and the security vulnerability of the site has been patched. Of course, never click on any suspicious links.

Social networking websites are never safe from worms like these that spread very fast because they are automatically sent out to all our contacts. Twitter was a victim for quite a few times. The same goes for Facebook. I think that if everyone learns to use these websites responsibly, we should be safe.

Blogfest.Asia 2010 [1st – 3rd Oct, 2010] @ Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia

I just got to know about Blogfest.Asia 2010 which will be held from 1st to 3rd October, 2010 in Georgetown, Penang at the Wawasan Open University. This blog fest is a gathering for blogger communities in the Asian region with participants from neighbouring countries expected to attend. This will be the 2nd cross-border gathering.

This event is free for everyone which is a main attraction to me and I would like to participate as well. I have been looking forward to a chance to visit Penang and this is as good an opportunity as any. Unfortunately, I am dismayed that I only know about this so close to the event and hotel accommodation for four days is so expensive! Of course, it wouldn’t be as expensive if I could find someone to share out the cost with me but then I am a full time blogger and who would have the time to go along on a trip with me even though it’s over the weekend?

Hhmm I’d really have to think this over. Malaysian participants are not subsidised, you see, even though the fest itself is free. Maybe I’d mark my calendar for NEXT YEAR. Sigh.

Gmail Higher Quality Video Chat

Gmail is currently testing its new higher quality video chat feature through Labs but both users are supposed to enable the feature first before they would notice a difference in quality. I think a lot of us have been waiting for higher video quality for a long time and even though we already have high speed internet and good quality web cam, it doesn’t always work.

According to a post on the Google blog, this new feature will free up valuable resources on our computer during conversations, which is a good thing. Of course, having larger chat and preview windows make it more comfortable to video chat and besides, we have so much screen real estate now with our large computer monitors. What better way to utilize than to video chat, right?

Well, having said that, I don’t like to video chat. I’m always busy walking in an out of the room and can’t find time to sit still at the computer to chat. That’s a luxury!

Chrome 7 60 Times Faster

Google has announced that based on tests, their new Chrome 7 browser will be 60 times faster than Chrome 6. Frankly, I never felt that Chrome is faster than other browsers even though Google and other techies keep saying so. The stable version is expected later in the year.

Whether Chrome is faster or remains the same, I just hope that the browser handles flash better. You wouldn’t believe the number of times my Chrome crashes when I play Facebook games and I do play my games on Facebook throughout the day as and when i like.

So having such an unreliable browser where I have to kill the page or the browser is a pain in the neck. So tell me, who cares about faster or slower when it can’t handle so many pages that I frequently visit?

Facebook is Top Online Destination in August

According to comScore, Facebook was the top online destination among web users in August, spending a good part of online time on Facebook, beating Google. Of course, we all know that Google is what we use to search and then get out of the site by clicking a link whilst Facebook is a content provider BUT from what I understand, traffic for Gmail and YouTube was taken into consideration as well.

Facebook is a social networking website and although there are only so many status messages to post, so many photos to upload and videos to share, the magnet that makes people stick to Facebook is actually the social games.

EVen so, social game developers are not able to survive on their own without a social platform, and this is evident when Zynga bows to the pressure from Facebook by joining the Facebook Credit bandwagon and in the process, giving 30% share of each transaction to Facebook. I estimate the average number of social games that Facebook users play actively is three and we definitely do not want to log into three separate websites just to play these games, do we?

Gmail Priority Inbox

Although I have known of Gmail Priority Inbox since the day it was released, I didn’t think I would need it since I don’t receive that many email daily per inbox. That means my mail is pretty well spread out.

Even though I don’t need it and will not be using it, just for fun, I clicked on the link at the top of my Gmail to “read” about Priority Inbox and I was greeted with this very cute video. I remember going to the link at the first instance but there was no video yet. I’m so glad that I went and have a look again this time. It’s presented in a very refreshing way!

Enjoy!

Google Instant Search

Google made a slight enhancement to its search service yesterday, calling it Google Instant. While Google claims that it makes searching for the web a lot faster, there are people who like it and there are people who don’t.

Now, I am not someone who doesn’t adapt well to changes but I think that many times, with Google Instant, it actually makes me spend more time going to the RIGHT topic that I wanted to search for in the beginning.

Google, as you type your keyword, will start coming up with all sorts of suggestions and if you are a fast reader, even though some of the suggestions that come up are not what you were looking for, you would be curious enough to read those web pages with eye-catching headlines.

Anyway, that’s not the irritating part. The irritating part to me, is when you click on the next page. Why does Google blur out the page? Does it make the page load quicker or what?