Why corporate IT should unchain our office computers. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine

Why corporate IT should unchain our office computers. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine
This is a very insightful look and the other side of the common place practice of blocking no work related sites in most corporate offices

6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer

While statistics put Internet Explorer clearly ahead as the most widely used web browser, it's clear to many people that it is not due to the excellent programming. Subject to more than one official inquiry in Europe, and numerous columns, both online and in print, the practice of 'bundling' the infamous browser with the every copy of the operating system represents the primary reason behind its crushing dominance. Alternative web browsers are aplenty and have a low barrier of entry even for less technically savvy computer users, but people are generally not keen to change their habits or spending time researching, downloading and installing another application – especially when the one that comes preloaded appears to be working just fine. 1. Firefox is not perfect software, but its vulnerabilities are fixed in a considerably shorter amount of time. Many new users are curious – is Mozilla Firefox safe? Updates are released immediately, not on a monthly schedule, and clock in at fewer than 10 MB. Users are notified automatically and prompted to install the update with a single click. The update process doesn't take more than a minute on a modern computer. 2. Since Firefox is open source, anyone can look at the source code, anyone can spot a problem and contribute a fix. Would you leave your car keys with a guy that says "trust me" or at a car lot with video surveillance and a logbook? 3. ActiveX applets, the way IE extends the functionality of the browser, are a known highway for malware and viruses. Firefox works with verified and signed add-ons. Even if you choose to install a malicious add-on – and the browser warns you – the damage is limited to the information in the browser whereas ActiveX exploits could be used to take over the whole computer. 4. Conscious users can install NoScript, an add-on that takes care of vulnerabilities that are not yet patched, either in Firefox or other plug-ins such as Java, JavaScript and Adobe's Flash. It achieves this goal by allowing the user to selectively enable interactive objects that the user decides to trust, automatically blocking the rest. 5. Security through obscurity; malicious programmers will always target the browser with the largest user base, especially if that user base is less tech savvy. 6. Firefox uses a service provided by Google that notifies the user before entering a potentially malicious web site. These websites ask for your financial data under false pretenses or contain malicious software often posing as something useful such as codecs or registry fixes. We check the radiator on the car when the temperature indicator turns red; by the time the computer starts acting up or not starting at all, and by all chances appearing to work just fine, your documents, passwords and financial data might already siphoned half a world away. Most people don't realize this, there are no clear warnings, but using Internet Explorer is in itself a security threat. I substantiate that statement by citing the Google Analytics on my blog – there are still people using old, un-patched and therefore vulnerable versions of Internet Explorer. The reasons behind this range from the hassle of dealing with Windows Update, millions of machines without a valid license which cannot access updates and users not realizing the importance of having up to date software. This is not news, yet there are people unaware of the danger posed. Washington Post's Brian Krebs reports on the Security Fix blog "Internet Explorer Unsafe for 284 Days in 2006". Even a fully patched and up-to-date version of IE 6 contains at least 22 discovered vulnerabilities; IE 7 stands at 9 and IE 8 at 2. By comparison, the latest version of Firefox (3.5.1), a free and open source browser, has zero un-patched vulnerabilities; the previous version (3.0.x) also stands at zero. Via makeuseof

Use OfficeTab To Give Microsoft Office Firefox-Like Tabs

 

 

I got a hot tip today on a piece of Chinese software that will make my life MUCH easier by adding Microsoft Office tabs to your installed MS applications. Have you heard of OfficeTab? Well if you are not into finding the latest and greatest software you have probably never heard of it. But I am here to show you what it is, how it works and how to grab it. Interested? Good, I thought that would spark some interest! Feel free to download OfficeTab from this link. BUT WAIT – the catch is that the site is NOT in English. So the direct download link lives here which, if you scroll down to the bottom of the product page, is the only link there. So no need for Google Translations today. The actual application IS multilingual so there are no issues there. Let's take a look at how it works. After downloading the application you have to install it. You will see a screen that looks like this after the initial start… Simply check the Microsoft Office Applications you want OfficeTab to add Microsoft Office tabs to. I left the only three that showed up checked. I guess you wouldn't have a real need for it in Access or Outlook (or would you?) Finish your install and then check out the settings. These are the Excel settings which start with the check box to enable the Microsoft Office Tabs inside Excel. I left the rest of the settings alone until I really get into using the application. The other tabs include WordTab and PowerPoint Tab – they are essentially identical. But peruse them and see if there is something that tickles your fancy like enabling custom colors, changing the hot key to switch labels and more. If you find a particularly helpful option, let us know in the comments. Hit apply if you change anything and let's see how it looks in Word: Wow just like Firefox! Very cool and a lot handier than having to hit the task bar to switch between windows. All you need to do is open multiple files and they will each have their very own tab. Sweet! Let's see how it works in Excel: It works the exact same way in Excel as it does in Word. And guess what? It works the same exact way in PowerPoint as well. It could not be easier and this really helps my work flow. Now here is a little hint that you Firefoxers will love – you can open a new tab the same way you would in Firefox by simply double-clicking the area where the new tab would appear. Go ahead and try it – we will wait. See I told you we would wait. Wasn't that worth it? For me this is going on all my systems where I use Microsoft Office. What do you think? Will this help you work faster? Do you know of other free MS Office plugins? We would love to give them a try. Go ahead and leave them in the comments – I dare you Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

Via makeuseof

Cool Websites and Tools

Here's a list of some useful sites via Make Use Of

(1) Criticker – Nice movie suggestion engine which makes the process of discovering and reviewing movies a painless one. It uses the Taste Compatibility Index (TCI) to match you with people who have similar tastes in movies, so you should get a fairly good advice from other users on what you'd love to watch and what you might hate. Read more: Criticker – Movie Suggestion Engine (2) DingBee – Social calendaring application that provides a calendar where you can add your events, make events public or private, share events with your friends and see the events on their calendar. Read more: DingBee – Cool Social Calendaring App (3) AllFreeEssays – Free user shared database of more than 50,000 student university essays, term papers and reports. Essays are categorized into several categories. Users may browse essays by topic or search using keywords. Read more: AllFreeEssays – Free Student Essays, Papers & Reports (4) SearchBastard – Advanced search add-on for Firefox that incorporates some mind-boggling search tools and mechanisms which turn your browser into a search power house. You can group search engines, clean up search results, perform multisearch, quickly look up words on a page by selecting the text, add the non-conventional search engines to your list and much more. Read more: SearchBastard – Firefox Advanced Search Add-on (5) TweetBlocker – Twitter tool which aims to clean up your Twitter stream by identifying spammers and helping you unfollow them. Using highly advanced filtering, it catalogs and ranks the top spammers on Twitter, allowing users to quickly and easily find and block them. Read more: TweetBlocker – Block Twitter Spammers

Welcome to Techno Jargon

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RECOMMENDED LINKS:
Make Use Of http://www.makeuseof.com/
BoingBoing http://boingboing.net/