I’m sure the folks at McAfee think I’m picking on them, but sometimes they just make it soooooo easy.

Until today, I did not know that McAfee had a URL-shortener service. If you go to http://mcaf.ee you can see it for yourself:

The bad news? The reason I know McAfee has a new short-URL service is because an obnoxious spammer used that service to leave a comment on my ZDNet blog sending my readers to his scummy shopping site. (I’ve obscured the relevant part of the URL, so no one is tempted to give this guy any traffic.)

]

Sadly, a site visitor might see that mcaf.ee prefix and assume the link is legitimate. That impression is reinforced if they go to the site and see this in the top left corner:

Even more sadly, I see no way to report this abuse to McAfee so that they can prevent their service from being exploited in this fashion. Perhaps that’s why the spammers have chosen to use it.

Update: I missed this tiny link in the upper right corner of the page:

I absolutely love the way "miscategorized" is misspelled. Oh, and that link? It leads to a forum thread that was last updated in June 2011. Awesome work, McAfee.

For a detailed discussion of why URL shorteners are a mixed blessing and a security risk, see this 2010 post:

Be careful what you click! The perils of URL shorteners

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I suspect a lot of the people who visit this site are experimenting with pre-release copies of Windows 8. Microsoft has made the Windows Developer Preview available for free download, but the download is in a disk image (ISO) file.

So what do you do with an ISO file? You can’t use it directly to install Windows; instead, you have to burn the image to a DVD or copy it to a bootable USB flash drive. Although there are plenty of utilities to help you accomplish this task, the easiest of all is Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. It was designed for use with Windows 7 images downloaded from the Microsoft Store, but it works just fine with Windows 8.

You can get this tool from a variety of sources:

• CNET Download.com
• The Microsoft Store
• Codeplex

Download and install the utility on any PC running Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit), Windows Vista, or Windows XP SP2 or later.

For the x86 and x64 ISO files without developer tools, you’ll need a blank DVD or a completely empty USB flash drive of 4GB or larger. At 4.8 GB, the x64 version with developer tools is too large to fit on a regular DVD, you’ll need a dual-layer DVD (and compatible drive) or an empty 8GB (or larger) flash drive.

Update: As a reader thoughtfully points out, the bootable flash drive will work fine on PCs that use a conventional BIOS. That’s the overwhelming majority of PCs sold today. However, if the design of your PC uses Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), this utility won’t help. UEFI-based  systems will be much more common when Windows 8 ships, but they’re rare today.

Open the utility and follow the four simple steps. This step allows you to choose whether you want to burn the ISO file to a DVD or copy the files to a bootable USB flash drive.

This is what you’ll see if you choose the USB device option. Select the correct drive and click Begin Copying.

The entire operation doesn’t take long and requires no user intervention. When you’re finished, you have a DVD or a flash drive that you can set as the startup device on your computer so that you can begin a clean setup. Or you can open the setup disk in Windows Explorer and double-click Setup to upgrade your current Windows installation.

I’ve just returned from Microsoft’s BUILD Conference in Anaheim, where I had a chance to spend some hands-on time with the Windows Developer Preview release that’s now available online. (As an aside, did you notice that the number 8 is not in the name?. My first look, “Windows 8 unveiled,” was based on hands-on experience with a loaner Samsung tablet that Microsoft allowed journalists (like me) to use for the week.

I returned that unit to the press room on Thursday morning before leaving (don’t worry – I kept a slew of screen shots and a few photos to document the experience)

Now that I’m home, I’ve been performing test installs on some hardware here and monitoring Windows 8 chatter on the newsgroups and on Twitter. A number of people are running into a common problem: the new Metro-style Windows 8 apps—the full-screen “immersive” ones—won’t open when you click their tile on the Start screen.

In every case I’ve seen so far, the cause of this problem is a screen resolution that is set below the minimum screen resolution for Windows 8: 1024×768. This appears to be especially likely to happen if you’re running in a windowed virtual machine or on a netbook with limited graphics hardware.

The real issue is the lack of an error message, which I suspect will be added in the next public release. Meanwhile, the fix is to bump up the resolution to a minimum of 1024 wide and 768 high. As soon as you do that, those apps should start working properly. On some graphics hardware, you might be able to adjust the resolution so a value beyond the native resolution of the device. You’ll find instructions in this thread at Microsoft’s Windows 8 forums.

Update: Before you install the Windows Developer Preview, you should check the system requirements. They include the following:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
• Taking advantage of touch input requires a screen that supports multi-touch
• To run Metro style Apps, you need a screen resolution of 1024 X 768 or greater

If you plan to test the OS in a virtual environment, I recommend reading this blog post: Running Windows 8 Developer Preview in a virtual environment.

They’re not making exclusives like they used to.

Fox News, September 9, 2011:

Exclusively? Really, Fox News? Perhaps your reporters and editors need to take a class in how to use a search engine.

Let’s dial the Wayback Machine for 90 days ago, shall we?

ComputerWorld, June 3, 2011:

In the same story, Fox reporter John Brandon offered the following mind-boggling, hilarity-inducing insights:

• “a ribbon interface … will make its debut in just about every dialog box and bundled application, not just the Paint app.” [Really? Ribbons in dialog boxes?]
• “the new OS will provide direct access to the contents inside an ISO image, which is normally a protected file used for burning DVDs.” [Really? ISO files are protected?]
• “Windows 7 was partly successful because it was a minor upgrade from Windows Vista.” [Really? A minor upgrade from Vista?]
• “The other major competitor is also an Apple product: the iOS.” [Really? Did you read about that on the Twitter?]

It’s worth noting that the last story this intrepid reporter filed was “Heavy Duty Pickup Truck Showdown.” No, I am not making this up.

If you are a Google+ subscriber, you can participate in a discussion of this post here.

I’ll be at the Microsoft BUILD conference in Anaheim next week, where there will be lots and lots of news on Windows 8.

If you’re going to be at the conference, look me up. If you can’t make it, watch my blog at ZDNet for in-depth coverage, including a liveblog of the keynote addresses on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Windows boss Steven Sinofsky:

I want to reassure customers that Media Center will definitely be part of Windows 8. No doubt about it.

More details here, along with speculation that it could be delivered as a Windows add-on via Microsoft’s new app store.

I’ve been getting more forged e-mails lately that claim to be Facebook notifications but in reality are phishing attempts. The authors are getting surprisingly good at their craft.

So I put together a quiz for ZDNet: Can you tell which Facebook notifications are real and which are fake?

If you know someone who’s been fooled by one of these fakes, it might be worth sharing.

After nearly a decade, I’ve finally grown tired of managing comments. Between spammers and trolls and thread drift, it just isn’t fun anymore.

If you have a question or comment about something I’ve written, you can find me on Twitter: @edbott. If you want to disagree with something, write your own blog post.

So long, and thanks for all the feedback for all these years.

I’m baffled by the ongoing debate over the ribbon, which started in Office and will move into the Windows 8 desktop.

Maybe an analogy will help.

Pull-down menus: The New York Times, 1911

The ribbon: The New York Times, 2011

Any questions?

[1911 front page image from TimesMachine.]