A new Knowledge Base article identifies Updates for Windows Media Player 9 Series and for Windows Media Player 10.
Curiously, the update doesn’t include the fix Microsoft promised last month for the “poisoned” Windows Media file issue I’ve been writing about since the New Year.
InformationWeek points to a new study from Jupiter Research that says Web surfers are going overboard with deleting cookies:
58 percent of Internet users have deleted the tiny files, essentially making many consumers anonymous during site visits, and crippling website operators’ ability to gather information, JupiterResearch found through surveys this year of more than 4,600 online consumers. In addition, 39 percent of consumers are deleting cookies from their primary computer monthly.
The reason for these Draconian measures is fear. Consumers are constantly reminded about the risks on the Internet posed by spyware, phishers and viruses, so deleting cookies makes them feel more secure, even though it’s unlikely to make them safer, Peterson said.
The article is oddly sympathetic to Web site administrators who can’t build profiles of their visitors. I feel more pain for the people who think that deleting cookies will have even the tiniest effect on their privacy or security.
Here’s something to look forward to – The Design Desk at Poynter.org has a preview of six new Windows fonts:
Beginning in 2006, Microsoft says it will ship with its operating system and other software products six brand new typefaces created especially for extended on-screen reading.
The new ClearType Font Collection incorporates improved ClearType and OpenType technologies, and a boatload of research, to improve the structure and the clarity of the letter forms. Basically, that means a story will be easier to read because the letters and words won’t be as soft and mushy looking.
The Microsoft collection includes two serif, three sans serif, and a monospaced face for use in programming environments. They are intended to be text typefaces as opposed to display faces that are used in larger sizes for headlines. Some of the new fonts are suitable for print as well as on-screen applications.
Scroll to the end of the story to see a snippet of each font or look at the samples here. It’s easy to see that these were designed to be easy on the eye and crisp on the screen. People who are looking forward to Longhorn are expecting massive, killer features, but the accumulation of small touches like these have just as much impact.
Last weekend I passed along sketchy details of a news report that claimed spyware purveyors have found a way to get to Windows users even when they use Firefox as their primary browser. I’ve now had a chance to test this claim and I can report that it’s true.
The original article included enough details to help me track down the seemingly legitimate Web site that’s distributing this stuff. Like so many of these sites, it offers content designed to attract young people – in this case, a library of song lyrics. I visited the site using both Internet Explorer and Firefox. The results were surprising.
Hmmm. This looks interesting.
Update: As Steve Rubel points out in the comments, this is nearly a year old. Oddly, it doesn’t appear to have advanced much during that time. Does anyone else think Google has more “live” beta software than any other company in the history of computing?
Yesterday it was rumor. Now it’s confirmed: TiVo and Comcast have made a deal to put the TiVo interface on a Comcast box. From News.com:
TiVo and cable giant Comcast have reached a distribution deal, easing some investor concerns over the digital video recorder pioneer’s future.
The companies announced the agreement Tuesday, saying they are working to make TiVo’s DVR service and interactive advertising capability available over Comcast’s cable network. The first of their co-developed products will be available in mid- to late-2006 and will use the TiVo brand. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the alliance is long term and nonexclusive.
Why on earth will it take 18 months to roll out products? In this industry, that’s a lifetime. And do you think Microsoft, which is supplying the foundation software for other Comcast boxes, will stand still during that time?
Although this is probably good news for TiVo stockholders, it’s of little practical value for me, because I don’t live in a Comcast service area. TiVo, will you please call Cox Cable and work out a deal with them?
Update: I just read the TiVo press release, which includes a rosy quote from TiVo Vice Chairman Tom Rogers. A few years back, I worked for About.com when they were purchased by Primedia. At the time, Mr. Rogers was chairman and CEO of Primedia, and I sat in several transition meetings where he explained how bright our future was. Most of those statements, it later turned out, were pure BS. Based on that experience, I’m betting against the TiVo-Comcast deal.
Woody and I write books together (Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003 and Special Edition Using Microsoft Office XP, for instance), but because we live on opposite sides of the earth, we rarely see each other in person. So it was a real surprise and treat when I discovered that Woody and his family were in Redmond last week and we had a chance to have dinner together.
Woody’s doing well. He lives in Phuket, Thailand, which was devastated by the tsunami but is swiftly being rebuilt. And he’s got a new Web site. Go say hi at Ask Woody. (And tell him he needs an RSS feed!)
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission released a 62-page staff report on spyware (PDF version here). The conclusions are sound, the writing is crystal clear, and there are excellent recommendations in the report. The brief press release summarizes the issues well:
Based on discussions at the workshop and more than 750 comments submitted to supplement the workshop record, the FTC staff has concluded that spyware is a real and growing problem and that spyware can impair the operation of computers and create substantial privacy and security risks for consumers’ information.
[…]
[T]he problems caused by spyware can be reduced if the private sector and the government take action. The report suggests that technological solutions – firewalls, anti-spyware software, and improved browsers and operating systems – can provide significant protection to consumers from the risks related to spyware. The report recommends that industry identify what constitutes spyware and how information about spyware should be disclosed to consumers; expand efforts to educate consumers about spyware risks; and assist law enforcement. The report further recommends that the government increase criminal and civil prosecution under existing laws of those who distribute spyware and increase efforts to educate consumers about the risks of spyware.
So what’s the problem? This report was issued in March 2005. It was based on a one-day workshop held in April 2004. When it takes 11 months just to publish a report, you know you’re dealing with a bureaucracy that simply doesn’t know how to respond to a “real and growing problem.”
Amit Singh talks about a cool new tool that his group at IBM Research demonstrated at a trade show earlier this month:
[It’s] a “personal jumper cable” to counter the “Blue Screen of Death” on PCs.
In a pinch, the Linux-based technology “transforms” a personal device, such as an MP3 player, a USB pen, or even a cell phone, into a powerful “Rescue and Recovery” device that can be used for things such as:
- Booting a PC “from” the personal device
- Accessing data from the PC’s unbootable drive
- Accessing specific backups located on the personal device
- Providing an emergency productivity environment (e-mail, Lotus Notes, web, …), even if the PC’s drive is completely dead
- Rebuilding the PC’s drive
- More …
An iPod mini was used in the PartnerWorld demonstration.
Let’s see… A Linux-based tool running on Mac hardware driving a Windows-based PC. I believe that may be about as cross-platform as you can get!
(Link via Geek News Central)
ThinkGeek is selling “the ultimate in retro-cool PC mods.”
The PlusDeck 2 is a full-logic cassette deck for your PC. Use it to archive your old cassette tapes of 80s hair bands into digital media files for playback on your PC. Or better yet, archive your favorite audio files or streams onto cassette – perfect for playback in your ’78 Midget that is still not sporting an in-dash CD player.
I have a few hundred cassette tapes from the dark ages of audio, including some field recordings and some FM broadcasts that probably can’t be found elsewhere. PC Magazine’s review of a pre-production unit praises it as “the easiest way we know to copy tapes to your PC” but dings it for “cumbersome” installation and “often-incoherent documentation”:
Setup involves screwing the deck into an external drive bay and cabling it to a slotless back-panel interface card that must then be patched to a serial port and to your sound board’s 1/8-inch line-in/line-out jacks. If your system lacks a serial interface, you’re out of luck, and if your sound board, like our Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro, has the wrong type of jacks, you’ll have to purchase adapters.
I suppose I could hook up an old cassette player to the Line In jacks and do all this manually, but the prospect of one-button dubbing is pretty tempting. I’m looking over the manual and FAQs now to see if the problems are fixed in production units. Anyone tried this device?
