Tech MD Live

Microsoft was fined today with a record amount of $1.3bn on an antitrust battle.

I know Microsoft actions last week on it’s statement to open up Windows API is a little bit skeptical but I think it did not excite Neelie Kroes, the European Union Competition Commisioner.

Neelie Kroes has been very open with her distrust and skepticism with Microsoft.  “Talk is cheap,” Ms. Kroes said.  As the report pointed out, the fine could have been much higher. 

Let us see how Microsoft will play this out.  This is a huge amount.  Not to mention that Microsoft also need some more capital to raise for its bid on Yahoo.

Microsoft did it again.  Yes.  Believe it.  One catch.  You have to be a student with a valid .edu email address.  And you have to be enrolled (what am I thinking).

Maybe Microsoft is just trying to get some tax breaks for the next fiscal year but students, take advantage of this.  I was going to post it last September 12 but the link was not yet active so I decided to wait for a few more days.  The site is up and you could make your purchase at http://www.theultimatesteal.com.  Offer is valid up to April 30, 2008. 

The Ultimate Steal promotion will run in Canada, UK and the United States.  It will be offered in France, Italy and Spain by Sept. 20, 2007.  Actually, the pilot was started in Australia with good feedback. 

Why do Microsoft do this?  They’re farming.  They’re planting the seed to these students who would be using this software for how many years they’re in college.  Afterwards, as the students graduate and become successful, they would be influencing the decision making in buying Microsoft products. 

And that is marketing with a twist.  Would your customer benefit from your services or products that you could slash for future business?  Learn from Microsoft. 

Monster.com has been a recent victim of identity attack by a couple of trojans.  The report indicated by Symantec shows that at least 46,000 people were infected by the trojan.  However, there could be more than 1.6M records that could be compromised by the attack of the trojan called Infostealer.

It is noted that these could be staged by not just one culprit.  This is a spammer’s dream come true.  Getting 1.6M records and sending you phishing mails to get you to click and input sensitive information is just a start.  What they do with the info that they get is what’s scary.

Read the whole story here.

Just got this from the mail.  Anyway, do you want to get a free pass on the LinuxWorld San Francisco on August 6-9 at the Moscone Center? 

Oracle is giving away F*ree pass at Linux World.  I wish I could go but previous engagements prevents me from going.  Click here to get your free pass

Talking about ingenuity and creativeness.  I was reading the news on MSN when I saw this article about MyDeathSpace.COM.  This site creates a ‘death map’ chart that marks former MySpace members with skull and grave markers.  It archives the pages of deceased MySpace members.  I know this post is not relevant to the theme of this site but I just find it interesting.

Browsing thru the myriad of extensions that is available for Firefox, I have found this nifty tool.  FTP extension for Firefox - FireFTP.  For some of us that came from IE, we are used to have Windows Explorer as our FTP Client.  Switching to Firefox, working with transferring files in and out from Firefox is not that easy.  With this extension, I no longer have to open up Filezilla or WSFTP to perform my general ftp task.

It’s been awhile since my last blog.  Google has released a new way of publishing search results from its search engine.  It’s called Universal Search.

The system officially rolled out last month and have every SEO (search engine optimization) specialist looking into this new way of publishing search results.  I believe Google has found that Web 2.0 can not be ignored and the way people are using audio, video, images, etc in their web pages makes it a challenge to data mine. 

I think with this new technology, ’search marketers’ would have to structure the web sites into a more focused site.  You can almost feel what Google is trying to work on from their purchase of YouTube, and now Feedburner.  The elements that comprises Web2.0 functionality is now getting attention from search engines and it will be interesting how other search engines, like Yahoo or MSN, will adopt this on their result pages. 

In the hardware scene we have what we call ’system integration’.  Now the search engines are starting to develop what I call ‘rich media integration’ on result pages.

Do you find that Windows Internet Explorer seems to be running slow?  From time to time, you would probably go to the Internet Options and click on [Delete Files..].  I have found a nice tool that will probably save you a great deal in cleaning up IE temp files. 

It’s called CCleaner (it used to be called CrapCleaner).  You can download it here at CCleaner.com.  What it does is clean up the temporary files that may be residing in the IE temp folders.  It also clears up all URL history, cookies, form history, etc.  What I find nice with this tool is when you want to perform a spyware cleanup.  As some of you knows, it is time consuming to perform a spyware scan and cleanup.  With this tool, you could start the process with a deleting temp files using CCleaner and then proceed with your spyware scan.

For those of you who download a lot of files from the internet, this should help you clean up the temp folders and make IE run faster.  Give it a try.

It’s Memorial Day once again and I would like to thank the wonderful men and women who have sacrificed so that we can enjoy the freedom that we have today in this great land of USA.

I pray for all the families of these men and women that the Good Lord will watch over them and protect them as their love ones served this country.  For those that have lost a loved one, I pray for peace for their heart and mind.  A tragic lost is not an easy event to go through.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on this blog.  Anyway, I would like to introduce everyone to Google Applications For Domain.  Google Apps (as it is commonly known),  at its very basic, gives you to host your own webmail via GMail, a web calendar, chat, and a basic web hosting site.

If you are a small business or organization with less than 100 employees that will need the above features, Google Apps is worth looking at.  The start page may need some work to make it nicer looking.  You could link the web apps to your main domain page if you don’t like the start page. 

For GMail, you have 2 gig of user space and you could use a variety of Google mini-apps on your start page.  The favorite of my clients is the Sticky Notes and the to-do list.  Google allows you to be able to use any mail clients to retrieve your mail from the Google servers if you want to use Outlook or Outlook Express. 

Another goodies that you could get from this is the integration of Google’s Document and Spreadsheet feature.  A nice app to use when you need to write a simple document on the fly or simply create a spreadsheet that you want to show a client when you’re not in the office.  It is not up to par with Microsoft Office, but it could be a life-saver in certain situations.

I have not really given it a try on a collaborative end, but for the most part, my clients have been satisfied with them.  Like I said earlier, it is not as fancy as Microsoft’s Office, but if Google play this right, Office Live have a definite competition here!