Windows XP is still used by a large number of consumer and business PCs but now the operating system’s creator is urging people who still have the operating system to start thinking at least about upgrading to Windows 7. In an new post on the official Windows blog site, Microsoft’s Stephen L Rose stated that there are two big reasons for leaving Windows XP behind. One of them is, of course, the fact that there is a new version of the OS, Windows 7, that’s a big improvement over Windows XP (no mention at all of Windows Vista).

The other big reason is the fact that there is only 1,000 more days for Microsoft to officially support Windows XP with things like patches. Rose states, “On April 8, 2014, security patches and hotfixes for all versions of Windows XP will no longer be available. So bottom line, PC’s running Windows XP will be vulnerable to security threats.”

Rose also points out that third party software makers are also planning to retire support for Windows XP versions of their products which Rose says, “translates to even more complexity, security risks, and ultimately, added management costs for your IT department if you’re still managing Windows XP environments.” Rose also states that a recent report from Garter says “more than 50 (percent) of organizations that do not start deploying Windows 7 by early 2012 will not complete their deployments before Windows XP support ends, and will incur increased support costs.”

Rose says that businesses have a number of ways to make the upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 easier including a 90 day trial version of Windows 7 for enterprise customers.

Neowin.net – Microsoft: Time to start thinking about retiring Windows XP.

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Users of iPhones can now tweak their contracts (hopefully without extra charge – like me) to include tethering for no extra cost.

O2 scraps mobile tethering surcharges, cheers up a whole United Kingdom — Engadget.

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“Employing talented young individuals and enrolling them on the Modern Apprenticeship Scheme through Leeds City College is a fundamental part of our business plan and company philosophy. Our employees are our most valued asset and the college is an integral part of our training and development strategy. The apprentice scheme provides the core skills we require from our technicians along with enhancing our company profile through professional certification and vendor accreditations. We are certainly reaping the benefits of the scheme with our most valued engineers being developed through it. Our business continues to grow and a large part of our success can be attributed to the commitment, drive and quality of our staff along with the support and feedback of Leeds City College.”  Michael Canavan, Technical Director

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IE6 is now 10 years old, far to old to be used as a browser to surf the Internet. Besides being exposed to numerous security threats, the technology is outdated and cumbersome. Currently IE6 holds a 12% market share according to Net Applications and Microsoft’s goal is to get that down to 1%. Why 1%? Microsoft states:

Why 1%? We realize that there might not a magic number for when web developers and IT pros can drop support for older browsers, but we believe that 1% will allow more sites and IT pros worldwide to make IE6 a low-priority browser – meaning you don’t have to invest as much time in updates or fixes.

With the IE9 launch right around the corner for Microsoft, it is good to see them make a formal push to help remove IE6 and finally put this chapter of the browser novel to bed. IE9 is expected to launch in late March and will bring with it many enhancements.

Source : Neowin.net – Microsoft launches ie6countdown.com.

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Fake anti-virus software (also known as scareware, rogueware or “FakeAV”) is without doubt one of the most significant threats today. Bogus security warnings adorned with flashy images and incessant popup windows attempt to scare unwitting users into coughing up cash to clean up non-existent infections.

Search results for images are also being poisoned to distribute fake anti-virus. For these attacks, the doorway page links to several images from other sites across the web, piggybacking on the existing structure of each legitimate image link in addition to the keyword stuffing on the doorway page. One client was tricked into installing the Fake software whilst searching for “Hello Kitty” images for a birthday cake!

So how to you avoid it? Here are other telltale signs, according to Download Squad:

• Alerts that just don’t belong – Windows will tell you if you’re not running antivirus software or the definitions are out of date, but it won’t tell you that an infection has been found. Windows Defender will pop up alerts, but not Windows itself or the Windows Security Center. Alerts that claim Windows has found infected files are pulling your leg.
• Poor grammar – Windows has its weak points, but real system messages are usually very well written and clear. Alerts from rogue apps don’t have the same attention to detail.

People get taken by these fake “apps” all the time. After it runs a “scan” on your system (and finds all kinds of infections, natch), you’re asked for a credit card number to buy the full program, which is “required” to rid your system of all that nasty malware.

Don’t fall for this. Treat all pop-up security alerts with suspicion. Keep your browser and operating system up to date, and choose a reliable, top-rated security program for your PC.

Source : Turning scareware devious distribution tactics into practical protection mechanisms | Naked Security.

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The software giant, which is losing market share, made the bold claim as it unveiled what is known as the release candidate of IE9.

This is the final test drive for the new browser – a chance to catch any last-minute bugs before its debut.

IE9 has been downloaded 25 million times during beta testing.

Privacy and speed are being highlighted as two of the features that set IE9 apart.

“This release is one that is playing catch up [on past releases], but it leapfrogs everything and now you see the other folks on the back foot trying to catch up with us,” Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, told BBC News.

“This is a real race again in terms of browsers,” said Lance Ulanoff, editor-in-chief of PCMag.com.

“To some extent, Microsoft had ceded that race, but when I first heard about IE9, my initial reaction was ‘oh the game is on’.

Now it is a question of how people will perceive it when they look at it against Google Chrome and Firefox, but Chrome is where you have the most interesting battle and this is a true battle in the browser space.”

One feature being put front and centre of IE9 is tracking protection that gives users better control over how their information is shared across the web.

Some content on websites can be used to track activity as people hop from one site to another. IE9′s tracking protection means users can limit the browser’s communication with certain websites to help keep information private.

Privacy features

“With this release you are seeing innovation after innovation that other folks are catching up to. Hardware acceleration was something no one was talking about until we did it. No one else was talking about privacy and tracking until we did it.”

According to Web analytics company Net Applications, IE lost more than six percentage points of user share in the past 12 months. At the end of January, the browser hit an historic low with 56% of users using IE.

Microsoft’s Leila Martine shows Rory Cellan-Jones the ‘high graphic capabilities’ of IE9 in September 2010

This feature relies on tracking protection lists the user can create, or on lists created by the four main online privacy and tracking companies to allow or block a site or ad network from tracking users.

Microsoft has said it will not generate such lists.

The feature is seen as a response to a call by the Federal Trade Commission for a web equivalent to the Do Not Call list aimed at telemarketers calling and harassing people at home.

Firefox also offers a ‘do not track’ option.

“The most exciting thing is this is a technology that is ready to use today and can provide a meaningful level of protection as you browse around the web,” said Andy Zeigler, privacy programme manager with Microsoft’s IE team.

“For example, the lists can block companies that collect data about you without your consent, which could be information like your browsing history, the sites you visit, the things you buy online and the videos you watch.”

Need for speed

With speed becoming an increasingly seductive selling point for users, Microsoft said that this latest version of IE9 is faster than the beta by 35%, making it faster than any browser currently available.

Also new is expanded support for HTML5 and what is known as other “future-web” technologies. These include support for a geolocation feature and HTML5 semantic tags. These features are largely present in other browsers.

The company said it received over 17,000 comments from early users. As a result of some of that feedback, the software will let people add a new row of tabs to the bar at the top of the browser window. It will also pop up fewer notifications.

The company is now focused on encouraging developers to build new websites and user experiences on IE9.

IE9 is a free download that works Windows Vista and Windows 7 computers. It’s not compatible with Windows XP.

Source : BBC News – Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 web browser goes live.

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Each upgrade brings exciting new features, but new versions of your favorite programs can take some getting used to. It’s no different for those who create the Office programs than it is for our customers.

To ease the transition, we’ve put together six handy Office 2010 migration guides to help you step up to the newest versions of Microsoft Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word.

Whether you’re coming from an older version of Office and just want to find the most frequently used commands in a program, or you’re entirely new to Office and want a quick overview of how the ribbon works and how to get to the most important things, each guide provides helpful information that we’ve based on direct feedback from you — our customers.

All six guides are available as a separate download, so you can grab just the ones you need:

1. Install the free Adobe Reader (if you don’t already have it on your computer).
2. Browse and download our free Office 2010 migration guides below.

While you’re viewing any guide, you can save a copy of it to your computer for later viewing, navigate through all of its pages (each guide has 7-8 pages in total), zoom in to get a closer view at any of the screenshots, or search for feature names or keywords to quickly find something in the text.

If you find these guides useful, consider sharing this blog post with your colleagues and friends who use Microsoft Office programs.

The guides

Click a link or an image below, and the guide opens as a PDF file in Adobe Reader. You can then view the guide, print it out, or save it for later use.

Access 2010 Migration Guide	Excel 2010 Migration Guide	Outlook 2010 Migration Guide
PowerPoint 2010 Migration Guide	OneNote 2010 Migration Guide	Word 2010 Migration Guide

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This guide will show what you can (and cannot) do to safeguard your Facebook privacy. Thanks to : 10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy.

1. Organize Friends in Lists

What do you do when your boss, mother-in-law, or a casual web acquaintance sends you a friend request on Facebook? Use Friend Lists. Friend Lists are the foundation of your Facebook privacy settings. Select Friends from the top menu, and use the Create link to create friend lists like Co-workers, Family, College Friends, etc. Your friends can’t see your lists, so you can name them whatever you like.

Tip: On your left sidebar, all your friend lists may not show up by default. Click More to see all of them, and drag and drop those you want above the separator.

2. Customize Profile Privacy

Click Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile. Select which parts of your profile will be seen by whom.

If you choose Customize in the drop down, you can be more specific. This is where the Friend Lists you created before become really useful.

Also go to the Contact Information tab and choose how you want your contact information to be shared on the Internet.

3. Set Facebook Privacy Level of Photo Albums

On the Photos tab of your profile page, click Album Privacy. Here again, you can use your Friend Lists to set the privacy for each photo album.

Note that your profile pictures go into a special album that is always visible to ALL your friends.

4. Restrict Search Visibility

Click Privacy > Search to set your visibility when someone searches Facebook for people. This is an important way to safeguard your Facebook privacy.  You can also select what will be visible in the search results.

5. Control Automatic Wall Posts and News Feed Updates

Your actions in Facebook such as comments, likes, appear as highlights on ALL your friends’ home pages. You cannot use friend lists here, only turn them on or off.

Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall and choose whether you want your boss or ex-girlfriend to know that you’re in a relationship.

6. Set Facebook Wall Privacy

Go to your profile page, click Options > Settings under the status box.

Here you can control whether your friends can post to your Wall, and who can see the posts made by your friends.

7. Avoid Appearing in Advertisements

Facebook has two types of advertisements: third-party and Facebook. Third-party advertisements are currently not allowed to use your pictures, but there is a setting to disallow it if it is allowed in the future. Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads tab to turn this off.

The Facebook ads shown to your friends are about ‘social actions’ like becoming a fan of something. You can turn this off at the bottom of the page.

8. Protect Yourself from Friends’ Applications

Go to Privacy > Applications, and click the Settings tab and uncheck all the boxes. These settings control what information about you is visible to applications installed by your friends. By default, these are set to visible. This means that your religious, sexual, and political preferences, pictures, etc. are readily available to one of the million worldwide Facebook application developers, each time any of your friends takes a quiz, plays a game, or runs any other Facebook app. This is obviously a Facebook privacy issue.

This is the most commonly misunderstood aspect of Facebook privacy. These settings control what applications installed by your friends can see about you, even if you don’t install the application yourself.

Why is this important? Because these settings will not change anything about what you are sharing with the applications you install yourself. For that, go to the next step.

9. Privacy from Your Applications

There is no way to control what applications see about you; it is an all-or-nothing affair. Take this quiz developed by the American Civil Liberties Union to check what anonymous application developers can know about you and your friends each time you take a quiz.

The Burton Group’s Identity Blog features the Facebook Privacy Mirror, an application that you can use to find out what applications know about you and your friends. If you really want to see exactly what profile data of each of your friends is visible to application developers, Privacy Mirror shows it in detail.

The only thing you can do is to authorize only those applications you require and trust. Go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu. Change the drop-down from Recently Used to Authorized. Here you can see all the applications you have authorized to get access to ALL your profile information. Remove the ones you no longer need.

Also check the list of applications Allowed to Post and Granted Additional Permissions to remove unwanted ones.

10. Quitting Facebook? Delete, Don’t Just De-Activate Your Account

You can easily deactivate your account in Facebook from the Settings page. But deactivation will retain all your profile information within Facebook, including pictures, friends, etc. If you want to permanently delete your Facebook account, click here to submit a deletion request. Note that:

1. There is an unspecified delay between submitting your delete request and actual deletion.
2. If you login to Facebook, your deletion request is automatically cancelled.
3. There doesn’t seem to be any way to confirm that your request was completed.
4. Even after permanent deletion, Facebook says that copies of your photos may remain on their servers for technical reasons.

Also, note that once in a while, there is news of a Facebook hack or leak that can expose your information on the Internet. It is better to be safe than sorry by avoiding using Facebook for anything that may embarrass you.

I hope this article gives you a better understanding and insight into Facebook’s privacy.

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[Regular TUAW readers who are staring in disbelief and muttering "Are they really writing up the iTunes for Windows install process?" -- relax, go have some egg nog, we'll be back to normal in no time.]

We’re also taking questions all day Christmas day on our tricks & tips Twitter account, Ask_TUAW. Pipe up if you need help!

First step: download the software. The URL is easy to remember, though… itunes.com, then click on the Download iTunes button at the top right.

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As robust as they are, not many phones survive being dropped on their screen. After being asked by some customers to replace their broken screens, and after a couple of our own ‘droppers’ – we have now decided to offer iPhone screen replacement as a standard service.

An example of repair cost :

iPhone 3GS (including parts and fitting) – £89.95

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