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If your computer gets the infamous “Blue Screen of Death”, does the frowny face make you feel any better about it? Introducing the new Windows 8 Blue Screen error – now you know it’s really bad.

(Source: Geekologie)

On Aug. 30, the news broke that a hacker calling himself “Comodohacker” made off with a Google authentication certificate on July 19, which allowed him to set up fraudulent Web pages under a legitimate Google domain name and harvest the personal information of anyone who visited his spoofed sites.

Read the rest of the article here from MSNBC – “Cracked Digital Certificates Endanger ‘Web of Trust’”

Scary! So the 3 things that lead to this cyber-disaster were:

(1) easy to guess passwords,

(2) lack of antivirus software and

(3) not being patched to the latest security update.

Who’s been talking about that again? That’s right, Now IT Works.  Talk to your account manager about signing up for a Blue Steel Support Program today!

August 23, 1899: The first ship-to-shore signal is sent by Lightship No. 70 to a US receiving station in San Francisco.

‘“Sherman is sighted,” the message said, referring to the troopship Sherman, which was returning a San Francisco regiment from the battlefields of the Spanish-American War. It marked the first use outside England of this technology, still in its infancy.

The name most closely associated with the invention of wireless telegraphy — what we now know simply as radio — is Guglielmo Marconi, but as with so many technologies, there were a number of hands stirring the pot, chief among them Heinrich Hertz, Alexander Popov and Nicola Tesla. Marconi’s claim to primacy was no doubt helped by the fact that he obtained the British patent for wireless in 1896, when Britannia still ruled the waves.

Radio communication at sea quickly evolved into an indispensable safety aid for mariners. By the early 20th century ships were able to communicate with each other as well as with shore-based stations. The Japanese navy used radio communication to scout the Russian fleet during the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, a crushing Japanese victory and a turning point in the Russo-Japanese War.

The failure of radio communication played a major role in the Titanic disaster in 1912. The lone radio operator aboard the Californian had switched off his set for the night (as was common aboard vessels carrying a single operator) and never received the Titanic’s distress signals. Had someone been at his post, the Californian — by far the closest ship to the stricken liner — could have arrived soon enough to save many of the lives that were lost.’

Source: Wired Magazine. This article first appeared on Wired.com Aug. 23, 2007.

Just another reason why Yahoo! Answers gets a bad rap -

(Source: Geeks Are Sexy)

If you answer yes to the question above, you’re not alone, according to a study in the journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. These checking habits consist of repetitive checking of email and other social networking applications, “lasting less than 30 seconds and occurring within 10 minutes of each other.”

On average, people check their phones 34 times a day, not because they need to but because it has simply become a habit.

Here’s a few questions you can ask yourself to find out if you are a habitual checker:

1. Do you check your email even when there is no notification of a new email being received?
2. Are you starting to annoy the people around you?
3. Does not checking your email or having your phone around makes you start to shake and sweat?

If you’d like to break the habit, schedule times when you will be without your phone – perhaps when you have plans with friends or during family events. As with anything else, the first step in acknowledging you have a problem is admitting it…

There is a new scam making its way around Twitter lately, which promises to increase a user’s followers. However, all this scam really does is give control of the account to a third party.

The tweet simply says “I will follow back if you follow me” and includes a shortened link that would typically be seen on Twitter. When that link is clicked on, the user is redirected to a site that offers either a pay-plan or a free trial. The user must then re-enter their Twitter log-in information, which is how the third-party is then able to access the account.

According to PC World:

“While the scam is making the rounds again, it is not a new one. Researchers at Zscaler explained the details of the ploy several months ago, noting some services ask for credit card numbers in exchange for VIP status, which promises 400-1,000 new followers a day. In reality, the compromised Twitter account is then used to send out Twitter spam to promote the service and follow hundreds of other accounts but result in no meaningful additional followers, according to Zscaler.

Cluley advised anyone who had fallen into the trap to revoke the application’s rights immediately in the Settings/Applications section of a Twitter account. Changing one’s password is also recommended, he said.”

It is best to follow the same rules as with email – if you don’t know who sent you the link or if it is not from a trusted source, don’t click on it.

• Thinking about switching your cell phone service to Verizon? Hurry up, as they will be ending unlimited data plans soon (CNN Money)

• DropBox breach in security – left user accounts open for 4 hours on Sunday (Wired)

• Firefox 5 is now available for download… (PC Mag)

• …and here’s 5 good reasons to download it (PC World)

Happy Tuesday everyone – enjoy the nice weather!

We’ve all gotten those emails where the content is about business but the delivery is lacking some professionalism. Maybe it’s the email that is written in all caps, seeming like the writer is yelling at you for no apparent reason. Or perhaps you get annoyed when someone spells your name wrong, despite the fact that the correct spelling is merely 2-3 inches above, in the address line.

Whatever your own personal email pet peeve is, be sure to read this article from CNN “Top 10 Business Emails You Shouldn’t Send” to make sure you aren’t guilty of these silly mistakes.

Earlier this week, the web was abuzz thinking this girl must be crazy to get all of her Facebook friends tattooed on her. Which leads to the question – if it is real, what happens when someone un-friends her?

As it turns out, this video is just a marketing effort for a Dutch based company that sells Facebook themed gifts. The temporary transfer took about 3 hours to apply and will wash off in a couple of days.

Before it was determined to be a hoax, this video was watched more than 500,000 times on YouTube!