Headlines of note

Interesting ‘news’ items today.

* PayPal Vulnerability Allows Hackers to Steal All Your Money

“A critical security vulnerability has been discovered in the global e-commerce business PayPal that could allow attackers to steal your login credentials, and even your credit card details in unencrypted format.” Read more..

* Supercookies are back, and they’re as unappealing as ever

“Supercookies are back in force. But if supercookies are so great for consumers, why aren’t mobile carriers bragging about using them?” Read more..

* Scanner identifies thousands of malicious Android apps on Google Play, other markets

“A team of researchers have created an app vetting scanner referred to as “MassVet,” and they used it to identify more than 127,000 potentially harmful applications (PHA) in more than 30 Android markets – including Google Play.” Read more..

* The Internet of Things is a safety issue, and therefore a business risk

“When you merge the physical and the digital, it’s not just about InfoSec any more. People’s lives could be at risk.” Read more..

* Adobe Flash steadily heading toward demise

“After multiple malvertising campaigns on major ad networks, including Yahoo and AdSpirit.de, as well as the disclosure of major vulnerabilities, companies have begun banning Adobe Flash ads on their websites.” Read more..

[ Well.. that’s about 5 years too late.. But, better late than blah blah. ]

* Here’s How Iranian Hackers Can Hack Your Gmail Accounts

“Hackers are getting smarter in fooling us all, and now they are using sophisticated hacking schemes to get into your Gmail. Yes, Iranian hackers have now discovered a new way to fool Gmail’s tight security system by bypassing its two-step verification – a security process that requires a security code (generally sent via SMS) along with the password in order to log into Gmail account.” Read more..

* Warning! How Hackers Could Hijack Your Facebook Fan Page With This Trick

“Facebook bounty hunter Laxman Muthiyah from India has recently discovered his third bug of this year in the widely popular social network website that just made a new record by touching 1 Billion users in a single day. At the beginning of the year, Laxman discovered a serious flaw in Facebook graphs that allowed him to view or probably delete others photo album on Facebook, even without …” Read more..

Oh, yes, there’s more, but…

Today’s quote: “It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Copyright 2007-2015 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Warning: It’s an F for Flash security

Folks, if you haven’t done so already, you need to act now to protect yourself.

* Block or update Adobe Flash
		“Apple notoriously hates it. Firefox is currently blocking it, and Facebook is calling for its demise. Three zero-day vulnerabilities have been exposed in Adobe Flash in the past week, and the company has been speedily patching its vulnerable app. You should either update it right away or shut it down. Find out how to block Flash in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE, and how to keep watching your YouTube videos without it.” Read more..

My two cents: Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash have – for as long as I can remember – consistently topped the Most Vulnerable and Most Exploited lists. They’re *crud*. And Adobe should be taken to task. Remove them if you can.

*     *     *

Today’s quote: “I have a low tolerance for people who complain about things but never do anything to change them. This led me to conclude that the single largest pool of untapped natural resources in this world is human good intentions that are never translated into actions.” ~ Cindy Gallop

Copyright 2007-2015 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

---

>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Pre-Halloween Mishmash

Here’s a few Items of Interest for you.

* World’s first bitcoin ATM opens in Vancouver

“Bitcoiniacs’s kiosk dispenses digital currency from Waves Coffee House” Read more..

* Weaponized Antivirus: When Good Software Does Bad Things

“The 8th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software is aimed at bringing forward the latest scholarly research in security, in an atmosphere that allows direct and candid interaction between all attendees. This year’s conference (Malware 2013 for short) launched with a keynote by Dennis Batchelder, director of Microsoft Malware Protection Center, pointing out the hard problems that face the antimalware industry.” Read more..

[note: this one’s kinda important to know.. ]

* 6 Ridiculous Science Myths You Learned in Kindergarten

“Right around the time we learn to start questioning the ways of this wonderful world around us, our parents start packing us onto school buses every morning, because who the hell has time for all those obnoxious questions? Let the professionals address the budding curiosity of our children; we’ve got America’s Next Top Model to watch. Teachers are better equipped to deal with those questions anyway, right? Right!” Read more..

* Here’s something scary .. Boo!

* Also scary.. Adobe Confesses to Bigger Password Hack

“Early this month, digital media solutions provider Adobe reported a security breach which compromised password information and credit card data for around 3 million customers…” Read more..

BTW Blackberry’s BBM is now available for iGadgets and android devices.

And in case I don’t speak with you before then, please have a safe and a happy Halloween.

Today’s quote: “There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.” ~ Stephen Hawking

(Now that’s scary..!)

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

---

>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Adobe’s Online Photoshop

When Adobe introduced its new online Photoshop Website, I took a look and posted this review, Adobe Photoshop Express (Beta). Today I went back and looked at it again, as Photoshop.com is no longer a newly hatched beta.

For those who don’t yet know, Photoshop.com is a “Web 2.0” application for editing and sharing your digital images, and is seen to be a replacement for a program you buy and load onto your computer. It is a free service (and surprisingly, has no ads).

I would be very surprised if you haven’t heard of Photoshop; it has been around so long, it has become a verb in today’s language — meaning “to create a fake image”. Photoshop is the tool which allows you to put your head on someone else’s body.. or make it look like you’re standing on the moon.. Photoshop has long been considered the premier digital image manipulation program.

As I discussed in this article, “Web 2.0″ is all about us regular folks being able to ‘upload’ to the Web (and “share”/collaborate) instead of simply viewing (’downloading’) content. And frankly, Adobe is not the first to the market of online photo sharing Websites, nor sites that let you edit your pictures once you’ve loaded them.. Flickr, Picassa and Photobucket have been around for a while now (to name a few).

To use Photoshop online, you must “join” the club, by providing an e-mail address and creating a user account. While you do that, you create a personalized URL (like, http://yourname.photoshop.com) where you can post your pictures in “galleries”, if you want to share them (not required). Once you’re a member, you “upload” your pictures, and you can now edit them, and organize them into galleries, e-mail them, or use them as images on (other) Websites.
You can also easily “import” them from your other online accounts at Facebook as well as the sites named above.

The screenshot above shows the image editing screen. Those of you who have ever used Photoshop Elements will be very familiar with this interface. The editing options (left column) provide a thumbnail range above your original so you can see, and select from, adjustments. This makes ‘tweaking’ your image fairly easy and straight-forward, and allows you to experiment without ruining your original.

Is this for you? Well, I am an advanced Photoshop user, and so I find the tools in Photoshop Elements overly simplified – but which is precisely what many people want. While this tool will not let you paste your head onto a super-model’s body, or pose on the moon (you need a more powerful image editing program for that), it will let you smoothly and easily tweak your images, remove the red-eye effect, and share your pictures with far away friends and relatives.
[note: Photoshop.com also allows the uploading of videos, but I did not explore this feature.]

If you are not already using a similar service.. or are not satisfied with the one you’re using.. I suggest that you give this a tryout. I find it to be very slick and easy to use. So, click the link and get started.

Today’s free link: Photoshop.com

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Latest Flash Version Breaks Things

Folks–
No, you aren’t seeing things, and no, it’s (probably) not a new infection on your machine.
Adobe’s recent Flash Player update has caused a lot of trouble (particularly to Firefox users)  by failing to work with several web sites that rely heavily on Flash.

You may find it easiest to use IE until Adobe and Webmasters get the glitch squared away.

Photoshop online– use the Web to edit pictures*

“Made You Look” is the marketing catchphrase for the new online Photoshop Website, and yes– I did take a look. Adobe Photoshop Express (Beta) is a Web 2.0 application for editing and sharing your digital images, and is seen to be a replacement for a program you buy and load onto your computer. It is — at this time, anyway — a free service (and surprisingly, has no ads).

I would be very surprised if you haven’t heard of Photoshop; it has been around so long, it has become a verb in today’s language (meaning “to create a fake image”). Photoshop is the tool which allows you to put your head on someone else’s body.. or make it look like you’re standing on the moon.. or remove your Ex from your old vacation pictures. (With the right starting photos, there’s almost nothing I can’t fake in Photoshop.)

Photoshop has long been considered the premier digital image manipulation program. As I discussed in this article, “Web 2.0” is all about us regular folks being able to ‘upload’ to the Web (and “share”/collaborate) instead of simply viewing (‘downloading’) content. And frankly, Adobe is not the first to the market of online photo sharing Websites, nor sites that let you edit your pictures once you’ve loaded them.. Picassa and Photobucket have been around for a while now (to name a few).

Considering Photoshop’s reputation, I wanted to know if Adobe’s online service had superior editing capabilities. To use Express, you must “join” the club, by providing an e-mail address and creating a user account. While you do that, you create a personalized URL (like, http://yourname.photoshop.com) where you can post your pictures in “galleries”, if you want to share them (which is not required). Once you’re a member, you “upload” your pictures, and you can now edit them, and organize them into galleries, e-mail them, or use them as images on (other) Websites.

The screenshot above shows the image editing screen. Those of you who have ever used Photoshop Elements will be very familiar with this interface. The editing options (left column) provide a thumbnail range above your original so you can see, and select from, adjustments. This makes ‘tweaking’ your image quite easy and straight-forward, and allows you to experiment without ruining your original.

Is this for you? Well, as it stands, I find that there are some basic image editing features which are missing (it is possible I just couldn’t find the menu..) such as image resizing and dots-per-inch adjustment. You can crop, but not shrink.. nor adjust file type or size. I am an advanced Photoshop user, and so I find the tools in Photoshop Elements overly simplified, and these even more so– which is precisely what many people want.

While this (at least, in its current state) tool will not let you paste your head onto a super-model’s body, or pose on the moon, it will let you smoothly and easily tweak your images, remove the red-eye effect, and share your pictures with far away friends and relatives. If you are not already using a similar service.. or are not satisfied with the one you’re using.. you should give this a tryout. It is very slick and easy to use. Click the link in the second sentence, and get started.

*Original posting: 4/14/08

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Made You Look

This is the marketing catchphrase for the new online Photoshop Website, and yes– I did take a look. Adobe Photoshop Express (Beta) is a Web 2.0 application for editing and sharing your digital images, and is seen to be a replacement for a program you buy and load onto your computer. It is — at this time, anyway — a free service (and surprisingly, has no ads).

I would be very surprised if you haven’t heard of Photoshop; it has been around so long, it has become a verb in today’s language — meaning “to create a fake image”. Photoshop is the tool which allows you to put your head on someone else’s body.. or make it look like you’re standing on the moon.. or remove your Ex from your old vacation pictures. (With the right starting photos, there’s almost nothing I can’t fake in Photoshop.)
Photoshop has long been considered the premier digital image manipulation program.

As I discussed in this article, “Web 2.0” is all about us regular folks being able to ‘upload’ to the Web (and “share”/collaborate) instead of simply viewing (‘downloading’) content. And frankly, Adobe is not the first to the market of online photo sharing Websites, nor sites that let you edit your pictures once you’ve loaded them.. Picassa and Photobucket have been around for a while now (to name a few).
Considering Photoshop’s reputation, I wanted to know if Adobe’s online service had superior editing capabilities.

To use Express, you must “join” the club, by providing an e-mail address and creating a user account. While you do that, you create a personalized URL (like, http://yourname.photoshop.com) where you can post your pictures in “galleries”, if you want to share them (not required). Once you’re a member, you “upload” your pictures, and you can now edit them, and organize them into galleries, e-mail them, or use them as images on (other) Websites.

The screenshot above shows the image editing screen. Those of you who have ever used Photoshop Elements will be very familiar with this interface. The editing options (left column) provide a thumbnail range above your original so you can see, and select from, adjustments. This makes ‘tweaking’ your image fairly easy and straight-forward, and allows you to experiment without ruining your original.

Is this for you? Well, as it stands, I find that there are some basic image editing features which are missing (it is possible I just couldn’t find the menu..) such as image resizing and dots-per-inch adjustment. You can crop, but not shrink.. nor adjust file type or size.
I am an advanced Photoshop user, and so I find the tools in Photoshop Elements overly simplified, and these even more so– which is precisely what many people want.
While this (at least, in its current state) tool will not let you paste your head onto a super-model’s body, or pose on the moon, it will let you smoothly and easily tweak your images, remove the red-eye effect, and share your pictures with far away friends and relatives.
If you are not already using a similar service.. or are not satisfied with the one you’re using.. you should give this a tryout. It is very slick and easy to use. Click the link in the second sentence, and get started.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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