The INFORMER

If you are planning to buy a new netbook pc than wait for sometime time because Acer is coming up with a much more smart pc this time.Its size,style and performance is definitely better than the previous versions.
The new netbook will have a 10 inch WSVGA LED backlit display having a resolution of 1024×600 pixels and will weigh 1.18 Kg. The design will be quite similar to the older netbook. It will have Acer Crystal Eye Webcam embedded right on top of the screen which will offer better quality even in poor light settings. The netbook will have a lot of connectivity options like WiFi, Integrated Acer Signal Up technology and Bluetooth. It will have an Intel Atom processor, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 160 GB HDD and will have a 6 cell battery offering 7 hours of battery life.
Pricing and the existence of multiple trim levels isn’t known, though the same leaks suggest that one will cost $399 when it ships to the US in February.There are rumours that it may be launched officially in February or March.But the final date hasn’t been announced by the officials.

I heard that last week the international community was hit by the worst virus attack in the history, this virus was launched by hackers to take over the corporate world. The worm is known with the names of Downadup, Conficker , or Kido -_- it has at least infected 8 million computers most of them were corporate computers. On Tuesday there were 2.5 million, on Wednesday 3.5 million and Friday, 8 million.It's getting worse, not better, right now 8.9 million is the estimated amount of computers infected.
The virus exploits multiple security flaws in Microsoft's Windows OS's. It injects into the system as services.exe, it is a common system process. It creates a new DLL file in Windows system folder with a random five letter name. It makes registry edits referencing this DLL as a service, so it’s automatically run on restart. Once it has its grips on the system, it proceeds to create an HTTP server and download malware onto the computer from hacker web sites. It wipes out the system restore with a reset, making it harder to recover the system. People who think their computer is secures should worry about this worm and should start protecting their computer's by updating their antivirus.

While many viruses download malware remotely from a handful of web sites, the installed files can be easily removed , this one is very hard to remove. This virus creates hundreds of dummy domain names using algorithm coded in the virus, with only one being the actual malware site. This makes it extremely difficult to search what exactly is being installed every single day. The worm's main way to get transferred to another computer is local area network. Once a computer has been infected on the network it searches for other computers on the network, and then it uses the a Windows security flaw to attempt to gain access to them.

While the computers are typically password protected, the amazing part is that the virus can guess short password by a random guessing method which is also known as brute force method. Once it has found the correct password there goes your pc. It infects the next computer and the next one and the next one there's no stopping it . Microsoft has a patch which protects against virus the attack -- MS08-067 --Companies are strongly recommended to get this patch as the virus is rapidly spreading across Europe, the United States, and Asia. The patch may slow the spread of the virus it may not be enough to stop it. The virus has been only used to inject malware into the pc but experts say that hackers could use it on the system to start stealing user's and customer's credit card and personal information.

Microsoft has been providing some special Operating systems to the computer users since Widows 95. After that they developed Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Xp (differnt versions) and then Windows Vista.
Now they have introduced another OS named Windows 7, Windows 7 can be considered as Vista with some advanced features and some bug fixes etc.
The following features are prominent and most talked about:

Improved Taskbar
Microsoft is consolidating the various methods of launching programs into a new Windows 7 taskbar, the strip that traditionally appears along the bottom of the computer screen in Windows. The taskbar is larger and offers new ways to quickly interact with programs. For example, a feature calls "Jump Lists" provides a quick glimpse of recent files and features associated with a particular program when a user right-clicks on the program's icon in the taskbar. So, it makes the things quicker than before.
taskBetter and easy search
The new Windows 7 search function will provide a unified method of searching USB drives, external hard drives and other computers on a home network, from one centralized location.
Window management
Dragging an open window against the left or right border of the desktop automatically resizes it to fit one half of the screen. That makes it easier to quickly adjust the size of two windows -- for cutting and pasting text between documents, for example. Likewise, dragging a window on the top border of the desktop quickly expands it to the full size of the screen.
System Tray
Officially known as the “Notification Area,” Microsoft finally give users the tools to address the desktop area, which is often disorganized. Users can have any icon that is displayed in the System Tray, the icon to change the position and whether it is allowed to attract users with the notification.
systemtray
Home Groups
Windows 7 is to introduce a new feature called Home Groups network that aims to ease some of the computer network to share files and peripherals - as if all that is located on a PC the same. Although the features of Windows Networking since always aims the same, In fact configuration to use the network printer is still too difficult for most users.
Peeking
Peeking features in Windows 7 are easier for users to quickly read the content in one window without the need to interact with the other window. Placing mouse over the thumbnail window on the Task Bar will change all open windows except for a transparent window is selected. In addition to “snoop” window applications, users can also tout the Windows desktop.
peek
Multimedia Streaming
W7 add features delivery media files from PC to the various tools that support streaming music such as the Sonos system through the network. Microsoft said that the W7 will change to the file in a format that can be played by your media player.
play-to
Themes
In W7 Microsoft provides a new theme that suits better with the preview feature in the original size and allow you to save custom themes with just a few clicks. Microsoft also plans to change Themes Styles.
themechooser
Nice Paint
Windows Paint is to get big upgrade, now appearing with the Ribbon UI of Office 2007 that has now become standard in many Microsoft applications.
paintribbon
Touch Screen
Windows 7 is the first version of Windows that supports multi-touch that allows you to control the OS with both hands. Many still doubt whether the multi-touch will change the PC world as it changed world’s mobile phone. Currently there are almost no PC outstanding in the market that supports features touch screen other than the Touch Smart from HP and Dell Latitude XT.
These features present in the beta version can rate the Windows 7 as a better windows than the previous version, But again OS like linux still have their own roll.
Rumors are their about its official release in 2009,but the expected release date of this OS is in mid of 2010.

Last night i was searching for few topics about hacking as it is the topic of my presentation tomorrow, but i was surprised to see that every link in the search results had a warning message under it " This site may harm your computer".
At that time I could,nt know that this was actually a hiccup at google's end as i was in hurry to get my work done as early as possible.
I am sure some of you guys also have been through this as all the blogosphere is abuzz about the complaints given by the unhappy web surfers.
The problem appears to be centered around the google safe browsing API even that returned a “This site may harm your computer” warning , the security diagnostics service that powers Firefox’s malware blocking service.
This Screen shot tells all :
google_safebrowsing1I wonder how much this episode has damaged the reputation of the google but its still too early for us speculating anything about reputation right ?