'World's Biggest Day of Golf'
Microsoft and St. Andrews Links have combined forces in an attempt to create "the world's biggest day of golf," which will bring the real and virtual worlds of golf colliding together for a fun tournament. Using Links LS 2000 on the MSN Gaming Zone, the online tournament will mirror the World Shotgun 2000 tournament taking place simultaneously at St. Andrews Links. This even will take place on Saturday, June 24th, and Courses in different time zones will give a coordinating signal to the golfers on the course to play their shot. Zone.com will coordinate with the timing of the physical event by signaling the electronic participants. Visit the MSN Gaming Zone to register for the event.
1GB Drive in Your Pocket
Big Blue today announced its new Microdrives will be capable of storing up to 1GB of data, yet at no more size than could fit in your pocket. The drives are fitted for Type II CompactFlash card slots found in some digital cameras. The drives will hit the shelves in September, while they will be shipped to manufacturers in small quantities next month. Visit News.com for a photo of the drives and more information.
Chat Your Life Away
AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Odigo, and PowWow, amongst a slew of others, are the array of instant messaging clients available to netizens around the world. As of today, AltaVista joins those ranks. Launched this morning, the AltaVista Messenger connects with MSN Messenger via Tribal Voice's PowWow technology. AltaVista officials told the press they do plan on pursuing a deal with AOL to connect to the massive AOL database. For more information visit AltaVista or download it from FileForum.
StarOffice 5.2 Released
Sun Microsystems has released version 5.2 of its free office suite entitled StarOffice. Now available in 11 languages, with a host of improvements to boost performance and stability, StarOffice, Sun boasts, "With the release of StarOffice[tm] 5.2 software, Sun is changing the rules about how software is done in the dot-com age." This multi-platform software touts over 200 features and compatibility with a vast range of file types. For more information visit Sun Microsystems or download it from FileForum today.
Virus Alert - VBS_Stages
The McAfee Anti-Viral team sent word today of a new virus being spread rapidly through IRC and the use of Microsoft Outlook and the address book contained therein. This new virus has been assessed a High Risk alert by the team. Several companies have shut down their e-mail systems to combat the spread of the virus for now, while CERT officials say the virus is relatively benign. Microsoft and Visa rank amongst those companies hit by the worm yesterday.
The virus disguises itself as a joke, and carries the attached file LIFE_STAGES.txt. What the user doesn't see is the hidden .SHS extension which allows the malicious code to be run and the virus to spread itself. The .shs extension comes from the use of Windows scrap files, relatively unused in previous code.
AOL Fesses Up
Officials at AOL today confirmed previous reports that hackers had allegedly gotten through security and downloaded the mail of members and employees at the company. Only about 200 accounts were hacked, and while officials call this a "small number", it is only small relative to what AOL handles. The users who stole the accounts were able to fire off a trojan virus before the accounts were disabled. The attacks were first discovered by Inside-AOL and Observer.
Need Help? Visit Its Not Working.com
A new site launched this past Friday that gives netizens and computer users around the globe a place to go to get their problems resolved. The site provides a forum for users to ask questions and get answers from people who have had similar problems before, as well as providing access to a constantly growing database of drivers and customer contacts for your hardware needs. Soon the creators of the site plan on adding hardware and software reviews along with editorials discussing computer issues. Visit Its Not Working.com for more information and to solve your computer problems.
Echo.com Enters Beta
A new Web site has just popped up on the Internet that provides netizens with music of all kinds from all places. The new site allows anyone to set up a radio station and invite friends to join them in chatting and discussions about their favorite music. You can earn reward points for referring friends, and rating the music you listen to. Check out Echo.com for more information and to sign up to hear free music.
US Attempts to Stop Spam
Those letters that you know are worthless junk just by reading the subject line, those ridiculous Web page snapshots with your horoscope telling you today is a "1" and you shouldn't go outside...all spam. Nowadays spam in the electronic mailbox is worse than the coupon books and Pennysavers currently invading your snailmail box. Hopefully not for much longer though, in the United States at least.
The House of Representatives approved a bill yesterday that would require spam to at least have a valid and real reply rather than the craziness currently cluttering your inbox. It will also require those spammers to label the mail as spam so netizens know what it is before opening it.
AOL to Open Chat Client
As per the request of the Federal Trade Commission, currently working on the AOL-Time Warner merger, America Online will soon be opening the protocol to its popular chat program AOL Instant Messenger, which currently boasts over 50 million members, to create an open standard to interoperate with other clients. The instant messaging "war" has sparked recently due to the industry's request for a universal protocol to connect them all together. AOL was of course, reluctant to move in that direction.
The decision to create an open standard is surprising as just this week a rival program entitled Odigo debuted its latest version with connectivity to AOL and ICQ. In a not-so-surprising move, AOL blocked that access like it had in the past to Odigo, Microsoft, and Yahoo chat programs.
Gnutella for Selling Movies?
Online movie retailer SightSound is combining the file-sharing program Gnutella with Microsoft's digital rights management software to provide movie fans with a way of purchasing and then downloading movies from the net. The firm has already locked the rights for 12 Miramax films, which the user will download then purchase a license to view the film. Microsoft is reportedly not concerned with the security of the exchange. As you may remember, Stephen Kings first eBook was nabbed by piraters to prove the weakness of the security. Visit SightSound.com for more information about the arrangement.
Hotmail Problems Continue
Last week, many Hotmail users were surprised to see they could not access the service and read e-mail. Those users were even more surprised, when after 5 days of denial they were finally allowed back on to see their saved mail and address books had been deleted. Saying the glich affected less than half of one percent of its users (which is still a lot of people for a service such as Hotmail), officials report that the problem occurred during what they call "routine maintenance." Engineers are working feverishly to recover the lost data and restore the remaining users access.
One user told BetaNews:
AOL Almost Everywhere
AOL will be debuting on Sprint PCS cellular phones tomorrow, marking the first step in AOL's quest to have "AOL Everywhere" as their new slogan touts. The next step will be for AOLtv to premier at the end of this month, and bring the Internet giant into homes via America's favorite way to pass time, the television. Post AOLtv comes the merger with Time Warner, which will push the megacoporation's content onto magazines, television, Internet, all things. When and if the government approves this merger, the company can fill the shoes of its slogan "AOL Everywhere."
Bluetooth Bites Into Windows
Big Blue will announce today that it currently plans to develop Bluetooth software native to Windows by the end of the second quarter of 2001. While the current software is compatible with both Windows 98 and 2000, the purpose of the project is to make the software native to the 2000 operating environment. Bluetooth has been in development for over six years now, and many companies are currently working on software and other applications of the wireless protocol. Visit Bluetooth.com for more information about the software.
Missing Hard Drives = Missing Nuclear Secrets
A pair of hard drives from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico have gone AWOL. The hard drives are no typical data storage devices however, they happen to contain nuclear secrets amongst other sensitive data. Officials report that they have been missing since June 1st, when a forest fire caused the building to be evacuated. They doubt that espionage is involved in this case, but remain very serious in the search for the materials. The two drives were used by the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, which is trained to respond to nuclear emergencies in the United States. The hard drives were stored in the highly secured "X Division" where nuclear researchers do their work.
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