Outlook Blog - Your Outlook calendar: Would you exist without it?

Outlook Blog - Your Outlook calendar: Would you exist without it?

Great tips on expanding your usage of Outlook's calendar functionality! There are tips for the calendar novice to heavy user. --Stuart

June Nielsen numbers show Android atop OS heap

Android is the top operating system in the United States, according to June data just released by Nielsen. Android hold a 39 percent share of the U.S. smartphone market, with iOS coming in second with 28 percent and Blackberry in third with 20 percent. Bringing up the rear is WP7 with nine percent, and Symbian and WebOS with 2 percent each.

Though Android is the OS to beat, Apple still holds the title of top smartphone manufacturer, claiming all 28 percent of iOS's market share. Among the devices running Android, HTC holds a slim lead with 14 percent market share, followed by Motorola at 10 percent, Samsung at 8 percent, and all other manufacturers accounting for the remaining 6 percent.

Report: Windows 7 almost five times more secure than XP

Report: Windows 7 almost five times more secure than XP: "Infection rates for Windows 7 is about four to five times less than for Windows XP, according to Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report."

Important for those thinking that Windows XP is adiquate in 2011.
-Stuart

How Dropbox sacrifices user privacy for cost savings

Must read for anyone considering DropBox for cloud storage...what is the real cost of free? -Stuart

How Dropbox sacrifices user privacy for cost savings:

Summary

Dropbox, the popular cloud based backup service deduplicates the files that its users have stored online. This means that if two different users store the same file in their respective accounts, Dropbox will only actually store a single copy of the file on its servers.

The service tells users that it 'uses the same secure methods as banks and the military to send and store your data' and that '[a]ll files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password.' However, the company does in fact have access to the unencrypted data (if it didn't, it wouldn't be able to detect duplicate data across different accounts).

This bandwidth and disk storage design tweak creates an easily observable side channel through which a single bit of data (whether any particular file is already stored by one or more users) can be observed.

If you value your privacy or are worried about what might happen if Dropbox were compelled by a court order to disclose which of its users have stored a particular file, you should encrypt your data yourself with a tool like truecrypt or switch to one of several cloud based backup services that encrypt data with a key only known to the user.

Whats thinner than a MacBook Air?

Samsung Series 9 arrives: lighter, thinner than MacBook Air

Wonderful to see some of these great versitile Windows based notebooks being released!

Google Responds To Android Malware, Will Fix Infected Devices And ‘Remote Kill’ Malicious Apps

Google has now confirmed that 58 malicious applications were uploaded to Android Market, and that they were downloaded onto around 260,000 devices before Google removed the apps Tuesday evening. That number sounds alarmingly high, but Google believes that only device-specific information, namely the phone’s IMEI number, was compromised — and that no personal data or account information was ever transferred. Given that these apps were getting root access, this could have been a lot worse. Now the cleanup begins.

Something to think about as smart phones becoming common place. Be careful what you install on your phone!
-Stuart

Scary Smartphone Privacy Story