Google URL Shortener

Google has launched updated versions of the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner that offer a new URL shortening service from Google called the Google URL Shortener.

Google URL Shortener at goo.gl is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them into fewer characters to make a link that is easier to share, tweet, or email to friends. The core goals of this service are:

• Stability – ensuring that the service has very good uptime
• Security – protecting users from malware and phishing pages
• Speed – fast resolution of short URLs

Google URL Shortener is currently available for Google products and not for broader consumer use.

The Google privacy policy applies to the Google URL Shortener. Please note that Google may choose to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about particular shortened links, such as the number of end user clicks.

The Ultimate Geek TaskForce!

The Ultimate Geek TaskForce! is a fairly new and helpful forum dedicated to all things security. A daunting task in these days when computer help forums are plentiful.

Why The Ultimate Geek TaskForce? Well if you have ever posted on a help forum  for help removing malware then you know the waiting time can be up to a week. Since this website is “less traveled” you can usually get an answer and maybe even cured withing an hour. Not only for your malware ailments but with any computer issue from the beginner tips to something that may be a bit more geeky like error codes to hardware issues.

Be on the safe side and have an expert examine your computer for malware. Just run the scans in the Read before posting your log topic and then post the logs in the Malware/Threat Removal forum.

Membership is free. All you have to do is create an account (2 minutes time) and post your question. The Ultimate Geek TaskForce!

Explore as Administrator PowerToy

Blog entry found at The Windows Club. Explore as Administrator PowerToy released | The Windows Club

Have you ever tried to use Windows Explorer to create a folder within or copy a file into a protected folder such a Program Files or Windows and had to deal with the confusing “File Operation” dialog box before you could complete your task. This is one of the most confusing and poorly understood features of User Account Control.

When running as a administrator with UAC enabled, your standard user token does not have write permissions to these protected folders.

Unfortunately, because Windows Explorer was not designed to run in multiple instances in the same desktop session, Windows cannot simply throw up a UAC prompt and then launch an elevated instance of Explorer.

Instead, you get one or more elevation prompts (if full-prompting is enabled) and Windows completes the operations using the full administrator token. This can be annoying if you have to make repeated operations in these folders.

To work around this annoyance, you may want to check out the Explore as Administrator PowerToy. For this PowerToy to work, the Elevate Command PowerToy must also be installed.

GoogleGoogleGoogleGoolge

Why four Googles? GoogleGoogleGoogleGoolge lets you search Google x4 times on the same open tab!

The developers were chatting on Google Talk one night, and they wondered if googlegoogle.com was taken. It was, but googlegooglegooglegoogle.com was available. In a impulse buy, they purchased the domain and someone had the idea of putting four googles on the page. Thus, googlegooglegooglegoogle was born.

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Try it for yourself. GoogleGoogleGoogleGoolge.com

What things to do when bored on the Internet?

What things to do when bored on the Internet?

A great article from the Computer Hope Administrator with all sorts of time killing things to do sitting at your keyboard.

Enjoy and thanks Nathan!

STAYSAFEONLINE.org

This is a great website with online safety information for everyone from the home user, school children to businesses. Take some time to look around and you will find plenty of information and activities to occupy your time and help you learn to be safe online all at the same time.

Welcome to Stay Safe Online | STAYSAFEONLINE.org

Home Users

K-12 Educators

Higher Education

Small Business

Tools & Resources

Cyber Security Awareness Month

Fix MSE Utility – Repair Microsoft Security Essentials

Repair Microsoft Security Essentials with Fix MSE Utility from The Windows Club.

We are pleased to release the Fix MSE Utility v 1.0. This freeware portable utility will reset all the Registry and other settings of Microsoft Security Essentials to default value.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a new antivirus from Microsoft. It provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.

Microsoft Malware Protection Center

Resizeable Textarea add-on for Firefox

A lot of forums and boards provide very small textareas for postings. If you type a long post you have to scroll up and down to read and edit what you have written. This can be very annoying!

The Resizeable Textarea extension lets you resize most textareas in online forums and message boards. Works great! Give it a try. Resizeable Textarea for Firefox

Add-ons Blocklist | Mozilla

UPDATE: Mozilla has now removed the extensions from the block list after Microsoft clarified some information in its bulletin on how Firefox users were affected. More information: Mozilla unblocks one sneaky Microsoft add-on

I just got a pop up in Firefox saying it’s blocked some Microsoft add-ons because of high security risks.

Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant 1.1
Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5.30729.1

The two add-ons were automatically added to Firefox as a part of recent Windows updates without approval from the user (us) or explaining what they do and if they are actually needed. Microsoft even goes so far as to change the user agent string of Firefox by appending the user’s current .NET framework version to the end of the existing string!

Now it looks like Mozilla has had enough with Microsoft’s antics and have decided to fight back by disabling these unneeded and unauthorized add-ons. Here is the page you go to when clicking ‘More information.’ Add-ons Blocklist | Mozilla

I wonder if this is a big war in the making? As long as our browsers don’t become the battle field then let them go at each other. Ultimately a war should make a better, stronger browser for everyone no matter if you use IE or Firefox. At least that’s my hopes.

Edit: The officail Mozilla blog post. .NET Framework Assistant Blocked to Disarm Security Vulnerability

MojoPac

MojoPac turns any USB 2.0 storage device, such as iPods, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, USB-enabled cell phones, and USB-enabled digital cameras, into a portable computing environment. The term “MojoPac” is used by the company to refer to the software application, the virtualized environment running inside this software, and the USB storage device that contains the software and relevant applications. MojoPac supports popular applications such as Firefox and Microsoft Office, and it is also high performance enough to run popular PC Games such as World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2.

It looks and acts like a new install of Windows, it has it’s own Desktop, My Computer and also any programs that you install into it. I found the easiest way to install a program into it, is have it all set up and then drag the .exe onto your Pen drive using your host computer, then go back into Mojopac and double click the .exe.

The video explains it much better than I can. http://www.mojopac.com

MojoPac Installation instructions.