Over iT!

I don’t blog very often, so it has to be something pretty special when I do. Our buds over at DataSavers LLC successfully recovered some important data for a very happy owner of a Windows 3.1 machine. He’d been using Golf Digest’s ScoreCard 4.0 software to log all of his golf games, scores, and courses for over 15 years. Over iT!’s Challenge: get this all to work easily on his brand new 27″ iMac. What a challenge! Windows 3.1 running on new Mac is something I’ve never seen in my time as a certified Apple specialist. We decided to leverage DOSBox, a free software currently used by old-school PC video gamers to play classic DOS games. In under and hour of the client’s call (and never having met with him in person), we had him up and running. The bonus… We now have our old favorite game, Wolf 3D, running on our iMacs.  ;)

VirtualBox 3.2 Beta Virtualizes Mac OS X (On Macs) – VirtualBox – Lifehacker.

Windows/Mac/Linux: Free virtualization tool VirtualBox, technically Oracle VM VirtualBox now, has quietly added “experimental support for Mac OS X guests” to a beta release. That’s good news—at least for Mac owners, and those willing to dig into serious Hackintosh tweaks.

Several security companies today warned of a major malware campaign that tries to dupe users into opening rigged PDFs that exploit an unpatched design flaw in the PDF format.

Users who open the attack PDFs are infected with a variant of a Windows worm known as “Auraax” or “Emold,” researchers said.

The malicious messages masquerade as mail from company system administrators and come with the subject heading of “setting for your mailbox are changed,” said Mary Grace Gabriel, a research engineer in CA Inc.’s security group. A PDF attachment purportedly contains instructions on how to reset e-mail settings. “SMTP and POP3 servers for … mailbox are changed. Please carefully read the attached instructions before updating settings,” the message states.

Major malware campaign abuses unfixed PDF flaw – Computerworld.

This update improves overall stability and fixes issues in a number of areas in Aperture 3. The key areas addressed include:

• Applying adjustments such as Retouch or Chromatic Aberration
• Creating and using Raw Fine Tuning presets
• Viewing, adding and removing detected faces
• Switching target printers and paper sizes when printing
• Duplicating Smart Albums
• Repairing and rebuilding Aperture libraries
• Reconnecting referenced files
• Working with GPS track files in Places
• Searching for keywords in the Query HUD or Keyword Controls

The update is recommended for all users of Aperture 3.

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website:http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2518

Steve Jobs issue a press release to publicly confirm why Flash will not be incorporated into Apple mobile devices.

Read more on Apple’s site:   Thoughts on Flash.

Verizon, the largest wireless provider in the U.S., is reportedly investing in its network to make it capable of handling extra traffic from Apple’s iPhone, a company official said.

In an interview with BusinessWeek, Anthony Melone, Verizon Wireless’ chief technology officer, said his company is prepared if Apple decides to end its exclusive agreement with AT&T in 2010.

“We have put things in place already,” Melone reportedly said. “We are prepared to support that traffic.”

The company official did not, however, comment on the prospect of the iPhone becoming available on Verizon. But various reports as of late have suggested Apple could be working with chip-maker Qualcomm for a CDMA-capable iPhone that could run on the Verizon network. While there is some debate as to whether the phone would be a dual-mode, also compatible with GSM networks, or solely CDMA, reports have pegged the new handset for a possible launch in the third quarter of 2010.

Some analysts believe a Verizon iPhone in 2010 is a very likely scenario. Piper Jaffray believes there is a 70 percent chance Apple will launch the handset in mid-calendar year 2010. With 89 million customers, Verizon would add a great number of potential customers for Apple to expand the iPhone to.

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iPartition 3.2.0 Released: “

Apple has released iTunes 8.2, an update that “now supports iPhone or iPod touch with the iPhone 3.0 Software Update.” The extremely brief release note also indicates that iTunes 8.2 includes many unspecified accessibility improvements and bug fixes; a security vulnerability involving itms: URLs has also been addressed. It’s available via Software Update or as a standalone 77.3 MB download.

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ComboFix is just as spartan as the screenshot here makes it look. You download ComboFix, run it, and it takes care of the rest. The basic ComboFix process looks like this: It backs up your registry, checks to see if you have Windows Recovery Console installed, and then it goes to town on your system scanning away through 40+ stages. When it’s done, ComboFix spits out a log file and lists all the malware it found, which ones it was able to remove, and which ones you’ll have to use your Google-fu to look up how to remove manually. It isn’t fancy, but it gets the job done and gives you a detailed report at the end to take to security forums for help if you need it.

Bucking the trend for ever-smaller devices, Amazon has announced the Kindle DX, a scaled-up version of the company’s much-discussed ebook reading device. Along with a larger screen, the Kindle DX provides a native PDF reader, finally making it compatible with the most common digital format for highly formatted electronic documents.

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