One year ago today we made our first Technibble post. In the span of the year we have made over 370 articles/news posts and have had over 1,170 members join our forums. Heres to another good year!

Microsoft sends out a warning to those who use calendars in their operating systems to be careful because of the new daylight-saving time that was made in 2005 by the U.S. law.

The new daylight-saving time would start three weeks earlier and end one week later. The reason for the change, according to the U.S. congress, is that it would translate to more energy savings.

This new change affects U.S. and Canada but not most countrys. A person who works for CalConnect, a company that develops Calendar software said it is hard to predict how much damage the problem will do.

Source: Lfpress

SoftPerfect Network Scanner is a free multi-threaded IP, NetBIOS and SNMP network scanner. This tool will ping computers, scan for listening TCP ports and displays the resources available on the network (router web logins, printers, computer shares etc..).
I personally have used this network scanning tool many times on clients computers for finding their router or wireless access point’s IP address on their network if the IP is unknown. A must have tool if you do anything with network setup and repairs.
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New flaws have been found in the newest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows and Mozilla Firefox for Windows and Unix.

The way it works is that an unsuspecting web visitor surfs a webpage where he or she has to enter certain characters on a field. Once entered, the user’s sensitive hardrive contents will be revealed to an attacker.

This method involves the features in Windows and Unix that lets a user upload a file to a remote server using either the Internet Explorer or Firefox programs.

Microsoft is currently investigating the situation.

Source: The Register

Its time for us to dig into our archives and find our most popular posts in case you may have missed them or weren’t a Technibble reader back then.
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A Microsoft exceutive from the RSA Conference in San Francisco has announced that the next Windows operating system will be released in less than two years.

Vista was supposed to be released two years after XP. However, they decided to make major changes for Vista which means it will go over their original deadline. Therefore, they released Service Pack number 2 for XP instead.

The next operating system is rumored to be called as Vienna. Ben Fathi, the vice president of development at Windows Core Operating System Division said their team is not supposed to talk about the name of the next OS.

Source: Earthtimes

Most users of Microsoft’s email/contact/calendar software “Outlook” have most likely come across this problem at some point. It can occur when Outlook is closed and then the user tries to open it again from its system tray (near the clock) icon. This icon will remain in the system tray until the computer is rebooted and can cause problems if Outlook is shared because the database remains open while this icon is active.
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PC World reports that the firewall of Windows Vista fails on outbound security.

They note that by default, outbound filtering in Winows Vista is not turned on. In order to get around this problem, the user must use the Microsoft Management Console. Then go to Windows Firewall with an applet called Advanced Security Group Policy. The user will see a command prompt where he should type in “wf.msc” without the quotation marks. Then follow more instructions which is located on PC World’s article.

The article also mentioned that it lacks a rule that prevents all malware on making outbound connections.

Microsoft will release twelve patches according to their blog on their Technet site.

Five of these patches will fix some flaws on the Windows operating system environement. At least one of them is rated as critical.

Two of the updates are designed to fix flaws on the Microsoft Office softwares.

One update is designed for both Windows and Office.

The other updates are for:

-Windows Live OneCare
-Antigen
-Windows Defender
-Forefront Security for Exchange Server
-Forefront Security for SharePoint

Neither one of these five updates have been rated as critical.

Source: Tgdaily

If you’ve decided you are going to take the plunge, and set up on your own as a freelance technician, before going out and buying a set of mini tools and an anti-static wristband, spend a little time looking at the business side of your new venture. This article looks at branding, a good place to start when you’re just about to venture out into the big wide world.
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