Microsoft has made an announcement at the Photo Marketing Association 07 International Convention and Trade Show in Las Vegas about a new format for digital pictures. It is called HD Photo.

They said that it will be twice as efficient as JPEG in terms of compressing an image. It will also have fewer damaging artifacts and higher-quality images even though it will only have a half of the resulting file size.

Beta versions of this format has been released as a plug-in for Adobe’s Photoshop software. Both the CS2 and CS3 versions of Photoshop are supported.

Source: XTVWorld

DABCC has reported that a new worm is on the loose which had attacked Korean computers.

The worm is called “MSVista OS” and it is a file disguised as a Vista file. It is a compressed file according to the report and the way to activate this virus is by uncompressing it. After a user uncompressed the file, it installs a backdoor and it will steal private information from the user’s computer.

It debut last January all over the world. The report does not contain info on whether a patch has been released to stop this worm on Windows computers.

Source: DABCC

Microsoft has admitted that a bug exists in their OneCare software in Vista which deletes email in both Outlook and Outlook Express email application programs.

They responded that the bug happens because it may think that an email in either of the Outlook versions may contain a malicious code. In this case, OneCare quarantines the data file of the Outlook programs.

An instruction has been given by Microsoft on how to recover the data if this happens to a user. You can find it in Computerworld’s article here along with a more detailed report about this issue.

OK tigers and tigresses. You’ve decided you’re going to employ a member of staff, you’ve managed to put aside a budgetary allowance to do so, and you even have an idea of what you want your new recruit to do. The next step in doing this is to share this hot news with the rest of the world, to ensure you have the best and brightest of the nation/your locale hammering on the door waiting to join your workforce and aspiring to pass your anti-static wristband (as it were!).
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Mozilla has recently released a patch for a JavaScript vulnerability on their Firefox internet browser.

The vulnerabilty allowed some things in image tags even though users have disabled the JavaScript function on Firefox. Since disabling the JavaScript function does not work against this vulnerability, users must update their browser to the latest version which is 2.0.0.2 or version 1.5.0.10 for those who are using version 1 of Firefox.

The application Seamonkey suite is also affected by this bug and Mozilla released a patch for this software too.

Source: Computerworld

Its time for us to dig into our archives for a second time (here is the first one if you missed it) 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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Apple has released a patch which fixes eight vulnerabilities on Windows Vista for their Quicktime multi-media player software. Part of the bugs that were fixed are security vulnerabilities which could make the software crash or run a malicious code on it.

Kirk McElhearn who is an author of Mac OS and other Apple products said “Arbitrary code execution means someone can stick a payload into a QuickTime movie or an image file and it can activate but, given the way Macs work … if something is going to touch parts of system, you are going to get an authentication dialog. It’s not going to happen without people knowing, no matter what.”

Source: Mac News World

Apple has released a new version of iTunes for Windows recently. The version number is 7.1. It patches some incompatibility issues with Windows Vista but major bugs still exists.

In their website, they have a bulletin which states “Apple is actively working with Microsoft to resolve a few remaining known issues.”

One of the issues that were not resolved in this release is about ejecting an iPod using the Safely Eject Hardware function in Vista. If this is not done properly, it may corrupt a user’s iPod.

Apple also warns that their update still does not support 64-bit Vista versions.

Source: iTnews

This one is for experienced users only; This free tool allows you to view nearly everything on your system that is set to automatically run and goes far beyond the capabilities of MSConfig. This tool can show you files that are in your startup folder, files being launched from the registry, files that are launched by TaskScheduler, files that Windows starts by default such as DLL’s, Microsoft and 3rd party services and much more.
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Virus Bulletin has tested Windows Live OneCare and fifteen other security suites against malware. The result concludes that it failed to detect or stop thirty-seven malicious programs.

John Hawes of Virus Bulletin said, “In these days of hourly updates, it is always a surprise and a disappointment to see major products missing them. Computer users deserve to see a better performance than this from security vendors.”

Although OneCare detected over 99.9% of the threats, it failed to stop some polymorphic malware, file infectors, and viruses.

Source: Vnunet.com