^{Where it all started}

So you say you’re getting download errors on HD movies in iTunes?  You’ve contacted Apple support, and they haven’t been able to help?  Your HD movie sits there in your download queue, just sitting and sitting, and when you try to download it, it times out after slooooowly downloading just a few megabytes?  Learn from me, grasshopper, and you will save yourself some time!

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It looks like Google decided to take on a small chunk of Microsoft, specifically their Internet Explorer v6 web browser, and won.

As of March 1st, Google will no longer support the IE6 browser for Google Docs or Google Sites.

IE users will have to upgrade to at least version 7 if they want to use those products, as “many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers,” said in the Official Google Enterprise Blog.

What is supported?  IE7, Firefox 3 (and newer), Chrome 4 (and newer) and Safari 3 (and newer).  Why did they decide to do this now?  Its probably due to the flaw in IE6 that was exploited recently that took aim at Google and some other U.S. companies, which Microsoft released a patch for earlier in January.

Personally, I am surprised that companies and consumers are still using IE6. With all of IE7’s improvements, the upgrade should have been a no-brainer.  And, it comes on all new PCs anyway.

I was on a Norwegian Cruise Lines “Cruise to Nowhere” this weekend, and on each floor they had large LCD monitors letting you know what was going on around the ship, such as which restaurants had a wait, and what bars were on which deck.

Apparently they might want to switch over to Firefox, as Internet Explorer had a little trouble keeping up — and it pooped out a little before midnight on Deck 13!

This is one of those bits of news that bears repeating, particularly if you use online banking.  CNET is reporting about a new type of Trojan horse, known as URLZone, that is designed not to steal your login information for online banking sites, but rather to actually steal your money while you’re on the bank’s website.  URLZone is sophisticated enough that it calculates how much money to steal based on how much is in your account, then displays a false balance to the user so as not to arouse suspicion.

The Trojan is being distributed through emails, infected sites that carry the malware, or an Adobe PDF.   It exploits a hole in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, IE7, IE8, and Opera running on Windows systems.  According to the firm that identified the Trojan horse, about 90,000 computers have visited sites with the malware, over 6,000 have been infected, and a few hundred have actually been used to steal the users’ money.

For more details, see CNET’s articles here and here.

[via CNET]

Following the Google Labs and Gmail Labs, the people behind the Google Toolbar Team has chosen to free their imagination and build and deliver fast improvements to the Google Toolbar.

Here are the first two creatures of the Google Toolbar Labs.

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Microsoft last night introduced a new service called Live Mesh. After reading a half dozen summaries of the service (none of which had very concrete information), I concluded that Live Mesh is an advanced synchronization tool that does pretty much what Windows Live Foldershare has been accomplishing on my PC for the last two years. Using Foldershare I create one folder on my office computer called “Sync” – then on each of my remote computers Foldershare automatically synchronizes the contents of the folder (and all subfolders). It’s very cool – BUT – I also use Google Apps (documents and spreadsheets) – which don’t require any of this because all data is saved on the web and accessible from any Internet connected computer. This is where Microsoft is getting desperate to close the gap and protect their legacy desktop software. Will Live Mesh be worth the wait? It’s hard to say but you can get in line to test it – and I’ll show you where to sign up.

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