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Back in January, I posted a preview of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server, a product that should send shivers of delight down the spine of any home computing enthusiast. Windows Home Server, or WHS, is the product we’ve been waiting for quite a long time, and then some: In addition to the expected digital media sharing features, WHS also offers a pervasive platform for full-home PC backups, hot-add expandable storage, and remote access. And best of all, it will be made available both as a standalone software package (which you can install on any PC or server) and as a bundle with specially-made home server hardware.

WHS is expected in late 2006, but since my initial preview, Microsoft has made a number of improvements to this product. First, the company released Beta 2 (see my screenshot galleries), the first beta version of WHS to ship to users outside of Microsoft. WHS Beta 2 offered a decent look at the features I’d described back in my preview, so I didn’t provide an overview of that version. But since then, most recently, Microsoft has shipped another beta release. Dubbed the April 2007 CTP (Community Technology Preview), this WHS release offers dramatic improvements and a near-feature-complete look at this evolving product. The April CTP also comes on the heels of news that Microsoft has shipped a software development kit (SDK) that will allow enterprising third party developers to ship WHS software add-ons that will extend this product in exciting ways. Taken together, we now have a much better idea of how WHS is shaping up.

View: Full Story @ winsupersite.com

What’s New in Thunderbird 2

* Message Tags: Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.
* Visual Theme: Thunderbird 2’s theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability and maximize screen real estate.
* Session History Navigation: Back and Forward buttons allow navigation through message history.
* Advanced Folder Views: Customize the folder pane to show favorite, unread or recent folders.
* Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.
* Improved Support For Extensions: Extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database.
* Improved New Mail Notification Alerts: New mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message preview text.
* Folder Summary Popups: Mouse over a folder with new messages to see a summary of the new messages in that folder.
* Saved Search Folder Performance: Search results for saved search folders are now cached, improving folder loading performance.
* Find As You Type: Finds and highlights message text as you type.
* Improved Filing Tools: Recent folder menu items for moving and copying messages to recently used folders. Move / Copy again functionality.
* Updates to the Extension System: The extension system has been updated to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions.
* New Windows installer: Based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, the new Windows installer resolves many long-standing issues.
* Windows Vista Support: Many enhancements and fixes for Windows Vista.

View: Full Story @ Mozilla.com

Increasingly the actual code, often JavaScript, used to attack PCs is hidden in Flash animations or scrambled so that anyone who examines the source of a page can’t easily identify it, said Jose Nazario, a senior software engineer at Arbor Networks, in a presentation at the CanSecWest security confab here.

“Their obfuscation tools are primitive but effective,” Nazario said. “They use obfuscation to avoid simple signatures,” he said, referring to security techniques based on signatures to detect malicious Web sites. Signatures are fingerprints of known attacks.

Web attacks have become commonplace. Tens of thousands of Web sites attempt to install malicious code, according to StopBadware.org. The sites, the bulk of which are compromised sites, often drop a Trojan horse or other pest onto a PC through a security hole in the Web browser.

View: Full Story @ News.com

Rootkits–malicious software that operates in a stealth fashion by hiding its files, processes and registry keys–have grown over the past five years from 27 components to 2,400, according to McAfee’s Rootkits Part 2: A Technical Primer (PDF).

“The trend is it used to be rootkit A was used, but now it’s different components in different rootkit malware,” said Dave Marcus, security researcher and communications manager for McAfee Avert Labs. “Now, there are more ways attackers can use these components to hide their malware.”

Attackers use rootkits to hide their malicious software, which can range from spyware to keylogger software that can steal sensitive information from users’ computers. The rootkits can then be used to create a hidden directory or folder designed to keep it out of view from a user’s operating system and security software.

View: Full Story @ News.com

MySpace is going into the news business with a service that will scour the internet for news stories and let users vote on which ones receive the most exposure.

This approach blends elements of Google News and sites such as Digg and Netscape, which rely on readers to submit stories and determine their prominence. It also marks the site’s ambitions to become a web portal like Yahoo!, providing its users with a front door to the internet.

MySpace, which is owned by News Corp, also the parent company of Times Online, will display headlines from external new sites, a practice that attracted legal challenges when Google used it for its news service.

View: Full Story @ TimesOnline

During March, MessageLabs intercepted 716 e-mail messages that were part of 249 targeted attacks aimed at 216 of its customers, the Gloucester, England-based provider of hosted e-mail filtering services said in a research report. Of the attacks, almost 200 consisted of a single malicious e-mail designed to infiltrate an organization, MessageLabs said.

“These numbers represent a significant increase when compared to the same period last year when attack rates reached one or two per day,” MessageLabs said.

Security experts have said that limited-scale attacks are the most dangerous. Widespread worms, viruses or Trojan horses sent to millions of mailboxes are typically not a grave concern because they can be blocked. But targeted Trojan horses, especially those aimed at specific businesses, have become nightmares as they can fly under the radar.

View: Full Story @ news.com

High-flying startup StumbleUpon has been rumored to be in acquisition discussions since at least last November. Recently we’ve heard that talks have heated up again, with Google, AOL and eBay as potential suitors. A source with knowledge of the deal now says the company has signed a term sheet with eBay to be acquired. The price is somewhere between $40 – $75 million. (update: GigaOm is now reporting the price at a $40 – $45 million).

StumbleUpon lets users rate websites via a browser toolbar. At any time a user can click “Stumble!” and will be taken to a website highly rated by other StumbleUpon users who tend to vote in a similar way as the person “stumbling.” More often than not, it’s something almost serendipitously interesting to the reader. The company expanded into video referrals in late 2006.

People who are passionate about StumbleUpon say they like it because of the surprise factor in what they see next, and the fact that the product has such a high hit rate in delivering interesting new content. The StumbleUpon site says they have 2.1 million users, up from 1.7 million in December 2006. 4+ million sites are “stumbled” daily.

View: Full Story @ techcrunch.com

Windows XP will stop being available on new PCs from the end of January 2008.

Microsoft is keeping to a plan to stop selling the operating system even though surveys show a lukewarm response to Windows Vista among consumers.

A poll by US market research firm Harris Interactive found that only 10% of those questioned were planning to upgrade to Vista in the near future.

All versions of XP, including those made for media centre or tablet PCs, are affected by the decision.

View: Full Story @ BBCNews

Your data’s trapped on a dead computer. You lost your login password. You never wrote down the product key on a non-working Windows installation. Your Mac won’t start.

Don’t pay the extortionists at the computer repair shop 800 bucks to get your data back or start up your dead computer. Plenty of free tools can help you and are available for download right now. Today we’ve got our top 10 system recovery picks which span operating systems but all cost the same: exactly nothing.

View: Full Story @ LifeHacker