Sunday, December 31, 2006

Letterpop--Create amazing newsletters for free.

I came across this amazing site today where you can create your own creative and unique newsletters. Now instead of going to various sites to pick a greeting card you can create your own. Once you sign up for a free registration you can even use your own pics and photos and thus customize it.

There is a 12 month free premium membership available for users registering now.

One can even use this to create wedding cards, newsletters for small businesses etc:- All you will need is a printer if you want to have a hard copy of the newsletter. But if you just want to send your custom made newsletter or cards to someone over the internet just click on the email button.

There are currently 14 templates available and once you are upgraded to premium (which as I mentioned is free now) you will get a wider range of templates. All users signing up now will be upgraded to premium soon. And there are six pre-set images. But like I mentioned earlier one can upload their own images once you sign up. You can upload upto 25 images.

You can drag and drop the template and then your images. By clicking on the "Headlines" and "Text here" you get to see the composer and you can choose a variety of fonts and colors.

The news letters are auto saved and you can always go back to the newsletters that you have been working on even if happen to accidentally close a page.

This site was started recently and you can expect a lot of upgrades.

So, pay a visit to the Letterpop and let your creative juices flow.

Anti Rootkit for Windows Vista.

F-secure has on 29th Dec released a beta version of it's Black light AntiRootkit software which supports Windows vista. This also supports the Windows 2003 server and will work with all other supported platforms too.

Currently it supports 32 bit versions. But F-secure is adding support for 64 bit OS.

There are currently no known rootkits for the 64 bit operating systems. But since it is not impossible to create rootkits for the 64 bit operating systems F-secure is will be adding support for that too.

As I had mentioned in an earlier article about Kaspersky and Vista, Kaspersky also has released a beta version of it's Antivirus software which supports Windows vista.

You can download the new beta BlackLight here.

Related reading:-
What are rootkits and AntiRootkits.

Worm sends massive amounts of fake NewYear greetings.



Luder.A also known as Tibs.jy is an email worm, a dropper for a trojan downloader and a file infector and it has been reported by F-Secure that this worm is sending out mass emails in the form of fake New year greetings.

The numbers are big enough for F-secure to raise the threat level for this worm to Radar Alert Level 2.
The attachments mostly comes in the form of Postcard.exe and is always themed around New year even though the text might vary.

According the report, before spreading the worm collects e-mail addresses from an infected computer. It locates and reads the WAB (Windows Address Book) file. The worm avoids sending e-mails to e-mail addresses that contain any of the following:

* microsoft
* .mil
* .gov

To learn how to disinfect the worm go here.

Kaspersky and Vista.

On the 22nd of this monthKaspersky has announced support for the Vista operating system through it's Anti-Virus 6.0 and Internet Security 6.0 personal software products. The new feature added to these products which is Maintenance Pack 2 is the support for Vista.


It was only recently that Jim Allchin of Microsoft was misinterpreted by the Media and was reported that Vista is such a secure OS that it will not need any additional antivirus protection.

In an article written by the CEO of Kaspersky, Natalya Kaspersky, she makes some good points about how Vista is far from being a fully secured OS on it's own.

Vista comes with Windows Defender but this is just an Antispyware and it does not protect against all malwares. Users can also choose to use One Care provided by Microsoft but this does not come as a part of Vista and has to be purchased separately. This new commercial Antivirus program by Microsoft still has it's limitations. And there are three points that Natalya makes regarding that aspect:

1. Microsoft’s reputation in the security field. Microsoft still does not have a good reputation in this area. By default, Microsoft solutions are perceived as being insecure or full of security loopholes. These loopholes in Windows and MS Office applications are due, above all, to extraordinary popularity – hackers across the world are going to hack programs used by the majority. Given this, I am afraid that Microsoft’s new antivirus solutions may suffer the same fate; virus writers will create malware that is designed primarily to evade detection by OneCare.

2. Another important factor is the speed at which vendors have to respond to new threats. All vendors face the same dilemma – either detect the maximum possible number of malicious programs (even at the risk of false positives) or avoid false positives at the risk of failing to detect malicious programs. Just remember the media fuss which broke out when Microsoft's antivirus detected Gmail as being malicious, with only a few journalists failing to pick up on the story. Another slightly less well-known case was when a Microsoft product detected the Russian antivirus product Dr. Web. Given Microsoft’s brand and reputation, the company simply cannot allow itself to make such mistakes. As Microsoft will need to check each potential false positive with its legal department, response to new threats will inevitably be slow.

3. The detection rate is an important characteristic of any antivirus. AV-Test GmbH at the University of Magdeburg tested OneCare in September and November 2006. The results from both tests indicated a detection rate that would be considered fairly low for your average antivirus product (the most recent – 81.22%).

Natalya clearly states that Windows Vista does have a number of features that improve security, but it still cannot guarantee protection against malware. A standalone antivirus solution is therefore a must.

Natalya's article gives some insight into the Vista security aspects. Read the article here.

So Vista needs to be protected by an Antivirus solution from an expert and experienced Antivirus vendor. And the beta versions of Kaspersky Antivirus 6.0 and Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 with the Maintenance Pack 2 does just that.

You can download the beta version here and can be downloaded for free now.






Multiply.com--amazing photo sharing site with a difference.


My friend Alex who runs the Samanblog recently asked me to check out this site. And I found out that this is a great photo and video sharing with a difference and let me share with you why I feel so:

The most friendly stuff when it comes to uploading photos is that there is a Java and Ajax upload tools available at this site when you choose to upload photos. And instead of just uploading photos one by one, using this option you can just drag and drop all your photos or even copy and paste all the photos onto the upload box. And I dig this feature. YOu can also import photos from Yahoo, Windows Live spaces, Flickr or any other web pages.

You can choose these options to upload photos by clicking on the related link at the bottom of the page where you upload photos by where it is written "Check out our JAVA, AJAX and E-Mail upload tools.

One can even upload photos via email.

At multiply.com you can Import contacts from Yahoo, MSN, Myspace etc:- Or add contacts manually. This is not just a one-stop site for uploading and sharing your photos but you can share your videos, music, and even have a blog space and start your own network by importing contacts from all popular social networking sites such as myspace, Orkut etc:-

You also get an yourname@multiply.com url and can customize your webpage.

Another feature is that apart from uploading your own vidoes you can add videos from YouTube and Google videos and can upload your music to this site and share it with your friends.

Apart all these there is a free blogspace available and many other features. Check it out folks.

Google