Oh no! My Mac has a Windows Trojan!

In doing some further research on the Skype spam I thought I'd run the online test on my Mac.

Sure enough, it operates exactly the same way in Safari as it does on a Windows Box.

According to this wonderful piece of software, my iMac is infected with the following malware.

• Backdoor:Win32/NT Root
• Backdoor: Win32/Sivuxa
• Trojan.Caijing

Funny enough, that's exactly what my Windows machine has according to this marvellous utility.

Darn it! I knew I should have never put my precious Mac on the network with those horrid, low class Windows boxes. Now it's caught their horrible disease.

The scary thing with this is some people will shell out the 19.95 this rubbish asks for to clean their Macs.

Skype malware, Onlinealert and ScanAlert

One of my computers has Skype Chat turned on. This afternoon I received a message from Security Center ® (Offline) Skype™ Chat (yes those registration marks are what was there) warning me that WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION.

The warning directs the reader to "download the patch" from a website calling itself Onlinealert.

Normally I'd disregard this but this is my test machine that I know is clean so I thought I'd visit the Onlinealert page.

Sure enough, this site runs a fake scan from an organisation called ScanAlert that gives a bunch of fake malware detections.

I don't know how much ScanAlert charge for their wares, but given the false results I personally wouldn't be trusting them too much to keep my computer hacker safe.

Incidentally, the Onlinealert domain is registered to someone in Moscow calling themselves Sergei Machorin.

I'm sure if Sergei really exists, he'll make a few bucks from people who've been fooled into this little scam.

It will be interesting to see what Skype have to say about this.

Ten years doing the radio

I was going through my old files today and found the fax that started my ABC Radio spots.

I didn't realise it, but sometime last month I passed the ten years mark of doing the Weekend show.

I feel old.

The Australian Technology Blog

A new blog is born to join the other seven million created every day.

I've set up the Australian Technology Blog to discuss technology issues and how they affect Australians, both individuals and businesses.

This blog will continue as my outlet for non-technology issues and generally venting my spleen.

I hope you can visit both.

The Lonely Planet sale

In my days of backpacking through the mid and late 80s, Lonely Planet books were by far the most reliable guidebooks to Asia and the more out of the way locations. Since the arrival of the Internet, their Thorn Tree forums have been invaluable when trying to find information on obscure destinations.

So it's heartening to hear the founders, Peter and Maureen Wheeler, have sold 40% of their stake to BBC for a reported $100 million.

I heard Maureen Wheeler on ABC Radio this morning and she said the reason for selling was because they found making money out of the websites too hard compared to making money publishing books.

That's an interesting perspective we can all dwell on. If it's too hard for content rich websites like Lonely Planet, how are humble blogs like this going to survive?

Incidentally, their announcement on the Lonely Planet website is absolutely terrific. A great example of how businesses can use the web.

I suspect they are being a bit too modest about their abilities to deal with the so-called new media.

On the bleeding edge

I had to chuckle reading the Australian IT profile of Gus Kollar, the chief of IT during the Sydney APEC conference.

The older operating system didn't trouble Kollar too much, but the apprehension in his voice was evident when Vista was mentioned.

"We were so courageous to dive deep into Vista," he says.

"Surprisingly, there weren't too many issues."

Phew! I'd hate the software to confuse President George. He might think he's in another country or at another conference.

The Telstra and government war continues

Telstra's clumsy attempt to buy into the Federal election campaign has prompted a predictably fierce response from the minister.

Helen Coonan is quite right, in her own words; "It could have stepped up to the plate. It could have been a leader in rolling out broadband".

Telstra could have been the world leader. Instead Telstra spent ten years doing everything it could to protect its revenues and stymie Australian Internet growth.

What really gets me cranky is throughout this entire period, the current Federal government either fully owned or had a controlling interest in Telstra. They could have fixed all of this in one board meeting.

Instead they sat on their backsides and ignored the urgings of the IT industry, farmers, small business and even Bill Gates. The only thing they did was to fully sell off Telstra at the first opportunity.

Now the Feds find themselves fighting an organisation with a near monopoly that's maximising profits by running down infrastructure and strangling competition.

Rather than blaming Telstra for this situation, Senator Coonan needs to look no further than her boss and the dills he appointed as her predecessors.

Regardless of who is the next communications minister and of what party they are from, the next three years are going to be a very interesting and difficult time for them.

At least we'll be able to say that one minister will be working hard for their money.

Marketing genius

While browsing the web I stumbled on the promo for the Bob Dylan compilation due out next week. The create your own message feature is pure marketing genius.

Thanks to the Bookchase Blog for putting me onto this. The promo certainly worked for me, I'll be buying the album.

XP gets a lifeline while Vista struggles

Finally Microsoft have faced the reality that Vista is not popular with the market and have announced Windows XP will be available beyond the planned January 30, 2008 cut off date.

I've ranted enough about Vista's problems enough on this blog but the main reason why Vista has failed is that the benefits of moving up to Vista do not, for most people, outweigh the negatives.

In my view, the core problem is that Vista is Windows XP with a tutu. That tutu is the User Access Control feature. It gets in the way of what people are doing.

This is a problem of Microsoft's own making. To keep users, and their own software developers, happy they allowed the mess that was the Windows 9x security model to extend into XP.

The stupid thing is the Windows NT family, which includes Vista and XP, always had superior security to earlier versions of Windows but Microsoft decided to ignore it .

I suspect this was because their own software, especially Office XP and 2000, didn't run properly in Limited User profiles.

Being stuck with running most users as Administrators they decided on putting on the UAC tutu and that's made Vista as attractive as pig with lipstick.

There's a lot of things about this debacle that amazes me; how it took the world's biggest software company five years to come out with a substandard product, how the rest of the IT world completely bungled getting their products compatible and why Apple haven't doubled their market share because of this fumbling.

While Microsoft deserve most of the scorn in this schemozzle, the rest of the IT industry should hang their collective heads in shame as well.

When Adwords get things wrong

Today's question on our IT Queries site was about registry cleaners. My reply was less than enthusiastic about these products as most of them are snake oil and there's perfectly good free tools to do the job.

Given my negative reply I had to laugh at what Adwords had inserted at the top of the question.



I know it's possible to exclude certain adwords appearing on your page but I'm not sure I can be bothered blocking them all and I know for every one I block there'll be five others to take their place.

I'll just rely on readers to properly read the article.

They do read, don't they?

The little picture

Nick Gruen writes in his Rough Type blog about the fat guy who can't get his web 2.0 software to work. Salesforce decided to upgrade their software and now it won't synch with Outlook.

I'm not a fan of Nick's blog. I'm more a little picture person than a big picture guy, I'm more interested in the small guy's application of new technology. Like my post yesterday of how a three person office uses Google Maps.

In fact, I'm such a small picture guy not seeing the wood for the trees is not my problem, I'm fighting my way through the underbrush.

So it's interesting to see Nick stoop to my level for a change. And he's absolutely right, the Software-as-a-Service guys need to consider the little stuff as much as the big stuff.

Where I disagree is that synching with Outlook is not little; it's a major problem. Breaking Outlook synchronisation is ridiculous.

I'll bet plenty of corporate IT admins have been sweating while the Chief Executive whatever screams at them about this very issue. Whether Salesforce like it or not, Outlook is the established leader in the PIM field and they have to deal with it.

The danger with letting technology people run an operation is they see the technology as being an end in itself. This is why Linux doesn't get traction in the mass market and why software developers tell small business to ditch Outlook.

In the real world IT is a means to improve productivity: The computers; Internet; Web 2.0 apps and everything else is there to help ordinary people do stuff. When the computer gets in the way of doing things then the computer has to go.

As the fat guy says in his blog,

"...Oh, and I’ll be going back to the open-source free crap for making cool pie-charts out of an SQL database (which my dog could probably write) for the quarterly investor reports. Maybe even Google docs. Maybe even nothing more than a yellow legal pad and some markers."

There's the message for everyone in the IT industry; whether you are a high falutin', macbook toting, Web 2.0 big picture guy or just the mom and pop corner computer store. If your products aren't delivering what the customers want, they will go elsewhere.

Using web applications

One of the fascinating things with the rise of web 2.0 applications is how they are changing business practices. Pretty well every week I see a few new and unexpected ways people are adapting the new tools to their work.

Yesterday I visited a hazardous goods consultant. Most of his business involves inspecting warehouses and factories and advising on how they can meet standards and reduce risks.

Before taking an assignment he uses the satellite view of Google Maps to check out the premises. He's found this helps him pick up features he might have missed when visiting onsite or reviewing plans, it also saves him a lot of time in preparing proposals, quotes and reports.

One of the important aspects is that he can now check out potential clients in places that he wouldn't have considered two or three years ago. While I was there he was checking out a warehouse and factory complex in Perth to see if the job was worth his while.

This is the exciting thing about the new generation of web based applications, they are allowing smaller businesses to reach into markets they couldn't have considered a few years back.

How to kill a web 2.0 product

How do you kill a web based service? Sign an exclusivity deal which locks most users out of your service, that's how.

MySpace signing an exclusivity deal with Optus and blocking Australian who are with other carriers from accessing the mobile service pretty well kills that app dead here.

Mind you, given the average age of an Australian MySpace user is rapidly approaching 12 and that many pre-paid mobile plans don't include data, I doubt MySpace Mobile is generate much interest.

I can understand they have to make as much as they can before the revenue stream completely dries up.

Locked software

Mark Fletcher's Australian Newsagents Blog has two stories of newsagents locked out of point of sale software.

From the posts, I assume this is due to licensing disputes between the store and the software vendor. This is absolutely disgraceful behaviour by the vendor as it cripples the business.

Sadly, this sort of thing is not unusual with proprietary database programs. The data is firmly locked away and difficult to get at unless the victim stumps up a large and improbably amount of money.

I would recommend to anyone considering buying such a program to have a close look at the backup and data export features in the program. All programs should have a local backup function and the ability to export the databases into a generic format like a Comma Separated Values text file.

That way, should you find a dispute looming then you can at least export your business data into a format that other programs can read.

For my money, locking customers out of their own data is shameful behaviour. Sadly this lack of respect for the consumer all too common in the IT industry and is another reason why we are getting a reputation somewhere between real estate agents and used car dealers.

Too many Vista versions

When I first heard of there would be five different versions of Vista I thought it would be a support nightmare. Well I was right on that but now I'm finding it messes me up in other ways.

I'm midway through adapting Dan Gookin's latest "PCs for Dummies" for the Australian market. One of the things that's really, really irritating me is the version differences.

Take for instance the chapter on video making, Dan spends two pages on Windows Movie Maker. The final line reads "this isn't available in all versions of Windows Vista".

This proviso is having to go at least once into every chapter. It's a joke.

I've blogged on this being way too confusing for customers before. To make it harder, most of the entry level PCs, the CHUMPS as Adrian Kingsley-Hughes calls them, come with Vista Home Basic. This means they don't get much of the features Microsoft tout and that we spend much of the book discussing.

There was plenty of confusion between XP Home and Professional. Users were caught out because they bought the wrong type, usually office users buying Home and finding they couldn't connect to the office domain. With Vista it's far, far worse.

Apple are exactly right on this, this is needlessly confusing the market. It also screws up the channel as it increases inventory costs and returns.

To say Vista is not Microsoft's finest hour is an understatement.

Shipping bare PCs

According to CNet The Globalization Institute, a European think tank, has recommended the EU require all PCs to be sold without preloaded operating systems.

I can't see that happening. A bare bones computer is a nightmare, it would send support costs soaring as buyers spend hours installing the operating system and system drivers. Customers want computers to work as soon as they plug them in.

Such a move in the EU would be a boom for the IT support industry. If this came in, I might consider moving to somewhere nice in Europe for a few years to take advantage of this.

Demolishing the silo

The SMH discusses the exodus of companies to the suburbs from the cities. To say I'm sceptical about this is an understatement, moving offices away from transport hubs to car dependent suburbs strikes me as a big step backwards. Even more so given the steady rises in oil prices.

But along with the usual management justifications for the bean counters bright ideas the SMH article claims a new one; moving from a high rise office to a "campus" will destroy "siloing".

It's funny they mention siloing in an article about Optus. The worst case of Siloing I came across was when I was trying to connect a client to the Optus Exchange server.

I just needed the password to connect, so we rang the Optus support desk. No dice, she was using a Dell and the only people on that day were Mac support techs. She's have to call back two days later when the PC guy was in.

We got the password by ringing back a few minutes later and pretending she was on a Mac.

If the bean counters think spending millions on moving to the suburbs and losing half their staff is the way to defeat that sort of mentality, then I wish them the best.

Another Google threat to Sensis

I've previously blogged about the threat Google is to the Yellow and White Pages monopolies Sensis currently holds. Thanks to Techmeme and Search Engine Land, I found Google411.

While this is currently a US-based experiment you can't help but think this is another threat to Sensis' dominance.

If Google launch this in Australia and take a chunk of the directory assistance market it pretty well leaves Sensis with only the printed directory business as a monopoly. Sensis have shown they struggle when forced to compete in a market.

There's no doubt the printed Yellow and White Pages directories are going to be very profitable for a long time to come, but these are declining businesses with high distribution costs.

When I was a Telstra shareholder, I was a firm advocate of them selling Sensis. I'm wondering now if they've left it too late.

Vista drives the switch to Macs

It certainly appears switching to the Mac has become the flavour of the month. We covered it on the last ABC Sydney radio spot, now Jason Fry of the Wall Street Journal has his story of considering switching which is backed up by Mark Cuban's experience.

The message from Mark and Jason's readers is clear, Vista is driving customers away from Microsoft. The only thing restricting Apple's growth is their retail strategy as the New York Time described earlier this week.

We've certainly had a number of clients looking at changing but so far few have done so. Those that have seem to be happy with one or two exceptions.

There's no doubt though that Microsoft has really dropped the ball on Vista. Not enough to threaten their position in the market, but even one of the world's biggest companies can't afford many more mistakes like this.

Missing sales opportunities

I visited a client on Friday who had bought a new printer. One of the irritations of buying printers is how manufacturers skimp on a couple of dollars by not supplying USB cables which are essential to set up the machine.

This should be a great selling opportunity for the sales person to make more profit on the sale, given the fat margins shops make on cables. Yet nearly half the new printers I see are sold without a cable.

For the manufacturer, this is false economy as they almost certainly receive support calls from upset customers who can't figure out how to plug the printer in. This probably wipes out any savings from not throwing a cable into the box.

The local shop is even more at risk as those customers who can't set it up may well return the printer. That wipes out the profit on the next five printers.

Another niggle is the failure of shops to sell paper to go with the printer. Again this is another good opportunity. My client had no paper in her house.

The client suggested they could throw the cable and paper in for free as a goodwill gesture. Unfortunately too much of the retail IT industry operates on margins too fine to allow that. Also many customers are wholly price driven so goodwill gestures are usually wasted.

I charged for the cable, but gave some paper as a goodwill gesture. I'm still baffled why the shops don't do this.