E-Musings Mon Immorata

If you are really worried about your Bookmarks. And have access to an FTP- or HTTP-enabled web account, use the Bookmarks Synchronizer extension that saves a remote copy of your Bookmarks as an XML file. I now maintain a common file combining Bookmarks from home and work at my personal web site. A cool extension for frequent downloaders is Metaproducts Download Express. Now available as a Firefox XPI it uses multiple threads to significantly reduce download time. And can even overcome FTP server default settings that limit downloads to 3 streams. This add-in also "learn" filename extensions. And when you cancel a download, opens a window so you can blacklist file types. Internet Explorer users get two more options: when clicking a download button, ALT+Ctrl adds the link while Shift will ignore it.

If you feel the urge to save web text to the clipboard, watch out for a tiresome Windows Clipboard bug. That requires you open the destination application before copying text into the Clipboard. Instead, use QuickNote to store text from a web page. That you can save as .TXT files for later retrieval. Access the feature as a Side bar element, a tab or a floating window. Another cool extension is Javascript Options (works only with Firefox 1.0.1) that updates advanced Javascript settings into their own window and adds an Undo feature. As always the best place to find great Thunderbird and Firefox extensions is Extensions Mirror. Minimizing open applications to Windows Task Bar significantly reduces system resource use. But minimizing to the System Tray is even better. Unfortunately too few many applications support this feature. There are utilities for Firefox (Firefox Preloader) and Thunderbird (TB-Tray) to better manage resource use. Opera 7.5x and later also supports a system tray option (Windows XP and better) but it's only activated if there's a mail account configured. If you like to live (a bit) dangerously consider the new Opera 8 Preview 5 (Build 7497) without Java featuring improved IMAP account management for the M2 client. Opera recommends you access only test IMAP accounts as there's a risk for data corruption! I also notice these Previews are missing included Help. You have to search the online version. As I found while looking for more about (a recently discovered) "inline find" feature that highlights text using a highlight overlay. Activated with period key, it can also auto-discover links on a web page if you use the comma key instead. There's also a new version of Trillian 3.1 that groups contact lists by identity. As well as faster startup times and better icon rendering. Windows XP users benefit from UPnP (Universal Plug 'n Play) that improves transfer rates. Read the complete changelog. If you use Gaim, update to 1.1.4 to resolve significant glitches with Gaim 1.1.3. that cause it to frequently crash. And finally stay alert for a new strain of the Bagel worm. Worm_Bagle.BE spreads by email, using addresses harvested from the Windows Address Book. And includes a second-level infector TROJ_BAGLE.BE to create a worm-Trojan propagation cycle where the worm mass-mails copies of the Trojan. The latter attempts to download copies of the worm from the Web. As of writing none of the target web sites were available. TROJ_BAGLE.BE terminates several antivirus and security-related software and also prevents an infected user from accessing antivirus Web sites! The worm infects all Windows variants. Upon execution, the Trojan drops a copy of itself into the %System folder as WINDLHHL.EXE. And creates several registry entries to auto-run it at system startup. If the Trojan's able to successfully connect to a remote site, it attempts to download EML.EXE, containing a list of recipients to send email to, into the %Windows folder. And will keep attempting to download this file every 100 milliseconds until it succeeds; non-availability still means that you'll experience a bandwidth hit. The worm will try to use an available SMTP or will fall back to its own SMTP engine. It also tries to access the affected system’s Mail Exchanger (MX) server for its mass-mailing routine. If no MX server is available, TROJ_BAGLE.BE uses 217.5.97.137. Stay alert for any messages with a blank subject, an attachment and the message body containing price or new price. And delete them immediately. That's it for this week. More next time. Stay Safe and don't open questionable messages with attachments. Click Here to Email Me