I got an email today from some friends who run a Bay Area IT consultancy. They deal almost exclusively in the PC trade but are Mac savvy themselves, so I was startled a bit by the subject line for their monthly Good News / Bad News newsletter: Two Very Bad Mac OSX Viruses.

Of course, I knew from chatter over the summer and from more recent conversation that the days of Macs being impervious to viruses and malware are probably numbered and sure enough, even Apple Support now officially recommends users install antivirus protection on Mac systems:

Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.

The Apple knowledge base article goes on to recommend programs from Intego, Symantec/Norton and McAfee, all of which are commercially licensed products.

My consulting friends recommended iAntivirus, which is a free program, and said, “We have never used it but reviewers say it is good for being a free program. Download and use all free software with caution!”

Another free Mac virus checker (though the developer gratefully accepts all donations) is ClamXav, an updated version of which was released on Monday; the program gets 4.25 stars at Mac Update.

So, is that it? Are we all going to opt for the flu shot from now on? If you’ve installed antivirus software on your Mac, tell us how it’s going and what you like. If you haven’t, or don’t plan to, tell us why in comments.

A new application called AddressBookSync lets you match Facebook user photos and birthdays with your Mac OS X address book and your iPhone, simplifying your offline life just a little bit. AddressBookSync does his by matching names from your Facebook friends list to those in your address book. There is an option for “Last Name Only” matching, as well as the ability to select which friends you would and would not like to be synchronized for this application. From then on, future updates for user photos and birthdays will be automated.

AddressBookSync seems pretty basic in its offerings, especially as other applications such as Plaxo have been synchronizing aspects of your social network with offline applications and address books for some time now. But if you’re a Mac user and you’d like to have your address book updated with the ever-changing user photos of your friends, be sure to check this app out. Download it here.

It’s a long road to a victory in the browser wars. Just ask Firefox. The open source browser which launched in 2004 just cracked the 20 percent threshold of the market share for November, according to Net Applications, pushing it a step closer but still miles away from IE.

Recently a few new players have also thrown their hats in the ring, including Google with its much-hyped Chrome and the lesser known, Mozilla-based social web browser Flock, which released its 2.0 version this past October. But do these newcomers even stand a chance?

The Basics

Firefox is gaining ground for good reason: it’s simple, reliable and secure. Its tabbed browsing led to a similar remodel in IE and it has a slew of add-ons that give it a leg up over the competition. It’s slowly becoming the new standard with a steady audience, and that will be hard to beat anytime soon. And its open source platform leaves room for alternatives and experimental niche browsers like Flock.

Flock 2.0 is basically a Firefox with a lot of perks and pre-installed add-ons for those heavy into social networking.  Think of it as a FriendFeed of the browser world, which brings all of your friends from 23 various networks together in a sidebar. It is also one of the first browsers to incorporate media feeds for photos and videos.  Flock is all about sharing what you find on the web as you surf, and it allows you to accomplish this pretty easily by dragging and dropping them either into an email or onto a friend.

Chrome is the polar opposite of Flock, and its big advantage is that it’s even simpler than Firefox, or any other browser out there right now.  The search bar is also integrated into the address bar, which seems to be the wave of the future, at least for those who swear by Google search and don’t need any bells and whistles. Unfortunately, Chrome’s only available for PCs at the moment.

Usability

Chrome wins hands down on getting the job done.  It’s quick and painless with a clear focus of searching for information using Google’s engine.  Dynamic tabbed browsing is a staple now, and if anything crashes, only that tab will go down, not your entire session, which is nice. But if you want a richer web browsing experience stick with Firefox or Flock.  There’s also no easy way to subscribe to RSS feeds from the search bar as there is with Firefox.

Flock can feel a bit overwhelming at times with all of the sidebars of information, but once you get everything set up and get the hang of it, it’s pretty convenient and preferable to keeping a million tabs open for sites like Twitter and Facebook. The drag and drop interface is great.  When you just want to email a YouTube video or picture it’s much easier than copying any URLs, although it does also seem a bit too easy to share something that you might not want shared.

The only other problem with the social networks is that you can’t really fit all of that functionality into a sidebar.  It’s a good way of consolidating friends, but it’s more like a giant address book than anything else. Simple things like posting tweets are a bit confusing, with no clear box for entering in text. When a friend adds content, however, it will open up the profile in the main browser in full view, so you still need to go back to the source.

Speed

Despite the extra features, Flock is surprisingly just as fast as Chrome or Firefox, at least on a medium grade PC.  Looks like they’ve improved upon this concern in the latest release. And Chrome seems to have Firefox beat in this category but the difference isn’t anything drastic.

Privacy

Incognito — aka “porn mode” –  is the new way to surf, as every browser is picking up on this private surfing option that Safari first initiated.

Chrome has faced some privacy concerns at launch with its Omnibox monitoring and recording too much information, but this can all be prevented by changing the default settings and going Incognito.

Expandability

Chrome doesn’t support any extensions or add-ons yet, so Firefox still dominates in this area.  But if you are looking for simple, you probably don’t want much more than Chrome already offers.

Final Thoughts

Firefox is here to stay, but there will always be a long tail of niche alternatives like Chrome and Flock.  When Chrome moves into Mac realm it could pick up some market share from Safari.  Flock will be there for social network junkies who want to try something new, but the first step to making Flock mainstream will be for more of the social networks themselves to go mainstream. Twitter is on track, but still has a long way to go before it’s a household name. If you’re only on Facebook or MySpace, you probably don’t need to worry about the extra sidebars and features.

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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Flock Gets a New Boss, Flock 1.0 Coming
Flock Public Beta Now Live
How Can Flock’s Social Browser Play Into the “Open” Movement?
Flock’s Social Browser 1.0 Has Finally Arrived
More is More: Flock 2.0
Flock CEO Jumps Ship
Anxious About Private Browsing in Firefox? Try the Latest Build

Though Apple didn’t offer discount this holiday on its prime products the iPhone, iPod Touch and iMac, it however managed to score better sales. The survey was carried out by Piper Jaffray’s team under Gene Munster  who counted the sales of Mac and the iPhone for ten hours in five Apple stores on Friday and reported the sales were up to the expectations. The report stated the sales for Mac averaged 13 per hour while those of iPhone averaged 3.4 pieces per hour. With sales not falling prey to the current crisis Apple joins the ranks of Walmart and Amazon for seeing the slumping holidays sales through, successfully.

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Related Articles at Startup Meme:

Apple wrestled more computer users from the grasp of Microsoft, according to a November survey of Web users released Monday. Macs comprise nearly 9 percent of computers online, Net Applications announced.

The November marketshare of 8.82 percent is an increase over Cupertino’s 8.21 percent share NA reported in October.

Conversely, Microsoft’s share of Internet usage fell in November. Windows fell to 89.69 percent of online users, slipping below the nine-out-of-10 marketshare Redmond has enjoyed for years.

Along with the Mac, iPhone devices eroded the Windows lead. The iPhone jumped 12 percent in November to 0.37 percent of the 40,000 Websites monitored by Net Applications. In October, the iPhone comprised 0.33 percent of operating systems accessing the Internet.

Microsoft Internet Explorer fell below 70 percent of the market for Web browsers, IE dropping 2 percent to 69.77 percent in November. Safari hit 7 percent of the market in November, climbing 8 percent over October’s 6.57 percent rating.

In another milestone, Firefox topped 20 percent of browsers, rising four percent from 19.97 percent posted in October.

Songbeat has updated its music discovery engine letting  you perform music search across more engines at the same time enabling you to play and download the audios. The services it performs the search across include Project Playlist, SpoolFM  along with its previous search engine Seeqpod, as well as letting you directly upload to a site  and burn onto a CD. Users will be anxiously waiting for its Mac version to roll out soon.

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Related Articles at Startup Meme:

You’re running out of disk space? You want to clean your disk to free up some space and get rid of the clutter? Sponge is a tool to keep your Mac clean and tidy.

Features

Sponge combines three different techniques to clean up your Mac: removing applications, locating the large files on your drive and finding duplicates.

• Removing applications: Sponge generates a list of all the applications installed on your system, how much space these applications occupy, and their associated files and folders. Sponge then provides the facility to remove applications safely from the system.
• Sweeping disk hogs: Sponge will show which files and directories take up the most space, giving you a starting point for cleaning some of the clutter from your Mac. Once you’ve tracked them down, Sponge can conveniently swipe them off your disk.
• Finding duplicates: With all the attachments, memos, letters and other documents with which we are flooded in today’s world, it’s easy to lose track and accidentally save duplicates of files. Sponge makes finding these multiple copies easy.

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In spite of the general economic downturn, ‘Black Friday’ sales of Apple computers were “better than expected,” analysts told investors Monday.

Like past Black Friday sales, Apple offered discounts on seven products with an 8 percent discount.

However, Mac sales we more than six times what they were in November, according to Piper Jaffray. Analyst Gene Munster said an average of 13 Macs per hour were sold Friday compared to two computers per hour in November. Munster based his numbers on 10 hours of monitoring five Apple retail stores.

Friday, Apple cut its “unibody” MacBooks by $101 and $51 discounts on the $999 white plastic entry-level MacBook. One-day price reductions of $51 on the entry-level 2.4GHz iMac and $101 for the 2.66GHz and 2.8GHz aluminum all-in-ones were also unveiled.

iPhones did not share in the same level of consumer enthusiasm. Munster said iPhone sales averaged 3.4 per hour compared to 1.3 per hour in November.

Although the analyst expects the iPhone will receive a boost in holiday sales, the impact will be “minimal.”

In a wider review of Black Friday Apple sales, Deutsche Bank said “demand for Apple was solid considering the macro backdrop.” Both Mac and iPod sales for the day likely were “modestly above” Deutsche Bank’s estimates. The firm, which reviewed retail and online sales at more than 125 storefronts, expects Apple to report 5 million iPhone sales for the quarter.

Deutsche found the new MacBooks were popular Black Friday offerings with 2GHz and 2.4GHz MacBooks outselling the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

Best Buy locations reported strong demand for the iPhone and shoppers at AT&T stores preferred the lower-priced 8GB iPhone. The reverse was true for iPod shoppers: the 16GB nanos were outselling the 8GB nanos, according to Deutesche.