It’s not clear whether Microsoft intends to fix the flaw next week.

On Thursday, Microsoft revised a security advisory it first posted April 19 about a bug in Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008 that could be exploited to gain additional privileges on vulnerable machines. “Exploit code has been published on the Internet for the vulnerability addressed by this advisory,” confirmed Bill Sisk, a communications manager at Microsoft’s Security Response Center in a post to the MSRC blog.

The vulnerability has a convoluted history.

In late March, Argentinean security researcher Cesar Cerrudo announced he had found a bug that could let attackers bypass some of the security schemes in the newest versions of the operating system, including Windows Server 2008. At the time, Sick called Cerrudo’s bug a “design flaw” rather than a vulnerability, and downplayed the threat.

Source:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9116924&source=rss_topic17

As a small business or blog owner you don’t have the resources to implement such large-scale promotions but you can use contests to drive traffic to your site and also increase your readership. My personal experience with contests has shown me that using them can generate a spike in traffic and increase your readership. I successfully turned a PageRank0 blog into PageRank3 and doubled my readership in 2 months just by using weekly contests.

When you set up a contest you can decide if you want your visitors to add a comment to enter, visit the sponsor’s site, sign up for your feed or blog about your contest which builds up your backlinks. You can also decide what prize(s) you will give away and for how long the contest will last.

Once you figure out what you want to give away and how long you want your contest to last, how do you implement it? You could write a post and require that readers post a comment to enter but a free Web App called ContestMachine has made it much easier. ContestMachine will also make your contest look like it was setup professionally.

From their site:

“We saw an unserved need - a wide gulf between the promotions run by big companies like Ford and GM, and the small businesses trying to achieve the same promotional objectives with comment forms on blogs.”

Setting up ContestMachine on your Blog or Website

There are 3 easy steps to setup ContestMachine on your site.

• Create: Create the contest or giveaway and set entry requirements and rules.
• Customize: Add prizes and match the widget colors to your site.
• Embed: Embed the widget in your site and collect entries from your users.

If you’re interested they have an interactive tour on their site that will walk you through each step.

BONUS! You don’t even have to own a blog or a website to use ContestMachine. You can email out a link to your contest page which is hosted by ContestMachine on their site.

Here are some other things you can do with ContestMachine.

• Track the progress of the promotion through an overview page on their site.
• Disqualify entries that don’t meet your entry requirements or follow the rules.

Contest Machine does all of the work for you once the contest is over.

1. The entry form stops automatically and won’t accept new entries when it reaches the date and time you specify as the end of the contest.

2. It randomly picks the winners if you chose a Random Giveaway (or lets you pick the winner if it is a judged contest).

3. Notifies the winners by email and collects their contact information so you can send out the prize(s)

4. Lets you track whether winners respond to your email in case you want to pick alternates.

On of the best features I think is the fact that it is all hosted on their site, and of course, that they have a free plan! You can easily go in and change your settings at any time and your completed contest data is saved in case you need it in the future.

At the moment, there are 3 plans at ContestMachine. However, here at Make Use Of, we only cover the free options so at ContestMachine, the free option is the Basic Machine.

The features of the Basic Machine:

• Free!
• Allows you to run up to 2 promotions a month
• Unlimited entries (special promotion, usually 1,000 entries a month)
• Customizable widgets
• Customizable hosted page
• Customizable winner emails

I was able to create an account, which only requires your email address and a password, and setup a contest in 5 minutes.

This is definitely one Web App that is worth taking a look at.

What do you think? What contests have you set up using ContestMachine? What success has it brought your blog or website?

(By) Wendy Limauge authors several blogs including the Business Blogging Guide www.businessbloggingguide.com and Swisher Sweetie where you can learn tips and tricks for winning promotions www.swishersweetie.com.

New subscriber? Get your freebies at MakeUseOf Downloads. Enjoy!

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The Town Hall event scheduled for next Tuesday, is invitation-only, meaning that not everyone would be welcomed. But you can be rest assured that Sizlopedia would be on the case. It is expected that Apple may be unveiling a new product on this event. But which one is it going to be?

There had been a lot of rumors lately, of different Apple products coming into existence. It all started off with some mock-ups of an expected MacBook touch, a multi-touch tabled based on the Mac platform. While no such confirmation came from Steve’s Co., a new set of rumors surfaced about a product code-named ‘brick’, which was later believed to be a manufacturing process rather than a new product.

The third set of rumors were about the new Macbook Pro, with some really convincing images. While the images still look pretty much authentic, nothing can be said for sure until Apple itself gives the official word. Apple did surprise us last month with the new line of iPod Touch, so we can expect similar surprises from them this time on.

One new rumor that has popped up is that a lower priced version of the MacBooks would be unvieled with some sources even claiming it to be as low as $800. With Apple’s stock dropping 40% in the last month, they badly need a move like to get back in the game. Until the event, nothing can be said for sure, but you can rely on us to keep you updated every step of the way.

© 2008 Sizlopedia All Rights Reserved

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• Apple ‘Brick’ Rumors
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Fitbit tracks your activity.

A month after wowing attendees of the TechCrunch50 conference with its personal motion sensor and associated online service that tracks your physical activity, fitness gadget company Fitbit has raised a modest early-stage funding round.

The company has closed a $2 million round led by True Ventures, with additional money from SoftTech VC and "a group of angel investors," according to the company's statement.

The cool little product is still not available. The company site projects a December or January shipment of the first units. The funding will help kick-start the manufacturing process.

Related reading:
Fitbit will get you off the couch.
Best of shows: Top 10 from DemoFall, TechCrunch50.
A rant on risk: Swype vs. Fitbit.

As seen on the PDC website, here is a glimpse of the event agenda highlighting windows strata.

We need a new operating system designed for the cloud and we will introduce one in about four weeks, we’ll even have a name to give you by then. But let’s just call it for the purposes of today ‘Windows Cloud’; said Big Steve on 1 October.

To remain competitive in an online world, MS has to do much more to convince users to switch to windows 7 after the the redmonian behemoth’s failure with windows vista. This will be done by giving developers some new flavours of its upcoming OS including the mostly publicized, Windows multi-touch capability via API’s.

Will STRATA be another VISTA? We will soon find out, in the event being covered on the 27 of this month.

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Other social networks such as Facebook and MySpace have already been there almost a month ago. It may be because of the fact that Orkut is very popular in Brazil and iPhone became available there just last week. So if we see that way, the release is not that late at all.

Image Source: VentureBeat

To access the site, you just need to log on to http://m.orkut.com in the browser of iPhone. Following are the features you will be able to access:

• Your personalized home page with status and activity updates from your friends, along with all-important birthday reminders
• Your scrapbook where you can both read and write scraps
• Your friend list with one-click call access to anyone whose number is publicly displayed on orkut
• Fully functional search for anyone on orkut so that you can add new friends as you meet them
• Photos in a rich full-screen format

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The Dashboard was one of the marquee new features in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger when it was introduced in the spring of 2005 — a sort of Desktop alternate universe accessed through the Dock as a home and interface for an assortment of mini-applications and utilities called Widgets.

Those who liked it, liked it a lot, it seems. Hundreds of Dashboard Widgets have been developed by third-parties in addition to the variety bundled with OS X by Apple.

Personally, I’ve never really warmed to the Dashboard, and rarely use it — by “rarely” I mean a frequency of probably less than once a month on average, and there is no Dashboard Widget I would really miss having available.

On the other hand, Dashboard is something of a resources hog, and being a user of older, low-end hardware, I begrudge the amounts of RAM, processor cycles, and swapfile access that get absorbed by the Dashboard. For example, the old Pismo PowerBook I’m typing this article on has a 550 MHz G4 processor and just 576 MB of RAM, and my most powerful Mac at this time is a 2004 vintage 1.33 GHz G4 PowerBook with a still-modest by today’s standards 1.5 GB of RAM. It would be great if Apple had provided the option to manually quit the Dashboard in OS X, but for whatever reason, they didn’t.
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From here users are prompted to state the amount they’ve spent on a particular product recently, and also mention what category it belongs to. Although if you forget to record the voice message, you can always log into and manage your account from the site. So this can be stated as an advantage over others.

Expense Tracker costs $15/month and $10 for buying a 6-month deal. A little expensive for some, but this would prompt users to use the service regularly, and not just sideline it, as is the usual norm. Expensify and ShoeBoxed are two other companies aimed at expense tracking.

Check out the video below for more details:

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