It spreads through text messages. Quick Story: If you get a "very strange or unusual text message," immediately turn off your iPhone and restart it.

What exactly does this virus do? Well, first, let me clarify that it is NOT an actual virus--it's more of a hack, though many people are considering it a virus. What happens is the SMS text message allows the hacker to gain control of your iPhone and essentially do whatever he wants to it--whether it be make phone calls, send MORE text messages, gain access to your contacts and whatever else they want to do with your information. Everything on your iPhone is at risk with this security hole.

Major security flaw leaves iPhones vulnerable for SMS texting virus and other hacks
Technorati Tags: iPhone, virus, iPhone virus, text message, hack, Apple

This one is a MUST HAVE piece of software. While it doesn't handle tables or hyperlinks as I'd like, it does the general PDF text to Word text conversions quite well. Right now, that's about all one can expect in a desktop application.

Free PDF to Word Converter: desktop app offers excellent PDF to Word/Doc conversions | freewaregenius.com

Free PDF to Word Converter: desktop app offers excellent PDF to Word/Doc conversions

Here's an interesting site, from WordPress, that shows you how to do just about anything on WordPress. Pretty cool!

How To « WordPress.tv

I just posted a comparison of iTunes versus Amazon. Guess who wins? Hint: It's not Apple.

Amazon offers all the same benefits, only better, faster, and cheaper, in most cases.

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Here's a great read written by one of my favorite tech writers, Gina Tripani (formerly of Lifehacker). I'll have to check some of these out (can't at work, silly tech geeks disallow any and all gmail.com and mail.google.com domains...) - LATER!

Gmail power tools | Business Center | Working Mac | Macworld

If you've EVER used any version of Windows (heck, any computer OS), you'll know that once in a while, you'll get the "not responding" message. Here's how to kill a program without invoking the Task Manager:

• Right click on the desktop and choose New > Shortcut



• In the dialog box that appears just type the following:
  

  taskkill.exe /f /fi “status eq not responding”
  

  

  
  
• Give it a name of your choice



• Now just wait for something to start “Not Responding” and let loose your Task Killer!

Full story here - How To Kill Unresponsive Programs without The Task Manager

Want to save some money? How about saving the environment, if only a little? Try Edison, an application that runs on Windows XP or Vista, made by a company called Verdiem. It's free, easy, and will save a bit of money on your electricity bill.

More fully featured than the built-in power app in the control panel, Edison allows you to set a lot more options, with a lot more control.

Edison requires at least the .NET framework 2.0, so make sure you have that. You can get the latest here.

As you know by now, the Conficker malware exploits the Windows Autorun feature to install itself. So, disable Autorun! Who needs it anyway?

How to disable the Autorun functionality in Windows

Conficker is a nasty wormy-type virus (malware) that can pretty much render your PC useless to you (but not the deviant who created it)!

Follow the steps in the article below before April 1 or else you might be faced with a computer that really doesn't work any longer.

A month or so ago, a client of mine was so badly infected that it was necessary to completely rebuild his PC.

This is a good reminder to ALWAYS:

1. Keep your PC up to date on OS patches
2. BACK UP!
3. Get a solid antivirus utility and keep it up to date
4. Hardware firewalls are a must!
5. Internet Explorer should be called "Internet Exploder"
   

Run a Conficker removal tool before April 1

This is a great service that uncompresses files on the fly, so to speak. Whether you have a Zipped file but no utility like WinZip to decompress it, or you have the URL to a compressed set of files, you can extract them at WobZip.com.

This online service may be especially helpful when you're on the road or behind a corporate firewall. In the corporate setting, all you need to know is the URL of the compressed file. WobZip.com will take care of the rest.

If you've ever been confronted with a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), you're a Windows user who has felt his heart drop.

Often, in fact, most often, Windows will boot up after all this.

But sometimes it won't.

Take my father-in-law's computer. A Dell Dimension, it's a nearly 4 years old, with never an issue besides the normal Windows maladies like spyware and viruses (UGH!), it finally got so infected (it had a good anti-virus program but it wasn't running - go figure) that it just gave up, like an old lion.

Of course, after 4 years, there's quite a bit of data on a PC, but of course, there were no backups. Whatever happened to people backing stuff up? Backing up used to be much more prevalent when backing up was so darned inconvenient (floppies or Zip drives, anyone?).

Anyway, I told him I'd try to get his data and restore his system (Windows repair utilities did not work). I couldn't get anything to work that was Windows based, even DOS-based utilities.

Before I finally giving up, I tried one last thing: A Knoppix Live CD. These are CD or DVDs that have a live OS on them. Boot up using the CD or DVD and you've got a fully-functional OS on which to perform any data recovery that may be possible.

To make a long story short, I was able to save all the data to a flash drive, reboot, and restore using the built-in PC Restore partition that Dell so smartly included.

It really was a 30 minute affair (with 25 minutes for the data copy).

If you want more helpful computer advice, visit my main site, Computer Monkeys.

Free Domain Name from GoDaddy.com with Purchase at Buy.com

I rarely have issues with Windows (really), but for those of you who do, here's a possible solution!

Microsoft offers to just 'Fix it' | Tech News on ZDNet

I don't know about you, but setting up Windows takes a LONG time. The formatting, options choices, updates. Could take a day.

Not with this disk!

How To Create An Unattended Windows XP Disk | MakeUseOf.com

There are a whole host of things you can do to improve Win XP performance. Here are a few that give you the best bang for the buck.

Adjust these performance options to speed up Windows XP | Microsoft Windows | TechRepublic.com

In a word, no, Songbird is not an iTunes killer.

I am no iTunes hater, as some have suggested (or is it Apple that I hate? I can't tell.) In fact, I still use iTunes for a few things (once in a while it's just easier to burn a CD of iTunes-purchases songs. It's way quicker, too, if you bought an entire collection on iTunes).

However, I always look for "a better way." I like finding "better mousetraps."

You'll no doubt know that I'm a huge fan of Media Monkey. I love it. But in the interest of trying something new for the sake of finding something better, I thought I'd give Songbird a try.

And I like it. It's got some really cool add-ons, just like its browser-cousin, Firefox (which I love, too). Some of the neatest add-ons are LyricMaster and MediaFlow. There's SongTapper (rap the tune with your fingers like a drum and this add-on finds the tune! How cool is that?), Flickr Extension, and SHOUTcast Radio.

The music library is set up a lot like iTunes.

Songbird didn't crash my computer.

But the limited features crashed my enthusiasm. As previously mentioned in Is Songbird an iTunes Killer?, Songbird does not rip CDs, nor does it offer burn capabilities. It also cannot convert mp4 (protected) to DRM-free (I know, technically illegal but so much bullshit nobody will entertain the notion of prosecution. Plus, the economy is in such a crapper that nobody has any money and hence no reason to sue. Deep pockets are gone).

So my verdict is that while Songbird is cool, it really doesn't differentiate itself from iTunes enough to warrant further consideration until those "must-have" features are built-in. Of course, Songbird's project leaders claim that some of the missing functionality is on the "roadmap," so there's at least some hope.

It's a nice attempt. It's free, but so is iTunes. The add-ons make it compelling, but not compelling enough for me to switch from Media Monkey.

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Here's a 3-step process for reducing the horrid Firefox 3 loading time from MakeUseOf.com.

How To Cut Firefox 3 Loading Times On Your Windows Machine.

I wrote a while back about How I Have Achieved iPod Nirvana, which got a lot of Stumbles and a few comments (I wish more of you would comment!); in that post, I talked about using Media Monkey to manage my music library and iPods, and installing Floola and CDEx on my iPods to enable two-way synchronization and ripping a CD without using (or even having) iTunes.

Now, it seems as though Songbird has reached a level of maturity that requires that I try it (again -- hated it the first time around). If it does the things it promises, then I think we've got a serious contender on our hands, all for the low, LOW, LOW price of FREE! Songbird is free, open-source, from the Mozilla folks and it promises to be a great replacement for iTunes, offering much of the same capability, with some of its own new functionality, both native to the app and with the use of add-ons.

Check back here in a few days for a first-impression review. Time permitting, I'll get to play with Songbird for a few days and tell you what I think. It looks like you'll need to keep doubletwist, Floola and CDEx on your iPod, if you want that functionality.

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If you have an iPhone, here are some Tips & Tricks.

Get a copy of WinUtilities for FREE today only