50 Great Widgets For Your Blog

MyBlogLog’s Recent Readers - this widget can easily be called a hit amongst blog owners; its popularity even managed to convince Yahoo into buying MyBlogLog. The widget lets you see the avatars of recent visitors to your blog, provided they’re also members of MyBlogLog.
Mashable - get the latest social networking news from this very site.
Flickr Flash Photo Stream Badge - display images from your Flickr profile with a handy Flash photo stream.
Preview Anywhere - see a live preview of outgoing links in a small popup which activates on mouseover. Some find this annoying, while others might find it useful.
Twitter Badge - if your life is so interesting that everyone must know what you’re up to all the time, then a Twitter badge is the ideal counterpart to your blog. It’ll proudly displays your recent tweets.
Digg News - display the latest Digg links on your blog. Themeable and fully customizable.
FEEDJIT - real time traffic data directly in your blog’s sidebar.
LineBuzz - inline comments for your blog. Very handy for blogs with frequent lively discussions.
Flixn - display a stream directly from your webcam, so your blog visitors can always see what you’re up to.
3Jam - lets your visitors send messages to your mobile phone, without them knowing your phone number.
Jaxtr - with Jaxtr, your visitors can actually call you to your mobile phone; again, your number stays private.
LinkedInABox - show off your LinkedIn profile. Perfect for personal blogs.
Box Widget - enable visitors to use box.net’s online storage directly on your web site.
Price of gas - displaying gas prices on your blog might seem unnecessary to some, but it’s cool if you have a traffic/travel related blog.
iBegin Weather Widget - Display weather information in your sidebar. Just like with Price of Gas, works great with travel-related blogs.
ClockLink - display time in various time zones with these nifty Flash clocks.
Film Loops - display the latest loops from your FilmLoops account.
Daily Painters - display paintings from famous painters on your blog.
WhoLinked - show your visitors which sites have recently linked to your web site. Works with all major blog platforms.
Criteo AutoRoll - displays links to blogs similar to your blog.
Bitty Browser - embed a cute, fully functional mini web browser to your blog.
Leafletter - create a mini website and embed it into your blog.
WikiSeek - search Wikipedia with this simple widget.
FeedCount - show off the number of visitors to your blog with this handy little button.
Technorati Link Count - display the number of links your website has from one of the biggest blog authorities - Technorati.
MyPageRank - another good way to show how “big” your blog is is to show off your Google PageRank.
CheckPageRank - in addition to showing your PageRank, this widget also shows your Alexa ranking.
BlinkxIt - embed a link to related videos directly into your website.
Skype button - display your Skype online/offline status on your blog.
RockYou Horoscope - not something I would personally use, but some people are into horoscope. Hell, most people are into horoscope. Anyway, this widget shows horoscope (doh!) and does it in a nicely designed colorful box.
del.icio.us Tagometer - display how many times have del.icio.us users saved your page.
del.icio.us Linkrolls - this badge shows your latest bookmarks from del.icio.us.
Timelines - need to create a timeline? Seek no further. This widget makes it really easy.
PollDaddy - PollDaddy lets you create beautiful polls in no time, and display them at your blog.
Vizu - another poll-making widget, compatible with all major blog platforms.
AnswerTips - display definitions from Answers.com for various terms on your blog. The definitions are shown in bubbles which are activated on doubleclick.
AnswerBoxes - give your visitors a chance to enter a term themselves, and get a definition from Answers.com
Now Playing - if you got to share your current playlist contents with the world, Sigamp will do the trick. Works with most popular music players, including Foobar, Winamp, iTunes and others.
BuzzBoost - display headlines from your RSS feed on any website.
LibraryThing - show off the latest books you’ve been reading.
Plaxo Address Book - let your most faithful visitors access their address books direclty from your site.
AuctionAds - a widget that displays auctioned items on eBay, and gives you a percentage of the price paid when sometimes buys an item.
aStore - similar to AuctionAds, only for Amazon. Create a mini-store on your site and receive profit when someone buys an item through your store.
Plazes - show your current location on a Plazes map.
Stockalicious - track your portfolio with this widget, and share it with others. Let everyone know how much money you’ve lost.
Yahoo! For Good - create a charity badge and ask for donations for a worthy cause.
Giftspace - your friends never know what to buy you for birthday? Let them know what you really want with this nifty widget.
MixMap - see where are the visitors to your MySpace profile from on a map.
Google Map Widget - display a searchable Google Map on your website.
Google Video Search - add a video search form and selected videos to your web site.
Odeo player - display an Odeo player for and podcast right there in your sidebar.

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Microsoft: Windows 7 will run on SSD netbooks

Microsoft is not pushing Vista for netbooks because of its larger footprint, but Windows 7 will be able to comfortably run on netbooks with as little as 16GB of storage

Netbooks equipped with solid-state drives (SSD) sporting as little as 16GB of storage capacity will be able to comfortably run Windows 7, Microsoft said on Thursday.
The operating system and auxiliary files generated by Windows 7 -- including restore files, log points, hibernation files, and temp files -- will require 8GB, leaving 8GB for applications and user data, Microsoft senior lead program manager Leon Braginski said during a presentation at its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC).
The entire install of Windows 7 will be smaller than Vista ," Braginski said. Thus, 16GB is "enough for a good Windows 7 experience."

The first subnotebook computer, or netbook, released last year, the Asus Eee PC 701, came with a 4GB SSD. It ran Linux because Windows Vista could not fit , and because Microsoft refused to license XP to netbook makers at that time.

As netbooks started taking off, Microsoft came around , allowing netbook makers to license Windows XP Home Edition .

Though many netbooks now come with standard hard drives, Microsoft is working on slimming down XP too so it can fit on low-end netbooks with SSDs as small as 2GB , such as the One Laptop Per Child project's XO laptop.

Microsoft is not pushing Windows Vista for netbooks today, in part because its larger footprint , and because larger-capacity SSDs, i.e. with 8GB or 16GB or more, remain pricey.

Gartner expects the wholesale prices of SSDs to be halved by 2010, when Windows 7 is expected to be released.

Braginski would not say whether Microsoft plans to create a stripped-down version of Windows 7 specifically for netbooks. He did say that Microsoft has no plans to create a special user interface for Windows 7 for netbooks' smaller screens. Windows 7 will also not officially support boot from USB flash drives, Braginski said.

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Anti-malware testing standard proposed

Symantec, McAfee, F-Secure and Kaspersky are among the names who have pledged support for the project, which boasts a list of more than 40 security vendors and media groups as part of the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organisation.

The new system would provide guidelines as to how a test should be conducted, including the types of malware used, method of analysis, and accurate support for a conclusion. The guidelines also outline procedures for studying and disclosing new malware samples.

Many security vendors and experts have suggested that an updated standard for testing be established in recent years. Current security tests, such as the VB100 system, have been criticized for their testing procedures and what some say is an inability to accurately access certain types of anti-malware programs.

The group hopes that its outlines will allow both security firms and independent testing groups to research the effectiveness of anti-malware software with better accuracy and a built-in neutrality.

"While there have been many great security software reviews in the past, many poor reviews have confused or misled people," commented McAfee senior vice president Jeff Green.

"This is a significant milestone that should skew the balance towards fair and scientific testing, providing users with a true viewpoint on the security protection vendors provide."

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Warning on Halloween web fraud

Scammers are latching onto Halloween web sites as a method of spreading infectious code internet monitoring company Websense is warning.
The company is warning that sites selling Halloween gifts and services have been targeted as never before and internet users can be put at risk of infection from code embedded within them.

“One particular example is a Web site selling Halloween costumes. The deobfuscation returned by ThreatSeeker shows that the JavaScript has multiple layers of obfuscation,” the company said in an alert.

“The script contacts a malicious server in the .biz TLD. Within the ThreatSeeker network, we have seen almost ten thousand sites infected with the same obfuscation technique.”

Another technique involves building a redirect into a popular web site. Websense has detected over 13,000 such script injections in popular sites.

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Critical infrastructure often under cyberattack

Computer systems that run the world's critical infrastructure are not as secure as they should be and insiders are mad.
That's according to a new survey released Monday that asked management, network engineers, and administrators in nine infrastructure industries about the state of cybersecurity in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Insiders felt that all of these industries, save financial services, were unprepared for cyberattacks. These unready industries included: water, utilities, oil and gas, telecommunications, transportation, emergency services, chemicals, and the shipping industry.

And that's bad news because more than half of them said that their companies had already been hit with some sort of cyber incident, data leak, or insider attack. Another 14 percent said they were expecting something like this to happen in the next year. "None of them thought that they were very prepared for either insider threats or data leakage," said Elan Winkler, director of critical infrastructure solutions with Secure Computing.

About 90 percent of the survey's 199 respondents were directly employed in infrastructure industry with the other 10 percent listed some other occupation such as academic or consultant. Winkler's company paid for the study, which was produced by IDC's Energy Insights. IDC is owned by the IDG News Service's parent company, International Data Group.

Although there have been scattered reports of computer compromises affecting critical infrastructure, most companies keep this kind of information secret because it is considered to be potentially embarrassing.

That's not the case in the IT security industry, which often prides itself on the open disclosure of information, and there is often a culture clash between IT security folks who push to make security information public, and more conservative utility security workers, who worry that this kind of knowledge could be misused.

The Energy Insights survey found that many insiders are dissatisfied with the lack of preparedness within their own industries. About three quarters of respondents said they were "annoyed, angry or frustrated" with the state of critical infrastructure security, Winkler said.

"These are the people who actually know what's going on and they're unhappy," she said. "That, to me was a real surprise"

Some industries are farther along than others, Winkler said. Financial, energy and telecommunications are the most prepared, she said. While the water industry, shipping, and transportation industries were rated least-ready.

However, the Energy sector was considered the most in need of improved security because it is the biggest, most vulnerable and easiest to breach, respondents said.

Cost was ranked as the biggest impediment to security, Winkler said.

Industries that have already seen how a major disaster can affect their bottom line are more likely to have a serious risk analysis models that take things like cybersecurity into account, said Eric Byres,] chief technology officer with Byres security, a critical infrastructure security consultancy. "What I'm seeing is that there is a real mix," he said. "Some companies are really on the ball... and then I see other companies that are very much in the dark, who don't get it."

The companies that are prepared for the next cyber attack are the ones that have buy-in from the bosses, Byres said. "It really gets driven from the upper management," he said.

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New worm exploits critical Windows bug

A worm that exploits the bug Microsoft patched in an emergency update 11 days ago is actively attacking systems, several security companies and researchers said Monday.

The worm, which Symantec Corp. labeled " Wecorl " but was dubbed "MS08-067.g" by Kaspersky Lab and Microsoft itself, likely originated in China, said Kevin Haley, a director with Symantec's security response team. "It may have come out of China," said Haley, who added that it appeared to target Chinese language versions of Windows 2000.

Haley confirmed that the worm is both different from the information-stealing Trojan horse that prompted Microsoft to issue the out-of-cycle patch on Oct. 23, and circulating in the wild.

Other researchers echoed Symantec's take that the worm installs multiple components on victimized PCs, including a Trojan downloader and rootkit code to mask it from security software. Helsinki-based F-Secure Corp ., for example, identified the former as "Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Agent.yhi" and the rootkit bits as "Rootkit.Win32.KernelBot.dg."

According to Haley, if the worm manages to infect a Windows PC, it also tries to attack all the machines on the same subnet. "If it can get behind the [fire]wall, then it can infect other systems," Haley said.

"That circumvents the firewall mitigation that Microsoft noted," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc. "Enterprises typically have laptops configured to be location aware so when they're on the company network, parts of the firewall are disabled, or port 139 is allowed from known IP addresses."

In the security bulletin it released two weeks ago, Microsoft said that "standard default firewall configurations can help protect network resources from attacks that originate outside the enterprise perimeter."

Within days of the emergency patch , hackers had published working attack code on the Internet.

F-Secure said that the just-released worm is based on the exploit code that had been posted online last week. nCircle's Storms agreed that's likely.

Symantec rated the worm as a "Very Low" threat, although it maintained its ThreatCon, an all-around indicator of Internet security, at "2" because Microsoft issued an emergency patch. "It doesn't appear to be very widespread, although that could change, of course," said Haley.

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, Storms said that the appearance of a worm is actually a good thing. "Evidence that we're finding and detecting it means we're in a better situation than we were earlier," he argued. "If it had gone undetected and unfound [it would have meant] that enterprises didn't have any defense-in-depth. But because we're finding it, that means we have signatures for it."

Storms urged users who had not installed the MS08-067 update to do so immediately. "The worm may not have many legs, but you should get ahead of the game and deploy now," he said.

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Researchers crack WPA encryption

Two researchers have apparently cracked a part of the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption protocol.

Erik Tews and Martin Beck claim to have broken the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol in under 15 minutes. The breakthrough means that data sent from the router to the PC can be scanned, but not the other way around.

Access to this traffic could also enable a hacker to send false information to a client on the network.
The researchers developed a way to get the router to send out large volumes of traffic, thereby giving them a large data set to work with, in order to break the key using a mathematical formula the pair developed.

WPA's predecessor, Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), which was developed as one of the first wireless security systems in the 1990s, is now considered almost completely unsecure as it can be hacked in just a few minutes using tools easily available on the internet.

WPA2, an advanced version of the protocol, is not susceptible to the new attack and is still considered secure.

But WPA2 is a relatively new platform and was only made mandatory in all new products from March this year, meaning that many users may have routers that do not support the standard.

Experts believe that this latest development could open the door for a host of new wireless network attacks, forcing many businesses to upgrade their systems to remain protected.

Full details about the WPA hack will be revealed and discussed next week at the PacSec Applied Security Conference in Tokyo.

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