When we talk of stability, it must be said that some Chinese sites are apparently targetting Mac users. Please be mindful of this video which is presented with the following description on YouTube:

Sophos expert Graham Cluley shows how hackers are setting up websites to infect Apple Mac users with the RSPlug Trojan horse.
More information on his blog at http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc

You can get a FREE 30 day trial over at http://www.sophos.com

Ranging from one IT-consultant that emphasized a need for intranet functionality on IE6 all the way over to people claiming they have visitor rates up around 15-20% of their web-visitors using IE 6… Now that Microsoft has stopped their support of this browser some are waking up. You can still get a Service Pack 1 [available from this location: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/default.mspx].

But let’s face it. Outdated software never is a valid point for any company (or user). Especially when moving ahead to newer versions is free. Fault-finding and technology moves at unprecedented speeds, and it’s actually fun to watch people so bent on clinging to their old versions at a time when everyone has long ago moved on to MS-IE 7 (or even 8), Firefox, Safari or Opera.

I updated my iTunes yesterday, and keeping an up-to-date MacBook IS much better as I do get full value for money when my system is always operational.

As any Mac user will already know, the best place to go for ANY updates, software or utilities is either under the “Update software” menu item under the Apple logo, or to visit this website: http://www.apple.com/startpage/.

You may want to save some money, but you should NEVER attempt to install pirated software. Why would you even consider it when there is so much you can download legally for free? Even at Download.com you can find many programs for the MacOS operating system.

So the best advice ever is to stay clean from all the fancy crap out there. It simply just ain’t worth it.

Handbrake is multi-featured and runs on all three platforms: Windows, Linux and MacOS.

Supported sources

• Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (unencrypted–protection methods including CSS are not supported internally and must be handled externally with third-party software and libraries), and some .VOB and .TS files
• Most any multimedia file it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode.

Output

• File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM
• Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
• Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

It’s freeware, and you can freely download this program over at: http://handbrake.fr/?article=download.

Anyone who knows the MacOS operating system would know it is very different from other operating systems. You are asked for your admin password when you install software, and given the fact that the Microsoft Internet Explorer is NOT available for MacOS X many security holes don’t even exist. Furthermore anyone who maintains good data security in what is clicked on in e-mails should be somewhat safer without having any false sense of security from so-called security suites.

The only two products I would recommend in the genre of security online would be these two:

• Norton Confidential
• Norton Antivirus 2009

You are free to check other programs but Symantec would be my first choice for recommendations. They are well established on the market ever since Dr. Norton walked the DOS-platform…

It was an amazing system. Tag lines different for each account and everything working with filters, subdirectories and templates that could be adapted in all sorts of ways. We spent many hours looking into various ways to do this, but we also saved many more because The Bat! was well-designed right from the beginning.

They did run a complete refresh on their source code and I was one of the few that hoped the project would have been integrated into a cross-platform development phase. But now that version 4 has been released and nothing is said on the subject, I must admit I have given up hope. I was there since version 1.6x and I loved the software. But I did unsubscribe only minutes ago from the mailing list because I realize the fight is impossible to win. They simply won’t listen to the potential, and I won’t install Windows..

Thunderbird is my choice nowadays, but The Bat! is still sorely missed as we did get accustomed to many nifty things…

You can take a full 3 minute product tour by visiting this page: http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/ProductTour.

More than just being compatible with iCal which came with the MacOS X, it can actually be used by people using either Windows, Linux or MacOS. True cross-platform programming.

For developers and businesses who want to take this Open Source programme up a notch full source code can be collected at http://chandlerproject.org/Developers/ChandlerDesktopSource so Chandler can become your ultimate calendar in businesses, and for private users you get a Personal Information Manager with quite a bit of potential – for free. Could it get any better than this?…

You can see the features from this page: http://www.ragesw.com/products/optimize-web-sites/screenshots/0/

You can download a free version before you decide whether you want to buy a license which would cost you $49.95 at this location: http://www.ragesw.com/products/optimize-web-sites/download/.

So if you miss some of the more nerdy efforts of trying to help people with Windows-related problems, you have a chance to help others while remaining on your Mac computer. I’m sure your friends will be happy Microsoft released this.

• Flock with loads of extensions you can read more about here: https://extensions.flock.com/addons
• SeaMonkey, and SeaMonkey take their addons from the Mozilla site at: https://addons.mozilla.org/da/seamonkey/
• Camino
• OmniWeb, and when you visit the OmniWeb website there are lots of other interesting products…
• Shiira

Have fun, and remember: Carpe diem