The latest version of the world most popular self-hosted blogging platform, WordPress 2.9, is now out and available for everyone to download and install. It's been quite a while since the last major update, more than six months actually, and the latest version comes with a few big new features and a bunch of smaller ones as well as updates, bug fixes, the works. The biggest feature is likely the new image editor which allows users to do basic photo editing inside the post editor without having to rely on third-party tools.
“I’m here on behalf of the entire WordPress development team and community to announce the immediate availability of WordPress version 2.9 “Carmen” named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae (whom we’ve added to our Last.fm WP release station),” Matt Mullenweg, Automattic founder, the company behind the open-source WordPress platform and the WordPress.com blog hosting service, wrote.
With the new built-in image editor, users can crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale images until they fit perfectly in the post. Seeing as these are 99 percent of the editing tools any blogger would ever need, the tool is a very welcome addition. It also probably means that you won't need to fire up Photoshop, or maybe Gimp if you're into open source or just too emotionally attached to your money, just to crop out the creepy old dude that keeps popping up in the your artistic shots of the day.
Another new feature which could prove quite useful, even though you wouldn't think you need it until something bad happens, is the new “Global undo/'trash' feature” which basically means that deleted posts don't get obliterated from existence but rather just sent to Purgatory, it's actually called Trash, to make amends.
Batch plugin updates and compatibility checking are a welcomed addition for those with a lot of plugins and an itch to always have the latest and greatest version. The feature comes especially handy when updating WordPress, i.e. right now if you're thinking about upgrading to 2.9, and should make the process a little less painful.
Finally, WordPress uses a little magic to convert most links to videos to actual embed code. The feature works for a bunch of sites like YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv and even more are coming. The list of new features doesn't end here but these are the highlights. If you want to know what else is new, you can check out the official post or head over here to see all the 510 bug fixes, updates and new features in WordPress 2.9.
"2.9 has been an exciting development cycle, and I must say it has whetted our appetite for 3.0, which is coming next (probably this spring) and will include at the very least the merge of MU with the WordPress core, and a new default theme," Mullenweg added about upcoming plans.
WordPress 2.9 is available for download here.
Authors of rogue antivirus software hesitate little when it comes down to copying the design and branding of official security solutions in an attempt to pass their fake antivirus code as genuine offerings. It is, of course, just one of the aspects of the social engineering techniques designed to trick end users into paying for inexistent protection. Fake antivirus generate an incessant volume of misleading alerts and false detection reports, forcing the user to buy illegitimate security software. Privacy Center is one of the rogue antivirus that copied a genuine Microsoft security product, namely the company’s privacy portal, in the attempt to create the illusion that it is a valid product.
“The developers of the rogue security application known as “Privacy Center” even went so far as to include a link to Microsoft to trick users into thinking the rogue is a Microsoft product. Trojan:Win32/PrivacyCenter is a family of programs that claims to scan for malware and displays fake warnings of “malicious programs and viruses”. They then inform the user that they need to pay money to register the software in order to remove these non-existent threats,” revealed Patrick Nolan, Microsoft Malware Protection Center.
At the top of this article is a screenshot of the rogue AV in question. End users that come across a very noisy Privacy Center alleged security solution, that volunteers to scan their computer and presents a multitude of fake threats, should proceed with caution and remove it, but certainly not pay for a license. Security solutions from Microsoft, including Windows Defender, Microsoft Security Essentials, and Malicious Software Removal Tool already detect and can remove Privacy Center.
“We have received reports that this trojan has been distributed via poisoned search results, where users are redirected to sites that display fake scanners. These pages mistakenly report that the user's system is infected in order to convince users to download Trojan:Win32/PrivacyCenter. We have also received reports that this trojan has been distributed masquerading as a fake video codec. The pages and files utilized in this form of attack are highly variable, and change according to the user's location, browser and operating system,” Nolan added.
Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 can be downloaded for free via this link.
The Malicious Software Removal Tool is available for download here.
Yesterday evening, December 20th, Patrick Verner announced a new and improved version of his versatile Parted Magic, Slackware-based Linux distribution. Parted Magic 4.7 comes now with Linux kernel 2.6.32.2, Google Chrome, Partclone, and lots of updated applications, as well as bug fixes and improvements. Parted Magic is an operating system created to help users easily partition their hard drives or perform various recovery tasks.
Highlights of Parted Magic 4.7:
· Linux kernel 2.6.32.2 with the squashfs-lzma compression;
· Added Partclone 0.1.9, due to popular demand;
· Replaced Xfburn and libburnia with simpleburn and cdrtools;
· Added LXMusic 0.4.0;
· Replaced util-linux with util-linux-ng;
· Replaced Mozilla Firefox with Google Chrome Beta;
· Repaired the Broadcom wireless drivers;
· Added lsof 4.78;
· Added workman 1.3.4;
· Added hddtemp 0.3 Beta 15;
· Fixed major issues in wireless scripts!
The following applications were updated in Parted Magic 4.6:
boot_info_script 036;
· HDT 0.3.6;
· NTFS-3G 2009.11.14;
· OpenSSL 0.9.8l;
· udev 149;
· Coreutils 8.1;
· grep 2.5.4;
· module-init-tools 3.11.1;
· startup-notification 0.10;
· VTE 0.22.5;
· FreeType 2.3.11;
· Lftp 4.0.4;
· GParted 0.5.0;
· GTK+ 2.18.5;
· Openbox 3.4.9;
· FSArchiver 0.6.2;
· LXPanel 0.5.4;
· menu-cache 0.2.6;
· smartmontools 5.39
· libxml2 2.7.6
· Syslinux 3.84.
About Parted Magic
Parted Magic is a business-card operating system based on Slackware Linux, with programs that allow you to partition hard disks with ease. Programs like Partition Image, TestDisk, fdisk, sfdisk, dd, ddrescue, and a good documentation will help you in your partitioning tasks. Parted Magic is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Download Parted Magic 4.7 right now from Softpedia.
The latest version of the world most popular self-hosted blogging platform, WordPress 2.9, is now out and available for everyone to download and install. It's been quite a while since the last major update, more than six months actually, and the latest version comes with a few big new features and a bunch of smaller ones as well as updates, bug fixes, the works. The biggest feature is likely the new image editor which allows users to do basic photo editing inside the post editor without having to rely on third-party tools.
