I came to know about Flock while I went to check updates on WordPress.org and found a better browser based on Mozilla framework. It includes great features for Favorites, Blogging from Browser and much more. Check yourself

Release Notes: http://www.flock.com/products/flock/releases/0.5pre.php

Five Ways to get started: http://www.flock.com/fiveways/togetstarted/

Detailed Features: http://www.flock.com/fiveways/togetstarted/13.php

Direct Downloads:

• Windows Download (7.3 MB)
• Mac OSX Download (9.4 MB)
• Linux Download (7.9 MB)

As this bug is now patched so not to worry much about that but still it matters to IT pros.

Skype acknowledged Tuesday that all its VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) clients suffer from bugs that leave machines susceptible to crashes and/or open them to attacks that could take control of the computers. But even as it patched the software, one analyst questioned how the popular service carried out the fix.
The flaws, which were reported by Danish vulnerability tracker Secunia and judged a “Highly critical” problem, involve the Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Pocket PC versions of the Skype client.

But even as Skype released patches for all but the bug in Pocket PC, Lawrence Orans, a research director at Gartner and an expert on VoIP security, questioned the company’s ability to deliver a secure network.

“Earlier this year, when Microsoft’s instant messenger client was vulnerable, Microsoft shut down [MSN] and then when users tried to connect, required them to update to a patched client. Microsoft essentially did our vulnerability management for us,” said Orans.

Not so with Skype. When TechWeb launched a vulnerable version of the Windows client Tuesday, Skype did not require an update to connect to its network. Nor did it offer the fixed version when the client’s “Check for Update” feature was selected, but instead presented another vulnerable edition.

One of the Skype bugs — found by a pair of researchers from U.K.-based security firm Pentest, Limited — affects Skype for Windows 1.1.0.0 through – 1.4.0.83, and can be used by attackers to first generate a buffer overflow on the PC, then use that to drop additional code on the computer. All the attacker needs to do is convince a user to click on a malicious Skype-style URL.

“In addition, Skype can be made to execute arbitrary code during importation of a VCARD that is in a specific non-standard format,” wrote the Pentest researchers, Mark Rowe and Joe Moore, in their advisory.

Quoted from Information Week

I just noticed that today is Google’s 7th birthday

Congratulations to Google and Its team and have a more and more nice future

On last 8/8 @ 8am Studio 8 was announced and now on 9/8 (for India) or 8/9 (for US) Macromedia announced Flash Media Server 2 formely was known as Flashcom or Flash Communication Server or FCS. We all know its power and how it bring revolution in web based video / audio applications.

As per the announcement, It will ship in this October and public beta will be available at this September, YES you heared right … this September.

Following features are announced:

More Reach, Less Hassle
Reach the widest audience with the least amount of effort.

Broadest Reach: Flash is the world’s most pervasive software platform, reaching over 98% of all connected desktops on the web and distributed with major partners including Microsoft, Apple, Netscape, and AOL.

“It Just Works”: Flash offers consist media experiences across operating systems and browsers freeing up your development staff to work on great new experiences rather than creating hacks to work across platforms.

Lower Costs: Bypass the need to encode into different formats and develop multiple versions of your site to reach multiple platforms. Encode and develop once and deliver everywhere with FMS2.

Best Media Experiences: Create and deliver consistently great, highly differentiated media experiences.

Seamlessly Integrated: Seamlessly integrate media experiences directly in your website without having to pop-up other windows or browsers for a clean, cohesive look.

Custom Player: Take control of the look and feel of your media player to conform to site design specifications and promote your brands. Build custom players with unique functionality to differentiate your experience and retain and engage your audiences.

High Quality Video: new Support for the new On2 VP6 codec offers superior video quality at smaller file sizes.

Instant On: A small, light-weight file format, protocol and player coupled with a programmable buffer control on the server enable the FMS streamed media to start instantly after the play button is selected.

Interactivity
Engage your audience by adding interactivity, taking advantage of the “lean-forward” nature of the Internet.

Advanced Seek: Enable your viewers to immediately jump to any part of the video regardless of the length of the video or whether it has been downloaded yet.

Video Hotspots: Embed clickable hotspots in the video to let your viewers display associated content or even be used to present alternative endings in content.

Multiple Camera Angles: Let the viewer choose from different points of view for deeply engaging, interactive experiences.

Rest Assured Delivery
A persistent connection between the FMS2 and the Flash Player ensures that your audio and video are delivered in the best possible manner.

Bandwidth Detection: Detect the speed at which the client connects and serve up the appropriate bit rate video. No more confusing “Choose Size of Video” messages to your end-users.

Automatic Player Detection: new Ensure a smooth viewing experience with video encoded in the right format by automatically serving up the proper video based on the version of the Flash Player that the user connects with.

Dynamic Buffering: Programmatically set the buffer to the precise setting for the fastest start time based on the length and bitrate of the video and the client connection speed. Provides the fastest possible start and enables videos that have a higher bit rate than the client connection speed to be delivered to the in the most optimal manner.

Quality of Service Monitoring: new Track the playback experience on the client and correct unforeseen playback problems due to network congestion in real-time.

Firewall and Proxy Traversal: Quickly test multiple port and protocol combinations to bypass firewalls and proxies and choose the fastest connection.

Advanced Media Applications: Programmatic control of your streams and media assets enables innovative media applications.

Playlist and Ad-Insertion Support: Use standard XML formats such as SMIL or ASX for delivering client-side or server-side playlists and monetizing your content with in-stream pre-roll and interstitial ads.

Live Video Streaming & Recording: Capture and stream live audio and video from any OS recognized camera and microphone source simply by plugging the camera into a USB or Firewire port. Camera APIs enable developers to specify video capture parameters dynamically. Captured video can be broadcast to others in real-time and/or can also be recorded to disc on the server.

Multi-User Communications: Create innovative video communication applications such as rich media chat rooms, video blogging, video messaging, multi-user games, and more using multi-way, multi-user streaming and remote Shared Object technology for synchronizing data among multiple users.

Secure Media Delivery
Flash Media Server 2 provides the most secure way to deliver audio and video through Flash.

No Client Cache: Because media is not saved to the client’s cache when streamed, users are unable to look though their temporary Internet files folder to access video or MP3 files.

Authentication: new FMS2 provides a number of approaches to authenticate users prior to serving video streams. Server configuration controls, remote script execution, and the ability run external authentication processes such as hash key verification provide you with many flexible options for securing streams for single sign-on systems, the prevention of deep linking, or even offering pay per view content.

Encrypted Delivery: new Via support built into both the server and client, streams can be encrypted during delivery for the ultimate protection.

Scalability, Reliability, and Performance
FMS2 is enterprise-ready and can scaling to meet large scale media demands.

Origin and Edge Servers: new
provide the optimal deployment for large scale media applications, simplifying load balancing, failover and clustering. Scale with multiple Edge servers to manage bandwidth, traffic and processing while giving the Origin server a single view to reports, logs, media assets and application logic.

Multiple Processes: new FMS2 can be configured to run virtual hosts, applications, or instances in isolated individual processes providing for complete reliability.

Fits in Existing Infrastructure: FMS2 will fit in seamlessly with your existing infrastructure.

Backend System Integration: new With support for Remoting, File objects, and XML objects, sockets and streams including support for Jabber XML streams, FMS2 offers a number of ways to integrate with Application Servers and media asset management systems for retrieval of meta-data information.

Multi-platform: FMS2 runs on both Windows and Linux servers with standard server hardware giving you the flexibility to choose the platform that best suites your needs and deploy on your existing infrastructure.

Logging: new
W3C compliant ASCII logs, a real-time usage monitor, and a complete API for server and stream events ensure that publishers have all the tools they need to track and generate reports on the content usage.

Quite Excited features But no ScreenSharing

Who should attend:

• Creative/Art Director
• Dreamweaver Developer/Designer
• E-Learning Content Developer
• Flash App Developer
• Instructional Designer
• Internet Application Architect
• IS/IT Manager
• Multimedia Designer/Developer
• .NET/ASP App Developer
• Webmaster
• Web Application Developer
• Web Designer/Developer

Special Promotion Scheme:

Save US $100 :: Buy Studio MX 2004 at US$899 (SRP) and get FREE upgrade to Studio 8 (SRP US$999) Includes Freehand MX (available as part of Studio MX 2004) Includes Contribute 3 and FlashPaper 2 (available as part of Studio MX

Attend this special Studio 8 event to see:

• New advanced animation, graphic effects, text tools, and interactive video in the new version of Flash Professional
• Fast coding efficiencies with new CSS, drag-and-drop of XML sources, Zoom, and more in the new version of Dreamweaver
• New graphic effects and integrated workflows with Fireworks
• Web content management with FlashPaper and Contribute

The new Macromedia Studio 8 includes Dreamweaver 8, Flash Professional 8, Fireworks 8, Contribute 3, and FlashPaper 2

Dates & Venue:

• 2nd Sept-J WMarriott, Mumbai
• 5th Sept-Le Meridien, Delhi
• 6th Sept-LeMeridien,Bangalore
• Timings: 8.30 am to 12.30 pm

I am planning to go at Mumbai on 2nd September. Will meet new guys there!!!