I've never been a big fan of social networking sites.

I'm not on Facebook. Or Myspace. Or LinkedIn. Or Bebo. Or Orkut. Of course, I have to follow what's happening on these services as they are very popular. And I have set up placeholder accounts on them to prevent someone from posing as me. But I don't really use them. And when I monitor these sites, what I can see is that they are more and more targeted by online criminals.

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SoftMaker has released a public beta of its latest office suite, SoftMaker Office 2012. You can download and install the beta until the end of October after which a new beta will be released or the paid versions come into effect, offering both Standard and Professional flavors.

SoftMaker Office Professional 2012 includes an email client and task management/calendar program, which isn’t included in the beta. The beta also lacks the Berlitz dictionaries that come with the full version and its help files are for the 2010 version of the suite. However, in all other respects the software is fully functional.

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This analysis is excerpted from AVG Technologies' Q3 "Community Powered Threat Report", which released Oct. 11, 2011.

Facebook is the second most popular site in the world according to Alexa's traffic rankings. The social network had explosive growth from 2008 with 100 million users to 750 million users today. This equates to about 11 percent of the world’s population or 36 percent of global Internet users; Facebook became the largest social network worldwide. The social network's popularity and its fast growth make it a prime target for cybercriminals.

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Irony, it has many faces and comes as your best friend or worst enemy. Often, the only difference is timing. Take for, example, Apple and the Newton. The Newton was Apple’s first handheld device, and it was a colossal failure in the early 1990s. Much of Apple’s success now is because of the iPod and iPhone revolution. Timing, it’s all about timing.

Most kids these days don't know the full history of Apple, they just know Apple is cool and makes amazing mobile devices. They, may not know how political infighting within the company drove the genius behind Apple (Steve Jobs) out in 1985 or the back story they almost didn’t make it to be the world's most-valuable technology company today.

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VMware has released a major update to its free virtualization tool. VMware Player 4.0 enables you to create virtual computers within your existing PC, allowing you to try out new operating systems or other software in a safe environment without messing up your main computer.

The main improvements in version 4.0 center around the virtual hardware provided. This is the specification of the basic computer created within the program into which you can install an operating system and other test apps. In VMWare Player 4.0, the display capabilities have been upped so that they support multiple monitors.

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"Team,

I have some very sad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today.

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Sparrow, the majestically minimal mail app for Mac OS has received a bit of a revamp in its latest release at version 1.4. Both its user interface and its back end have been significantly improved to deliver enhanced performance and more intuitive controls.

The latest release also provides integration with CloudApp, the file sharing service enabling you to link to attachments so recipients only download them when they decide to. Your attachments won’t cause a bottleneck when fetching email which should make you more popular with all your contacts.

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Apple’s product announcements are a tale of two iPhones: the iPhone 4States and the Immortal 3GS.

Today at Apple’s annual event, new CEO Tim Cook unveiled evolved iPods, a new dual-core iPhone 4S, and the voice-controlled virtual assistant based on Apple’s acquisition of Siri. He also recapped on iOS 5 and iCloud which were announced back in June. Although Apple sells two-thirds of their iPhones outside the US, I fear that the most innovative new parts of the iPhone 4S product design will appeal most to a US audience. Apple will still do well globally, but it could do even better with some tweaked product thinking.

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Next week Apple will announce new iPhones. There will be a backlash. There will be praise. Much of the significance will be lost in the noise.

Instead, Apple’s metrics should focus rivals’ attention on the importance of multi-year strategies.

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On September 27, Nik Cubrilovic posted a follow-up to his terrific analysis (which we posted two days ago) looking at how Facebook uses cookies to track users even when they have signed out of the service. That post's popularity got Facebook to respond to his questions about cookie tracking, something that it hadn't done despite more than a year of requests. We asked and he granted permission to repost this follow-up, but we're a day late because of the time difference between Australia and the United States. This version differs in two subtle ways from the original: Slight editing for house style and different headline.

I wrote a post two days ago about privacy issues with the Facebook logout procedure which could lead to your subsequent web requests to third-party sites that integrate Facebook widgets being identifiable and linked back to your real account. Over the course of the past 48 hours since that post was published we have researched the issue further and have been in constant contact with Facebook on working out solutions and clarifying behavior on the site.

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On September 25, Nik Cubrilovic posted a terrific analysis looking at how Facebook uses cookies to track users even when they have signed out of the service. His findings about Facebook cookie tracking raises yet more red flags about subscriber privacy. We asked and he granted permission to repost the analysis, which differs in two subtle ways from the original: Slight editing for house style and incorporation of two updates into the main text. We also changed the headline.

Dave Winer wrote a timely piece yesterday morning about how Facebook is scaring him since the new API allows applications to post status items to your Facebook timeline without a user's intervention. It is an extension of Facebook Instant and they call it frictionless sharing. The privacy concern here is that because you no longer have to explicitly opt-in to share an item, you may accidentally share a page or an event that you did not intend others to see.

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One thing I hear regularly when working in the computer security field are comments from Apple users along the lines of: "Why doesn't everybody use Apple because there are no viruses for Macs?" or "All viruses target Windows because Windows sucks so bad" or "Microsoft is the target because Microsoft sucks!"

None of these comments are based on accurate information about the real security situation facing Apple products. In fact, I would claim that the current security level of Windows 7 is better than on Mac OS X, and that it's more likely we will see a major mobile worm outbreak on iPhone than on smartphones running Windows Phone.

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Sunday, September 18. Sprint Store, North Jersey.

This fanboy stalked his Sprint Dedicated Care rep for many moons, leading up to this day. What hardship getting here. Samsung announced the Galaxy S II in February, and it started selling everywhere else in the world in April. But not the United States. As if the waiting wasn't enough, 10 days earlier the rep informed me that I would have to go to the local Sprint Store to pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, but only if I bought a $50 gift card first. Then I would have to return to the store on Sept. 18. Sprint couldn't mail the phone to me. Surely this was a joke.

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Facebook's new Timeline profiles go live on Thursday, September 29, 2011, but you can convert yours now. You just have to pretend you're an app developer (or continue being one if you already are.)

It's a simple four-step process that can be done in a couple of minutes. Here's how you do it:

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Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt on Wednesday testified before the U.S. Senate in a hearing called "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?". The Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights sought to determine the impact Google's dominance (considered by some to be a natural monopoly) is having on competition.

Schmidt's oral testimony is embedded here.

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