Microsoft Office 2007 has introduced new file format after several years of it’s old traditional ‘doc’ file format. The new file format has a new character ‘x’ suffixed to it’s existing name. But this small ‘x’ had improved a lot of features in the new file format. This new file system is known as OpenXML format.

The OpenXML format work in a similar way how a HTML document works. Prior to CSS, all the formatting is plugged inside the HTML document.

<p align=”center” color=”#CC0000″>Some paragraph text</p>

The above text is stored a .HTML file. Similarly the old Microsoft office documents have both their styles and contents in one single document.

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Google Docs is such a simple and powerful application which helps you to take the office docs online and work on it. In most of the cases you would have a need for PDF format of the document you work on. And probably you would have tired searching and downloading a PDF print driver or any PDF convertor to do it.

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Most of the corporates would be using Lotus Notes as their email client. And most of the time when I send mails, the mail bounces back due to lack of space in their mail box. Since the space limit for mail box is less compared to Gmail and Yahoo.

So, to avoid such mail bounces and missing out important mails, Lotus Notes provides replication feature.

Replication feature allows your Lotus notes mail client to download all the email messages into your local machine and clean up your mail server, and give space for more mails. Since the corporate email accounts will have only a minimum space ( 100MB or 200 MB ), you cannot afford to store all the mail in your server. Replication would make the life easier for you. Here is how you turn on the Lotus Notes Replicator

Click on Replica Tab -> More Settings

You will get a replication Settings window

Click Change Schedule to update the time and schedule on which the replication should occur.

You will find various tabs in this window for advanced configuration. In this post I limit to turn on the replication and doesn’t want to extend much. 

Enabling replication will help to move all your mails to your local, hence faster access to your mail and clean up your inbox for morespace. Also you can sync up with your local and server while editing drafs, deleting mails etc. They are advanced feature of this replication. Will post more on the advanced settings of replication.

Read More on replication

Mozilla Songbird has been upgraded to 0.5 and added few new features like MTP Device support, Media Views, Improved Filter picker etc.

Mozilla Songbird is completely plugin based media playerhas been started it’s grab in the music player market which is occupied by Winamp, iTunes , Realplayer etc. The newly introduced features are awesome and this cool UI features are good enough to change the other media players thoughts on UI stuffs.

MTP Device support

Windows users have a shiny new MTP Add-on that introduces MTP Device Support! Most portable media players and cell phones integrate the MTP spec so try plugging in your device and share your findings on the MTP Device Compatibility Wiki Page.

Media Views

Media Views provide new ways of displaying, manipulating, exploring, and contextualizing your media library.

This Media Views allows you to develop your own way to visualizingthe media library. You can create the plugins for media view and plug it in the Songbird and visualize your media. One simple example is creating Tag clouds for your media similar to tag clouds in blog.

 Complete list of features

• Media Views
• Improved Filter Picker
• MTP Device support
• New List background
• Improved Rating UI
• Always on Top
• Hotkeys on Mac

Also the developer resources have been featured with this release.

Most of the online users would be aware of the Phishing attack. There are also various kind of attacks, but Phishing is most common attack happening in the Internet through mails.

Few days back I got a mail from titled ‘Paypal’ with Subject that “You Account access is limited. Remove this limitation”. Obliviously, I opened it.

And the mail read like this

In the mail it has been stated that I’ve done some unusual online activity , so that they have put the account under control.

They want to verify my authentication. This mail alarmed me. Then immediately I opened up the header of the mail. The header is read as

And the mail is from “limitedpayapl.com“. If you could note it, even the word “paypal” is not proper. It’s “payapl“. Which is fake and Phishing domain.

So, I marked as spam. Now my big question is, If I haven’t opened up the header and directly clicked the link they have provided, how does the browser effectively alert users about this phishing site.

How Internet Explorer 8 warns about a phishing site

Now I’m bit careful enough while launching the site and I’m sure that I don’t type any extra information.

You would see a red colour URL address bar and extra indicator “Unsafe Website”.

Also, Internet Explorer 8 provides additional information regarding the type of attack. And in this it says that it’s a “Phishing Threat”.

These visuals are clear indicator that the user is going to visit a unsafe website.

How Mozilla Firefox 2.0 warns about a Phishing site

Firefox doesn’t stops block loading of website and doesn’t have any red alert URL title bar.

Firefox just popup a balloon alerting that you are going to visit a unsafe website. Also when you click on “Read More” you will be provided with more information about the kind of website you will be visiting.

Finally I was browsing in Safari 3.0, and see how safari reacts

Do you see any kind of alert in this browser? Anything? Yeah correct. Even I didn’t see any small indicator!!

As apple claims, Safari might be a best browser in this contemporary, but I don’t see a single sign of alert on such website.

This will sure lead to the unknown user to get into a Phishing website. Even I love to browse with Safari, but this one really makes me pissed off! Guess the developers of safari has to look something seriously into it.

I came across few sites which is reporting about this vulnerablity

• PayPal thinks Safari is too vulnerable to phishing scams
• PayPal: Apple Safari Vulnerable To Phishers