Firefox 3.0 is barely out of the gate, but already Mozilla is moving toward the future with the first alpha release of Firefox 3.1. The final release of 3.1 is scheduled for the end of 2008 with the usual series of alpha and beta releases in the coming months.

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In it’s own words Microsoft promotes IE8 for “professionals as well as those trying CSS and scripting for the first time.“, because of it’s built in tools for debugging purpose. ReadWriteWeb has done a great job promoting IE8, this is what they had to say regarding it’s standard compliance:

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Or download your virtual machine image H E R E

Written by Bernard Lunn / August 1, 2008 12:32 AM /

I recently moved to a new office and found that I couldn't send mail via Microsoft Outlook. I've had this same problem in different locations. I've been told that it depends on the ISP settings and it is easy to fix by contacting the ISP. That seemed like a pain, so this week I just started using Gmail as my default. I've not looked back. This is anecdotal and maybe I am a market of one, but it is a big deal for me. I have “lived in Outlook” for years. It was the one part of Office that I thought I would never replace. I suspect I am not alone.

I use multiple email addresses. I need to send and receive mail from company domains. That took me about 10 minutes to set up in Gmail. Once I had done this, I noticed two big benefits:

1. 99% of Spam was gone - poof. I had foolishly once put my email address on a web site in clear form where it could be collected by spammers and one of my accounts, managed on an Exchange server, was overrun with spam. Once I went to Gmail, no problem. I am sure I am missing a few valid mails that got incorrectly seen as spam, but that will eventually correct itself as people contact me some other way. When I am contacting somebody new by email I always now assume that overzealous spam filters stop my mail getting received, so I ask a contact who knows that person to forward my mail. That is a small price to pay for getting rid of spam and using contacts that way is obviously good for business as well.

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The Web became a substantially more dangerous place this week, thanks largely to the publication of instructions that show cyber criminals how to exploit a pervasive, critical flaw in the Internet infrastructure.

While Internet service providers and corporations can mitigate the danger by updating the software that powers vulnerable components of their networks, data released yesterday indicates that only about half of the world's online population is currently protected by these updates.

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After finding a few last-minute problems with Vista Service Pack 1 and XP Service Pack 3, Microsoft delayed deployment on both of them. Now they're both back and ready for download, either manually or through Windows Update.

Hold on there, pilgrim! There's no hurry. Urgent updates such as security patches are delivered as soon as they're available. The additional patches in service packs deal with problems that are not security issues. The Vista file copy performance problem, for example, has been fixed by Vista SP1, along with dozens of other issues. The XP SP3 fix list is similarly impressive. Yet there's no need to jump right on to installing these service packs unless they fix a problem you urgently need to solve.

Don't fool yourself, there can be problems caused by service packs. Every new service pack release can be guaranteed to be chased by a news story about users whose systems have been brought low by it. But heck, XP SP3 is a minor update when compared with the incompatibilities of XP SP2; up to 10% of systems had issues with that one. But when all was said and done, XP SP2 was the best thing that ever happened to Windows.

These latest updates were delayed at the last minute when an incompatibility was discovered in Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System. Imagine updating your operating system and finding that your store management system wouldn't work properly -- yeah, bummer. Microsoft was quick to isolate the issue and create a patch.

Just in case you do take the jump soon and have a problem with Vista SP1, my fellow InformationWeek blogger Serdar Yegulalp has put together a detailed guide for getting out of trouble.

If you're anxious to get the jump on XP SP3, even if it's just for testing purposes, Microsoft has both an ISO image and a network installation package.

Really, though, don't bust a gut trying to deploy these immediately. If you don't want to be the pioneer on these service packs, wait for a month and keep an eye on the tech news sites. If the buzz is generally positive, go for it.

Over the past three days, Yahoo has been exposing visitors to banner ads that try to trick them into installing malware, and there's no indication anyone at the company is even aware of the problem.

According to Microsoft MVP Sandi Hardmeier's "Spyware Sucks" blog, the ads are displayed across a wide swath of the web portal's sprawling empire, including Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Astrology. Hardmeier first sounded the alarm on Saturday, and yet on Monday, Yahoo continued to run the rogue ads, she reported. El Reg emailed three different Yahoo PR reps but never did get a response.

"I wonder how many hits Yahoo gets per day, and how many people are being exposed to fraudware, while these advertisements are allowed to remain online," Hardmeier wrote.

The ads pitch women's deodorant, but behind the scenes, they contact servers that have been used by previous rogue ads targeting high-traffic websites. Typically, the ads produce a pop up that looks strikingly similar to official Windows dialog pop-ups that urge the end user to download software to fix problems. Expedia, Rhapsody, MySpace, Excite, Blick, and CNN.com have all served up similar malicious ads in the past.

Attackers who shoe horn their banners onto reputable sites usually take advantage of the highly decentralized way that online advertisements are sold. It's not unusual for there to be a succession of affiliates, making it possible for an attacker to pose as an authorized agent of a name-brand product or service. In this case, Yahoo has gotten hoodwinked into running ads that point to adtds2.promoplexer.com, which has been implicated in previous rogue banner attacks.

Remember, folks, that the NoScript extension for Firefox is your friend here. Even if you've whitelisted Yahoo, it will block Adobe Flash being sent from the attacker's website. Nice to know someone's looking out for you. ®