I just realised that this goes out on 1 April. There are no April Fool's jokes on my podcast, even what we have about Microsoft. And if you have a Windows machine, pay particular regard to the Conficker Worm. Mac users should also not let down the guard, but Conficker does not affect OS X.

iMovie '09 (1) Starting Up and Clip Imports

My big decision of the week, which actually seemed so obvious to me, was to exit all the applications I was using that connected with Twitter. It is said that one either gets Twitter or one doesn't. I guess I don't. Actually the name seems perfectly apt: imagine a flock of sparrows sitting on a garden wall all making the same level of noise and apparently, to human ears, making the same comments.

I might want to tell someone I am communicating with by email or SMS that I am off to bed, or having lunch -- a harmless one on one bit if chit-chat. When you tell possibly thousands of people the same thing, that is worthless. There are also the Twitter stars -- those with hundreds or even thousands of followers, perhaps telling them similar factlets. That demeans the followers because there is rarely any reply to a follower's comment. Duly banished.

This week, something that may be ultimately more useful was the release of a Skype App for the iPhone. This will work on the generation 2 iPod touch. There is another app called Fring which I have on my generation 1 touch that will dial out, via Skype, which it first has to contact, but with no microphone facility, it is a bit pointless for me. I put it on as a test exercise and managed to make it dial out and I could hear; but that was it. Skype is now available in the iTunes store, even in Thailand.

There were several updates available from Apple at the end of the week, although I did not get round to them until Sunday. For iWork the only information is that it is recommended for all users. The iWeb update concerns uploading via FTP and "other minor issues." The iMovie update again covers minor issues as well as stability; while the iPhoto update covers stability as well as improvements around faces, Places, photo sharing and slideshows. Finally, an iLife Support update, which will require a restart, covers stability and other minor issues. The five downloads are available via Software Update or the Apple Downloads pages.

The updates were fairly bare of information concerning what had been improved or changed, although Jeff Calrson at TidBits did find out some things concerning iMovie which he explains in his online article.

Apple also released a Knowledge Base article on iPhoto themes. Apparently some may not be available depending on which processor the Mac uses, and G4 users are worst off. This is part of that evolution that is inevitable.

I was in Siam Discovery Center on Friday when I noticed that the construction boards were off at the new iStudio and the staff busy with the displays inside. I recognised Pornthep who has been so helpful in the past and persuaded him to let me take some pre-opening photographs, which I put online later with a Bangkok Diary posting.

I have the iPod shuffle in my hands right now, but on Tuesday I had email from someone at the Apple Singapore operation telling me that an iPhone is on its way for me to look at and review. In some ways I have written this several times in my head since 7 January 2007 and the touch I have makes a good tool with some of the functions, but if the finances had been right, I would have had one of these for myself the moment they were released here. It is still in my master plan.

Someone is listening. Well, maybe not. Maybe this is a case of great minds think alike, but there is now an iPhone app for the fledgling Bangkok commuter train services. I was looking at that App Store index page, which now has more and more of Thailand-specific apps available, and saw this called Bangkok Sky Train.

The developer goes by the name of Derrik Gooch, who has a web presence at the oddly named Spasinbangkok.

The display is reminiscent of something I have seen before and is a little too basic for me: OK I know it is free. All we have is the map image that displays the three lines of the BTS and MRTA, although there it also shows the piers along the river: a good cheap day trip for sure as well as a useful and quick transportation link. The map cannot be double clicked so the only enlargement is the pinch. Nor does it work in landscape mode: there is no change to the aspect.

The reverse side, accessed via an "i" for Information at the top,, shows a list of stations in BTS number form: N, S, W and E depending on the line and a limited list of attractions in the area of each station. However, it does not show any information about MRTA stations or attractions. Petchaburi, for example, may well soon be one of the busiest stations once the Airport link is opened and Hualompong IS the main Thai railway terminus. It is good that some development of Thai-related apps is taking place, but this is a basic right now: the eggs have hatched; they need to grow.

I have been looking at the new TT & T run MacNet that offers a 3MB connection, with no phone line (which suggests some line sharing) for 590 baht. When I checked, the links do not come out this far.

It was with some surprise then, that on Thursday morning, I read in the Bangkok Post Business Section that as a reaction to MacNet, which has begun to get noticed by some people, True have rolled out a service with a connection speed of 8MB and of course I am interested. Not so fast.

When we phoned there was a pause. Apparently the area I live in will only carry a speed of 5MB and that any upgrade to better lines may not be available for a month or more. I wrote to True, using the same Help-Desk address and suggested that, if there is a better line, why do we have to wait to find out from the newspapers. If the subscribers, you know, the guys that pay the bills and give the company the income they need to survive, were to be kept informed, maybe we would go for the better service.

Are we beginning to detect a pattern here? Does the customer matter? Probably not.

We mentioned a short while ago Ballmer's comments that Macs were finished and who would want to pay and extra $500 for the privilege of using one. When I calculated the difference with the home computers, it was actually $620 on today's prices. Microsoft have now turned this into an advertising campaign, but like many, there are certain facts missing.

The first example of a user who was given $1,000 to spend, is supposedly a college graduate who also happens to be an actress, named Laura and she wanted a 17" screen. As everyone will realise, no Mac with a 17" screen can be bought for that price. Mac World has a few comments on this, plus a couple of YouTube excerpts.

The Mac Observer takes the same advertisement and analyses a little more pointing out that the HP notebook she bought, does not have high speed wifi, nor hi speed Ethernet and a load of other inputs and outputs: and that the screen resolution is the same as Apple's 15" machines. Oh, it also weighs a couple of pounds more. What it also lacks is software. She said "I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person," so is that Microsoft's message?

Over the weekend, others did some analysis. A close look at what she alleged she bought was carried out by Seth Weintraub of Computerworld. For a PC magazine, his comments on the device she came out of Best Buy with are devastating; and for a Microsoft ad., where is the information about Microsoft?

The best demonstration about how bogus the whole thing is comes in a look at the ad by Seth Weintraub again, but this time on 9 to 5 Mac. As part of the ad, the actress who uses the name, Laura, says she went into an Apple Shop for a look around. In the video, as she walks in (at the 13 sec mark) a guy is approaching the door to the right, and when she comes out after having a look around, the same guy is still walking past the store. He may be an extra, especially as he is carrying a tripod and camera, but why would anyone put the same extra in a clip like that?

That was apparently really Bill Gates hand giving her the cash, according to a Rixstep article that savages the ad and explains that Lauren has bought herself a whole lot of trouble, and why. She also has a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) according to Rixstep who post what may be part of her resume. Some student, eh?

Another thing that the cheaper Windows machine will have plenty of is virus attacks. There are still none on the Mac, but there is enough malware about that some are considering it may be worthwhile installing something like ClamXav. If you do, donate.

And on a perhaps related note, and I did check the date on this, we hear from The Guardian on 30 March, that Ballmer is to be named media person of the year at the Cannes International Advertising festival in June. For what: truth in advertising?

I don't suppose it has anything to do with Microsoft being a sponsor of the festival, does it?

I started the podcast with mention of Conficker, but let me pass on some more specific information about this. A lot of experts are concerned that today this worm is primed to deliver a major blow that will have millions of users in tears. Macsimum News actually asks the question, "are you and your Mac safe?"

With that question in front of me, I downloaded ClamXav which is now at version 1.1.1 as a first line of defence.

When I ran it in the user account, it came up with two examples of phishing that I had: one that claimed to be from Paypal and another, the mail I sent with a copy of the suspect message to Paypal's email address that deals with the problem. I also noticed that it checked my music, and some of the tunes were certainly downloaded. So far so good.

On that question of the Mac and safety, what I hear from a number of sources is that, while before we might run safely, we still can but it is worth being prepared. That Conficker Worm is certainly not going to affect a Mac with OS X, but many have Windows partitions now.

The British Parliament has lots of computers for its MPs and the staff, but my guess is that these are mainly Windows machines -- a gift that keeps on giving -- as the computers on their network have all been infected with the Conficker Worm: something that has been about for a while now, which suggests some poor IT work there.

This seems to mirror the British relationship with technology: get it half working then let others take it over. Whatever the textbooks tell you, the first analytical computer was developed in Britain, by Alan Turing at the government's facility at Bletchley Park that was working on decryptions of the Enigma coding machines.

The Bombe, and the other computers like Colossus, which was built form standard telephone parts, were declared secrets by Churchill who ordered everything destroyed at the end of WW2, so the Brits had to start again while the US path which we now follow, for better or worse, became the standard.

I saw last week that the Bombe had just been rebuilt and was part of the Bletchley appeal for funds. I went there last time I was in the UK -- about 14 years ago -- and it was full of enthusiasts lost in a sort of time warp all dressing up in uniforms of the period with one or tow notable exceptions, like Tony Sale who was rebuilding Colossus. He had just got the paper tape output -- or was that input -- up and running.

The Brits took a hammering last week with the approach to computers and IT that is taken there. The online version of the London Times had an interesting article concerning the level of security at several Ministries there and focussed on the amount of suspect hardware and software they had bought from Huawei and then installed on the new BT (formerly British Telecom) communications network. There are fears that the company, and perhaps the Chinese, have the ability to shut down the system by throwing a switch. A bit James Bond, but there is a chance that commercial information might be available.

Then it dawned on me that an awful lot of equipment here had been bought by CAT from the same company, Huawei, including that CDMA system that works in the central provinces and its upgrade that will be countrywide.

A few hours later, the BBC had another report on the Chinese and computer security, particularly in relation to the Dalai Lama and Asian governments. Working on some Canadian research, the BBS reported that they had infiltrated 1,295 computers in 103 countries. Coming so close to the other report, one cannot but help think they are related and the common link would be the US as source of the news.Nonetheless, this is not really a surprising revelation: one would be surprised if they were not; but the widespread nature, and the systems affected do give some cause for concern. Among those affected were apparently hacked systems in embassies of several countries, including Thailand on which malware installed has sent and received classified data.

About time some governments ended their blind adoration of Windows PCs.

Which brings me back to the Conficker Worm and its origins. One security company has a theory, based on a bit of detective work that cannot be confirmed, that this might have come from China: with the other rumours and warnings, the Chinese either have a lot to answer for or are due a lot of apologies. Dong Ngo, writing on CNET cites the work of a Vietnamese security company that has done some tracking and explains what to do if you think you might be at risk. The Register's Dan Goodin also came up with some useful information on this and outlines the way that researchers found the fingerprint and, following that, how it became much easier to find it on infected machines. Let us hope that enough sysadmins got the information as, if it does go feral, we will all be affected because there will be major problems on the internet.

There has been so much development in tracking and other data on the worm, that I am putting a series of links to a number of sites with useful information. The first in the lost is MacWorld who point out that OSX is not affected:

CNET Article on Conficker

A little late, but Apple announced the dates of the World Wide Developers' Conference, to be held in San Francisco this year. This will be from 8 - 12 June and the image they use, of an iPhone makes it clear that this will be the main thrust for the conference although on the Developer pages, OS X, which means 10.6, Snow Leopard, does get equal billing. The dates must also produce some speculation as to whether Steve Jobs will be there even if he said his return would be late June. Some think it would be better if he did not attend as this would make the total identification of him with Apple less distinct. Ian Paul on MacWorld has a number of observations on this.

An update to something we discussed a couple of weeks ago concerning censorship in Australia where, we hear, it is not only prohibited to look at certain sites there, it is prohibited to know which sites are prohibited. The German Wikileaks site, which has published information about such lists of banned sites of a number of countries in the past, was raided by the police there recently and, according to the Register's, John Ozimek, it all sounds as if it was a little heavy-handed. I would not be surprised to see more and more of this around the world under one pretext or other.

Two final items:

A new version of Neo Office -- now version 3.0 -- was released this week. The download is 160MB.

And, in this time of economic problems, some people are wondering (Some angrily) why public money is being used to pay for a proposed bridge that joins two parts of the Microsoft campus at Redmond.

Too Good to Miss?

We mentioned a couple of weeks back, the EFF health warning on Microsoft products. Eric Raymond follows this up with a lengthy article revealing some of the falsities and problems surrounding the introduction of Windows and why it is inherently insecure, a point that many Windows users face every day but seem unable to accept. One of the points is that it and the original Mac were never designed for networking, including the Internet, and that is integral to how we work these days. Those security certificates that Microsoft has are for standalone systems with no external drives, he explains: This is a good read.

Another point he makes is worth repeating: "The greatest harm Microsoft and the media are doing right now is not bursting the Windows centric bubble [my italics - the original was speech marks] they have most ordinary home users living in." Haven't some of us been saying that. That is what your $500 discount gets you, I suppose.

To keep the balance, we also read last week a ComputerWorld report that Macs have dropped in reliability and are now behind Asus and Lenovo.

However, we found out at the weekend that the company that issued the report, Rescuecom, was a repair company that was not even authorised to repair Macs, so those that they saw were probably outside of warranty. Daniel Eran Dilger of Roughly Drafted does a good job of explaining how there is more to this than meets the eye and that the company's own reliability might be the real problem.

On Thursday evening I tried to check my website stats but the login was not accepted. Well, this sometimes happens and is OK a few hours later. But when I tried to upload an RSS feed update on Friday morning, that failed, so I tried FTP and that reported the password was wrong. I checked the site and found that the page to the Mac articles was one for last month, so there was a problem, although the articles I had uploaded a couple of days earlier were there.

I sent email and had the result on my iPod touch while having lunch in Siam Center. They had had hardware problems and some files at top level had disappeared so they used a backup. They also reset my password.

Well, Heavens, Greenpeace has rehabilitated Apple, along with Philips and now the bad guys are Lenovo, HP and Dell according to a report in the Register. Nokia and Samsung also improved.

One person whom I discovered uses a Mac last week is Lance Armstrong, the champion cyclist. He put a video online and we can see that he has an image of the recent injury on the screen.

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