point

Forcing vendors to fix bugs under deadline

In October 2006, security researcher H.D. Moore discovered a serious problem with the way applications running on Windows display rich text content.

He reported the vulnerability to Microsoft and nearly four years later it's still not fixed, despite the fact that it could be exploited to run malicious code on a PC and take control of it.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. According to the Zero Day Initiative, which serves as a broker between security researchers who find flaws and software companies who need to fix them, there are 122 outstanding vulnerabilities that have been reported … Read more

TippingPoint gives vendors six months to fix holes

As of Wednesday, software vendors will have a deadline to fix vulnerabilities reported to them by TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative rather than allowing holes to remain unpatched indefinitely.

Vendors will be required to fix the holes within six months, said Aaron Portnoy, manager of security research at TippingPoint, owned by Hewlett-Packard. TippingPoint runs the Zero Day Initiative, which acts a broker paying researchers for information on vulnerabilities and then providing the information to the vendors so they can fix them.

Extensions to the deadline will be given on a case by case basis, he said. If they don't … Read more

PowerPoint converter

PowerPoint presentations do a great job of presenting complex information to audiences, but they take a lot of time and effort to create yet tend to have a limited lifespan, typically the duration of a project. Wondershare's PPT2Video Pro can help you maximize the usefulness of your PowerPoint presentations by converting them into video for posting online, in product manuals, as training materials, and much more. With 130 different file formats available, including HD, you can probably find something useful to do with your old presentations.

To use PPT2Video Pro, you need to have PowerPoint installed, not just some … Read more

PowerPoint representation

Xilisoft's PowerPoint to Video Converter Personal converts Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into a wide range of standard and HD video formats, everything from AVI to WMV, that can be played back, posted online or in LANs, or carried on portable devices, even iPhones. You can use it to recycle old presentations, share them, and create archives. It has uses beyond business, though, including electronic resumes, fund-raising, public affairs--anyone who can make good use of presentations can probably find a way to reuse them, too, with a tool like this. It will even convert PPT files if your system lacks PowerPoint, … Read more

First public EV charging station opens in NYC

Coulomb Technologies installed its first public electric charging station in New York on Wednesday. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg attended the unveiling of the ChargePoint charging station, which is located in a public parking lot near Port Authority.

It's the first installation of Coulomb Technologies' $37 million project, funded in part by a $15 million grant administered by the Department of Energy, the Associated Press reported. The company will install thousands of public charging stations in nine U.S. regions: Austin, Texas; Detroit; Los Angeles; New York; Orlando, Fla.; Sacramento, Calif.; the San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area; Redmond, … Read more

Google Docs delivers presentation basics

In last Wednesday's post pitting Microsoft's Office Web Apps against Google Docs, I said Google Docs doesn't support PowerPoint presentations. Wrong.

Google Docs wouldn't open my test PPTX file, but the service lets you create and edit presentations in the older PowerPoint PPT format, albeit without most of the desktop app's formatting options. You won't find much in the way of transitions, effects, and other advanced features in Google Docs, either. The best feature of Google's online presentation tool is its clean interface, which isn't a surprise considering the company behind the … Read more

Video: Office 2011 for Mac preview

The Office 2011 for Mac preview was on display at an entertainment-related event put on by Microsoft this week.

Microsoft says the goal of this latest installment of Office for Mac is to bring the software more in line with the Windows user experience of the suite. What we see as the most notable addition to the Mac version is Outlook, the e-mail and productivity software Mac users have clamored for for years. We also noticed that like Office 2010 for Windows, the Mac version looks like it will share the same unified Ribbon interface features of its Windows counterpart … Read more

Office Web Apps, Google Docs go head-to-head

Microsoft's first true browser-based versions of the venerable Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications won't make you abandon the programs' full-featured counterparts installed your hard drive. But if you splurge for Office 2010, you may find yourself spending a lot more time working in your browser.

You probably already do some word processing and spreadsheet work using Google Docs, Zoho, or another such service. (I described the Web's best desktop-app replacements in a post last month.)

These services have offered first-rate word processing and spreadsheet programs that run in a browser and let you create, open, and store … Read more

Salesforce releases its Facebook for business

Salesforce.com hopes its new Chatter product will give businesses something to talk about.

After beta testing the collaboration service since February, the company says the product is ready for mainstream use. Although it is designed to compete with Microsoft's SharePoint or IBM's Lotus Notes, Salesforce.com aptly describes Chatter as sort of a Facebook for businesses.

Instead of following old high school classmates, though, Chatter allows workers to follow co-workers, specific business documents, or pieces of data. A sales rep, for example, could follow a pending deal and get updates whenever details on the transaction are updated, … Read more