If you are the type of person that always seems to get to a website that is inappropriate or not a website that is suitable for viewing by children, then you may seem lost with all of these talks of Parental Controls for Windows and Mac. These tools are great, but if you really want to keep them out, try this free service called OpenDNS. OpenDNS allows you to use OpenDNS as your DNS server, which means that it can filter out websites that you try to goto. It also has category filtering, so that you can filter categories of webites (i.e. Social Networking, Adult). No more trying to set parental controls on a bunch of different computers in your house. In order to get OpenDNS to work at your home all you have to do is a simple configuration change to your router. OpenDNS offers many tutorials on how to get this setup and working.

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Everyone is really up in arms about one of the latest worms that is out on the internet. Keep in mind that it only effects computers that haven’t been kept to date with Microsoft Updates. Make sure that your system is fully patched to protect it from Conficker. It also won’t hurt to make sure you have an antivirus and that it is up to date. If you are using your computer for personal use, I suggest using AVG Free, which is a great antivirus system and is also free.

To those Mac users out there…. don’t be afraid, Conficker can’t infect a Mac system.

If you want to test your machine for the Conficker worm, a Conficker test page is located here.

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Recently I have put in an Untangle Server together.  This OS is based on linux and can be used a firewall, web filter, virus scanner, VPN server, and much more.   I currently have it setup as a firewall (primary), virus scanner, and VPN server.  The best thing about Untangle is it is open source and free.  So, the startup costs are very small.  All you need is a basic computer with 3 Network Cards (if you are using DMZ, Internal, and External).   I’m still working with it, but I will be releasing a log viewer for Untangle Server very soon.  Check back soon.

For now the best resource for Untangle is using Untangle’s forums.  There are many knowledgable people in there that can help answer your questions.

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Apple announced at their World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2008, that Apple will be realeasing iPhone version 2.  The new iPhone will support AT&T’s higher speed network called 3G.  There are many phones that take advantage of this faster speed, and the iPhone will now do the same.  The faster speeds will aid in the development of many 3rd party applications that will be available when the iPhone 2.0 software update comes out.  The 3G iPhone also will have built in GPS.

The 3G iPhone will be less expensive up front than iPhone 1.0.  The 8GB version will cost $199 and the 16GB will be $299.  However, AT&T will require that iPhone users pay an additional $10 for the faster high speed 3G network, even if they don’t live in an area that has 3G coverage.

The 3G iPhone will be released on July 11th.

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Microsoft release Windows XP in October of 2001.  It wasn’t until September of the next year that Microsoft release Windows XP SP1.  This was a minor update compared to the release of Windows XP SP2 in 2004.  Service Pack 2 came with many new improvements, especially in the area of security and wireless internet.  Windows XP has laid dormant, besides bug fixes and patches for the past 3+ years, mainly because of the new operating system, Windows Vista, that came out in January of 2007.    Windows XP Service Pack 3 will not feature any big feature updates like in Service Pack 2, but will contain a roll up of all those many patches that Microsoft has released for Windows XP.  No more of going to Windows Update and seeing 100’s of updates and restarting multiple times. Pre-versions of SP3 have been out for a few months now, but the release of SP3 to the general public is coming in just a few weeks.  It will come first as a download from the Microsoft website, then will become part of Windows Update sometime in June 2008.  The download will be released by Microsoft to the general public next Tuesday, April 29, 2008.   Be sure to check out Microsoft’s Download Center in the next coming week for the download. 

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