Newsletter 2012.10

 
 
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Welcome to the METHOD IT Newsletter for October 2012

IT Management & Security Concerns

Worried about Web and network security in your organisation?  Having trouble balancing efficient working practices with security, updates and patches?  Operating systems reaching the end of their life and proving harder to support? Need assistance in bringing realistic and sustainable IT policies to your corporate environment?
Let us help you achieve your IT goals with our comprehensive management and monitoring packages.

Tips & Tricks

Dropbox and Google do the 2-step

As we entrust more and more of our personal and professional data to public cloud services, it’s important to protect our files and emails from getting into the wrong hands. Both Dropbox and Google now offer ‘two-step verification’ for improved security. But what is it exactly and how do you set it up?
Read More >>

New iPhone YouTube App

Ahead of its removal from Apple’s iOS 6, Google released an all-new YouTube app for iPhone and iPod Touch. Unfortunately an iPad version isn’t available at time of writing.
This is looking to be much better than the old pre-installed app. Tens of thousands more videos are viewable, you just have to suffer a little advertising to get to them. Other new features include access to subscribed channels and enhanced options for sharing videos with others.
Get the new YouTube app on iTunes >>

New Wikipedia eBook Export Feature

English Wikipedia has launched a handy export-to-ebook feature for offline reading of its pages. Just click ‘Print/Export’>’Create a book’ in the left sidebar of the website to make a custom compilation of Wikipedia pages and export them as an EPUB, PDF or OpenOffice file.
More info on the official Wikipedia blog >>

News from the Web

iPhone 5 Arrives - Videos, Reviews, Tips, Comedy

iPhone 5 was finally released in 11 countries including the US and Japan on September 21st. Check out our handy compilation of need-to-know iPhone news featuring videos, reviews, jokes, the maps fiasco, and tips on getting an iPhone 5 in Japan.

Japanese Websites Attacked by Chinese Hackers

In a co-ordinated effort earlier this month, Chinese hackers went after Japanese websites on a publicly posted hitlist of 300 with DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks and other intrusions. Some sites had their homepages replaced with an image of a Chinese flag and messages about the hotly disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The hackers were able to do so using exploits in older versions of software. A timely reminder to make sure your web servers are all up-to-date and fully secure.

Power, Pollution and the Internet

Just what goes on in the average Data Center? And how environmentally friendly are they? Read the fascinating and detailed results from a New York Times survey conducted over one year.

Win XP Users: Google to Drop Support for IE8

With MS Internet Explorer 10 on the way in Windows 8 next month, Google are sticking to their current-and-prior-version-only policy and dropping support for IE 8 on November 15th. If you’re still running Windows XP and access Google Apps like GMail using Internet Explorer, now’s the time to either upgrade your OS or, less drastically, switch to Firefox or Chrome.

Spank your Smartphone

Strange-yet-cool idea of the month. Microsoft has filed a patent for shutting up a ringing phone with a smack of the hand. Great for when you forgot to turn silent mode on in a crowded train or movie theater. BAM!

Oddball Korean Music Video Becomes Internet Craze

We feel obliged to close this month with the hottest viral video on the Internet – ‘Gangnam Style’ by Korean rapper PSY. This magic blend of quirky humor and a horse-riding dance has clocked up 330 million views and counting on YouTube in the two months since it was posted, and spawned all kinds of spoofs, celebrity tributes and foreign TV appearances.