Ever wonder what people do with their free time in other parts of the world? Earth Album allows users to navigate photos taken from around the globe, all from the comfort of their own homes.

It’s quite an interesting concept. The site actually doesn’t host any of its own pictures, but instead references them from Flickr. Earth Album uses Google Earth in its Hybrid Satellite View to “mashup” said images with the coordinates on the earth. Simple in theory, beautiful in execution.

Using Earth Album, it becomes immediately clear that you’re not just getting the watered-down, stock images of the mainstay temples and pyramids in other lands (sights we’ve become all-too-accustomed to seeing when viewing such photos).

In my first few minutes of exploring, I was pulling up images of lightning striking outside the bedroom window of one lucky Finnish photog. I witnessed people diving from Read the rest of this entry »

So you’ve stopped going to “those” types of websites that could potentially fill your PC with all kinds of malicious malware, viruses and back door trojans — nice move. You also keep your virus definitions up-to-date and run regular scans of your entire machine. Your backups couldn’t be more religious, and you archive everything to DVD on a weekly basis. You’re safe, right? Maybe not…

There’s a new kind of security exploit that involves a new image format called a “GIFAR”, where users who simply LOOK at the image, will fall prey to its nefarious objectives.

Computerworld: Here’s how an attack would work: A bad guy would create a profile on a popular Web site — Facebook, for example — and upload his GIFAR as an image on the site. Then he’d trick a victim into visiting a malicious Web site, which would tell the victim’s browser to go open the GIFAR. At that point, the applet would run in the browser, providing the hacker access to Read the rest of this entry »