Spyware’s have been a pain the backside for Windows users for a few years now, and those pesky programmers behind the serious problem are finding new places to spread this behind the scenes software. They’re new place of business…MySpace???

According to Information Week and several other sources. Several hoax MySpace users are disguising themselves as legitiment users and posting adult videos that require a software application to be installed called Zango. Here’s what InformationWeek had to say:

Just days after the Federal Trade Commission reached an agreement with adware distributor Zango that requires the company to pay a $3 million settlement, security vendor Websense said it has spotted adult videos that require installation of Zango software from a site posing as YouTube.

Websense has identified a number of pages on the social networking site MySpace that offer up videos which appear to originate from the video-sharing site YouTube. The videos are actually hosted on a site with a similar URL — www.youtube.info — which Websense classified as “clearly fraudulent” based on bogus domain registration information. The site, which was available Tuesday, is hosted from a server in Amsterdam, Websense said.

As you can see, there is going to continue to be a threat of adware/spyware as long browsers are vulnerable. Unfortunately, many non-expecting young kids are going to be infecting they’re parents computers and in some cases making life miserable for what many consider “their life.”

You can find many prevention and removal tools at Download.com’s Adware and Spyware Section.

It’s been an amazing couple of weeks for YouTube. First the biggest news of any was the Google Acquisition for $1.65 Billionand just this week was named “Invention of the Year” by Time Magazine. Not bad for a couple of young entrepreneurs just looking to share their family video recordings.

Now, it sounds as though Verizon Communications and YouTube are on in “advanced talks” to bring video to both Verizon Wireless for cell phone use, along with Verizon’s cable television network.

This excerpt from eWeek:

Verizon Communications Inc., the No. 2 U.S. telecommunications company, is in advanced talks with YouTube Inc. to bring the Web site’s videos to cellphones and television sets, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
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A deal may give Verizon a marketing edge over its rivals in the wireless and cable industries, furthering the company’s efforts to expand into Internet and entertainment services, the Journal reported.

Source: eWeek.com

When in comes to realm of open source, we all know who the top dog is..LINUX!!!…But great games that run stable on the Linux without using some type of emulation software or running into some serious hiccups are hard to come by. Over at Techgage they’ve put together a list of the top 10, freely available, Linux specific games, for your enjoyment. Here they are:

#1 – Battle for Wesnoth – Here is a game that was constantly being noted as a great game, but I have never even heard of it until recently. Wesnoth is a fantasy turn based strategy game that is truly cross platform. It’s not only available for Linux but also Windows, BeOS, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and others. David White, the creator of the game, based it off a few Sega Genesis classics. He wanted the game to be rather simple to play, yet have strong AI. He strongly believes in the “Keep it Simple, Stupid” analogy, so you can’t expect deep gameplay that will drag you away from real life for hours at a time.

#2 – Frozen Bubble – If there ever were a popular puzzle game for Linux, Frozen Bubble would be it. Based off what we have seen with Bust a Move, Frozen Bubble is a rather simplistic puzzle that that requires some sort of strategy to succeed.

#3 – Enemy Territory – When Return to Castle Wolfenstein was first released, it was hailed quickly by online gamers. It was a blast to play and had great graphics and sound to boot. Shortly after this, Enemy Territory, originally slated as a commercial expansion pack, was released entirely for free. In early 2004, the source code was released making it easier for modders and those working on total conversions to get things done.

#4 – Nexuiz – Nexuiz proves to be one of the most popular open source FPS games on Linux, and for good reason. The game engine used is DarkPlaces, which is a heavily modified Quake 1 engine. That’s evident in the graphics. If you’ve ever played Quake 1 deathmatch, then you are aware that it was one of the pioneers in what it did. Jump in, have some quick fun and log oback out. Personally, it was the first game that I played online quite often. Nexuiz tries to go back to those roots, and delivers for the most part.

#5 – Neverball & Neverputt – If you enjoy playing with balls, then Neverball should be right up your alley. The game is quite similar to Super Monkey Ball for the Nintendo Gamecube, so if you’ve played that, then you know what to expect here. The game premise is simple… you have a ball and are required to move it around the level collecting a set amount of coins. Once done, you must make it safely to the finishing portal. It sounds simple, because for the most part… it is.

#6 – Pingus – Puzzle games have proven to be one of the most popular genres around, so it’s no surprise that the market is littered with such games. Not only that, but some of the true classics, we have seen recreated and updated time and time again. Not only by the official companies, but by fans also. Pingus, if you cannot already tell, is based off the ultra-popular Lemmings game. When it originally came out in the early 90′s, I am sure the developers did not expect it to catch on so rapidly!

#7 – Cube 2 – One thing you will notice with this top 10 list, is that four of the games are FPS. It goes to show that these are some of the most favored out there, and it’s no surprise given the graphic and online capabilities. Cube is one of these, for multiple reasons. First, it’s a game that’s incredibly quick and easy to get into. After running the start script, you are literally standing in the game ready to go, within seconds.

#8 – Armagetron Advanced – Who doesn’t love Tron? Admit it, you do. Tron is a prime example of killer gameplay that doesn’t need superb graphics to be fun. Armagetron Advanced does nothing amazing to the Tron-like style games, but what it does do, it does well. The game doesn’t have good graphics, although they are very clean in high resolutions. The sound is nothing major either, but works well with the Tron theme.

#9 – Americas Army – It’s not too often you can say you are playing a game put out by the United States Government, but Americas Army is just that. This began not only as a game, but a tool to train future army recruits. The US Army probably didn’t expect the game to quickly explode into a popular online stature though.

#10 – KMahjongg – To start things off, we have a classic Chinese puzzle game at number 10. Classic in the sense that it’s well over 100 years old! After creation, the game quickly spread out of China and become popular the world over. Like Solitaire, it can be played by yourself, which is a huge draw.

Check out Techgage for a more comprehensive page with download links.

With critical data always floating around on your pc, it’s important that files get permanently destroyed. Over the past few years people have finally realized that although files are deleted from your recycle bin, the truth is, is that the files can still be recovered. Sysinternals.com has quite a few handy tools for all the Help Desk and Desktop Analysts out there, and SDelete is one of the applications.

Once you SDelete downloaded and placed into your “c:\windows\system32″ directory. All that you have to do is create a BAT files with the following code:

@echo off
echo .* * *W A R N I N G * * *
echo .
echo .The File(s)/Folders(s) Will Be Permanently Deleted!
echo .
echo .Press CTRL-C to Abort and Terminate Batch Job Or…
echo .
pause
sdelete -p 4 -s %1
pause

As more and more people join the World Wide Web, more and more people are making all of their purchases via the web for obvious reasons.

With the millions of shoppers have come hundreds, if not thousands of deal and price comparison shopping sites. Most people end up picking their favorites and check them on a daily, if not hourly basis. The problem is, is that you are probably still not finding the best deal. Now, with the up and coming Web 2.0, comes a couple of ingenious deal search engines, Roosster.com and Clipfire.com. Essentially what these sites do, are instead of scanning all of the major shopping networks for the best prices, as most price comparing sites do, is automatically scan the hundreds of deal specific sites, for rebates, price drops and coupons for you.

I find Roosster.com the best of the two, because it sets it self up as many of the other deal sites and then allows for searching, filtering and RSS reading for your viewing pleasure.

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Clipfire.com is the other popular option for this arena. Clipfire works very similar to Digg, where registered users “Clip” deals that they like enabling them to be posted to the front page of the popular deals page. While clipfire does search many of the large deal sites, does have RSS and does have search capabilities, it doesn’t have quite the same options as Roosster. I would just check them both regularly to find your best deal.

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