Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Burqalicious. The Dubai Diaries. Brit ExPat lifts the lid on life in Dubai. Sun,sex,sand and shopping.
SYDNEY-based author, Becky Wicks, lifts the veil on life as a young single British expat in Dubai in her new book ‘Burqalicious – The Dubai Diaries’ – a true account of what really goes down in the world’s fastest growing, yet relatively undocumented city.
Over two and a half years, an entire city rose from the dust around Becky in Dubai, along with a good few rungs of that hard-to-climb career ladder.
She recounts the time spent living on a mad inventor’s landing, living on a building site in the middle of mounting chaos, and struggling as a celebrity editor in a land where sex definitely does not sell. She also talks us through her steamy – literally – days and nights as a wealthy Arab’s mistress…
Eminently readable, this book fuses an exploration of the wacky and weird that comprise day-to-day life in the heady tax-free haven.
Told with a healthy dose of humour, anyone who’s ever worked abroad, or wanted to, will relate, laugh and maybe learn a thing or two.
Keep up to date with the latest news at the Burqalicious The Dubai Diaries Facebook Page.
Paperback and Kindle editions are available from Amazon
In the UK you can order Burqalicious the Dubai Diaries from Waterstones.
‘Burqalicious – The Dubai Diaries’ is on sale at all leading bookshops now. An ebook version is also available.
ISBN-10: 0732292484
ISBN-13: 978-0732292485
Phishing and the toerags who toss the hooks and lines
A phone call this morning alerted me to the presence of some Phishing code that had been planted into this site by some unknown sewer rat.
I don’t know at the moment how they did that, but it may be related to a security hole in WordPress, that has now been plugged in a recent update which I have applied today.
So if you received an email apparently from this site, trash it. Do not act on any instructions within it, although I would expect anyone with any sense wouldn’t do so anyway.
Apologies to anyone who has been bothered by this nonsense, it has nothing to do with us beyond my tardiness in updating WordPress.
TweetFacebook new groups feature rife withabuse | Naked Security
Facebook new groups feature rife with abuse: “”
The new Groups feature, set up so a small group of friends can have a discussion away from the regular news feed, has a rather nasty sting in the tail.
Keep an eye on your Facebook pages. One of your “Friends” could easily subscribe you to a group without your permission. You wouldn’t even receive an email notification.
You will only be notified if and when you are logged in to Facebook.
From the Facebook Help Centre
“Can I prevent people from adding me to a new group?”.
The functionality of approving a group membership is not available. Similar to being tagged in a photo, you can only be added to a group by one of your friends. When a friend adds you to a group, a story in the group (and in News Feed for Open or Closed groups) will indicate that your friend has added you to a group.
Please keep in mind:
* Only your friends can add you to groups.
* When a friend adds you to a group, you’ll get a notification right away.
* You can leave a group anytime. To do so, just go to the group page and click “Leave Group” in the right-hand column. Once you leave a group, you can’t be added by anyone else unless you explicitly request to be re-added.
Choose your Facebook friends wisely.
TweetThe recession is worsening
It must be.
We went into my wine merchants of choice yesterday, Aldi, and there were 3 checkouts in operation. Unheard of since the dawn of time. There is usually only one until the queue gets beyond 4 people when they call for reinforcements.
The place was heaving with people and no places in the car park either.
Unheard of since Pontious was Pilot.
Amazing.
Wedding Bales. Posh Hay Bale Seating.
I had a call a couple of days ago from a client who already has a couple of websites. He wanted a quick single page website to promote a new idea that seems to have emerged out of nowhere.
He sells hay bales, usually for animal feed or bedding, but had an enquiry recently to supply some hay bales for seating at a wedding reception.
He suggested that the bales be covered in material in a colour to match the brides dress. This went down well and everyone at the reception was very pleased with the result.
There was born a new business idea.
So here it is, a quick and clean single page brochure site for Wedding Bales, custom covered hay bales for wedding receptions, parties and events.
Tweetmywebcalls.com. Where’s my account?
I was recently looking for an alternative to Skype for making calls from computer to landline phone. Particularly for overseas calls as Skype rates to some destinations are a bit high. I regularly use 18866 from the landline phone here but I wanted something similar to Skype on the Mac so anyone in the room can join in the conversation without passing the handset around.
I found Mywebcalls had some attractive rates and opened an account, paying $30 via Paypal in the process.
Mywebcalls say it can take up to 24 hours to open accounts. So far it’s been 13 days.
I’ve sent 3 emails to support@mywebcalls.com and received 3 auto responses. I’ve also opened a dispute file with PayPal.
Mywebcalls is a PC to phone service run by ISP Fused Group who I have contacted by telephone today.
I’m waiting for a promised response and will update this blog post accordingly.
Update.
I received a call back asking for a copy of my email and PayPal transaction details with a promise to “Look in to the matter”. Email sent.
Anti Virus in the cloud. Titanium Internet Security.
Windows PC users have to be constantly vigilant while on the net, and keep their anti virus software up to date.
One of the disadvantages of many anti virus software applications is that they are constantly using system resources while running in the background. This can have a serious impact on the computers performance.
Trend Micro has come up with an interesting solution. Titanium Internet Security. Anti Virus in the cloud. Specifically designed for low powered Netbooks it can be used on any Windows PC using XP Pro, Vista Family or Windows 7 Home,Premium and Starter. They say it will run on an XP machine with a 300MHz processor.
It’s $39.95 with a free trial
TweetFacebook’s Places Feature About to Launch
Facebook’s Places Feature About to Launch:
“There are, of course, complications, which leave the geolocation- and local-services start-up community with plenty of questions about how much of their data they will have to share with Facebook if they tap into the new APIs. And additionally, Facebook’s tendency to garner bad press with regard to privacy may make some of them wary of getting involved.”
Facebook needs to understand that it’s users are increasingly concerned about privacy on the web, and what Facebook does with their personal information.
TweetAdobe fixes six critical Flash bugs | Security | Macworld
Adobe fixes six critical Flash bugs | Security | Macworld: “Tuesday’s update was 2010’s third for Flash Player, the Adobe browser plug-in that’s installed on an estimated 99 percent of all personal computers. Previous updates in March and June have fixed 33 other flaws.
As is Adobe’s practice, it revealed only the scantiest of details about the half-dozen bugs in the accompanying security advisory. Five of the six were labeled as ‘memory corruption’ vulnerabilities, while the sixth could potentially be used in a ‘click-jacking’ attack.
Adobe said it was unaware of any in-the-wild exploitation of the vulnerabilities.
One of the patches is a second try for Adobe.
The company tried to patch the CVE-2010-2188 flaw two months ago when it last updated Flash. However, about two weeks after that June 10 update, Adobe admitted its fix had failed. “
There is also a security update for Adobe Reader pending. Look out for that next week.
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