Tech News for 9-23-09

For those of you who have seen the fake anti-virus programs, with names such as AntiVirus 2009, Vista AntiVirus, AntiVirus 360, you know they are definitely annoying and conniving. They pretend to find multiple "infections" on your computer and then prompt or require you to pay for an "upgrade" in order to remove the "infections".The software is a complete scam. Instead of improving and updating its security software, Microsoft has found new, better method to prevent these "scareware" programs: lawyers and lawsuits. According to Reuters, the software giant has filed suit against several "companies" that create these fake anti-virus programs, companies with names such as "Soft Solutions", "ote2008.info" and "Direct Ad". Microsoft intends to uncover who is actually creating and distributing these programs.


Intuit, a personal financial software company (creators of QuickBooks) will acquire Mint, a free online personal finance service, for around $170 million. Mint has been growing rapidly ever since it first launched two years ago, gaining around 3,000 users a day. The company is currently valued at around $140 million.



Google has been scanning and allowing users to read millions of books through it's Google Books service, even allowing users to search through the books. Now, Google is working with a firm called On Demand Books, to allow users to turn those digital books into paper copies. On Demand Books is a company that has created a device called the Espresso Book Machine, which is able to print out a 300 page gray-scale book with a color cover in about 4 minutes. Bookstores with this machine will able to print out any of the 2 million public domain books in Google Books.

~Bryan Scheiber is a Systems Administrator in Metro Detroit.
He can be reached at: bryan@bryzo.com

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