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Mac Viruses Continue to Lag Behind Windows Counterparts

By Scott Gilbertson November 20th, 2008 Categories: Humor, Software & Tools

imac virusQuite a few software makers routinely release Windows versions ahead of Mac flavors — Skype, Google Chrome and Adobe Photoshop Elements to name a few — and now it seems that poor Mac users can’t even get a decent virus that’s on par with the threats Windows users face.

Yes, that’s right, there’s a new Mac virus lurking out there in the wild, but unless you’re incredibly stupid there’s no need to worry. The virus is technically a trojan, named Lamzev-A, which creates a backdoor for attackers to take over your Mac. At the moment the trojan disguises itself as video codec on what The Register calls “grumble flick” sites — that’d be porn to you and me.

Of course setting the new trojan loose requires quite a few steps on your part, first you need to download the file, then launch the resulting .dmg. Once the disk image is mounted, the hapless victim then launches the app, which proceeds to create the backdoor.

Along the way OS X will alert you that you just downloaded an unknown app and you might want to think twice about running it. Do people really install codec files from porn sites? Probably, but not many. In any case Trend Micro has already updated its software, so if you suspect you’ve been a victim of Lamzev-A try the online scanner.

While this may not a be a serious threat, jokes aside, it should be a reminder that, just because you’re running OS X doesn’t mean you’re totally immune. Just like we have no doubt Google will get around to release Chrome for Mac, there’s also a good change malware authors will get around to writing something truly scary for OS X.

After all, the very first computer virus was written for an Apple machine.

[Awesome iMac virus image courtesy of Trend Micro]

See Also:


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Have a jQuery Halloween

By Adam DuVander October 31st, 2008 Categories: Humor

jQuery pumpkin

There’s nothing like short and sweet jQuery JavaScript carved into a pumpkin to get me in the Halloween mood. If you aren’t familiar with the framework, give yourself a treat and read up on our jQuery tutorial.

On the other hand, if you’d rather get some other pumpkin carving ideas, Wired has you covered.

Still need a costume? Yeah, plenty of geeky disguise ideas to choose from.

[via John Resig]


Tags: halloween, jQuery
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MacHeads Film to Explore the ‘Cult of Mac’

By Scott Gilbertson October 15th, 2008 Categories: Humor, Multimedia

There’s a new trailer for the coming film MacHeads making the internet rounds today. The film, which so far doesn’t have a release date, looks sort of like Trekkies, but focuses on the “cult of Mac” rather than the cult of Star Trek. The trailer doesn’t give many hints as to what the film is about, but we have no doubt that many a Mac fan will be at least momentarily entranced.

Given that PCs currently outnumber Macs two to one in my household, I don’t think I qualify as a Mac head (though OS X is running on one of those PCs so many that makes up for it). That said, even I will admit there’s something strangely compelling about Apple, Steve Jobs and the whole aura of Macs.

Whether you find Mac fans annoying pedants or you’re happily draining the Kool-Aid from Steve’s over-sized sippy cup, there’s no denying that Apple and its fans have a significant impact on the web and tech culture in general.

Will we fork out $12 to see MacHeads? Nah, we’ll just wait until it hits the iTunes Store.

[Trivia note: Wired’s resident Mac expert Leander Kahney (founder of the Cult of Mac blog and author of several books on Apple) makes an appearance in the trailer.]


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ABC Brandishes Text-Based Website for ‘Life On Mars’ Premiere

By Michael Calore October 9th, 2008 Categories: Humor, Visual Design

Visit the ABC.com website Thursday and you’ll see the faux old-school terminal interface shown above. The box on the right side of the page tries to load a video player, then spits out a string of errors. A few seconds later, the whole page refreshes and you’re redirected to the regular ABC.com site.

This little prank was devised to promote the premiere of ABC’s newest show, Life on Mars. It’s the story of an NYPD cop who loses consciousness and wakes up in 1973. The show stars Harvey Keitel, the fetching Gretchen Mol and Chrissy from The Sopranos.

No idea if the show is a drama or a comedy (we’ll tell you tomorrow), but somebody at ABC has a sick sense of humor — the entire “terminal” interface is built in Flash.


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YouTube Commenters Hear Their Own Gibberish

By Adam DuVander October 7th, 2008 Categories: Humor, Software & Tools

YouTube audio previewApparently the developers at YouTube read web comic xkcd. Before posting a comment on the video sharing site, users now have the option to hear their words in text-to-speech, a feature suggested in a recent installment of the popular online strip.

YouTube comment threads are well known for what could be kindly called “lacking coherence.” There’s even a Firefox extension to remove misspelled comments. Now the site has decided to let users hear for themselves how little sense they make.

Whether “audio preview” will make any difference to someone whose entire comment reads “rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” (actual comment from a featured video) is to be seen. I’m guessing most commenters will skip right past it in an effort to get their “first!” comments in there.

The placement of the button is interesting. It’s exactly where the post message button used to be, meaning quick commenters will discover it only when they accidentally click the new button. Hopefully they’ll do this with their speakers up at work.

No word yet from YouTube on the official blog, but it caused at least one user to suspect a virus.

[Thanks for the tip, Koichi and the xkcd connection, ami_the_geek]

See also:


Tags: audio, video, youtube
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Swag We Don’t Want: CNN Headline Shirts

By Adam DuVander October 3rd, 2008 Categories: Humor

96 yr-old blind fan betting on Cubs winIf web t-shirt selling hadn’t already jumped the shark, surely it will with CNN headline shirts. The cable news network takes what appear to be its most humorous web headlines and prints on demand for t-shirts. Nevermind that CNN is supposed to have real news, the sort of stuff that shouldn’t be shirt worthy. And most of it isn’t.

This is something you might expect of satirical news site The Onion. While the site with funny headlines does sells shirts, it only includes vague references to its own stories. Too bad.

Maybe The Onion (or you–really anybody can do better than CNN) should use CNN’s provider Spreadshirt to make its own shirts on demand.

See also:


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Travel Back in Google Time to the Year 2001

By Scott Loganbill September 30th, 2008 Categories: Humor, Other

Travel way back to Google-date 2001 thanks to Google’s 10th year birthday celebration. The company has made its oldest recorded index live and searchable through an easter egg. Search results include links to the wayback machine.

Ah, 2001. Webmonkey was there and owned by Lycos. The internet bubble broke, and there was a brief period of time when it was considered a fad by middle managers and financial pundits everywhere.

When miserable failure meant prohibition and a search for “paris hilton” delivered a hotel in France.

You know, sometimes I miss those wild, wacky, simpler times.


Tags: Google, search
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Google 10th Birthday Easter Egg: Street View Guy

By Michael Calore September 25th, 2008 Categories: Events, Humor

Street View Guy

September 2008 officially marks Google’s tenth birthday (though the exact date and/or age is still a bit of a mystery) and the company has trotted out its 10th Birthday website in celebration.

Appropriately, little Easter Eggs are showing up in some of Google’s services. Here’s our favorite: The Street View Guy has a hat and a handful of party balloons. In the screenshot above, he is levitating over our office. More specifically, the Reddit engineering squad.

Have you seen any other Easter Eggs? Leave a comment and let us know. Picasa photos of you eating cake while searching the internet in your underwear don’t count, but don’t let us stop you.


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Google Offers Programming Tips Straight From the Cat’s Mouth

By Scott Gilbertson September 19th, 2008 Categories: Humor, Programming

testing rocksFind the average programming tutorial too full of jargon? Looking for something more in the language of the people? Or perhaps language of the cats? Well, we here at Webmonkey aren’t going to give you any such satisfaction, but Google will.

We though we were nerds, but the engineers on the Google Testing Blog have one-upped us with the latest episode of “Testing on the Toilet,” a humorous (but also somewhat serious) tutorial written entirely in lolcat speak.

For instance:

Oh NOES! Usin’ internets in ur unit testz? Don’t clog the tubes! Is not big truck! Mock the LOLIO thingy. No moar tubes!

If you find the post funny you’ve probably reached a level of nerdery from which there is no return. But, believe it or not, there is actually some good advice in there, so head over and have a read.

And fear not, the ‘monkey abides, and will not be offering an lolcats tutorials any time soon. Or ever.


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Humor: You’re No One if You’re Not on Twitter

By Scott Gilbertson September 18th, 2008 Categories: Humor

Ben Walker recently posted this little tune, extolling and mocking everybody’s favorite micromessage service, Twitter.

You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter/ and if you aren’t there already, you missed it.

That’s why the ‘monkey has its own twitter page, follow if you dare.

See Also:


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