Last year, in the run-up to the launch of Windows 7, Microsoft rewarded early adopters with a series of discounted upgrade offers. And then, as quickly as they appeared, those deals vanished.

But if you’re willing to wait a month or so, one of the best of those deals is about to make a triumphant return. Beginning October 3 in the U.S., you’ll once again be able to buy the Windows 7 Family Pack, which gives you three upgrade licenses of Windows 7 Home Premium for an estimated retail price of $149.99. (Typically, online retailers discount that price by 10 bucks or so.)

If you can use all three licenses at an average cost of $50 each, this deal represents a savings of 58% off the best available retail price of roughly $120 for a single upgrade license. As I noted last year when this deal first appeared:

If you have two or more PCs in your home and you want to upgrade them to Windows 7, this deal is for you. […] It includes two DVDs: one copy each of the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade installation media. You get a single product key that can be activated on up to three different PCs.

[...]

The license says you can install Family Pack upgrades on up to three PCs in the same household, for use by residents of that household. When I asked Microsoft whether it was OK to use this license in a home business, I was told, officially, “There is no restriction around use of a license for business purposes conducted within the home,” although naturally they recommended Windows 7 Professional for those situations.

Nothing in the license prevents you from mixing and matching the 32-bit and 64-bit versions on up to three PCs in your household. But no, you can’t share licenses with your neighbor or your cousin in Peoria.

According to Microsoft, the discounted three-pack will also be available in Canada, the U.K., Germany, France, Australia, and possibly other markets, with most on-sale dates timed to the one-year anniversary of Windows 7’s launch on October 22.

Microsoft warns that the return of the Family Pack is a limited-time offer and will end when supplies run out. Last year, that took about six weeks.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

IDG News Service - Scammers are trying to take advantage of the fact that many users will soon have to update their version of the TweetDeck Twitter software.

On Monday, TweetDeck warned that some Twitter messages were advising people to upload an untrustworthy executable file, called tweetdeck-08302010-update.exe.

"These tweets are from hacked accounts and this file does not come from us. Do not download it," TweetDeck said in a post on its support page.

The software is a generic Trojan horse program that is not detected by most antivirus products, said Paul Ferguson, a researcher with Trend Micro. This type of software is used to download a variety of different malicious programs such as password-stealing keyloggers.

Users of the older versions of TweetDeck really will have to update their software Tuesday, as Twitter is expected to pull support for a programming interface used by TweetDeck releases prior to version 0.33.

Scammers apparently see this as an opportunity. On Monday, numerous posts were viewable on Twitter, telling users to update TweetDeck. "Sorry for offtopic, but it is a critical TweetDeck update. It won't work tomorrow!" reads one post.

The scammers have also included popular Twitter search terms such as "emmys" in the messages, presumably so they will turn up in search results and trick people.

The fake updates are hosted on the Alturl.com website. The only place that real TweetDeck updates can be found is: http://www.tweetdeck.com/desktop/

Power outages in the U.S. increase this year even before hurricane season

Computerworld - If Hurricane Earl, now a major hurricane, hits the East Coast of the U.S. later this week, the top concern for IT executives may not be data center outages but loss of Internet access for telecommuting workers.

Forecasters say the storm could possibly hit land somewhere between the Carolinas and New England sometime before the start of Labor Day weekend.

Critical data centers, with backup generators, facilities and fuel supplies, are now built to continue operating during storms. The same can't be said for the computing setups that telecommuters maintain in their homes, and they may be put to the test this year.

Last year, a lack of hurricanes made it a good one for telecommuters.

There were only three hurricanes in U.S. waters last year, and none of them brought hurricane force winds over land in this country, according to Eaton Corp., a power management company that has been tracking power outages nationally since 2008. The company compiles what it calls a "Blackout Tracker" based on data gleaned from storm stories from news services and in newspapers, and from personal accounts.

In 2009, there were an average of 236 power outages a month in the U.S., said Mike DeCamp, an Eaton spokesman who also works on the Blackout Tracker. Through July, the average had increased to 273 a month for 2010, he added.

DeCamp attributes the increase "to an aging power infrastructure subjected to a daily onslaught of outages." He noted that "weather-related outages have jumped from about 77 per month to 99 per month this year."

Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of The Telework Coalition and a telecommuter who works from his home in Washington suburb Montgomery County, said he has already had to deal with multiple major storm-related power outages this summer.

Wilsker said he has prepared his home office to cope with power outages, storm-related and otherwise.

For example, Wilsker keeps two batteries each for his laptop and his BlackBerry, and when a storm like Hurricane Earl poses a threat, he makes sure the backups are charged.

During an outage, as the batteries run down, Wilsker plugs a DC-to-AC power inverter into his car and then uses it to recharge his laptop and cell phone. He maintains Internet service via his BlackBerry smartphone device and tethers it to his laptop.

He also has a battery-powered desk light and a wired telephone that operates off the line current. A Xantrex portable battery provides additional power, he said.

"I will be more prepared than most people I know because this is my life -- I work from home," said Wilsker.

The need for teleworkers to be self-sufficient (and less dependent on coffee shops and local libraries for wireless access) is growing.

In a report released last month, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments estimated that there as may be as many as 600,000 workers, or about 25% of the region's workforce, who telework at least one day a week.

The council also discovered, via a telephone survey of more than 6,000 area workers, that the number of teleworkers could rise by 500,000 over the next few years.

Teleworkers in the Washington metropolitan area have faced several significant outages already this year even though they have yet to deal with a hurricane.

There were multiple storm related outages in July and two in August. The first resulted in power losses to nearly 300,000 Potomac Electric Power Co. (Pepco) customers. About 75,000 customers lost service in the second storm, and 98,000 in the third. There have also been "complaints of frequent and apparently inexplicable outages occurring outside of storm events," said the Public Service Commission of Maryland, which is now holding hearings on the outages.

Pepco has defended its performance and says that more than 90% of the outages from the storms were caused by trees and limbs falling on lines.

But telecommuting has paid dividends, at least for the federal government.

When blizzards early this year prompted a multiday shutdown of federal offices, "many federal employees rose to the challenge and continued to work, making good use of telework and other work flexibilities," testified John Berry, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, before a congressional committee earlier this year.

IDG News Service - More than 40% of the world's spam is coming from a single network of computers that computer security experts continue to battle, according to new statistics from Symantec's MessageLabs' division.

The Rustock botnet has shrunk since April, when about 2.5 million computers were infected with its malicious software that sent about 43 billion spam e-mails per day. Much of it is pharmaceutical spam.

Now, about 1.3 million computers are infected with Rustock, and the botnet is making up for its decreased size with increased volume, said Paul Wood, a MessageLabs intelligence analyst with Symantec. Those infected computers -- most of which are in North America and Western Europe -- are collectively sending around 46 billion spam e-mails per day.

The reason for the drop in infected computers could be due to a number of factors, Wood said. Those computers' antivirus programs may have detected the infections or the people controlling Rustock could have lost the connection to those computers for various reasons.

The computers infected with Rustock have also stopped using TLS (Transport Layer Security), an encryption protocol used to securely send e-mail. Spammers were believed to encrypt their spam using TLS because it was harder for other network equipment to inspect the traffic and figure out if it was spam, Wood said.

But sending e-mail using TLS required more resources and was slower. "It would seem that the botnet controllers, especially those behind Rustock, have perhaps realized that the use of TLS gave them little or no discernible benefits and instead impeded their sending capacity owing to the additional bandwidth and processing overhead needed for TLS," the report said.

Rustock has proved to be a robust botnet. It was nearly killed off when McColo, an ISP in San Jose, California, was cut off from the Internet in November 2008 by its upstream providers. McColo had hosted the command-and-control servers for several botnets, including Rustock.

But Rustock's operators were able to switch the command-and-control servers when McColo briefly regained connectivity again before finally being shut off, which has allowed it to run for nearly four years now.

How to Disable Facebook Places

Yesterday Facebook rolled out a new feature called Places that lets you and your friends check in to locations, Foursquare-style. If you'd prefer to keep your location private, or at least stop your friends from posting it, here's how.

If you're not convinced that posting your location can be a bad thing, check out PleaseRobMe for some evidence. Of course, if you're careful, check-ins aren't inherently a bad thing. Whether or not you want to disable them is entirely up to you, but Facebook—yet again—has made the assumption that you want to take part in all of their privacy-eroding new features. If you don't, or want a little more control over who can divulge your location, you can make this change pretty quickly through your privacy settings.

1) Log in to Facebook. From your Account menu, choose Privacy Settings. You'll get something like the picture below. Click the Customize option (if it isn't already selected) and then click the "Customize settings" link (it's the one next to the pencil below the table depicting your current privacy settings).

2) Under the "Things I Share" heading, all the way at the bottom (of that section), there are two things you may want to change. By default "Places I check in" should be set to only be visible by your friends. If you want to limit it more or less, use the drop down menu to do so. I set mine to "Only Me," which is as private as you're going to get. Below that option is "Include me in 'People Here Now' after I check in." It is enabled by default. This will let people know you're at a particular location via the location's page or in a search for people near you. Uncheck "Enable" if you don't want this.

3) Lastly—and this is the important one—if you don't want your friends to check you into Places, sharing your current location with a bunch of people you may or may not know, go down to the section called "Things Others Share" and find "Friends can check me in to Places." Initially, mine wasn't set to anything at all so the default option could be either choice. Regardless, set this to "Disabled" if you don't want your friends checking you in. Keep in mind that any friend could potentially check you in anywhere. You don't actually have to be there. If you don't want anyone playing a practical joke and checking you in to a strip club, for example, this is a good thing to turn off.

And that's it! While it's not so great that you're opted-in to the new Places feature, fortunately it's pretty easy to opt-out.

Facebook Bandwagon

So many businesses are now jumping on the Facebook bandwagon and there are a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to setting up the account. Do you need a personal profile first?  Can I just create a personal profile with my business name and information instead of my own personal information?  What about using the “BUSINESS ACCOUNT” feature that is available when setting up a Facebook PAGE for the first time to avoid having to create my own profile?

Not fully understanding the differences can end up hurting the efforts you put into managing your Facebook presence as well as the actual functionality of your business page.  To understand the 4 faces of Facebook (Profiles-Pages- Groups- Community Pages) check out my earlier post but let’s look at some important facts that will help you make these decisions as set up a business page:

1. You can create a Facebook PAGE for any of your businesses.  You must be an official representative of the business or organization to create a PAGE (not just someone who uses a service or likes a business).  Even as a hired consultant, you are authorized to set up the business PAGE and I highly suggest you add one or two additional people to be admins on the PAGE after it is created (These people must have a personal profile set up and become FANS of the PAGE first!).

To create a business PAGE (or Fan PAGE as we used to call them), you must also set up a personal PROFILE or “BUSINESS ACCOUNT” that is linked to the PAGE.  Some people make the mistake of thinking they will keep their personal PROFILE for personal use and set up an additional “BUSINESS ACCOUNT” with a different email address to use for their business.  DON’T DO IT!  Managing multiple accounts is a serious violation of Facebook’s terms of use and they can terminate all of your accounts.  You are adding a feature to your Facebook PROFILE when you create a PAGE.  You will use the same login information but they are kept very separate.

If you do not have a personal PROFILE on Facebook and you don’t intend to ever use a personal PROFILE on Facebook, you can go the route of a “BUSINESS ACCOUNT.”  This is basically just a “limited” personal profile.  Facebook still wants to know that there is a real person managing the account and they want to know how to get a hold of you.  HOWEVER… here are a few more things to keep in mind before you decide to forego the personal PROFILE for the BUSINESS ACCOUNT:

• You only have access to information that is LIVING ON THE PAGE (Posts on your PAGE wall, etc.).  If a fan comments, you cannot click over to see the PROFILE. (Creating a personal PROFILE, even without using it, will open this feature)
• A business account cannot be found in a search (a PAGE can be found and a PERSONAL PROFILE can be found but not your name or information listed in the biz account set up)
• You cannot send or receive friend requests when you are set up under a BUSINESS ACCOUNT.  All activity is strictly run through your PAGE.  (With personal PROFILES you can send and receive messages from people on Facebook)

Most people find that it is easier and more flexible to just create a personal PROFILE and limit the info shared there.  You can always change your mind later and post information or start connecting with friends and professional associates.

Remember, any post or comment made from your business PAGE does not reference or show information from your personal PROFILE or have your name attached at all and vice versa.  When you post something on your personal PROFILE, your fans on your PAGE will not receive that post.

If you are completely confused now, give me a holler!  Although many think it is not a big deal, later they regret that they set their business PAGE up incorrectly or their account gets shut down because they have two different PROFILES associated with their name.  Take some time to do it right and this marketing powerhouse tool will help you connect and engage your community!

Happy connecting!

@GinaSchreck