Ted

It's bargain day at Bugs & Fixes. This week's column offers three separate items for the price of one.

Mail Crashes After Launch

You've managed to dodge the bullet of obsolete storage media. All your data from floppy disks (or whatever) is now safely on USB flash drives, terabyte backup drives, or in the cloud. But another pitfall awaits if and when you ever try to open those old files. What if a file's data format is so ancient that you no longer have any applications that can read the format? I recently tripped over two examples of this dilemma. Here's how I solved them:

This message appeared when I tried to open a very old AppleWorks documentAppleWorks

A security flaw that exposes iOS and possibly Android smartphone users to identity theft has been discovered in mobile apps for Facebook, Dropbox, and LinkedIn. Smartphone owners would be well served to take extra precautions to protect their devices, as the flaw may well be present in other mobile applications as well.

The flaw exposes users to identity theft by saving user authentication keys in easily accessible, unencrypted plain text files, or .plists. By stealing those files and transferring them to another device -- regardless of whether the device is jailbroken -- a cyber thief could access the victim's associated accounts without having to enter any log-in credentials.

If you have an iPhone, but your car's audio system doesn't have Bluetooth support, stop reading now and go update your system. The technology is that good. By pairing your iPhone with your car, you have the absolute best, most convenient way for hands-free talking on a phone while driving. There's no need for a headset of any kind. Nor is there any need to fumble with your iPhone when you want to make or answer a call. It can all be done from the dashboard controls or (in some cars) entirely by voice. As a bonus, the sound is typically louder and clearer than from a headset, allowing you to more easily overcome road noise.

Many car systems also support stereo Bluetooth playing of your iPhone's iTunes music. I occasionally use this feature in my Ford Fusion Hybrid. With it, I can instantly and wirelessly begin playing music without even having to take the iPhone out of my pocket. If nothing else, it makes an impressive demo for passengers. However, Bluetooth is not a complete substitute for a USB connection between my iPhone and my car's audio. With Bluetooth, I can't select specific songs from the dashboard controls; the wireless connection can also run down the iPhone's battery. Still, it's a great option to have at your disposal.

Let me emphatically state at the outset: The new iPhoto for iOS is one impressive piece of software. It sets a new standard for how a productivity app can take advantage of a touchscreen interface. If anything, it may be a bit too feature-rich; more than with any other Apple iOS app, I want to consult a manual when I launch iPhoto. Regardless, the editing capabilities of the app are outstanding.

That said, there are still a few bugs in the system. In my use, the biggest trouble spot has been the Journals feature. This is a spanking new option, not yet available in the Mac version of iPhoto, where you can create and publish photo albums. In essence, it replaces (and improves upon) MobileMe's soon-to-be-defunct Gallery.

In sync with today's launch of the new iPad, dozens of protestors today joined eager prospective iPad owners at Apple Stores in Georgetown, New York City, and San Francisco to protest the company's alleged worker abuse at overseas factories.

Apple has faced increasing criticism in recent months for the labor practices at the Foxconn and Pegatron locations, where the iPad and other Apple products are built, with some critics going so far as call to boycott the company until it changes its ways.

There's an item that's been near the top of my iOS wish list almost since the iPhone was released: RTF (rich text format) support. Before you start shouting that iOS already has such support, allow me to rewind to the beginning of the story.

If all one means by RTF support is the ability to create bold, italicized, and underlined text, then yes, this feature has been available from an assortment of iOS apps for quite some time. For example, you'll find it in "Office" apps such as QuickOffice andOffice² HD. These apps go beyond the just-mentioned trio of font styling options, allowing for a variety of fonts, font sizes, and colors. With Office² HD, you can even insert graphics into a document. Apple's iWork for iOS apps provide similar formatting support.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." -- Cassius, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

www.microsoft.comCassius would have made an excellent tech support guru. When struck with a computer problem, we often assume the cause must lie with faulty software or hardware. Only later do we discover that the true cause is our own misunderstanding.

Companies and home users whose computers or routers are infected by the DNSChanger Trojan risk being unable to access the Web come March 8, 2012. That could represent a substantial number of users, too, as half of Fortune 500 companies and government agencies are infected with the malware, according to a new report.

Back in November, the feds famously took down the DNSChanger botnet network, which a cyber criminal gang was using to redirect Internet traffic to phony websites that existed simply to serve up ads. The feds replaced the criminals' servers with legitimate ones that would push along traffic to its intended destination.

When I can't quite recall a critical detail from a webpage I visited a few days ago, I typically search Safari's History to locate it. Increasingly often, I am wasting my time.

Why? Because many of the URLs I load in Safari come from my Twitter feed. These URLs, in turn, are wrapped by t.co, Twitter's official URL shortener. The primary function of shorteners is to allow tweets to contain URLs without the links eating up too much of Twitter's 140 character limit. That's fine. However, an unintended consequence is that, when these URLs show up in Safari's History, they all have a title of "(no title)" and an indecipherable "http//t.co/" address.

Like a bacterial infection that an antibiotic doesn't entirely kill, a computer issue can come back to bite you despite you applying what seemed to be a successful solution.

Case in point: Back in November, I posted an article (Running on Empty) where I described how my friend's iMac had bogged down to such an extent that she could not get any work done. Beyond the overall slowness, she could not save files or send email. I eventually tracked down the cause--her hard drive was completely full: zero GB available. The quick solution was to delete about 10GB of unneeded files. All was good.