If your company blocks your favorite blog and you absolutely can't wait to read the latest post (and you don't have a smartphone capable of browsing), then a new site has a free solution for you. 

Send WebToMail an e-mail (at send@webtomail.co.cc) with a URL as the subject, and a few minutes later you'll receive an HTML e-mail of that page.  The e-mail won't look the same as the page in a browser, as it won't arrange menus and site navigation properly, but it includes images and works fine to read the content on the page.

Symantec yesterday announced the beta for its Norton Safe Web, a service meant to directly compete with McAfee's popular SiteAdvisor. But unlike SiteAdvisor, which is available as a free download to anyone using Firefox or IE, the Safe Web beta toolbar is currently only available for those beta testing Norton Internet Security 2009.

Symantec's announcement post says the beta will "provide visual site ratings within everyday search results from top search sites like Google, Yahoo! and Live Search," and "also warn users before they visit a site that contains malicious content."

Yahoo rang the latest note in the seeming death knell for DRM-protected music as the company decided to "abandon customers who bought tracks from its music store encoded with DRM," according to the IDG News Service.

The company will shut down the Yahoo! Music Store, along with the servers that renew DRM licenses, on Sept. 30.  After that, according to the notification e-mail from Yahoo, "you will not be able to transfer songs to unauthorized computers or re-license these songs after changing operating systems (full text available from the LA Times)." Songs currently playing on a PC should continue to do so until the OS changes, and "backing up your music to an audio CD will allow you to copy the music back to your computer again if the license keys for your original music files cannot be retrieved," per the e-mail.

If you're looking for a way to start writing for money, Google as of today offers a new option.

Its new Knol - short for 'a unit of knowledge' - site is similar to Wikipedia in that anyone can write an article on (almost) anything. But where Wikipedia is a collective endeavor where anyone can both write and edit pieces, Knol focuses on preserving ownership of articles.

TiVo and Amazon will expand their partnership with an advertising deal that will allow TiVo owners to directly purchase products advertised and promoted on TV shows from Amazon, the New York Times reports.

The feature will roll out in the coming months, according to the story. The piece isn't entirely clear on just where the purchase links will appear (and neither TiVo nor Amazon appear to have released details), but it does say TiVo owners will see links to buy products in "TiVo's various onscreen menus."

Security researcher Dan Kaminsky announced last week that a major bug affected DNS software, which translates human-usable domain names like "pcworld.com" into the IP addresses that computers use to find each other. DNS servers guide most all Internet traffic, and the odds are your company uses a number of such servers.

While the news on the flaw came out on the 8th, I know from experience how slow many companies can be to fix - or even discover - business-critical system flaws like these. So here's a quick way to tell if your company servers are at risk.

Security company Finjan today reported it has found more than 1,000 sites infected by an attack toolkit called "Asprox," which exploits discovered flaws in a vulnerable site's programming to add hidden attack code.  The attack code in turn searches for flaws on a browser's PC, and if any such holes are found it will download malware onto the computer.

I wasn't struck by the number - these days, 1,000 sites unfortunately isn't that many - so much as by the list of sites that Finjan says were hacked.  My own city's site, which I've visited many times to pay parking tickets and the like, was nailed (though it's now clean).  Snapple took a hit, as did the National Health Service in the UK and a wide range of other sites.

A cautionary tale for any network, government or business:  The San Francisco Chronicle reported this morning that a network admin working for the city of SF has changed the digital locks on a new, multi-million dollar 'FiberWAN' network and is refusing access to anyone else, according to authorities.

He won't give up the passwords, they say, even as he's charged with four counts of computer tampering.

Job-matching site Jobfox.com today released its ranking of those positions most in demand on its site from November last year through this month, and to my surprise, Sales Rep/Business Development came out on top:

1.    Sales Representative/Business Development.
2.    Software Design/Development.
3.    Nursing.
4.    Accounting & Finance Executive.
5.    Accounting Staff.

Welcome to the iPocalypse.

Reports are flooding in from Gizmodo (which posted that clever Apple meets Armageddon phrase), TechCrunch, the IDG News Service and pretty much any other iPhone-manic news outlet that stalwart Apple fans who rushed to buy their new iPhone today are left holding beautifully designed bricks that can't be activated. 

Microsoft yesterday warned of a new attack underway against a flaw in the ActiveX control for the Snapshot Viewer for Microsoft Access, used by IE. There is not yet any patch available for the zero-day security hole, and the attacks likely focus on business targets.

In its security advisory, Redmond says the vulnerable control installs with "all supported versions of Microsoft Office Access except for Microsoft Office Access 2007. The ActiveX control is also shipped with the standalone Snapshot Viewer." A poisoned Web page that exploits the hole could surreptitiously download malware to a victim PC.

Icahn's proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board got a new head of steam this morning, as Microsoft announced that "after the shareholder election Microsoft would be interested in discussing with a new board a major transaction with Yahoo!, such as either a transaction to purchase the "Search" function with large financial guarantees or, in the alternative, purchasing the whole company."

Microsoft's short statement, available via Yahoo Finance news (yes, I appreciate the irony) follows a statement this morning from Icahn to Yahoo shareholders. In it, he writes that if his battle succeeds, "I strongly believe that in very short order the new board would, subject to its fiduciary duties, be presenting to shareholders either a purchase offer for the whole company or a very attractive offer to purchase "Search" with large guarantees."

As the IDG News Service reports, the International Organization for Standardization is now in charge of Adobe's Portable Document Format as an international standard. To mark the occasion, here's a collection of tips and tools for working with the ubiquitous files.

First, and most important, if you use Adobe Reader make sure you keep it up-to-date. The most recent security flaw in the program allows an attacker to take over your PC if you open a poisoned PDF, and it was actively exploited before a patch even came out. Take a look at the Secunia advisory for more info and links to Reader updates.

The vast array of great sites and business services that continue to pop up online like mushrooms after a rain proves what human ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit can accomplish in an open and free marketplace.

On the other hand, the cell phone market is a fine example of what happens when companies take steps to reduce competition and ensure that they lock in their customers: An SMS data transfer charge of $1310.72 per megabyte, according to some number-crunching from CrunchGear.