Online miscreants have released a Trojan horse that can infect computers running Microsoft’s Windows XP, installing programs to remotely control a victim’s system. The program–dubbed “Phel,” an anagram of “Help”–infects visitors to a maliciously-created Web site through Internet Explorer’s Help controls.

In this great parody, one enterprising Web developer postulates on some new “signature” iPods. Be forwarned. This is not entirely safe for work (or your immortal soul, for that matter).

We’ve got some pretty big internal structural changes happening to the ZATZ Web sites this weekend. All our pages are going from static generation to dynamic. What that means is, previously, we individually generated (what we called “rendering”) pages once to an Apache server, which would then serve each pre-generated page to you when you visited any of the magazines. Unfortunately, making a simple change, like changing the copyright date from 2004 to 2005, necessitates regenerating well over 20,000 individual pages. In addition, it’s much more difficult to include dynamic data, like we’re trying to do as we add more interactive services and RSS support.

So, this weekend, we’re making the move from static serving to serving the pages dynamically from our ZENPRESS server. We’ve tested most of the changes offline and have been working on developing the new system for the past few months, but since we’re moving pretty much everything, there may be some down-time and weirdness. We figured the New Year’s weekend was good for such a change because many of you will be away from your ‘puters, but don’t freak if things seem weird (OK, weirder than usual) for the next few days. This transition’s a pretty big job.

Oh, and to everyone, a Happy New Year and our fervent hope for all your safety and the safety of those you love. Best wishes to everyone from us here at ZATZ!

Sony USA has today announced that it will shortly begin shipping a new addition to its line of Memory Stick flash memory cards. The black 1GB Memory Stick PRO, as with other black Memory Stick PRO cards, offers a somewhat extended operating temperature range of -13 to 185 degrees fahrenheit (identical to that of High Speed Memory Stick PRO cards).

2004 was the year of off shoring, voice over IP (VoIP) and iPods. Spam proliferated and viruses showed no signs of abating. In what is a more mature industry, there were fewer disruptive technologies, but plenty of new trends emerged to keep us interested. Here are 10 that TechTarget’s Paul Gillin predicts will occupy our attention in 2005.

If you can’t make it to Times Square for the famed locale’s 100th New Year’s Eve celebration, you can watch it from start to finish online. Microsoft’s MSN portal said Tuesday it will provide an online broadcast of the historic party. The Webcast starts at 3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time when event organizers plan to raise their trademark crystal ball and runs until 9:15 p.m. PST after the ball’s drop.

Reporting a new crop of variants, a security firm warned that the Cabir cell phone virus is becoming more of a threat. Earlier versions of Cabir, which spreads through phones running the Symbian operating system and Bluetooth wireless technology, won attention this summer for being the first worms to spread via smart phones. But they were quickly determined to be relatively harmless, proof-of-concept programs. As it issued alerts for Cabir.H, Cabir.I, and Cabir.J, security firm F-Secure warned that the latest versions of Cabir are evolving beyond its comparatively benign predecessors.

As 2004 comes to a close, the world is at once very different and much the same for video enthusiasts wanting to take movies from the Internet, store them on their PCs and shoot them over to giant TV screens. What’s new is the growing list of devices coming out that can connect the two worlds, either wirelessly or with cables.

The organization that regulates advertising in the Netherlands recently asked chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices to stop at least some of its radio ads aimed to promote AMD’s Enhanced Virus Protection (EVP) capabilities. The association said one or all of the EVP radio clips were misleading, as the technology did not substitute the real antivirus software.

A Minnesota agency may not regulate calls through cyberspace as it does calls through traditional phone lines, a federal appeals court ruled. The Tuesday order by the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upholds a lower-court ruling and is a win for fledgling companies like Vonage Holdings Corp. of Edison, N.J., which provides Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.