Ever run in to a Web site that you know for sure started loading a virus on to your computer? Why not do your part to keep the Internet safe and report them?

Last night I encountered a virus attempting to load itself on to my system.  This was not a nefarious site, and one that I have been visiting for years, and much to my shock it started to load one of those “Your system is at risk!” bogus programs that tries to trick you into loading it, and then you spend 3 days trying to clean it out of your system.

Since this is a site I have visited for years, I dropped them an email as opposed to reporting them, however, if you do run into a site that is obviously malicious, did you know you can report them to Google?

Considering Google is the largest search engine, getting booted from the search results can be pretty damaging to a site, so this actually does matter.  If a site is found to be truly malicious, Google will remove them from the search results, and they will also put up a page that warns you of the reports before you entire the site.  All you need to do is go to http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/, enter the URL, answer the security question and enter text about why you think the site is bad, click “Submit Report” and you’re all done!

Do your good deed for the day by reporting the bad guys.

Downloadable comics just got a huge boost in the arm with the addition of Marvel Entertainment to the fold.

Comixology, the maker of several iPhone and iPod Touch apps for purchasing and reading comic books, has announced the addition of one of the “big two” comic publishers to its stable of publishers: Marvel Entertainment.

While the catalog is currently limited to the titles of Astonishing X-Men (the first 24 issues written by Buffy, the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon), Marvel Zombies miniseries, Captain America, X-23 and X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, this is surely not the end of what the House of Ideas will be offering.

As the former manager of a comic book store (from Aug. 1986 to Dec. 2001), I have been interested in how this would work, so I dove in and downloaded Astonishing X-Men #1.  I have to say, it works surprisingly well.  You are presented with one panel at a time, and the “camera” zooms in to the word balloon of the person talking, when you hit next, it pans to other side of the panel on very wide panels.  It felt a bit more like watching TV than reading a comic book to be honest, and I kind of liked it.

However, there is a rub here.  The issue I bought cost me a $1.99, a fairly high price I feel for a digital comic that was only 22-pages in length to begin with.  True, comic books now run you $2.99 to $3.99 on the stands (sometimes even as high as $4.99), but at least those you get to keep those for your collection.  As someone who used to have over 10,000 comics in his personal collection, I can see the appeal of this for the casual reader, though.  One of the reasons I dropped out of comics for the most part was that I simply couldn’t go on storing them, and I sold off about 8,000 of my books.  I miss reading comic books, but I could never allow myself to buy one and throw it away.  This method will allow me to buy issues I am interested in and not have the storage or guilt concerns.

Will this ever replace the printed form of comic books?  Highly, highly doubtful.  Could it bring back some old readers?  Quite possibly.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, I say treat yourself to at least one issue, it was a worthwhile experience to be sure.

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Amazon has introduced a new layer of security to its Amazon Payments system which is intriguing for what it might mean later on.

Amazon Payments has been popping up all over the Web as a way for customers to pay for purchases with the information they have stored with the mega-retailer.  Well, starting today, you can now use the payment system without ever having to enter your credit card information on another site that uses the system, and you can also check out in just three steps.

PayPhrase is a system where you create a phrase unique to you – each phrase can only be used once in the system, so expect some wacky combinations cropping up – that you will enter anywhere you see the Pay Phrase dialog box.  You enter your phrase, enter your pin number when prompted, click the order button, and you’re done.  Pretty simple, and also fairly secure as only Amazon will have access to your credit card information.

While this is already potentially handy, we here at StarterTech think the true genius of this system will be realized once it shows up in mobile applications.  It doesn’t matter how good your smartphone is, typing all of your information in for an order on a mobile device gets annoying.  The less you have to type in on your cell phone, the better, so this could be a major step forward for mobile payments.  Heck, we could even see it being used in restaurants.  Imagine a waiter walks over with an iPod Touch that has your bill shown, you type in your PayPhrase and pin number, and your bill is paid for.  Your waiter never touches or even sees your credit card.

Some people are laughing this system off, saying that if people can never remember their password, how will they ever remember this?  Give it some time, but we think this new tool could revolutionize several different aspects of commerce.

Amazon is ready for you to start your holiday shopping for the video game fan on your shopping list right now.

Amazon is running a video game promotion from now until Oct. 31st wherein if you purchase $80 worth of video games, you will receive a credit for $40 off your next video game purchase.  The credit voucher will be emailed to you seven days after our order for $80 ships to you.

This isn’t the type of thing we normally cover around here at StarterTech, but we were struck by the selection of games including some very recent releases such as Batman:Arkham Asylum, Wet, The Beatles: Rock Band and so on.  You normally expect in sales such as this for them to only offer up older games that a company is overstocked on, but this offer really is worth it considering how expensive new releases are running now.

Even if you have no one to buy for, this deal is worth checking out for your own collection if you have been putting off purchasing some of the newest releases.

Google Voice has finally answered the dreams of its users and added the ability to use your existing phone number.

Ever since Google bought Grand Central, and changed the name of the service to Google Voice, users have expressed the desire to use their existing phone numbers as opposed to signing up for new ones.  This would cut out the headache of passing out a new phone number, and you could get the benefits of the service without having to print new business cards and so on.

Well, Google has finally added this ability to the service, and while it doesn’t deliver all of the features of the regular service yet, there are plans to add them in the future.  You can save your voice mails, star them, have them transcribed to text and so on, and even if you change phone companies, your voice mails will be saved in the Voice system for you.  You can also do things such as screening calls, listening to them before deciding to answer and more.

In short, for a free service (thus far), it is still amazing.  There is a short video below describing how the new system works.

Netflix is finally coming to the Sony Playstation 3.

While it has been rumored for quite some time, Netflix has finally announced that its streaming service will be coming to the Sony Playstation 3 very soon.  There is, however, one hitch for those who start using it right away … you need a Blu-ray disc to make it work.

Yep, you need a disc.  You will need to contact Netflix to get a free Blu-ray disc that will need to be in your PS3 any time you are streaming content.  This is only a temporary workaround until Sony updates the system software in 2010.  Still annoying, and it makes you wonder why Netflix didn’t wait to launch the service, but oh well.

This now leaves the Nintendo Wii as the only current generation video game system in the United States without Netflix streaming capabilities, so it makes you wonder how long until that system also receives it.

We here at StarterTech stream Netflix via an Xbox 360, and we love the service.  Sure it isn’t perfect, but for the price, you really can’t beat it.

At long last, you can export your documents en masse from Google Docs.

While you’ve been able to download one file at a time from Google Docs forever, Google Operating System is reporting that you can now download the files in batches in a .ZIP compressed file.

This is a major step forward for the application as people have often worried about their important documents being lost on the service due to the nature of it being a cloud computing solution.  Now that you can download them in large batches, there should be no reason to fear this any longer and not look at Docs as a viable alternative to commercial solutions such as Microsoft Office.

Have you ever noticed that the cheaper the hotel, the better the odds are that it will provide you with free Internet access?

Over my years of travelling since the Internet became a mainstream utility, I have had the opportunity to stay in hotels of just about every price level.  When Internet access first started to appear in hotels, all of them charged for it, but as time wore on, it came to be viewed more as a necessity and was given away just like in the old days when you would see hotel signs that said “Free HBO!”  Well, now those signs say “Free High Speed!”, but it seems to only happen at lower tier hotels for some odd reason.

When speaking with a friend of mine yesterday, she made a passing joke that next time I visited her I should book a room at a fancy hotel that had opened near her just so she could stay with me and enjoy the fancy room.  Wanting to see just how much of my money she had just spent, I looked up the hotel and it was in the range of $329 to $419 a night per room.  One thing leaped out at me:

Wireless High Speed Internet Access in All Guest Rooms (Charge)

Yes, they were willing to let me stay in their rooms for hundreds of dollars a night, but by golly they wouldn’t let me on the Internet for free!  Mind you these rooms have 37″ – 42″ flat screen HD TVs, iPod docking stations, dual-line cordless phones and so on, but yet giving me free access to the Internet would somehow break them?

Mind you my friend and I were just joking about staying at this place, but free Internet has actually become a deciding factor for me in where I stay.  The Internet has become an essential tool in the lives of a good number of people, and as a professional blogger, I can not go without it.  Even while I was on vacation this past August, my first in 13 years, I had to spend time each day writing, having to pay to access the Internet would have not been fun.  Luckily my hotel offered free Wi-Fi and I was able to get work done while sitting out on the dock, with a gorgeous backdrop of private yachts and fishing boats to look at over the top of my screen.  I may have been working, but at least I got to enjoy it.

Why the higher-end hotels feel the need to charge for Internet access is beyond me.  Considering what people already pay for these rooms, and all of the amenities that they give you for free, the charging for Internet access just comes off as greedy in my eyes.  They know you want it, they know that most likely you will use it, so why not make an extra couple of bucks?  And, you know, I probably wouldn’t mind it if it was around $1 or $2 dollars a day, but no, most of these places charge you $9.95 for 24-hours of access.  That’s highway robbery in my opinion.

Are they going to start charging you for electricity as a separate fee next?

At long last, the end of specific cell phone chargers for different brands and models is coming to an end … at least in Europe.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations body, has given final approval to a universal cell phone charger according to the BBC.  We first brought you news of this possibility back in Feb. of this year, and even we are a bit surprised by how fast this has become a reality.

It is not compulsory for cell phone manufacturers to use the new micro USB connection, but companies such as Sony Ericsson have already said they will be using it on new phones as they are introduced in 2010.

It is estimated that this new move will stop the production of 51,000 tons of redundant chargers each year, as well as the emission of 13.6 million tons of greenhouse gases.  Of course this isn’t to mention the amount of convenience it will make for consumers.  One charger will be able to be shared by a family … no more desperation if you lose your charger, just walk into any cell phone store and buy another … no more drawers full of chargers that no longer match your current phone and so on.

While this has mostly been discussed for Europe thus far, it is hard to believe that it won’t appear in other countries as well.  It is difficult to imagine that cell phone companies would want to tool different molds for different countries to use, the only difference will be the end that plugs into the wall as countries use different plug-in styles around the world.

Now, if only other electronics like laptops would do this also …

It seems the new 27″ iMacs are good for a lot more than just running the latest version of Mac OS X.

While it isn’t news that the new iMacs are widescreen with a 16:9 aspect ratio (the same as high definition televisions), what is news is what you can do with the 27″ version.

Thanks to the addition of a Mini DisplayPort connection port, the new model iMac is capable of being used as external screen for any computer (i.e. all of the current Mac products) that has the same style port.  So say you want to work on your MacBook Pro with a bigger screen, just use a DisplayPort cable and you can be viewing your laptop on the 27″ iMac screen in no time.  Of course this means you can’t use your iMac’s computing prowess at the same time, but it still makes some sense.

Where it gets even more intriguing is the other devices out there that are using the same connection technology.  There are now TV tuners and Blu-ray players being released with DisplayPort connections, so you could use your iMac as an HD widescreen monitor for watching television and movies.  Thanks also to a VESA mounting adapter you can purchase, you could mount your iMac on a wall and use it just like you do any other flat screen television.

With the available wireless keyboard and mouse for the iMac, you could still work away from the comfort of your favorite chair with your iMac on the wall when not in use to display entertainment, so you do not lose the computer aspects of the device at the same time.

Very intriguing, and it makes you wonder if Apple has some other tricks up its sleeves for the future of this technology.