Eyjafjallaj?kull Volcanic steam rises from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, Wednesday. The Icelandic volcano which grounded air traffic over Europe is still erupting, but it is spewing less ash, the meteorological office and experts said on Wednesday. Close monitoring of the neighbouring and potentially more dangerous Katla volcano was also taking place, but there have been no signs it has re-awakened, they added. – Reuters Scareware slingers have balked at using the name of the Icelandic volcano that this week has prevented planes flying across much of Europe as a theme for search engine manipulation campaigns because its name is simply too complicated. Distributors of rogue security software can normally be relied upon to latch onto any item of news as a motif for attempts to make sure links to scareware portals appear prominently in the searches for likely terms via Google or other search engines. Links promising pictures of the spectacular storms around eruption volcanoes in Iceland would fit right into this strategy, but their appearance has been halted because no one agrees on how to spell the name of the volcano at the centre of the event. Eyjafjallaj?kull, despite being arguably the biggest news story of the year so far, is simply too difficult to spell for most surfers, let alone virus writer types not known for their mastery of grammar and punctuation. That's not to say black-hat SEO attacks riding on the coat tails of the volcanic ash clouds spreading over Europe have failed to materialise. But instead of using the name of the volcano, hackers have taken the more prosaic approach of using search terms such as “Iceland Volcano Images” as themes for their attacks, as explained in a blog post by Luis Corrons of Panda Security. – theregister.co.uk Stranded passengersAir traffic in Europe is back on track after a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland caused five days of airspace closures. Though aviation officials say that air traffic has returned to about 75 percent of normal capacity on Wednesday, it could take weeks for the airlines to put their backlog of flights in order. The restoration of air service is welcome news to 8 million stranded or delayed travelers, but many must now battle for a flight home. – petergreenberg.com I ‘quilt'!When you've had enough, can't tolerate your job any longer and are ready to quit, perhaps you could try one last thing. Quilt instead. You've got nothing to lose, right? I mean, you're going to quit anyway, so what's the worst that could happen to you? So quilt. Spend hours every day integrating the people you work with into a cohesive group. Weave in your customers as well. Take every scrap, even the people you don't like, and sew them together. Spend far less time than you should on the ‘real' work and instead focus on creating genuine connections with the people you work with. Including your boss. After all, once you quit, you're never going to see them again anyway, right? Might as well give it a try. Careful... it might change everything. – sethgodiin.typepad.com Docs on Facebook Adamant to preserve its Office empire, Microsoft has teamed up with Facebook on a new social productivity tool that takes the online office concept to the next level. Put simply, the new collaboration suite lets you create, edit, and share documents with your Facebook friends. Google should be worried, indeed. The service is available at the new domain Docs.com and uses Facebook Connect to log you in with your Facebook credentials. Alternatively, use the Docs Facebook app to run Docs right inside Facebook. Once logged in, you can see a list of Facebook friends already using the service, check out their shared documents, share your stuff with them, and more. You can also upload Office documents, spreadsheets, or presentations from your computer. To create a new document from the scratch, use the options under the “Add a Doc” tab. Surprisingly, Microsoft has allowed you to edit documents in your browser, without requiring you to have Microsoft Office installed on your computer. Being a beta, Docs is pretty rudimentary and you'll run into quirks. For example, it lacks persistent save so you need to manually save your work by hitting the “Save” at the top of the page. You can invite some of your Facebook friends – even the entire Facebook community – to view or edit your documents, add notes to a shared document, post directly to editors' or viewers' Facebook wall and more.
