New & Noteworthy: SecureMac.com is back; TechTracker Desktop tracks crashes; Passport news; more

SecureMac.com is back; AIM Thief noted SecureMac.com was offline for a month due to server problems. But it is now back online. On this page, they discuss that "hackers found a hole in the protocol used by AIM that lets them remotely change any users passwords if the user name is 10 characters of less."

FireWire USB card Miglia Alchemy has announced the latest addition to its Alchemy range of PCI expansion cards the Miglia Alchemy FW USB PCI card for all PCI based Macs. FW USB PCI enables users of PCI based computers (Mac and PC) to gain the additional connectivity options of both FireWire and USB using only one slot!

MS Passport looks to expand From a press release: "Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to expand its popular Passport authentication service to interoperate with enterprises, network and other service operators to deliver trusted, universal single sign-in spanning multiple organizations and services. This page offers a Q&A about what it all means.

TechTracker Desktop tracks crashes Jerry Pournelle's latest column at Byte.com notes a new feature of the Windows version of TechTracker Desktop for Windows: "The update tracker feature is interesting and useful, but it's not what's exciting. What TechTracker intends to do here is not only tell you about upgrades, but take reports of software problems including automatic reports of crashes. From that they will build a database and look for patterns..." A Mac version is planned for release at Macworld Expo in January. [Note: TechTracker is the parent company of MacFixIt.]