On the surface, April 1 came and went without a peep from the dreaded Conficker megaworm. But security experts see a frightening reality, one where Conficker is now more powerful and more dangerous than ever.

In the first minute of April 1, Conficker did exactly what everyone knew it was going to do: It successfully phoned home for an update. And while it was fun to imagine what nasty payload that update may have included (it was fun, wasn’t it?), the result was not outwardly catastrophic; rather than a blueprint for world domination, the update contained instructions on how to dig in even deeper.

Hey everyone. If you you’re in the Ames Iowa area tomorrow night and consider yourself a geek, come join us for the IgniteIT event. This is going to be my first year attending and I have even thrown my name out there to give a talk on Inbox Zero

Here is a description of what IgniteIT is all about:

IgniteIT is the networking opportunity for Iowa’s information technology community. Our mission is to spark imaginations, connect people, create new technology opportunities in Iowa and have a lot of fun in the process. Inveigh against solipsism!

I’m not a windows mobile developer. And why would you want to be. Seeing this latest article from CNet News, I can’t think of a reason I would want to play in the Micro$oft world of endless, confusing licensing agreements.

Microsoft plans to charge mobile-application developers $99 to release upgraded versions of applications they submit to the Windows Mobile Marketplace, and will also charge them for minor updates unless they are released within seven days of the application’s debut.

Looks like it might be time to install TrueCrypt for all of my files.

I follow quite a few blogs of various people that make headlines and have a coding background. One person in particular that somehow made the list many moons ago that I have failed to remove is Leah Culver. I think it was her ties to the midwest and the fact that she seems to be putting her ass out there with Pownce (which has since had to close its doors).

In her latest post, she talks about writing a plugin for Django. If you are unfamiliar with django, it is a web framework written in python which loosely follows the model-view-controller design pattern (source).