5 Most viewed articles on the Delvinia Link Pool: March 22-28

Chevy Adds QR Codes to Cars | Branding Unbound

Flex 4 & Flash Builder 4 are Here!
| Everything Flex

IE9: Microsoft retools its browser with HTML5, accelerated graphics | TechFlash

The Lost Principles of Design | Fuel Your Creativity

Adobe smacks back Apple over iPad, again | Scobleizer

Click here to see what we’re sharing this week.

You’ve got that malware feeling

My apologies to The Righteous Brothers.
Lately I’m being tasked on a frequent basis to get rid of someone’s new infection of rouge “anti-virus” malware.  To say the least, these are pesky pains in the posterior to get rid of.  Each time I diligently tried to track down where the infection originated, I was given the same type of answer, “I only surf legitimate sites and didn’t click on anything I shouldn’t have”.  At first I thought this was people’s natural reaction to cover-up their own mischief, but since everyone said the same thing it led me to believe that there must be something happening on these ‘legitimate’ sites that actually causes the infection.

But what could it be?  It wasn’t very likely that a variety of top flight sites would suddenly implant something so insidious, but there had to be something.  What was common among these sites?

Then the light bulb went on.  I bet it’s the ads on the sites!  But no, what ad network would allow such a thing?

Well it turns out, that some of the biggest, most well-known ad serving networks are; according to recent information from Avast.  CNet has published an article with some of the findings.

So what’s being done about it?  Apparently not much, except a lot of finger pointing.  The ad serving networks seem to think it’s the publisher’s responsibility and vice versa.  Please for the sake of all of us, somebody take ownership and get this resolved!

In the meantime, stop the malware in its tracks by keeping high quality anti-virus/anti-malware running and up-to-date.  Most importantly, always install security updates for all of your applications as this is typically how malware creeps in.

Podcamp Toronto – hanging out with 900 friends

Its been a couple of weeks since Podcamp Toronto was held Feb 20 & 21 at the Rogers Communciation Centre at Ryerson University. Well over 900 people arrived on Saturday morning to choose from 42 sessions. If you’ve never been to a Podcamp, it’s a bit different from your typical expensive industry conference. Podcamp is an “unconference” – it’s organized and run by a dedicated group of volunteers. The sessions are crowdsourced, anyone who wants to lead a session can – breakout sessions were still being added throughout the two days. The Law of Two Feet rules at Podcamp, if you are not getting something from the session you are in, you are encouraged to leave and find another session that you are interested in.

I purposely sought out sessions I wouldn’t normally attend, including these:

• A Brief Discussion on Dante’s “Inferno” - given by Hamilton high school teacher and podcaster/blogger Anthony Marco
• Integration, Integration, Integration: Communications in the New Social Media Ecosystem - led by Dave Fleet of Toronto PR firm Thornley-Fallis.
• Get Over Yourselves – by Joel Kelly, Digital Strategist with Halifax agency Colour
• Death to Pie Charts! presented by Zoe Siskos, Manager, Measurement Science at Syncapse
• Death and Digital Legacy in Social Media by Adele McAlear of Montreal’s McAlear Marketing
• Twitter and Dating: tips for dating 140 characters or less by Jeremy Wright of Thornley-Fallis / 76 Design and Michelle Smich of Softcom

Videos and presentation decks from most of the sessions in Toronto are available here.

One of the most valuable part of Podcamp tends to happen in the hallways between sessions or at hastily arranged lunch meetups. People who have previously only known each other online finally get to meet each other and real life.

Click here or a full list of upcoming and past Podcamps from around the world.

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