TechBlogger

Apple Says Macs Are Safe, No Antivirus Needed

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:41:00 +0000

lobridge writes “Over the last two days multiple news feeds (and Slashdot) have been reporting that Apple has been quietly recommending antivirus software for their machines. It appears now that Apple has deleted an entry on their forums that suggested this and are saying that Mac computers are ’safe out of the box.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

Have You Ever Edited Wikipedia? [Reader Poll]

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:00:00 +0000

CNET reports that Wikipedia has received $890,000 in funding specifically aimed at creating an easier to use interface for readers with a low level of tech knowledge. Wikipedia’s goal is “to identify the most common barriers to entry for first-time writers, and then work to systematically reduce or eliminate them.” It’s an excellent idea, considering the obvious fact that there are presumably countless potential contributors with a lot of knowledge but a low level of tech skill. Still, since most of our readers are a tech-savvy bunch, it got us wondering:

Have You Ever Edited Wikipedia?
( polls)

It’s not clear when the new and improved interface will reach public eyes, but all the new code will remain open source for those of us who’ve set up ou own personal Wikipedia using MediaWiki’s software. Until then, check out our previous guide to contributing to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia gets $890,000 for the Luddites [CNET]

Original post by Adam Pash

DMCA Exemptions Desired to Hack iPhones, Remix DVDs

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:00:00 +0000

An anonymous reader writes “For copyright activists, Christmas comes but once every three years: a chance to ask Santa for a new exemption to the much-hated Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibitions against hacking, reverse engineering and evasion of Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes protecting all kinds of digital works and electronic items. Judging from the list of 20 exemptions requested this year [19 shown], some in the cyber-law community are thinking big. The requests include the right to legally jailbreak iPhones in order to use third party software, university professors wishing to rip clips from DVDs for classroom use, YouTube users wishing to rip DVDs to make video mashups, a request to allow users to hack DRM protecting content from stores that have gone bankrupt or shut down, and a request to allow security researchers to reverse engineer video games with security flaws that put end-users at risk.” Reader MistaE provides some more specific links to PDF versions: “Among the exemption proposals is a request from the Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic to allow circumvention of DRM protection when the central authorization server goes down, a request from the EFF to allow circumvention to install third party programs on phones, as well as a request for ripping DVDs for non-commercial purposes. There were also several narrow requests from educational institutions to rip DVDs for classroom practices.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

New .tel TLD Now In Use

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:12:00 +0000

rockwood reports that the .tel top level domain has been deployed, “in a first attempt at pushing the recently approved .tel. The top-level domain .tel was approved by ICANN as a sponsored TLD launching on Wednesday, December 3, 2008[1] to trademark owners of national effect and on February 3, 2009 to anyone who wishes to apply. Its main purpose is as a single management and publishing point for ‘internet communication’ services, providing a global contacts directory service by housing all types of contact information directly in the DNS.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

Toucan Syncs and Backs Up Your Files [Featured Windows Download]

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:00:54 +0000

Windows only: Portable application Toucan backs up and syncs your data between two locations (like your hard drive and your USB drive). Weighing in at just over 4.10MB installed, Toucan offers several advanced backup and syncing settings, like incremental backup with compression (supporting 7-Zip format), portable drive variables, scripts and advanced rulesets. Similar to SyncBackSE but smaller and portable, Toucan is a nice option for making sure you’ve got everything on your thumb drive. Toucan is a free download for Windows only.

Toucan [PortableApps.com]

Original post by Gina Trapani

Cutting costs but still want a fancy phone?

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:09:13 +0000

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. economy’s worst crisis since the 1930’s depression may have some consumers questioning the wisdom of buying a fancy new cell phone just yet, but those who can’t wait just might find some deals out there.

Original post by Adam Pash

Battlestar Galactica Gets Spinoff Prequel Series

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:08:00 +0000

It was recently announced that sci-fi remake series, Battlestar Galactica is getting a whole new spinoff prequel series called “Caprica”. Signed on for twenty hours worth of finished product, including a two hour pilot, the new series is to be set 50 years prior to Battlestar Galactica and will focus on two rival families, the Graystones and the Adamas. “Enmeshed in the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and robotics that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons, the two houses go toe-to-toe blending action with corporate conspiracy and sexual politics. ‘Caprica’ will deliver all of the passion, intrigue, political backbiting and family conflict in television’s first science fiction family saga.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by ScuttleMonkey

Windows 7 Beta 1 Coming January 2009 [Windows 7]

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:00:00 +0000

Web site Windows 7 Center reports that Microsoft’s forthcoming update to Vista, Windows 7, will release its first official beta on January 13, 2009—exciting news for anybody dying to test drive Windows 7’s awesome new features. On the other hand, if you’re not eager to upgrade, you can still enjoy some of Windows 7’s best features right now.

Original post by Adam Pash

Apple Has Always Recommended Antivirus Apps [Antivirus]

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:55:00 +0000

Despite a widely reported claim that Apple had recently changed a support document to recommend its users run multiple antivirus utilities, Gizmodo reveals that the antivirus recommendation is not new. Still—even if the recommendation predates dinosaurs—68% of you have never once run antivirus on your Mac in the first place. UPDATE: The kicker: Apple has now removed the article in question altogether.

Original post by Adam Pash

What’s Inside Vista SP2 [Windows Vista]

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:15:00 +0000

The All About Microsoft blog posts a seriously complete list of what’s going to be included in Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista, expected to be out in April 2009. Major items include the Vista Feature Pack for Wireless for easier/better connections, built-in Blu-Ray writing, and reduced resources required for sidebar gadgets. Nothing majorly huge, so it’s worth looking at Windows 7 features you can get in Vista.

Original post by Kevin Purdy

Lessig Launches Open Transition Principles

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:14:00 +0000

soDean writes “The Principles for an Open Transition and a petition were co-launched by Lawrence Lessig, Mozilla, and the Participatory Culture Foundation today. This was in reaction to the announcement that Obama would be posting his transition videos to YouTube. The petition encourages Obama to publish his transition videos with open licenses, make them available for download, and preferably use royalty free/open video formats and standards. Unless YouTube makes some radical changes, the videos will need to be hosted elsewhere.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

Real-World Benchmarks of Ext4

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:39:00 +0000

Ashmash writes “Phoronix has put out a fresh series of benchmarks that show the real world performance of the Ext4 file-system. They ran 19 tests on Fedora 10 with changing out their primary partition to test Ext3, Ext4, Xfs, and ReiserFS. The Linux 2.6.27 kernel was used with the latest file-system support. In the disk benchmarks like Bonnie++ Ext4 was a clear winner but with the real world tests the results were much tighter and Xfs also possessed many wins. They conclude though that Ext4 is a nice upgrade over Ext3 due to the new features and just not improved performance in a few areas, but its lifespan may be short with btrfs coming soon.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

Real World Benchmarks of Ext4

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:39:00 +0000

Ashmash writes “Phoronix has put out a fresh series of benchmarks that show the real world performance of the Ext4 file-system. They ran 19 tests on Fedora 10 with changing out their primary partition to test Ext3, Ext4, Xfs, and ReiserFS. The Linux 2.6.27 kernel was used with the latest file-system support. In the disk benchmarks like Bonnie++ Ext4 was a clear winner but with the real world tests the results were much tighter and Xfs also possessed many wins. They conclude though that Ext4 is a nice upgrade over Ext3 due to the new features and just not improved performance in a few areas but its lifespan may be short with btrfs coming soon.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

SkyDrive Upgrade Goes Live with 25GB of Space [Online Storage]

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:30:00 +0000

Windows Live, intended to be a landing page for social activity and Microsoft’s cloud-connected apps, is rolling out a host of redesigns and upgrades today, but none so exciting (to our eyes, anyways) as the anticipated jump of the SkyDrive online storage service to 25GB capacity. As the Digital Inspiration blog points out, SkyDrive seems to be a central part of the Redmond giant’s web ambitions, so it’s not likely to go away or shrink. Aside from the raw upload/download capabilities, having a SkyDrive account gives you a few other cool abilities, which we’ll detail below.

No-sign-up-needed sharing: If you’ve used most any Microsoft service, you know their features are often linked to a drive to get more people signed into their apps and networks. Not so with SkyDrive, which offers a nice little checkbox for sending sharing links to any email address without requiring a Live sign-in.

Lots of tools for photos: Tag yourself or friends Facebook-style in your photos, launch elegant pic-on-black-background slideshows from folders of pictures (your own or shared) that works on any browser (but supposedly better with Silverlight installed), order prints, and SkyDrive’s thumbnails are nicely big and clear. Here’s how photos are handled in SkyDrive’s file browser:

Grab entire folders as single .zip files: This simple, helpful compression feature isn’t entirely common amongst file-sharing/storage services. You can also drop photos right into your Live Photo Gallery, if that’s how your roll.

Easy sharing and updates on contacts’ files: Windows Live allows you to keep updated with what your friends on Live, Facebook, and LinkedIn are up to, and SkyDrive is no different. Your main SkyDrive page will let you know if any of your contacts have opened up a file for public sharing, and you can organize contacts into categories for easy group sharing—so everyone, for example, in “Project Team” can be sent your latest report at once, with one click.

Mount SkyDrive on your desktop with Gladinet: As we detailed earlier this week, Gladinet’s free Cloud Desktop beta allows you mount and access SkyDrive (and Picasa, Google Docs, and Amazon’s S3) as if it were a plain network folder. Drag-and-drop access to 25GB of go-anywhere cloud space is surely a nifty thing.

Still lacking—50MB file size limit: Amongst SkyDrive’s online storage peers, 50MB isn’t quite eye-opening, especially for a service that wants to be the hub of a burgeoning online network. Still, for photos, documents, and even most zipped-up MP3 albums, it’s decent enough.

SkyDrive requires a sign-up with Windows Live for storing and sharing files. What do you think of the newly-expanded SkyDrive? Share your review in the comments.

SkyDrive: 25 GB of free online storage [Windows Live SkyDrive team blog]

Original post by Kevin Purdy

Aussies Hit the Streets Over Gov’t Internet Filters

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:43:00 +0000

mask.of.sanity writes “Outraged aussies will hold simultaneous protests across Australia in opposition to the government’s plans for mandatory ISP internet content filtering. The plan will introduce nation-wide filtered internet using blacklists operated by a government agency, away from public scrutiny. Politicians and ISPs will join protesters in the streets to voice their opposition to the government’s plan, which has ploughed ahead, despite intense criticism that the technology will crippled internet speeds and infringe on free speech. Opponents said the most accurate filter chosen by the government will incorrectly block up to 10,000 Web pages out of 1 million.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

Aussies Hit the Streets Over Govt Internet Filters

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:43:00 +0000

mask.of.sanity writes “Outraged aussies will hold simultaneous protests across Australia in opposition to the government’s plans for mandatory ISP internet content filtering. The plan will introduce nation-wide filtered internet using blacklists operated by a government agency, away from public scrunity. Politicians and ISPs will join protesters in the streets to voice their opposition to the government’s plan, which has ploughed-ahead, despite intense criticism that the technology will crippled internet speeds and infringe on free speech.Opponents said the most accurate filter chosen by the government will incorrectly block up to 10,000 Web pages out of 1 million.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

Photology Helps You Search Your Photos Using Intuitive Filters [Windows Featured Download]

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:30:00 +0000

Windows only: Photology steps away from tag based searching and allows you to search through your pictures with a variety of filters. There are filter functions for colors, dates, times of day, photo orientation, exposure, text of captions/file names/folders, and even filters for things like plants, sky, faces, beaches, flowers, snow, sunset and water. The simpler filters like the color picker are a bit more accurate than the more advanced ones like clouds. In the screenshot above I had searched for the color blue and snow. Photology kicked out a ton of blue skied and snowy wallpapers I had saved earlier in the holiday season but it also returned a picture of Wonder Woman standing on a cloud. In the defense of Photology clouds and snowbanks are quite similar. Filters can be stacked, so if you need to find a picture from October, predominantly yellow, and taken in the morning you can use all three filters. In addition to helping you search through your photos, Photology has tools for photo adjustments like color correction, red eye removal, cropping, etc. You can also upload your pictures from the application to a site hosted by Enoetic, the parent company of Photology. Pictures will be stored there for 7 days to share with friends. For a more permanent upload, you can also use Photology to upload to Flickr. Photology is freeware, Windows only, requires .Net 3.0+ framework. Thanks GisellaPot!

Photology

Original post by Jason Fitzpatrick

Cell phone market gloom spreads to LG, RIM

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:13:31 +0000

BARCELONA/SEOUL (Reuters) - Cell phone makers LG Electronics and Research in Motion warned on sales and profit growth on Wednesday, the latest sign a consumer spending spree on expensive gadgets has dried up amid economic gloom.

Original post by Kevin Purdy

Logitech Makes 1 Billionth Mouse

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:59:00 +0000

Smivs writes “Logitech has hailed as a major landmark the production of their one billionth computer mouse. The news comes at a time when analysts claim the days of the mouse are numbered. “It’s rare in human history that a billionth of anything has been shipped by one company,” said Logitech’s general manager Rory Dooley. “Look at any other industry and it has never happened. This is a significant milestone.” The computer mouse will achieve a milestone of its own next week when it turns 40. It was 9 December 1968 when Douglas C. Engelbart and his group of researchers at Stanford University put the first mouse through its paces.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

Logitech Makes 1 Billionth Mouse

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:59:00 +0000

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco