Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – February 10, 2012

The 50 Best Free iPhone Apps - I’m an Android guy, but if you are one of the countless iPhone fans out there, you owe it to yourself to check out this roundup. Yes, you could wander through the App Store, weed through countless uninformed user reviews, and make your own decision about what apps are best, but we have done the hard work for you here. Our resident iPhone expert, Jill Duffy, has PCMag’s picks.

Do Not Track Plus – There’s a war on the Web for your personal data, and Abine’s new Do Not Track Plus browser add-on hands you the Internet equivalent of a neutron bomb.

Free Image-editing Software for SMBs – We look at five open source image-editing programs you can use to tweak your small business website graphics and product shots. And they’re all free.

5 Tips to Make Your Facebook Timeline Amazing – Facebook Timeline is coming. It’s just a matter of, well, time. Here are five tips to make your Timeline pop (plus a bonus tip in case you don’t like Timeline).

20 Popular Ubuntu Linux Apps You May Want to Try – Gaming accounted for many of the top apps last month, but there were a few business-oriented gems as well, according to a new report.

Chrome 17 tweaks speed, download security – Small but important security changes arrive in Chrome 17 stable, along with a slight expansion of the browser’s precognitive superpower.

Windows 8 bundled Metro apps revealed – Now due on February 29, the next Windows 8 beta will offer several built-in Metro apps, including Music, Video, Mail, Messaging, and SkyDrive.

Microsoft Ruining Valentine’s Day with Nine Security Bulletins – Microsoft shared its Patch Tuesday preview, revealing that there are nine security bulletins on the agenda for next week.

Active mobile botnet enslaves thousands of Android devices – A trojanized Android application for configuring phone settings has been enslaving the devices of the customers of China’s two largest mobile carriers into a botnet numbering hundreds of thousands of compromised devices, says Symantec researchers

Best File-Syncing Services – Dropbox and other files-syncing and -sharing services have drastically changed the way we use our computers, allowing us to access important files at any time from any location. Here are some of the best services available.

Google Wallet PIN Cracked in Seconds [Video] – This is a nasty bit of news for Google, credit card companies, and consumers alike. Joshua Rubin, a researcher at zvelo, has been digging into Google Wallet’s encryption methods and wrote a program that can decrypt your Google Wallet PIN in seconds.

Company News:

No more Kodak moments – In a drastic bid to cut costs, bankrupted Eastman Kodak Co plans to stop making cameras in the first half of 2012. After making cameras for more than 120 years — dominating the market at one point, and even bringing photos back from the first Moon landing — the company will now focus on printers and will license its brand name to other manufacturers.

Google’s GDrive Reportedly To Launch As Dropbox-rival ‘Drive’ – A news report says the new product will be free to consumers up to a certain size limit, and would also be folded into Google Apps for enterprise.

Raspberry Pi: Britain’s £16 computer (and what powers it) – Measuring just 85mm by 54mm and costing $25 (£16), the Raspberry Pi packs a punch. “It can do anything a PC can,” says engineer Eben Upton, one of six Cambridge-based creators. At its heart is a Broadcom system-on-a-chip, and with 128MB of RAM it can run a full version of Linux-based system Fedora 15 as powerfully as a Pentium II machine.

Amazon Attacks Apple: You Get Three Kindle Products for Price of iPad 2 – Amazon has released a new advertisement that takes a shot at the price of Apple’s iPad, emphasizing the lower cost of the Kindle e-reader and Android-based Kindle Fire tablet computer.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Meet Li-Fi, The LED-Based Alternative To Household Wi-Fi – Detailed look at potential of Li-Fi, a magical concept. One that promises to let you stream a movie from a lamp, communicate underwater by torchlight, download music from an illuminated billboard. It’s Wi-Fi, but not as you know it

Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen – My daughter thought it would be funny/rebellious/cool to post on her Facebook wall just how upset she was and how unfair her life here is; how we work her too hard with chores, never pay her for chores, and just in general make her life difficult. She chose to share this with the entire world on Facebook and block her parent’s from seeing it. Well, umm… she failed. As of the end of this video, she won’t have to worry anymore about posting inappropriate things on Facebook… (recommended by Michael F.)

W3C co-chair: Apple, Google power causing Open Web crisis – Apple and Google dominate mobile browsing so much that the Web is being infected with proprietary technologies again, just like the bad days of IE6, Daniel Glazman says.

We Need to Regulate Facebook – Facebook, Google, Twitter, and every other data-sucking Web giant should be forced to reveal exactly what data they collect about us — before it’s too late.

Read FBI background report on Apple co-founder Steve Jobs – Turns out that the FBI did a background check on Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1991, when he was considered for an appointment on George H.W. Bush’s President’s Export Council. According to the report, which the bureau published today, Jobs’ past drug use raised some questions, as did his lack of support for his eldest child, who was born out of wedlock.

Today’s Quote:

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, “Where have I gone wrong? Then a voice says to me, “This is going to take more than one night.”

-     Charles M. Schulz

Today’s Free Downloads:

Adobe Muse 0.8 Build 755 Beta 6 – Create websites as easily as you create layouts for print. You can design and publish original HTML pages to the latest web standards without writing code. Now in beta, Muse makes it a snap to produce unique, professional websites. (Registration required).

Windows 7 Codec Pack 3.8.0 – The Windows 7 Codec Pack supports almost every compression and file type used by modern video and audio files. The package is easy to install, while also offering advanced settings to the high end user: For simple installation select “Easy Installation”. For advanced installation options select “Expert Installation”.