Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – May 5, 2013

Best Windows security apps – Just because threats to your PC continue to mutate doesn’t mean that you must pay for your peace of mind. We’ve collected some of the top free security and privacy programs available that will keep your computer safer.

3D-printable gun specs to be available next week, provider says – 3D-printable gun advocate Cody Wilson is planning to release next week the specs for a gun he calls “the Liberator.” The University of Texas law student and founder of the non-profit Defense Distributed tells Forbes he will release the CAD files for the gun, which will allow anyone with access to a 3D printer to print the gun without having to bother with things like a serial number, background check or waiting period.

Twitter needs to grow up and take responsibility, some say – Twitter, the increasingly popular microblogging service, has come under quite a bit of criticism in the past few weeks. Users of the platform, which describes itself as an “information-sharing network” are struggling with what to do about false information being spread around.

Scan Documents To PDF Using FastStone Image Viewer – Buried in Fastone Image Viewer is an option where you can scan documents and save them as PDF files. I personally use this all of the time to convert my paper documents to the digital PDF format.

Chrome caching to smooth out rough patches in network – “Offline cache mode” lets Google’s browser load a saved version of a previously visited Web page. The cached version might be out of date, though.

Make your old iPhone run like new – First, take a minute to get rid of any bulky apps you never use. Dive in to Settings>General>Usage and look at the list of the apps installed on your phone. You’ll see them listed in order of the size of the app, which makes it easy to spot the serious offenders. I’ll bet you’ll be surprised.

Top Tech for Dog Lovers – So, if you’ve ever bought your dad an iPad or your girlfriend a Fitbit activity tracker, you might be interested in buying your four-legged best friend some cool tech as well. Lucky for you, we have some suggestions. In some cases these items will give you peace of mind, whether it’s making your pet more visible to drivers late at night, or alerting you if she strays too far from home. In other cases these gadgets will bring you closer to your buddy even if you are far away. One option simply spoils your pup silly by delivering new treats and toys to your doorstep every month. Think Birchbox for dogs.

Barnes & Noble offers full Google Play access for the Nook HD and HD+ – The Barnes & Noble lineup of Nook digital readers originally required a hack in order to access the full version of the Google Play store.

Infographic: LinkedIn Transforms Job Recruiting – LinkedIn is the preferred social networking site for recruiters, according to people at Masters in Human Resources.

5 quick steps for using LinkedIn for recruitment – If you’re only using LinkedIn as a glorified business-card collector, an email replacement or some kind of Facebook counterpart for business contacts, you’re missing out on its recruitment potential. With 200 million users, LinkedIn has been making great strides lately to offer better tools for searching and posting jobs. With that in mind, here are five ways your small business can use LinkedIn to catch the next great candidate.

Pickup Artist Training App Hits the iPhone – A new iOS app based on “pickup artist” Nick Savoy’s Love Systems method purports to teach shy guys how to woo women—and it’s definitely not creepy, the developers promised on Friday. What’s more, Chouquette Games assured us that Become A Pick Up Artist is “certainly not another Girls Around Me app,” a reference to a controversial and now-defunct mobile app that took publicly available information from FourSquare and Facebook, mashed it up, and presented users with a map showing where nearby females were located plus a quick link to their Facebook profiles.

Keep your laptop battery healthy: Use it sparingly – What wears down a battery? Charging and discharging. Obviously, you can’t avoid either of those acts entirely (although if you could, you wouldn’t have to worry about wearing out your battery). The trick, of course, is to do as little charging and discharging as possible. And one way to avoid charging and discharging is to remove the battery when you don’t need it.

Security:

Microsoft admits zero-day bug in IE8, pledges patch – Microsoft late Friday confirmed that a “zero-day,” or unpatched, vulnerability exists in Internet Explorer 8, the company’s most popular browser.

Path “Find Friends” blocked by Facebook for suspicious spam – Facebook has blocked Path’s access to its social graph due to Path’s recent spam debacle. This will prevent Path from being able to access the social network’s “Find Friends” feature, meaning the app won’t be able to spam your contacts list with invites. However, users will still be able to login to Path via Facebook and they will still be able to share their content onto their walls.

Beware: Fake Facebook Security Check – Trend Micro, a computer and Internet security company, has identified a new malware that pretends to be Facebook Security doing a “security check”. The Hacker News reported it as follows…..

Cyberattack affected US defense contractor over three-year period – Most, if not all, of the intellectual property of a U.S. defense contractor whose forte includes spy satellites and drone aircraft, was apparently compromised over a three-year period by Chinese hackers. Traces of the hackers’ work was found in many of the divisions of the contractor, QinetiQ (pronounced “kinetic”) and across most of their product lines, a former senior vice president at Verizon Terremark told Bloomberg News.

Call of Duty: Ghosts “beta invite” imposter websites on the prowl – Activision has recently revealed the Call of Duty: Ghosts trailer, causing excitement to fans all around. However, that excitement may have its faults as many scammers are already looking to take advantage of naive gamers. Several fake websites have begun appearing on the internet posing as Call of Duty: Ghosts websites. These sites say they’re offering free Beta keys and other goodies for your information.

Syrian Electronic Army takes over E! Online’s Twitter Account – The Syrian Electronic Army strikes again, and this time, their target was both E! Online and Justin Bieber. In a series of tweets, the SEA stated that Justin Bieber was coming out of the closet and admitting to his homosexuality in an E! Online exclusive. The group provided links following those tweets, presumably to malware infested sites. The SEA finished up their practical joke with the tweet, “The Syrian Electronic Army was here! Fans of @justinbieber, you have been trolled.” (Let’s turn Anonymous loose on these a-holes. That, would be fun to watch.   )

Company News:

Google Takes A Controversial Political Stance: Google Recognizes Palestine – With one small gesture, Google has made a big statement. On Thursday the Palestine News Network reported that Google.ps changed its title from “The Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine.”

PayPal considers accepting BitCoin payments – PayPal CEO John Donahoe is considering ways of implementing BitCoins into PayPal’s digital transaction network. He says that he’s watching Bitcoins very closely and expects that the virtual currency, or virtual currency in general, will be here to stay. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Donahoe stated that within 5 years, Bitcoins and other virtual currencies will be able to be converted into cash and be used in the real world.

eBay’s $35 Million Mess – The Business Insider reports on eBay’s two most successful affiliate partners, and why both ended up pleading guilty to wire fraud.

Microsoft entices Windows Phone developers with more payout options – Microsoft is continuing to try and entice developers to develop apps for its Windows Phone 8 platform, and this time around, they are bringing new features and statistics to better support their persuasion. It touts an increasing market share (albeit by only 2%) as one of its major selling points, as well as an increased number of first time smartphone buyers opting for the Windows Phone 8 platform.

Webopedia Daily:

Information technology (IT) supervisor – The IT supervisor works with other information technology management professionals to install, maintain, and upgrade an organization’s technology systems. Supervisors generally oversee a team of IT administrators and support personnel responsible for the day-to-day operation of the IT network and system components. Since they are closely involved in the maintenance of information systems, IT supervisors come to the position with a solid technical background. An online computer science degree or IT degree may offer the necessary foundation for the career. IT supervisors generally have a bachelor’s degree; advancement to management-level IT careers is possible with an MBA degree or advanced coursework in management information systems.

Games and Entertainment:

Sid Meier lets fly with mobile game — and why you’ll be happy to pay – Meier’s new game — and first foray into the mobile world — is “Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol,” a turn-based strategy game based on World War I fighter planes. Rather than embrace the freemium model of many others, he is using a “try to buy” model in which the first few levels are free, and each nationality is $1.99 (for a total of four). The entire game can be purchased for $5.

Eternal Darkness sequel to be crowdfunded, heads to PC and Wii U first – Eternal Darkness, a popular survival horror game released for the GameCube, will have a “spiritual successor” soon if finances are in order. Precursor Games will be developing the game and it plans on generating $1.5 million through crowdfunding in order to create Eternal Darkness’s sequel. The game will be called Shadow of the Eternals, and it will initially be available for PC and Nintendo Wii U gamers.

RuneScape 3 drops Java in favor of HTML5 – Jagex, the developers of the infamous web-browser MMORPG RuneScape, has decided that it’s time to put Java away and welcome in HTML5. The game developer knew that in order for the next sequel of RuneScape, RuneScape 3, to be successful, it needed to transition into a new engine. It considered Adobe Flash, but Flash didn’t enough power to run the game, and it thought of Microsoft Silverlight, but Silverlight is limited only to Internet Explorer.

This May the Fourth, look back at amazing ‘Return of the Jedi’ art – A Star Wars Day spectacular! Take a trip through Ralph McQuarrie’s vision of the alien worlds and characters seen in “Return of the Jedi,” which celebrates three decades this year.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Iron Penguin: First open-source “Iron Man” suit within reach? – Building on the ground-breaking work of billionaire genius Tony Stark, the first Linux-powered Iron Man suits may soon be within the reach of homebrew builders.

What I learned living abroad as a digital nomad – Digital nomad Mike Elgan returns to the U.S. after 10 months of travel and shares these tips for working and living abroad.

Spam’s birthday and Hotmail’s closure lead email milestones – The first spam message sent on what was to become the Internet—Arpanet—is attributed to Gary Thuerk, who on May 3, 1978 sent a message to a mailing list of 393 people promoting a new computer model from the now defunct Digital Equipment Corporation. The practice was immediately condemned by Arpanet users, but the mailing did sell a computer or two for DEC, which only encouraged spammers, who were willing tolerate a little revulsion in exchange for sales.

Swearing in Fantasy and Fiction – A lot of writers worry about the use of bad language in their work. It is a legitimate concern, depending on the audience you are writing for. Some writers abhor the use of expletives and curses, choosing to avoid it entirely. Some writers dump expletives with abandon, and pepper their dialog with spicy adjective sandwiches.

Ancient cemetery found under parking lot in England – It would seem parking lots in England are the places to go for those wanting to find some ancient bones – or, in this case, a rather large grave, which is said to be the final resting place of individuals of different religions, making it especially unque. The discovery was made in Leicester, England, and is said to be approximately 1700 years old. This isn’t the first time Leicester has been the source of an unearthed ancient grave cite, with the remains of King Richard III being found under a parking lot earlier this year.

Spy court OK’d all U.S. wiretap requests it received in 2012 – A special court established to review government requests for warrants to conduct electronic surveillance of suspected foreign spies received close to 1,900 warrant requests last year — all of which it approved. (I have some old rubber stamps perhaps these guys could make use of. Oh, wait….)

Today’s Quote:

“The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.”

-    Robert Jackson

Today’s Free Downloads:

Digital Home Server 2.1.1.0 – The Digital Home Server (DHS) is a FREE home automation and multimedia application which is easy to use, and aimed at non-technical users.DHS is actually a graphical framework with a number of applications. Some applications are small and can be dragged around the screen, others are full screen.

OpenRocket 13.05 – A free, fully featured model rocket simulator that allows you to design and simulate your rockets before actually building and flying them.

iSpy 4.9.8.0 – iSpy uses your webcams and microphones to detect and record movement or sound and provides security, surveillance, monitoring and alerting services. Any media that is captured is compressed to flash video and made available, securely over the web. iSpy can be setup to run on multiple computers simultaneously. iSpy is free, open-source software, so if you want it to do anything else, please download the source code and customise it to your requirements.

Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – May 4, 2013

Supersize your free cloud storage to 100GB or more – With some patience, you can build your own supercloud with more than 100GB of free storage. With a lot of patience (and pestering of your pals), you can nab more than 225GB.

What Do You Have to Hide? – “What are you worried about? If you are not doing anything wrong, what difference does it make?” I’ve fought this bogus comment with all sorts of arguments. Now I’ll apply the exact same argument to promote cameras in the bathrooms of your own home. Public bathrooms should indeed have cameras because people head there to do drug deals. There are also muggings and murders in bathrooms. Put cameras in the bathrooms of America to stop crime. What better way is there than a camera in every room? And most law-abiding citizens should not care since they are not doing anything bad, right?

Consumer Reports: How secure is your smart phone? – Chances are you’re among the roughly half of American adults who use an ­iPhone, Android-based phone, or other type of smart phone. And you probably entrust it with sensitive information: your circle of friends, your whereabouts from day to day, or passwords to your accounts. But when you take your phone into your confidence, so to speak, you’re also taking in a host of parties that make all of those wonderful mobile services possible, including app developers, your wireless carrier and phone manufacturer, mobile advertisers, and the maker of your phone’s operating system.

3D printer? Staples says, ‘Yeah, we’ve got that’ – 3D printers are taking another step in the long haul toward the mainstream, with a little help from Staples. On Friday, the office supply retailer began selling the Cube 3D Printer online for $1300, becoming the first major U.S. retailer to sell a 3D printer. Staples says it will offer the printer in “a limited number” of retail stores by the end of June.

Here’s what you can make with a mainstream 3D printer – Staples and a limited number of stores will begin selling the 3D Systems Cube 3D Printer to the general public. But what can they do?

World’s first 3D-printed gun makes its debut – Defense Distributed, a Texas-based group working toward nonprofit status, has given Forbes images of what is being called the world’s first 3D-printed handgun. The gun is capable of firing standard handgun rounds and is made entirely of plastic, except for a nail that’s being used as a firing pin and a six-ounce piece of steel that’s designed solely to allow the gun to be detected by metal detectors.

Get a free Windows 8 tips-and-tricks guide – Sure, you can read all the great Windows 8-related tutorials and how-to guides here at PC World, or even take a free online course. But sometimes your best bet is a cheat-sheet—something you can keep right beside your keyboard for at-a-glance information. The folks at TradePub have just the thing: the Microsoft Windows 8 Quick Reference Card. It’s a colorful two-page guide to Windows 8′s most commonly used areas. And if you don’t mind sharing a bit of personal information, it’s free. At the risk of gushing, this is one of the handiest Windows 8 helpers I’ve seen yet.

Beam app fills the Google Glass-to-YouTube upload gap – Google’s Glass can shoot video with its built-in camera, but one missing piece is getting it right onto YouTube, which Google also happens to own. Fullscreen, a Los Angeles-based company, has solved that with what it claims is the first YouTube app for Glass. The software, called Beam, lets Glass owners post their videos to YouTube, as well as automatically share them on Twitter once they’re live.

How to increase your Twitter following – one step at a time – What do all Twitter users want? Followers – and lots of them. But unless you’re a celebrity, it is often difficult for most of us to build a large Twitter audience. Looking at a half-million tweets over 15 months, a first-of-its-kind study from Georgia Tech has revealed a set of reliable predictors for building a Twitter following.

Why the browser wars are important to you – In this off-topic post, I explore (no pun intended) the five major browsers and why you should care about them.

Google and Adobe beautify fonts on Linux, iOS – Users of Android, Chrome OS, Linux, and iOS devices may not realize it, but FreeType open source software is used to render fonts on more than a billion such devices. Not only that, but the FreeType project this week got a significant update from none other than Adobe and Google.

Raspberry Pi kits to form drone shield – A US engineer is trying to sell the idea of an open source drone detection system built out of shedloads of Raspberry Pi kits. The Drone Shield, which is designed by John Franklin, will cost around $60 to $70 to set up. It will combine a, a signal processor, a microphone, and analysis software to scan for specific audio signatures and compare them against what known drones sound like. Once a match is found, the Drone Shield then sends an e-mail or SMS to its owner and warns him or her to keep their head down.

Security:

Top Android AV software fooled by common evasion techniques – A team of researchers from Northwestern University and North Carolina State University have tested ten of the most popular Android anti-virus software and have discovered that all of them can be fooled by common code obfuscation techniques.

Multi-stage exploit attacks for more effective malware delivery – Most drive-by exploit kits use a minimal exploit shellcode that downloads and runs the final payload. This is akin to a two-stage ICBM (InterContinental Ballistic Missile) where the first stage, the exploit, puts the rocket in its trajectory and the second stage, the payload, inflicts the damage.

Systems manager arrested for revenge hacking former employer’s network – A 41-year-old man was arrested for allegedly disrupting his former employer’s network after he was passed over for promotions, leading him to quit his job and take revenge, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

ICS-CERT revises recommendations to avoid shamoon infections – ICS-CERT updates a number of recommendations for critical infrastructure operators to prevent infections from the Shamoon wiper malware. Shamoon struck Saudi oil company Aramco, destroying more than 30,000 workstations.

Company News:

Avast targets Facebook and VPN – Yesterday, Avast Software made news with its acquisition of privacy company Secure.Me, a small developer best known for its Facebook apps of the same name. Secure.Me protects users’ Facebook accounts, monitoring all activity and photos, detecting malware links, and identifying content that is questionable or unsuitable for children.

Google Is Making Gaming Moves – Google may be planning some big moves into video games, based on a few recent developments. Android Police has reported that Google is working on a multiplayer gaming service, similar to Apple‘s Game Center, based on hints in one of Google’s own Android apps. What’s going on here? Let’s mull over the possibilities, based on what we know.

Tech group pushing to ease rules for exporting broken phones – A trade group that represents Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and other tech giants is pushing new language for an international treaty that one watchdog group says could open the floodgates to toxic e-waste exportation.

Facebook settles with Timelines Inc. – Facebook said Thursday in its 10-Q quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had reached agreement with Timelines Inc. to settle the dispute. The social network did not disclose the terms of the settlement, but indicated that the cost was not material to its business.

Retailers share blame for poor Windows 8 sales – “Windows 8 brought a brand new UI [user interface] that had not fundamentally changed since DOS,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, in a blog post Tuesday. “[So] how did big-box retail respond? The same way they have for the last 20 years.”

Webopedia Daily:

IT outsourcing – IT outsourcing is a phrase used to describe the practice of seeking resources — or subcontracting — outside of an organizational structure for all or part of an IT (Information Technology) function. An organization would use IT outsourcing for functions ranging from infrastructure to software development, maintenance and support. For example, an enterprise might outsource its IT management because it is cheaper to contract a third party to do so than it would be to build its own in-house IT management team. Or a company might outsource all of its data storage needs because it does not want to buy and maintain its own data storage devices. Most large organizations only outsource a portion of any given IT function.

Games and Entertainment:

Get the party started with Heads Up (pictures) – This trivia and activity social game has a simple interface to get your group of friends playing together. In some games you’ll only have to guess a word or name, but others have you acting out clues, or even doing impersonations.

10 Games to Watch for Late Spring 2013 – Check out our late-spring list of PC, console and handheld video games to keep an eye on.

Robot Unicorn Attack 2 – The game-making gurus over at Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim have a knack for crafting entertaining, competitive experiences out of whole cloth; Robot Unicorn Attack 2 is their latest endeavor. It’s an endless runner in the vein of games like Canabalt or Temple Run. There are only two buttons: jump to leap over chasms, and dash to bash through obstacles. You’ll accumulate points as you run, and can also collect fairies to boost your score, and tears, which serve as the in game currency.

New Trailer Provides Sneak Peek at ‘The Elder Scrolls Online’ – One year after Bethesda Softworks announced plans to take The Elder Scrolls online in a massively multiplayer online version, the company today revealed more details about its next chapter.

Fez lands on Windows – The remarkable little 2D platformer set in a 3D world launches its Windows version today on Steam and GOG. It’s Gomez time!

Wise Game Booster – You don’t need a supercharged PC to run high-demand games. Wise Game Booster will speed up your computer’s gaming performance with the touch of a button. It’s a little too powerful for rookie users, but the ability to change or modify how it closes programs makes it a worthwhile download.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Born Apple: Six famous Windows apps that debuted on the Mac – A number of the most famous apps to make the Mac-Windows jump began as GUI-based reinterpretations of older software ideas, while others began as programs that could have only originated in a bitmapped computing environment like that of the Macintosh. We’ll take a look at a handful in this slideshow.

The 10 Most Popular iPhone Apps of All Time – With the App Store about to hit 50 billion downloads any day now, Apple appears to be in a celebratory mood. To commemorate the impending milestone, Apple on Thursday began highlighting the top 25 free and paid iOS apps of all time, giving us some insight into the apps we just had to check out over the past five years. Interestingly, each of the top 5 paid apps are games, while social-networking services ruled the free app rankings.

Expelled girl’s ‘bomb’: Toilet cleaner and foil – As the scientific community rallies around Kiera Wilmot, the 16-year-old expelled for a scientific experiment gone slightly awry, court papers reveal hers was an ordinary experiment. The school, meanwhile, insists it did the right thing.

Revenge-porn website victim files suit against ex and four porn sites – A US woman in the state of Florida has filed charges against her ex-boyfriend and four websites for posting revenge porn images of her – i.e., nude photos and/or videos, including private facts and details of the victim, posted online without the subject’s consent.

Today’s Quote:

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

-     Henry David Thoreau

Today’s Free Downloads:

Cain and Abel 4.9.44 – Allows easy recovery of various kind of passwords by sniffing the network, cracking encrypted passwords and more.

MailStore Home 8.0.3 – With MailStore Home you can bring order into chaos by creating a single central archive for all emails.

Spiceworks IT Desktop 6.2.90.1 – Spiceworks IT Desktop is the only application that combines Network Inventory, Help Desk, Reporting,and more in a single, easy-to-use interface.

Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – May 3, 2013

Leave early on Friday: time-saving tips and tricks – Or, um, get ahead on your next project, yeah. These 21 hardware and software shortcuts help you finish work faster. We’re going to contribute to your expert education with 21 simple things you can do to waste less time while you’re using a PC. Even if one of these tips saves you just five minutes each week, it’ll save you hours over the next year.

Facebook’s “Trusted Contacts” lets friends bail you out of a hack attack – Facebook Thursday announced a new security tool called “Trusted Contacts” for users who suspect they’ve been hacked. Trusted Contacts allows you to specify three to five Facebook friends to help you regain account access. In case of a security breach, each of these friends gets a code that you must enter to unlock your account.

Google Glass ‘Winky’ App Lets You Snap Photos by Winking – Google Glass is finally rolling out to developers and early adopters, and a number of interesting experiments and hacks have already appeared. But one new Glass app is certain to raise eyebrows, figuratively and literally, because it allows you to take photos with just a wink.

Q&A: The FBI’s role in ‘manufacturing’ terrorism – In his new book, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism, investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson analyzes 10 years of terrorism cases that were prosecuted in the United States after Sept. 11. Rather than stopping actual terrorist attacks, like the Boston bombing, the FBI focuses significant resources on using informants and sting operations to entrap would-be Islamic terrorists who “never could have obtained the capability to carry out their planned violent acts were it not for the FBI’s assistance,” he writes in his book.

Hate Facebook mobile ads? Now you can hide them – The social network lets users hide some mobile ads, with even more ad-nixing options on the way.

$70 Drone Shield wants to protect you from flying spies – There are quite a lot of people who are seriously concerned about maintaining their privacy in an age where aerial drones – like the Parrot AR – are increasingly easy to build or buy. Enter the Drone Shield, created by an aerospace engineer who is seeking backing on Indigogo to bring the device to market.

How to Remove Babylon Search Toolbar – Millions of consumers turn to download.com to get software. Unfortunately, some of that software comes with an unwelcome add-on: the Babylon Search Toolbar. How do you get rid of it? It isn’t easy, but PCMag’s Fahmida Rashid can walk you through it.

Revive the F8 method of booting Windows 8 into Safe Mode – It is possible to reconfigure the Windows 8 boot process to allow you to use the F8 key to access the Advanced Boot Options menu of old.

EFF Gives Twitter High Marks for Protecting Users’ Data – How safe are your favorite websites? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) evaluated 18 major Internet companies for privacy and transparency, and Twitter and West Coast ISP Sonic.net came out on top.

Five cheap digital photo apps – The digital photography revolution has resulted in an overabundance of high priced products for editing and managing digital photos. However, there are also free and cheap photo editing and management tools available. In this post we list five such tools that are either free or cost less than fifty dollars.

Would you use a cloud-based version of Windows? – It’s been two years since Chromebooks running Google’s Chrome OS appeared on store shelves. So far, Google’s plan—to turn your Web browser into an operating system and websites into desktop-app replacements—does not appear to be catching on. But what if instead of accessing just websites, Chromebooks connected to a Windows desktop that lived in the cloud? Instead of having the Windows OS and all your apps stored locally, what if Microsoft hosted your Windows desktop on its servers, allowing you to access your personal “PC” from any device?

Android Jelly Bean Tops Ice Cream Sandwich – The most recent version of Android’s operating system, Jelly Bean, has now topped its predecessor, Ice Cream Sandwich, but Gingerbread still reigns supreme.

Security:

Fake AV scammers impersonate Microsoft – Cyber scammers continue to impersonate Microsoft and try to trick users into believing that their computer is serious need of an AV solution. Webroot researchers have spotted an active campaign that involves an ever-rotating slew of websites sporting a warning mimicking a Microsoft Security Essentials alert:

Salted Password Hashing – Doing it Right – The most important aspect of a user account system is how user passwords are protected. User account databases are hacked frequently, so you absolutely must do something to protect your users’ passwords if your website is ever breached. The best way to protect passwords is to employ salted password hashing. This page will explain how to do it properly. (A worthwhile read for security pros or high end users.)

Chinese break into US dam database – Chinese hackers have cracked a US Army database that contains information about the vulnerabilities of thousands of US dams.

FinFisher spy kit’s C&C servers are popping up around the world – Some two months ago, Reporters Without Borders identified UK-based Gamma International as one of the “enemies of the Internet” due to their FinFisher spyware tool kit being used by a number of oppressive governments. Privacy International has recently been trying to discover under which conditions Gamma International has been allowed to export FinFisher, but they haven’t had much luck with it, Citizen Lab researchers pointed out. I recommend reading the entire report as it really goes in great detail about how the spyware works. You can download it here.

Serious website vulnerabilities continue to decrease – A new WhiteHat Security report has correlated vulnerability data from tens of thousands of websites from more than 650 organizations, with software development lifecycle (SDLC) activity data obtained from 76 survey respondents. In 2012, the average number of serious vulnerabilities per website continued to decline, going from 79 in 2011 down to 56 in 2012. Despite this, 86 percent of all websites tested were found to have at least one serious vulnerability exposed to attack every single day of 2012.

Companies explore self-detonating data as security control – “It puts controls on what people see, and I can put expiration dates on sensitive documents,” says Marc McDonald, owner of Chicago-based Midland Metal Products, which a few months ago started using the software-as-a-service called VIA from Intralinks Holdings. Via now lets the maker of store fixtures share computer-aided design files for custom manufacturing with business partners. Midland Metal Products restricts download of sensitive information and also sets a time for the files to self-destruct. McDonald says the password-controlled VIA option is simpler and has more security controls than the Dropbox option had previously used.

Reputation.com resets all user passwords following breach – Fortunately, the few passwords that were nabbed were salted and hashed. Also, the company doesn’t request sensitive information such as Social Security Numbers and doesn’t store financial data such as credit card numbers or bank accounts. Kudos for good security practices, guys.

Windows Magnifier Hack – Steps to reset a Windows account password given physical access to the box.

Company News:

BlackBerry 10 wins Pentagon’s security approval – The device maker beats out Apple and Samsung to be the first company to get its latest operating system authorized by the U.S. Department of Defense for agency use.

Intel lifts the veil on Haswell graphics – Intel is clearly tired of Nvidia and AMD kicking sand in its face when it comes to graphics performance. The company has had a talented GPU engineering team for many years. With the fourth generation of Intel’s Core CPU line—codenamed Haswell—those engineers finally get to strut their stuff. And Intel Is launching a new brand to boot to mark the occasion.

Microsoft readies ‘Mohoro’ Windows desktop as a service – Microsoft is believed to be building a Windows Azure-hosted desktop virtualization service that could be available on a pay-per-use basis.

Bitcoin exchange partnership dissolves with lawsuit – CoinLab files lawsuit against key Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox alleging breach of contract in deal to manage North America operations.

Rumors swirl around AMD buy – If you read the financial press you might be surprised to learn that AMD is about to be bought by every company under the sun.

Webopedia Daily:

Vertical cloud computing – A vertical cloud, or vertical cloud computing, is the phrase used to describe the optimization of cloud computing and cloud services for a particular vertical (e.g., a specific industry) or specific use application. The cloud provider will offer specialized functions and options that best meet industry-use and specifications. Today, the vertical health-care cloud is one of the more well-established vertical clouds.

Games and Entertainment:

Gamers Spending More Time Online – Online gaming is on the rise, and users are spending more time playing games overall, according to a new report from the NPD Group. The research firm surveyed 8,867 individuals in February and March and found that 72 percent of U.S. gamers play online. This represents a 5 percentage point increase from 2012.

The big picture: Projection basics – TVs are great and all, but if you want really epic entertainment, you need a projector. One-hundred-plus inches of high-definition awesomeness.

‘Angry Birds Friends’ Goes Mobile – Rovio is rolling out Angry Birds Friends to iOS and Android, allowing players to compete against Facebook friends while on the go. The apps are available for free, though the next weekly tournament doesn’t begin until May 6. Once it kicks off, users can compete on mobile or Facebook, with progress synced across both platforms.

‘Star Trek’ Enterprise bridge restoration in warp drive – The New Starship Foundation rescued a version of the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” bridge from the scrap heap. Restoration is under way.

Crackle brings the content front and center (pictures) – Crackle lays out TV shows and movies in a grid, or you can view them in list view for quick scanning of titles.

Off Topic (Sort of):

How to prepare for your last log-off – From will templates to postmortem e-mails, free and low-cost Web services help you put your affairs in order, send messages from the afterlife (sort of), and ensure your online accounts are properly laid to rest

Insect-like flying robot developed by Harvard researchers – Researchers at Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed an insect-like robot that achieves flight by flapping a pair of tiny wings. The robot is small enough to sit on the tip of a finger and weighs 80 milligrams — that’s roughly 1/30th the weight of a U.S. penny coin. Its wings, which have a span of 3 centimeters, can flap at up to 120 times per second.

Five Phrases That Fail (video 3:50) – 5 things da kidz don’t say any more. (suggested by Michael F.)

T-Mobile employee: I used vacation time to go to the bathroom – A former T-Mobile employee going through a difficult pregnancy says she was told to clock out every time she used the bathroom, as her visits were too frequent.

Windows 8 Wikipedia page vandalized – Why would anyone wish to besmirch the Windows 8 Wikipedia page? Hasn’t Windows 8 got enough problems? Please don’t say it’s a fanperson from another brand. It seems that it might have been.

Are Americans getting tired of texting? – While people in the U.S. are still sending trillions of text messages per year, they sent 5 percent less in 2012 than they did in 2011.

Today’s Quote:

“Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.”

-     Gary Zukav

Today’s Free Downloads:

Avast! Free Edition – Based on the award-winning avast! antivirus engine, avast! antivirus contains all of the features you would expect in a modern antivirus program. It incorporates anti-spyware technology certified by West Coast Labs’ Checkmark process, as well as anti-rootkit and strong self-protection capabilities, but now provides even faster scanning with improved detection ability. It contains several real-time “Shields” which continuously monitor your email and internet connections and check the files on your computer whenever they are opened or closed.

Wise Data Recovery – Freeware Wise Data Recovery does well in recovering lost data, no matter which are images, documents, audios, videos, compressed files or emails. It can quickly and safely search and recover the file you want as long as you specify the drive, the file type, or the file name. Wise Data Recovery will also show you the difficult level of the recovery by indicating the data as “Good”, “Poor”, “Very Poor”, or “Lost” in the scan result.

Advanced Renamer 3.57 – Advanced Renamer is a free program for renaming multiple files and folders at once. By configuring renaming methods the names can be manipulated in various ways.

Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – May 2, 2013

US seeks to pressure Google, Facebook et al. into installing wiretapping backdoors – A new proposal would require tech firms to design surveillance-enabling trapdoors from the ground up or modify existing services, facilities and equipment. The FBI says it’s necessary to quickly catch terrorists and child abusers, but others say it’s a recipe for opening servers up to hacking and illicit surveillance.  (Unbelievable – the government in our homes all day – every day. What planet are these people from?)

The Future of Cars: Connected Vehicles Infographic – It used to be that drivers only had to worry about driving safely, following the rules of the road and maintaining their vehicle, but now vehicle owners have a new issue to worry about: IT security. Connected Cars infographic outlines the security risks new features in connected cars introduce and tips for vehicle owners and manufacturers for protecting these vehicles.

Text- and app-blocker keeps eyes on the road – When your teen driver can’t keep his eyes on the road, who ya gonna call? TextBuster!

12 easy PC tasks you should be doing (but aren’t) – No more excuses! Whipping your PC into the best shape it can be requires but a dozen simple tasks. None are complicated, most take a matter of minutes, and all will have a major effect on how well your computer works for you. Even better, by the time you’re finished you’ll never have to worry about doing many of these tasks again.

Tools for the paranoid: 5 free security tools to protect your data – Because even a law-abiding citizen like you has a few secrets to keep, we’ve found five industrial-grade tools to help you hang on to what’s yours. No need to enter a credit card number to get them, either–they’re all free.

Find out what’s taking up space on your drive in seconds with WizTree – Clearing out hard drive space is never fun, so it should at least be a quick and painless task. WizTree is a free and tiny utility that scans NTFS volumes at blazing speeds, making it possible to home in on the largest files and folders in no time at all. It’s available in a portable version, too, so you can carry it around on your USB stick to help out friends and colleagues in need. This product is donationware. It’s free to use, but the developer encourages donations.

Tech A Mother Can Love – Sure, you can give your Mom flowers or a nice framed picture of you. But to really wow her, check out some fun, useful gadgets and apps she’ll love.

Crisp up your desktop with a window manager utility- Too many open windows, and suddenly your desktop’s a disaster. We review five programs that can organize your windows in a snap.

Amazon Updates iOS Kindle Reading App for Blind, Visually Impaired – Amazon is making it easier for blind and visually impaired users to take advantage of the Kindle Store.

Consolidate your photo libraries with NeroKwik – NeroKwik lets you access all of your online and offline photos (scattered between multiple devices and social media sites) from one accessible app.

Use Net Uptime Monitor to help diagnose Internet problems – True to its name, this utility helps you track when your connection is up—and, more importantly, when it’s down. Specifically, it alerts you to Internet connection failures and records the time and duration of those failures. That log may be of help when presented to your ISP.

Jelly Bean overtakes Ice Cream Sandwich in Android rankings – Android 4.1 and 4.2 combine for 28.4 percent of active devices running the mobile OS, claiming second place from Ice Cream Sandwich with sliding Gingerbread on the horizon.

Security:

Mozilla moves to stop spyware company from spoofing Firefox – Mozilla sent a cease-and-desist letter to a European company that created a piece of spyware masquerading itself as the Firefox browser. The move Tuesday comes after computer security researchers said that they discovered that a well-known spyware program called FinSpy was spoofing Firefox. Mozilla was alerted by the researchers, who are with Citizen Lab, a research project that is part of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. FinSpy is one component in a set of remote interception and intrusion tools called FinFisher, which is made by a subsidiary of U.K-based Gamma Group called Gamma International.

When you encrypt a file or a hard drive, is it really secure? – There’s no such thing as perfect security. Someone with sufficient time and money, and a strong enough motive, can crack anything. So the real question becomes: Is your encryption secure enough. And the answer is: If your encryption software uses a recognized and respected standard such as AES or Blowfish, and you use strong passwords and take other precautions, it almost certainly is.

Backroom Secrets of the Security Tech Support Experts Revealed – Honesty is the best policy, they say. Certainly I appreciated the honesty displayed during my recent review of Emsisoft Anti-Malware 7.0. When the antivirus scanner couldn’t completely remove the malware it found, it honestly admitted that fact, and advised me to get tech support help for finishing the cleanup process. Little did I know that by doing so I’d embark on a weeklong trek, experiencing first-hand just how far a malware cleanup expert will go.

Watering hole attack claims us department of labor website – The United States Department of Labor website was hacked in a watering hole attack. The website was redirecting visitors to a malicious site hosting the Poison Ivy remote access Trojan.

Internet Companies Get Passing Grades on Privacy Advocacy and Transparency – The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s annual “Who’s Got Your Back?” report evaluates the privacy, advocacy and transparency positions of leading Internet companies. While most fared well, ISPs such as Verizon and AT&T, as well as Apple, Amazon and Yahoo, did not.

Company News:

Path Accused of Spamming Via Texts, Robocalls – Path is once again being accused of spamming members’ contacts with text messages and calls, according to the sordid tale of one ex-Path user’s experience.

Google finds itself under further government pressure – British Parliament appears to be a little concerned that the search engine Google might not have been telling the whole truth the last time it showed up.

Think tablets are popular? Shipments explode in Q1 – Tablet shipments exploded by 142 percent in the first quarter of 2013 year-over-year as all Android tablets, including low-budget white box versions, dominated the market over Apple iOS tablets, IDC said.

Is Apple losing its edge to a cheaper tablet market? – Numbers show that while the tech giant still reigns in tablet shipments, it’s growing at a slower rate than Samsung, Amazon, Asus, and Microsoft.

Yahoo acquires to-do app Astrid – The company will continue to support the task management app for the next 90 days, but some users can expect refunds on paid subscriptions.

Facebook revenue rises 38 percent amid continued mobile growth – Facebook posted a revenue increase of 38 percent in the first quarter that was bolstered by broad engagement across the site, the company reported Wednesday. Revenue for the social networking company increased to US$1.46 billion for the quarter ended March 31, up 38 percent from $1.06 billion from the same period last year.

YouTube to advertisers: You need us to attract a younger crowd – Google executives say the site is a key way to reach 18- to 34-year-olds, but it didn’t announce any major partnerships or revolutionary new programming during an event in New York.

Webopedia Daily:

Enterprise Linux – Enterprise Linux is the term used to reference any distribution (distro) of the open source Linux operating system that is targeted to the commercial market — not to consumers — for use on corporate or small business servers, desktops, workstations and mobile deployments. Some of the different Enterprise Linux distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED).

Games and Entertainment:

Fez lands on Windows – The remarkable little 2D platformer set in a 3D world launches its Windows version today on Steam and GOG. It’s Gomez time!

Electricity zaps gamers’ muscles for force feedback – The system, developed by researchers at Germany’s Hasso Plattner Institute, involves sticking electrodes on gamers’ forearms and then delivering a small pulse of electricity from a 9-volt battery. The pulse makes the muscle contract and it’s the fighting of that contraction that delivers the feeling of force feedback.

Trailer for ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’ Revealed – Shortly after Activision confirmed the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Ghosts, a trailer for the game has been posted to YouTube.

Drop: Minecraft creator’s new Web game – Minecraft’s Notch has “dropped” a new, Unity-based browser game in our laps to commemorate this year’s Ludum Dare competition. Only speedy typists with laser focus need apply.

YouTubers watch more than 6B hours of videos per month – Up more than 50 percent from just a year ago, video viewing by the site’s 1 billion monthly visitors shows they are watching a serious boatload of videos.

Off Topic (Sort of):

How to transform any window into a power outlet – Solar chargers, a revolutionary idea just a few short years ago, are popping up everywhere.

Schoolgirl tries science experiment, arrested for felony – A teenage girl puts two household chemicals in a water bottle at school to see what might happen. There is a small explosion. No one is hurt. She is expelled and charged with weapons possession.

German ministry replaced brand new PCs infected with Conficker worm, rather than disinfect them – After computers in Germany became infected with the notorious Conficker worm, 170 of them were disposed of and replaced with new equipment at the taxpayers’ expense. Wouldn’t it have been easier (and cheaper) to have wiped the drives and restored from a backup?

World’s toughest material created by tying slip knots into weak, commercial thread – Nicola Pugno, at the University of Trento in Italy, has succeeded in making by far the toughest material in the world — by taking a conventional piece of fiber… and tying it in a slip knot. This method seems (and is) so simple that the inventor is calling it the Egg of Columbus, which refers to a discovery that has eluded mankind forever — but seems incredibly obvious and easy after the fact.

Time to Vote in the ‘Doodle 4 Google’ Contest – From Hawaii to Maine, Google has selected 50 state winners from across the United States and has now opened the voting to the public to pick their favorites.

Today’s Quote:

“There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.”

- Anatole Broyard

Today’s Free Downloads:

LibreOffice Productivity Suite 4.0.3 RC2 – LibreOffice was developed to be a productivity suite that is compatible with other major office suites, and available on a variety of platforms. Beta test the next version.

Windows Bootable Image Creator 1.3 – “WBICreator” is a free and portable utility created by AskVG reader “Shashi Kumar Sinha” which allows you to create bootable ISO image file of Windows XP/Vista/Win7/Win8 setup.

Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – May 1, 2013

How to build a bulletproof cloud backup system without spending a dime – There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who have lost critical data, and those who will. In other words, if you use technology long enough and neglect to back up your data, you’re guaranteed to have at least one extremely bad day. Whether it’s theft, loss, fire, flood, corruption, or some form of malware, a single incident can destroy the lion’s share of your family photos, personal documents, address books, years-in-the-making music library, and more. The solution, of course, is to back up everything.

The next home-networking revolution will be wired – Wireless networks are fabulous, until they aren’t. Theoretically, you can deploy an 802.11ac router and send data, audio, and high-def video zipping throughout your home without any wires. That is, unless your home has very thick walls or multiple floors, or your client device is too far from your Wi-Fi router, or your neighbor’s wireless network stomps on yours, or your microwave oven creates interference.

5 Great Laptops for Kids – Getting your son or daughter a laptop of their own doesn’t have to be scary. We’ve already found 5 great laptops that should fit the bill.

How to rate a comparative anti-virus test – a six-step guide – It sometimes seems like anyone with a computer feels qualified to do comparative anti-virus testing. There are a lot of pitfalls to look out for, which often trip up unwary would-be testers and regularly lead to wonky data and odd conclusions. So how do you know which tests are any good?

EFF: Trust Twitter–but not Apple or Verizon–to protect your privacy – Twitter and Internet service provider Sonic.net scored a perfect six in the third annual Electronic Frontier Foundation “Who Has Your Back?” report. However, Verizon and MySpace scored a zero out of a possible six stars in a test of how far 18 technology service providers will go to protect user data from government data demands.

Surf the Web in a new way with Nextly – Flip through Web sites and your Facebook and Twitter feeds with style, grace, and speed with Web app Nextly.

10 Reasons Cell Phone Users Still Need a Landline at Home – In a world of increasing technology and smart phones galore, you’d think having a landline at home is pointless. Here are some reasons you should consider keeping a landline, though everyone around you seems to be eschewing that relatively small monthly bill in favor of beefier mobile billing plans.

Pick from hundreds of themes in Microsoft’s Personalization Gallery – Over the years, Microsoft has released a myriad of themes from their Microsoft Download page. And while there have been a lot of them, they were released sporadically and hidden among lots of other downloads. Fortunately, Microsoft recently modernized its delivery system, called it the Personalization Gallery, and created a centralized location for a huge collection of Windows Themes and Desktop Backgrounds, thus making it easy for you to customize your Windows 7 or Windows 8 system. Here’s how it works.

iPad Mini popularity burying regular iPad, claim suppliers – Trends and shipment estimates indicate that the iPad Mini is overwhelming the iPad in popularity.

Security:

Email Hacked? Here Is What To Do – Your email account is not accepting your password. Your friends are asking how you got stranded in London and whether you got the money they wired. Your mother wants to know why you are sending out emails with nothing in it, but a link. Okay, so you are hacked. Now what?

Fake PayPal “Reset your password” request leads to malware – PayPal customers are being targeted with a fake email impersonating the e-payment service, claiming that their account has been put “on hold” and will stay that way until they reset their password. More experienced users will likely identify the email as malicious and consider it a phishing attempt, but it’s not. Checking whether their speculation is right can be fatal, as the offered link leads to a legitimate compromised site hosting the Blackhole exploit kit.

Why we need security awareness training programs – Lately, some of the smartest people in infosec decided that security awareness trainings are a waste of time. Last out is Bruce Schneier, who decided to speak up against awareness training. The claim that security awareness trainings are not working is, in my opinion, a claim based on wrong assumptions. It also shows a clear lack of understanding of the inner workings of the human mind, and a total lack of respect for your co-workers.

Scammy Profile Viewer app is now “offered” by Facebook – Once users become too familiar with a type of scam and stop falling for it, scammers tend to move on to new ones. But every now and then they go back to using old ones for a while in the hopes that new users haven’t been told about them, and that old users forgot about them. Hoax-Slayer has spotted an ongoing Facebook campaign that combines a well-known (but obviously still effective) lure and a trick that has been around for a good while

UK banks targeted with Trojans and social engineering – Using HTML injection, these malware variants present the victim with new input fields, security warnings and customized text during login, account navigation and transactions. Some malware variants go as far as creating custom, localized pages that are generated based on the victim’s language preference.

Report: Hackers jack Nintendo’s Wii U – A team of hackers who previously managed to design a custom chip that circumvented security protocols on Nintendo’s Wii console say they have created a similar key for the recently launched Wii U.

Company News:

To give back to investors, Apple goes for massive bond deal – In an effort to return cash to investors, Apple is reaching out to the debt market and offering $17 billion in bonds, the biggest non-bank bond offering in history, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

Bang With Friends raises $1 million to help people ‘bang’ their Facebook friends – Sometimes I wonder if there may be too much venture capitalist money out there. Business Insider is reporting that the popular three-month-old Web app Bang With Friends (BWF) has raised $1 million in seed money to further spread its unique brand of carefree social media-fueled debauchery.

Blackberry CEO: Tablets are doomed! – Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins has made a bold prediction: He says that tablets don’t have much of a future. “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” Heins told Bloomberg today. “Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.” Heins comments seem hard to believe at first. But a broader look at Heins’ past remarks shows a vision that actually isn’t so radical.

Verizon rolls out mostly pointless cloud-storage service – Verizon Wireless has announced a new cloud-storage service to compete with Dropbox, Google Drive, and SkyDrive, but it’s not really clear why anyone would use it in place of those services. Verizon Cloud comes with 500MB of free data—a paltry amount compared to Dropbox’s 2GB, Google Drive’s 5GB and SkyDrive’s 7GB. Additional data is often more expensive than the competition as well.

Microsoft shares hit five-year high despite Windows 8 flop – With solid earnings and big growth in corporate sales and cloud-computing technology, Microsoft’s stock reaches levels not seen since 2007.

Google tests Intel Haswell-powered Chromebook – Google is reportedly testing a new Chromebook powered by Intel’s x86 Haswell SoC. For some strange reason, the new device has been nicknamed “Slippy,” at least according to a few lines of Chromium code spotted by one Dinsan Francis.

Webopedia Daily:

Horizontal application – A horizontal application is any software application that targets a large number of users with different knowledge and skill sets. Because these types of applications can extend across markets and be used in a range of industries, they typically do not offer market-specific features. Horizontal applications can be off-the-shelf solutions or integrated and proprietary vendor solutions. Some examples of horizontal applications include word processors, spreadsheets, financial software and Web browsers.

Games and Entertainment:

Robot Unicorn Attack 2: More wishes, more powers, more glory – The epic Robot Unicorn iOS game from Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim is back. And this time, it’s more glorious than ever.

Netflix said to eliminate 100s of classic titles – As of May 1, movies like the James Bond hit “Goldfinger” and Woody Allen’s “Stardust Memories” will not be available for streaming. But, 500 new titles, like “Mission: Impossible II”, will be added.

Twaggies greatest hits: Weird tweets get illustrated - A team of artists takes the funniest Twitter missives they can find and turns them into short comics that up the entertainment value considerably.

Portal Creator Unveils Ouya-Exclusive Game, Soul Fjord – Ouya this week unveiled the game that Kim Swift and Airtight Games developed exclusively for the Android-based gaming console.

Google releases Glass tutorial – The video explains how the touchpad is located on the eyeglass frames between your temple and ear. You can “wake up” Glass by tapping the touchpad. You can manually adjust the position of the homescreen image so that it “sits” above your line of sight.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Wrinkly old people make better programmers – The industry perception that you have to be a freshly scrubbed schoolboy to be any good as a developer is rubbish, according to research. While many companies have refused to hire older developers because they think that they cannot deal with many of the new technology changes, research from North Carolina State University indicates that firms are getting rid of the best. The study indicates that the knowledge and skills of programmers actually improve over time and that older programmers know more than their younger peers when it comes to recent software platforms.

Stem cells grow new windpipe for 2-year-old girl facing death – Experimental stem-cell treatment has been credited with saving the life of a 2-year-old girl who was born without a windpipe. The Associated Press reported that the treatment involved extracting cells from the girl’s own hip bone marrow. The cells were then seeded on a plastic base, and left for a week to multiply and grow. They grew into a windpipe, which was subsequently implanted on the girl, Hannah Warren, in a nine-hour surgery on April 9, AP reported.

Every atom matters in new IBM film (Pictures) – IBM’s short animated film “A boy and his atom” was shot at the atomic level and set the Guinness record for world’s smallest stop-motion movie.

The science behind a riot – Since the 1960′s, participants of group riots have been viewed as rational individuals driven by a sense of injustice. However, Dr. Christian Borch claims this approach is misleading, at least in today’s world.

What happened before the dinosaurs? – Predecessors to dinosaurs missed the race to fill habitats emptied when 9 out of 10 species disappeared during Earth’s largest mass extinction 252 million years ago. Or did they?

Today’s Quote:

“It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to skin it.”

-      Latin Proverb

Today’s Free Downloads:

ClamWin Portable – ClamWin is a Free Antivirus program for Microsoft Windows 7 / Vista / XP / Me / 2000 / 98 and Windows Server 2008 and 2003. ClamWin Free Antivirus is used by more than 600,000 users worldwide on a daily basis. It comes with an easy installer and open source code. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge.

BitTorrent – BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing/distribution protocol designed for transferring files from multiple locations. Because of the nature of this protocol, large files can be handled more efficiently than the typical client/server method.

uTorrent 3.3 Build 29609 Stable – µTorrent is an efficient and feature rich BitTorrent client for Windows sporting a very small footprint. It was designed to use as little cpu, memory and space as possible while offering all the functionality expected from advanced clients. This is a beta test version.

4 Amazing Things Created By 3D Printing

In 1984 3D printing was born, and after some incredible advances in 3D printing technology over the past twenty years, we’re now at a point where we’re beginning to see some impressive results.

I have put together a list of some of the craziest, most impressive and potentially world-changing 3D printed objects that have so far been created by this mind-blowing technology – which is still only in its infancy.

1. Artificial blood vessels

Back in 2011 a research team at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany successfully overcome problems in tissue engineering when they printed working blood vessels.

There had been a number of research teams that tried to overcome the problems involved in providing artificial tissue with nutrients that need to arrive via capillary vessels, but these results from the German team are the most promising.

If creating working blood vessels wasn’t impressive enough, the technology could soon be used to help those patients on organ donation lists, and allow us to print fully working organs for transplant.

2. A gun

While an entire 3D printed gun hasn’t yet been made, technological advances have meant that certain parts of guns can be. Lower receivers, the parts of a gun that include the workings of the trigger and the magazine, have already been successfully printed and fitted by some 3D printing/gun enthusiasts – and it’s been causing quite a bit of controversy.

Should the technology improve to a point where additional gun parts can be manufactured (and the odds of that happening are pretty strong) then 3D printers could effectively kill a country’s gun control legislation, with individuals effectively able to create their own weapons at home – or at least, part of them.

3. A prosthetic jaw

In 2012 Belgium scientists created a 3D-printed jawbone for an 83-year-old woman after her jaw became badly infected. The standard 20-hour surgery required to reconstruct the jaw was deemed too dangerous considering the patients age, so something else had to be thought up…

While prosthetic jaws have been created before, the operation was the first ever to involve a 3D printed prosthetic. The prosthetic jaw was printed in layers from titanium powder before being covered in a ‘bioceramic’ coating.

4. Other 3D printers…

In 2007 RepRap Project (short for replicating rapid prototyper) – a company whose goal is to develop the world’s first self-replicating 3D printer – released Darwin, a 3D printer capable of printing almost all of its component parts.

RepRap Project hopes one day to be able to supply their 3D printers cheaply to people around the world, and to communities in need of materials normally associated with expensive industrial processes that they have no access to.

Exciting news for global development – these self-replicating 3D printer could well bring about a new industrial revolution in the 21st century.

This is an article by Rob Henry who is one of the directors at Ink Worldwide, which provides products like Epson, HP, Canon and Brother Ink and Toner throughout the UK. Rob has been with Ink Worldwide from the beginning and has played a major role in helping run and grow the company.

Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – April 30, 2013

21 tips for supercharging your cloud storage – Enjoy offline access to essential files, get more gigabytes for free, and squeeze more productivity out of your cloud storage.

Twitter warns of more hacks, threats to come; issues media memo – The microblogging giant has warned news outlets that “these attacks will continue,” particularly against high profile media organizations.

BoxCryptor vs. DropSmack: The battle to secure Dropbox – Can DropSmack malware be stopped? Michael P. Kassner asks the creators of BoxCryptor if it is up to the task of securing the Dropbox file-synchronization service.

12 ways Windows 8 dominates the OS competition – Beyond the vilified modern UI lies a bounty of basic desktop functions that blow the competition out of the water. Seriously. Remember how hard Windows 7 rocked? All that awesome is still there in Windows 8, just buried beneath Live Tiles. Speaking of which, while we were all busy whining about those shifty squares, Microsoft snuck some handy functionality into the modern UI—aspects of which have no peers among Windows’ rivals.

Make a Movie With Your Smartphone – Smartphones have gone from showing movies to making them. Here are some of the accessories you’ll need to help your entry hit Cannes.

Troll admits to making death threats against children on Facebook – A 24-year-old UK man has admitted to posting threats on the Facebook tribute page of a teenager killed after being thrown from a truck. He told police he didn’t think anybody would take the threats seriously. He was very wrong.

Google Now available for iPhone and iPad – Google Now is one of the best features of the Android platform, and it is now available for iOS devices.

Your guide to Google Now on iOS – Until this release, Google Now was only available on Android devices, but as of Monday, it’s also available for iOS. So what is it and why should you care?

Quick Tip: Count and itemize files in Google Drive – You can quickly find out how many and what type of files are in a Google Drive folder with this little trick.

Here’s why Bitcoin is the future of money – Bitcoin may not last, but crypto-currency is here to stay. It’s only a matter of time before a government replaces paper with more traceable, secure digital money. But is that a good thing?

New Linux 3.9 kernel gets a boost and adds new features – The Linux 3.9 kernel brings with it an SSD caching, improved performance for multi-threaded network server apps and a host of other new perks.

How to install GNOME 3.8 on Ubuntu – If you want to try Ubuntu 13.04, but prefer a different desktop than Unity, Jack Wallen shows you how you can install the latest iteration of GNOME Shell (3.8) and why you should give it a try.

Wattwave brings power line technology into the smarter home – Smart homes are about to get a whole lot smarter with Wattwave power line technology from startup enModus. Wattwave runs on a low-cost, off-the-shelf 32-bit ARM microprocessor, with an analog subsystem coupling it to the mains. The analog subsystem was recently moved from a set of 350 discrete components to a semi-custom analog array chip — a more compact (7x7mm) and lower-cost ($2.50) solution.

Security:

How cybercriminals can target you on public networks – Mobile technology boosts a connected cafe culture – consumers feel safe and comfortable checking Facebook, sending and receiving emails, downloading pictures, shopping online, conducting mobile banking and even accessing sensitive documents over public Internet connections. Often, consumers are unaware of the severe cybercrime risks posed by these seemingly harmless tasks.

Hit by LivingSocial Hack? Get a Password Manager Now! – This past Friday, LivingSocial disclosed that an attacker gained access to over 50 million accounts. For users of the popular deals website, it’s scary—even though the financial information remained secure and the passwords remain encrypted. But a password manager can make future attacks less likely and less damaging.

Why changing your LivingSocial password won’t save you – LivingSocial revealed last week that it was the victim of a cyber attack that compromised the account details of its 50 million customers. To address the situation, LivingSocial sent a notice to customers, and reset users’ passwords to force people to create new ones. Don’t make the mistake of believing that changing your password is your only concern.

Would you let a spammer give you a root canal? Sure you would! – When someone contacts you entirely for their benefit, out of the blue, and pitches you a concept that is peculiar at best, and outright alarming at worst……you really do find yourself thinking, “Why? WHY? What can the sender POSSIBLY hope to get out of this?”

Company News:

IBM launches MessageSight, appliance aimed at M2M – The IBM MessageSight appliance is aimed at the auto industry, cities and states managing traffic, oil and gas and home appliances.

Infographic: 25 Years of Linksys Routers – Iconic networking company Linksys is celebrating its 25th birthday today. President and CEO Victor Tsao founded the company in 1988 with his wife in their home garage. Within five years, Linksys surpassed Intel, 3Com, and Netgear in the retail market as the top networking hardware manufacturer.

Yahoo continues to recast itself and debuts two new ad features – Aiming to make Yahoo more “personal, intuitive, and immersive,” CEO Marissa Mayer announces ad units that cater to users’ interests.

Leaked doc shows Foursquare’s big plans for your check-in data – Ads centered on location data seem like a no-brainer — so long as members keep checking in.

Microsoft’s Azure gets competitive with $1B in revenue – A jump in subscriptions to the software giant’s cloud computing software reveals that the company may be starting to edge into Amazon’s territory.

Webopedia Daily:

Offline Storage Table (OST) – An OST file, or offline storage table (.ost) file, is an offline Outlook Data File used by Microsoft Exchange Server that enables users to work with their messages and mail data even when access to the mail server isn’t available. OST files are used in two scenarios: with Microsoft Exchange Server’s Cached Exchange Mode and with the Outlook Connector for Windows Live Hotmail when accessing Hotmail mail. While a Microsoft Exchange Server user’s e-mails and other data items are normally saved directly on the mail server, OST files are an available option that enable a local copy of all the data to be stored on the user’s computer. These items are then automatically synched when access to the mail server is restored.

Games and Entertainment:

Microsoft Teases Immersive ‘IllumiRoom’ for Gamers – IllumiRoom brings a more immersive gaming experience right to your living room. IllumiRoom is described as “a proof-of-concept system that augments the area surrounding a television with projected visualizations to enhance traditional gaming experiences,” which means everything from extending gameplay to the borders of your living room to making it appear as though it’s snowing inside the house.

MLB brings live game streaming to YouTube, but not in U.S. – MLB offers two live games per day to fans in most countries around the world. But fans everywhere finally get access to thousands of hours of archive footage dating back 60 years.

The best action games for Android – Sometimes, you just need a quick game fix. And even if you have a high-powered gaming rig at home that’s raring to go, it won’t do you any good while you’re standing on a corner, waiting for a bus. That’s where mobile action games come in.

HuffPost Live Internet Shows Coming to Cable – The Huffington Post’s Internet video network has sealed a deal to bring its programming to cable television.

Game Dev Tycoon battles digital piracy with digital piracy – A new game called Game Dev Tycoon is forcing software pirates to take a long, hard look in the mirror. The game, which costs $8 on Windows, Mac, and Linux, lets players run their own game development studios. Players start off in their garages in the 1980s, and slowly become multimillion-dollar corporations.

‘All My Children,’ ‘One Live to Live’ Return on Hulu, iTunes – New episodes of “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” become available on Hulu and Hulu Plus.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Designing your digital legacy – We lead rich virtual lives on social networking sites like Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. So what happens when real life catches up, and our flesh-and-blood bodies succumb to mortality? For our virtual selves, at least, some concrete answers are available—ways to settle our digital affairs after death, while minimizing hassle and heartache for loved ones.

What is Amithings – Amithings is a service designed to store information based on seven principles which are standardization, organization, structure, centralization, security, reliability and completeness, in order to provide a perfect integration between the real world and the virtual world with minimum effort. We believe that its concepts are capable of causing a paradigm shift in how we create our virtual world and interact with him. Amithings is not “just another Internet project”, and you will soon find out why.

Cracked: 21 Mind-Blowing Facts That Will Put a Smile On Your Face – Contrary to what you might think following the last two weeks of news, the world isn’t completely full of doom and gloom. We asked our readers to come up with some of the happiest, least terrifying, most joy-inducing pieces of news they could find.

Courtesy – Cracked.

China’s unique PC buying trends revealed in survey – China took the title of world’s largest market for PCs in 2012, and a survey by IHS iSuppli revealed that computer buyers in the country had unique preferences compared to counterparts worldwide. The research firm said that last year a majority of PCs in China shipped without an operating system pre-installed, and a large chunk of laptops had a 14-inch screen. Desktops remained well and alive in China, with shipments equalling laptops in 2012.

Android’s two killer innovations since the iPhone 5 launch – Since Apple announced the iPhone 5 over 7 months ago, Android has made two big leaps forward. One came from Google and the other from a third party app.

SAP study: Brazil, China, Germany and India ‘most ready’ for M2M tech – A new international survey pinpoints where machine-to-machine technology has the best chance to enable smarter cities right now.

Today’s Quote:

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

-      Thomas Jefferson

Today’s Free Downloads:

Data Crow 3.9.22 – Data Crow is the ultimate media cataloger and media organiser. Always wanted to manage all your collections in one product? You want a product you can customize to your needs? Your search ends here! Using Data Crow allows you to create a huge database containing all your collected items. You can use the excellent online services to retrieve the information instead of typing all the information yourself.

iSpy – iSpy uses your webcams and microphones to detect and record movement or sound and provides security, surveillance, monitoring and alerting services.

Free Ringtone Maker – Free Ringtone Maker is an extremely simple and handy Windows software for making your own free ringtones. Make Your Own Ringtones in 3 Easy Steps.