Make free calls to landlines, mobile phones with Vonage app – Normally this costs money. For a limited time, however, you can use Vonage Mobile to make free calls to landline and mobile phones. As part of the promotion, you can place calls to anyone in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. There’s a cap of 3,000 minutes per month, which is probably more than ample for most folks, but no indication of how long this free goodness will last. (At least a month, I’m guessing.)
Google Sells Out of 16GB Nexus 7 Tablets – Google’s officially out of stock of 16-gigabyte Nexus 7 tablets. And, according to sources speaking to The Guardian’s Charles Arthur, it’s because the company “seriously underestimated” demand for the seven-inch device.
Mom arrested for hacking school computers, tweaking her kids’ grades – A US mother is facing charges that she allegedly hacked into her children’s school computer, changing their grades, and accessed thousands of the school’s personnel files that contained contracts, employee reports and other information.
Top 20 Windows 8 Features – As with any technological overhaul, Windows 8 has been met with passionate and mixed response among those who have had a chance to download and test run the Consumer Preview of Microsoft’s flagship OS. The company’s bold new direction for Windows, with its dual interface and emphasis on tablet functionality, certainly means changes ahead for IT departments when Windows officially ships. But for users there is a lot to like about the forthcoming OS. Here is a look at the 20 features that Windows 8 users will appreciate the most.
Kid-Friendly Tech for Travel – These gadgets will keep your children so happily occupied that they won’t even have time to ask the inevitable question: Are we there yet?
SMS gets synchronized in the cloud – Get ready to synchronize your SMS messages in the cloud with MySMS, which just rolled out of beta status early this morning. Essentially, MySMS can best be described as a platform-independent SMS service that synchronizes all your text messages across Windows, OS X, iOS and Android – all through a single cloud-based account.
Web-based Tool Personal Capital Aids Financial Management – Minimal account connections hassles, detailed financial information, and access to a financial adviser make this free finance tracking app worth a look.
Huddle Allows Collaboration on Live Documents – The revamped platform allows users to view documents online in high definition and search, copy text to the clipboard, zoom and print without having to download their files.
Ubuntu Linux Blurs the Line Between Desktop and Web Apps – Web or native desktop enterprise applications? It doesn’t really matter anymore, with initiatives like Canonical’s Ubuntu WebApps.
How Mobile Apps Are Changing Desktop Software – First, they revolutionized smartphones. Now, app stores for Macs and Windows PCs are changing the way we work on laptops and desktops–for better and for worse.
Indian computers the worst for flooding the internet with spam, report discovers – Flooded Taj MahalSophosLabs experts have released their latest “dirty dozen” report detailing the world’s top spam-relaying countries – and have discovered that India has solidified its position as the biggest global contributor to the junk email problem. In fact, if you have a spam in your inbox, there’s a more than one in ten chance that it was relayed from an Indian computer.
Security:
Five Tips to Avoid Olympic-Related Cybercrime – Fans worldwide await the start of the summer Olympic Games next week. Some lucky few will attend in person, and many will watch on TV. But according to a recent report from market research firm eMarketer, as many as a billion people will watch on PCs or mobile devices. That’s a tempting target audience for cyber criminals.
Spam Halved With Grum Takedown – When a global cooperative shut down the infamous Grum botnet, the result should cut worldwide spam in half. Grum’s last servers were taken offline in Russia last week, effectively killing the botnet that has no fallback mechanism, said Atif Mushtaq, a researcher at FireEye’s security lab, which collaborated with the Russian Computer Security Incident Response Team and the Spamhouse Project in battling Grum.
Researcher Releases Smart Meter Hacking Tool – Power companies and utilities will be able to use Termineter to identify and validate internal flaws that make the meters vulnerable to hacking and tampering.
Cybersecurity Bill Rhetoric Heats Up in Washington – President Barack Obama says foreign adversaries could seek to exploit U.S. computer vulnerabilities, taking down vital banking systems, and that could cause a financial crisis.
Company News:
Oracle’s Wooing of CentOS Users Raises Questions – Oracle’s recent launch of a campaign to convert users of CentOS — a free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux that uses community support, rather than an paid option — is being met with skepticism by some members of the business Linux community.
Facebook Tests Pinterest-Like App Stories – Some Facebook users may be feeling a bout of déjà-vu while browsing the social network’s new Open Graph app stories layout. The updated interface, currently under testing, is highly reminiscent of social corkboard site Pinterest.
Microsoft Ready to Cash In on Big Gamble – Microsoft has tied the fate of both Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office to the success or failure of Windows 8.
Report: EU Antitrust Deal Might Force Changes to Android – A European Commission antitrust probe into Google might result in the search giant having to make changes to its Android platform, according to a new report from the Financial Times. The two sides, led by EU competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia, have been negotiating for weeks, but if a deal is not reached, Google could face a multi-billion dollar fine, the newspaper said.
Mozilla Releases Test Version of Firefox OS – The build will let developers experience the mobile OS before it’s available on phones.
Instagram Allegedly Playing With Expanded Web Profiles – A user uncovers a brand-new link to “View Profiles” on Instagram’s otherwise dull website. What does it mean?
Webopedia Daily:
Red Hat Cloud Computing – Red Hat Cloud Computing refers to solutions for private clouds, hybrid clouds, and public clouds offered by Red Hat.
1. CloudForms
Red Hat CloudForms is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering that builds upon a collection of more than 60 open source projects. CloudForms include application lifecycle management capabilities as well as the capability to create hybrid, public and private clouds from the broadest range of computing resources with unique portability across physical, virtual and cloud computing resources.
2. OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift is a platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud for open source developers, providing a choice in languages, frameworks, and clouds to build, test, run, and manage applications.
Off Topic (Sort of):
Shopping in Texas? (YouTube 0.25) – How do U know if U R shopping in TX? Here is a sure fire way to tell! TX has the right to carry firearms law!!
A Plea to Fix Firefox – The tech press needs to complain more about the deterioration of the Firefox browser and make something happen before everyone runs to Chrome. I personally do not like Chrome and I wonder about its appeal.
The Genetics Of Stupidity – To understand intelligence, maybe we should look not for what creates it, but for what destroys it. Fresh thinking and a great example of why scientists should blog.
A Presidential Questionnaire – Could you qualify to be president? Answer the following questions and find out! Just print this list, answer the questions, and send the results to the Department of Homeland Security. After you have answered all questions and mailed your answers, you will be contacted by a political representative, a police officer, a therapist, or some combination of these three. If you are not contacted, it means you don’t have enough money to run for office, in which case your name will be given to job recruiters who speak English poorly and will contact you with potential jobs at fast food establishments in your area.
Stanford University researchers create first virtual organism – A team of Stanford University researchers has managed to create the world’s first complete computer model of an organism.
Artificial jellyfish built from rat cells – Bioengineers have made an artificial jellyfish using silicone and muscle cells from a rat’s heart. The synthetic creature, dubbed a medusoid, looks like a flower with eight petals. When placed in an electric field, it pulses and swims exactly like its living counterpart. “Morphologically, we’ve built a jellyfish. Functionally, we’ve built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat,” says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. The project is described today in Nature Biotechnology1. (recommended by Michael F.)
Video: Fire Shadow missile cruises for six hours before ruining your day – When the military fires a missile, you can almost be certain that the projectile has a target and is well on the way to blowing something up ASAP. Sure, this may be the case with most of the missiles in the Pentagon’s arsenal, but a new projectile dubbed the Fire Shadow doesn’t have to blow anything up right away. In fact, military commanders can launch the missile and let it loiter for six hours before striking a target.
Today’s Quote:
“Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle i.e. being human.”
– Hugh Macleod
Today’s Free Downloads:
Microsoft IntelliType Pro – IntelliType Pro software enables you to customize the unique features of your Microsoft keyboard to fit your needs. With IntelliType Pro software, you can reassign many of the keys to open a program, file, or Web page, or to perform commands, such as Search.
TweakNow WinSecret – Novice users should not edit registry value directly using a registry editor by them self. In TweakNow WinSecret, we have gathered the most popular Windows registry settings and provide them for you in an easy and safe user interface.