Sir, You Are Being Hunted is an unapologetically British survival horror romp. Also, very fun.
Xerox has issued the first software patch intended to fix a problem in some multi-function printers that causes characters to be incorrectly reproduced when scanned. The when a German computer scientist noticed errors in the reproduction of a building floor plan. Examining a PDF document of the scanned plan, he noticed some figures printed in a small, fine font on a document were incorrectly copied. “We have confirmed that errors can occur under a set of limited conditions when scanning ‘stress documents’ to PDF—which can include very small font sizes, stray pixels and be difficult to read. Given this finding, however uncommon, we have developed this patch which eliminates that possibility,” . Xerox said the problem only occurs with such “stress documents,” which it defines as those that have “small fonts, are hard to read, contain stray pixels and/or have been scanned multiple times.”
If you're not satisfied with the basic Zip archiving built into Windows, you'll want to give Hamster Free Zip Archiver a try. It offers far more capabilities than what you get with Windows, and unlike many other similar pieces of archiving software, does it for free. Hamster Free Zip Archiver 1.1.0.13 handles the most popular compression formats, including Zip and 7z, and does so with exceptional ease. Creating an archive is as simple as dragging and dropping files and pressing a button. Opening an archive is even simpler: Just navigate to the archive and click the Open button. It creates archives in only the Zip and 7z formats, but handles unarchiving in the RAR format. Even though Hamster Free Zip Archiver is simple to use, it has some nice customizability. It allows you to decide whether faster speed or smaller archive size (or a compromise between them) is your goal. You can choose among three compression levels, Minimum, Optimal, and Maximum. Minimum compresses the least, but the program creates the archive the fastest; Maximum compresses the most and creates an archive the slowest. Optimal, as its name implies, is just right for those who want to balance speed of creation with small size. Unless you need to compress extremely large files, you'll likely find that the optimal setting works fine; in my tests, it compressed a 34.6 MB file in only 15 seconds. You can also split large archives into pieces, and also password-protect archives as well. This compression software doesn't have the have advanced features, such as e-mail integration, that you'll find in a paid product like . But if you don't need those features, and are looking for a free, simple, no-fuss way to handle archives, you'll want to download Hamster Free Zip Archiver.
The current generation of teenagers seems willing to share anything on social media, but cares more about privacy than you think, according to a recent Pew study. One in four teenagers have uninstalled a mobile app because they found out it was collecting personal information they didn’t want to share, said a released Thursday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. Half of teenagers have avoided an app altogether on their cell phone or tablet due to concerns about personal information they would have to share in order to use it, the report also said.
. Pundits immediately began asking who would want to buy the company, which has seen its share of the U.S. cell phone market drop from 50 percent to a mere 3 percent in four short years. on the whole at about $5 billion. That sounds like a lot, but $2.8 billion of that is in cash the company is sitting on. Patents and software account for another $1 billion of the total. But the phone unit—which manufactures the BlackBerry hardware and is the source of most of the company’s revenues—actually has a negative value. There’s virtually zero interest among potential buyers for the company’s handsets, which are now widely seen as dated and boring and which don’t offer any features that don’t already exist in current hardware. Simply shutting down the phone division could cost an acquirer as much as $800 million. The upshot of all of that is that BlackBerry will almost certainly be sold in pieces, and BlackBerry’s hardware as we know it will be going away. Soon.
Apps that use Facebook Login now have to separate the sign-in process from asking your permission to share activity.
Recent versions of Orbit Downloader, a popular Windows program for downloading embedded media content and other types of files from websites, turns computers into bots and uses them to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, according to security researchers. Starting with version 4.1.1.14 released in December, the Orbit Downloader program silently downloads and uses a DLL (Dynamic Link Library) component that has DDoS functionality, malware researchers from antivirus vendor ESET said Wednesday in a . The rogue component is downloaded from a location on the program’s official website, orbitdownloader.com, the ESET researchers said. An encrypted configuration file containing a list of websites and IP (Internet Protocol) addresses to serve as targets for attacks is downloaded from the same site, they said. Orbit Downloader has been developed since at least 2006 and judging by download statistics from software distribution sites like Cnet’s Download.com and Softpedia.com it is, or used to be, a popular program.
The next time you fly Delta, don’t be surprised if a smartphone takes your drink order. The airline announced today that over 19,000 flight attendants will now carry Nokia Lumia 820 handsets for processing in-flight purchases. Using a handset will make life simpler for hard-pressed flight attendants and the passengers they care for. Instead of writing down orders by hand and collecting cash or credit card numbers, flight attendants will simply enter orders on the smartphone screen, collect payment with a quick swipe of a credit or debit card across an attached reader, and email a receipt to the passenger. Food and drinks aren’t the only items that can be purchased this way; upgrades to better seats qualify as well. A planned update will let flight attendants scan coupons from flyers’ own mobile devices. Also in the future, “Delta expects to provide flight attendants with certain customer-specific information to enable more personalized service.” In other words, your server might be able to look up past purchases and know that you prefer your martinis shaken, not stirred—or at least that you prefer martinis.
No, that's not a ghost touching your screen—those phantom double taps and presses you may have been experiencing with your new Nexus 7 tablet are a software issue that Google is rolling out an update for today.
SAP has made the second change to its software licensing policies within a month following a long-term lobbying effort by user groups, and while the move will give customers more flexibility, certain limitations apply. Customers can now replace existing on-premises software licenses and associated maintenance fees with other products in SAP’s on-premises portfolio, SAP said in an emailed statement on Thursday. However, following any changes a customer makes, their maintenance bill must “at a minimum, remain the same,” SAP added. Under the new policy, customers could also partially terminate licenses and their associated maintenance fees without adding new products, but doing so may not make sense in all cases.
We've already seen 3D printers, so why not 3D scanners as well? MakerBot's new $1400 Digitizer lets you scan 3D objects, converting them into digital models you can manipulate and then print on your 3D printer.
Mobile application development tools vendor Appcelerator has acquired Singly, a provider of API (application programming interface) management software, the two companies announced. The Singly technology will allow Appcelerator to “open APIs to partners that want to connect to our platform, and enterprises that want to create APIs for themselves,” said Jeff Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator. Singly’s signature product, DataFabric, provides an API gateway for about 40 different social networking services, including LinkedIn, Yammer, PayPal, DropBox, Google Calendar, Facebook and Twitter.
Steven Sinofsky, who exited Microsoft abruptly weeks after his Windows 8 brainchild shipped, has found a new gig at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. , isn't a full-time job. late last year and was captivated by what he viewed as the firm's commitment to "fostering innovation, product creation and working with product-focused entrepreneurs." In his blog post, he profusely professed great admiration for the firm, its employees and leaders and for "the values clearly articulated and lived day to day by everyone at the firm."
While Microsoft may have thought that it had overcome the negative reactions that accompanied Windows 8, the world's top PC manufacturer isn’t necessarily convinced. , a utility that adds a replacement Start button plus a number of apps and discovery tools, on a number of Lenovo machines. Those will include IdeaPad laptops, ThinkPad laptops, and IdeaCentre desktops, within multiple regions across the world, the company said. Acer made Pokki available on its own PCs in June, meaning that two of the top five OEMs will ship with the Pokki software preinstalled. —to allow more customization in the Start Screen, and to allow users to boot into the desktop if they so choose.
. This ambitious project blurred the line between smartphone and PC, and while it burned but only briefly, it burned brightly enough that its legacy will live on in the hearts of future generation of phones. , designed to lead the world into an era where a single device could drive many displays, and be many things: a phone when you need portability, a desktop when productivity beckons. . But like so many other prophets throughout the ages, the Ubuntu Edge died before attaining its ($32 million) goal. The story does not end here, though.
Intel and its PC partners are taking another page out of the mobile device playbook to beef up Ultrabooks and All-in-One PCs, bringing built-in voice command software to the desktop. On Thursday, Nuance Communications announced that a select line of ultra-mobile laptops and all-in-ones from Asus, Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba would come pre-loaded with Nuance Dragon Assistant. . You can use Dragon Assistant for PCs to open programs, take dictation, search the Web, play music, check email, and update Facebook and Twitter. . Now it appears Dragon Assistant is ready for prime time with its debut on a wider variety of devices. of PCs for the fall back-to-school season.
We're still stuck at the airport, but not to worry -- we've got the right apps and accessories on hand to take some of the agony out of flying.
Downloading from illegal sources has increased instead of decreased six months after a court ordered ISPs in the Netherlands to block access to The Pirate Bay, according to research from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Tilburg University, released Thursday. As of May 2012, more than 80 percent of Dutch Internet subscribers were unable to access The Pirate Bay directly through their ISP due to two court rulings that lead to the torrent search site being blocked at the biggest ISPs in the Netherlands. A block of the site at the ISP level was called for because an estimated 90 percent to 95 percent of the material offered via The Pirate Bay is illegal, the court ruled. Antipiracy foundation Brein, which represented rights holders in both cases, argued in court that a block of The Pirate Bay, based on evidence from Italy and Denmark, could significantly reduce the number of unique visitors to the site. .
Facebook, Twitter, even Gmail -- all major Web services experience outages from time to time. Of course, if you're not sure what's happening, you can pull your hair out trying to figure out what's wrong with your computer. comes in: This handy site monitors the status of over a dozen major services, everything from Blogger to Yahoo. Just head over to see up-to-the-minute data (which combine "official" announcements with user reports) on any site that's giving you trouble (won't load, won't send messages, etc.).
Google's personal assistant just keeps getting more useful.
I know of only three ways to completely and permanently destroy a message in Gmail: for details.)
Cisco Systems has released new security patches for several versions of Unified Communications Manager (UCM) to address vulnerabilities that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands, modify system data, or disrupt services. The UCM is the call processing component of Cisco’s IP Telephony solution. It connects to IP (Internet Protocol) phones, media processing devices, VoIP gateways, and multimedia applications and provides services such as session management, voice, video, messaging, mobility, and web conferencing. The most serious vulnerability addressed by the newly released patches can lead to a buffer overflow and is identified as CVE-2013-3462 in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database. This vulnerability can be exploited remotely, but it requires the attacker to be authenticated on the device. “An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by overwriting an allocated memory buffer on an affected device,” Cisco said Wednesday in a . “An exploit could allow the attacker to corrupt data, disrupt services, or run arbitrary commands.”
Finally, there’s a Google product integration that everyone can love. A new version of to the note-taking app. As with Google Now and Apple’s Reminders app, you can set Keep reminders based on location or time. So if you needed an alert to pick-up milk the next time you’re at Safeway, Keep could ping you when you get near the store. Adding a reminder in Keep is simple: Open up any note in the app, and tap the reminders button toward the bottom of the screen. You can then choose to set reminders by time or location. You can set geofencing reminders by specific place such as a restaurant or store (as long as Google Maps knows about the location), or you can add a specific street address. Options for time-based reminders include setting a specific time like 3:25 p.m. or general times of the day such as morning, afternoon, and evening.
For most professionals, Adobe Photoshop CS is the only photo editing tool worthy of consideration. Casual snapshooters can choose from a wealth of free and Web-based editors. For everyone in the middle—photo enthusiasts, serious shooters, and even pros dissatisfied with Adobe's new Creative Cloud—there's Corel's PaintShop Pro. A viable Photoshop alternative for 20 years, PaintShop Pro offers 90 percent of Adobe's features for a tenth the price. In PaintShop Pro X6, Corel offers almost nothing new...which isn't such a bad thing. With a few exceptions, this upgrade is all about improved performance. At long last, PaintShop Pro is a 64-bit application. That should mean faster processing and the ability to work with larger and more numerous images. Corel offers a slew of benchmarks to show that X6 runs faster than its predecessors, and in practice I found it to run notably quicker. Using my own stopwatch, I found that on the same PC, X6 shaves a few seconds off the startup time. Images—both JPG and RAW—load about 10 percent faster, and X6 catalogs folders and displays images more than twice as fast. Everything is snappier, giving the impression that you're at the helm of a tightly run ship.
I made the jump from Windows 8 to Mac OS X a few months back, when I started carrying a Macbook Pro for work. Let me tell you, the scariest part of moving from a Windows PC to a Mac is the prospect of losing access to the tools and utilities you use on a daily basis. What I realized, though, is that many of the features and tools I relied on in Windows are also available in OS X. You just have to know where to look. As I discovered, software is rarely an issue: The lion’s share of your favorite programs have Mac analogues, and the growing popularity of subscription services like , though you might have more fun exploring the wonderful world of Apple accessories. For me, the real struggle was trying to translate all the everyday tasks I found so simple in Windows but so confusing in OS X. When you don’t know where to go to adjust volume levels or capture screenshots, every day can be an exercise in frustration. (Unconsciously reaching for the Start menu every five minutes certainly made feel like a huge rube.) So I did what any good tech geek would do: I ventured out into the unknown and made myself a translation guide for all my basic tools, shortcuts, and gestures. And now I want to share them with you. This short video walks you through some of the most common Windows tasks—including changing your settings, taking out the trash, and jotting down notes—on OS X so you can with minimal hassle. Becoming an expert in anything takes time—but hopefully this will help you feel a little more confident when navigating the waters of OS X.
Software AG is adding mashup and real-time analytic capabilities to its lineup with the acquisition of JackBe. Terms of the deal, which was announced Thursday, were not disclosed. JackBe is best known for its , which allows users to bring together and visualize data from multiple sources. It has also offered a real-time analytics product that incorporates Software AG’s Terracotta BigMemory in-memory data grid technology. The latter product as well as Presto will continue to be offered in stand-alone form. Software AG is also planning to release a new suite called webMethods Intelligent Business Operations Platform, scheduled for early-access availability in the fourth quarter, it said in a statement.
Canonical raised only $12.8 million of the $32 million it wanted for the . Close to 20,000 people backed the project, which ran from July 22 to Aug. 21, but that wasn’t enough to reach the ambitious goal. The final sum raised has still made the Edge fund-raiser the biggest fixed-target crowdfunding campaign, so far, according to Canonical. Two weeks before the deadline, , according to founder Mark Shuttleworth. “While we passionately wanted to build the Edge to showcase Ubuntu on phones, the support and attention it received will still be a huge boost as other Ubuntu phones start to arrive in 2014. Thousands of you clearly want to own an Ubuntu phone and believe in our vision of convergence, and rest assured you won’t have much longer to wait,” he wrote in
A malicious software tool perhaps most famously used to hack RSA’s SecurID infrastructure is still being used in targeted attacks, according to security vendor FireEye. Poison Ivy is a remote access trojan (RAT) that was released eight years ago but is still favored by some hackers, FireEye wrote in a released Wednesday. It has a familiar Windows interface, is easy to use and can log keystrokes, steal files and passwords. Since Poison Ivy is still so widely used, FireEye said it is harder for security analysts to link its use to a specific hacking group. For its analysis, the company collected 194 samples of Poison Ivy used in attacks dating to 2008, looking at the passwords used by the attackers to access the RATs and the command-and-control servers used.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Now Gains Car Rental, Concert Tickets, Reminders While You Search & More More cards have come to Google’s predictive search service, Google Now,...
More cards have come to Google’s predictive search service, Google Now, including information to alert you to your car rentals, concert tickets and a way to set reminders related to TV shows, book releases and more, when you are searching. Car Rentals Google posted the news to its Android...
This white paper contains 8 easy to implement, impactful techniques for optimizing your AdWords campaigns right away. Thee tips include plenty of solutions to common mistakes many AdWords advertisers frequently overlook. You will learn how to set up conversion tracking so you’ll know what’s really...
Today, Google is rolling out a brand new Paid & Organic report in AdWords that gives advertisers at-a-glance insights into query performance across the Google landscape. This is pretty big news from a reporting viewpoint. In the screenshot below, you’ll see query performance when an ad...
In an updated digital and mobile advertising forecast, eMarketer has projected that mobile search will be worth more than $15 billion in the US by 2017. Accordingly, it will lead all other types of mobile advertising, similar to its current position online. Display advertising will follow with...
China’s dominant search engine, Baidu, offers huge potential for marketers seeking to connect with Chinese consumers. Yet, for US companies, there are several barriers to entry that haven’t made it worth the hassle — for starters, all documentation is in Mandarin and ads and...
Early Bird rates for Search Engine Land’s SMX East end this Saturday, August 24th. Register now and save! Join us October 1-3 in NYC for: Timely programing: over 80% of sessions are new, with the latest tips on Penguin-proof link building, mastering Google Enhanced Campaigns and more. Check...
In a recent video answer, Google’s head of search spam Matt Cutts said that page speed is not any more important in terms of a ranking factor for mobile search than it is for desktop search. Matt Cutts said: It is not that in mobile, we apply that [page speed ranking factor] any more or...
Today’s Google logo is a melodic and artful animated illustration to honor French composer Claude Debussy on the occasion of his 151st birthday. Set to the tune of Debussy’s popular Clair de Lune, the logo depicts a riverside scene on a moonlit night as silhouettes of cars, bicycles,...