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Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook over moral concerns (AP) : Technet |
- Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook over moral concerns (AP)
- 12 Android Apps to Replace Your Other Gadgets (PC World)
- 5 Excellent E-Card iPhone Apps (Mashable)
- Google Signals Android 2.3 'Gingerbread' is Done Baking (PC Magazine)
- Saudi Arabia Defriends, Refriends Facebook (PC Magazine)
- The Music Video of the Future and Rent That's Too High in Viral Views 9! (PC World)
- 12 Fun Hacks for Getting More Out of YouTube (Mashable)
- Researchers Take Down Koobface Servers (PC World)
- China’s New Supercomputer Is Probably World’s Fastest… But Not for Long (PC World)
| Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook over moral concerns (AP) Posted: 13 Nov 2010 07:21 AM PST RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – An official with Saudi Arabia's communications authority says it has blocked Facebook because the popular social networking website doesn't conform with the kingdom's conservative values. The official says Saudi's Communications and Information Technology Commission blocked the site Saturday and an error message shows up when Internet users try to access it. He says Facebook's content had "crossed a line" with the kingdom's conservative morals, but that blocking the site is a temporary measure. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam and religious leaders have strong influence over policy making and social mores. Pakistan and Bangladesh both imposed temporary bans on Facebook this year. |
| 12 Android Apps to Replace Your Other Gadgets (PC World) Posted: 13 Nov 2010 06:00 PM PST But with the right apps, you can also turn it into a flashlight, a remote control, a barcode scanner, and a compass. Musicians will find that it makes an excellent tuner and metronome. And though it's already an alarm clock and a music player, it can get better at these tasks with the right software. Here are 12 apps--all of them available from the Android Market and most of them free--that can turn your phone into an even better multipurpose device. But not a perfect one. I'm still looking for the right Phillips screwdriver app. Flashlight Have you ever watched someone trying to read in the dark by the blue glow of their cellphone's screen? Have you ever been that person? With Motorola's DroidLight, those days are over. Launch this app, and your phone's camera LED will come on and light the way. DroidLight's user interface is transcendently simple: An illustration of an old-fashioned, incandescent light bulb. Touch the bulb to turn the light on or off. One caveat: Make sure that you go to another program or return to the Home Screen before putting away your phone. Otherwise, you might accidentally turn the beam back on, and it will light up the inside of your pocket until the phone's battery dies. The DroidLight requires a camera with flash, of course; and it doesn't work on all such phones. It's most dependable on Motorola phones, but it does work on some others, as well. And since it's free, there's no risk in trying it. Tape Recorder Your phone has a microphone and a memory. Why shouldn't you be able to use it to record verbal reminders, conversations, and even live music? Though there are plenty of recording apps for Android, I recommend the free RecForge Lite and its $6 big sibling, RecForge. (Until very recently, both versions went by the name AudioRecorder.) The lite version is fine if you're making recordings of less than 3 minutes each. Either app gives you a host of options for handling the recording you want to make. At its default setting it saves recordings as .mp3 files, but you can choose instead to record .wav or .ogg files. Available sample rates range from low-fi but understandable 8KHz to CD-quality 44KHz, and you can choose to record in mono or in two-track stereo. Once you've recorded something, you can attach an additional recording to the end, convert it to another format, or share it via e-mail, Gmail, Bluetooth, or text message. Don't get too excited about the Edit option on the menu, however: That's just for file manipulation; you can't edit the audio in RecForge. Bear in mind, too, that in most places, recording conversations or performances without permission is illegal. TV Remote Control I wish I could recommend an app that would turn your Android phone into a universal remote control. But that won't happen any time soon. The problem is that phones don't emit infrared signals--the preferred interface between remotes and the devices they control. There are a few of exceptions, all of them involving controls for devices that plug into your home network as well as into your TV. By turning on your phone's Wi-Fi connection, you can control the device over the LAN. I gave the free Boxee Wifi Remote a whirl. If you've attached a computer to your television so that you can watch movies and TV shows via your Boxee account, this program will permit your phone to function passably as a remote control. It's reasonably straightforward and it works, navigating through the menus with simple on-screen controls, and it even uses your phone's volume control for Boxee. Running Boxee involves entering text occasionally--for instance, if you want to search for a title or an actor. If you've ever tried to enter text with a conventional remote control, you know how much easier it is to use your phone's keyboard instead. And that's despite the fact that the Boxee Web remote got confused when I tried using Swype with it. The developer told me that he has not yet tested this app with DLink's upcoming Boxee Box, but he thinks that it should work. Since I don't own a TiVo, I wasn't able to test Tim Hoeck's TivoRemote. The app costs $1 and is supposed to work with Tivo Series3, HD, or Premiere DVRs. Remote Keyboard and Mouse You can control your computer from your Android phone, even if you aren't watching Boxee. The free, open-source RemoteDroid uses your network and Java to ast as another keyboard and mouse for your Windows PC. Preliminarily, you'll have to install the Java SE runtime environment on your the computer and then run the RemoteDroid Server software. And of course, you'll have to turn on your phone's Wi-Fi and get it onto the network. Once you've taken care of those steps, you'll find the user interface minimal but intuitive: You use the big rectangle as a touchpad; the two smaller rectangles are buttons; and (as you'd expect) the keyboard icon brings up the keyboard. RemoteDroid doesn't support Swype, unfortunately. But it does let you lean back and control your computer without having to touch it. And if you hook up your computer to your TV, the app works with Windows Media Center. Alarm Clock Plus is, quite simply, the best alarm clock I've ever used--including physical alarm clocks of the digital, analog, and wind-up varieties. What does Alarm Clock Plus do that the others can't? Plenty. It lets you select not just a song but a playlist, from which it will play songs at random. That means you can select 40 or 400 songs that seem right for starting the day, and be pleasantly surprised every morning. You can have it start the alarm softly and slowly increase the volume. And if you have a really hard time getting up, you can preset it not to shut up until you've solved a math problem. That should get your brain working. You can set alarms to play once, to play every day, or to play only the days of your choice (such as on weekdays). With all these of options, Alarm Clock Plus can be a little daunting to set up. So when you create an alarm, work through it slowly, and then use the option for testing it. The requirement to proceed methodically may explain why Brent Rose had such a different experience with it than I did. The full version of Alarm Clock Plus costs $1.79; but if you're willing to put up with some advertising, the free version works just fine. Compass If you're in a location where you can recharge your phone and get on a 3G network, you probably don't need a compass. But a compass is still a cool thing to have around. Catch.com's free Compass displays a working compass on your Android phone's screen, complete with an arrow that always points north. And unlike a real compass, this one can point to due north as well as to magnetic north. You get a choice of seven compass designs, from antique to GPS, and you can select from among various backgrounds. The app has some cool tricks up its sleeve. For instance, you can save your current longitude and latitude as a place, and later you can bring up the place in Google Maps for directions back to it. If you're the sort of person who forgets where you parked your car--or who gets blindfolded and taken to secret hideouts a lot--this feature can come in handy. Compass's accuracy is only as good as your phone's direction- and location-finding abilities. You may also have to move your phone in odd ways (such as in a figure 8 pattern) before you can get an accurate reading. Notepad, Post-its, and Refrigerator Door We all scribble things on pieces of paper--reminders, ideas, shopping lists. Then we leave them places where we'll find them or, more likely, never see them again. You'll find plenty of note-taking apps in the Android Market, but the free AK Notepad won my heart. In the first place, it looks great on a phone's screen--mimicking yellow, lined paper. The sans serif font looks slightly handwritten while remaining highly legible. You can edit the title of each note separately from the note itself. After creating a note, you can do much more with it than just leave it in AK Notepad. You can set a reminder to go off in 5 minutes, in a day, or on the day and time of your choice. You can pin an icon for the note (but not, unfortunately, a widget) to your Home Screen. You can save the note as a text file, or send it to someone via e-mail, Gmail, or text messaging. Barcode Scanner Almost every commercially packaged product has a barcode, which can tell you more than just the price of the product in that particular store--especially if you've installed Barcode Scanner on your Android device. With the app running, point your phone's camera at a bar code, and it will decode it and offer you information about the product. You may find reviews, and you'll certainly learn where else you can buy it and whether you can get a better deal. Barcode Scanner gives you three ways to look up each product that it identifies. Its own Product Search tends to find local and online stores that offer the same item. The Web Search looks up the code in Google, thereby finding a wider variety of information. And if you have the Google Shopper app installed, Barcode Scanner can use that--though in my experience, the results are identical to those from the Product Search. The app saves all of your scans in a history, which is good, but it doesn't do much with that history. For one thing, it merely lists numbers, without descriptions, which is not very useful. Also, as near as I can tell, you can't delete anything from the history. WWDiary is worth considerably more than you don't have pay for it. Here you track the foods you've eaten in the course of a day, the exercise you've done, and the effect these have on your daily and weekly allotment of points. (In the Weight Watcher system, every food serving has points, from 1 point for a carrot to 19 points for a banana split. Based on your age, weight, and gender, you should accumulate no more than a specified maximum number points per day and per week--or you'll start accumulating unwanted reserves of cushiony lipids.) When you add a new food or a new exercise to your diary, you have the option of adding it to your Favorites list too, which simplifies adding the same things in future entries. Specialized calculators help you determine the points associated with a food item or an exercise routine, as well as how many points you're allowed that day. You can also keep a log of your weight changes. But don't bother with the widget--at least not at first. It simply tells you how much weight you've lost since you started using the app. WWDiary is not officially affiliated with Weight Watchers, and it carries this disclaimer: "By using this program you agree that I am not responsible for any of your problems." Portable Music Player Android phones come with software for playing MP3s and other music files. But the preloaded player is pretty basic, and lots of better alternatives exist. My favorite is Maxim Petrov's PowerAMP. As I write this, PowerAMP is a free beta. But the final version will be out very soon and will cost $5. That's a lot to pay for a program that competes with a bunch of freebies, but consider what you get for the money. First, PowerAMP provides some awesome audio settings: a ten-band equalizer; preamp control; and separate dials for controlling bass, treble, and volume. All of these adjustments come up on a separate, highly graphical window, but you can turn any of them off or on from the main screen. As on most other players, the main screen displays album artwork. But PowerAMP is sensitive to what you do with your fingers over that art. Flick left and it takes you to the next song. Flick right and you go to the previous one. PowerAMP is intelligent about headphones, too. Unplug your headphones and the music stops. Plug them in again, and it restarts. You also get your choice of three different widgets for viewing and controlling your music from the Home Screen. Guitar Tuner Country Joe McDonald once gave me his analysis of the difference between '60s rock and '70s rock: In the 70s, everybody's instruments were properly tuned. He credited this triumph of euphony to the invention of small, electronic devices that took the guesswork out of instrument tuning. Cohortor.org's gStrings can turn your Android phone into just such a chromatic tuner. Using the microphone, it determines whether a plucked string or a note blown through a mouthpiece has produced the correct wavelength. You can optimize the program for a specific instrument, or you can shift its results to match the tuning practices of a particular orchestra. The free version should work just fine for most people, but for a single Euro (the equivalent of $1.41, as I write this) you can get gStrings+, which provides more-precise results and--thanks to its relatively compact code--demands less power from your phone's battery. My wife, a professional musician and music teacher, described gStrings as "Clearly a professional tuner for many instruments." Metronome By supplying a regular but adjustable pulse both visually and audibly, a metronome helps musicians keep a steady beat while they practice. You can set the beat to match the piece and your comfort level with it before you start playing. Sophisticated metronomes can accent downbeats to mark the beginning of each measure. The full version of Zealy Technology's Metronome ($1) does all of this.The free demo is just that--a demo. You can't even change the tempo on it. With the real program, you can do that and more. You can set the app to count out anywhere from 40 to 208 beats per minute, and to add a measure-marking ping on the downbeats. You can play the beat audibly, display it as a blinking series of lights, and receive tactile feedback via vibration. Its vibrating ability means that you can operate this metronome while it's tucked in your pocket. In fact, by turning off the light and sound, keeping the vibration on, and parking the phone in a pocket, a musician could use it during a performance and no one else would ever know. Lincoln Spector writes PCWorld's daily Answer Line blog. Madeline Prager provided expert opinion and analysis on the Tuner and Metronome sections. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 5 Excellent E-Card iPhone Apps (Mashable) Posted: 13 Nov 2010 02:13 PM PST Although we can't deny the pleasure of getting a real-life, hard copy card through good old-fashioned snail mail, e-cards offer a great alternative, especially for anyone short on time. E-cards have grown up from the tacky offerings of the 1990s and are an environmentally friendly way to send a greeting -- especially nowadays, when you're more likely to have your friend's e-mail address than postal address. Greeting card apps in the App Store are 10 a penny though, so to save you the hassle of shopping around for the best app, we've selected five fabulous options that will suit all tastes -- from minimalists to shutterbugs to lovers of vintage style.
1. Cartolina
Classy card company Cartolina has gone, in its words, "pretty hi tech" with this iPhone app, which offers a limited range of e-cards that you can text or e-mail out as many times as you'd like. The cards only offer space for three lines of text, so they're perfect for when you want to send more than a text message, say, for a birthday greeting, announcement or even an event invite. As well as the "Cartograms," the app offers integration with the birthday field in your iPhone's contacts, and provides a calendar you can flick through to see birthdays and other dates. The app even sends you a reminder so you can assure that your message gets sent off in time. Developer: Cartolina Cards
2. fCards
fCards is a great all-around greeting card app. It offers a minimalist approach to design -- the cards are postcard-style and have an image on one "side" and an area to write a message on the other. You can use your own images and customize the look and placement of the text. Categories are comprehensive and there's some really nice imagery on offer, including some beautifully simple photos that work really well for a variety of occasions. A bonus feature for social networkers is that the app is Facebook-friendly. Sign in to the social networking site in-app and you can send e-cards to your Facebook friends, as well as via traditional e-mail. Developer: fStop
3. Cerebral Itch E-Cards
Cerebral Itch's e-card app is the virtual greeting card solution for people who don't like greeting cards. In the developer's words, "our e-card app is what an e-card app would be if it were home-schooled, slightly kinky and thought is was better than the other e-card apps." Funny, irreverent, non-traditional and in some cases downright rude, the card designs are modern, clever and knowing -- and should only be sent to those with a sense of humor. Categories include those you'd expect -- birthday, anniversary, thank you, get well, etc. -- and some you might not -- intervention, politics and breakup support. Besides sending the e-cards as e-mails, you can also send out invitations. The app lets you customize the date, time and location of the event, which will appear as a Google Maps link in the e-mail. At $2.99, this app isn't cheap (although it's certainly cheaper than buying the equivalent cards and paying postage), so if you can't bring yourself to plunk down that kind of change, then try out the free version that offers a limited selection of designs. Developer: Cerebral Itch
4. Lifecards - Postcards
This very comprehensive app offers a huge variety of 350-plus themed templates that you can insert your own images and text into and send off as electronic postcards, letters, newsletters, cards and more. Categories are wide ranging, including obvious ones like travel and Christmas, as well as more unusual options like fruit and food, sport and winter. Customization options are plentiful and include the ability to tweak layouts, edit photos, change the color and font of the text and, in some designs, even hand write your signature. Your creations are e-mailed as image attachments, and they look good. If you're looking for a way to show off your own photos, then Lifecards is your app -- and well worth the $2 download cost. Developer: Vivid Apps
5. Vintage Greeting Cards
Small View Media offers an entire range of "vintage" greetings cards apps that work for all occasions (Valentines, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and more), each with some period charm. In the words of the developers, the apps offer "greetings from the past delivered using today's technology." The downside is that each occasion is a separate app, priced at $1.99 a pop, which means collecting the set isn't cheap. If you do, however, you'll have a library of lovely cards to use throughout the year. In each app, you can browse the cards in a cover view-style flip layout and, when you see the one you want, you can save it to your photo roll and e-mail the image from there. This means less in-app personalization than other options we've featured here, but that simplicity might well suit some users. And with great galleries in each app, there will definitely be a design to suit everyone. Developer: Small View Media
BONUS: Mean Cards
If the Cerebral Itch e-cards are for people you know have a sense of humor, then Mean Cards are for the friends you have that are a little bit twisted. This rated 17+ app offers a laugh-out-loud selection of wildly inappropriate greetings that range from flippant to downright hostile. If you want to tell a cousin his degree is uselessness, a work colleague that everyone thinks she is faking an illness, or a friend that if she has one more baby, she's white trash, then this is the app to do it with. Just don't be too mean. Developer: Cerebral Itch
More iPhone Resources from Mashable:- 10 Mobile Apps for Movie Addicts - 3 Innovative iPad Games That Use the iPhone as a Controller - 5 Stylish iPhone Alarm Clock Apps to Wake You Up On Time - 10 Useful iPhone Shortcuts, Tips and Tricks - 10 Useful iPhone Keyboard Shortcuts, Tips and Tricks |
| Google Signals Android 2.3 'Gingerbread' is Done Baking (PC Magazine) Posted: 13 Nov 2010 07:10 AM PST Google has dropped yet another clue that the company's next iteration of its Android mobile operating system is ready to be served up to users—literally. The official Google Mobile Twitter account now links to a rather suspicious image of a plethora of gingerbread cookies that have been baked in the style of, you guessed it, the Android logo. The culinary move comes in the wake of Google's first big clue that Gingerbread was nearing release—the launch of a giant Gingerbread man in the front of the company's Mountain View, Calif. headquarters. It's been a longstanding tradition that larger-than-life replications of the company's mobile OS codenames, all conveniently themed around delicious desserts, get added to the ever-expanding "sculpture gallery" at Google.
So what, then, can users expect to see upon the ideally imminent release of the upgraded OS? According to Phandroid, the user interface has been shuffled around a bit to the benefit of Android's native applications—they'll now appear as more integrated parts of the operating system, rather than add-on accessories in the same styling of a conventional downloaded application. Video chat is allegedly integrated into the Gingerbread OS—a move that wastes no time in arriving, given Apple's push toward making its Facetime video chatting service an industry standard. Provided carriers allow it, Google also allegedly intends to integrate VoIP service directly into its mobile OS. While that might not be as big a deal for the mobile market, the cost of data plans being what they are, it would be quite a line in the sand for future tablet devices based on the Android OS. After all, one could then pick up an iPad-like device without having to pony up monthly fees to a carrier for any communications or data. Integrated wireless connectivity could solve the latter, and integrated Voice over IP functionality (through Google Voice?) could theoretically allow the tablet to serve as a kind-of phone replacement, if necessary. There's no official release date for Gingerbread, nor the Samsung Nexus S—a device originally rumored to be hitting the market this month, and one whose front-facing camera would be an ideal match for the aforementioned Android 2.3 features. With pictures of both currently making rounds in the market, however, it's safe to say that the Gingerbread Man is coming soon to Android users soon. And, with luck, he'll have some new hardware for his features to actually work with. Until then, check out PCMag mobile analyst Sascha Segan's Gingerbread wish list. |
| Saudi Arabia Defriends, Refriends Facebook (PC Magazine) Posted: 13 Nov 2010 05:43 AM PST Officials in the country of Saudi Arabia officially blocked-and quickly restored-access to the world's largest social network for its population of approximately 27 million people earlier today. According to officials, Facebook "crossed a line" against the country's more conservative values. But, like two college co-eds in a digital battle over a dorm room, Saudi Arabia soon warmed up to Facebook and removed the temporary restrictions put in place, according to the Associated Press. The site was quasi-offline for the brief span of a few hours, leading to a number of online messages inquiring as to why users were met with a green "contest restricted" screen upon trying to log into the service. The extremely temporary ban follows the same route that both Pakistan and Bangladesh employed earlier this year in their own attempts to keep pages on the social-networking service out of the public eye. It appears that Saudi Arabia's few-hour ban is the shortest on record, however. Pakistan and Bangladesh restricted access to the site anywhere from a few days to a week. There's no indication as to what parts of Facebook's sprawling content well that Saudi Arabia officials objected. Pakistan and Bangladesh blocked the site as a reaction to user uproar over a user-proposed, "Everybody draw Mohammed Day" event, as images of Prophet Muhammed are considered blasphemous by many Muslims; Islamic scholars remain divided over its permissibility. Officials haven't released any information as to why the ban was lifted so shortly after it began. Facebook itself has not issued a comment on the matter. |
| The Music Video of the Future and Rent That's Too High in Viral Views 9! (PC World) Posted: 13 Nov 2010 01:16 PM PST Hello internet people! Viral Views is here to jazz up your life with some of the craziest, kookiest, and downright coolest music videos on the net. So plug in your headphones, turn that volume up, and let the sights and sounds make your day. The guys of OK Go sure know how to make an entertaining music video. In the video for their song "This Too Shall Pass" they rig a massive Rube Goldberg machine in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse. What does the machine do? Well, you'll just have to watch and find out: Band Re-Creates Famous Works of Art Check out this new take on classic works of art by the Franco-American band Hold Your Horses. Try to see how many paintings you can recognize (no cheating and using an Art History major)! Jimmy McMillan of The Rent is Too Damn High Party may not have won the race to be Governor of New York, but he did win the race to the hearts of the billions on the internet. I salute thee Jimmy McMillan and I will agree, the rent is too damn high! Music video of the future (Use Chrome or IE9) The new age of music videos is here! Using an HTML5-compatible browser (I recommend Google Chrome or Internet Explorer 9) you become the star of your own music video that has been customized specifically for you. So load the webpage, sit back, and marvel at the future that HTML5 websites will bring to us. Christopher Walken Busts a Move If this video teaches us anything, it's that Christopher Walken should give up Hollywood acting in favor of Broadway. I would go to every show if I could see him perform like this again. Some music videos are so ridiculous that only a parody can properly explain what is going on. Literal music videos were a wave of amazing in 2009, the most famous one "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" finally made sense of a video that had puzzled scholars for years. Now if only all songs in the 80's could get the same treatment, we could finally make sense of what exactly happened in that decade. That's it for this week's Viral Views. Remember to check back every Friday here at Geek Tech for your weekly helping of internet randomness. Now if you'll excuse us, we have a bus to catch. See you in 7! Visit GeekTech every Friday afternoon for more Viral Views; for best results, follow @viral_views on Twitter (that's with an underscore). |
| 12 Fun Hacks for Getting More Out of YouTube (Mashable) Posted: 13 Nov 2010 11:38 AM PST There's no doubt that plain old YouTube can be tons of fun, but when you get bored of watching clips the traditional way, there are a ton of sites that can help enhance the experience. Whether you want to view a video with a far-away friend, compare two clips, or find more interesting ways of browsing and sharing, there are plenty of options out there. The web community is known for creating hacks that improve your surfing experience; now we've dug into some of those tools and hacks built around YouTube. Have a look through our 10 choices and let us know of any other YouTube mashups, hacks, or similar sites and services you've used. We'd love to hear about them in the comments below.
1. TubeReplay
This site features a super-simple premise. TubeReply will play a YouTube video over and over again, until you stop it or go mad -- whichever happens first. Just enter the URL of the clip you want repeated and the site will do the rest.
2. DragonTape
DragonTape allows you to remix YouTube videos into a seamless mixtape. Search for the clips you want, drag and drop to set up the play order and then share the playlist with friends via an auto-generated URL, or embed it with the code provided.
3. YouTube Doubler
This "mashup helper" exists "because you have better things to do than work." You can use it to compare two videos, or have fun mashing together two patently unsuitable videos. Simply enter the two URLs, decide on your VJ name, and you're off and away. You can share your video pairing via a generated URL.
4. SynchTube
SynchTube allows you to watch synchronized YouTube videos with up to 50 other people with a chat window along the side so you can IM about what's happening. Setting up a "room" is easy. Just enter the URL(s) of the videos you want to watch and then share the URL with your group. We can imagine tons of uses for this service, but the sweetest one has got to be setting up some videos to watch "together" with a far-away partner.
5. Infinitube
Enter your choice of keywords into this site and it will create an infinite playlist based on them. Get ready for a seamless viewing experience based on as many keywords as you can imagine.
6. Splicd
You can link to a specific spot in a YouTube video by adding #t=MMmSSs (replace MM with minutes and SS with seconds) to the end of the URL, but Spilcd (and TubeChop below) take this concept a step further. Splicd lets you cut down a YouTube video by entering start time and finish time. You can then share your edited clip with a URL or embed it with the code supplied.
7. TubeChop
TubeChop shares exactly the same principle as Splicd. TubeChop, however, lets you make your edited selection by sliding a bar along a timeline. It's worth an independent mention as some may prefer TubeChop's visual editing process.
8. YouCube
This unique little tool lets you create a "YouCube," an interesting, if slightly offbeat way of sharing YouTube videos. Enter the six YouTube videos you want to appear on each side of the cube and it generates a spinning 3D cube of your videos that you can then name and share via a shortened URL.
9. MixTube
MixTube is a great, simple tool that lets you easily create and share music playlists from YouTube videos just by adding the URLs to a list. This tool is tidy and useful for songs that you can only find on YouTube, such as mashups, live performances, and other user-generated content.
10. YouFlow
YouFlow offers an alternative and more attractive way to browse videos on YouTube. Enter your key words and a selection of results will be displayed in a cover flow-style layout that you can scroll through. You can choose to play multiple videos right from the results, something that is much more difficult to do with YouTube's queues and playlists.
11. Quietube
If the majority of YouTube comments depress you, then: a) You're not alone, and b) There's a solution. This browser bookmarklet offers a plain white or plain black background to view vids on. Simply install and then hit the "quietube" button after you press play on any YouTube video for some peaceful, troll-free viewing.
12. YouTube TestTube
TestTube is YouTube's "ideas incubator," akin to Gmail Labs, where YouTube engineers and developers "test out recipes and concoctions that aren't quite fully baked." You can play around with a comment search, HTML5, the lite version of YouTube (Feather), a caption editor, music discovery features and more.
More YouTube Resources from Mashable- 10 Killer Tips for Creating a Branded YouTube Channel - HOW TO: Add Captions To Your YouTube Videos - HOW TO: Create Custom Backgrounds for Twitter, YouTube, & MySpace - Top 10 YouTube Tips for Small Businesses Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Talaj |
| Researchers Take Down Koobface Servers (PC World) Posted: 12 Nov 2010 10:10 PM PST Security researchers, working with law enforcement and Internet service providers, have disrupted the brains of the Koobface botnet. Late Friday afternoon, Pacific Time, the computer identified as the command-and-control server used to send instructions to infected Koobface machines was offline. According to Nart Villeneuve the chief research officer with SecDev Group, the server was one of three Koobface systems taken offline Friday by Coreix, a U.K. Internet service provider. "Those are all on the same network, and they're all inaccessible right now," Villeneuve said Friday evening. Coreix took down the servers after researchers contacted U.K. law enforcement, Villeneuve said. The company could not be reached immediately for comment. The takedown will disrupt Koobface for a time, but for any real effect, much more will have to happen. Machines that are infected by Koobface connect to intermediary servers -- typically Web servers that have had their FTP credentials compromised -- that then redirect them to the now-downed command and control servers. Friday's takedown is part of a larger operation that first started two weeks ago. Villeneuve and his team have notified the ISPs about the compromised FTP accounts, and they've also tipped off Facebook and Google to hundreds of thousands of Koobface-operated accounts. The Facebook accounts are used to lure victims to Google Blogspot pages, which in turn redirect them to Web servers that contain the malicious Koobface code. Victims are usually promised some interesting video on a page designed to look like YouTube. But first they must download special video software. That software is actually Koobface. Koobface includes several components, including worm software that automatically tries to infect Facebook friends of the victims, and botnet code that gives the hackers remote control of the infected computer. Koobface has turned out to be a pretty lucrative business since it first popped up on Facebook in July 2008. In a report published Friday, Villeneuve says that the botnet made more than US$2 million between June 2009 and June 2010. Researchers found data stored on another central server, called "the mothership" used by the Koobface gang to keep track of accounts. This server sent daily text messages to four Russian mobile numbers each day, reporting the botnet's daily earnings totals. Revenue ranged from a loss of $1,014.11 on Jan. 15 of this year to a profit of $19,928.53 on March 23. Payments were made to Koobface's operators through the Paymer payment service, similar to eBay's PayPal. The gang's creators would use their hacked computers to register more Gmail, Blogspot and Facebook accounts and steal FTP (File Transfer Protocol) passwords. They also messed up their victims' search results to trick them into clicking on online ads, generating referral money from advertising companies. More cash came from fake antivirus software that Koobface can sneak onto victims' PCs. Almost exactly half of Koobface's income -- just over $1 million [m] -- came from the fake antivirus software. The other half came from online advertising fees. Villeneuve doesn't identify the Koobface gang in the report, but he thinks that at least one of the members lives in St. Petersburg. Interestingly, Koobface's operators could have caused more damage. They could have broken into online bank accounts, or stolen passwords or credit card numbers, but they didn't. "The Koobface gang had a certain charm and ethical restraint," the report sates. "They communicated with security researchers about their intents and their desire not to do major harm. They limited their crimes to petty fraud, albeit massive in scale and scope. But the scary part is that they could have easily done otherwise." They may not be so friendly with researchers from now on, however. Villeneuve has handed over information to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and U.K. authorities. And the researchers have also notified Facebook, Google and various ISPs about the fraudulent and compromised accounts. They have identified 20,000 fake Facebook accounts; 500,000 fake Gmail and Blogspot accounts, and thousands of compromised FTP accounts used by the gang. They hope that these activities will disrupt the botnet's operations, but Villeneuve has no illusions about Koobface being stopped. "I think that they'll probably start up pretty soon, and they'll probably try to recover as many of their bots as soon as they can," he said. Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| China’s New Supercomputer Is Probably World’s Fastest… But Not for Long (PC World) Posted: 13 Nov 2010 01:30 PM PST In late October, China unveiled the world's "fastest" super computer, the Tianhe 1A (although blogger Chrisopher Mims has a few important qualifications as to why "world's fastest" is not entirely accurate). Tianhe 1A runs on more than 7,000 American made nVidia graphics chips and over 14,000 traditional CPUs. It can make well over 1,000 trillion calculations per second and can get up to 4.7 petaflops at peak performance. And this is all well and good, but around the world there are at several systems currently being planned or under construction that will surpass the Tianhe 1A in power and speed. In the U.S., the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications is developing a system called Blue Waters, which will be capable of at least 1 petaflop of sustained performance, and up to 10 petaflops at peak performance. Running on power7 multicore processors from IBM, the system also boasts super efficient interconnect chip technology that will serve as a gateway between the power7 processors and allows the processors to communicate with each other. All this power will be devoted to scientific research: from making predictions in biology and astrophysics, to simulating engineered systems. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is also working with IBM to create a 20 petaflop supercomputer called "Sequoia" that will gear up in 2011 and be running quadrillions of scientific computations per second in 2012. This supercomputer will take over the duties of running the weapons simulation codes to "ensure the safety, security, and reliability" of nuclear weapons in America. (according to a 2003 paper submitted by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). Looks like China's going to need a few more processors. [via MIT Technology Review] Like this? You might also enjoy...
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