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Here you will find detailed, unofficial reviews and recommendations on websites/web services that cover every different category, from Personal Information Managers, to Image Editors to Desktop Managers…and more!
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BitTorrent is launching SoShare, a service that lets you share files up to 1TB in size for free

SoShare has just been announced, and it’s a new file delivery service powered by BitTorrent. What makes it different from other services is the focus on large (very large) file sizes that coders, designers and content creators need to transfer on a daily basis.
The problem with other services, BitTorrent [...]
Read More »Facebook was hacked last month and is only admitting it now

The same time the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Twitter were attacked, there was a fourth company that also fell victim to a “sophisticated attack.”
Facebook, which is home to more than a billion users worldwide, was hit by a zero-day exploit that installed malware on [...]
Read More »Anti-piracy group pirates The Pirate Bay’s website, The Pirate Bay says they are “outraged” and will sue

An anti-piracy group from Finland has put up their own website, copying the exact design and layout of the infamous The Pirate Bay.
The new site is called “Piraattilahti,” which you can probably guess is “the pirate bay” in Finnish and is run by the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre [...]
Read More »This is what happens when you refuse to pay the freelancers you hire [Image]
As a webmaster, I have worked with more than a few freelancers over the years and still continue to work with many today (the great people who bring you great articles on a daily basis). Anyone that has worked as a freelancer or has worked with a freelancer knows there [...]
Read More »WARNING: Someone is spoofing dotTech’s email to send spam, don’t be fooled!

Hi dotTechies,
I just wanted to give everyone a head-up that some scumbag is using dotTech’s email to spend spam emails.
If you receive an e-mail from “admin@dottech.org” that is not characteristic of the emails we send (i.e. not an article or comment notification), then the email is probably spam. [...]
Read More »Another attack on free speech: US legislator introduces bill to ban photoshopping of head on porn star’s body

First of all, the above image is quite disturbing — I apologize but it is necessary to convey the gravity of this story. Georgia State Representative Earnest Smith has introduced a bill to ban the practice of imposing the facial image of a person onto an obscene depiction (in the [...]
Read More »This is the first ever banner ad on the Internet and the man who created it

This is Joe McCambley, co-founder of The Wonderfactory. He’s also the creator of the very first banner ad on the Internet. You know, the ones that are probably sitting somewhere on the sides of your screen when you’re off browsing the interweb. Here’s what it looked like:

The ad appeared [...]
Read More »Father pays daughter $200 to stop using Facebook

A father in Boston is paying his daughter to quit Facebook. He’s giving her $200 to stop using the social network for at least 5 months, and they even have their own official contract containing the agreement.
The agreement states that Paul Baier, the father, will get access to his [...]
Read More »SOPA/PIPA-like CISPA bill is coming back from the dead to kill your digital privacy [USA]

If you thought that bills like SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA were all behind us and the Internet was safe from prying eyes, I’ve got bad news for you — one of them is coming back. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger and Rep. Mike Rogers of the USA are planning on re-introducing CISPA [...]
Read More »This is a list of Wikipedia’s most popular pages, and it has a lot of questionable items on it

I’m not sure what’s more amazing here, the fact that Wikipedia member ‘West.andrew.g’ has spent 3 whole years downloading and analyzing data traffic across Wikipedia’s English-language pages as a research project, or the fact that right below Facebook, United States, YouTube, and Google is Justin Bieber. Sigh.
West.andrew.g has posted [...]
Read More »Watching porn on your smartphone or tablet is dangerous, according to study

A new study says that watching porn can be bad for your smartphone or tablet. The reason for this? Malware. Visiting mobile porn sites will bring up the chances of downloading malware three-fold — it’s worse than e-mail spam, malicious websites and fake apps combined.
The study, which was done [...]
Read More »Facebook is being sued because of the ‘Like’ button

After Facebook popularized the use of the “Like” button, countless other versions of the Like button have appeared in other sites. You’d think that Facebook invented it, right? Apparently not. And the company holding the patent for such a feature is suing.
Rembrandt Social Media, a patent-holding company, is filing [...]
Read More »FBI likes to torrent, too — here are some of the FBI’s favorite things to pirate via BitTorrent

Try going to MegaUpload.com and you’ll see an FBI anti-piracy warning. The warning is for the purposes of discouraging people from pirating copyrighted content. But that doesn’t mean the FBI doesn’t like to pirate things themselves! BitTorrent monitoring company ScanEye has once again given us a little peak into what [...]
Read More »Weird Google Search bug brings up pornographic results when asked for answers to equations

Now this is pretty weird. If you use Google Search, you might be aware that the tool can do a lot more than just finding stuff. It can convert measurements, currencies, do instant translations, and even make calculations for you. But what happens when you enter an equation that the [...]
Read More »The danger of Facebook: it can kill the internet

One thing that has been eluding the internet is a global web identity; one identity that one can be used across all websites and forums. While inroads have been made with other services, because of its popularity, Facebook is the closest we have so far to a universal digital identity, [...]
Read More »AOL still sells over $600 million worth of slow dial-up internet per year (!)

I remember back when we got our first computer. We were so excited about not only the computer itself but also finally being able to have dial-up AOL (America Online) — including hearing the awesome “You’ve Got Mail” jiggle every time we would log into AOL. Unfortunately, at the time [...]
Read More »US Federal Reserve website is hacked, and the stolen data is published online by the hackers

Hackers have managed to access one of the US Federal Reserve’s websites and steal a “limited amount of data,” according to a statement. The notice that was sent via the Fed’s Emergency Communication System, however, warned that email addresses, phone numbers and other contact information had been stolen and published.[...]
Read More »Microsoft tells users to ditch Gmail for Outlook.com because Microsoft “doesn’t go through your email to sell ads”

So while we take a break from all the Apple versus Samsung lawsuits, why don’t we shift our attention over to the brewing Microsoft versus Google battle. This time, we have Microsoft on the offensive with their current “Scroogled” ad campaign — which also cost them a seven figure amount. [...]
Read More »North Korea gets pwned by DMCA, propaganda video is taken down for stealing footage from video game

You probably read the headline and thought, “wait, what?” Don’t worry, it’s exactly what you think it is. A bizarre North Korean propaganda video has been taken down by YouTube after video game publisher Activision filed a DMCA complaint.
The video shows dreams of future space dominance by North Korea, [...]
Read More »‘Six-Strikes’ anti-piracy system is powered by the same company that flagged HBO.com for pirating HBO content

I’m sure you all know what the Six-Strikes system is by now, and that it’s set to launch in a few weeks. But what do we know about the company that’s going to be flagging users who share copyrighted content?
Turns out the CAS (Copyright Alerts System) that AT&T, Cablevision, [...]
Read More »Bitcasa is a new service that offers ‘infinite storage’ on the cloud

How much storage do you have on your cloud backup service? 40GB, 50GB? How does infinite sound? That’s what a new service, Bitcasa, is offering. Check out the video below!
So how much is infinite storage going to cost? Not so much, actually. This month, they’re offering a discounted fee [...]
Read More »Facebook is developing an always-on app that tracks your location, so you can “find your friends”

Facebook’s current tracking system allows you to check-in places ala Foursquare, and add locations to your posts. According to a report by Bloomberg, Facebook expand its tracking into a standalone app that can track your location in the background so you can find friends and your friends would be able [...]
Read More »In the wake of (alleged) cyberwarfare by China, US president now has the power to order (preemptive) cyber attacks

According to a report by The New York Times, a secret White House legal review has granted the president of the United States the legal authority to order preemptive cyber attacks against a target (which can be a country), when there is credible evidence of a pending attack.
Officials [...]
Read More »Japan’s most notorious hacker gets a unique wanted poster and a bounty of 3 million yen

A hacker has been toying with the police and the general public in Japan since last summer. The hacker has remote controlled innocent people’s computers to send killing spree threats and a bomb threat to Nintendo headquarters. This was followed by cryptic messages involving anime characters and even a microSD [...]
Read More »China is “the most sophisticated and prolific” hacker of foreign firms, says Google’s Eric Schmidt

An upcoming book co-authored by Google’s Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen was previewed by The Wall Street Journal, and it looks like China’s reputation as of late isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
The book is called The New Digital Age, and it says that China is the ”the [...]
Read More »Twitter is hacked: 250,000 user accounts compromised

No one’s really safe from hackers these days, with Twitter joining the New York Times as one of the recent victims of security breaches recently. Twitter announced in a blog post that it detected unusual access patterns during the week, which led them to discovering attempts to access user data. [...]
Read More »The problem with Netflix [Image]
How many dotTechies subscribe to Netflix or some other online on-demand video and movie website (for those of you that aren’t in counties Netflix operates in)? If you subscribe to Netflix or a similar website, then you probably will agree with the following comic. I know I do. Check it [...]
Read More »You can watch the premiere of ‘House of Cards’ on Netflix for free, even without a paid account

Netflix has released their original series, ‘House of Cards’. To push their second original series, the company wants as many people as possible to watch it. What better way than to make the premiere episode available for anyone to watch, at no cost?
(Note: This is only available in countries [...]
Read More »Check out this amazing interactive panorama of Dubai, as seen from the world’s tallest building

The Dubai skyline is becoming one of the most awesome views you can see today, and what better view can you get than from the top of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building?
This interactive 360-degree view of Dubai was created by photographer Gerald Donovan, in honor of the [...]
Read More »The Caribbean island of Antigua is launching a government-run pirate (file sharing) website, to “punish” the US

You think Kim Dotcom and his Mega service should worry anti-piracy advocates? That is nothing. The government of Antigua, which is a small country in the Caribbean, is set to a launch a government-run pirate website. Yep, movies, music, TV shows, and software will all be available for download on [...]
Read More »New York Times hack shows your antivirus won’t protect you from zero-day attacks

Some may call it obvious but just having antivirus software installed isn’t going to help you much if hit by zero-day attacks. The New York Times had antivirus from Symantec (Norton) installed on the devices connected to their network, but that didn’t stop Chinese hackers from retrieving usernames and passwords [...]
Read More »US law allows ‘wire-tapping’ of people who use US-based cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and iCloud — even if you don’t live in the United States

European privacy expert Caspar Bowden is warning that the data of people who use US-based cloud services might be monitored by the American authorities. In other words, Dropbox, Apple’s iCloud, Google Drive, and Amazon’s Cloud Drive are all services that could be “wire-tapped” due to the American Foreign Intelligence Surveillance [...]
Read More »Amazon sold $61.09 billion worth of stuff last year, but they managed to lose $39 million doing it

When Amazon announced it’s fourth quarter earnings, you’d think they were doing pretty good. The company made a profit of $97 million last quarter on sales of $21.27 billion, and the sales which are up by 22 percent from the same time last year. But if you look at the [...]
Read More »40 universities are going to offer full credit online courses for free this spring

A new initiative hopes to help people realize the value of an online education, without the financial risk. How do they plan to do this? By offering full credit courses that can lead to master-level degrees. For free.
The initiative is called MOOC2Degree (where MOOC stands for massive open online [...]
Read More »You can now see a little more of North Korea on Google Maps, thanks to crowdsourced data

If you ever tried taking a peek at North Korea through Google Maps before, you’d have to be content with the image above. Sparse, with no details about roads or any sort of locations within North Korea for that matter — just the landmass. Thanks to the data that Google [...]
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![This is what happens when you refuse to pay the freelancers you hire [Image]](http://cdn.dottech.org/media/2013/02/2013-02-15_041323-290x160.png)
![The problem with Netflix [Image]](http://cdn.dottech.org/media/2013/02/how_i_use_netflix-290x160.jpg)