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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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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 [...]
Read More »YouTube is looking to launch paid channel subscriptions, according to report
While YouTube currently charges for things like movies and TV shows, individual channels remain free for everyone to subscribe to and watch. A report from AdAge says that Google is looking into launching paid subscriptions for a particular set of channels, with prices ranging from $1 to $5 a month.[...]
Read More »Microsoft’s latest version of Office is here, it’s in the cloud, and it costs $100 per year for 5 computers
Microsoft has announced that Office 2013 and Office 365 are now available for purchase on Office.com and in retail stores across 162 countries. When you purchase your copy and unbox it at home, don’t be surprised if you don’t find the usual DVD inside it. It was never there, and [...]
Read More »Twitter’s Vine accidentally showcased hardcore porn as an ‘Editor’s Picks’
Remember Vine? Twitter’s newly launched app that lets you embed quick six-second videos in your tweets? Well, it’s only been out for a couple of days and they’ve already made the quite the blunder. And of course, it involves porn.
When Vine launched with the ability to shoot video, I’m [...]
Read More »Google redesigns Image Search, adds bigger views and keyboard shortcuts
Google has redesigned a lot of its core services like Gmail and even turning Google Docs into Google Drive. So it’s about time that they made significant changes to how image searches work, as its mostly stayed the same over the years save for the few tweaks here and there.[...]
Read More »New high-quality video standard H.265 is approved, will bring better quality videos to both fast and slow connections
The current standard for high-quality video is H.264; H.264 is used by pretty much all video streaming websites and most offline videos that are of high-quality use it, too. However, soon H.264 will be a thing of the past because the International Telecommunication Union has just approved H.265, the new [...]
Read More »Google protects user privacy and defies the government by asking for search warrants to access Gmail emails
To most Americans (and other countries that have laws to protect citizens from search and seizure without warrant), it may come as a surprise that a search warrant is not required for the American government to access private emails. This is due to the ‘Electronic Communications Privacy Act’ (ECPA), a [...]
Read More »Protect your Google account (Gmail) by enabling SMS (text message) notifications for suspicious activity [Tip]
Google has a useful ‘account activity’ monitor built into Gmail that allows you to check to see where the latest logins to your account were made from. This helps you identify if there was unauthorized access to your account. Another useful security feature Google has is the ability to notify [...]
Read More »Kim Dotcom’s newly launched Mega already has anti-piracy groups trying to shut it down
After launching Mega in one of the strangest technology press conferences to date, it looks like the site is already target of anti-piracy groups that want it shut down.
Robert King, who is affiliated with the adult industry, is also behind an anti-piracy group called StopFileLockers. Just how do they [...]
Read More »Student expelled from college because he reported a security problem to officials
What do you do when a student discovers then reports a serious vulnerability in your school’s network — so serious that it could potentially give access to students’ social security numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, class schedules and every other bit of information that a school would have on its [...]
Read More »Facebook is impersonating you without your consent — you just don’t know it
Facebook is ‘impersonating’ people on the social network without their consent. What Facebook is doing is re-posting one of your ‘likes’ every once in awhile accompanied with a related article. The posts are in your name and they appear in feeds as if you posted them. People have no idea [...]
Read More »Cable industry admits that data caps (bandwidth limits) are all about the money, not network congestion
If you didn’t need any more reasons to dislike internet service providers for charging too much for their services, this isn’t going to help very much. Michael Powell, who is the former chairman of the FCC but now president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, told an audience the [...]
Read More »Watch Kim Dotcom’s ridiculous Mega launch event
Leave it up to Kim Dotcom to not be content with simply launching a new file-sharing service, but to have an actual launch event to go with it that is probably crazier than he is.
The whole event can be viewed on Youtube…
…and it’s up there in terms of [...]
Read More »Google responds to claims that they murdered a donkey with a Street View car
This little donkey has been making the rounds on the internet lately — from Twitter all the way to Fox News. Twitter user @TheRealSheldonCooper posted the picture above on the social network, which is actually a Google Street View image in Botswana. People assumed that the donkey was behind the [...]
Read More »US will have Google Fiber-like gigabit internet speeds in all 50 states by 2015, if the FCC Chairman has his way
If you’re jealous about Kansas City’s current gigabit internet speeds, you’ve got a friend in FCC Chairman Julius Genachoski. The chairman has just issued the “Gigabit City Challenge.” What does he hope to accomplish from this? At least one community in each of the 50 states to have gigabit internet [...]
Read More »Google wants your next password to be your phone or a ring on your finger
The traditional password is now considered by many to be a security flaw. A combination of characters that can be cracked or even guessed is probably not the best way to safeguard our online lives today, and services like LastPass or 1Password provide an alternative through their software-generated passwords. But [...]
Read More »Kim Dotcom’s ‘Mega’ file locker service will give you 50GB of free cloud storage
Looks like Kim Dotcom is definitely going through with launching his latest file sharing service Mega, despite its striking similarities to the ill-fate Megaupload. It’s also launching soon — like this Saturday kind of soon.
Dotcom also recently revealed through Twitter that the service will be going big right away [...]
Read More »US House of Representatives enjoy torrenting movies and TV shows; here are some of their favorite BitTorrent downloads
It looks like the US Congress doesn’t need to look very far for examples of internet piracy for inspiration to put together another internet-related legislation. Turns out pirated movies and TV shows can be found within the walls of Capitol Hill. Anti-piracy forensics company ScanEye has published a report revealing [...]
Read More »Facebook’s newly announced ‘Graph Search’ is an internal search engine, helps you make new connections
Facebook has just announced “Graph Search,” which they’re hoping will change the way you search for new friends, connections and even answers on the social network. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is careful to note that this is in no way a competitor to web search, it’s something different. Ordinary searches on [...]
Read More »Verizon’s ‘six-strikes’ anti-piracy program is coming in a few weeks, here are the details
Remember that controversial six-strikes anti-piracy thing we talked about? And how that got delayed to 2013? Well, it’s 2013 now and the program is just a couple of weeks away from officially kicking off. None of the participating ISPs have detailed their measures, but TorrentFreak was able to obtain Verizon’s [...]
Read More »China is now requiring fiber optic, high-speed internet in all new houses that are near it
First off, for you eagle-eyed viewers out there, I’m well aware that the photo is of a Japanese neighborhood — it just seemed to fit. Now that’s out of the way, a new policy in China is now requiring all new residences built near fiber optic connections to be wired [...]
Read More »Check out the first trailer for the upcoming The Pirate Bay documentary, ‘TPB AFK’
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to run one of the most hated and loved websites, while fending off authorities constantly, all in the name of piracy? I sure don’t. And I’m pretty sure you don’t either. But we can all catch a glimpse of what it’s like when [...]
Read More »Guess what? Hollywood studios illegally pirate movies, too
You know who really hates it when people pirate their movies? Hollywood studios. You know who else downloads pirated movies through BitTorrent? What do you know, Hollywood studios. It looks the entities that are thought to be suffering the most due to piracy are no stranger to downloading torrents themselves.[...]
Read More »Online digital library JSTOR now offering free (but limited) access to everyone
JSTOR, an online digital library filled with quality academic papers, journals, and books, is now offering free access to everyone through their newly announced ‘Register & Read Program’.
Registering for an account to access JSTOR is known to be very expensive, and even then accounts are usually restricted to libraries [...]
Read More »Federal Trade Commission drops cases against Google, and Google promises changes to mitigate anti-competitive concerns
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has closed its investigation of Google’s potentially anti-competitive practices related to Google Search and other services. The verdict? Google’s services are now in the clear and considered good for users and competition. In other words, FTC did not find enough anti-competitive wrongdoing on [...]
Read More »Dangerous Ruby on Rails bug makes more than 240,000 sites vulnerable, including Hulu and Github
A critical vulnerability in the Ruby on Rails framework has been discovered to bring devastating effects to those affected. One of the developers that confirmed its existence, Ben Murphy, says that it “gives hackers a simple and reliable way to pilfer database contents, run system commands, and cause websites to [...]
Read More »New Java zero-day exploit hits the internet, is “massively exploited in the wild” — disable Java now!
So you thought Java season was over, eh? Wrong! It is still open season on Java and a brand new, previously unknown bug has been discovered in Java that allows scumbags to install malware on the computers of netizens.
It isn’t entirely clear how this exploit is conducted but it [...]
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Yahoo! Mail quietly adds HTTPS security option
It looks like Yahoo! has learned its lesson when it comes to security. After its mail service was recently hacked by an XSS exploit, the company has not only patched the problem but is also quietly rolling out an HTTPS option for its users.
HTTPS or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure [...]
Read More »Google is bringing free Wi-Fi to New York City
Google, in a press conference along with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Senator Charles Schumer, have announced that it is going to provide free Wi-Fi service to Chelsea, a New York City neighborhood.
The company says that it hopes to keep the thousands of residents and millions [...]
Read More »Iran plans on using “intelligent software” to censor social networks instead of blocking them
Do you think a censored Facebook is better than no Facebook at all? That seems to be the thinking behind Iran’s recent decision to develop “intelligent software” to censor social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, instead of outright blocking them completely.
Facebook and Twitter, as any Iranian would know, [...]
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