The Power User's Guide to Google Chrome
ExitReality launches 3D browsing for 'the entire Web' - Internet - iTnews Australia

Melbourne-based company ExitReality today launched software that renders two dimensional webpages into three dimensional scenes – like something out of a computer game.

Developers say that ExitReality is compatible with ‘the entire Web’, working inside browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox to display a 3D depiction of each page’s contents.

Some websites already have special designs for use with ExitReality. Major companies such as eBay and MSN are depicted as buildings which act as hyperlinks.

YouTube appears as a movie theatre, while social networking site MySpace appears as a virtual lounge.

Other websites are displayed as a grid of content that users can walk through.

“It is the entire web in 3D – making 40 billion virtual worlds – and it will instantly transform 2D content into 3D,” said ExitReality founder Danny Stefanic.

Users can search for websites using the software and instantly switch between 2D and 3D views.

EFF sues Bush, Cheney et al for AT&T spying - Telecommunications - iTnews Australia

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit on behalf of AT&T’s business and personal customers over the US government’s wiretapping of private telephone and internet records.

The organisation alleges that a secret National Security Agency was set up in San Francisco with AT&T’s help and was used to process the data from millions of telephone conversations and internet sessions.

The suit has been filed against the National Security Agency (NSA) but also names President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance.

"Demanding personal accountability from President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others responsible for the NSA's dragnet surveillance of ordinary Americans' communications is the best way to guarantee that such blatantly illegal spying will not be authorized in the future," said EFF legal director Cindy Cohn.

Nokia 'free' music phone sales to start Oct 17 - Telecommunications - iTnews Australia

Nokia's first phone model with free access to music is scheduled to go on sale on October 17 in Britain, retailer Carphone Warehouse said on its Web page.

Nokia's "Comes with Music" bundle of phone and music service could help the music industry make up for falling CD sales, while challenging dominance of Apple's iTunes in the digital music market.

The package will differ from other bundles on the market as users can keep all the music they have downloaded during the 12 month subscription period.

Vodafone launches unlimited music downloads - Telecommunications - iTnews Australia

Vodafone today launched an unlimited music downloads service, allowing users to download thousands of songs to their mobile phones for a fixed price per month.

MusicStation will cost $11.95 per month, with no extra data download costs, and will give users access to a database of over a million songs.

Mandriva unveils Linux for netbooks - Operating Systems - iTnews Australia

Linux publisher Mandriva has unveiled a version of its platform designed specifically for the new breed of mini laptops.

Mandriva Mini is aimed primarily at vendors of so-called 'netbooks', and is customised for this category of small form factor device, Mandriva said.

It features a fast boot-up, comprehensive connectivity support and multimedia codecs, and is adapted to work on key netbook platforms such as Intel's Atom.

Unlike Windows, which powers many mini laptops, Linux versions such as Mandriva Mini are customised for a small footprint and efficient power management, and have user interfaces adapted to smaller display screens.

Open Source makes historic UK breakthrough - Software - iTnews Australia

Open Source companies have been granted official permission to supply software to the UK public sector for the first time in British history.

At least two Open Source software suppliers have been awarded places on the £80 million Software for Educational Institutions Framework, making them official suppliers to UK schools and scoring a victory in what has been a long and frustrating battle against favouritism shown to conventional commercial software companies in UK politics and procurement.

Mark Taylor, president of the Sirius Corporation, one of the winning Open Source suppliers, said "We were utterly stunned. We are delighted. It's a significant breakthrough for Open Source software."

The UK's procurement frameworks, a fast-track process for public sector purchasers, handled £4.4bn of business in the year to April 2008. They are not meant to prevent companies not on the lists from selling to the public sector but, said Taylor, this had not been the experience of the Open Source community.

Telstra 'a disgrace' to Aussie R&D, NICTA CEO says - Business - iTnews Australia

NICTA CEO David Skellern said that Telstra is 'a disgrace' and called on the federal government to give more support to the ICT industry.

“If Australia’s ICT sector was a national swim team, there’d be a huge outcry at its current state. We’d be throwing everything at it to make it go faster – special diets, training, coaches, the lot.

“We would bother, because we’d understand that the team had the talent – it just needed the support. So I’d like to let us bother about ICT innovation too.

“I have a deep conviction that it can flourish in this country, if it can attract the support it requires. You can rest assured that NICTA will be doing its part to bring home the gold.”

Delivering the keynote address at the Influence Forum 2008 in the Hunter Valley this weekend, Skellern condemned Telstra’s historical record as a poor investor in R&D.

“Companies like Telstra are a disgrace when it comes to research and development,” he said.

BBC NEWS | UK | Google climbdown on abortion ads

Google is to change its policy on adverts about abortion following a legal challenge from a Christian pressure group.

It had refused a Christian Institute advert, saying it did not allow the advertising of websites with "abortion and religion-related content".

The institute threatened to use British equality laws to contest the decision.

But after an out-of-court settlement, Google will now allow religious groups to advertise about abortion.

It means when the word "abortion" is typed into the search engine, internet users will no longer just see adverts with details of abortion clinics and support groups, but could also find links to religious groups which may oppose abortion.

BBC NEWS | Technology | YouTube bans some weapons footage

YouTube is to ban footage showing weapons being used to intimidate people on its website in the UK.

The new policy was being introduced because of "particular concern" in Britain over the subject, the site's owners, Google, said.

MPs criticised video-sharing websites, including YouTube, in July, saying they should be doing more to vet content.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith welcomed the YouTube ban and called on other internet sites to follow suit.

YouTube said the introduction of the new rule on weapons and intimidation would be the first time the site had made a policy change targeted specifically at the UK.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Palin e-mail hack details emerge

Details of how an e-mail account of US Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was hacked have emerged.

Following the hack, screenshots of Mrs Palin's messages, inbox, pictures and address book were posted to the Wikileaks whistle-blowing site.

It is thought the attackers exploited the password resetting system of Yahoo's e-mail service.

Details about Mrs Palin's life pulled from public sources reportedly helped defeat security questions.

Fake popup study sadly confirms most users are idiots

For most of us, security issues happen to "other people"—we block popup ads, we carefully examine dialog boxes and, for those of us on the Mac platform, we snicker when confronted with something that attempts to mimic a Windows system warning. But everyone knows that they are exceptional—what's the behavior of a more typical user like? Some researchers have tested how college students respond to fake dialog boxes in browser popup windows and found that the students are so anxious to get the dialog out of the way, they click right through obvious warning signs.

Google's T-Mobile G1 Android phone: the first review - Tech & Web News - Times Online

The arrival of Android signals the opening round of the battle between Google and its rivals, such as Nokia and Apple, to create software for the next generation of mobile phones that allows users to connect seamlessly to the internet.

A Google spokesman said that, these days, using phones “does not just mean a phone call, but rather access to the world’s information” and that mobiles will be one of the most important ways to connect to the internet in future.

However, when The Times was granted a first glance at the new device, the phone did not seem to offer a ground-breaking feature to rival the “wow factor” of the iPhone’s touchscreen. Instead, the G1 happily adopts the best features of the iPhone and BlackBerry — two of the best smart phones on the market.

Apple's redesigned power adapters already shipping, sort of

Owners of iPhone 3G, and those who simply had to gobble up a few of Apple's cute lil' USB-to-AC power adapters, may have to wait a few weeks to swap theirs out for units that won't cause an electric shock. However, according two different reports, Apple's replacement plugs are already shipping with new iPhones, and analysts say that the company shouldn't have much backlash to worry about from the whole affair.

New royalty agreement leaves Internet radio out in the cold

This afternoon, the Digital Media Association announced a new agreement with organizations that represent musicians and songwriters that will provide a streamlined licensing procedure for many models of digital music distribution. The new agreement doesn't apply to "download to own" music, but will apply to streaming services, including subscription and ad-supported music (think Last.fm and SpiralFrog). The agreement has been submitted to the Copyright Royalty Judges for approval.

For the purposes of this agreement, musicians and songwriters were represented by he National Music Publishers' Association, the Nashville Songwriters Association International, and the Songwriters Guild of America. They negotiated the deal with the RIAA and the Digital Media Association, which includes industry heavy-hitters like Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. But the DiMA also includes a variety of companies that are doing less well under the current system, such as the recently-purchased Napster, and Internet radio services like Live365 and Pandora, which are buckling under the current royalty system.

Bad seed ISP Atrivo cut off from rest of the Internet

Malicious ISP Atrivo has lost the confidence and support of the last upstream provider willing to do business with the company. Up until last Saturday, Pacific Internet Exchange (PIE) had kept Atrivo connected to the rest of the world, but evidently felt the cost of doing business with the rot-filled ISP was too high to justify. Pacific was the last company to get the memo on that particular decision, but as of Saturday, Atrivo is offline.

The chain of events that ultimately led to Atrivo's shutdown may have been touched off by an August report from HostExploit on the company's illegal endeavors. At the time, Atrivo was a major hub of illegal activity; some 66 percent of the fake antivirus scanners and false malware-laden "codecs" were on Atrivo's network. The situation also persisted over time, a significant indication that Atrivo's disproportionate share of the malware market was no mere blip or oversight.

Windows 7: an upgrade to Vista, not an overhaul | NetworkWorld.com Community

Screenshots of Windows 7 leaked this week on the ThinkNext.net site shows Windows 7 looking more like an update to the Vista user experience and not an overhaul of Vista. That makes sense given the short timeframe to develop and release Windows 7, and Microsoft's change to shorter OS release cycles over the past mega-Windows OS releases. Balmer is saying Windows 7 should be here in 2009. Frankly, most of the screenshots show pretty minor updates to the Vista user interface: a simplified Start menu, ribbon menus (BOO!) in apps like Wordpad, and redesigns to Windows Explorer and other control panel apps. So far, not a lot to get excited about, at least in this group of leaked screenshots.

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Retailer Best Buy to buy Napster

Consumer electronics giant Best Buy has entered the online music arena, purchasing the Napster online music service for $121m (£67.5m) in cash and investments.

The acquisition values Napster at $2.65 a share, more than twice its market value on Friday.

Best Buy said the move was to "reach new customers" and leverage Napster's 700,000 existing subscribers.

The deal is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Best Buy said Napster's easy-to-use interface, streaming music and mobile offerings were the service's key strengths.

Neuros open set-top box goes HD - Boing Boing

Computers becoming open in the early 80s transformed the category from proprietary computing machines to PCs. Can the same thing happen with the TV set? Will an open device that allows content providers and third party software developers (Miro as an example) to access the TV render proprietary set-top devices obsolete as happened in the computer space? This is Neuros's strategy as they enhance their Neuros OSD with HD capability

Google puts wallet behind African wireless broadband effort

The new venture is a startup called O3b networks, named for the "other 3 billion" that aren't currently getting Internet service. Although the first deployments will be in Africa, the company hopes to eventually deploy its access model across other poorly served areas of the globe.

That model takes into account a couple of realities that are sometimes ignored in plans to connect the developing world. Equatorial Africa is vast, politically fragmented, and unstable. No private entity is likely to put up the money necessary to provide and maintain comprehensive access to fiber in the region, and assistance from other governments has primarily focused on wiring up academic centers that tend to be in the already-developed regions of the continent.

The solution, in O3b's view, is to go wireless and leverage the region's infatuation with the cell phone. The company plans to use the existing infrastructure of cell phone towers, and add hardware that enables 3G and WiMax networking. That hardware will then be linked to the big-ticket item in the plan: a series of low-earth orbit satellites, which will serve as a bridge to the wider world at speeds approaching 10Gbps. Should the full plan be rolled out, there will be a total of 16 satellites connected to over 2,300 earth-bound access points.

TiVo fans rejoice: HD, MPEG-4 TiVo returning to DirecTV

Ever since DirecTV decided to part ways with TiVo and roll its own DVR, fans of the pioneering TiVo have fervently hoped that the two service providers would reunite. While the companies have played nicely with one another since the split, providing a handful of modest feature improvements to DirecTV TiVo owners, there was no indication that DirecTV had any plans to embrace the TiVo platform once again. That has finally changed, as a new HD-capable TiVo for DirecTV customers will be launching in the second half of next year.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Yahoo defends Google advert deal

Yahoo said it will implement its much-criticised search ad deal with Google despite possible anti-trust hurdles.

Under the agreement, from October Google will sell ads alongside Yahoo search results on some of its pages.

Rumours the US justice department would challenge the deal grew this week when it hired a veteran anti-trust lawyer.

Hilary Schneider, executive vice-president of Yahoo US, told the BBC the agreement was "fully within the guidelines of the law".

Both companies voluntarily agreed to have the US Department of Justice (DoJ) examine the plan, which was announced in June.

They also committed themselves to wait three and a half months to give regulators time to scrutinise it.

Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt recently said both companies were aiming to go forward with the deal.

Woman sues city after it orders her to remove a link to the local cops' website - Boing Boing

A woman in Sheboygan, MI is suing the city because the city's attorney used legal threats to get her to remove a link to the local police department website -- the city apparently believes you need permission to communicate the URLs of its pages:

Jennifer Reisinger says the Sheboygan city attorney ordered her to remove from her Web site a link to the city’s police department, in what she believes was retaliation for her support of recalling Mayor Juan Perez, according to the suit filed last week.

CALL YOUR SENATOR: Stop proposal to make taxpayers responsible for MPAA's copyright claims! - Boing Boing

ast week, the Senate Judiciary Committee gave the green light to S. 3325, "The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Act of 2008." We need you to show them the red light, and quick! Among other things, this intellectual property enforcement bill lets the DOJ enforce civil copyright claims and lets the government do the MPAA and RIAA’s intellectual property rights enforcement work for them—at tax payers’ expense.

Beta Beat: Foxmarks Beta-Testing Profile-Specific Password Sync

bookmark-syncing extension for Firefox, Foxmarks, is venturing into syncing your passwords as well as your bookmarks between browsers over the internet. Coupled with Foxmarks' new profile support, you can selectively sync what passwords go where and keep your banking passwords at home and your IT passwords at work. You have to opt into the password sync beta to enable it in your Foxmarks account. Of course, trusting your important passwords to a feature in beta—no matter how secure it appears to be—should make anyone concerned about security and privacy antsy, so do proceed with caution, and maybe only use this feature for your low-security passwords. Do you sync your passwords to the cloud, or do you wish you could?

Beta Beat: Firefox 3.1 to Add Private Browsing Mode

You can already switch on private browsing in Firefox with previously mentioned Stealther, but in the wake of IE8's InPrivate Browsing and Google Chrome's Incognito mode, Mozilla is set to incorporate their own private browsing mode with Firefox 3.1.

Firefox: Enable Chrome's Best Features in Firefox

The internet is atwitter with Google Chrome's innovative new features, but there was no clear winner in our speed test comparing Firefox and Chrome—which means your choice of browser may depend solely on features. Apart from a few specific issues (namely process management), many of Chrome's best features are already available in Firefox 3, proving yet again the power of extensibility. From incognito browsing and the streamlined download manager to URL highlighting and improved search, let's take a look at how you can bring some of Google Chrome's best features to Firefox.
Stealther Turns On Incognito Browsing

Chrome's Incognito browsing allows you to shop for your significant other look at porn without keeping any history of that browsing session anywhere on your computer. In Firefox, the Stealther extension does the same thing. The main difference: In Chrome, a single window can enter Incognito mode, whereas in Firefox it's enabled globally (this is probably possible in Chrome because of how it manages each tab as a separate process). But let's be honest, are your multi-tasking skills really that good? (Original post)
Download Statusbar Puts Downloads in Your Status Bar (Surprise!)

Chrome is all about saving space, so files you download don't break out into a separate window. Instead, they live in your status bar. Not bad, but guess what: The Download Statusbar Firefox extension has been doing this for five years, and it offers lots of additional options and wastes even less screen real estate. (Original post)
Speed Dial and Auto Dial Power Up Your Empty Tabs

Chrome's empty tab page—which displays your most visited sites, most used search boxes, and even your recently closed tabs—is awesome. There isn't currently anything quite as full featured for Firefox, however there are a couple of options that are very close. The Speed Dial extension (which itself is a ripoff of the Speed Dial feature in Opera) provides a very similar thumbnail-based new tab page, but you decide which sites you want in your speed dial and you can quickly access any of them from your keyboard with shortcuts. (Original post)
Locationbar2 Adds Domain-Highlighting to the Address Bar

Google Chrome's "omni bar" sports root domain highlighting, a cool feature that doubles as a nice anti-phishing device (if you see the root domain more easily, you are less likely to give your information to an imposter domain). That sort of domain highlighting isn't new by any means, though; the Locationbar2 Firefox extension has been boasting this same highlighting—in addition to several other excellent features—for well over a year.
Prism Extension Turns Any Site into a Separate Application

If you want to break out a webapp you use all day long into a separate window and desktop shortcut, Chrome makes it easy on you. Just click x and do y. The concept of separating webapps into their own application isn't new, though. At Mozilla, they've been cooking up Prism to do just that for quite some time. With Prism and the Prism for Firefox extension installed, just go to Tools -> Convert Website to Application to break a webapp into a separate window and application. Right now this extension is Windows only, but hey—so is Chrome.
Keyword Search Bookmarks Integrate Site-Specific Search with the Address Bar

Chrome boasts that after using a site's search engine once, you can perform that same search from the address bar the next time. For example, after you search Amazon once, the next time you may just be able to go to your address bar, type 'a', press Tab, and then perform your search. That's pretty saucy, but it's also not much of an innovation over keyword searches in Firefox. Granted, you have to manually add a search box (here are 15 of our favorite Firefox quick searches), but you can also define exactly what you want that shortcut to be. Chrome also doesn't currently support keyword bookmarking in general, which is one of the most time-saving features in Firefox.

On the other hand, previously mentioned Auto Dial automatically populates the new tab page with your most frequently visited sites. It's not as attractive as Speed Dial or Chrome's new tab page, though. Either way, give Firefox extension developers some time. We'll have an even better alternative before you know it.

Pew study: cloud computing popular, privacy worries linger

A new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life project, released Friday morning at Google's Washington, DC headquarters, finds cloud computing applications taking off among Internet users. But respondents also told pollsters that they have profound concerns about ways their personal data might be used—among them, the kind of ad-targeting practiced by... Google.

As Internet users increasingly find themselves using multiple (potentially incompatible) networked devices to get online from a variety of locations, it should come as little surprise that large numbers of them are availing themselves of "cloud" services that offload computing or data storage functions to someone else's server, allowing e-mail, photos, or documents to be accessed anywhere. More than half of Internet users have used Web-based e-mail services, which study author John Horrigan called the "starter drug" of cloud computing, while just over a third have stored personal photos on sites like Flickr or Photobucket. Cloud apps like Google Documents and Adobe Photoshop Express were third most popular, with 29 percent of respondents saying they'd used one, while fewer than 10 percent had used Web-based services to store personal videos or back up their hard drives. All told, 69 percent of users had used at least one form of cloud computing; 40 percent had used two or more. For users under 30, those numbers jumped to 87 percent and 59 percent respectively.

Perhaps more surprising is that 68 percent of respondents who said they'd used cloud services declared that they would be "very" concerned, and another 19 percent at least "somewhat" concerned, if their personal data were analyzed to provide targeted advertising. This, of course, is precisely what many Web mail services, such as Google's own Gmail, do—which implies that at least some of those who profess to be "very" concerned about the practice are probably nevertheless subjecting themselves to it.

Copyright bill blasted as "enormous gift" to Big Content

The United States Congress returned to work this week, and senators appear to have copyright on the brain: A broad intellectual property enforcement bill introduced in July is slated for markup by the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, and another aimed at cracking down on piracy overseas was introduced Wednesday.

Google has moved to calm privacy concerns, with plans to halve the time it keeps users' web search data on record following pressure from European regulators.

The company said on its official blog it was reducing the amount of time it keeps the search data associated with a user's unique internet address to nine months from 18 months currently.

After nine months search data would be disassociated with internet protocol addresses. The company did not say when the measure would take effect.

Microsoft retain search logs for 18 months while Yahoo! kept such information for 13 months.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google looks to the next 10 years

Don't be evil

It was 10 years ago this month that Larry Page and Sergey Brin formed Google Inc to "organise all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" and do it better than anyone else.

Google Chrome: Is there anything under the hood? - Network World

The bottom line — it's fast, very fast. However, throwing huge factors of performance improvement around is likely more for headlines and less related to what you see yourself.

Interestingly, though, is one last aspect of Chrome that has yet to be mentioned, how it addresses the true slow part of the Web — the network. Sure JavaScript is slow, but it is nothing compared to round-tripping to the server. If you look closely at Chrome there is real goodness here. First, simple DNS resolution caching of common sites and pre-fetching is on by default in Chrome.And in terms of network plumbing, we found a very interesting feature in Chrome — native bzip2 compression. While gzip-based HTTP compression has been around for quite some time, bzip2 compression is much better in terms of size reduction for common text formats like HTML, CSS and very importantly JavaScript.

With the rise of very JavaScript-heavy sites this is going to be a welcome improvement. The bad news though is that so far no Web servers are dishing out bzip2-based data, save Lighttpd.

In the final analysis Google Chrome certainly gets the plumbing right, and this is just the start. While its end-user features are still being developed it is certainly clear that, as an engine, it provides a lot of horsepower for the future of Web development.

The WebKit Open Source Project

WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that's used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. WebKit's HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE. This website is also the home of S60's S60 WebKit development.

Nokia's Comes With Music won't worry Apple... yet

Comes With Music offers a compelling proposition: buy a phone, get free music downloads for a year. Carphone Warehouse will be the exclusive UK provider of Comes With Music handsets for now, and the initial CWM device will be Nokia's 5310 handset. Buyers receive "free" access to millions of tracks out of Nokia's own music store for 12 months.

The really interesting bit about Comes With Music is that users get to keep downloaded tracks after the 12-month free download period is up. Nokia would love for people to buy another Nokia device, thereby extending their subscription for another year, but it won't rescind the rights to music already downloaded.

But the entire scheme has a set of drawbacks so substantial that they will certainly limit Comes With Music's stocking-stuffer appeal. For one thing, there's all that DRM. The songs are all protected by a DRM that makes them playable only on a computer and a phone (and apparently, just one of each). That's great if you plan to use your phone as your music player at all times, though not so hot if you also have, say, an iPod or a Creative Zen.While the music can be kept "perpetually," even after the 12-month download period is over, DRM has a way of crashing the party. As noted when Microsoft and Yahoo shuttered music stores of their own, DRM-crippled tracks are only yours in perpetuity where "perpetuity" is defined as "until we shut down the DRM key servers." Don't plan on building a permanent music collection this way; it's more for sampling.

Then there's 5310 itself, which in no way possesses the sleek styling or "gotta get it now!" awesomeness of the iPhone or HTC Touch. While it may well be a competent platform on which to roll out the Comes With Music effort, it's hard to see how Nokia is "taking on Apple" with the offering, especially given the restrictions on the music.

BBC NEWS | Technology | BBC iPlayer offered on Nokia N96

Users of the Nokia N96 are to be among the first with the ability to run the BBC's iPlayer on their mobile phones.

From 1 October a purpose-built application will be available to download via the BBC website and will also be pre-loaded on some handsets.

The BBC iPlayer allows UK audiences to download and stream BBC TV and Radio programming from the past seven days.

A Nokia spokesman said the service would be 3G and wireless compatible and that Nokia would not charge to use it.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Intel details new core chip line

Intel has unveiled the processors that will form the core of its product line from 2009 onwards.

Details about Nehalem, now officially called Core i7, were given at the Intel Developers Forum in San Francisco.

The chips will appear in laptops, desktops and servers and with them Intel aims to boost processing ability, cut power use and improve graphics.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Intel unites the internet with TV

Intel has signed a deal with Yahoo to enhance the way people use their TVs by adding internet applications.

The collaboration will produce a Widget Channel that lets viewers e-mail friends, trade shares or check the weather while watching programmes.

The internet-based services will run on a new set of Intel chips designed specifically for web-connected devices.

"This is not a copy of a PC on TV," said Eric Kim, head of Intel's digital home group.

"We are setting a new bar and delivering a richer internet experience to TV like never before," he said.

BBC NEWS | Technology | One Laptop signs up with Amazon

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation has signed a deal with Amazon to sell its low cost laptops.

The online retailer will help with its next Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) programme that is due to begin in late November.

Under this scheme people can buy one of the XO laptops for themselves and donate the other to a school child in a developing nation.

It is hoped the deal with Amazon will iron out the problems OLPC encountered when it ran the G1G1 programme itself.

Kaspersky Lab patents dynamic antivirus technology - Security - iTnews Australia

Kaspersky Lab has patented a method of antivirus scanning that assesses files according to when and how they first appeared on the computer.

The method has been granted Patent No. 7 392 544 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Internally, it has been unofficially named ‘FirstTimeCheck’.

By dynamically varying the scanning level and set of tools used for file scanning, FirstTimeCheck is expected to minimise the impact of antivirus scanning on the overall system performance.

The technology also makes it possible to extend the time taken to scan new files and files received via ‘high-risk’ sources such as suspicious Web sites, P2P networks and e-mail attachments.

VMware Fusion 2.0 reaches release candidate stage

VMware Fusion 2.0 RC 1 was ushered out the door recently, and even contains a few new features to boot.

Most of the major feature updates were released as part of the Beta 1 and Beta 2 builds, including Unity 2.0, Leopard Server support, DirectX 9, and VM snapshots. It's pretty hard to compete with heavy-hitting features like those, but RC 1 is giving it a shot by including a free 12-month subscription to McAfee VirusScan Plus in order to keep nasty things off of your Windows VM. The RC build also includes full Italian and Spanish language support, bringing the number of support languages to seven (including English). In terms of more minor updates, the user interface has received a few tweaks, and the Leopard Server compatibility has been improved.

AppleInsider | Road to Snow Leopard: twice the RAM, half the price, 64-bits

Following the initial introduction to 64-bit computing leading up to Snow Leopard and a second segment outlining issues related to the amount of RAM that can be installed and actually used by the system, this third segment examines how much memory a specific app can use and how performance will improve with 64-bit addressing despite the additional overhead involved. A follow up segment will look at how the market for 64-bit apps is unfolding and how Apple is pioneering 64-bits on the desktop.

The new facility replaces Red Hat’s existing Brisbane premises, which served as its Asia-Pacific engineering and support headquarters for the past nine years.

According to Paul Gampe, who is the software vendor’s vice president of Engineering Services and Operations, Red Hat’s regional engineering and support business has grown over the past six months.

“We have increased staff in both engineering and support, so we are launching this new facility to accommodate for this expansion and scale for future growth,” he told iTnews.

The new facility accommodates approximately 110 staff and has created ‘a number’ of new positions, Gampe said.

Boasting an area of almost 1,500 square metres spread across multiple storeys, the new facility is triple the size of its predecessor and now is Red Hat’s largest engineering centre in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Many technology companies have moved their development and support functions from Australia to China and India,” Gampe said, noting that Red Hat has facilities in all three countries.

“But for Red Hat, the growth of these two economies has contributed to the expansion of our operations in Australia … Brisbane is the regional headquarters for Engineering in Asia.”

“Our Brisbane centre provides service and support to customers around the globe, with Australian and New Zealand customers benefiting further because support is available in their time zone,” he said.

Red Hat’s Asia Pacific engineering and support staff conduct software research and development, product engineering, project management and software engineering activities.

This includes core graphics engineering, and Red Hat’s main translation team, which is responsible for making products available in 13 languages including German, French, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Indonesian.

Gampe highlighted staffing and scaling Red Hat’s support organisation inline with its business growth as two core focus areas of the new headquarters.

“A number of significant announcements were made at the Red Hat Summit in June, particularly around open virtualisation and Linux Automation strategies,” he said.

“Hand-in-hand with these announcements, we’ve increased the local investment in ‘behind-the-scenes’ engineering functions as part of our commitment to these initiatives.”

The new centre was officially opened yesterday afternoon by the Honourable Desley Boyle, Queensland Minister for Tourism, Regional Development and Industry.

According to Gampe, Red Hat’s Queensland location was chosen nine years ago because of ‘overwhelming’ state government support through a Queensland Government grant, and the quality of local engineering talent.

To support and sustain local talent, and contribute to the open source community, Red Hat’s Brisbane engineering centre will drive several initiatives promoting open source innovation and collaboration.

This includes Red Hat’s ongoing sponsorship of Honours research students at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and a research collaboration with QUT that will investigate open source localisation.

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"Antony Loewenstein introduces us to many members of the digital tribe, their hopes, dreams and daily lives in countries where the new battle for freedom of expression is being fought." Salam Pax, The Baghdad Blogger

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http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-85490-9.html

YouTube on the intranet: Google Video for business launched

Companies making use of Google Apps as part of their business operations can now share videos within an organization without having to upload them to YouTube or another video sharing service. Google introduced Google Video for business today, which allows businesses to upload a video to Google Apps, then invite others to view it securely without having to worry about messing with privacy settings. The feature is already available for enterprises making use of Google's services, and will soon come to education customers, as well.

LinkedIn boosts Web 2.0 credentials - Internet - iTnews Australia

LinkedIn has launched a raft of new Web 2.0 features designed to enhance its business value and enable professionals to collaborate and network more effectively.

The social networking site, which claims over 26 million members, unveiled interactive discussion boards, enhanced search and a searchable groups directory which will allow users to find professionals and groups with similar interests.

Also new are digest emails, group homepages of latest activity within a group and the ability for group administrators to monitor and control comments.

Here’s the Google Chrome Browser Comic Book: Hey Microsoft, Kaa-POW!!! | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

Here is Google’s entire comic book that it is using to explain the technical details of its new browser called Chrome. It explains the techie underpinnings of Chrome, especially its JavaScript engine, called V8, that the company says makes future complex Web applications render faster.

Google Chrome - Download a new browser

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Chrome Just Means More Incompatible Web Sites | NetworkWorld.com Community

What Google is glossing over are the inevitable compatibility problems Chrome will introduce in how it renders and displays HTML. As software developers we already have to design, code and test knowing IE and Firefox each have their own idiosyncrasies. And Chrome will have its own as well.

Web Publishing: Google 404 Pages Help Your Web Visitors Find the Right Page

Google offers a free, embeddable widget for web site owners that can help fight back against link typos, permalink problems, and other issues that send visitors to non-existent pages. The customizable JavaScript widget suggests the URLs on your site closest to the link visitors come in on, and offers a search box pre-loaded with search terms relevant to the bad link. Anyone who's run a site for a long while knows that page URLs are a hard thing to keep linked and standing properly, and this widget is a nice step to preventing aggravation on both sides of the site. The widget requires signing up for a free Google Webmaster account and heading to the Tools menu, then the "Enhance 404 pages" link.

Featured Download: GMDesk Puts Google Webapps into a Single Desktop Application

All platforms with Adobe AIR: Free desktop application GMDesk provides quick access to Google services in a standalone window separate from your browser. GMDesk separates Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Maps from the rest of your web browsing, and provides keyboard shortcuts to switch between them (Ctrl+ or Cmd+1 through 6). You can't install browser add-ons like Better Gmail or Better GReader in GMDesk, and currently it displays too-small text in Gmail (though the developer is working on a fix for that). Ultimately GMDesk doesn't offer many features that make it worth using (or much better than apps like Prism or Fluid), but it raises the question: If Google released native desktop apps like Picasa for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and Google Docs, would you use them? Until they do (which may be never), GMDesk is a free download and requires Adobe AIR to run.

Feature: Create Distraction-Free, Customized Webapps with Prism

Prism is remarkably easy to install and start using, whether you use the Firefox extension to create your Prism apps or just use Prism itself. Simply head to your favorite webapp and pass Prism the URL, or download one of the pre-compiled app bundles of popular sites. Ubuntu 8.04 users can also grab most of the popular Google tools, plus Twitter and Facebook, through the repositories.

Once you see your app shortcuts, you may (still) be wondering what advantage Prism has over, well, a URL shortcut. Here's a few reasons you might consider using Prism instead of a Firefox tab (or five):

* Distraction-free web work: Sure, I can open up Google Docs in a tab and get typing, but, wait, the Gmail tab says I've got a new message! ... Okay, back to work. I was on the third paragraph ... But, wait, Google Reader probably has 100 new items in the time I've been doing this, right? I'll just check for a few minutes ...
* Memory savings: Firefox 2 launches on my Vista system and grabs about 30 MB of memory, and that amount grows and grows, even if I close my tabs as I go. A Prism implementation of Google Calendar uses just 16 MB, and stays there, no matter what I do with it.
* Security/privacy: A Prism app keeps its cache, temporary files or web history in a separate space from Firefox, and trades only a single set of cookies with the site it points at.
* Crash protection: Got a site or webapp that's resulted in repeated browser breaks? Run it in Prism instead, and even if it goes down, the rest of your browsing can continue uninterrupted.

If any of that sounds appealing, here's a few ways you can get more utility out of Prism, using free software tools and a little creative thinking.
Quickly access your webapps
It might go without saying for Windows power users, but you can easily integrate any Prism application into your preferred app launcher or assign a hot key to it. Launchy can find Prism apps pretty easily, and you can also assign hot keys using tools like Qliner Hotkeys, or to a desktop-side tab with Nubs. Even Vista's Start search feature can be a handy link to your calendars, email, and/or to-do lists with Prism. OS X users can keep their shortcuts on the dock, and so can Linux fans, with some help from Awn.
Keep Prism apps in the system tray
I'm a huge fan of applications that can be front-and-center on my screen when needed, but tucked quietly into the system tray the rest of the time. Mac OS X users can reduce any window to the dock, Linux users can do much the same with the AllTray utility, but what about Windows users? You've got your pick of apps, two of which we've previously covered. I like TrayIt for its easy customization, but our commenters have given shout-outs to 4T Tray Minimizer as well, which adds two buttons to your apps' title bars. Either way, you'll be able to keep your favorite sites running without taking up screen space.
At-a-glance web previews in Windows
Want to keep occasional tabs on your personal mail or Facebook page, but don't want the pop-ups or pings of an auto-checking app? Using tools like the previously-mentioned Thumbnail Sizer, Visual ToolTip, or a Vista registry hack, you can keep tabs on chat rooms, email, or live-blogging events in Vista (or XP) by simply mousing over a taskbar window or hitting Alt+Tab.
Create dynamic monitors with URL hacks
alexa_cropped.jpgSites that let you paste information into them for processing right from the URL are pretty nifty, and Prism can make them even more convenient. Want a Google Maps directions applet with your house always pegged as the starting point? Roll your own with a simple URL hack. Keep your eye on web traffic, create a window of deep Amazon discounts, and generally wrap the web around your savvy little finger.
Customized extensions (experimental)
This is more a "promising possibility" than current reality, but since Prism creates a new runtime environment for each application, each webapp can have its own extension set. Right now, unfortunately, there are no official Prism-accepted extensions—but a few handy hackers have figured out how to make some Firefox add-ons work in Prism. The trick involves modifying a configuration file and seems to work mostly with smaller, less-complicated apps, but the author claims to have gotten AdBlock working in his Prism rig. The more bright minds that turn toward this app, however, the more interesting the possibilities will become.

Featured Mac Download: Add Webapps to Your Dock with Fluid

Mac OS X Leopard only: Freeware application Fluid runs your favorite webapps in a dedicated, WebKit-based browser so you can run your most-used webapps just like they're native Mac apps. If this idea sounds familiar it's because Mozilla has tackled similar territory with an app they're calling Prism. The major difference is that Fluid uses the same rendering engine as Safari and gets that native Mac look that's still lacking from Mozilla apps. And since Prism doesn't really work with extensions yet, Fluid seems like the best choice if you're on a Mac. Fluid is freeware (though this beta expires in April, so it may go shareware in the future), Mac OS X Leopard only.

Featured Firefox Extension: Evernote Web Clipper Adds Content from Any Web Page

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Free, cross-platform note-taking application Evernote offers a handful of tools for clipping content into your Evernote account, including the newly released Web Clipper Firefox extension. Aside from a Clip to Evernote entry in the right-click menu and a new toolbar button, the extension works just like the Clip to Evernote bookmarklet (perfect in its own right if you don't want to install another extension). The inline dialog autocompletes tags and adds the item to your Evernote account without interrupting anything you're doing. A Web Clipper keyboard shortcut would be nice, too, but the extension or bookmarklet are a must-have for anyone getting started with one of the best note-taking tools available.

Feature: The Quicksilver-for-Windows Showdown

Before I owned my first Mac, Quicksilver was the application that made me wish I did. Luckily, slowly but surely, Windows developers began building apps intended to successfully attain that Quicksilver-for-Windows status. They started as simple application launchers, but recently the Quicksilver-for-Windows battle has exploded with tons of new applications. The question is: Which one deserves a place on your system?

Firefox Tip: Make Firefox 3's Bookmarks Available to Launchy and Quicksilver

Firefox 3 doesn't store your bookmarks in the plain old HTML file that Firefox 2 did, so desktop launchers like Quicksilver and Launchy can't index them properly. But the HackCollege blog has a solution: a Firefox 3 about:config tweak that makes Firefox automatically export your bookmarks to a file. Change the browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML value from false to true to get a bookmarks.html file saved to your Firefox profile directory each time you shut down your browser.

Not only does this config tweak provide a nice automatic bookmark backup, it also makes your links accessible to application launchers like Quicksilver and Launchy for quick launching from the desktop.

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): If you like the concept of bookmark tags introduced in Firefox 3 but just can't seem to get into the habit of using them, Firefox extension Tagmarks adds tag images to your awesome bar for quick and easy bookmarking and tagging. Once installed, you'll see several new images next to the default star when you hover your mouse over the star. Click one to both tag and bookmark that page in one fell swoop. You can click on as many of these tags as you want, and when you view your bookmarks, you'll notice text tags have been automatically assigned. Tagmarks is free, works wherever Firefox does. Hopefully we'll see a more customizable version of Tagmarks in the future.

Featured Firefox Extension: AutoPager Automatically Loads the Next Web Page Inline

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The AutoPager Firefox extension automatically loads the next page of a site inline when you reach the end of the current page for infinite scrolling of content. By default AutoPager works with a ton of sites, including Lifehacker, the New York Times, Digg, and, of course, Google. At first blush AutoPager is a little difficult to understand, but just set it as Always Enabled by clicking the AE link on supported sites and it'll take care of the rest. If you want to add your own custom autopaging to unsupported sites, the site wizard feature makes it easy (first pick the Next link, then pick only the content you want loaded (in Lifehacker, for example, the posts). AutoPager is free, works wherever Firefox does. For similar functionality, check out previously mentioned Repagination.

Featured Firefox Extension: RIP Permanently Removes Elements from a Web Site

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension Remove It Permanently (RIP) selectively removes any element from a web site. If you've ever looked at a site and wished you could get rid of some unsightly image or an element that throws off the flow of a site, just right-click it with RIP and remove it permanently. You can select to remove it from that page only, all similar pages, from the web site, or from the entire domain--in addition to a few other options. Don't think of it as an ad-blocker--you should just install an extension like AdBlock Plus if that's what you're looking to do; think of it more as an all-purpose annoyance remover. Unfortunately RIP hasn't been updated for Firefox 3.0.1, but this tweak will do the trick until it has. RIP is free, works wherever Firefox does.

Featured Firefox Extension: Drag & Drop.io Makes Sharing Files Dead Simple

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The Drag & Drop.io Firefox extension makes it easy to quickly share a file in Firefox 3 with previously mentioned file sharing site Drop.io by simple dragging and dropping the file in your browser. The best part of the extension is that you don't need to go through any tedious Browse for file dialogs to upload files you're probably already staring at anyway. The extension has a few subtle differences in how you can use it to upload and share files, so check the demo video for a full overview. If you want to be able to drag and drop files into any upload box at any site, check out previously mentioned dragdropupload.

Featured Firefox Extension: Google Redesigned Facelifts Gmail and GCal

All platforms with Firefox: Globex Designs, makers of the popular Gmail Redesigned skin, have released a standalone Firefox extension which applies the style without Stylish (or Better Gmail and/or Better GCal). Download the extension to completely redesign your Gmail and Google Calendar with the latest and greatest style from Globex.

Featured Firefox Extension: Evernote Web Clipper Adds Content from Any Web Page

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Free, cross-platform note-taking application Evernote offers a handful of tools for clipping content into your Evernote account, including the newly released Web Clipper Firefox extension. Aside from a Clip to Evernote entry in the right-click menu and a new toolbar button, the extension works just like the Clip to Evernote bookmarklet (perfect in its own right if you don't want to install another extension). The inline dialog autocompletes tags and adds the item to your Evernote account without interrupting anything you're doing. A Web Clipper keyboard shortcut would be nice, too, but the extension or bookmarklet are a must-have for anyone getting started with one of the best note-taking tools available.

AppleInsider is reporting that one of its readers has received one of Steve Jobs's legendary one-line e-mails in response to his complaints of third-party iPhone app crashes. The e-mail reads, simply, "This is a known iPhone bug that is being fixed in the next software update in September."

The issue seems to manifest at random and prevents any third-party applications from launching. The issue does not seem to affect all users, but it has generated at least one thread on Apple Discussions with 178 replies. According posts there, neither the 2.0.1 nor this week's 2.0.2 firmware update fixes the problem. It appears to be related to the FairPlay DRM, and some users have found temporary relief by deleting applications from the phone and re-syncing them manually. Others had success downgrading to iTunes 7.7 from 7.7.1 and re-syncing apps.

Apple's customer satisfaction up despite struggling industry

The most recent results of the American Customer Satisfaction Index puts Apple ahead of all other computer manufacturers with a rating of 85 percent, a new high for the industry. The Cupertino company saw an improvement of 8 percent since the last measurement, putting it 10 full percentage points ahead of its nearest competitor in an industry where the general satisfaction rating has gone down for the second straight time. The report attributes Microsoft's launch of Vista as responsible for at least some of Apple's numbers

MobileMe users get (another) extension, 60 days this time

Apple apparently recognizes that MobileMe "issues" are ongoing—after all, things are still occasionally going up and down and are otherwise unreliable. That's why the company has decided to extend every MobileMe user's account by another 60 days. Yes, apparently on top of the 30 days given out to MobileMe users last month.

Pixelmator 1.2.2 brings live gradients, laughs at Photoshop

Pixelmator, the feature-packed contender to everything from Photoshop to MS Paint, has received a minor update to 1.2.2 with a major new feature: live gradients. Pixelmator's gradient tool will now render a gradient's colors live while dragging its end point. This makes it much easier to plot out a gradient and play with a design, minimizing the need for cmd-z. This is something even Photoshop CS3 Extended can't flaunt, and according to a Pixelmator blog post, it required converting all gradient types from Cocoa to Core Image kernels "for performance." As a nice bonus, the gradient tool in Pixelmator's tool palette now displays a live color rendering of the current gradient you're using.

Use Fluke to add FLAC files to your iTunes library

The are quite a few audio and media formats out there, one of which is FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio Codec. This format serves a purpose similar to that of the Apple Lossless format, but many Apple users haven't heard of FLAC. This is due in large part to the lack of FLAC support in iTunes. Still, many Mac users have large FLAC libraries, so a number of attempts have been made to shoehorn FLAC files into iTunes. One of the newer utilities, Fluke, offers an easy way to add FLAC files to your iTunes library.

Fluke is actually just an AppleScript disguised as an application bundle, which by itself isn't enough to make the magic happen. Luckily, the Fluke installer will download the rest of the necessary components, including the XiphQT plug-in and two other libraries. One installation is complete, all you have to do is restart iTunes, drag FLAC files to the Fluke icon, and they'll be added to your library for your listening pleasure.

Robotripping: hands on with the Android SDK beta

Google has announced the availability of the first Android SDK beta and also disclosed the roadmap for the upcoming 1.0 release. The platform has improved significantly since the early prereleases, and the API is now richer and more complete.
Android applications and user interface

The user interface has been completely redesigned, with a strong focus on attractiveness and usability. The application with the most impressive improvements is the web browser. Ars recently gave Opera Mobile 9.5 a rave review. Android's built-in browser delivers all of the same features but with a cleaner and less clunky user interface.

Linux Foundation gets a boost as Canonical signs on

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, has joined the Linux Foundation. This move reflects the growing relevance of Canonical in the Linux ecosystem and indicates that the company has achieved a level of growth that empowers it to contribute additional resources back to the Linux community.

The Linux Foundation was formed last year when the Open Source Development Labs merged with the Free Standards Group with the aim of pooling resources and collaboratively defending the Linux platform from fragmentation. The organization employs Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds and also leads the Linux Standard Base (LSB) initiative, an effort to standardize and define the structure of the Linux platform.

Georgia cyberattacks lead to questions about risk to US

CNN's report on the United States' vulnerabilities doesn't explicitly state that the Russian hackers who attacked Georgia were directly attached to the Russian military, but implies that the online assault was, at the very least, coordinated with the real-world attacks. The problem is, there's apparently not much evidence to support this claim. Historically, online attacks have often followed real-world events that create controversy or tension between two opposing sides. Relations between Georgia and Russia have never been good, and grown increasingly fractious of late, so it's not surprising that hackers began attacking Georgian websites, including that of the President, in late July.

The attacks themselves, meanwhile, were absolutely nothing new. Botnets are readily available (and cheap), and DDoS assaults are practically the infantry of cyberwarfare. Such attacks require neither significant funds nor sophisticated attack vectors, and could conceivably be the work of a mere handful of people. The Russian government may have been involved in these attacks, but it certainly didn't need to be in order to guarantee their efficacy.

According to a recent report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the United States has no effective means of unilaterally preventing coordinated attacks from striking US websites. Scott Borg, director of the United States Cyber Consequences Unit (a nonprofit organization), has stated that the US isn't necessarily vulnerable to the types of DDoS attacks that brought down Georgia, thanks to an abundance over server bandwidth, but could be the target of other, more sophisticated attacks, or attacks that physically originate within the United States itself. "We can command so much bandwidth that it's hard to overwhelm our servers," Borg told CNN. "We are vulnerable to more sophisticated attacks, but right now most of the people who want to do us harm don't have those capabilities."

The only problem with Borg's remarks is that he apparently neglected to include a "yet," at the end of them.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Stellar result in MoD challenge

The Ministry of Defence today announced the winners of its Grand Challenge, a contest to identify promising battlefield robot technologies.

The contest began in 2006, with a shortlist of seven contestants battling it out 16-18 August.

The final phase included sniffing out a range of threats placed in a mock battle theatre.

Saturn, the winner, included integrated ground and aerial robots with visual, thermal, and radar sensors.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Windows 7 details to be released

A first glimpse at the technology inside the next version of Windows will be given in October.

Microsoft has said that engineering information about Windows 7 will be shared with attendees at two technical conferences it runs.

Windows 7 developers will show off their work at both the Professional Developers Conference and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference.

Based on Vista, Windows 7 is expected to be released in January 2010.

Featured Firefox Extension: Tagmarks Makes It Easy to Tag Your Firefox 3 Bookmarks

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): If you like the concept of bookmark tags introduced in Firefox 3 but just can't seem to get into the habit of using them, Firefox extension Tagmarks adds tag images to your awesome bar for quick and easy bookmarking and tagging. Once installed, you'll see several new images next to the default star when you hover your mouse over the star. Click one to both tag and bookmark that page in one fell swoop. You can click on as many of these tags as you want, and when you view your bookmarks, you'll notice text tags have been automatically assigned. Tagmarks is free, works wherever Firefox does. Hopefully we'll see a more customizable version of Tagmarks in the future.

Featured Firefox Extension: AutoPager Automatically Loads the Next Web Page Inline

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The AutoPager Firefox extension automatically loads the next page of a site inline when you reach the end of the current page for infinite scrolling of content. By default AutoPager works with a ton of sites, including Lifehacker, the New York Times, Digg, and, of course, Google. At first blush AutoPager is a little difficult to understand, but just set it as Always Enabled by clicking the AE link on supported sites and it'll take care of the rest. If you want to add your own custom autopaging to unsupported sites, the site wizard feature makes it easy (first pick the Next link, then pick only the content you want loaded (in Lifehacker, for example, the posts). AutoPager is free, works wherever Firefox does.

Featured Firefox Extension: RIP Permanently Removes Elements from a Web Site

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension Remove It Permanently (RIP) selectively removes any element from a web site. If you've ever looked at a site and wished you could get rid of some unsightly image or an element that throws off the flow of a site, just right-click it with RIP and remove it permanently. You can select to remove it from that page only, all similar pages, from the web site, or from the entire domain—in addition to a few other options. Don't think of it as an ad-blocker—you should just install an extension like AdBlock Plus if that's what you're looking to do; think of it more as an all-purpose annoyance remover. Unfortunately RIP hasn't been updated for Firefox 3.0.1, but this tweak will do the trick until it has. RIP is free, works wherever Firefox does.

Featured Firefox Extension: Drag & Drop.io Makes Sharing Files Dead Simple

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The Drag & Drop.io Firefox extension makes it easy to quickly share a file in Firefox 3 with previously mentioned file sharing site Drop.io by simple dragging and dropping the file in your browser. The best part of the extension is that you don't need to go through any tedious Browse for file dialogs to upload files you're probably already staring at anyway. The extension has a few subtle differences in how you can use it to upload and share files, so check the demo video for a full overview. If you want to be able to drag and drop files into any upload box at any site, check out previously mentioned dragdropupload.

Featured Firefox Extension: Google Redesigned Facelifts Gmail and GCal

All platforms with Firefox: Globex Designs, makers of the popular Gmail Redesigned skin, have released a standalone Firefox extension which applies the style without Stylish (or Better Gmail and/or Better GCal). Download the extension to completely redesign your Gmail and Google Calendar with the latest and greatest style from Globex.

Featured Firefox Extension: Evernote Web Clipper Adds Content from Any Web Page

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Free, cross-platform note-taking application Evernote offers a handful of tools for clipping content into your Evernote account, including the newly released Web Clipper Firefox extension. Aside from a Clip to Evernote entry in the right-click menu and a new toolbar button, the extension works just like the Clip to Evernote bookmarklet (perfect in its own right if you don't want to install another extension). The inline dialog autocompletes tags and adds the item to your Evernote account without interrupting anything you're doing. A Web Clipper keyboard shortcut would be nice, too, but the extension or bookmarklet are a must-have for anyone getting started with one of the best note-taking tools available.

Google Maps: http://m.google.com/maps
BeeJive - Instant Messaging: http://www.beejive.com/
Sprite - Backup software: http://www.spritesoftware.com/
Worldcard Mobile - Contact management helper: http://www.penpowerinc.com/
Skype: http://www.skype.com
Active Synch Remote Display: http://tinyurl.com/56rdbo
TouchPal - Soft keyboard replacement: http://www.cootek.com/
Opera Mobile - Browser: http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/
Battery Pack Pro - Bunch of utils: http://www.omegaone.com/batterypack/

Security researcher Dan Kaminsky has delivered his much-anticipated report on the DNS flaw he discovered earlier this year.

Kaminsky explained to a crowd at the Blackhat conference in Las Vegas that the flaw he uncovered could be used for attacks far more complex and sinister than just phishing operations.

The researcher began his presentation with an update on the patching operation. He noted that hundreds of millions of users have been protected through updates by vendors and ISPs, and the majority of Fortune 500 companies had deployed patches for their servers as well

The vulnerability centers around the way the domain name system looks up information linking URLs to IP addresses. In short, the flaw allows an attacker to "poison" a given DNS server and redirect traffic to the malicious site.

The vulnerability has mostly been discussed for its possible use in phishing attacks. However, Kaminsky warned that it could also be used to compromise mail servers, allowing the attacker to intercept and redirect messages.

Journalists expelled from Black Hat for hacking competitors - Security - iTnews Australia

Three French journalists from Global Security Magazine have been thrown out of the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas for hacking into fellow journalist’s computers.

Hacking is usually part of the fun at Black Hat and delegates are warned that hackers are patrolling the conference’s public Wi-Fi network trying to steal data. That data is then posted on a public ‘Wall of Sheep’ at the venue, to embarrass security specialists who should know better.

However, as the organisers don’t expect journalists to be as adept at network security the press area is off limits to hacking and runs on a private network. Nevertheless the three journalists decided to do it anyway and try and get the login details for journalists from CNET and eWeek onto the Wall of Sheep.

However the trio, Dominique Jouniot, Mauro Israel and Marc Brami, were rebuffed by staff, asked to leave the conference and banned from attending this year’s DEFCON event as well.

The attack seems to have used a network-sniffing tool called Cain and while it was successful in obtaining details from an eWeek journalists CNET report that the data retrieved on them was incomplete.

Mini laptop use set to soar - Hardware - iTnews Australia

Mini-notebook shipments are set to rocket past the five million unit mark this year and could reach eight million by 2009, according to new figures from analyst firm Gartner..

A mini-notebook typically has a five- to 10-inch screen and runs a full operating system. Current models include the Asus Eee PC and HP Mini-Note. Dell is also expected to make this week.

Part of the reason for the huge popularity of mini laptops, according to Gartner, is that they are likely to attract a variety of users with different requirements including content consumption, internet browsing and email and instant messaging use.

Although the surge in demand is likely to come mainly from consumer markets, mini-notebooks will also appeal to business users including journalists, sales people, and mobile services and support workers "who are seeking a small and lightweight mobile PC with basic functionality and internet connectivity", the report said.

“The demand for mini-notebooks will be driven by several factors: by their small form factor and small screen, their light weight, their price, their ease of use and their basic, but sufficient, PC functionality,” said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, in a statement.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google Street View gets go ahead

Google's controversial Street View photo-mapping tool has been given the all clear by the UK's privacy watchdog.

The system takes pictures of streets and adds them to online maps to let people see what locations look like.

The project drew criticism from privacy campaigners worried it could breach data protection laws.

But the Information Commissioner said it was "satisfied" that Google had put in place safeguards to avoid risking anyone's privacy or safety.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft sees end of Windows era

Microsoft has kicked off a research project to create software that will take over when it retires Windows.

Called Midori, the cut-down operating system is radically different to Microsoft's older programs.

It is centred on the internet and does away with the dependencies that tie Windows to a single PC.

It is seen as Microsoft's answer to rivals' use of "virtualisation" as a way to solve many of the problems of modern-day computing.

Tie breaking

Although Midori has been heard about before now, more details have now been published by Software Development Times after viewing internal Microsoft documents describing the technology.

Midori is believed to be under development because Windows is unlikely to be able to cope with the pace of change in future technology and the way people use it.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Invisibility cloak 'step closer'

Scientists in the US say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people invisible.

Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley have developed a material that can bend light around 3D objects making them "disappear".

The materials do not occur naturally but have been created on a nano scale, measured in billionths of a metre.

The team says the principles could one day be scaled up to make invisibility cloaks large enough to hide people.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Apple blogs to disaffected users

Apple has set up an apologetic blog devoted to solving the problems of its recently launched MobileMe service.

It follows a barrage of criticism of the service, which connects Apple devices to e-mail, contacts and online storage.

In posts over the weekend, the firm admitted to fixing "over 70 bugs" but that 10% of e-mail might have been lost for good.

It said the problem affected just 1% of customers.

One month of the iPhone 3G: what Apple needs to fix

It is just over a month since the worldwide launch of the iPhone 3G. The device has been welcomed enthusiastically by millions of buyers around the world, but the second coming of the iPhone has not been flawless by a long shot. Sure, it's rare for any launch to be entirely flawless, but problems have cropped up in greater frequency this time around than even after the original iPhone launch. Here, we look at the ups and downs in one month with the iPhone 3G.

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/

http://nimble.tv/

http://www.view2gether.com/

http://twit.tv/

http://www.mogulus.com/

http://www.ustream.tv/

http://www.rocketboom.com/

http://portablefilmfestival.com/symposium.php

I was watching the webinar by Dan Kaminsky about the DNS vulnerability that he found. Meanwhile ISP's and software vendors were taking their own sweet time to release the patch. I wanted to check whether my broadband provider, BSNL's DNS server has been patched? Dan has provided a button, CHECK MY DNS, in his web page using which I found that my DNS server wasn't yet patched. (I have sent a mail about this to BNSL though)

If DNS server is compromised, then we may end up with a fake website that looks like a real thing and end up giving our user credentials.

Rather than using BSNL's DNS servers, I changed my DNS server to OpenDNS.

I found this link very helpful in setting up OpenDNS : http://www.webmonkey.com/tutorial/Set_Up_OpenDNS/

Dan's Home page: http://www.doxpara.com/?p=1176

Disasters of DNS attack:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080726-new-dns-exploit-now-in-the-wild-and-having-a-blast.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/DNS-disaster-first-attacks-reported/0,130061744,339290897,00.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBUgEx_91BU (My Favorite)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BesI6NEPWlM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtp5gNhBZgo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwEWxpOWOok

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ3eq_lKHFk

Registrations for the .me top level domain started yesterday afternoon, giving users a new crack at getting a personalised web address.

Unlike the recent staggered rollout of the .asia domain, the .me registrations are open to everyone from day one.

The .me domain name was previously assigned to Montenegro after the country gained independence in June 2006.

However, owing to the widespread potential appeal of the name it is now available for general use.

Beware of 3G bill shock - Telecommunications - iTnews Australia

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is warning consumers to be wary of the high charges that come with excessive data usage on new 3G mobile devices.

With the nationwide popularity of the recently released 3G iPhone, the ACCC said it wants to make sure consumers know the risks of usage caps and excess charges that come with data usage.

"In the case of smartphones, consumers can download greater amounts of information from the internet than ever before. With this, comes the potential for them to exceed their phone plan value and incur considerable additional charges,” said ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Say goodbye to the computer mouse

It's nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days of the computer mouse are numbered.

A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years.

Taking over will be so called gestural computer mechanisms like touch screens and facial recognition devices.

"The mouse works fine in the desktop environment but for home entertainment or working on a notebook it's over," declared analyst Steve Prentice.

Every show an infomercial? TiVo, Amazon ink purchase pact

TiVo plans to introduce a new feature to its popular DVRs that will allow TV viewers to buy products on-screen directly from Amazon when they are shown on various TV shows—the ultimate form of product placement. TiVo hopes that the new venture will not only help the company offer new ways for users to interact with their DVRs, but also help shed its reputation among broadcasters for devaluing their advertising by enabling users to skip ads.

.org first top level domain to adopt DNS security protocol

ICANN has unanimously approved a request by the Public Interest Registry (which handles .org domains) to become the first generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) to switch to the DNS security protocol DNSSEC. As part of the agreement, PIR will trailblaze DNSSEC, while simultaneously developing an education and adoption plan that can later be disseminated across the Internet's infrastructure, PIR's use of DNSSEC is a significant step forward, but a mixture of contentious political and technological issues have slowed the worldwide development and deployment process.

DNSSEC is intended to fix fundamental flaws in the original DNS protocol that leave it vulnerable to several different attack vectors, including cache poisoning. This is accomplished in part through the use of digital signatures. By using such signatures, the DNS resolver can check to see if information it is receiving is actually from the appropriate address; the digital signatures effectively act as a password (the analogy is not exact).

The DNS flaws themselves aren't anything new—they were discovered back in 1990—but the solution to the problem has been no less than eleven years in the making, putting the length of its development cycle almost on par with Duke Nukem Forever. DNSSEC development lasted from January 1997 to the present day, or roughly 11 years and six months. DNF was announced in April of 1997, and, assuming 3DRealms makes good on its 2008 projection, must ship no later than December 2008, for a total development time of 11 years, eight months. Hail to the king, indeed.

iPhone 3G tethering possible with jailbreak and proxy app

Although Mobile Safari on the iPhone is a reasonably good way to surf the web, there are also times when that screen is a little small, and you'd rather be using your laptop. WiFi is one option, but free, public WiFi isn't a given in many areas. Depending on which mobile phone you have, you may be able to tether the device to your laptop and browse using a cellular data network. Now, the iPhone doesn't normally have this functionality (much to our frustration), but thanks to the recent iPhone 3G jailbreak and a third-party proxy application, cre.ations.net has figured out a way to (sort of) tether your iPhone 3G and use your laptop via the 3G network.

Open Tech offers a different twist on the Apple clone

Just one week after news broke about a lawsuit pitting Apple against "clone" manufacturer Psytar, another company has announced that it will be throwing its own hat into the ring. Open Tech Inc. has announced it will begin selling Mac OS X-compatible PCs in the coming days, offering two models to choose from: the Open Tech Home, and Open Tech XT.

The Open Tech Home, clearly marketed for home use, features a 3.4GHz Pentium D processor, 500GB of storage, 3GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM, a 500-watt power supply, built in WiFi, a GeForce 8600 GT (512MB), and a DVD burner for a total of $620. The XT, however, seems to be more of a pro workstation with a Intel Core 2 Quad running at 2.40GHz, 4GB of 800MHz DDR2, a 800-watt power supply, built-in WiFi, a GeForce 8800 GT (256MB) and a DVD burner for $1,200.

If we are looking at pure bang for your buck (and operating system aside), neither the Home nor the XT offer an outstanding ratio. You could build pretty much the same machine for cheaper elsewhere, but this is all about the operating system.

So how is Open Tech shipping its non-Apple computers with OS X installed? The answer is that it isn't. While the company will preinstall Ubuntu 8.0.4 or Windows XP, the computer the company claims to be Apple-compatible won't actually be able to do so with Mac OS X.

How To: Create Your Own Linux Recovery Disc

Linux.com writes up a helpful guide to creating your own custom system recovery boot disc using an Ubuntu 8.04 CD image, a little command line work, and a few recommended emergency tools, including the partition format/restore tool GParted, e2undel, a file recovery tool, and anything else you might need if your hard drive, RAM, or anything else on your system suddenly decides it doesn't want to work. The guide requires a good bit of command line work, but it also lets you add whatever programs you'd like to have when you come back from the brink, and helps you strip out programs you don't to boot faster. For a similar (but pre-compiled) hard drive-fixing tool, check out Gina's guide to using the System Rescue CD.

Virtualization: VeeDee-Eyes Offers Pre-Configured Linux Distros for VirtualBox

If you've been checking out the newest VirtualBox beta for Mac OS X, or you're intrigued by Linux but not ready to deal with virtualizing it, the Sun xVM VirtualBox VDI Index—or, as it's skeevily nicknamed, veeDee-Eyes—has a host of pre-compiled, pre-configured images for you. No need to set up space, "boot" from a live CD and mess around with hardware config, as copies of Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and others are ready to run. Not all of them are free, with a few of the multi-GB distros asking for a buck or two to cover server costs, but a good number of interesting variants and betas are there for the taking. VirtualBox runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and is a free download.

Linux Tip: p7zip Adds Built-In 7-Zip Tools to Ubuntu

The Tombuntu blog points out a seriously helpful package available in Ubuntu's extended repositories that make creating super-efficient 7-Zip archives simple and fast, whether you're right-clicking or working with a command line. Run this command to install it:

sudo apt-get install p7zip

Users of other Linux distros should find a similar package in their own sources. Once installed, creating compressed archives for storing or emailing is as simple as selecting the files, right-clicking, and choosing "Create Archive," and de-compressing just as simple

Time machine needed to get iPhone? - Boing Boing

Eric Mueller took this photo of an AT&T store on lower Broadway in downtown Manhattan (near Park Place / City Hall) today. Seems the iPhone is "temporally out stock." Perhaps it'll be available last year.

Apple pushes 1 million iPhone 3Gs, 10 million iPhone Apps

Apple announced this morning that it had sold 1 million 3G iPhones over the weekend since the device's launch on Friday. The device launched in 21 countries (France, one of the original 22 countries, is sitting this one out until July 17) to long lines that lasted throughout the weekend, making this the most successful device launch yet—at least in terms of sales. This was all despite significant problems over the weekend, including unresponsive iTunes activation servers, supply issues, and up-and-down MobileMe service.

What kind of iPhone data plan do you really need?

Here's an overview of some common activities, how much data they used, and how long they took. Note that the tests were done with an iPod touch over WiFi, so there will be some differences with cellular data use.

Only 6 percent of iPhone buyers purchasing this summer

In the past two weeks, SRG has asked a total of 1,127 potential iPhone buyers when they were planning on purchasing the device, and only 6 percent said that they would be buying either this month or next month. Around 30 percent of those asked said they weren't sure or would be buying "later". A full 25 percent of those surveyed are planning to buy around Christmas, and roughly the same amount are planning on buying in early 2009.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Fix found for net security flaw

Mr Kaminsky discovered the error in the workings of the Domain Name System (DNS) about six months ago.

DNS is used to convert web addresses written in words - such as www.bbc.com - into the numerical sequences used by computers to route internet traffic around the world.

The flaw revolves around the way that the servers that translate words into numbers handle the requests they get.

Unresolved the flaw would make it simple to operate "phishing" scams, in which users are directed to fake webpages supposedly for genuine banks or businesses and are tricked into disclosing credit card details or other personal data.

Mr Kaminsky talked to Microsoft, Sun and Cisco and many others in March and has been part of a team engaged in secret research since then to develop the security patch which has now been released simultaneously.

"This hasn't been done before and it is a massive undertaking," said Mr Kaminsky.

Despite the scale of the operation few are expected to see any disruption to their web experience as the patch is applied. It is not thought that the flaw had been exploited prior to its discovery.

Technical details are being kept secret for another month to give companies a chance to update their computers, before malicious hackers try to unpick the patch.

Personal computers should pick up the patch through automated updates. Microsoft released its patch on 8 July as part of its regular security cycle.

Apres CAPTCHA, le deluge - Boing Boing

CAPTCHAs -- the technology used to stop spammers from using computers to sign up for email accounts and the like -- are thoroughly broken; spammers and researchers are finding better and better ways to get computers to recognize the word-soup.

Time machine needed to get iPhone? - Boing Boing

Eric Mueller took this photo of an AT&T store on lower Broadway in downtown Manhattan (near Park Place / City Hall) today. Seems the iPhone is "temporally out stock." Perhaps it'll be available last year.

MPAA: actual P2P distribution often "impossible" to prove

Copyright holders shouldn't have to prove that an unauthorized distribution of their work occurred in order to collect damages, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The group made its argument in an amicus brief filed on Friday to Judge Michael Davis, the judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial, after he asked for feedback from the industry before deciding whether to order a mistrial. Both sides realize that the stakes are high and are throwing everything they've got Judge Davis' way.

P2P leecher targeted in Germany for making files available

Evidence used to "prove" P2P users guilty of copyright infringement has been called into question a number of times recently, as the argument about whether "making available" music and movies counts as copyright infringement continues to rage on. In one case across the pond, it turns out that a German user who was targeted for making files available through the eD2K network had actually tweaked his eMule client so that it would not upload any files whatsoever. Telling the world "But I was leeching!" will rarely earn you any sympathy, but might in this case.

Campus copyright battle moves to textbook torrents

The RIAA's extensive campaign against filesharing has drawn in a lot of individuals, but college campuses have remained a major target of the content owners' legal threats. It's pretty clear that there's significant expertise with filesharing on college campuses, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that this expertise has been put to use with other copyrighted materials. Textbook companies are getting worried about the sharing of their bread-and-butter online, and have started a campaign designed to block the sharing at its source.

Friday in San Jose CA: hearing to punish Universal for sending copyright threats to dancing toddler - Boing Boing

If you're in Silicon Valley this week and want to have some legal-type fun, you could drop in on the Lenz v. Universal hearing (dress nice, behave yourself!) in which EFF will be arguing that Universal should be punished for sending a bogus copyright threat to a mom who posted a 29-second youtube of her adorable toddler dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Viacom 'backs off' YouTube demand

Viacom has "backed off" from demands to divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched a video on YouTube, the website has claimed.

Google had been ordered to provide personal details of millions of YouTube users to help Viacom prepare its case on alleged copyright infringement.

Google, owners of YouTube, will now hand over the database but without data that could identify users.

Microsoft tells Congress Yahoogle will own 90% of ad market

A US Senate subcommittee heard testimony today about the competitive implications of Yahoo's recent deal with Google, which will see the company mix ads supplied by Google with its own on search result pages. In addition to two individuals who currently purchase search advertising, the hearings featured testimony from senior executives from the two principals involved in the deal, as well as Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith. Their testimony presented radically different pictures of what constitutes competition in the search market, how this deal will affect that competition, and the ongoing negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo.

Microsoft: $1 of piracy = $5.50 in "lost opportunities"

Each dollar lost to software piracy equals $5.50 in lost opportunities, claims Microsoft. A new white paper released by IDC and funded by the software giant looks at how copyright infringement affects the software ecosystem as a whole, not just how it affects a single corporation. IDC claims that, if Microsoft were to make back each of those lost dollars, partner companies would gain $4.37 in increased revenues and $1.13 in lower operational costs. That's assuming, however, that the Business Software Alliance's estimated losses due to piracy are correct—an assumption that IDC makes in this report, despite having admitted in the past that the numbers are misleading.

NVIDIA newest patent beatdown target for Rambus

We thought that Rambus' legal saga was finally winding down this year, with the cards largely having fallen in Rambus' favor. A jury in California determined that the company's patenting of DDR technology was not done fraudulently, and the DC Court of Appeals has determined that the FTC did not provide sufficient evidentiary support for its intervention in the RAM market. But instead of winding down, Rambus was apparently just warming up. The IP-only memory company has decided to start looking beyond traditional RAM manufacturing companies for further licensing, and has set its sights on graphics giant NVIDIA.

Apple finally sues unlicensed Macintosh cloner Psystar

Apple's adventures with Mac clones had at best, mixed results, and Steve Jobs quickly ended the program in 1997 after his return as CEO. While a company named Psystar ignored that memo when it decided to release its own unofficial Mac clones earlier this year, there's no way it's going to miss Apple's latest memo, which came in the form of a just-uncovered lawsuit filed earlier this month.

This past April, Psystar made instant waves by announcing a bargain-basement Mac clone for $399 that could run Leopard, the latest version of Apple's Mac OS X. Psystar's PC is an upgradeable tower with a respectable amount of features which, at face value, starts $200 lower than Apple's cheapest—and highly unconfigurable—Mac mini at $599. Despite drawbacks like incompatibility with some Apple software updates, a flood of orders brought the company's site down for days at a time.

Backup Utilities: Five Best Windows Backup Tools

Read on for a closer look at the five best Windows backup tools (according to Lifehacker readers), then give your vote to the application you like best:
- MozyHome does unlimited online backup for just $5 a month. Mozy is a set-it-and-forget-it solution, and the setting up part is incredibly simple. If you're just looking to give it a test run or you don't need unlimited backup, sign up for MozyHome Free, which gives you 2GB of backup space for gratis.
- Cobian Backup is free backup software that supports scheduled local and remote backups. Users love its rich feature set, as Cobian supports nearly every feature of its shareware alternatives. All current versions of Cobian are freeware, but the latest (version 9) is no longer open source
- SyncBack is full-featured backup software available in both freeware and shareware versions. The freeware SyncBack has a few limitations that the shareware version doesn't, like inability to backup open files, but both versions offer extensive features—including backup profiles and options for local and remote backups. The shareware version of SyncBack will set you back $30.
- Acronis True Image creates full live disk images of your PC so that when the time comes that you need to restore a backup, you're not just restoring files—you're restoring an exact copy of your PC as it was. The latest version of Acronis supports excluding individual files and folders from your image or you can set criteria for the data that you want to back up (in case you don't actually want to include everything in your disk image). Acronis True Image costs $50 and a 15 day trial version is available.
- Carbonite is an online backup solution similar to MozyHome. For $50 a year, Carbonite provides unlimited online backup and is another set-it-and-forget-it solution which offers off-site backup to remote servers. The biggest difference between Carbonite and Mozy is the price: Carbonite is $50 per year upfront compared to MozyHome's $5 per month, which adds up to $60 a year but doesn't lock you into a year. Carbonite does not offer a free version like MozyHome Free's 2GBs, but there is a 15-day trial.

Firefox 3: Ctrl+Drag a Tab to Copy It and Its History

When you want to backtrack a few paces in your web surfing clicktrail but not lose the page you're on, in Firefox 3, click on your current tab, hold down the Ctrl key and drag it. This will duplicate the tab and keep its history in the copy—that way you can back out and stay where you are in another tab. Sadly this trick only works in Firefox for Windows, not on the Mac. Don't forget, you can also drag tabs between browser windows in Firefox, too.

Screenshot Captor

Screenshot Captor is a program for taking screenshots on your computer. It's different from other screenshot utils in several notable ways.

The Australian Open Source community has called for the consideration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the implementation of the Rudd Government’s Digital Education Revolution Policy.

In an open letter that was submitted last week to the Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gilliard, members of the community expressed its support of the Government’s investment in Australian ICT capabilities, education and training.

The letter is signed by nine leading FOSS advocates, including: Open Source Victoria’s Education Spokesperson Donna Benjamin; OLPA Australia Director Pia Waugh; Red Hat Australia General Manager Max McLaren; and Samba Developer Andrew Tridgell.

Central to the FOSS argument is the low cost associated with Open Source Software, which could enable more flexible use of the $1000-per-unit National Secondary School Computer Fund (NSSCF).

Vodafone accidentally announces iPhone plans - Telecommunications - iTnews Australia

Vodafone is offering four different plans, which are modelled after its current schemes, for both cap contract and business customers.

The cheapest monthly plan runs for $69 a month for $310 worth of minutes and texts, and 250MB worth of data. With this plan, customers will pay $189 for the 8GB and $309 for the 16GB.

With a $169 a-month contract, customers can get the 8GB iPhone for free, and the 16GB device for $89. This plan is worth $1200 of minutes and 1GB worth of data.

The other plans charge $99 a month for $600 worth of talk and text and 500MB of data, and $119 for $800 worth of text and talk and 500MB of data.

Vodafone said it will release more details on launch-day Friday

Opinion: Year of the penguin - Linux & Open Source - iTnews Australia

It’s taken the confluence of several disparate but connected events to create the perfect breeding ground for desktop versions of Linux to finally flourish.

Firstly, credit where it’s due, Apple’s decision to switch to a Unix core proved that you didn’t need to be a geek and/or a master of the command line interface to enjoy the benefits of Bell Labs’ near 40-year-old gaming platform. You could now watch the pretty pictures with the click of a mouse and have no need to know what was under the covers of MacOS X.

And of course, credit to über-geek Linus Torvalds for rescuing Unix from the litigators arguing over who owns which bit of what was once basically free anyway. Your correspondent purchased the full source code for Unix, on magnetic tape of course, for US$1 back in 1980.

IBM and Linden teleport avatars beween virtual worlds - Internet - iTnews Australia

Linden Labs, creators of Second Life, and IBM say they have developed have created a set of compatible avatars that can be used on either companies systems.

The two companies said that they have successfully transported avatars from IBM's OpenSim virtual world server to a Second Life Preview server. The 3D characters were 'teleported' from one server to another and were able to function in both worlds.

The companies said that the occasion marks an important milestone in their interoperability efforts.

EU may regulate social networking sites over security issues

Social networking sites need more regulation in order to ensure that they won't pose major security risks to users, according to the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA). The agency issued a preliminary version of its General Report (PDF) covering online security this morning, pointing out that it views social networks as a "positive social phenomenon" that are not without their own set of security problems, and the organization has a set of recommendations meant to protect users online.

ENISA said that some of the main threats identified so far through social networks involve digital dossiers, face recognition, and social engineering attacks on enterprises. Phishing attacks, reputation damage, ID theft, stalking, and cyberbullying are common as well. The organization says that, because of the human desire to connect and the growing popularity of social networks, it's easy for users to let their guards down and not be aware of the size of the audience accessing their information. "Social Networking may be seen as a 'digital cocktail party,'" read the report. "However, compared with a real-world cocktail party, [social networking service] members broadcast information much more widely and sometimes unadvisedly, either by choice or unwittingly."

AMD set to ship first retail Mac Pro-ready graphics card

AMD has announced the ATI-branded Radeon HD 3870 for Mac & PC Edition, its first retail video card for the Mac Pro. Apple offers a version of the Radeon 2600 as the standard option for the Mac Pro, but this card is the first 3000-series available for that system. The card is also the first graphics card that is both Mac and PC compatible out of the box.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Google must divulge YouTube log

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a "set-back to privacy rights".

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

BBC NEWS | Technology | It's not the Gates, it's the bars

Many outside the computer field credit Microsoft for advances which it only took advantage of, such as making computers cheap and fast, and convenient graphical user interfaces.

Gates' philanthropy for health care for poor countries has won some people's good opinion. The LA Times reported that his foundation spends five to 10% of its money annually and invests the rest, sometimes in companies it suggests cause environmental degradation and illness in the same poor countries.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Firefox download record official

Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period.

The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for web browser Firefox 3.0 took place in June.

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