Software posts

The iPhone isn’t just a communications tool, it’s a personal computer connected to every piece of electronic information in the world. It’s the most powerful tool in existence and the biggest thing to happen to education news since the invention of writing. It can compress the Einstein’s life work and the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius into three by four inches, and most people waste it on Angry Birds instead. Increase your IQ and become a better person by using these education apps instead. Star Walk Star Walk turns space itself into an open book, one read through your iProduct. It adds…

The Tom Cruise-driven vision of a future (almost) completely without murder worked with the concept that if we could use precognition to know when a murder was going to happen in the future, we could prevent it from ever happening. It was a science fiction concept that has tantalized the imagination on different levels with other concepts introduced in the film. Floating visual computer interfaces and iris-recognition technology aside, the crime-fighting components are well out of reach. Or are they? According to this infographic, we may actually have somewhere to go with all of this using…

It’s been a long time since a concept car has really sparked the imagination of tech geeks and car enthusiasts alike. When Toyota unveiled their latest concept car, the Fun-Vii, at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show this week, everyone from Automobile Magazine to Mashable jumped in to discuss its proposed paradigm-shifting features. It’s clear what the “Fun” part of the name means just by watching the second video below. The “Vii” stands for Vehicle, Interactive, Internet. Inside and out, most aspects of the car can interact with the internet and be controlled by a smartphone. Most surfaces on and within…

Laugh synth for iOS has just been released, compatible with both iPhone and iPad. Laugh Synth makes it possible create laughing sounds with a simple touch of the screen to control different characteristics of the laugh. Users can even sample their own sounds to create custom laughs. This is as easy as recording any sound you want (laugh, scream, burp, meow, whatever) and trimming to only use the portion of the waveform you want. Touch the screen to control the pitch and the level of effects present in the sound. Add reverb or other effects to further enhance the laugh. Have a look at the app by watching…

In the not-too-distant past, Macs were a relative rarity in the laptop bags of those attending open source conferences. Not so anymore. I recently had the chance to go through some download data from SourceForge for an article on the site’s blog and talk to Community Hacker Rich Bowen about what the data meant. Windows downloads led the pack by far, and Mac and Linux download levels swapped positions over the past couple of years. Bowen told me out he saw people whipping out MacBooks at ApacheCon and other places he never would have seen them a few years back, anecdotally supporting the overall trend…

The future of the internet and computing might be in the cloud, but people are reluctant to give up their hard drives and programs. This has been made clear by the assumed poor performance of the Chromebook line of laptops over the last six months. The most recent price reductions of Acer and Samsung Chromebooks to a base of $299 just prior to Christmas is enough circumstantial evidence to show that we’re just not ready to dish out big bucks for cloud-based computers. Like it or not, we use Microsoft Word. We feel safer storing our pictures on our hard drives. We don’t want to rely on persistent internet…

The term “firewall” has one that most people know but few understand. It’s often confused with anti-virus software because of the similarities of purpose, but it has a completely different use on your computer. This infographic by ZoneAlarm breaks it down nicely for us (while throwing in a quick pitch about their product). Knowing what they do and why they’re important can help you understand how to better protect your computer from the more nefarious types on the internet. Click to enlarge. …

Everyone has heard of hackers, viruses, and spam. What fewer people have heard of or understand are botnets despite statistics that show they’re trending to be the choice of current cybercriminals. By using “Command-and-Control” servers, hackers are able to remotely take over computers to execute their nefarious activities. Connecting through C&C servers allows a “bot herder” is able to send out spam emails, spread viruses, distribute malicious software, and steal identities. Nearly 90% of all email spam is sent through botnets – and that’s not their biggest threat. This infographic…

Amazon is getting a lot of attention based upon the Amazon Fire tablet, but now that buzz around the initial launch announcement has subsided a bit, it’s time to take a look at real differentiator: Silk. When Amazon first introduced Silk, they didn’t wait beyond the 2nd sentence of the post before asking the question that they knew would be asked by dozens of tech bloggers: “A browser?  Do we really need another one?” Their response to those and other questions is in this video: What they didn’t address was the inherent problem with their browser: privacy. To solve the concern that tablet hardware…

With over 12 million monthly visitors, word must get out to keep people from going to MySQL(dot)com until they get things sorted out. This isn’t a minor annoyance. The exploits inserted by the hackers are extremely malicious and work in the background. There is no need to click on or accept anything. Simply visiting the site can cause major permanent damage to your hard drive and currently only 6 out of the 43 major malware protection services are even able to detect it. The administrative access to perform the hack and inject the exploits, known as the BlackHole Exploit Pack, was sold through a hacker…