Worst Inside: 6/1/11

Jun 30, 2011

VisionOnlineJobs Review

I have been working for VISION online jobs (www.visiononlinejobs.com) and my findings are that company is very honest and smart to pay back for what you do for them. They have penalized me for the mistakes I made while working because the franchise people did not educate me about the whole process which resulted in my anger and anxiety towards franchise staff.

Cool Your Head to Fall Asleep - Tip for Insomniacs

PhotoAlto/Frederic Cirou

Can't sleep? If darkening the room doesn't help, you might try a cooling cap.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine reported this week at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) that keeping the brain cool may help people with insomnia to catch more z's.

Free to Be You and Me: Valve's 'Team Fortress 2' Goes Grati

valve's got a good thing going on two important fronts.

First, its Steam digital distribution network went from an idea viewed with skepticism to a juggernaut that's a vital destination for developers both big and small who want to reach PC gaming audiences.

Second, as one of gaming's most respected creative studios, they've created classics like the Counter-

Archos

Somehow, Archos has managed to fit some powerful hardware into an Android tablet that's just over half the price of an iPad.

The Archos G9 series tablets will come in two flavors when they launch in late September: An 8-inch model will start at $279 and have the same screen resolution as an iPad (1024-by-768), and a 10.1-inch model will start at $349 and use a widescreen format like many other modern Android tablets.

Techland Illustration

Is Google too big for the U.S. Government? That might explain why the company is rumored to be facing subpoenas concerning abuse of its position in web-search advertising.

The Wall Street Journal quotes the traditional "people familiar with the matter," and explains that "issues in the FTC probe are expected to include whether Google searches unfairly steer users to the company's own growing network of services at the expense of rival providers."

Techland photo

The commercialization of Twitter is going to mean advert tweets appearing in users' timelines, according to the Financial Times.

Given the hoo-ha when the company added the "QuickBar" to timelines viewed via its iOS app, see if you can imagine how much of a stink putting ads in the timeline would cause. One helluva one.

Reuters

Hacker group LulzSec has struck again, this time targeting Arizona law enforcement by releasing thousands of pages of confidential documents and communications presumably acquired in a security breach. Among those documents are several that show law enforcement's special interest in the iPhone and other smart phones.

Less than one year after Facebook's big 500 million user milestone, the social network is still piling on more users.

A source close to the company tells TechCrunch that Facebook's user count has just passed 750 million. Facebook won't officially confirm the number, probably because it's waiting for 1 billion users before it makes another announcement, but earlier estimates from this month and last month suggest that the numbers may at least be close to the mark.

I'm ready for my upgrade, by which I mean from a well-worn early 2010 13-inch MacBook Pro to a shiny new Thunderbolt-equipped 11.6-inch MacBook Air—if Apple does right by me spec-wise with its imminent MacBook Air refresh, anyway. The latest rumors (per DigiTimes) don't tell us much about what to expect from Cupertino's ultraportable not-a-netbook (but really, yes Apple, a netbook) product update, save that it's due to happen in July.

Google ramps up speed of search

Google has made changes to its search engine as it strives to get consumers the information they want faster.

Its new Instant Pages system will shave between two to five seconds off the time it takes for a web page to load, the company said.

It is also planning to offer voice-activated and enhanced image searching.

The first laptop running Google's Chrome operating system has gone on sale in the United States.

The Samsung machine replaces installed software with browser-based apps which store files online.

Google claims that the technology enables a new way of computing, removing the need for features such as anti-virus software or optical drives.

This is not the first time, any indian singer is showing insecurity towards Atif, prominent singers like Asha Bhosle, Abhijeet and Sunidhi Chauhan have earlier criticized Atif Aslam in the past.

Abhijit Sawant – who will be seen in an upcoming Bolly flick

‘Comedy ke Tansen’ – was when asked, why has he put his musical career on stake ? he replied the question with, “There’s a great deal of lobbying in the music industry.

Amazon

It's sad, but it's true: Spam is as spam does. It gets everywhere. It's now found its way into Amazon's Kindle e-book store.

One of the great things about the Kindle store is that anyone can sign up as an author, upload a manuscript, and "publish" it for instant sales to millions of Kindle owners, desperate to consume more e-ink because their Kindle still has 76 years of battery life left and they'll be damned if they're going to let any of that go to waste.

snapdeal

A small village in India has decided to rename itself "Snapdeal.com Nagar" after an online daily deals company, and surprisingly, it's not some overblown publicity scheme gone wrong.

Instead, the town (or "nagar," in case you were wondering why it was called "Snapdeal.com Nagar") chose to change its name to thank the company for adopting the village and installing manual pumps, giving the inhabitants clean drinking water for the first time.

Apple

When Apple's OS X Lion debuts in July, it'll only be available through Apple's Mac App Store. No retail copies, no white-edged Apple-gray install DVDs—just an install file you'll purchase and pull down by conjuring the App Store from your Mac's dock and perusing "New and Noteworthy" for a picture of Apple's new tawny-maned kitty. Oh, and you'll need at least 2GB of memory, 4GB of install space and to be running the very latest version of OS X Snow Leopard in the bargain to make it all work.

Doug Aamoth / Techland

Ben Bajarin is the Director of Consumer Technology Analysis and Research at Creative Strategies, Inc, a technology industry analysis and market intelligence firm located in Silicon Valley.

Earlier this week I spoke at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition. The topic I was asked to address was related to connected TV. More specifically I was addressing how the advent of Internet connected TV's will drive new commerce opportunities called "t-Commerce" or commerce through the television.

TECHLAND ILLUSTRATION

Late last night news broke that Facebook was finally making its own iPad app. "An iPad app?" you say. "Haven't iPads been around for, like, a year now?"

Yep. The iPad's been without a native Facebook app since its launch in April 2010. But the New York Times is reporting that sources at Facebook will introduce their long-awaited iPad app some time in the next few weeks.

Samsung

In a rumor that's as shaky as rumors get, Samsung may be working on an updated version of its 7-inch Galaxy Tab.

That's right, the original iPad rival that was quickly overshadowed by newer, shinier competition -- including the iPad 2 and a bigger Samsung tablet -- is reportedly getting a refresh, according to Italy's unofficial Samsung HD Blog.

Now you can't watch 'Friday' anymore - Rebecca Black Video Off YouTube

guardian

Happy Friday everyone! Well everyone but Rebecca Black, the 13-year-old YouTube sensation whose song "Friday" has gotten 167 million views. If you haven't seen the notoriously bad video, you may have lost your chance. Rebecca's family had the video taken down because they say Ark Music Factory, the company they hired to make it, is wrongfully exploiting the song and Rebecca's image.

Twitter's Link Shortener - Why Third Parties Will Be Okay

REUTERS

Once upon a time not very long ago, the link shortening business appeared to be the tech world's next golden egg. Site's like TinyURL and Bitly were able to build fully-realized business models by condensing links down to more manageable Twitter lengths of roughly 20 characters long.

Financers were impressed. In October of last year, Bitly managed to raise another $9 million in series B funding with its 200 million clicks supplied per day.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

The hackers behind recent attacks on Sony's PlayStation Network may be less anonymous than they'd hoped. The New York Times is reporting that police in Spain say they've nabbed three individuals allegedly involved in recent hack-intrusions against Sony's PSN (among other cyber-iniquities). The three were arrested independently in the Spanish cities of Almeria, Barcelona and Valencia.

From their data facility cooled by seawater, to the green-friendly architects they hired to design their new offices, we here at Techland are big fans of all the sustainable initiatives Google's been unveiling.

In the latest post on the Google blog, the company revisits its RechargeIT initiative from 2007, which aimed to cut CO2 levels and oil use by standardizing electric plug-in vehicles across the company.

Protect Your iPad While Cooking

The iPad makes a nice digital cookbook, huh? But using it around messy ingredients can get downright ugly and trying to use the touchscreen when your hands are covered in whatever it is that people who know how to cook have their hands covered in is a bad, bad idea.

What goes down must eventually come back up. That would've been Newton's fourth law had he lived another 284 years and been using Skype this morning.

"Skype broken for everyone?" wrote Xona Games' game producer Matthew Doucette on Twitter this morning. I glanced up at my Mac's menu bar. Sure enough, the dreaded X-Cloud (or "X-in-a-cloud," you pick) icon.

Reuters

If you're worried about being attacked by computer hackers, here's a curious piece of information that might put your mind at ease: 25% of them are working for the FBI.

The Guardian newspaper has discovered that one in four hackers is an FBI informer as part of a recent investigation, with many forums where hackers sell illegally obtained information being run by either moles or undercover FBI agents.

Image: Jack Tretton / Sony

Sony bigwig Jack Tretton kicked things off at E3 2011 last night exactly as we hoped he might, owning the PlayStation Network outage from his first word, and even managing to crack a joke and tease the press, who've certainly benefited traffic-wise from Sony's misery.

"This isn't the first time that I've come to an E3 press conference with an elephant in the room," said Tretton, dressed in a gray suit, pink shirt, and light blue tie as he strode the stage and kicked off Sony's E3 presser.

Reuters

There was so much stuff announced at Apple's WWDC keynote yesterday, it's hard to know where to start.

But one thing was abundantly clear: The humble mouse you've got plugged into your computer is living on borrowed time. There are Lions prowling, and they're hungry for mouse-sized snacks.

Photo: NASA

It's one of those shots that makes you go "holy word-I-can't-say-here": A space shuttle hanging from the International Space Station like a bird caught midflight, or a high diver reaching around about to leap backwards off a diving board. It's also the first photograph of a shuttle—the very vehicle that helped assemble the space station over the past decade—taken by another spacecraft while snapped into the ISS.

Reuters

Yes, "Burp." Oh dear.

That's the trouble with key moments in history: Very often, the people involved have no idea that they're taking part in a key moment in history.

Most of time it's just another ordinary day where you brush your teeth, go to work, and type the word "Burp" in a message to your boss. Happens all the time.

"Spectacular is an understatement."

With those words, Cupertino Council Member Orrin Mahoney greeted Steve Jobs' presentation to the council about his plans for a new HQ, just a few blocks down the road from the existing one located at One Infinite Loop.

Facebook

I know the future is upon us, but there's still something about facial recognition that creeps me out. Especially when it suggests those not-so-flattering photos of me accurately...

Soon, Facebook will be able to scan all photos posted to Facebook and suggest people to tag based on their facial features.

Kung Fu Panda 2 3D (2011)

Po is now living his dream as The Dragon Warrior, protecting the Valley of Peace alongside his friends and fellow kung fu masters, The Furious Five. But Po's new life of awesomeness is threatened by the emergence of a formidable villain, who plans to use a secret, unstoppable weapon to conquer China and destroy kung fu. He must look to his past and uncover the secrets of his mysterious origins; only then will Po be able to unlock the strength he needs to succeed

AFP Photo

TEHRAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday accused Washington, Tehran’s arch-foe, of planning to sabotage Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, during a media conference in Tehran.

“We have precise information that America wants to sabotage the Pakistani nuclear facilities in order to control Pakistan and to weaken the government and people of Pakistan,” the hardline president said.

Microsoft has run an extended campaign to get people to abandon IE6

Google is phasing out support for older browsers from 1 August.

Those using IE7, Safari 3, Firefox 3.5 and their predecessors to view Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites will then lose some functions.

Eventually, it warned, these web services will stop working for those sticking with older browsers.

Two unexpected words have joined the list of those you can't say on television and radio news in France: "Facebook" and "Twitter."

The French TV regulatory agency, Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel, has banned mentions of either company on the air unless it relates to a specific story about said companies, for fear of unfair commercial promotion.

Apple

Something strange is afoot.

Right before an Apple event that normally announces a new iPhone, yet this year is supposedly NOT being used to announce a new iPhone, Walmart has dropped the price of the iPhone 4 down to $147. If I had a full beard, I'd be stroking it right now and saying, "Hmmm."

The closest thing gamers have to a holy pilgrimage comes in the form of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. E3 takes over the Los Angeles Convention Center for only three days every year, but entire weeks leading up to the show are filled with hype and rumors about what games and hardware will be shown and announced.

This year's no different. In fact, the stakes feel higher in 2011 than they have in some time.

Photo: Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

It looks like Google Gmail wasn't the only online service pummeled in recent hack attacks: It turns out Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail were, too.

That, and while the targeted attacks—technically dubbed "spear phishing" attempts—were carried out independently, the methods were eerily similar to those employed against Google, says security vendor Trend Micro.

PEMRA issues notices to 4 TV Channels for provoking anti-national sentiments

ISLAMABAD, Jun 3 (APP): Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) on Friday issued notices to Geo News, Dawn News, News One and Dunya News for being irresponsible and provoking anti-national sentiments among viewers by sensitizing events unnecessarily. According to a PEMRA press release, some of the talk shows and programmes of these channels were observed in violation of Section 20 of PEMRA Ordinance 2002 read with Rule 15 of PEMRA Rules 2009 and clause (1) (d) (g) (h) of Code of Conduct set out in the Schedule-B of PEMRA Rules 2009.

Is the Nokia Oro a beautifully crafted and exclusive handset with will impress people with your good taste? Or is it a just tarted up Nokia C7 with a bit of bling and costing nearly four times as much? The truth is that it is a bit of both.

Nokia are remarkably honest about their target customers - they say that "The main markets for this sort of device are the Middle East and Russia.. premium products like Nokia Oro have always been best sellers in Russia..

What if you could turn your iPad 2 into a laptop by simply placing it in a case? That is the promise of Crux Loaded by CruxCase, clamshell enclosure that gives users a keyboard like that Logitech Keyboard Case we reviewed, but goes a step further by also offering a trackpad. Both trackpad and keyboard communicate with the iPad wirelessly using Bluetooth, and CruxCase claims the trackpad will control the iPad 2 in the same multitouch way as the iPad’s screen.

Toshiba has announced its foray into the fast-growing tablet market with its latest gadget called Thrive.

The Japanese electronics maker has priced its entry level model at $429 (£262), which is cheaper than the base model of Apple's ipad2.

The company said its base model comes with wi-fi ability and is targeted at consumers who use tablets at home.

Microsoft Previews OS Windows 8

A major player on the third day at Computex was Microsoft. They dropped some major news by previewing the next generation of the Windows operating system code-named Windows 8. Mike Angiulo, Corporate Vice President of Windows Planning, Hardware and PC Ecosystem at Microsoft demonstrated how the new operating system is optimized for newer touch-centric hardware, including tablets in a technical preview.

Google is being sued by PayPal, which claims that the internet search giant stole its technology for turning smartphones into digital wallets.

PayPal alleges that Google obtained trade secrets from Osama Bedier, a former PayPal executive who is now Google's vice president of payments.

The lawsuit came hours after Google unveiled its plans to allow people to pay for shopping with their mobiles.

FarmVille Maker Looks to Grow Empire

NEW YORK (AP) -- The creator of "FarmVille" and "FrontierVille" is ditching the "ville" suffix for its latest Facebook game, "Empires & Allies."

The game from Zynga is set to launch Wednesday. It is like a mix of the classic strategy game "Risk" and "CityVille," where players oversee virtual cities. Unlike the company's other games, which give points for helping neighbors, "Empires" lets Facebook users play against one another.

After achieving success in Bollywood, singer-turned-actor Ali Zafar might end-up starring in a Hollywood movie. The actor, whilst speaking to the media in Lahore, said that apart from signing on for two more Indian movies, he has got an offer for a Hollywood movie as well.

Now this surely is one hell of news for all of the Ali Zafar fans out there. And it’d be interesting to see him in a new avatar (of Hollywood especially) if he considers signing-up for that movie.

The King Khan has posted his first video blog in twitter. In the video SRK shares everything from family to movies and Cricket. The video last about 1 Minute and 32 Seconds long where he shares about his daughter’s birthday.

He says he had gifted his daughter a pink lipstick and one of her friends gave her a pink iPod and a white bikini, so she was thrilled.

Bollywood actress Bipasha Basu was held at the Mumbai airport for not declaring goods bought from London at customs, said TV reports. The actress, however, was cleared after she paid a tax amounting Rs 10,000. Bipasha inadvertently passed through green channel without declaring the items she bought from London.Bipasha Basu told a news channel that she did not know about the tax and has now been cleared by customs.

Apple will be ditching the glass back for the iPhone 5 for an aluminum back, a report from the Economic News Daily of Taiwan says.

The publication, citing a Chinese source who has reportedly confirmed the plan by Apple,

says that problems with scratches, white paint and weight of the back panel on the iPhone’s glass back are the cause of the plan.

Over 50 of the latest tablet computers will be on show as the annual Computex computing show kicks off in Taipei, Taiwan.

All will be hoping to put a dent in the Apple iPad's dominance of the market amid falling PC sales.

The event is the second-largest in the computing diary, and runs from Tuesday to Saturday.

Apple's battle against Mac malware has taken a predictable turn, as a new threat bypasses the MacDefender patch that Apple just issued.

On Tuesday, Apple issued a security update that was supposed to block the MacDefender malware and its variants. But according to Ed Bott at ZDNet, malware makers have already worked around Apple's defenses.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center released today tells us a little more about the Twitter demographic, though most of it isn't all that surprising.

13% of online adults in the U.S. use Twitter, up from 8% in 2010. 25% of African Americans online are on Twitter and 19% of Hispanics online are also users. Though they're the second largest group on Twitter,

And so it begins.

Google's foray into the potentially lucrative world of hyperlocal Groupon-like deals was announced at the D9 conference yesterday. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt was joined by VP of Commerce Stephanie Tilenius to unveil the beta roll out of ‘Google Offers' starting in Portland, Oregon (with New York and San Francisco to join the ranks shortly).

Google's "+1" initiative, announced in late March, is finally ready for its big debut on sites across the web. Similar to Facebook's "Like" button, +1 will live on some of the websites you frequent and you'll be able to click it to recommend whatever you find interesting to others.

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