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Mininova Ordered to Remove all Torrents

Sierra Monica B. — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:11:08 +0000

Yet another big file-sharing web site with users from allover the world was forced to remove all its torrents. Well, actually not all of them, but only those containing materials protected by the copyright laws. It is about Mininova this time, one of the largest torrent providers, based in Netherlands.

BBC News informs us about the court decision to force Mininova remove all the links to illegal torrents and that the site didn’t shut down, but has already removed the material.
“We applaud the fact that Mininova now uses the BitTorrent technology for legal business,” said Tim Kuik, director of Brien, a Dutch anti-piracy group. “We are not against the technology but only against the use of that technology for illegal purposes.”
In the mean time, Mininova declared in a blog post that they are thinking in appealing against the court decision.

Earlier this month, people were talking about The Pirate Bay, another famous torrent provider, which was ordered by a Dutch court to remove all the links to content pertaining to a group of music and movie makers from Netherlands. The founders of The Pirate Bay, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholmmen, declared that they already sold the torrents site and are no longer responsible of the content sharing. The new owner of The Pirate Bay is Riversella, a company from Seychelles.

iOKi Lets you Record Your Voice Over Karaoke Songs via iPhone and iPod touch

Sierra Monica B. — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:32:57 +0000

gridMobi has just introduced a new iPhone application that enables a karaoke-like experience with Lady Gaga’s songs and not only.
The new application is called iOKi and is available for download at the iTunes App store for US users at a price of $4.99. It allows you to select a song from the list and play it with the possibility to see the lyrics on the display and record your own voice over the negative.

iOKi is available for both iPhone and iPod touch and you can purchase songs in karaoke style via the application, for $1.99 per song, or sing the five pre-loaded tracks of Lady Gaga, including Bad Romance from the Fame Monster album.
You can select a song by artist, genre, era, song title, gender or album title. The application’s interface is available in English, Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

In addition to the karaoke songs you can see slideshows with images with Lady Gaga displayed behind the lyrics and use the automatic linking to your Twitter account, which lets your friends know when and what you’re performing. Another thing you can do is send your recordings to friends via email.

The iOKi application was developed by gridMobi in collaboration with Lady Gaga.

New iPhone Malicious Worm Targets ING Customers With Online Banking

Sierra Monica B. — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:53:16 +0000

Remember the world’s first iPhone worm created by 21-year old Ashley Towns, which affects jailbroken iPhones by changing the default wallpaper with one of Rick Ashley’s, while spreading through the contacts list? It seems that ikee was nothing compared to this new worm reported by F-Secure, the provider of various security tools for your computer files, Internet access and mobile handset.

This time things get more serious, being about a malicious iPhone worm that steals information from the handset. It works like ikee by targeting only jailbroken iPhones with SSH installed and the default password unchanged. F-Secure explains that it has botnet functionality and connects to an online center of command and control located at the IP address 92.61.38.16, which is in Lituania.
The security company promised to offer more information on this as soon as they finish the full analysis.

In the mean time, BBC News provided more details about this issue and we learned that the second iPhone worm is targeting users in the Netherlands who use Internet banking services via ING. What it practically does is redirecting ING’s customers to a web page displaying a login screen.
The best advise is: If you have a jailbroken iPhone change the default password “alpine” immediately.

Windows Live Messenger Available via Nokia Messaging

Sierra Monica B. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:50:58 +0000

Nokia announced that the popular instant messaging service from Microsoft, Windows Live Messenger, is now available via the push email service from Nokia, the Nokia Messaging. Users can access Windows Live Messenger on their smartphones right on the handset’s home screen, through the Nokia’s Messaging application for chat.

Based on this new feature, smartphone users have the possibility to manage several conversations with friends, family members and colleagues, simultaneously. They also can change their statuses or send personal messages, as well as manage buddy lists in Windows Live. All is done via the home screen.
Other features include tabbed chat windows for quick switching between conversations, direct calling, message alerts that pop up, and support for multi-tasking.
Like in any other instant messaging application you can login as Invisible, group contacts, or use emoticons and sounds.

Nokia announced in its latest press release that the first handset with support for Chat and the Windows Live Messenger is Nokia E72. Still, if you own a Nokia E63, Nokia E71 or a Nokia E75 you can download the applications called Nokia Messaging for IM from the Ovi Store. The application is free to download and use and works with Yahoo! Messenger, Ovi Chat and Gtalk.

The new Acrobat.com Brings 35 new Features

Sierra Monica B. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:02:23 +0000

Adobe Systems has just updated its Acrobat.com web site with several new features meant to enhance productivity and collaboration. It now enables an easier-to-use interface and mobile access among others.

The enhanced web site based on the Adobe Flash Platform has now 35 new features suggested by customers, among which you can find smartphone access, a file organizer for storing and sharing, a PDF creator, online office application launcher and the possibility to start web meetings. Practically, on Acrobat.com you can work together with colleagues and collaborators on the same projects, access your online files in real-time from any computer connected to the Internet, and use productivity applications like Adobe Buzzword and Presentations and Tables.

If you’re using the Acrobat.com mobile application from scanR you also can upload images from your cell phone and store them as PDF files, or view your files stored online for sharing with others or to fax them. The basic free service allows you to upload five documents and send two faxes via your cell phone.

Buzzword and Presentations and Tables can be used to import and publish PPT/PPTX presentations to PDF, XLS or CSV, even to EPUB for eBook readers. You also have the possibility to browse image sharing web sites like Flickr and import pictures into your presentations, as well as apply color sets from Kuler to presentations via Adobe Kuler.

deviantART Hosts the Darksiders: These Are Your Last Days Contest

Sierra Monica B. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:50:00 +0000

Are you a talented artwork creator with an account at deviantART? In this case you are invited to participate in a new contest opened for deviantART community members to get the chance to win lots of prizes, including a PS3, an Xbox 360, American Express gift cards of up to $1,000, or the upcoming Darksiders video game.

The online community with more than 80 million artwork pieces and 30 million unique users monthly hosts the contest about your unique interpretation of the apocalypse. Called Darksiders: These Are Your Last Days Contest, it is inspired from the upcoming video game called Darksiders, developed by THQ, which will be released in stores on January 5, next year. The game was created for the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and Sony PlayStation 3 gaming systems.

The online contest on deviantART is hosted by Joe Madureira, who will select the winners. Joe Madureira is a well known comic book writer and Creative Director at Vigil Games.
Darksiders is an action-adventure game placing the action in a world destructed by the apocalypse.

“We are really excited to partner with THQ to bring this contest to the deviantART community,” said Heather Wetzler, deviantART’s vice-president of Advertising Sales. “It’s a great opportunity to engage with both artists and gamers, and a privilege to be working with Joe Madureira.”

Microsoft Announces the Beta Release of Microsoft Office 2010

Sierra Monica B. — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:33:22 +0000

If earlier this year, the Microsoft team introduced Microsoft Office 2010, yesterday, Kurt DelBene, senior vice president of the Office Business Productivity Group at Microsoft, announced the public beta release of the popular productivity suite for personal computers, cell phones and web browsers, through which people work with text, images and videos.

Not only Microsoft Office 2010 reached the beta stage, but also the SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010, Project 2010, Office Web Apps and Office Mobile 2010. You can download and test the beta versions from the official web site of Microsoft in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.

Office Mobile 2010 beta comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and the SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010, and is available for smartphones running on Windows Mobile 6.5. You can get it from Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

The Office 2010 suite comes with several new features including the Outlook Social Connector with communication history, social network feeds and collaboration at the business level, the improved picture formatting tools, the possibility to work with people in different locations on the same file simultaneously, the Sparklines feature in Excel, support for videos in PowerPoint presentations, the Quick Steps feature for a simpler management of emails, Broadcast Slide Show feature for sharing presentations online, and the Microsoft Office Backstage view that enables a central place for file management.

The new Experimental Google Image Swirl Feature

Sierra Monica B. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:48:00 +0000

Eight years after the launch of the popular Google Search feature called Image Search, the developers are preparing to introduce a new option to help you find groups of images in an easy-to-use interface, which is called Google Image Swirl.
Available now in experimental phase at Google Labs, the feature clusters similar images into groups presented in a nice interface, allowing you to explore categories of your interest in a new way.

If by now we were able to find lots of images of things we were searching, having the Find Similar Images option to narrow our search, now we also can check groups of image thumbnails on specific topics.
Aparna Chennapragada, Product Manager, and Yushi Jing from Google Research made the announcement on the official Google Blog, giving us as example the search results for “Washington”. Well, if you type this in Image Swirl you’ll receive a result consisting of 12 image thumbnails of the Washington Monument, the President Washington and maps of Washington D. C. One of these would be the group that interests you and you have the option to click on the thumbnail group you want o start exploring the sub-groups in clusters.

The technologies supporting this new feature are those used by Similar Images and the Picasa Face Recognition. They group images creating hierarchies.

Three Cool New Features Introduced in Google Translate

Sierra Monica B. — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:06:34 +0000

Yesterday, Awaneesh Verma, Product Manager of Google Translate, announced on the official Google blog the introduction of new features in the online translator, as well as some interface enhancements. There are three new features in total which I’ll tell you about in the following lines, while the redesigned interface makes the application easier to use in my opinion.
Google Translate can translate text fragments and entire web pages either by entering words in the Google Translate box, or by clicking on the dedicated browser add-on. Currently there are 51 languages supported and 2550 language pairs.

The developers team added the instant translation feature that practically translates the text as your type it in the box. You won’t have to press on the Translate button anymore, but just look below the input box.

The second key feature added enables you to read and write in any language. For example, if you have to translate a text in Chinese, but don’t know how to read the characters, you have the option of pressing Show Romanization. Which will display the Chinese text in English. This feature works with all languages that don’t use Roman characters, excepting Arabic, Hebrew and Persan. Still, for Arabic, Hindi and Persian you have the possibility to use the new input transliteration for when you don’t have the characters on the keyboard. This can be done by typing the worss as they sound and Google Translate will convert them into the native script.

The coolest new feature introduced in Google Translate is the text-to-speech support, which adds to the translation below the text input box. If you want to hear the translation you can simply press on the sound symbol and listen the woman voice reading it to you.

Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 Betas Available

Sierra Monica B. — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:48:47 +0000

Adobe has just released the Adobe AIR 2 beta and Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta. Both are available at Adobe Labs for the most popular operating systems including Windows, Linux and Mac.
The latest version of the cross-platform runtime environment used to create rich web applications, known as the Adobe Integrated Runtime, follows the success of the previous version which was adopted by top companies in various industries, such as FedEx, Atlantic Records and The New York Times, and allows developers build more applications, featuring support for native application processes, mass storage devices and UDP or peer-to-peer networking.

On the other hand, the new Adobe Flash Flayer comes with support for x86 mini laptops powered by Intel and enables rendering of rich web applications and high definition video content, based on the HTTP streaming with content protection provided by the Adobe Flash Access 2.0.
Both software enable developers create advanced applications for use on multi-touch and gesture-based computers, so users won’t need the computer mouse anymore.

“With the beta availability of Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 today, we are taking an important step toward realizing the Open Screen Project vision to enable rich Internet experiences across any device, anywhere,” said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president, Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “Content creators will provide multi-screen experiences with uncompromised Web browsing and standalone applications across desktops and netbooks, and in the near future across a wide range of mobile devices.”