August 2012
3 posts
7 tags
Microsoft release new square logo
Microsoft has unveiled a new logo after 25 years since its last iteration. The new logo is set in Segoe and features four squares.
The Microsoft logo which has been used which follows the simplicity of the Windows logo (see below). “The symbol’s squares of color are intended to express the company’s diverse portfolio of products” said Jeff Hansen a Manager for Brand Strategy at...
6 tags
Cinch.fm announces closure of audio recording...
Cinch.fm a website that allows users to record and share audio snippets is coming to a close. New account creation will end on August 20 and all content will be deleted on October 20.
The company behind Cinch.fm, CinchCast, is moving their focus to BlogTalkRadio, an internet radio service. Bob Charish, chief operating officer at Cinch.FM, told users “we just do not have the engineering...
8 tags
Khan Academy launches Computer Science course
The long awaited computer science (CS) course from Khan Academy has been launched today after nearly a year in creation. The online platform focusses on student interaction with code to teach computer science, is led by JavaScript guru and Khan Academy employee John Resig.
The course will be “far more engaging and self-paced than what you would find at a traditional university”,...
July 2012
1 post
5 tags
June 2012
2 posts
6 tags
Google cuts price of Google Maps API
Google has announced cuts to the cost for using the Google Maps API from $4 to 50¢ for 1,000 map loads that apply to the heaviest external websites using Google Maps.
Thor Mitchell, Product Manager for Google Maps API wrote on the Google Geo Developer blog that “fees will only apply to the top 0.35% of sites regularly exceeding the published limits of 25,000 map loads every day for 90...
6 tags
Microsoft annouces Surface
Microsoft has today announced a new Windows-based tablet called Surface. Surface will be available with Windows RT with an ARM processor and an Intel core processor with Windows 8 and will size up at 10.6” with Microsoft Office and a new ‘touch cover’.
The ‘touch cover’ draw-card is a 3mm “pressure sensitive cover” that acts as a keyboard and clicks into the tablet. The alternative input is a...
May 2012
4 posts
7 tags
Marketly issues most Google copyright removal...
The updated Google Transparency report now includes copyright takedown requests information. This month’s data shows that Microsoft has been the highest copyright owner with most of Microsoft’s requests made by Marketly and DtecNet. Microsoft’s copyright requests have reached 543,378 URLs this month. The next closest copyright holder is the British Phonographic Industry (BPI)...
9 tags
Top three websites for curated mind-changing...
1. Longform
With the rise of internet journalism, the deluge of short and snappy articles that can be finished in a couple of minutes has risen.
Longform curates a different breed of journalism. Their collection of long-form journalism, they say, are “too long and too interesting to be read on a web browser”. These articles often carve a deep narrative and include investigative...
6 tags
Windows 8 drops Aero Glass
Windows 8 will signal a move away from the transparent UI of Windows Vista and 7 to a design based on their new “clean and crisp” design direction.
Jensen Harris from the Windows 8 team said that the new design was “chromeless” on the Building Windows blog and:
Gone are the glass and reflections. We squared off the edges of windows and the taskbar. We removed all the...
5 tags
What's new in the upcoming Firefox 13
Latest additions that will be coming to Firefox 13 include performance improvements, new default tabs and improvements to the web developer tools.
Making Firefox “snappy” is a high priority for the Mozilla team. When loading tabs in a Firefox start-up, “only the active tab will load. Loading of background tabs is deferred until a tab is selected”, according to Lawrence...
April 2012
4 posts
3 tags
Top Features in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Here are some of our favorite new features in Ubuntu 12.04. This is a long-term support release which means it will be supported for 5 years (in previous releases this was three years) and is suitable for large organization-wide installations.
Video lens
Ubuntu’s new video lens searches for videos on the web and on your computer. It gets video from online sources relevant to your...
1 tag
Welcome to Linear Fix
Welcome to the new Linear Fix. This blog has been moved from WordPress.com to Tumblr and brings some 263 technology posts along with it.
To find a post try using general ‘tag’ keywords. For example, if you’re searching for our articles covering the best subreddits on Reddit, just search for ‘reddit’.
Linear Fix coverage has garnered more than 170,000 views on...
3 tags
Instagram Now Available For Android
Instagram on iOS (left) and Android (right). Image via Instagram.
Instagram is now available for download at Google Play for use on Android devices. The popular app aims to replicate the familiar features of the original iOS version, down to the same algorithms for the filters and user interface. The app allows users to set retro filters to images and share them online.
Right now, however, the...
6 tags
Top Five Web Development Podcasts
1. Boagworld
Boagworld’s podcast proclaims that they are “longest running web design podcast” and is one of the most well-known podcasts available on web development. The podcast is hosted by Paul Boag and is created in ‘seasons’ which focuss on a particular section of web development.
2. SitePoint Podcast
These web developers from Melbourne, Australia known for their books and online...
March 2012
5 posts
4 tags
EFF Fights for User’s Megaupload Data
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is representing a Ohio small business owner who has requested a federal judge to open “a process that would allow him and other lawful Megaupload users to get their files back”, according to the EFF.
The EFF will represent Kyle Goodwin, a Ohio high school sports reporting business owner, who stored video footage, promotional packages and interviews on...
5 tags
Google Docs Now Gets Spell Check from Google...
Google engineers have updated the Google Docs spell checking feature to use the same information gathered by GoogleBot and used in its search.
Yew Jin Lim, Software Engineer at Google, said that the change allows contextual correction such as “Icland is an icland” should be “Iceland is an island” on the Google Docs blog. Lim also pointed out that by using data from GoogleBot, the spell checker...
3 tags
Amazon Acquires Kiva Systems for Quicker Packing
Amazon.com has agreed to acquire Kiva Systems, a company known for their orange robots which slide under shelves and delivers them to stationary warehouse packers, for $775 million cash. Staples, Gap, Walgreen as well as Amazon’s Soap.com and Diapers.com, which were acquired, last year already use the system.
David Clark, Vice President of Global Customer Fulfillment , said “Amazon has long used...
3 tags
Tumblr Redesigns Homepage To Showcase Content
A new iteration of Tumblr’s popular homepage has gone live and showcases popular posts and bloggers under the new tagline of a place to “follow the world’s creators” and makes use of clean CSS3 animations to transition between the homepage and sign-in areas.
The new homepage is a drift away from showing off Tumblr features and pushing new users into the system as in the old design The sign-up...
2 tags
Microsoft Releases Windows 8 Consumer Preview
The Windows team have released a landmark version of Windows 8 in a new downloadable Windows 8 Consumer Preview, suitable for daily use to test out the upcoming iteration of Windows.
Differences from the developer release include “over 100,000 code changes” according to Steven Sinofsky on the Windows 8 blog. The changes from this release includes the opening of the Windows Store for new...
January 2012
18 posts
3 tags
Codecademy Launches New Course Creator
Codecademy, a programming education start-up, has released a tool that allows users to create their own courses. The course creator allows users to make lessons, projects and challenges in JavaScript, Python and Ruby.
Creating a course in Codecademy involves writing hints, instructions, default code and allowed code submissions.Right now there are no barriers to who can become a teacher in...
3 tags
New Zealand Police Website Taken Down by Anonymous...
The official website of the New Zealand Police force has been hit by Anonymous denial of service attacks. It appears that New Zealand police are unable to bring the website up with downtime for more than 9 hours due to their involvement in the “Mega Conspiracy”.
Anonymous IRC tweeted “cause u suck b**ches”, in a vitriolic tweet aimed at the New Zealand police. The New Zealand law enforcement...
5 tags
Tango Down: Brazil Govt. Sites, Visa, MasterCard...
Brazilian Anonymous members have taken down more than 100 Brazil government website including law enforcement and government department websites; though most have returned online now. The two hackers publicizing the hackers used the Twitter pseudonyms of Havittaja and The evilc0de; tweeting the infamous line of “tango down” for each attack, a line also used by LulzSec.
The attacks also affected...
4 tags
MegaUpload Shutdown and Hit With Piracy Indictment...
The FBI have taken down MegaUpload.com and charged seven individuals and two corporations, Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited, with piracy related charges. The FBI, allege that MegaUpload was “running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works”.
The FBI said “the estimated harm caused by the...
3 tags
NinjaVideo.net Co-Founder Ordered to Pay Over...
The Department of Justice have announced the sentence of Matthew David Howard Smith, the co-founder of NinjaVideo.net. Smith will spend 14 months in jail and was ordered to pay $172,387 and forfeit five bank accounts and computer equipment after pleading guilty September 23 2011 to conspiracy and copyright infringement.
NinjaVideo.net was run from February 2008 to June 2010. The Department...
2 tags
WordPress.com Blacks Out Homepage and Allows Users...
WordPress.com have blacked out their Freshly Pressed front-page to protest SOPA and PIPA. WordPress.com are also allowing users to change settings on their WordPress.com blog to protest SOPA with the following settings taken from the temporary page:
Full Blackout and Ribbon: Display a protest ribbon on every page of my site until January 24, 2012 and black out every page on my site in protest...
4 tags
Bulk Download YouTube Videos with BYTubeD
BYTubeD is a bulk YouTube downloader created by M S Ram for Firefox as an extension. Bulk YouTube downloaders have a variety of purposes such as downloading an entire users’ video collection, playlists and backing up your videos.
BYTubeD can automatically convert from FLV to MP4, since FLV is the default format and often requires other media players such as VLC Player. The addon can also be...
3 tags
Upgrade Your Tumblr With Statistics, Commenting...
Here are some third-party solutions to potential shortcomings in the Tumblr platform, we’ll walk through adding powerful statistics, commenting and themes.
Problem One: No Statistics
If you’re moving to Tumblr from a blogging system such as Blogger or WordPress, you may be surprised at the lack of statistics. However, since Tumblr offers unlimited access to your site’s code (via the customize...
3 tags
Murdoch: We Screwed Up MySpace
Rupert Murdoch, the founder of News Corporation, gave a simple answer addressing the $580 million failure of MySpace which was sold June last year for $35 million to Specific Media, saying:
Many questions and jokes about My Space.simple answer – we screwed up in every way possible, learned lots of valuable expensive lessons.— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 13, 2012
The new Murdoch...
2 tags
New Android Design Guide for Ice Cream Sandwich...
Google developers have released a new Android design guide for the latest Android 4.0, titled Ice Cream Sandwich. The design guide, like the iOS Human Interface Guidelines, will help designers maintain design consistency in their apps; some developers have previously criticized the Android for the lack of consistency in apps.
Christian Robertson, leader of the Android visual design group, said...
3 tags
Cut the Rope Available to Play Online with HTML5
ZeptoLab, the creators of the popular Cut the Rope game, have created a new HTML5 version that runs in any modern browser working with Pixel Lab and Microsoft Internet Explorer, who are promoting the use of HTML5 in Windows 8.
Details about game development have been posted online and developers said that 15,000 lines of code was ported from Objective-C used in iPhone development into...
3 tags
Mass Suicide Threats at Foxconn
300 Foxconn workers threatened to mass suicide on 2 Jan and were later talked down by mayor of Wuhan in Hubei province on 3 Jan according to Kotaku reports.Workers had asked for pay rises but were denied. Foxconn reportedly offered the option of leave with compensation or no raise, with most selecting dismissal with compensation. However, Foxconn has since allegedly denied payments for...
3 tags
Elisa ISP Forced to Block Pirate Bay
Elisa has enacted a temporary ban on the Pirate Bay, the Music Bay and SuprNova as well as affiliated IP addresses. The ban stems from a District Court of Helsinki decision on 26 October 2011 which Elisa has appealed to the Helsinki Court of Appeal. The ban will affect Elisa and Saunalahti customers.
The company said the decision meant “Elisa must remove the Pirate Bay service’s domain names...
4 tags
Microsoft Patents ‘Unsafe Neighbourhoods’ GPS Path...
Microsoft has been awarded a patent that allows pedestrian using GPS information to avoid unsafe areas, weather conditions and even unstable terrain. Researchers say that this can select safer paths, indoor areas if it is raining or level land for elderly pedestrians.
Researchers said “since a large number of individuals travel by vehicle, application to pedestrian travel has been ignored”. Some...
4 tags
Canonical Releases Ubuntu One Files iOS App
Canonical have announced an iOS app that allows users to access and transfer files on their Ubuntu One platform, similar to the Android version released mid last year. A major feature for the Ubuntu One Files app is the ability to automatically upload photos on your iOS device to Ubuntu One then share theme.
Ubuntu One offers 5 GB of storage and can now be used across Windows, Ubuntu, iOS...
5 tags
JavaScript and jQuery: The Missing Manual Review
JavaScript and jQuery: The Missing Manual (O’Reilly), is the latest JavaScript book written by David Sawyer McFarland. McFarland walks though jQuery with ease, explaining some difficult concepts intuitively but overall falls short for the new programmer to JavaScript and jQuery.
Now in it’s second edition, it was previously published JavaScript: The Missing Manual, but was renamed for this new...
4 tags
An Introduction to Making HTML & CSS Tumblr Themes...
With the booming popularity of Tumblr and more than 39 million blogs, the need for a stand-out blog is almost essential. In this tutorial, we’ll build on HTML and CSS knowledge to start the HTML structure that is used on all Tumblr blogs.
Tumblr gives users control over all aspects of their blog’s design via the HTML and CSS syntax and uses a simple “block” system. The Tumblr block system only...
4 tags
Nintendo, Sony Electronics and EA Drop out of SOPA...
An updated list of supporters of the SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, now appears without popular gaming companies including Nintendo, Sony, EA and Microsoft. Sony Music companies still appear on the list, however the gaming arm has dropped from the list.
A twist in support for all four companies appears in the ESA (Entertainment Software Association), a gaming trade association which includes all...
December 2011
21 posts
4 tags
Hackers Readying Publication of 2.7 Million Emails...
The Anonymous group is readying the publication of Stratfor emails by sorting through the millions of email, believed to be 2.7 million. Messages from Wikileaks distributed via Twitter and Facebook said “milions of emails between some of the most powerful men in the world are about to be released”.
Barrett Brown, a journalist organizing the project, said in a Pastebin post the original purpose...
5 tags
Anonymous and LulzSec Hack Stratfor in ‘LulzXmas’
A hacking co-operative formed between LulzSec and Anonymous hackers, ‘AntiSec’, have hacked Stratfor, an American intelligence think-tank. The group stole private client information including credit card details, passwords and phone numbers. The group allegedly collected as much as 200 GB of data.
The breach occurred on December 24 as part of a ‘LulzXmas’ campaign, the company has since...
5 tags
Anonymous Gain Credit Card Information from...
Anonymous and LulzSec have continued their ‘LulzXmas’ today, breaking into standard Blowfish encryption used on SpecialForces.com after encryption keys were stolen, according to an Anonymous press release.
The password list of SpecialForces.com was allegedly leaked earlier than expected by an inside Anonymous member, Anonymous said they had the password lists for “the past few months” and that...
3 tags
Cryptocat Provides Privacy-Aware Chat Alternative...
Cryptocat is an open-source web app that uses encryption to secure online chat. If you’re looking for an option with even more security the Cryptocat Chrome app, stores all code locally reducing the need to contact the server.
The website actually securely deletes all logs of conversations after an hour of inactivity. Cryptocat developer, Nadim Kobeissi, explained that “big data such as Google...
2 tags
GoDaddy CEO Unsure of SOPA Stance In Congress
Interviews with new GoDaddy CEO, Warren Adelman, show that the CEO has yet to take a stance on their Congress support for SOPA. Adelman said the they were neither supporting or opposing the measures. In TechCrunch reports, from yesterday, Adelman said “I’ll take that back to our legislative guys, but I agree that’s an important step”.
GoDaddy has faced a consumer boycott over their previous...
2 tags
Go Daddy Ceases Support for SOPA After Consumer...
After a community boycott on Reddit and other websites with competitors cashing in on the earlier pro-SOPA stance from Go Daddy with discount codes such as “BYEBYEGD”, “SOPASUCKS” and “NODADDY”.
In a public statement, Warren Adelman, Go Daddy CEO, said “It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. GoDaddy will support it when and...
2 tags
LinkedIn Makes IndexTank Open Source
After the October acquisition of IndexTank, LinkedIn has fulfilled a promise to open source IndexTank. The release has been made available on Github including the indexing engine and service which includes API, BackOffice, Storefront, and Nebulizer components.
Diego Basch, Director of Engineering, said “We are looking forward to seeing IndexTank thrive as an open-source project. Of course we’ll...
4 tags
Mozilla Extends Google Contract for Default Search...
Mozilla has extended their largest revenue source with an extension of the agreement between Google and Mozilla. The agreement stipulates that Google will be included as the default search in the Mozilla Firefox, the flagship open-source browser of Mozilla.
The contract expired last month, November 2011, and has contributed 86% (around 87.3 million) and 91% (around 76.08 million) of royalties...
2 tags
Khan Academy Slated to Teach JavaScript
Khan Academy is likely adopt JavaScript as the first programming language to be covered in their free video and exercises website. Some of the technologies explained in a blog post from Resig included the use of modern web standards such as cutting-edge HTML5, JavaScript libraries and CSS including the use of canvas.
John Resig, the creator of jQuery, the most popular JavaScript library, also...
2 tags
Top 5 Free MP3 Tag Editors
1. Mp3Tag
Mp3tag has a clean interface and allows import from the Amazon, Discogs and MusicBrainz databases for tags. The most powerful features are available in the menu bar and includes the ability to import from text documents; perform a tag-clean up and replacing text using regular expression (regex). Mp3Tag is regularly updated and has a large following in its forum.
2. Foobar2000 +...
3 tags
Google Zeitgeist Includes Top 10 Lists for 2011
Google has announced the fastest rising search terms, which are mostly pop culture and consumer technology searches, but also includes lists which cover topics such as the fastest falling search terms and fastest rising sports terms in the updated Google Zeitgeist website.
The website now includes 3D visualizations. Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, said “detailed infographics [allow] for an immersive...
3 tags
Louis C.K.’s Internet Live at the Beacon Theater...
Louis C.K.’s online experiment to sell his stand-up show online for $5 titled Live at the Beacon Theater. Louis C.K. used a method to cheaply sell his performance without DRM, which would have restricted content, and decided to not sell rights to a company, instead editing and selling it himself.
The video production cost $170,000. It took six cameras on both of the performances with Louis C.K....
3 tags
GOG Giving Away Empire Earth: Gold Edition
GOG, Good Old Game, are giving away a DRM-free download of Empire Earth: Gold Edition until December 14 at 10.59 GMT as part of a holiday promotion.
Empire Earth was released in 2001 and plays like a combination of Ages of Empires and Civilization, in that players move through ages of technology with 500,000 years of world history. The real-time strategy received an average of 82% from critics...
