Google Now, Lola may trump Siri. With the launch of Siri last year, Apple underscored the potential for our devices to act as personal digital assistants, even if the company's marketing got a little ahead of the voice-recognition service's abilities. As the Cupertino tech giant prepares an upgrade for the next version of its mobile software, other organizations are also busy enhancing the abilities of computers to respond to and even anticipate our needs. In all cases, the firms are employing sophisticated artificial intelligence software that acts and communicates more like a human assistant (minus the occasional demand for a raise).
At the Google I/O developer conference last week, the Mountain View company announced big improvements to the speed and accuracy of the voice search feature in the forthcoming version of its operating system for Android phones and tablets. Like Siri, this allows users to initiate searches or dictate texts or e-mails with their voice.
The concept is best illustrated with an example. Flashback Tidbits: Flashback Checker, OpenDNS Protection, Apple's Low-Visibility Security Team. The Flashback malware affecting OS X systems has gained quite a bit of publicity since it was disclosed last week that over 600,000 Macs have been infected by the malware. Flashback began life last year as a trojan and has morphed into a drive-by download taking advantage of a vulnerability in Java that Apple did not patch until last week, despite Oracle having released patches for other systems back in February. Over the past few days, a few additional tidbits of information on Flashback have surfaced, including the arrival of some new tools to help users manage the threat. - As noted by Ars Technica, a new Mac app by the name of Flashback Checker has been released to help users determine whether their machines have been infected.
Users have been instructed to use Terminal to enter commands searching for files created by the malware upon infection, and Flashback Checker offers a simple packaging of these commands behind a user interface. All the Awesome Things You Can Do with a Long Press on Your iPhone, iPad, or iPad touch. How to stop Facebook from sharing your location. Facebook is at it again, releasing yet another feature that I never had the opportunity to politely opt out of: location sharing. When Facebook decided to withdraw efforts from its short-lived check-in service, Places, it quickly implemented a more passive location-sharing feature that doesn't even have a name.
It's just there. And it's creepy. Now, every time you compose a post on a mobile device or desktop computer, you'll see a light-gray location description in the lower left of the status box. Facebook sneakily grabs your location via GPS or Wi-Fi router, and attaches it to your post, so your friends can enjoy a more in-depth stalking experience. Do you remember opting in to that? In fact, if you dig through your privacy and account settings, the option to turn off location-sharing isn't available.
Since the location is shown in light gray, it's very easy to miss. Improve Your Google Search Skills [Infographic] Don’t limit yourself to just plugging in simple search terms to Google; check out this infographic and learn a search string search or two. You don’t need to limit yourself to searching just for simple strings; Google supports all manner of handy search tricks. If you want to search just HowToGeek.com’s archive of XBMC articles, for example, you can plug in site:howtogeek.com XBMC to search our site. Get More Out of Google [HackCollege via Mashable] Jason Fitzpatrick is a warranty-voiding DIYer who spends his days cracking opening cases and wrestling with code so you don't have to.
If it can be modded, optimized, repurposed, or torn apart for fun he's interested (and probably already at the workbench taking it apart). 9 Strange Things About Tweets, Retweets And DMs Every Twitter User Must Know. How to Make iMessage Work Better Across Multiple Devices. App Player for Windows :: Run apps fast on your PC or tablet. Easiest Online Backup Service - Backblaze. Peachpit: Publishers of technology books, eBooks, and videos for creative people.
Facebook Investor Roger McNamee Explains Why Social Is Over. How to Set Up a File-Syncing Dropbox Clone You Control. Depends on what you mean by 'safe'. Nothing is truly safe, and any kind of wireless syncing is going to be accessible or 'sniffable' at some point. Honestly, if your father isn't being specifically targeted by someone, Live Mesh is fine. I prefer Dropbox though. Agree on the "Nothing is truly safe" comment. Dropbox has had its share of problems lately, however I recommend it (as I wrote on my comment on this post) because of its simplicity and its easiness and it has been really trying to do its best to make people feel safe with their files, and they have updated their legal, public files regarding the matter (was it their terms of service or privacy policy? Sadly, no manual setup that I've found is seamless. Stay safe online: 5 secrets every PC (and Mac) owner should know. In any given week, I get dozens of requests for help.
The #1 question of 2011? It's no contest: "How do I protect myself online? " These days I'm getting that question in equal numbers from PC and Mac owners who are concerned about the best way to avoid being sucker-punched by social engineering attacks. Many people think that security begins and ends with antivirus software. I disagree. So let’s stipulate that you’re running a well-supported, up-to-date security program—whether you use a PC or a Mac. If you've been paying attention to the current threat landscape, much of the advice in this post will be familiar, even obvious. These days, threats can come from unexpected places: Google (and Bing) search results, compromised websites, deceptive ads, seemingly innocent downloads. If I had to summarize my guidance in a single sound bite, it would go something like this: Pay attention to your surroundings, and don't be stupid. Let's break that down. Step 1: Don’t panic.
When in doubt, stop. 3. How to Go Back to a Previous Version of Internet Explorer. Mining patterns in search data with Google Correlate. It all started with the flu. In 2008, we found that the activity of certain search terms are good indicators of actual flu activity. Based on this finding, we launched Google Flu Trends to provide timely estimates of flu activity in 28 countries. Since then, we’ve seen a number of other researchers—including our very own—use search activity data to estimate other real world activities. However, tools that provide access to search data, such as Google Trends or Google Insights for Search, weren’t designed with this type of research in mind. Those systems allow you to enter a search term and see the trend; but researchers told us they want to enter the trend of some real world activity and see which search terms best match that trend.
This is now possible with Google Correlate, which we’re launching today on Google Labs. You can also enter a search term such as [ribosome] and find other terms whose activity corresponds well over time with the one you’re interested in: Startup Mantra: Hire Fast, Fire Fast. Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. Read more about Suster at his Startup Blog, BothSidesoftheTable. I have often said that what separates real entrepreneurs from pundits and bystanders is a bias towards getting things done versus over analyzing things. My credo has always been JFDI. It’s the hardest thing to teach people who come out of big companies, out of conservative jobs.
At the big consulting firms, investment banks and established large technology companies we’re taught to produce long reports, make sure that every document is perfect quality and that every possible bit of diligence has been done. Good enough isn’t. And so things operate on a CYA basis. That doesn’t work in a startup. There’s a certain cadence that you can feel when you spend time hanging any well-run startup company. The startup entrepreneur knows that they’re going to be wrong often. In fact, analysis paralysis drives me fucking bonkers. 27 Tips for Complete Email Mastery. Email. We all have it. We all hate it. From Outlook to Gmail to the Great Email Beyond, here’s how to make the most of it. They say that the kids don’t use email that much these days. Doesn’t that sound dreamy? We adults, unfortunately, have no such luxury. For better or for worse, email is a major part of our personal and work lives. We’re tempted to just leave it at that.
Getting Intimate with Outlook The road to email mastery begins with Microsoft’s ubiquitous email application Using Outlook is one thing. Photo ID Photo ID: Microsoft now has its own built-in social connections. The Microsoft Outlook Social Connector Provider for Facebook, new on the scene but compatible with Outlook 2010, 2007, and 2003, links your Facebook or LinkedIn account to Outlook and helps you keep on top of information you can use to blackmail… er, get familiar with your contacts. Fast-Action Screenshots In Outlook 2010, you can insert a screenshot in the body of your email message. Get Your Xobni On Sync Your Team. Scrible Launches Rich Web Annotation App To The Public. Startup Scrible is launching its rich web annotation tool to the public today.
Scrible is also announcing that it has received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The service’s bookmarklet allows users to save and organize web pages and richly annotate articles with highlighters and sticky notes. You can also share annotated web pages with others. All of your saved web annocations are stored within your Scrible account and the startup will index this so your can search and filter through your saved content. One of the virtues of using Scrible is that it saves the whole contents of the page for later, so the page and content is still saved in case the information changes or goes offline.
The startup says that its tool is ideal for any sort of web research, especially in the educational fields. Scrible faces competition from Instapaper. Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone.
Free Software University. Image by opensource.com Marrying technology, innovation, and this curious Internet thing of giving stuff away for free, consultant and Cong-base Englishman, Lloyd Hardy, is hoping to kick start an online learning revolution. Hardy proposes to deliver university courses for free over the internet using an “open source” model. Open source has revolutionised the delivery of technology since the late 1990s. Famous examples include the Linux operating system, the Firefox browser, the Apache web server and the OpenOffice suite.
“My idea is that would-be students who, for a variety of reasons are unable to learn in the traditional way are able to access tuition from graduates working in industry in a structured learning environment in a virtual classroom,” said Hardy of the Free Software University (FSU). An IT Consultant, Hardy said the initial focus would be on technical courses. Tutors include new users “right up to published authors and software development companies,” he said. 10 iPad 2 apps for business. How to Put Your iPad to Work. 5 Web Technologies and Trends to Watch in 2011. In 2010 we saw the rise of HTML5, the maturation of CSS3, the release of Rails 3.0, and the widespread adoption of the @font-face selector (part of CSS3) — among other things. In short: it was a busy year for advancing web development technologies. What will 2011 hold? Below is a list, compiled by Mashable editors of some of the web technologies and trends we think should be on your radar for the coming year.
These aren't all straight up web dev technologies, per se, but they're all things that will have an impact on website and app development in 2011. 1. jQuery Mobile jQuery has become practically synonymous with JavaScript, in large part because of its extensibility, ease of use and strong project leadership. . - Christina Warren, Mobile Reporter 2. Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is lightning fast, thanks to its use of DirectX 10 and hardware acceleration, vastly improving the speed and capabilities of the browser versus its competitors. . - Ben Parr, Co-Editor 3. . - Josh Catone, Features Editor 4. Shady Characters.
SQL. Facebook 'Instant personalization' launches: How to disable it, and why. Updated: see below. Facebook's 'instant personalization' feature allows the walls between the social network and the world to be broken through for a seamless experience for all. While many have not been able to access the instant personalisation feature yet, many have found that it is turned on by default so many will be entirely unaware the feature even exists. However, this raises concerns amongst the 500 million and growing population of the social network, with the potential for better targeted adverts and more of your data handed out to other websites. Information that is set or has been set to 'Everyone' may have already been copied elsewhere.
How it works Provided you are logged into Facebook, certain websites like Pandora and Bing can 'personalise' their sites with data provided from your account. Only certain sites can access this, and permissions need to be granted to do this. How to turn it off 1. Why You Learn More Effectively by Writing Than Typing. How I Use Visualization To Drive Creativity. This is a guest post by Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur turned VC. He sold his second company to Salesforce.com, becoming VP of Product Management.
He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner focusing on early-stage technology companies. Read more about Suster on his blog at Bothsidesofthetable and on Twitter at @msuster. Creativity. I’ve always believed it’s been one of the most important attributes of business success yet something very few business leaders talk about. As a practitioner of creativity rather than as an instructor of it I’m certain that there are many ways to get the creative juices flowing and how to release more creativity. Visualization is so important to help yourself & others conceptualize ideas. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This is a long post, so I put an executive summary here if you want to get the point without reading all the detail.
Almost all business success relies on creativity. What exactly is visualization? Strange, I know. In addition to driving Ms. Chartbeat Cracks 2 Million Concurrent Users Tracked. It was only last August that Chartbeat passed one million concurrent users tracked across all the sites that use the realtime analytics dashboard. It took 16 months from launch to get there. Now, a mere five months later, Chartbeat has broken through the 2-million user milepost. Chartbeat is like Google Analytics, but in realtime. It lest you see exactly how many visitors are on any page on your Website at any given time, where they came from, and how your realtime traffic compares to the norm. So you can see spikes right when they are occurring. I use it religiously to track how posts are doing on TechCrunch every day. It is certainly a popular service.
Photography. Using VNC With Your iPad. Four Free Tools that every Administrator should Know About. 10 Business Models That Rocked 2010. FunThings. A world of tweets. Modern_perl_a4.pdf - Powered by Google Docs. Digg: A Cautionary Tale for Web 2.0 Companies. Astronomy. Design. Microsoft Software Dev. Security. Music to play. Google.