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For those of you who subscribe to mobileme Apple has released a free iDisk mobileMe application. This application allows you to download and view documents from your mobileme idisk. It also allows you to email links to the files in your idisk to people in your address book. The idisk app will allow you to view iWork, Microsoft Office, PDF, QuickTime, and many other file types. This can come in really handy if you need to send someone a copy of the a presentation or a copy of a PDF. Anything on the iDisk can be sent to anyone with an email address. Pretty soon the iphone will pretty much be a mobile work station.
What is MobileMe
For those who don’t know what mobileme is mobileMe is a service offered by Apple that gives you an email address and Internet storage space called idisk. The best part about mobileme is that is syncs all your data over your different computers. It will sync your Bookmarks, Calender, Contacts, dashboard widgets, dock items, keychains, mail accounts, mail rules, signatures, smart mailboxes, notes, and preferences. This is a true value of mobileme and comes in handy if you have more than one computer. If you have an iphone your mobileme will also keep your contacts and calender synced at all times without having to plug your phone into your computer.
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Did you guys hear about the 11 year-old boy in Cincinnati Ohio that tried to hijack a scooter off two boys with a toy gun. The father of the 8 and 10 year-old boys said it was not apparent that the gun was the toy. The 11-year-old boy pointed the toy gun at the two boys and said that he wanted one of the scooters. The older boy then chased the two younger boys as they drove away on their scooters.
The boy was taken to the Hamilton County juvenile center. His hearing is set for Aug. 7th , but a public defender doesn’t think the boy understood the consequences of his actions. What do you think of this? I am divided between thinking it’s right to punish the kid and thinking it’s ridiculous and that the boy didn’t mean any harm.
On the one hand if someone older held up a toy gun that looked real I wouldn’t think twice before shooting him or her if they were threatening peoples lives. The fact is if no one knows the gun is fake the implications of threatening people with it are the same as if the gun was real. There have been news stories of people using toys or unloaded guns in robberies and in my opinion this doesn't change the threat they are posing on people. So in that respect I agree with punishing the boy in some manner.
On the other hand I had all kinds of toy guns when I was a kid, now my parents wouldn’t let me point them at anyone but still I wouldn’t put it past my child self to do something like this. At what point is it just the imagination of a boys playing and what point is it a serious threat. I don’t know if the boys knew each other, but it doesn’t seem like they did which would make it a lot scarier. 11 is also a little old to be playing in such a way. I think if it was a 5 year-old this would be a very different story.
So what do you think should be Done? Leave me a comment and tell me what you think of this story, and how you think the boy should be dealt with.
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Charlie Miller cybersecurity researcher has discovered a way to send a SMS burst to iphone users that hijacks the iphone and allows the hacker to use all the functions of the phone, including sending text messages to other people further spreading the virus.
The SMS hijack can turn on your camera, microphone, place calls, send text messages, and browse the web. Charlie Miller along with his fellow cybersecurity researcher partner Collin Mulliner are going to reveal the vulnerability at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas on Thursday July 30th .
According to Miller if you get a Text message with a little square character in it you should shut your phone off because this is the only way to prevent the hacker from using your phone. According to miller this is the only way that someone could know their phone has been affected.
Miller contacted Apple about the vulnerability about a month ago, but they have not released an update or patch for the vulnerability yet. In fact Miller has not heard back from Apple concerning his discovery at all.
I sure hope this SMS hijack thing isn’t something too serious. That would be awful if all the iphone users had their phones hijacked. I know that would put a damper on my day.
Read More Here
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In early June an 56 year old Israeli Woman attempted to commit suicide by down in front of a high speed train. The train fortunately ran right over her only causing minor burns to her head. The Woman was taken to a psychiatric hospital so her mental condition could be further evaluated.
This is a crazy story even though it’s a little old I thought I would share it with all you. I think if I were to commit suicide I would want the train to hit my head first. That way I would die on impact. If you laid down like she did you might get maimed first and then die or the train might just burn your head a little. Anyways I’m glad she was not harmed.
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Camera Zoom is a simple application that allows you to use a 4X digital zoom on your iphone’s camera. I don’t know exactly why apple did not incorporate a zoom into the new iPhone 3G S but they did. This little app will allow you to do that for only $.99
The only thing I don’t like about the application is that you can’t use the selective focusing features because when you touch the screen the camera takes the picture. I would say that a digital zoom isn’t really worth it because you can just zoom and crop, but the application actually takes a better sharper image then just taking an image and cropping it.
Anyways checkout the Camera Zoom application at the iTunes store its only $.99
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Everyone has been up in arms today because Apple has not only rejected Google’s official Google Voice application but has removed the third party Google voice apps that were in the app store already. According to Apple the applications have functions too similar to that of the iphone and have been removed for duplicate functionality. I think this is just an excuse and is an attempt to stunt the growth of Google voice with the iphone.
I don’t really understand why Apple has to be such a jerk to Google when it comes to accepting their application. I don’t really see how the applications would cause Apple to loose money. I don’t think it’s possible to use Google voice without service from AT&T. Even if it was possible it would probably take jail breaking the phone to do it, which puts it out of Apple’s hands anyway.
Is Apple still upset that Google has their own phone that might be taking away from their profits? This still doesn’t explain why Apple refuses Google’s apps. I mean you want your customers to be able to do the same things on your phone as the competition’s devices. Why would you stunt the productivity of the iphone and give the completion something you don’t have, a working native Google Voice application.
It just doesn’t make since, I love Apple and I’ve been a fan of them for a long time now. I have to say however that when I hear things like this it makes it hard to love the company. I know that big business is not exactly lovable, because it takes cutthroat business tactics to make it, especially in technology. I just wish Apple and Google would just get along, and I wish Apple would loosen its grip on its technology just a little bit.
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Augmented reality applications are coming to the iphone. For those who don’t know, I didn’t know either so don’t feel bad, augmented reality is a field of computer research, which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data. What does this mean? Well this means that an application can use the iphone’s camera to analyze images and load data based on what it sees. For example you could point your camera at a famous building, structure, or painting and the program would load information about the object.
The video I embedded is an application that allows you to setup a profile with information posted on it. When someone points the camera at you with the AR application running it analyzes your face and shows your profile and superimposes the info by your head. A pretty cool application if I do say so myself and I don’t know how practical it is but it is very interesting.
I wonder what the different uses for this type of applications would be. It would be great if you could get information on a city or a museum by using your camera. Anyway checkout the video and leave a comment on what you think this type of technology could be used to do.
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I have so many passwords and logins that I can’t keep track of them all. In order to keep my logins safe it’s better to use different passwords for all your accounts. This is hard to do if you have tons of accounts on many different sites. It’s also good to use long passwords with letters and numbers to fend off a brute force attack.
I use Firefox most of the time for browsing the web and I keep my passwords stored in Firefox which works great and allows you to apply a master password to unlock all your logins but this is not as secure as what 1Password can offer. 1Password offers a 128 bit AES encrypted database, which is much better than Firefox’s where people have already figured out how to reverse the encryption.
1Password also allows you to create different profiles with your information in it to auto fill your information into forms. You can create different profiles for work or home or even one that contains fake information for websites that don’t need your information. You can create wallet items like credit cards that can be auto filled into forums as well.
1Password works on most browsers and works across all your browsers as well. A login saved in one browser can be used in a different browser to login to the same site. This allows you to freely switch from browser to browser without being tied down to which browser your login is stored in. 1Password can also create passwords for you that auto fill in forms and get stored as part of the login for that site.
1Password is a very powerful application that will make storing passwords and private information secure but at the same time very accessible.
1Password is $30 but has a free trial version.
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Vuwer works much like the lojack software for laptops except Vuwer is free and doesn’t cost anything. Vuewer pronounced “Viewer” is a service application that runs in the background. If your laptop were to get stolen you could capture the IP address of the computer, which the police could use to track the address of the computer. You can also use the built in isight camera to take a picture of the criminal or at least whoever has your laptop currently. You can also take screen shots of the screen to see if that would help discover the identity of the criminal.
This application is not as easy to setup as the one lojack offers but this program is 100% free and there is no signup or service you have to pay for. Of course it doesn’t have guarantees that the other similar software’s have but once again this one is free. I think this is a great little precaution that can be taken just incase your computer is ever taken.
Vuwer Homepage - Contains directions on how the application works and how to install it.