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When your laptop is stolen the first thing you wish you had installed was software to track it's whereabouts, and then you begin to think about all your stored passwords you wish you could remove. Prey is a free open source app that could get your laptop returned to you or at least keep your passwords safe.
What can Prey do?
So what can Prey actually do? Well for starters it can use your devices GPS or WiFi connection to triangulate your computer's position. Prey can force your computer to connect to a WiFi network when no internet is available. Prey will take screenshots of active sessions as well as take pictures with a built in webcams so you can get a look at the thief. These are all the covert operations but Prey has more up its sleeve.
You can make your laptop sound a loud alarm for 30 seconds just in case it's near by. Prey can make a message popup letting the thief know you're on to him. Prey also allows you to lock your computer to prevent him from using it until a password is entered. To prevent the thief from getting into your other accounts you can have Prey delete your browser cookies and passwords for all users as well as hide emails.
Pray is simple to install, all you have to do is download the software, which runs on Mac, Windows, Ubuntu, and Android. You then create an account which you activate using your email address. That's it you're done. You can now activate all of Prey's monitoring features using their website.
The free account allows you to track one device and store up to 10 reports at a time. Prey offers several payed accounts which are very affordable on any budget. It's worth a look see and might just save you a laptop.
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If you own a Mac and love simple minimalistic applications like Tweetie than Sparrow might just be the email client for you. Sparrow, other than being minimalistic, is also perhaps the best native Gmail client for Mac adding priority mailbox and IMAP support.
Sparrow now supports all IMAP email services and with their new priority inbox support make their Gmail integration even better. The application is simple and elegant and reminds me a lot of Tweetie, now the official Twitter desktop client. The new version also supports multi-touch controls as new contact groups feature and formatting bar.
If you want to give sparrow a try you can find it in the Mac App Store for $10. They also have a trial version of Sparrow that only supports one email address if you want to give it a try before buying.
Sparrow @ Mac App Store
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There has been a lot of hype around the new iPhone and Android app Color. Maybe it's the $41 million in funding or the fact the founders behind LaLa have their hands in it. Whatever it is the app is pretty interesting.The idea behind it is to take pictures that are instantly shared with people within 150 feet of your location. If several users all in the same location begin taking picture what is created is an instant album of the party or event. The photos are 100% public and there are no friends or followers. Photos in your area popup in a stream allowing users to favorite, comment, and share them via SMS, email, Twitter, and Facebook.
It's an interesting idea for sure, but will it catch on? The main problem, in my opinion, is the lack of privacy controls. If I am taking pictures with friends I don't want other random people to have access to these images. It kind of ruins the idea of the app if you start restricting access but at the same time I don't want my photos flying out to just anyone who might be sitting near by. The idea of a collaborative album of photos generated by people in a general area is pretty interesting if you can get past the creepy factor.
This might be one of those things, like Twitter, that seem kind of dumb until it's widely accepted and used making it very interesting and usable. The low client base makes sharing a little pointless right now since in any given area you and your friends will likely to be the only people sharing images.
The real surprising thing is how much money Color was able to raise even before it opened it's doors and had an established client base. They also spent $350,000 on color.com, which is more that most startups raise for themselves in a lifetime. Only time will tell if color becomes the next big thing or a big fat flop.
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For the last 9 months YouTube has offered a very basic online video editor. It contained basic features like the ability to trimming, combining videos, adding music, inserting transitions, and rotating clips. These features are about a basic as they come allowing for some very bare bones video editing. YouTube announced yesterday that they are planning some enhancements to their online video editor bringing new features that make it more like desktop video editors. These features include the following:
- Video transitions (crossfade, wipe, slide)
- The ability to save projects across sessions
- Increased clips allowed in the editor from 6 to 17
- Video rotation (from portrait to landscape and vice versa - great for videos shot on mobile)
- Shape transitions (heart, star, diamond, and Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween)
- Audio mixing (AudioSwap track mixed with original audio)
- Effects (brightness/contrast, black & white)
- A new user interface and project menu for multiple saved projects
Two new features not mentioned above that are particularly interesting are the stabilizer feature and the 3D creator. The stabilizer allows you to remove the camera shake from a shot using a rather impressive algorithm. The example here is quite impressive, though at the beginning of the clip it looks like the buildings are swaying back in forth.
The 3D creator is just what you think it is. You shoot video using two video cameras that are positioned in a specific way. You then can use YouTube's video tool to compile the two videos into one 3D video. Pretty neat for a free online video tool!