Jul 15

Automated shoulder surfing makes it easier to steal passwords, isn’t very tubular, brah (video)

Posted in: Android, BlackBerry, camera, interface, ios, research, security, smartphone, Software, Today's Chili, touchscreen, ui, video
Here’s something mildly terrifying to chew on: researchers in Italy have developed a way to automatically harvest anything you type on your smartphone’s touchscreen, using only a camera placed over your shoulder. The software, created by Federico Maggi and his team from the Politecnico di Milano, takes advantage of the magnified touchscreen keys you’ll find on most iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices. Because these magnifications often pop up in predictable positions, the spying system can recognize and record them with relative ease, with the help of a camera aimed at a targeted display. And it’s not like bobbing and weaving around will help evade its watchful eye, since the apparatus can instantly detect sudden movements and adjust its gaze accordingly. Researchers say their tool is capable of accurately recognizing up to 97 percent of all keystrokes and is fast enough to transmit copied passwords in “quasi real-time,” which must be music to a lazy criminal’s ears. Tiptoe past the break to see the beast in action and spend the rest of your life in an everlasting state of fear.

Continue reading Automated shoulder surfing makes it easier to steal passwords, isn’t very tubular, brah (video)

Automated shoulder surfing makes it easier to steal passwords, isn’t very tubular, brah (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Slashdot  |  sourcephretor (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags: , , ,
Jul 15

Best Greasemonkey Scripts: Google Reader Preview

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

Lifehacker just released a new version of their Better GReader Firefox extension. It brings all of the best Greasemonkey scripts for Google Reader under one roof, and by installing the extension you can enable up to 8 of scripts that will all enhance either the look or usability of Google Reader.

One script in particular that they included really caught my eye. It’s called Google Reader Preview Enhanced, and what it does is give you the option to open a particular feed item’s website within a frame in Google Reader. This becomes the default behavior when you click on the title of the article, or on a specialized button located at the bottom of each feed item:

Google Reader Preview
Click to Enlarge

This is ideal for sites that don’t provide the full article content within the feeds, but one of the real reasons that I’ve found this especially useful for is commenting. The script removes the burden of having to open a new tab/window to leave a comment on a site. Heck, I have enough tabs open already and don’t need to add to them.

Clicking on the title or preview button a second time will switch back to the actual feed item, or if you still want to open the site in a new tab/window just click the little arrow at the far right side of feed item bar (located next to the time).

Google Reader Preview Enhanced

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags: ,
Jul 15

Apple intros App Store volume purchasing, businesses enthused

Posted in: Apple, AppStore, business, enterprise, ios, ipad, iPhone, ipod touch, IpodTouch, Software, Today's Chili

Got iOS devices deployed across your enterprise? Listen up. Apple’s just announced the Volume Purchase Program, enabling businesses to procure applications from the US App Store en-masse. Upon registering with Cupertino, corporate overlords can then access a web-form to acquire and sling apps to their plebeian employees at will. And for those needing custom corporate-only software? It looks like bespoke B2B applications — even ones built by third parties — will soon be distributed via the same mechanism. We’re not orchard owners, but them Apples are looking mighty tasty, and it’s past BlackBerry season, right?

Apple intros App Store volume purchasing, businesses enthused originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MacRumors  |  sourceApple  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags: , , ,
Jul 15

What do You Think of the Firefox 3 Themes?

Posted in: Firefox 3, Freeware, Linux, Mac, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on May 19, 2008 by CyberNet.

skitched-20080519-110406.jpgFirefox 3 is scheduled to be finished in the next month or two, and with it users will begin seeing a completely redesigned interface that is tailored to the operating system that they are using. This version of Firefox has already made significant advances in terms of performance, and it seems as though the only thing people have been criticizing in Firefox 3 are the new themes. When it comes down to it there is a different theme available for Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP.

Alex Faaborg, the user experience designer at Mozilla, put together a rather comprehensive review of how they visually tied Firefox 3 into the different operating systems. Personally the only thing that I really dislike in the themes is the “keyhole” design for the back/forward button. All of the themes, except for Linux, have this type of button. I find it to be gaudy and not flow well with the other aspects of the themes.

Luckily you can easily ditch the keyhole-styled button by enabling small icons. Just right-click on the navigation bar, choose Customize, and then check the Use Small Icons box. Notice how the oversized keyhole design is nowhere to be found?

I was really looking forward to Aero Glass integration in the Vista theme, but that won’t be happening this time around. For the time being we’ll have to rely on an extension to get that job done, that is until the next version of Firefox arrives:

On Vista we do a great job visually integrating with icons and with our set of secondary windows, although the main window is notably missing support for Aero glass. Users will hopefully be able to get this functionality using an extension during the life cycle of Firefox 3, and we will have glass support added to XUL for the next release of Firefox.

Faaborg even went as far as to say that “Safari 3.1 does a number of [visual] things wrong that we get right.” An example he gave was how the navigation buttons are not grayed out in Safari 3.1 when the window is not selected, which isn’t consistent with some other Apple applications. One commenter who goes by the name Superdotman called Faaborg out by saying:

Apple’s attention to detail is huge. If you see something that seems inconsistent, there’s usually a good reason.

Safari glyphs remain dark because when the window is deselected, they still accept click-through. Finder’s don’t.

Aqua controls are used for webclips because webclips are done with a modal dialog. Inline find uses the appropriate textured controls.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you guys are trying to integrate more with OS X! Just tone down the ego a bit until you have some more knowledgeable Mac guys to back it up.

Mozilla definitely deserves some credit for being one of the first cross-platform browsers to developer OS-specific themes. I’m curious as to how many of you like the new themes, and how many of you will actually go hunting for a new one to use.

Thanks to “Change” for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags: ,
Jul 14

SnagIt for Mac (Beta) Released

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Mac, Pre-Release, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 16, 2009 by CyberNet.

snagit mac.png
Click to Enlarge

arrow Mac Mac only arrow
I’ve been using a Mac for nearly two years, and with as many screenshots as I take there was just never an app that quite matched the capabilities of SnagIt on Windows. I’ll admit that Skitch was pretty close, but the screenshot editor lacked in a lot of different areas. My biggest pet peeve is the inability to manage/manipulate multiple screenshots on the same canvas… a.k.a. turning more than one screenshot into a single image. That was something SnagIt on Windows really shined at.

Techsmith has heard the pleas from Mac users, and released a Mac-compatible screencast recorder earlier this year. Then yesterday I received an email from them saying that they have officially unveiled the Beta version of SnagIt for taking screenshots on a Mac. The interface is wildly different from the Windows counterpart, but that’s understandable considering that the Windows version uses the Office 2007 Ribbon UI that Microsoft hasn’t made available for Mac applications.

How does SnagIt for Mac handle itself? Right now I’d say very well. It offers an all-in-one capture mode that tries to detect whether you want to grab the full screen, a window, a specific region, or even a scrolling area. That’s cool and all, but it’s the small things I appreciate having again… like the small magnified window when capturing a region:

snagit zoom.png

The awesome thing about the magnified window is that it doesn’t actually appear until your cursor isn’t moving much on the screen. That makes sense because when your cursor is only being nudged a few pixels at a time is when you’re probably trying to get a pixel-perfect screenshot, and that’s when you need the magnified area.

Overall I’d say there are a lot of nice touches in the app. You can use keyboard shortcuts, the Menubar icon, or the hide-away window (pictured in the first screenshot) to initiate a capture. SnagIt for Mac isn’t full-featured yet though, and you’ll notice that as soon as you click on the “Effects” tab where all you’ll see is a “Coming soon” message. The things that are available work very well though.

I like where the app is headed, and I’m already confident that I’ll be purchasing it once it is released. It offers all the intuitiveness that Skitch does, but tacks on a much better screenshot editor. If you hardly edit your screenshots I’d say this isn’t the application for you, but keep in mind that the Beta of SnagIt for Mac is completely free to use until a commercial version is released. They haven’t specified when that will happen, but I’m guessing it will give you more than enough time to try it out to determine whether it’s something you’ll want to buy.

SnagIt for Mac (Beta) Homepage (Mac only; Freeware while in Beta)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Jul 14

Windows Vista Supports Copying Movies

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on January 09, 2006 by CyberNet.

Windows Vista Supports Copying Movies

Yes, it is true, Microsoft will allow users to copy their DVD Movies using Windows Vista. Not only will they allow you to copy them, but they will provide you with the software to do so. Not in the traditional sense, though, because the software will only copy the movie to your hard drive and not to another DVD. This decision came because of the increasing size of hard drives and the need to store DVDs so that you don’t have to carry them around. Looks like Microsoft will really be up-scaling the Media Center since Vista will also support HD and cable TV.

News Source: The Unofficial Microsoft Weblog

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Jul 14

Have An Extra Memory Card? Use It With ReadyBoost!

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on November 13, 2006 by CyberNet.

Windows Vista has a special feature called ReadyBoost that has been overlooked by many people. It offers a quick and easy opportunity for someone to add more memory to their computer without physically installing RAM. All you have to do is insert a removable Flash drive into your computer that is running Windows Vista and it will prompt you in the AutoRun dialog box to use the drive with ReadyBoost.

Here is what Microsoft says about the feature:

Windows ReadyBoost lets users use a removable flash memory device, such as a USB thumb drive, to improve system performance without opening the box. Windows ReadyBoost can improve system performance because it can retrieve data kept on the flash memory more quickly than it can retrieve data kept on the hard disk, decreasing the time you need to wait for your PC to respond.

Windows ReadyBoost technology is reliable and provides protection of the data stored on your device. You can remove the memory device at any time without any loss of data or negative impact to the system; however, if you remove the device, your performance returns to the level you experienced without the device. Additionally, data on the removable memory device is encrypted to help prevent inappropriate access to data when the device is removed.

So how much of a difference could a simple Flash drive or memory card make? I didn’t think it could be much and it never even crossed my mind to try it out. This morning I was on Google Video, however, and came across someone who did decide to use it with a 512MB SD card and the results were quite impressive:

Unfortunately my Flash drive does not work with ReadyBoost because Vista says that the performance of the drive is too slow. I’m not sure if it would really make that much of a difference on my laptop anyways because I have 1.5GB of RAM and I hardly use half of that at any one given time. To get the significant speed improvement like the person in the video received I would guess that they started with 512MB of RAM which is the minimum for Vista.

Update:
Sometimes I am just utterly blind. In the beginning of the movie it says that the person started with 1GB of RAM which is even more impressive that the ReadyBoost made such a difference.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Jul 13

Cowon D3 firmware update brings Android 2.3, now treats your fingers as well as your ears

Posted in: Android, firmware, firmware update, FirmwareUpdate, gingerbread, PMP, Software, software update, SoftwareUpdate, Today's Chili, update

Hey there, high roller. If you splurged on Cowon‘s beautiful, profoundly expensive D3 Plenue, you’ve probably wondered when you’d get an upgrade from Android 2.1. Well, that day is today, as the company’s released an updated, Gingerbread-based firmware. The new code adds some miscellaneous new features – a sleep timer for the music app, some more music search options, and VoIP – and ought to improve system stability. It also promises better touch responsiveness, which we hope alleviates the sluggishness that made the little PMP so difficult to use. If similar frustration with your D3 rendered it an elegant paperweight, glide over to the source link to see if the update soothes your pain.

[Thanks, Stefan]

Cowon D3 firmware update brings Android 2.3, now treats your fingers as well as your ears originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 11:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Anythingbutipod  |  sourceCowon  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags: , , , , ,
Jul 13

Mojopac Freedom – Make Any App Portable

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili, Windows XP

This article was written on October 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mojopac Last year we gave away some copies of Mojopac, and a lot of people seemed excited about the features the software offered. With Mojopac you can carry your own your own copy of Windows XP wherever you go, including any applications that you use.

Previously Mojopac ran you $50 to buy, but it can now be downloaded for free! That’s right, the new MojoPac Freedom was recently announced giving you the ability to carry your games, applications, and all of your operating system customizations with you on your iPod or USB drive.

How can they offer it for free? They still have a Deluxe version available for $50 but it hardly differs from the free version. The only added benefit that you really get is the technical support, but I have a feeling that their real money maker is in the Enterprise version. That has a lot of additional features consumers won’t really need, and by offering a free version for personal use they are more likely to get people to spread the word about their program. It’s kind of like how Microsoft offers Windows and Office to students at significantly reduced costs, because they know that if students are familiar with their products then they will carry that into the workplace.

Mojopac should work with almost all of your applications, but you can get a little reassurance by viewing a list of known programs that work with it. On the list you’ll see programs like Microsoft Office, World of Warcraft, iTunes, and dozens more.

Get Mojopac Freedom (Only works with Windows XP, Vista version is being tested)
Mojopac Video Demonstration
Source: jkOnTheRun

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags: ,
Jul 12

2007 CyberNet Awards: Most Productive Apps

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 31, 2007 by CyberNet.

The 2007 CyberNet Awards is wrapping things up by highlighting what we believe to be the Most Productive Apps of 2007. One of our favorite things to write about are programs that can help increase productivity, and it’s only fitting to close with this award. A big thanks to all the developers of the following programs, because without them I don’t know how I would get anything done!

The 2007 CyberNet Award for Most Productive App goes to…

–3rd Place: Foxit Reader–

This is an absolutely incredible PDF reader, and after using it you’ll likely never go back to Adobe Acrobat Reader. The reason why this has made me more productive is because of the incredible startup speed. It normally takes just 1 or 2 seconds to startup, compared to Adobe Acrobat’s 10 or 15 seconds (when you don’t let Adobe pre-load its software).

It doesn’t sound like much, but maybe you’ll see the significance once we put it into perspective. Lets say you open your PDF reader 3 times a day, and by using Foxit you save an average of 10 seconds on the loading time. Personally I know I open more than 3 PDF’s a day, so I think that is pretty conservative. That’s 30 seconds each day you could save by using Foxit, and in a year’s time that equates to over 3 hours of saved time! Even if you just open it once a day that’s one hour that you would save in a year.

–2nd Place: Launchy–

Launchy is arguably the best application launcher available, and the fact that it’s free makes it even better. They really upped their game with the new Launchy 2.0 that was just released a few weeks ago, which added a more unified experience by integrating settings into a single window. It also included some new skins which really makes the app look astounding.

I know that many of you rely on Launchy each and everyday to assist with finding the programs and documents you use the most. Having to hunt through the Start Menu or Windows Explorer to find what you want can waste so much time, but Launchy helps regain the time that would otherwise be lost.

–1st Place: Microsoft Office 2007–

I couldn’t help but give Microsoft first place in this category. Their new Office 2007 has made me a hundred times more productive thanks to the intuitive Ribbons that have replaced the old-fashioned toolbars. I find myself using features I never knew existed, and it looks so darn good. Yeah, I’m a sucker for eye candy.

I first started using Microsoft Office 2007 over a year ago when it was still in the pre-release stage. It took a few weeks to get accustomed to where some of the options had moved to, but in the end I find myself saving loads of time. A big thanks goes out to the developers who came up with the idea for “live previews,” because that alone deserves a gold medal. And the Mini Toolbar is sheer genius.

–And Your Winners–

Now it is time for you to chime in! Let us know in the comments who earned your “Most Productive App? award.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments