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Walyou

Top 10 Crazy Hacks of 2013
Consumer Polls Hint At An Extinction For Non-Smart Phones
Google Camera App Brings Lens Blur and Panorama to Android
On Earth Day, Nest Thermostats Are on Sale on Google Play
Sphinx Tablet Dock Is a Functional Solution for Workplaces

Top 10 Crazy Hacks of 2013

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 07:00 AM PDT

WEEEEEEE! Stuff, yo! Now that we’re approaching the end of the year, it’s time to look at all the ways we got hacked, tricked, or otherwise taken advantage of in 2013.

10. The Burger King Twitter Hack

On February 18, Burger King fans woke up to find their favorite Twitter account hacked to display several offensive images and the new slogan “Fredom is Failure.” Yes, the hackers misspelled “freedom.” I guess they were smart enough to break into Burger King’s Twitter account but not to run spell check.

9. The Jeep “Whopper” Hack

The same team that hacked Burger King followed up a day later by hacking Jeep’s Twitter account, and running the same images of employees using drugs and other offensive tweets that they had posted the day before. The new slogan that they slapped onto Jeep’s Twitter? “#OpMadCow #OpWhopper.” Come on, guys.

8. Twishing

“Did you see this pic of you?” Did you click the link? If you did, you fell victim to the infamous 2013 twishing hack. Even I came close, until I realized that http://tw1tter.com was not actually the real Twitter login site. Thank goodness.

7. Adobe Needs Us To Update AGAIN

Since nearly everyone in the developed world uses Adobe to read and edit PDFs, we all got that same email on October 10 letting us know that a hacker “may have obtained access to your Adobe ID and encrypted password.” This time, instead of updating Adobe itself, we all had to update our passwords.

6. The New York Times’ Syrian Electronic Army hack

In August, the Syrian Electronic Army literally took the New York Times website offline. They pulled off this sophisticated hack by sending a malicious link to the CTO of the New York Times’ DNS registrar, disguised as a routine work email. According to the Trend Micro team, this is one of the top ways that hackers are able to break into large corporations and is large part of the reason they recommend security software to protect from malicious attacks. In this case, lack of proper protection allowed the Syrian Electronic Army to defeat the Grey Lady.

5. Diane in Seat 7A

We’re still angry about this one, okay? Earlier this month, reality show producer Elan Gale live-tweeted a fight he had with a cranky passenger named Diane, who was apparently sitting in seat 7A on an unidentified flight. Turns out Diane wasn’t real. The flight wasn’t real. I’m not even sure airplanes have a seat “7A.”

4. Fox News’ Homepage

Fox News officially went forward stating that this was not a hack, that it was instead an “internal production problem.” That doesn’t change the fact that for one glorious day, anyone who visited the Fox News website was greeted by the words “WEEEEEEE! Stuff, yo!”

3. Obama Under Attack

The Syrian Electronic Army struck multiple times this year, notoriously hacking the Associated Press Twitter account to post fake news that President Obama had been badly injured after explosions at the White House. The stock market immediately fell 130 points, but bounced back soon after we all learned that President Obama was just fine.

2. Your Computer Is Kidnapped, Please Pay in Bitcoins

If you haven’t heard of the CryptoLocker hack, beware — this new hack, currently infecting computers in both the UK and the US, encrypts the files on your computer and then demands a bitcoin ransom to get the files back. The CryptoLocker hack gets users by sending fake FedEx and UPS tracking emails with dangerous attachments. Make sure to talk to your parents about avoiding this hack, because it will be easier than explaining to them what a bitcoin is.

1. My Little Malicious Pony

To top off the list, we just learned this week that hackers were able to use the Pony botnet to steal over two million passwords from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, and other sites. Guess not all ponies are as cute and adorable as Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie.

Consumer Polls Hint At An Extinction For Non-Smart Phones

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 06:00 AM PDT

Recent developments in technology, and increased affordability of modern Smartphones seem to hint at the end of an era for our old, regular devices.

It seems there will be a new member of the discarded technology family, and it might just be regular, pre-smartphone device. Just like the VHS, walkman and even DVDs, the usage of basic mobile phones has steadily been going down, and seem to be almost dead in the case of the USA, according to a poll by the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

The sample chosen for this study, albeit of only 500 US citizens (that means, rather small) who acquired a phone in the last 3 months show that only 3% of the costumers decided for a regular, plain mobile. This number is 20% down from what was reported last year in this very month, which is quite a jump. However, they could be faring worse, as they still reported bigger numbers when compared to Blackberry and Windows phones, who managed to get only 1% each. The remaining 95% was split between a 53 percent for Apple, and 42% for Android OS, which seems to just become bigger every year.

Are you feeling nostalgic about your old Motorola V360 yet? How about the Nokia 1100? Remember the time when we only had to charge our phones once every 4 days or so?

Source: Geekosystem

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Google Camera App Brings Lens Blur and Panorama to Android

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 05:00 AM PDT

More than slightly rivalling Instagram's photo filters, Google has released the Google Camera app to brings lens blur, panorama and more to Android devices.

Give anyone with a bit of technological know how and an ounce of vanity a chance and the second you're not looking you'll probably find them on Instagram, snapping photos and double tapping away as they make good use of the photo-sharing apps crop, rotate and filter functions. In fact, with Instagram's weekly photography challenges, the service is one of the most popular reasons to own a smartphone or tablet with a decent camera. But what if users want more than what Instagram can offer them? What if sepia-tinged selfies just won't cut it? In all honesty, there aren't really a lot of alternatives as plenty of people just invest in Photoshop and a decent DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera) but now, the Google Camera app is looking to change that by bringing lens blur, panorama and more to Android powered devices.

While the benefits of getting the Google Camera app (which is free) are apparent, its features are more than a bargain. The headline feature of lens blur allows users to distort the depth of field by focusing on one object in the foreground and managing to blur everything else in the background behind it. Typically used to put emphasis on a subject or object, Google Camera's lens blur feature is said to work remarkably well, not just beating Instagram's offerings but that of expensive DSLRs too. Panorama is a much needed staple, letting you capture things far and wide in order to knit them together like a single shot when in reality the final edit is made up of a few images. It makes taking photos of a gorgeous landscape far easier and is useful if you don't have any photo editing skills or know how. Finally, the third big feature in the Google Camera app is Photo Sphere. Photo Sphere actually works a lot like Panorama in that it knits multiple shots together but instead of only capturing things from left to right, Photo Sphere accommodates up and down too, meaning that you can capture the beautiful view in front of you as well as the sky above and the ground below your feet, providing a clear depiction of just what you did or where you went that day.

The only catch to the Google Camera app is that it's only available on certain Android devices. Compatible with smartphones and tablets that run Android KitKat 4.0 or higher, those who have yet to upgrade their Android devices or those who are unable to will miss out on the Google branded picture fun. It's unclear whether Google are looking to release the app for earlier versions of Android but we'll keep you posted once we know more.

Source: TechCrunch

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On Earth Day, Nest Thermostats Are on Sale on Google Play

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 01:45 PM PDT

A bit over three months have passed since Nest Labs was acquired by Google, and now their products are already on the search giant’s Play Store.

Google has been an important supporter of renewable energy, and the company’s investments in this field are proof of that. The acquisition of Nest in January only emphasized the search giant’s great concern for our planet, so it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that Earth Day was chosen for launching the Nest Thermostat on Play Store.

Nest’s Yoky Matsuoka pointed out in a blog post that “In honor of Earth Day, we’re excited to announce that we’ve crunched the numbers and come to a pretty amazing conclusion: for the majority of our customers, the Nest Thermostat can become carbon neutral in just eight weeks. For some customers, it can take as little as two weeks.”

She also expressed her enthusiasm regarding the impact of the learning thermostats on the world, as well as the potential of these little gadgets: “We are incredibly proud of the positive impact Nest has had so far, but our work isn’t done. We’re also setting a new goal for ourselves. By next Earth Day, we hope Nest Thermostat schedules around the world can save the energy equal to the annual amount of CO2 absorbed by a forest 50 times the size of Manhattan. But together we think we can reach that goal and make next year’s Earth Day all the greener.”

On Google’s Play Store, the Nest Thermostat is now placed right under the Nexus devices. This might be a clear sign that Google has great plans for its new acquisition, and that true smart homes could become a reality in the not-so-distant future. The device carries a price tag of $249, which is not that much, if you come to think about how much a Nest Thermostat can help you save in the long run.

As usual, one major downside about selling Google products on Play Store is the limited availability of said devices. The Nest Thermostat will only be available in a few selected countries, while the inhabitants of the others will have to pay extra to get their mittens on such products. Hopefully, Google will take measure about that soon and will adjust the availability of its gadgets.

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Sphinx Tablet Dock Is a Functional Solution for Workplaces

Posted: 22 Apr 2014 01:00 PM PDT

Who said that tablets are only for gaming? These little gadgets are real life savers in work environments (in certain contexts), and the Sphinx dock improves their functionality even more.

The Sphinx tablet dock uses cloud platforms and remote desktop integration to virtualize input devices. All this is done in order to enable tablet users to use such peripherals as mice and keyboards. After years of using desktop PCs or even notebooks, being as quick at something as when using full-fledged peripherals is quite a challenge for tablet owners.

Dock2Office's CTO Leendert van der Plas explained that “The unique thing we are doing is connecting mouse and keyboard (and additional devices in future) directly to remote computer (through the cloud). So there is no direct interconnection between tablet, mouse and keyboard. Our solution also works with iPad, which has no options to connect mouse (iOS does not support mouse.”

Van der Plas added that “All existing docking stations for tablets are only to power them, all devices (mostly keyboards) which can be used with tablets are using some type of direct connection (Bluetooth mostly). The Sphinx is mainly developed for use with remote computing solutions. This can be your own PC, but in business environment this is mostly a Windows Terminal, VDI or Daas environment.”

Splashtop, Teamviewer, LogmeIn, PocketCloud, Microsoft Remote Desktop and Real VNC are only some of the remote desktop apps that work with Dock2Office’s Sphinx. Most important, van der Plas emphasized that the lag is barely perceptible, which makes using the Sphinx dock a real pleasure.

What claims to be the world’s first intelligent tablet dock is currently a project on Kickstarter, so the mass production of this gadget is not yet a certainty. Backing the project with $145 will help people secure a Sphinx Lite for themselves, assuming that the project gets funded. When these and the ones reserved to the Early Birds are gone, people will have to pay $185 for the dock, which is quite a steep price, even considering its revolutionary functionality.

The Dutch developers of the Sphinx intelligent tablet dock had at press time 31 more days to reach the $150K goal. Whether it will do so or not depends on whether people will think that the device is worth the price.

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