Tag: OP-ED

This weekend, Gawker Media had its primary database compromised. In this monstrous breach, not only did 1.5 million users have their privacy breached and email address stolen, but they also had their passwords cracked. In a day and age where the currency of our email address and password -- and thus our identity -- is only superseded by our bank details, it's fair to label the Gawker breach as ...

Let me start off by saying I personally think Aza Raskin is a genius. Really. When Windows Phone 7 Series just came out, everyone was all amazed about how "the data is the UI", and how everything is so semantic and clean. Well, it's been done. Raskin did it quite a while back with the incredible (and sadly deserted) Enso Humanized launcher. This launcher was mind-blowingly cool. Really. It's ...

So, music site TheSixtyOne underwent a massive redesign. Old news, right? I was thrilled, others less so. Those disgruntled souls left plenty of comments sharing their feelings, and one of them was kind enough to set me up with a few of TheSixtyOne's top users. These are people who have been with the site for a year or two, day in, day out, and accumulated gazillions of "points". Amongst ...

Ah, Evony. Sweet, sweet Evony. Chances are if you've been online for more than a day or two and you dare step outside the sandbox of Gmail or Facebook and into the seedy underbelly of the beast, you'll have seen the Evony ads. Take a good, long look at the advert to the right --> OK. Now what're you thinking? BOOBS? Voyeuristic pleasures of the flesh? 'You know, it looks like she's ...

Intego, a "leading internet security and privacy software" publisher dropped a press release on my inbox this morning that might as well have read, "Hey, Apple.. Gotcha!" Beyond recognizing the malware threat to Macs, Apple goes further, admitting that the techniques it includes in Mac OS X aren't enough to fully protect Macs from viruses and malware. The company provides security advice, as ...

There are plenty of things I'd love to quit reading about, and the EU's continued moaning about unfair browser bundling is pretty high on the list. We get it. You (and a number of competitors) think Microsoft needs to do something more substantial than allow users to uninstall/disable/burn down Internet Explorer. Your latest fabulous idea? A download dashboard, which will present a number of ...

Moblin beta 2 just dropped a week ago, and things are looking good for the lightweight Linux distribution. It's innovative, sexy, and has already received loads of praise from reviewers for its ease of use, integration of activity streams, and uniqueness. Tech Republic's Gary Marshall, however, thinks Moblin has to be stopped - now. Why? Because he's afraid developers (and the inevitable ...

Early morning Tuesday a software malfunction caused a security breach at Rudder, a web based financial management service Download Squad has covered in the past. It seems a number of Rudder users received email intended for a ton of other users, and in some cases one user received hundreds of emails intended for other users of the service. Soon after, Twitter went crazy with tweets and retweets ...

Without giving it a little thought, I don't recall when I got my first Athlon 64 mainboard and CPU. It's been a long time. AMD first released the chips in September, 2003. Here we are six years later, and we still haven't really begun to make use of the added processing power. Six years is a pretty long time in computer terms. My tower at work is now equipped with eight times as much memory, ...

Don't get me wrong - the people developing various cloud desktops like eyeOS and iCloud have created some very interesting apps with slick features. There are just a few nagging issues I have that prevent me from using one - or even thinking about using one any time soon. First, there's my concern over data. I don't even want to consider the possibility of a company I don't control storing all my ...

There's been a fair amount of buzz over the past couple days regarding TipJar, a place to share money-saving advice powered by Google Moderator. It started with a Tweet from the official @google account, which nearly warranted an immediate post from us, but we let it sit for a couple of reasons. The biggest one: ambiguity. Twitter has been flooded with tweets about TipJar, saying it's like ...