Spam your Facebook friends with fake $25 iTunes offer
If your time isn't worth much, do take advantage of the free $25 iTunes gift card offer circulating Facebook. Clicking the link will lead you to a page compelling you to share the offer with all your friends, before moving on to a survey. What do you get -- other than perhaps a few dislikes from your social network? Nothing. It's a scam, blogs Graham Cluley, Sophos senior technology consultant.
The request to "share" the offer with Facebook friends should be dead giveaway the offer is fake. "You should, of course, always treat such requests with suspicion, but that hasn't stopped many people unwittingly help the scammers to spread their links far and wide across Facebook", Cluely warns.
Acronis True Image Home 2012 enters private beta
Acronis has released the first private beta of Acronis True Image Home 2012, its flagship backup tool. True Image, which combines drive-imaging, online and file-based backups in one program, is now available to Acronis account users. After registering, the beta can be downloaded and installed.
Acronis True Image Home 2012 introduces a new file synchronization feature, closer integration with Acronis Online Backup and a number of under-the-hood improvements as well as some other minor changes.
Save everything with Redo Backup and Recovery 1.0
We all know how important backing up your hard drive is. Whether you're backing up a clutch of files and settings, or want a complete backup of the entire hard drive, there are solutions a-plenty to choose from. But while you may have given a lot of thought to backing up your computer, have you ever considered what you'll do if the worst comes to pass and you need to restore that data?
What you need is a tool that doesn't rely on you being able to load your operating system before it allows you to get at your data. And if it's free, well so much the better! The good news is that you can have your cake and eat it, with the aid of Redo Backup and Recovery, which has just enjoyed its first stable release (1.0) after a lengthy period in beta.
Forget iPhone 5, Samsung sells 3 million Galaxy S IIs in just 55 days
You want to know why Apple is so hellbent on stopping Samsung selling smartphones in the United Sates? Reread this post's headline.
Samsung's sales milestone comes as competition increases with Apple here and abroad. Galaxy S II sales success also partly explains the ongoing patent claims and counter-claims spat going on between the companies. In its boldest move yet, Apple on July 1 requested a preliminary injunction barring Samsung from selling Droid Charge, Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G and Galaxy Tab 10.1 here. (Justia.com has consolidated case history.)
Take advantage of Dropbox revised terms of service with SecretSync
On Friday, Dropbox revised its terms of service, privacy policy and security overview documents. Although the updates are designed to make Dropbox's T&Cs simpler and easier to understand, it has reignited the debate that first surfaced when Dropbox announced it was changing its terms and conditions to allow it to hand over data if required to do so by the authorities.
In its defense, Dropbox has always recommended software to let users encrypt their data before its uploaded to Dropbox's servers, thereby protecting their data even if Dropbox was forced to hand it over. TrueCrypt is one such solution, and BoxCryptor is another, and now there's a third option available for Linux and Windows users in the form of SecretSync.
No one shot President Obama, Fox News Twitter account hacked
The alarming tweets that went out a few hours ago are false, according to Fox News. They claimed that President Barack Obama had been shot while campaigning, which itself is red flag something wasn't right. What president would campaign on America's Independence Day nearly 18 months before the election?
"FoxNews.com's Twitter feed for political news, FoxNewspolitics, was hacked early Monday morning", according to a report by Fox News. "Hackers sent out several malicious and false tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family. The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created".
Google+ is a marketing sensation
Finally techdom is talking about something other than Apple, and probably it's more important.
When dinosaurs ruled the earth, what creature then could have imagined that someday mammals, which were smaller and eventually smarter, would replace them? Fast-forward to the present. For all the talk about the handsome or the beautiful, it's the geeks, not the athletes, that people listen to. Right now techdom is incessantly chattering about Google+. There's simply no way to turn down the volume.
I tried to free myself from Google and failed
On this day, 235 years ago, the Second Continental Congress voted for a Declaration of Independence. From that perspective, July 2nd is America's independence day, but the document wasn't ready for another two days. So it's perhaps appropriate timing to discuss the declaration I made on April 4th to free myself from Google. At the time I asked: "Can you give up Google?" Maybe you can, but I couldn't.
Google's antitrust troubles motivated me. In December, the European Commission opened an "antitrust investigation into allegations that Google Inc. has abused a dominant position in online search". An investigation loomed in the United States and, as of late last month, is underway. The Federal Trade Commission is reviewing Google's business practices.
Celebrate the Fourth of July with Google's data declaration of independence [video]
Well, hell, maybe Google is serious about all this open stuff, after all. As part of the massive Google sites makeover now underway -- of which the + social service and gmail clutter cleanup are part -- there is a new utility for sucking all your precious data out of the search and information giant's services. Hey, it's your data. Shouldn't you be able to take it anywhere?
The Data Liberation Front video above introduces this new thing -- Google Takeout. It's more than a utility. Google Takeout is a movement. I mean that. This whole data portability thing clearly stems from Google's so-called "Open Principles". There is a Data Liberation Front website, blog and Twitter feed.
Will video chat be Facebook's next big thing?
On July 6, Facebook is hosting an event where it will unveil an unnamed new product, which TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington says will be an in-browser video chat client from Skype.
Though we haven't yet received an acknowledgement of this report today from Facebook or Skype, Arrington's proclamation is entirely plausible.
Google Might buy Hulu? Make it TiVo, too
Los Angeles Times reporters Jessica Guynn and Dawn Chmielewski claim that Google "is in preliminary talks to buy online video pioneer Hulu, people familiar with the situation said". Microsoft and Yahoo also are suitors. Last week, Hulu went on the selling block, setting off a tizzy of speculation about whom -- and rumors, just like this one.
Generally, when negotiations are serious, they never leak out, and "preliminary" means just that. Companies have preliminary talks every day about partnerships and acquisitions that go nowhere. Talk is cheap. Buying a company isn't, which is one of many reasons why leaks about talks generally mean nothing more or that one side or the other seeks leverage. The leak about Google could be purposely done to get a more serious suitor to ante up more cash.
The era of mass Internet attacks is over
A lot of the easy money in Internet attacks is gone. Now you have to do some homework and pick your targets more carefully to get a rewarding rate of return on your crimes.
A report from Cisco says that the nature of attacks on the Internet is changing. Dumb, old-fashioned mass-spammed attacks, and spam itself, are losing their financial motivation and decreasing in frequency.
Zynga wastes 1.3 million years of our time annually -- now it wants a $1B IPO
Zynga, the Maryland-based social gaming company responsible for such popular time-wasters as FarmVille, CityVille, and Mafia Wars, filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange commission on Friday that values the company at one billion dollars.
In the company's S-1 filing with the SEC today, it neatly lined up all the important statistics that led to the billion dollar valuation: 232 million monthly active users, 60 million daily active users engaging in 2 billion minutes of play per day. When tallied, that amounts to 3805 years worth of gameplay every single day.
Internet Explorer usage is a falling rock
But can IE9 and Windows 7 help defy gravity?
First of the month means fresh browser usage data from NetApplications. Despite all the hoopla about IE9, Internet Explorer's share, as measured in usage, declined (again) in June -- to 53.68 percent from 54.27 percent in May and 55.11 percent in April. Internet Explorer 9 launched in March.
Tag Heuer unveils $6,800 Android smartphone, doesn't even offer Gingerbread
Wristwatch blog ablogtoread.com caught the exclusive debut of Tag Heuer's Link Smartphone, another device in the very small "Luxury Android" category that carries an almost $7,000 pricetag.
Tag Heuer is a division of the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy luxury goods conglomerate, and this is only its second luxury mobile phone.
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