Policing Twitter -- can the existing legal system cope with the technological age?
Twitter is rarely out of the headlines, but this week two legal cases surrounding the social network slash micro-blogging service brought it to attention for slightly different reasons than normal. On one side of the Atlantic a couple fell foul of the law for using Twitter to make threats to a feminist campaigner, while on the other a celebrity managed to avoid prosecution for libel after managing to plead ignorance about the falsity of a claim made online.
For a court case victory, it was announced in a very restrained, quiet way... particularly when you consider that the victor was none other than Courtney Love. The celebratory tweet reads simply "I can't thank you enough Dongell Lawrence Finney LLP, the most incredible law firm on the planet. We won this epic battle. #justiceprevails", and the decision to use Twitter was slightly ironic considering the fact that the court case stemmed from a previous tweet made by Ms. Love.
British school children subjected to NSA-style surveillance
The idea of being monitored, spied upon, surveilled, call it what you will, is something we are gradually becoming used to. CCTV cameras abound, we now know that our private communication could be intercepted at any time, and god only knows what else is going on unbeknownst to us. The plots of Person of Interest look positively tame compared to what is actually happening. Look, a whole introductory paragraph about modern-day surveillance and not one reference to Big Brother, 1984 or George Orwell. Oh ... damn.
But it seems that it is not just potential terrorists, criminals and other ne'er do wells who might feel concerned about who is reading their emails and monitoring their online activity. Hundreds of schools up and down the UK are actively monitoring the online communication of pupils using methods not too far removed from those employed by the NSA on a global scale.
ImDisk Toolkit adds dynamic RAM disks
Setting up a RAM disk can be a quick and easy way to speed up some programs, but it also has a very obvious down side. Any RAM you allocate to a virtual drive is no longer available to Windows and the rest of your system, which may reduce performance in other situations.
While this kind of trade-off sounds inevitable, the latest ImDisk Toolkit shows it doesn’t have to be that way. New dynamic memory management support means that RAM disks will only consume the memory they actually need. If you’ve a 512MB RAM disk with 10MB of files, say, then memory consumption will be only a fraction above 10MB: the remaining 500MB will be available for other applications.
PngOptimizer compresses PNG files without affecting image quality
Save an image as a PNG file and you can be sure it’ll be compressed to a significant degree -- but there could be scope for reducing the file size even further. You don’t have to resize the image, cut the number of colors or do anything to affect image quality, either. It’s just a matter of using PngOptimizer to rewrite your files in a more efficient way.
The program arrives as a single 246KB executable, and its interface is as basic as that size suggests. There’s just a window, with no toolbar or menus: you drag and drop your target onto PngOptimizer, and they’re automatically analyzed, optimized and saved.
Beats Music extends free trial, but no Windows Phone app yet
It’s been a busy week for Beats Music, with a big launch, followed closely by a subsequent closure of registration due to problems with the network. Regardless if the problems were real or a publicity stunt, the streaming service is back now.
Today the company’s CEO Ian Rogers issues a thank you to those who have stuck with it, and to show his gratitude he made a special offer. "To thank you for being early we are extending the 7 day trial to 14 days for all customers who sign up before Saturday evening".
Some Windows computers are infecting Android devices with malware
Since Android is based on Linux, many users consider it rather safe and secure. However, this is not at all true -- most malware that targets mobile devices, targets Android. For the most part though, it is easy to stay safe by only installing reputable apps from the Play Store.
What if, however, your desktop operating system was infecting your Android device without you knowing? Sadly, this can happen, as some Windows users are finding out. Symantec announces it has found such a case, and it is really nasty.
Linux photo management app Shotwell development handed off
Using a Linux distribution as your desktop operating system can be hit or miss. Depending on your needs, it may work brilliantly or horribly. You see, most mainstream apps are not available, so you must depend on alternative software. For instance, for some users, GIMP is a passable replacement for photoshop and Libreoffice for Microsoft Office.
When it comes to photo management, there is really only one great Linux app -- Shotwell, by a company called Yorba. If you do amateur or professional photography and you want to organize your photos, there really isn't a better piece of software on Linux. Sure, there are alternatives such as F-Spot, but Shotwell is the definitive app. Sadly, it hasn't been getting the attention it needs lately, which was worrying to some users (myself included). As a result, Yorba has handed over development and the recipient is rather surprising -- the Elemenatary OS team.
The most popular stories on BetaNews this past week - January 19 -- 25
Handset news aplenty this week. The Nokia Lumia 929 appeared for sale in China, and also showed up on Verizon's US website under the Nokia Lumia Icon name before quietly disappearing. None of this did anything to improve Windows Phone sales for Nokia which were found to be disappointing. Figures released this week showed that phablets are going to become increasingly popular as user look to merge smartphones and tablets in to a single device. It will probably come as little surprise that in the next few years it is predicted that mobile apps will be the most used software. Samsung Galaxy Note 3 owners were disappointed to find that upgrading to KitKat killed their ability to use third party accessories.
Ahead of the release of Update 1 to the operating system, Microsoft finally got around to releasing a guide to mastering Windows 8.1. So keen is Microsoft for you to learn more about Windows 8.1, a second batch of guides was released later in the week. And while you're becoming an expert Windows 8.1 user, Microsoft would like you to take a second look at Internet Explorer and rethink its web browser.
Gmail is back up, but strange problem persists
There is something to be said for the cloud and web-based services. However, when you rely on these things, sometimes it goes a bit wrong. That's not as bad as it sounds. It can go very wrong with your home computer and network as well. Today, Google is experiencing one of those "glitches".
As of this writing, the Gmail service seems to be restored for all users, and I've inquired with writer friends around the US and the world to verify that. However, there is a rather bizarre side-effect, but it's only affecting one poor user. Sadly, that person is getting the bulk of the email being sent since the outage relented.
My Mac Moment
Macintosh is 30 years old. If this were "Logan's Run", January 24 would be Last Day. Or the 1960s, time to ditch the computer because, you know, don't trust anyone (or anything) over 30. Declaration: I am a Mac user, which surely surprises the long line of people accusing me of being anti-Apple. My Mac sojourn started on a Winter's day in December 1998. I've abandoned Apple a few times since, even briefly boycotting, but always come back.
My first Macintosh sighting was August 1984. I spent the summer in Chapel Hill, N.C. and often hung out on the University of North Carolina campus. The college book store displayed the Apple, which I found remarkable. I wasn't a computer geek, nor am I one now, but nevertheless found the device charming. A decade later, I started using a Windows PC and for a while was a Macintosh bigot. I particularly enjoyed ribbing the graphic designers with whom my wife worked when their Macs crashed, wiping out hours of Photoshop or QuarkXpress work. "Get a PC!" was my common retort.
Automatically add clipart-style masks to on-screen faces with Funny Mask
If you want to have a little fun with a picture of someone, then you could open it in a graphics editor, draw on glasses, add a clipart wig, maybe a hat. But if that sounds like too much work, you could just use Funny Mask to do much the same thing, at a click.
The program is small, portable and easy to use. Just launch it, and click "Draw On Screen". Funny Mask uses OpenCV (the Open Source Computer Vision Library) to look for faces, and adds one of twelve silly customizations to anything it finds (wigs, glasses, hats, a mustache, and more).
WinPatrol 2014 debuts tweaked user interface, better performance
BillP Studios has unveiled the 30th major version of its snapshot-based security tool with the release of WinPatrol 30.0.2014. Although this release isn’t a beta, it’s been billed as a "Preview", with many additional enhancements -- including support for international date formats -- promised to follow.
What is already present in the new release is an interface redesign, improved performance, enhanced reporting, new cookie support, better handling of Windows Update and a tweaked Delayed Start function.
GifCam records screen activity as an animated GIF
Screen recorders are a great way to show others what’s happening on your desktop, as we saw with oCam earlier this month. But they usually save their results as videos, which can be a problem if you want to be sure they can be viewed by anyone, on any device (you’re embedding them in a website, for example).
GifCam can help by recording your desktop activity as an animated GIF. This means you won’t be able to include audio, of course, and file sizes will be larger. But they’ll be accessible to everyone, everywhere -- and the program is far better at tuning the results than you might think.
Best Windows 8 apps this week
Sixty-fifth in a series. Growth has been almost negative this week. Not because of a lack of new applications published to Windows Store, but because of Microsoft's continuing clean-up operations.
About 500 apps were removed from the Tools category alone, and slower than usual growth in other categories is an indicator that Microsoft removed apps from other categories as well in this week.
Nokia's swan song
Yesterday, Nokia posted its final financial results before the Microsoft deal closes. Unfortunately, the part of Nokia being sold to Microsoft doesn't seem to be in great shape. Nokia's recent traction with the Lumia range seems to have stalled as it announced a 7 percent sequential decline in unit sales. Let's take a brief look at the causes of the decline and what Microsoft is really buying.
The chart above shows Lumia shipments and ASPs for the past eight quarters. As we can see the Lumia's ASP (Average Selling Price) has continued to decline as shipments grew. This reinforces the fact that the Lumia sales mix was dominated by low-end variants -- primarily the Lumia 520. We need to keep this in mind while examining the cause of the Q4 decline in shipments.
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