Alien invasion -- Google celebrates the Roswell Incident

google roswell doodle

In the summer of 1947 an unidentified flying object reportedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico (75 miles north-west to be exact). The "event" was classified by the United States as the crash of an experimental high-altitude weather balloon, and little was made of it at the time. That changed in 1978 when the National Enquirer ran a report of the story and the tin-foil hat crowd jumped on it.

As my friend Brian Dunning, who runs the popular Skeptoid podcast and blog reports: "Stanton Friedman, an obsessed UFO [enthusiast], started interviewing everyone he could find who was still alive who had been connected with the incident and began constructing all sorts of elaborate conspiracies". Regardless if you believe any of this or not, there is no denying it is a fun story and a major tourist draw for the city.

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Nokia Lumia 925 arrives in Australia later this month

1200-nokia_lumia_925_color_range-600x600

Finnish phone maker Nokia is slowly rolling out its new Lumia 925 Windows Phone in major markets across the world. Following Germany and UK, the smartphone will also arrive in Australia later this month.

Nokia's Australian arm revealed the upcoming local availability of the Lumia 925, earlier today, in a Facebook posting. The Windows Phone 8 device will be offered by "all major retailers" starting July 17, with mobile operators Telstra and Optus selling the handset from July 30 and August 1, respectively.

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RegScanner lets you navigate the Registry like a pro

Registry

When you’re troubleshooting PC problems, locating the right Registry setting can often point you in the right direction. But you’ll have to find it first, and that can be a problem as the standard Regedit search option is just about as basic as you’ll get.

You could try to solve this by looking for an alternative Registry editor, but, as usual, NirSoft provides a simpler solution. Its tiny RegScanner utility allows you to search the Registry with a host of new options, saving you time and helping you locate settings you’d never find with Regedit alone.

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jAlbum resolves memory issues, improves page customisation tools

Jalbum

jAlbum AB has put out another minor update of its cross-platform web media album builder with the launch of jAlbum 11.3. The app, which runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, simplifies the task of building both picture and video galleries for displaying online in the form of web pages.

Version 11.3 attempts to provide a better showcase of the program’s capabilities by preloading a Sample Portfolio project that demonstrates how to make a full portfolio site by using sub-folders and custom Contact and About pages. Users can then use this as a template or a tutorial for building such sites using the app.

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LG teases the forthcoming Optimus G2 smartphone

LG billboard

LG is set to launch a new product in New York on 7 August and has posted a Samsung style teaser video suggesting the device will be the follow up to the Optimus G.

The video clip shows various locations in New York as viewed from a first person perspective. At each landmark, including Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge, the person holding the camera sees a sign stating "To me, you are perfect. From G", which also happens to be the name of the video.

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Easily create icons from images or executables

Any2Ico

Replacing a few of the standard Windows and application icons can be a great way to give your PC a fresh new look. Creating new icons can be more of a challenge, though, as the ICO format isn’t widely supported by graphics software.

There is an easy solution to this problem, though, and it’s called Quick Any2Ico. Point this compact free program at an image or executable file and it’ll convert or extract the required icon for you with a click.

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Nokia Lumia 928 -- photographing the rainforest with Windows Phone 8

rainforest (5)

This weekend, I returned from a nine day cruise of the Caribbean. On this particular cruise, I went to Bermuda, St. Martin, Puerto Rico and Haiti. What I love about cruises, other than the food (yes, I’m a fat guy), is visiting multiple locations in a short time rather than being in one place for the entire trip. This allows me to take very eclectic photos and have memories that will last a lifetime.

I own a fairly nice point-and-shoot camera with the Nikon Coolpix AW100. The Nikon is my go-to camera when I am visiting beaches since it is waterproof. However, while in Puerto Rico, I was to tour El Yunque Rainforest -- a beautiful place to take photos where I would not be going swimming. And so, I decided to use a different camera instead -- the Nokia Lumia 928 on Verizon. Yup, I was trusting my vacation memories with a camera-phone!

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Scammers are after the Apple ID I don't have

espionage hacker thief black hat

When I receive an email asking to validate my account info, it is an obvious alert that something is amiss. These frequently come in the guise of PayPal and even banks where I have no account -- a no brainer to hit the delete button. However, as I browsed through my messages while preparing for bed, one caught my attention, not because of variance from other email scams, but because it simply attempted to lure me to a trap I had not encountered previously.

While the likes of PayPal and CitiBank may trade between targets number one and two, this was the first time I had been asked to validate my Apple account -- the one I have never had.

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Evernote Touch 2.0 for Windows 8 gets new hub page, improves editing

Evernote Touch 2.0

Evernote Corporation has released Evernote Touch 2.0, a major update of its touch-friendly Windows 8 app. The latest version's main new feature is a hub page providing a summary of the user’s account, while it also promises improved editing tools and support for Business accounts.

The major new highlight is undoubtedly the hub page, which is the first thing users will see when logging into the app. All of its core navigation items as well as an overview of the various parts of the user's account, including notes, notebooks, tags and shortcuts, can now be found here.

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Move BeyondPod to Feedly, after Google killed Reader

beyondpod podcast feed

By now you are likely sick of hearing all of the bemoaning over the death of Google Reader, but the fact is, this affected more things than it would seem on the surface. If you happen to have an Android device and listen to podcasts, then you will notice that popular app BeyondPod stopped updating on July 1.

BeyondPod used Google Listen for its backend, which, in turn, relied on Reader. When the latter died, it dragged the former down into the grave with it. Sadly BeyondPod was not able to get its update together in time for the RSS aggregator's demise. However, the company is testing the new version, and has elected to migrate to Feedly for its backend.

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CyberLink Media Suite 11 Ultimate review

cyberlink

From watching movies to editing videos, organising photos or burning discs, everyone needs quality multimedia software. This can be very expensive, though, so you will probably only wish to purchase the bare minimum of tools, just the core essentials that you really need.

There is another option, though. Buying CyberLink Media Suite 11 Ultimate will get you 15 of software's best multimedia apps – playback tools, including audio, photo and video editors; disc authoring apps, media organisers, sharing tools and more.

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Best Windows 8 apps this week

network speed test

Thirty-six in a series. Microsoft confirmed this week that the total Windows Store app count crossed the 100,000 apps threshold. That's a big milestone for the company and users of the system.

These 100,000 apps are not available to all users though, as localization limits app availability somewhat. The US Windows Store for instance crossed the 70,000 apps mark this week which in turn means that about 30,000 apps are not available to users from the United States.

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Jolidrive brings your personal cloud to iOS

jolicloud for iOS

With all of the cloud and social apps these days, our content becomes increasingly spread across vast reaches of the Internet. It is a modern-day problem that is less easy to solve than you may believe and accomplishing the feat has generated its own mini-industry within the tech world.

One service aiming to unify our vast web of data is Jolicloud, which uses its Jolidrive app to bring this sprawling mess together in a central location for customers to access. Now the service releases its iOS app, which is built for both iPhone and iPad and brings together much of your cloud-based life.

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Aging desktop search tool Everything now receives major update

Everything

Five years have passed since the search tool Everything first appeared, and the program's amazing speed gets it fans ever since. It's easy to see why, too -- there's no fuss, no complexity, just enter part of a file or folder name and results appear just as quickly as you can type.

What is a little more surprising, though, is that the program's last stable release was back in March 2009. But there's no need to worry, Everything isn't dead, just "resting", and a series of betas released this year show that the developer is determined to make up for lost time.

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Edward Snowden is a patriot

Saluting Flag USA Soldier Man

It's big news and rightly so. Whistleblower Edward Snowden is now the US government's number one enemy. He is called both a traitor and patriot by the public, press, and government officials. His story sparked a debate over where America's best interests lie, whether in freedom or in safety.

The Justice Department is gathering all the information it needs to press a criminal case against Snowden, who has leaked secret documents on the NSA's expansive surveillance programs. From Snowden's leaks, it appears that the agency is increasingly focused on regular American citizens rather than terrorists and suspected criminals.

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