FDA to regulate medical smartphone, tablet apps

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The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday announced it is looking to the public for input about the regulation of mobile health and medicine apps for smartphones, tablets, and mobile computers.

By 2015, the organization expects 500 million smartphone users will count on some kind of health care application on their device, be it to measure and regulate caloric intake, to monitor heart conditions, or to do any number of things.

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Mozilla re-establishes Enterprise Working Group

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Perhaps stung by the reaction to recent statements and actions, Mozilla has announced that they are taking the old Mozilla Enterprise Working Group out of virtual mothballs.

The MEWG is a forum where Mozilla developers can interact with Enterprise IT and developers to discuss their needs and experiences with Mozilla software. It is supposed to include a monthly conference call in addition to online forums, but there hasn't been a meeting in almost 4 years.

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Augmented reality navigation app Wikitude Drive comes to US

Wikitude Drive

Austrian software developers Wikitude were pioneers of Augmented Reality on the Android platform. The company's Wikitude World Browser was the first AR app for Android in 2008, and it has been downloaded onto a million devices.

Tuesday, Wikitude launched its augmented reality satellite navigation app Wikitude Drive for U.S. Android devices. The app has been available for approximately 8 months already in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, Spain, France, and Italy.

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Dissatisfied with Facebook? You're not alone

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The American Customer Satisfaction Index e-business report is out, and, whoa, do people not really like Facebook.

"Facebook continues to register as one of the lowest-scoring companies measured by the ACSI", from the report. "To put this in perspective, only 14 other sites of the 226 private-sector companies measured by the ACSI have scores that tie or fall below Facebook's, meaning Facebook is in the bottom 6 percent of the whole ACSI".

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AVG launches powerful social media organization and sharing tool MultiMi

MultiMi contact ranking

Security software company AVG and Israeli startup Zbang on Tuesday launched the beta of MultiMi, a free Windows desktop app for organizing and sharing content between multiple inboxes, social networks, calendars, and media albums.

MultiMi could be compared to social media aggregators Inbox2, Threadsy or even Tweetdeck because it offers the user a look into multiple social media accounts at once. But it doesn't just organize multiple social media, it also handles Google Docs, Box.net, Google and Facebook Calendar, Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, and many more. In addition to being able to link up with Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and any POP, IMAP or Exchange email inboxes, MultiMi has the capacity to support any Web-based service with an available API, so that means there's no support for Google+ just yet, but there will be as soon as the API is released.

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The irony and infamy of LulzSec's Rupert Murdoch attacks

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There's an irony to today's LulzSec attacks on News Corp. websites. It's bad for newspapers to wiretap, but OK to hack them. That's the message from the hacktivists -- they're justified to break the law but no one else.

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LulzSec livetweets attack on Rupert Murdoch's news empire

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Mischievous hacker group LulzSec on Monday repeatedly attacked websites belonging to international media conglomerate News Corporation, calling it "Murdoch Meltdown Monday."

At 5:40pm EST, LulzSec announced on Twitter that it had "owned" the UK news outlet The Sun, and replaced the front page with a fake one which proclaimed that News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch was found dead.

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Will iPhone 5 bring the perfect storm?

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It's a good question to ask now that ChangeWave claims that 46 percent of 4,163 consumers surveyed plan to buy iPhone within 90 days. Apple is expected to release iPhone 5 within that time period.

Earlier today, ChangeWave released the data, which reliability is somewhat skewed. "This survey focuses primarily on the North American smartphone market -- with the sample being 89 percent U.S. respondents and 11 percent outside the US", according to the analyst firm. Pardon my confusion, but when did the United States annex Canada and Mexico? Last I checked, North America wasn't synonymous with the United States. It's little details like this that in the past caused me to beat ChangeWave with its own data.

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Manage Windows files with Multi Commander 1.10

Multi Commander

Mathias Svensson has released version 1.10 of his Windows file management tool, Multi Commander. It's a notable release for being the first build to be made publicly available as freeware, and also features a number of notable new tools and improvements.

Multi Commander 1.10 contains over 180 changes according to the author, including a new Folder Tree feature, which adds a folder tree option to each of Multi Commander's two window panes. Also new in version 1.10 is customizable file colors based on the file name as well as a new column listing additional information from IMDB and RottenTomatoes.com for identifiable movies.

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UserAssist uncovers hidden Windows activity logs

UserAssist

It's no secret that Windows records many details about how your PC is being used. A quick look at the Start menu will probably uncover the programs you've launched recently, and the documents you've opened, for instance, while histories in WordPad, Paint, the Run box and so on reveal even more about your recent activities.

What's not quite as well known, though, is that Windows also maintains a longer and separate history of all the programs launched on your computer, including details like the number of times they've been run, and the last execution date and time. This information is stored in the Registry (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist), but it's encrypted, so you'll need something like the free UserAssist tool to find out more (for Windows 7 use this version --for Windows XP or Vista go here).

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Last year's tech is good enough for Sprint's new push-to-talk Android phone

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Sprint Nextel on Monday announced it will be replacing the year-old Motorola i1 in its product lineup with the Motorola Titanium, the second rugged Android phone to support the 800/900 MHz iDEN network protocol and the Nextel Direct Connect push to talk service.

Motorola Titanium includes a portrait QWERTY keyboard, 3.1" touchscreen display in a ruggedized design meeting Military Specification 810G (MIL-STD-810G) for environmental stress resistance to dust, shock, air pressure, temperature and sunshine. It has a 5 megapixel LED flash camera, stereo bluetooth, 802.11b/g, AGPS, and a micro USB port.

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Google issues temporary fix for the 'there aren't enough native Honeycomb apps' problem

Android Honeycomb logo

Today, Google formally announced Android 3.2, an "incremental release" that addresses a big perception problem: Not enough native Honeycomb tablet apps. Apple's iPad has 100,000, while Android has, well, you don't really want to know.

Google announced the new capability a week ago. Now developers will have access to it: "'Stretch to fill screen' is normal layout resizing (using your app's alternative resources for size and density) and 'Zoom to fill screen' is the new screen compatibility mode" Scott Main, lead tech writer for developer.android.com, writes in a July 11 blog post.

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After getting booted from Google+, Anonymous announces its own social network

Anonymous, Guy Fawkes, V, mask

Responding to Google's ban of +YourAnonNews on new social network Google+, "hacktivist" group Anonymous and Presstorm Media began discussing the possibility of a new social network called AnonPlus (or Anon+).

"This project is not overnight and will take many of those out there who simply want a better internet," the site's landing page says. "We will not be stopped by those looking to troll or those willing to stop the spreading of the truth. One thing i would like to point out that this project is for ALL people not just anonymous, this idea is a presstorm idea and only takes the name anon because of the Anonymity of the social network."

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Pssst, want to save a bundle on textbooks?

Amazon e-textbook rental

That's the question raised by Amazon's new Kindle Textbook Rental service, announced today. Amazon claims 80-percent savings when renting rather than buying. Would you go for it?

Amazon says it has "tens of thousands" of e-textbooks available to rent for initial 30 day-periods with extensions that could go as little as one day more up to a total of 360 days. The rental program is available for Kindle ereaders or any device capable of running the Kindle software, including Android handsets or tablets, iPad, iPhone, Macs or PCs.

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Adobe acquires e-signature tech company EchoSign

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Software company Adobe Systems Inc. has acquired e-signature technology company EchoSign, the two parties announced on Monday. EchoSign's technology will be integrated with Adobe's document solutions including SendNow, FormsCentral, and CreatePDF.

EchoSign's e-signature technology has already been integrated into Salesforce, Google Docs, NetSuite, Oracle CRM on Demand, SugarCRM, and SAP CLM, so Adobe, in addition to gaining the tech for its own document solutions, gains a foothold into document authentication for these major enterprise solutions.

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