So it’s a few hours after my first post, and I figured I’d give you another round of things to look at, contemplate or click on and ignore. Your choice.
Imgur isn’t having the best of luck these days.
Only a day after Facebook blocked all imgur links, then recanted (and apologized), the Reddit-born image sharing site has been found to be ranked a “high risk” by McAfee, being filed under the categories “Malicious Sites” and “Media Sharing” in that order. I am not quite sure I understand why it’s a high risk site, except for the fact that it contains no #NSFW warnings, and can absolutely murder your productivity. This Reddit thread has a bit to say, stating that is serving up malicious code, while siteadvisor.com (run by McAfee) lists it as being ok.
Tired of YouTube comments pissing you off?
Just install the above-linked extension. It translates the posts into a version of English that directly matches the intelligence of the input. If you’re brave enough, you can click the comment to see the original text, but bring Asprin: It’s gonna make your brain hurt.
Copyright group sued for not paying for music in their ad.
HAHAHAHA. Okay, I’m done. It appears that Melchior Rietveldt composed some music in 2006 for a one-off anti-piracy ad to be used exclusively at a local film festival. After some legal maneuvering, they offered him a paltry sum, and he chose to sue. They said he was owed 60,000 euros for his music being used on over 71 commercial DVDs, when he calculated it was over 164,974 euros. The courts slapped them with a fine, forced them to pay Rietveldt’s legal fees as well as the rest of the money he was owed. It gets better: The copyrights group had a board member (Gerrits) speak to Rietveldt on television, where he offered to help – assuming the composer would sell the song rights to High Fashion Music, which would get 1/3 of his royalties. What’s the problem? Gerrits owns High Fashion. There’s been talk of corruption (duh), but now Gerrits has resigned and is suing for defamation.
Google now has “street view” of Antarctic huts.
Yes, Google has some really cool stuff. They’ve brought their street view technology to Antarctica (how droll) and put it to amazing use cataloging the interiors of century old huts for their World Wonders Project. But that’s not all you can see: Unlike traditional street view, you can’ just pick an intersection and go, you are limited to where they decided to take shots. Thankfully, they took a bunch of cool shots. Head over to see it all.
Daily Show and Colbert Report are back on Viacom’s site.
Well, it appears that they decided everyone took things the wrong way and wanted to make things right. Jon Stewart’s bit probably didn’t help them feel very good about it either.
Microsoft may be in big trouble in little Europe.
The European Commission has started to bring new antitrust proceedings against Microsoft over their lack of access to other web-browsers as part of a previous three year agreement. I suppose including Internet Explorer doesn’t count. While I didn’t really like MS for being so big and hoggy, reading the timeline here makes me think that the EC is a bunch of whiny 10 year olds who don’t know what they’re yelling about.
Skype to patch bug that sent IMs to unintended recipients.
Oh, oops. It looks like Skype had a teensy problem: it could possibly have sent your IMs – supposedly private messages – to other people in your address book. Well, it’s been noted and fixed. To ensure that parts of your messages don’t go astray, update to the newest version of Skype when prompted. Just make sure to check for Bing toolbars.
Carriers may charge extra for FaceTime.
9to5mac reports on a extremely disturbing rumor: iOS6 beta versions show that FaceTime over an AT&T network will require “activation” in the same way the hotspot feature does. Yes, that means a contract add-on, and an additional fee. Dear AT&T: I already pay you too much for my data. You make profits hand over fist. Stop telling me how I can use my data. Even though I don’t own a FaceTime compatible device, this irks me. I have a bandwidth cap, let me reach it how I see fit. (PS – I don’t have a cap)
The Woz does not travel light.
Seriously: That’s a lot of stuff. Seven phones (4 iOS, 3 Android), two GPS, two Mifi hotspots, two iPods, two iPads, a Kindle, a MacBook Pro and assorted accessories. Over 50lbs worth of gadgets and chargers and … stuff that I wish I could afford to have laying around the house, much less pay for data on. Still, pretty cool, Woz.
And to cap that all off, here’s a list of the 10 coolest smartphones of 2012 – so far. Spoilers: 8 Android phones, the Lumia 900, and a Nokia running Symbian (really?) are the list. Not too unpredictable.
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