In a written statement to a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the DMCA takedown system, RIAA CEO Cary Sherman informed lawmakers about the ongoing struggle against online piracy.

According to Sherman the current takedown system is not sufficient to deal with the problem. One of the main issues is that several foreign websites simply ignore takedown notices, or put the links back under a slightly modified URL.

“The Pirate Bay website, for example, simply ignores takedown notices. Mp3skull, we believe, immediately repopulates, with modest changes in the address, all of its links that are contained within our takedown notices,” Sherman explains.

For the RIAA and other copyright holders there are no legal options to deal with these rogue sites. However, the music industry group believes that Google and other search engines can do more to prevent people from accessing pirate sites through their services.

Sherman explains that Google deserves credit for processing takedown notices swiftly, but since the search engine limits the number of takedown requests copyright holders can send, it’s impossible for them to target piracy properly.

“Google places a numerical limit on the number of search queries we can make to find the infringing content and, as a result, we can only take down a tiny fraction of the number of infringing files on each pirate site, let alone on the Internet generally,” Sherman notes.

“Google claims that they ‘receive notices for far less than 1% of everything hosted and indexed by Google.’ Well, that’s largely because their search query limitations provide us with a bucket to address an ever-replenishing ocean of infringement,” he adds.

Regardless of whether Google ups its limits, the DMCA takedown process is still not sufficient for the RIAA. Sherman explains that several sites simply change the links, which are then available through Google and other search engines a day later.

“All those links to infringing music files that were automatically repopulated by each pirate site after today’s takedown will be re-indexed and appear in search results tomorrow. Every day we have to send new notices to take down the very same links to illegal content we took down the day before. It’s like ‘Groundhog Day’ for takedowns,” Sherman says.

“Every day we have to send new notices to take down the very same links to illegal content we took down the day before. It’s like ‘Groundhog Day’ for takedowns.”

The RIAA believes that it’s time for search engines to strike a deal with copyright holders to address this issue. The industry group wants Google to end the piracy “whack-a-mole” by going beyond the legal takedown requirements.

”Ensure that when links to content are taken down, the same content on the same site is not continuously re-indexed when repopulated by the pirate site, rendering the takedown process useless,” RIAA’s CEO suggests.

RIAA’s checkboxes

In addition the RIAA wants Google to lift all takedown limits, push down pirate sites in search results, promote legal sites and services, remove pirate terms from Autocomplete and completely remove “repeat infringers” from their search index.

Google, however, clearly disagrees with the RIAA.

Katherine Oyama, Google’s Senior Copyright Policy Counsel, appeared before the House Judiciary Subcommittee yesterday and stressed that the DMCA process is working just fine. She noted that some copyright holders abuse the process, but in general it works.

Bouncing the ball back into the RIAA’s court, Oyama noted that copyright holders should consider better SEO if they want to improve their search rankings. Other than that, they should focus on offering consumers what they want; decent legal alternatives.

“The best way to battle piracy is with better, more convenient, legitimate alternatives to piracy, as services ranging from Netflix to Spotify to iTunes have demonstrated. The right combination of price, convenience, and inventory will do far more to reduce piracy than enforcement can,” Oyama said.

If anything, the above shows that Google and industry group such as the RIAA have a long way to go before they are on the same page. Both would like to address online piracy issues without new legislation, but in the near future they are not expected to reach consensus on the measures to take.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

Tony Benn, a veteran left wing Labour MP who renounced his title in order to become a parliamentarian, has died at home at the age of 88. Benn was a hero of mine, a principled campaigner and articulate statesman. He was an inventor and tinkerer who created wonderful devices, including a brilliant pocket-protector of his own devising.

Benn's activism, which included going to Iraq in the runup to the US/UK invasion in an attempt to forestall war, was tireless, inspired and inspiring. He will be very missed.

A major figure on the left of the party, he narrowly missed out on the deputy leadership in 1981 and went on to be a popular public speaker, anti-war campaigner and political diarist.

In a statement his children Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua said Mr Benn died peacefully early this morning at his home in west London surrounded by his family.

"We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to all the NHS staff and carers who have looked after him with such kindness in hospital and at home.

"We will miss above all his love which has sustained us throughout our lives. But we are comforted by the memory of his long, full and inspiring life and so proud of his devotion to helping others as he sought to change the world for the better."

Labour stalwart Tony Benn dies at 88 [BBC]

(Image: Tony Benn Glasto07, CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons/Glastonbury Left Field)

There are some common food around your house that can be quite dangerous to your pets. Most pet owners know not to feed chocolate to dogs, but did you know about these other foods?

The ever-resourceful blog Real Simple put together this list of foods that can be dangerous to your pets.

• Chocolate. Primarily for dogs, for dangerous for all species to a lesser degree. Chocolate overstimulates the nervous system and heart.
• Grapes and Raisins. Can cause damage to the kidneys.
• Garlic and Onions. Can damage red blood cells.
• Xylitol. Found in sugarless gum and candy, it can cause increased insulin secretion.
• Alcohol. Depresses the nervous system.
• Raw Yeast and Bread Dough. Forms gas in the digestive tract and fermentation of yeast can cause alcohol poisoning.
• Macadamia nuts. Cause muscle and nervous system problems.
• Avocados. Contain persin, which damages heart muscle.

8 Things Your Pet Shouldn't Eat | Real Simple

Photo by T. Fernandes.

Russia is blocking websites critical of President Vladimir Putin. The Prosecutor General’s office ordered Russian Internet service providers to cut off access to a handful of websites, including the blog of famed chess champion, Garry Kasparov. “These sites contain incitement to illegal activity and participation in public events held in violation of the established order,” read… Read More

Images of an Amazon-branded game controller have leaked, all-but confirming the existence of an Amazon set-top box for your TV. The images were first posted by media blog Zatz Not Funny, and come from a Brazilian regulatory agency similar to the FCC. They depict a traditional-looking game controller with media control buttons at its bottom. It actually looks remarkably similar to the controller for OnLive, but with Xbox-style offset analogue sticks. The controller also features three central buttons that look like Android's back, home, and menu keys, and a button beneath that bears the logo for GameCircle, Amazon's service for cloud saves, leaderboards, and achievements.

Continue reading…

Although deceptively small considering its impact, Automattic is a company that touches hundreds of millions of Internet users every day. The company, best known for being behind the WordPress blogging and publishing platform, currently hosts more than 48 million sites on WordPress.com.

Servicing 400 million visitors accessing 13.1 billion pages each month is no mean feat, and with so much user-generated content on-board it’s obvious why the company has a keen interest in the DMCA and the protections it offers service providers.

Speaking today during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Section 512 of Title 17, Automattic General Counsel Paul Sieminski spoke about his company’s experiences with the notice and takedown provisions of the DMCA. Noting that the process works well overall, Sieminski said that shortcomings in the system negatively affect freedom of expression and adversly impact companies like Automattic.

Sieminski says that significant resources are being diverted away from product development at Automattic in order to deal with overbroad and abusive DMCA takedown notices. On the one hand the company wants to ensure freedom of speech, but balancing that with its legal commitments under the DMCA is not an easy task.

“At Automattic, we’ve seen an increasing amount of abuse of the DMCA’s takedown process. The DMCA’s takedown process provides what can be an easy avenue for censorship: simply send in a DMCA notice claiming copyrights in a piece of content that you don’t agree with. Regardless of whether you own the copyright, the service provider that hosts the content must take it down or risk being out of compliance with the DMCA,” the lawyer explained.

Sieminski went on to detail several cases where the DMCA had been abused to stifle speech, including one elaborate scam in which someone tried to undermine the work of science journalists by copying their work, backdating it, and claiming copyright in order to take down the original content. Although the journalists filed a counter-notice, it took the full 10 days mandated by the DMCA to get it put back online.

Another case involved a UK-based journalist who reported on a freely-given press statement. The source of the press release changed his mind on having it published, claimed copyright, and had the journalist’s work taken down under the DMCA. Concerned about submitting to the jurisdiction of a US court (those submitting a counter-notice are required to reveal their name and address and agree to be sued in federal court), the journalist chose to back down. His report remains censored to this day.

As reported here on TF on many occasions, wrongful DMCA notices are sent on a daily basis, many the product of automated systems that lack the finesse to correctly identify infringement, much less consider fair use situations. Add these notices to the millions already being sent and they often go undetected, taken down by nervous service providers wary of becoming liable for the infringements of others.

According to Automattic, a solution needs to be found.

“The DMCA system gives copyright holders a powerful and easy-to-use weapon: the unilateral right to issue a takedown notice that a website operator (like Automattic) must honor or risk legal liability,” Sieminski explained.

“The system works so long as copyright owners use this power in good faith. But too often they don’t, and there should be clear legal consequences for those who choose to abuse the system. I’d urge the Committee to add such penalties to the DMCA to deter and punish these types of abuses,” the lawyer concludes.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

The service will allow British security officials to censor videos "at scale" -- but not illegal videos, just material that "certainly is unsavoury and may not be the sort of material that people would want to see or receive." The new "super flaggers" will target jihadi radicalisation videos and, basically, anything they don't like. But what could go wrong? Thanks, Google!

Productivity-obsessed Brits will soon be getting a UK-specific version of Lifehacker, thanks to a partnership with the folks at Future Publishing.

Just like our friends at Lifehacker Australia and Lifehacker India, Lifehacker UK readers will get all the stories they've come to know and love from Lifehacker in the US, in addition to original content produced by the Lifehacker UK team. And US readers, fret not—we'll be keeping an eye on the UK's best original posts to publish here when relevant.

Lifehacker UK will be edited by Dan Grabham, who is currently the associate editor of Future's tech site Techradar. The site will launch in a few weeks, so keep an eye out!

Welcome back to Android Gaming Weekly, our weekly recap of new game releases. We still plan to cover upcoming releases and games we’re playing, but this column is dedicated to new games that you can start playing right now. Check out our top picks and let us know in the comments section if you have any suggestions for next week’s post.

Threes!

Description: Threes is tiny puzzle that grows on you. Explore our little game’s deep challenge and grow your mind beyond imagination. Optimized for Android and human brains.

 

Bardbarian

Description: In BARDBARIAN you play as Brad the Barbarian, who is (once again) awoken to the sounds of his town under siege. Today is no ordinary day though; Brad has grown tired of fighting. The XP grind has grown dull, and his heart beats with a musical bloodlust. Crafting a magic lute out of an old war axe, he steps outside…

 

Not So Fast

Description: Rid your land of the dastardly and conniving blockish runners. Use the various abilities you unlock to destroy each wave of running, jumping, and sliding foes.

 

CONFLUX: Connect the Blocks

Description: CONFLUX: Connect the Blocks – is a simple block puzzle game that is addictive. Put your finger on the screen and move it to touch the two blocks together. Keep your finger on the screen until the level is completed or you will lose some seconds.

 

Squiggle Racer

Description: We dare you to make just one lap! If you think you’re good enough to survive our tracks, then prove it! Test out the 4 lap trial for our new gameplay mode the “Track Endurance Challenge”. Unlock the unlimited challenge to go further!

 

Sorcery!

Description: From legendary designer Steve Jackson, co-founder of Lionhead Studios (with Peter Molyneux), and Fighting Fantasy and Games Workshop (with Ian Livingstone); and inkle, the studio behind the award-winning, App Store featured Frankenstein, Sorcery! is an interactive adventure like never before.

 

Space Runner 3D

Description:  Very simple and also very catchy game. You control little guy that is running in space road and try avoid obstacles, controlling him only via your motion sensor. BUT not like other runners, because our guy is running towards you !!!

 

Block Legend

Description:  Block Legend is a retro puzzle JRPG. Travel through different regions as a wide cast of characters, fighting monsters, visiting towns, and completing quests.

 

OLO

Description: OLO is an addictive game of skill and strategy, a new generation social board game for all ages. Play with up to three friends or play online against anyone, anywhere. The aim is to get as many of your OLOs into your target zone. Use cunning techniques to outmaneuver your opponent and claim victory, but beware the death finger!

 

Even

Description: There are only two rules: swipe to move the numbers on the board and keep combining same numbers to get more points. How long can you go before the board fills up? While the game play is simple, the strategy is anything but. Speed play for a minute or spend 20 minutes strategizing every move, either way Even is going to grow on you and leave you addicted.

 

Google today significantly dropped the prices for its Google Drive online storage service. The first 15GB of storage remain free, but 100GB now costs just $1.99 per month instead of $4.99. Even more impressively, though, you can now get a terabyte of online storage for $9.99 a month, down from $49.99. If you really need a lot of online storage space, you can also get 10 terabytes for $99.99 a… Read More

A number of notable people have invited the masses on Reddit to ask them any question they want, or “Ask Me Anything (AMA)” — from President Barack Obama, to Bill Gates, to Madonna, to Al Gore, and many others. But the free-for-all nature that makes Reddit AMAs so fascinating is not the most readable format for posterity. Thankfully, there’s a new site called Interviewly… Read More

The street likes what it hears. This morning, prior to the market opening, Amazon announced that it was raising the price of its Prime subscription membership by $20 to $99 a year. The company’s stock followed suit and opened the day at $376, trading at up 1.63% on the day. This stock price increase puts its highest level since the dramatic crash following disappointing holiday earnings. The… Read More

According to the music and movie industries, three strikes-style regimes are needed to bring the pirating Internet masses into line. Receive three strikes/complaints (six in the United States) and then some punitive deterrent measure has to kick in.

Legislation has compelled many ISPs to participate in such programs. In 2009, South Korean ISPs became the first in the world to implement a so-called graduated response scheme and 2011′s Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act brought the mechanism to New Zealand. The HADOPI legislation introduced a similar program to the French.

However, not all participation has been forced by law. The United States’ “six-strikes” program was introduced voluntarily last year but by that time the Irish had already gained several years’ experience of a self-imposed regime.

In 2009, Eircom, the country’s largest ISP, prepared its own three-strikes program following a deal with the major recording labels, a package which allowed Eircom to disconnect persistent infringers. So now, four years since its introduction in 2010, how many people has Eircom disconnected? A hundred? One thousand? Five?

According to the ISP – not even one.

“We are continuing to implement the graduated response process,” a spokesman said today. “We haven’t, as yet, disconnected anyone.”

Eircom’s system allows the user two notices of infringement before a third notice triggers a seven-day disconnection. A further notice means disconnection for a year. Considering the cries of rampant piracy from the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA), the notion that not a single subscriber from Eircom’s 700,000 customer pool has been caught file-sharing more than twice is certainly going to raise eyebrows.

Several years ago the ISP said it was sending out at least 1,000 notices per week, but now the company apparently doesn’t want anyone to know how many are going out.

“We don’t share details on the number of letters issued,” a spokesman said.

Independent.ie cites a source close to Eircom who states that many of those who received letters are “believed to have desisted from suspected filesharing” but with no figures being released on the number of warnings being sent, it’s impossible to draw any conclusions. Of course, it’s also just as easily said that those who were caught originally simply went underground with their downloading habits.

For their part, IRMA clearly thinks that the Eircom program is working. The music group is currently taking legal action to force ISP UPC to Eircom in promising to disconnect pirating customers.

If UPC loses and then follows Eircom’s example, that will presumably amount to zero subscribers by 2018.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

The Red Queen will return for the Alice sequel

With new director James Bobin in place and stars Mia Wasikowska and Johnny Depp back on board to reprise their roles as Alice and The Mad Hatter, the Alice In Wonderland sequel Through The Looking Glass is setting up deals with other cast members. According to Variety, Helena Bonham Carter will be back as the Red Queen.

The Queen, who had become a tyrant ruler in Wonderland before she was defeated and banished to the Outlands by the Hatter and Anne Hathaway’s White Queen, will return in some capacity, probably causing trouble again.

We don’t know exactly what she’ll be up to this time, as Disney is keeping a tight hold on the details of Linda Woolverton’s sequel script. And since Tim Burton’s first Alice borrowed from both the Wonderland tome and Through The Looking Glass, the plot is still a mystery. So far, none of the other cast members have made deals to return, but there’s always a chance the likes of Hathaway and Matt Lucas could be back. The release date is set, however, with Disney planting a flag on May 27, 2016.

Bonham Carter, who was last seen in The Lone Ranger, has Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s The Young And Prodigious T.S. Spivet set for release on June 13, and will also be seen in the new Cinderella, which arrives on April 3 next year.

If you thought Mozilla importing the Unreal Engine 3 onto Firefox was impressive, just wait until you get a load of what they've done with Unreal Engine 4. Less than a year after Mozilla showed off its successful port of the gaming engine behind the latest Bioshock and Mass Effect games into its web browser, the organization has come back with another video that gives us the first glimpse of its port of Unreal Engine 4. The video gives a brief two-minute tour of areas in the games Epic's Soul and Swing Ninja and they look nothing short of stunning. Of course, this trailer is only one short little demonstration and we still don't know whether Mozilla has solved a lot issues with latency and long load times that it was dealing with at this time last year. The full video is posted below.

Continue reading...

UCAS is the UK post-secondary admissions service, and is the sole means of applying to most British tertiary institutions. It has been caught selling its applicants' data to marketing departments hoping to sell Microsoft products, mobile phone contracts and energy beverages to young people. UCAS warehouses data on children as young as 16. UCAS doesn't deny selling applicants' data, but insists that it violated no laws, because the students whose data it sold did not opt out of "mailings" (opting out of mailings with UCAS also means you won't receive information from educational institutions and potential employers).

UCAS's "UCAS Media" offshoot advertises access to children's data with the slogan, "We help them reach uni – we help you reach them." Another UCAS company, UCAS Progress, collects data on children aged 13-16 and asks them to opt into marketing pitches as well. A third of UCAS's income comes from selling university applicants' data to third parties.

Ucas Media promotes its services to potential clients by emphasising the unique richness and accuracy of its data and the trust associated with its brand. Almost every student applying to a British university from the UK or overseas must use the online Ucas application gateway, which requires them to provide up-to-date identity and contact details. "We help them reach uni – we help you reach them," Ucas Media tells potential advertisers.

There is no suggestion that Ucas Media is breaking the law in selling access to data about university applicants and schoolchildren. It does not sell individuals' data directly, but markets access to it, using its own channels to deliver marketing – and keeping possession of a rich and highly valuable bank of personal information.

University applicants are given the option of refusing mailings when they register with Ucas. However, they have to opt out rather than in, and Ucas's application form does not disaggregate commercial mailings from information from education providers and employers.

As a result students who reject product mailings risk missing out on course information and potential career opportunities.

Ucas sells access to student data for phone and drinks firms' marketing [Lucy Ward/Guardian]

Jeff Vinall, a Conservative Party activist who is director of communications for the Oxford University Tories and is a second year law student at Brasenose College has abused the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act to censor a website that reproduced a posting from his Facebook account in which he called Nelson Mandela a "terrorist," shortly after Mandela's death.

Vinall sent a DMCA takedown notice to the hosts of the UK-based website Political Scrapbook after an initial demand to censor their reporting was declined. The DMCA is an American statute and notices issued under it have no standing in the United Kingdom; furthermore, it's clear that the brief quotation from Vinall qualifies as fair use under the American copyright law and fair dealing under English and Welsh copyright law.

In my opinion, Vinall is trying to have his cake and eat it too. I think he believes that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, but he also believes that saying this aloud brings him and the party into disrepute. At the same time, I think he believes that repudiating his tasteless remarks will alienate a sizable number of Conservative supporters who also hated Mandela and cheered his death -- so using bullying, censorious tactics to suppress the reporting of his remarks is way for him to suppress news of the remarks without having to issue an insincere apology through gritted teeth that would disgust the party's reactionary wing.

However, the Streisand Effect is in full effect; The Oxford Tab has picked up the story and reproduced Vinall's remarks. They have spoken to Apartheid refugees, who expressed shock and horror at Vinall's callous remarks and his willingness to take the side of the totalitarian monsters who branded Mandela a terrorist and imprisoned him for a quarter-century.

The claims have upset some members of OUCA, with one South African member commenting to The Tab: “My family were removed from their homes due to the racist policies during Apartheid – calling Mandela a terrorist is not only deeply personally offensive, but it is also worrying that such a person is a candidate in an OUCA election.”

A student at Wadham, which ends every bop with “Free Nelson Mandela”, said to The Tab: “Wadham had historic close ties with Nelson Mandela, and I’m shocked that anyone could call him a terrorist. Mandela was a great man, and should be remembered as such.”

One senior member of OUCA commented to the Tab: “I have grave concerns about some of Jeff’s behaviour, he needs to understand that OUCA has to rapidly change if it’s ever going to be a proper Conservative society and not just a bunch of oddballs with unsavoury opinions.”

Oxford Tory Soc candidate Jeff Vinall calls Mandela a ‘terrorist’ [The Tab]

Jeff Vinall tries to gag Scrapbook after 'Mandela terrorist' claim [Political Scrapbook]

(Image: Jeff Vinall's Facebook update, used for critical and commentary purposes, without permission, as fair dealing [England/Wales] and fair use [USA])

YouTube is notorious for having content blocked by region due to the variety of licensing schemes a content provider can put up. Unblock YouTube can get around this with a simple URL paste.

The service acts as a basic proxy for YouTube videos (as well as a few other sites). Just grab the URL of the video you want to see, paste it in the box at the bottom of the page and you're off!

Unblock YouTube | via MakeUseOf

On the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, we’re pleased to share this guest post from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web. In this post he reflects on the past, present and future of the web—and encourages the rest of us to fight to keep it free and open. -Ed.

Today is the web’s 25th birthday. On March 12, 1989, I distributed a proposal to improve information flows: “a ‘web’ of notes with links between them.”

Though CERN, as a physics lab, couldn’t justify such a general software project, my boss Mike Sendall allowed me to work on it on the side. In 1990, I wrote the first browser and editor. In 1993, after much urging, CERN declared that WWW technology would be available to all, without paying royalties, forever.

This decision enabled tens of thousands to start working together to build the web. Now, about 40 percent of us are connected and creating online. The web has generated trillions of dollars of economic value, transformed education and healthcare and activated many new movements for democracy around the world. And we’re just getting started.

How has this happened? By design, the underlying Internet and the WWW are non-hierarchical, decentralized and radically open. The web can be made to work with any type of information, on any device, with any software, in any language. You can link to any piece of information. You don’t need to ask for permission. What you create is limited only by your imagination.

So today is a day to celebrate. But it’s also an occasion to think, discuss—and do. Key decisions on the governance and future of the Internet are looming, and it’s vital for all of us to speak up for the web’s future. How can we ensure that the other 60 percent around the world who are not connected get online fast? How can we make sure that the web supports all languages and cultures, not just the dominant ones? How do we build consensus around open standards to link the coming Internet of Things? Will we allow others to package and restrict our online experience, or will we protect the magic of the open web and the power it gives us to say, discover, and create anything? How can we build systems of checks and balances to hold the groups that can spy on the net accountable to the public? These are some of my questions—what are yours?

On the 25th birthday of the web, I ask you to join in—to help us imagine and build the future standards for the web, and to press for every country to develop a digital bill of rights to advance a free and open web for everyone. Learn more at webat25.org and speak up for the sort of web we really want with #web25.

Posted by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web

New apps need lovin’ too, right? Every day there are thousands of additions to the Google Play Store, but many go unnoticed and never receive the attention they deserve. We’ve shown in the past that this community can discover great apps and propel them to new heights. Our weekly Fresh Meat column highlights new apps with fewer than 100,000 installs. Browse our new Android app picks below and let us know which ones you enjoy.

Web PC Suite

Description:  Web PC Suite brings you a new experience by syncing your Android content with your PC or Tablet. Scan the QR Code to connect your Android device with your computer to transfer and manage your device on the Web. It’s easy, useful and fast!

 

Frequency: App Usage Tracking

Description: Frequency: the newest and best-looking way to see what apps you use, how much you use them and when you use them. See what apps you never use and uninstall them right from the app!

 

Fiverr® for Android

Description: Everything you love about Fiverr is now available for Android. Buying and selling on Fiverr has never been as simple, fast and fun. Find Gigs you love, anytime, anywhere. The Fiverr mobile experience gives you instant access to over 3 million awesome services, starting at $5.

 

mac.remote

Description: Mac.Remote was created to provide a nice design, great user experience and the ability to customize at the same time. Out of the box You can control: iTunes, Spotify, Rdio, QuickTime, MPlayerX, VLC, Keynote, iPhoto. By control I mean play, pause, current track info, previous, next, rewind, fast-forward. All media buttons in Mac.remote work consistently with Mac media keys, e.g. long click on “next” button works like “fast-forward” in iTunes.

 

COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey

Description: The COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY app is a companion to the groundbreaking series, providing breathtaking imagery, unique videos and additional exclusive content to enable viewers to connect to the show all week long. In addition, the app features a stunning interactive Cosmic Calendar, which visualizes the 13.8 billion year history of the universe condensed down into a single calendar year.

 

Booktrack

Description: Experience reading on your mobile with a soundtrack customized for the story. Thousands of stories to read, from famous classics to undiscovered gems. So put on your headphones and experience reading in a new way!

 

PhotoDirector – Photo Editor

Description: PhotoDirector puts a powerful set of photo editing tools in the palm of your hand. You can quickly edit images on your device and share them on Facebook, Flickr and more.

 

Inspire Launcher

Description: Inspire Launcher is a brand new launcher based on the new KitKat Android Launcher with tons of features and customizations. It combines the major features of the most common Android Launchers with some goodies from iOS and Windows Phone.

 

Schedule XD

Description: Schedule XD is a beautiful and intuitive application used to organize your classes. From now on every important information like notes or dates of the tests will be reminded by Schedule.

 

 Pixl Preview

Description:  Pixl Preview lets you view your Photoshop® designs on your Android device in real-time. Get an accurate look and feel of your designs the moment you’re making them, and instantly get an on-device image of all your iterations and tweaks.

 

It's no surprise that the Angry Birds craze is far from over, but the latest entry in the popular mobile franchise might be the biggest departure yet for Rovio. Angry Birds Epic is a turn-based RPG, and although details are scarce, we can assume that means we'll see plenty of interchangeable characters, random battles and upgradeable stats. According to Kotaku, crafting will also play a large role in the game. Players will be able to purchase materials with in-game currency or real money to craft equipment for their characters. The game will soft launch on the App Store in Canada and Australia later this week, with "other countries to follow." Check out the teaser trailer below.

Continue reading...

A new Snowden leak, detailed in a long, fascinating piece in The Intercept, explains the NSA's TURBINE initiative, intended to automate malicious software infections. These infections -- called "implants" in spy jargon -- have historically been carried out on a narrow, surgical scale, targeted at people of demonstrated value to spies, due to the expense and difficulty of arranging the attacks.

But TURBINE, which was carried out with other "Five Eyes" spy agencies as part of the NSA's $67.6M "Owning the Net" plan, is intended to automate the infection process, allowing for "millions" of infections at once.

The article mentions an internal NSA message-board posting called "I hunt sys admins," sheds some light on the surveillance practices at the NSA. In the post, an NSA operative explains that he targets systems administrators at companies, especially telecoms companies, as a "means to an end" -- that is, infiltrating the companies' networks. As Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher point out, this admission shows that malware attacks are not targeted solely or even particularly at people suspected of terrorism or other crimes -- rather, they are aimed at the people who maintain the infrastructure of critical networks and systems to allow the NSA to control those systems.

The malware that TURBINE implants can compromise systems in a variety of ways, including hijacking computer cameras and microphones, harvesting Web-browsing history and email traffic, logging passwords and other keystrokes, etc.

The implants being deployed were once reserved for a few hundred hard-to-reach targets, whose communications could not be monitored through traditional wiretaps. But the documents analyzed by The Intercept show how the NSA has aggressively accelerated its hacking initiatives in the past decade by computerizing some processes previously handled by humans. The automated system – codenamed TURBINE – is designed to “allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually.”

In a top-secret presentation, dated August 2009, the NSA describes a pre-programmed part of the covert infrastructure called the “Expert System,” which is designed to operate “like the brain.” The system manages the applications and functions of the implants and “decides” what tools they need to best extract data from infected machines.

How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware [Ryan Gallagher and Glenn Greenwald/First Look]

If you ever want to change the style of all the headings or captions in a document, bold all the italicized text, or otherwise fine-tune the formatting of your document in one swoop, Microsoft Word has a setting for that.

Highlight some text with the formatting you want to change, then in the Editing menu, go to Select > "Select all text with similar formatting." Then you can stylize as you wish. (This is a feature also in Google Docs , by the way.)

Already knew that, Microsoft Word maven? Perhaps one of the other nineteen overlooked Word features outlined at PC Authority will teach you something new. For example, if you click the tiny pop-out icon of the Clipboard on the Home tab, you can select up to 24 items saved in that panel. Handy!

How to: 20 features you've never used in Word | PC Authority

Amazon has decided to pick up four of the pilots it recently previewed for customers as part of the company's next phase of original programming. Chris Carter's The After is among the selections — though few were betting against the famed X-Files creator getting the green light. Bosch, an adaptation of Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels, is pick number two. Jill Soloway's Transparent will be getting the full series treatment, as will Mozart in the Jungle. The latter was among our favorites of the bunch thanks to its strong pilot written by Jason Schwartzman, Roman Coppola, and Alex Timbers.

In fact, only one of the pilots hasn't received Amazon's stamp of approval, and that's The Rebels. The show follows a trophy wife's...

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iPhone and iPad owners' latest gaming addiction is now available on Android. Threes, which has been out for just over a month on iOS, is launching today on Android 4.0 and above for $1.99. The deceptively simple puzzle game has players sliding together numbers to create larger ones until they fill up a grid, so players are only ever competing to beat their own (or maybe a leaderboard's) high score. The Android version, which was ported for developer Sirvo by Hidden Variable Studios, appears to be identical to its iPhone counterpart, with both featuring a playful and colorful style that makes the game a joy to play. If you buy it, just make sure that you have time for a few rounds — it can be hard to put down.

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The gorgeous device you see pictured above is not The All New HTC One, but it does provide our best look yet at HTC's upcoming new flagship smartphone for 2014. How does that make sense? It's actually a dummy — an exact replica modeled after the real device that is used in display arrangements in retail shops. EBay France seller dummy_store has managed to get its hands on the model ahead of The All New HTC One's launch, and its photos give us the clearest look yet at HTC's upcoming hero phone.

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The 50 Greatest British Novels of the 19th Century

Yesterday, Google introduced add-ons for Google Docs and Sheets . These add-ons allow you to add all kinds of functionality to your documents, including signing faxes, creating bibliographies, and more. While it's still in its infancy, here are a few of the best add-ons available at launch.

HelloFax

We're fans of HelloFax because it's the easiest way for most of us to send the occasional fax. The Google Docs add-on makes that process even easier. Just click on HelloFax in your Add-Ons, enter the fax number you want to send the document to, and you're done. If faxing isn't your thing, the same company also has HelloSign for those times when you need to sign an important document in Google Docs.

Mapping Sheets

Mapping Sheets is an easy way to make custom Google Maps using Google Sheets. If you have a Google Sheet filled with names and addresses, you can instantly create a Google Map from it. This means you can create a giant map with all your contacts or easily plot out a vacation plan. Really, you can plot out pretty much any data you want and it only takes a couple of seconds.

EasyBib

Creating bibliographies is one of the most tedious and boring parts of writing a paper in college, but EasyBib makes that process a bit better. Enter in a URL or title into EasyBib and it automatically generates a bibliography entry in MLA, APA, or Chicago style. If you're typing your research papers in Google Docs, this is incredibly helpful. Speaking of adding Word functionality to Google Docs, Table of Contents is also worth a look for anyone writing massive research papers.

UberConference

UberConference adds audio conference calls to your Google Doc. All you do is load up UberConference, invite your participants, and then everyone will be in the document and on the conference call within seconds. It works surprisingly well, and setup is simple since you don't ever need to leave Google Docs to use UberConference.

MindMeister

We love mind maps and Mindmeister makes them easily with Google Docs. Create a bulleted list of items, turn MindMeister on, and then it creates a mind map for your list. It's not nearly as satisfying as creating a mind map on a piece of paper, but it works well enough for digital.

Track Changes

Tracking changes is one of Microsoft Word's best tools and it was always a bummer that it didn't work the same way in Google Docs. Track Changes is an add-on that makes Google Docs work basically the same way as MS Word.

Make Your Own Add-Ons

The great thing about all these add-ons is how anyone can make one. You just need to know a little about HTML. If you want to give it a try, Digital Inspiration has a great starter guide to get you going.

Considering these add-ons were just announced, we're sure plenty more great additions will pop up in the coming weeks, but the above list is a good place to start.