Responding to a request from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), yesterday the MPAA submitted a new list of “notorious markets.”

In its latest filing the MPAA targets a wide variety of websites which they claim are promoting illegal distribution of movies and TV-shows, with declining incomes and lost jobs in the movie industry as a result.

“Copyright theft is not a victimless crime. The criminals who profit from the most notorious markets throughout the world threaten the very heart of our industry and in doing so they threaten the livelihoods of the people who give it life,” the MPAA writes.

According to the movie industry group, in recent years the piracy landscape has become more fragmented and harder to deal with, as torrent sites, cyberlockers, streaming sites and linking sites continue to gain ground.

“Today the online market has further fragmented and content thieves are taking advantage of new online technologies, with streaming sites and cyberlockers representing a growing share of unlawful conduct.”

“Moreover, a secondary market has arisen in the form of ‘linking sites’, which are professional-looking sites that facilitate content theft by indexing stolen movie and television content hosted on other sites.

Despite these challenges the movie studios are also glad to report one of their recent successes, the takedown of isoHunt.com. Nevertheless, there are still many other sites that remain a problem for the group.

Below is the full list of ‘rogue’ sites and their suspected location as defined by the MPAA in its USTR filing.

BitTorrent / P2P sites:

- ExtraTorrent.com (Ukraine)
- Kickass.to (Canada)
- RuTracker.org (Russia)
- ThePirateBay.sx (Sweden)
- Torrentz.eu (Canada)
- Xunlei.com (China)
- Kuaibo.com (China)

Download/streaming:

- Extabit.com (Netherlands)
- Netload.in (Germany)
- Nowvideo.sx (Netherlands)
- Putlocker.com (United Kingdom)
- Rapidgator.net (Russia)
- Uploaded.net (Netherlands)
- VK.com (Russia)

Linking sites:

- Cuevana.tv (Argentina)
- Primewire.ag (Estonia)
- Filmesonlinegratis.net (Brazil)
- Free-tv-video-online.me (Czech Republic)
- Megafilmeshd.net (Brazil)
- Movie4k.to (Romania)
- Seriesyonkis.com (Spain)
- Solarmovie.eu (Latvia)
- Telona.org (Sweden)
- Yyets.com (China)

Usenet:

- Usenext.com (Germany)

The MPAA provides a short description for every site listed but doesn’t detail why these sites are considered “rogue” while others aren’t. Additionally, some of their other claims are not always accurate.

For example, the MPAA claims that Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm has been extradited to Denmark where he was supposedly sentenced following hacking related charges.

“In 2012, one of the site’s co-founders was found guilty on hacking charges in Sweden after his extradition from Cambodia. He was then extradited to Denmark and sentenced for similar charges in 2013,” MPAA writes.

However, Gottfrid is still in a Swedish prison and filed for an appeal at the Supreme Court this week. He hasn’t even left for Denmark, let alone been tried and sentenced.

Similarly, the MPAA suggests that Pirate Bay’s PirateBrowser is linking to websites that are actually hosted on the Tor network, which is not what it does.

“ThePirateBay.sx promoted its tenth year as an index website by releasing the PirateBrowser, a self-contained portable web browser with preset bookmarks to BitTorrent websites hosted on the TOR network,” MPAA notes.

In a few weeks the US Trade Representative will use the submissions of the MPAA and other interested parties to make up its final list of piracy havens. The U.S. Government will then alert the countries where these sites are operating from, hoping that the local authorities take action.

Source: MPAA Reports Notorious Pirate Sites to U.S. Government

One of the greats is gone. Singer, songwriter, guitarist, poet, and artist Lou Reed has died. Reed underwent a liver transplant in May. He was 71. Update: He died of liver disease, report the New York Times and other sources.

From Rolling Stone's obituary, the first report online:

With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example. "One chord is fine," he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. "Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."

Our friends at Dangerous Minds blog have some great posts about Reed's work over the years, including the story of Rachel, a trans woman who inspired much of the work on his album "Coney Island Baby."

Video: "Black Angel's Death Song," Velvet Underground.

Video: "Walk On The Wild Side," live, 1973.

Video: Lou Reed and John Cale, "Berlin," at Bataclan in Paris, 1972.

Video: "Heroin," at Bataclan in Paris, 1972.

Video: Probably not his favorite interview ever.

Video: The 1988 documentary Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart.

Video: "Sweet Jane," live in Paris, 1974.

Video: The Velvet Underground on "The South Bank Show," 1986.

Video: The Velvet Underground, "Rock and Roll." From the seminal proto-punk album, Loaded.

50 Years Later: The Greatest Beatles Performance of All Time

Newly published Snowden leaks show that the UK spy agency GCHQ took extraordinary measures to hide the eager cooperativeness of the country's phone companies, who were apparently delighted to help it spy on the nation and its allies; further, the leak details the GCHQ's internal conviction that their spying violated European law, and thus had to be kept a secret.

The agency fought domestic attempts to make wiretapping materials admissible as evidence lest the public discover the extent of its illegal spying programme, and it sought out sympathetic public figures to discredit opponents and celebrate its spying, including the LibDem peer Lord Carlile. Carlile has been slamming the Guardian for its coverage of the Snowden leaks -- apparently acting as a de facto PR agent for the nation's criminal spy-class.

GCHQ's submission goes on to set out why its relationships with telecoms companies go further than what can be legally compelled under current law. It says that in the internet era, companies wishing to avoid being legally mandated to assist UK intelligence agencies would often be able to do so "at little cost or risk to their operations" by moving "some or all" of their communications services overseas.

As a result, "it has been necessary to enter into agreements with both UK-based and offshore providers for them to afford the UK agencies access, with appropriate legal authorisation, to the communications they carry outside the UK".

The submission to ministers does not set out which overseas firms have entered into voluntary relationships with the UK, or even in which countries they operate, though documents detailing the Tempora programme made it clear the UK's interception capabilities relied on taps located both on UK soil and overseas.

There is no indication as to whether the governments of the countries in which deals with companies have been struck would be aware of the GCHQ cable taps.

Evidence that telecoms firms and GCHQ are engaging in mass interception overseas could stoke an ongoing diplomatic row over surveillance ignited this week after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, accused the NSA of monitoring her phone calls, and the subsequent revelation that the agency monitored communications of at least 35 other world leaders.

Leaked memos reveal GCHQ efforts to keep mass surveillance secret [James Ball/The Guardian]

(via /.)

The Washington Times is preparing a lawsuit after federal agents raided the Maryland home of award-winning investigative reporter Audrey Hudson and confiscated her notes.

The agents had a warrant, but it was for unregistered firearms suspected of belonging to her husband. Only after they left did Hudson realize that some of her notes, which included interviews with confidential sources, were missing. The notes pertained to her reporting on problems within the Department of Homeland Security's federal air marshal service.

During the raid, a Homeland Security agent asked Hudson if she was the reporter who had written the air marshal stories for the Times.

"This violates the very premise of a free press."

"There is no reason for agents...

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After twisting the knife at E3 regarding Microsoft's then-complicated game-sharing program, Sony has explained how digital strategy will work on PlayStation 4. Although sharing physical games remains as simple as Sony's tongue-in-cheek video suggested, games bought over PSN will be more locked down. The first PS4 you register will be your "primary console," and that's where digital purchases will automatically sync to. Anyone logged in on your primary system will then be able to play that game.

If you download the game on a secondary console, only you will be able to play that game. There's no limit to the number of consoles you can download a game on, but only two games can be played concurrently — one on your primary system, one...

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Google is a more powerful tool than most people realize. You can get much more refined searches with Google's built-in tools, advanced operators, and third-party extensions. You can also use it for some pretty cool stuff if you know the right tricks. Here are 10 of our favorite lesser known tricks and features.

10. Use Google to Search Certain Sites

If you really like a web site but its search tool isn't very good, fret not—Google almost always does a better job, and you can use it to search that site with a simple operator. For example, if you want to find an old Lifehacker article, just type site:lifehacker.com before your search terms (e.g. site:lifehacker.com hackintosh). The same goes for your favorite forums, blogs, and even web services. In fact, it's actually really good for finding free audiobooks, searching for free stuff without the spam, and more.

9. Find Product Names, Recipes, and More with Reverse Image Search

Google's reverse image search is great if you're looking for the source of a photo, wallpaper, or more images like that. However, reverse image search is also great for searching out information—like finding out who makes the chair in this picture, or how do I make the meal in this photo. Just punch in an image like you normally would, but look at Google's regular results instead of the image results—you'll probably find a lot.

8. Get "Wildcard" Suggestions Through Autocomplete

A lot of advanced search engines let you put a * in the middle of your terms to denote "anything." Google does too, but it doesn't always work the way you want. However, you can still get wildcard suggestions, of a sort, by typing in a full phrase in Google and then deleting the word you want to replace. For example, you can search for how to jailbreak an iphoneand remove one word to see all the suggestions for how to ____ an iphone.

7. Find Free Downloads of Any Type

Ever needed an old Android app but couldn't find the APK for what you were looking for? Or wanted an MP3 but couldn't find the right version? Google has a few search tools that, when used together, can unlock a plethora of downloads: inurl, intitle, and filetype. For example, to find free Android APKs, you'd search for -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" apk to see site indexes of stored APK files. You can use this to find Android apps, music files, free ebooks, comic books, and more. Check out the linked posts for more information.

6. Discover Alternatives to Popular Sites, Apps, and Products

You've probably searched for comparisons on Google before, like roku vs apple tv. But what if you don't know what you want to compare a product too, or you want to see what other competitors are out there? Just type in roku vs and see what Google's autocomplete adds. It'll most likely list the most popular competitors to the roku so you know what else to check out. You can also search for better than roku to see alternatives, too.

5. Access Google Cache Directly from the Search Bar

We all know Google Cache can be a great tool, but there's no need to search for the page and then hunt for that "Cached" link: just type cache: before that site's URL (e.g. cache:http://lifehacker.com). If Google has the site in its cache, it'll pull it right up for you. If you want to simplify the process even more, this bookmarklet is handy to have around. It's great for seeing an old version of a page, accessing a site when it's down, or getting past something like the SOPA blackout.

4. Bypass Paywalls, Blocked Sites, and More with a Google Proxy

You may already know that you can sometimes bypass paywalls, get around blocked sites, and download files by funneling a site through Google Translate or Google Mobilizer. That's a clever search trick in and of itself, but just like Google Cache, you can make the process a lot faster by keeping a few URLs on hand. Just add the URL you want to visit to the end of the Google URL (e.g. http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://example.com/ and you're good to go. Check out the full list of proxies, along with bookmarklets to make them even easier, here.

3. Search for People on Google Images

Some people's names are also real-world objects—like "Rose" or "Paris." If you're looking for a person and not a flower, just search for rose and add to &imgtype=facethe end of your search URL, as shown above. Google will redo the search but return results that it recognizes as faces!

2. Get More Precise Time-Based Search Results

You've probably seen the option in Google that lets you filter results by time, such as the past hour, day, or week. But if you want something more specific—like in the past 10 minutes—you can do so with a URL hack. Just add &tbs=qdr: to the end of the URL, along with the time you want to search (which can include h5 for 5 hours, n5 for 5 minutes, or s5 for 5 seconds (substituting any number you want). So, to search within th past 10 minutes, you'd add&tbs=qdr:n10to your URL. It's handy for getting the most up-to-the-minute news.

1. Refine Your Search Terms with Advanced Operators

Okay, so this isn't so much a "clever use" than it is a tool everyone should have in their pocket. For everything Google can do, so few of us actually use the tools at our disposal. You probably already know you can search multiple terms with AND or OR, but have you ever used AROUND? AROUND is a halfway point between regular search terms (like white teeth) and using quotes (like "white teeth"). AROUND(2), for example, ensures that the two words are close to each other, but not necessarily in a specific order. You can tweak the range with a higher or lower number in the parentheses.

Similarly, if you want to exclude a word entirely, you can add a dash before it—like justin bieber -sucks if you want sites that only speak of Justin Bieber in a positive light. You can also use this to exclude other parameters—like excluding a site you don't like (troubleshooting mac -site:experts-exchange.com). Check out our guide to tweaking your Google searches for more of these tips, and you can also find a pretty solid list over at weblog Marc and Angel Hack Life. Search on!

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

Dead Trigger 2

Description: Find a safe place to hide-out, get equipped, and fight for your life in a real time bid for survival against an onslaught of bloodthirsty undead. Join the Global Resistance and fight to crush the Zombie plague that has positioned the Earth on the edge of peril. It’s up to you to provide humanity with a new chance at survival.

Plants vs. Zombies™ 2

Description: The zombies are coming… back. It’s about time! The sequel to the hit action-strategy adventure brings the fun to tablets and touchscreens. Join Crazy Dave on a crazy adventure where you’ll meet, greet and defeat legions of zombies from the dawn of time to the end of days.

Combat Monsters

Description: Combat Monsters are not your everyday monsters. They will follow your commands to vanquish the enemy… or die a fiery death! Play for FREE against friends right in front of you or on the other side of the globe. Devise strategies that make the most of your deck: will you overrun your adversary with dozens of bloodthirsty creatures?

Wake the Cat

Description: Wake a kitten from her endless slumber and dreams of fish by experimenting with meticulously designed contraptions. Fling the yarn across the room and use toy trains, portal slippers, fans and more to help guide the yarn to the dozy cat.

Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy

Description: FORGET EVERYTHING ELSE! THIS IS THE ULTIMATE AIR COMBAT GAME! With an extensive single player campaign and revolutionary multiplayer modes, the non-stop action will keep you at the edge of your seat! Become the supreme lord of the skies!

Rabbids Big Bang

Description: Rabbids Big Bang is the first Rabbids physic-based game on mobile devices that lets you pilot a Rabbid in space with the tip of your finger!

Mechs vs. Aliens

Description: Transform into a giant mech of destruction and battle deadly extraterrestrial kaiju monsters to save our planet! Play this FREE turn-based fighting game in which you take control of elite war robots to defend the Earth from alien invaders.

Kingdom Tactics

Description: Take part in a battle of strategic tactics to reclaim the lost throne! A massive-scale war game taking place over a vast and beautiful map! Assemble an army of diverse characters, dragons, and Heroes to rebuild the defeated kingdom and restore peace throughout the continent! This game is free to play, but you can choose to buy items with real money.

Random Heroes

Description: A group of unlikely heroes are set out to save the world. Monsters from another dimension are trying to take over Earth. Blast your way through these invaders in this action platformer! Collect coins and upgrade your weapons and characters to become stronger, faster and more lethal!

D&D Arena of War

Description:Arena of War, the first free-to-play Dungeons & Dragons game on mobile, is a thrilling 3D battle role-playing game that takes place in the famous Forgotten Realms. The Sundering, a historic event that will reshape the world and the heavens, is underway and threatens the balance of power between the gods of good and evil.

COMING SOON

When the PlayStation 4 launches on November 15th, there will be a software update already waiting for new owners — and that update is necessary to enjoy some of the console's most basic functions. Chief among these features is the ability to play Blu-ray discs or DVDs, which won't be possible until the update is installed. You also won't be able to utilize Remote Play, which lets gamers play PS4 games on a PS Vita, while other missing features include the ability to play games as they're being downloaded, recording and uploading gameplay using the console's new sharing features, and being able to use voice chat while playing games with friends. Of course, these features will be available once you install the 300MB update, but for...

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Walk down your supermarket's oil aisle, and you've got a surprising number of cooking oils to choose from. You don't have to stick with just one oil, though, for simplicity's sake. The Kitchn recommends keeping these three oils topped up for universal cooking and flavor needs.

The oils are: grapeseed oil (great for frying, with a high smoke point, but also with little flavor, so it works in mayonnaise and similar dishes), extra virgin olive oil (the good kind, that is, for dressings and such),and toasted sesame oil (for the flavor enhancement).

Of course, your favorites might vary, but if in doubt, these three oils are versatile enough to serve multiple cooking needs.

Three Oils You Need in the Kitchen (And One More That Might Be Nice) | The Kitchn

Photo by bikingbettie.

Police in Manchester, UK made a huge show out of having seized a "3D printed gun." Then, it turned out that they'd just seized parts for a 3D printer. But it's still very scary, as Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood copsplains: it might have been a 3D printed gun, and they had "intelligence" about a 3D printed gun, and if they search the computers they stole, they might find plans for a 3D printed gun, and also, our botched, humiliating cockup "opens up a wider debate about the emerging threat these next generation of weapons might pose."

Thanks, Officer Hypothetical, for saving us from this dire threat!

"We need to be absolutely clear that at that this stage, we cannot categorically say we have recovered the component parts for a 3D gun.

What we have seized are items that need further forensic testing by national ballistics experts to establish whether they can be used in the construction of a genuine, viable firearm.

We will also be conducting a thorough analysis of computers we have recovered to establish any evidence of a blueprint on how to construct such a weapon.

Clearly the fact we have seized a 3D printer and have intelligence about the possible production of a weapon using this technology is of concern. It prudent we establish exactly what these parts can be used for and whether they pose any threat.

What this has also done is open up a wider debate about the emerging threat these next generation of weapons might pose.

The worrying thing is for me is that these printers can be used to make certain components of guns, while others can be legitimately ordered over the Internet without arousing suspicion. When put together, this could allow a person to construct a firearm in their own home.

Thanks to Challenger, which is the biggest ever multi-agency response to organized crime in Greater Manchester's history, we now have even greater resources to combat any emerging threats posed by organized criminal gangs, which may include the production of these weapons.Under Challenger we will a multi-agency action plan for every single organized crime group in Manchester and we will target these networks from every possible angle, hitting them where it hurts."

3D-printed 'gun parts' seized in UK raid may be spare parts for a printer (update) [Aaron Souppouris/The Verge]

(Thanks, Alex G!)

Sony ran into trouble last week when it had to postpone the release of Driveclub, a launch title and PlayStation 4 exclusive, immediately following Ubisoft's surprising delays of Watch Dogs and The Crew. In order to combat the disappointment and reinvigorate fans, Sony has released a video promoting all the exclusive content coming to the PlayStation 4, from games that won't show up on any other console to extra features that will only appear on the PS4 versions of huge triple-A releases.

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As Twitter gets closer to its initial public offering (IPO), more and more details are leaking out, and now we know exactly how many shares will be available when the company hits the market. According to a new document filed with the SEC, Twitter will offer 70 million shares and expects to price them between $17 and $20. That's a good bit less than Facebook hit the market at — but given the wild ride that its stock went on over the following year, Twitter's more conservative pricing might be to the benefit of potential investors. Though, as noted by Bloomberg, Twitter's average revenue per user is less than half of Facebook's, and the company has a significantly smaller userbase than Facebook as well.

There's also an option to...

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http://variety.com/2013/tv/news/suits-renewed-by-usa-for-season-4-1200758566/

The series has been picked up for another sixteen episodes, so that's more Gina Torres on our televisions.

http://celebritybabies.people.com/2013/10/24/homeland-morena-baccarin-welcomes-son-julius/

Morena has given birth to a healthy baby boy named Julius.

With millions of visitors every day ExtraTorrent is one of the most-visited torrent indexes on the Internet.

The site is a thorn in the side of the entertainment industries who have labeled it a “rogue site” on numerous occasions. In recent weeks, however, more concrete actions have been taken.

In September, ExtraTorrent suffered a massive blow when City of London Police convinced its registrar to seize their .com domain. ExtraTorrent was not happy with this decision and threatened legal action.

The registrar eventually decided to redirect the .com domain to the new .cc TLD, but still refuses to return it.

Smelling blood, the MPAA jumped in last week by sending a DMCA request to Google, asking the search engine to remove ExtraTorrent’s new homepage from its search results. The Hollywood group sent a targeted DMCA notice listing only two URLs including ExtraTorrent.cc.

Interestingly, Google refused to take action and decided to keep the site listed, presumably because the copyrighted content referenced by the studios was no longer linked there. Needless to say, ExtraTorrent’s staff was delighted with Google’s backing.

“We are happy to know that Google took the right decision,” ExtraTorrent’s Sam told TorrentFreak earlier this week, when we asked for a comment on Google’s refusal.

“MPAA thought that we would be vulnerable after the domain drama, and that the time was right to go after us using the same tactics London police used with our old clumsy registrar. However, they forgot that Google is not like our old registrar and that they are not as easily manipulated,” he added.

ExtraTorrent.cc not removed

However, just when we were about to publish our findings today we noticed that the new ExtraTorrent.cc domain had disappeared after all. The search giant hadn’t backpedaled on its earlier decision, but it turns out the MPAA wasn’t the only one going after ExtraTorrent’s new home.

On Monday, Fox also sent a takedown notice to Google. This notice listed only one URL – extratorrent.cc – and no less than 110 copyrighted movies and TV-shows including Family Guy, Homeland, Avatar and Life of Pi.

While the DMCA notice doesn’t list any links to individual pages where .torrent files can be downloaded, Google has removed ExtraTorrent’s homepage from its search results after this second request.

Talking to TorrentFreak, ExtraTorrent says they are disappointed that Google gave in so quickly. They are considering contacting the search engine to file a counter notice to get the domain reinstated.

Whether the delisting of the homepage will have a pronounced affect on ExtraTorrent’s traffic has yet to be seen, but Hollywood certainly believes this will be the case. As we have pointed out in the past, with precision attacks the MPAA and individual movie studios are increasingly asking Google to remove the homepages of “pirate” sites.

Thus far results have been mixed. Kickass.to, EZTV and 1337x’s homepages are no longer appearing in Google’s search results, but Google refused to delist ThePirateBay.sx and Torrentz.eu as these URLs don’t link directly to copyrighted works.

Unfortunately for ExtraTorrent the Google ban and the domain issues are not the only pushback they’re facing at the moment.

The site is also being blocked by Internet providers in several countries including Italy and Belgium. To help users circumvent these blockades, ExtraTorrent just launched a dedicated proxy on Extratorrentlive.com.

For the time being, the proxy’s homepage is still indexed by Google….

Source: Google Removes ExtraTorrent Homepage From Search Results

New apps need lovin’ too, right? Every day there are thousands of new entries on 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 launch them to new heights. Our weekly column Fresh Meat highlights new apps with less than 100k installs. Browse our new Android app picks below and let us know which ones you enjoy.

Google Maps Engine

 

Description: Google Maps Engine on Android enables you to view your custom maps anywhere, anytime. View: enables you to view the beautiful maps that you or your organization have built on Google Maps Engine, easily toggling on and off relevant layers

Power-Grid

Description: ROCCAT™ Power-Grid™ is a fully customizable remote for your PC. It lets you connect to, monitor and control your PC and games from your smartphone – all without having to leave the action.

BBM

Description: The OFFICIAL version of BBM™ from BlackBerry is now here for Android. Get the free BBM app for the best way to stay connected with friends and family. Download it now.

Switchr

Description: Switchr is a well designed, well polished, feature-packed and simple, yet practical application that allows switching between running tasks with impeccable elegance and flawless perfection.

Microsoft Remote Desktop

Description: With the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, you can connect to a remote PC and your work resources from almost anywhere. Experience the power of Windows with RemoteFX in a Remote Desktop client designed to help you get your work done wherever you are.

Card2Contact

Description: Card2Contact manages everything you need to know about your important contacts right from your smartphone. The Card2Contact app not only digitizes business cards with a quick photo, but also integrates your calendar, address book, and notification reminders into one complete system to turn your smartphone into a mobile CRM.

Popup Messenger

Description:  Popup Messenger shows all incoming and outgoing SMS messages within a floating popup window that allows you to receive and respond to messages without exiting your current app.

Aereo (Beta)

Description: It used to be that watching over-the-air television required a giant rooftop antenna or awkward rabbit ears connected to your TV. Aereo changes all that. With Aereo for Android, simply launch the app, sign in to your Aereo account, and use your remote antenna and DVR to watch real TV on your Android phone or tablet.

Hands-Free SMS Lite

Description: Hands-Free SMS is just what it sounds like – a Hands Free SMS application that you use to listen to and respond to SMS Text messages without using your hands. Hands-Free SMS is completely voice activated.

Black Friday Deal Finder 2013

Description:  More than just a planner, this app makes shopping for Black Friday deals easy–anywhere! The ultimate one-stop resource to SEARCH, COMPARE, SHOP, SAVE and SHARE all the Black Friday 2013 ads and deals throughout the holidays, including shopping for Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday deals.

Happiness is both a skill you can control and a habit you can develop. Happify, created by scientists and game developers, is an awesome webapp that trains you to live a happier, less stressful, and more fulfilling life.

Happify's activities and games are based on scientific research that suggests there are five essential skills for happiness: savoring, thanking, aspiring, giving, and empathizing. It's a lot like brain-training site Lumosity, but for your emotional well-being instead.

The activities are organized into "tracks" that you focus on each week. So games, for example, in the "confidence" track include things like clicking on balloons with positive words on them and listing three things you were grateful for the day before. Complete three activities to get a silver medal or five to get a gold one, and then choose a different track to continue working on your happiness. The free version lets you do a few activities each day, while the plus plan ($4.95 to $14.95, depending on a billion options) unlocks all the activities.

Every couple of weeks, Happify will quiz you to measure your happiness, and the dashboard also shows your progress on the different happiness skills.

As with physical and mental exercises, working on your happiness needs to be a daily or at least regular habit if you want to see improvement. Happify's small, quick exercises might help you turn happiness into a habit, although your mileage may vary.

Happify

Next month Marvel's Thor: The Dark World will be hitting theaters, but it's already time to start looking ahead to what next year holds. This first trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier gives us a look at Chris Evans in the title role, along with Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Samuel L. Jackson as the venerable Nick Fury, and Robert Redford. We liked the footage we saw earlier this year at San Diego Comic-Con, with directors Joe and Anthony Russo mentioning 1970s spy thrillers as a particular stylistic point of reference. If you're intrigued by what you see here, you'll have plenty of time to go through it frame by frame: the film won't be released until April 4th, 2014.

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You want it. You can’t stop thinking about it. You must have it. You keep visiting websites about it. You find it for sale online and your finger hovers over the button. You see it in a store and you almost can’t tear yourself away from picking it up and holding it in your hands. Whatever that item is, you crave it. You want it so bad you can almost taste it.

This post originally appeared on The Simple Dollar.

However, giving into that craving without planning ahead for it is a sure way to disrupt your plans and your budget and your positive financial progress. For me, the craving often revolves around books. I want to read the latest bestsellers. I want to take some of my most-loved and most-thought-provoking books and actually annotate the pages, almost as if they were a journal. I want to read and re-read books that I love and share them with friends.

I recognize the craving for what it is. It’s just a strong desire for something I don’t really need that, if I’m not careful, can grow out of control and cause me to toss aside sensible financial principles. You might crave something else. Maybe it’s video games. Maybe it’s clothing. Maybe it’s fine wine. Maybe it’s craft beer. Maybe it’s hunting gear. I know people who crave all of those things.

Whatever that material item is that you crave, it’s a potential danger to your personal finances if you let it go unchecked. Thankfully, there are several steps you can take to curb that craving.

Don’t Shop Recreationally

Don’t go into a store without a specific purchase in mind that you’ve already considered carefully and researched. Pick the item you want, buy it, and get out of there.

Stores are designed from the bottom up to encourage product desire and encourage you to buy things that you shouldn’t. Recreational shopping amounts to begging the stores to take money from you for things you don’t want. Just avoid it.

Don’t Watch Television Without a Specific Program in Mind

Sure, there’s ads, but the problem is actually in the programs themselves. Almost every program on television is laden with product placement, from the beverage someone is drinking in a sitcom to the logos all over the place on sports programming. It’s all there to remind you of products and keep them in your head.

Don’t Web Browse Without a Specific Purpose

Again, the ads are the obvious part, but there are so many “stories,” particularly on news sites, that amount to little more than advertisements for a product. They glow about the latest gadget or the latest food product and make it sound like anyone who’s anyone must have it. Keep your web browsing to a specific purpose and minimize this junk.

Seek Out Entertainment That Doesn’t Involve Material Possessions

Go to free concerts. Get involved in charities. Read books or watch movies from the library. Host dinner parties for your friends. Practice meditation or prayer. Dig deep into exercise. All of these hobbies and activities are enjoyed without having to have “stuff.” The more you can do without “stuff” being a requirement, the less you’ll desire it.

The "Craving" and How to Curb It | The Simple Dollar

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Trent Hamm is a personal finance writer at TheSimpleDollar.com. After pulling himself out of his own financial crisis, he founded the site in late 2006 to help others through financially difficult situations; today the site has become a finance, insurance, and retirement resource. Contact Trent at trent AT the simple dollar DOT com; please send site inquiries to inquiries AT the simple dollar DOT com.

Want to see your work on Lifehacker? Email Tessa.

It's been a long time coming, but Firefox OS has finally made its way onto a phone from a from a major smartphone vendor. The LG Fireweb, LG's first ever Firefox OS device, debuted in Brazil on Tuesday along with the Alcatel One Touch Fire. The LG Fireweb will feature a 4-inch screen with a 480 x 320 pixel display, 1GHz Qualcomm processor, 5-megapixel camera, 4GB of internal storage, and the ability to expand to 32GB with microSD support. The entry-level specs might not attract smartphone users in the market for the most advanced handset, but the $129 BRL ($59 USD) price tag on contract at Vivo Brazil could make this a great jumping off point for Firefox OS. A demonstration video from Mozilla follows below.

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The new gTLDs are starting to roll out. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the delegation of four new "generic top-level domains," those URL suffixes that help organize the Web (a la .com, .org, and .net). ICANN ultimately hopes to add as many as 1400 new gTLDs to the Web.

The four new non-Latin strings—in Arabic, Chinese and Cyrillic—signify ICANN's push towards a more global Web. They are:

• شبكة (xn--ngbc5azd) – Arabic for "web/network" Registry: International Domain Registry Pty. Ltd
• онлайн (xn--80asehdb) – Cyrillic for "online" Registry: CORE Association
• сайт (xn--80aswg) – Cyrillic for "site" Registry: CORE Association
• 游戏(xn--unup4y) – Chinese for "game(s)" Registry: Spring Fields, LLC

See Also: What You Need to Know About ICANN's New Generic Top Level Domains

YouTube is readying its own subscription music service that could launch in the coming months. Billboard first reported news of the service, which is described as being in the vein of Spotify but with the added video component. It will reportedly have two different tiers: a free version, and then a premium option that will offer unlimited access to a broad selection of music (not unlike Rdio or Google Play Music All Access).

The service's launch is not imminent, sources familiar with the product told The Verge, though it could launch later this year. It is expected to cost around $9.99 a month for the premium option.

According to Billboard, those subscribing to the premium service would be able to remove ads and store music offline...

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The Sorcerer Supreme is in active development

The Doctor Strange movie may not be exactly new news, but the project has definitely moved on since the story first emerged. Marvel's top dog Kevin Feige, currently doing the press rounds to promote Thor: The Dark World, crystalised the studio's thinking in an interview with Movies.com. To whit: "It's in active development right now.”

“Doc Strange, as I’ve been saying for years, is a movie I believe we should make," Feige elaborated. "We’re just figuring out how to make it a great movie.

Marvel's Phase 3 will kick off with Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man in late 2015, followed by two yet-to-be-officially-announced projects in the summer of 2016 and ’17 respectively. Feige was tight-lipped about which of these would be Doctor Strange, if either.

“Whether that’s one of the movies we announce for 2016 or 2017, we have to see,” he said. “I think it’ll be the middle of next year before we announce officially what the post Ant-Man films will be. Stuff might happen before that. It’s too early to tell.”

We suspect Feige is a little further on than he's admitting, since he said they already have "some ideas of what we're doing" in 2016 and 2017 that ruled out a female superhero-led film in the next few years, and our guess is that Strange will end up in one of those two slots. Still, Marvel is keeping its powder dry until Ant-Man is a little closer to shooting and Phase 2 is further advanced. In the meantime, we've kicked some ideas around on who should play the Sorcerer Supreme. Join the debate here.

Whether you love to cook or you just love to eat, odds are you have a collection of dishes and recipes you'd like to try. Maybe you have a bunch handed down from a loved one. In either case, you probably need a better method to keep them organized for the long haul than a bunch of index cards in a file folder. Here are some of the best apps for you, depending on the kind of recipe collection you have.

We've covered a number of recipe managers and organization tools in the past. This time though we're taking a look at some specific tools just right for your needs, whether you like to take your tablet into the kitchen or you have boxes of hand-written recipes you want to save for future generations.

For Importing Old, Hand-Written Recipes: BigOven

If you're looking for a recipe organizer because you need something to bridge the paper and electronic divide, BigOven (Web/iOS/Android/Windows Phone) is the service for you. It's been around for a while, but it still boasts a recipe library over 250,000 strong, and it's still a fantastic way to combine recipes from around the web with those old, hand-written recipes you may have stuffed between pages in a cookbook. BigOven is free to join, but to get the best features out of it, you'll need to pony up $2.50/mo or $20/yr for a Pro membership.

Being a Pro member gives you access to BigOven's recipe scanner, which lets you take photos of your cookbooks, hand-written note cards, and other printed out recipes and add them to your collection thanks to a combination of optical character recognition (OCR) and real people behind the scenes reviewing the scans. However, they're not free, even with a Pro membership. Signing up for Pro gets you 25 free scans, but after that they're generally a dollar per scan. That can add up if you have a lot of recipes to enter, but then again, you can enter them manually if you prefer. You have to ask, which is more valuable, the time or the money?

Beyond that though, Pro memberships come with other bonuses (nutritional information, BigOven's web clipper-which admittedly is a free feature on almost any other site, and private notes) as well. Plus, for as well as it works on the web, BigOven also has iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps to let you take your collection on the go.

For the Web Clipper or Pinterest Junkie: ChefTap or Paprika

If the bulk of your saved recipes are already available online or you have them pinned to other sites (like Pinterest), consider previously mentioned ChefTap (Web/Android) or Paprika (Mac/iOS/Android). Both make it easy to pull in recipes from other sites. ChefTap can import an entire pinboard full of linked recipes and dishes in three taps, and Paprika has a built-in browser you can use to import recipes from your pinboards or favorite blogs.

ChefTap is free, and works great on Android phones and tablets as well as on the desktop. Clipping recipes from around the web is easy, and you can edit them later. It's smart enough to pull the recipe out of even long blog articles, and works on any site or blog—something a lot of recipe apps can't claim. It'll tag and organize your recipes, make them easy to find by search later, and has a large-print "kitchen view" if you want to take your device into the kitchen with you.

Paprika recently launched an Android version of its well regarded iOS and Mac apps. Clipping recipes from the web thanks to its built-in browser is easy, and then syncs those recipes to the cloud so you can get back to them on any of your devices. Organizing your recipes into folders or notebooks is a drag-and-drop affair, and Paprika can even make grocery lists out of those recipes that you can take to the store with you. The only downside to Paprika is its price. It's $20 for the Mac, $5 for the iPhone, $5 for the iPad (no, it's not a universal app), and $5 for Android. You'll have to buy a version for each device you want to use it with.

For the Tablet Cook: Basil or Pepperplate

If you like to take your tablet to the kitchen while you cook, consider Basil (iPad) or Pepperplate (iOS/Android/WIndows 8/Windows Phone/Nook). Basil has a laundry list of sites that it supports one-touch imports from, including some of our favorites like CHOW, Bon Appetit, and Serious Eats. It's also designed to be used in the kitchen, with bright backgrounds and black text, built-in timers, and large photos. Pepperplate includes built-in kitchen timers, large, easy-to-read displays while you're cooking, and offline access so you don't need connectivity while you cook.

Basil is iPad only (and $3 at iTunes). Basil doesn't just clip your recipes, it also organizes them by ingredient, tags them automatically, and makes them easy to find. In effect, it turns your recipes into a personal cookbook that's easy to browse and search whenever you're in the mood for something or you have a specific ingredient you have to work with. It even converts units, scales recipes up or down for you, and any step in a recipe with a time attached automatically becomes a timer.

Pepperplate on the other hand supports a broad variety of devices, and has huge tablet views and built-in timers to help you out while you're in the kitchen trying to make your mom's chicken soup from the recipe you just digitized. It goes beyond recipes though, and includes a fully-featured meal planner, recipe search tool, and tools to build grocery lists based on your meal plan or the recipes you want to make on a given week.

For Complete Control: Evernote/Evernote Food or Springpad

If you're looking for total control over your recipe collection, give Evernote (or its food-centric spinoff Evernote Food) (Web/iOS/Android) a try. Similarly, Springpad (Web/iOS/Android) takes a very visual approach to saving recipes in a virtual "recipe box," and it even organizes them for you so they're easy to search and browse. While other methods focus on building cookbooks and specifically organizing recipes, these tools work for a variety of other things as well as food, and make your data a bit more portable, available on more devices, and cost less to use.

Evernote is already a great place to save your recipes, since you can enter text or clip items from the web extremely easy thanks to its web clipper. You can organize your own notebooks however you choose. Evernote Food for iOS and Android takes this up a notch by encouraging you to take pictures and upload your own recipes to your personal "cookbook." You can also use that cookbook as a jumping off point to explore new recipes from other users.

Springpad is a little more robust in this regard, and is actually our preferred option between the two when it comes to clipping recipes. The interface is a bit more suited for recipes, and the Springpad web clipper can tell a recipe from an article or a bookmark. It'll auto-populate your clipping with ingredients and step-by-step instructions, and then leaves you to tag it, add photos, and save it. Once you do, it'll even look up a wine pairing that would go well with the dish and add it to your saved recipe, automatically.

These tools are just the beginning. You could just go "text files in Dropbox" if you don't want to bother with any of these, but there's something great about having your recipes neatly organized, complete with pictures, ingredients, nutrition information, and more. We think these are a great start, depending on the type of home cook you are, and what you need to organize.

If you're looking for a smarter, more organized, and just all-around better way to manage your pile of contacts, Contacts+ for Android is your best option. It brings a number of features to the table that don't just give you a way to quickly get in touch with people, it actually helps you keep up with them.

Contacts+

Platform: Android (2.1+, and iOS)
Price: Free
Download Page

Features

• Uses your phone's contacts, including your Google contacts, which are all seamlessly imported.
• Syncs contacts from any email accounts on your phone (including Google Apps accounts.)
• Features standard list views or large, photo-centric grid views that bring your friend's pictures front and center.
• Pulls in contact information from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, FourSquare, and more to give you a complete profile of your contacts, including their most up-to-date contact information, recent activity on social networks, their birthday, shared photos, and more.
• Automatically pulls in profile photos from Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and automatically grabs shared photos from Google+
• Ranks contacts by importance, most contacted, or by "Starred," which gives you a way to highlight the people you want to see, even if you don't talk to them often
• Allows you to easily edit any errant contacts from within the app, instead of shunting you to the origin of the contact card.
• Identifies and merges duplicate contacts.
• Includes a built-in dialer and SMS app, so you can directly call your contacts or send a message without leaving the app.
• Long-press on any contact portrait to bring up quick buttons to call or text that person.
• Includes a built-in browser so you can view Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, or any other connected social account within the app, instead of being pushed out to the native app or a web browser.
• Displays a history of all interactions with the contact, including emails, direct messages, social media interactions, phone calls, and SMS messages.
• Call, email, or SMS a contact with a single tap.
• Stores and synchronizes your contacts across multiple devices (including Gmail or Outlook) automatically and in the cloud, so you always have up-to-date contact information.
• Optimized for phones and tablets, with larger, full-screen views available for tablet users.
• Features light and dark themes you can select to suit the amount of light in the room, or your personal preferences.
• Includes a contacts and home screen widget.
• Reminds you of your friends' birthdays with a notification so you can call or text them to wish them well.

Where It Excels

Contacts+ really won our hearts a few months ago when we stumbled onto it, and since then it's only gotten better. Since our previous favorite, Smartr Contacts, got eaten by Yahoo when they acquired Xobni, the company that built it, we'd been looking for a replacement that got the job done just as well, and Contacts+ does the job just as well, if not a little better. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Google Contacts is long-overdue for an overhaul, and while the default contact manager for Android phones is passable, it doesn't offer quite the same level of features that a more robust app like Contacts+ does. The app is completely free, ad-free, and gives you quick access to any contact you need to look up, either by search, or by viewing your recent or most relevant contacts.

Contacts+ does a great job at emphasizing the social elements of keeping in touch with your contacts, and we really like how it pulls together all of their social networks and updates into one view, just a tap away from their actual contact information. As soon as you open the app, any person you need to communicate with is one tap away (or less if you want to call or text, then you can just long-press their photo). Another tap and you're up to speed on their lives and what they've been doing lately. The goal of the app isn't just to be an address book, although it's exceptional at that (you can search quickly, sort your contacts by the people you communicate with most often or the ones you want to see first, and more), but to also be a tool you turn to regularly to keep up with your friends, communicate with them, and stay in touch with the people that are important to you.

Just one small way Contacts+ proves the point is by notifying you when one of your friends' has a birthday. You get a notification in the notifications bar, and the app reminds you to wish your friend, mom, cousin, or old high school friend a happy birthday. It's a little thing, and definitely not a banner feature compared to all of the others, but it drives the point home.

Where It Falls Short

Contacts+ has a few caveats. First, when it comes to Android, the app relies on your Google Contacts. if your Google Contacts are a mess, or if you have old contacts that you used to email all the time but now never do, Contacts+ may be smart, but not smart enough to sort that out for you. You'll inevitably see people in your contatcts list or grid with no profile image and little additional information associated with them. The app does go out of its way to only show you people in your grid you have phone numbers and additional detail for, but still, this is as much Google's fault as it is anyone else's. Tidy up your Google Contacts and merge duplicate entries before using the app, or at least after you've installed it. Contacts+ does a great job at merging duplicate contacts if you forget to do it up front.

Second, while its contact manager is fantastic, the dialer and SMS tools included with Contacts+ leave a little to be desired. The dialer has a cramped interface that's easy to fat-finger and difficult to use, especially compared to stock dialers, and the SMS app is solid (and I really love the pop-up notification when I get a new text), but it's nothing to write home about. Some people may love having all three of those things bundled together, other people might hate it. Still, even if you do hate it, you can still use your preferred dialer and SMS app—Contacts+ doesn't stop you.

The Competition

Don't discount your built-in address book and Google Contacts. You already have it, and on most Android devices, you can merge disparate contacts easily and add social network profiles to a single contact card so you can see all of a person's information in one screen. The trick here is that in order to do this, you need to have the right social network apps installed on your phone, and you have to allow them to sync that network's contacts with Google Contacts on your phone. That can get a little tricky at times, but it works. You don't get relationship history, current updates, photos, or contacts organized by relevance and importance, but it definitely gets the job done. Depending on the phone you have, your OEM may have even included a really nice contacts manager.

DW Contacts (Free, 2.1+) looks pretty rough around the edges and definitely won't win any design awards, but it is fast and tries to incorporate a number of features above. You get contact images and a nice grid layout for your contacts, an "events" tab that's ideally used for birthdays and anniversaries, a built-in dialer, drag-and-drop contact organization, long-press contact options, and more. The app also includes a built-in call filter, so your contacts can only call you at certain times, you can silence your phone at night but still let important calls through, block all anonymous calls, and so on. It'll even keep track of how many minutes you have left on your billing cycle.

GO Contacts (Free, 2.0+) deserves a mention, if for no other reason than its incredible popularity. Again, it's more of a contacts and dialer replacement, and its claim to fame is the fact that it's customizable and you can download skins and themes for it, but it does offer some functional features as well. You can search contacts easily, drag and drop them into custom groups, dial or SMS by typing a portion of your contact's name, and easily merge duplicate contacts. Aside from that though, its focus is on form, not the kind of function we're looking for here.

There are tons of contact managers that are essentially replacements and skins for the built-in contacts and dialer apps that we didn't mention, because we were looking specifically for tools that replace your address book with something more functionally useful. Even so, we're sure to have missed some, and there's definitely something to be said for the variety of built-in contact managers different manufacturers include with their devices. On one phone, you may hate it because it's bare-bones and ugly. On another device, it may be beautifully fast and functional. Check yours out before you replace it.

Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.

The long-awaited sequel to Plants vs. Zombies hit iOS back in August, and now it's finally available to Android users. Plants vs. Zombies 2 soft-launched in Australia and New Zealand at the beginning of October, but developer Popcap has finally available made the game available elsewhere in the world. Like the iOS edition, PvZ2 on Android moves the series to a free-to-play model, though — as we noted in our review — the addition of micro transactions hasn't harmed the game's addictive strategy formula. The Android version works with devices running Android 2.3 or higher, and you can download it from Google Play at the source link below.

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During the heyday of DVDs, everyone was eager to offer more and more bonus features to help convince movie fans that they should make a purchase, and now that bonus content is slowly making its way into the age of streaming and downloadable media. Vudu is now beginning to include extra content like deleted scenes, trivia, and behind-the-scenes clips with the purchase of select films. Just about everything you'd expect from a DVD is included, though Vudu's extras will also allow viewers to share clips to Facebook and Twitter and to search for specific scenes and events in the film.

Vudu is calling the new feature Extras+, and it'll be first available today for the film District 9. Later in the year, Vudu will bring Extras+ to This is...

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Sherlock is finally and officially coming back early next year. PBS has confirmed that the third season of Steven Moffat's acclaimed adaptation will premiere in the US on January 19th. The first episode will air on PBS' Masterpiece at 10PM, directly after Downton Abbey. "The Empty Hearse" was written by Mark Gatiss — responsible for two of the series' strongest episodes, "The Great Game" and "The Hounds of Baskerville" —  and is based on Conan Doyle's story "The Adventure of the Empty House." Like that story, it's going to have to explain the protagonist's miraculous reappearance after his struggle with Moriarty at the end of the second season. After that, we'll see "The Sign of Three" (based on "The Sign of the Four") and "His...

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Music lookup services like Shazam have been helping listeners get songs out of their heads and into their music players for years, but now researchers are realizing that there's even more scientific value to be had from the principles behind these apps. Using the very algorithm employed by many music lookup services, researchers have found that it's possible to distinguish between Dolphins' "signature whistles" — the sounds that they use to effectively address other dolphins by name — in a simple and efficient way.

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