Share Clipboard Contents Across Your Network with BeyondCopy

Windows only: Copy and paste text and files between computers on your Local Area Network (LAN) with free, open source application BeyondCopy. Just set up BeyondCopy on every Windows computer you'd like to use it with (it can handle several) by installing the utility and entering in the hostname of each computer you want to share with. Once each computer is set up, BeyondCopy automatically syncs your clipboard between computers each time you copy something, including text and files; you can then paste the same clipboard contents on any connected computer. We've highlighted how to share your clipboard and mouse with Synergy in the past, but if you don't want the mouse sharing or you need file copy sharing, BeyondCopy looks like an excellent solution. BeyondCopy is free, Windows only.
BeyondCopy [SourceForge via Inspect My Gadget]

Nice little program!!

Consumer protection org warns: resist Vista, "back to the future" with XP

In yet another blow to the reputation of Windows Vista, the Dutch Consumers' Association (Consumentenbond) has recommended that customers who purchase new PCs insist on obtaining Windows XP over Vista. In addition, it called on computer shops to provide Windows XP downgrades to customers who have already obtained Vista from said shops. After unsuccessfully trying to persuade Microsoft to provide those free downgrades, the DCA said that consumers would have to take matters into their own hands since Microsoft does not agree with its assessment of the OS, which the organization said appears to have been released before it was truly ready, according to comments recorded by Expatica. Related Stories * XP on OEM hardware? Not after January, 2008 * Microsoft's OEM catch-22: XP still in the driver's seat * Report: Vista Business, XP Pro sales down in Europe * Forget big service packs, Vista "high quality right out of the gate," says execThe organization's spat with Microsoft began when it conducted a survey on Vista's performance. According to the survey results, the OS performed quite poorly, racking up 5,000 consumer complaints in less than five weeks. Commonly reported issues center on printer and hardware compatibility, system crashes, and slow peripherals. The DCA met with Microsoft to discuss its concerns before issuing its statement warning consumers away from Vista—evidently, whatever olive branch Microsoft offered wasn't enough to satisfy the group.

read more | digg story

Man I am with them on the Vista problems!!

Verizon Wireless Opt-Out Plan For Customer Records

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that Verizon Wireless is planning to share its customers' calling records (called CPNI) with "our affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone) and their subsidiaries." The article explains that CPNI "includes the numbers of incoming and outgoing calls and time spent on each call, among other data." Some subscribers, it's not known if it's all of them, received a letter in the mail giving them 30 days to opt out of this sharing by calling 1-800-333-9956. Skydeck, a mobile and wireless services company, seems to have been the first to call attention to the Verizon initiative on their blog; they also posted a scan of the letter (sideways PDF) from Verizon.

Man that just boils my biscuits. I say we all call them and complain and tell them that we do not want it!! If you believe what I believe it isn't right

Hitachi breakthrough: 4TB disks by 2011

When Hitachi -- the first disk manufacturer to go perpendicular and subsequently break the 1TB consumer disk drive barrier -- speaks about advances in hard disk technology, you'd be wise to listen. Today they're touting the world's smallest read-head technology for HDDs. The bold claim? 4TB desktop (3.5-inch) and 1TB laptop (2.5-inch) drives within the next 4 years. The new recording heads are more than 2x smaller than existing gear or about 2,000 times smaller than a human hair. Hmmm, Samsung may have to update their SSD vs. HDD graph after this, eh?

Hmm, Does that mean when those come out the 1 TB are going to go down in price!! :) I hope so, maybe they'll come up with a way for a 1 TB for a laptop!

Teenager claims to have easy iPod Touch jailbreak

A 13-year-old hacker claims to have developed code that would let you put third-party applications on an iPod Touch without having to take a computer science class.

AriX sent us a press release Sunday promoting iJailbreak, an automated program that allows third-party applications to run on the iPod Touch. It doesn't work for the iPhone, and it's only available for iPod Touch owners that are using Intel-based Macs. I don't have an iPod Touch at my disposal right now, so I'm unable to test whether it actually works, but some users on MacRumors.com reported that it worked.

Ever since Apple released the 1.1.1 software update for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch in late September that broke older third-party application installers, hackers have been hard at work searching for a new way to bypass the restrictions. A preliminary jailbreaking application was released last week, but it required a great deal of expertise to get up and running. Erica Sadun, a writer for The Unofficial Apple Weblog, installed that iPod Touch jailbreak Friday evening but warned, "This is not ready for prime time, kids. Don't do this at home."

If a 13 year old can do it why can't the dev team do it?

Canadian iPhone delayed by trademark dispute?

Mirroring the premature trademark dispute surrounding the launch of the Cisco iPhone in the US, Apple's Canadian launch of its respective iPhone could be delayed due to a trademark dispute with a product that shares the same name as Apple's gadget. Comwave Telecom in Toronto owns the trademark rights to the name "iPhone" in Canada for use on its VoIP products and services, and has filed a complaint with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office over Apple's application for the trademark rights of the name for its future Canadian version of the iPhone. Sounds like a case of how much Apple is willing to pay, or how long they're willing to delay.

Oh I wonder how long before they can ship to Canada??

Manage Multiple Remote Desktop Connections with mRemote

Windows only: Connect to and manage multiple remote desktop connections—supporting RDP, VNC, SSH2, and Telnet protocols—in a friendly tabbed interface with free, open source application mRemote. While you could run multiple instances of the Windows Remote Desktop application along with your other remote connections, mRemote allows you to connect to and manage them all from one place without cluttering up your taskbar or running several different applications. Whether you're controlling your home computer on-the-go with VNC, you prefer Windows Remote Desktop connections (RDP), or you regularly use an SSH2 or even Telnet connections, mRemote is the perfect tool to manage and connect to them all. mRemote is free, Windows only.

Nice little program for when you have more than two machines and need to get on both.

Reported assassination of Russian spammer deemed a hoax

The reported assassination of an alleged Russian spammer is a hoax, according to security researchers.

On Thursday, a blog post on the Web site Loonov.com claimed a spammer named Alexey Tolstokozhev was found murdered in a villa outside Moscow. "He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of Russian hit men," the post said.

The reported assassination of Tolstokozhev echoed the 2005 murder of an actual Russian spammer, Vardan Kushnir. Kushnir was found beaten to death in a Moscow apartment, prompting speculation his murder was related to his activities as a spammer. However, a police investigation later said Kushnir was killed by robbers and his death was not connected with his spam activities.

The Tolstokozhev story caught the attention of the security community as well as blogs, even making it on to Slashdot, one of the most popular sites for technology-related news. But security researchers soon debunked the report.

The story began to unravel when researchers failed to locate Tolstokozhev in records of known spammers, even though Loonov.com claimed he was responsible for "up to 30 percent of all Viagra and penis enlargement-related spam" and made more than $2 million in 2007 from these unsolicited e-mails. More questions were raised when researchers discovered that the Loonov.com domain name was registered on the same day the assassination post appeared.

"We got the feeling pretty quickly that it was a hoax," said Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager at McAfee's Avert Labs. "It just became obvious that either this was somebody's idea of a joke or they were using a real person's name and trying to associate him with being a spammer."

Other security researchers picked up on the hoax as well, with reports appearing on Sunbelt Software's SunbeltBlog and Taint.org, a blog written by Justin Mason, a software developer in Ireland.

The motivation behind the Tolstokozhev hoax is not clear. The Loonov.com domain was registered anonymously and the identity of the person behind the hoax is not known.

"It's probably just an attempt to besmirch this person's name, because this guy's name does not appear on the list of usual suspects," Marcus said.

Avert Labs and other researchers looked into whether there was a malicious side to the Loonov.com site, such as downloading malware onto a visitor's computer, but didn't find anything suspicious. "As of now, we haven't found any malicious code embedded in the site," he said.

Perhaps ironically, all of the attention that's been given to the Tolstokozhev story may eventually turn Loonov.com into a spam site.

"He's getting an awful lot of traffic being driven to the site because of all the attention he's getting. He'll get a lot of Google juice out of this," Marcus said, referring to the way Google's search engine ranks Web sites. "If you use it as a spam site, you've already got good Google activity built up, but that's just a guess."

Wow, now that's really unfortunate!!

Gmail Storage to 6GB by January

The Official Gmail Blog has announced that Gmail's storage counter has received a much-needed bump in its storage growth rate, which will put Gmail storage at 6GB by January 2008. Additionally, the premium Premier Edition is seeing a jump to 25GB from 10GB. We've covered how to free up space in Gmail (and so have you), but these storage bumps should go a long way toward keeping Google's promise that "you'll never need to delete another message."

Wow what I want to know is when are we going to be able to use the space?

Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell - Just Like Ballmer Predicted

IP Innovation LLC has just filed a patent infringement claim against Red Hat and Novell. It was filed October 9, case no. 2:2007cv00447, IP Innovation, LLC et al v. Red Hat Inc. et al, in Texas. Where else? The patent troll magnet state.

The first ever patent infringement litigation involving Linux. Here's the patent, for those who can look at it without risk. If in doubt, don't. Here's the complaint [PDF].

And now let's play, where's Microsoft? You know, like where's Waldo? Betcha he's in the tree's leaves somewhere if we look close enough. We had our first hint when Steve Ballmer said in his speech the other day that he figured other folks besides Microsoft would want Red Hat and FOSS to pay them for their patents. Remember? Is he a prophet or merely well informed? Or is there more to this? When I lay out all the research, you can decide.

The plaintiff is asking for an injunction, along with damages:

Plaintiffs IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corp. claim to have the rights to U.S. Patent No. 5,072,412 for a User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects issued Dec. 10, 1991 along with two other similar patents.

Defendants Red Hat Inc. and Novell have allegedly committed acts of infringement through products including the Red Hat Linux system, the Novell Suse Linex Enterprise Desktop and the Novell Suse Linex Enterprise Server.

"Red Hat's and Novell's infringement, contributory infringement and inducement to infringe has injured plaintiffs and plaintiffs are entitled to recover damages adequate to compensate them for such infringement but in no event less than a reasonable royalty," the original complaint states.

The plaintiffs also allege that defendants received notice of the patents, therefore the infringing activities have been deliberate and willful.

Plaintiffs are seeking an injunction from the court, increased damages and other relief that the court or a jury may deem just and proper.

T. John Ward Jr. of Ward & Smith Law Firm in Longview is representing the plaintiff.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Leonard E. Davis.

Oh Come on now after RIAA they think they have something to prove!! The Trolls are out, now lets see where this goes.

Call of Duty 4 Demo OUT

I'm going to go try this game out!!

New Harry Potter DVD Comes Bundled With Portable Video

Warner Home Video announced today that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be the first DVD to come bundled with multiple video formats on a single disk. In addition to the regular DVD format, the disk will include versions for both home computer viewing and playback on portable media players. There has been no word on whether DRM could be part of the equation, but keep in mind that protection schemes are typical with Warner releases.

Warner execs also noted that they will soon roll out an on-demand form of DVD burning that will help bridge the gap between in-store purchases and downloading. Again, CSS copy protection will most likely be part of the equation, but they claim that these releases would not be platform specific. It may not be perfect, but it should help movie fans who have been ripping video save a little time. Order of the Phoenix is due on store shelves December 11th.[Electronista]

I wonder how good the quality is going to be and what will be able to use it?

Find Software Updates with UpdateStar

Windows only: Freeware application UpdateStar detects what applications are running on your computer and informs you of available updates. In tests, UpdateStar performed much better than previously mentioned AppSnap as it provides shareware and commercial application information, whereas AppSnap does not. UpdateStar's interface is also a lot snazzier, though that's really just frosting. To be fair, UpdateStar isn't entirely accurate: it informed me that Mozilla Thunderbird 5.2 was the latest version available (it's currently at 2.0.0.6). However, for a product that's still in beta, it does a fine job. UpdateStar is a free application for Windows only.

Nice little program!

Patent investigation could force hard drives off US market

This one's still a ways off, but the International Trade Commission has just launched a patent investigation into five manufacturers that could result in a ban on hard drive imports if the agency finds evidence of infringement. The patents, which are owned by Californians Steven and Mary Reiber, cover a method of using "ceramic bonding tips" on the internal wiring of the drives, and the couple claims Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell have all infringed by importing the drives. Much like the Qualcomm case, the ITC has a variety of ways of dealing with the situation and the parties have a lot of methods of appeal, but products that infringe on US patents are barred from being imported, so this initial determination will set off a lot of dominoes when it gets made in 45 days. Details are still pretty sketchy on what exactly the ITC is investigating, but we'll definitely keep you updated as we get more info.

Well now that is going to be an interesting development, I hope it comes out good!!

Downloadable files coming to next Harry Potter DVD

Users clamoring for alternate (read: easier) ways to transport commercial DVD footage to portable media players will likely enjoy knowing that the next Harry Potter DVD will reportedly feature "two downloadable digital files" for easy viewing on devices other than a vanilla DVD player. According to Jim Wuthrich, Warner senior VP of digital distribution, users can "buy the DVD and have the option of the digital copy," and apparently, he also suggested that "another studio was preparing to launch digital copies of a film tied to its DVD release." Unfortunately, details about the actual formats and whatnot weren't disclosed, so barring any unforeseen announcements, it looks like we'll be waiting for the December 11th release of Order of the Phoenix to find out exactly what this disc contains.

I wonder what it will be used for? IPOD or IPhone?

Ubiquiti Announces First 700Mhz Mini-PCI Wireless Card

Ubiquiti Networks has come out with the "world's first" wireless card specifically designed for the hotly desired and discussed 700Mhz band everyone's scrambling to get a piece of. The XtremeRange7 uses the 32-bit mini-PCI Type IIIA standard and sports a ridiculous output power of 600 mW (your dinky home router's probably putting out 28mW), which Ubiquiti claims gives it a tested antenna-dependent outdoor range of over 50 km, perfect for picking up wireless broadband provided by future (or current) licensees of the 700Mhz band.

Wow, that is one extreme wireless!! I hope they come up with a laptop version!

Belkin n52te Hybrid Gaming Keyboard

Belkin announced a new product today called the Belkin n52te SpeedPad, which updates the Belkin Nostromo SpeedPad n52. The new n52te SpeedPad will be available in November for $69.99. The pad features fully backlit keys with the familiar Razer blue color and features a scroll wheel and 15 fully programmable keys.
An adjustable soft-touch wrist pad is built-in for comfort with extended gaming. The bottom of the device has rubber non-slip pads to keep the SpeedPad in place during spirited gaming sessions. Three keymap states allow you to bind more commands to the available keys and the device is powered by Razer Synapse software.

Onboard memory stores your programming choices for use on systems without software. The eight-way thumb pad is programmable as well and has a removable joystick. The SpeedPad is a dedicated gaming pad aimed at FPS gamers like the Wolf Claw Devour we covered previously.

3 steps to Unlock the Iphone 4+ever

First step and this is the hardest part. DO NOT TELL Apple how you unlock the I-phone, by telling them you run the chance of apple finding a way to update the iphone before you can do anything with it. I say Apple Devteam needs to just be blunt with the media saying only the truth. Something like "Yes we have unlocked the Iphone, but can not tell you the exact details of how we unlocked it!". Then they say "Yes we have 3rd party apps on the iphone, but again we can't tell you how we did it!". The more you keep the information out of Apples hand the more popular you will be with Iphone users.
Second Step is to come out with programs to do it, so apple has no way of getting the information until everyone gets the hack. That way Apple will have to spend money to find out how the devteam did this in the first place. I say the more Apple has to pay for this type of information the less they will worry about ATT. That is just the nature of business. If you can get the Cost of bricking the Iphone to high, I am willing to bet Apple will step away.
Third step is to come up with the next Possible hack and start exploiting it to prevent yourself from having to do this again, and to always have a backup. Just like hard drives the more backups you have the better off you are. I say keep ahead of Apple by coming out with more than one way to unlock the phone and that will help you defeat Apple and ATT. This is the only way to beat Apple at there own game, it's a hard game. I do hope the Devteam is up to it?

Copyright 10-09-07 at 6am EST time
Can't be used without the authors express permission!

Twitter Testing Text Footer Ads

The format is a one line tip directly below the Tweet. The message might be flattering to CNet’s Caroline McCarthy, but it’s a fair guess that this is a test message and that in future it might read something like “Tip: Orkut, not just big in Brazil” or something similar.

Buried at the bottom of a Guardian article is mention that Twitter is looking at developing “branded channels” where companies can connect with Twitter users via their own corporate Twitter page. Twitter’s Ev Williams is quoted as saying this is an alternative to “attaching advertising to a personal communications channel” which would suggest that Twitter isn’t focusing on footer ads, but the screenshot above would seem to suggest otherwise.

Now how are they supposed to help with adds on your phone are you going to sit there and buy something on your phone? It is going to be quite interesting to see what develops.

Nine Inch Nails Dumps Record Labels, Going Direct to Fans

Hear that? It's the RIAA quaking in their diamond-coated boots as yet another A-list band gives labels the finger: Pretty hate machine Trent Reznor announced today that "as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label." Instead of futzing through the hapless middleman of an inept label, Trent's promising "a direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate," so we can expect more experiments in direct distribution and promotion, probably culminating in an album release not unlike Radiohead's In Rainbows.

If two of the biggest acts in the industry can see the digital writing on the wall and totally embrace it—that the old way of doing business is broken—why can't the labels? What Radiohead and NIN are showing is that the business model "of the future" feared by entrenched interests isn't arriving some time in the horizon. It's touching down now. [NIN, Flickr]

Here is another Group that is disregarding contracts and selling there records themselves. I believe because the RIAA will keep all the money and not give it to the labels. I bet before long there will be more quakes due to the RIAA. Please listen to the MikeTechShow Round table Show 148 for other discussions on record labels.