Nokia Lumia 929 Case Appears Online With Photos

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Review: Create a professional online portfolio in minutes with Enthuse.me

Enthuse.me If you're looking for a free and super-simple way to show the world what you're good at, Enthuse.me is it.

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Creating a résumé or CV can be a tedious task, manually listing your experience, training, and other salient facts of your life. And then it may get ignored by prospective employers or clients who just want to know what you can do. Increasingly, your skill and results are what counts, so having a good way to showcase them is important. Enthuse.me is a free service that lets you do just that.  You can quickly put up an Enthuse.me page that pulls in the best of your work from around the Web.

Enthuse.me's introductory page is simple and cuts right to the point, just like the service itself.

While competitors About.me and Flavors.me emphasize customization, Enthuse.me is all about keeping things simple. To get started, you need to provide only a single profile image, and describe yourself in a couple of words. This forms the basis of your page, but isn't very interesting on its own: Your next step is adding links to your work.

To get started, Enthuse.me asks you to describe yourself in just a few words.

Not all links are equal, and Enthuse.me reflects this by offering different modules for populating the page. There's a module for links showing your current work, and there's one for historical links. There's a module for your Twitter profile that renders your vital Twitter stats on the page, and there are purpose-built modules for Blogger,  LinkedIn, Soundcloud, SlideShare, Tumblr, Vimeo, YouTube, and even Klout, if that's your thing. Finally, if you just want to add a bit of text, the Insight module lets you write a 255-character message that appears right on the page, sort of like a static tweet.

You build up your page by adding content modules.

The Current Projects module includes a thumbnail, and lets you specify a headline and an excerpt for describing the link. There's also a Press & Mentions module, for including links to places which noted your work in the past.

The end result feels like a neat, comprehensive summary of your online professional presence. Since you can't pick a color or a theme, it may not look very different from all other Ethuse.me profiles, but the clean, sparse layout puts your information front and center. The company will introduce customization options later this year, as a premium feature.

The final page is clean and spacious, and can house lots of information without becoming visually overwhelming.

Enthuse.me is a fast and simple way to show the world what you're about. I wouldn't say it's better than using Flavors.me or coding your own site from scratch, but it's definitely faster. If you're looking for a clean online CV, this can be it.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Make Money Searching and Shopping Online With Perk Browser

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From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Review: Amara is a Web-based service that lets anyone transcribe and translate online video

Producing video subtitles is a laborious process. First you must transcribe the original video, writing down everything that's said, proofread and correct then, synchronize the subtitles with the audio so they appear on-screen right when the lines are being delivered. Finally, you translate the text into other languages. Amara is a platform that tries to crowd-source all of this work, making it possible for you to set up a system where droves of volunteers help you produce video subtitles for free, without having to download or install anything. It's not entirely successful, but it's an interesting first step in the right direction.

Before you can translate a video, you must first transcribe it. You can select any video for transcription – you don't have to own the content: it just has to be available online. Simply provide Amara with a video's URL on YouTube, Vimeo, or another online video service, and it launches into the transcription interface. You don't have to open an account before you begin–you can just start working.

Amara's Beginner mode lets you play 4-second snippets of video as you transcribe, hitting Tab to play the next snippet when you're ready.

The first step in the transcription process is just writing down what the people in the video say without worrying too much about typos and capitalization. Amara's transcription interface is simple and intuitive. By default, it plays four seconds of video, then automatically pauses. You then type what you've just heard, and hit Tab to play four more seconds. If you miss anything, you can hit Shift-Tab to rewind four seconds and listen again. If you don't like to constantly hit Tab and Shift-Tab, Amara can also auto-pause the video for you. In this mode, you simply listen to the video and type as you listen, with Amara pausing it automatically to let you catch up. The way this works isn't clearly explained (Amara calls it "magical"), but it works remarkably well: The video paused and played right when I needed it to, and I had to hit Shift-Tab to rewind only rarely. Even with the excellent auto-pausing engine, transcription is still a laborious process, though. I touch-type quickly, but transcribing a four-minute video took me about twenty minutes of intense concentration.

The "magical autopause" mode pauses the video cleverly to let you catch up on your typing, and works very well for touch-typists.

The next step after transcribing the video is timing the subtitles. Here, you must watch the video and click a button whenever the speaker starts on the next subtitle. Just like transcription, this requires unbroken concentration; fast reflexes help, too. Amara's video introduction to this step says it's "like a computer game," but it’s not one I would play for fun. The interface is effective, but it definitely feels like work.

The directions also say you don't have to worry if you get the timing slightly wrong, as you'll be able to correct it later. Accordingly, I didn't worry much – but when I got to the final step, reviewing and correcting the subtitles, I discovered things aren't so simple to correct. I wasn't always able to extend or contract the subtitles along the timelines so they synced correctly, and the whole process quickly got out of hand. The end result I got reflects Amara's strengths and weaknesses: The video was fully transcribed, but the synchronization was only so-so. Another issue was that some of the subtitles were too long: Amara doesn't offer an easy way to shift text from the end of one subtitle to the beginning of the next (except for manually copy-pasting), so if you happen to break things down into too large chunks when transcribing, you'll have a problem later on.

Once a source-language transcription is ready, Amara lets you (or others) translate it into your language of choice while watching the video for reference.

Once you've got a timed transcription of a video, you can now translate it into different languages. Translation is simpler than transcription: Just type the translated text under each subtitle. Of course, how good the end product is depends both on the transcription's quality and on the translator, but the interface itself is easy to use. Also, to enjoy the subtitles, viewers would usually have to use Amara's player.

Amara is an interesting product, but after using it, I remain unconvinced that video subtitles can truly be crowd-sourced, if "crowd-sourcing" implies casual, untrained work. Producing a high-quality subtitled translation is a complex process, with each step requiring its own expertise. Still, if you want to dabble with subtitling or translation, or if you have a video and volunteer or professional translators dedicated to putting out a professional-quality result, Amara is a powerful platform worth experimenting with.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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Review: Wizardry Online brings 1981 dungeon crawling into the MMO era

Wizardry I, on the Apple II, consumed a significant portion of my freshman year in college. Each game in the series has been painfully addictive, deep, and compelling. The earliest games had a well-deserved reputation for sadistic brutality towards players, with it being quite easy to lose weeks of work and start over, not due to bugs or crashes, but due to deliberately limited save features. If you died in the dungeon, you couldn't load a saved game. You had to begin anew.

Wizardry Online resurrects this concept, attempting to implement a feature considered to be suicide in a mass market produce: permadeath. Under some circumstances, if your Wizardry Online character dies, they are gone for good. To lessen the blow slightly, all of your characters share a "soul," which measures the player's total progress in the game, and the loss of a character doesn't reduce your "soul rank," which is one of the most important factors in determining the ability to equip weapons or access some game features.

Sadly, there is no 'kill 10 spamming gold sellers' quest yet in Wizardry Online. And you'll wish there were. Furthermore, all of your characters have access to a Cloak Room (what most MMOs call a 'shared bank') where items can be stored. And most important,Wizardry Online isn't "one strike and you're out." Multiple factors determine your chance of successful resurrection, and you can increase the odds with items purchased from the game's cash store. You can even conveniently buy such items right at the point where you see your odds of successfully being raised. There are few better inducements to shell out real-world cash than the prospect of losing a character you've invested weeks or months in.

Compounding this is the fact Wizardry Online is an open PVP game. You can be attacked anywhere, by anyone. Attacking someone who is not a criminal will flag you as a criminal, and you can then be attacked with impunity. (Or with a sword, if no one is wielding any impunity.) Healing criminals is also a crime, as is stealing from anyone.

However, unlike Darkfall or EVE Online, the primary gameplay model in Wizardry Online is not PVP. The bulk of the mechanics, game areas, etc., are classic dungeons, where you are expected to do the usual round of FedEx quests, genocidal assaults, and clicking on mounds of rotting sewage in the hopes of finding a key. So you have a game built primarily around "form a party and kill some monsters," with the added feature of "Oh, and by the way, the people in your party might be sociopaths who will gut you and take your stuff...and when they do, you might be dead forever. Have fun!"

You will die from traps. You will die from exploding chests. You will even die from dying, in an odd way...

Wizardry Online is not an open world game, which also sets it apart from its rivals in the PVP niche. You unlock dungeons by doing quests, then talk to an NPC who teleports you to the dungeon of your choice. Once there, you kill monsters, die, look for traps, die, find hidden areas and solve puzzles, die, try to complete quests, die, talk to NPCs to gain more quests or hints, and die.

You will die from traps. You will die from exploding chests. You will even die from dying, in an odd way, as, when you are dead, your ghost is chased by dark spirits who try to keep you from reaching the scattered shrines which can (sometimes) resurrect you, and will send you back to your corpse (as well as lowering your chances of resurrection).

Unlike most MMOs, you don't get an instant auto-map of the dungeon. You have to find map fragments scattered here and there to get pieces of each map. This contributes to the puzzle-solving, and also to the dying.

All of the above is great. This is precisely what Wizardry Online advertises, this is the niche it has staked out for itself, and it delivers what it promises in that regard. The issues I have with Wizardry Online have nothing to do with the degree of difficulty, the risks of death, or the insane amount the blacksmith charges to repair my armor. I'm clearly putting his kids through Adventurer School.

Yet there are drawbacks to Wizardry Online. First, the interface is somewhat unintuitive, combining odd movement, tiny and indistinct inventory icons, and controls that do different things depending on if your weapon is drawn or not. Some conversations are painfully slow to display, but they convey vital information and can't be skipped. Preferences selected are sometimes not saved. These are all relatively minor, as you can get used to any interface in time, but given the plethora of MMOs on the market, many gamers won't take the time. If their first hour isn't fun, they have a hundred other games vying for their attention.

Sony could gut [gold spammers'] business by simply setting a flag so that items purchased from the store can't be sold or traded...Why don't they?

Second, it suffers from poor translation from the Japanese. Quests often contradict themselves, as different descriptive elements were clearly written by different people without coordination. (For example, in one quest, part of the text claims you're looking for a doll for an NPC's daughter; in other parts, it's the NPC's doll.) Generic text, such as "You hand over the important item," is very common. Placeholder text, use of incorrect synonyms, default strings, and so on are scattered throughout.

Third, it is seriously overrun with gold spammers and other repugnant creatures. Since there's a single town and the spammers are all standing there in plain sight, it ought to be trivial for an employee to simply delete their accounts permanently as soon as one pops up, but, they don't. There's not even a click-to-report mechanism.

Due to a really poor design decision, items bought from the item shop can be sold to other players. The subhuman sleazes who run gold-selling businesses a) Buy such items, mostly using stolen credit cards, b) Offer such items for sale for in-game gold, and, c) Sell in-game gold players then use to buy the items. So long as what the spammers sell gold for allows players to buy the items for less than the cost of buying them on the item store, the criminals profit.

This wouldn't work if they had to legitimately buy the store items, of course, but since they are criminals who are using stolen money and then laundering it via this process, it works just great for them. Sony could gut their business by simply setting a flag so that items purchased from the store can't be sold or traded, but are bound to the purchasing account. Why don't they?

Wizardry Online is gritty, difficult, and brutally unforgiving.

Fourth, there are still significant balance, design, and polish issues to resolve. Many of the game's mechanics, such as disarming chests, or carefully edging around traps, encourage careful movement or take time— but the respawn rates on monsters are so high that you literally cannot stand still in many places without being swamped. Often, monsters spawn faster than you can kill them. (Fortunately, they tend not to chase you far.) Quests are sometimes unclear as to what you're supposed to kill. Sometimes, searching will produce an item which is purposeless until you get the quest (this is good, you don't have to then go back and search the same spot), but, sometimes, searching will not produce an item unless you have the quest, so you never know if a place you searched had nothing because there was nothing, or if it had nothing because you didn't have the quest that made it active. The aforementioned map fragments try to look hand-drawn,, but this makes them somewhat difficult to use. I love the fact you have to earn your maps; I dislike that, once earned, they're less helpful than they could be.

Bottom line: This game is not for people with a low tolerance for frustration, or who expect glowing neon arrows leading them from quest to quest, or who want a lot of bright colors and shiny effects. Wizardry Online is gritty, difficult, and brutally unforgiving. The history of MMORPGs strongly hints it will become much less so over time, so, if you want bragging rights of having played when it was tough, start now.

Of course, Wizardry Online might buck historical trends and get harder over time, not easier. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Rumor: Nexus 5 Specs and Image Appear Online, Verified By Google Employee

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From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Review: PhotoPeach makes online slideshows a breeze for Picasa users

PhotoPeach is a Web-based slideshow builder that makes it easy to get started. The service directs you to upload your photos, either from your computer or an online service. But where rival PhotoSnack supports a whole host of online services, PhotoPeach is limited to Facebook and Picasa. That limitation would be acceptable if PhotoPeach’s connection with those services worked, but I had trouble accessing any photos from Facebook: PhotoPeach bounced me to that site to log in, but never let me access my photo albums. The connection with Picasa worked flawlessly, though.

If you’re using the free version of PhotoPeach, you’ll be limited to including 30 photos in your slideshow; any more and you have to subscribe to the $3-per-month Premium version. The Premium account also lets you upload your own music to accompany your slideshow, burn your slideshows to disc, and customize the transitions between photos.

Once your photos are uploaded, you can set the time interval for photos and the music you’d like to accompany your slideshow. If you haven’t opted for a premium account, you’re limited to PhotoPeach’s small selection of background music or you can opt to search YouTube for a song of your liking. PhotoPeach doesn’t offer any background templates; instead it keeps the focus right on your photos, which is a nice touch. It offers limited customization options, but casual users will find enough here to meet their needs.

Fuss-free PhotoPeach would be a true peach of a slideshow builder if its Facebook integration worked properly.

And that’s it: PhotoPeach then displays your slideshow. If you’re a Premium member, you can burn it to DVD; users of the free service can share it via email or through various Web sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

PhotoPeach is an easy-to-use service that lets you create basic slideshows. I like how its slideshows display your photos, and nothing but your photos. If you're looking for more of an animated background, consider Smilebox. And if you'd like more customization options, consider Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder Deluxe or PhotoSnack. If you're looking for a no-fuss slideshow solution, PhotoPeach may fit the bill. If only it worked more seamlessly with Facebook, I could recommend it without hesitation.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use this Web-based software.

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

CCFinder An Able Helper For Finding Reusable Images Online

Journalists, bloggers, and designers will find desktop search engine CCFinder (free for basic service, $10 for Plus version) handy because it makes finding legally reusable images on the Internet quick and easy. Photographers can attach one of several different Creative Commons licenses to their images to let online viewers know it is OK to reuse them, and in what way. The CCFinder software aims to take the sting out of the work of finding such images.

CCFinder brings up many reusable images at the click of a button.The rub with this software is that once you click on a picture in CCFinder, you will immediately see the limitations. You can download the photo to your computer for no charge, but color filters and PDF downloading are disabled by default until you pay a "donation" of $10. If you like the software and use it a lot, you may decide upgrading to the Plus model makes sense.

Operating CCFinder isn't a problem. Just enter your search term (as you would with any other search engine), choose which filter you want and press "go." The images that match your search term and filter will then be presented and you can click on one to see it in a much larger size.

On the larger image screen, you are presented with the various terms and conditions for that image so you don't run afoul of the photographer's wishes and misuse the image. You are told if you need to attribute the image to the photographer or not, under what circumstances the image can be used (commercial or non-commercial), and whether or not you can alter the photo in any way.

Overall, CCFinder is a nice little desktop program if you find yourself looking for the right image to accompany a blog post, or if you need some visual inspiration for designs of your own. The only thing stopping it from getting a higher rating is the constant nagging for the $10 upgrade. But if you can learn to ignore that, this is worth keeping on your PC.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

—Mark O'Neill

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Sony’s VAIO Duo 11 Windows 8 Hybrid Appears Online

Samsung isn’t the only one with a Windows 8 hybrid up its sleeve. PocketNow has obtained photos of just such a device hailing from Sony, and the Sony VAIO Duo 11 looks attractive enough — and business-friendly enough — that it might just give the Microsoft Surface tablet a run for its money.

The website’s source didn’t divulge any information about the hybrid’s actual hardware components, but the “11? in “VAIO Duo 11? likely signifies the screen size. Digging into the images, it looks as though the VAIO Duo 11 will run Windows 8, given the appearance of a desktop version of Office in one of the pictures. Every image features a prominently displayed stylus and the keyboard is backlit.

Speaking of the keyboard, it appears as though Sony has opted to include a built-in, slide-out keyboard similar to the one in the Asus Eee Pad Slider rather than a Surface-esque optional stand or a detachable keyboard like the Samsung Series 5 Hybrid, which sports a magnetic connection at the hinge.

Other manufacturers have even more varied visions of how a keyboard and tablet should meld, and we’re hoping to see several Windows 8 hybrids unveiled this week at IFA 2012. Online editorial director Avram Piltch is on the floor in Berlin and will be keeping you up to date on all the latest and greatest gadgets being shown off. 

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

CCFinder An Able Helper For Finding Reusable Images Online

Journalists, bloggers, and designers will find desktop search engine CCFinder (free for basic service, $10 for Plus version) handy because it makes finding legally reusable images on the Internet quick and easy. Photographers can attach one of several different Creative Commons licenses to their images to let online viewers know it is OK to reuse them, and in what way. The CCFinder software aims to take the sting out of the work of finding such images.

CCFinder brings up many reusable images at the click of a button.The rub with this software is that once you click on a picture in CCFinder, you will immediately see the limitations. You can download the photo to your computer for no charge, but color filters and PDF downloading are disabled by default until you pay a "donation" of $10. If you like the software and use it a lot, you may decide upgrading to the Plus model makes sense.

Operating CCFinder isn't a problem. Just enter your search term (as you would with any other search engine), choose which filter you want and press "go." The images that match your search term and filter will then be presented and you can click on one to see it in a much larger size.

On the larger image screen, you are presented with the various terms and conditions for that image so you don't run afoul of the photographer's wishes and misuse the image. You are told if you need to attribute the image to the photographer or not, under what circumstances the image can be used (commercial or non-commercial), and whether or not you can alter the photo in any way.

Overall, CCFinder is a nice little desktop program if you find yourself looking for the right image to accompany a blog post, or if you need some visual inspiration for designs of your own. The only thing stopping it from getting a higher rating is the constant nagging for the $10 upgrade. But if you can learn to ignore that, this is worth keeping on your PC.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

—Mark O'Neill

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

MultiMi Brings Your Entire Online Presence Under One AVG-Secured Client

How do you control your ever-increasing number of social networks and activities? Most either keep their networks separated, or use social clients such as HootSuite or TweetDeck to aggregate their social activities under one roof. These are great options for controlling your social accounts, and sometimes even your blog, but what about email, calendar, media and documents? A new free solution from AVG aims to bring all these activities under one client called MultiMi.

The customizable MultMi homescreen. You can decide what aspects of your social life will be included in your homescreen.Many things about MultiMi sound innovative and exciting. To start, it aggregates much more than just social accounts. Aside from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, MultiMi also includes your emails, photos, Google Calendar and Google Docs, among other services. In addition, its AVG origins bring AVG link scanning to all your social activities, protecting you from dubious links and phishing scams.

In practice, however, MultiMi seems to have bitten a bit more than it can chew. Upon launching it for the first time, MultiMi will prompt you to add your accounts. Here, already, some problems arise; for example, the connection to Facebook chat failed without further explanation, only to suddenly connect without notice several days later. Once your accounts are linked, MultiMi will take a while to synchronize your activities, which can now be browsed through the left sidebar.

MultiMi provides a convenient interface for browsing your activities, with a large window display of the current message, complete with all possible actions.MultiMi's sidebar is divided into 10 tabs, including a customizable Home tab, Messages, Social, Events, Reader, Photos, and even a built-in browser. Moving between tabs is a slow affair, at least on my 2.2GHz, 4GB machine, and even after all items load once, there's still quite a wait when switching tabs.

Looking at the imported content in MultiMi, I saw that almost nothing made it through in one piece. Google Reader feeds were stripped of their folders, Picasa photos simply never made it, Facebook content took a very long while to appear, and not all unread emails appeared as they should. To top it all off, Google Talk showed only one contact out of dozens, and a spell-check bug marked correctly spelled words and included the mark in an outgoing email.

Adding accounts to MultiMi is easy. The friendly interface will show you the way.On the positive side, MultiMi does let you send updates, emails and files from one slick, centralized interface. Adding files is done by a simple drag and drop, and files can be shared on social networks or simply uploaded to Picasa, Google Docs or Box.net. You can also save drafts of your Facebook and Twitter updates to send at a later time, although a post scheduler is still missing.

The killer feature, and the one I will probably come back to MultiMi for, is the ability to search through all your networks for one keyword or phrase. In theory, you can also use the interface to view only photos and media from your feeds, but this worked only partially, pulling photos mainly from Facebook.

The addition of some useful features and improvement of the current ones could turn MultiMi into a decent and secure control center for your online life. All in all, MultiMi feels like a great effort, but one which is not quite baked yet.

—Yaara Lancet

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Sketch, Paint, and Share Online for Free With DeviantArt Muro

Everybody doodles. Or draws, or sketches. It's one of those universal human behaviors instilled into us from kindergarten, or maybe from caveman times. deviantArt muro is a free browser-based drawing tool that invites you to take your doodling online, and offers some fun brushes and an innovative way to record your work and learn from others.

In the hands of a skilled artist, deviantArt muro can be used to create stunning works of art.Muro comes from deviantArt, one of the Internet's largest and oldest art communities, established in 2000. Muro itself was launched in 2010, but has recently received a major overhaul. You don't need a deviantArt account to start using Muro, but you do need a free account to save your work. deviantArt muro does not offer as many brushes as free Web-based paint application Psykopaint, but it does make some interesting choices. For example, the default brush you start off with isn't a basic paintbrush (à la Microsoft Paint), but a brush called Webink which makes it easy to create shading by linking your strokes with a web of fine lines. It feels similar to the procedural brushes used on another free Web-based drawing tool, Harmony.

The Webink brush is one of eight free brushes that come with deviantArt muro. Other free brushes include Basic (does what you think), Paintbrush (emulates a soft airbrush actually), Nightmare (similar to Webink but much wilder), the self-explanatory Drippy, Scattered, and Sketch, and Smoke. That last one is my personal favorite; it creates interesting shading effects when you twist and turn the mouse. I was able to use it to draw a fairly creepy-looking rabbit with little effort. Other than the eight free brushes, Muro has twelve paid brushes, divided into three packs. Each pack costs 320 deviantArt points, which works out to roughly $4 at the time of this writing.

In the hands of a software reviewer, deviantArt muro can be used to create scary-looking bunnies with ease. deviantArt muro boasts a "Works with Wacom" logo, which inspired me to reach for my Intuos5 pen tablet and try scribbling with the pen. Muro was responsive, and the brushes worked well. The free Sketch brush was lots of fun to use with the tablet, and felt similar to actually roughing in a sketch on paper. That said, Muro is no Corel Painter, and did not recognize when I flipped the pen over and tried to erase something with its eraser end.

Muro's killer feature, though, is not a drawing tool at all: It is called Redraw, and it records you as you work. You can then share the recording with others, so they get a sense for the process and the workflow and can learn from your work (or offer tips).

Most of deviantArt muro's features are free, but some of the brush packs cost money.A prime example of Redraw is a piece called Sable, in which deviantArt user *tinkerpaws draws a richly detailed ibex with birds perched on its back. By watching the Redraw replay, you can see exactly how *tinkerpaws created the work. Artists often share screencasts of their process as YouTube videos, but this requires third-party recording software. With deviantArt muro, the recorder is built right in, and you don't have to think about it as you work. The only drawback is that it doesn't support audio narration or text notes, so the artist can't explain things as they work.

deviantArt muro doesn't try to be a complete drawing application, but a simple artistic tool. Being an HTML5 application, it should work as well on iPhone and iPad; I tested it on a PC only. Whether used on a PC or tablet, its social sharing feature is truly innovative, and it makes drawing fun and accessible.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

--Erez Zukerman

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Learn Vim With Online Game Vim Adventures

The Vim text editor is not the only piece of ancient software still popular today. After all, Microsoft Word was first released in 1983, a full eight years before Vim. But today's Word bears little resemblance to its original version, while text editor Vim looks and feels almost the same. And yet, Vim has a vibrant community of developers and evangelists working to keep it alive and kicking, with projects like the game Vim Adventures to bring new users into the fold.

Vim is indispensable once you've learned it, and Vim Adventures makes the learning more fun.Currently in prototype form, the Vim Adventures game teaches you to use Vim's unique keystrokes. Right now only two levels are available for free play, and both focus on cursor movement. The first teaches the essential hjkl keys for moving left, down, up, and right. The second lesson has you jumping between words with e, w, and several other keys.

The game itself is a retro-looking tile maze, implemented in HTML 5 (so no Flash is required to play). You're not really a character: Whatever tile you're currently standing on just blinks, a bit like the caret in a text editor.

At the beginning of the first level, Vim Adventures shows you what hjkl do. You then need to use those keys to successfully navigate a tricky maze. As you move through it, you need to collect keys, backtrack, cross one-way passages, and more. And if you don't make it through the maze in 45 seconds, Vim Adventures teleports you back to the beginning. This is frustrating, but it also ensures that by the time you make it to the end of the level, you have some muscle memory for hjkl movements.

Vim Adventures took me about ten minutes from start to finish, and serves as a nice introduction for Vim's unique motion keys. Rounded out with more levels, it can become an excellent way to master Vim basics.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Darkfall Online Excels at Player vs. Player Combat

Darkfall Online ($15/month subscription, 14-day free trial) hearkens back to some of the earliest days of MMOs, especially Ultima Online, where a combination of game design issues and misreading the audience led to the early months being pretty much a nonstop slaughterfest. While the history of MMOs since then has shown that most players do not like to pay 15 dollars a month to be someone else's victim, there's a small, but very loud, group that wants the hardest of hardcore PVP. The MBA degree holders in that group play spreadsheets-in-space game EVE Online. The rest play Darkfall.

Don't let the seemingly placid scene fool you; Darkfall is full of opportunities for sudden death.I'm not a big fan of Free-for-All Player vs. Player games, but I was illed only once by another player in Darkfall, and he resurrected me seconds late.; I do not know if he killed me by accident, was just trying to raise his casting skill, or if this was some kind of initiation rite. ("Welcome to Darkfall! Die! Aw, just kidding!") He ran off before I could ask. Another player tried to trick me into attacking him while in one of the rare "safe" zones, by dancing around me threateningly and casting non-damaging spells on me. If I'd attacked him, the guard towers would kill me instantly and he'd be able to freely loot my corpse. This was a common tactic back in the UO days.

Darkfall has a freeform skill system in which skills increase as you use them. You learn new skills by purchasing them (at level 1.0) from assorted vendors or sometimes gaining them as quest rewards), and many have prerequisite skills you must master first. Skills include combat, magic, and crafting, with many options. You can be anything or master any set of skills, though of course there are plenty of user guides out there opining about the optimal mix and/or which aren't worth your time. Learning armor and weapon crafting helped me replace broken basic gear at minimal cost; it's a good thing to have.

Combat in Darkfall is a mix of game mechanics and player skill. You don't just select an enemy and spam actions; you must constantly keep them targeted. Enemies in Darkfall, as opposed to those in most MMORPGs, do not stand there and let you kill them. They run, dodge, call for help, retreat when wounded, and surround you. They will attack from range and will not close in just to make it easier for you to kill them. About the only thing they don't do is loot your body.

When you die in Darkfall, you drop everything you were carrying except a single basic weapon. You must then make your way back to your corpse to retrieve your items, and your corpse is still surrounded by the monsters that killed you when you were fully armed and armored. This is why a lot of my time in Darkfall was spent running from the monster spawn areas to the town, banking everything I had, and running back. "Bank early, bank often." Also, run. Don't make a last stand; even if you die, the further away from the main monster areas you die, the better. And rest. Don't go into any fight at less than full health. This is a very different playstyle than most MMOs, where death is borderline meaningless and there's no real risk of loss. Assume that you may permanently lose every item on your person every time you start to play, and accept that as part of the game. (Players who happen on your corpse can loot it; you may return to find there's nothing left on your body but items not worth taking.)

Darkfall equipment also takes wear-and-tear damage from normal use; if you don't pay attention, you may find your weapon or armor breaking mid-battle. While aspects of Darkfall might appeal to those who just want to kill kill kill, such players will probably not last long, as planning and patience are as important as quick reflexes.

Darkfall Online has no instances or arenas or scenarios. It's entirely open-world PVP. There are no mechanical restrictions on who can attack whom, but players who prey on their allies may find themselves barred from the major towns and cities (player-built cities, of course, set their own rules). To really survive and prosper in Darkfall, you need to join an active clan (guild), who will help you train and gain gear.

Darkfall's interface is modal; you're in 'combat mode' or 'UI mode', activated by right-clicking. This can take some getting used to, as can constantly switching weapons and items during combat. I won't say it ever got intuitive, but it got easier the longer I played.

Graphically, Darkfall ranges from adequate to pretty darn nice, especially given that it's coming from a small studio. . Lighting, plants, and weather effects are very atmospheric, and there are nice touches, such as rivers with currents that can wash you along. There's a price to this beauty, though. I was sputtering at about 8-16 FPS until I turned off shadows; then my FPS shot up to 80-100, which greatly improved my ability to fight and target foes.

The community is mixed. The players I chatted with privately were generally helpful and gave me good advice on getting started, but the general chat channels and forums have a distinctly negative vibe. Again, finding a good guild is paramount if you want to have fun in Darkfall.

Because of the way your character gains skills in Darkfall Online, veteran players have a strong edge on newer ones, despite changes to accelerate learning. Likewise, the game attracts "win at any cost" types who will use every exploit known to achieve victory. Competitive players will need to keep on top of scripts, macros, and optimization tips.

Recommendation? If you like this playstyle, there are not many games that offer it, and Darkfall has been around long enough to work out most of the major bugs and balance issues. Other than EVE Online, Darkfall is probably the best-supported and populated PVP sandbox game out there. An important caveat to note is that Aventurine is working on Darkfall 2, which is likely to replace Darkfall at some point in the future. This can make investing a lot of time in the existing game risky, as Aventurine has been open that the bulk of their corporate resources are focused on the sequel game. Very recently, Aventurine dropped the requirement to purchase the game itself, allowing you to pay just the subscription fee.

The 14-day trial is long enough to allow you to judge Darkfall Online. After that, there's a $15 per month fee (or $40 for a three-month subscription), with no cash shop, microtransactions, or free-to-play options.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

--Ian Harac

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Lincoln Announces Online 24/7 Concierge Service, iPad App

The process of purchasing a new car can be strenuous. There’s hours of research, traveling to car dealerships and doing battle with swarmy car dealers. Lincoln is attempting to make the process of purchasing and maintaining a Lincoln a little smoother with their new online concierge service. 

The service can be accessed through Lincoln’s website and will provide a personalized walkthrough of Lincoln products and vehicles. Users caa also create a portfolio with customer preferences that can be shared with the dealer. The portfolio can be accessed from multiple devices including laptops, smartphones and iPads. Consumers can also grant a chosen Lincoln dealer access to the portfolio to better assist them in finding their perfect car. 

In addition to the 24/7 service, Lincoln also announced an iPad for Lincoln dealers to better assist consumers. Similar to the conceirge service , the app will help dealers navigate through vehicles and specific features to better assist consumers. The app will also quickly compare competitor prices.

Both services will kick off in 2013, just in time for the launch of the 2013 Lincoln MKX.

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Online Reputation Management: Advice, Tips, and Tools

While deciding on a name for your company, be sure to consider the availability of a domain name that matches your business, abilities, skills or identity. You want to get a URL name as close to your company name as possible. If you’re called Synergy, you don’t want your URL to be www.thesynergybusinessonline1234.com. Bloated or misleading URL names complicate your online identity and viewers will find difficulty navigating to your website.

In the best-case scenario, you will be able to secure a domain name that begins with your company name and ends in a .com or a country-specific suffix such as .ca or .eu. Once you’ve done that, it’s also a good idea to register the .xxx version of your domain so it can’t be used against you in the future. An adult entertainment site under the same name as your lifestyle blog is definitely something you want to avoid.

Be sure the name you wish to protect is available on such popular social-sharing sites as Facebook and Twitter. Don’t make the same mistake that Netflix did when they announced their new (and now defunct) company, Qwikster. Someone else had already claimed the Twitter handle @Qwikster (pictured) and was proudly displaying a pot-smoking Elmo in its profile photo. 

The key is to link your social networks to your website and remain active on each network. Regular activity ensures that your users know exactly where to look for official updates and information.

If you have a personal Facebook account, don’t forget to configure your privacy settings so that only friends will be able to search your account. If you have nothing to hide, then continue to post appropriate content consistently.

Don’t wait for someone else to post information about your company. Instead, start the conversation on your own. Posting information about yourself or your company on a regular basis will help ensure that online readers are finding content that you crafted and approved.

Having your own website is the best way to make sure people are reading accurate information before anything else that may be written about you or your company. Google favors fresh content, so make sure you post often, even if it’s just a minor update. The more you post original content, the higher up in search results you will move. As long as you are generating your own content, a Google search should display your own articles before others when your chosen name is searched.

You can use 123people.com (pictured) and PeekYou.com to see what photos and videos (along with email addresses and other information) are connected to your name online. The websites display the information in an easy-to-read format with clearly labelled sections. The searches are done on a first- and last-name basis, but PeekYou also lets you search usernames. Both services are good resources to turn to, as they offer fairly comprehensive results in only a few seconds. 

You can’t address any problems or threats to your company’s reputation if you don’t know what’s being said about you.

1. Google Alerts: Google Alerts can be your best friend. It’s simple to set up. All you have to do is visit www.google.com/alerts and fill out the required information. Just enter your search query (in this case your business name). Then choose the result type (News, Blogs, Video, Discussions, Books or Everything). Choosing Everything will yield the most complete results. From there, you can choose how often Google checks for new listings, how many results to show you (choose all of them) and what email address to use for receiving alerts. Once you’ve set up an alert for your company name, go ahead and do the same for your Twitter handle and other usernames.

2. Reputation.com: Sign up at www.reputation.com to stay informed about what is being said about you on the Internet. The website will perform an in-depth search of your or your company’s name for free. This service will also monitor your personal data on the Web and alert you whenever your search phrase is mentioned online. 

One advantage to Reputation.com versus Google Alerts is the ability to rate any links to your name as either positive, negative or neutral. If a link is marked positive, Reputation.com will start promoting the link. The opposite is true if a link is marked negative. If a link is marked neutral, nothing is done.

Also included with your account is MyPrivacy, a service that searches databases that cater specifically to people in order to inform you of what personal information (addresses, phone numbers, etc.) is readily available. Reputation.com also has a paid version called ReputationDefender that offers even more comprehensive options when dealing with your online presence. The extras don’t comecheap, however, running anywhere from $129 to $699 per year. But unless you’ve got a really messy past, the free version should suffice.

Quick Tip: If you are using such services as Reputation.com and Google Alerts, be sure to search any online aliases that you use, as these will always surface and find their way back to the real you.

3. Rhino360: Start at www.reputationrhino.com to sign up for this free monitoring service. You’ll receive daily, weekly or monthly reports identifying who is talking about your keywords, where they are and what they’re saying. The service reportedly checks more than 1 million online sources including blogs, video, photo sharing sites, social networkings and discussion boards. The report, which can be sent as text, HTML or Excel files, breaks down whether the comments are positive, negative or neutral.

4. Technorati: Use www.technorati.com (a popular blog aggregator) to subscribe to searches for your business name. The site also ranks various websites in different categories so you can get a feel for how you stack up against the competition. It does take a bit of work to authenticate your website (you need to prove that you actually run it), but it’s worth the extra effort. 

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Back Up Your Online Files With SocialFolders

I have photos stored on Facebook. I have spreadsheets stored in Google Docs. I have documents stored in Box. And I have videos stored on YouTube. Which is great--until I want access to these files when I'm offline. I could go to each site and download all of my files until I've amassed an offline collection of my stuff. Or I could just turn to SocialFolders, a service that offers an idea that's so simple--it syncs the content you have on your social sites to your desktop--I have to wonder why someone didn't think of it before.

SocialFolders is both an application and a Web service: You download a component to your desktop, which creates a SocialFolders folder that you can access via Windows Explorer. Then you head to socialfolders.me, where you create an account and start connecting your social services. SocialFolders supports Box, Evernote, Facebook, Flickr, Google Docs, Instagram, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug, Twitter, and YouTube. (The free version of SocialFolders limits you to three services and 2,000 files; a Premium account, which costs $10 per year, is unlimited.)

SocialFolders organizes your Facebook photos into folders that correspond with your album names, and photo titles that correspond to your captions.Once you've connected SocialFolders to your social services, icons for each of them will appear in the SocialFolders folder that's been created on your computer. Subfolders for each of your connected services will automatically be created there, too. You can use SocialFolders's Web interface to determine how much information you'd like access to (all of your Facebook albums, or only a select few, for example), and the content you've chosen will be automatically downloaded to your desktop. You will need to make sure you have the storage to spare, though, as some of these files could takeup plenty of disk space. SocialFolders is not only limited to downloads: It lets you upload files to your social sites, too. You simply create a folder in the SocialFolders directory on your desktop, and its contents will be automatically synced to your account.

SocialFolders does more than just create a backup of your files. It also lets you access your friends' photos and files (as long as their privacy settings allow you to do so), and to create an offline copy of these documents, too. I found this a very handy way to grab photos of my nieces and nephews that my siblings share on Facebook. I did notice that some of the photos that SocialFolders downloaded for me looked to be slightly lower res than they appeared when viewed on Facebook, though. The company says that it does not change the resolution of photos when they're downloaded, but that it relies on the API of the social site itself. For example, SocialFolders uses Facebook's default upload API, which can reduce photo resolution. The company does note that most of the photo-sharing sites it supports lets users download photos in full resolution, though.

Minor issue with photo resolution aside, I was quite impressed with SocialFolders. It offers a free and easy way to make sure you always have a backup of your precious online data.

--Liane Cassavoy

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Hidden Math Flaw Jeopardizes Millions of Online Transactions

Undone by Arithmetic

The encryption schemes with the biggest flaws, the researchers found, were those based on the RSA 1024-bit algorithm, which uses two large prime numbers to generate a public key and a private key. As with all public-key encryption schemes, someone wishing to send a secret message to a recipient uses the recipient’s public key to encrypt the message, which can be decoded only by the recipient’s private key.

Using the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid’s simple but effective method of factoring numbers, Hughes and his fellow researchers proved that two out of every thousand RSA-1024-bit-based public keys shared one large prime number as a factor — far more than would occur if the numbers were truly random.

“We stumbled upon 12,720 different 1024-bit RSA moduli [out of 6.4 million studied] that offer no security,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “Their secret keys are accessible to anyone who takes the trouble to redo our work. … 1024-bit RSA provides 99.8 percent security at best.”

“Some people may say that 99.8 percent security is fine,” Hughes, who participated independently in the research from his home in Palo Alto, Calif., told the Times.

Not Good Enough

But 99.8 percent security is definitely not good enough for online transactions. Let’s assume that a major online retailer processes half a million purchase transactions per day. If one out of every 500 of those transactions were hijacked by cybercriminals, that would amount to roughly 10,000 compromised sessions — in which credit-card and personal data could be stolen — every single day.

“The lack of sophistication of our methods and findings make it hard for us to believe that what we have presented is new, in particular to agencies and parties that are known for their curiosity in such matters,” wrote the authors of the paper, which they half-jokingly referred to as a “sanity check.”

The researchers, who apart from Hughes were based at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, found that encryption schemes based on the 2048-bit RSA algorithm were also affected by the lack-of-randomness flaw, though to a smaller degree.

However, encryption schemes based on the Diffie-Hellman algorithm, which uses only one randomly generated number, were not affected by lack of randomness.  Hence the paper’s odd title, “Ron was wrong, Whit is right.”

Ron Rivest, along with Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, formulated the RSA algorithm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978. (The three went on to found the RSA security company, which is still based near Boston.)

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Access Nonfiction Books and and Video With Safari Books Online

One of the biggest challenges in distributing digital content is to make it easier for people to consume legally rather than illegally. When it comes to e-books, this gets even trickier; e-book files are much smaller than video or music files, so they can be downloaded much faster. Safari Bookshelf (various subscription plans, starting at $10/month) is a bid to make it easier, faster, and more productive to consume electronic books online legally rather than download them.

Safari Books Online offers access to a staggering selection of technical books and videos, and makes it easy to find what you need.Safari Bookshelf (no relation to Apple's Web browser) is a subscription-based service, for which you can pay either monthly or yearly. When users first try to sign up, they are offered either unlimited access for $43 per month, or a 10-slot bookshelf for $20 per month. There is a third option, not shown on the page, offering a 5-slot bookshelf for $10.

"Slots" are basically places your virtual shelf has for books. Once you choose to read a book, it takes up one slot on your shelf, and must stay there for at least one month. Once that month elapses, you can swap it out for another book. Slots are a good way to offer the service at a reduced price, but they also make it much less useful.

The Unlimited Access plan does away with the concept of slots and lets you read any and all books, but you still must read them online, using a browser (Safari also offers an iPad app and a mobile-friendly version of the site). If you're more interested in downloading e-books for offline reading, both the unlimited and limited plans offer download "tokens." You get five tokens every month, which you can use to download chapters (a chapter usually costs one token). You can also buy extra tokens for $2 each.

The catalog of books offered can only be described as staggering. Safari Books Online hosts books by Apress, Adobe Press, Microsoft Publishing, O'Reilly, Sams, Wiley, and several other big-name publishers. Books span the gamut of programming, Web development, computer graphics (Photoshop and friends), and more. Not all books are computer-related: There are plenty of books about photography, for example. No fiction, though.

The search feature is well thought out, and is one of the best parts of using Safari Books Online. Imagine having to leaf through 19,000 books to find the information you need, or even to search through PDF files on your computer. Safari Books Online lets you do a simple text search, but you can then quickly refine results by category, publication year, author, and publisher. You can also search within the results, so you can search for "macro photography" first, and then search for "Photoshop" to further refine.

Safari Books Online is not only about published books, though. The Unlimited plan also provides access to many video courses, and to a section called "Rough Cuts," containing drafts of pre-published manuscripts--the bleeding edge of online publishing. When reading a Rough Cuts manuscript, a Feedback bar appears at the top of the screen letting you comment about the section you are reading. Comments are publicly visible, and cannot be edited or deleted once submitted, so weigh your words carefully.

Safari Books Online offers a great deal, but it is not a perfect service. For video courses, I still find Lynda.com superior, especially given the price ($25 per month, almost half of the Safari price). And if you are looking for pinpoint solutions to specific problems, nothing beats free tech Q&A website Stack Overflow.

The steep price Safari Books charges for the Unlimited plan only makes it worthwhile if you regularly buy more than two brand-new computer books every month--and I don't know anyone who does, really. Apart from this, Safari Books Online is an amazing service, and is probably the best way to read unlimited computer books online today. Highly recommended.

Note: The free trial lasts for ten days or 1000 page views, whichever comes first.

--Erez Zukerman

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Nintendo Finally Embraces Online Play

Nine years after Microsoft launched Xbox Live, and five years after Sony launched the Playstation Network, Nintendo announced that it’s building its own online service, called the Nintendo Network.

As Mashable reports, the Nintendo Network will offer the requisite connected console fare, including user accounts, online multiplayer, downloadable add-ons and eventually full game downloads.

Although Nintendo’s Wii and 3DS can already connect to the Internet for downloadable games, online play and a couple of streaming video apps, the company’s online services are limited compared to what Microsoft and Sony offer. Nintendo doesn’t currently sell add-ons for existing games, offer system-wide voice support or even allow players to choose an online nickname that other players can easily look up.

Nintendo is still being cagey about the particulars of its upcoming network, but there have been clues. Last July, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime told Forbes that Nintendo will allow other publishers’ networks -- services like Valve’s Steam and EA’s Origin, I assume -- to operate as part of Nintendo’s online service:

“So instead of a situation where a publisher has their own network and wants that to be the predominant platform, and having arguments with platform holders, we’re going to welcome that. We’re going to welcome that from the best and the brightest of the third party publishers,” Fils-Aime said.

How that’ll work remains unclear. Actually, see if you can make sense of the business jargon in Nintendo president Satoru Iwata’s statement on the matter: “Unlike Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, which has been focused upon specific functionalities and concepts, we are aiming to establish a platform where various services available through the network for our consumers shall be connected via Nintendo Network service so that the company can make comprehensive proposals to consumers.”

Verbose statements to investors aside, I’m just happy Nintendo’s working on something.

For more smart takes on technology, visit Technologizer.com. Story copyright © 2011, Technologizer. All rights reserved.

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