Software

One of the great things about the internet is the fact that everyday people can share what they know with the entire world, so if they’ve had a particularly good or bad experience with a business or product, they can notify everyone via customer review websites. The flip-side of that, however, is that business owners can plant fake reviews on those same sites, that either praise their own business or slam their competition. Well, confused consumers can now take heart – researchers from Cornell University have developed software that is able to identify phony reviews with close to 90 percent accuracy. Read More

The world has changed greatly for Apple in the past few years. As of their earnings statement released Tuesday, three quarters of all income comes from the iPhone and iPad and the number of users of iOS is already at least four times that of Mac users. After the under-the-hood tweaks and rationalizations of previous operating system update Snow Leopard, the mission for Mac OS X Lion was clear - make the Mac OS comfortable and familiar to the new Apple mobile user audience without putting off established Mac veterans. Can they pull it off? Read More

iA's Writer app for the iPad has been on my home screen since it launched, and it's one of the apps I bring up when people ask me what brings me to carry a giant iPod touch in my bag. In an age where it's not at all weird for someone who writes for a living to stare at two or more monitors displaying tweets from hundreds or thousands of Twitter users and RSS feeds from hundreds or thousands of websites/blogs in real time, iA Writer is an infinite number of steps in the opposite direction. The effect on my ability to craft words has been nothing short of ridiculous. Read More

Last Wednesday (April 20th, 2011), tech bloggers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden reported that iPhones and 3G iPads running iOS4 were keeping a secret record of their users' travels in an unencrypted file. While there was no indication that the devices were sharing the data, there were concerns that if a person's phone were to fall into the wrong hands, their personal security could be compromised. At the time of Allan and Warden's posting, Apple had not responded to their inquiries. Yesterday, however, the company issued a statement in which it explained the apparent true purpose of the database. Read More

Protecting computer systems from malicious attack using complex software solutions is a constant, but necessary, struggle. As threats become more sophisticated, the technology used to fight them off can impact more and more on system performance. According to researchers from North Carolina State University, programs that have built-in safety features can be slowed down by as much as a 1,000 percent. To combat this issue they have developed technology that helps such programs to run more efficiently without sacrificing effectiveness. Read More

Computer scientists from the University of Utah have developed computer software that allows editing of "extreme resolution" image files in a matter of seconds, a process that could previously have taken hours. Whereas existing editing suites require the full gigapixel image to be loaded into a computer's memory before manipulation can begin, the new development draws a lower resolution preview image from an externally-stored image into the editing screen. Users are said to benefit from being able to make image-wide modifications in seconds rather than hours and on devices normally not nearly powerful enough for such things. Read More

Those frustrating boot-up moments while we wait an absolute age for our computers to load up are set to get somewhat shorter with the impending retirement of system BIOS. Despite now being a very old technology and relatively stuck in its ways, the BIOS is still found in many modern machines. Instead of taking around 25 - 30 seconds before giving the all-clear for an operating system to start, a new kid on the block is well on its way to offering instant-on. It's not quite there yet, but the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is getting closer. Read More

The lads behind Diaspora, the open source decentralized alternative to Facebook, have announced the public release of its source code to developers. The group of four students from NYU’s Courant Institute wanted to give users complete control of their details and content in response to privacy concerns regarding Facebook. Upon releasing the source code the developers say, “this is now a community project and development is open to anyone with the technical expertise who shares the vision of a social network that puts users in control.” Read More

Too embarrassed to pull out your ancient, non-touchscreen mobile phone in front of your smartphone-toting friends? Sick of the sniggers and jeers as you search through your contacts using – gasp – buttons!? Desperately want to join the “in” touchscreen crowd but are still stuck in a contract that’s you can’t afford to break? Relax. New software, called TouchDevice, can give touchscreen capabilities to an ordinary mobile phone by using the phone’s microphone. In fact, it can even extend the touch surface beyond the screen to include the entire phone’s casing. Read More