How to Schedule Pins on Pinterest Using Pingraphy

One of the techniques I use most when managing my social media accounts is automation. I love using Buffer to schedule posts for Twitter, LinkedIn, and my Facebook page. I also use HootSuite from time to time to schedule posts for Google+.

When it comes to Pinterest, there aren’t many tools available for scheduling your posts. Pingraphy is a “Pinterest management tool for brands” that can help you schedule pins, among other things.
You can check out the other features after creating your account. For now, let’s see how to schedule pins on Pinterest via Pingraphy.
1. Log in to Pingraphy using your Pinterest email and password. For those of you using Facebook or Twitter to log in, there doesn’t seem to be a way to log in using those methods; you’ll need to create an account on Pinterest using your email.
2. Drag the Pingraphy bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar.

3. When you find an item or items that you want to pin, click on the Pinography bookmarklet and choose the item(s).
4. Once you click on the “next” button, another window will pop up. Here, you can choose the board that the item(s) should be pinned to. You can also edit the description and URL of each item if needed.

5. Finally, choose to “upload now” or “schedule” the pin.
6. When you click on “Schedule,” you’ll be able to choose a start time, interval between each pin (if you’re adding more than one item), and time zone.
Pingraphy is obviously set up to schedule pins in bulk (i.e. you can select more than one image at a time), which is why you can choose a start time and interval. If you only have one item to schedule, you can leave out the interval.

7. You can also enhance your images by adding effects, changing the orientation, cropping, changing the brightness, and more.

8. Once scheduled, you can see your item(s) on the Pingraphy dashboard, along with the time(s) they’ll get posted.

From what I’ve gathered, there doesn’t seem to be a limitation to the number of pins that you can schedule. As you can see, with Pingraphy it’s really easy to schedule pins from anywhere on the Web.

Use IFTTT to Automate Your Internet Life

When using your computer or mobile device, it seems as if a multitude of applications are in use each day. Once you are done checking email and catching up on the news, you may have a ton of services to catch up with later during the day, from catching up with the latest on Instagram to documents received in Dropbox.

Regardless whether you are finding a way to separate work from play, merging them together, or a little bit of both, we can all benefit with a little automation. We can have the Internet work for us. That’s the motto of IFTTT. Today, we will go over how it can help to with your daily syncing regimen.

What is IFTTT?

IFTTT’s purpose is to get the Internet to work for you. It will create a syncing regimen by piecing together your various social networking sites and online services and carrying out your tasks without you initiating them. From automatically having business email attachments saved into Dropbox to setting a text message alert each time precipitation is in the forecast for the next day, IFTTT makes it possible to have a free automated personal assistant.

Services Available to Help (Channels)

In IFTTT, a recipe is created in large part with the help of channels. These are the services and networks that drive IFTTT. The following are some of the popular services supported by IFTTT:

• bitly
• Blogger
• Box
• Buffer
• Craigslist
• Date & Time
• Delicious
• Dropbox
• Email
• Evernote
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Drive
• Google Talk
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• SkyDrive
• SMS
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Weather
• WordPress
• YouTube

You can view all the channels here.

Creating a Task (Recipe)

1. On the IFTTT dashboard, click “Create” at the top region of the screen.
2. You will see the IFTTT phrase (If this then that), click “This”.

3. With trigger channels presented, choose the channel (service/network) that you want to begin your recipe with. This is the channel that will cause an action to occur. For example, if you want to email a photo once it hits a Dropbox folder, Dropbox will be the trigger.

4. In step 4, you will be presented with two or three additional options that allow for you to have a more specific recipe.
5. Options from here on out are custom to the type of recipe and service you are creating and choosing.

6. You will then choose the “That” or action channel. Back to our example in step 3, Gmail would be the action channel.
7. When finished with all prompts, click “Create Action“.

Useful Recipes

Syncing: For Work

1. From Email Attachment to Dropbox: Got an email from the boss with the latest report? Have it saved in Dropbox without having to lift a finger.
2. Receipts from Email to Evernote: Bookkeeping and tax records made easy with this recipe that automatically adds receipts from your email to Evernote.

Syncing: For Social

1. Backup Your Photos: Each time you take a photo on Instagram, it is automatically saved to Dropbox. Works with Facebook and Flickr as well!
2. Convert WordPress Posts into Ever-”notes”: From WordPress to Evernote, this recipe does just that.
3. Keep Social Profile Pictures in Sync: Whenever your Facebook profile photo changes, your Twitter one changes as well.

Syncing: For Life

1. Weather Alerts Each Morning: Not everyone has a smartphone. When waiting for the local news to tell you the weather holds you back in the morning, this recipe can help out.
2. Send Family Photos To Grandma’s Email: From Dropbox folder to recipient’s inbox, automatically. You select the folder and recipient’s email.

As you have just learned, IFTTT can provide a wonderful way for you to keep your digital life in sync without even having to leave your web browser. In what ways do you think IFTTT can help your syncing regimen? Let us know in the comments below.

[SOLVED] Wireless Network Detected But Unable To Connect Under Ubuntu 12.04/11.10

If you can't connect to wifi networks and the buttons for connecting/enabling a wireless network are grayed out in your Network Manager indicator under Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) or Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot), this means that your wireless network is disabled by hardware/software switch. This problem is common for users of laptops.

To check if there is a block on hardware/software of your wireless network, we need to run this command from the terminal:

rfkill list wlan

or

rfkill list all

Here are the outputs returned for my example:

~$ rfkill list all
1: phy1: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

As you can see from the example above, I can't connect to the wireless network because software is blocked. To unblock it, you need to use one of these two commands:

rfkill unblock wlan

or

rfkill unblock all

Finally, restart your network manager with this command:

sudo service network-manager restart

You can now connect smoothly to WiFi networks.

Samba 3.6.7 Officially Announced

Samba, a component that seamlessly integrates Linux/Unix Servers and Desktops into Active Directory environments using the winbind daemon, is now at version 3.6.7.

Highlights of Samba 3.6.7:

· Resolving our own "Domain Local" groups was fixed;
· Migrating printers while upgrading from 3.5.x has been fixed;
· Kernel oplocks when uid(file) != uid(process) have been fixed;
· A typo in set_re_uid() call when USE_SETRESUID is selected in configure, has been fixed;
· A bad call to data_blob_const has been repaired;
· Migrating printers while upgrading from 3.5.x have been fixed;
· Printing fails in function cups_job_submit have been corrected;
· Bugs in SMB2 credit handling code have been fixed.

A complete list of changes and updates can be found in the official announcement.

 Download Samba 3.6.7

How to Disable & Bypass Online Surveys

Many websites have annoying surveys which makes your online web experience sluggish and pathetic. These surveys prevent you to access content without filling them. Majority of these useless online surveys are from companies which require too much personal information and worst of all there seems to be no way to bypass them. It is highly recommended to never give away your private information to these unknown companies.

To disable these surveys there is a very simple trick that works most of the time to block these surveys to pop-up.
If you are using Firefox simply go to Preferences>Content and untick “enable javascript” and load the page on which surveys keep poping up.

 

On Chrome go to Settings>Under the hood and click on “Do not allow any site to run JavaScript” and load the survey infected page.

After website is loaded without surveys you can turn javascript on for full experience (it will be required of you have to login etc)
Note: This simple trick is tested to be working on majority of websites (Mgcash etc) with surveys but there is no guarantee.

Anonymous member says group is hugely divided

 

 Long-serving hacker wants nothing to do with political agendas or hactivism.

 

A seasoned member of the hacking collective known as Anonymous has spoken out about the huge split within the group.
The veteran, interviewed by The Daily Beast, says the group is not the well-oiled, single-minded machine, purely focused on sticking it to the man, as many believe it to be.
Instead he and many others want nothing to do with political agendas and wish simply to continue the notorious and crude 4Chan.org website's tradition of unrelenting online malice just for the "Lulz."
The subject William (not his real name) says the mask-wearing members of the hactivist movement, who have taken on big companies and government institutions are nothing but "a joke."

Watching the world burn

"Before people thought we were a spiteful, Internet hate machine. Before you could revel in being a real p***k," says William. "Now people think we're vigilantes and care about stuff."
"Some men just want to watch the world burn," he adds, throwing in a The Dark Knight quote about The Joker and distancing himself from the moral righteousness of Anonymous and splinter group LulzSec.
The current splits is Batman vs The Joker, Parmy Olson, the interviewer and author of the book We are Anonymous points out. William is no Batman.
The keen SWATing (using 911 hoaxes to send SWAT teams to the houses of innocents) enthusiast adds that he misses the mean spirited fun and bemoans the policy of letting anyone join the group.
"It was a lot smaller and more structured [in the past]. You had to be accepted. Now anyone can join Anonymous."
Finally he adds: "I don't think [Anonymous] can change much in the world."

 

Parted Magic

Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic , a utility live CD designed primarily for disk management and data rescue tasks: "Minor bug fix release with some added programs and updates. SpaceFM was updated to 0.7.7 and now uses udevil for device mounting. pyNeighborhood 0.5.4, Shorewall 4.4.27, Shorewall6 4.4.27.3, gptsync 0.14 and udevil 0.2.4 were added. Coreutils 8.17, File 5.11, LFTP 4.3.6, MB 1.1.11, OpenSSH 6.0p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8x, rdesktop 1.7.1, SSHFS FUSE 2.4, UNetbootin 575, zerofree 1.0.2, ClamAV 0.97.4, e2fsprogs 1.42.3, FUSE 2.9.0, rsync 3.0.9, cifs-utils 5.4, keyutils 1.5.5, krb5 1.7.1, cURL 7.25.0, Libidn 1.25, OpenLDAP client 2.4.31, and SpaceFM 0.7.7 were updated. The Download Java program has been completely rewritten and works more reliably now. Work on a GUI for Shorewall has started." Visit the project's news page to read the release announcement. Download (MD5): pmagic_2012_05_30.iso (196MB), pmagic_2012_05_30_i486.iso (195MB), pmagic_2012_05_30_x86_64.iso (196MB).

Analyzing screen-to-body size ratios of top Android handsets

It’s a well known fact that there’s nothing like a bit of graphing to brighten up a geek’s day. This seems to be well understood by a Reddit user that goes by the name of “Thare” who, after embarking on a search for a new Android phone that had the largest screen while maintaining the smallest possible size, decided to share the wealth of information that he had gathered.
It will come as no surprise that of the phones he compared the Samsung Galaxy Note ended up at the top of the heap having 66.9% of its body area made up of touch-screen real estate. Of course, no one can really call the Note a small device, unless they possess Shaquille O’Neal-sized hands.

While this isn’t a comprehensive study of all the available Android devices on the market, Thare did a good job including a range of the most popular devices across the four US carriers. Samsung also garnered the second spot on the list with its yet to be released Galaxy S3 (which of course is made for humans) which has 66.1% of its svelte design available for touch interactions. HTC rounds out the top three with its EVO 4G LTE phone running on Sprint. Its 4.7-inch screen gives owners 66% of real estate to play with.

iPhone owners won’t be surprised to see the 4S coming in next to last place, with the trade-off being of course those beautiful Retina displays that Apple is installing in the world’s most popular smartphone. Which leads to an interesting thing to point out. While the Galaxy Note certainly has a large screen, it also has the distinction of having one of the lowest pixel density’s in the chart. While it’s the first Android device to sport a higher resolution than the 4S, the iPhone still takes better advantage of the space it has to work with by having a pixel density of 326 ppi compared to the Note’s 285.

While the comparison of different devices is certainly interesting, probably the real gem that is visualized is the slow progression we are seeing in the mobile industry towards larger screens installed in consumer devices. With rumors abounding that Samsung has retooled many of its assembly lines to mass-produce its flexible OLED screens, it’s conceivable that we could, sometime in the near future, see bezel-less devices to hit retail stores. While market analysts say that it won’t be until 2017 before we see the market dominated by flexible display devices, it’s certainly interesting to think about the possibility because bezel-less handset will totally change this list.

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LulzSec Hacks SonyPictures.com; 1 Million Accounts Exposed

Just when it looks like Sony was finally recovering from the PlayStation Network hack, it happened again. This time, it wasn't PSN, but Sony Pictures: hackers may have compromised 1 million SonyPictures.com user accounts, stealing personal information including e-mail addresses and passwords, as well as street addresses, dates of birth, and more. On top of that, the hacker group posted a file containing information on 50,000 users.
Apparently the hack wasn't even that difficult for LulzSec to pull off: Gizmodo quotes LulzSec as saying, "SonyPictures.com was owned by a very simple SQL injection, one of the most primitive and common vulnerabilities, as we should all know by now. From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING."

In addition, none of the passwords were encrypted; instead, they were stored in plain text.

Keep in mind that Sony Pictures is an entirely different division of the company from Sony Computer Entertainment, the Sony subsidiary responsible for the PlayStation 3 and hit with April's PlayStation Network hack. Still, it's another black eye for a company that hasn't exactly garnered a good reputation security-wise in recent weeks.

We'll have more on PCWorld.com on this story as it develops, including tips on what you should do in case you fall victim to a data breach.

Mobile gaming market booming thanks to iPhone & Facebook

Online gaming is bigger than ever thanks to Facebook and mobile devices like Apple's iPhone.

To be sure, both have opened up gaming opportunities to a huge amount of new users, helping to expand the industry exponentially. Although the huge user base is quite positive for gaming companies, it’s important to remember the competition is fierce.

"It's [really] an ugly scene," Alexandre de Rochefort, chief financial officer of mobile video game specialist Gameloft told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in Paris.

"The smartphone market is not a goldmine for developers. It's a bit like playing the lottery."

After reminding hopeful game developers that the industry is no cakewalk, executives noted developing and distributing games has become easier thanks to companies like Amazon who rent out computing space to test games for the likes of Facebook and the App Store.

UK-based media firm Screen Digest states the mobile gaming market has grown from $2.2 billion in 2007 to $3.7 billion in 2010, with estimates putting growth at around a staggering $7.8 billion by 2014.

"Since Apple launched its App Store, the mobile gaming market has undergone a transformation," explained Screen Digest analyst Jack Kent.

"Before, less than 5 percent were paying to access mobile games, in Europe at least ... since then consumers are a lot more willing to pay for content and particularly games."

As expected, changes in the industry have sparked deals amongst big gaming corporations like Electronic Arts (EA) and privately held smaller companies such as Zynga of Farmville fame.

Screen Digest reported 26 mobile gaming-related acquisitions within the last year, up from 12 in 2009 and 11 from the first quarter of this year. With $200 million in venture capital funds floating around last quarter alone, mobile gaming certainly has a hot niche in the market.

"We used to stay away from games," Neil Rimer, Index co-founder and partner, told the summit. "It was really like the movie industry where you had to come up with this basic idea for a game and then spend 5 to 15 million euros ($7 to $21 million) and two years building the thing," he said.

"Sometimes it would work. Many times it would bomb and you were out 15 million bucks."

Although it all sounds like rainbows and unicorns for app developers, it’s important to keep in mind that there are certain barriers to entry that make success in the mobile gaming market difficult. Even Rovio Mobile, maker of the uber-popular Angry Birds game, developed 51 titles before hitting the jackpot with Angry Birds.

Kaspersky wants Interpol for the web

The world needs an Internet Interpol, as well as enforceable online identities and an “Internet passport”, Eugene Kaspersky has told the AusCERT 2011 conference this week.

The founder of Kaspersky Labs said his “Interpol” needed to be a global, borderless cybercrime unit that would exist with the support cooperation of international law enforcement agencies.

Kaspersky told AusCERT conference in Queensland that the “embedded” nature of cybercrime in the online world could be compared to the omnipresence of sharks in Australia waters.

The "digital world is under attack," he said. Although the idea has been discussed by government authorities and the security industry have been discussed for more than a decade, nothing’s been done.

He said another reason cybercrime has risen is that “some cybercriminals from non English-speaking countries don’t release malware in their own country because they don’t want police to connect them to it," something that an international agency could help monitor.

"Sooner or later we will have [an Internet Interpol],” Kaspersky said. “I am also talking about Internet passports and having an online ID. Some countries are introducing this idea, so maybe in 15 years we will all have it,” he forecast.

The security software millionaire said an international online identification system could help in the fight against identity theft and the illicit theft of passport documents online.

He also believes the rise of cloud computing demands industry standards for cloud security.

China isi intareste controlul asupra Internetului

China a pus bazele unei noi institutii guvernamentale, responsabila pentru controlul informatiei pe Internet.

Biroul de Informatii al Internetului le va permite autoritatilor sa practice o cenzura care l-ar face pana si pe Ceausescu gelos, controland tot contentul disponibil pentru utilizatorii de internet din tara.

Beijing-ul opereaza o cenzura draconica asupra internetului, numita si “Marele zid de foc al Chinei.” Website-urile considerate o amenintare la adresa guvernului sunt blocate zilnic.

The Chinese government has put a lot of resources into controlling and censoring the internet content available to its citizens.

Guvernul chinez a alocat un numar mare de resurse in controlarea si cenzurarea contentului de pe web.

Pana in prezent aceasta supraveghere era exercitata de catre Biroul de Informatii al tarii si de alte cateva agentii. Institutia noua creata aduce la un loc controlul tehnic si cel politic.

Consecinta imediat urmatoare se va vedea intr-o cenzura mult mai accentuata a stirilor si a informatiilor online, a afacerilor new media si intr-un control mult mai agresiv al accesului la internet.

Decizia autoritatilor de a infiinta Biroul de Informatii al Internetului ar putea veni ca urmare a revolutiilor din Orientul Mijlociu si Nordul Africii.

The room where bin Laden was killed, messy and full of blood

The ABC News has published some pictures from her home in the city Abbotaba Pakistan, where al-Qaida terrorist network leader Osama bin Laden, was killed.

Images by ABC News show room where he was killed , which is messy and full of blood stains.

The American President, Barack Obama, announced that al-Qaida terrorist network leader Osama bin Laden, was killed in a shootout, and the forces U.S. over the corpse.

The clashes have killed three men and one woman used as human shield, but there were no casualties among the Americans on the ground, said sources cited.

Among the victims is also one of bin Laden’s sons, two other men, probably messengers used by al-Qaida leader, and a woman who is protecting one of the men, said sources cited.

Two other women were injured in the attack on the residence where he harbored bin Laden and where there were more women and children.

Playbook update to bring video chat this month

Blackberry's tablet is slated to get its own Facetime-like application.

Research in Motion announced it will be bringing video chat functionality to the Playbook later this month, utilizing the gadget's front-facing camera and allowing users to chat with one another. The proprietary app will let users add friends, view video call history, and offer voice chatting as well, all over a Wi-Fi connection. There is no 3G or 4G version of the Playbook yet available.

RIM also noted it will be releasing a Facebook app this month as well. Currently, the pre-loaded Facebook "app" is nothing more than a shortcut to the browser app, with Facebook.com loaded up.

The new dedicated application will let users more easily upload photos and video, and connect with the social networking site without disrupting their current browser activity.

These upcoming additions will hopefully make the Playbook a more attractive device, but they also underscore one of the biggest complaints about the device - many have criticized it as an unfinished product. That is, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that a true iPad competitor should have.

It looks like RIM will incrementally roll those out over time, but clearly it could have taken a bit longer to have them available from day one.

We're also still waiting for the Playbook models with mobile network connectivity, as portability is one of the defining ideas of the Blackberry brand.

The Playbook has received mixed reviews, but according to analysts it likely sold very well in its initial launch, giving RIM a much needed boost. It's up to the company to keep the newfound momentum going.

The 10 fastest computers in the world

This article is brought to you in association with LG Optimus 2X

If you thought your PC was fast, wait until you see what Tianhe-1A can do: the Intel and Nvidia-powered supercomputer can do in a day what a dual-core personal computer would take 160 years to complete.

It's a serious bit of kit, and it's not the only supercomputer with more cores than we've had hot dinners.

Every six months, the TOP500 project ranks the world's most powerful computers - and right now, these are the top ten machines the world has ever seen.

1. The slightly mysterious Chinese one: Tianhe-1A

China's supercomputer is currently the world's fastest: it can run at a sustained 2.5 petaflops (a petaflop is a thousand trillion floating point operations per second) thanks to its 186,368 cores and 229,376GB of RAM.

While the horsepower comes from off-the-shelf Intel and Nvidia chips, the New York Times says that the Chinese machine's speed is down to its interconnect, the networking technology that connects the individual nodes of the computer together, which is twice as fast as the InfiniBand technology used in many other supercomputers.

It's located in Shenzhen's National Supercomputing Centre, where it's used by universities and Chinese companies.

Image credit: Nvidia

2. The one with a quarter of a million cores: Jaguar

Jaguar, a Cray XT5-HE supercomputer located at the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has quite a few cores: TOP500 says there are nearly a quarter of a million since its most recent upgrade.

Jaguar's 224,162 cores come courtesy of a whole bunch of six-core Opteron chips, and its performance is a hefty 1.76 petaflops. Oak Ridge says it's the world's fastest supercomputer for unclassified research.

Image credit: NCCS.gov

3. The other slightly mysterious Chinese one: Dawning Nebulae

When it launched in early 2010 the Chinese Dawning Nebulae supercomputer was the world's fastest, with performance of 1.27 petaflops, but it's already in third place thanks to Jaguar and China's own newer, faster Tianhe-1A. Like its sibling Nebulae is in the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen.

Image credit: Nvidia

4. The one with the rubbish name: TSUBAME 2.0

Tokyo's TSUBAME 2.0 offers similar performance to Jaguar - it peaks at 2.3 petaflops, with sustained performance of around 1.4 petaflops - but it's one-quarter of the size and uses one-quarter of the power thanks to its heavy reliance on Nvidia Fermi GPUs as well as Intel CPUs.

According to project lead Professor Satoshi Matsuoka, TSUBAME will really shine in climate and weather forecasting, biomolecular modelling and tsunami simulations.

5. The planet-saver: Hopper

Hopper is working on the big stuff: climate change, clean energy, astrophysics, particle physics... its home, the US Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, offers its services to more than 3,000 researchers in the fields of climate research, chemistry, new material development and other crucial fields.

Image credit: NERSC

6. The French one: Tera-100

The first petaflop-scale supercomputer to be designed and built in Europe is pretty fast: "its capacity to transfer information is equivalent to a million people watching high-definition films simultaneously", the press release says.

Built around Intel Xeon 7500 processors, the successor to 2005's Tera 10 is 20 times faster and seven times more energy efficient as its predecessor. It's another nuclear one: Tera-100's mission is to help guarantee the reliability of Europe's nukes.

Image credit: Bull

7. The former champion: Roadrunner

Supercomputing is a fast-moving field, and Roadrunner is the proof: in 2008 it was the first supercomputer to crack the petaflop barrier for sustained performance, but its 1.04 petaflop speed means it fell to seventh place in just two years.

Built by IBM for the US Department of Energy, it was designed to work out whether the US's nuclear weapons would remain safe as they age - although like most supercomputers it's also available to industry, with car and aerospace industries paying for a go.

Image credit: IBM

8. The answer to life, the universe and everything: Kraken

Can your computing project be handled by a machine with 511 cores? Then don't bother coming to Kraken: it's best suited to jobs that use "at least 512 cores". It's got plenty to spare: the National Institute for Computational Sciences reports that the Cray supercomputer has 112,895 compute cores spread across 9,408 nodes.

Its purpose? To help "solve the world's greatest scientific challenges, such as understanding the fundamentals of matter and unlocking the secrets to the origin of our universe".

Image credit: UTK

9. The ultimate DVD ripper: JUGENE

Germany's supercomputer was designed for low power consumption as well as high performance, and it's been involved in some interesting projects - including trying to work out how DVDs work. According to Scientific Computing, it's improving our understanding of "the processes involved in writing and erasing a DVD", which should lead to storage media that works better, lasts longer and provides higher capacity.

Image credit: Forschungszentrum Jülich

10. The one keeping nukes safe: Cielo

Nuclear science and supercomputers are a match made in heaven: the former can use the latter to test things without blowing anybody up or irradiating them for generations. Cielo is used for "classified operations" by the US National Nuclear Security Administration, and it's getting a big upgrade this year: its 6,704 computing nodes will be upped to 9,000, and its memory will go from 221.5TB to around 300TB.

Image credit: NNSA

The ones coming soon: Titan and Sequoia

Will China lose its fastest computer crown in 2012? That's when the US Titan supercomputer, a $100 million machine for the US Department of Energy, comes online - and it's also when IBM's Tianhe-1A-rivalling Sequoia gets plugged in too. TItan is designed to analyse complex energy systems, while Sequoia will work on simulations of nuclear explosions to reduce the need for real-world tests.

How to make Twitter more useful

Last year, Twitter made it a goal to increase monetization of its social networking site by implementing promoted tweets and running ad campaigns with major brands.

This year, Twitter hopes to make the site more accessible and broaden its appeal to the masses.

To that end, the San Francisco-based company hired Dick Costolo in 2010 hoping he could successfully monetize Twitter.

Co-founder Evan Williams has described COO Costolo’s tenure as successful, saying, "During his year at Twitter, he has been a critical leader in devising and executing our revenue efforts, while simultaneously and effectively making the trains run on time in the office."

This year, Twitter has re-hired Jack Dorsey whose main function will be to make Twitter more useful.

Dorsey officially returned to Twitter three weeks ago after being pushed out by the board two-and-a-half-years ago.

At a talk at Columbia, Dorsey said, "We have a lot of mainstream awareness, but mainstream relevancy is still a challenge.”

The majority of people still see Twitter as a way to update a status, much like Facebook. One of Twitter’s main goals for 2011 is to highlight the usefulness of Twitter by taking a hyper local approach.

Sources say when someone signs on Twitter, the company hopes to highlight tweets from their immediate area. Whether it’s from a local politician or musician, the idea is to show new users how Twitter is relevant to their lives, thus prompting them to use the site.

Jonathan Strauss, chief executive at Awe.sm said "Most people understand Twitter exists, but they don't understand what Twitter is and how they can participate.”

Besides promoting local tweets to add relevance, Twitter is hoping to add tools for power users. Recently, TG Daily reported rumors that Twitter might buy TweetDeck for $50 million, a tool that allows users to filter the Twitter conversation and track their account in a more advanced way.

Aside from promoted tweets for local users, Twitter users have already created lists where people can group together particular people. A person familiar with the matter said Twitter is looking into ways to promote certain lists to make them more accessible to newbies.

Twitter is also exploring "EdgeRank," a system that highlights posts by a user’s closest friends.

"Most of the time what people want is the most relevant and important information, and without filtering its content for individual users that's difficult for Twitter to satisfy," said Strauss.

Twitter is clearly an awesome idea that has caught on in a major way. That said, it’s about time Twitter finally understands that users want to access and filter information in new ways. No doubt the social networking site will be seeing some serious changes (hopefully for the better) in the coming months.

FTP is now a 40-year-old protocol

One of the most important protocols on the Internet is marking 40 years since its debut in April 1971, when it was referred to simply as RFC 114.


Yes, FTP has managed to withstand the onslaught of newer, competing technologies such as P2P. 

Of course, FTP today is not exactly the same as it was when MIT student, Abhey Bushan, wrote the original FTP specs. 



Rather, the protocol has undergone a number of changes in tandem with industry demands, including the shift away from a command line interface.

For example, current web browsers support basic FTP and can be used to easily retrieve files via an FTP server.

FTP has also maintained its relevance by forming a vital link in many cloud-based computing services and applications. 



Compared to P2P, FTP variants are easier to secure, something that makes the protocol quite useful for online banking platform and other technologies which require the transmission of sensitive traffic.

Of course, there are security concerns over data sent via FTP - especially the transmission of clear text log in credentials and provision for anonymous log ins (though this function can be disabled on the server).

As such the standard has evolved, and now boasts secure FTP (FTP over SSH), explicit FTPS and implicit FTPS. Nevertheless, basic FTP still continues to be used for the routine transfer of files.

IPv4 addresses maxed out in Asia

Some people were probably starting to wonder about the constantly predicted, but somehow never materializing exhaustion of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses.

Well, APNIC (The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) has just announced the release of its last available batch of IPv4 addresses.

Of course, anyone who has been seriously following developments in the IP address realm will not find such developments unexpected in the slightest.

To be sure, IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) and ICANN (Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers) already made it known in February that they had just assigned the last IPv4 blocks to RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) such as APNIC.

Still, the fact that APNIC exhausted its last blocks so quickly is not something many would have predicted. Analysts had estimated the beginning of summer as the earliest time the addresses would run out for any RIR.

In an official statement, APNIC confirmed the remaining IPv4 addresses would be placed under limited distribution, primarily for network operators to use in facilitating integration with new generation IPv6 address blocks.

As such, the organization has placed a cap of 1,024 IPv4 addresses for existing and new members eligible for current allocation.

RIPE - which covers the Middle East, Europe and the former Soviet Union - is expected to be the next RIR on the chopping block before ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers).

At some point, it seemed like some RIRs would survive to 2012. But APNIC’s swift run on its IPv4 address block likely means the writing is on the wall for the rest.

Hacker says he cracked Federal Reserve Bank

It seems as if hackers will always find a way of breaching even the most sophisticated and secure networks.



Take the case of Lin Mun Poo, the 32 year old Malaysian national who infiltrated FedComp - a network administered by the US Federal Reserve Bank - and stole payment card information. 



The attack on FedComp enabled Lin to obtain sensitive card data from numerous credit unions across the U.S., as FedComp processes information from over 2,500 credit unions.

Fortunately for law enforcement officials, Lin travelled to the US where he was arrested just hours after arriving at New York’s JFK International Airport.



Actually, federal agents apprehended Lin shortly after watching him sell stolen card numbers at a Brooklyn diner for $1,000.

The Malaysian national was carrying an encrypted laptop that contained over 400,000 bank account, debit card and credit card numbers. Prosecutors allege that Lin had made a career penetrating the computer networks of financial institutions, corporations and defense contractors before putting the stolen data up for sale.

Lin was charged with aggravated identity theft, fraud, unauthorized access of government information and unlawful transmission of computer code.

However, Lin recently pleaded guilty to just one charge - access device fraud. He also admitted to infiltrating the Federal Reserve’s network and installing malicious computer code on one of the servers.

If found guilty on all charges, Lin could face up to 10 years in prison.