By Dave Johnson
December 19, 2009

The holidays are a time for colorful gifts, candy canes, and holiday pictures. And with a little attention to exposure settings and shooting techniques, you can capture great holiday photos you’ll want to share.


Choose the Right Camera Settings
When the house is filling with guests and the kids want to open their gifts, you don’t want to worry about your camera settings. Here’s how to optimize your camera in advance for the kinds of shots you plan to take.

For all-around indoor holiday photography, prepare your camera to shoot fast action in low light. Kids are like cats: They might appear calm and quiet, but you can’t predict what they’ll do next, especially under the influence of presents and candy. If you’ll be shooting during daylight hours, turn off the camera’s flash and increase the ISO to ensure that the camera can take good natural-light photos. Then either set the camera to its action scene mode or switch to aperture priority and use a small f-number, which will give you the fastest possible shutter speed.

In the evening, you’ll probably need to turn the flash back on, but you might want to leave the ISO setting high–especially if you’ll be shooting in a large room–so you can fully illuminate the scene.


Capture the Magic With a Series of Photos
Often, a single photo can’t adequately capture the moment. If your camera has an interval timer mode (check the camera’s menu or user guide), you can use it to create your own time-lapse photos. Set up the camera in a corner of the room with a good view of the action, and configure it to snap one picture every minute or so as you decorate the tree or open presents. You can turn the resulting photos into a time-lapse movie, or you can publish the most interesting shots as a series of images on your Web site or photo-sharing site.

Another alternative is to use the burst mode or continuous-shooting setting on your camera to take a series of rapid-fire shots while the assembled multitude is opening gifts. You’re much likelier to get a memorable photo this way, and you can discard the images that you don’t like.

Whether you choose to shoot photos at intervals or in burst mode, you’ll want to avoid using the flash, in order to save battery life and to let the camera recharge faster, with less lag between shots.

By PCWorld (US) Staff
December 19, 2009

The typical Twitter post has a life span of seconds; other tweets seem destined for greater glory, as diagrammed below by our friends at GDS Digital. (Click to enlarge the image.)

By Gregg Keizer
Computerworld
December 19, 2009

Hackers redirected Twitter.com’s traffic to a rogue Web site for more than an hour Friday by accessing its DNS records using an account assigned to Twitter, the company that manages Twitter’s DNS (Domain Name System) servers said.

Twitter initially blamed the early-Friday hour-long blackout of its site on changes made to the company’s DNS records, which act like a telephone directory to match the twitter.com domain name with the IP addresses used by its servers.

“Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised, but have now been fixed,” the company said on its service status page at 2:30 a.m. ET. “We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.” The status page has not been revised with more information since then.

Twitter uses a New Hampshire firm, Dyn Inc., to manage its DNS records, which match Twitter’s domain name (twitter.com, and numerous others) with the IP addresses of its servers.

Today, Dyn denied that its infrastructure had been hacked. Early Friday, Tom Daly, Dyn’s chief technology officer, told the Washington Post it appeared someone changed Twitter’s DNS records to point visitors to a different IP address using the proper account credentials assigned to Twitter.

“Someone logged in who purported to be a legitimate user of their [DNS] platform account and started making changes,” Daly told the Post ‘s Brian Krebs . “It was not a failing on our systems whatsoever.”

Kyle York, Dyn’s vice president of marketing, echoed that in an interview with Computerworld. “No unauthenticated e-mail address associated with the account accessed the [Twitter] account,” York maintained. “This was not an unauthorized breach of our system.”

When asked whether the Twitter account had been used by someone authorized to do so, or if those account credentials had been pilfered by hackers, York declined to answer directly. “You’ll have to read between the lines,” he said. However, he did point to a tweet on Dyn’s own Twitter feed as having the right explanation.

That tweet referenced a story on The Tech Herald , in which reporter Steve Ragan used the clues available, including Dyn’s public statements, to theorize that someone compromised a Twitter staffer’s e-mail account, presumably via malware that snuck onto the Twitter employee’s computer, or through a standard phishing-style identity theft attack.

Once in control of the e-mail account, the hackers then used it to request a password reset for Twitter’s account with Dyn, Ragan speculated. “The password reset process is completed, and at this point the person(s) posing as a Twitter staffer gets the reset password via e-mail,” Ragan wrote.

That approach makes the most sense, agreed Ray Dickenson, chief technology officer at security vendor Authentium. “That’s the most logical explanation,” said Dickenson. “If someone obtained administrator credentials for Twitter’s account with Dyn, or even if it was inside job, everything worked except the human element.”

Dickenson said Dyn’s claim that its servers had not been officially hacked is also likely true. “It’s very difficult to directly hack a top-tier DNS provider,” he said, noting that security at such firms is extremely tight. “You’ve got to believe that Twitter looked at the options, and made the right choice when it went with Dyn. Twitter’s a huge site, and a huge brand.”

Also in Dyn’s favor, said Dickenson, is the company’s contention that only Twitter’s DNS records were altered, a fact that York stressed. “The fact that virtually all of Twitter’s records were pointing to this defaced site, and that no other [Dyn] customers’ records had been altered, corroborates what Dyn’s saying.”

According to York, Twitter will post a more detailed explanation of the cause of the outage later Friday. “It will fully exonerate us, that’s one thing I can say,” York said.

Twitter has been on shaky security ground for some time. Last August, determined distributed denial-of-service attacks knocked it offline for several hours. Two months before that, a hack of a URL-shortening service redirected millions of Twitter users to an unintended destination.

By Sumner Lemon
IDG News Service
December 18, 2009

Microblogging site Twitter went offline for a while Friday after hackers calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army apparently managed to change DNS records, redirecting traffic to another Web page.

Instead of the usual Twitter Web site design, visitors to the site instead saw a black screen with an image of a green flag and Arabic writing. The defaced site also included a message that said, “This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army,” and an e-mail address.

Whether or not Iranian hackers are responsible for the attack wasn’t immediately clear. However, Twitter and other Internet sites have been used by Iranian opposition groups and protestors to share details of anti-government protests in that country.

Twitter blamed the outage on changes made to the company’s DNS (Domain Name System) records, which match the company’s domain name with the IP addresses of its servers.

“Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon,” Twitter said on its Twitter Status page.

Based on Twitter’s account of the attack, it’s possible that the company’s servers were never compromised. The actual attack may have instead targeted Dyn, the DNS service provider that manages Twitter’s DNS records, according to whois records.

While the outage left Twitter users cut off from the service for about an hour, the type of attack wasn’t serious, according to Dhillon Andrew Kannabhiran , founder and CEO of Hack In The Box, a Malaysian company that runs security conferences in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

“Yawn, is my comment. It was a simple defacement. So what?” Kannabhiran said.

By JR Raphael
December 18, 2009

Susan Boyle may not have won the top spot in “Britain’s Got Talent,” but the big-voiced Brit has just achieved a far more impressive feat: Her video has taken the title of most watched clip on YouTube in 2009.

YouTube released a list of its most popular videos of the year, taking into account aggregated views from all over the globe. And while Boyle’s inaugural television appearance was the most harmonious of the bunch, the other hot commodities were no less theatrical.

Here’s the full list of YouTube’s most watched videos of 2009.

5. Evian Roller Babies With more than 27 million views under its belt, this creative commercial for Evian water certainly grabbed the world’s attention. No word yet how many diaper changes were involved.

4. New Moon Movie Trailer Surprise, surprise: A lot of people watched the trailer for the Twilight saga’s New Moon movie. Thirty-one million, to be exact. Granted, even more people probably gazed at the assets in Christian Serratos’s revealing PETA ad — but that’s another story altogether.

3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance YouTube helped a small wedding make a big splash this year. Jill and Kevin, a couple from Minnesota, busted a move as they walked down the aisle — in fact, the entire wedding party got pretty jiggy, nuptially speaking. The wacky dancers went viral, attracting thirty-three million eyeballs over the course of ’09.

2. David After Dentist A drugged-up little dude soared high on the YouTube charts, pulling in 37 million views worldwide. David, a seven-year-old boy, spouted off all sorts of nonsense following a trip to the dentist. Do his amusing antics warrant the massive merchandise and public speaking business that’s sprung up since the video’s success? God no. But at least they kept that Fred guy from being in this year’s top five.

1. Susan Boyle – Britain’s Got Talent As promised, the saucy Miss Boyle belted her way into YouTube’s most-watched spot for 2009. The clip of Boyle’s first appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent” garnered a whopping 120 million views across the world. Who’s the master of the house now?

By JR Raphael
December 18, 2009

Photo: Courtesy of Flickr.com

11. Cantaloupe Hunting
“I thought cantelope was an animal!? i always thought that a cantaloupe was that animal that has the horns and they live in Arizona and stuff, but i was shopping for groceries yesterday and i saw they had cantaloupe meat on sale. so i was like yeah sure i’ll try it, but what i saw, wasn’t a cantaloupe. it was some white and green fruit thing! whats up with this?”

The store is guilty of mislabeling. The term it was looking for is “jackalope”–which is a cross between a jackfruit and a manilla envelope.


12. Hey, Babby
“How is babby formed????? how girl get pragnent?”

On the one hand, I kind of hope you never figure it out. On the other, maybe your parents don’t know either–and it obviously didn’t stop them.


13. An Academic Inquiry
“Why are there school? is a point to it?”

There are school so you can learn how is babby formed, silly.

Photo: Courtsey of pthread1981 via Flickr.com

14. Canine Law
“Is it illegal to name a dog after a movie?”

Only if that movie is Air Bud 2. As a practical matter, though, you might want to avoid calling out to your pooch on a crowded bus if you decide to name it “Bang Bang You’re Dead” or “I’m Going to Explode.”


15. Lost in Space
“What is the best place to ask questions online? i mean, or there any QA forums like on yahoo or anything?”

Hmm…a forum-like place to ask questions on Yahoo. Nope, haven’t heard of anything like that. But if you find something, be sure to let us know.

Photo: courtesy of trekkyandy via Flickr.com

16. Mathematical Matters
“Is there any possible way of making 2+2=5?”

The easiest way is to flip the positions of 4 and 5 on the number line. Another method is to use LSD (Least Sequential Denominators).


17. Sandwich Sensations
“Is it possible to feel like a sandwich?”

Sure. It’s called LSD (Lettuce, Succotash, and Dill-pickle). It feels, like, weird…


18. About Those Drugs…
“How do you ask a question on yahoo answers?”

Hey, don’t ask me. I’m still trying to find out if there’s a forum-like place to pose questions there. Anyone? Anyone?


19. Spelling 101
“How do you spell government?”

Most of the time.

Photo: Courtesy of daviddesign via Flickr.com

20. Turtle Trouble
“I was bitten by a turtle when i was a young lad, can i still drink orange juice?”

This is why old lads should be barred from Yahoo Answers. Seriously–where do they come up with this stuff?

By JR Raphael
December 18, 2009

God bless the Internet. Where else can you assume a fake identity, pose the most inane question imaginable–like “Why can’t I see my reflection in the mirror on a television?”–and then sit back and watch the answers pour in?

Crowd-source advice sites like Yahoo Answers have become a bit of a magnet for the maladjusted. Sure, there are plenty of average Joes just looking for ordinary information. But among the sites’ many mundane queries, there’s a sea of jaw-droppingly dumb discussions guaranteed to amaze and entertain.

I spent some time surfing through Yahoo Answers to find the worst of the worst, and boy did I find it. The spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all as found in the original queries–because why put lipstick on a dodo?

So let’s take a look at the vital questions of our time, as posed by some of the deepest thinkers out there, along with the best answers I could come up with…

Photo: Courtesy of hyku via Flickr.com

1. Backward Thinking
“I sold my only car to help pay for gas money, but now gas has come down in price. How do I get my car back?”

I tried to contact this guy, but it turns out that he also sold his computer to help pay for his Internet connection.


2. It’s Caps Lock–Capisce?
“HOW DO I TURN OFF CAPSLOCK? I ACCIDENTALLY TURNED IT ON YESTERDAY AND I DONT KNOW HOW TO TURN IT BACK OFF.”

Note to self: Register howtoturnoffcapslock.com; make millions.

Photo: Courtesy of garethjmsaunders via Flickr.com

3. Credit Crunch
“I wanted to see if my computer would read my credit card so i put it in the cd rom and it got stuck, how do i get it out?? I tryed toothpics but lost them in the process?? also the drive is making noises”

Oh, that’s normal. Your system is just waiting for you to pay the required $1 processing fee for scanning the card. Simply fold a greenback into a tiny square and insert it into any USB port.


4. Mousin’ Around
“My mouse stop working every time i lift it up from the table why is this? this is not just OS .i have linux and vista both same thing so its not drivers”

Yeah, no big deal there, either: Insert your credit card into the CD-ROM drive and tell your computer–slowly and distinctly–that you need the Air Mouse 3000 upgrade. You’ll be good in no time.


5. Technical Difficulties
“I’ve been asked to write an application in my own handwriting….? is there a computer programme that will do this for me? they also want original ideas. do you know any?”

This reminds me of a letter to the editor I once read years ago: “Are there any undiscovered islands left in the world?” The response: “Not that we know of.”


6. It’s All in the Details
“I have an assignment about computer.. What is unimportant details about computer?”

Wait a minute–does this assignment also require original ideas?

Photo: Courtesy of www.jwcaketops.com

7. Unknown Nuptials
“Am i married in any state? have i been divorced?”

I’ll take “questions asked after a night in Vegas” for $500, Alex.


8. A Sticky Subject
“Where can i buy a really big jar of peanut butter?”

If this is from the same guy who asked the previous question, I’m getting concerned.


9. Fruit Frets
“I have ate two whole tangerines in about two hours what will happen to me?”

That all depends on whether you swallowed any seeds. If you did, be very careful not to eat any dirt or drink any water for the next two weeks.


10. Fat Chance
“How do i become obese fast? I want to look good by the end of the year.”

You can start by eating two tangerines in two hours. Then run around in circles until you figure out what “obese” means.

December 18, 2009

To encourage young people to use technology for community development, Google has launched the first Google Map Maker Global Competition. The contest invites interested participants around the world, including the Philippines, to map the universities, schools, hospitals, and medical clinics in their home countries on Google Map Maker to help humanitarian organizations such as UNICEF do their jobs better.

Google Map Maker (enables users to become ”citizen cartographers” and contribute their knowledge of their hometowns with the online community. Users can add familiar points of interests, draw roads and buildings, and generally create maps of places with just a few clicks of a mouse.

Competition entrants will be evaluated according to the quantity and quality of their map edits and moderation activity, which is essential to making sure that other peers’ edits are accurate. The winner’s efforts will result in a USD50,000 donation from UNICEF to benefit projects that empower local youth through technology in his or her homeland.

“We are very excited to be launching this mapping competition and we hope that Filipinos will participate in mapping as many universities, schools, hospitals and medical clinics in the country as possible to help humanitarian organizations implement their projects effectively,” said Therese Lim, head of communications for the Philippines, Google Southeast Asia.

“We have seen how powerful online maps can be during the aftermath of typhoons Ondoy and Peping, when Filipino volunteers used Google Maps to plot locations of people needing urgent rescue and areas with high levels of flooding. Those maps were relied on by a number of relief organizations to deliver aid.” “We are delighted that Google is supporting UNICEF’s efforts to help build a world fit for children. We know that mapping is a proven method to enhance community development. Google Map Maker is a powerful tool to create better situational awareness for both young people and communities at large. It will enable organizations like ours to better deliver services, respond to crises and adapt to change,” said Gerrit Beger, leader of UNICEF’s innovation drive focusing on youth.

Interested people can register for the Map Maker Global Competition at http://www.google.com/help/mapmaker/competitions/global/getstarted.html. The contest is open from December 15, 2009 to January 31, 2010. Entries will be evaluated on:

• Mapping quality- Mapping additions and editsmust be accurate and detailed.
• Mapping quantity- The more mapping additions and edits published, the better!
• Moderation quality- Moderations of mapping changes must be polite, helpful, and correct.
• Moderation quantity- The more moderations completed, the better!

In addition to the USD50,000 UNICEF donation, the contest winner will get a VIP tour from UNICEF officials of the local project in their country that will benefit from the donation. Google will also invite, the winner to attend the Google Super Mappers 2010 conference, all expenses paid. The winner will be announced by February 15, 2010. Additional information about the Map Maker Global Competition can be found on http://www.google.com/help/mapmaker/competitions/global/index.html.

December 18, 2009

The Yuletide season has always been about finding the right gifts for the special people in your lives, so why not make gift-hunting extra special by adding another “nice” person on your list – YOU. After all, you deserve a reward for the year that has been. So indulge yourself with the gift of technology and choose from the vast array of the coolest computing gadgets to this year’s most impressive printers. Fortunately, HP offers a wide range of budget-friendly gifts of technology that are bound to please the demands of your everyday life.

Reward yourself this Christmas through high quality HP printing technologies, the most practical and valuable gifts anyone can enjoy. This year’s printers from HP offer excellent solutions that perform according to the needs of schoolwork, business, or everyday printing at home.

HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One
P10,490

Give yourself the gift of touch this Christmas with the HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One, the flagship model of the HP Photosmart printer lineup. The HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One is an easy-to-use print, scan, and copy solution that offers the convenience of HP TouchSmart and wireless connectivity for users who want to print from virtually anywhere in the home. Featuring a TouchSmart control panel with a large 3.45-inch touchscreen, the HP Photosmart Premium All-in-One allows users to view, edit and print lab-quality photos without a PC. Complete with built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Ethernet capabilities, this device is perfect for your daily needs – from everyday documents to photos.

HP Photosmart C4680
P4,990

If you’re looking for the perfect gift that’s within the holiday budget, go for the HP Photosmart C4680 All-in-One, HP’s most affordable Photosmart printer that boasts touch-enabled interface. The HP Photosmart C4680 All-in-One is a versatile, intuitive printing system that makes at-home scanning, copying and printing simple and convenient. It also allows users to easily view and print photos, web pages and everyday documents with the HP TouchSmart frame, the printer’s stunning color display.

HP Deskjet D5560 Printer
P4,490

For a more flexible printing power, the HP Deskjet D5560 Printer will be ideal. HP’s most affordable wireless printer, the HP Deskjet D5560 Printer has integrated Wi-Fi capabilities, an easy wireless setup, and a one-touch operation button that allows several users print laser-quality text and vivid color images virtually anywhere in the home or office. Putting a premium on hassle-free printing, it comes with handy ink level gauges that alert users when the printer is running low on ink. Packed with big features and wireless connectivity, this affordable machine ups the ante when it comes to ease-of-use that’s ideal for the student or the home and office user.

By Jared Newman
December 17, 2009

art by Luis Anthony G. Oliveros

HP, Acer, Dell, and…Google? That’s right — Google could soon join the ranks of those netbook manufacturers. The rumor mill now suggests that a Google-branded netbook will arrive next year, in addition to the Google phone.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington cites “multiple sources” as saying Google is working directly with at least one computer manufacturer on hardware specs, in the same way that the search giant reportedly dictated hardware and design to HTC for the Nexus One smartphone. The netbook would be branded with Google and sold directly to consumers.

In terms of performance, what would make this netbook so much different than the rest? Arrington doesn’t know at this point, but speculates that an ARM processor and Nvidia Tegra graphics chip would be used instead of the usual Intel Atom processor and integrated graphics.

As I’ve suggested with the Google phone, hardware isn’t the important thing. Smartphones and netbooks generally have similar specs. Software is key, but what’s potentially the most exciting about Google’s rumored smartphone and netbook plans is the idea of the company selling them directly.

That means you’re looking at a possible Google Store. It means that Google could advertise its hardware to you every time you do a Web search. As some have suggested, it means Google could maybe subsidize its own tech products with advertising.

It also opens the door to more Google-branded products down the line. Remember, when Google announced Chrome OS, the company said it was being designed for desktop computers as well as notebooks. Imagine a tiny box that hooks up to your monitor, keyboard, and mouse. What if there was a screen on it as well? What if this was also your home theater PC, streaming free and subscription-based content from YouTube and elsewhere?

I’m getting ahead of myself, of course, but if Google is, in fact, planning to directly market and sell a smartphone and netbook with its brand name, I don’t see any reason why it would stop there. Brace yourself for the day that Google owns your entire computing experience, from power up to shut down.