Archive for December, 2009

Aussie Startup plugs in Mono to Active Directory

An Australian tech startup has filled a missing piece of the open source Mono .Net application environment by integrating it with Microsoft’s Active Directory server. When Sydney-based provider of enterprise social networking software HubOne looked at running its software on non-Windows platforms — particularly for Mac-wielding executives — it considered using the open source Mono [...]

First Look: Google Goggles tries to ID your world

On Monday, Google announced, along with its new real-time search feature, a photo-based search it is calling Google Goggles (which is hard to say without — sorry — giggling). Goggles lets you send photos of a business card, book cover or even bar code from your Android-based smartphone to Google for quick identification and data [...]

Tibco’s ‘Tibbr’ aims to be enterprise Twitter

The microblogging service emphasizes following subjects over people. Middleware vendor Tibco said Monday it is preparing to release Tibbr, a messaging system with strong echoes of the popular Twitter microblogging service. Whereas Twitter users build up a steady flow of information by “following” other users and receiving their postings, Tibbr emphasizes the ability to follow [...]

Namebench Helps You Find the Fastest DNS Server for Your Computer

Windows/Mac/Linux: Last week Google announced a free DNS service designed to speed up your browsing, but just because Google wants to be fast doesn’t actually mean they’re the best option for you. Namebench finds the fastest DNS server for your connection. After you download and fire up namebench, just click the Start Benchmark button to [...]

Microsoft labs tests a Wikipedia of average Joes

The EntityCube listing for Microsoft Research chief Rick Rashid. (Credit: CNET) Think of Microsoft’s latest labs effort as the software maker’s attempt to give everyone their own Wikipedia entry. Dubbed EntityCube and now live to try out, the research project pulls together biographical information on anyone found on the Web. Similar in some ways to [...]

Google turns on real-time search

Users will get the option to view up-to-the minute results from sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace As it promised in October, Google has now started to add search results in real-time to its engine, giving end-users the option of seeing relevant links that have just been added to its index. The move is an [...]

Yahoo Will Divulge Pretty Much Anything for $60

On one hand, it’s reassuring to know that Yahoo will work with law enforcement to bust criminals, digging through their private messages to get the job done. On the other, $60 is a low price for our privacy. For $20, Yahoo will give subpoena-wielding authorities your basic user ID information. For $30-$40, that jumps to [...]

New cloud-based service steals Wi-Fi passwords

For $34, a new cloud-based hacking service can crack a WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) network password in just 20 minutes, its creator says. Launched today, the WPA Cracker service bills itself as a useful tool for security auditors and penetration testers who want to know if they could break into certain types of WPA networks. [...]

Uproar over E.T. hunter misplaced, SETI@home founder says

The school superintendent investigating a former employee who ran the SETI@home program on school computers doesn’t understand how the technology works or that the project is well-respected, experts in the technology field say. Some also say that her estimates for how much money this incident will cost the school district sound inflated. Superintendent Denise Birdwell [...]

Torrent giant mininova forced to go legit

Mininova, one of the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing sites next to The Pirate Bay, has now removed most of its links to copyrighted content. The site complied with a Dutch court ruling from August. Mininova has said it is considering appealing that ruling. Netherlands-based Mininova has risen in recent months as one of the [...]