Author: coutinho

By MG Siegler, TechCrunch – November 22, 2010 at 03:46PM

A couple weeks ago, we noted that Automattic was testing out a new Top Author stat area on the Site Stats page found on WordPress.com blogs. Today, they’ve rolled out the feature with a couple little bonuses.

First of all, the widget itself has been prettied-up quite a bit from the one we shared. You’ll now see author icons next to the author names. More importantly, you’ll see a plus sign, which, when clicked, presents a drop down that shows you exactly what stories by that author are brining in traffic on any given day. WordPress.com also removed the number of posts area, after that caused some confusion. “the top spot is not about who wrote the most posts, it’s about which author wrote the posts that got the most visits,” they note.

WordPress.com says that they liked the new icon and drop down so much, that they’ve also added it to the Referrers box as well. The result is a simple way to see things like which Twitter account is sending the most traffic your way. Pretty nifty.

WordPress.com says the stats upgrade is available for all blogs on WordPress.com and it will automatically appear if your blog has two or more authors with traffic on their posts. Automattic also notes that these features will be coming to the Stats plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs shortly.

By Adam Pash, Lifehacker – November 22, 2010 at 03:30PM

Apple’s device tracking, locking, and wiping tool Find My iPhone is available for free with the iOS 4.2. By default it only works on the iPhone 4, fourth generation iPod touch, and iPad. Here’s how to get free access from any device.

What Is Find My iPhone?

First, as a refresher, Find My iPhone is a tracking app that runs on your iOS device and tracks its location. If you lose your device, you can log into MobileMe, see the device on a map, and optionally display a message on your device (“Hey, did you find my lost iPhone? Call me at …”), play a sound (handy if you just left it in the couch cushion), lock the device with a four-digit PIN, or completely wipe your device so no one can access your sensitive data.

It’s now available for free on any of the latest generation of iOS devices. If you’ve got an older device, however, you’re not out of luck. As commenters in our announcement post quickly discovered, all you need to get free Find My iPhone access from pre-2010 devices is access to one of the supported devices. From Apple (footnote 3):

You can create a free Find My iPhone account on any iPhone 4, iPad, or iPod touch (4th generation) running iOS 4.2. Once you create an account on a qualifying device, use your Apple ID and password to enable Find My iPhone on your other devices running iOS 4.2.

The TiPb blog confirms. So if you want to get Find My iPhone running on your pre-2010 iOS device, here’s how it works:

Download Find My iPhone on a 2010 iOS Device and Register

1. Launch the App Store and download Find My iPhone.
2. While it’s downloading, jump over to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > and add a MobileMe account. Log into MobileMe using your Apple ID and password, and when it’s connected, turn on Find My iPhone.
3. Now launch the Find My iPhone app, again log in with your Apple ID, and you should be set up.

Repeat Those Steps on Your Pre-2010 iOS Device

Once you’ve activated Find My iPhone on a newer iOS device, just repeat the steps above on a pre-2010 iOS device and it should work like a charm. I tested the process by turning on Find My iPhone on an iPad, then enabling it on an iPhone 3G.

To verify that everything’s working, just point your browser to Find My iPhone and make sure both devices are in your device list.

It Continues to Work Even After You Kill the Connection on the New Device

Since some of you may be using someone else’s latest generation iOS device to gain access to Find My iPhone, I then deleted my MobileMe account from the iPad and verified that my iPhone 3G continued to work with Find My iPhone.

So if you are borrowing someone else’s iOS device to activate Find My iPhone on your older device, you should be able to safely delete your MobileMe account from their device but continue using Find My iPhone on yours. That means you can always log into MobileMe and the Find My iPhone dashboard, track your phone, display a message or play a sound, lock the phone with a PIN, or remotely wipe it, all for free. Handy.

Update: Reader Casey writes in and notes: “You can only make three MobileMe accounts per device. I tried setting up several people’s in my office who have 3GS phones, and it cut me off after the third one. I removed the other MobileMe accounts after enabling their older devices, and the 3Gs continued to work. Even after doing so, it says I maxed out the number of accounts I could create on that phone.

By Jay Hathaway, Download Squad – November 22, 2010 at 03:00PM

Filed under: Games, Humor

It’s easy to get so caught up the addictive gameplay of Angry Birds that you forget the game has a plot. Hardcore Birds fans love all the random extras and YouTube videos following the war with the pigs, though, and now there’s a new one that might be the coolest yet.

In this live-action video, the Angry Birds attempt to negotiate a peace treaty with their enemies, the evil pigs, but it doesn’t really go as planned. The negotiations break down with the birds and pigs each blaming one another and shouting some NSFW expletives, and then everything seems to settle down again … until the surprise ending. Angry Birds superfans will love it.

This isn’t an official promotional video from Rovio, though. It’s a skit on an Israeli comedy show, Eretz Nehederet. That just goes to show how huge Angry Birds has become, not only as a game, but as a global cultural phenomenon. We’ll see how people feel about the birds vs. pigs conflict when they see it from the pigs’ perspective in the upcoming Angry Birds sequel, though!

Angry Birds fail to negotiate peace treaty with pigs in a new comedy video originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Justin Pot, MakeUseOf – November 22, 2010 at 01:49PM

You’re at the coffee shop. You need to access a file that has information about your work, but as you attempt to find the file you realize that you’ve made a mistake. You saved the work on your desktop computer, but you only have your laptop with you. You have no way to access the file.

Enter Dropbox. This program acts as a “magic pocket” which is always with you and contains whatever you place in it. Put a file into your Dropbox and it’s on all of your computers and mobile devices, really handy if you own multiple devices. But there’s more to Dropbox: you can use it for file sharing, backing up your data and even remotely control your computer.

If you’re not using Dropbox yet, you should be. Lucky for you our new MakeUseOf manual “Using The Magic Pocket: A Dropbox Manual” is now available for download.

It’s informative, easy to read and, like all of our manuals, completely free.

Download: Using The Magic Pocket: A Dropbox Manual

Or

Read now online on Scribd

(Note: If the download link doesn’t work for you try ‘right click -> Save link as’ option)

This amazing guide is your complete Dropbox resource, outlining:

• Easily syncing files between all your devices
• Using the desktop, mobile and web interfaces
• Share files with friends on Facebook and Twitter, using Dropbox’s Public folder
• Easily share entire albums with friends in just a few clicks
• Share folders with friends or co-workers
• Sync your calendar and browser settings

Download: Using The Magic Pocket: A Dropbox Manual

Or

Read now on Scribd

Do us a huge favor and share the guide with friends on Facebook and Twittter.

Enjoy!

Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Don’t forget to share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.

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By Bakari Chavanu, MakeUseOf – November 22, 2010 at 01:31PM

Nearly every longtime and experienced computer user knows that the best solution to recover deleted files is to have a good regularly scheduled backup system. For Mac users, we have covered a few of the best backup systems, including Tina’s 5 Ways To Clone & Copy Your Hard Drive, Jeffry’s Carbon Copy Cloner – A Free & Powerful Backup Utility, and my tips on using Snow Leopard’s default backup system, Time Machine.

Time Machine has saved me more than a few times and made it very easy to recover deleted files. But for occasions when a backup system fails or when it is not used to back up files on say memory cards or external drives, data recovery applications like Cleverfiles’s Disk Drill will probably be your best solution and is free in its beta version.

Disk Drill is a recovery software for uprooting deleted or damaged files, including videos, lost music, podcasts, photos, and text documents. It works on both internal and external drives, as well as memory cards and thumb drives. I have had to use similar software in the past, and the one thing I like about Disk Drill is its straightforward user interface. I didn’t have to read a lot of instructions to start using it.

Using Disk Drill

When you first launch Disk Drill, you are presented with a guided tour and tutorial of its features. The developers understand how agonizing it is to lose and try to recover important data. But as they point out in their tutorial, “Data recovery is mostly about chances, probability, and common sense…there’s really no guarantee something will be recovered 100%.” If you accidentally delete a file(s), your chances of recovering it are very good if you use Disk Drill soon after, to recover what you lost.

So for example, if you delete files off a camera media card, your chances of recovering them are greater the less you reuse the card after those files are deleted. The more you use the card, the more you overwrite deleted data.

To use Disk Drill, simply click the Recover Data button in the menu bar, select the drive you want to recover, and then click ”Quick Scan” or ”Deep scan” to start the recovery process. To make the scanning go faster, you can specify the type of files you want to recover, e.g., pictures, videos, text documents, audio files.

Disk Drill will give you results of its search, at which time you can preview and select the files you want to restore.

I tried the application on a media card and it recovered several deleted images – most at their full resolution size.

Recovery Vault

One unique feature of Disk Drill is Recovery Vault, which seems to work like a backup protection system for your designated partitions and selected folders. According to the developers, Recovery Vault “keeps a smart history of your file activity and lets you increase recovery changes for all your disks with the Mac file system or FAT”.

Recovery Vault is not enabled by default, and it will only of course protect files on drives after it is applied to them. This feature is very useful because when files are deleted on the Mac system, the details (file name, dates, etc) are also erased. Recovery Vault retains this information when files are deleted or damaged.

Documentation

Users of Disk Drill will have different recovery issues for their hard drives. Cleverfiles‘s developers seem to be addressing well the needs of different users. Their site includes a growing collection of documentation for the type of recovery processes a user might need.

These documents include how to recover deleted files for when trash is already empty, for memory card recovery, lost data from formatted partitions, and from FAT/NTFS/HFS and other file systems.

The site also includes a user forum for additional questions and discussions.

Data recovery is not something we look forward to or use everyday, but it’s important to have a program like Disk Drill for when the inevitable occurs. Let us know what you think of Disk Drill after you download and give it a run. It will remain free under its beta version, so you will want to grab a copy now.

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By (author unknown), Core77 – November 22, 2010 at 11:09AM

How many times have you thrown your heavy grappling hook skyward only to have it miss the windowsill, plummet back towards the ground and kill one of your accomplices?

That’s no longer a problem with Battelle’s Tactical Air Initiated Launch system, which accurately fires a titanium grappling hook and Kevlar line 100 feet high and sixty feet away. That means you could be standing across the street from your neighbor’s tenth-floor apartment, honoring the boundaries set by the restraining order, and still hit his windowsill with this thing. Even better, the TAIL uses compressed air, so there’s none of that noise you’d get with an explosive gunpowder-driven grappling hook gun. Without that telltale BANG noise, chances are slim anyone’s going to call the police!

But wait, there’s more! The TAIL system isn’t just for firing grapping hooks–it can launch any object that fits in the barrel. Your days of tying a note to a brick and hurling it through a window (try getting that up to the tenth floor) are over!

(more…)

By Splitsider, Gizmodo – November 19, 2010 at 09:00PM

Everybody’s been clamoring for Ghostbusters 3, but in this video, they’ve come back and it might not be a good thing. You know, because they’re dicks. More »

By (author unknown), MacNN | The Macintosh News Network – November 19, 2010 at 05:00PM

Security Generation has released a new security guide for Mac users. The guide, which is currently available online for free, includes five different sections: Creating and Managing Accounts, Networking and Services, Security, FileVault and Firewall, Privacy, and Securing Safari. A sixth chapter, Additional Security, is also in the works and will be uploaded in the coming weeks. A Securing Leopard Checklist has also been made available, allowing users to document which changes they decide to implement….

By (author unknown), The Big Picture – November 19, 2010 at 12:03PM

Kanana Camp, Botswana. Pulling over by the side of the road to watch a grazing giraffe, we spotted an amber head lurking behind a small mound. A hungry lioness. Watching, waiting, camera to my eye, she eventually chose her moment and pounced just as the giraffe sensed danger. The lioness gave chase, but failed. Hungry, she lay down, invisible, in the grass not ten feet from us and waited again. (Photo and caption by Alex Tan)

By Adam Dachis, Lifehacker – November 18, 2010 at 02:30PM

It’s almost daily routine that you run into someone parking in two spots, way too far over the line, or in a spot designed for a car half the size. You Park Like an Asshole helps you fight back.