MudWatt Generates Power from Mud and Garbage

The MudWatt kit from KeegoTech is an educational DIY kit that can teach kids about soil chemistry, microbiology and electricity. By combining ordinary dirt from your yard, along with scraps from your refrigerator, kids can create a fuel cell that will light up an LED. The MudWatt set is priced at $44.95 and can be [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/11/27/mudwatt-generates-power-from-mud-and-garbage/

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Immerse yourself with classic cars with ROAD inc for iPad

ROAD inc is an iPad app for car enthusiasts. It includes 50 landmark automobile models and over 70 videos, 350 HD photos, 3000 documents, and 100 engine sounds. Exploring these classic cars is a very interactive and immersive experience, that even non-car enthusiasts will enjoy this app. Check out...

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/qfr6XjrQunU/story01.htm

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Linux Mint 12 debuts 'Lisa' as belle of the ball

The Ubuntu variant famed for delivering a minty fresh taste to Linux has officially arrived at version 12. Code-named "Lisa," the distribution introduces a new desktop that's based on GNOME 3.2, yet offers extensive user customization courtesy of Mint Gnome Shell Extensions (MGSE). Open source fans will find the default search engine is now DuckDuckGo, which touts crowd-sourcing and a no-tracking privacy policy. Those concerned with aesthetics will certainly appreciate two new themes, Mint-Z and Mint-Z-Dark, and the distro also delivers upgrades to Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice. Linux Mint currently rides in the pole position at DistroWatch, having supplanted Ubuntu as the alternative of choice for many Tux enthusiasts. Perhaps it's time to sample the freshness for yourself.

Linux Mint 12 debuts 'Lisa' as belle of the ball originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/29/linux-mint-12-debuts-lisa-as-belle-of-the-ball/

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Video hands-on with Cluzee: Not quite a Siri competitor


Youtube link for mobile viewing

There are a few things a voice-recognition app needs to do well to be successful -- and must do extremely well if it wants to call itself a competitor to Apple's Siri.

  1. It needs to be easilly accessible, and launch quickly. Very quickly.
  2. It needs to actually understand what you're saying.
  3. It needs to return results quickly.

As we continue to find out, this is easier said than done. The latest victim candidate is Cluzee, which bills itself as "Your Intelligent Personal Assisant" -- and which despite some initial glowing press doesn't really stand up to simple testing.

Let's start with Point 1: You need to be able to launch a voice app like this quickly. The iPhone 4S has a leg up by allowing you to long-press the home button to launch Siri at any time. Simple, quick. With Cluzee, you need a home screen shortcut, which means having to wake and unlock the phone first. If the app's not yet in memory, it takes several seconds to launch -- an eternity for this sort of thing. It really has to be faster. (And it is, so long as Cluzee remains loaded.)

On to Point 2: Cluzee understood our tests some of the time, but not all of the time. And even in our abbreviated use, it seemed to struggle more than it should. That ties into Point 3: Returning results for local pizza locations took so long we thought the app had hung on us (force closes are not uncommon at this point). And opening applications through Cluzee took too many steps. (Us: "Open Google Maps." Cluzee: "Which application do you want me to open?" Grrrrrr.)

That's not to say Cluzee doesn't have potential -- it most certainly does, and it does a decent job at personifying itself, using the pronouns you'd expect from something like this. But let's not go calling it a Siri competitor just yet. If you want to give it a shot, we've got download links after the break.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/-R-XamDwQ9c/story01.htm

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Dodge is a space-shooter in which you have no weapons

dodge
Space-shooters are usually a fairly fiery affair, with many types of guns, weapon upgrades, power-ups and more. Dodge does away with all of that, while keeping the very essence of a space shooter: Dark background, fast action, and stuff blowing up all over the place.

Your vector-looking spacecraft is the fastest thing on the screen, most of the time. And as the header implies, you have absolutely no weapons; you can't get any, either. All you have is agility and maneuverability.

Your opponents shoot heat-seeking missiles at you; the missiles lock on and start tracking you. The trick is to dodge the missiles while putting them in the path of one of your enemies, thus letting them have a taste of their own medicine.

There are three types of enemies, at least in the first few levels: "simple" spaceships which fire slow projectiles, "tanks" which seem to be more serious and take more hits to destroy, and "circles." The circles simply explode, spewing twenty or thirty very fast projectiles. This sounds dangerous, but is actually great once you learn to use them; they are very destructive for tanks, and can even blow up other circles.

The soundtrack is very techno, but it meshes very well with this type of game. Intense fun!

Dodge is a space-shooter in which you have no weapons originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/01/dodge-is-a-space-shooter-in-which-you-have-no-weapons/

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O'Reilly helps Japan, offers entire e-book catalog for 50% off, today only

O'reilly make some of the best computer books in the world. They also sell them as DRM-free e-books in a bunch of formats, including PDFs and Mobi for Kindle.

They usually offer one "Deal of the Day", which is a 50% discount code for a book chosen for that one day. But just for for today, they've created a discount code -- DDJPN -- that gives you a 50% discount on their entire catalog, and they give a part of the proceeds to aid Japan relief efforts.

So far they've raised over $60,000, and the day is still young. So if you've been recently hankering after some nerdy book (or three), now would be a great time to grab one.

O'Reilly helps Japan, offers entire e-book catalog for 50% off, today only originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/22/oreilly-helps-japan-offers-entire-e-book-catalog-for-50-off/

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How Secure is My Password lets you know just that

howsecureismypassword
We've all heard it before; you need to select a lengthy password, one that's hard to guess. Not a dictionary word. And it has to have some capital letters in it too, and some digits, and a symbol or two won't hurt either.

That's a handy set of rules to keep in mind, but How Secure is My Password helps us understand why they're important.

It's basically like a full-screen version of one of those password-strength meters websites sometimes use. But instead of showing you a bar going from "weak" to "strong", it shows you an estimation of how long your password would take to crack. That's a much more visceral way to understand why your password is strong.

For example, when I entered "rabbit", it came back with "your password is one of the 500 most common passwords. It could be cracked almost instantly". "rabbit5" would take two hours, "$rabbit5" would take 38 days, and "$rabbitZ5" would take 237 years. It's quite enlightening to see what a difference three simple characters can make.

How Secure is My Password lets you know just that originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/05/how-secure-is-my-password-lets-you-know-just-that/

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Interlocked is a three-dimensional brain teaser

interlocked
Back when I was a kid, I used to love crafting ornate puzzle boxes out of Lego. There would be just one way to open the box, by carefully shifting and rotating a bunch of pieces. Well, either that, or breaking the box in frustration.

Interlocked takes that spirit and turns it into a beautiful Flash game. It's a good thing the soundtrack is soothing, because the game itself can get pretty frustrating.

At the start of each level, you're presented with a box built out of blocks in different colors. You can click and drag the mouse to rotate the box any which way. Once you decide you want to shift a part of the box, hit SPACE to switch into "move" mode. You can then click any part of the box and drag it. Of course, you can only move a part as long as nothing is in its way. So it becomes a matter of understanding how the box is built, and what parts you need to move around so you could eventually take the box apart.

It's a tricky, difficult game, but it's a great brain teaser -- and definitely a keeper.

Interlocked is a three-dimensional brain teaser originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/29/interlocked-is-a-three-dimensional-brain-teaser/

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Security firm RSA attacked using Excel-Flash one-two sucker punch

RSA attacked using Flash vulnerability
It has emerged that the underlying cause of RSA's SecurID gaffe was the recently-reported zero-day vulnerability found in Adobe's Flash Player.

The exploit, which used specially-crafted Flash embedding in Excel spreadsheets, was first reported on March 15 and has since been fixed. RSA was hacked sometime in the first half of March when an employee was successfully spear phished and opened an infected spreadsheet. As soon as the spreadsheet was opened, an advanced persistent threat (APT) -- a backdoor Trojan -- called Poison Ivy was installed. From there, the attackers basically had free reign of RSA's internal network, which led to the eventual dissemination of data pertaining to RSA's two-factor authenticators.

The attack is reminiscent of the APTs used in the China vs. Google attacks from last year -- and indeed, Uri Rivner, the head of new technologies at RSA is quick to point out that that other big companies are being attacked, too: "The number of enterprises hit by APTs grows by the month; and the range of APT targets includes just about every industry. Unofficial tallies number dozens of mega corporations attacked [...] These companies deploy any imaginable combination of state-of-the-art perimeter and end-point security controls, and use all imaginable combinations of security operations and security controls. Yet still the determined attackers find their way in."

What we'd like to know, though, is whether the attack on RSA was caused by Adobe's lackadaisical approach to patching Flash -- or was it the other way around? Was it the RSA attack that first brought the zero-day vulnerability to Adobe's attention?

Security firm RSA attacked using Excel-Flash one-two sucker punch originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 06:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/06/security-firm-rsa-attacked-using-excel-flash-one-two-sucker-punc/

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WeedMaps Acquires Marijuana.com For A Kushy $4.20 Million

weedmapslogo-1Yes, really. General Cannabis Inc. has just announced that it's acquired Marijuana.com. The company didn't disclose the details of the deal, but we've confirmed that the acquisition price was $4.20 million. Naturally. The executives involved obviously have a sense of humor, but General Cannabis is a serious business: it's traded on the OTCQX market, and a year ago it acquired WeedMaps, a popular 'Yelp for Cannabis Dispensaries' site with a large following.  WeedMaps was topping $400,000 a month in revenues at the time of the acquisition and it's growing nicely ? the site did over $1 million in gross revenues in July, and now sees 10 million page views a month.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/qlT5ttc1zm4/

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