Today they have released the new layout and its excellent! What we really like the most is the new slider on the home-page, on the old version of the site the slider just displayed pictures of the videos however, on the new layout the slider now has the video themselves so you can either listen to the video straight away or click the link to the videos page to find out more!

What we have also noticed is that the new “Related Videos” suggestion now displays pictures of the videos which are quite usefull.

Take a look for yourself by clicking this link here or like them on Facebook by clicking here.

Researchers used a special tool to monitor energy use by several apps on Android and Windows Mobile handsets.

Findings suggested that in one case 75% of an app’s energy consumption was spent on powering advertisements.

Report author Abhinav Pathak said app makers must take energy optimisation more seriously.

Free applications typically have built-in advertisements so developers can make money without having to charge for the initial app download.

Mr Pathak told the BBC that developers should perhaps think twice when utilising third-party advertising and analytics services in their app.

The research, produced by at team at Purdue University in Indiana, USA, looked at popular apps such as Angry Birds and Facebook.

Due to restrictions built into Apple’s mobile operating system, the team was unable to run tests on the iPhone.

In the case of Angry Birds, research suggested that only 20% of the total energy consumption was used to actually play the game itself.

Of the rest, 45% is used finding out your location with which it can serve targeted advertising.

’3G tail’

The tests were carried out by running the app over a 3G connection. The results noted that many apps leave connections open for up to 10 seconds after downloading information.

In Angry Birds, that brief period – described by researchers as a “3G tail” – accounted for over a quarter of the app’s total energy consumption.

Chris McClelland, director of Belfast-based app developer Ecliptic Labs, said he was not surprised by the findings.

“Advertising needs to connect to the server and send information about location,” he explained to the BBC.

“That just takes up so much battery. It seeps up the energy.”

He said such practices were largely unavoidable if users wanted to enjoy free, ad-supported games and applications.

However, he said developers should give more consideration to energy consumption when building in new features.

The bottom-right corner of your desktop display will forever be known to most people as the place you put your mouse cursor when watching a movie or video in full-screen mode. If you want to view your movie or game sans mouse, your only real option is to move the mouse to the edge of the screen. Hopefully, there’s no hidden control bar there, because that would cause it to display instead.

Kimbra – “Good Intent” video, Mammal Films, 2011.

The problem is, at least on newer versions of Windows, that the cursor isn’t designed to disappear after a period of inactivity. To solve this problem, try out AutoHideMouseCursor from Nenag Hrg. This free software is easy to use, lightweight, and portable.

Step 1: Download and install AutoHideMouseCursor.

Step 2: Run the extracted program.

Step 3: By default, the inactivity trigger is set to 5 seconds. To adjust the time, move the slider on the lower-left side of the program window.

Step 4: In the Preferences heading, check the option labeled Start with Windows. This will ensure that the app runs every time your computer is shut down or restarted.

Step 5: Under the #Options menu, make sure the Always start minimized (ToTray) choice is enabled.

That’s all there is for setup! After a period of inactivity, your mouse cursor will automatically hide. Not only is this perfect for home uses, you may also find this program helpful if you spend a lot of time in word processors at work.

Shutting off Windows used to be a simple matter of clicking the Start button and choosing the “Shut down” option. But the Windows 8 beta has no Start button. So how do you shut it down?

Microsoft has concocted a series of manuevers and keyboard shortcuts to shut down the new OS. Though slower and clumsier than going through the Start button, the new steps at least let you fully turn Windows 8 off.

The most basic way to shut down Windows 8 is through the Charms bar.

In the Metro interface, hover your mouse over the Zoom icon that appears in the lower right corner of the screen. The Charms bar should then pop up displaying several icons. Moving your mouse up the screen will reveal the names of each icon, including Search, Share, Start, Devices, and Settings. Click the Settings icon and then the Power Icon. You should see three options: Sleep, Restart, and Shut down. Clicking Shut down will close Windows 8 and turn off your PC.

You can more quickly reach the settings screen by pressing the Windows key and the i key. From there, clicking the Power button will give you access to the same three options mentioned above.

Another alternative is to sign out of your account and then shut down. You can either click your account photo or image at the top or press Ctrl/Alt/Del. Click the option to sign out. That will bring you to the opening screen for Windows 8 which you then need to pull up to access your login screen. The Shut down icon will be in the lower right corner. Click it to reveal the options for Sleep, Restart, and Shut down.

One more option is to switch to the Desktop and press Alt/F4. That will bring up a dedicated Shut down screen where you can choose to put the PC to sleep, restart, or shut down completely. You just need to make sure to save all your work and close all your applications first before you shut down using this method.

Laptop users have yet another way to shut down Windows 8 through the Power settings. Right-click on the hot corner that appears in the lower left of your screen–you can access this from the Metro UI or the Desktop. You should see a popup menu appear with a variety of Windows features, such as Network Connections, System, Device Manager, and Control Panel. Click the option for Control Panel.

Click the category for Hardware and Sound and then click the link for Power Options. From here you can set Windows to shut down if you press the power button or simply close the lid of your laptop.

Though you have several ways of shutting down Windows 8, none of them are quick or convenient. Even with the Start button gone, why didn’t Microsoft include a more user-friendly way to close Windows 8?

With the new OS, Microsoft has set up a new hybrid boot-up process that lets you boot up more quickly. But to achieve this faster speed, Windows 8 actually needs to go into hibernation mode rather than a full shut down.

By moving the Shut down option to a more remote spot, Microsoft may be assuming that people will let their PCs hibernate instead of shutting them down completely. But I think users will be thrown by the lack of an out-in-the-open Shut down button.

There’s still plenty of time for Microsoft to tweak Windows 8 between now and its final release. Let’s hope that a more direct Shut down option is one of the beneficiaries.

As political parties, bank managers, and drug dealers have often found to their cost, infiltrators can be very hard to detect.

This is something that, perhaps, the members of Anonymous recently discovered for themselves, at least according to Symantec, the online security people.

For the company believes that members of the hacking collective were deceived into downloading a Zeus Trojan that gave up their banking details and other personal information.

On its blog, Symantec described how, on January 20–the day of the rather charming Kim Dotcom’s sequestration by the FBI–members of Anonymous used their own personal computers to participate in DDoS attacks.

These were launched against a broad and institutional swathe of targets, such as the Recording Industry Association of America and the FBI.

Some mean-spirited–and still anonymous–individual allegedly inserted a Zeus Trojan into the Slowloris attack tool, of which many DDoS-ers are fond.

When members of Anonymous downloaded this tool, their banking details were apparently exposed like boxer shorts above low-slung pants and sent to a remote server.

I am grateful to MSNBC for discovering Symantec’s troubling analysis.

However, Anonymous seems to have unloaded its own feelings about it.

For, on the YourAnonNews Twitter feed, there was posted a fierce rebuttal: “This post from @Symantec about @YourAnonNews’s spreading the DDOS hijacking trojan is wrong & libelous to say the least http://goo.gl/MUVxD.”

The following tweet read: “Dear @Symantec – @YourAnonNews NEVER posted the DDOS hijacker nor did we attempt to trick people; instead we WARNED of it.”

And a third offered: “Also, @Symantec – maybe if you paid attention to more details and did proper due diligence, your source code wouldn’t have been stolen. SMH.”

So there.

Some will chortle with schadenfreude that the hackers may have themselves been hacked. But doesn’t this tale, if true, offer something greater–and something sadder–about the brittleness of human trust?

In Anonymous’ case, one assumes that many of its members have never met in person. Their relationship is guided entirely by their ability to trust through gadget-based means.

It is the equivalent of trying to find a lover online and only ever having dates with them online. You can’t so easily look them in the eyes and see if their facial expressions and body movements betray their true thoughts. Skype doesn’t quite deliver the same chance of interpreting human nuance.

Whenever you’re trying to collectively build something–or even collectively trying to destroy something–a twisted being will soon waft into your day, pretend they’re on your side, and then try to ruin things.

SAN FRANCISCO–Every year, security vendors gather at the RSA conference here to reaffirm their commitment to fencing out hackers and keeping data safe. And every year, corporate and government Web sites continue to fall victim to basic attacks. Heck, ubersecurity firm RSA itself was compromised not that long ago, as was digital certificate heavyweight VeriSign, even if it didn’t admit it for two years.

In other words, very little changes from year to year beyond the buzzwords du jour bruited about by security vendors. “It’s Groundhog Day,” says Josh Corman, director of security intelligence at Akamai.

Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA, at least had the presence of mind to be humble, acknowledging in his keynote that current “security models” are inadequate. Yet he couldn’t help but lapse into rah-rah boosterism by the end of his speech. “Never have so many companies been under attack, including RSA,” he said. “Together we can learn from these experiences and emerge from this hell, smarter and stronger than we were before.”

Really? History would suggest otherwise. Instead of finally locking down our data and fencing out the shadowy forces who want to steal our identities, the security industry is almost certain to present us with more warnings of newer and scarier threats and bigger, more dangerous break-ins and data compromises and new products that are quickly outdated. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“The cybersecurity cycle will go on for the rest of our lives,” predicts Rod Beckstrom, president and CEO of ICANN and former director of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center. “The industry takes a long time to evolve.”

Of course, while it’s evolving, the rest of us are still coming to grips with existing vulnerabilities–to say nothing of trying to figure out which future problems are going to pose us the biggest headaches. This is a world, after all, with keyloggers that record bank account information. With “advanced persistent threats,” or APTs, that conduct long-term industrial espionage. With government secrets left on unencrypted laptops and malware like Stuxnet apparently designed to sabotage national nuclear-arms programs.

The industry’s sluggishness is enough to breed pervasive cynicism in some quarters. Critics like Corman are quick to note that if security vendors really could do what they promise, they’d simply put themselves out of business. “The security industry is not about securing you; it’s about making money,” Corman says. “Minimum investment to get maximum revenue.”

Even if you’re not quite as jaded as Corman, there are still two big–maybe insuperable–obstacles lying between us and security Nirvana. First, there’s the seemingly endless arms race between hackers and defenders, one that shows no sign of slowing anytime soon.

Second, there’s the fact that attackers are–at least for now–much more motivated to get in than companies are to keep them out.

Put together, it’s enough to make almost anyone despair. One executive at a top security firm who asked not to be identified admitted that technology innovation is lagging behind the criminal hackers, whose motivation is greater than the level of risk corporations feel they face.

“Never before have so many spent so much and accomplished so little,” he said.

Part of the problem is the increasing pervasiveness of networked computers, software, and social networks. There are more targets for attackers to hit. Twenty years ago we didn’t have mobile phones and Facebook and Internet-connected power-grid controllers. Digital thieves are sneaking in new side doors before companies even realize they’re unlocked.

And the attackers are fast learners, able to devise new methods for getting into computer systems even when strong defenses are in place. When antivirus software blocked malware, lurking villains came up with cunning social engineering tricks to lure you to the malware.

Making matters worse is the fact that the white hats are riding lame stallions and firing rusty revolvers. Models like antivirus signature updating–which protects only against known threats–are fundamentally broken, yet many companies still rely on them. The promises of Public Key Infrastructure have not materialized. Some hope that analysis of Big Data–the tons of log and network information housed within corporate systems–can identify points of weakness and block hackers. We’ll see.

“We’re fighting the problems, but they’re not solvable,” said David Perry, president of G Data Software North America. “Everyone has expected the magic bullet forever, but there is none.”

Companies and consumers still want an easy fix, though–and that often plays right into the hands of hackers. When you see headlines about identity fraud and data breaches, it’s much easier to buy a new antimalware package than to really analyze the problem and switch gears. “There’s a mentality that we can solve the problem with another product,” said Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at Cisco. If only it were true.

Getting companies to devote time and money to adequately address their security issues is particularly difficult because they often don’t think there’s a problem until they’ve been compromised. And for some, too much knowledge can be a bad thing. “Part of the problem might be plausible deniability, that if the company finds something, there will be an SEC filing requirement,” Landesman said.

Of course, it would help if software in general was less buggy. Some security experts are pushing for a more proactive approach to security much like preventative medicine can help keep you healthy. The more secure the software code, the fewer bugs and the less chance of attackers getting in.

“Most of RSA, especially on the trade show floor, is reactive security and the idea behind that is protect broken stuff from the bad people,” said Gary McGraw, chief technology officer at Cigital. “But that hasn’t been working very well. It’s like a hamster wheel.”

This concept helped Microsoft improve its battered image 10 years ago after being hammered by viruses that infected tons of computers by exploiting holes in Windows. Microsoft launched its Software Development Lifecycle program to focus on building software with security in mind and it has been a success, making its products some of the most secure in the industry.

That sort of solution, though, isn’t particularly scalable, especially not with coders churning out apps and applications to meet the demand for new apps on new devices. “We know how to build software with fewer bugs per square inch and we are getting much better at that,” McGraw said. “The problem is we’re building more square miles of code than ever before.”

There is no easy answer, because there are so many aspects to security, said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at BT.

“The fundamental problems are about using technology, implementation, user interface, installations, updates, all of those ancillary things,” he said. “And there are economic barriers that people who deploy the technology don’t have financial motivations to do so…. The person in charge of the problem doesn’t have the ability to fix it and the person with the ability to fix it isn’t in charge.”

And no one wants to pay money to provide security for anyone else. Like pollution, security incidents are something everyone potentially contributes to and suffers as a result of. “This might be a fundamental mismatch that the market cannot resolve,” without government intervention, Schneier said.

After checking the site out for a while we quite like it and think you will do too!

So a bit about the site: thousands upon thousands of people upload videos of themselves showcasing their talent whether it is singing, playing an instrument etc. In some cases this has been quite successful for instance Justin Bieber was found over YouTube!

However, as everyone is now catching on to this idea it can be quite hard to find the real talent amongst all the fakes! So, MusicMeerkat publishes artists from those in their teens to those in their elderly years showcasing their talent.

Whether they are doing it to get some form of work out of it or just to see what people think you can find some brilliant people with amazing talents on the new service!

What we quite like about MusicMeerkat is that it still allows you to comment on a video and it is so easy to navigate around. One of the features that really stands out is the feature which allows you to “Turn of the lights”. This feature dims if you like the rest of the page which can be quite useful in times!

Another great feature is the rate feature, this allows you to give the video an amount of stars out of 5 so it allows you to get your opinion heard and you can see what others are thinking too!

If you want to check the new service out then head over to MusicMeerkat.com.

By changing a privacy setting, you can limit the likelihood of receiving Facebook friend requests from total strangers.

Do you get friend requests from strangers or people you hardly or don’t want to know? Unless you embrace all comers on Facebook, these requests are nothing but an annoyance. One likely source of such requests is people seeing your profile in the People You May Know box that sometimes appears to the right of the News Feed.

By default, Facebook broadcasts your profile to everyone, but you can restrict your appearances in the People You May Know box to only friends of friends. Here’s how:

Go to your Facebook privacy settings by clicking on the downward arrow in the upper-right corner and selecting Privacy Settings. Scroll down and click the Edit Settings link next to How You Connect. For the question, Who can send you friend requests? select Friends of Friends and then click Done.

Now, only friends of your Facebook friends will be able to send you friend requests, and according to Facebook, your profile will appear in the People You May Know section only for people who are friends of friends.

Ads within instant-messenger or browser clients are rarely welcomed by the user. They can slow down your computer and have the potential to contain harmful content–from adult products you don’t want young eyes to see to adware or malware. RemoveAds is a Windows program that can be installed to remove those pesky (and sometimes dangerous) advertisements from just about any IM client or browser.

Step 1: Download and install RemoveAdsRemoveAds. 

Step 2: Launch the program from the Start menu by searching for RemoveAds.

Step 3: Be on the lookout for any ads that made it through the blocking process. If you see an ad on a Web site, open the Database tab of the RemoveAds window and select Advertising site suggestions. Enter the required information and click send to submit the ad site for blacklisting.

There’s very little setup or maintenance required for this app, other than the occasional submission of newer ad sites. Simply install and enjoy!

Iranians suffered a wide spread Internet outage today, the second disruption of in the past 10 days to leave millions without access to e-mail and social networks.

The latest disruption blocked access to all encrypted International sites outside the country that operate on Secure Sockets Layer protocol, Reuters reports.

“E-mail, proxies, and all the secure channels that start with ‘https’ are not available,” a Tehran-based technology expert told Reuters. “The situation regarding accessing these Web sites is even worse than last week because the VPNs are not working.”

Many Iranians use proxy servers over Virtual Private Networks to circumvent government efforts to block access to foreign news sites and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The latest outage comes less than two weeks before planned parliamentary elections next month and less than two weeks after Iranians lost access to Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo e-mail. As in that instance, the government has not yet made an official statement regarding the disruption.

Iran’s information minister told the Islamic Republic News Agency in January that a firewalled national Internet would soon become operational but no specifics were given as to when that would happen. The creation of such a vast “intranet” has worried cyber activists in Iran because it would give the government an advantage in its cyber cat-and-mouse battle with opponents.