5 Tech Stories Worth Reading

1. Sony cut online security staff two weeks before it was hacked
Lawsuits against Japanese electronics giant Sony have revealed that the company laid off a number of employees responsible for network security, two weeks before attacks brought down the PlayStation Network.

2. How to use Twitter in the classroom
The advantage to using a tool like Twitter for education is that it’s instant and it’s to the point. There have been countless articles about whether or not social media makes us lazy, or whether it affects our attention spans. If that really is the case, why not use that to our advantage?

3. Laptops Powered by Typing Could Be on the Way
Australian researchers have figured out a way to harness the energy we use while typing to power a laptop. Using piezoelectricity, this method works in a similar way to cigarette lighters that create a spark by striking a piezoelectric crystal.

4. Stack Exchange Gets In The Conference Game With Stack Overflow DevDays
Q&A network Stack Exchange will be launching Stack Overflow DevDays this fall, a two day series of conferences targeting coders who want to brush up or dive into the latest programming technologies like MongoDB, HTML 5 and Coffeescript, with hour long tutorials put on by speakers culled from the developer community.

5. GitHub Releases Mac Client
Today GitHub announced a client for OSX, GitHub for Mac. The client walks developers through the process of creating a GitHub account and uploading repositories and provides a local admin interface similar to the traditional Web-based one.

BONUS

6. Cloud computing requires new thinking on privacy
The move to the cloud has broad implications on privacy and requires a lot of discussion on the boundaries and expectations for data in a cloud environment. The government’s approach to data privacy, in particular, is of great concern, from the legislation it enacts to the way law enforcement uses it, said Nolan Goldberg, senior counsel for IP and technology at law firm Proskauer.

5 Tech Stories Worth Reading

1. Push.IO Buys Mobile App Framework TapLynx From NewsGator
Push IO, a startup that offers a cloud-based mobile feature platform for developers has announced the acquisition of mobile app framework TapLynx from NewsGator.

2. Lendio Scores $2 Million More To Assist Business Owners In Securing Loans
Off the heels of raising $6 million in venture capital, Lendio has secured another $2 million in debt financing from Square 1 Bank

3. Windows 8 Brings Entirely New Look And Feel, Unifies Touch And PC Interfaces
Microsoft has just given a demonstration of what they’re calling Windows 8.

4. Apple Is Building Twitter Into Your iPhone And It’s A Game-Changer
Twitter integration is coming to the next version of iOS – Apple’s operating system for iPads, iPod Touches, and iPhones.

5. Google’s +1 Button For Websites Goes Live
Google announced their new +1 sharing button back in March, and it has now officially launched the +1 button for websites, which will let you share your favourite websites with your friends.

Bonus:

6. With Twitter Deal, A Photobucket Comeback Is Officially On
Photobucket just made a major leap forward on the comeback trail. The online photo sharing pioneer confirmed Wednesday its technology will power Twitter’s highly anticipated native photo sharing feature.

5 Tech Stories Worth Reading

Today’s Tech Stories I found interesting:

1. Google Wallet
Google is getting into the mobile payment market.

2. Twitter Photo Sharing
Twitter is finally putting a photo sharing service online. But can we expect constant outages with Twtimg as well? One interesting note, especially for developers. Twitter is going to crate it’s own version of your stand alone client application. If you rely on Twitter for your core business, expect to be challenged, by the source.

3. Apple iCloud
Apple plans on announcing it’s newly minted iCloud (formerly MobileMe), among other new products, at WWDC on June 6th. Expect Twitter and other Interwebs to be inundated with traffic.

4. Craigslist switches to MongoDB
Cragislist is in the process of incorporating MongoDB as it’s primary database system. MongoDB is a document style repository versus a traditional relational database.

5. Five Best Set-Top Boxes for On-Demand Video
On-demand video is taking the net by storm. Just look at Netflix, who is now responsible for +20% of all Internet traffic. Gaming consoles are very popular, but boxes such as Boxee and Roku are priced very competitively, and stream the same channels like Netflix, Hulu+, and Amazon Video on Demand.

What cool Tech stories have you read today?

Favorite iPhone Apps Of 2010

I’m installing and buying more apps for the iPhone than ever befor. A couple of reason for this, but mostly, I’m eating my own dog food as it were. Paying for great apps instead of always looking foe the free alternative.

As a software engineer, I want people to appreciate my work, and I hope they find it valuable. One way thy can show me that value is to pay me for it.

That said, I installed a few apps last year that totally rocked. I’ll share my three favorite apps of 2010. They are SpringPad, Camera+, and Mormon Channel.

SpringPad is an application similar to Evernote, but I like the way SpringPad visually represents my data. The iPhone app is every bit as good as the Web version. You can create multiple notebooks, and within the notebooks, you can create todo’s, links, text, and web clips.

The feature that really won me over though was the way it handles web clips. It actually works. I can never get Evernote web clips to work. All I get is the page text and usually no images, so when I look at it, the page is all screwed up.

Camera+ is an awesome application. There are so many options that it would take me days to explain them all. But here are a few of the ones that won me over.

  • Dozens of styles that allow me to alter the photos.
  • A timer, like a real camera
  • Edit existing images
  • Share multiple images to Facebook, Twitter and Email. This is huge, and the one feature that really won me over. Most of the other apps only let you send one at a time.

The Mormon Channel is a pretty narrow niche, but for me it brings together all the amazing resources the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-day Saints has to offer. Everything from scriptures, magazines, radio broadcasts, audio recordings, video records and more.

Another Mormon specific application that I am getting a lot of value from is LDS Scriptures App. This application is probably the most comprehensive LDS based application I’ve used. This application includes scriptures, manuals, magazines and other content. The only thing I wish it had more of would be audio and video content. But other than that, this is a rock solid app.

Other applications that I really enjoyed; Angry Birds, Facebook, TweetDeck, Pandora, Foursquare and DropBox.