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Saturday, 31 August 2013
Free Game Friday: Feed your free time with these food games
Is your stomach growling? Maybe it's just about lunch time? Well, hold yourself over with a couple food-related games that won't put a dent in your wallet—unlike that overpriced sandwich from the hoity-toity deli down the street.
You know that one special gift that we all have deep down? The one that drives our passion and dreams in life? Yeah, well, in Pan Man yours is the ability to flip a pancake.
Flip a pancake for fame! As a poor man living the simple life, you spend your time impressing your family and friends on how well you can flip a pancake. Throw it high and move around to line it up with the pan, smacking it back up for a multiplier bonus. If you let it sit in the pan too long, it starts to burn, which you know can ruin the aroma of any home.
If you manage to impress your friends at the pub, you go on to be a show spectacle at Caesar's Palace some years later. If you succeed there, you continue on to be a hit at a Caribbean vacation spot, and so on. You only get three pancakes to drop, and once you're out you're sent back home. Seeing the different final score screens is great depending on how long you were gone, giving a look into the hollowness of fame and the importance of family. Get out there, get flipping and be an international sensation—at least until you end up back home when you fail.
Are you a fan of Cooking Mama? Well now it's time to jump on the cupcake fad and open your own cupcake shop in Papa's Cupcakeria.
Take orders, bake cupcakes, get money. Take each customer's order, run to the batter station to fill the tray, throw them in the oven and make sure they don't burn, finally build them to the customer's satisfaction. You get rated at each station and earn tips based on how well you do—there are some serious aspects of micromanagement and mouse control skill. I've burned a lot of cupcakes because I was concentrating on getting those damn rainbow sprinkles just right.
If you want a newfound respect for the cupcake creators out there, or if you're just looking for a stressful, addictive, fun time: Papa's Cupcakeria will provide.
Now it's time to see the other side of these food games—time to go to the dentist. Operate Now! Dental Implant will have you scraping, cutting and pulling your way to some shinier smiles.
I'm glad I'm not a real dentist. *Shudder* At first, I didn't trust a game on a site called Flash Girl Games, but I underestimated it—this game isn't for the squeamish. Pick from a set of tools to operate on cartoon mouths with close-up views of injecting, cutting and drilling. Choose the wrong tool and your patient becomes more unstable, but don't take your time because you're on the clock!
If there's one thing that makes this game really difficult, but really intense, it's the sound. The music is so overdramatic and overwhelming you may actually start to sweat. The beeping heart monitor, counting down your seconds will keep your heart-rate on edge. If you're thinking of getting into the dentistry field, this game may change your mind!
Alex covers desktops, everything from fancy to practical. He's also an avid (addicted) gamer and loves following the industry.
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Dorm room entertainment: Build a killer system with just two devices
Dorm rooms are tiny, but that won’t stop you from having friends over after a long day of classes. But while you might be fine with watching a movie on your laptop, its screen is too small for a group of people—and with your limited space (and college student budget), you can’t really splurge on a tricked-out entertainment system either.
You can, however, create your own basic setup with two key devices: a high-quality display and an awesome set of speakers.
Instead of a TV, consider picking something a little more versatile, like an all-in-one PC or an HDTV monitor. The 27-inch Samsung LT27B750NDX/ZA ($550) is an HDTV monitor with a built-in TV tuner, so you can use it as a spare monitor for your laptop and for watching TV. The tuner supports your dorm’s cable network, and you can access myriad web apps from the display’s home screen—it includes streaming staples like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and Pandora. Videos look sharp on its 1080p resolution display.
This Samsung is a two-in-one HDTV and computer monitor. Because it’s Wi-Fi enabled, you can stream content from the monitor’s apps without needing your laptop hooked up. And thanks to the USB jacks on its side, you can connect your mouse and keyboard and browse the Internet through its built-in browser.
When choosing your speakers, take your budget and your needs into consideration. If you have a couple of different devices that play music, a Bluetooth speaker set is the way to go. Consider Brookstone’s Big Blue Studio ($150), which easily pairs with any Bluetooth-ready device, like your laptop, smartphone, or tablet—just hold down its big blue button to activate syncing mode. The Studio lasts about four straight hours on its battery, but you can also use it plugged in. With two front-facing full-range speaker drivers, a down-firing woofer, and a passive radiator, the Big Blue Studio sounds phenomenal, and doesn’t take up too much shelf space.
The Big Blue Studio pairs with any Bluetooth device. For a speaker dock made for the Apple family, Bowers & Wilikin’s Z2 ($400) is hard to beat. This speaker features a Lightening-connector dock (for the iPhone 5 and latest generation of iPods) and AirPlay wireless streaming, so you can hook your iPhone up or stream music wirelessly. The dock holds the iPhone 5 securely in place, so you don’t have to worry about it coming lose if someone bumps the Z2 during a party. Under the hood, the Z2 packs dual full-range drivers and a pair of 20-watt amplifiers, which ensure exceptional clarity no matter what type of music you’re listening to. It even has a remote, which is especially handy for killing the noise in a pinch if your floor’s Resident Assistant comes knocking.
B&W’s Z2 is the perfect Apple companion. If you want something showy, portable, and long-lasting, TDK’s Life on Record Wireless Boombox ($350) is a great option. It has the look and feel of an old-school boom box, but is far from that. To play a song, you can plug in your smartphone or iPod directly through its USB port, or beam it wirelessly via Bluetooth. The Boombox has an auxiliary input for other devices, too, and can even support some instruments. It boasts six hours of continuous play on its battery, which is solid considering its size. Inside, it houses two full-range drivers, two passive radiators, and one subwoofer, and you can adjust its bass and treble equalization for the best sound possible. Its final feature is an FM radio tuner, because no true boom box should be without it.
Macworld.auThe flashy Life on Record Wireless Boombox begs to be seen. With just two devices, you can create a killer mini-entertainment mecca for you and your friends. Now, throw a welcoming bash for your floormates to show off your new gear. Who can respect your dorm’s quiet hours with a setup like this?
Leah started out as a PCWorld columnist before Macworld scooped her up as an assistant editor. Now, she happily writes features and covers iOS apps, smartphone cases, gadget bags, and social media trends across all three of our sites.
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Review: Helium Music Manager 9 jazzes up music management
You don't have to be a hard-core audiophile to appreciate Helium Music Manager, but music fans with will get the most out of this application. This music organizer and player that helps you stay on top of extensive collections of files. It features an attractive design, but sometimes it's just a bit harder to use than it should be.
Helium Music Manager features a wizard that makes it easy to add music files. I like how easy Helium Music Manager makes getting started: Launch the application, and it displays a wizard that lets you select which files you'd like to add to its music library. The process is quick, though adding thousands of files obviously takes a bit of time.
Once your files are available through Helium, you can see its organizational features at work. Chief among them is Helium's tag editor, which lets you work with individual files or batches, to speed things along. Casual users may be overwhelmed with how many options there are for tagging audio files, but music aficionados will appreciate the choices.
The application lets you monitor its progress as it adds music files. Unfortunately, many of Helium's other management features are not available in the free version. You have to upgrade to either the $29 Premium or $49 Network (up to 5 users) versions to take advantage of the features that allow you to analyze and repair MP3 and FLAC files, and locate and manage duplicate files. Rival MediaMonkey offers this kind of de-duping feature in its free version.
Helium makes syncing with mobile devices more complicated than it should be. Helium proved more difficult to sync with mobile devices than MediaMonkey. That application synced easily with both an iPhone and an Android phone. Helium, meanwhile, made the process disappointingly cumbersome, requiring that I choose a folder on the phone into which I'd like to transfer the music—and it didn't let me specify exactly which music to tranfer. A more automated, streamlined syncing process would go a long way toward increasing Helium's appeal.
Helium Music Manager Premium does offer additional features that make it worth the upgrade for heavy users, including the Music Browser, which allows you to browse through your music collection in different ways. It displays lists of recently played files, top artists of the week, and tag clouds that let you see visual representations of artists and genres. It's a neat way to find new music that might otherwise be buried in your collection.
Helium's design is attractive and modern. I like Helium Music Manager 9's design. Its slick black and fuschia look is appealing and modern. But I do wish the application itself were easier to use and that more of its features were available in the free version.
Liane Cassavoy is a veteran technology and business journalist. She contributes regularly to PCWorld and has written about business issues and products for Entrepreneur Magazine and other publications. She is the author of two business start-up guides published by Entrepreneur Press.
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Leaked U.S. spying budget reveals investments in 'groundbreaking' cryptanalysis
The U.S. intelligence community is reportedly using a fifth of its $52.6 billion annual budget to fund cryptography-related programs and operations.
Some of those funds are invested in finding weaknesses in cryptographic systems that would allow breaking encrypted communications collected from the Internet and elsewhere, according to a portion of a top-secret document published Thursday by The Washington Post and obtained from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The document is the fiscal year 2013 budget proposal summary for the National Intelligence Program, which spans 16 agencies with over 107,000 employees. The entire report called “FY 2013 Congressional Budget Justification” has 178 pages, according to the Post, but the newspaper only published 17, including a 5-page statement signed by U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Edward Snowden
In his statement, Clapper listed the primary areas of investment for the intelligence community which included Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). In respect to SIGINT he wrote: “We are bolstering our support for clandestine SIGINT capabilities to collect against high priority targets, including foreign leadership targets. Also, we are investing in groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities to defeat adversarial cryptography and exploit internet traffic.”
Cryptanalysis is the science of analyzing cryptographic systems in order to find weaknesses that would allow obtaining the contents of encrypted messages without advance knowledge of the encryption key.
Previous documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA is collecting Internet communications en-masse with the help of telecommunication and technology companies.
U.S. companies that operate the backbone telecommunications and Internet infrastructure are paid millions of dollars every year by the government to allow the NSA to collect data as it moves through their fiber-optic cables and networks, the Post reported Thursday.
The newly leaked budget reveals that this money is paid through a project called the “Corporate Partner Access” that was expected to cost $278 million during fiscal year 2013, the newspaper said. There are some other payments for “Foreign Partner Access” totalling $56.6 million, although it’s not clear if these are for foreign companies, foreign governments or other entities.
The NSA’s mass upstream interception of Internet traffic has prompted many people in the security community to wonder what the agency’s crypto-cracking capabilities might be in relation to encryption schemes and protocols that are in widespread use on the Internet today. Some crypto experts believe that there is not reason to believe the NSA can crack strong encryption algorithms vetted by scientists, but others said that the feasibility of breaking widely used encryption protocols like SSL/TLS depends on various factors, like key size and other configurations.
While the leaked budget document does not provide details about the NSA’s ability to crack encrypted communication, it does confirm that cryptography and cryptanalysis are one of the U.S. intelligence community’s key areas of interest.
Related: Report: The NSA pays millions for U.S. telecom access
Twenty-one percent, or roughly $11 billion, of the 2013 budget was intended for the Consolidated Cryptologic Program (CCP), which includes NSA programs and is staffed by around 35,000 employees. This makes it the second most expensive program of the intelligence community after the Central Intelligence Agency program, which was supposed to receive 28 percent of the funds.
Of the $11 billion used to fund the CPP, around $2.5 billion, or 23 percent, were intended for “collection and operations” and $1.6 billion, or 15 percent, for “processing and exploitation.” The program’s biggest expenses were estimated in the “enterprise management and support” category which was set to receive 26 percent of the funds.
AT&T’s contract-free Aio service going nationwide in mid-September
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Microsoft: Talks with U.S. government on surveillance transparency break down
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