Author: Dr. Bill

Facebook now has an Appstore. Does EVERYONE have an Appstore now? Oh well, I have to wonder if you really NEED Facebook apps!

Introducing the App Center

From the Facebook Developer Blog:

“Today, we’re announcing the App Center, a new place for people to find social apps. The App Center gives developers an additional way to grow their apps and creates opportunities for more types of apps to be successful.

In the coming weeks, people will be able to access the App Center on the web and in the iOS and Android Facebook apps. All canvas, mobile and web apps that follow the guidelines can be listed. All developers should start preparing today to make sure their app is included for the launch.

A place to find great apps
For the over 900 million people that use Facebook, the App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates, Viddy, and Bubble Witch Saga.

Everything has an app detail page, which helps people see what makes an app unique and lets them install it before going to an app.”

The GIMP 2.8 is out! And, it is causing quite a buzz in Open Source circles! It is time to upgrade! And, if you haven’t tried the GIMP yet, download it and give it a spin! It is my favorite Open Source image editor! I use it all the time!

https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

“GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.”

Security issues with Flash and PHP! Dewd! Patch as soon as possible!

Emergency Patches Pushed for Flash, PHP

“Adobe pushed an emergency patch Friday for its Flash Player to fix a flaw that’s being actively exploited to attack computers running Windows.

Meanwhile, software writers are still scrambling to fix a vulnerability, made public earlier this week, in PHP, a scripting language which is used widely to run servers on the Web, including those of Facebook.

The Adobe fix aims to cure an ‘object confusion vulnerability’ discovered in all versions of the player — Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Android — but thus far has only been used to attack Windows systems using Microsoft’s browser software, Internet Explorer, according to a company bulletin on the subject.

When exploited, the defect could crash Flash Player and allow an attacker to take control of your computer.

Malware exploiting the vulnerability is being delivered in email messages containing an attachment. The email, though, is highly targeted, which means it’s directed at a limited number of individuals.

Adobe’s PDF file format has become a popular vehicle in recent times for delivering a malicious payload to a computer, according to John Harrison, a group product manager at Symantec. ‘The malicious attachments that are coming these days don’t include executables; they’re a PDF or [Microsoft] Office document,’ he told PCWorld.

‘Today,’ he adds, ‘PDFs are inherently more dangerous, in my opinion, than executables because you’re lulled into thinking you’re just looking at a document that has some text. You may be reading some text, but behind the scenes it’s really doing whatever an attacker wants.’

Adobe recommends that Windows, Macintosh and Linux users of Flash Player 11.2.202.233 or earlier, upgrade to the latest version of the program immediately.

The same should be done by users of Android 4.x using Flash Player 11.1.115.7 and Android 2.x and 3.x using version 11.1.111.8 of the software.”

Today is Star Wars Day!  No kidding… it is May the Fourth (be with you…)  Get it?  Plus, Avengers Day… the new movie starts!  (AWESOMENESS!)  And, tomorrow is Free Comic Book Saturday at your local comic book store.  So, go get an Avengers comic book… and, drop by a Star Wars cantina!  DEWD!  How geeky a weekend is this?!?!  Oh, and this Saturday night is also the Super Moon!  (The moon is closest to the earth.)  EPIC!

Looks like the next generation will be a on-line video savvy bunch! A whole generation of YouTubers! Dewd. Makes you wonder how many cute cat videos will be added. But then, we ALL need cute cat videos! It is the reason for the Interwebs!

Study: 37% Of U.S. Teens Now Use Video Chat, 27% Upload Videos

“Video chat is still something many people don’t feel comfortable with. For U.S. teens, however, it is quickly becoming a pretty routine way of communicating with each other. According to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 37% of teens now regularly use Skype, Apple’s iChat and startups like Tinychat to video chat with each other.

There are significant differences between how many boys and girls use video chat, though. Only a third of boys use video chat while 42% of girls said they have video chatted. Maybe unsurprisingly, those teens who use the Internet more frequently also use video chats more often than their peers who only go online a few times per week. The same is true for teens who text and use social media more often than their peers.”

Discovery Communications, home of MythBusters, has just bought Revision3!

Welcome to the Family, Revision3!

From Discovery: “This afternoon, our Chief Digital Officer, JB Perrette, shared some exciting news: Discovery Communications will be acquiring leading online video production company Revision3. With tons of engaging shows, millions of fans online and one of the 10 largest networks on YouTube, we can’t wait to welcome Jim Louderback and his team to the Discovery family!”

“What’s beyond silicon? There have been a number of proposals: protein computers, DNA computers, optical computers, quantum computers, molecular computers. Dr. Michio Kaku says ‘if I were to put money on the table I would say that in the next ten years as Moore’s Law slows down, we will tweak it.'”