Freesat is launching a revamped TV guide to pull together content from your satellite dish and the Internet. Free Time has a unified now and next view that lets you search backwards for shows you've missed that are available on-demand. It currently supports BBC iPlayer and ITV player, with 4OD and Demand 5 due to be added before Christmas -- and while it's still a rumor at this point, we're expecting Netflix to arrive on the platform at some point in the future. The guide will form the centerpiece of the next generation of Freesat hardware, which will be available for £280 when it arrives later this month.
Hacker group Antisec has released a dump of 1 million unique identifiers (UDIDs) from Apple iOS devices tonight. The records reportedly came from a file found on an FBI laptop back in March.
During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java, during the shell session some files were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv" turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc. the personal details fields referring to people appears many times empty leaving the whole list incompleted on many parts. no other file on the same folder makes mention about this list or its purpose.
The file that was found was said to contain over 12 million device records, including Apple UDIDs, usernames, push notification tokens, and in some instances, names, cell phone numbers, addresses and zip codes.
The group released 1 million of these records but stripped most personal information. The final release includes Apple UDIDs, APNS (push notification) Tokens, Device Name (e.g. "Arnold's iPhone") and Device Type (e.g. "iPhone"). MacRumors has been able to confirm that the UDIDs appear to be legitimate.
The source of the data is not entirely clear, though the type of data is typical for the kind of information an iOS app developer would collect to deliver push notifications to users. It seems an App developer or developers are the original likely source of the information, though no specific information is yet available. Right now there's no easy way to determine if your device's UDID was included in the list, beyond downloading the list yourself.
The actual implications of the leak, even if your UDID is found, aren't entirely clear. The UDIDs themselves are rather harmless in isolation. Apple has previously come under fire for the use of these globally identifying ids. The privacy risks, however, typically come from these ids being used across ad networks and apps to piece together a more complete picture of activity and interests of the user. But it was reported back in 2011 that by leveraging existing networks, information and even login access can be obtained from UDIDs. It's not yet clear if the released push tokens can be used in any manner. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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In the business world, meeting invitations are considered mandatory if you are emailed one directly, and only optional if you are carbon copied. These arcane rules work great in an office when everyone understands this business etiquette. But what if you’re scheduling a family event and your son or daughter does not accept your invitation, say, to pick them up from soccer practice? Do you figure out if you still need to pick them up, or do you reschedule? Using the business world’s invitation system just flat out will not work with kids. I know from experience, they will not accept your invitations.
So what is the solution? Knowing family members’ busy schedules can be more than useful, it can be a way to stay connected with one another. Thankfully, there is more than one way to keep an entire family up to date with the various events we have in our lives. The following is a list of three different techniques that members of an iCloud-using family can stay connected and share their schedules with one another.
Create one family calendar account
Having a single family iCloud account set up on all of your Apple products is one such technique. Anyone can add any event at any time and everyone will see it instantly. This may be the easiest way to go, but it does require some initial setup and configuration. Here is what you need to do to set up a shared iCloud account on your family’s devices:
On the first family member’s device you are going to create a new AppleID at and set up an iCloud account associated with that AppleID.
In the System Preferences of each family member’s Mac, add a new account using the AppleID and password you just created.
In the Settings of each family member’s iOS device, add a new account using the AppleID and password you just created.
On all devices, ensure that the Calendar option is turned on in each account’s respective mail settings.
Once all of the devices are configured, you just start creating calendars and adding events as if it was your own personal account. You can even use this one iCloud account to share notes, reminders and contacts. Basically keep all of your family’s business up to date and in one place.
Share multiple calendars for common events
Sharing calendars requires everyone to share and subscribe to each others’ calendars. Not exactly practical for everyday events, but it may make makes sense for stuff that is set in stone like school calendars, holidays and game schedules. These events may not limited to just one family and can be shared with just about anyone. Sharing all of the events that you add to a particular calendar can be accomplished by performing the following tasks:
Create a New Calendar in iCal. Choose the account you want to share from.
Select the Calendar you created in iCal’s Calendar List View on the left and then select the Share Calendar option from the Edit menu.
Determine if you want to share the Calendar with everyone, or just a few individuals from your Contacts List.
If sharing with everyone, copy the Calendar’s URL by right clicking on the Calendar entry you created in iCal’s Calendar List View.
Subscribing to a shared calendar is accomplished by selecting New Calendar Subscription from iCal’s File Menu. On the screen that pops up, just enter the Calendar’s URL that you want to subscribe to. Keep in mind that this technique will share all events added to that particular calendar. So you will want to create multiple calendars for each of the social events that are important to the family. Currently, sharing and subscribing to shared calendars can only be set up via iCal on OS X. And any shared calendars that you manually add on any of your iOS devices will not push to iCloud.
Send invitations on special occasions
There are still times when sending an invitation does work: For invitees that you do not want to let create and edit events on your shared family calendar, and those one-off events that do not make sense to create their own shared calendar. The benefit of using iCloud’s invitation system is that you can also see who has accepted, who has declined, and who has not done anything at all.
Create a new Event and enter in the title as well as a date and time for the new event.
Select Add Invitees and enter in the e-mail address of those you wish to invite.
Send the invitation.
Recipients of an iCloud invitation will be able to RSVP by accepting, declining or indicating that they might be attending the event. Two things you need to keep in mind when inviting someone to an event: what account you are using to create the event with, and where the invitees have their accounts. Not every email service supports calendars, and not every calendar supports the ability to invite others to an event. When sending from your iCloud account, the RSVP status of the invitation will be managed regardless of what email system the recipient is using.
With these three techniques, you should be able to manage your family’s busy schedule. Each one can be used separately, or you can use a combination of the three depending on what you hope to accomplish. Try one out just to see if you feel it will help everyone know, where everyone is at. It may surprise you when you see how many events your entire family manages each week.
ABC News has upgraded its iPad app to deliver extensive elections coverage from the conventions and presidential debates leading up to the elections in November.
The app will provide a continuous news flow this week of the Democratic National Convention, including three live streams for mobile and desktop.
Politics is more interactive than ever. It's hard to miss a beat from the campaign trail as media channels use social networks and political apps for continuous coverage. For example, YouTube launched an Elections Hub, an online one-stop-shop for elections coverage, this year. The hub features content from ABC News, Al Jazeera English, The New York Times and other media.
WeForPresident is an online civic engagement platform: Users can learn about and debate key issues, check out candidates and political organizations to join and learn how to register to vote.
Almost every politician knows he or she needs to be on Facebook these days -- but did you know that developers are disrupting politics-as-usual with the power of Facebook's Open Graph, too?
These five apps, which were on display at a Facebook event during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, are shaking up the political scene via social media.
Other facts about Facebook and politics that were revealed during the event:
There are now more Facebook users in the U.S. than people that voted in the 2008 election
People on Facebook are 57% more likely to persuade a friend or co-worker to vote, according to Pew
There are 110,000 political Facebook Pages in the U.S.… Continue reading...
The social media numbers for the Republican National Convention are in, and they're impressive: more than 4 million tweets with a peak of 14,743 tweets per minute, 2.5 million-plus YouTube views and 300,000 hours of streaming video viewed in a three-day period with an average view time of more than 30 minutes.
Given how ubiquitous social media has become since the last election in 2008, it's not surprising that this year's conventions are doing well online -- but these numbers certainly set a high bar for the Democratic National Convention, beginning Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina.
"I think our [digital] strategy was right on, and it sets the bar for how future conventions an… Continue reading...
Nearly 50% of my Facebook friends are married, which adds up to 123 people total. Meanwhile, 20.1% or 51 of my friends are in a relationship, and 13 are engaged.
All this information I now know thanks to a new "Facebook Report" by Wolfram Alpha, which will gift you with more knowledge than you could possibly ever want to know about yourself and your Facebook profile.
You can access your data by going to Wolfram Alpha's site and typing "Facebook report" into the search box. Results will ask you to authenticate the app, giving it permission to analyze your account and tell you details.
For instance, I now know I’m Facebook friends with 10 Davids, making that name the most popular… Continue reading...
AirDrop is a dead-simple OS X service for beaming files back and forth between Macs wirelessly, but a simple terminal command can make it even better. More »
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