Moopz Tech News

Path uploads your entire iPhone address book to its servers

2012-02-08T08:00:00Z

Path uploads your entire iPhone address book to its servers 8 Feb 2012 – Singapore It all started innocently enough. I was thinking of implementing a Path Mac OS X app as part of our regularly scheduled hackathon. Using the awesome mitmproxy tool which was featured on the front page of the Hacker News yesterday, I started to observe the various API calls made to Path’s servers from the iPhone app. It all seemed harmless enough until I observed a POST request to https://api.path.com/3/contacts/add. Upon inspecting closer, I noticed that my entire address book (including full names, emails and phone...

Pinterest Hits 10 Million Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site Ever

2012-02-08T00:24:30Z

It’s beautiful, it’s addictive, and now Pinterest is having its glorious hockey stick moment. TechCrunch has attained exclusive data from comScore showing Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly visitors, crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history. In fact, users are spending so much time sharing their favorite images that now only Facebook and Tumblr have more social media time on site than Pinterest. Who’s propelling its rise? 18-34 year old upper income women from the American heartland. Maybe we should call it blow-dryer growth. According to comScore, the average Pinterest user spend 98...

Google Chrome Is Now Available For Android (And It’s Fantastic)

2012-02-07T17:40:40Z

If you have one of the few Android devices currently running Ice Cream Sandwich, then you’re going to love this post. The rest of you, including those of you on iOS, will have to gaze longingly for a while. Because Chrome just landed on Android. It’s faster. It syncs everything (providing you want it to). It has nifty transition effects and a more intuitive system for jumping between tabs. And it’s also loaded with potential. Google’s Chrome browser, which has skyrocketed to popularity since its debut in 2008 and consistently gets top marks for being the fastest browser in town,...

Sky News clamps down on Twitter use

2012-02-07T19:34:09Z

Reporters banned from reposting non-company tweets and told to check with the news desk before breaking news storiesSky News has told its journalists not to repost information from any Twitter users who are not an employee of the broadcaster.An email to staff on Tuesday laid out new social media guidelines for Sky News employees, including a contentious ban on retweeting rival "journalists or people on Twitter".The new guidelines also warn Sky News journalists to "stick to your own beat" and not to tweet about non-work subjects from their professional accounts.Sky News has cultivated a reputation for digital innovation and has...

Microsoft Star Wars Xbox 360 bundle coming to a galaxy close to here, April 3rd

2012-02-07T17:37:00Z

Come spring you'll finally be able to get your grubby paws on that droid-based console you've been looking for. Microsoft's Major Nelson let slip in a series of tweets that the Star Wars Xbox 360 Kinect bundle will land on April 3rd. The set, which was first unveiled, fittingly, at Comic Con, is dressed up like R2-D2 and ships with a C-3P0-themed controller, a white Kinect sensor and the games Star Wars Kinect and Kinect Adventures. The 320GB system will run you $449, so start saving up those Galactic Credits now.Microsoft Star Wars Xbox 360 bundle coming to a...

Introducing Chrome for Android

2012-02-07T17:40:00Z

In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We’re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we're introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you’ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go,...

Siri Is Only The Beginning

2012-02-07T22:22:35Z

Dag Kittlaus was co-founder and CEO at Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010. For decades, Hollywood has been portraying machines that humans can converse with, delegate tasks to, and command. Remember the HAL 9000, KITT the car, COMPUTER from Star Trek, or even the brilliantly conceived and visualized Apple “Knowledge Navigator” from over 20 years ago? The day is dawning. Hello Siri. The response to Siri has exceeded even my own imagination … and I have a rather vast imagination. I don’t believe it’s an accident that Siri has captivated as it has. It’s fun, it works well...

Hasbro reinvents Lazer Tag for the smartphone generation, lets you live out your Doom-fueled fantasies

2012-02-07T15:30:00Z

Xappr and appBlaster are fine weaponizers for your smartphone, provided you don't care to share your violent tendencies with your friends. Thankfully, Hasbro is bridging the gap between new-school AR shooter and that teenage classic -- laser tag. The NERF Lazer Tag system is getting an update for 2012 that lets you pair your blaster with an iPhone or iPod touch. The top of the plastic guns now sport a slot for your iDevice which, when loaded with the Lazer Tag app, provides you with an augmented HUD view. While you can play against purely virtual opponents, the real...

Inside Instagram: How Slowing Its Roll Put the Little Startup in the Fast Lane

2012-02-07T17:00:00Z

The must-have app on the iPhone is not iMessage. It's not iTunes or Safari or even Find My iPhone. It's Instagram, the photo-sharing app that once described itself as "quirky." Cultish would be more appropriate these days. More »...

Path Uploads Your iPhone’s Address Book To Their Servers Without A Peep

2012-02-07T21:17:09Z

What started as a bit of aimless tinkering for developer Arun Thampi ultimately unearthed something very surprising about personal life-sharing service Path. As a fan of the app, Thampi took it upon himself to look at the API calls that the app made to Path’s service and found that his “entire address book (including full names, emails and phone numbers) was being sent as a plist to Path.” Puzzled, Thampi created an entirely new Path and tried again, only to be faced with the same results. Feel free to try it for yourself if you’re curious, as Thampi has written...

Google Chrome browser arrives on Android (video)

2012-02-07T16:49:00Z

The latest step in bringing Google-based unification has arrived. The Chrome browser is here on Android. This beta version is available for that elite crowd of ICS phones and tablets, and like it's desktop progenitor, the synced settings and bookmarks are all in tow. Expect to see the card view and more natural mobile view of the tab system. It'll also remember what you were last looking at on your desktop Chrome browser, and sync it across to your mobile device -- it's like Kindle or iBook's bookmarking system, but for the web. We're giving it a good play-around...

California Pension Fund Challenges Facebook Over Board

2012-02-07T22:08:41Z

CalSTRS, the big pension fund, challenged Facebook over what it sees as a lack of diversity on the company's board of directors....

Chrome for Android beta launches with place shifting, faster rendering, and card view

2012-02-07T17:40:07Z

Chrome for Android — the long-rumored, oft-requested grand unification of Google's mobile and desktop browsing technologies — has just been announced today, and it's being made available immediately as a beta release for phones and tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich. Though Android's existing browser has long shared bits and pieces with desktop Chrome (notably WebKit rendering and Google's V8 JavaScript engine), the release of Chrome for Android represents a more thorough synergy: they're both now based on the open-source Chromium Project, which means it'll be easier for Google to advance the products in better lockstep with one another —...

Chrome for Android won't support Flash, Adobe confirms

2012-02-07T22:08:24Z

When we took a look at the Chrome for Android beta, we mentioned that Flash wasn't supported on the software. Now, Adobe has reiterated that decision, stating that the lack of Flash support is consistent with its position to stop developing Flash Player for mobile devices. Instead, Adobe stressed its partnership with Google to advance HTML5 and noted a couple of Adobe technologies, like CSS Regions, that did make it into the browser. While Flash is still supported on Android's current default browser, Google plans to eventually replace that browser with Chrome, effectively signaling the end of mobile Flash...

FYI: Path uploads your iPhone’s entire address book to their servers

2012-02-07T20:35:35Z

Blogger Arun Thampi has discovered something that may or may not sit right about the free social media app Path while packet sniffing the app last night. Upon first installing the app and registering for an account, Path sends every single one of your contacts in your address book to their server via a .plist. The .plist includes full names, phone numbers, and e-mails. Path makes the call “https://api.path.com/3/contacts/add” when you first create an account, and it uploads every single one of your contacts to its server. In most people’s mind this obviously makes them feel a little uncomfortable. Thampi...

Chrome Beta for Android hands-on (video)

2012-02-07T19:54:00Z

So, Google is finally making the move we've been expecting for some time now and bringing Chrome to Android. Now, you'll need a device running Ice Cream Sandwich to get the new mobile browser up and running but, thankfully, we happened to have a Galaxy Nexus on hand. As you might expect, mobile Chrome (much like its desktop sibling) is fast -- a little buggy perhaps, but fast. It isn't, however, the fastest browser for the platform. Chrome Beta holds its own, but the standard Android browser, the stable version of Firefox and Dolphin HD all edged it out...

Rice University And OpenStax Announce First Open-Source Textbooks

2012-02-07T23:50:36Z

When we think about the distribution industry being disrupted, we tend to think about music and movies, whose physical media and vast shipment infrastructure have been rendered mostly obsolete over the last decade. To a lesser extent, we hear about print, and the effect of e-readers and web consumption on books and magazines. No one is making the change particularly gracefully, and the same can be said of the textbook business, which does millions of dollars of business every year selling incredibly expensive items to students — who likely consider them anachronisms. Rice University, which has been pushing alternative distribution...

Honeywell vs Nest: When The Establishment Sues Silicon Valley

2012-02-07T16:34:05Z

Honeywell filed a multi-patent infringement lawsuit against Nest Labs and Best Buy yesterday. The suit alleges that Nest Labs is infringing on seven Honeywell patents. Honeywell is not seeking licensing fees. The consumer electronic conglomerate wants Nest Labs to cease using the technology and is actually looking to collect damages caused by the infringement. Damages? Bullshit. This is about killing the competition. This lawsuit hit Silicon Valley and the tech world hard when it broke Monday morning. Nest Labs is the Valley’s star child right now. The company, founded by the godfather of the iPod, started in a Palo Alto...

Three years on, Chrome at last arrives on Android

2012-02-07T17:40:00Z

With the Chrome for Android beta, Google adds PC sync, hardware acceleration, Web standards, and more as part of its plan "to reinvent mobile browsers."...

How Pinterest is secretly profiting from your links

2012-02-08T01:18:37Z

Is surprise-hit Pinterest covertly capitalizing on the product-sharing behaviors of its burgeoning user base? Evidence amassed by insightful observers suggests as much. Pinterest is the invite-only digital pin-board site where people, mostly arts and crafts enthusiasts between the ages of 25 and 44, “pin” products, recipes, and photos to themed boards. The two year-old company is an insanely buzzy up-and-coming social network that attracts millions of visitors each week. But unbeknownst to the average user, Pinterest is automatically swapping out the links behind product pins, using a third-party service called Skimlinks (a thriving business of its own), with its own...

These are the most unbelievably retro iPhone cases you will ever see

2012-02-07T23:48:20Z

No matter what you think about Apple and its community of die-hard fans, it’s difficult to deny how iconic some of its more popular products have become over time. Products like the iMac and iPod have made an incredibly strong impression on our lives, and the simplistic-yet-beautiful aesthetic that surrounds them is one reason why they have become so memorable (many thanks to Sir Jony Ive). As far as iPhone cases go, everybody’s seen the ones that look like a Polaroid or R2D2, but I have never seen a case that actually made my retro-loving-jaw drop with admiration like these...

Pinterest is quietly generating revenue by modifying user submitted pins.

2012-02-07T20:10:57Z

I swore I wasn’t going to write about Pinterest again for a while after finishing a six part series of blog posts, but major developments keeping coming and no major news organizations see to be covering them. If you post a pin to Pinterest, and it links to an ecommerce site that happens to have an affiliate program, Pinterest modifies the link to add their own affiliate tracking code. If someone clicks through the picture from Pinterest and makes a purchase, Pinterest gets paid. They don’t have any disclosure of this link modification on their site, and so far, while...

Google Voice update for Android brings design refresh and asynchronous SMS

2012-02-07T22:39:00Z

A new version of Google Voice has just crawled out of the woodwork, and while the changes are minor, we think most users will like what's in store. First and foremost, we were greeted with a new, darker interface that better matches Honeycomb's design philosophy, along with a refreshed icon that more closely resembles the messaging app in Ice Cream Sandwich. There's also a curious new feature known as asynchronous SMS, which allows you to queue up messages for later delivery when you happen to be without signal. To test this out, we put our handset into airplane mode,...

LinkedIn Is Acquiring Contacts Start-Up Rapportive

2012-02-07T21:40:57Z

Rapportive, which makes a browser plug-in that overlays Gmail with contextual information about email contacts, is being acquired by LinkedIn, sources said. LinkedIn declined to comment, while Rapportive CEO Rahul Vohra ducked our attempts to talk to him. A source familiar with the negotiations said LinkedIn offered Rapportive “high teens” of millions of dollars worth of cash. It’s unclear whether the deal has closed or not. Competitors to Rapportive include Xobni (our coverage) and Mingly (our coverage). LinkedIn also bought a somewhat similar contact management start-up called Connected last fall. Rapportive, which is still available only for Gmail, overlays an...

Thousands Of Webcams Made Publicly Accessible By Software Bug

2012-02-07T21:43:57Z

26 models of Trendnet webcams have been identified as vulnerable to a bug that lets anyone tap into the video stream with just an IP address. The flaw was noted a month ago and the company has been working to alert people and patch the devices. Unfortunately, the company has no way of contacting non-registered webcam owners, and so the devices may remain accessible if the users never suspect anything. It’s a bit scary, but certainly not unprecedented. Although it’s not quite the same thing, two years ago a school was accused of spying on its students via the webcams...

Facebook Reveals: Seventh Grade Boys Have Feelings, Too! (Video)

2012-02-07T20:43:05Z

Do you remember the seventh grade? The first time your new girlfriend hated on your best friend? What about your first kiss? I don’t remember any of that, but the memories came flying back to me after I saw this video. If I had to sum it up in one word I’d call it amazing, mostly because it combines three of my favorite things: confrontations settled over social networks, dramatic reenactments, and tweens’ tendency to talk about matters of the heart as though they understand them. Oh, I should probably tell you what you’re about to look at. This is...

Olympus Brings Retro To Micro Four Thirds With The OM-D E-M5

2012-02-08T02:00:16Z

Olympus is building on its significant micro four-thirds IP (i.e. mirrorless cameras with the M4/3 sensor size) with a premium offering with a stylized, retro look. The OM-D EM-5, digital successor to the long-running OM series of film cameras, has a look straight out of the 70s but specs that should satisfy enthusiast photographers looking for a compact but powerful system. Their PEN series of M4/3 cameras is popular and well-reviewed, and the EM-5 builds on that tech. The difference is in some pro-like features Olympus has added in: a weather-resistant magnesium body, high-FPS EVF, and high-speed autofocus and shooting....

Urbanspoon: Traffic Up 80% In 2011, Mobile Growth Faster Than Web

2012-02-07T19:18:52Z

Popular restaurant app Urbanspoon is releasing new data today related to its growth over the course of 2011. The company says its traffic is up by 80%, with mobile growth outpacing the web. The site is now seeing 28 million visits per month, with traffic now split roughly half and half between mobile and web. On the mobile side, Urbanspoon has seen 112% year-over-year growth, while on the web side, it’s at 70% growth over last year. Overall, the company saw 255 million visits in 2011, up from 141 million in 2010. Across all mobile platforms, including both apps and...

Nikon D800 combines medium format quality, HD filmmaking in one DSLR

2012-02-07T16:30:00Z

Nikon on Monday announced the D800 digital SLR camera, the newest addition to its professional DSLR line up. Boasting a 36.3 megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor, high ISO shooting capabilities, and a variety of high definition video modes, the D800 leapfrogs well beyond its predecessor, the D700, as well as anything else in the 35mm format, to offer resolution approaching that of $10,000+ medium format cameras. Like the flagship D4 announced in January, the D800 uses a 51-point autofocus system that is sensitive down to -2EV. It also has the new 91,000 pixel 3D color matrix metering and Advanced Scene...

Booktango Automatically Publishers Your Timeless Text To Multiple Platforms

2012-02-07T22:33:15Z

Say you, like me, wrote a book about the two Lithuanian lovers who find themselves trapped in a basement and have to solve mysteries and learn magic to escape the traps set by them by an evil wizard robot using their brawn, brains, and a little sultry lovemaking. How would you publish and sell it? Presumably you would visit the Kindle, B&N, and Apple book stores and upload it, making it available on all of those platforms and raking in the dough. Now, however, you can just use Booktango. Before we get too deep into the “Whys” and “Wherefores” of...