DMCA

Brought into law in the US right back in 1998 and now a prominent part of any website with user-created content, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act created a legal framework for rights-holders to send “takedown notices” to services found to be serving infringing content, or links to infringing content. Like all of these measures it is widely criticised as having too much power and leaves itself open for abuse.

A study from Google indicated that 57% of all the claims it received were abuse by targeting a competing business, while 37% were simply not valid copyright claims. Dealing with these claims costs businesses working time and money, of course – probably more so than the infringing copyright would have cost the claimant anyway. On more than one occasion I’ve had to deal with DMCA complaints directed at MakeUseOf, some utterly unjustified and some simply because a user pasted something they took from another site into a comment here.

It’s also led to security vulnerabilities being left unpublished because of fears that any crypto-analytic research may violate the DMCA, which is just downright dangerous. Want to know more? Read our previous article explaining the DMCA in more detail.

Having hastily pushed through the DMCA, the RIAA still weren’t satisfied though. Specifically, they could never quite accept the idea of safe harbour - whereby ISPs won’t be held responsible for content their users upload. Now they want ISPs to do their dirty work for them as well.

“You cannot monitor all the infringements on the Internet. It’s simply not possible. We don’t have the ability to search all the places infringing content appears, such as cyberlockers like [file-hosting firm] RapidShare.” (RIAA President Cary Sherman)

Any further legislation will be to address that, turning the ISPs to police and removing any safe harbour loopholes.

SOPA/PIPA

I’m sure you’ve all heard quite enough of SOPA, I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say, it would have given rights holders broad reaching capabilities to shut down entire sites at the DNS level if any piece of infringing material was found – so the internets took action, and the bill was put on hold.  On hold, I emphasise – that doesn’t mean it’s gone away, just that they’ll bring it back (I suggest they rename it POOPA) when you’re off looking at lolcats, and the rest of the nation is being told about an impending attack by insurgents with a weapons of mass distraction  destruction. Make no mistake, the SOPA successor is being drafted as you read this.

ACTA

You thought SOPA was bad? ACTA – The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – bypasses sovereign laws in countries signed up – thats America, Japan, Austraila, Canada, and more recently, the whole of Europe too. ACTA doesn’t just cover copyright infringement, but trademarks too – generic medicines, counterfeit goods, seed patents – that sort of thing. The Electronic Frontier Foundation speculates some of the possible ramifications of the agreement:

• A 3-strikes law, similar to the one currently used in France
• Mandatory deep packet-level filtering by ISPs
• ISPs to remove infringing material on their servers (goes against the safe harbour rule)
• Criminal charges for users crossing borders with a single copyright song on their PC
• Stopping access to generic versions of drugs and medicines (in favour of expensive, branded ones)

As I write this article, the full text of the agreement was only made available this morning – though you’ll need to understand legalese – as well as a document that tries to ease our minds as to some of the myths surrounding ACTA. I expect over the coming weeks for a more fuller and accurate picture of the exact details of ACTA to emerge, but I’m sure it’ll be quite scary stuff.

That’s not the whole story though. Here are a few more bills over the years; and though some never made it, some might still – have you ever heard of them?

• Copyright Extension Act – which added yet another 20 years onto the copyright term to the existing 50 years after the death of the holder. 
  
• Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005 – never made it through, but would have required all analog recording equipment to have a form of secret copy protection in it, as well as only allowing a 90-minute window for watching time shifted content.
• The PIRATE act, 2004 was eventually rejected, but would have opened the door for civil lawsuits (as opposed to criminal ones) against copyright infringers, lowering the burden of proof for prosecutors. It later became the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act of 2007, but also failed to pass.
• The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act (PCIPA) is still in deliberation, and along with new data retention laws will all but eradicate any concept of privacy. It would give agencies unparalleled access to information from ISPs on suspicion of any crime and without a warrant. This is all justified under the guise of searching for child pornography, so you’d have to be a real a**hole to oppose that!

I can’t possibly claim to understand all the ins and outs of these various laws and acts – no sane normal citizen possibly can – and that’s kind of the point. I’d love to sit here and say you need to continue fighting against these, but the nihilistic part of me says it’s absolutely futile. The industries are so powerful already – they effectively own our politicians and senators through the legalised corruption we call lobbying. These new laws will continue to be introduced, and slowly but surely we will be worn down into accepting them without protest. What’s your next move going to be, internet?

You know what you could do? You could stop buying records, movies, DVDs, or going to the cinema. Hit them where it really hurts, and let them know that this continued attack on our freedoms will not be tolerated.

Image Credits: ShutterStock; XKCD; Copyright terms through the ages – Tom Bell

Just think of the power that comes from having incoming emails automatically generating new tasks or new calendar appointments, or having a completed task automatically email your boss with the updated status report from the task description.

If you do it right, you can cut your entire day’s workload by a boatload just by automating things in an intelligent and efficient way.

If you follow my writing here, then you know that in the past I’ve covered things like integrating web browser features into Excel, automatically maximizing application windows, or automating chart updates in Excel.

Well, in this article I’m going to cover another automation task – actually one that I’ve used often more recently – to automatically update an Excel spreadsheet with all of your remaining active Outlook tasks at the end of the day.

Feeding Outlook Tasks To An Excel Spreadsheet

There are a lot of reasons you may want to do this. Maybe you want to track your unfinished tasks on a daily basis in a format that you can quickly mail off to someone (not so easy to do with Outlook tasks). Or maybe it’ll become part of a larger report that you’ll be typing up in Word.

Whatever the case may be, the ability to capture and output uncompleted Outlook task information is a useful thing.

For this example, here’s my sample Outlook task list with 5 remaining tasks that I still haven’t completed yet.

Everything we’re going to do here, is in VBA. In Outlook, you get to the VBA editor by clicking on “Tools“, then “Macro” and then choosing the “Visual Basic Editor“.

The code that you’re going to use to capture your task list and export it to Excel is actually not quite as complicated as you might think. The first step is to plug into both Outlook objects and Excel objects by creating the necessary variable definitions. Then, using the workbook object you’ve created, start off by creating the header in your spreadsheet.

Dim strReport As String
  Dim olnameSpace As Outlook.NameSpace
  Dim taskFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
  Dim tasks As Outlook.Items
  Dim tsk As Outlook.TaskItem
  Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
  Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
  Dim sht As Excel.Worksheet
 
  Dim strMyName As String
  Dim x As Integer
  Dim y As Integer
 
  Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\MyActiveTasks.xls")
 
'  exWb.Sheets(strMyName).Delete
'  exWb.Sheets.Add (strMyName)

  Set olnameSpace = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
  Set taskFolder = olnameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderTasks)
 
  Set tasks = taskFolder.Items
 
  strReport = ""
 
  'Create Header
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 1) = "Subject"
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 2) = "Due Date"
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 3) = "Percent Complete"
  exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(1, 4) = "Status"

So, here’s what the new spreadsheet looks like. Your Outlook app just created a new Excel file called “MyActiveTasks.xls” in the C:\temp directory, and created a header for the tasks that you’re about to insert.

So, now it’s time to extract your tasks and insert them into the Excel file. I use a “y” variable starting at two in order to make sure the first row that’s used isn’t the first, because I don’t want to overwrite the header.

y = 2
 
  For x = 1 To tasks.Count
 
       Set tsk = tasks.Item(x)
 
       'strReport = strReport + tsk.Subject + "; "

       'Fill in Data
       If Not tsk.Complete Then
 
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 1) = tsk.Subject
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 2) = tsk.DueDate
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 3) = tsk.PercentComplete
        exWb.Sheets("Ryan").Cells(y, 4) = tsk.Status
        y = y + 1
 
       End If
 
  Next x

What this script does is searches through your entire list of task items in Outlook, checks to see whether the item is completed yet, and if it isn’t, then it inserts that task information into 4 cells of the spreadsheet. If you wanted to, you could insert more information. Just explore what task information is available by typing “tsk.” and then browsing through the list of properties that pop up.

Now here’s what the sheet looks like.

Being a bit of a perfectionist, there’s still a problem. Notice how column A clipped the last task subject?” I don’t like that. So let’s add a little bit more code to autofit all columns in the Excel table.

'Autofit all column widths

For Each sht In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets
    sht.Columns("A").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    sht.Columns("B").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    sht.Columns("C").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    sht.Columns("D").EntireColumn.AutoFit
Next sht
 
exWb.Save
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing

The Save and Close methods in those last few lines will save the sheet and close it so that it doesn’t remain locked by the application, otherwise it would be difficult to open the Excel file until you closed Outlook.

So, now here’s what the finished spreadsheet looks like.

When do you set the script to run? Well, I set it up to run on the “Application.Close()” event, which runs when you exit Outlook at the end of the day. This will make outlook produce the Excel spreadsheet report at the end of the day, all on its own.

Can you think of any other cool uses for this technique? Maybe automatically firing off an email with the list of tasks, or outputting them to an HTML file and FTPing it to your web server?

With a little creativity, it’s amazing what you can pull off with a bit of scripting automation. Share your own thoughts and ideas in the comments section below!

Shutterstock

Of these, the firewall is often the least well remembered despite its importance. The fade of the firewall from public view is due to the fact that Windows itself now has a built-in firewall, so there’s less need to go searching for a third-party option. Curious minds may wonder how they work, however, so let’s take a look.

The Beginnings Of The Firewall

The term “firewall” of course starts with actual walls built to prevent against fire. These are still common today in buildings that deal with hazardous materials. If there is a blast or fire, the firewall prevents the blaze from exiting the hazardous area and feeding on the rest of the structure.

Geeks adopted the term in the late 1980′s as a way of describing any piece of software or hardware that protects a system or network from the Internet at large. Malware like the Morris Worm provided that it was possible for software to pig-back the Internet and do serious damage to randomly targeted systems. As a result, security-savvy individuals and organizations started to look in to ways to protect themselves from such malware.

This is a good point to start talking about the three types of firewalls that are most common, starting with the first type invented – the packet filter.

Types of Firewalls

Packet Filters

Early firewalls only read packet header data, like source address and destination address. Action could then be taken based off the information obtained. This is efficient and quick, but can be vulnerable in some ways. Spoofing attacks, for example, can be very effective against a packet filter. Advanced versions of packet filter firewalls keep data about packets in memory and can change their behavior based on network events. These are known as “stateful” and “dynamic” firewalls, respectively.

Circuit Gateways

The next step in firewalls, the Circuit Gateway doesn’t just deal with packet header data. It also attempts to make sure that a connection relaying packets is valid. To do this, the Circuit Gateway pays attention to packet data and looks for changes, such as an unusual source IP address or destination port. If a connection is determined invalid, it can be closed.  These firewalls also automatically reject information not specifically requested by a user inside the firewall.

Application Level Gateways

These firewalls share the properties of circuit gateways, but they delve deeper into the information being sent through the firewall and see how it relates to specific applications, services and websites. For example, an application level gateway can look into packets carrying web traffic and determine what sites the traffic is from. The firewall can then block data from certain sites if the administrator desires.

Software Firewalls

If you have a firewall installed on your computer, it is most likely an application level firewall. It will be able to control how individual applications access the Internet and block specific or unknown applications the moment the try to accept incoming information or send outgoing information.

Your personal firewall is also a software firewall. That means its functions are controlled by code installed on your computer. The advantage of this is obvious – you can easily change the settings of the firewall whenever you would like, and you can access its interface without logging into any separate piece of equipment.

However, a software firewall can be vulnerable due to the fact that it can be manipulated if the system it is installed on is compromised. If your computer was somehow infected with malware in spite of your firewall and other security measures, that malware might be programmed to circumvent the firewall or change its settings. For this reason, software firewalls are never entirely secure.

Hardware Firewalls & Home Use

To address this vulnerability, large organizations usually use a hardware firewall or firewalls in addition to a software firewall or firewalls. The kind of firewalls used by organizations with their own networking department is heavy equipment capable of sniffing out network instruction attempts on its own. Often, they’re sold as part of a larger security ecosystem by companies that specialize in enterprise-level security solutions, like Cisco.

Such equipment often isn’t practical for a home user. But the alternative may already sit in your home. For one, every broadband router acts as a firewall due to its nature. A router acts as a go-between for your computers in the Internet. Connections sent your computers from the Internet are not sent directly to them – they’re sent to the router first. It then decides where that information needs to go, if anywhere. If the router decides the information wasn’t requested, or the information is sent to a port the router doesn’t have open at all, it’s dropped.

This is why you sometimes have to set up “port forwarding” in your router to get certain games to function. The packets coming in from the game’s servers are being ignored by the router. This isn’t a true firewall, however, because there’s no inspection of packets. It’s simply a side-effect of the way a router functions.

If you decide you do want a real hardware firewall, you can buy one at affordable prices. Cisco, Netgear and others produce “small business routers,” which are small devices with built-in firewall functionality that are designed connecting for just a handful of computers to the Internet. Such a device usually uses a packet filtering or circuit gateway method, so it can’t be easily circumvented by a software infection on a network PC.

In addition, a basic hardware firewall is useful if you run a server because it can monitor for denial-of-service attacks and intrusion attempts. Don’t expect your $199 firewall to hold off Anonymous, but it could come in handy if SuCkAz555 is sore after you banned him from your Minecraft server.

Conclusion

Software firewalls remain an important part of securing your home computer. Windows has had a built-in firewall since XP, and if you’d just like to use that, we have a tutorial article that can help you learn your way around. Free third-party firewalls still exist, as well.

If you are behind a router and have a software firewall, you’re reasonably well protected. The main way that you would become compromised is if you downloaded malware that then managed to circumvent your system including your firewall. But if you have anti-virus software and you did not disable User Account Control, any such attack should be stopped in its tracks.

Image Credit: David Nutter and Dave Habben

iBooks Author allows you how to write, design, and publish interactive e-Pub books and post them for free or for sell on Apple’s iBooks Store.

In the latest 1.0.1 update of iBooks Author, Apple states “If you want to charge a fee for a work that includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, you may only sell or distribute such work through Apple, in such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.”

The above is essentially what Apple required in the original license. In this update, however, it adds in part, “This restriction does not apply to the content of such works when distributed in any form is not include files in the .ibooks format.”

Apple further clarifies it policy agreement on its iBooks Author: Publishing and distribution FAQ page. It says in part:

If a fee is charged for the work and it is in the .ibooks format, the work may only be sold through the iBookstore. If the work is in a different format, such as PDF or ePub, this restriction does not apply.

When the work is provided for free, it can be distributed through the iBookstore or by other means, including when the work is in the .ibooks format.

While Apple says it doesn’t own the copyright of your book, it might be a good idea to hire a legal expert if you think your book is going to have significant sell value.

Source: ZDNET

If you’re sick of reading tiny text, or constantly scrolling just to read a single page, this is the change you’ve been waiting for. The EPUB format is open source and designed to work well with both phones and e-ink devices.

Head to our manual download page and you’ll see most of our manuals are now available as EPUB files. Enter your password, as usual, and you’ll find the link to the new EPUB file.

Reflowable is Good

Why EPUB? Because this format is to ebooks what mobile versions are to websites. The content will fit your screen, whatever your screen size or zoom settings. This is possible because EPUB files are reflowable.

What does that mean? Basically, text and pictures in EPUB files aren’t laid out on a page they way the are in a PDF file. Instead, each “page” you see on your device is created by your device, meaning it’s always the perfect size. EPUB files are made for reading on small screens, unlike PDF files which are made to be printed.

Downloading Our EPUB Files

On our manuals download page you’ll see all of our manuals. If there’s an EPUB available, it will be indicated:

Just download the manuals as you usually would: by entering our password. We give this password to our newsletter subscribers, but our Facebook page also has it if you’re a fan. Enter this password and you’ll see the download links:

Just click the “EPUB” link to get your file. You can now send it to your ereader, using Calibre or the software that came with your device.

Supported Devices

So what devices can read EPUBs? Just about any. Here’s a brief list:

• iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, using iBooks or Stanza
• Android devices using FBReader
• Kobo Readers
• Nook from Barnes and Noble
• Sony Reader
• Any computer, using Calibre. This is also the best tool for transferring files to any device.

Why not support for the Kindle? Because the Kindle doesn’t support EPUB. Don’t worry: we’ll be making an announcement regarding the Kindle in the months to come, so stay tuned.

For now, check out the manuals Download page to get our EPUB downloads, alongside the PDF manuals you know and love.

The thing that makes this story really noteworthy is that Vonage is undercutting Skype’s international long distance rates by an incredible 30%. It’s similar to the tact Vonage took with their home phone service, coming in at a price that is nearly impossible for competitors to compete with. It will be interesting to see if this puts any pressure on Skype to lower their rates for calling internationally.

Any calls made are charged through credits purchased within the application. Because these credits are added through iTunes or Android, there is no need to give Vonage your credit card information.

For the launch of the app, users will get free calls to any phone in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. This is a limited time offer, so if you want to take advantage you will need to get the application right away.

Here’s the application links:

• Android Link
• iTunes Link

Source: Venture Beat

Now it’s time to dig deep and see what the web has to offer the Dragonborn. The following resources will aid you in clearing dungeons, navigating the province, mastering alchemy and a whole lot more.

I was going to put a joke here, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

Reference & Walkthrough

You can’t beat a well-maintained wiki when it comes to crowdsourcing information about video games, and Skyrim isn’t short on wikis. The two I would recommend are the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP, established in 1995) and the Elder Scrolls at Wikia.

Both of these sites feature a healthy, constantly growing database of pretty much everything the game throws at you. Mission walkthroughs, character biographies, item locations – pretty much everything you need to know. Be warned though, it’s easy to spoil quests and developing storylines by spending too much time reading articles. Skyrim’s entry on GameFAQs also has a number of extremely detailed walkthroughs.

If it’s a giant annotated map you’re after then check out GameBanshee’s 9.34MB high-resolution .PNG which also comes in 9-page PDF form for easy printing as a 3×3 poster for your wall (you geek).

Alchemy & Ingredients

The simplest way of discovering an ingredient’s effect is by eating it and seeing what happens to you. If you’re not keen on poisoning yourself or would rather not waste your precious ingredients then one of the many alchemy guides is bound to suit.

There are two rather awesome tools for budding alchemists, the first being the Skyrim Alchemy Recipes Finder. Simply add a few ingredients (or all of them for the full list) and all possible potions will be revealed to you. This utility is useful for finding out what certain ingredients do without wasting anything.

You can also use Josh Blevins’ Alchemy Effects & Ingredients to reverse look-up an effect for a list of ingredients. Traditional types who like long plain text lists should take a look at Ahlyis’ Alchemy Guide on GameFAQs which has full potions, ingredients and effects lists.

Character Building

Building a character can present you with some of the toughest decisions in the game, so planning your perks is the best way to ensure your character blossoms into the dragon slaying hero you desire.

Thankfully it’s easy to do just that with the Skyrim Perk Calculator. Use it to go hog wild and build the character of your dreams then plan your path to power, save and start exploring the world. iOS and Android users can look forward to mobile apps soon.

There is also a fairly lengthy character development guide on GameFAQs as well as this more condensed version from SegmentNext.

PC Gamers & Modding

Those of you enjoying the PC version of the game are lucky enough to be able to modify it but also have the added obstacle of performance issues. If you are suffering from poor framerates or just think your game could run smoother then have a look at nVidia’s Skyrim tweak guide, it even comes with Bethesda’s approval.

As for mods then look no further than Skyrim Nexus. There really are quite a lot of mods on this site with new ones being released regularly. If you fancy modding your game but don’t know where to start then you could always take some inspiration from PC Gamer’s Top 25 Skyrim mods.

Conclusion

If you’ve not yet played Skyrim then you have a fantastic experience in store if beautiful open-world RPGs are your thing. Even if you’re a well-seasoned adventurer, hopefully some of these resources will help you out next time you decide to start a new character.

If you have any of your own recommendations, links or just an opinion then add a comment below.

Well, I’m here to tell you that letting your cats play with iPad cat toys is the most fun you and they are going to have this month. Surprisingly, cats (at least mine) tend to be very gentle on the screen and don’t really use their claws, and seeing them trying to find the critters on the screen under the iPad is positively hilarious. So if you feel ready now, and think you’re up to trying, here are 6 great apps that turn your iPad into an awesome cat toy. You won’t regret it!

Friskies JitterBug [iTunes]

This game by Friskies was definitely one of the favorites. When you load it, you can either choose “Play Game” or “Advanced”. In Advanced, you can choose how many bugs you want to see of each, and choose to play the endless mode, which basically lets your cat play forever and ever.

If you start the game through the Advanced screen, you will get a totally black screen with cute bugs on it. My cats loved this. When the cat taps on a bug, it disappears, but new ones enter all the time. The game has no sound. If it’s not in endless mode, the cat can “win” by killing all the bugs.

If you don’t enter the game through the advanced screen, you will get a timed game with prompts and levels, which my cats found somewhat less appealing.

Cat Fishing [iTunes] & Cat Fishing 2 [iTunes]

These are two more games by Friskies, which are very similar to one another and are therefore included under the same title. The goal of the game is for the cat to tap on the fish. When it does, they disappear. Here, too, there is no sound.

In Cat Fishing, there’s just this screen with one fish, which is replaced by a new one when the cat taps it. There’s a “kill count” on the top right corner.

Cat Fishing 2 is a bit more complex, with more than one fish at a time, and a timer and levels that keep prompting and switching. As with JitterBug, my cats loved the fish, not so much the prompts.

Game For Cats [iTunes]

Game for Cats are really trying to sell you more games, but their free version is actually quite good too. When you launch the app, you will see this screen. The cheese version on the right requires an in-app purchase, but the laser version on the left is totally free.

If your cats like to play with a laser pointer, they’re going to love this. The laser dot moves around the screen at a surprisingly lifelike way, and is really calling out to cats to catch it. The dot is a bit hard to catch, but if they manage to do it, it blows up with a small ding sound, and a new one appears.

To exit the game, tap the paw icon on the bottom 5 times in a row (hopefully your cats can’t do this).

Cat Toys Lite [iTunes]

In this game, your cat gets to play with a purple mouse trapped in a box. You can control the speed of the mouse, and toggle sounds on and off. When your cat taps the mouse, it speeds up, and if sounds are on, it also squeaks.

Something about the mouse’s movements really caught my cats’ eye, and they went to great lengths trying to catch it. You can also get the full version for $0.99, which lets you choose between 5 different toys.

Cat Toy [iTunes]

Now this is a good one. Cat Toy is actually an iPhone app, one of those you have to blow up to fit the iPad screen, but if your cats are not too picky about their graphics, it’s not a problem.

The game lets you choose between four different modes: Itsy (spider), Flutter (butterfly), Zapper (laser) and Squeak (mouse).

The favorite in my house was the mouse, hands down. In this mode, the mouse is running around the screen, and then vanishes off it. While it’s gone, you hear scratching sounds that simply drove my cats crazy. They were sure the mouse was hiding under the iPad.

The other modes are fun too, but not as good as this. The only problem was that my cats were so enthusiastic, they kept activating multi-touch gestures and switching apps. This only happened with this app.

Catch The Mouse Cat Game [iTunes – $0.99]

As the only paid app on this lineup, Catch the Mouse is worth the 99¢, but (at least for my cats) only if you turn off the sound.

What you get in this game is a cute orange mouse, and it’s running around the screen for dear life. The sounds, unfortunately, are bit over the top, and my cats were not really buying it. They sat there looking at the thing, but it was making such unbelievable sounds, they weren’t engaged.

The magic happened when I turned off the sound. Suddenly, the mouse became very attractive, and the hits counter started climbing. If you don’t like orange on black, there are 5 different background colors to choose from, and 3 different mouse colors.

Bottom Line

Turning the iPad into a cat toy is officially a success. The apps are great, and the cats had loads of fun (and so did us humans).

What do your cats think of these games? Or do you think it’s totally crazy to even try? Do you know any more cool cat games for the iPad? Share everything in the comments.

Feed Notifier has been my best-kept secret for a long time. I fired up Google and began searching up for a software that would put breaking news and RSS updates in my face while remaining lightweight, portable, and effective. It took a long time, but I found this beautiful baby.

I work online, and when the Internet is your workplace then you know things move fast. You’ve got to keep up with trends and you’ve got to be on the ball or you might miss out on opportunities, excitement, or (in my case) money. Feed Notifier does a fantastic job of delivering RSS notifications more effectively than any software I’ve used. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or just someone who likes to keep up to date with the news.

Let’s go over some features:

• It’s portable. You know I love throwing things in Dropbox and on a flash drive.
• It supports RSS, Atom, and literally every other protocol.
• It is incredibly smooth and clean looking, no matter how you skin it.
• You can configure how often you want to poll each feed so that you aren’t stressing your CPU or bandwidth.
• You can customize the popup duration, size, position, opacity, etc.
• The popup is non-instrusive.
• It’s multi-threaded.
• You can enable and disable feeds, rather than deleting ones you might want to use again in the future.
• It supports favicons.

The list goes on and on and on, and it’s best if you read into the features on their official website.

Here are a few live shots of the configurable options so you know exactly what you’re getting into. This screenshot shows a list of all feeds.

This screenshot shows the configurable popup options.

This screenshot shows the other associated options.

I’ve got mine popping up in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen, looking something like:

Download Feed Notifier and let me show you how to add MakeUseOf as your first feed!

• Open the application and right click your tray icon, then click “Preferences…”.
• Click the “Add…” button and enter the MakeUseOf RSS feed URL or my MakeUseOf author feed URL if you like me.

• Click “Next >” and proceed to where the feed’s name will be automatically fetched and you’ll be able to adjust your options:

These are the recommended settings that I’d use for the MakeUseOf feed. Awesomely enough, these are the defaults that Feed Notifier suggests, also. If you’re using my feed, check every day instead of every hour.

After you apply, a few of the latest RSS posts may automatically pop up. If it does, and you’re uninterested in letting them scroll on through, just click the fast forward button and close it out. From there on, you’ll get the latest, streaming updates.

If you’re a fan of RSS in general, check out these other articles:

• How RSS Feeds Work In Simple Terms
• Two Easy Tips To Manage Your Unread RSS Feeds Better
• 6 Of The Best Free RSS Readers For The iPad

And that’s all. I hope you guys manage to enjoy the convenience and efficiency that Feed Notifier provides just as much as I do. If you come across any problems, just drop me a line in the comments and I’ll give you a hand.