Anti-ACTA protest to sweep across Europe tomorrow
Sunday, February 12th, 2012Anti-ACTA protest to sweep across Europe tomorrow
Using a network of Facebook event pages, a wiki and a spreadsheet in Google Docs, the anti-censorship group Fight for the Future is planning to launch large-scale crowd-sourced protests on Saturday against what they call the “European version of SOPA,” known as ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). Over 200,000 people have committed to participate in 200 cities, mostly in Europe but with scattered protests in Canada, the US and elsewhere….
http://www.electronista.com/rss/macnn_mostpopular.rss
A blogger who has had ongoing difficulty with an AppleCare transfer on a replacement monitor received a rare admission from the company that it suffered some form of system failure in its AppleCare database recently. Upon reporting this and urging readers to revisit their own AppleCare profiles, writer David Boles now claims to have received a warning letter from Apple….
Former iPhone product marketing engineer Bob Borchers, best known for his appearances some of the iLife and iPhone “guided tour” videos, recently gave a talk to students at a California school that touched on his time at Apple, particularly covering the introduction of the iPhone, and what he is doing now having left the company. His talk, captured in two YouTube videos by an audience member, focused on how Apple innovates in hopes of fostering creative thinking in his young audience….
Canon has finally updated its Canon EOS Utility to launch and work properly for users of Mac OS X Lion (10.7.x), alleviating a problem Lion users have had for months with the app. The program offers two main abilities to Canon EOS camera users: an Image Capture-like ability to selectively transfer pictures from the camera, as well as an option to remotely operate the camera from a user’s computer using a supplied interface cable….
(Updated for app’s removal) Another iPhone app allowing unofficial tethering has slipped into the App Store. Called QuasiDisk, the title is mainly a file manager, enabling local and remote transfer. A January 28th update, though, is said to have quietly enabled tethering using a proxy. As of this writing, QuasiDisk is still on sale for $2….
Razer has announced that it has sold out of the first batch of its Blade gaming notebooks within 30 minutes. The high-end notebooks were originally slated for the holidays, however the launch was eventually delayed until late January as the company made a last-minute decision to switch to SSD storage….
Today’s release of Mac OS X 10.7.3 also incorporates Apple’s first Security Update of 2012, addressing vulnerabilities in components throughout the OS and its components. The update is also available as a separate download for Snow Leopard users, and while none of the issues have been reported in the wild, the update is recommended for all users of Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7, and closes potential issues in programs ranging from Apache to QuickTime….
Seagate has quietly updated its accessory page with a GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter. The add-on now lets any of Seagate’s mobile GoFlex drives use the 10Gbps interface on a Mac or upcoming PCs. The storage designers claim that it’s about 20 times faster than USB 2.0, although only if the drive itself can maximize the bus speed….
[Update: ZEVO web site is back up after prolonged outage] A former Apple engineer who worked on ZFS integration in Leopard and Snow Leopard has debuted a new software program to implement full ZFS support on the Mac. The alternative disk formatting, which offers a more efficient way to utilize disk space and actively prevents file corruption among other benefits, was touted by Sun Microsystems and considered by Apple as a possible replacement for HFS, but ultimately abandoned due to licensing issues….
Apple has temporarily solved problems with the CUI bug in the Mac OS X 10.7.3 update by changing the download users get. Anyone who checks Software Update, along with seeking the usual download, now gets the combo update to Lion (1.3GB, link may not work) instead. The full installer is known to work properly at the expense of a much larger file size….
The world of mice could often be described charitably as stagnant: it’s an endless sea of ergonomic shapes that assume you’re sitting at a desk and have lots of room in your bag. Logitech’s Cube is about as different as you can get, with a small, brick-like design that relies on touch and orientation to make it an ultraportable mouse and presenter. We’ll gauge in our Logitech Cube review whether it’s a welcome break or a novelty….
Mac app developer Smile has introduced a version of its business-oriented PDF editor PDFpen to the iPad, allowing users to add text, images and signatures to PDFs, fill out forms and perform many other editing, annotation and management functions with PDF documents, will full iCloud support to allow seamless transfer between iOS and Mac OS X machines. The company also release a new version of PDFpen for Mac for both Mac App Store and direct-update customers….
(Update: Windows too) The promised iPhone 4S and iPad 2 untethered jailbreak has been posted as of Friday. Absinthe lets Mac users crack iOS 5 on the modern Apple hardware to run Cydia as well as other unsigned apps. Demand is such that the main host, greenpois0n, is currently having trouble; Chronic Dev Team contributor Josh Hill warned that the jailbreak might not run at first, since it’s dependent on reaching the greenpois0n site….
Apple has posted blowout results for its fiscal first (calendar fourth) quarter with record iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales. It’s holding a conference call to discuss the results and should have both more details as well as possible surprises. Check our live coverage page from 5PM Eastern for details as they arrive….