Several weeks ago, Canon announced that the latest version of its document management system, Uniflow 5, features a new security tool that allows a company to prevent its employees from printing, scanning, copying or faxing documents that contain keywords such as client or project names. The Uniflow server identifies prohibited keywords, which are designated by […]

Google calls out Facebook. Last month, Facebook added an information download feature that made users’ data portable. But there was one big exception. A user could download any content that he had uploaded or created — photos, wall posts, messages, etc.; however, he could only get a list of his friends, no contact information that […]

The NYT Bits blog broke the story of an Android app called the “SMS replicator.”  This odious piece of spyware is described here; unless it’s a prank, the idea is that a stalker type with momentary access to someone else’s Android phone can install it.  It doesn’t show up as an icon, but runs quietly […]

JZ asked for suggestions of good note-managing systems, and here’s what y’all said: “Scrivener on Mac is awesome.” “Zotero add-on for Firefox. Free and syncs across computers.” “Try Devon Agent + Devon Note for research and Avenir for writing.” “Tiddlywiki is the way to go.It is simple, versatile, portable, platform independent and very effective.” “If […]

T-Mobile gives its G2 Droid amnesia. The G2s appearing on T-Mobile shelves this week come with an extra piece of hardware, and it’s not a free car charger. If G2 owners teach their Droids (either by coding or downloading software) to do something that interferes with T-Mobile’s business model, the company-installed rootkit will induce short-term […]

Earlier this month, Apple announced changes to its iOS Program License for app developers. This move happened “suddenly” and was “surprising” to the tech community. Some e-news sites speculated that Apple was bowing to FTC pressure; this spring, the agency launched a probe into whether Apple’s ban on third-party app development tools constituted an impermissible […]

Tweeting has become a foundational Internet technology.  It’s not even dependent on the World Wide Web — people can send and receive tweets without having to visit twitter.com.  And the act of tweeting isn’t even unique to Twitter — many other Internet platforms are seeking to compete by allowing people to “emote” an update to […]

I saw these two stories today — or is it one story? From Slashdot: “Turnkey CPU upgrades aren’t just for mainframes anymore. According to Engadget, OEMs (including Gateway) are selling computers with the Intel Pentium G6951, which can have extra cache and hyper-threading enabled through a $50 software unlock called Intel Upgrade Service.” Also from […]

Lately I’ve been interested in both cybersecurity and human computing.  The former increasingly relies on PATRIOT-missile-style automated defenses against attacks as cyberattacks happen, and ideally are repelled, in mere nanoseconds.  The latter involves taking tasks normally mundane enough for computers and turning them over to people to do — in ways that enable to tasker […]

Not exactly an Internet topic, I know, but I was struck by the Daily Dish’s call out to a post by Karl Smith: Most people are afraid of death in a way that they are not afraid of non-existence. Thinking about the world just after your death tends to be at minimum unnerving. Thinking about […]