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Track-and-Recover App Prey Can Now Find Your Lost or Stolen iOS Device

Friday, December 2, 2011 // by Saurabh // Labels: , , , , , // No comments:



Softwares If you've lost your iPhone or had it stolen, free app Prey will find your phone, set off an alarm, and even take a picture of the thief.
Prey is our favorite app for tracking and recovering lost (or stolen) laptops and Android devices, but now they've finally released an app for iOS, so you can track those too. It works a bit differently than the Android version, due to the limited permissions of the iPhone, but its implementation is quite clever. For example, since it can't take a picture from the front-facing camera on demand, it sends a notification to the device saying "slide the lock to set up your new PIN number". The thief will think, "jackpot!", slide the slider, and get his picture taken. If you mark your phone as stolen, Prey will even give the app a new boot screen to make it look like a game instead of an anti-theft program.


It does have a few small issues, though. First of all, you'll notice that the GPS icon stays in your location bar all the time when you have Prey on your device—even if you've closed it. This is apparently a bug and should not destroy your battery life, as it would seem. The real problem, however, is that in an effort to save battery life, Prey only checks back with your computer when it changes location and detects a new cell tower. That's great for battery life, but if you don't report your phone stolen right away, and the thief leaves it somewhere, it'll never actually register as "missing". Unfortunately, these are limitations of the iPhone that the Prey team is trying to work with, so it's a solid effort on their part, and as long as you report your device missing quickly enough, you probably won't have too many problems.


Prey is a free download for iOS devices.


Prey | via Prey Blog

Six Best Video Editing Applications

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Softwares & Article You want to be the supreme ruler of your own virtual cutting room? Better break out the checkbook—your film-chopping powers aren't going to come cheaply.




We can't promise cheap and open source, but we can promise that the contenders are—price tags and all—worthy of inclusion. A final note regarding pricing: many of the video editors can only be purchased as part of a bundle of software. For example, Adobe Premiere is part of the Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium bundle, and also includes, among other software, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects.




Sony Vegas Pro / Windows / $450


Sony Vegas Pro has the distinction of being frequently noted as an overlooked but high-powered underdog by many readers. While it doesn't sport as flashy of a resume as say Final Cut Pro, it is feature-packed. Vegas Pro had the ability to mix multiple video formats and resolutions without recoding, a full seven years before Final Cut Pro added the same feature. Vegas Pro started life as an audio editor and was later bought by Sony, but between its roots and Sony inheritance it brought superior sound editing tools to the table before its competitors, and still boasts impressive audio capabilities. Like Final Cut Pro, Vegas Pro has support for add-ons for Vegas Pro, which are actually user scripts coded in Visual Basic or Java Script, cranked out by communities online. Vegas Pro has no specialized hardware requirements and operates on nearly any Windows based machine, giving it both a price and compatibility edge over more expensive and hardware dependent video editors.




iMovie / Mac / $79


When your Mac-loving friends get that look in their eyes and say things like "It just works!" they're under the influence of gems like iMovie. iMovie is a consumer-level movie editing tool available as part of the iLife bundle of media tools. It features professional touches like frame stabilization for smoother movie playback, has drag and drop editing, easy to configure transitions, and even easier special effects for headache-free movie editing. You can get down to the dirty business of creating your stop-motion Lego mini figure space opera without needing to get bogged down thanks to the simple time lines and the easy to use interface in iMovie.




Adobe Premiere Pro / Windows/Mac / $799


A veritable wise old man in the video editing world, Adobe Premier has been around for 18 years. One of the strongest selling points for Premier, aside from the rock-solid editing provided by nearly two decades of improvements, is the tight integration with other software packages in the Adobe Creative Suite, like Adobe After Effects. Premier lays claim to having some of the fastest HD video importing around, and even supports importing video projects from Apple Final Cut Pro. One of Premier's killer features is the built in speech-to-text function, which creates a search ready index of spoken words in your video. No more scrubbing through hours of footage looking for an exact quotel; you can search directly for it.




Final Cut Pro / Mac / $1299


Final Cut Pro has built quite a resume in a very short period of time. Several Hollywood movies have been edited using just Final Cut Pro, including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, No Country for Old Men, and Cold Mountain. If it's good enough for academy award winners, and assuming your pocket book can handle it, it should be more than good enough for your next epic masterpiece. Final Cut Pro supports non-linear and non-destructive editing of a wide variety of video formats. You can easily mix video files of varying formats and resolutions without having to spend time recoding the files. There are extensive tools for filtering and color correcting your video built right in with support for third party plugins. Since version 4 you've been able to apply effects in real time thanks to the introduction of DynamicRT.




Windows Movie Maker / Windows / Free


Although Windows Movie Maker has played second fiddle to the robust iMove in the consumer market—especially since were released around the same time—it's tough to beat free when all you need is basic editing. Windows Movie Maker supports video transfer from most consumer camcorders via FireWire and USB, and sports a time-line-based interface for easy drag and drop shuffling of your video clips. Windows Movie Maker supports over a 100 transitions and movie effects, and the Vista version has Direct3D integration for even higher quality effects. All effects are grabbed from XML, so you can create your own with a little know-how, or look to repositories on the web to find more.




Avid Media Composer / Windows/Mac / $2500


First released in 1989 for the Mac II, Avid Media Composer is the dominant application in professional broadcast and moving editing. Avid Media Composer has extensive support for multiple cameras, making it easy to group and select the best shots. There are a host of effects like inter-frame cloning and removal of imperfections when importing non-digital sources. Avid Media Composer stands out from other high-end video editors by including non-Avid products in its software bundle. Rather that reinventing already excellent products from other companies, Avid bundles software from third parties to fill needed roles like Sonicfire Pro for advanced audio editing and Sorenson Squeeze 5 for DVD compression. The newest version of Avid Media Composer can be used as a stand-alone application, unlike prior versions which were tightly integrated with bundled hardware and network storage tools.


Now that you've seen the contenders for top video editor, it's time to log your vote:


Best Video Editing Software

If you have something to add—especially if you voted Other—sound off in the comments below to share your video editing tips with your fellow readers.

How to Handle Emails You Receive That Are Intended for Someone Else

Thursday, December 1, 2011 // by Saurabh // Labels: , // No comments:





Article If you've ever worked in an office where your name is very similar to someone else already on staff, or opened an email account only to find out that someone else's address is really close to yours, you know what it's like to get email that's intended for someone else, even someone you might know. When you do, don't just sit there and stare at it. Here's what to do.


You're Not Ethically Bound to Do Anything


When The New York Times asked an ethicist what the best course of action was here, his response was to try and gauge whether the message was urgent and the person's life, career, or happiness would be in jeopardy if they didn't get the message. If it would, send it along. If it's an advertising message, spam, or something not worth your time or energy, he explains you're not ethically obligated to do anything—forward it if you like, delete it if you know it's nothing either of you needs to see.


For example, if it's a personal note from a family member who just mistyped two characters about the person's ailing relative, your ethical obligations is greater than if it's the week's hottest bargains at a local retailer. Even so, at Tech. In Total we're all about saving your time and energy, and while ethics says your obligation depends on the type of message and the sender, we can think of better ways to spend your time than struggling with the "is this important enough to forward" moral decision. Here's our recommendation.




Forward It. Don't Delete It.


If this is an office situation and you get a single message that was intended for someone else, send it on to the person it was supposed to get to. CC the original sender and let them know that you're passing it along and they made a mistake by sending it to you. When I worked in a large company, this happened to me all the time: often someone meaning to send a note to "ahenney@company name" accidentally sent their note to "ahenry@companyname." Sometimes the message would be a simple, hurried one-line update, other times it would be an urgent and sensitive issue that needed attention. In every case, I passed it along.


It helped that I knew "ahenney" (his name was Alex, but our company's email standard was first letter-last name), and he would call sometimes to thank me. The message's original sender would often respond to me and thank me for passing the note along as well. You can earn a lot of gratitude with a few moments' effort by clicking forward, and that gratitude is satisfying both personally and professionally, especially in an office environment. Even if you don't get a quick "thank you" from either party, it's better than just trashing the message and pretending you never got it or it's not your business. Eventually, someone will figure out that it went to you by accident.


If you have no idea who the message is supposed to go to though, a simple response to the sender will more often than not get you off the hook (assuming the sender is a real person.) Let them know that you got the message, but you're clearly not the person it's intended for, and move on. You've done your part, you don't need to try and research who it was supposed to go to. If you know, send it on, but if not, don't worry about it. If the sender is an automated mailer or a business and you know your response will go unanswered, it's time to move on to stronger medicine.




Use Technology to Deal with Repeat Offenders and Auto Mailers


Just because you forward a misdirected message doesn't mean you have to take responsibility for it getting to its destination. You're doing someone a favor and being a stand-up person, not acting as a courier. That means if this happens all the time and it's gone from entertaining to annoying, it's time to do something permenent about it. Set up mail filters and rules to make sure that any misdirected messages are forwarded to their proper recipient and never actually clutter up your inbox.


If your organization uses Gmail or Google Apps for messaging, our guide to mastering gmail will help you build your filters that forward the message on to its intended party and archive it so you never see it, or even set up canned responses to the frequent offender who just won't learn from their mistakes. If you do have someone who just can't get it right, I'd suggest doing both, or at least CC'ing them on the forward every time it goes out. If your company uses Microsoft Exchange, check out this guide to filtering email in Outlook and this Microsoft help article to help you get started there. Outlook has somewhat less robust tools for filtering than Gmail does, but it can get the job done just as well in this case. If you're using Thunderbird or another email client, there's likely a tutorial on setting up mail filters and rules for you available, just Google it.


Depending on your threshold for repeat offenders, it may be quicker and easier for you to set up a filter after the first misdirected message comes in, rather than wait and be annoyed when a second or third one arrives. Considering mail filters and canned responses are quick and easy to configure, there's no reason not to manually forward a message more than two or three times. Let your tool of choice do the work for you so you don't have to think about it.


Keep an Eye Open, Though



Most people know what it's like to get an email intended for someone else. If this is in a professional situation or an office, it's pretty cut and dry. If you're getting email that appears to be intended for someone else to your personal addresses, it's also likely nothing big or important, and as we said, only send it along if you know who it's supposed to go to, and only reply if the sender is a real person. However, if you start getting repeated emails that seem like they're for someone else to your email address, you may want to check with the company sending them to make sure someone isn't using your email address—or any other personal data—and masquerading as you.


This old Metafilter thread has a few examples of people who would never have noticed their identity had been stolen if they hadn't suddenly started getting promotional and account-related emails from companies they'd never worked with, even if they were addressed to a different name.


When you get misdirected email, what do you do? Spam it and forget about it, or send it along to its intended recipient? We've told you what we think you should do, now let us know what you prefer in the comments.

The Get More Out of Google Infographic Summarizes Online Research Tricks for Students

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Many Tech. In Total. readers are already Google Search ninjas (even knowing obscure Google search tricks), but a recent study found that 3 out of 4 students don't search Google efficiently, and you probably know other people who could use some Googling help. This infographic is for them and it also might make a handy poster with reminders for basic tricks.
Provided by the folks at HackCollege, the infographic reminds student researchers that you can use Google as a calculator and unit converter, how to find papers by a specific author in Google Scholar, and basic operators you can use. Here's the full infographic (click to expand):







Shopycat Recommends Gifts for Your Facebook Friends

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Article Finding the right gift isn't always easy, but new Facebook app Shopycat can take advantage of what your friends say they like and offer up suggestions for what to buy. It's like your little elf assistant on Facebook.
Whether you're a big Facebook user or not, the app is pretty handy because of the personalized gift recommendations based on stuff your Facebook friends' "likes," status updates, and interests in their profiles. Shopycat matches those interests and likes with product catalogs from Wal-Mart (the app was developed by the big box retailer), Barnes & Noble, RedEnvelope, and other retailers.

A New Update to Google "The Google Bar"

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NEWS Six months ago Google started rolling out a new look and feel for Search, News, Maps, Translate, Gmail and a bunch of other products. Their goal was to create a beautifully simple and intuitive user experience across Google. 


now they're ready for the next stage of our redesign — a new Google bar that will enable the users to navigate quickly between google services, as well as share the right stuff with the right people easily on Google+. 




Instead of the horizontal black bar at the top of the page, you’ll now find links to your services in a new drop-down Google menu nested under the Google logo. We’ll show you a list of links and you can access additional services by hovering over the “More” link at the bottom of the list. Click on what you want, and you’re off.




To find out more about the new Google bar, take a look at this video




The Changes are visible on all Google services:




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