Thursday, December 30, 2010

Android Trojan Geinimi


Lookout Mobile Security blog reports the spreading of a new sophisticated trojan on Android devices. Geinimi, the Trojan has been injected into legitimate versions of Android games and apps--mostly distributed via third-party app stores in China.


Lookout believes Geinimi is capable of receiving commands from a central server, and it can collect and transmit user data. There is also the posibility that Geinimi might be setting up the infrastructure required for a botnetLookout also believes there is a possibility that Geinimi could be laying the groundwork for an Android botnet.


How do you protect yourself?

Via Download Squad

Image via Lookout Mobile Security

Beware the Facebook "awkwardhaha" scam


Naked Security just reported of a new watch-this-video survey scam. The message says, "Hey, [name]!! What the heck are you doing in this video! LOL", and links directly to a Facebook application:

http://apps.facebook.com/awkwardhaha

The link - which looks legitimate enough because of the "facebook.com" domain - redirects you to a video-hosting site. For a brief moment, you'll see a web page opening with the title "Videos here - Powered by CO.CC":


The page uses a JavaScript trick to redirect you to yet another site, which pops up a fake Facebook login page:


These types of scams aren't usually picked up by Anti-Virus or Malware applications. As with any link or download on the internet, always use caution and verify the address in your browser and do not log in to application which are not using https or have expired/unknown certificates.

Article source information and images courtesy of Naked Security. To read the source article please click here.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Who’s Using Twitter And How They’re Using It

Who’s Using Twitter And How They’re Using It
Flowtown - Social Media Marketing Application

Search Amazon.com Books for Twitter

jProgr: Firefox's Configuration Folder

This article is part of the jProgr.com translation series. 

Firefox has a specific profile which contains all of its settings, tweaks here and there that you have done to your favorite browser. It is useful to know this when we have two computers or reinstall your OS and you don't want to configure Firefox from Zero to customize it to your liking.

As I mentioned, the complete profile is kept in one folder, which you can copy to other installations of Firefox to have it like that of our home computer (or wherever). The folder is in C:\users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ on Windows 7 and Vista, on Mac it would be under /Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/[random].[profile]/ and for Linux it can be found in /home/[username]/.mozilla/firefox/[random].[profile]. You can copy the location for your OS and paste it into the navigation bar of your file browser so you don't have to search folder by folder.

Copying that folder you now have a backing of your browser settings for use in emergencies, we can also make an automatic backup of the profile with the help of an extension, which saves you time by having to look for the folder, in addition you'll now have up to date copies/backups of your profile settings.

The next time you install Firefox on a machine and want to have the same configuration that you already have on your PC you know that copying a single folder you'll have everything resolved.

Source Article: La carpeta de configuraciones de Firefox(una muy importante)
Published on: 2010/03/26
Author: jProgr

jProgr: The future of security on the iPhone

This article is part of the jProgr.com translation series.
In France an attack was able to modify the wallpaper of many iPhones thanks to a vulnerability in the SSH protocol. Victims were presented with a message to visit a certain web site and pay $4.95 using PayPal in order to receive instruction on securing their iPhone and preventing worse types of attacks. via SpamLoco.net
The screen capture to the left is the image which surprised many Europeans, this is something which alarming but thankfully the attacker soon published the solution to the vulnerability. This is one of the first attacks on the iPhone-- any technology is secure at first for the simple fact that it is not popular (among its users as well as as its attackers. But when the popularity begins to rise, black hat hackers take notice and interest. 

In the beginning Windows had a formidable "barrier" that had no virus, but now you can't click on a link without thinking twice. Mac OS is going through this process very slowly, and Linux still offers a decent "barrier" when it comes to security.

The iPhone, with more and more sales, is under increasing attack. It is not the first but currently has one of the fastest growing markets and I assure you it will not be the last. Take for example smartphones (the iPhone is a level higher than a smartphone) at the beginning you could navigate without worries, but now there are even AntiVirus for these devices.

Is a matter of time, but in the future we will have to be so careful while browsing and sharing files on Apple's star gadget as well as when you connect your flash drive in your own computer. And of course, as in Windows, it will become more and more expensive to own an iPhone, you will have to pay for extra security applications (whether antivirus, firewall, etc..) because any improvement in security that Apple develops for the iPhone it is going to be violated as it is in Windows.

Now with the scales balanced, let's see who is better at this: Microsoft or Apple.

Source Article: El futuro de la seguridad en el iPhone
Published on: 2009/11/05
Author: jProgr

Thanks for another great article jProgr.com

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Linux Toolbox: Bang (!) Commands

Most modern shells support csh's bang commands - bash, tcsh and zsh all do.  While some bang commands don't work in all those shells, all of the following do.

For the purposes of these tips, every tip will assume these are the last three commands you ran:

% which firefox
% make
% ./foo -f foo.conf
% vi foo.c bar.c


Getting stuff from the last command:

Full line:  % !!           becomes:  % vi foo.c bar.c
Last arg :  % svn ci !$    becomes:  % svn ci bar.c
All args :  % svn ci !*    becomes:  % svn ci foo.c bar.c
First arg:  % svn ci !!:1  becomes:  % svn ci foo.c

Accessing commandlines by pattern:

Full line:  % !./f          becomes:  % ./foo -f foo.conf
Full line:  % vi `!whi`     becomes:  % vi `which firefox`
Last arg :  % vi !./f:$     becomes:  % vi foo.conf
All args :  % ./bar !./f:*  becomes:  % ./bar -f foo.conf
First arg:  % svn ci !vi:1  becomes:  % svn ci foo.c

The double bang !! comes in very handy whenever you need to re-execute a command using sudo if you don't have the required permissions, all you need to do is execute the following:

sudo !!

via: ILUG Mailing List

Monday, December 27, 2010

Winter 2011 Anime Schedule

The Winter 2011 Anime Schedule looks promising. Here is a list of the Anime I plan to watch (at least the first two episodes) in chronological order:

Houkago no Pleiades

Air Date: Jan 2011
Producers: Gainax
Genres: Cars
A collaboration between Gainax and the car maker Subaru.
Rio: Rainbow Gate!

Air Date: Jan 4, 2011
Producers: Xebec
Genres: Comedy, Ecchi
Anime featuring Rio, a character from slot machines.
IS: Infinite Stratos

Air Date: Jan 6, 2011
Producers: 8bit
Genres: Action, Mecha, Sci-Fi, Shounen
Japan engineered an armed powered exoskeleton "Infinite Stratos" (IS) and it became the mainstream of weapons. Since only women can operate IS, women dominate the society over men. Orimura Ichika is a 15 year old boy and accidentally touches an IS placed in the IS pilot training school. He is found to be the only man who can operate IS and forced to enter the training school. Ichika's busy school life surrounded by girls has begun.
Yumekui Merry

Air Date: Jan 6, 2011
Producers: J.C. Staff
Genres: Action, Supernatural
Ten years ago Fujiwara noticed he had a power to see multicolored auras surrounding the person's body. Ever since then he's been having a weird dream about a war with cats. Then one day a mysterious girl falls on top of him...

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Ignoring the Warnings



This post is part of the jProgr.com translation series.

Why do users ignore these Warning?

I was really surprised today to see how a user completely a very critical and serious warning.

By pure chance I passed by and saw the warning on the screen, my first thought was that he/she would return, or would go to Google. But I was astonished to see the degree of irresponsibility, such was my surprise that I could not help myself in telling the user to immediately leave from that site, and I'm not the type to speak to just anyone. Eventually the user left the site.

The person in question was someone I know and whose computer I have fixed several times, but I just could not help but comment that such warnings should be taken very seriously and it's not something that should be ignored like the Blue Screen of Death. I might have behaved somewhat intrusive but my expression was such that I could not help

I got to talking with the user and was told that these "windows" had popped up before, or in the users words "these type of windows pop up all of the time". After making it clear what those warnings were, I though to myself What would make a user ignore these warnings?

The person I'm speaking of is not someone completely ignorant of computer security: this person knows of viruses and understands the hazards (and well), known of malware and to always keep your antivirus updated. This person is not a hacker with expertise in security, but knows the basics.

A warning from Firefox is more difficult to ignore that one of Windows, for obvious reasons, but I'm still wondering why would he/she do it. I have seen users ignore warnings from avast! an anti-virus application (the window superimposes itself on the screen and they still ignore it) and I kind of understand it, its something within the OS, easy to ignore. But the Internet is like going into a minefield and ignoring large signs above each mine.

It's been a while, I believe it was SpamLoco , who shared a Tweet on a study published on safety-info News, showing how users evade all warnings in order to complete the task at hand (even the most obvious!).

Incredible ...



Source Article: Ignorando las alertas
Published on: 2009/08/18
Author: jProgr

Thanks for another great article jProgr.com

Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0, still best anti-malware package around


After a four-month beta program, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) 2.0 has been released. Since its initial release MSE has been my favorite anti-malware application for Windows—it’s free, behaves well when consuming resources, and with the release of version 2.0 it now adds network filtering, and heuristic scanning.

To me, MSE has always been really good at finding and removing malware, but with the inclusion of a heuristic engine it should make it more effective in finding malware not only located within its virus definition files—as with most heuristic engines there is a risk of false positives, so make sure to inspect files before sending them off to the Null Void1. So far I haven’t had a Windows box with MSE get hit with malware, and with MSE 2.0 I feel much more confidant that my computers will remain clean.

So what are these new features?
Here’s a list of the main features in MSE 2.0:
  • Heuristic Scanning Engine: Finds malware by scanning files for certain type of attacks allowing the detection of such even though they might not be in its virus definition files.
  • Network Traffic Inspection: Monitors Network traffic allowing it to detect threats before they actually get loaded onto the computer.
  • IE Integration: By integrating into Internet Explorer it is able to block scripts before IE get to execute them. The previous version would detect such scripts only after they were written to the IE cache—this is a big plus for IE fans

Where do I get MSE 2.0?


MSE is free for Home use and small businesses with 10 PC’s or less. Larger businesses will need to look at Forefront suite. You can download MSE 2.0 from the Microsoft Download Center. If you already have MSE, it should automatically update itself.


1 Null Void: http://ben10.wikia.com/wiki/Null_Void

Friday, December 17, 2010

Amazon shipping update email spreads malware attack in time for Christmas

Researchers at SophosLabs have intercepted a malware campaign that has been spammed out, pretending to be a notice from Amazon.com.

The emails headers are forged to look like it was sent from order-update@amazon.com, here are some details from the email to help you detect these fraudulent emails:

Subject : Shipping update for your Amazon.com order
Message text : Shipping update for your Amazon.com order [number]
Attached file : Shipping documents.zip

Whatever you do, don't open the attached ZIP file as it contains malware. Sophos detects it as W32/AutoRun-BHY and the ZIP file as Troj/BredoZp-BD.


Screenshot of email
via: Naked Security

Word Lens, Turn you iPhone into the dictionary of the future



Word Lens is a real-time translation app that turns your iPhone into “the dictionary of the future” optical character recognition and augmented reality to translate text. The app is free in the iTunes Store, and it comes with Spanish->English. You can purchase English->Spanish as an in app purchase. Apparently there are more languages coming soon.

via questvisual.com

Dropbox 1.0 Released

Dropbox 1.0 has just been released with hundreds of bugfixes, improved performance, and selective sync.

This version reduces memory usage by up to 50%. It’s speedier and more efficient when handling big changes to your Dropbox while ensuring that smaller changes remain quick.

Selective Sync – If you have a netbook or a computer with a tiny hard drive, you now can choose which folders get downloaded to which computers.

Download Dropbox 1.0!

Hot To Upgrade to Dropbox 1.0 stable in Linux
  • Exit Dropbox
  • Backup current install:
    mv ~/.dropbox-dist ~/.dropbox-dist.OLD
  • Run Dropbox from Applications > Internet > Dropbox
The latest stable Dropbox version will be downloaded and installed

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Fake Office Documents, mind your attachments

Nowadays, it is very common to receive chain letters or jokes as Word (.doc) or PowerPoint (.ppt) attachments in emails. Since you usually receive these emails from known contacts and most people don't think twice about opening them, it has become common practice to disguise malicious software as these Word or PowerPoint files.

During last years H1N1 Flu outbreak there was a chain email going around with a file attachment by the name of "Novel H1N1 Flu Situation Update.exe", and the icon of the file makes it look like a Word Document. The executables contain backdoor functionality, including an elaborate keylogger (which is used to track and send off username, password, and credit card information).

This Malicious software actually opens a document file that causes the user to think he really opened a Word file. This is what the document looks like.



You must alway be cautious when opening any type of attachments even from people you may know since many of these Virus/Trojans will resend themselves using the infected computers address book. Remember, never to trust email attachments and run them through a Virus Scanner (make sure you virus definitions are up to date).

What if my computer is infected?

SecureList has a an article with basic information to try and stop the malicious software. The article also mentions the following:
However, no universal advice can be given for all occasions. Advanced worms and Trojans occur every now then that are quite difficult to track down. In this case, it is best to consult the support service of the IT security vendor that released your antivirus client, a company offering IT assistance services, or ask for help at specialized web forums
F-Secure offers an online scanning service to determine if your computer is infected.

Additional information:


This post is part of the jProgr.com translation series. This article is based on the article posted over at jProgr.com and is not translated word for word.


Published on: 2009/07/22
Author: jProgr

Thanks for another great article jProgr.com

What Type Are You?


Typefaces reflect the character of the person using them, I usually gravitate towards mono spaced typefaces and never gave much thought as to why. Actually, I have given it some thought and figured it was because of my programming background and my heavy use of the command line.

Pentagram has created an application "What Type Are You" with research of over seven years with a team of 23 academics across Eastern Europe. The application asks four key character questions and analyses your responses in exceptional detail and recommends one of 16 typefaces as a result.

My typeface is Archtype Van Doesburg. Architype Van Doesburg is a geometric sans-serif typeface based upon a 1919 alphabet designed by Theo Van Doesburg. The face is constructed entirely of perpendicular evenly weighted strokes. Each character is based upon a square divided into a raster of 25 smaller squares.

Archtype Van Doesburg

Need more information?

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

DId I Get Gawkered?


If you haven't heard yet, the Gawker Media network, which includes popular websites such as Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, Fleshbot, and of course Gawker, was compromised. The hacker group Gnosis posted a torrent containing a full dump of Gawker's source code as well as the entire user database of around 1.3 million usernames, email addresses, and DES-based crypt(3) password hashes.

Duo Security has launched a site that allows you to easily check if your username or email address was included in the Gawker password dump: http://didigetgawkered.com

More information on the hack and an analysis of the data can be found here: Brief Analysis of the Gawker Password Dump - Duo Security

tƶken (Token) a multitouch technology platform


tƶken is a multitouch technology platform created by Rodrigo Campos from Santiago de Chile, for musical performance, whose purpose is to raise the status of a "live performance" the next level.

tƶken is large multitouch platform using a piece of software called "emulator". tƶken is very stable, versatile, very low latency and 100% functional.

More Information: Token Experience

Windows System State Analyzer

Windows System State Analyzer utility compares two snapshots of a systems taken at different points in time allowing you can compare drives, registry keys, services or drivers. This is a great utility for auditing installation programs, reverse engineering, creating portable applications or malware analysis.

Upon launching the application you a presented with a two pane interface which will allow you to select what you want to take a snapshot of. I think having predefined names like Pre Install and Post Install is a nice touch.


Once the comparing is complete you are able to view the output within the application showing a before and after of the components you had selected for comparison.






The application also allows you to export a Detailed comparison report as a simple html file.



This tool is part of the Server Logo Program Certification Tool and can be downloaded from the following locations



Note: You must have the .NET Framework 2.0 installed for Windows System State Analyzer to work correctly.


Article source and images via: Ask the Performance Team

Disposable Emails (jProgr.com)

There are some sites or forums which require registration in order to access the resources you are interested with. The problem is that many of these sites require you confirmation via email and will generate a lot of traffic especially if you register to many of these you'll end up with an inbox full of unwanted emails.

One way around this is to use disposable emails, these emails are only valid from 10 minutes up to a few days and then are no longer apply. These are perfect for registration forms of websites you'll probably not visit again or have no interest in becoming part of them. The only thing you are asked to create a real email and go.

Here are two services for such occasions:

10 Minute Mail will generate a temporary email for you and dispose of it after 10 minutes. The site has its own built-in inbox for you to view your emails.


Tempmail requires you to enter your real email address, but it allows you to specify and expiration period of 4 hours, 1 day, 1 week or 1 month.




Article Source: Correos desechables
Published on: 2009/05/30
Author: jProgr

My Bookmarks for 12/14/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

AMIR - Advance Malware Identification & Removal

Advance Malware Identification & Removal is an application that will help you identify unwanted processing running on your system with the option to remove them. AMIR will highlight possible suspect programs with the option to show the PE Details or the process. It also gives you the option of Memory Dumps of the running process and the ability to display the Resources used by the binary.

AMIR also includes a Heuristic Scanner which look for Malicious code in .vbs, .inf, and .bat files.

AMIR can also enable Regedit, Task Manager & Folder Option that has been locked by Malware activity.

AMIR Architecture

AMIR may not be FOSS (Free Open Source Software), but it is Free and without any restrictions.

AMIR Download Link: http://www.malwareinfo.org/Utilities/AMIR.zip
System Requirement: Windows 2000/XP/2003 ( Not tested in Windows VISTA )

Source: AMIR Google Code Page

Search Amazon.com Books for Malware

Friday, December 10, 2010

jProgr Translation Series


jProgr.com is a technology blog written in Spanish with great articles covering topics from Windows, Mac, Linux, Web development/design and Anime/Manga to name a few.

I've been following the site for while now and recently found an article I wanted to share with you. I contacted jprogr (the administrator of the site) and he gave me the green light to translate and post the article which includes 28 link to other articles on the site. I will start posting the articles in chronological order leading up to the main article.

Hopefully I'll be able to continue to bring to you more articles by jProgr.com after I complete this initial series by featuring at least an article a week from jProgr.com.

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Twitter Worm Making The Rounds

Fig. 1
New Twitter virus is on the loose and replicating by people clicking on mobile links shortened with Goo.gl like in this Twitter search (Fig. 1). So far it's spreading using two different URL's http://goo.gl/od0az and http://goo.gl/R7f68 but that could change any minute. For now, try to stay away from any goo.gl URL.

Troy Holden from Twitter @support told TechCrunch, “We’re aware and have sent out password resets for affected users. We’ll monitor the situation in case of further iterations.”

Read Source Article (Techcrunch.com)

Hacker brings enhanced security to jailbroken iPhones

Stefan Esser, a security consultant and developer for SektionEins, plans to unveil a process at the Power of Community security conference (December 17 in Seoul, South Korea) for jailbreaking iDevices that automatically fortifies them with ASLR which would make the devices more resistant to malware attacks.

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) randomizes the memory locations where injected code is executed making it impossible for exploits to know ahead of time where malicious payloads are located.

Apple has limited ASLR built in to Mac OS X and it is has left it out of iOS. Interestingly enough Microsft does include ASLR into their OS starting with Windows Vista, and have also included it into their Windows 7 mobile OS.

“When you jailbreak it, it breaks a lot of security of a normal iPhone,” Charlie Miller (a principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators) told The Register. “With Stefan's stuff, now maybe it's an option, if you're a security-conscious person, to still jailbreak your phone because you can pick up ASLR, which is going to make it a lot harder to do exploits.”




Esser also plans to release a tool titled antid0te, that simplifies the process of implementing ASLR into a jailbroken iDevice.


Read Source Article: The Register

My Bookmarks for 12/07/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Monday, December 06, 2010

Khan Academy, the free classroom for the World



The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere.

With 1600+ videos in 1800+ categories the library is developed as an open source project allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World.

The Khan Academy is all about using video to explain the world, so what better way to explain the Khan Academy than through videos.




Visit Khan Academy and make sure to check out the Frequently Asked Questions for more information.

Saturday, December 04, 2010

NASA transcripts of the Apollo 13 Mission


Apollo13.spacelog.org allows you to explore transcripts of radio communications between the Apollo 13 crew and the NASA personnel back at Houston. Included with the transcripts are photographs taken both from the ground and by the crew in space, as well as other information about the mission, the problems that occurred, and the measures that were taken, both on ground and in the Command and Lunar Modules that made up the crew areas of Apollo 13.


Spacelog.org a project created by /dev/fort, features searchable and linkable transcripts of radio communications between astronauts and Mission Control from NASA's early space flights. Spacelog features two missions: Mercury 6 (1962) and Apollo 13 (1970).

The site offers the transcripts in a clean and attractive layout with timestamps and permalinks for each line of conversation within the transcripts. Photographs are also included as part of the transcripts (the image in this post was taken from the transcript which was spoken on April 11, 1970, 7:13 p.m. UTC (40 years, 8 months ago). The transcripts are also available in PDF and plain text format.

Here's a sample of what the site looks like.

Spoken on April 14, 1970, 3:08 a.m. UTC (40 years, 8 months ago).

Visit site: Apollo 13 transcripts on Spacelog

Search Amazon.com for Apollo 13

My Bookmarks for 12/04/2010

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Friday, December 03, 2010

Lecturefox: Free University Lecture Index

Lecturefox is a free service providing an index to high-quality classes from universities all over the world.

All lectures are from official universities from the faculties physics, chemistry, computer science and mathematics. They also cover lectures from other departments like electrical engineering, biology, psychology, economics, history and philosophy under the category “faculty mix”.

Start learning at http://www.lecturefox.com, they also have a blog about free university lectures, videos, podcasts, coding and design.

Reading Linux Partitions in Windows with Ext2Read

Image courtesy of Ext2Read project


Ext2Read is a to explore ext2/ext3/ext4 files under windows. As of version 2.2 It supports LVM2 and EXT4 extents 

Features
  • Simple UI designed using QT4.
  • View/Read Ext2/ext3/ext4 partitions.
  • Linux LVM2 Support.
  • Ext4 Large File support (untested).
  • Recursively Copy the entire folder or even support for external USB disks.
  • Support for disk and filesystem  images. Wubi users can just open their root.disk file through this program.
  • LRU based Block cache for faster access.
  • Unicode support.
The executable and sources can be downloaded from http://ext2read.sf.net

The explorer like application requires administrator privileges to run (Right click -> Run As Administrator)

7 areas beyond gaming where Kinect could play a role

Image courtesy Microsoft/Xbox press kit.
Alex Howard has a great article on possible application outside of gaming for the Xbox 360's Kinect. Here are a few excerpts from the article, make sure to read the full article (link provided at end of post)
Kinect, at this stage, isn't perfect. As the Wall Street Journal and Engadget noted in reviews, a controller is still needed to access certain menus or functions, and accuracy-focused tasks that involve manipulating objects don't work all that well.
 Joe Sinicki summarized Kinect's broader influence in his review: "The main draw of Kinect is not what it does now, but what developers may be able to do with it in the future." Given OpenKinect, a set of open source drivers that unlocks the device's potential, the developer opportunities are considerable.
Here are the seven areas mentioned in the article. Details for each are described in the article.
  1. Health and medicine
  2. Special needs children and adults
  3. Exercise
  4. Education
  5. Participatory art
  6. Advertising and e-commerce
  7. Navigating the web/exploring digital spaces
Read Article

Thursday, December 02, 2010

Apple patents glasses-less 3D projection

Diagram of how Apple's proposed 3D projection system would work.
(Credit: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)
I've always loved Apple's sense of design, everything from their computers to their portable devices. Now it seems that they also care about how you look by designing a 3D projection systems which doesn't require you to wear those dorky plastic glasses to view 3D content.


Apple has been granted a patent on a method of projecting a 3D image that can be viewed without glasses.

How does the system work?

A three-dimensional display system provides a projection screen having a predetermined angularly-responsive reflective surface function. Three-dimensional images are respectively modulated in coordination with the predetermined angularly-responsive reflective surface function to define a programmable mirror with a programmable deflection angle.

The previous paragraph is taken from the abstract description from the patent which doesn't make much sense. Here's my try to translate it to English:

The simplified explanation would be that the system would bounce each pixel on the screen using a reflective and textured surface directly into each of the viewers eyes creating a stereoscopic image (3D image). The system includes sensors which would locate the eyes of each viewer in order to know where to send the pixels. This will allow multiple viewer at different angles to experience the 3D content.

Read more:

The Power of WordPress


Infographic: The Power of WordPress


The Power of WordPress
by Tech King

COULD YOU BE A FAILURE? (and other charts by age)

Failure & other fun charts.
Infographic by Smarter.org

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Brewing Unix tools in OS X

Brewery Hoepfner.-.Brew kettle

Mac OS X is a Unix-based operating systems which includes many of the wonderful tools you would expect in Linux or BSD, but there are many essential tools which are missing.

There are several ways to get Unix tools installed on your OS X system. Some offer OS X binary downloads, but most only offer their source as downloads. Tools like MacPorts offer interfaces which ease the search, download, compatibility patching and compilation process. I've tried these tools before and over time only resulted in headaches which would result in me removing and switching between the two packages.

Recently I found an new alternative to this process called Homebrew which is a new modern package management system that is faster and easier to maintain than MacPorts.

Homebrew packages are installed into their own isolated prefixes and then symlinked into /usr/local. Homebrew allows you to also create new packages and edit formulas (package install instruction) which are simple Ruby scripts.

Next, I'm going to walk you through the simple installation process (the only dependency for Home brew is having the XCode installed)

From the Terminal execute the following command

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSLk https://gist.github.com/raw/323731/install_homebrew.rb)"

This will download and execute the gist and then install Xcode

You should now be able to install any application located in the Homebrew repository. To get a list of available formulas enter the following command (basically you do an empty search)

brew search

You can browse the Formula folder on GitHub.

It is really simple to install a package using Homebrew (if you get and error like Error: Cannot write to /usr/local/Cellar you'll need to execute brew with sudo)


brew install wget

This will download and compile wget on your system. You can use the info command to get more information on the package and formula:

brew info wget

wget 1.12
http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/
/usr/local/Cellar/wget/1.12 (7 files, 576K)
http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/wget.rb


If the package is not available in the repository you'll get the following error "Error: No available formula for package-name".

Homebrew also allows you to create new formulas which you can contribute back to the community using git. For more information on creating and contributing formulas take a look at the Formula Cookbook.

Here are some of the tools I've installed using Homebrew:
axel, iftop, mpg123, wget, git, irssi, lsof, mplayer, bmon, unrar, htop, mkvtoolnix, p7zip and w3m
For more information on Homebrew: