Apple Unveils All-New 17-inch MacBook Pro
by Paul Miller, posted Jan 6th 2009 at 3:34PM
Posts Filed under: Computers
Cell Phone Soap Operas Promote Safe Sex
Let's be frank. No one gets all that excited at the idea of safe sex and the mention of condoms. But if you're out there having unprotected sex you're a moron. Sorry to be blunt, dear readers, but it's true, and everyone has been trying to tell you this for years and you're still not listening. But while we're resorting to name calling and verbal abuse, others like Rachel Jones, a professor of Nursing at Rutgers University, are creating more innovative campaigns to encourage people to practice safe sex.
Jones, using a grant from Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey and the National Institutes of Health, filmed a series of twelve twenty minute soap operas to be distributed online and via cell phone. The episodes tell tales of infidelity and risky behavior amongst urban women. Jones is conducting a study in which women will watch the stories over a period of time that deliver a message encouraging safe sex in order to find out if the rate of risky behavior, such as having unprotected sex, decreases in the subjects.
You can check out the double length pilot episode here. The rest be released over the coming weeks and months. [From: Fox News]
Parents Joining Facebook, Kids Horrified
Of course, college and high school students who were accustomed to Facebook being their impregnable online fortress for posting pictures of their drunken antics have started complaining, loudly, to anyone who will listen (and many who won't). Many students have simply decided not to accept their family members, or to set different privacy filters to keep family from viewing certain parts of their profiles.
We actually understand the frustration over the loss of an online haven, but such is life. Besides, if it's something you wouldn't want your parents to see, it probably shouldn't be posted online -- we've got a feeling potential employer's wouldn't be thrilled to see it either. [From: Neatorama and ABC News]
Does Rise of 'Space Faking' Mean More Identity Theft?
Of late, there have surfaced so many instances of impersonation on social networking sites that critics have given the practice a name: "space faking."
According to a report by the Sydney Morning Herald, "Social networking sites are being overrun by space fakers, who swipe other users' photos and create entirely new identities for themselves."
This ought not be news to social networking site users, who have undoubtedly come across fake celebrity profiles on Facebook, MySpace and their competitors. In fact, a Web site -- FakersBusted.com -- has been established just to expose these masqueraders. But, while such celebrity impersonations are usually benign, performed out of admiration more than much else, some experts find a correlation between the respective rises of "space faking" and online identity theft.
To reiterate a point from last month's report on social networking cyber crime, the most effective way to prevent this sort of identity theft is simple: Don't transmit anything serious, let alone sensitive, over social networking sites. [From: Sydney Morning Herald]
Phishing Scams Plague Twitter
The Twitter Eng and Ops teams identified a scam involving direct messages being sent from hijacked accounts that included a link to a page designed to look exactly like the Twitter login screen. Of course, the page is a fake and entering your username and password into the screen allows the scammers to take over your account and send the same message to your friends on the service.
So keep an eye out for direct messages with suspicious links, like the current message going around that claims to be "a funny blog about you!" And double check the address bar to make sure you're about to log into "Twitter.com" and not some other domain name that just happens to have the word "Twitter" in it. [From: Twitter Blog and Download Squad]
New Mac Mini To Debut at Macworld?
It seems like the signs are pointing to a refresh of the Mac mini when this year's Macworld rolls around. According to a press release by SeeFile, their new (version 4.6) Web server software can be purchased bundled with a Mac mini server with 1 terabyte of storage -- which is odd enough, since the largest internal drive that ships with the thing is 120GB. And how about the release itself, indiscreetly titled: "New Mac Mini Hardware to Be Supported by Revolutionary SeeFile Web Sharing DAM Software." Of course, this could all be mere speculation, rumors and innuendo. We'll find out soon enough, won't we? [Via Yahoo]The Transparent Weatherman: Why Not to Wear Green on TV
If you've never been in a television studio before, there's a reason why television 'green screens' have that name -- they're actually green. Computers replace anything close to the color with a background image and, hey presto, the weather forecast is magically displayed behind your overly chipper local weather personality. What happens if you should accidentally wear the same color tie? Why, you appear to have a hole in your chest, as in the video above.
Watch it through and you'll hear the flustered forecaster say: "dude we just made YouTube." We're not sure about his meteorology skills, but he certainly got that prediction right. [From: BuzzFeed]
Watch it through and you'll hear the flustered forecaster say: "dude we just made YouTube." We're not sure about his meteorology skills, but he certainly got that prediction right. [From: BuzzFeed]
Steve Jobs Discusses His Health in Open Letter
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Workers Return to Inboxes Full of Spam
It's being dubbed a "spamalanch" by communications consulting firm Expert Messaging, who estimate that e-mail power users may have over 3,000 unread messages awaiting them this morning, 70-percent of which would be spam. That's a daunting prospect, but it seems a bit unrealistic to us -- who could really go two weeks without at least checking their e-mail? [From: Mail Online]
Girl Gets Tattoo of Google's Android Logo
