Tech Blog

What started as a seemingly harmless hoax or practical joke on Twitter has now turned into a widespread annoyance. Hackers are using a security hole in the popular service to get people to post and click on malicious links.

The hack is enabled when Twitter users insert "onmouseover" JavaScript code in a URL link in their tweet. When a user places their mouse over the URL a popup window appears with a message. It can also launch a third party website, which is more often than not something that won't be safe for work.

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Location apps like Foursquare, Yelp, and Gowalla have been getting some decent attention of late. Myself, I've been writing about Foursquare so I'm pretty well immersed in it, so it's no wonder that today's announcement from Foursquare caught my eye. First part is an update to the iPhone app with some nice touches (incremental I'd call it) the second part is more interesting.

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One of the limitations with watching movies on your iPad is, frankly, what movies you can watch on your iPad. I'm not talking about content, but formats. For many of us we use VLC on our machines to watch movies that are in pretty much any format. This wasn't an option for iPad owners, well until today.

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The BlackBerry Torch was centre stage at a swanky launch party in downtown Toronto, and those of us who were lucky enough to get a VIP card were able to walk out of the bash digesting a few drinks and carrying the shiny new handset. I’ve been playing with it since I got home and here are some of my initial thoughts.

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You always know that you could buy the hottest new thing on the market at be the talk of the town... for about 12-18 months. Then what happens? Version 2.0 of that widget you bought comes out and all of a sudden you're jealous...

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Email. Text. Facebook. Twitter.

Despite the death knell being rung for the printed word, the spoken word is not rising to replace it in our society.  We are still hovering over keyboards most of the day, it's just they are printing words in bits instead of ink.

Without the proper context provided by the human voice, misunderstandings in the modern age of communication are more common than in a Three's Company episode.

Here are some ways to avoid ending up like Jack , Chrissy and Janet :

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Is Facebook about to follow in Google's footsteps? It appears that may be the case as rumours swirl that the folks over at the social networking site are preparing to launch their own phone.

Reports are surfacing the company is hard at work developing the OS for the device while the hand set itself is being designed and manufactured by a separate company.

Two high level Facebook employees, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos, are said to be working on the secret project. You may remember Hewitt actually helped design Firefox and the iPhone Facebook apps, so building a new mobile OS wouldn't be that far of a stretch for him. Meanwhile Papakipos was leading the Google Chrome OS project until June when he made the jump over to Facebook.

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A lot happened last week -- so much so that my usual weekend post was delayed. But, just in case you'd missed some of the more interesting things that happened last week -- here ye be! Ya Harrrrrrr! New stuff happened this past week -- new Twitter, Boxee, IE9, Facebook competitor, and more! Oh my!

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Fighting game fans who loved the Guilty Gear Series and the original BlazBlue are in for a treat with the next iteration in the series: BlazBlue Continuum Shift . Created by Arc System Works, the game features fantastic characters, fast-paced combat, and wicked music. Intrigued? You should be. It’s awesome.

Continuum Shift features more characters right out of the box, with another 3 on the way as Downloadable Content. The BlazBlue formula has been recast with changes and balance tweaks for every single character, with some drastically evolved from the original game.

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Atlus' critically acclaimed PS3 exclusive Demon's Souls is the latest game to receive the PlayStation Greatest Hits treatment the publisher announced this week.  To become a PS3 Greatest Hit, a game must be on the market for ten months or more, and sell at least 500,000 copies.  Looks like Sony wasted no time giving the "ok" to add the signature red label to the game's packaging, a mark that indicates its new Greatest Hit designation, considering the game was released in North America a mere eleven months ago.

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Ignore the sales numbers for the iPad and iPhone and iPod Touch .

Ignore the touch screen interfaces coming in to desktop computers thanks to the innovations of Windows 7 .

If you want to truly believe that the future format of computing is touch based, watch a child.

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The Professor has returned and so too has his apprentice, Luke. Luke, however, appears in greater quantities in this new game, as it begins with Luke from the Future™ sending a letter to Layton stating that the London that they know and love is in peril, and only the Professor can save it! So begins Professor Layton and the Unwound Future!

I received a care package from the Professor a few weeks ago, including a letter imploring me to help him, as well as a packet of delicious tea. I steeped the tea briefly and sat down with my Nintendo DSi to take a crack at this great new puzzle game.

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The Halo Reach Midnight Launch party at Future Shop in Toronto was a blast, and the gaming tent had all the action with customers playing Halo Reach and winning prizes. To recap the event and the experience of playing with the customers as a Pro Halo player, it's best to start by saying it was a blast!

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The motion control video game war has officially kicked into high gear with Sony releasing the PlayStation Move this weekend across North America to the legion of PlayStation 3 owners.

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I know what you're thinking, twenty-four hours is equal to one full day.  That's exactly how long I've put into Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies for the Nintendo DS.  There are not many activies that I enjoy enough to put in a full day's worth of investment, but when I'm engrossed in the best role-playing game I've played all year -- twenty-four hours just doesn't do it justice.

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Halo: Reach is soaring to new heights with Microsoft announcing this week that the preeminent Xbox 360 first-person shooter has generated over $200 million in the United States and Europe during its first 24 hours on sale.  According to Microsoft this earns Halo: Reach the coveted distinction of being 2010's biggest U.S. entertainment launch, eclipsing the three-day opening weekends of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters such as Iron Man 2 , Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland in a single day.

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There are some great discussions I've noticed online this week about the need to create proper websites.  Mark Ramsey and Michael Kwan are begging people to go out and create professional, functional, slick websites.

You don't need a website, you need a domain.  Once you have that domain, point it to your Facebook page - especially if you're not good at web design or have no budget to create / host / maintain one.

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