Autodesks 123D Web app is an easy way to create 3D models that can then be sent to your 3D printer. For Valentines Day, Autodesk has added a new app called Charmr that lets you convert a photograph into jewelry.

In essence, Charmr is a lot like those custom jewelry kiosks you used to find in Walmart. You upload a picture, place it onto the pendant or charm of your choice and then print it. What sets Charmr apart is that it generates a 3D printable file for you to make with your 3D printer.

For example, lets say somebody wasnt right in their right mind and wanted a charm with my face on it. With Charmr, I just simply have to upload the picture onto the sight, set it inside the charm of my choice and download the STL file.

If you dont have a 3D printer, you can still obtain a 3D print of your jewelry through Shapeways, Sculpteo and i.materialise. Shapeways may be your best bet as the company offers prints in a variety of materials that arent plastic.

If youre like me and have a face that only a mother could tolerate, you might want to go with one of the designs already up on Charmr. At the moment, you can choose between some Milk Box earrings, a Ye heart pendant, a BFF pendant or a Year of the Horse pendant. There will be more designs added soon as more people make more charms.

Image via Charmr [h/t: 3ders]

See the original post here:

Charmr Makes 3D Printable Jewelry Out Of Your Photos

EVENING Times readers are being urged to support a charity event that is raising funds to ensure a vital service can continue.

A race night is being held to raise funds for our Talking Newspaper for the blind

Cue and Review Print Speaking to the Blind, which produces our Talking Newspaper, is holding a race night to raise cash to fund the service.

Volunteers and young disabled people employed by the charity currently read a total of 28 articles each day and upload them for blind and partially-sighted people to download to their specially adapted internet radio boxes.

It costs 167 each day to keep the service free. Up to 2000 blind people can access the audio version of the Evening Times thanks to the charity.

A fundraising race night is being held on February 21 at the Social Club in St Mungo Street in Bishopbriggs.

Alastair McPhee, Cue and Review managing editor, said: "Providing a six day a week service for the Evening Times costs money and with that in mind the volunteers are asking readers to come along and support the event.

"It costs 167 per day to keep our service free, and we do need your support to help up to 2000 blind people who have access to the audio Evening Times.

"Providing a six-day a week service of the Herald and Evening Times costs money and with that in mind the volunteers are asking Evening Times readers to come along and support the event."

Tickets for the race night are 7.50, including a hot supper and horses can be sponsored for a minimum of 5.

See the article here:

Plea to help raise funds for talking newspaper service

IB Coordinator in Dubai

GEMS Education has a global network of world class international schools. With 53 years of experience in education, GEMS provides high quality holistic education to over 142,000 students from 151 countries. It employs over 10,000 education professionals, specialists and staff from around the world.

Established in 1986, this year GEMS Modern Academy celebrated its 25 years of Excellence in Education. Affiliated to the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, New Delhi, India, the school opens admissions to pupils from Pre-kindergarten to Grade 12 and conducts two examinations annually: ICSE (Grade 10) and ISC (Grade 12).

In recognition of the role we are playing in preparing children to take on the challenges of world citizenship, the school has the rare distinction of winning the highest educational accolade in the Gulf region - The Hamdan Award for Distinguished Academic Excellence and School Administration. The school is also the winner of the prestigious Dubai Quality Appreciation Program Award. The Dubai School Inspections Bureau has rated GEMS Modern Academy an Outstanding school in Dubai.

Moving forward and also in keeping with the times and educational trends, the school is also registered with the International Baccalaureate and is now an accredited IB World school since June 2012.Modern as it is affectionately known, is a school that is proud of its ethnicity, and encourages its students to gain a global perspectiveand exemplifies the forward thinking attitude that is an inherent part of the dynamic environment.With this in mind, we are introducing the Diploma Programme in 2014 and wish to make this strategic and recognize this as a key appointment.

You will, in conjunction with the Senior Leadership Team of the school, focus on the following areas, in addition to performing all duties designated by the Principal:

If you wish to apply for this post, please upload your CV with a recent photograph on http://www.gemseducation.com/careers to job reference number 1972 .

Expired

Link:

IB Coordinator

Bridge Banter: Was Jose Mourinho's Billy McCulloch masseur revelation just a bluff about Chelsea title chances?

12:17pm Friday 7th February 2014 in Sport By Tim Ashton

You never know whats going to happen in this beautiful game.

The Chelsea lads may have arrived in Manchester on a bus (OK, more likely a luxury coach) but it was parked in an allotted space outside the Etihad stadium.

Ask any self-important sports journalist, and they would have insisted that the bus was going to be plonked in front of Petr Cechs goal.

Ask any pundit who graces a comfy chair in a TV studio because he used to play the game, and they would have told you the same.

Ask Jose Mourinho and he just tells you what he wants you to hear.

Then he turns in a performance of such tactical genius that those aforementioned scribblers and bawlers can be found quickly deleting their wayward predictions and whistling an innocuous tune.

Chelsea did not do a containing job on the previously invincible City, because they did not need to.

Straight from the off they went at the jugular and they were unlucky not to score more than Branislav Ivanovics decisively sweet strike.

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Was Mourinho's masseur revelation just a bluff about Chelsea title chances?

There is nothing that sells movie tickets more than nostalgia, and there are few things moviegoers are more fond of than their childhood toys. With that in mind, it seems a no-brainer that Warner Bros. should be pairing a walk down memory lane with proven comedic talent in The LEGO Movie. Making a film built entirely out of toys demands imagination, and the results are already clear: when appealing to an audiences' inner child, superheroes, wizards, and even presidents can all coexist. But this isn't the first time filmmakers have turned to toys to do the impossible on film. Here is a brief look at Our 10 Favorite Toy Movies. Victor Herbert's operetta Babes in Toyland has been adapted a number of times, but the 1934 film starring comedy duo Laurel and Hardy has to be our favorite. Set in the fairy tale land of Santa Claus, Little Bo Peep and the Three Little Pigs, the film is anything but suitable for children. Featuring six-foot-tall wooden soldiers unaware of their own strength or lethality; threats of medieval torture; pignapping, and an army of Bogeyman, the fact that toys come to life is almost an afterthought. Nevertheless, the fever-dream plot and characters are unforgettable. Every child dreams of bringing their toys to life, but few ever dream of their army men or toy soldiers teaching them about 18th Century colonization. Somehow, author Lynne Reid Banks made that seem exciting in the novel The Indian in the Cupboard, adapted to film by director Frank Oz. The story begins a when young boy receives a small cupboard for his birthday, but the potential for 'worst birthday gift ever' is redeemed when he realizes it can bring toys placed inside of it to life. As the title suggests, Omri forges a fast friendship with Little Bear, a small Native American figure. We would experiment a bit more than Omri did, grabbing any chance to see a Transformer or Ninja Turtle stomp around our bedroom... but then Michael Bay would be out of a job. The basic premise of The Last Mimzy seems fairly standard for this list: a young boy and girl are stunned and delighted when their stuffed rabbit turns out to be more than a simple stuffed animal. Where Mimzy differs is the fact that it's not a magical being, but an artificially intelligent creation of future humans, sent back in time to return with DNA uncorrupted by widespread pollution. Also, it turns children into telekinetics and telepaths so it can communicate. That's a heavy story for a young audience - even moreso when the plot is placed under a microscope. Mimzy's young master is needed to save the future, but the plan was never to prevent the pollution in the first place. So the children will be forced to watch humanity stumble, with or without superpowers. The Misfit Toys may not be the star of the stop-motion classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but they are just as well-known as Santa's gifted sled-puller. An addition to the original story, Rudolph discovers the Island of Misfit Toys after leaving Santa's Village, populated by toys deemed unsuitable for giving to children. Ruled over by King Moonracer (a winged lion, because why not?) the island's inhabitants feature an airplane that won't fly, a swimming bird, an ostrich-riding cowboy, and a polka-dotted elephant, to name a few. Seeing them brought to life made every child realize that each toy is deserving of love, whatever their faults. That's a dangerous excuse for hoarding, but memorable nonetheless. Toys often appear in animated children's films, but rarely are they the sole star. When Disney adapted the classic Italian tale of Pinocchio into the studio's second animated film, they had to make some serious changes before it became the classic it is today. The story of Geppetto's marionette wished to be a real boy is one of the most iconic in Disney's history, with many other films on our list owing their existence at least partly to it. To this day, we can't help but wish there was a small, singing, top-hat-wearing cricket sitting on our shoulder, telling us when we're headed for trouble. But if that comes at the price of a nose that grows with every lie, and the chilling run-ins with 'Pleasure Island,' the film is more than enough of an escape. Given its title and subject matter, director Barry Levinson's Toys must be mentioned for this list - as much for its approach to the idea of childlike play as the cinematic riddle it wound up being. The story is simple enough: Leslie Zevo (Robin Williams) is too immature to take over control of his father's toy company, and must wage war against the military toys created by his three-star general uncle. But the overall detachment from reality makes the film more of an abstract painting of a film, sure to confuse almost every viewer at one point or another. Thankfully, the film's third act includes an all-out war between traditional toys and military-grade toy tanks and helicopters - not to mention the enormous (and deadly) 'toys' sprinkled throughout. Toy fans may not love it, but it's one they simply must see to believe. What happens when a toy coming to life turns out not to be a dream come true, but a nightmare made real? That's the case with Chucky, the bloodthirsty star of the Child's Play film series - an everyday 'Good Guy' doll brought to life and infused with the departing soul of "The Lakeshore Slasher." It wasn't the first movie to place an animated doll as its deadly villain, and there have been plenty of imitators since. But whether it's the red hair, the freckles, or the voice work of Brad Dourif (Lord of the Rings) that make Chucky remain as unsettling today as when first released, the movie made us forever suspicious of even the cutest dolls (more than we were already). To a child, there's nothing more wondrous than the idea of having your favorite stuffed animal come to life and become the best friend you'd always hoped for. While Seth MacFarlane's Ted featured a talking teddy bear that did just that, it followed the story through to the end, with the titular plushie's persona of 'best friend' aging alongside Mark Wahlberg. It may not be as revered as others on our list, but Ted did what no other 'talking toy' movie ever had: shown adult audiences what it would be like to have a toy for a best friend. For that alone (not to mention the experience of seeing a friendly fistfight between a human being and stuffed bear), the movie is worth some recognition. It's one thing to see your toys come to life, but in Small Soldiers, Alan Abernathy is dropped right into the middle of a full-on toy war. Essentially, gross mismanagement and shortsightedness led a toy company to design toys that would "play back" with the children who owned them. The Commando Elite were outfitted with artificial intelligence, as were their sworn enemies, the Gorgonites. Predictably, the situation spun out of control when the Commandos decided humans would only get in the way of eliminating their Gorgonite foes, and the star-studded cast raised this toy-led adventure up from a simple children's movie. In fact, much of the film is far darker than any kids movie should be - but that doesn't mean older audiences can't appreciate a brutal action-figure massacre. As the name implies, it was Pixar's goal to weave a tale beginning and ending with children's playthings, but in chronicling the adventures of Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of Toy Story's cast, they proved that animated films could be relevant for an entirely new generation, and crafted one of the best examples in history. For the sake of the other entries on our list, we've grouped together the entire trilogy. There is little the series as a whole leaves uncovered, and for viewers who aged right along with Toy Story's Andy, no film will better capture the love of dolls, action figures, or stuffed animals - and the need to one day leave them all behind. That's just 10 of the many films starring or featuring toys that are far more than simple playthings, but each movie fan is sure to have their favorites. Which toy characters stick out the most in your memory? Is it due to the quality of the film, the strength of the performance, or simply nostalgia? Be sure to mention your own favorites in the comments. _____ The LEGO Movie is in theaters now. Follow me on Twitter @andrew_dyce.

Continued here:

Our 10 Favorite Toy Movies

After an eight-year detour in which he served as governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has returned to his true calling as a cyborg assassin. Shooting on a new Terminator film reportedly got under way last month in New Orleans and is expected to be released sometime next year. But the resurgence of one of the films main characters, the self-aware computing network Skynet, is already a fait accompli. Skynet is invoked every time a military contractor dispatches a fleet of autonomous vehicles, or a shadowy corporation begins rallying a robot army, or scientists develop a cloud-based hive mind for robots to upload and download information and learn new tasks from each other, completely independent of humans.

With life imitating art, I spent a few minutes discussing our robot overlords with William Wisher, who wrote the original Terminator movies along with James Cameron. (Wisher is not working on the new Terminator movie.) The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Skynet sure gets a lot of attention in recent days. Have you been following along? Wisher: I have, and I cant say Im crazy about it. Terminator 1 and 2 were not how-to movies. They were more cautionary tales. But a lot of that kind of thing seems to be happening, between the NSA spying and Google (GOOG) Glass, which apparently has a new app with facial recognition software, designed to look at you and then your face compared to millions of others in the database, including social networks, and it comes up and tells the person who you are, where you live, and so forth and so on, and all the information thats available to you in the Internet. Here we are, welcome to the future.

What parallels do you see to the Terminator films? I think very general ones. The thing we wrote in the films was about Skynet becoming self-aware. Every program the NSA has is just collecting information. That feedback loop might change, and human beings might become redundant. Terminator was about AI deciding it can operate without human thought. Then the movies start. Im unaware of any private or government program regarding artificial intelligence thats on the verge of becoming self-aware, but what I do see is a rather amazingly fast erosion of privacy in this country.

Are you familiar with the concept of the singularity, which many people in Silicon Valley seem to believe is just around the corner? Oh yes. I know that there are people working on achieving the singularity, and I think it will happen. Its just a matter of application and a few more rungs on the ladder. Does it necessarily mean that it will be a bad thing? Thats an important question.

The tech is just a technology; its just a hammer. You can use a hammer to build a house, you can also use it to crush somebodys skull. Its not the hammers fault. But what do you do with stuff once youve created it? That question is hanging out there. I would imagine that artificial intelligence would reflect the goals, aspirations, personalities, and flaws of the people whove created it. What is AIs personality like?

A lot of this stuff has for decades and decades been an inspiration for people working on real world stuff. That becomes a goal. Theyll go and see a film or read a book and think thats cool, why dont we work on that. I dont mean to say that people like me are responsible for it, but we do have an influence on real-world events, just like we were influenced by trends in the real world. It becomes part of a massive exchange between real-world technology and fictional imagination.

What was the real-life technology you used as a model for the Terminator films? One of my inspirations was Darpa, although I dont know that there was any particular technology. People were talking about what the possibilities were. It was in the air, as more of a general thing, kind of a feeling of where tech industries were heading. We imagined a rather dark conclusion.

Does the stuff happening now plant the seeds of new fiction in your brain? Oh, lots of things. Im working on something right now that has to do with the NSA and the CIA, and a kind of a competition that may indeed be happening right now. I dont want to say much more.

Anything else youve seen in films or media exploring these issues that youve found compelling? Real life, at the moment, is far more fascinating than whats on TV.

More here:

A Creator of Skynet Ponders Google

Princeton, NJ (PRWEB) February 06, 2014

While surveying yearbook advisors, Entourage Yearbooks found that gathering photos is believed to be the most difficult aspect of creating a yearbook. Many advisors depend on teachers, parents and students to take pictures at all of the events throughout the school year, and to submit them in a timely manner to the yearbook staff. Entourage Yearbooks has created a new Smartphone app to make submitting photos as easy as possible.

"We created the app with the entire school community in mind," said Entourage Yearbooks President, Elias Jo. "Getting everyone involved in taking and uploading photos will not only make the yearbook process easier for the yearbook advisor and staff, but will also result in a broader representation of the school year."

In the past, using photos from Smartphones was often discouraged as they often resulted in pixilated or poorly lit photographs. Over the last year, phone manufacturers have started including such technologically advanced cameras in phones that the print quality of pictures taken with most Smartphones and submitted at their full resolution no longer remains an issue.

The Entourage Yearbooks Smartphone App is simple to use and will soon be available for all school yearbooks working with Entourage. The app allows the user to upload pictures directly into pre-created folders on the school's yearbook website hosted by Entourage Yearbooks. Once uploaded, the yearbook advisor has access to all of the photos.

"It's as easy as posting a photo on Facebook or Google+," said Jo. "Having the app set up on a phone will cut out a few steps like searching for the school's name, or filling out login information to access the website. The simplicity of the process, and it's similarity to other popular interfaces should encourage more members of the school community to submit photos. More photos means easier and more awesome yearbooks!"

Entourage Yearbooks plans to announce the official launch date of the app within the coming months.

About Entourage Yearbooks: Founded in 2006, Entourage Yearbooks provides yearbooks to over 3,000 schools across the US and in 18 countries around the world. Entourages unique collaborative yearbook technologies and industry leading production times has made the company one of the fastest growing in the country, recently recognized by Inc. Magazine as the 17th fastest growing private education company in the US. For more information about Entourage Yearbooks, visit http://www.entourageyearbooks.com.

Original post:

Entourage Yearbooks Launches Smartphone App to Address Most Difficult Aspect of Creating a Yearbook

Hey there, Towson. My name is Sydney Adamson and Im back for another semester to give you my thoughts on whatever pop-culture topic is currently at the forefront of my mind.

If you read POPSyd last semester, youll know that I have mentioned (once, twice maybe 10 times) that I love YouTube. Most of the time I prefer watching YouTube videos to watching TV.

Just as one would become invested in a TV show, I have become invested in certain YouTube channels. FunForLouis is one of those channels.

But unlike a TV show, all the videos on FunforLouis are filmed, edited and uploaded to the channel by one person Louis Cole.

Cole has always been an adventurous YouTuber. His earliest YouTube videos were of him eating strange and often disgusting foods, and were posted on his first channel, FoodForLouis.

In 2012, Cole created a second YouTube channel to share vlogs (video blogs) of his travels, which is how FunForLouis was born.

Coles travel videos always prove to be interesting, well filmed and intriguingly edited. Cole does not simply film himself hanging out with friends or lying in the sun on vacation using his cell phone camera.

No, his life is a bit more exciting than that, as is his filming equipment.

Originally from England, Cole and his cameras have traveled across cities, countries, and continents. Just last year, he visited Australia, France, Uganda, Switzerland, Romania, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and more.

To document his adventures, Cole uses a small GoPro camera, a point and shoot camera and a DSLR camera.

Here is the original post:

Pop Syd: Adventures in YouTube

Countries where the Internet is most controlled and speaking your mind on it can get you in serious trouble with the government, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists:

1. North Korea. All websites are under government control. About 4% of the population has Internet access.

2. Burma. Authorities filter e-mails and block access to sites of groups that expose human rights violations or disagree with the government.

3. Cuba. Internet available only at government controlled "access points." Activity online is monitored through IP blocking, keyword filtering and browsing history checking. Only pro-government users may upload content.

4. Saudi Arabia. Around 400,000 sites have been blocked, including any that discuss political, social or religious topics incompatible with the Islamic beliefs of the monarchy.

5. Iran. Bloggers must register at the Ministry of Art and Culture. Those that express opposition to the mullahs who run the country are harassed and jailed.

6. China. China has the most rigid censorship program in the world. The government filters searches, block sites and erases "inconvenient" content, rerouting search terms on Taiwan independence or the Tiananmen Square massacre to items favorable to the Communist Party.

7. Syria. Bloggers who "jeopardize national unity" are arrested. Cybercafes must ask all customers for identification, record time of use and report the information to authorities.

8. Tunisia. Tunisian Internet service providers must report to the government the IP addresses and personal information of all bloggers. All traffic goes through a central network. The government filters all content uploaded and monitors e-mails.

9. Vietnam. The Communist Party requires Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to divulge data on all bloggers who use their platforms. It blocks websites critical of the government, as well as those that advocate for democracy, human rights and religious freedom.

Go here to read the rest:

Top 10 Internet-censored countries

Alaska hosts "Choose Respect" rallies across the state in the spring.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: John D. Sutter is a columnist for CNN Opinion and head of CNN's Change the List project. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. E-mail him at ctl@cnn.com.

Juneau, Alaska (CNN) -- Quick: Name the governor of Alaska.

Nope, not Sarah Palin.

He's no reality TV star. Isn't on anyone's list of 2016 presidential candidates. And the local press thinks he's so bland they call him the "Oatmeal Governor."

But Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell deserves national name-recognition for one reason: He's taking on one of the most important issues of our time.

He's trying to get Alaska to talk about the "resident evil" of rape.

John D. Sutter

"It's culturally permissible to be silent about it," and that must change, Parnell told me in a recent interview at the governor's office in Juneau. (You commissioned that trip, by the way, as part of CNN's Change the List project. More on that here.)

Read the original here:

Gov. : 'An epidemic'

YouTube, like many other websites, undergoes changes, and it has taken on a number of guises over the years. Some looks have lasted for a long time, while others have been shorter lived. There are also experimental looks, not all of which end up being released, but even when a redesign is rolled out, it can take a while to make its way around the world. Currently in the experimental stage is a center-aligned layout which includes a cleaned up interface a new menu and a few other tweaks.

In the new design, a top navigation bar is now locked to the top of the screen, remaining in place while the rest of the page scrolls. There is a customizable carousel and a new Upload button encourages visitors into sharing. It's not yet clear quite when this new interface will be officially released to a waiting world, but it's something you can enable now; all it takes is a quick cookie tweak.

You'll need to fire up YouTube and then access your web browser's dev console and the method varies slightly from one browser to another.

Select and copy the code below before pasting it into the console.

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=LlWIQlLwL_Y; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

Hit the Enter key and then close the console. You should find that the page automatically reloads with the new, cleaner interface in place.

Should you change your mind and decide you prefer the old look, return to the console and enter the following code to reverse the change.

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

Do you like the new look, or are you sticking with the old interface?

Originally posted here:

How to enable the hidden, experimental, center-aligned version of YouTube

Bridge Banter: Chelsea v Man City - prepare for the Clash of the Titans

3:27pm Friday 31st January 2014 in Sport By Tim Harrison

On paper it looks like a hopelessly unequal struggle, but its the kind of fixture that Jose Mourinho relishes.

Manchester City v Chelsea on Monday night could well give Manuel Pellegrinis free-scoring team the clear water they need to cruise to the Premier League title.

After all, City thrashed Spurs 5-1 at White Hart Lane in midweek, while the Blues could only manage a 0-0 draw against West Ham at Stamford Bridge.

Chelseas frustration at dropping two vital home points was given sharper focus by the statistics. No team has managed more shots 39 in a Premier League game in the past decade, and still failed to score.

Mourinho could not believe his eyes as the Irons repelled attack after attack on Wednesday night, grumbling that his side had fallen victim to 19th century football whatever that means.

But Sam Allardyces tactics worked. It wasnt pretty, but it was effective.

Now Chelsea have to regroup for the first part of an extraordinary double-header, with two visits to the Etihad stadium in the space of 12 days, in league and FA Cup.

The Blues are underdogs, bearing in mind Citys incredible home record, but Jose would do well to put himself through a few more uncomfortable viewings of the match tape from Wednesday night to study how Allardyce outwitted him.

See the rest here:

Chelsea v Man City - prepare for the Clash of the Titans

In this weeks#AskWSJDvideo, we answer reader Jane Carrolls question about finding a cheap and light computer that lets her access her corporate network while shes out and about.

If your company requires you to use Windows, our suggestion is to get a cheap Windows 8.1 device like the $350 Asus Transformer Book T100, which conveniently doubles as a laptop and a tablet. When it comes to other non-Windows options, we gave Jane a few more suggestions, which you can see in the video above.

Got a burning tech question for us? We want to hear from you, and nothing is too stupid to ask! Here are some ways you can send us yours:

1. Vine or Instagram Video. Record your question on video via Vine or Instagram and tag it#AskWSJD.

2. YouTube or other video sites. Upload your video to YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo or any other video service and tweet us the link at@WSJDor email the link to us at Joanna.Stern@wsj.com or Geoffrey.Fowler@wsj.com. Keep your video questions concise: 15 seconds or less, or you will be chopped!

3. Email. Email your video to us at one of the above addresses, and again, mind that 15-second rule.

4.Twitter. If you are really camera shy, you can just tweet us your questions (or email them to the addresses above). Just remember the#AskWSJDhashtag. Well be on the lookout.

Read more here:

#AskWSJD: What Is the Cheapest, Lightest Device for Work on the Go?

Windows Sysinternals has released Process Explorer 16, a major update which sees the popular system monitoring tool gain full VirusTotal integration.

If you spot a process which looks suspicious, you can now right-click it, and select "Check VirusTotal". Process Explorer then submits the file hash, displays the number of antivirus engines which detect it as a threat ("4/48"), and clicking that figure opens a browser window with the full report.

Better still, click Options > VirusTotal.com > Check VirusTotal.com and Process Explorer 16 will check the hashes of all processes (those running now, or launched later) and loaded DLLs with VirusTotal, displaying the results a few seconds later.

The use of hashes means that, by default, Process Explorer 16 can only highlight known threats. Click Options > Submit Unknown Files, though, and the program can upload mystery executables for further analysis. Of course this will also take much longer, and consume far more network bandwidth, so its probably best to leave this option off unless youre sure you need it.

There are some issues here. When we first enabled the "Check VirusTotal.com" setting, Process Explorer displayed a "The system cannot find the file specified" error for some processes, rather than its VirusTotal score. This is misleading; the real problem is that Process Explorer doesnt have the rights to access those processes, and launching the program as an administrator should allow it to check everything.

More seriously, we found Process Explorer 16 crashed several times, after it had been running for a few minutes. We dont understand why, so its possible theres some local cause, but keep that in mind if you also have problems. Try turning off VirusTotal checking, perhaps, and see if that helps.

Whether there is a bug here or not, VirusTotal integration is going to be a major plus for the program, as it helps even inexperienced users to quickly spot potential threats.Process Explorer 16 is available now.

Here is the original post:

Process Explorer 16 adds full VirusTotal integration

Salt Lake City, UT (PRWEB) January 31, 2014

Modern Compliance Solutions, Inc., developer of HIPAA One - a simple, automated and affordable web-based alternative to complex or expensive Risk Analysis and Compliance Assessments - will be attending the annual Healthcare Compliance Association Annual Conference in San Diego March 29 - April 2 and will be unveiling its latest, newest version of HIPAA One 2.1.

In addition, to help achieve peace of mind, audit-advisory services will be included in all HIPAA One subscriptions. Specifically, any client using HIPAA One who is asked to respond to a Meaningful Use audit, HIPAA audit or OCR audit can reach out for help in responding most appropriately for proving their HIPAA Security Risk Analysis compliance. Although there is no substitute for sound legal advise from an attorney, HIPAA One dramatically reduces the time taken to manage the entire process including generating required documentation for a HIPAA audit.

Steven Marco, President of Modern Compliance Solutions, states, "To date, we have helped our clients successfully respond to 3 audit investigations and 6 Meaningful Use audits using HIPAA One's documentation. HIPAA One can gather reporting documentation within three clicks of logging into http://login.hipaaone.com.. We guarantee compliance with Meaningful Use to protect CEHRT data requirements when using, and continually updating, HIPAA One."

New features of HIPAA One 2.1 include:

1.Automated inventory upload utility - reduces manual entry of ePHI servers and equipment 2."Evidential Matter of HIPAA Compliance" added in reporting documentation 3.3D post-assessment dashboards added: Remediation Activity and Current Risk Status 6.Nessus Vulnerability Scan menu-flags indicate scans pending & expected completion time 7.Added Risk Level to Remediation Plan 8.Reduced clicks and streamlined tab-handling (i.e. less clicks for more results) 9.Simplified interview questions and automated remediation solutions 10. Updates, as always, are automatically pushed to all HIPAA One subscribers

For more information about HIPAA One, visit http://www.hipaaone.com.

Continue reading here:

Modern Compliance Solutions to Announce Inclusive Audit Advisory Services at the Healthcare Compliance Association ...

To do or not to do. That is the question for anyone who has a love/hate relationship with productivity apps. Ive tested out so many different to-do list, mind-mapping, and Getting Things Done (GTD) apps (as well as various pen-and-paper planner hacks) that I sometimes wonder if its become just another way for me to procrastinate.

My main challenge is that no matter how many productivity apps I try, my to-do list never seems to get shorter, and seeing row after row after row of uncompleted tasks every day is discouraging. DropTask wants to cure to-do list malaise by getting rid of the list altogether. Developed by a UK-based startup, DropTask lets people drag and drop tasks into circles of different colors, then filter them by priority and deadline. You can change the size of circles, and add different people to projects. (Members can also switch to a list view if they prefer, which includes all the same information as the circle view). For visually-oriented people, this layout can help boost productivity (or at least cut down on stress) by letting them see big projects split into small, manageable parts.

Originally a Web app, DropTask is now also available for iPhone ($2.99) and iPad ($4.99).

I found DropTasks circle view works very well with the iPads touchscreen, but is difficult to navigate on the iPhones smaller screen. The app is cloud-based, so I recommend downloading the iPhone app only if you need to use the app while youre out-and-about.

There are already a lot of productivity apps out there for visually-oriented people, like iMindMap and iThoughts. DropTask also competes with products like Asana, Wunderlist, and Trello.

DropTask wants to differentiate not only with its colorful user interface, but also by being as easy and intuitive to use as possible, even for larger projects.

More often than not, when a new task management application is brought into the picture, the user has to take time to read support articles, learn about all the features, and also how to navigate in and around the app its virtually a task within itself, DropTask marketing executive Yogita Khetia told me in an email. But with DropTask, weve aimed to keep things simple, yet powerful.

DropTask can help individuals stay on top of their daily to-do lists and deadlines (Khetia says the app is especially helpful for harried students because its layout helps them instantly see what they have to do for each class). There are also enough features, including the ability to upload files, assign tasks, track progress, and communicate within the app, to make DropTask useful for business users, family members, class projects, or any other group.

We believe the user experience is really heightened when the individual user transitions into working collaboratively and invites others to share projects with, says Khetia.

The app already has enough collaboration features for small teams, but DropTask PRO, which is schedule to launch soon, will include project templates and the DropTask inbox to let users email tasks directly into the app. The startup is also developing a set of user permission and management features to give collaborators and project owners more control over what people can see and edit, and an Android version of the mobile app.

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DropTask Is A Productivity App That Does Away With To-Do Lists

There is a website where cats and dogs rule the day, profanities are common, and clips from Lord of the Rings movies can be used to convey universal sentiments like the joy of revenge. All right, there are plenty of websites like that, but this one is more popular than those of the Weather Channel and the New York Times. Although it looks like just another photo-sharing hub, its the best example yet of how a new generation of Internet users prefers to express itself.

Imgur (pronounced imager) is a place to post and browse GIFs, the Internets de facto file format for pictures and short, punchy animated clips designed for sharing on social networks. The company has only 11 employees and is located in a seedy San Francisco neighborhood, on the fourth floor of a low-rise building whose lobby combines the scents of trash and disinfectant. Yet Imgurs already profitable, thanks to a stream of display ads from movie studios and video game publishers, and is well on its way to becoming one of the highest-traffic sites in the world, with more than 120 million monthly unique visitors posting images and searching for jolts of humor and insight. GIFs work because the punch line is instantaneous, says Imgur founder Alan Schaaf, 26. Its entirely different from almost any other form of content on the Internet, which takes time to consume.

Imgurs morsels of media are typically trivial, pleasantly distracting, and sometimes bewildering. A quarter of the user-submitted images involve cats and dogs, often running into objects, falling off tables, and cuddling with or fighting other animals. Many images are overlaid with short captions, meant to convey an emotion that could turn that slim slice of content into a meme that resonates with Internet users and inspires them to use it in their conversations on Facebook (FB) or Twitter (TWTR). You guys are adorable, reads the caption on one image of the Mars rover. Shaken, not stirred, reads the caption on a photo of a dog with tuxedo-patterned markings wearing a bow tie.

The company hasnt raised any venture capital, making it an anomaly in high tech. It charges heavy users $24 per year for features such as unlimited image storage and the ability to post high-bandwidth animated GIFs.

The sites appeal lies partly in its ease of use: Users dont have to register. They can jump between images with a click, and they quickly show their approval or disapproval of an image with either an up or down vote or a short comment. The most popular images are posted in a gallery on Imgurs home page that gets about 77 million views per day. Its easy to laugh at and to downplay when you dont take into account the sheer scale at which Imgur is operating at now, says Tim Hwang, co-founder of ROFLCon, an annual conference about Internet culture. People are finding out they can say more with Imgur and an animated GIF than they can with anything else.

Schaaf started the company while a junior at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, in 2009, as a photo-uploading tool for Reddit, the popular news and entertainment website. Traffic from Reddit was overwhelming other photo-sharing services: When an image was in high demand, sites such as Photobucket would pull the file and ask the person who posted it to pay for a premium account. Because of that upper limit on popularity, Schaaf says, images could not go viral in the same way videos could take off on YouTube. His site let Reddit users easily augment their posts with pictures. He launched it with a post entitled, My Gift to Reddit: I created an image hosting service that doesnt suck. What do you think?

Imgur ran off user donations for the first six months. Then Schaaf got a $25,000 grant from a small fund associated with his university and eventually started running Google (GOOG) ads to pay his storage costs. Over the next few years he opened the gallery and turned the site into an online destination in its own right. In 2011, Schaaf moved the company to San Francisco to be closer to the rest of the tech industry. It has since surpassed Reddit, whose monthly audience numbers around 85 million.

Imgurs users upload about 1.5 million images a day and spend an average of 10 minutes on the site (more than the average time spent on a well-known porn site, Schaaf says). You can easily spend an hour going through 100 pictures, says user ShamrockFury, whose real name is Stephen, and who asked that his last name be withheld because he doesnt want his boss to know how he spends time at work. He says hes drawn to the site as an easy source of distraction and enjoys trying to reach the home page gallery with his contributions, like a recent clip of a raccoon stealing pet food as two cats watch. Sampling the unfiltered stream of GIFs as they upload to the site is basically like looking into the mind of a 14-year-old boy, he says.

Imgur is the latest in a long line of image-sharing services that have captured large online audiences. Sites such as Photobucket, Flickr, Shutterfly (SFLY), and Instagram all were acquired or had initial public offerings. While many such sites focus on allowing users to organize their photos and create collections, Imgur was purely optimized for getting your image on the Internet as quickly and easily as possible, says Schaaf. The site provides a short link with each image to facilitate sharing on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

See the article here:

How Imgur Became a Meme Machine

In our inaugural #AskWSJD video, we answer @DailyDanMilanos question about app availability for people who want to abandon the iPhone for Android or another mobile platform. Watch the video above to see our reply.

Going forward we want to hear your deepest and darkest tech questions. Nothing is too stupid to ask! Here are some ways you can send us your questions:

1. Vine or Instagram Video. Record your question on video via Vine or Instagram and tag it #AskWSJD.

2. YouTube or other video sites. Upload your video to YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo or any other video service and tweet us the link at @WSJD or email the link to us atJoanna.Stern@wsj.comorGeoffrey.Fowler@wsj.com.Keep your video questions concise: 15 seconds or less, or you will be chopped!

3. Email. Email your video to us at one of the above addresses, and again, mind that 15-second rule.

4. Twitter. If you are really camera shy, you can just tweet us your questions (or email them to the addresses above). Just remember the #AskWSJD hashtag. Well be on the lookout.

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Got a Tech Conundrum? #AskWSJD For Help

LOS ANGELES

In the corner of YouTube star Grace Helbigs bungalow on a hillside in East Los Angeles, a camera sits on a tripod waiting to be turned on.

Its a high-level Canon 60D with a flattering lens, a step up from the built-in webcam of Helbigs Mac that she used for her videos in the early years. When she records here, the lens faces down so that she has to look up at it, like a peephole. She has also shot videos on floors and on couches and standing in hotel elevators. Really, she says, a video can happen anywhere.

On a typically warm, sunny afternoon last week, she sits down at her desk and presses record, then waves her arms around.

Now were in a Grace video! she says in the same lilting, half-asleep tone thats become her hallmark delivery. Yay, videos!

Sometimes Helbig, 28, surprisingly tall and often laughing, uses professional lights to record, but they had been left at her friend and fellow YouTube personality Mamrie Harts place, so she has been shooting in the natural light coming in through her window. She also owns a high-quality microphone but hasnt been using that recently either.

Ive just been using the camera mike, she says. I guess people dont seem to mind.

No, they dont mind. In fact, Helbigs fans predominantly teenagers, mostly girls probably wouldnt care if she recorded her videos on a camcorder from 1986; they just want to hang out with her. She sees herself as an awkward older sister to her fans, she says, one who just wants to tell them about the world, even though she has no idea herself.

In the next six months shell see how far her fans are willing to follow their awkward big sis as she sets out on a variety of new ventures, including a risky split from her longtime Internet home, My Damn Channel, a potential pilot for the E! Network, a book and a film.

Helbig is trying to make the leap from YouTube popularity to international brand a trajectory she admits is a primary goal and shes banking on her young fans to propel her there.

Read more from the original source:

What comes after YouTube stardom? Grace Helbig is figuring it out.

Main article: Mind uploading

Mind uploading, mind transfer or whole brain emulation is a use of a computer as an emulated human brain, and the view of thoughts and memories as software information states. The term mind transfer also refers to a hypothetical transfer of a mind from one biological brain to another. It is a common theme in science fiction.

One of the earliest examples can be found in Frederik Pohl's story "The Tunnel Under the World" from 1955. In this story, the protagonist Guy Burckhardt continually wakes up on the same date from a dream of dying in an explosion. Burckhardt is already familiar with the idea of putting human minds in robotic bodies, since this is what is done with the robot workers at the nearby Contro Chemical factory. As someone has once explained it to him, "each machine was controlled by a sort of computer which reproduced, in its electronic snarl, the actual memory and mind of a human being ... It was only a matter, he said, of transferring a man's habit patterns from brain cells to vacuum-tube cells." Later in the story, Pohl gives some additional description of the procedure: "Take a master petroleum chemist, infinitely skilled in the separation of crude oil into its fractions. Strap him down, probe into his brain with searching electronic needles. The machine scans the patterns of the mind, translates what it sees into charts and sine waves. Impress these same waves on a robot computer and you have your chemist. Or a thousand copies of your chemist, if you wish, with all of his knowledge and skill, and no human limitations at all." After some investigation, Burckhardt learns that his entire town had been killed in a chemical explosion, and the brains of the dead townspeople had been scanned and placed into miniature robotic bodies in a miniature replica of the town (as a character explains to him, 'It's as easy to transfer a pattern from a dead brain as a living one'), so that a businessman named Mr. Dorchin could charge companies to use the townspeople as test subjects for new products and advertisements.

Something close to the notion of mind uploading is very briefly mentioned in Isaac Asimov's 1956 short story The Last Question: "One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain." A more detailed exploration of the idea (and one in which individual identity is preserved, unlike in Asimov's story) can be found in ArthurC. Clarke's novel The City and the Stars, also from 1956 (this novel was a revised and expanded version of Clarke's earlier story Against the Fall of Night, but the earlier version did not contain the elements relating to mind uploading). The story is set in a city named Diaspar one billion years in the future, where the minds of inhabitants are stored as patterns of information in the city's Central Computer in between a series of 1000-year lives in cloned bodies. Various commentators identify this story as one of the first (if not the first) to deal with mind uploading, human-machine synthesis, and computerized immortality.[1][2][3][4]

Another of the "firsts" is the novel Detta r verkligheten (This is reality), 1968, by the renowned philosopher and logician Bertil Mrtensson, a novel in which he describes people living in an uploaded state as a means to control overpopulation. The uploaded people believe that they are "alive", but in reality they are playing elaborate and advanced fantasy games. In a twist at the end, the author changes everything into one of the best "multiverse" ideas of science fiction.

In Robert Silverberg's To Live Again (1969), an entire worldwide economy is built up around the buying and selling of "souls" (personas that have been tape-recorded at six-month intervals), allowing well-heeled consumers the opportunity to spend tens of millions of dollars on a medical treatment that uploads the most recent recordings of archived personalities into the minds of the buyers. Federal law prevents people from buying a "personality recording" unless the possessor first had died; similarly, two or more buyers were not allowed to own a "share" of the persona. In this novel, the personality recording always went to the highest bidder. However, when one attempted to buy (and therefore possess) too many personalities, there was the risk that one of the personas would wrest control of the body from the possessor.

In the 1982 novel Software, part of the Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker, one of the main characters, Cobb Anderson, has his mind downloaded and his body replaced with an extremely human-like android body. The robots who persuade Anderson into doing this sell the process to him as a way to become immortal.

In William Gibson's award-winning Neuromancer (1984), which popularized the concept of "cyberspace", a hacking tool used by the main character is an artificial infomorph of a notorious cyber-criminal, Dixie Flatline. The infomorph only assists in exchange for the promise that he be deleted after the mission is complete.

The fiction of Greg Egan has explored many of the philosophical, ethical, legal, and identity aspects of mind transfer, as well as the financial and computing aspects (i.e. hardware, software, processing power) of maintaining "copies." In Egan's Permutation City (1994), Diaspora (1997) and Zendegi (2010), "copies" are made by computer simulation of scanned brain physiology. See also Egan's "jewelhead" stories, where the mind is transferred from the organic brain to a small, immortal backup computer at the base of the skull, the organic brain then being surgically removed.

The movie The Matrix is commonly mistaken for a mind uploading movie, but is only about virtual reality and simulated reality, since the main character Neo's physical brain still is required to reside his mind. The mind (the information content of the brain) is not copied into an emulated brain in a computer. Neo's physical brain is connected into the Matrix via a brain-machine interface. Only the rest of the physical body is simulated. Neo is disconnected from and reconnected to this dreamworld.

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Mind uploading in fiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia