At first blush, the easiest way to find apps and get them onto your Android device is via the Android Market, which can be accessed via an app on your phone. If you want a great way to find apps, and keep track of them, there is another method. Check out AppBrain, a web service and Android app that lets you keep track of not only the apps that you have installed, but also to see what apps your friends are using.
One of the big news stories last week was the hacking of Gawker Media’s servers. As part of the attack, user accounts were compromised on Gawker sites, including Lifehacker and Gizmodo. More than 500,000 user emails and 185,000 decrypted passwords were posted online. If you’re not sure which account you used on a Gawker site, and want to determine if your account might have been compromised, there’s a tool for that.
Slate has created a widget that lets you input your username or email address to see if your account was hacked. All that you need to do is input your username or email address that you used on a Gawker site, and hit the “Check” button. You’ll get one of two messages back:
1. “Your account data has been released. If your account had a password, it has also been released in an encrypted form. Change it.”
2. “The e-mail account or user name does not appear to be in the released database.”
If you get the first message, you should not only change your Gawker password, but if you used that email/password combination on any other sites, you should change your password on those sites, too.
To avoid a problem like this in the future, make sure that you use unique passwords on all sites. Check out one of our favorite tools, LastPass, for an easy way to generate and remember all of those passwords.
Does a hack like this make you trust Gawker sites less? Or trust the Internet less? Our take: this could happen to any site out there. Protect yourself by using unique passwords on all sites.
Back in October, there was some geeky gushing going on about the Tron sequel. It was happening here on 40Tech – and the culprit might well have been me. I’m not saying it was… but it’s a definite possible kind of a certainty. Well, Tron Legacy has hit the box office, and even though I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, you might have – and you may well have been impressed enough to wish that you, too, could look all glowy and blue.
Ladyada and Becky Stern can help you out with that.
Check out the video and links below. If you’re feeling a little creative this holiday season, and aren’t afraid of a little EL wire and some solder, you too can be Tron-ified.
Go on, then. Get your geek on.
Tron Bag with EL Wire (Tutorial Link)
How-To: Tron Bag with EL WIre [Make:]
In case you missed the announcements last week, Google Wave will live on, and quite likely prosper, in the open source development hands of Apache. In November, Google made a proposal to the Apache Software Foundation to take over development of Wave, hoping to keep the potential of the project alive and bring new blood to its development. The proposal mentioned several weighty companies (including the US Navy) that are still actively using Wave, which was originally set to shut down at the end of 2010, and listed people willing to commit to the project from both within and outside of Google.
Prior to talks with Apache, Google had already made a standalone version of Wave available to interested developers. The end product was named “Wave in a Box” and maintained much of Wave’s functionality. It was even able to import Wave data and communicate with other Wave in a Box installations through a federated protocol. Apache is essentially installing Wave in a Box to their servers and adding it to their Incubator projects as a means to gather a community that will continue active development. I’m not sure whether all existing Wave data will come with it, or not, but it is always possible that the new Apache Wave will offer importing of your Wave data at some point. If you want to act now, there is already a button in each single Wave that allows for exporting to HTML, or PDF with attachments, and Google is apparently working on a tool to export large amounts of Waves at one time, as well as a way to access your Waves in Google Docs.
At any rate, for those of you who were following our Wave Alternatives posts, there is definite hope on the horizon for a better, stronger, and ultimately more useful Wave in the near future.
Keep tabs on the Wave Incubator project here.
What are your thoughts on Apache Wave?
Last week, Evernote 4.1 for Windows was released for general consumption. 4.1 takes the giant leap forward that was Evernote 4 and makes it even better, adding more notebooks, notebook stacks, an improved note info panel, and more. If you’re not yet familiar with Evernote 4, it takes all the good of Evernote 3.5 — which took getting used to for some — and makes significant improvements to the user interface and overall functionality of our beloved notes tool. Some of the highlights include a more economical (and prettier) layout that suits Windows 7, a significant boost in load time and decrease in memory usage, better editing features, and more Windows 7 integrations like jump lists and geo-location.
I’m also happy to report that new windows once again automatically open when you start a new notes, which was a feature I, personally, missed (though the entire client still opens behind it for some reason). The new version also adds support for your local font files, makes it easier to hide things you don’t need to see, and improved clipping support.
For those looking for such things, there is still no social sharing capabilities, so don’t get too excited. All is not lost, however — you can always use Springpad for that.
For more detail on Evernote 4, look here
For more detail on the 4.1 update, look here
What are your thoughts on the newest release of Evernote for Windows?
