Author: Serkadis

Recently, yet another suit hit Facebook, and this time it is caused by various game advertisements that scammed numerous users. The second defendant in this federal class-action lawsuit is Zynga, and the two companies are requested to pay more than $5 million to the social network users who had been scammed through the displayed game ads.

This action was predicted by several voices over the web, since the representatives of a law firm from Sacramento, Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff, announced that they were searching for people who had been scammed by the same ads while playing Mafia Wars or Farmville. They were trying to gather enough data to file a class-action suit, and when they found the appropriate information, they went to the federal district court.

In all fairness, it is worth mentioning that neither of the two defendants is the real originator of the advertisements in question. The situation appeared because third-party companies place ads within the Zynga games listed on Facebook, thus generating great revenue for the two companies. The scams are conducted by encouraging users to sign up for unauthorized cell phone charges, as well as highly priced mail order products (such as CDs), which are presented as “free,” “free trials,” or parts of “online quizzes.”
read more)

We’ve hit you with a bunch of Black Friday 2009 sales and leaks, but we’ve been waiting to see what Newegg had up their sleeve. We can now report that we’ve got details on the Newegg Black Friday 2009 sale, and there are some nice tidbits. How about a 6-foot HDMI cable for $1.99, or a 46-inch 1080p 120Hz HDTV for $699? Yeah, and that’s not all:

Pre-Black Friday (Starts Midnight PST on Monday 11/23)

• Canon DC410 DVD Camcorder $199.99 (list: $279.99)
• Antec 300 PC Case $49.95 (list $69.95)
• Seagate 2TB External Hard Drive $149.99 (list: $179.99)
• Monster 16ft High Speed HDMI Cable $29.99 (list: $54.99)
• Viewsonic 8” Digital Photo Frame $49.99 (list: $69.99)
• Logitech RX1500 3-Button Laser Mouse $12.99 (list $27.99)
• Creative GigaWorks T40 Series II Speakers $69.99 ($149.99)
• Logitech G11 Gaming Keyboard $43.99 (list $63.99)
• Sparkle GeForce 8400GS PCI-E Low-Profile Video Card $19.99 (list $34.99)

Black Friday (starts 11/25 at 3PM PST)

• Cash Back starts at 3PM PST on all products on NewEgg.com
• Digital Photo Frame $29.99
• HDMI Cable – 6 FEET $1.99 after MIR
• 1080P 120Hz LCD TV $699.99
• 430W ATX 12V Power Supply $16.99

As always, you can find all sorts of Newegg promo codes and deals on our forums.

Tags:
2tb,
black friday,
black friday 2009,
hdtv,
lcd,
newegg,
newegg black friday,
newegg black friday 2009,
newegg coupon code,
newegg coupons,
newegg deals,
newegg discounts,
newegg promo code,
shopping,

With Facebook counting over 325 million users, it’s little wonder that many are trying to profit from the social network and not always with the nicest of methods. One company that was selling fans and friends to customers wanting to boost their counts, USocial, was sent a Cease and Desist letter by Facebook for violating its Terms of Service with the methods it employs to get its customers more followers.

Facebook didn’t make it clear whether it had an issue with USocial’s business, selling followers, and only said that the company “violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm.” The social network threatened legal actions unless USocial stopped the activities it had issues with. Facebook doesn’t allow users to profit from their profiles, for example getting paid to friend someone, but it hasn’t taken a stance on service getting Facebook users without offering them money.

USocial has decided to comply with the request and said it would stop offering to sell friends but would not shut down the service completely. The company stated it would delete the login information it had gathered up and also put a notice on its site, buried at the bottom, saying it isn’t a… (read more)

Google has pushed a new build to the Chrome dev channel with the usual number of small fixes and tweaks. It’s only a minor update but if you want to be on the bleeding edge, you should grab the latest build, Google Chrome 4.0.249.4, from the download link below. The updated version fixes a number of issues across all platforms but the extensions gallery hinted at lately still isn’t here.

Anthony Laforge, Google Chrome Program Manager, listed the bug fixes that apply to all platforms, “Some extensions crash after installing 4.0.249.0. Reload on crash infobar causes more crashes.” On Windows, the update “[f]ixed top windows crasher. Fixed a crashing race condition in bookmark synchronization. Make the character encoding indicator visible again on Windows.”

Mac users finally get Silverlight support and some bookmark bar improvements and “[p]asting some text into the Omnibox should no longer crash Google Chrome” on both Mac and Linux. With a big extensions announcement likely coming soon, the dev team is putting some finishing touches ahead of the broader launch like fixing the tab traversal in popups on Windows and several other bugs.

Finally, Google wanted to make sure users realize the fact that the new extension links in the fresh tab page that don’t work are not a bug and… (read more)

People in the tech industry love speculating about two things, what Facebook is really worth and how Twitter will make money. The jury is still out on the first one but Twitter is adding more fuel to the fire by changing its tune and now saying that ads are in fact coming to the site. To add to the hype, Twitter isn’t actually saying how and when but, not one for thinking small, the company claims it will be “fascinating,” “non-traditional” and “really cool.”

Ads on a website is not exactly a revolutionary business model and not usually something to get excited about. The reason why everyone is aflutter about Twitter ads is because the company has been saying for a while now that ads were the last option when it came to generating revenue. Time and time again Twitter talked about “alternative” revenue streams and more innovative ways of making money.

So, why the sudden change of heart? Well, it’s not exactly sudden and not a change of heart either. While the company said it wasn’t planning on putting ads on the site, it didn’t completely rule out the idea. In fact, a relatively recent change in Twitter’s Terms of Service made provisions for advertising to be integrated with the service.

The new direction was revealed by the company’s COO Dick Costolo at the Realtime CrunchUp conference. He di… (read more)

People love online video these days. In some cases, it has even begun to replace old-fashioned TV watching as users connect their PCs or web-enabled set-top boxes to their TV sets and get the best of both worlds. But it’s a tough world to make a living in for video sites, not only are they struggling to bring in revenue, they also have to keep content creators, aka TV networks, happy. Put all of these things together and you get another case where a video site cuts off access to a device and, surprisingly, this time it isn’t Hulu, it’s YouTube.

Starting with next month, users of a line of set-top boxes going by the name of Popcorn Hour are left without access to everyone’s favorite chat-video site in what the manufacturer, Syabas Technology, believes to be a somewhat arbitrary move. The company says that it had an agreement with YouTube to access the content through the API the video site offers and the devices have had YouTube videos for more than a year now. Syabas claims that YouTube has changed its Terms of Service (ToS), which it was in its rights to do, so that third-party manufacturers like itself are being blocked from accessing the videos, if they don’t pay up anyway.

YouTube wouldn’t comment on this particular case but has issued a statement that applies to it, “Since July of 2008, YouTube’s … (read more)

While everyone is going agog over 3D technology, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto once again goes against the flow. For him, not everything has to be in 3D…

Dark Void (PS3, Xbox 360, PC) may have been delayed by Capcom to 2010, but there’s no reason to delay even gameplay videos for it. And we have o…

Reports have been coming in that folks who purchased the God of War Collection on the PS3 have been experiencing freeze problems. Are you one of them?…

We’ve seen a few ridiculous cases whereby local governments claim copyright on a law, but it’s still stunning to see what’s going on in Liberia. Tom sends in the news that no one knows what the law covers in Liberia, because one man, leading a small group of lawyers, claims to hold the copyright on the laws of the country and won’t share them unless people (or, rather, the government of Liberia) is willing to pay. Oh, and did we mention that the US government paid for some of this?

The story is a bit convoluted, but apparently, Liberia hasn’t really had a full copy of its laws, as they were mixed and matched in “incomplete sets” throughout different libraries. A professor at Cornell had begun a (free) project to compile the country’s laws, but after he died, a group of lawyers in Liberia took over the project — and were given $400,000 by the US Justice Department. The lawyers then “numbered, bound, and indexed” all of the recent laws, and claim that because of that, they now own the copyright on it.

While perhaps copyright law is different in Liberia, most places have rejected “sweat of the brow” arguments for copyright. If you didn’t create the actual content, you’re not supposed to get the copyright. You don’t get a copyright just for compiling the work of others without adding anything new. If this lawyer wanted to get paid for the work, he should have negotiated that upfront. Instead, he’s holding the country’s laws hostage, and asking for $150,000 to $360,000 to turn them over to the government.

What’s really amazing is that this guy is currently serving as Liberia’s justice minister. The work he did on the laws happened before that, and he claims that he’d give up the laws for free, but that the other lawyers he worked with will not.

Perhaps Liberia should just start from scratch and create all new laws, wiping out the value of these particular locked up laws.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Erik Estavillo is one avid gamer. So avid in fact, that he will not hesitate to take you to court if you get in the way of his pursuit of happiness wi…

This 2 part article offers 25 tips for Adobe Photoshop, carefully selected to give you increased efficiency and a set of timesaving techniques when using the program. With focus placed on practicality, this compilation delivers many of the overlooked- and little known tricks present in the most popular image manipulation tool.

1. The Quicker Way of Opening Documents

In Photoshop, you are not forced to rely on the upper menu bar to open documents. You can double click on the blank workspace and this action will pop the Open dialog up.

2. Scrub Opportunities

Many vital functions in Photoshop are controlled by sliders, like the opacity of Layers or the opacity of the Brush you are using. It is a little known fact that the majority of these sliders are adjustable by scrubbing the mouse over the name of the desired command.

3. Isolation by Visibility

To make one particular Layer visible and render all the other Layers temporarily invisible, hold down the Alt modifier key and click on the visibility toggle of the Layer you want to isolate. Repeat this action to toggle its function back and forth.

5. Image Size and Canvas Size

Ctrl + Alt + i invokes the Image Size dialog, while Ctrl + Alt + c invokes the Canvas Size dialog. Though Image- and Canvas Size values are intuitively related, they are practically separate from each other. You are free to place an image on the canvas if the image is bigger than the canvas and vice versa.

4. Creating Groups Using Selection Columns

To create a selection column of any number of Layers, first select a Layer to define the top of the selection column, then Shift + select a Layer to define the bottom of the selection column. You can go the other way, as well, defining the bottom first. This is an efficient method to declare elements of a Layer Group. To create the Layer Group itself, rely on the Ctrl + g hotkey combination with the selection column active, or you can select the Folder icon on the Layer Palette with the selection column active.

5. Efficient Layer Stacking

While creating the stacking order by drag and drop seems to be an intuitive method, it has disadvantages. If you grab a Layer and start to modify its position in the stack, you will not be able to evaluate the result until you release the Layer. Modifying its position in the stack with the hotkey combination Ctrl + Brackets gives you immediate feedback of every possible position. It also is a more fluent way of arranging Layers, as Photoshop tends to demand pixel precise accuracy if you want to place a Layer on the top of the stack manually. This becomes much easier with the hotkey combination. If you add the Shift modifier key to the Ctrl + Brackets command, then the Layer will jump right to the top or to the bottom, depending on the command.

6. Efficient Layer Cycling

The hotkey combination Alt + Brackets lets you select a Layer in the stack. If you want your fresh selection to include your previous selection(s), then add the Shift modifier key to the Alt + Brackets command. If you need to select all Layers with minimal effort, you can rely on the Ctrl + Alt + a hotkey combination.

7. Instant Fills

The Alt + Backspace hotkey combination fills the current Layer with the active Foreground color.

The Ctrl + Backspace hotkey combination fills the current Layer with the active Background color.

If you add the Shift modifier key, then the Fill will affect only the opaque pixels of the Layer. Shift + Backspace will bring up the Fill dialog panel.

8. Quick Access to Shadows and Highlights

The Dodge and Burn tools are excellent solutions for defining the shading extremes of any colored region. These tools do fall under the same category and are accessible by the hotkey o or by the hotkey combination Shift + o, depending on the last tool you have used from this category.

9. Creating New Layers

The Ctrl + Shift + n hotkey combination creates a new, empty Layer. The Ctrl + j hotkey combination duplicates the Layer which is currently selected.

10. Mask On

The hotkey d resets the Foreground color to Black and resets the Background color to White. This is useful when you want to paint Masks, as the White value will reveal the affected portions of the Mask, while the Black value will render those invisible.

11.  Revert Command

The hotkey F12 invokes the Revert command, which will discard all edits you have made since the last save. This is useful when you are unhappy with the current state of the document, as you would be forced to close- and open the document again without this function.

12. Selection Actions

Selecting portions of the image defines the regions you want to amend your edits on. There are selection related hotkeys that are worth knowing. Regardless if you are using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, the Lasso Tool or the Pen Tool to define your current selection region, the following hotkeys do apply. To add to a selection region, start a fresh selection with the Shift modifier key pressed. To subtract from a selection, rely on the Alt modifier key while drawing the selection. The modifier key combination Ctrl + Alt will pick up intersections between selection regions and will give you the intersection itself as a selection. As long as you keep the mouse button pressed while defining selection boundaries, you are free to position the center of the selection on the screen, using the Space modifier key.

Stay tuned for more, in part two!

Related posts:

1. Top 25 Photoshop Tips – Part 2 This post is the second part of the two…
2. Complex Manual Selections in Photoshop Photoshop comes with various selections tools you could utilize to…
3. Using Reuseable Borders in PhotoShop About In this tutorial I will continue where the previous…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Dark Helmet alerts us to the news that our good friend Lily Allen is back in the news discussing file sharing again. Tragically, it does not appear that she’s used her “time off” to better understand copyright issues very much. Unlike nearly everyone else who complains about copyright infringement, she’s apparently “all for” infringing on her copyrights, just so long as you pay someone — even if it’s the guy on the street selling the counterfeit CDs. Seriously:

“If someone comes up with a burnt copy of my CD and offers it to you for £4 I haven’t a problem with that as long as the person buying it places some kind of value on my music.”

Yes, so while some musicians have said they’re fine with non-commercial file sharing, but are against anyone selling their unauthorized works, Ms. Allen seems to have taken the opposite approach. Counterfeit all you want, just as long as you profit from it. Yeah. Someone should explain to her the difference between price and value, and also the benefits of word of mouth marketing. But, it doesn’t seem like she’s much interested in actually understanding this stuff, so if you want to help her understand, maybe go set up a shop selling burned copies of her CDs, and see what happens.

Of course, if we take this seriously, it shows how little she’s thought this through. Her earlier complaint was that when people file share, they don’t provide money back to the artists and the labels. Of course, when counterfeiters are selling on the street, the same thing is true, but suddenly it’s okay? At what point does the world realize that Ms. Allen doesn’t know what she’s talking about?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The big red VZW is going to be the first in the US to get the new Omnia2. The Omnia2 has been out around Europe for a while now, but it seems America is next on its tour bus to get a CDMA Omnia2 with its awesome features for a great price. VZW—America’s biggest network(3G,Subscribers)—will get the Omnia2 on December 2nd for a really great $200 price tag with a contract of course which is still about the best price.

This phone does not only look good, but the specifications are even better and it has something no other Windows Mobile phone has. This phone is special because it is the first AMOLED phone to ever run WM, for the people that do not know what that is, AMOLED is just the best period. The only problem is that it is still a resistive screen. The phone has an 8GB internal memory base, which makes it 1 hand over the HD2, but the screen is still 3.7inches so the HD2 wins.

This phone has some great things. VZW bands, 3.7inch WVGA AMOLED screen, 8GB internal memory, Wifi, Gps, Bluetooth, 800Mhz processor, and a pretty good 5MP camera. The phone will ship with 6.1, but shortly get a 6.5 upgrade.

I should be one of the first people getting one for a review and I will do some video—If I can—and I will compare it with the TP2, HD2, Droid1, Droid2, Imagio and maybe even the TG01 if it is out for VZW yet.

WM

Back in July, we wrote about how a company named Volomedia had gleefully announced that it had patented podcasting. The patent itself (7,568,213) seemed ridiculously broad, obvious and covered by prior art. On top of that, it was difficult to see how it passed the current (though, perhaps not for long) “Bilski” test for what can be patented.

It looks like the EFF has decided to be proactive about this and is looking for prior art with which to bust this particular patent. In the comments on our original post about this, reader Marcel de Jong, noted that Dave Winer described audio enclosures for RSS in a blog post in January of 2001 — nearly three years before this patent was filed. Hopefully that is rather compelling prior art, but if anyone has any more info, please send it over to the EFF.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

I’m wondering if there’s more to this, because it seems rather “un-Google-like.” The makers of a set top box that can display internet content are complaining that Google is blocking them from displaying YouTube content, unless they agree to “partner” and commit to buying lots of ads (the amount is in dispute). If this sounds quite a bit like the ongoing battle between Hulu and Boxee, you might be right. However, in that case, at least you could sort of understand the (misguided) thinking behind it, since Hulu is owned by the colossally short-sighted content companies. But what’s Google’s excuse? If all these set top boxes are really doing is accessing free internet content and formatting it better for a TV, why stop it? They’re really no different than accessing content via a computer and a browser — it’s just that the “computer” is a set top box and the “browser” is formatted for a television. That shouldn’t require a special agreement, or any sort of ad buy commitment. Update: Received a confused and angry email from YouTube PR linking us to the very Wired article we linked to and demanding we add their PR statement (which is already in the Wired article). However, it does not actually answer the questions raised or change the point of this post. The fact that YouTube restricts set tops from accessing the content still does not make sense.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Dodge, Police/Emergency

We like police cars. Seriously. Just not when they’re filling our rearview mirrors, blue-and-reds ablaze. Then, our fanboy status diminishes markedly. In the meantime, however, we get pretty jazzed when a department does something a little different and cool. This week’s example comes from the Broward County Sheriff’s office, which appears to have added a fully-marked Dodge Challenger R/T to its fleet. Decked out in the BSO’s familiar green-and-white livery, the muscular Mopar looks like it means business, ready to take down speeders and bust up meth labs with aplomb. We totally want to see it in person the next time we’re down in South Florida — just under our own, friendly terms. Thanks for the tip, Lee!

[Source: Law Officer Connect]

Pull Over: Broward County Sheriff gets a full-dress Challenger R/T originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

At the request of a few, I’ve filmed the landscape and portrait QWERTY keyboards.

This feels like a very good set of keyboards so far, so it may even be a decent upgrade from the Touch Pro or older keyboarded devices…

If there’s anything else you want filmed, let me know!

Thanks to Clove and WMPowerUser.com for the device.

Sherwin Siy (one of the few people who actually was allowed to glance briefly at parts of the proposed ACTA treaty, though under strict NDA) has written about yet another letter sent by the entertainment industry to the government in support of ACTA. This letter includes pretty much everyone who benefits from abusing copyright laws and is afraid of the internet:

Advertising Photographers of America
American Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
American Society of Media Photographers, Inc. (ASMP)
Association of American Publishers (AAP)
Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI)
Commercial Photographers International
Directors Guild of America (DGA)
Evidence Photographers International Council
Independent Film and Television Alliance (IFTA)
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)
Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA)
National Music Publishers Association (NMPA)
NBC Universal
News Corporation
Picture Archive Council of America (PACA)
Professional Photographers of America (PPA)
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Reed Elsevier Inc.
Society of Sport & Event Photographers
Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)
Stock Artists Alliance
Student Photographic Society
The Advertising Photographers of America
The Walt Disney Company
Time Warner, Inc.
Universal Music Group
Viacom Inc.
Warner Music Group

Funny… isn’t it, that all these companies and industry groups are supporting a deal that no one’s seen yet? Oh wait… that’s because many of them have seen it and actually have had a hand in creating it. But what’s really damning is that no where in the letter do they explain why this is actually needed or how it will do anything valuable. Instead, it’s a pure faith-based letter saying “if you pass this secret treaty, good things will happen.” I don’t know about you, but generally, I prefer there to be actual proof and evidence that restricting consumer rights around the world actually leads to some sort of real benefit.

Tellingly, they don’t respond to any of the points we raised earlier. This is not a treaty to help people or the economy. It’s a deal to try to sneak through a system for propping up an obsolete business model by companies who don’t want to adapt.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story