The Woz and HPU!

“The Woz” AKA Steve Wozniak, spoke as commencement speaker recently at High Point University, our local, high-end, private college. (Full disclosure, my son, Ben AKA “The GameMaster,” attends HPU, and is on the Dean’s List every semester… and, yes, I am VERY proud!!! Ben is in the Communications Department, majoring in Electronic Gaming… of course!)

Well, now, “The Woz” is taking on even more at HPU!

“HIGH POINT, N.C., June 4, 2013 – Steve Wozniak, Apple Co-Founder and creator of the first personal computer, has joined the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication Advisory Board at High Point University.”

Awesome! “The Woz” and HPU… a great team!

Geek Software of the Week: FeedReader

FeedReader

Google Reader is dying. So, alternatives are being explored. And, this is a GREAT option! FeedReader!

Geek Software of the Week: FeedReader

Feedreader Online – Everywhere you go
Feedreader Online is one of the best Google Reader alternatives allowing you to view all of your feeds any way you want: in any browser, on any device, without installing a single application. Just sign in and enjoy your feeds!

Feedreader Lookup – All feeds in one place
Feedreader Lookup is a unique search engine for Internet feeds. Now you don’t need to tediously google them up from across the Web. Type in a few keywords in the Lookup search box, find the feed you need, and subscribe to it in one place!

Feedreader Browser – All your feeds within reach
Feedreader Browser lets you quickly find news and feeds related to any topic. What’s more, it allows you to view these feeds right in your browser, subscribe to them, and aggregate them in one feed on Feedreader Online!

GamePop: Android Gaming Hardware For Free!

This is a challenger to the Ouya Open Source Gaming Console! Hardware is free, with a monthly gaming subscription.

BlueStacks’ GamePop Android Game Console Adds $50 of Free Games as Kicker

“BlueStacks already has a pretty intriguing deal for people interested in its GamePop Android game console — sign up for a monthly subscription by the end of June and you’ll receive the console and a controller for free — and it just got a little sweeter. In addition to giving the hardware away from free for a limited time (you do have to pay shipping), BlueStacks announced that it will also include a collection of games from three AAA developers that would normally cost $50 on Google Play.

There’s quite a bit to cover here, so let’s start with the console itself. If you haven’t heard of GamePop before, it’s essentially an alternative to Ouya, but rather than buy games outright, BlueStacks is promoting a Netflix-like subscription model that runs $6.99 per month. In return, you get access to over 500 paid games worth over $200 that you can play on your TV via the console. You control the games using the gamepad that comes with it, or you can use motion control from your iPhone or Android device.

The Hardware is Really Free?

GamePopFor a limited time, BlueStacks is offering its GamePop console and controller for free, though there are some caveats. The first is that you have to pre-order by the end of June (the promotion was originally scheduled to end in May, but due to the ‘high demand of pre-orders,’ the company decided to extend the offer). When it ships, you’ll be billed $6.99 for the first month of service plus $9.95 for shipping in the U.S. ($19.90 for international shipping).

The other caveat is that you have to remain a subscriber for 12 months. If you cancel your subscription before then, you either have to send the console and controller back to BlueStacks ‘in working order within 30 days of cancelling’ and pay a $25 restocking fee, or keep the hardware and pay a $100 early termination charge.

After June, BlueStacks will sell the console and controller for $129 outright. You’ll still have to subscribe at $6.99/month to play games, but you’ll be able to cancel at any time with any fees.

What’s Inside?

BlueStacks hasn’t yet revealed the hardware inside its GamePop console, though it did promise that games will run just as fast or faster than they do on the top mobile phones. The company also claims the controller is ‘like none seen before,’ though isn’t saying exactly how or why.

What do you think, will Android consoles find a place in our living rooms, or will they get trampled by the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U?”

The Government is Scanning our Email and Internet Postings

This is huge in the news right now, and kinda scary. For the full story, follow the link to the full Washington Post article.

U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.

The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley.

Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: ‘Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.’

London’s Guardian newspaper reported Friday that GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, also has been secretly gathering intelligence from the same internet companies through an operation set up by the NSA.

According to documents obtained by The Guardian, PRISM would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required in Britain to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside of the country.

PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Bush’s secret program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after news media disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forced the president to look for new authority.

Congress obliged with the Protect America Act in 2007 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with U.S. intelligence collection. PRISM recruited its first partner, Microsoft, and began six years of rapidly growing data collection beneath the surface of a roiling national debate on surveillance and privacy. Late last year, when critics in Congress sought changes in the FISA Amendments Act, the only lawmakers who knew about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.

The court-approved program is focused on foreign communications traffic, which often flows through U.S. servers even when sent from one overseas location to another. Between 2004 and 2007, Bush administration lawyers persuaded federal FISA judges to issue surveillance orders in a fundamentally new form. Until then the government had to show probable cause that a particular ‘target’ and ‘facility’ were both connected to terrorism or espionage.

In four new orders, which remain classified, the court defined massive data sets as ‘facilities’ and agreed to certify periodically that the government had reasonable procedures in place to minimize collection of ‘U.S. persons’ data without a warrant.

In a statement issue late Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said ‘information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats. The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.'”

A New Version of Handbrake is Out!

Handbrake is Open Source, and AWESOME! And, a new version, that is even MORE awesome is out!

New Version of Handbrake

Built-in Device Presets
Get started with HandBrake in seconds by choosing a profile optimised for your device, or choose a universal profile for standard or high quality conversions. Simple, easy, fast. For those that want more choice, tweak many basic and advanced options to improve your encodes.

Supported Input Sources:
Handbrake can process most common multimedia files and any DVD or BluRay sources that do not contain any kind of copy protection.

Outputs:
File Containers: .MP4(.M4V) and .MKV
Video Encoders: H.264(x264), MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 (libav), and Theora(libtheora)
Audio Encoders: AAC, CoreAudio AAC/HE-AAC (OS X Only), MP3, Flac, AC3, or Vorbis
Audio Pass-thru: AC-3, DTS, DTS-HD, AAC and MP3 tracks

Even more features
Title / Chapter selection
Queue up multiple encodes
Chapter Markers
Subtitles (VobSub, Closed Captions CEA-608, SSA, SRT)
Constant Quality or Average Bitrate Video Encoding
Support for VFR, CFR and VFR
Video Filters: Deinterlacing, Decomb, Detelecine, Deblock, Grayscale, Cropping and scaling
Live Video Preview

License
All of HandBrake’s source code is covered by the GNU General Public License, version 2. A copy of which is included with every release in the COPYING file.

Raspberry Pi Free Software for Noobs!

Noobs should have fun with the Raspberry Pi as well! So, introducing “NOOBS!”

Raspberry Pi offers free software for newbies

“The Raspberry Pi Foundation has introduced free software designed to get people using the tiny Linux-based computing more quickly.

New Out of Box Software (NOOBS) has been developed with first time users in mind.

‘We don’t want people to put their Raspberry Pi down in horror after five minutes,’ says the team.

Partners will ultimately start offering SD cards pre-installed with NOOBS, but the download link at https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads exists for now.

The Pi makers recommend installing NOOBS onto a 4GB (or larger) SD card.

Upon first boot up users have a choice of operating systems to install, including Raspbian, Pidora and two flavours of XBMC.

NOTE: Raspbian is a free operating system based on Debian optimised for the Raspberry Pi hardware. The Raspbian teams says that it provides ‘more than a pure OS’ as it comes with over 35,000 packages of pre-compiled bundled software.

According to the development team, when you boot up for the first time, you’ll see a menu prompting you to install one of several operating systems into the free space on the card.

‘Afterwards, the NOOBS remains on the SD card and allows the user to switch to a recovery interface (hold shift during boot up) if things go horribly wrong. Users can also opt to switch to a different operating system, or overwrite a corrupted card with a fresh installation,’ says the team.

Last month the Foundation announced its first official Raspberry Pi camera board. In February it revealed an even cheaper version of its low-cost, ARM-based miniature computer, priced at $25 (£16), excluding tax and shipping.”