Lightbeam
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Firefox plugin reveals how your internet browsing is being monitored
If someone screams "they're watching you!" into your face, then you're either starring in a horror movie or living in these surveillance-conscious times. Still, if it's the latter, at least now you can put a name to the faceless entities observing your every move. Mozilla has released Lightbeam, a Firefox plugin that visualizes which sites are tracking your browsing history and how those sites are connected. Based on the experimental Collusion add-on, the software will even show you which third-party tools and personalization trackers are watching you from afar. All you need to do to get learning is download the feature from the source -- just remember to pull your best Enemy of the State face when you see the tangled web that just a few minutes of browsing will weave.
LightBeam pico projector turns any surface into a display, any object into a remote (video)
Do you ever stop to think about all those plain, unloved surfaces in the world, which go through life without ever once being used to reflect a Flickr feed or Facebook wall? It amounts to hectares of wasted potential, but there is a solution. It's called LightBeam and it's a 'nomadic' pico projector that uses a webcam to track and reorient its display to suit any ad hoc surface -- the piece of paper in your hand, the cover of a book, or the picture frame on your desk. And just when you think you've seen it all before, the guy in the video after the break rotates a coffee mug to flip the channel. Handy, no?
