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Facebook has big plans to bring internet to more people in rural areas
Over the past few years, Facebook has been rolling out several initiatives to bring free and cost-reducing internet to people in underdeveloped areas all around the world. That includes things like Terragraph, a millimeter-wave wireless technology that not only serves connectivity but does so in speedy form -- it runs on the same frequency as the one being tested by operators for proposed 5G cellular networks. Then there are others such as the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), a collaboration between tech industry firms to accelerate the development of internet infrastructure in rural areas. OpenCellular, meanwhile, is a low-power base station optimized for underserved regions across the globe. In order for all of these projects to be successful, though, Facebook can't do it alone.
US military wants vaccines that adapt to fight new viruses
Vaccines and other antiviral treatments have one overriding, seemingly inescapable problem: since viruses evolve, a solution that works today can be completely useless tomorrow. The researchers at DARPA are convinced this is a solvable problem, however. They've launched an INTERCEPT (Interfering and Co-Evolving Prevention and Therapy) program that aims to create therapies which adapt in sync with the viruses they're meant to thwart. It'll largely revolve around therapeutic interfering particles (TIPs), or tiny slices of protein-shelled DNA that infiltrate cells and compete with viruses for protein shells. Since the particles should be produced faster than viruses, you end up with loads of dud viruses that dramatically reduce the impact of any viral load. Think of it as watering down a stiff drink.
Tipster: it's free, basic and calculates tips
Tipster is a tip calculator for iPhone. There's no bells and whistles, it's just a simple tip calculator with one job: calculating tips. As anyone even slightly familiar with the App Store knows, developers have overwhelmingly filled it with tip calculators since they're so useful, easy to create and iOS has always lacked a native utility for tips. Does Tipster do a good job of standing out from the crowd as a solid choice? That's the question I try to answer from my experience. It's free with in-app purchases requires iOS 7.1 or later. Tipster's interface is dead simple. The four stars at the top are adjustable based on the tip percentage you want to leave. One star is 10 percent, two stars is 15 percent, three stars is 18 percent and four stars is 20 percent. Use the fifth option to enter a custom percentage. Underneath the stars you have the bill total and tax amount, which you type in separately. When you input the bill total, the tip shows up rather largely on screen above the stars. The hierarchy to fill information in isn't really all that ideal. Additionally, having to put in the tax amount yourself seems a tad ridiculous. It should be an option in the settings to enable this should you choose to do it this way, but otherwise the tax should be able to calculate based on your state's sales tax percentage. Tipster also supports splitting the check. Again, the app includes four preset options for, in this case, one to four people. The fifth allows for a custom amount of people - seriously infinite. If the bill needs to be split, the app shows how much each person should pay including tip at the bottom. Tapping what looks like a menu icon on the bottom right breaks down the entire per-person amount including the subtotal, tax and tip for each person paying. The app shows a single banner ad at the very bottom. It's mostly out of the way and doesn't cover up anything or hinder usage within the app, but if you're dead set against ads, there is an in-app purchase available which ditches the ads for US$0.99. Should Tipster be your go-to tip calculator app? Well, if you're okay with ads, Tipster is free so you don't have any money to lose. I do think there's better-designed alternatives like Tips or Tippit, but they come at a price. I'm not a fan of having to input the specific tax amount in this app and the order in which certain values get displayed is a tad awkward. Don't forget that your iPhone and iPad both technically come with a tip calculator thanks to Siri. If you ask Siri what you should leave for a tip and provide the bill total and percentage, she'll give you an answer pretty quickly. Doing the multiplication on the standard Calculator app on iPhone works as well. Tipster is certainly a capable tip calculator, but I can't help but want more out of it. It's good, but with some design changes it could be great.
How to quickly browse draft emails on your iPhone
Here's a trick I found quite by accident. You can jump directly to a list of your draft emails in Mail for iPhone by pressing and holding the compose button: Just hold your finger down and a list of unfinished drafts pops up. Tap any one to jump right to it. I just happened to press and hold the compose button and there it was. Excellent. As with so many other iOS tips, this also works in Mail on the iPad and iPod touch as well.
Crying wolf: when emergency alerts stop being effective
Yesterday, I switched off all AMBER and Emergency iPhone Alerts in Settings > Notification Center. This followed a day and a night of flash flood warnings that started at 1 AM and continued until just after noon. [Erica is in Colorado, where recent wet weather has contributed to disastrous flooding. –Ed.] In that time, I counted eight individual Emergency Alerts issued by the National Weather Service in my personal notification center. These included alerts in the middle of the night; alerts as I was in office buildings; and alerts while I was waiting for appointments or having meetings. Since AT&T pushed out its Emergency Alert upgrade to support my iPhone 4S, I have received alerts for a variety of weather situations plus that abduction one from California. I cannot point to a single alert in my history that I considered necessary to receive on a phone rather than seeing on the TV or by hearing the local tornado alarms. I cannot customize the alerts I hear. It's all on or all off for AMBER and/or emergency items. These alerts are loud, scary, intrusive and blunt. I think my alert burnout is pretty human. When people get tired of alerts that aren't relevant, they're going to shut them off. Emergency alerts by their very nature should be few, important and effective. As is, they've become the spam of disaster preparedness. And I've just sent mine to my virtual alert spam folder. We posted a how-to on turning off your emergency alerts in July. Please consider the risks and benefits before changing this setting on your phone. –Ed.
Use this trick to cache offline maps in the latest Google Maps for iOS
The latest version of Google Maps for iOS released yesterday brought a number of new features. The most notable addition is support for the iPad, but there's also a really cool easter egg Google added into the app. The easter egg allows you to cache maps for offline use inside the app. It has actually been available in the Android version for a while, but this is the first time it has made its way to iOS. To cache your maps for offline use, first zoom in to the area of the map that you want to save. Be careful you aren't trying to cover an extremely large area or else this trick won't work. Once you've zoomed into an area you want to save for offline use, tap on the search field and type "ok maps." Then tap the search button on the keyboard to start downloading your offline map. If you've zoomed in far enough, you'll then see the Google Maps icon briefly appear onscreen and then at the bottom of the screen a black bar with white text will appear displaying a message that says, "The onscreen map has been cached." After the map is cached, you can access it by simply navigating back to that portion of the map at any time. This trick is immensely handy for people with WiFi-only iPads and iPod touches, as they'll be able to be out and about with no internet connection and still see maps of areas important to them. This trick is also handy for those with 3G connections since cached maps will load faster and save roaming data charges if, for example, you are traveling in a foreign city. Google Maps for iOS is a free download. [via Cnet]
Neverwinter Days: The 14 guides you need to read
I've had a strange start with Neverwinter, to be honest. While I did get in on the 25th with the early-early crowd, shortly thereafter I had to boogie on off to a vacation that canceled out eight days of soft launch gaming time. So even though I got an early start, I'm probably behind many of you -- even those who started on the 30th. That's OK; I'm not in a rush. I'm not the type to get into a speed race or feel the compulsion to become an instant expert by the end of week one. My experience so far has been feeling out what Neverwinter has to offer, mostly by going through the solo quest line, participating in skirmishes, and queuing up for dungeon runs when time permits. And I'm enjoying myself so far, although I still have that "slightly lost" feeling that comes with exploring a brand-new MMO. I need to learn how to create Foundry missions and I haven't even touched professions yet. Maybe you're like me. Maybe you assume that everyone already knows the ins and outs of the game as though he's been playing it for years, while you're an ignorant noob wandering the streets. I don't think you're alone if that's the case, and to help both you and me out, I've done some research to find the top 14 most helpful threads, sites, and articles that all fledgling Neverwinter adventurers should at least skim over.
Add a clone partition to your backup drive
In case you missed it, March 31st was World Backup Day, a big topic of discussion on the last few Talkcasts, which culminated in a visit by the team at Dolly Drive. Inspired by the conversation, I wanted to create a clone-sized partition to mirror my SSD. I had an extra external drive on my desk but, like most, it already had some important data on it. In this video I will show you how to add a partition to an existing drive so it can be repurposed to make a clone of your boot drive. I'll be using Dolly Drive Revo, a free Dolly Drive 10 GB Account and Disk Utility in Mountain Lion. The actual cloning can also be done with Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper! if you prefer. Warning: Before you attempt any disc-related modifications, please be sure to have a backup of the data contained on that drive.
Ask Massively: With thanks to the tipsters
Massively's tipsters are awesome. You've probably seen acknowledgements of their contributions in posts like these. Without them, we'd be limited to just the research our fairly small staff can drum up on a moment's notice. The tipsters broaden our view and bring us news from games that might otherwise have gone overlooked. We love you guys. We do get tips we won't or can't report on, though. And it's not because we hate you. I promise.
Mac 101: Use Automator to extract text from PDFs
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for novice (and expert) Mac users. Have you every tried to copy and paste text from a PDF into a word processor document like Pages or Microsoft Word? Most of the time the text loses all its formatting from the PDF, which can be a real pain. Too often I've spent a frustrating amount of time putting text back into a coherent order after copying it from a PDF, while wondering why there isn't a simpler way of doing this on my Mac. Thankfully, a friend (who discovered how to from MacWorld) showed me, using Automator. And provided the text in the PDF is formatted correctly (and you're not trying to extract text that is actually an image), it's foolproof as well as free! Here's how. On your Mac, open Automator from Applications. Automator will ask you to select a type for your document. Select Workflow, then hit return. In the far-left column of Automator, click on Files and Folders. In the second column, select Ask for Finder Items and drag and drop it into the far-right space which reads "Drag actions or files here to build your workflow." This becomes your first action. Now click on PDFs in the far-left column and select Extract PDF Text from the second column. Drag and drop Extract PDF Text into the space to the right, where you dragged Find Files and Folders. You'll now see that Automator has created a workflow or one action following another. You're almost there. In the Extract PDF Text bubble of the workflow, select Rich Text instead of Plain Text (next to Output -- this will retain formatting like italics and bold) and choose where you want Automator to place your extracted text files from Save Output To. To finish, simply title and save, but make sure you've save as an application and not a workflow. Now open your new Automator application and select the PDF you want to grab the text from. A new Rich Text document will be created. From there, simply open this document and copy and paste the text into your preferred word processor.
Use Automator to get the Airport Utility 5.6.1 working on OS X 10.8
When I acquired a second printer dedicated to making prints and photos, I decided to dig the older Airport Express I have out of a drawer and set it up to be a wireless print server for that printer. However, I ran into a bit of a snafu: the older Airport Expresses require AirPort Utility 5.6.1 to run. It's still available on Apple's website, but even though it's easy to obtain, you can't run it in Mountain Lion. The actual AirPort Utility 5.6.1 software runs just fine on Mountain Lion. Its installer, however, isn't compatible. The solution I initially discovered, thanks to Douglas Urner in the Apple support communities, was to use Terminal to extract the AirPortUtility.pkg from the installer and dig the app out of it. It worked great, and it nets you a working copy of AirPort Utility 5.6.1. But UI designer Frank Tisellano makes this even easier. He developed an Automator workflow does all the coding work for you. This is the solution for those who aren't comfortable with diving into the inner workings of your Mac. Here's what to do: Download the AirPort Utility 5.6.1 installer from Apple. Download Tisellano's workflow from his website. Drag the AirPort Utility installer file onto the extracted workflow item. Don't just run the workflow, otherwise it won't work properly. Authorize any permissions needed and let the workflow do its magic. Once it's finished, you'll see an AirPortTemp and the older AirPort Utility sitting on your desktop. Move the AirPort Utility to your Utilities folder, trash the other folders, and you're good to go!
Ask Massively: Yes, we have heard of your game
Welcome back to Ask Massively, the place where Bree dispenses random thoughts about the sitemeta because you guys are cheaper than a shrink. About 20 people asked: Hey have you guys heard about Pathfinder Online and also why aren't you writing more about Pathfinder Online. P.S. Your coverage of Pathfinder Online is inadequate to my needs. And have you heard about Pathfinder Online?? Yes, we have heard of your game.
Can't save PDF files from Safari with Mountain Lion? Here's the fix
There's quite a bit of traffic on Apple's discussion boards (and others) about a problem with saving PDF files that have been viewed in Safari with Mountain Lion. Safari can view PDF files just fine, but for many people the problems start when you go to save the files or print them. The files get corrupted, and you're met with a message that tells you the file is damaged. There is no problem viewing a PDF you already have in either Apple's Preview app or with Adobe Reader. If Safari is involved, however, you are likely to have some issues. You can try to open the file in Adobe Reader, and you'll get a similar message. The cause seems to be a problem with Adobe Reader updates. There's a file in your Library/Internet Plug-Ins called 'AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin'. Find it, and trash it. You'll also see a file called 'AdobePDFViewer.plugin'. Don't trash that one, it's fine. I had this problem on both my Mac laptop and Mac Pro. I checked with a couple of friends and they all had the same problem. Some people have spent a lot of time on the phone with Apple and haven't gotten the problem resolved, as the issue rests with Adobe, not Apple. Let us know if you've seen this, or if you haven't. Lots of people are affected, but you may not see the problem until you need to view or print that PDF. Saving a PDF link without opening it works fine, but if the document is opened in Safari, and then saved, then the trouble can begin.
Captain's Log: Star Trek Online's skill points and expertise
It's time to ramp up the efforts to help out Star Trek Online newbies -- not just experienced MMO players new to Star Trek Online but new MMO players in general. Since STO went free-to-play late last year, the game has seen an influx of new players, many of whom have discovered and have become a part of the game's wonderful community. To date, there are still many people who are making STO their first MMO and are looking for helpful hints. With the kind assitance and input of many members of the STO and Massively communities, I'm continuing a series of columns devoted to helpful hints for the new player. This week we'll be taking a look at the game's skill trees for playable characters and their bridge officers.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Tips for your first outing in Guild Wars 2
Welcome to Tyria, adventurer! This is the long-awaited launch day for Guild Wars 2. If you pre-purchased or pre-ordered the game, you've had a while in the world already. If not, then put on your best adventuring cloak and be sure to grab a spare handkerchief! For those of you who haven't been following the game with the feverish eyes of a true fanatic, here are some things to keep in mind when you first strike out in Tyria.
Use Messages to send files from Mac to iPhone
Now that the Messages app is available as a beta for OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion, there's a way that you can quickly send files from any Mac to an iPhone. Lifehacker tested the capability, and sure enough it works splendidly for zapping files to iPhones in the field. Here's how to do it: open Messages on your Mac (you did download the beta, didn't you?), and address a message to an iMessages account on an iPhone. Instead of typing into the message field, just drag any file from your Mac and drop it onto the message field. Press the return key on your keyboard to send the file, and within a few seconds you'll usually get notification that it has been delivered. On the iPhone, just open Messages and you'll see the file or files that you sent. Images usually come across as a small thumbnail -- tap on the thumbnail to view the image and save it to your photo library. Documents such as PDFs or Word docs can also be viewed within the limitations of the iPhone screen with a tap -- tapping on the Share button that appears gives you the option of printing the document or opening it in any compatible app. This method worked well for a number of files of varying size and format. For example, everything from a 149 KB PDF to a 101.4 MB MOV were quickly dispatched to my iPhone with a drag and drop. I tried to throw a 194 MB MOV file to the iPhone, but was informed that the file was too large. The limit is somewhere between 101.4 MB and 194 MB -- I leave determining the exact maximum size as an exercise to the reader.
Reduce visual clutter in Microsoft Word
I know a lot of people who hate Microsoft Word. The two complaints that I hear most often are that it's slow to launch and extremely cluttered. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to make it better. I'll walk you through the steps that I take whenever I'm setting up Word on a new computer. Take a look at the image above, and you'll see how Word looks when you first launch it. Yikes. Ok, let's start pruning. Step One: Cut the ribbon The "ribbon" is Microsoft's attempt to make it easier to find the settings that you need, rather than having them buried in menus. It takes up a lot of space. Under Preferences » Ribbon you will find two options: Turn on the ribbon Expand ribbon when document opens I suggest turning both of them off, but at the very least, don't have the ribbon expand when you start a new document. That's a good start. Step Two: Toolbars Off Next, go to View » Toolbars » Standard and make sure that it is unchecked. Step Three: Ruler Off While you are there, go to View » Ruler and uncheck that too: Now that we have made all of those changes, here's what we're left with: I think we'd all agree that looks a lot nicer. Note: thanks to Byron807 for mentioning in the comments that you can turn off the status bar by going into Preferences » View: I was looking for it in the Toolbars menu, where you can toggle other toolbars on/off. Startup Speedup By default, Microsoft Word will show you the "Document Gallery" when it starts. This shows you all of the different kind of files that you can make with Word. But most of the time, you probably just want to make a regular Word document, and the gallery can be quite slow to load, so why not turn off the automatic gallery? Once I have that turned off, MSWord launches as fast as a basic text editor. (Note: after the initial installation, the very first launch will take a bit longer as the font cache is built, but after that, it's downright speedy.) If you ever do need the Document Gallery, use File » New From Template... to have it shown. Since we're tweaking anyway... While you're fixing things in Word, you might as well make a few more changes too. Change default folder for new files: Do you use Dropbox? If so, you might want to tell Word to save your documents in Dropbox instead of ~/Documents/. You can do that by going to Preferences » Personal Settings » File Locations: Decrease Auto-Recovery Time: Did you know Microsoft Word can automatically save your changes? Go to Preferences » Save While you are there, you might want to change the default file format from '.docx' to '.doc' since more programs can read/edit '.doc' files than '.docx. Fullscreen Mode A lot of writing apps now have "distraction free" modes, but I bet most people don't know that Word has one too. Go to View » Full Screen and you'll get a white field for writing and a black background. There is a toolbar which will appear at first, but it will go away when you start typing. If you want a wider area to use for your words, click the Zoom drop down menu and choose "Page Width." And if you want a real throw-back look, go to Preferences » General and choose "Blue background, white text" and you can get this: which will probably remind many of you of WordPerfect for DOS from "back in the day" as the kids say. Perfect? No. Better? Yes. Of course these changes are just cosmetic. There are still plenty of things about Microsoft Word I don't like, but there are times when I am required to use it, so I want to make it as enjoyable as possible. Hopefully this will give you some ideas of how to customize Word more to your liking.
Nokia penalised for texting tips to Aussie users, regrets not adding unsubscribe option
Here's a bit of bad news for those who actually enjoy receiving Nokia's regular tips via SMS: Reuters reports that the Australian Communications and Media Authority has slapped the Finnish company a hefty A$55,000 ($58,000) fine, with the reason being that there was no way to unsubscribe from said messages. This kind of flaw sure is a surprise at this day and age, but Nokia's already taken action by simply axing this spammy service entirely in Australia, while at the same time "ramping it down elsewhere" just to be safe, according to Reuters. If Pope Benedict is still going about his texting business over there, we sure hope he won't be next on the Aussie naughty list. [Image credit: Ester Inbar]
Mac 101: Encode media from Automator or the command line in Lion
There's an easy way in OS X 10.7 Lion to convert video or audio from one format to another, using a fixed suite of conversion settings. One approach uses Automator and can be launched from the Finder. The other uses the Terminal application and the afconvert (for audio) or avconvert (for video) command-line utilities. Behind the scenes, though, Automator is simply serving as a convenient front-end for the CLI tools. (You can also use the free Hoot app from the Mac App Store to do the same audio conversions.) The Automator method is the easiest to start with. Simply select the video or audio file you want to convert in the Finder. Under the Finder menu, choose the Services submenu, then "Encode Selected Video Files" or "Encode Selected Audio Files." You can also get to the Services submenu via the Finder's contextual menus; right-click the target file (or control-click, or on a trackpad, two-finger click) and the Services choices will be at the bottom of the pop-up menu. Finder menu / Services submenu Contextual pop-up menu Either approach will launch a dialog box where you can select your media conversion settings and the target file's destination. You can process one file at a time or, if you select multiple files, they'll be tackled in a batch conversion. The settings are slightly different for audio and video files, as appropriate to their media types -- you can experiment with the different settings to find the format that works for you. Video encoding settings Audio encoding settings For those of you more comfortable with the command line, you can use afconvert to encode an audio file from one format to another or avconvert to do the same with video. Type "afconvert -h" in Terminal to get a list of all the options you can use in the audio conversion. The avconvert tool is new in OS X Lion. Besides transcoding, it also lets you extract the audio or video track from a clip, change frame rates, add closed captioning and more. You read more about Automator video encoding and audio encoding at the Mac OS X Automation website. Additional information on the CLI commands can be found in Apple's Mac OS X Developer Library.
Tidying up location contacts for Siri and Reminders
My personal address book has no shame. I have contacts for people I haven't spoken to in years, contacts for people who I met at tech conferences, contacts for schools, for local stores, for repairmen, and so forth. It's one big old happy jumbled mess. I'm cool with that. When I want Siri and Reminders to be able to trigger a location-based event, I just throw it into my address book where it joins the hundreds of other often sad and neglected entries. I believe this makes makes me a type "N" on Myers Brigg or something like that. Not everyone will be happy with this kind of unstructured approach and an overflowing address book, or this kind of lack of organization. If you want to be able to to set location reminders without messing up your address book, TUAW reader Will Herbert has a solution. On your Mac, launch the Address Book application and create two new groups. Call one Contacts and the other Locations. Drag all your normal contacts into the Contacts group and create a set of location-only contacts in the other. Add stores, offices, dry cleaners, supermarkets, and so forth. These are all places that you don't necessarily want in your day-to-day contacts list. Each of these is still available in the address book and therefore still available to Siri and Reminders. At the same time, they won't clutter up your standard contacts. Score one for the Felixes of the world. The rest of us Oscars will trudge on as we were.
