High-profile Google blogger Matt Cutts discusses what happens when the search giant’s new browser Chrome phones home in “Preventing paranoia: when does Google Chrome talk to Google.com?” The information fed to Google HQ by Chrome is minimal and mostly anonymous, according to Cutts. The Chrome team also told him that the browser is not recording your footprints when you are browsing around the Web.
Link via Daring Fireball.
Mac blog Mac OS X Hints has an advanced script/web solution to track stolen Macs. The solution is a combination of software running on your Mac, and a web server to which the software reports (which you must set up). The script reports the computer’s MAC address, rearranges a few system settings if the computers thinks it has been stolen, is able to take photos with the built-in iSight camera, and attempts to trick the thief into bringing the machine to the Apple store for a free fix.
This is a pretty cool setup, but it’s also a little complicated — not really novice material.
A Simplehelp reader recently followed the site’s instructions for using your PC and web camera as a motion-detecting security system, and was able to catch a thief in the act. Nice job!
Internet Explorer 8 — the next version of Microsoft’s web browser — is on its way. In fact, a beta version of the software is already available.
Tech blog gHacks.net compares IE8’s features to those of the popular open source browser Mozilla Firefox in “Internet Explorer 8 Features And Their Firefox Equivalent”. There are improvements to in-page searching, the address bar, and privacy & security. IE8 also has some new features aimed at productivity — “Accelerators” for making quick use of web services, and “Web Slices” for adding small bits of self-updating information to the toolbar.
How-to blogger Tim Fehlman of Daily Cup of Tech has a guide on converting text into an audio file. Tim’s setup converts text into a WAV file that you can use in a variety of situations that make reading difficult or impractical.
Did you know that you can use your flatbed scanner as a make-shift digital camera? Photography blog Digital Photography School has a few tips for taking pictures of small objects with your scanner.
No camera? No problem! Suppose you feel like taking a break from your camera, or maybe it’s just a rainy day and you don’t want to go out and risk getting the camera wet. Then you can use your flatbed scanner (assuming you have one) to make very interesting still-life pictures.
Just make sure not to use anything so heavy it might break the glass, or with such sharp edges that it might leave a scratch.
The 2.0 version of the iPhone software has apparently re-introduced a security bug that was fixed in version 1.1.3, eight months ago. The bug allows an unauthorized user to bypass an iPhone’s passcode lock with a specific series of button taps.
Link via Daring Fireball.
In addition to various improvements that pertain to image quality, Nikon’s new D90 digital SLR camera captures video in 720p HD, and is able to GPS tagging.
calllog2ical is a Ruby script that will fetch your iPhone’s call log and post the entries to an iCal calendar. Also included is an AppleScript to make running calllog2ical a little easier.
As the author notes, this would probably be useful to anyone who bills their services by the hour and spends a lot of time on the phone with clients.
Microsoft Pro Photo is a free image meta data management application from Microsoft. Meta data mangement? Stored inside many digital photographs is a variety of information about the file: when it was taken, what camera settings were used, and option fields that may be filled out by the photographer such as title, keywords, and copyright information. This is called “meta data”, and Microsoft Pro Photo is a tool for managing it.
Anyway, back to the point — Microsoft Pro Photo makes geotagging extremely easy. You can record the location at which a photograph was taken by simply entering the address into MS Pro Photo. And if you were shooing pictures in the middle of a field or something, you may also geotag by browsing a map.
Link via CyberNet News.