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As a frequent Skype user I find myself annoyed by the fact that it crashes incessantly and the lack of integration with my primary IM client.

My immediate thought (after “oh, crap”) was what would have happened if I were running Windows and had installed a wonky MSN plugin? Odds are I would have had to go to some registry setting instead of just deleting the item. The average computer user has a better chance at performing an exorcist than they do of fixing Windows registry issues.

If you enjoy IM (and who doesn’t?) on the
Mac and are not using Adium you are missing out. Adium is fast, has a friendly UI and is generally very stable.

I am sure the author, who generously donated the plugin to the Adium community will fix the issue. You should throw him some PayPal for all his hard work.

Today I decided to install the Skype plugin and it somehow it made everything blow up. I could no longer start/stop Adium or Skype and had to throw both away, clear the Library and re-install.

Voyant At Home shows how the good and the bad of your financial future.

It wasn’t clear from the demo where the data comes from. If you have to enter it in manually, that’s a drag, although not a deal breaker. It would be better if you could import from Quicken. Quicken, of course, has its own financial planner, but Voyant looks both easier to use and more comprehensive in its analysis.

Voyant is software, but there’s an online social angle, too: You can connect with other people in similar financial straits and talk about how to manage through.

Although the Demo 2008 pitch came off a bit like an infomercial, Voyant At Home looks like an important and useful Web application for consumers. It’s a personal financial planner that understands the impact of life events–children being born, college starting, retirement starting, and so on. You tell it your income and assets and when the life events will happen, and it tells you what your economic picture looks like. If you want to run some what-if questions, you can drag dates around (when you’re buying that
car, for example), or enter in alternate financial data–send the kid to public school, or do poorly on your 401(k). The application will show you a graph of your financial surplus or deficit.

It manages to do all this by adding a small toolbar over the iPhone’s onscreen keyboard. Using the small loop magnifier you can highlight strings of text, then copy them into a virtual clipboard. From there it can be pasted into other notes, then sent off. Unfortunately you can’t carry the clipboard to other applications, which is what most people are hoping Apple will provide.

If you’re one of the many waiting for Apple to get its act together and offer a copy/paste feature on the
iPhone, there’s a promising development called MagicPad from software creator Proximi. It’s an application similar to the notes tool that ships with the iPhone. The big difference is that it’s got support for multiple fonts; rich text elements like underlining, italics, and strikethroughs; and the much-wanted copy/paste.

(Via Macrumors)

Write notes, and use rich text elements including copy and paste, with MagicPad.

(Credit:
Proximi)

First Look - MagicPad from Apple iPhone Apps on Vimeo.

Posted after the break is a video of the yet-to-be-released application in action, which was made by AppleiPhoneNotes.com. One thing that might keep MagicPad from making it onto the device is if it does not meet Apple’s stringent human interface guidelines, which protect things like the keyboard configuration to keep the end user from getting confused.

But the greater obstacle that stood in Jackson’s way was finding partners who would join him in his efforts to launch a proxy fight.

But in reaching out to potential partners, he found that a number of them had never been involved in proxy fights and were hesitant to join in, he noted.

To date, Jackson had found four potential candidates to run for the 10 board seats that will be up for re-election to a one-year term at the shareholders’ meeting. And although Jackson was shooting for 10 members to run for the board, he needed at least 2 more to gain control.

“It takes a big financial commitment to run a campaign. There’s legal costs, proxy solicitor costs, mailing costs, and it could easily cost more than a million bucks, depending on how much Yahoo wants to battle,” said Jackson, who runs hedge fund Ironfire Capital.

Icahn is said to have begun amassing 50 million shares of Yahoo stock late last week, according to the CNBC report. Shares of Yahoo, which dipped last week after Microsoft pulled its $47.5 billion bid for the Internet search pioneer, climbed 3.4 percent in late morning trading to $26.12 per share on speculation that Icahn may wage a proxy fight.

Jackson’s decision comes as billionaire financier Carl Icahn is weighing a possible proxy fight, according to a CNBC report.

Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Jackson, in an interview with CNET News.com, gave himself a 40 percent chance of moving forward with his bid, citing the challenges of persuading other partners to help him in his efforts and getting enough dissident directors to take control of Yahoo’s board.

“It’s like trying to get the first penguin off the ice flow,” Jackson said. “If you get one off, the rest will follow.”

Jackson, as well any other Yahoo shareholder, would have until the close of the business day Thursday to submit a list of dissident director nominees to run against the Internet company’s board of directors at the next annual shareholders’ meeting on July 3. Jackson owns less than 100 shares of Yahoo.

Yahoo shareholder Eric Jackson announced Tuesday that he’s dropping his efforts to launch a proxy fight against the Internet search pioneer, citing cost concerns of going it alone.

He also noted that partners could find dissident directors as well.

One of the AFI's top 100 American films:
still only available on VHS.

(Credit: Amazon)

I have no idea how many titles have been released on DVD, but the 90,000-title library available at Netflix gives a pretty good indication. That’s a much larger pool of titles than the infant Blu-ray format (still far fewer than 1,000 titles available), but it’s far from comprehensive. Despite such guilty pleasures as Gymkata and Strange Brew hitting the the silver disc in the past few years, there are still some high-profile movies (and TV shows) that have yet to be released on DVD.

There are a variety of reasons for the no-shows. Sometimes there are squabbles over who controls home video rights; other times the company is taking its time to locate a good print of the movie, and investing time and money into restoring the image and soundtrack to optimal condition. Whatever the reasons, however, the net result is that some favorite flicks or TV shows remain unavailable on DVD. Some of these are bona fide classics–The Magnificent Ambersons and The African Queen remain AWOL on DVD. Others are less well-known, but still have recognizable stars or top directors: Night People (with Gregory Peck), Holiday Affair (Robert Mitchum), Otto Preminger’s Forever Amber, and Samuel Fuller’s China Gate–just to name a few that my parents have been searching for. Once you get to cult classic territory, the list seems endless. A good friend of mine has been holding on to his well-worn VHS copies of 84 Charlie MoPic and The Final Option for more than a decade. International cinema can also be tough: don’t look for DVD versions of Mediterraneo or Love Without Pity in North America.

Turning to TV, things can become even more frustrating. It’s Garry Shandling’s Show is nowhere to be found, while Shandling’s Larry Sanders Show has only the complete first season and a “best of” compilation–apparently tepid sales of the former didn’t justify a complete season-by-season release. Projected sales volume isn’t the only problem. Another roadblock is music rights: co-creator Judd Apatow insisted on paying big bucks to keep the ’80s pop soundtrack of his cult hit Freaks and Geeks intact when it hit DVD. By comparison, the WKRP in Cincinnati producers had to settle for poorly dubbed muzak when they couldn’t afford to pay for the rights to include the classic rock tunes heard on the original TV broadcast versions. That’s the same reason Tour of Duty’s once hard-rocking Rolling Stones’ intro is a generic instrumental when viewed on DVD.

To make matters worse, searching for some of these movies on Amazon or eBay will offer glimmers of hope, only to be dashed when reading the fine print. Many of the movies are available in overseas editions, but that means you’ll need a region-free DVD player–and, usually, a PAL-compatible video display–to watch them.

However, It’s not all bad news. Following in the steps of the always excellent Criterion Collection, the Weinstein brothers’ Miriam Films line has been restoring and releasing such old-school epics as Anthony Mann’s El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire. David Lynch fans finally got his Lost Highway on DVD earlier this week. Still, it looks as if those us waiting to see North American DVD versions of Saul Bass’s Phase IV or the cheesy apocalyptic thriller Damnation Alley are going to have to dig in for the long term.

Got a favorite movie or TV show that hasn’t yet been released on DVD? Share your thoughts below.

As was first reported here last month, Electronic Arts’ hotly-anticipated new evolution game, Spore, was about to go “gold.”

Now, EA says, the game from SimCity and The Sims designer Will Wright has indeed done so, meaning that development on it is finished, and Spore is off to manufacturing.

Now all that’s left is for the Spore marketing operation to kick into high gear, getting ready for the game’s September 7 launch.

It’s hard to imagine that this video game, which was first announced in 2005, and which has had its ship date redefined several times, is about to come out. But that’s exactly what’s happening.

And that means that you and I, and likely millions of others, will soon be playing around in primordial ooze, learning how to make friends with new tribes, conquering foreign civilizations, and colonizing space.

If, after September 7, I seem to disappear for a few days, well, you might check my home office and see if I’m sitting there, sort of catatonic, trying to get just a little further in the game.

If you want to whet your appetite in the meantime, you can check out a few of the creatures from the game here.

See the SlingPlayer 2.0 beta in action.

(Credit:
CNET)

The beta version of the SlingPlayer 2.0 software is now available for Windows users as a free download from Sling Media’s Web site. The software, which allows owners of the company’s Slingbox products to access their TV programming via any broadband-connected PC, includes several notable upgrades from the previous version:

Live video buffer: Whether or not your Slingbox is connected to a DVR, you now have the ability to pause, rewind, and fast-forward up to an hour’s worth of programming. Onscreen programming guide: A channel programming grid is now integrated into the software, so you can see what’s on, and jump channels just by clicking on what you want to watch. You can view your entire channel lineup, or a stripped-down list of favorites that you designate.
Integrated Sling accounts: Sign up for a Sling account and your preferences are stored online (that’s “in the cloud” for you Webware readers). As a result, any interface tweaks you make (such as channel favorites) will have a consistent look and feel, no matter how many machines you install the program on.

What you won’t find aboard this version is the “Clip+Sling” feature that the company has been talking about for the better part of two years. (Note: CBS, the parent company of CNET, is a Clip+Sling partner.) A company spokesman insisted that Clip+Sling remains very much on the Sling’s roadmap–along with the Slingbox PRO-HD and SlingCatcher products that were touted at January’s Consumer Electronics Show.

Sling gave us an early copy of the beta software, and–having played with it for just a couple of days–it’s a substantive improvement over the previous SlingPlayer. By buffering the video and moving the programming guide to the PC screen, the company has load-shifted two of the big processing burdens from the server (your Slingbox) to the client-side (your PC). The result is a much smoother TV-watching experience. Not having to call up the program guide on your cable or satellite box–and wait for the resulting lag while that command is processed–is a big time-saver.

We also appreciated the software’s built-in support for closed captioning, and the overall improved look and feel of the interface. (While the screenshot above shows the Player’s full range of options, a click of the mouse can toggle off the remote and/or program guide, or send the video full-screen.) For beta software, it was incredibly stable. In fact, the only issue we encountered was that the programming guide didn’t include some of the channel changes that our local cable system (Time Warner) initiated in the past couple of weeks.

The SlingPlayer 2.0 beta software is currently only available for Windows PCs, though a
Mac version is in development; the beta and final version remain free downloads. In addition to the Mac, older SlingPlayer versions are available for Windows Mobile, Palm, and Symbian handhelds and phones, and a BlackBerry version remains on deck for the future. All mobile versions require a one-time $30 fee, but trial downloads are available.

The ThinkPad W700’s case also incorporates VGA, DisplayPort, and Dual Link DVI-D connections to support larger external displays. Hard-drive options go up to 640GB of storage and include a 64GB solid-state drive (which will surely be too small for a digital content professional), and optical drive options include a Blu-ray drive.

The 4.7-inch-by-3.2-inch digitizer is essentially a mini-Wacom tablet that sits next to the laptop’s touch pad. The digitizer pad can be mapped to the entire screen or to a defined area so you can manipulate images by hand. Above the digitizer pad sits an X-rite Pantone color sensor that’s capable of color-calibrating the display when the lid is closed, eliminating the need to carry a separate calibration device. True colors will be especially noticeable on the ThinkPad W700’s 17-inch WUXGA display, which offers 72 percent color gamut (meaning it can display 72 percent of the entire range of visible colors).

Pricing will start around $3,000; with the digitizer pad, color calibrator, and the highest-end component options, the price could reach $5,000. It seems like a lot, but we suspect the ThinkPad W700’s intended audience of graphics professionals will gladly pay that amount to have all the tools they need in one mobile workstation.

The ThinkPad W700 will begin shipping September 2. We’ll be catching a close-up look at the laptop at Siggraph on Tuesday and will post photos later in the week.

As you might suspect, the ThinkPad W700 is intended for graphics professionals, such as those in the digital content creation, computer-aided design and manufacturing, or digital photography fields. As such, Lenovo has configured the W700 with heavy-duty components to handle complex rendering tasks. In fact, the components are so new they haven’t even been officially announced; Lenovo can only tell us the ThinkPad W700 will include a “next-generation Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad Core processor” and the “latest Nvidia Quadro FX graphics.”

Set to debut on Tuesday at the Siggraph conference in Los Angeles, Lenovo’s new ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation is full of firsts. The 17-inch laptop is the first time ThinkPad has ventured into desktop replacement territory, and its larger-than-ever case will pack in not only the latest-generation components, but also two features we’ve never before seen on a laptop: a digitizing pad integrated into the wrist rest, and a built-in color calibrator.

For the first time, Black Hat 2008 will borrow the “Wall of Sheep,” a display of unprotected wireless networks sniffed at the conference, from it’s sister conference, Defcon, which begins on Friday at the Riveria, just up the street.

So far the only controversy concerns Apple. Last week one researcher announced he would not present his talk on the Apple FileVault, then it was announced that a second talk on security practices at Apple was also withdrawn by the panel moderator.

Preceding the talks on both Wednesday and Thursday will be a keynote. On Wednesday, Ian Angell, Professor of Information Systems, London School of Economics, will talk on “Complexity in Computer Security–a Risky Business”. On Thursday, Rod Beckström, director of the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) will talk on “Natural Security.”

Wednesday starts with a bang with Billy Rios and Nitesh Dhanjani reprising their Black Hat DC talk “Bad Sushi.” Then high expectations are running high as Dan Kaminsky reveals more about his DNS vulnerability. Petko Petkov will be talking on Client-side security and Joe Stewart talking on the protocols and encryption of the Storm worm. Brian Chess and Jacob West will host the second annual Iron Chef Black Hat. Tom Stracener and Robert Hansen will present on vulnerabilities with Google Gadgets and Bruce Potter will talk about malware detection using network flow analysis. Then Jim Christy returns with the annual Meet the Feds panel with Federal agents from various agencies.

The “public” part of Black Hat runs Wednesday and Thursday and features speakers in 15 separate tracks. One of the tracks will consist of Turbo talks of 20 minutes each. After those, there will an opportunity for the audience to talk with some of the speakers in a another room.

Thursday starts with Shawn Moyer and Nathan Hamiel presenting Satan is on my Friends List, a talk about social networking evil. Then Billy Hoffman on Circumventing Automated JavaScript Analysis Tools. Lukas Grunwald on Federal Trojans. Karsten Nohl on MiFare hacking. Jeremiah Grossman and Arian Evans on making money on the Web, the Black Hat way. And Rob Carter and others will talk on a hybrid file format that combines GIF images with Java Archive Sets. Calling these files GIFARs, the speakers say this intersection of Javascript with images could pose a difficult problem in the near future. Christopher Tarnovsky will talk on exploiting Secure Smartcards and Microcontrollers.

Events continue into the evening with the annual Hacker Court, a mock trial on some topical issue. At the same time there will be a presentation on recommendations for the 44th Presidency around cybersecurity.

Click here for full coverage of Black Hat 2008.

LAS VEGAS–Black Hat 2008 is bigger, and some might say better. Occupying most of the third and fourth floors of the convention hall at Caesars Palace, the conference started on Saturday with two- and four-day training sessions that continue through Tuesday.

Blu-ray is coming to the Xbox 360 within the next month. Trust me, it’s Microsoft’s only course of action going forward.

But all that needs to be thrown out and Microsoft must swallow its pride and pay up. Why you ask? Simple — if it doesn’t Sony will use it as a platform to spew lunacy about how the PS3 is the only “real” next-gen platform and isn’t living in the past like its competitors. And although it’ll use Microsoft’s Blu-ray player as a springboard for other attacks, it won’t be nearly as bad as the aforementioned alternative.

Now that Engadget is reporting Toshiba will wave the white flag tomorrow and finally put an end to the high-def format war once and for all, there are a whole new set of questions that must be answered.

Realizing this, does Microsoft want to look like the loser who doesn’t have the functionality to compete? Even worse, won’t the Xbox 360 suddenly look like the console that may be able to play games, but can’t let you enjoy high-def movies? And now that the
PS3 is much closer to the Xbox 360 in terms of price, how many people that are looking for an “in” to the next-gen format would choose Microsoft’s console over Sony’s?

And whether you want to believe it or not, Microsoft realizes that it’s in a bad position, but it must release a Blu-ray player. In effect, a Microsoft Blu-ray player would allow the company to at least say owners have the ability to play high-def movies and it would eliminate a major competitive advantage Sony could hang over its head.

Of course, time also plays a factor in Microsoft’s decision. If it waits too long to set the ball in motion, Sony will have a field day and we’ll be left wondering why Microsoft hasn’t responded.

A month ago, that very assertion would have sounded ludicrous to all but the most cynical of tech followers. But after one short month, quite a bit has changed and suddenly Microsoft is far behind Sony in the HD realm.

But in the end, Microsoft is in trouble. Blu-ray is Sony’s and there’s no chance that Microsoft can wield any power over the media. To make matters worse, Sony is its biggest competitor in the video gaming space and it’ll be forced to pay the piper just to compete. In effect, Sony’s win in the format war goes far beyond media.

Trust me — within a month, the company will announce a Blu-ray add-on for the Xbox 360.

Consider this — the Playstation 3 has officially become the only console that’s capable of playing high-def movies and although some may still find some benefit in owning Microsoft’s HD DVD player, it wouldn’t surprise me if they landed in the junkyard in a matter of minutes after Toshiba announces its failure.

Will Toshiba move to Blu-ray? What will the company do with the technology? Will it sell the HD DVD name to the Blu-ray folks?

Of course, Microsoft is quick to say that “games sell hardware” and the death of HD DVD will not have any major impact on its console. And while this argument may hold some water in the short-term, I don’t think it can expect its place in the market to remain constant if it doesn’t allow its customers to enjoy Blu-ray movies.

But perhaps most importantly, what will Microsoft do? The company has been a staunch supported of HD DVD since the beginning and it currently offers an HD DVD add-on for its
Xbox 360 console. But now that the format is dead and the rightful winner is ready to be crowned, will Microsoft ignore the format war and go about its business or try to jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon?