The company that's known for giving you access to the Internet now also wants to be entrusted with storing your personal files.

Comcast, one of the biggest Internet service providers in the U.S., on Thursday launched its online backup service called Secure Backup & Share for its high-speed Internet customers. This service is powered by Mozy, a known online backup provider currently owned by EMC. It was a CNET Webware 100 winner of 2009.

According to Mozy, some 140,000 hard drives crash in the United States every week. Files can also be lost other ways, too, including human error, when a computer is stolen or misplaced, and from viruses. Comcast says that it wants to help reduce the risk of data loss and is encouraging consumers to back up and secure their digital files.

The company gives all of its existing customers 2GB of online storage for free with the launch of the Secure Backup & Share service. Those who want to use more storage space can opt for a few different plans, including a 50GB storage plan for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 annually, and a 200GB storage plan for $9.99 monthly or $99.99 annually.

This pricing is about the same as plans offered by other online backup providers such as Memeo or McAfee Online Backup .

According to Comcast, Secure Backup & Share, apart from keeping files off-site in case of disaster, also allows customers to share files via a personalized Web site. Sharable content includes photos, videos, music, and documents.

Comcast costumers can immediately activate their free accounts and use the new online backup, which is currently only works with PC computers. It's unclear if those who use this service are exempt from Comcast's monthly bandwidth cap.

Originally posted at Crave

It's not often that a technology product, even a successful one, enters the language as a verb. Some of us google, but nobody iPhones, Excels, or HDMIs.

But by remaining influential over a history that now spans 20 years, Photoshop software has achieved a place in the English language. Over its two decades, it grew from a single black-and-white image-editing package to a multi-product franchise, a starring member of Adobe Systems' Creative Suite line, and, of course, a verb.

At a National Association of Photoshop Professionals event Thursday in San Francisco, Photoshop's movers and shakers will gather to toast the software. For those who can't be there, here's a look at the software's history and future.

Photoshop got its start in 1987 when Thomas Knoll wrote software that could display grayscale images--those with a range of gray tones--on monitors that could show only black or white pixels. He and his brother, John Knoll, licensed the software to Barneyscan in 1988, then to Adobe in 1989. Adobe Photoshop 1.0 arrived in 1990, a Mac-only product initially, and in 1995, Adobe acquired the Photoshop software outright.

Pixel-level manipulation software turned out to be popular. Photoshop's clone tool let people copy one part of an image to another. And even at this early stage, it enabled sophisticated tonal controls through levels and curves adjustments.

Photoshop acquired many more features over the years. By providing a nicer interface to raw mathematical image-processing algorithms, Photoshop let people sharpen edges and change colors. Layers enabled creation of composites that blended multiple photos, text, and other elements. Adjustment layers opened up the idea that changes could be revisited rather than baked into the pixel data. Camera lens problems could be corrected.

The software gained popularity in a variety of areas--publishing, art, photography, advertising--and specific features followed. Narrower markets arrived, too--police forensics, medical diagnostics, scientific analysis.

The biggest and possibly most infamous feature, though, is the ability to make people look more attractive. Curves get curvier, skin gets creamier, teeth get whiter, muscles get chunkier, lips get plumper.

In many circles--advertising, most notably--this is considered fair game. But elsewhere, where many people still expect a photograph to capture truth, image manipulation has caused controversy.

Did 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry really stand next to Jane Fonda in a 1970s anti-war rally? No, but with each passing year such manipulations become easier. That "Photoshopping" has come to be synonymous with image manipulation and sometimes outright fakery shows we're getting more sophisticated about the possibilities, but you can bet we will be fooled again.

Adobe's Photoshop franchise has been expanding gradually. At the lower end, where people rarely are willing to spend hundreds of dollars for software, the company has released a cheaper enthusiast version, Photoshop Elements. Adobe killed the free Photoshop Album Starter Edition version.

Another new direction for the software was the photography-specific Lightroom. This software is tailored for high-quality "raw" images that come directly from camera image sensors and handles cataloging, captions, titles, and other image management matters.

The company continues to work on the core Photoshop product, too. For example, it's got refinements in the works to automate one of the most difficult processes, selecting complicated subjects to isolate them from backgrounds.

Adobe now faces new challenges, though, as computing moves into domains where Adobe doesn't have its incumbent power: increasingly powerful mobile computing devices and the cloud. To cover its bases, Adobe has released the online Photoshop.com and Photoshop for the iPhone.

Even though today's explorations of photography's social dimension are largely taking place beyond Adobe's sphere of influence, though, Photoshop doubtless will remain a fixture of image editing for some time.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

As a longtime fan of Meebo, the browser-based, cross-platform instant-messaging service that requires no software and costs no money, I've been waiting forever for an iPhone companion.

The wait is over. Meebo for iPhone is here, and it's perfect. I can't envision myself wanting or using any other IM app.

Meebo supports all the major networks--AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, ICQ, Windows Live, Yahoo--and dozens more you've probably never heard of. (Batanga? Decayenne? Outspark? Guess I'm not as social as I thought I was.)

If you're already a Meebo user, just sign in; the app immediately retrieves your account settings so you can start chatting immediately, no configuration required. If you're not yet onboard, you can sign up for a free account from within the app.

Once you're logged in, just scroll through your list of online buddies and tap one to initiate a chat. It's equally easy to add buddies--and accounts. Indeed, the app couldn't be much easier to use, as it has just three options along the bottom: Buddies, Chats, and Accounts. (To tweak the settings, you have to venture into the iPhone's own Settings app, which is a bit of a hassle.)

Aside form simplicity, Meebo for iPhone has two notable features. First, it offers landscape typing, something you can't get in certain other freebie IM apps (*cough* AIM *cough*).

Second, like its Web counterpart, the app lets you view--and search!--a complete chat history for each of your buddies. Awesome, awesome feature. I use it constantly--couldn't live without it.

Meebo supports emoticons, multiple chats (swipe to switch between them), push notifications and embedded links (which open in an embedded browser--nice).

In other words, it's as capable as most other IM apps, but it doesn't cost a dime. That's bad news for developers that charge a few bucks, but good news for you.

Is there an instant-messaging app you like better? One you think is worth paying for? Share your IM thoughts in the comments.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

These days, a great number of people are not only finding the majority of their entertainment online but also conducting a fair amount of their social lives there as well. In such times, it's great to have a quick and simple tool for downloading, editing, sharing, and transferring media. RealPlayer SP for Windows already had most of that down, but the latest version brings the features full circle.

In the past, RealPlayer SP already offered an easy, one-click solution for downloading unprotected videos for the Web. Another click transcodes those same videos to your portable device without a bit of extra effort on your part when it comes to fiddling with tricky digital format settings. The latest version of the software not only adds even more devices to the every expanding list of compatible handsets, but also incorporates a very user-friendly video trimming tool that allows you to select only certain bits of a video to transfer or share.

Plus, the program has incorporated one-click buttons that allow for sharing to a variety of social sites, such as Facebook and YouTube. In addition, you have the option to strip the audio out of the videos and save those as separate files. And you can do all this for free, as RealPlayer SP only requires a license fee if you want upgraded features, such as H.264 conversion and DVD burning.

Editors' note: After the program launch, the PDF conversion feature started functioning properly. Additional comments have been added below.

Nuance brings its crisp interface to a new free PDF reader, and it's got a decent feature set that should appeal to casual PDF users. Exclusive today on CNET Download.com for its first day of release, Nuance PDF Reader 6.0 is a strong entry to the growing field of zero-cost Adobe Reader alternatives such as Foxit Reader.

Nuance comes with two toolbars. The one at the top of the program is loaded with big icons, but it avoids clutter by hiding most of the secondary tools behind drop-down arrows. The toolbar at the bottom contains PDF-relevant details, such page number, zoom percentage, and viewing format. It's bigger than in most competitors, though, and it looks good on larger screens. It's a bit distracting to have to look down from the center of the screen, and it'd be great if one of the PDF reader-makers could just redesign the entire concept.

If you like clean, simple installations, you'll appreciate that the version of Nuance I installed lacked any annoying opt-out windows.

Editing is limited in the free version to highlighting, underlining, and crossing out, and although you can view comments that have been made, you can't add any of your own. Frustratingly, the free online PDF conversion service that Nuance comes with wasn't working when I tested the program.

If it does become functional and performs well, it could be a killer end-run around the lack of more editing features. Users could convert a PDF to Microsoft Word, for example, edit the PDF in Word, and then use a free PDF creator such as doPDF or NitroPDF to "print" the Word doc back into PDF format. It's inelegant, but a much better solution than paying a hundred dollars for a conversion program you're only going to use once.

There are two other minor problems that stand out. First off, the lack of tabbed viewing means that each open PDF lives in its own window, so its harder to do document conversion than in competitors such as Foxit, which does support tabs. Secondly, Nuance uses more RAM when running than competitor Foxit Reader, 26 MB of RAM with two PDFs open for Foxit compared to 46 MB with two PDFs open for Nuance. That's still far more nimble than Adobe Reader, but for users on older, less powerful machines that might be a concern.

These problems aren't deal-killers, though, and in general using Nuance was a hassle-free experience.

Updated at 3:10 p.m. PST on February 18, 2010: The PDF conversion feature is now working. Clicking the Convert PDF button on the toolbar will take you to Nuance's conversion Web site, where users can choose from four output formats, multiple language translation options, and image quality settings. The converter can return a file in Microsoft Office 2007's DOCX and XLSX formats, Rich Text Format, or WordPerfect, and it can translate the PDF into English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, or Hungarian.

The output document quality in DOCX was generally high, with few errors. Several additional blank pages were added in places that they didn't exist in the source PDF, and there were occasional, minor alignment issues. The RTF output quality was much worse, with significant alignment problems on every page. I didn't test the XLSX or WordPerfect formats. If you're looking for high-end, high-quality conversion, this program isn't for you. But users who are looking for more than adequate conversion on the fly should find Nuance's free PDF conversion perfectly acceptable, not to mention giving Nuance a tool that most other free PDF readers lack.

Continuing its effort to expand the e-book business beyond its own hardware, Amazon.com on Thursday released a Kindle application for BlackBerry phones.

Amazon got its start as an online book seller, expanded to electronics and other retail categories, then returned to its roots with its own Kindle reader devices. More recently, though, it expanded with Kindle applications that let people read books on the iPhone and iPod Touch and on Windows computers. After purchasing rights to read a book, a customer may read it on any of those devices.

That device list now includes BlackBerry phones, and according to Amazon, soon also will include Apple's Macs and iPads. Amazon didn't mention Android phone support in the announcement.

"Since the launch of our popular Kindle for iPhone app last year, customers have been asking us to bring a similar experience to the BlackBerry, and we are thrilled to make it available today," said Ian Freed, Amazon's vice president for Kindle work.

The electronic book market is burgeoning after years of obscurity, catalyzed in part by the Kindle. However, Kindle doesn't have the market to itself anymore, with dedicated e-book readers arriving from Barnes & Noble and others and with Apple's forthcoming iPad sporting e-book reading as only one of several abilities.

The BlackBerry devices compatible with the Amazon application are the Bold 9000 and 9700, the Curve 8520 and 8900, the Storm 9530 and 9550, and the Tour 9630, according to the Amazon's Kindle for BlackBerry site.

The free application lets people browse Amazon's catalog, read a book's beginning before purchasing, bookmark locations in books, synchronize the reading location among different devices, and read books in full color. Although books can be annotated on Kindle devices and with the iPhone and iPod Touch application, the BlackBerry application doesn't permit new annotations.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

More than 74,000 PCs at nearly 2,500 organizations around the globe were compromised over the past year and a half in a botnet infestation designed to steal login credentials to bank sites, social networks, and e-mail systems, a security firm said Wednesday.

The systems were infected with the Zeus Trojan and the botnet was dubbed "Kneber" after a username that linked the infected PCs on corporate and government systems, according to NetWitness.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Merck, Cardinal Health, Paramount Pictures, and Juniper Networks were among the targets in the attack. NetWitness speculated that criminals in Eastern Europe using a command-and-control server in Germany sent attachments containing the malware in e-mails or links to the malware on Web sites that employees within the companies clicked on.

NetWitness said it discovered more than 75 gigabytes worth of stolen data during routine analytic tasks as part of an evaluation of a client network on January 26. The cache of stolen data included 68,000 corporate login credentials, access to e-mail systems, online banking sites, Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail, 2,000 SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate files and data on individuals, NetWitness said in a statement and in a whitepaper available for download from its Web site.

In addition to stealing specific data, Zeus can be used to search for and steal any file on the computer, download and execute programs and allow someone to remotely control the computer.

More than half of the compromised machines were also infected with peer-to-peer bot malware called Waledac, the company said. Nearly 200 countries were affected, with most of the infections found in Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States.

The news comes after Google announced an attack targeting it and what is believed to be more than 30 other companies and which was linked back to China. McAfee dubbed that attack "Operation Aurora."

"While Operation Aurora shed light on advanced threats from sponsored adversaries, the number of compromised companies and organizations pales in comparison to this single botnet," said Amit Yoran, chief executive of NetWitness and former Director of the National Cyber Security Division. "These large-scale compromises of enterprise networks have reached epidemic levels."

Originally posted at InSecurity Complex