Smaller tweaks, like laying out Widgets like the Launchpad will make finding them a little bit easier.

The Mountain Lion Developer Preview was released last week and Apple was particularly excited to show off 10 of the bigger new features in OS X. Check out our First Take of the Mountain Lion Developer Preview here. But what else is under the hood in Apple's latest OS?

Poking around in Mountain Lion, I came across a lot of smaller changes to the UI and some feature fixes that users of earlier Mac operating systems will appreciate.

UI and System tweaks The Dashboard is home to your widgets, and in Mountain Lion Apple has made a slight UI change. To select a new widget, you no longer need to scroll through a list of available widgets at the bottom; now, Mountain Lion displays available widgets in a Launchpad like view so you can see them all. Widgets got updated UIs as well, with a new slow scroll of current movies in the Movies Widget, for example, and a new way to create stacks in widgets evidenced by a UI tweak in the Stocks widget. The Stocks widget now lets you flip through different types of info using arrow buttons at the bottom. While not a huge change, it means that we'll be seeing new treatments for widgets and

Writing term papers and dissertations is hard enough without having to get every last reference formatted down to the last underlined period. Reference App is a great Chrome extension that makes this part of paper writing considerably easier. Here's how to use it:

1. Install the Reference App extension here.
2. To create a reference for a book or journal article, just click the Reference App icon in the Extension Bar, select Book or Journal, then enter the information required and click Create.

   Step 2: Create book reference.

3. To create a reference for a Web article, point your browser to the page containing the article, then click the Reference App icon, select Web, then enter the information required, grab the URL, and click Create.

   Step 3: Create Web page reference.

4. Copy and paste the reference into your paper and move on to the next one. 
5. That's it! The extension will disappear if you navigate away from its window, so make sure to follow through once you get started. Other than that minor frustration, Reference App should be a real boon to students and researchers everywhere.

(Via ... [Read more]

Imagine a technology that can stop spam and malware, identify and block illegal downloads, and allow ISPs to prioritize the data they transmit by content as well as by type. Sounds pretty good.

Now imagine a technology that gives network managers and governments the ability to monitor everything you do on the Internet, including reading and recording your e-mail and other digital communications, and tracking your every move on the Web.

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• Anti-SOPA forces have ISP snooping bill in their crosshairs

Of course, it's the same technology--deep packet inspection by name. That's how governments around the world are able to spy on their citizens' online activities and control their access to th... [Read more]

Paragon Backup & Recover 2012 Free offers all the features most home users will need.

You know you're supposed to make regular backups, yet you're just not doing it. Why?

If it's because you're not wild about the idea of spending money on backup software, here's good news: you don't have to. There are plenty of full-featured backup utilities (for Windows, anyway) that don't cost a dime.

Indeed, your only out-of-pocket expense should be a USB or network hard drive--a place to hold your precious data in case your primary drive goes belly-up.

Below I've rounded up five of the most popular and well-known backup programs for Windows, all of them capable, all of them free. Check the list, then meet me below for some thoughts and questions.

• Cobian Backup
• DriveImage XML
• Easeus Todo Backup
• Macrium Reflect Free
• ... [Read more]

The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire is coming soon to an iOS device near you.

These days, mega-hot movie properties almost always get the app treatment, whether it's a game or some "interactive companion." And right now, there's no hotter property than "The Hunger Games."

Thus, you'd expect that any tie-in app would come from a big developer: EA, Gameloft, or even the studio's own label.

Surprise! The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire for iOS is in development by Adam Saltsman, an indie developer best known for the browser-based games Canabalt and Gravity Hook (both of which have recently been adapted for iOS).

So, what will the official "Hunger Games" game look like? That remains to be seen, but there are some very interesting clues to be found in Saltsman's earlier efforts. Canabalt and Gravity Hook are simplistic high-score challenges that employ 8-bit graphics (a popular trend in recent years).

And, sure enough, the title screen (currently the only publicly released artwork) for Girl on Fire suggests something quite similar--a game that looks like it might have originated on a Commodore 64.[Read more]

In the wake of reports that Google had sidestepped privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser, Microsoft announced today it had discovered that the Web giant had done the same with Internet Explorer.

"When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?" IE executive Dean Hachamovitch wrote in a blog post this morning. "We've discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies."

The blog post, which details Microsoft's findings and offers privacy protection tips, said it has contacted Google about its concerns and asked it to "commit to honoring P3P privacy settings for users of all browsers."

In the blog post, Hachamovitch explained how the bypass occurs: Technically, Google utilizes a nuance in the P3P specification that has the effect of bypassing user preferences about cookies. The P3P specification (in an attempt to leave room for future advances in privacy policies) states that browsers should ignore any undefined policies they encounter. Google sends a P3P policy that fails to inform the browser about Google's use of cookies and user information. Google's P3P policy is actually a statement th... [Read more]

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

You may have recently learned how to block annoying callers on Android by adjusting settings in the caller's contact information. Now, you can handle the next step of ignoring someone--not seeing texts from them--by using NetQin's Mobile Manager for Android. Here's how to get started:

Important note: This app will ignore alerts for people on your blacklist, not prevent them from incurring charges for texts on your monthly bill. If you need a more permanent solution for blocking texts from your phone completely, you will need to contact your wireless provider.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 1: Install Mobile Manager on your Android device. 

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 2: Open the app and press on the settings button in the upper right corner.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 3: Access the SMS options by pressing the SMS Blocking tab.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

St... [Read more]

1. Download and install QTTabBar here. 
2. You should now see a new toolbar in Windows Explorer. Right-click an empty space on the bar to bring up QTTabBar's extensive Options menu. There's a lot of customization possible, but for most users, the defaults are fine. 

   Step 2: QTTabBar Options.

3. There are two ways to open a new tab. The simplest is to hit Ctrl-N; this clones the current tab, but you can easily browse to whichever new folder you like. The second is to click the scroll wheel on your mouse when highlighting a folder; this opens that folder in a new tab. 

   Step 3: QTTabBar with multiple tabs open.

4. Things get more familiar from here. Ctrl-Tab lets you navigate between tabs, and you can see folder contents easily by clicking a tab's icon. 

There's quite a bit more you can do with QTTabBar, including dragging and dropping, improving readability, and more. It extends the functionality of Windows Explorer quite dramatically, I think, though I occasionally see somewhat slower response time. It's a trade-off I'm  willing to make.

Thanks to MakeUseOf for the link!