Spam Texting

 Text message spam promising free iPads or cash rewards may be obnoxious and unwanted, but they also carry a greater danger: clicking on texts can install malware that collects personal data from your phone. They're also booming faster than any other sector of the tech industry. Spam text messages in the U.S. increased 45% in 2011 to an incredible 4.5 billion messages, Richi Jennings, an industry analyst and expert in spam, told Bloomberg.

Responding to such messages can, in many cases, also add significant charges to your phone bill. Generally, spam texts are sent using a prepaid phone card which costs about $20 a month and can send messages to millions of people. This is costing the carriers and the people receiving the texts much more than the senders, especially if the receiver doesn't have unlimited an unlimited texting plan.

Be Careful What You 'Like'

 

A judge recently ruled that "liking" something on Facebook does not protect you under the 1st amendment. Six law enforcement workers in Virginia were recently fired after "liking" the Facebook page of the current Sheriff's opponent. The debate is over whether or not a "like" is an endorsement. Currently, the only way to follow such a page is to "like" it, thus making it hard to say whether or not it should be thought of as an endorsement of something.

Judge Raymond A. Jackson acknowledged that other cases involving written messages on Facebook protected the speaker with the First Amendment, clicking the "like" button is different and doesn't warrant protection. This is sure to be an interesting debate that will take place in the near future.

Cinemin Slice Portable Projector

The Slice can display a 60-inch image from up to 10 feet away, so you can use it to show Hulu or Netflix on your bedroom wall or ceiling while you're trying to sleep, or use it to play your favorite Xbox game on the side of your house while lounging in the backyard.

The Slice has a 30-pin Apple connector so you can connect your iPod, iPod touch, iPhone or iPad to play media, as well as a mini-HDMI/AV port for connecting other types of devices and a VGA port for connecting up your laptop. The projector is also plug-and-play, which means you can just connect up your device of choice and start watching videos with no additional software or setup required.

It features play-and-play capability, so there is no software that needs to be downloaded to begin using whatever device you would like to. As with most projectors, the picture looks better when in a dark room. It displays the image with 854 x 480 resolution, at a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1000:1 contrast ratio. The projector has a manual focus and a 90-degree hinge so you can position it to display video at just the right angle and sharpness. The current cost in $429 for the projector

http://www.wowwee.com/en/products/tech/projection/cinemin/slice