The Great Geek Manual

Utilities and Resources

• Amazon Cloud Drive – stores your stuff online and streams your music back to you. First 5GB free.
• Mumble – open source, low-latency, high quality voice chat for gamers.
• Opera Mini 6 – if you’re looking for a better browser for your tablet, give this a try. It offers all the benefits of Opera, only faster and with a dedicated share button.
• Small Basic – Microsoft’s attempt to hook kids on programming. Pairs Basic with a nice user-friendly programming environment.
• Stardock ObjectDock – this replacement for the Windows taskbar gives your system the feel of Mac with a more graphical interface.

Tech News

• Amazon and music industry set to go head to head over whether consumers need a second license to store their music in the cloud
• Java founder James Gosling joins Google
• Google denies working on facial-recognition app
• Microsoft brings an antitrust suit against Google in the EU: Among other charges, they say Google is blocking other search engines from including videos from YouTube owned, of course, by Google – in its search results.

Software

• Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon
• Ubuntu Software Center Lets You Test-Drive Applications Without Installing Them

Research and Science

• Self-cooling observed in graphene elctronics

Internet

• 10 Sites with Software for Browsing the Web Anonymously
• How Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits Turn Low-Budget Movies Into Big Bucks
• Hotmail will allow emails to run javascript
• The Internet Causes Satanism?
• Moot On The Origin Of 4Chan And The Evolution of Memes
• “The more Google’s scientists refine search algorithms, the more they manipulate the results, even unconsciously. When you search Google for a recipe now, you get steered towards something with low calories that can be made quickly”. An interesting post about how Google’s search results can be seen as “promot[ing] a cooking culture focused on speed and diets.”
• The NYTimes discusses the new difficulties in Erasing Individual’s Digital Past.
• Why Cloud Storage is the Future of Music: How Amazon’s new CloudDrive service might be a trendsetter.
• Why is Google doodling about ice cream sundaes?

Gadgets

• Android Will Dominate the Smartphone Market in Five Years: This according to a new study by ABI Research, who predicts that Google’s OS will be running on a whopping 45% of all phones by 2016.
• Dell and Microsoft Separately Proclaim Tablets to Be Fads
• Google’s driverless car is already driving on public roads. They estimate this will be on the market in 10 years.
• One Year Later, The iPad Has Changed Everything
• Researchers at USC respond to Google’s April Fool’s Day video on Gmail Motion, actually demonstrate Gmail Motion using Microsoft Kinect

Entertainment

• 10 Ways to Tell You Are Addicted to FaceBook

Discussion / OpEd

• What Do Kids Say Is The Biggest Obstacle To Technology At School?
• Why TechCrunch is Over