Download Squad

John Burke

New York - http://twitter.com/johnburke

John has been blogging about technology news and rumors for the past five years. He is an avid Mac user and technology geek that maintains a number of blogs and websites. On the side, John dabbles in website design and development.

Filed under: Internet, Security, Web

Hundreds of Facebook groups hacked and hijacked - to prove a point?

by John Burke (RSS feed) Nov 10th 2009

Facebook is under attack! Okay, maybe that's a little too dramatic.

Recently, however, hundreds of Facebook groups were exploited by a group of attackers known as "Control Your Info". The hackers promise they aren't doing this for any malicious purpose though. The purpose of the mass hacking is to point out a major problem with the way Facebook handles groups management.

So what's the problem? The guys that did this said the problem has to do with group admins. When someone decides they don't want to be an admin any longer, virtually anyone can take over the group and make changes to members, group information, and pictures.

Unlike completely malicious hackers, the group says it wants to raise awareness and make sure people think about security. The groups that were hacked had their names changed to "Control Your Info" and profile images modified. A message appeared on many of the groups that said "Hello, we hereby announce that we have officially hijacked your Facebook group. If we wanted, we could make you appear in a bad way which could damage your image severely."

The group promised not to "mess anything up" and will return the groups to their original state by the end of the week.

Tags: administration, Facebook, groups, hackers, security, white hat, WhiteHat

Filed under: Windows, Mods

Create Windows 7 themes with Style 7

by John Burke (RSS feed) Oct 26th 2009

There has been plenty of talk about ways to modify and hack your copy of Windows 7, but what if you're looking for more ways to make it drool-worthy? Style7 is a little app that helps make it a little easier to make custom themes for Windows. The way it works is pretty simple (or is it?) and is done with a "simple" configuration file.

When you create a theme, it starts off using the default Aero and you work your way through it from there. You'll need to download Style 7, as well as a UxTheme patch to allow this mod to work. Personally, if I'm going to go through all this trouble, I'm just going to Google "Cool Windows 7 themes" or something. For those of you a little more daring, ehh, give it a try!

Tags: mods, patch, styles, Windows 7, Windows7

Filed under: Macintosh, iPhone

Tweetie 2.0 coming soon for iPhone and Mac

by John Burke (RSS feed) Sep 28th 2009

The popular Twitter client Tweetie -- available for both Mac and iPhone -- is getting a major overhaul.

Tweetie 2.0 for iPhone is built on the same framework -- dubbed "Bigbird" the Mac version enjoyed, stripped to essentials and updated. The new version also promises a complete offline mode with caching of tweets and the ability to remember exactly where you left off. It also fully supports landscape mode, gestures and even has a complete draft mode that can send updates to Birdhouse. Whew!

Some other cool features include:

Saved searches
Better threaded conversations
Link to iPhone address book
Multiple attachment support
Hashtag picker
Short URL previews

Former Download Squad'er Christina Warren managed to sneak in a preview for Mashable, which looks rather promising. Tweetie 2.0 for iPhone is coming soon and will cost $2.99. The Mac version update will be free.

Tags: atebits, Bigbird, hashtag, iPhone, landscape, Mac, tweetie, Twitter

Filed under: Internet, Social Software

Tweetmixx helps you see what's hot on Twitter

by John Burke (RSS feed) Sep 23rd 2009

As Twitter becomes more popular, it's become increasingly difficult to stay on top of links, content and stuff you're friends and followers are sharing. Made from the same guys behing Mixx, a Digg-style website that features user submitted content that you can vote on, Tweetmixx is designed to make it much easier to share and view links and content found in tweets.

After logging in with your Twitter username and password, you'll immediately be presented with a cool list of links found in your friends' tweets. See comments on them, view hot trends and even post and share directly from Tweetmixx. You can even specify interests that will help filter stuff you're interested in seeing.

Tags: digg, filter, links, mixx, sharing, trends, tweetmixx, Twitter

Filed under: Internet, Web

Login to Facebook with your vanity URL

by John Burke (RSS feed) Sep 23rd 2009

Here's a bit of ground breaking news for you. Facebook, known for their popular social networking website and recently flurry of product and service enhancements, has made possibly the biggest change yet. With over 50 million vanity names reserved since the social networking website started allowing users to pick their own unique URL, they have now announced that the names can be used to sign in as well.

Now, instead of having to remember an entire email address, XoXoSuperGirl111 or Bob or whatever name you chose can be used to login with. For me, that whole @me.com was a killer to remember.

You'll still be able to login using your email, mobile phone number or through a Facebook Connect website as always, this just adds another (more convenient?) way to sign in. I guess it's good that Facebook is keeping themselves balanced. After all, it'd be awful if all they did was release new features and functionality. That would almost be too much.

Tags: Connect, Facebook, Login, URL, Vanity URL, VanityUrl

Try out new Facebook features before your friends with Prototypes

by John Burke (RSS feed) Sep 16th 2009 {1 comments}

On the heels of last week's release of @mentions and the new Facebook Lite, today Facebook announced "Prototypes". Prototypes give users a chance to test out cool new applications and functionality "going on inside the walls of Facebook" and to provide feedback to the who built the prototypes, directly. To begin testing and providing feedback, simply find any application available in ...

Facebook introduces @mentions

by John Burke (RSS feed) Sep 10th 2009 {6 comments}

Facebook has been pretty busy today releasing new features on the popular social networking website. In addition to launching Facebook Lite, a stripped down version of the social networking site, the company also announced a new way to connect your content to friends. Status updates have always been one of the most popular and most used features of Facebook and today's introduction of "friend ...

Facebook comes to Android

by John Burke (RSS feed) Sep 10th 2009 {0 comments}

Oh look, more evidence that Facebook is slowly trying to take over the world. The popular social networking website is adding yet another option for its mobile users. Adding to the popular mobile platform that already has applications for iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, Sony Ericsson, Windows Mobile, Widsets, INQ and LG, today they announced the release of Facebook for Android. According to the ...

Office 2010 beta download leaked on torrent trackers

by John Burke (RSS feed) Sep 8th 2009 {8 comments}

Work on Microsoft Office 2010, the next major release of Office is coming together quite nicely. A few screenshots and more information about the suite of productivity apps has started to leak out into the wild. This release, (build 14.0.4417.1000) is the "Mondo edition" which has stood for an "Ultimate" version in the past. Strangely enough, ArsTechnica points out that all references and ...

Snow Leopard kills popular Mail plugin

by John Burke (RSS feed) Sep 3rd 2009 {2 comments}

The release of Snow Leopard has come with it's fair share of problems and compatability issues. Whether it's because the app does not run in 64-bit or is as simple as a few new lines of code, developers have been busy working up quick fixes and solutions. One such horror story comes from a popular Mail plugin called WideMail. For those of you unfamiliar, WideMail offers a range of ...

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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