I never thought I'd be writing about Toyota, a major car manufacturer, here on Download Squad. While we've mentioned cars before, usually it's in the context of an on-board entertainment system or a goofy experiment.

But it turns out that the accelerator problem that has prompted a massive recall of Toyota vehicles could be related to the onboard software the car manufacturer employs in these cars. Computers have become more and more integral in modern vehicles, and Computerworld reports that some vehicles like the affected Toyota models are fly by wire. Fly-by-wire, if you're not familiar with the term, refers to the idea that the controls that the user manipulates like the gas and brake pedal are not physically connected to the throttle and brakes on the car, but rather are simply inputs into the car's computer, which then controls the throttle and brakes digitally.

A problem with the software on board the car's computer could certainly cause odd behavior, and we all know that software can be buggy. But given the importance of fly by wire software, I have to think that Toyota put it through an incredible level of testing. Though the investigation has turned to looking at the software as the culprit, I'm hoping that it turns out to be a red herring. Though I guess it's only a matter of time before we hear about some real-world big tragedy caused by a software malfunction.

Today is Safer Internet Day, an annual event coordinated by the folks at InSafe -- who are all about promoting responsible Internet use. We've covered a number of great tools in the past that have the same aim, so what better day to take another look at them?

Web Of Trust (WOT, Pictured)
WOT is a community-powered trust and ratings system. With nearly 26 million sites rated to date, it's one of the most popular safe browsing tools you can find. Their browser add-on is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome. Once installed, you'll start seeing WOT's color coded ratings rings next to links to let you know if they're safe.

I have WOT installed in my browsers, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Read more →

If you're looking or an easy way to increase your touch-typing speed, head over to Klava. Klava's a free, online touch-typing tester that delivers a never-ending stream of words in patterns that help you focus on the most troublesome letter combinations, increasing your overall typing speed.

The tool offers a few different word sets including standard and advanced English, and even a few programming languages for the software developers out there that would like to increase their speed.

As someone who taught himself to touch-type using an ancient piece of freeware on my Windows 3.1 computer, I can vouch for the effectiveness of this type of tool. Dedicate twenty minutes per day, and your typing speed will increase in no time.

[via Lifehacker]

Who do you think of when you want to search for what's happening now? Increasingly people are searching social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and Google has increased the speed of its index to offer more up-to-date real-time information. In the realm of technology, Techmeme has had a lock on live news for a few years now.

But there's a site I recently learned about that you might not be aware of that has a unique take on allowing you to search for and presenting news and current affairs called Silobreaker. Silobreaker's current list of categories includes Global Issues, Technology, Science, Business, Energy, and World. Clicking on any of these top-level categories presents a menu of 4 to 6 sub-categories that allow you to further refine your view.

Silobreaker pulls from news sources, blogs, and multimedia sites to put together a hub of related posts and articles for any given story. In the sidebar, they offer an In Focus section with direct links to the people or organizations being discussed, a Network graph that helps you to visualize how each of the publications or services that are used in a story's summary are related, a Blogs section listing relevant blog posts, and a self-explanatory Audio/Video section.

Silobreaker's approach to sourcing out relevant information and determining what's hot seems to be working, and the way they present the collected information is second to none. Watch for the service to grow by leaps and bounds.

In what must surely be a sign that schools and universities are under-funded, a network security dude at the University of Georgia has just been arrested for shaking down multiple file-downloading students.

Two weeks ago he approached a female student and said he could make the "situation go away in exchange for money" -- he was promising to keep the data private, rather than forward it to the university administrators. In this case, the student didn't have any money and went straight to a university official to report the nefarious network nerd. He was promptly arrested by the police -- job done! (If anyone's wondering, this is the best way to get out of blackmail situations... don't give in to their demands! Don't deal with terrorists! Never eat yellow snow!)

There's no hint of how much money the guy was trying to extract from the girl, nor any hint of whether he tried to obtain other forms of 'payment' instead. But still... maybe it's not the RIAA or MPAA that you should be most worried about, students!

[via CNET]