6 Creative Ways to Earn Extra Money

There are a lot ways you can earn some extra cash on the side. Plus, with today's economic condition, earning some extra money wouldn't hurt. With today's economy, people have undoubtedly limited the way they spend their money. 

 1.Start a Blog 

 In the world of blogging, there's a place of expertise for everyone. If you're an expert at something, people would want to know about your expertise. Advertisements or recommending products could help you earn some profit from your blog. Connecting to services like Google adsense,Addyanamo,Chikita and other affialiates program could bring in a good cash flow.

2.Take Advantage of your artistic talents 

Get your creative juices flowing by designing t-shirts and selling them online. You can check out Café Pressor or Zazzle where you can set the price of your t-shirts.

Another great option you have is Threadless, where you can submit your design for the website community to vote for and comment on your design. If your idea is selected you will receive $2000 in cash and $500 in gift certificates. 

3.Learn How to DJ  

If you love music and like to mix it up then learn the trade of a DJ. DJ's earn big money today and if your music is good you can gain reputation fast. 

4.Write a Book
 If you have the knack for writing, try writing your own book. You can uses LULU to self-publish your book using one of their templates. Just write the content and Lulu will do the rest (while taking their cut of course).

5.Do freelance work 

Nowadays, almost any job can be done on a contract or freelance basis. Check out sites like Sologig, which lead jobs seekers to consulting, freelancing, and part-time projects that will help you earn money.


 6.You can even take up writing online articles, become a graphic designer, you can end up designing logos, or marketing campaigns for companies since most companies today are looking to outsource their work.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 | 1 comments | Read More

Apple unveils iPhone 5: Thinner, lighter, 16:9 4-inch display, LTE, and available Sept 21

Apple CEO Tim Cook and vice president Phil Schiller have unveiled the iPhone 5. In most major markets, the phone will be preorderable on September 14 and will begin shipping on September 21. In December, the iPhone 5 will be made available in 100 countries on 240 carriers. The iPhone 5 will cost the same as the iPhone 4S (starting at $199 in the US with a two-year contract).

The iPhone 5 looks exactly as the leaks suggested — longer and narrower than the iPhone 4 — but we now know that the iPhone 5 is also considerably thinner (7.6mm, the thinnest smartphone in the world, apparently) and much lighter (112g, 20% lighter than the iPhone 4S).

The iPhone 5 has a 4-inch 1136×640 (326 PPI) Retina display — so yes, Apple has finally moved from the 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9. As far as we can tell, this new space will simply be used for another row of icons on the home screen — and other important apps, iPhoto, iMovie, Keynote, etc. have all been updated to use the additional real estate. In the case of apps that haven’t been updated, the new iPhone will simply display the app at standard resolution (960×640) with black bars above and below (yes, I can hardly believe it, but there you go).

The new 16:9 display also ups color saturation by 44%, bringing its color gamut to full sRGB — “the most accurate display in the industry,” according to Apple. The touchscreen assembly is apparently built into the display, making it more accurate — but we don’t have any more details on that yet.

The Apple A6 SoC

Powering the iPhone 5 is the new Apple A6 SoC, which is apparently twice as fast as the A5, both in terms of graphics and computation. Apple wheeled out some EA executive to tell us that the A6 is capable of “full console quality” graphics, but we remain dubious. Battery life is apparently slightly improved from the iPhone 4S, too.

We don’t have any more details to share at this point, but given the doubling in speed the A6 is probably a dual-core Cortex-A15 design — similar to Samsung’s Exynos 5.

LTE support, no NFC

Beyond the new chassis, the other “big” feature is the addition of a cellular radio capable of HSPA+, DC-HSDPDA, and LTE. Details weren’t given, but we believe this modem is the Qualcomm MDM9615, a single-chip 28nm solution. A large number of supported carriers were listed, including AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon in the US, and a bunch of European and Asian providers. We will have much more details on the iPhone 5′s radio capabilities later.

Perhaps surprisingly, there is no NFC support on the iPhone 5 — indicating Apple still doesn’t believe that NFC is ready for prime time.

iSight camera

The iPhone 5 features an 8-megapixel shooter, with a backside illuminated CMOS sensor, f/2.4 aperture, and other fancy tricks to improve image quality and low-light performance. The new A6 SoC also has some new hardware in it that will improve image quality. Apparently the iPhone 5 is 40% faster at capturing an image (presumably we’re talking about processing time here, rather than shutter speed or something else). There isn’t any optical image stabilization like the Lumia 920, though!

Apple did show some amazing sample images during the presentation, but we’ll have to get our hands on some real sample images before we can decide if Apple or Nokia will be this generation’s camera king.

Rounding out the camera, there’s a few other neat features (face detection, panorama mode), and the front-facing camera can now do FaceTime calls over cellular networks (unless AT&T stops you, of course).

Die, 30-pin connector, die

With the iPhone 5, Apple is debuting a new 8-pin connector called Lightning (to go withThunderbolt, get it?). Other than being a lot smaller, the most exciting aspect of Lightning is that it’s reversible; you can shove it in whichever way you want. There is of course an adapter ($29!) if you need to connect your new iPhone to some old hardware (such as, you know, your car).

Rather than being related to Thunderbolt, though, Lightning is probably based on USB 3.0. Again, we don’t have any specifics to share (seems to be a recurring theme, for some reason).

Thursday, September 13, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

90,000 Chrome users fall for malicious Facebook Timeline extension

Security researchers at Barracuda Networks have spotted a handful of malicious Chrome extensions lurking in the Web Store that shared a common M.O. All of them were designed to track a user’s browsing activity, and all were disguised as Facebook mods that could revert the site from Timeline to its traditional layout. In total, around 90,000 Chrome users had been tricked into installing the three extensions spotted by Barracuda.

Beyond tracking their users, the extensions also pushed bogus surveys and urge users into joining fake Facebook events. That part of the scam is what attracts new users to scammy extensions like this in the first place. In the Web Store, it’s hard for them to stand out when other legitimate extensions are already established and offer a long list of reviews and good ratings that prove their utility. In order to lure their marks into the van, the extension authors push it on Facebook — where frustrated users are more likely to jump on the first thing they see that promises to undo the Timeline view.

Fortunately for Chrome users, Google has already caught on to the scam, too. As of this morning, all three of the extensions flagged by Barracuda as malicious have been removed from the Web Store.

Now that Chrome is the most-used web browser in the world, Google’s going to need to remain vigilant. It should be a bit easier to keep malicious extensions at bay now, what with the company’s acquisition of the web-based malware scanning service VirusTotal going down last week.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

FBI launches 1 billion dollar nationwide facial recognition system

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun rolling out its new $1 billion biometric Next Generation Identification (NGI) system. In essence, NGI is a nationwide database of mugshots, iris scans, DNA records, voice samples, and other biometrics, that will help the FBI identify and catch criminals — but it ishow this biometric data is captured, through a nationwide network of cameras and photo databases, that is raising the eyebrows of privacy advocates.

Until now, the FBI relied on IAFIS, a national fingerprint database that has long been due an overhaul. Over the last few months, the FBI has been pilot testing a facial recognition system — and soon, detectives will also be able to search the system for other biometrics such as DNA records and iris scans. In theory, this should result in much faster positive identifications of criminals and fewer unsolved cases.

According to New Scientist, facial recognition systems have reached the point where they can match a single face from a pool of 1.6 million mugshots/passport photos with 92% accuracy, in under 1.2 seconds [PDF]. In the case of automated, biometric border controls where your face and corresponding mugshot are well lit, the accuracy approaches 100%. Likewise, where DNA or iris records exist, it’s a very expedient way of accurately identifying suspects.

So far, so good — catching criminals faster and making less false arrests must be a good thing, right? Well, yes, but there are some important caveats that we must bear in mind. For a start, the pilot study has only used mugshots and driving license photos of known criminals — but the FBI hasn’t guaranteed that this will always be the case. There may come a time when the NGI is filled with as many photos as possible, from as many sources as possible, of as many people as possible — criminal or otherwise. This might be as overt as parsing CCTV footage and collating every single face into a database; or maybe you’re just unlucky and your face ends up in the system because you’re in the background of a photo starring a known criminal.

Imagine if the NGI had full access to every driving license and passport photo in the country — and DNA records kept by doctors, and iris scans kept by businesses. The FBI’s NGI, if the right checks and balances aren’t in place, could very easily become a tool that decimates civilian privacy and freedom. Time to invest in a hoodie, I think…

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

New Coke Machine Can Take Your Picture, Has a 46" video screen,a Microphone,,,

Intel showed off a new fancy Coca-Cola machine at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco today. Why did Intel show off a glorified sugar water dispenser? Well, that’s because the device happens to house an Intel Core i7 microprocessor.

 It needs all that computer horsepower to function its many doodads, like the microphone it has for no apparent reason. The machine also comes equipped with a camera, which would theoretically be used to gather demographic information, but is thoroughly creepy regardless. Dadi Perlmutter, Intel’s executive vice president, presented the machine during his keynote speech. 

Old coke dispenser

A camera and microphone isn’t all it has, according to VentureBeat:

 Perlmutter said the 46-inch video screen has full 1080p high-definition playback and a microphone. It has a Wi-Fi wireless network, a QR Code reader, and an old-fashioned money slot and dispenser. In case you want to watch a movie on the Coke machine, it’s entirely possible.

 Why a soda machine would have the majority of these additional options is confusing. It’s takes the glorious no-nonsense approach of a traditional dispenser out of the equation and replaces it with depressingly corporate set of shenanigans. At least it will look snazzy, though.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

Google Launches Open Course Builder

Google launched an open source course building web application for the growing list of K-12 and big-name universities developing online classes. The barebones website is a lightweight way to bring course material online, track student engagement (with web traffic and surveys), and evaluate performance. “We want to use this launch to show that Google believes it can contribute to technology in education,” says Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig.

Course-builder came off the back of an experimental Google class, “Power Searching with Google,” which went out to schools across the country to educate students on the more advanced features of Google for online research. The power-searching course “was a strong success and also generated some technology that we thought would be useful to share with the world,” says Norvig. “We feel that by sharing the code that we’ve generated, we can impact more people in the education space. There is a lot of experimentation going on in the industry at this point, and we felt that contributing an open source project would be a beneficial starting point that could help everyone.”

Google is hoping that big-name universities, such as Stanford and MIT, who have started to put their courses online for free, will adopt the technology.

There are many websites, such as Udemy, that have long offered services for individual users to create (and get paid) for their own classes. Universities, however, are looking for an in-house solution, and a common code-base to evolve custom courses could be helpful.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More

GoDaddy goes down

WEB HOSTING FIRM Godaddy saw its services go down for several hours last night as a mystery problem knocked thousands of websites offline. The firm admitted to the problems in a string of messages on the microblogging website Twitter.

 There it said that it was aware of the problem and was working hard to fix it. This was denied and rather scorned, however, by the rest of the group. The account holder, called Anonymousown3r, says that he was working alone, and asked that people not associate the attack with the wider Anonymous group. 

He claims that his still attacking Godaddy but has not given any reason for the attack. In statements on Twitter the hacker has suggested that the attack was easy, claiming that when he chooses to mount a denial of service attack on a website he can keep it offline for months. 

Godaddy has not yet responded to our request for comment, but in a statement on its website has told customers that no personal information has been taken in the attack.

 Update

 Godaddy has reponded to the outage, revealing that there was no hacking involved. 

A spokesperson said, "The service outage was not caused by external influences. "It was not a 'hack' and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). 

We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. 

"Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and Godaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again." )

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 | 0 comments | Read More