 option to change activation behavior for the on-screen keyboard, the ability to load icon themes even if the set is not readable, and support for properly removing network connections from the list of stored network connections.
Last but not least, the Network applet has received various enhancements, such as a fix for the icon that shows the current status of the VPN connection, and the “Auto” wireless connection is now being displayed whenever the user turns Wi-Fi off and then back on. Cinnamon 3.0.6 is available for download now and will soon arrive in the main repositories of various GNU/Linux distributions.
A Search Engine for Songs Playing on Internet Radio Now Exists
What if, at any given second, you could search the songs playing right this second on Internet radio stations from around the world? It’s a far better solution than scanning them blindly one by one, isn’t it?
With OnRad.io, that solution is now reality. Every few seconds, this search engine trawls 100,000+ Internet radio stations worldwide and provides moment-to-moment accuracy of songs playing on those stations.
For example, if you searched for Adele’s “Hello”, you’d get a few stats on the song’s popularity and a list of all stations currently playing it. Knowing this, you can pay closer attention to said stations because these are the stations that likely play your kind of music.
Of course, OnRad.io is capable of connecting to and playing all of the stations it lists, so it’s not just a search engine. You can even share currently playing songs with others with OnRad.io’s special URLs.
The best feature, however, is that you can set up notifications for songs that aren’t playing right now. The next time OnRad.io detects a station playing it, it’ll ping you.
OnRad.io is available on the Web, Android, and iOS.
Will you be using this tool or are you going to stick with Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn, etc? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!10:51 John S.: Yeah.
13:10 John S.: Right.
Web of horror
If you are worried about what the kids are doing on the internet, Levan Gabriadze’s clever and creepy cyber chiller will do nothing to ease your mind, for reasons expected and unexpected. First, though, you need to know how this movie was made because it’s challenging to watch. The entire film, 88 minutes long, is seen only via the laptop computer screen of one of the six teenagers at the centre of the drama.
If this recalls The Blair Witch Project, that is no accident. Screenwriter Nelson Greaves has said the aim was to use the restrictions of a computer screen in the same way the 1999 horror hit used the limitations of a single camera. I suspect the name of Greaves’s main character is no accident either.
Blaire (Shelley Hennig) is online with her boyfriend Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm), talking by the video chat service Skype. She has some excellent news for him: at the looming prom, they will lose their virginity together.
They are joined by four friends, glamour puss Jess (Renee Olstead), handsome bad boy Adam (Will Peltz), geeky Kenneth (Jacob Wysocki) and, a bit later, unpopular Val (Courtney Halverson). With all six Skyping, Blaire’s screen looks a bit like the opening credits of The Brady Bunch.
They seem like normal teens (the setting is Fresno, California), but a shadow overhangs them. It is a year to the day since another friend, Laura Barns, shot herself after a humiliating party video was posted on YouTube. We see Laura’s shocking death at the start of the film when Blaire clicks on the suicide footage, and we learn of the pitiless cyberbullying she endured.
Suddenly, an uninvited party joins the conversation, and it ain’t Ann B. Davis as Alice. The cocky kids dismiss “Billie227” as a hacker or a troll, but when one of the girls mock-threatens violence, the intruder responds with a message that chills to the core.
It quickly emerges that Billie227 is using Laura Barns’s tech tools — her Facebook page, iMessage account and so on — and is out for serious revenge. The gruesomeness that follows, seen through the deliberately frustrating perspective of Blaire’s computer screen, suggests an alternative title: SkypeDay the 13th. I won’t be using my blender for a while.
Who is Billie227-Laura Barns? A living avenger of the dead girl, or the dead girl herself?
There’s probably a clue in the fact the film was going to be called Cybernatural before a last-minute change. Unfriended is a much better title because as much as anything this is a story about false friendships, something that becomes apparent when the six are forced to play a truthor-die game that draws out their malicious secrets and lies. It’s a brilliant scene.
Unfriended
The six young actors are all convincing, clicking through the tech maze like the experts they no doubt are, and Gabriadze burdens the narrow frame of action with an at times unbearable tension.
You want nothing more than to shut down the screen, go to the kids’ houses — to the real world, for goodness sake — and see what is happening.
There are significant plausibility gaps — why don’t they just go offline or call the cops or (heaven forbid) their parents? — but it is a horror film after all, and a successful one. Shot in 16 days at a cost of $US1 million, Unfriended has grossed $US25m ($31m) to date, assisted by strategic screenings on the festival circuit and a savvy social media marketing campaign. I wasn’t sure it would be for me, but I was gripped from start to finish and it has been on my mind since.
Restricting a film to a computer screen is not an entirely new idea. Zach Donohue’s 2013 murder thriller The Den used a similar technique and a recent episode of the TV comedy Modern Family was shot with iPhones and shown on an Apple MacBook (and the advertising aspect should be noted).
But Unfriended has a sense of timing about it, exploring as it does issues such as cyberbullying, the shallowness and unpredictability of online “friendships”, digital ethics (to help someone in distress or film them?), the lynch mob tendencies of social media and the dark alleys of the internet in general.
“Everyone was posting so we did too. We were just joking,’’ Blaire says in defence of a particularly vile episode of cyberbullying.
Yes, there are lots of creeps on the internet, and some of them are closer to home than you may think.
Shelley Hennig in the clever cyber chillerSydney based real estate business JLL Australia has ditched real staff and gone for a more mechanical alternative, employing a robot as a receptionist in one of its offices.
The 57cm tall robot, named JiLL, sits in the foyer of level three at one of company’s Sydney offices, welcoming customers and receiving deliveries, Fairfax reports.
JiLL’s functions are somewhat limited, and her programming only allows for simple verbal syntax – greeting her with a “G’day” wont get you far.
Customers and clients are also presented with an iPad, which can complete tasks JiLL isn’t capable of yet, but JLL’s Australasian head of integrated facilities management Chris Hunt told SmartCompany he hopes she will be able to do more in the future.
“It is very much a pilot at this this stage, and we’ve intentionally simplified what she can do so we can learn how to use her best,” Hunt says.
Hunt says JiLL’s simple verbal interface can become quite complicated when it comes to how different people speak, so the team has kept it simple for the moment.
Hunt says his client’s feedback had been overwhelmingly positive, but admits some are uncomfortable with speaking to a robot.
“It’s clear that in the first couple of weeks some people have not been comfortable with talking to a robot. I had a client apologise to me, he said ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I tapped myself in rather than speaking to JiLL,’” Hunt says.
The robot cost the company $20,000 to create, and despite the hefty upfront cost, Hunt says it would be five times as expensive to hire a receptionist.
“We are increasingly aware of technology in the workplace. Robots are starting to emerge in a number of different situations including in hospitality and the property industry,” Hunt says.
Hunt says the company chose to implement JiLL so it could better understand the advantages of robots in the workplace and advise their clients accordingly.
“My area of JLL manages the workplaces for ANZ, Telstra, and Qantas, among others. The idea of the pilot was when the clients ask us what’s happening on the bleeding edge of the workplace, we can talk with knowledge about the benefits for their workplaces,” he says.
JiLL isn’t the only robot the company has started to pilot. It’s also using robotic cleaning devices in the larger facilities that it manages. Hunt hopes to roll out more of the robots, across a number of different roles.
JiLL may be quite small