A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away

The other day I looked at my Mac's screen saver and thought, I can do better. About 20 minutes later I found a few runner-ups but my clear favorite is the StarWarsScroll from KillerRobots. It is everything I want in a "way too nerdy" sort of way. Basically, it's the Star Wars crawl you see in the beginning of the movie, set against a background of stars. It even has the logo and the famous text in blue. The great part is they have every crawl from every thing that has ever had one, like Clone Wars or some barely known special.You can turn any of them off or on and choose the crawls you like. None of it looks pixelly or fuzzy.
So, if you need to upgrade your screensaver, try out StarWarsScroll.

Note: The above screensaver is Mac only.

A runner-up, Screenstagram - Grabs your feed from Instagram. Pretty cool!

Google Alerts makes me sad

For years, I have recommended Google Alerts to students for keeping track of everything from subjects you care about to seeing where your name has popped up on the net. Unfortunately, Google has let Alerts languish and now it only seems to work sporadically.

So I need a replacement to monitor information. Enter TalkWalker Alerts, a free service that looks very similar to Google Alerts. In fact, it's so similar, it will take you all of two minutes to figure out how to use it. Basically, throw in your search and decide on where the info comes from (News, blogs, everything...) and how it will be delivered to you.(Once a day or when it happens) I prefer not to get emails, so instead I use their global RSS feed which is linked to all my alerts and I can use it in my favorite RSS reader, I'm looking at you Feedly.

A few notes when setting up your alerts.

• Use quotes to specify that you want both of these words found in the search. Example:"Shane Sher" 
• Sometimes, adding a location can filter out results that are not relevant. Example "Shane Sher" Massachusetts
• If you are getting unwanted info in your alert, use the minus sign and parentheses to remove certain keywords Example: "Shane Sher" Massachusetts -(Cher,Sherwood,Alan Ladd)

Have an iPhone? Time for a little paranoia

Just recently, an exploit was found for iPhones. It is pretty simple to pull off and it can kill your phone. The exploit involves getting in the way of your phone attaching to some public WiFi signal, like that of Starbucks. Basically, they send a signal back down to your phone telling it the wrong date. Once this is done, your phone is basically a high priced brick.

To protect yourself, do two things. One, make sure to keep your phone updated. Apple is pretty good about patching issues...mostly. Second, use a little caution about which WiFi you connect to. Use your friend's but maybe not one from McDonald's or anything public unless you're phone is current with updates..

And since we are on the subject of Apple issues, go ahead and delete the software QuickTime from your computer if it is a Windows machine. Apple has basically disowned that software and it already has exploitable holes. So, be proactive and head to control Panels>Programs and Features>remove QuickTime.

Via Gizmodo