find

Track photos in Google Earth

HoudahGeo is an all-in-one app for geocoding and geotagging your photos, so you can keep track of where they were taken and upload them to sites like Google Earth and Flickr.

HoudahGeo provides a variety of ways to link your photos to geographic locations (using exportable EXIF, XMP, or IPTC tags), whether you're using a GPS track-logging device or you're entering locations manually, with coordinates, a built-in map, or Google Earth. You can even just take occasional, lower-quality reference photos (for example, with your iPhone 3G), and HoudahGeo will automatically geocode photos taken with your higher-res camera later … Read more

New book highlights Pixar's fantastic art

If you're a fan of Pixar's many wonderful movies--and who isn't?--you've no doubt spent years caught up in the studio's terrific storytelling. But you've probably also been glued to your seat again and again by Pixar's terrific artistry.

Now, you can dig deep into the history of that work. With the new book "The Art of Pixar," Amid Amidi takes us inside the creative process behind Pixar's long list of hit films--"Toy Story," "Finding Nemo," "Monster's Inc.," "Ratatouille," "… Read more

iOS shopping apps: bar code scanners

This week's post is a special early edition of my weekly iOS app collection. Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year, and though I can't help you beat the lines or navigate through the crowds, I've rounded up a few apps that might make your holiday shopping a tiny bit easier.

These apps are made for price-checking on the go, so you know you're getting the lowest price for the item in front of you. The best apps in this category are the ones that locate the item online and in nearby stores, but even apps that are only strong at scanning will definitely help to organize your holiday shopping and will hopefully result in fewer Black Friday headaches.

This week's iOS app collection is all about tools for holiday shopping. Get quick access to a huge database of products and prices and some helpful shopping tools.… Read more

Some app makers hope to scare the hell out of you

Today is Halloween and parents are getting bombarded with messages that their kids are at risk. So is CNET News.

"One night every year, parents let their guard down in the U.S. and allow their children to wander the streets of town for hours in the dark," begins a pitch from a location-based app maker to CNET News. "The reality is that every 40 seconds someone's son or daughter is reported missing, totaling 800,000 missing children in the United States each year."

These stats are scary, for sure. They're also misleading* and … Read more

About data security with Safari-only mode in OS X Lion

If you have enabled iCloud's Find My Mac feature in OS X Lion, then you will notice that the OS X log-in screen now shows a Guest user account, which when clicked will offer the option for rebooting the system into Safari-only mode.

This mode will run the system in a limited environment where it can be used for Web surfing, but not much else. The system will only allow Safari to run in plain vanilla form without any plugins (including Flash) or extras running, and if you quit the browser then the system will restart back to the … Read more

Moby's private location sharing hits Android

Moby, the free, multiplatform location-sharing app, has just extended its reach to Android.

Previously the app was only available on the iPhone and BlackBerry platforms, but it appears Contigo Systems, Moby's developer, is making good on its promise to connect families no matter what devices they may be carrying.

Considering the release of Apple's Find My Friends app and the continued adoption of Google Latitude, some might feel like Moby is pushing its way into increasingly dangerous territory. But to Moby's credit, it seems to be taking a different route from the others. While most of the … Read more

Find Junk Files does what it says

Find Junk Files may not be an imaginative software name, but it's an accurate one. This free tool finds junk files on your PC, mostly temporary files and folders. It scans for more than 100 file types, even obscure stuff like DOS and Windows 3.1 files, but you can choose what to scan and what to exclude. It's easy to use, maybe too easy; while it doesn't target anything dangerous like system files, it can find and remove logs, caches, settings, and other files and folders that, while not exactly "permanent," you'd prefer … Read more

Find My Friends (iOS 5) versus Google Latitude (Android)

When it comes to GPS-based friend-finding apps, you either love them or you don't.

Google has been a big believer on its Android platform for some time, integrating Google Latitude into all of its Android phones. Apple's iOS 5 update brings a separate downloadable app, Find My Friends (shortened to Find Friends once it installs).

In many cases, it's another iOS 5 feature that's very similar to those existing on rival mobile platforms, but there are some features all its own. This weekend, I buddied up with some CNET friends to see how Find My Friends … Read more

The 404 926: Where Siri ratted us out (podcast)

We didn't think it would take this long, but somebody finally exploited the iPhone 4S to catch a cheater using the new Find My Friend app on iOS 5.

The scary part of this story, though, is how easy it is to use GPS to lurk on your S.O. using Google Latitude or any one of these mobile spy apps.

In that same vein, today we're chatting about our favorite tech pranks along with the latest news headlines that include BlackBerry freebies, iPhone record breaking, cell phone bill shock, and a fishy story out of Sesame Street.

… Read more