tiny

Digital music aficionados who are constantly behind the wheel are often faced with the dilemma of how to connect their MP3 players to their car stereos. The lucky ones have head units with direct line-in ports, and a few may even be driving around in vehicles old enough to sport the good-old cassette deck.

Either instance requires a simple wired attachment, but for those who aren't blessed with such accouterments, playing MP3 audio in the car is a little more challenging. Two options remain: custom install a hardwire connection or play music over often-spotty FM transmitters. Thankfully, there are … Read more

Twitter's dramatic rise has helped ignite an industry to shorten Web addresses to fit within 140-character messages. With the technology, though, comes a new handful of challenges.

Among the challenges are reliably connecting people to the Web sites they want to reach, keeping spam and phishing attacks at bay, and maintaining the service into the future.

Joshua Schacter, founder of Yahoo's Delicious site for storing and sharing Web bookmarks and now a Google programmer, summarized the issues in an April rant about short-URL problems. "I feel that shorteners are bad for the ecosystem as a whole," … Read more

I know, I know, you don't have room for a decent set of speakers.

I've tried to tell you guys that when it comes to speakers, size still matters. Bigger speakers have tremendous size and performance advantages over pipsqueak models.

But since my pal Brent Butterworth wrote up the new Super Mini Cube speaker for the Sound & Vision Web site I figured something was up. The Super Mini Cube is supertiny; it's less than an inch cube, with a 0.75-inch driver, and better yet, it's powered by a built-in lithium battery. There's also … Read more

Flash-based MP3 players are taking over the marketplace. Unlike their hard-drive-based counterparts, flash MP3 players have no moving parts, affording them entirely skip-free playback and, in most cases, a long battery life. Also, flash chips are tiny, meaning the players that use them can be small to the point of ridiculousness.

Luckily, most (but perhaps not all) manufacturers realize that there is such a thing as too small. We had no trouble finding a collection of manageable MP3 players that won't take up valuable space in a briefcase, a backpack, a purse, or a pocket. And although each measures … Read more

Last week, my colleague Jason Parker brought you a roundup of excellent Notepad replacements. There are more of them out there than I'd like to contemplate, but Tiny Pad is one that offers some features I haven't seen from others.

This freeware boasts a hot corners feature that's turned on by default, so if the program's running but is not the top window, moving your mouse to either the top-left or top-right corner will bring Tiny Pad to the front. This is a little thing, but extremely useful given the nature of what the Notepad is … Read more

You've seen them in movies: tracking devices so small they can be put inside a tooth or embedded under the skin. In reality, tracking devices--for the general public at least--are not that tiny, but they can be pretty diminutive.

Lightning GPS introduced a small tracking device on Wednesday called the Spark Nano. Of course, you'll need to take the "Nano" notion with a big grain of salt. The device is actually about the size of a 9-Volt battery--you know, the big one that's used in a smoke detector. The Spark Nano is, however, rugged and … Read more

TinyStopWatch is another addition to the already saturated desktop clock market, but there's nothing about this particular clock that stands out above the rest.

The program launches as soon as you extract it, and a tiny interface appears on your desktop that resembles a digital clock. On the interface are three buttons: Start, Stop, and Reset. The program's settings menu can be accessed from a Taskbar icon. When we first right-clicked on the icon, the menu appeared in Japanese, but we were able to change it to English. The settings are very basic, and include letting you set … Read more

A few weeks ago TinyPic.com quietly launched support for HD video uploads. I gave it a spin earlier Thursday and the results look great. It supports files up to 200MB in size, which I'm told will get bumped up to 500MB starting next week.

The service's main appeal is that you can quickly upload and share these videos with friends, all without having to register. You can also upload an unlimited number of videos, however each one can only be up to five minutes long in length if it's in HD. SD videos, like most taken … Read more

Few people would characterize the popular and influential microblogging service Twitter as "secure." Hack attacks on Twitter, and Twitter users, appear to be increasing (latest: Twitter hit with "Don't Click" clickjacking attack).

There are two potential security issues currently plaguing the popular social network: the popular use of link shorteners like TinyURL that lead users to unknown destinations, and a single login system that some hope will be fixed with the arrival of OAuth.

Don't click on that link! Whenever I see an interesting tweet followed by a TinyURL link, I click it. I'll admit it. I don't even consider the ramifications of my actions and often, I'm surprised by where I go.

But I don't think I'm alone. TinyURL is the most common link you'll see on Twitter, but it's also one of the easiest ways for a malicious user to expose you to issues ranging from phishing scams to malware installs.

Luckily, Twitter is aware of this issue, and according to its co-founder, Biz Stone, the company is working on ways to make linking safer on the site.

"User security is absolutely a concern and we're working to make the interface safer in that regard," Stone told ZDNet blogger Jennifer Leggio. "We are looking into other ways to display shared links, for example noting whether a link goes to a picture or a video or some other media element. While more a feature, this could help in addressing some of the risk with the URL redirection."

Ginx, a new third-party service (which ironically requires your Twitter login credential to function; see next section), automatically expands shortened URLs before you click on them.

But what about stopping the use of TinyURL, Bit.ly, and other link-shortening services altogether? So far, Twitter has not indicated that it wants to do that and, as some security experts claim, it shouldn't consider that option.

Peter Gregory, a professional security expert and blogger at the Securitas Operandi blog, said he believes TinyURL use "basically comes down to trust: do you trust the source of the link, or is the creator of the link luring you into visiting a malicious Web site that will attempt to implant malware on your computer?"

Both TinyURL and Bit.ly seem poised to answer that call.

Last year, TinyURL introduced a major improvement to the service that anyone using Twitter should use: a preview feature.

TinyURL's preview feature doesn't require registration and instead asks to place a cookie on your machine. Once you surf to the company's preview page, it asks if you want to enable a TinyURL preview. If so, you only need to click the link on the site and from that moment forward, any TinyURL link you click in Twitter or elsewhere across the Web won't immediately send you to the destination site. Instead, you will be redirected to a TinyURL preview page that allows you to examine the link and decide if you want to go to the respective page.

Bit.ly, another URL-shortening service, provides a Firefox plug-in that allows you to preview links. With both solutions running, the risk of being redirected to a malicious site should be cut down considerably, though not eliminated--nothing in link security is a sure thing.

But that's just one security issue Twitter and its users are forced to confront each day.… Read more