filters

Picfx lets you play around with 47 different effects and 13 different styles with which to tweak your images, and adds some extras not found in other apps of this type. As with most image manipulation apps, you can snap a fresh photo with your iPhone camera or import a picture from your photo library. Across the bottom of the screen are icons of leather-bound books, each of which represents a bunch of effects. The categories are broken up into Grunge, Classics, Textures, Light, Space, and Frames. Once you've selected a photo, the layout makes it easy to pick … Read more

Now that people have had some time with their iPhone 4S, I'm sure many have had plenty of time to take pictures using the upgraded 8-megapixel camera. On it's own, the iPhone 4S takes great shots, but what if you want something more?

This week's iOS app collection is all about adding effects to your images. The first lets you flip through numerous effects and stack them for amazing results. The second offers tons of premade effects, but also gives you the option to adjust everything to your liking. The third app lets you play with the focused area of your image to produce visually unique images.… Read more

The bottom line: Following a banner year in 2011, the new F-Secure Internet Security 2012 doesn't introduce many new changes, but it does maintain many of the suite's high performance marks on both system impact and security.

Review: The Finnish security firm F-Secure gains a large percentage of its business from corporate accounts and platform operators, but that doesn't mean that it treats its consumer security suites as a ginger-haired child of indeterminate parentage and poor temperament. F-Secure Internet Security 2012 focuses on keeping its security ahead of the curve, along with some ease-of-use improvements. However, as … Read more

The bottom line: The new Kaspersky Anti-Virus for 2012 introduces a dual cloud-and-local security system bundled under an overhauled interface that's both easy to use and familiar. The suite's scans aren't the fastest, but it definitely will protect you.

Review: Kaspersky Anti-Virus continues to provide users with a high level of protection that includes security tools not offered by many competitors. The 2012 version won't change the face of personal computer security, although this particular package of security options has attracted enough devotees to make it a best-selling program, both in and out of the security … Read more

A reader named Eddy contacted me the other day to ask how to block mail from specific people in Mozilla Thunderbird. Eddy also wants to be notified when mail comes from certain addresses.

While I am familiar with how to create rules in Microsoft Outlook to block senders and receive notifications when mail arrives from a particular person or address, I had never tried to do the same in Thunderbird. It turns out Thunderbird's filters make it easy to automatically block mail from a person or address, but there's no equivalent in Thunderbird to Outlook's ability to … Read more

In an unsurprising but still shocking move, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs resigns as CEO but remains with the company as chairman. Tim Cook is promoted from chief operating officer to chief executive officer.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

I'm probably going against the will of the people here, but I sighed heavily this morning when I read in The New York Times that Facebook plans to release filters to give photos artsy effects.

You know what I'm talking about--the shots with the heavily darkened corners that old cameras produced, the desaturated colors from faded Polaroids, the sepia tones and cyanotype blues from 19th-century photography techniques, the wacky hues when one type of film was processed with another type's chemistry, the smeary Vaseline-on-the-lens look of old portraits.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this kind of … Read more

D-Link announced today the integration of OpenDNS technology into its select routers, which will enable you to block unsafe and inappropriate Web content, such as adult and phishing Web sites.

The company says that with OpenDNS technology, D-Link routers offer consumers the ability to mange content filtering and security services from anywhere over the Internet.

The new feature is called OpenDNS parental controls. It divides Web sites into more than 50 categories, allowing parents to choose their desired filtering level from "high" to "minimal." This can also be further customized to include certain categories of sites … Read more

Taking pictures with your smartphone can be a fun and easy way to share moments with friends and family. With Magic Hour for Android you can improve or make variations on your photos with the app's easy-to-use features. In just a few steps, you can give a photo an antique look, a more professional feel, or maybe something more artsy for your blog. Magic Hour offers a free filter market, and you can even make your own and share it with others. Here's how to get started:

Step 1: Download Magic Hour from the Android Market. … Read more