Flux

How to automatically optimize your computer's display for time of day

Your computer is optimized for daytime use. Even if you're a mile away from a window, your brain still knows what time it is, and as the sun sinks below the horizon (wherever that may be), you need softer, cooler light. That's part of the reason it can be so hard to sleep after intense bouts of World of Warcraft or late-night coding; your brain is confused by mixed signals. Enter f.lux, a sweet, small, free app that works on all major platforms to automatically adjust the brightness and tone of your monitor based on time of … Read more

Gesture-based music control and a challenging tower defense game: iPhone apps of the week

If you're a strategy gaming type of person, you know there is no shortage of tower defense games in the iTunes Store. It shouldn't be that big of a surprise, I suppose, because the iPhone and iPod Touch touch screens might be the best interface for games of this genre. Using your finger to choose and place towers couldn't be more intuitive. But even with the huge amount of tower defense games, some manage to rise above the rest. One of my apps this week is a sequel to one of the more popular games in the … Read more

Finally! A menacing-looking Wii gun attachment

This is not the first Wii gun attachment in the market and definitely not the last we'll see. But the Dark Ops Wii Light Gun from Cobalt Flux sure looks a lot more menacing than its angelic white counterparts available on retail shelves.

Priced at $19.95, it features an ergonomic pistol grip, plus a lock and load capability for easy loading and unloading of the Wii controller just like a gun magazine. More importantly, international shipping is available though it's limited to FedEx.

(Via Crave Asia)

How botnets use 'bullet-proof' domains

Botnets are proving to more resilient and harder to shut down.

That's largely due to an increased use of methods people use to obscure the domain by constantly mapping to different bots within the network, according to a recently released study (PDF).

The study's authors, Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks and Thorsten Holz of the University of Mannheim, tracked the traffic of 900 fast-flux domain names used by botnets within the first six months of 2008. "Fast-flux" is a term to describe how the botnets use constant changes in the mapping of the hard-coded domain name … Read more

MTV Networks buys Social Project platform

NEW YORK--Viacom division MTV Networks announced Monday that it has turned its minority stake in software company Social Platform into a full acquisition: Social Project, formerly known as Tagworld, is the basis for Viacom's Flux.

MTV Networks launched Flux just over a year ago as a social-networking platform that would be used across all its digital entertainment properties as well as eventually sites outside Viacom. The original Tagworld investment started in November 2006. Flux now powers community features on MTV.com, Colbert Nation, Atom.com, and other Viacom-owned sites, allowing users to access all of them with a single … Read more

MTV's 'Soundtrack' jumps on stage

MTV might've strayed away from music these days--My Super Sweet Sixteen, anyone?--but the entertainment mainstay's latest project aims to both bring it back to its roots and propel it into the social Web. Ambitious, yes.

It's called "Soundtrack," and it's an "interactive music guide for TV." If you're watching a heated moment of cattiness between Lauren and Audrina on The Hills and are dying to know what song's playing in the background, you can log on and find out exactly what it was. Then you can purchase the MP3, … Read more

Sony PlayStation site victim of SQL-injection attack

Early Wednesday, antivirus vendor Sophos reported that some visitors to the Sony PlayStation site may have been prompted to download an antivirus scanner.

Pages promoting the PlayStation games SingStar Pop and God of War contained SQL-injected code. Visitors to those specific game pages would see a fake antivirus scan , then a message that their computer was infected with different viruses and Trojan horses. Warned, the user would then be asked to purchase the scanner to remove the bogus malware.

The injected code linking to the scanner has since been removed.

Sophos said the attack could have downloaded malicious payloads, but … Read more

Viacom's Flux will support Google's OpenSocial

Flux, the social-networking initiative started by media giant Viacom, will officially support Google's OpenSocial standard. The developer site for Flux now says that OpenSocial implementation is "coming soon."

Flux, still in an early phase, was one of the few high-profile social networks that had not yet opted to partake in Google's developer standard. MySpace.com, Bebo, LinkedIn, and just about every other name in social media (except Facebook, which has opted to stick with its own developer platform, at least for now) had announced support for OpenSocial, and several have already invited developers to start hacking away. … Read more

MTV Networks consolidates new-media advertising into 'Digital Fusion'

Viacom's MTV Networks unit announced on Tuesday that it has created Digital Fusion, a new-media advertising division designed to bring together the marketing for its oft-disparate digital brands.

Digital Fusion, according to a release from MTV Networks, encompasses both innovation and consolidation. On one hand, it's an efficiency move to give the company an edge in the increasingly competitive online-ad market. But with that renewed efficiency, MTV hopes to go further, using it to "create entirely new digital-ad products, from creative uses of existing inventory to original interactive experiences, including video content, online games, microsites, and widgets.&… Read more