crashes

Marvel giveaway crashes Comixology's servers

AUSTIN, Texas--Marvel Comics announced yesterday at its 1 p.m. South by Southwest panel here that it was giving away 700 first-issue comics, spanning its entire publishing history, via its Comixology-powered app.

Barely six hours later, Comixology tweeted that its servers had buckled under the traffic load.

The comics deal was slated to last only until the end of SXSW Interactive on Tuesday, giving fans of Spider-Man, Wolverine, the X-Men, and the Avengers around 60 hours to download as many of their favorite No. 1 comics as possible.

Both Marvel Comics and Comixology declined to comment for this story. It's currently not known when their servers will be back up, or if the giveaway might be extended.… Read more

Was a texting pilot behind JFK runway fail?

We all know that we shouldn't use our cell phones while driving.

Yes, of course we do it anyway, but always with a tinge of guilt.

Surely, though, few would take that same cavalier attitude if they were piloting a plane. Somehow, one imagines that this task requires a little more concentration, amid the prospect of even more serious danger.

Yet it seems that one pilot of a small charter plane may have needed -- or perhaps merely wanted -- to use his cell phone while he was taxiing toward takeoff on Thursday evening.

As it happens, he wasn't wafting along the slipways of some tiny regional airport in Alberta. No, he was at JFK. … Read more

Fix 32-bit application crashes in OS X with a Safe Boot

A rare but potentially frustrating issue you might run into after upgrading to OS X 10.8 or after applying an update such as the most recent 10.8.2 release is that a number of applications in the system may start crashing when launched. This does not happen to all programs, and those affected may appear to be a bit random; however, it is likely they share common ground in all being 32-bit programs.

If this happens to you, a potentially quick way to manage it is to reboot the system into Safe Mode by holding the Shift key … Read more

Reverting file URL bug mishaps in Mountain Lion

Before it was revealed, the file URL error in OS X was a fairly obscure and benign bug, and perhaps still is for the most part; however, since learning about it, a number of people have tried it out on their systems to have some fun, only to find that in some instances the bug may stick and perpetually crash a particular program.

While it is known that the offending string that triggers the bug will be saved in crash logs, which in turn can crash the Crash Reporter and Console applications, it may also be saved in a program'… Read more

Assertion bug will crash apps in Mountain Lion if triggered

The Next Web has uncovered a bug in OS X that will crash the current application almost every time if invoked. Reportedly, in applications that support text entry fields, if you type the text "File:" followed by three forward slashes in the field to indicate a file address, then the program being used will freeze and then quit.

The bug is a problem in a core system service called Data Detectors that is responsible for handling dates and locations, part of which is a checking routine for an entered URL address. When you type information into programs that … Read more

Twitter acquires Crashlytics crash reporting service

Twitter has bought Crashlytics, a startup whose crash reporting tool has been incorporated into a wide variety of iOS apps including Vine, Yelp, Kayak, TaskRabbit, and Waze.

In a blog post today, Crashlytics co-founders Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang announced that the company is "joining the flock," the term often used when people or companies are hired or acquired by Twitter:

We started Crashlytics a little over a year ago to address a huge hole in mobile app development. With hundreds of millions of devices in use around the world, it was impossible for developers to fully test … Read more

Clean and boost your system with System Mechanic Free

System Mechanic Free from Iolo Systems is a stripped-down version of much more comprehensive premium tool. However, it offers good basic cleaning and optimizing for Windows systems with seven primary tools: PC Cleanup, Registry Tuner, Startup Optimizer, Memory Mechanic, Drive Accelerator, Shortcut Repair, and Internet Connection Repair. It can back up and save Registry settings and Undo changes with its SafetyNet feature.

When you install System Mechanic, you have the option to install the full or free version; we chose the freeware. But we still had to provide our e-mail address to receive an activation key for the free version. … Read more

Helmet-mounted crash sensor automatically calls for help

You're biking along, minding your own business. You reach an amazing downhill stretch. You pick up speed. You're really cranking along. Oh no! A hippopotamus wanders onto the trail! You swerve and end up faceplanting in the bushes.

Don't fear, your helmet will dial your emergency contacts and give your location. The ICEdot Crash Sensor is a stick-on sensor that mounts onto your helmet. It connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth. When it senses an impact, it sounds an alarm and starts a countdown clock on the crash sensor app. You have a set amount of time to turn it off.… Read more

Adobe provides fix for InDesign crashes on new MacBooks

Recently a number of Mac users of Adobe's InDesign software found that after upgrading to Apple's new MacBook Pro systems, the software would crash and show an empty warning box after performing certain actions within the program. Adobe has addressed this problem in part by releasing a small software patch for InDesign, but also by recommending against certain OS X updates.

Initially it was unclear what caused the crashes, with the only correlations being that it happened on the latest Apple hardware that was using the OS X 10.7.4. After investigating the issue, Adobe found that … Read more