freezing

Free ways to protect against identity theft

Identity thieves are more active than ever. In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 2 million consumer complaints overall, and for the 13th consecutive year, identity theft was the most-common complaint category: 369,132 ID-theft reports were added to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network in the year, an increase of more than 30 percent from 2011.

Last week the FTC released its 2012 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book (PDF). According to the report, the fastest-growing category of identity theft relates to government documents and benefits: complaints in this category increased 46 percent from calendar-year 2010. Credit-card fraud (… Read more

Prizefight: Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS4 vs. Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS

It's a Prizefight throwdown showdown! We're throwing two of the best point-and-shoot cameras that were made to outlast the elements. It's the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS4 versus the Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS!

Panasonic's TS4 brings a sleeker design that's still rugged with better image quality results. Olympus' TG-1 is chunkier, but it brings a larger feature set and is even crushproof.

Both of these bad boys are waterproof, shockproof, and freezeproof; which do you think deserves to be crowned the Prizefight King of the Ring?

Cast your vote!

Time Freeze makes virtual systems easy

No doubt you suspect your Windows PC of hidden talents, and one of the coolest is virtualization. It clones your system, creating fully working copies that you can use normally (or abnormally) without risking your "real" system. Toolwiz Time Freeze makes virtualization very easy to use. It can also protect your files and folders from changes and provide password protection.

Time Freeze has a simple interface for starting and stopping its main features as well as adding files to the File Protection feature (Time Freeze warns not to include Windows system files) and enabling password protection or changing … Read more

Things get real at Yahoo: Hiring freeze, job cuts may loom

Yahoo has frozen new hiring and may be forced to lay off existing employees, according to AllThingsD.

Word has reportedly come down not to fill the hundreds of job openings currently available as a first step toward cutting costs. As second step, layoffs of current support staff are expected to be "small and selective," though details are still being worked out.

After a year marked by weak quarterly revenue, takeover talk, and the ouster of former CEO Carol Bartz, Yahoo managed to deliver third-quarter results higher than forecast.

But Wall Street is once again anticipating shaky results when … Read more

FaceTime freezing on iPad 2, iOS 4.3

A growing thread on the Apple Support Discussions forum suggests that FaceTime for Apple's iPad 2 may not be working as expected. The issue, which occurs during video calls made with Apple's FaceTime, may be a bug in iOS 4.3, not limited to iPad 2 owners.

ASD forum user chucknelson writes:

I had this problem on my iPad 2 as well. I restored the iPad and it was fixed, but during a FaceTime call I switched to the back camera and it froze the video on both ends of the call (but NOT the local video / video … Read more

How to solve Facebook import and export freezes in iPhoto '11

Uploading photos from iPhoto to Facebook via iPhoto's built-in exporter has taken a turn for the worse for some users, not allowing uploading or downloading and often freezing while trying to connect.

Several users have voiced their displeasure with the situation in one of the Apple Support Discussion forum threads. User ajrossnz writes:

Since I upgraded from iPhoto '09 to '11 I have been unable to upload to facebook, a feature that worked great in '09. I have done all the things that were suggested through various googling such as removing my facebook account in preferences and removing albums, … Read more

Verizon iPhone 4 goes on sale, HP's WebOS event

It's iPhone 4 day for Verizon customers, and CNET TV was there to capture the somewhat underwhelming turnout. Apparently there's one thing that will keep die-hard Apple fanboys at bay, and that's subfreezing winter temperatures.

On today's episode of Loaded, we'll also give a rundown on HP's WebOS event from yesterday, which debuted the company's iPad competitor, the HP TouchPad. WebOS will also make its way to two new mobile devices, all of which we'll detail on today's show.

Random shutoff results in 'shutdown cause' error

Though the OS X operating system is very robust at handling software-related crashes and hangs, there are times when a problem may be beyond the scope of the operating system's abilities to manage and the system can either crash or freeze. When this happens, the system may show some clue in the system console, but likely it may only be a brief but repeating message that mentions something like the following:

Dec 20 13:33:23 localhost kernel: AppleSMU -- shutdown cause = 3

What is happening here is the system's power manager (called the Power Management Unit or &… Read more

Amazon promises to replace problem Kindle covers, look into issue

If you have a new Kindle and have poked around for a cover for your device, you may have noticed some diverging user reviews on Amazon.com of the non-lighted Kindle Leather cover. While the cover has many five-star reviews, there are more than 100 one-star reviews claiming the cover has problems that cause the device to freeze or reboot itself.

In a recent review, for example, customer Gunjan Srivastava writes:

I bought a Kindle 3 (Wi-Fi only) about three months back and was using it without any trouble. Then, I bought this leather cover and suddenly my Kindle ran … Read more

Apple releases MacBook Pro EFI Firmware update 1.9, iWork 9.0.4

Apple has released an update for 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pro systems released in mid-2010, which addresses a problem that could cause freezes and hangs during use, and more notably during start-up. The prevalence of this problem is rare, but has affected a few systems.

In addition to the freezes and hangs, the update addresses compatibility issues with external displays.

In order to install the update, you will need to have your external power supply attached and should expect a gray screen with a status bar appear when the system reboots. It is important that you do not interrupt this … Read more