A girl in Germany learned this the hard way this weekend.  The girl, named Thessa, created a Facebook invite to her 16th birthday party, and accidentally left it as public.  Because of this, the invite became a viral hit, and over 15,000 people checked themselves as attending.  Her parents canceled the party, hired private security, and alerted the police that there was potential for a major party and even a riot.

In the end, 1,500 people arrived. They were met there by 100 police officers, including four on horseback.  The party-goers had alcohol, and many were inebriated. They chanted for Thessa to come out and celebrate, and they screamed, “Thessa, celebrating a birthday is not a crime” in response to the police force.

The police detained eight people and had one officer injured.  The local fire department also had to respond to put out two fires. Thessa spent the party in hiding.

This should serve as a bit of a Facebook wake up call. I don’t know about you, but I have everything on my Facebook set to friends only.  As this shows, anything you post can end up anywhere if you do not monitor the settings.  Facebook is a fun social platform, but it has its dangers. Many people also feel that businesses and colleges may not accept you because of things on your Facebook page.  This is true, although somethings may cross the line.  According to WLS-TV of Chicago, “The family of a suburban Chicago high school student is considering legal action against the school after their son was suspended for creating a Facebook page that criticized a teacher.”  That is too far, but it shows that you Facebook profile should be monitored, because it can be viewed far more than you may think.

Facebook is fun, but remember to watch the settings.  You don’t want to get suspended, fired, …or have 1,500 arrive at a party.

(The information on the party is credited to the New York Times).

Back in 2006,  the whole notion of long distance technology truly kicked off with the Hug Shirt – fashionably unfashionable, but still a fun concept. Compared to the red circle design they used to have, it is a lot better now. The Hug Shirt is essentially a Bluetooth accessory for a mobile phone, and you are able to send hugs via text messages if you are running the HugMe™ java software.

Naturally, we couldn’t stop at just hugs. From there, someone developed prototypes of a series of mobile phones that could squeeze your hand, send a peck, or whisper in your ear. The phone used a motor to squeeze your hand, a wet sponge to simulate the kiss, and air to simulate a whisper. I think that these stayed in prototype form.

I also tried to see if PillowTalk pillows were on sale, but those may have stayed in the prototype phase as well. These pillows were designed by Interaction Design student, Joanna Montgomery. By wearing an elastic band around your chest, the pillows allow people to listen to the real-time heartbeat of their distant loved one. The pillow shows when the person has gone to sleep by starting to glow, a rather cute idea, especially if there is a time distance between the two of you.

The Japanese then took it even further – kissing, with tongue. It kind of creeps me out, but hey, I’m sure someone can enjoy it. To use it, you have a box that is attached to a straw-like thing. You kiss the straw, and the box records it. It then transmits the data and replicates your actions on the other side. I’m not sure how I feel about kissing a straw. The next step in the design is to incorporate tastes, moisture, and breathing patterns. That’s great, because I’ve really been wanting to make sure that my boyfriend’s staying true to his vegan lifestyle. (Kidding.)

Before technology, we sent love letters to each other to keep the relationship intact. As you can see, things have clearly changed.

Some of the most popular 3D commercial software packages are Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks, and ProE. For 3D, SolidWorks and ProE are more commonly used because they were two of the first commercial 3D packages and have settled into the market. Lately it seems that ProE is becoming a Legacy program, being substituted for the simplicity of SolidWorks. Autodesk is primarily known for AutoCAD, which is probably the best-known 2D design software, and has over the past 5 or so years begun to make strides in the 3D design market.

In terms of features, Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks, and ProE, are relatively similar. Autodesk has great simulation tools, SolidWorks has a very simple and easy to learn interface, and ProE has more sophisticated surfacing tools. Each of these software packages have been around for quite a few years and their features have developed accordingly. My personal favorite is SolidWorks, simply, because I have the most experience with it and feel the most comfortable with the tool. However, AutoDesk has purchased dozens of companies over the past few years and is expanding at an incredible rate, so I will be watching their software packages closely to monitor the new features.

Autodesk, SolidWorks, and ProE are each great tools. There is a reason that people are willing to spend thousands of dollars per seat for their software. They allow users to create, develop, and modify drawings of parts and assemblies of the world’s most complicated systems. Just be sure to do your research and test the different packages before making the investment.

There have been a slew of free antivirus software programs on the market over the years. Most were worth about what you pay for them. Typically they worked well for the existing, known viruses, but came up woefully short in the updating and keeping up with the bad guys departments.

Microsoft Security Essentials is different. As the name would indicate, this isn’t some fly by night operation running on a shoe string budget trying to be the next Internet breakout phenomenon. This is THE Microsoft. The biggest, greediest, most powerful computer company in the world. If Bill Gates wants to protect your PC from viruses for free, who are you to argue?

I resisted Security Essentials for two years. I didn’t want to be a part of the Beta test. I wasn’t a big believer in Microsoft’s ability to deliver a free program that would adequately protect from anything more than the most pedestrian viruses on the web.

When my McAfee subscription expired last month, I decided to give Security Essentials a try. Reviews have been generally very positive, and it came highly recommended by several IT professionals. What a pleasant surprise it has been.

The user interface is very straight forward and easy to use. Most un-Microsoft-like. The updates are automatic and the defined virus files appear to be comprehensive. We haven’t encountered a virus yet – knock on wood – so this review is incomplete. How Security Essentials will handle an actual incursion into my electronic domain remains to be seen. But on the surface it seems to be as user-friendly and capable as its paid brethren without the pesky price tag.

Start Spanish is a free app from Mirai Language Systems for your mobile device. It offers an innovative approach to learning basic Spanish. The software can be downloaded from the App Store or Mirai’s website. The entire program is self-contained; you do not need to be connected to the internet to do the lessons. You are free to work on your language skills whenever and wherever you like.

Each lesson is divided into four parts. The Tutor section features verbal cues from your “instructors,” Marta from Spain and Camilo from Colombia. This provides you with the benefit of hearing the words with both a European and Latin American emphasis (think the difference between the Queen’s English and English as spoken in the U.S.A.).

After each Tutor session, there is a Summary section that reinforces the key words or principles covered. The Vocab section lists out the new vocabulary words that were brought out in the current lesson. And finally, there is a Quiz to test what you’ve learned. What kind of Spanish tutor would this be without a quiz?

Start Spanish is very basic. I took Spanish in high school, back during the late Precambrian Era. So for me, this course was a good refresher on the things I had learned and long ago forgotten. My ten-year-old son is also using Start Spanish and found it to be easy to digest. More importantly, it actually held his interest enough to stick with the lessons.

There are more in-depth Spanish programs out there, but for a free app to get you started you can’t do much better than Start Spanish. The way I look at it, if you stay with it for the full 50 lessons you’ll know you are committed enough to learning a language to go for a paid Spanish language course.

Soundhound

Soundhound can identify the name and artist of any song after ‘listening’ to just a few bars. Contrary to my expectations, it works with any part of the song – not just the hook. We tested Soundhound on both iPhone and iPod and were amazed at the speed and accuracy of the results.

Soundhound was able to detect songs playing on the computer even amidst substantial background noise. It correctly ID’d Robert Plant’s Central Two-O-Nine - a fairly obscure song – after just six bars of banjo introduction without a single vocal.

The software goes beyond identifying the actual songs as performed by the original artists. Even with my questionable vocal abilities, Soundhound was able to identify Kiss by Prince (or should that be the Artist Formerly Known as Prince Back When He Was Actually Just Known as Prince the First Time?) and 10,000 Maniac’s These Are Days based on my own rendition.

We tried both the paid version ($4.99) and the free version. The free version has some annoying ads and limited features, but all in all it is pretty amazing for a piece of freeware. The paid version is well worth the five bucks for any music lover.

The only caveat for the iPod version is that older versions of the hardware do not include a microphone, which is, of course, necessary for Soundhound to work. External microphones are available if you want to go that route. Overall, we were mighty impressed with Soundhound’s speed, accuracy, and value. Once again, we find that stuff that was science fiction a decade ago is now not only reality, but it is free in the App Store.

Microsoft PowerPoint

You won’t find me promoting many Microsoft products. Most of the really good stuff comes either from Mac or open source development or some small developer with a great idea and good investors. But credit where credit is due, Microsoft has done it right with the 2007 version of PowerPoint.

The biggest improvement in the ‘new’ version (it sounds so odd to refer to four-year-old software as ‘new,’ but there it is) is the ease of incorporating various media into your presentation. Adding pictures, video, and web links is one-click easy. Background music is a cinch, too, unless you have a Mac and your music is in mp4 format. But Mac users are used to being the exception to compatibility.

The Microsoft Office Suite is already installed on millions of computers but many users don’t use it, either because they remember the hassle it was back in ’95 or they assumed it to be another typical Microsoft production and haven’t bothered to learn it. The truth is that with a little trial and error you can learn the basics of PowerPoint on your own. And with a little help from a book or a friend (anything but the Microsoft Tutorial) you can master some of the advanced features, which will take your presentation from plain to impressive in no time.

Presently, the application of writing has been changed from using a pen or pencil to write letters and papers to typing on a computer. But the Pentel AirpenPocket is trying to bring back the old day’s application of writing with an innovative approach. The Pentel AirpenPocket is a digital pen that is capable of wirelessly transmitting words, images, doodles from a piece of paper to a smartphone, a windows and a MAC computer. I guess since virtually everything is either digital or high definition, why not invent pens that are digital? I don’t think there will a HD pen though, it just doesn’t sound very practical or applicable but anything can happen. Anyway, the AirpenPocket  is developed by Pentel Company Ltd, a company in Tokyo, Japan, who is known for its abilities to make very excellent stationary writing instruments. With its latest product, the AirpenPocket, it has captured everyone’s attention all over the world.

Well, the two-hundred dollar (price of the AirpenPocket) question is how does it work? First of all, the product comprises of a specially designed digital pen and a memory unit. The unit will feature Bluetooth connectivity which allows it to send data as well as to receive data. When you decide that you want to write something, the memory unit will record down everything put on the paper thanks to ultrasound infrared, a method developed by Pentel. Then, you can transfer the information you recorded onto your computer and your smartphone through Bluetooth connectivity.

The product is set to come out later this month, and is truly a great buy for anyone who loves to write hand-written notes that can be restored and saved forever or anyone who has to write a paper on the go without the availability of the computer. The price of the pen is set at 200 bucks, so it sure isn’t cheap but is a very attractive and formidable product.

Tune Ripper is a nice little conversion utility that will convert your protected MP4s to more generally compatible MP3s. The interface is easy to use and the conversion is relatively quick. The software comes in three levels. The Basic version, which I tested, is $19.99 and converts audio MP4s flawlessly. The maximum conversion speed is 6x, which isn’t bad unless you’re running huge batches of songs at once. The Basic version is plenty for the typical user who wants to convert some songs only on occasion to an MP3 player.

For those who want to convert boat loads of music and don’t want to wait, the Premium and Ultimate versions convert at up to 54x playing speed. That’s about all you get for the extra seven bucks it costs to upgrade to Premium. The Ultimate version promises to convert both audio and video MP4s, which may be worth the $39.99 price tag to users who need to move an extensive amount of video from a Mac to a non-compatible device.
I initially balked at paying anything to convert music that is legally mine to another format for my personal use. I tested several free converters, but none delivered a copy of acceptable quality. Tune Ripper proved to be worth the expense for the ease of use, speed of conversion, and most importantly quality of the MP3 copy.

Maybe it’s the influence of AMC’s hit drama The Walking Dead. (More on that cultural phenomenon here.) Maybe the sudden interest in zombies is a rebellion against the sorry state of vampires in a post-Twilight world. Maybe they’re just good applications. But Call of Duty: Zombies, Zombie Farm, and Plants Vs. Zombies are among the top grossing of all the thousands of apps available from the app store.

The other games in the six are the continuingly-popular Angry Birds (#1), Tap Zoo (#2) and Fruit Ninja (#4). Rounding out the top ten are Smurf’s Village, Cut the Rope, SpongeBob Marbles & Slides, and Bloons TD 4. All ten top grossing apps are games. In fact, you’d have to go all the way to #19 to find anything other than a game – a photography app from Nexvio Inc. The only two non-gaming apps in the top fifty are both photography related – 8mm Vintage Camera at #19 and Hipstamatic at #45.

Only four of the top 10 apps cost $2.99 or more. The most expensive is Call of Duty: Zombies at $4.99. Three are free. Of the top 50 apps, 19 cost nothing and another 14 are just $.99.

So, what can we learn about society from the software downloads from the App Store? Well, we’re cheap. We like to take pictures. And we’re obsessed with zombies.