What to Do When Settlers of Catan Isn't Enough

What to Do When Settlers of Catan Isn't Enough:
from Wired Top Stories by Erik Wecks
 How do you sort through the clutter and find games that you will enjoy? Here are three ways to find out about great games?

0 A.D. raises the game for open-source RTS

0 A.D. raises the game for open-source RTS:
from BetaNews by Mike Williams

Open-source RTS games aren’t generally known for having quality graphics, even when finished, so you probably wouldn’t expect too much from an alpha build. Which is why 0 A.D. is a real surprise, thanks to visuals that are more impressive than many commercial products.
Okay, it’s true, the program has been in alpha for a very long time (running on Windows, the Mac and Linux must make for a complex development process), but the attention to detail is still impressive. Your citizens are people, not anonymous blobs. Buildings look as though like people live in them, with seating areas, pots and vases scattered around. And they live in a realistic and complex world, so for instance a desert will have sand, rocks, animals, perhaps palm trees which cast true shadows.
This continues throughout the game, too, so as you upgrade your simple homestead into a mighty citadel, or build a huge army (or navy) 0 A.D. still looks better than the cover art of some of the competition.
The program isn’t just about the graphics, though: there’s plenty of gameplay, too. You must create units of various types, collect resources, construct new buildings to expand your empire, and of course build an army to protect yourself from (and, ultimately, conquer) your enemies. This isn’t quite as intuitive as we’d like so you’ll probably need to spend some time with the online manual (which also could be better organised), but once you’ve mastered the basics then you’ll be ready to explore all the game has to offer.
The graphics aside, though, you do have to keep in mind that this is an alpha version, so problems and deficiencies are to be expected. Enemy AI can be a little on the basic side, for instance, and the program crashed a couple of times.
Still, if you’re a fan of this kind of RTS game and willing to make allowances for the occasional issue then there’s a lot of entertainment value to be found here: with more than 50 scenarios to play, and a multi-player option too, 0 A.D. could keep you busy for quite some time.

Does your company help with certification? Dilbert Comic for June 10, 2012

Comic for June 10, 2012:
from Dilbert Daily Strip

Super Angry Birds is a physical controller for the game

Super Angry Birds is a physical controller for the game:
from Hack a Day by Mike Szczys

This role reversal is quite entertaining. While the game Angry Birds is a virtual realization of knocking over stuff with a sling-shot, Super Angry Birds adds a physical control element back to the virtual game. It’s silly, but well-executed. The main controller takes advantage a part which we don’t see used very often. It’s a motorized linear actuator which would most often be seen on a high-end audio console.
Check out the video after the break to see the controller in action. The linear encoder is used to simulate pulling the rubber sling shot back. It uses the motorized feature to spring back in place, but we’re not sure whether or not the motor also provides resistance during the pull. The laser cut case also includes a companion in the form of a TNT trigger box al-a Wile E Coyote.
If this isn’t real enough for you perhaps this slingshot controller will suffice.

[Thanks Maddin and many others]

Filed under: peripherals hacks

Strategies to Win at Claw Grab Games [Video]

Strategies to Win at Claw Grab Games [Video]:
from Lifehacker by David Galloway

If you're ever around kids or perhaps just drunken friends you know how appealing claw games to win stuffed animals or other prizes can be. As in most games that involve trading money for a chance to win a prize, the odds are firmly stacked in the favor of the house but there are ways you can maximize your chances to win. More »

Bad passwords are worse than you think

Bad passwords are worse than you think:
from BetaNews by David Harley
I spend a lot of time defending educational as opposed to purely technical solutions to security. Not that I don’t believe in the usefulness of technical solutions. However, there are many people in the security business who believe that education is a waste of time because it isn’t 100-percent effective. Unfortunately, you can make the very same argument against any technological solution. Randy Abrams and I discussed that conflict of ideas at some length in a paper for AVAR: see People Patching: Is User Education Of Any Use At All? And Robert Slade made some excellent points more recently in post Security unawareness.
Static passwords are a pretty good example of a technology that’s proved to be less than 100-percent effective time and time again, yet is considered effective enough to remain the authentication mainstay of many a web service. Well, I could argue that it’s not so much about effectiveness, as a trade-off between effectiveness in terms of privacy, and the cost of implementing better authentication mechanisms. But that’s a discussion for another time.
There’s a proverb to the effect that "if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day: teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime". While the provenance of that saw is obscure, it’s worth examining more closely in the context of security, though in that context it might be better recast as "If you show a man a phish, you prevent him from falling for that one: if you teach him to recognize phishing, you save yourself and him a lot of hassle". And, in fact we’ve written quite a lot about phishing in the past: "A Pretty Kettle of Phish"; "Phish Phodder: Is User Education Helping or Hindering?"
Quite a Few Pairs of Breaches
However, right now I’d like to apply that thought to password practice, an area of security (or, more accurately, privacy) that’s probably of more immediate concern to many of us. In a year that’s so far been most notable for the number of major password breaches. On more than one occasion I’ve quoted Mark Burnett’s top 500 and one or two similar lists of the most-overused passwords, and recently I’ve noted quite a few journalists citing their own lists, but what does this teach the man-in-the-street (especially if he’s doing his on-line banking on his smartphone as he wanders down to the pub) about password choices?
Well, it isn’t entirely useless, or I wouldn’t have bothered in the first place (or, to be precise, the second place, i.e. at the time of the Yahoo! debacle. Sometimes a service uses the ‘three strikes and out’ approach to regulating password or passcode authentication, suspending an account after three failed attempts to supply the correct password, so avoiding the top 25  (say) most over-used passwords may be good enough to secure the account from an opportunistic attack using common passwords, and even where the suspension is automatically lifted after a preset time, that does at least reduce the potential effectiveness of a dictionary or guessing attack. But simply listing the top umpteen bad passwords isn’t really teaching anyone anything about password selection except to avoid a tiny handful of the billions of possible passwords and passphrases.
Horrific Heuristic
And in fact, that tiny handful, whether it’s 25 or 10,000, remains tiny even when you measure it against the millions of combinations that will be tried in a determined dictionary attack. In a recent Securiteam blog, I compared the two approaches in these terms. If you simply offer a list of bad passwords ordered by prevalence, you are effectively offering a series of micro-heuristics like this:
Don’t use ‘a’

Don’t use ‘aa’

Don’t use ‘aaa’

…

Don’t use ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’

Don’t use ‘b’

Don’t use ‘bb’
Valid heuristics, yes, but it saves an awful lot of typing just to say: "Don’t use any password consisting of a single character repeated N times". Or even "password is a really, really bad choice of password: it’s so obvious that everyone uses it, and letmein isn’t much better".
So let’s look again at that list of 25 passwords again. But rather than ranking them by how commonly they’re used (the sorted by prevalence column) let’s look at the alphanumeric order and see if that enables us to extract any heuristics more useful than "don’t use any of these 25 strings".
Sort of Sorted

Original Ranking	Sorted by prevalence	Sorted alphanumerically
1	password	111111
2	123456	1234
3	12345678	12345
4	1234	123456
5	qwerty	1234567
6	12345	12345678
7	dragon	2000
8	pussy	696969
9	baseball	abc123
10	football	baseball
11	letmein	dragon
12	monkey	football
13	696969	harley
14	abc123	jennifer
15	mustang	jordan
16	michael	letmein
17	shadow	master
18	master	michael
19	jennifer	monkey
20	111111	mustang
21	2000	password
22	jordan	pussy
23	superman	qwerty
24	harley	shadow
25	1234567	superman

Well, that’s interesting and maybe a little unexpected. In fact, it demonstrates the dangers of (1) using too small a dataset and (2) making assumptions about how applicable those data are in different contexts. Having done some analysis on purely numeric data as well as with larger password datasets, I know that the rule I mentioned above -- "Don’t use any password consisting of a single character repeated N times" -- is pretty sound in the context of both alphanumeric passwords and purely numeric strings (especially PINs -- Personal Identification Numbers: see Hearing a PIN drop and PIN Holes: Passcode Selection Strategies), but that heuristic isn’t specifically supported by this small dataset, where only one such password, 111111, is represented. So you’ll have to take my word for it that in larger datasets, other single character passwords (numeric and alphabetical) are indeed (over-)used and therefore bad choices.
Rules are Rules
A rule that does hold, however, is that passwords consisting of an ascending series of numbers starting at 1 are not a great or unique and original idea. The following all appear in our list above, all but one being in the top 6.

• 1234
• 12345
• 123456
• 1234567
• 12345678

Curiously, 1234567 comes in at number 25. That may be related to the fact that many authentication mechanisms enforce (or used to enforce) a minimum of only six characters: people who take this easy route to selecting a password are not likely to go to seven characters if they only need six. A seven-character minimum is pretty unusual. However, when services started to get more password-conscious (or entropy-conscious), many started to use an eight-character minimum, which probably explains why 12345678 ranks so highly. 1234 is also very highly ranked in PIN prevalence data, by the way.
There may actually be two reasons why people favor this group of numeric strings.

1. It’s not difficult to remember a simple increment-by-one series like this: all you have to do is remember when to stop.
2. But you hardly need to remember the series at all: all you have to do on most computer keyboards is finger-step your way along the appropriate row of the keyboard. Which certainly also explains the presence of QWERTY, the first six alphabetical characters on the next row down on a standard keyboard. And yes, people do user QWERTYUIOP or a subset thereof when they need a longer password. In countries that use a slightly different layout on that row -- AZERTY, for example -- we see reports of the modified string or substring being used instead of a QWERTYUIOP substring. (See PIN Holes: Passcode Selection Strategies.)

What about 2000? Well, that’s too popular to be a good choice, of course. But why 2000? Probably because people quite often use memorable dates, even just a year where they can get away with 4 digits, as in the context of many PINs. However, it’s pretty safe to assume that memorable years (1066, 1492, 2000, 2001, any recent Olympic year) will be high on a password guesser’s list, and where an automated attack can be implemented, it doesn’t take long to cycle through all the possible 4-digit combinations.
Then there’s 696969. I have a theory about why that one is so popular, and while the popularity of pussy (which is also in this top 25) is no doubt because cat lovers need passwords too, there are several other words and phrases likely to be sex–related, including four-letter words, that aren’t in this list, but do turn up in several others. I’m not particularly prudish myself, but I would suggest that if you think that no one else ever used an obscenity or a word related to sexual practices as a password, you should think again.
There is just one mixed alphanumeric string in this list, abc123, but there are several others that turn up in other lists, including such venerable items as NCC1701, better known as the USS Enterprise. Well, you might want to avoid those two.
Back to the Drawing Board
So we have several sport-related passwords: clearly baseball and football are too popular to be a good idea, but you’ll find that other popular sports also make over-popular passwords (Michael and Jordan? Hmm…). But then, any word you’re likely to find in a dictionary is going to be guessed eventually (i.e. sooner rather than later) in an automated attack. We could look at the psychology behind the other choices of dictionary words that make up the rest of this list, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point to it.
Clearly, there isn’t much potential for useful heuristics in a top 25. So in an upcoming post, I’m going to abandon the Top Umpteen approach altogether and start again from the basics of sound password selection. If you’d like to try a more flippant approach, though, you might want to take a look at A Torrent of Abuse for an attempt at password advice through parody.
Remember, though, that any password is only as good as the service to which it gives access: it doesn’t matter how hard to guess it is, if the service provider is incapable of providing competent security to keep a competent password secure.
A Teasing Conclusion
So here’s a quick summary of the little that we can learn from this top 25:

• Avoiding the most popular passwords is safer than using one of them, especially the top three. But avoiding even the top 100, 1,000, or 10,000 is only good enough if the authentication mechanism is well-implemented and your passwords are well-protected by the provider on its own systems.
• Passwords, passphrases and PINs consisting of a single character repeated are very, very unsafe.
• Any numeric or digital series ascending in increments of one or more is vulnerable to a guessing attack, a dictionary attack, or an algorithmic attack. So any substring of 0123456789 or abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz is likely to fail pretty quickly.
• Any password – or passphrase – that can be found in a dictionary is easily crackable if the authentication mechanism allows a dictionary attack.
• Passwords with a sexual connotation or using swearwords are very widely used, and therefore highly vulnerable to a guessing or dictionary attack.

In addition, a decent password manager saves you a lot of thinking in terms of generating a hard-to-crack password and reduces the temptation to re-use passwords and risk a cascade of breaches when one of your providers slips up, as so many have done recently. I’m looking at password management software at the moment, and while I’m reluctant to make too-specific recommendations, I’ll be trying to give you some idea of what to look for in password management in another forthcoming article.
Reprinted with permission
Photo Credit: Vlue/Shutterstock
David Harley BA CITP FBCS CISSP is an English IT security researcher, author/editor and consultant known for his prolific blogs and articles and his books on and research into topics like malware, Mac security, anti-malware product testing and management of email abuse. He works closely with ESET, where, since 2011, he has held the position of Senior Research Fellow.

How to Improve the Security of your WordPress Blog

How to Improve the Security of your WordPress Blog:
from Digital Inspiration Technology Blog by Amit
About a month ago, this WordPress blog was hacked. And since my other websites like ctrlq.org and hundredzeros.com are hosted on the same web server, the hacker successfully managed to wipe off all these sites from the Internet as well. →
The web hosting company says that it could have happened because one of the sites was running an older version of WordPress. The passwords weren’t compromised though as all the login activity happened from known IP addresses. It was a tough period but fortunately, the deleted sites have been restored and the traffic is also back to normal.
Here’s a list of changes I have done to improve the security of my WordPress blogs though the perpetual worry that such a thing can happen again will remain.

#1. Login with your email address

When you install a WordPress blog, the first user is called “admin” by default. You should create a different user to manage your WordPress blog and either remove the “admin” user or change the role from “administrator” to “subscriber.”
You can actually create a completely random (hard to guess) username and then use your email address to log into WordPress. The plugin WP-Email Login will add support for email based usernames in the WordPress login form.

#2. Do not advertise your WordPress version to the world

WordPress sites always publish the version number thus making it easier for people to determine if you are running an outdated non-patched version of WordPress.
It is easy to remove the WordPress version from page but you need to make one more change. Delete the readme.html file from your WordPress installation directory as it also advertises your WordPress version to the world.

#3. Don’t let others “Write” to your WordPress directory

Login to your WordPress Linux shell and execute the following command to get a list of all “open” directories where any other user can write files.

find . -type d -perm -o=w

You may also want to execute the following two commands in your shell to set the right permissions for all your WordPress files and folders (reference).

find /your/wordpress/folder/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /your/wordpress/folder/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

For directories, 755 (rwxr-xr-x) means that only the owner has write permission while others have read and execute permissions. For files, 644 (rw-r–r–) means that file owners have read and write permissions while others can only read the files.

#4. Rename your WordPress tables prefix

If you have installed WordPress using the default options, your WordPress tables have names like wp_posts or wp_users. It is thus a good idea to change the prefix of tables (wp_) to some random value. The Change DB Prefix plugin lets you rename your table prefix to any other string with a click.

#5. Prevent users from browsing your WordPress directories

This is important. Open the .htaccess file in your WordPress root directory and add the following line at the top.

Options -Indexes

It will prevent the outside world from seeing a listing of files available in your directories in case the default index.html or index.php files are absent from those directories.

#6. Update the WordPress Security Keys

Go here to generate six security keys for your WordPress blog. Open the wp-config.php file inside the WordPress directory and overwrite the default keys with the new ones.
These random salts make your stored WordPress passwords more secure and the other advantage is that if someone is logged into WordPress without your knowledge, they will get logged out immediately as their cookies will become invalid now.

#7. Keep a log of WordPress PHP and Database errors

The error logs can sometimes offer strong hints on what kind of invalid database queries and file requests are hitting your WordPress installation. I prefer the Error Log Monitor as it periodically sends the error logs by email and also displays them as a widget inside your WordPress dashboard.
To enable error logging in WordPress, add the following code to your wp-config.php file and remember to replace /path/to/error.log with the actual path of your log file. The error.log file should be placed in a folder not accessible from the browser (reference).

define('WP_DEBUG', true);
if (WP_DEBUG) {
 define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);
 @ini_set('log_errors', 'On');
 @ini_set('display_errors', 'Off');
 @ini_set('error_log', '/path/to/error.log');
}

#9. Password Protect the Admin Dashboard

It is always a good idea to password protect the wp-admin folder of your WordPress since none of the files in this area are intended for people who are visiting your public WordPress website. Once protected, even authorized users will have to enter two passwords to log in to their WordPress Admin dashboard.

10. Track login activity on your WordPress server

You can use the “last -i” command in Linux to get a listing of all users who have logged into your WordPress server along with their IP addresses. If you find an unknown IP address in this list, it is definitely time to change your password.
Also, the following command will show the user login activity for a longer period of time grouped by IP addresses (replace USERNAME with your shell user name).

last -if /var/log/wtmp.1 | grep USERNAME | awk '{print $3}' | sort | uniq -c

Monitor your WordPress with Plugins

The WordPress.org repository contains quite a few good security related plugins that will continuously monitor your WordPress site for intrusions and other suspicious activity. Here are the essential ones that I would recommend.

1. Exploit Scanner – It will quickly scan all your WordPress files and blog posts and list the ones that may have malicious code. Spam links may be hidden in your WordPress blog posts using CSS or IFRAMES and the plugin will detect them as well.
2. WordFence Security – This is an extremely powerful security plugin that you should have. It will compare your WordPress core files with the original files in the repository so any modifications are instantly detected. Also, the plugin will lock out users after ‘n’ number of unsuccessful login attempts.
3. WordPress Sentinel – Another useful plugin that monitors your WordPress files and alerts you whenever files are added, deleted and edited in any of the watched folders.
4. WP Notifier – If you don’t login to your WordPress Admin dashboard too often, this plugin is for you. It will send you email alerts whenever new updates are available for the installed themes, plugins and core WordPress.
5. VIP Scanner – The “official” security plugin will scan your WordPress themes for any problems. It will also detect any advertising code that may have been injected into your WordPress templates.

Tip: You can also use the following Linux command to get a list of all files that have been modified in the last 3 days. Change mtime to mmin to see files modified “n” minutes ago.

find . -type f -mtime -3 | grep -v "/Maildir/" | grep -v "/logs/"

Secure your WordPress Login Page

Your WordPress login page is accessible to the world but if you wish to prevent non-authorized users from logging into WordPress, you have three choices.

1. Password Protect with .htaccess – This involves protecting the wp-admin folder of your WordPress with a username and password in addition to your regular WordPress credentials.
2. Google Authenticator – This excellent plugin adds two-step verification to your WordPress blog similar to your Google Account. You’ll have to enter the password and also the time-dependent code generated on your mobile phone.
3. Login Dongle – This plugin takes a very unique approach to protect your WordPress. It generates a bookmarklet with a secret question that you can add to you bookmarks. While on the WordPress login page, enter you credentials and then press this bookmarklet to get into your WordPress – the button on the login screen won’t work.

Also see: Must-have WordPress Plugins

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This story, How to Improve the Security of your WordPress Blog, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 07/08/2012 under Security, WordPress, Internet.

The New MCSE: How to Successfully Build Your Microsoft Certified Career

The New MCSE: How to Successfully Build Your Microsoft Certified Career:
from TrainSignal Training by Kasia Lorenc
Microsoft has completely revamped their certification program, bringing back the MCSA, MCSE and MCSD certifications. But the MCSE is not what it used to be and the reinvented certification program has spawned a number of questions and concerns from IT professionals looking to get certified. This free webinar will help answer:

• What do you need to know about the new lineup of Microsoft certifications?
• What should you do if you’re in the process of getting MCITP certified?
• Which direction should you be taking now that the MCSE is back?
• How do you build your IT career around the new certs?

In this career focused webinar, Microsoft MVP Ed Liberman breaks down the new certification program from Microsoft, walking you through the different certification paths and the details on how to obtain the various new MCSA, MCSE and MCSD certifications. He also shares his advice on which direction is right for you depending on your speciality and interest.

CCNA Gamified: Learn Networking through the CCNA Aspire Game

CCNA Gamified: Learn Networking through the CCNA Aspire Game:
from Happy Router.com by David Davis

Mastering networking in preparation for the Cisco CCNA certification is challenging, especially for those new to the field. There’s a lot to learn and any hands-on experience you can get is the best thing you can do to prepare for the CCNA exam.
Earlier this year, Cisco launched the CCNA Aspire Game which allows CCNA candidates to prepare for the exam with scenario-based challenges that are based on real-world examples. The game is a great complement to instructor-led and video based training, like TrainSignal’s Cisco CCNA Training and will help you think on your feet as you sharpen your networking skills.

If your curiosity is piqued and you’re interested in learning more, check out Sean Wilkins’ review of the CCNA Aspire Game and the video trailer below. And give the game a try — you can download it for free here.

Zagg Full-Body Protection Left My iPod Coated With Perma-Goo

Sorry that the pictures are broken. I will work to fix it but thought that the text would still be good to read.

Zagg Full-Body Protection Left My iPod Coated With Perma-Goo:
from The Consumerist by Laura Northrup
 
Sure, those clear adhesive protective covers for small gadgets are supposed to last for a long time, but what happens when the film starts to peel and your iPod has plenty of useful life left? Then you do what reader Rob did and peel it off, discovering an unmovable coating of perma-goo on the outside of the device. No solvent can remove it.

Thought you may like to take a look at what happens after Zagg invisible shield products are installed for a few years. I bought the full body protection film for my iPod classic about three years ago. It was peeling so I decided to replace it.

The photo shows the sticky residue left behind. They do advertise "no sticky film left behind after removal". I've tried multiple solvents, orange based as Zagg suggested, alcohol, and Goo Gone Extreme, WD40, and even baby oil. My iPod is essentually ruined. I was an enthusiastic proponent of their products until this experience. As a result Ive removed the newly purchased screen protectors from my wifes and my iPhones. Just wanted to give a heads up to others using, or thinking of using this product.

MythTV library on Apple TV without a jailbreak

MythTV library on Apple TV without a jailbreak:
from Hack a Day by Mike Szczys

[Dan] wrote in to share a link to his MythTv to Apple TV setup. He found a way to make the recordings he made on his Linux box available on the 2nd Generation Apple TV. Our first thought is that he would use XBMC on a jailbroken device  but that is not the case. The secret is to roll iTunes into the mix.
Take a look at the diagram above. The system starts with an Arch Linux box that runs MythTV, an open source program which allows you to record from tuner or encoder hardware. But actually watching those recordings on an iOS device is difficult for a couple of reasons. First, Apple likes to keep their devices locked up tight in hopes that you buy your entertainment rather than watching over-the-air records. Second, if you’re recording ATSC channels the files may be 1080i or 1080p, neither of which can be handled by the Apple TV 2. [Dan] gets around this by first using the command line version of Handbrake to transcode the recordings to an h264 format. He then uses iTunes running on an Windows 7 virtual machine (on the Linux box) to host the transcoded files in a library the Apple TV can access.

Filed under: home entertainment hacks

Download video clips with YouTube Mate

Download video clips with YouTube Mate:
from BetaNews by Mike Williams
Visit YouTube in your browser and it’s easy enough to search for and play any videos you like. Downloading individual clips and using them offline is a little more difficult, though -- unless you get help from a third-party tool like YouTube Mate.
Launch the program and it’ll immediately begin monitoring your clipboard for YouTube URLs. If you find a video you’d like to save, just copy the address to the clipboard, and YouTube Mate will pop up a Download dialog. Click OK, choose the video format and resolution you’d like to save (there’s full HD support here) and watch as YouTube Mate downloads and saves it for you.
You have lots of clips to save? Not a problem. YouTube Mate can download multiple clips at the same time, just keep copying the URLs and deciding exactly which files and formats you’d like to grab.
Everything you download appears in a list on the program’s interface, and if you want to play a particular clip then just double-click it to view the movie in a simple video player.
Or, if the downloaded files aren’t in a convenient format for you, YouTube Mate can quickly convert them to something more suitable.
First you’ll need to define your output format by selecting the appropriate Profile option. There are profiles for specific devices (iPad, iPod, iPhone, and many other phones, portable video players and other hardware), and a lot of more general format options: you can save clips as Flash (SWF)movies, audio files, DVD-friendly MPEG’s and others (and you can even customise these profiles to take fine control over the frame video, video sample rate, whatever you like).
Then select an Output folder, click Convert, and YouTube Mate will quickly convert each clip to your chosen format. We would rather it converted only the selected clips, actually – there doesn’t seem to be any way to convert a specific file, other than remove everything else from the list – but it’s still a useful option.
YouTube Mate does have one potential annoyance, in that you must provide the authors with your email address before you can activate the program. They promise they won’t share it (and we’ve no reason to believe otherwise), but it just makes us wary.
If that’s not an issue for you, though, the program provides a quick and easy way to download and manage YouTube clips, and there’s certainly far more functionality here than we’d expect from a free tool.
Photo Credit:  cybrain/Shutterstock

'Your Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player subscription has ended'

A post explaining the changes to Amazon's online music storage plans.

'Your Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player subscription has ended':
from BetaNews by Joe Wilcox

What the retailer gives, it also takes away. In what I can only call the mother of all customer-unfriendly emails, Amazon tells me, and presumably others, that music uploaded to Cloud Drive is gone. I got my email yesterday, without prior notice of major subscription change. I only knew because my job is covering tech news.
But the email still shocked: "If your Cloud Player library contained more than 250 imported songs when your subscription expired, you will be unable to access your previously-imported music". Oh yeah? What happened to that generous 20GB of storage Amazon gave a year ago? What about benefits attached to Prime membership?
Cloud Player Premium
Amazon closed out July with a major change to its cloud music and storage services. For starters, the music store adopted a tune matching service, similar to Apple's and for same price ($24.99/year). But with a catch: Reduction of stored music to 250 songs, for free. That's a lot less than the 5GB Amazon previously promised, and 20GB generously granted.
Cloud Player debuted in March 2011, and Amazon couldn't give away storage fast enough. Purchasing any song automatically upgraded Cloud Drive to 20GB storage. "This storage plan is not set to renew automatically and will be reverted back to the free 5GB plan at the end of the promotion", Amazon promised last year. I seriously considered uploading my 12,000 tracks to Amazon, but chose Google's music service instead (process took about 40 hours). Based on previous communication, I reasonably expected 5GB to be available.
Text of my email from Amazon:

Dear Joe Wilcox,
Your 20GB + Cloud Player Premium Promotion subscription has ended and you are now limited to 250 imported songs in your Amazon Cloud Player library and 5GB of free storage in Amazon Cloud Drive. If you would like to review your usage or subscribe to a new plan, visit the Manage Your Cloud Subscriptions page.
If your Cloud Player library contained more than 250 imported songs when your subscription expired, you will be unable to access your previously-imported music, but you will still be able to access all of your Amazon MP3 purchases.
You are currently using 0.04 GB of Cloud Drive storage. If your Cloud Drive account contains more than 5 GB of files you will be prevented from uploading additional files until you delete enough files to be under the 5 GB limit or subscribe to a storage plan with enough space for your files.
For more details and instructions on how to manage your Amazon Cloud accounts, please see our Cloud Drive Online Help and Cloud Player Online Help pages. If you need further assistance, please contact Cloud Drive Customer Service or Cloud Player Customer Service.

The good news then: Songs purchased directly from Amazon are still available. But those uploaded are gone. Lucky I didn't upload many. Did you? Technically, 5GB of online storage remains, just not for music.
Wait a Minute
From one perspective, storage is unnecessary with the the music matching service, since if you own the tunes and Amazon matches them, they are automatically added to your cloud library. From Amazon's info page:

You no longer have to spend time manually importing your music to the cloud. Your music library is scanned and then matched to Amazon's eligible catalog. Matched files are delivered as high-quality 256 Kbps MP3s. Unmatched files in MP3 or AAC format will be uploaded. Most music on your hard drive can be scanned, regardless of whether the music is from iTunes or any other application. Any eligible MP3 album or song that you previously purchased from Amazon will be added to your Cloud Player account, and all future purchases will be added directly to Cloud Player for no added charge.

From another perspective, there's the forced upgrade: 25 bucks a year to Premium service or lost access to anything over 250 songs or not purchased from Amazon:

You'll get a 30-day free upgrade to Cloud Player Premium. If you don't subscribe to Cloud Player Premium or reduce your library to at most 250 imported songs before the end of the 30 days, you won't be able to access your imported songs in Cloud Player and will have to re-import them. Amazon MP3 purchases don't count against your 250 song limit and will continue to be accessible in Cloud Player. Your music isn't lost, though -- music files you imported to Cloud Drive before July 31, 2012 will still be accessible in and downloadable from Cloud Drive.

So, wait. I can still get to the music, just not listen to it using cloud player? But if I want to listen to it in Cloud Player, I have to automatically (using Premium service) or manually upload again? But wait, again. The email contradicts the online info: "You will be unable to access your previously-imported music".
Establishing and maintaining trust is tantamount to cloud services' success. You need to go no further than BetaNews comments to see how many people are unwilling to store their precious stuff in the cloud, or have reservations about doing so. Amazon's music tomfoolery -- presumably to get Cloud Player Premium service upgrades (and perhaps also because of content licensing restrictions) -- evokes mistrust. At best, Amazon communicates badly.
Online, Amazon promises 30 days grace, which really isn't all that generous, considering the suddenness of the service changes. Yet I have an email 19 days later with subject line: "Your Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player Subscription has ended". Doesn't that just make you feel good about storing stuff in the cloud?
Photo Credit: Regissercom/Shutterstock

Best music and MP3 downloader apps for Android

Best music and MP3 downloader apps for Android:
from Android Authority by Carl Parker

Music is a universal language understood by everyone. It may have different impacts on different people, but music is one thing that can bring people together. If you love listening to music like I do, having your songs with you wherever you go is a luxury you can enjoy with your Android device. No need for separate music players when your Android device is capable of doing almost anything. You just need the right apps to do the job.
If you missed including a song or two to your device’s music library and find hooking your device to the computer quite tiring, you’ve come to the right place. With your Android device, you can still hunt down those songs using the apps listed below.
You won’t need to get up from sitting or lying down when you just can search and download songs with the use of music and MP3 downloader apps for Android. Go through our list below and maybe you’ll find an app or two that you can use every time you want to download a song right then and there.

MP3 Music Download V6

MP3 Music Download V6 is every music enthusiast’s best friend. This app has an extensive collection of songs you can download, from the Billboard Charts to the South Korean Charts. If you are a fan of both English and non-English songs, this app can cater to your needs.
This app doesn’t have a confusing UI nor does it have a lot of menus within menus. Once you open the app, options are neatly lined up for your convenience. You can opt to manually key in the song you want to download or you can browse the songs from various charts. All your downloaded files are placed in a library so you can access them easily. You can also edit the tags of your music files for better organization, making it easier for you when you search for a song.
MP3 Music Download V6 also allows you to edit a downloaded song and turn it into your own ringtone. This is one neat feature that gives you the freedom to set just a part of a song as a ringtone, not the whole song itself. You can also preview a particular song before downloading it, helping you make sure you are downloading the right one.

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Easy Downloader

A perfect solution to all your file downloading problems, Easy Downloader is an app that downloads almost everything, not just audio files. As the app’s name suggests, it is indeed very easy to use as it can download every file format you need.
This app has a clean-looking UI that also organizes your downloads in separate folders to avoid clutter. The files you’ve downloaded directly go to your SD card and you have the freedom to organize them further even when the app has already categorized the files beforehand. All you need to do is key in the link to the file you want to download and the app will do the rest for you. It supports Internet protocols like HTTP and FTP and is compatible with the stock Android browser, Firefox, Dolphin Browser, and a lot more.
You can also download multiple files simultaneously, especially when you are fond of downloading batch files. This feature is handy when you need to get two or three songs right away and you don’t want to download each separately. A download progress bar and notifications are also included to keep you updated on completed download tasks.
Easy Download also comes in a pro version and is downloadable from the Google Play Store.

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Music Download Elite

Have you ever experienced hearing a song and wanting to have it without accessing your computer? What if you need to have the song right then and there but there is no laptop or computer in sight? With your Android device, getting a song won’t require the use of PCs, just as long as you have your device, an Internet connection, and Music Download Elite.
Music Download Elite lets you download loads of music and MP3 files in the fastest and most convenient way. The app sports an easy-to-use interface that also lets you create your own playlists from your downloaded songs. When you search for a song, you’ll be given a lot of search results and you can choose to preview the song before actually downloading it. This app can fetch a lot of songs, even international ones.
Music Download Elite is definitely one app you should never miss, most especially if you are a music enthusiast. Download this app for free from the Google Play Store and start building up your music library with the use of your Android device.

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MP3 Music Download

There are numerous music downloaders on the Google Play Store. Some of them really work, some don’t. Because of the number of apps the store has, we here at Android Authority painstakingly search for apps that are worth downloading and are worth your time. And from the bunch of music downloader apps from the store, one that works really well is MP3 Music Download.
MP3 Music Download was named very simply. It didn’t need to have a fancy name because it is dedicated to fulfilling every Android user’s music need. Aside from the obvious fact that you can search and download MP3s using this app, you can also edit any downloaded song to make it your ringtone. It has a built-in music editor which shows you the audio file’s wavelengths, similar to what you see when editing audio files using music editors like Adobe Audition.
Everything you need is packed in this app. You won’t need to download a separate app that can edit songs and set them as your ringtones. With MP3 Music Download, searching and downloading songs are easy to do and making songs your ringtones is made even easier.

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Tunee Music

One amazing thing about music is that it soothes your tired soul just by listening to the notes and melody. It sometimes takes you to places only you know of and relaxes your mind from all the stress. Being an Android user surely has its perks and one of them is the chance for you to use apps that answer your littlest need, just like downloading music and MP3s.
Tunee Music is another music downloader you can use to search for music and download it to your device. The app has a semi-minimalist theme going on and is actually clean to look at. You can search for the song’s title or artist and you also get to play the whole song before downloading it. Album art is also shown when you search for songs — another way of helping you remember if you are downloading the right song.
Sharing the track you’ve downloaded is also possible with this app. Just hit Share and you can let your friends know the songs you’ve downloaded using the app. Tunee Music also makes sure that the songs it gives you are of high quality so you won’t need to worry about downloading crappy files that sound like they were recorded in a tunnel.

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Simple MP3 Downloader

As people say, simplicity is beauty. It doesn’t always follow that when something looks really astonishing, its functionality is equally amazing. Simple things are easy to manipulate and can save us time, especially when its functionality is superb, just like Simple MP3 Downloader.
Simple MP3 Downloader is so simple that even a kindergartener could use it. With its tidy-looking UI, this app lets you search and download songs for not a single penny. Living up to its simplicity, the app lets you have the freedom to search for a song’s artist, title, or album — perfect for those who tend to forget who sang the song or what the title is. And, just like the other apps mentioned on this list, Simple MP3 Downloader allows you to hear the song first before you download it.
This app also puts all your downloaded songs in one place, the Library, so you can easily access them when you need to get your dose of music. Simple MP3 Downloader is absolutely free, so download it now from the Google Play Store.

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Music Download

Here’s another free music downloader you can try with your Android device. Searching, downloading, and organizing audio files are possible with this app, plus the option of seeing the lyrics of a certain song.
Music Download surely does what it’s supposed to do — search and download songs. Bu, one plus factor this app has is its feature that allows you to download the lyrics of a song and have it appear on your screen while the song is playing, like a mini-karaoke. The option to download the lyrics is still a beta version, but it’s one cool feature that could keep you downloading more and more songs using this app.
Just like MP3 Music Download, the app also has a music editor where you can edit a song and set it as your ringtone. The controls are fairly easy and the app shows comprehensive details about the audio file like its bitrate, length, and sampling frequency. You can also zoom in to the wavelengths to better see where to cut the song without leaving out a beat.
A built-in player is also included in this app. You can play your downloaded songs straight from their folder and you can set the repeat and shuffle buttons, too. Music Download is one indispensable music downloader for your Android device, so don’t miss out on this one.

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4shared Music

If you just want to search and download your favorite tracks and have no plans of setting them as your ringtone, 4shared Music is the app you should have. Most of us know what 4shared is and how extensive its collection of files are. Now, 4shared Music, solely a downloader for music, is available for Android users.
With 4shared Music, you don’t only get to download what you want, you also have the option to upload your own files and share them or just store your audio files to the cloud if you don’t want your audio files to eat up your device’s memory. 4shared Music gives you 15 GB of storage space when you make a web account. That’s quite a lot of space for audio files, if you ask me.
Creation of playlists is also one thing you can do with this app. You can add your favorite tracks to a playlist so that you won’t have to go through the hassle of looking for your favorite tunes because you can access them using your playlists. 4shared Music is a free app and is available at the Google Play Store for downloading. Get it today and start sharing your playlists.

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MP3 Search and Download Pro

Developed by Frank Joseph, MP3 Search and Download Pro may also be a way to quench your thirst for music. This app searches and downloads MP3s from public domains through public search engines, allowing for more choices and collections of songs you can choose from.
You can provide a song’s title, artist, or album, and the app goes searching for it instantly. Search results also include the size of the MP3 file so that you’ll know if an audio file is too large or too small.
Similar to the other apps mentioned on this list, the app lets you preview a song to make sure it is the one you are looking for before you hit the download button. You wouldn’t want to download the wrong songs and inconvenience yourself, right?
The app also has a player called Vanilla Player, but you need to download it separately. If you don’t want to get that player, your downloaded files can still be played using your device’s stock player. Although this app has the “pro” word in its name, you can download this for free. MP3 Search and Download Pro is certainly a must-have for your Android device.

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Google Play Music

To complete our list, we end with Google Play Music developed by no other than Google. With this app, you need to purchase the songs from the Google Play Store and keep your files online, so there’s no need to get worried if you have so little storage space on your device. But, if you do have gigabytes of free space, you can opt to keep your purchased files on your device.
One thing’s for sure, this app is something we should look forward to, given that it’s from Google. Although there are some things to tweak and improve, it still can function well enough to answer your needs. Your music purchases from the store appear automatically in this app. You won’t need to search far and wide for the files you’ve just bought, which, by the way, can get really taxing and annoying.
What’s great about this app is that you can share your songs using Google+. And, it’s not just previews of your purchased songs but full plays. Your circles can listen to what you’ve been listening to recently. Maybe you guys can hangout using Google+ Hangouts and listen to the tracks you’ve just shared. You can also save your files for offline playback, great for those times when you have intermittent Internet connection or you have no connection at all.
This app is only available in the U.S., but hopefully it will be made available for other regions soon. Of course, this app is downloadable for free so get this app now and hangout with your circles on Google+.

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Wherever you may be, you can easily search and download songs you’ve always wanted to have. Gone are the days when you have to mentally remember a song’s title or artist and rush back home to access the computer just to download the song. Most often than not, you end up forgetting the song title and artist and have to search the song using parts of its lyrics instead. Get rid of the hassle with some of these best music and MP3 downloader apps for Android.
Which of these apps do you use for downloading music?  Let us know in the comments or vote in our poll below.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

NEXT: Best music recognition apps for Android

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This article, Best music and MP3 downloader apps for Android , was originally published at AndroidAuthority.com - Your Android News Source.