WhatsApp Pushes Past 400 Million Monthly Users

WhatsApp -- the little messaging system that could -- announced today that it had surpassed a major user base milestone, topping 400 million monthly users, and active ones at that.<br><br>That number is double what WhatsApp reported in April, establishing WhatsApp as not just one of the most rapidly growing services on the Internet, but also as a viable competitor to text messaging services as we know them. To put that user base into perspective, the company notes that it is now processing 32 billion received messages and 500 billion photos every day. One survey notes that WhatsApp's weekly usage rate -- at 44 percent of all smartphone users polled -- now outpaces usage of Facebook's messaging system, at just 35 percent.<br> <br>WhatsApp, like many similar services, uses the Internet to let users send and receive messages (from text to photos to video), taking the standard phone carriers' SMS and MMS services out of the equation. Founded in 2009 by former Yahoo! employees, the service is now available on every major smartphone operating system and has near-universal compatibility across mobile handset hardware.<br> <br>The company makes money by charging a pittance -- 99 cents per year with the first year totally free -- to users. With 400 million active users, well, you can do the math on how much the company could ultimately be pulling in… and WhatsApp says it has barely even started to think about how to monetize the company.<br> <br>What's next for WhatsApp will depend largely on how its competitors react and whether they prosper. There are plenty of them (Wikipedia lists 17 that are compatible with Android alone), and nearly all are as heavily focused on accumulating new users as WhatsApp is. Last month, Snapchat, which focuses on short-term messages that vanish after a few seconds, turned down a reported $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. Also last month, Japanese competitor Line announced that its similar app had surpassed 300 million registered users. Alternative messaging systems are booming -- even Instagram has added a direct messaging system to its popular photo-sharing service -- but in the end, it's likely that the market will consolidate into a small pool of viable players.<br> <br>The way things are going, it's likely WhatsApp is going to be one of the more permanent fixtures in the market. Unless, of course, people tire of messaging altogether they way they did with voice calls.

WhatsApp Pushes Past 400 Million Monthly Users

WhatsApp -- the little messaging system that could -- announced today that it had surpassed a major user base milestone, topping 400 million...

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WhatsApp Pushes Past 400 Million Monthly Users

WhatsApp -- the little messaging system that could -- announced today that it had surpassed a major user base milestone, topping 400 million monthly users, and active ones at that.<br><br>That number is double what WhatsApp reported in April, establishing WhatsApp as not just one of the most rapidly growing services on the Internet, but also as a viable competitor to text messaging services as we know them. To put that user base into perspective, the company notes that it is now processing 32 billion received messages and 500 billion photos every day. One survey notes that WhatsApp's weekly usage rate -- at 44 percent of all smartphone users polled -- now outpaces usage of Facebook's messaging system, at just 35 percent.<br> <br>WhatsApp, like many similar services, uses the Internet to let users send and receive messages (from text to photos to video), taking the standard phone carriers' SMS and MMS services out of the equation. Founded in 2009 by former Yahoo! employees, the service is now available on every major smartphone operating system and has near-universal compatibility across mobile handset hardware.<br> <br>The company makes money by charging a pittance -- 99 cents per year with the first year totally free -- to users. With 400 million active users, well, you can do the math on how much the company could ultimately be pulling in… and WhatsApp says it has barely even started to think about how to monetize the company.<br> <br>What's next for WhatsApp will depend largely on how its competitors react and whether they prosper. There are plenty of them (Wikipedia lists 17 that are compatible with Android alone), and nearly all are as heavily focused on accumulating new users as WhatsApp is. Last month, Snapchat, which focuses on short-term messages that vanish after a few seconds, turned down a reported $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. Also last month, Japanese competitor Line announced that its similar app had surpassed 300 million registered users. Alternative messaging systems are booming -- even Instagram has added a direct messaging system to its popular photo-sharing service -- but in the end, it's likely that the market will consolidate into a small pool of viable players.<br> <br>The way things are going, it's likely WhatsApp is going to be one of the more permanent fixtures in the market. Unless, of course, people tire of messaging altogether they way they did with voice calls.

WhatsApp Pushes Past 400 Million Monthly Users

WhatsApp -- the little messaging system that could -- announced today that it had surpassed a major user base milestone, topping 400 million...

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security, hackers Listen up: RSA keys snatched by recording CPU sounds with a phone

It sounds too preposterous for even James Bond: by placing a mobile phone next to a PC, researchers can "listen" to the faintest sound a CPU makes as it churns away on RSA-encoded content and extract the keys themselves.<br> <br>Preposterous, except for the fact that Adi Shamir, one of the co-developers of the RSA encryption algorithm, co-wrote the paper that describes how to do it. Daniel Genkin and Eran Tromer were the other two authors.<br> <br><br>This is all that's necessary to steal RSA keys from a laptop.<br><br>"The attack can extract full 4096-bit RSA decryption keys from laptop computers (of various models), within an hour, using the sound generated by the computer during the decryption of some chosen ciphertexts," the paper's authors wrote. "We experimentally demonstrate that such attacks can be carried out, using either a plain mobile phone placed next to the computer, or a more sensitive microphone placed 4 meters away."<br> <br>The authors were able to experimentally succeed with their method using either an ungainly, and extremely obvious, parabolic antenna from 4 meters away, or by using a generic mobile phone from just 30 centimeters away.  Naturally, better listening equipment decreased the time to extract the RSA keys.<br> <br>And it gets even worse: merely touching the PC also allowed an attacker to extract the keys by measuring the electric potential of the PC chassis. In this case, users who touched the PC (and surreptitiously measured their electric potential) should be able to extract the keys. And be persuading the victim to plug in either an innocuous-looking VGA or ethernet cable into his laptop, the attacker could measure the shield potential elsewhere and get the keys as well.<br> <br>DANIEL GENKIN, ADI SHAMIR, ERAN TROMER<br>Attacks over longer distances are feasible using a parabolic antenna.<br><br>Typically, simply having physical access to a unsuspecting PC is enough for some security experts to throw up their hands and concede that the attacker has won. And that's true, in this case, as well. But the paper's authors demonstrated an "attack" running in a lecture hall, and suggested other plausible scenarios:<br> <br>Install an attack app on your phone. Set up a meeting with your victim, and during the meeting, place your phone on the desk next to the the victim's laptop.<br>Break into your victim's phone, install your attack app, and wait until the victim inadvertently places his phone next to the target laptop.<br> Construct a webpage, and use the microphone of the computer running the browser using Flash or another method. When the user permits the microphone access, use it to steal the user's secret key.<br>Put your stash of eavesdropping bugs and laser microphones to a new use.<br> Send your server to a colocation facility, with a good microphone inside the box. Then acoustically extract keys from all nearby servers.<br>Get near a protected machine, place a microphone next to its ventilation holes, and extract the secrets<br> The techniques the authors describe can be countered by sound dampening, but the white noise of a PC's fan can be pretty easily filtered out. The researchers said that they supplied their attack vector to GnuPG developers before publication, let them develop revised code, and yet it was still vulnerable. The answer may lie in using software to try and obfuscate the audible sound emanations, they said.<br> <br>In any case, the paper that Genkin, Shamir, and Tromer authored is seriously scary stuff, especially for business or government travelers carrying sensitive information outside the country as well as into and through strange hotels and conference rooms.

security, hackers Listen up: RSA keys snatched by recording CPU sounds with a phone

It sounds too preposterous for even James Bond: by placing a mobile phone next to a PC, researchers can "listen" to the faintest s...

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security, hackers Listen up: RSA keys snatched by recording CPU sounds with a phone

It sounds too preposterous for even James Bond: by placing a mobile phone next to a PC, researchers can "listen" to the faintest sound a CPU makes as it churns away on RSA-encoded content and extract the keys themselves.<br> <br>Preposterous, except for the fact that Adi Shamir, one of the co-developers of the RSA encryption algorithm, co-wrote the paper that describes how to do it. Daniel Genkin and Eran Tromer were the other two authors.<br> <br><br>This is all that's necessary to steal RSA keys from a laptop.<br><br>"The attack can extract full 4096-bit RSA decryption keys from laptop computers (of various models), within an hour, using the sound generated by the computer during the decryption of some chosen ciphertexts," the paper's authors wrote. "We experimentally demonstrate that such attacks can be carried out, using either a plain mobile phone placed next to the computer, or a more sensitive microphone placed 4 meters away."<br> <br>The authors were able to experimentally succeed with their method using either an ungainly, and extremely obvious, parabolic antenna from 4 meters away, or by using a generic mobile phone from just 30 centimeters away.  Naturally, better listening equipment decreased the time to extract the RSA keys.<br> <br>And it gets even worse: merely touching the PC also allowed an attacker to extract the keys by measuring the electric potential of the PC chassis. In this case, users who touched the PC (and surreptitiously measured their electric potential) should be able to extract the keys. And be persuading the victim to plug in either an innocuous-looking VGA or ethernet cable into his laptop, the attacker could measure the shield potential elsewhere and get the keys as well.<br> <br>DANIEL GENKIN, ADI SHAMIR, ERAN TROMER<br>Attacks over longer distances are feasible using a parabolic antenna.<br><br>Typically, simply having physical access to a unsuspecting PC is enough for some security experts to throw up their hands and concede that the attacker has won. And that's true, in this case, as well. But the paper's authors demonstrated an "attack" running in a lecture hall, and suggested other plausible scenarios:<br> <br>Install an attack app on your phone. Set up a meeting with your victim, and during the meeting, place your phone on the desk next to the the victim's laptop.<br>Break into your victim's phone, install your attack app, and wait until the victim inadvertently places his phone next to the target laptop.<br> Construct a webpage, and use the microphone of the computer running the browser using Flash or another method. When the user permits the microphone access, use it to steal the user's secret key.<br>Put your stash of eavesdropping bugs and laser microphones to a new use.<br> Send your server to a colocation facility, with a good microphone inside the box. Then acoustically extract keys from all nearby servers.<br>Get near a protected machine, place a microphone next to its ventilation holes, and extract the secrets<br> The techniques the authors describe can be countered by sound dampening, but the white noise of a PC's fan can be pretty easily filtered out. The researchers said that they supplied their attack vector to GnuPG developers before publication, let them develop revised code, and yet it was still vulnerable. The answer may lie in using software to try and obfuscate the audible sound emanations, they said.<br> <br>In any case, the paper that Genkin, Shamir, and Tromer authored is seriously scary stuff, especially for business or government travelers carrying sensitive information outside the country as well as into and through strange hotels and conference rooms.

security, hackers Listen up: RSA keys snatched by recording CPU sounds with a phone

It sounds too preposterous for even James Bond: by placing a mobile phone next to a PC, researchers can "listen" to the faintest s...

Read more »

How to download streaming media and watch it anywhere, anytime

<h1 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin:0px 0px 12px;line-height:1.13;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:25px;font-weight:500"><span style="line-height:1.7em;font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;font-size:15px">Subscribing to Hulu Plus or Netflix is a great deal—until you find yourself on a less-than-perfect Internet connection. Perversely, your streaming media library is most valuable in places where you can't access the Internet: Watching a movie or burning through episodes of your favorite TV show is the best way to get through a long plane trip, a car ride, or a vacation in the middle of nowhere.</span><br> </h1><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;line-height:21px"> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Luckily, you can use third-party software and a few tricks to download streaming video from Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix. Now you can watch your entertainment on your terms, even in places where your cherished Amazon Prime account is inaccessible.</p> <h2 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Bottling the Amazon Prime Instant Video stream</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">At first blush Amazon appears to offer an easy option with its downloadable<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/player" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">Unbox Player</a>, but the fine print renders Amazon's own tool almost useless for practical purposes.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Sure, you can use the Unbox Player to download movies and television shows you've rented or purchased on Amazon, but you can't use it to download the Amazon Prime Instant Video content that you can stream through your Amazon Prime subscription. The Unbox Player <em>does</em>let you stream that stuff, but streaming through Unbox isn't any different than streaming through your browser.</p> <a href="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/amazonunbox-100053271-orig.jpg" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" height="464" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/amazonunbox-100053271-large.jpg" style="border-width:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:auto;min-height:auto;max-width:100%;float:left" width="580"></a>Amazon's Unbox player is great for downloading digital copies of movies and TV shows you've purchased on Amazon, but you can't use it to save streaming Instant Video for later. If you want to do that, you'll have to turn to some unorthodox third-party alternatives.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> I rented a movie on Amazon to test whether Unbox could indeed download files for later. A half hour and several rounds of quitting out of the program and refreshing my recent purchases later, the film finally showed up in Unbox for offline viewing.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">The user experience was unpleasant, and offered no added convenience compared with watching video in my browser or through iTunes. Amazon's official solution to the offline-viewing problem is a bit of a wash. Fortunately, as I'll discuss later, some unsanctioned third-party alternatives can give you considerably more control over your streamed media.</p> <h2 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Jumping through hoops to save Hulu video</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Hulu doesn't provide an official download option. Viewers who want to record streaming movies and TV for later enjoyment should try RTMPDumpHelper, a free utility designed to download media that you're streaming via RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol, which Hulu uses). Your experience may differ on Linux, but on Windows you can simply download <a href="http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/rtmp_dump_helper.html" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">RTMPDumpHelper</a> and the<a href="http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">RTMPDump Toolkit</a>, unzip both into one folder, and then open the RTMPDumpHelper program.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">RTMPDumpHelper will walk you through the process of establishing a proxy server that will intercept any RTMP streams (including those for Hulu and several smaller video-streaming sites) and save them as an MP4 file. Be warned, though: Setup can be somewhat finicky, and the documentation is a little technical.</p> <a href="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/rtmpdump-100053273-orig.png" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" height="454" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/rtmpdump-100053273-large.png" style="border-width:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:auto;min-height:auto;max-width:100%;float:left" width="580"></a>RTMPDumpHelper will capture media to your hard drive from your browser as you stream it, allowing you to record a copy of your favorite movies and shows for offline viewing.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> During my testing, RTMPDump never successfully attached itself to Chrome—my browser of choice—even after I tried multiple suggested solutions online. I eventually gave up and opened Firefox, which RTMPDump readily recognized.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">However, even after RTMPDump was hooked into my browser, about a third of the time the program failed to notice that I was streaming a new video from Hulu. I had to reload the page—but since it was easy to see whether the stream was being recorded in the RTMPDumpHelper window, the extra step added only a few seconds of inconvenience.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Futzing with RTMPDumpHelper can be a little frustrating, but the results are worth your trouble. Of all the methods I used, RTMPDump produced usable video the fastest—usually just a few moments after my streams finished, taking minimal processing time compared with other options. It also recorded video in a format (MP4) that was easy to transfer to my phone or tablet, or to watch later on my PC. In fact, if RTMPDump were a ubiquitous utility, it would be the best way to download streaming media, period. The problem is, most streaming sites—including Netflix, the biggest name in streaming video—don't use RTMP.</p> <h2 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Taking back Netflix</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">If downloading videos from Amazon and Hulu seems difficult, well, I'm afraid Netflix has made the process almost impossible. Several years ago you could intercept a stream directly from Netflix, à la RTMPDump, but Netflix wised up and now exerts much tighter control over your streaming data.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">In fact, the only reliable method I could find to get a copy of a Netflix stream was to record it from the screen. Plenty of programs, including free options such as <a href="http://camstudio.org/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">CamStudio</a>, will let you record both the audio and the video from your computer screen as it plays.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Recording the video yourself does come with a few caveats. First, it's a demanding task that will tax your PC's hardware. Often your recordings can contain a lot of skipped frames if you're trying to capture video at a fairly high resolution, especially on older computers that have their hands full just streaming full-screen video in the first place.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Second, the files produced when you perform screen capturing are typically<em>huge</em>. For example, before I tweaked all the settings in CamStudio, my sample videos exceeded 200MB for just 30 seconds of footage. You'll need to experiment to figure out the optimal balance of recording size and quality for you and your available storage.</p> <a href="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/audials-moviebox-100053274-orig.png" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" height="330" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/audials-moviebox-100053274-large.png" style="border-width:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:auto;min-height:auto;max-width:100%;float:left" width="580"></a>Inexpensive screen-recording programs such as Audials give you the power to record and store anything you can play on your PC screen.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> That said, such problems become easier to deal with if you upgrade from free to paid software. Although screen-capturing with <a href="http://audials.com/en/start/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">Audials</a>, a $25 program, is still a system-intensive task that leaves you with gigantic files, paying for the software unlocks a lot of settings and presets. With most streams in my tests, the procedure was as easy as entering a URL and then letting the program open a new tab to begin recording. Getting the file size to reasonable levels (less than 1GB for an hour-long program) took very little tweaking.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Screen recording has other advantages as well. Since you're merely recording the video that's playing on your screen, you can use this trick with any streaming service. I eventually managed to record a stream using Audials on all three of the major streaming services, and you could do the same thing with Twitch, YouTube, or any other online video service.</p> <h2 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Pay someone else to do it for you</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">You can save some time and hassle by automating your streaming media recording completely. <a href="http://www.playlater.tv/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">PlayLater</a> is a new service that lets you queue up your accessible streaming media and records it for you in the background. It delivers an MP4 file after the stream ends, without interrupting your other computing tasks.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Paying $20 a year, or $40 for a lifetime subscription, allows you to use the PlayLater service and search for any stream on any service to which you legally have access. For paid services such as Amazon Prime or Netflix, you'll need to enter your login information; once you do, PlayLater presents an easy-to-use interface for finding streaming video and saving it to your computer as fast as you can stream it.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">If all of that sounds too good to be true—or legal—don't worry: Thanks to a 2010 ruling that protects the<a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2034644/the-vcrs-legacy-shines-brightly-at-youtube-and-aereo.html" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">consumer's right</a> to watch "time-shifted" media (the same one that makes recording streams yourself legal), the service should be protected.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">PlayLater has positioned itself as a DVR for online streams, which should be perfectly legal. Of course, the law surrounding copyright and online media is constantly shifting, but for now PlayLater is offering a service that simply automates the legal recording and rewatching of online video that you could perform yourself.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Of course, no matter which method you choose, once your recordings are in a file format that's right for you, the world is your oyster. Your newly captured media can reside on your phone or tablet for safekeeping. Depending on which formats your mobile devices prefer, you may need to convert the file, but <a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/255322/any_video_converter.html" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">that's simple enough</a>—and you'll never again have to worry because, say, Netflix removed <em>Farscape</em> from its streaming library while you were<em> right in the middle</em> of the second season (just as a crazy example). You'll even be able to use your downloaded media with services such as <a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2020227/meet-plex-the-media-streamer-that-will-make-you-forget-netflix-and-hulu.html" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">Plex</a>, which makes watching video from Netflix or Hulu on your home-theater system way more convenient.</p> </span>

How to download streaming media and watch it anywhere, anytime

Subscribing to Hulu Plus or Netflix is a great deal—until you find yourself on a less-than-perfect Internet connection. Perversely, your str...

Read more »

How to download streaming media and watch it anywhere, anytime

<h1 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin:0px 0px 12px;line-height:1.13;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:25px;font-weight:500"><span style="line-height:1.7em;font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;font-size:15px">Subscribing to Hulu Plus or Netflix is a great deal—until you find yourself on a less-than-perfect Internet connection. Perversely, your streaming media library is most valuable in places where you can't access the Internet: Watching a movie or burning through episodes of your favorite TV show is the best way to get through a long plane trip, a car ride, or a vacation in the middle of nowhere.</span><br> </h1><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;line-height:21px"> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Luckily, you can use third-party software and a few tricks to download streaming video from Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix. Now you can watch your entertainment on your terms, even in places where your cherished Amazon Prime account is inaccessible.</p> <h2 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Bottling the Amazon Prime Instant Video stream</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">At first blush Amazon appears to offer an easy option with its downloadable<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/player" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">Unbox Player</a>, but the fine print renders Amazon's own tool almost useless for practical purposes.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Sure, you can use the Unbox Player to download movies and television shows you've rented or purchased on Amazon, but you can't use it to download the Amazon Prime Instant Video content that you can stream through your Amazon Prime subscription. The Unbox Player <em>does</em>let you stream that stuff, but streaming through Unbox isn't any different than streaming through your browser.</p> <a href="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/amazonunbox-100053271-orig.jpg" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" height="464" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/amazonunbox-100053271-large.jpg" style="border-width:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:auto;min-height:auto;max-width:100%;float:left" width="580"></a>Amazon's Unbox player is great for downloading digital copies of movies and TV shows you've purchased on Amazon, but you can't use it to save streaming Instant Video for later. If you want to do that, you'll have to turn to some unorthodox third-party alternatives.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> I rented a movie on Amazon to test whether Unbox could indeed download files for later. A half hour and several rounds of quitting out of the program and refreshing my recent purchases later, the film finally showed up in Unbox for offline viewing.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">The user experience was unpleasant, and offered no added convenience compared with watching video in my browser or through iTunes. Amazon's official solution to the offline-viewing problem is a bit of a wash. Fortunately, as I'll discuss later, some unsanctioned third-party alternatives can give you considerably more control over your streamed media.</p> <h2 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Jumping through hoops to save Hulu video</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Hulu doesn't provide an official download option. Viewers who want to record streaming movies and TV for later enjoyment should try RTMPDumpHelper, a free utility designed to download media that you're streaming via RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol, which Hulu uses). Your experience may differ on Linux, but on Windows you can simply download <a href="http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/rtmp_dump_helper.html" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">RTMPDumpHelper</a> and the<a href="http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">RTMPDump Toolkit</a>, unzip both into one folder, and then open the RTMPDumpHelper program.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">RTMPDumpHelper will walk you through the process of establishing a proxy server that will intercept any RTMP streams (including those for Hulu and several smaller video-streaming sites) and save them as an MP4 file. Be warned, though: Setup can be somewhat finicky, and the documentation is a little technical.</p> <a href="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/rtmpdump-100053273-orig.png" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" height="454" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/rtmpdump-100053273-large.png" style="border-width:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:auto;min-height:auto;max-width:100%;float:left" width="580"></a>RTMPDumpHelper will capture media to your hard drive from your browser as you stream it, allowing you to record a copy of your favorite movies and shows for offline viewing.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> During my testing, RTMPDump never successfully attached itself to Chrome—my browser of choice—even after I tried multiple suggested solutions online. I eventually gave up and opened Firefox, which RTMPDump readily recognized.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">However, even after RTMPDump was hooked into my browser, about a third of the time the program failed to notice that I was streaming a new video from Hulu. I had to reload the page—but since it was easy to see whether the stream was being recorded in the RTMPDumpHelper window, the extra step added only a few seconds of inconvenience.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Futzing with RTMPDumpHelper can be a little frustrating, but the results are worth your trouble. Of all the methods I used, RTMPDump produced usable video the fastest—usually just a few moments after my streams finished, taking minimal processing time compared with other options. It also recorded video in a format (MP4) that was easy to transfer to my phone or tablet, or to watch later on my PC. In fact, if RTMPDump were a ubiquitous utility, it would be the best way to download streaming media, period. The problem is, most streaming sites—including Netflix, the biggest name in streaming video—don't use RTMP.</p> <h2 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Taking back Netflix</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">If downloading videos from Amazon and Hulu seems difficult, well, I'm afraid Netflix has made the process almost impossible. Several years ago you could intercept a stream directly from Netflix, à la RTMPDump, but Netflix wised up and now exerts much tighter control over your streaming data.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">In fact, the only reliable method I could find to get a copy of a Netflix stream was to record it from the screen. Plenty of programs, including free options such as <a href="http://camstudio.org/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">CamStudio</a>, will let you record both the audio and the video from your computer screen as it plays.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Recording the video yourself does come with a few caveats. First, it's a demanding task that will tax your PC's hardware. Often your recordings can contain a lot of skipped frames if you're trying to capture video at a fairly high resolution, especially on older computers that have their hands full just streaming full-screen video in the first place.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Second, the files produced when you perform screen capturing are typically<em>huge</em>. For example, before I tweaked all the settings in CamStudio, my sample videos exceeded 200MB for just 30 seconds of footage. You'll need to experiment to figure out the optimal balance of recording size and quality for you and your available storage.</p> <a href="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/audials-moviebox-100053274-orig.png" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank"><img alt="" border="0" height="330" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/audials-moviebox-100053274-large.png" style="border-width:0px;vertical-align:middle;width:auto;min-height:auto;max-width:100%;float:left" width="580"></a>Inexpensive screen-recording programs such as Audials give you the power to record and store anything you can play on your PC screen.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> That said, such problems become easier to deal with if you upgrade from free to paid software. Although screen-capturing with <a href="http://audials.com/en/start/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">Audials</a>, a $25 program, is still a system-intensive task that leaves you with gigantic files, paying for the software unlocks a lot of settings and presets. With most streams in my tests, the procedure was as easy as entering a URL and then letting the program open a new tab to begin recording. Getting the file size to reasonable levels (less than 1GB for an hour-long program) took very little tweaking.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Screen recording has other advantages as well. Since you're merely recording the video that's playing on your screen, you can use this trick with any streaming service. I eventually managed to record a stream using Audials on all three of the major streaming services, and you could do the same thing with Twitch, YouTube, or any other online video service.</p> <h2 style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Pay someone else to do it for you</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">You can save some time and hassle by automating your streaming media recording completely. <a href="http://www.playlater.tv/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">PlayLater</a> is a new service that lets you queue up your accessible streaming media and records it for you in the background. It delivers an MP4 file after the stream ends, without interrupting your other computing tasks.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Paying $20 a year, or $40 for a lifetime subscription, allows you to use the PlayLater service and search for any stream on any service to which you legally have access. For paid services such as Amazon Prime or Netflix, you'll need to enter your login information; once you do, PlayLater presents an easy-to-use interface for finding streaming video and saving it to your computer as fast as you can stream it.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">If all of that sounds too good to be true—or legal—don't worry: Thanks to a 2010 ruling that protects the<a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2034644/the-vcrs-legacy-shines-brightly-at-youtube-and-aereo.html" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">consumer's right</a> to watch "time-shifted" media (the same one that makes recording streams yourself legal), the service should be protected.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">PlayLater has positioned itself as a DVR for online streams, which should be perfectly legal. Of course, the law surrounding copyright and online media is constantly shifting, but for now PlayLater is offering a service that simply automates the legal recording and rewatching of online video that you could perform yourself.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Of course, no matter which method you choose, once your recordings are in a file format that's right for you, the world is your oyster. Your newly captured media can reside on your phone or tablet for safekeeping. Depending on which formats your mobile devices prefer, you may need to convert the file, but <a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/255322/any_video_converter.html" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">that's simple enough</a>—and you'll never again have to worry because, say, Netflix removed <em>Farscape</em> from its streaming library while you were<em> right in the middle</em> of the second season (just as a crazy example). You'll even be able to use your downloaded media with services such as <a href="http://www.techhive.com/article/2020227/meet-plex-the-media-streamer-that-will-make-you-forget-netflix-and-hulu.html" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)" target="_blank">Plex</a>, which makes watching video from Netflix or Hulu on your home-theater system way more convenient.</p> </span>

How to download streaming media and watch it anywhere, anytime

Subscribing to Hulu Plus or Netflix is a great deal—until you find yourself on a less-than-perfect Internet connection. Perversely, your str...

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How to get photos off of your Android phone

<h1 itemprop="name" style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin:0px 0px 12px;line-height:1.13;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:25px;font-weight:500"><span style="line-height:1.7em;font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px">If you're anything like me, you probably have hundreds—if not thousands—of photos on your phone. Getting those photos off your phone isn't always entirely obvious, but you have a number of options at your disposal.</span><br> </h1><span itemprop="articleBody description text" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px;line-height:22px"><h2 style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em"> Using USB</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">The traditional approach to getting stuff off your phone is to plug it into your computer using a USB cable.</p><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> <strong style>On Windows: </strong>Windows treats Android phones like any other camera, so when you plug your phone into your computer, Windows will ask you what to do, just as it would if you plugged in your digital camera. You can peruse the actual files in Windows Explorer, have Windows Explorer import all the photos for you, or use another program to import the photos, like the Windows 8 Photo Viewer app.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"><strong style>On OS X:  </strong>If you've got a Mac, getting photos off your Android phone requires Google's free <a href="http://www.android.com/filetransfer/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">Android File Transfer app</a>, a very basic file browser app that runs on Mac OS X 10.5 or later, and works with Android phones and tablets running Android 3.0 Honeycomb or later. Once you install the app, it will automatically open whenever you attach an Android phone or tablet to your computer.</p> <img alt="" border="0" height="475" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/android_file_transfer-100053563-large.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto; height: auto; max-width: 100%; float: left;" width="580">Mac users need to rely on the Android File Transfer app.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Your photos will be in one of two areas: The Pictures folder or the DCIM folder. Photos you took with your phone will likely be in your DCIM folder, while other photos or images (like screenshots) you keep on your phone will likely be in the Pictures folder. To save photos you took with your phone's camera, double-click the DCIM folder. You may see another folder within that named "Camera." Open this folder, and you should be able to get at your photos.</p> <h2 style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Email yourself</h2><img alt="" border="0" height="533" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/email_yourself-100053559-medium.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto; height: auto; max-width: 100%; float: left;" width="300">Sometimes, it's just easier to email yourself.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Android makes it easy to email photos to yourself. It's not really an ideal option if you have more than a few photos you want to move off your phone, but it's there if you need it.</p><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Open the Gallery app, and navigate to the album containing the photo (or photos) you want to share. Tap the three dots in the upper right corner, and then tap Select Item from the menu that appears.</p><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Select the photos you want to send to your computer, then tap the email button in the toolbar at the top of the screen—it looks like an envelope with a card sticking out of it. If the email button doesn't appear in the toolbar, tap the share button—it looks like a sideways V—and select Gmail from the menu. You'll get a "compose" window where you can enter your email address then send your images to yourself.</p> <h2 style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Google Drive</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">The Gallery app also lets you upload your photos to your Google Drive, so you can get at them from anywhere. If you install the Google Drive app on your Mac or PC, you can have your photos and other files automatically sync to your computer.</p> <img alt="" border="0" height="477" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/gdrive-100053557-large.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto; height: auto; max-width: 100%; float: left;" width="580">Upload your photos to Google Drive and get at them from anywhere.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> To upload them to Google Drive, select the photos you want to upload, then tap the share button. From the menu, tap "See all," then select Drive from the list. It'll ask you to give the photo a title and to confirm which account you want to upload to, and where you want to put it on your drive. If it all looks fine, tap OK, and it will go ahead and upload your photos.</p> <h2 style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Dropbox and other online storage services</h2><img alt="" border="0" height="533" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/share_menu-100053560-medium.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto; height: auto; max-width: 100%; float: left;" width="300">Once you install the Dropbox app on your phone, you can add photos to your Dropbox from within the Gallery app.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Dropbox is another good option for getting photos off of your phone: Install the Dropbox client on all your computers and devices, and it will sync files in your Dropbox to everything. You can pick and choose the photos you want to upload by installing the <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dropbox.android" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">free Dropbox app for Android</a>, which is useful if you want to pick and choose which photos you want to get off your phone.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Once you install the Dropbox app, you can upload your photos to Dropbox directly from Android's Gallery app. To do so, select the photos you want to upload, tap the sideways-V-shaped share button, tap "See all" from the menu, then tap Add to Dropbox. From there, you can choose where on your Dropbox you want to stick your photos. Once you're ready to upload your photos, tap Add, and Dropbox will work its magic. Your photos should then appear on all your devices with Dropbox installed.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Camera Upload, another Dropbox feature, lets you automatically upload your photos from your phone directly to Dropbox, so you don't have to individually select then upload them. You can choose to turn this feature on when you first install the Dropbox app on your phone, or from the Dropbox app's settings (tap the three dots in the upper right corner in the Dropbox app, then select Settings from the menu).</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Dropbox is arguably the most ubiquitous online storage and syncing service out there, but it's hardly the only one. Other options include <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.box.android" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">Box.net</a><strong style>, </strong><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.clouddrive.photos" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">Amazon Cloud Drive</a>, and Microsoft <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.skydrive" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">SkyDrive</a>. All of these apps do the same basic thing, though each app works a little differently.</p> </span>

How to get photos off of your Android phone

If you're anything like me, you probably have hundreds—if not thousands—of photos on your phone. Getting those photos off your phone isn...

Read more »

How to get photos off of your Android phone

<h1 itemprop="name" style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin:0px 0px 12px;line-height:1.13;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:25px;font-weight:500"><span style="line-height:1.7em;font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px">If you're anything like me, you probably have hundreds—if not thousands—of photos on your phone. Getting those photos off your phone isn't always entirely obvious, but you have a number of options at your disposal.</span><br> </h1><span itemprop="articleBody description text" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px;line-height:22px"><h2 style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em"> Using USB</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">The traditional approach to getting stuff off your phone is to plug it into your computer using a USB cable.</p><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> <strong style>On Windows: </strong>Windows treats Android phones like any other camera, so when you plug your phone into your computer, Windows will ask you what to do, just as it would if you plugged in your digital camera. You can peruse the actual files in Windows Explorer, have Windows Explorer import all the photos for you, or use another program to import the photos, like the Windows 8 Photo Viewer app.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"><strong style>On OS X:  </strong>If you've got a Mac, getting photos off your Android phone requires Google's free <a href="http://www.android.com/filetransfer/" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">Android File Transfer app</a>, a very basic file browser app that runs on Mac OS X 10.5 or later, and works with Android phones and tablets running Android 3.0 Honeycomb or later. Once you install the app, it will automatically open whenever you attach an Android phone or tablet to your computer.</p> <img alt="" border="0" height="475" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/android_file_transfer-100053563-large.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto; height: auto; max-width: 100%; float: left;" width="580">Mac users need to rely on the Android File Transfer app.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Your photos will be in one of two areas: The Pictures folder or the DCIM folder. Photos you took with your phone will likely be in your DCIM folder, while other photos or images (like screenshots) you keep on your phone will likely be in the Pictures folder. To save photos you took with your phone's camera, double-click the DCIM folder. You may see another folder within that named "Camera." Open this folder, and you should be able to get at your photos.</p> <h2 style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Email yourself</h2><img alt="" border="0" height="533" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/email_yourself-100053559-medium.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto; height: auto; max-width: 100%; float: left;" width="300">Sometimes, it's just easier to email yourself.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Android makes it easy to email photos to yourself. It's not really an ideal option if you have more than a few photos you want to move off your phone, but it's there if you need it.</p><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Open the Gallery app, and navigate to the album containing the photo (or photos) you want to share. Tap the three dots in the upper right corner, and then tap Select Item from the menu that appears.</p><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Select the photos you want to send to your computer, then tap the email button in the toolbar at the top of the screen—it looks like an envelope with a card sticking out of it. If the email button doesn't appear in the toolbar, tap the share button—it looks like a sideways V—and select Gmail from the menu. You'll get a "compose" window where you can enter your email address then send your images to yourself.</p> <h2 style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Google Drive</h2><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">The Gallery app also lets you upload your photos to your Google Drive, so you can get at them from anywhere. If you install the Google Drive app on your Mac or PC, you can have your photos and other files automatically sync to your computer.</p> <img alt="" border="0" height="477" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/gdrive-100053557-large.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto; height: auto; max-width: 100%; float: left;" width="580">Upload your photos to Google Drive and get at them from anywhere.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> To upload them to Google Drive, select the photos you want to upload, then tap the share button. From the menu, tap "See all," then select Drive from the list. It'll ask you to give the photo a title and to confirm which account you want to upload to, and where you want to put it on your drive. If it all looks fine, tap OK, and it will go ahead and upload your photos.</p> <h2 style="font-family:ff-enzo-web,sans-serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:0.25em">Dropbox and other online storage services</h2><img alt="" border="0" height="533" src="http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/09/share_menu-100053560-medium.png" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: auto; height: auto; max-width: 100%; float: left;" width="300">Once you install the Dropbox app on your phone, you can add photos to your Dropbox from within the Gallery app.<p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> Dropbox is another good option for getting photos off of your phone: Install the Dropbox client on all your computers and devices, and it will sync files in your Dropbox to everything. You can pick and choose the photos you want to upload by installing the <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dropbox.android" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">free Dropbox app for Android</a>, which is useful if you want to pick and choose which photos you want to get off your phone.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Once you install the Dropbox app, you can upload your photos to Dropbox directly from Android's Gallery app. To do so, select the photos you want to upload, tap the sideways-V-shaped share button, tap "See all" from the menu, then tap Add to Dropbox. From there, you can choose where on your Dropbox you want to stick your photos. Once you're ready to upload your photos, tap Add, and Dropbox will work its magic. Your photos should then appear on all your devices with Dropbox installed.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Camera Upload, another Dropbox feature, lets you automatically upload your photos from your phone directly to Dropbox, so you don't have to individually select then upload them. You can choose to turn this feature on when you first install the Dropbox app on your phone, or from the Dropbox app's settings (tap the three dots in the upper right corner in the Dropbox app, then select Settings from the menu).</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Dropbox is arguably the most ubiquitous online storage and syncing service out there, but it's hardly the only one. Other options include <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.box.android" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">Box.net</a><strong style>, </strong><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.clouddrive.photos" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">Amazon Cloud Drive</a>, and Microsoft <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.skydrive" style="color:rgb(37,167,215)">SkyDrive</a>. All of these apps do the same basic thing, though each app works a little differently.</p> </span>

How to get photos off of your Android phone

If you're anything like me, you probably have hundreds—if not thousands—of photos on your phone. Getting those photos off your phone isn...

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My laptop just hit the floor. You won't believe what happened

<h1 itemprop="name" style="font-family:facitweb,sans-serif;margin:0px 0px 12px;line-height:1.13;color:rgb(34,34,34);font-size:25px;font-weight:500"><span style="line-height:1.7em;font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;font-size:15px">Out of all the computing hassles you can face, nothing quite compares to dropping your laptop on a hard floor. Because, typically, that's the end of your laptop.</span></h1> <span itemprop="articleBody description text" style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Arial,sans-serif;line-height:21px"><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Or maybe not.</p><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em"> What happened was this: I had my backpack on my kitchen table (it's a "gathering table," and therefore higher than most). I went to slip my laptop into the zippered side pocket as I've done a hundred times, but just at that moment, something distracted me.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Milliseconds later, I heard a terrible<em style>thunk</em>. Not realizing I'd missed the pocket, I'd released my grip on the machine, and it went tumbling to the floor. Landed right on its corner, too.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">I'm sure you can guess the rest: the casing cracked, the screen splintered. My laptop lay broken, bleeding. Oh, the humanity. I envisioned a difficult data-extraction process and an expensive visit to Amazon or my local computer store for a replacment system.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Except none of that actually happened. When I picked up the unit, I was shocked to discover it looked fine. Like, 100-percent fine. Not a nick or ding or anything on it. And it booted right up, no worse for the wear.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Let me pause right here to note that when it comes to buying computer gear, I'm as cheap as they come. I typically buy the least-expensive hardware I can find, my rationale being that it's usually just as good as the pricier stuff, at least for my needs.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">But earlier this year I found a great deal on a Samsung Series 9 ultrabook, one that was too good to pass up. It had exactly the features I wanted--thin, lightweight design, SSD storage, backlit keyboard, etc.--so I splurged.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">What never entered my mind was the value of an aluminum chassis, which is what enabled the system to survive its fall. So tough is the Series 9, in fact, that it <em style>dented the floor</em>. My Pergo-covered kitchen floor, which has withstood every form of punishment two children can exact, showed a small divot where the laptop landed.</p> <p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">Ultrabook 1, floor 0.</p><p style="line-height:1.7em;margin:0px 0px 0.7em">The moral of the story is this: it may cost extra, but a metal laptop is much better at withstanding sudden bursts of gravity than a plastic one. That's something to consider the next time you go shopping.</p> </span>

My laptop just hit the floor. You won't believe what happened

Out of all the computing hassles you can face, nothing quite compares to dropping your laptop on a hard floor. Because, typically, that'...

Read more »