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'Copyright Alert System' rolls out to catch illegal downloaders

The "Copyright Alert System," aka "six strikes," kicked off today with the cooperation of five major Internet service providers. The goal of the new campaign is to curb copyright infringement by going after consumers rather than pirates.

While the CAS seems like something that would raise the hackles of privacy and civil liberty groups, the plan isn't to arrest, sue, or fine people downloading illegal movies, games, or music. Instead, the group managing the program -- the Center for Copyright Information -- says its objective is to "educate" such downloaders that they are … Read more

Apple settles lawsuit over in-app purchases by kids

Apple has settled a lawsuit over the unauthorized use of in-app purchase in games and apps sold through the App Store.

As part of a preliminary deal that has yet to be finalized by a U.S. district court judge, Apple will pay those eligible class members a $5 iTunes gift card. Users that spent more than $30 can choose to get a cash refund, as long as they meet a handful of requirements, including filling out a form that details what apps the charges originated from.

The 2011 suit stemmed from parents who complained that it was far too … Read more

Shake that app with Spotify apps

Spotify has been around for a good year and hasn't changed much; it's still one of our favorite applications for music on-demand and music library management. Taking cues from iTunes, Spotify integrates your existing music libraries with its own giant catalog of songs from artists all over the world. Where it trumps iTunes is that all the music is pretty much available to stream for free, with offline functionality for an addition ten bucks a month. In their in-app advertisements, claimss like "Piracy is overrated" are quite justified; it's seriously one of the most easiest … Read more

Download FLV videos with Video Download Toolbar

There are any number of programs now that can download FLV files from YouTube and other Flash videos sites. Video Download Toolbar is a straightforward utility that makes downloading a snap. It works so quickly and with so little hassle that at first we weren't sure that it was working at all. But opening the downloaded files revealed that Video Download Toolbar had done everything it promised

One great thing about this program is that it works with multiple browsers; we tried it with both Firefox and Internet Explorer, and in both cases it worked fine. Video Download Toolbar … Read more

Temple Run 2 downloaded 20M times in first four days

Temple Run 2 is off to a running start this weekend, logging more than 20 million downloads in its first four days of availability on Apple's App Store.

The sequel to the popular endless action video game became the top free app just eight hours after its release, according to developer Imangi Studios. The iOS game, in which runners try to escape a giant, evil monkey, is also the No. 3 top-grossing app, thanks to in-app purchases that boost characters' skills and improve their chances of running a personal best distance. … Read more

How to download, navigate your Twitter archive

Last month Twitter announced it was officially rolling out its Twitter archive feature to users. The feature, one Twitter users have been asking for, allows you to browse every tweet you've ever sent. Twitter is rolling out the archive feature slowly, with the full rollout expected to take months to reach all users across all supported languages.

Here's what you'll need to do:

To see if your account has the archive feature enabled, log into your account and navigate to Settings. Scroll down the bottom of the page. If your account is one of the lucky few, … Read more

Get your photos with Facebook Album Downloader

Most Facebook users feature a ton of photos on their profile. Downloading them one by one to your gadget is time-consuming and difficult. Facebook Album Downloader will do it for you, but it takes almost as long to make it work.

Obviously, the app requires you to log in through Facebook to work properly. However, Facebook Album Downloader crashes and freezes almost every time you try to log in. Once you finally get it working, you can download all of your albums and tagged photos with the touch of a button. You can even download all of a friend's … Read more

Download your Picasa albums to your Android device with Picasa Downloader

Google's Picasa makes it easy to store, share, and edit your photos and other images. While it's great to be able to access your Picasa images on the go, you probably don't want to store all your albums on your smartphone. Picasa Downloader by Andrei Markovits is a free app that makes it quick and easy to download your Picasa albums so that you can access them offline or when you need them. Even large albums download quickly -- depending on your connection speed, that is! With a 4G or Wi-Fi signal, your Picasa albums download so … Read more

Spotify kills new download purchases in Europe

Spotify is no longer allowing new download purchases through its service in Europe.

The company posted an FAQ to its U.K. site recently, saying that it is "no longer supporting new download purchases on Spotify." The music service didn't provide further details, but noted that users can still use downloads that were already purchased. Music that was already downloaded but not yet used is not affected by the change.

In a statement to CNET, a Spotify spokesperson confirmed it stopped the purchase option, but said that "we're not ruling out their return." Spotify … Read more

Record iOS, Android app downloads tallied in last week of 2012

The last week of 2012 saw a significant surge in the number of apps downloaded by iOS and Android users, according to new data from research firm Flurry Analytics.

From December 25 through December 31, 1.76 billion applications were downloaded by iOS and Android users, up 65 percent compared with the weekly average of 1.07 billion between December 4 and December 17. On Christmas Day alone, 328 million applications were downloaded across iOS and Android.

Flurry's data was taken from analysis it performed on more than 260,000 applications available on iOS and Android. The company claims … Read more