icons

I am always hitting the Safari icon when I mean to open Mail, and vice versa; I blame the icons' similar blue hue. I set out to change one of these icons, but without the effort required to jailbreak my iPhone. What I found was a free PC/Mac app called iPhone Explorer and the realization that I would have to live with the blue Safari and Mail icons.

Using iPhone Explorer, you can swap in new icons for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch apps, but only for third-party apps. Native apps like Safari and Mail can't be … Read more

Every now and then we find amusing details in OS X that Apple's programmers have included in the OS. One that we discussed a while ago was the letter to someone named "Kate" from "John Appleseed" that praising the Apple community and Mac users that is in the TextEdit icon, but there are others in other locations of the OS. Take a look at the following text to see if you can locate it somewhere in OS X:

A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 00:28:C0011E36 in VXD VMMM(01) . 00010E36. The current … Read more

The PlayBook comes with some preset app drawers to help organize apps. While the drawers make for a great way to categorize apps, arranging the apps to fit your liking is something you will probably want to do. This simple guide will walk you through rearranging and organizing apps on your PlayBook, as well as show you how to place apps of your choosing in the Favorites drawer.

… Read more

The U.S. government is warning critical-infrastructure operators of a serious hole in software used in oil and gas; water; electric utilities; and manufacturing plants around the world.

The stack overflow vulnerability affects the Genesis32 supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and BizViz software sold by ICONICS, according to an advisory (PDF) released yesterday by the Department of Homeland Security's ICS-CERT (Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team). ICONICS has issued a patch to close the hole, which could allow an attacker to remotely execute code and take control of the computer.

Meanwhile, an exploit targeting the vulnerability was … Read more

I'm pretty sure icon badges (the little red numbers that appear in the corners of some apps) have been around since iPhone Day One, and yet Apple has never seen fit to add one to its Weather app. Which is strange, seeing as that would give you a convenient at-a-glance outdoor temperature reading.

As always, third-party developers to the rescue. New weather app Fahrenheit (also available as Celsius) works a lot like the countless other weather apps currently available, but with one tiny--yet major--difference: it displays the current temperature as an icon badge.

In other words, now you can … Read more

Keeping items organized within a Finder window is obviously useful and is a reason why Apple has made the Finder simple and straightforward with options to show items in lists, columns, and snapped to a grid in icon views. While these various views should keep items so you can quickly access them, sometimes items may jump around and change locations.

When this happens, it usually is because of a combination of view settings. If you show items in any view, you have the option to arrange or sort them by various file attributes. The default is to use the file … Read more

The Finder's large and detailed icons are appealing and help give OS X a rich and colorful experience. However, every now and then there can be issues with them that result in either an odd appearance or odd behavior. One of these we covered in the past was blurry or pixelated icons, but another might be missing icons or duplicate uses of the same icon.

If this problem happens, there are a few approaches you can try to fix the issue:

Relaunch the Finder

The first step is to relaunch the Finder. You can do this by logging out … Read more

Here's a neat add-on for Firefox. Search Everywhere doesn't actually search everywhere; it only searches directly linked Web pages. This free extension creates a Google Custom Search Engine based on pages linked to the current page. When you enter a search term, Search Everywhere queries only those linked sites. This lets you quickly zero in on content, find hidden gems of information buried deep in large sites, and browse similar sites for related interests or content.

Search Everywhere placed its icon in the Firefox status bar in our browser window's lower right corner. Clicking this icon opened … Read more

Iconic Motors made a lot of waves when it debuted its 800-hp bespoke roadster in 2008. Since then, the custom car has been refined, re-engineered, and rebadged, now officially bearing the name of the 60s-era AC Cobras that it strongly resembles.

The 2012 Iconic AC Roadster spec changers are slight but impressive: it offers increased output of 825-hp from its 6.8-liter V8 aluminum engine. The trim roadster put on a few pounds and now weighs 2,400 lbs., but it also dropped a second of its 0-60 time and is now below 3 seconds. Not bad for two year'… Read more