donadony writes “Oracle announced the release of VirtualBox 4.3; this is a major release that comes with important new features, devices support and improvements. According to the announcement, ‘Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.3 adds a unique virtual multi-touch interface to support touch-based operating systems, and other new virtual devices and utilities, including webcam devices and a session recording facility. This release also builds on previous releases with support for the latest Microsoft, Apple, Linux and Oracle Solaris operating systems, new virtual devices, and improved networking functionality.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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VirtualBox 4.3 Comes With New Multi-Touch Support, Virtual Cam and More
By default, a lot of us just buy music from iTunes because it’s cheap and easy. However, Deal News recently took a look at the numbers, and it turns out that Amazon is cheaper than iTunes almost 80% of the time. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes “Using a Lego Mindstorms set, a Mac, and optical character recognition, Austrian professor Peter Purgathofer created a makeshift ebook copier. From the article: ‘It’s sort of a combination of high tech meets low. The scanning is done by way of the Mac’s iSight camera. The Mindstorms set does two things: Hits the page-advance button on the Kindle (it appears to be an older model, like the one in the picture above), then mashes the space bar on the Mac, causing it to take a picture.’ Purgathofer calls the creation a ‘reflection on the loss of long established rights.’ Check out the Vimeo video for a demonstration.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
mikejuk writes “Is it possible that we have been wasting our time typing programs. Could voice recognition, with a little help from an invented spoken language, be the solution we didn’t know we needed? About two years ago Tavis Rudd, developed a bad case of RSI caused by typing lots of code using Emacs. It was so severe that he couldn’t code. As he puts it: ‘Desperate, I tried voice recognition’. The Dragon Naturally Speaking system used by Rudd supported standard language quite well, but it wasn’t adapted to program editing commands. The solution was to use a Python speech extension, DragonFly, to program custom commands. OK, so far so good, but … the commands weren’t quite what you might have expected. Instead of English words for commands he used short vocalizations — you have to hear it to believe it. Now programming sounds like a conversation with R2D2. The advantage is that it is faster and the recognition is easier — it also sounds very cool and very techie. it is claimed that the system is faster than typing. So much so that it is still in use after the RSI cleared up.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
BREAKING: Effective 5:00 PM ET, Time Warner Cable has dropped CBS in NYC, Los Angeles, Dallas and several other markets. $TWC $CBS — CNBC (@CNBC) August 2, 2013 Read more… 
