crash

Ask app developers and most will tell you that good user reviews and high ratings are the keys to selling apps. I'm not going to get into which reviews are real or written by friends. Nor am I going to talk about those nefarious instances where one app maker puts a negative review on a competing app (yes, it happens). But suffice to say the more positive reviews the better, and negative reviews that bring an overall rating down hurt. Bad.

Which brings me to people who post one-star ratings on apps because they simply don't work or … Read more

An emphasis on speed and a lack of security makes automated trading in financial markets ripe for exploitation and fraud, a security researcher warned today.

Most stock trades in the U.S. and many around the world in general are now made by data-crunching computers that buy and sell stocks in microseconds--something that used to take human traders minutes to do. With these algorithm-based, high-frequency trades a fraction of second can be worth millions of dollars for an investor. (See CBS 60 Minutes report on this.)

In the push for greater speed and thus higher profits, security is sacrificed, James … Read more

A number of early adopters of the OS X 10.7 Lion upgrade are running into a fairly severe bug. What happens is that Macs will crash with a black screen, which requires a forced shutdown. Some systems may show kernel panic messages on-screen, but the majority of them just have a black screen. The issue seems to happen specifically when certain graphics events are happening such as manipulating images in applications, or triggering interface elements when graphics events are occurring. In addition, it happens when systems are woken from sleep.

Most systems that appear to be affected are 2010 … Read more

Imagine a situation where a kid chases a ball into a street. Even for drivers with lightning-sharp reflexes, there might not be enough braking distance to avoid impact. But Toyota's next-generation crash avoidance technology may be able to solve that problem by steering the vehicle out of harm's way.

Designed in part to reduce pedestrian fatalities, Toyota's Pre-Collision System (PCS) with collision-avoidance assist uses stereo camera and millimeter-wave radars installed around the vehicle to identify objects in its path. If the system calculates that there isn't enough time to brake and that a crash with an … Read more

Many cars are equipped with crash avoidance technology, but the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) says the Volvo's City Safety is the most effective at reducing low speed crashes.

By examining property damage liability claims, the IIHS determined drivers of Volvo XC60s outfitted with City Safety file 27 percent fewer at-fault driver claims than owners of comparable midsize SUVs without that technology. That means that XC60 owners are less likely to be involved in low-speed crashes in which they are at fault, namely rear-ending the car in front of them in traffic.

City Safety is standard feature on … Read more

There have been a few prominent issues following the update to OS X 10.6.8, though a couple of them have to do with third-party application support. One that has caused a number of users to have kernel panics is the tool Hands Off, which is a personal security program. Apparently the kernel extension for version 1.3 of the program is the culprit, and should be removed.

To do this, boot the system to Safe Mode and then locate the file "handsOff.kext" in the /Suystem/Library/Extensions/ folder. Move it out or delete it, and … Read more

Have you ever forgotten to turn your cell phone off during a flight? Did you survive?

The question might seem slightly churlish, but the airline industry would like you to know that your little electronic devices--yes, just one of them--can really, truly, seriously mess with the aircraft's systems.

ABC News managed to get hold of a report by the International Air Transport Association that makes for very interesting reading. For it seems to link up to 75 incidents on planes with interference from cell phones or other electronic devices.

Rational minds will, no doubt, judge the evidence through their … Read more

Crashes and their potential to harm productivity and personal data are the bane of many computer users, but the ability to diagnose and prevent them has arrived in the latest version of Soluto (download), available exclusively today from CNET Download.com. Soluto 1.12.113 beta sees two major new features, crash protection and browser add-on management, form a tripartite attack on problematic computer performance with the program's original feature, boot time management.

Called "Heal Crashes" within the program's main interface, the crash prevention feature takes information that Windows logs but ignores, and uses it to … Read more

Soluto makes a nice Windows system optimizer, which the team over at Download.com has secured early access to. I've found it useful and encourage you to check it out. But Soluto also might have an interesting angle on the business of PC utility software.

The latest version of the app features a Windows crash logging and advice component. When Soluto is running, and your PC or an app on your PCcrashes, Soluto gathers system data surrounding the crash and tries to determine what caused the problem. This is what Windows should do itself but doesn't.

Microsoft does actually collects a trove of crash data and makes it available to developers, but according to Soluto CEO Tomer Dvir, the data is not parsed to make analyzing it cost-effective for developers.

Soluto does the analysis, and Dvir says the company can make determinations about app and hardware reliability that Microsoft wouldn't release even if it had the data. "We can tell which machines are best for hardcore Photoshop users," Dvir says. Or which laptops are the crashiest after sleep/wake cycles. Or which software combinations system vendors should never install. Also, if certain apps cause undesirable behavior that's short of a crash, Soluto can help track it down. Say your computer suffers from occasional five-second hangs. "We know why," says Dvir.

The project to collect these crash signatures is called the PC Genome, and Soluto could probably make it into a revenue stream by selling it to hardware and software vendors, but Dvir tells me that the main business model will be selling professional, versions the free single-user Soluto app. (Pro versions will offer capabilities to manage multiple machines--possibly very useful for the "family CIO" as well as in business.)

That's a standard way to make money from a product like this. Soluto also plans to give the crash data away to vendors, so they can make more reliable products. I talked to folks from Soluto about this idea back in November, at which time the plan was to sell this information to the hardware and software companies. The Soluto execs of course know their business better than I do, but this still seems like a solid revenue stream. For the business' sake, I'd at least like to see a paid analysis service for manufacturers on top of a free version of the PC Genome data Soluto is going to make available.

As of the beginning of this year, Soluto had reportedly recorded data from twelve million blue-screen crashes. There should be more than one way to turn that frustration into revenue. … Read more