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Three U.S. senators are asking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to investigate recent reports that Internet-monitoring gear made by two California-based companies has found its way to Syria.

In a letter (PDF) made public today, the senators ask Clinton to investigate reports that devices made by NetApp and Blue Coat Systems were sold to Syria in a possible violation of U.S. law. The companies are both publicly traded and located in Sunnyvale, Calif., about an hour's drive south of San Francisco.

"We are deeply concerned about the reported sale of Internet monitoring and censorship technology to … Read more

Big Lens is an image-editing app with a unique interface for adding effects and manipulating focus in your images. You start by snapping a picture or importing one from your photo library, then use touch-screen controls to set the aperture, change periphery blur levels, and adjust background light to create a bokeh effect. What's interesting about the app is that you have the ability to draw where you want focus or blur effects.

You start by drawing over the part of the image you want in focus, then hitting the arrow in the upper right to apply the effect. … Read more

PhotoToaster is an image editor with tons of preset effects and custom options to give your photos a stylized look. To "toast" a photo you can either take a new picture with your iPhone camera or choose an image from your photo library. Buttons across the bottom of the interface let you experiment with the different effects.

With PhotoToaster, you can use one of several global effects for a photo or use them as a starting point--this app lets you customize the effects to your liking using onscreen sliders. Global effects include retro looks, black and white effects, … Read more

Picfx lets you play around with 47 different effects and 13 different styles with which to tweak your images, and adds some extras not found in other apps of this type. As with most image manipulation apps, you can snap a fresh photo with your iPhone camera or import a picture from your photo library. Across the bottom of the screen are icons of leather-bound books, each of which represents a bunch of effects. The categories are broken up into Grunge, Classics, Textures, Light, Space, and Frames. Once you've selected a photo, the layout makes it easy to pick … Read more

Now that people have had some time with their iPhone 4S, I'm sure many have had plenty of time to take pictures using the upgraded 8-megapixel camera. On it's own, the iPhone 4S takes great shots, but what if you want something more?

This week's iOS app collection is all about adding effects to your images. The first lets you flip through numerous effects and stack them for amazing results. The second offers tons of premade effects, but also gives you the option to adjust everything to your liking. The third app lets you play with the focused area of your image to produce visually unique images.… Read more

The bottom line: Following a banner year in 2011, the new F-Secure Internet Security 2012 doesn't introduce many new changes, but it does maintain many of the suite's high performance marks on both system impact and security.

Review: The Finnish security firm F-Secure gains a large percentage of its business from corporate accounts and platform operators, but that doesn't mean that it treats its consumer security suites as a ginger-haired child of indeterminate parentage and poor temperament. F-Secure Internet Security 2012 focuses on keeping its security ahead of the curve, along with some ease-of-use improvements. However, as … Read more

The bottom line: The new Kaspersky Anti-Virus for 2012 introduces a dual cloud-and-local security system bundled under an overhauled interface that's both easy to use and familiar. The suite's scans aren't the fastest, but it definitely will protect you.

Review: Kaspersky Anti-Virus continues to provide users with a high level of protection that includes security tools not offered by many competitors. The 2012 version won't change the face of personal computer security, although this particular package of security options has attracted enough devotees to make it a best-selling program, both in and out of the security … Read more

A reader named Eddy contacted me the other day to ask how to block mail from specific people in Mozilla Thunderbird. Eddy also wants to be notified when mail comes from certain addresses.

While I am familiar with how to create rules in Microsoft Outlook to block senders and receive notifications when mail arrives from a particular person or address, I had never tried to do the same in Thunderbird. It turns out Thunderbird's filters make it easy to automatically block mail from a person or address, but there's no equivalent in Thunderbird to Outlook's ability to … Read more

In an unsurprising but still shocking move, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs resigns as CEO but remains with the company as chairman. Tim Cook is promoted from chief operating officer to chief executive officer.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded: