I’m not a happy camper today as someone hacked my facebook.  Sure, I’m to blame as I totally forgot I set up a weak password for it.  But to make matters more interesting, msnbc.com reports the collection and publishing of 100 million facebook user’s information.  I sure hope you set your privacy options, because if you didn’t, even if you switched privacy settings now, people may still have any information that you published beforehand.  To make matters more interesting, you can now be found if any of your friends were searchable.  Let’s make this easy.  If you don’t want people to know, don’t put it on facebook.  Consider facebook a public billboard.  I’ve seen people post status updates of them going on vacation.  Is this really a wise idea?  Hmm…somebody’s not home…oh, did they publish their address…reminds me of the crooks from Home Alone and how easy they would have pulled off their heists if it weren’t for a kid named Kevin.  Be safe and be smart – try to limit the information that you put on facebook and remember, information is power that can certainly come back to bite you.

When I first heard of SplashData, they were known as one of the top developers for PalmOS.  Back then, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile pretty well ruled our phones, and SplashData jumped on their band wagon.  Since that time, SplashData has continued branching out, becoming almost the king of all mobile media, with apps on eight different mobile platforms.  Their library includes everything from PalmOS all the way through the iPad and iPhone 4.  Their latest offering sees the PalmOS classic SplashMoney making its way to the iPad, with all new graphics and features.  Read on for the full press release.

SplashData has released an iPad version of SplashMoney, the company’s personal finance manager which has been successful on such major mobile platforms as iPhone, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and BlackBerry. With SplashMoney, iPad users will be able to connect to their online banks from their iPad or desktop computers and download transactions directly into SplashMoney. It can be used to create budgets and then track and analyze spending with customizable reports and charts. They can also synchronize their iPad with their Windows or Mac desktop computer to stay on top of your finances whether they’re at home, on the road, or in the office.

Key features of SplashMoney include:
* Wireless synchronization with almost any online bank account
* Support for most account types: checking, savings, credit card, cash, asset, liability, money market and line of credit
* Secure password protection using Blowfish encryption
* Auto-fill and memorized transactions, which help speed-up and simplify data entry
* Account statement reconciliation
* Multiple currency support with live Currency updates

SplashMoney 4.8 for iPad is $4.99 USD and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Finance category. The Mac or Windows companion desktop software for SplashMoney is available at SplashData online for $19.95 (USD). A free 30-day trial version of the desktop companion app is available.

Our friends from Backflip Studios are back again with another one of their fantastic new twists on an old genre.  In this one, all you need to do is hit the target with the ball.  Sounds easy enough.  The ball will drop in front of a city wall, possibly already tagged by graffiti. 

Now, by default, the ball will just drop straight down the screen.  You need to use your spray can to  draw new graffiti lines which will cause the ball to bounce or roll toward the goal.  Be careful, though, just when you think you have gotten the hang of things, the next level will add new obstacles blocking your path.  You will need to find a way to guide the ball around all of the obstacles and into the goal before time runs out.

Yeah, you heard that right.  It is not enough to simply find the goal.  Each level comes complete with a timer.  Your score for each level is based on how much time remains on the clock when you reach the goal.  In order to help you, many levels include time bonuses on the screen.  Touch one with the ball to add time to the clock.  Watch out, though, because some of these bonuses will be out of your way, and could add more time than they save. 

Each group of levels are organized by cities.  Chicago contains the easiest levels, including the tutorial.  After that, there are four more cities to be played (Brooklyn, Paris, Toronto, and Tokyo) with each city containing 20 levels.  The great thing here is that the levels can be played in any order.  Regardless of the city or difficulty, all of the levels are unlocked from the beginning so you can play them all in any order you like.

The controls are pretty basic and easy to learn.  Drag your finger on the screen to “paint” your graffiti line on the wall.  These are the lines you will use to guide the ball.  You can use the settings to decide whether the spray paint can will appear under your finger.  Beneath the playing area is a clock showing the time remaining in the level.  Menu will exit the level and take you back to the level selection screen.  Go allows you to test out the level you are building (while the ball is bouncing around, this button will become Stop, allowing you to end the test if it is not working right). 

Finally, you can use the Undo button to remove the last line drawn.  The problem here was that the last line drawn may not always be the problem.  It would have been nice to have an eraser, so you could remove any line you drew, regardless of the order.

Like many games, this one also connects to the online Open Feint system.  This means there are plenty of awards available for you to earn, as well as online leaderboards so you can compare your performance to that of players from around the world.

I thought this was a fantastic game.  The levels are quick, and the challenges increase slowly enough that you have time to learn the nuances of the game in the earlier levels, but not so slow that you get bored before reaching more difficult levels.  While the game is not technically optimized for the iPad, I downloaded the iPhone version on my iPad, and found that it worked fine.  Since the graphics are not necessarily precise in nature, any degradation from expanding the image to the larger format did not really make a large difference.  Still, I would love to see a native iPad version, which more fully utilized the space available on the larger iPad interface.

If you are looking for a quick. but challenging game to fill those lost snippets of time throughout the day, then go ahead and give this one a try. 

Graffiti Ball was developed by Backflip Studios and is available from the iTunes App Store for free.  A $0.99 in-app purchase will even get rid of those pesky ads.

PhatWare today announced yet more productivity fun for iPad users with the release of a more feature rich version of WritePad.

WritePad lets users take notes in their own handwriting with an iPad stylus pen, or a finger. The state-of-the-art handwriting recognition software will adapt and learn while it is being used, improving the recognition quality over time. WritePad supports simple gestures, to select text, cut, copy, paste, insert special characters, and more.

The new WritePad Twitter client allows users to to compose Twitter updates in their own handwriting and send Twitter updates directly from WritePad. It can also display the Twitter timeline and replies to your updates, making it possible to copy, retweet, and reply to Twitter updates.

WritePad for iPad 4.1 is available now in the iTunes App Store for $9.99.

I’ve always been told by my parents – don’t use ATMs.  Sure it may be convenient.  But is that convenience worth being the victim of identity theft?  I’ve seen scams where brochure holders were “added” next to a machine which had a camera to grab pin numbers and the such, but the latest attack literally allows a malicious attacker to remotely dispense cash on demand.  According to ZDNet, Barnaby Jack, a security researcher was able to access and load custom software into ATMs made by Triton and Tranax that are powered by Windows CE.  “There are attack vectors in all these standalone or hole-in-the-wall ATMs,” Jack warned, noting that many ATMs are protected by a master key that can be bought for $10.78 on hundreds of web sites.  ”With this master key, I can walk up to a secluded ATM and have access to USB [and] SD/CF slots.  In some cases, opening and inserting my USB key was faster than installing a skimmer,” he said.  Now what makes matters even worse is that If someone inserts a card on that machine, I can capture and save the track data remotely".  Scary thoughts.  He’s even able to “dispense cash from each cassette,” “print stats on remaining bill counts,” and “Exit!”  I’m a firm believer of the use of credit cards as well as debit cards.  But as to ATMs, I’ll stay away from them as who knows what can be done to one of those machines during the times when nobody’s watching in the dead of night.  At least with self-checkouts you still have an employee making sure things are going right.  I’m just happy this is in the hands of a security researcher…but the bad news is that such a vulnerability exists.  From the looks of it, ATM manufacturers need to get on the ball with better security.  I don’t use ATMs…but if I did, now would, in my opinion, be a great time to stop.