Computer Technology

iPadding Test Scores: UCI Medical Students with Special Tablets Do Better Than Others

First-year medical students at UC Irvine were give special iPads in 2010 that were loaded with enhanced note-taking and recording capabilities, podcasts of topical lectures and other software to supplement self-learning. Today, those same students are reportedly scoring better on tests than the nati ... More >>

Maury May Be Able to Say, 'You ARE the Father,' Thanks to Smartphone App Developed at UCI

Pretty soon, the host of syndicated TV's Maury may be able to whip out his smartphone, look at the screen and proclaim, "You are the father!"And if Maury Povich does do that, he'll have computer scientists to thank at UC Irvine, where an Android smartphone app has been developed to store a small amo ... More >>

New Camera App Translates Chinese Menus

If you like to go to Chinese restaurants but can't read a lick of Chinese, you'll probably appreciate a new Chinese character translating app called WayGo, which was designed with deciphering food phrases in mind. Using the free download, you point your iPhone's camera at a block of Chinese text, li ... More >>

Dish Network Wants Accused Orange County Satellite Pirate To Pay $6.4 Million Penalty

Dish Network is asking a federal judge in Orange County to grant it summary judgment against a Little Saigon man who allegedly operated a satellite piracy website and order him to pay $6,376,600 in damages.Tan Nguyen, a single father of two young boys in Westminster, told the Weekly that he was ... More >>

Expensive Fish

[Hey, You!] Hats off to the inventor of the kids' game that tried to rob me blind

Jenna Milburn-DiPasquale, OC Cybersitter Marketer, Sees Red Thanks to China's Hackers

Jenna Milburn-DiPasquale was working on the computer in her Orange County home office in June 2009 when she received an email from her father. There's nothing strange about that since she does all the marketing for her Santa Barbara-based dad's eight-person company, Solid Oak Software, best known fo ... More >>

Blizzard Entertainment's Online Accounts Hacked

If you're playing World of Warcraft on one monitor and Navel Gazing on another, lissen up: You may have been hacked.No, it's not through your favorite alternative newsweekly blog that virtual bogeyman let themselves in but the online accounts of Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine.

OC Music Awards Announces Launch of iPhone App

​The OC Music Awards announced the launch of its free iPhone app today featuring interviews, photos and playlists of bands participating in the nine-week competition. We here at Weekly World Headquarters were rightly hooked by the word "free," and proceeded to tap furiously at the faces of our pho ... More >>

Inside the Mind of Luis Mijangos, Sextortion Hacker "Mistah X"

​January's GQ has a fascinating piece on a fellow who turned up in our crime coverage the past couple years: Luis Mijangos, the so-called "sextortion" hacker out of Santa Ana sentenced Sept. 1 to six years in prison for cyber-terrorism. The 32-year-old undocumented immigrant hacked into dozens of ... More >>

Getting a Rise Out of Me

[Hey, You!] After sunset, you should probably keep the Good News to yourself

WeedMaps Unveils New Amazon-Friendly Android App

​General Cannabis, the Newport Beach company that owns WeedMaps, is celebrating the official launch of a new marijuana-club locating phone application. While WeedMaps has already released I-Tunes and Google Android apps, this latest version is specially designed to work for Amazon-platform Android ... More >>

Become a Falling Still Fan to Win an iPad

​Remember Falling Still? The band from LA that compared Orange County to the Midwest? Well, they're running a iPad promotion for the next two weeks. Anyone who likes, follows, or shares their Twitter and Facebook pages are automatically entered to win an iPad. The winner will be announced on Aug. ... More >>

[UPDATED with Sentencing] Gary A. Shawkey's Trail of Lies Ends in Santa Ana, Where He's Found Guilty of Murdering Partner

Shawkey​UPDATED, JULY 22, 12:40 P.M.: Today in a Santa Ana courtroom, Gary A. Shawkey received his sentence for murdering a 71-year-old business partner in 2008: life in prison without the chance for parole. The victim was last seen on a boat with Shawkey, leaving Dana Point Harbor. It is believed ... More >>

TSA Agents No Longer Get To See You Naked

Bluefly​Soon, air travel will no longer require passengers to put on a virtual strip show.The Transportation Security Administration announced that over the next few months, full-body scanners at airports nationwide will be upgraded with new software that eliminates "passenger-speci ... More >>

Kelly Janeth Mejia, Fullerton Cop, Placed on Paid Leave for Alleged Theft of iPad in Miami

​Fullerton police officer Kelly Janeth Mejia was arrested last month for allegedly stealing an iPad from another traveler at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint at Miami International Airport.This week, the six-year veteran of the department was placed on paid administrati ... More >>

E3 2011: Hands-off Impressions of New Kinect Hardware

Peter Mai/OC Weekly​Unlike Nintendo and Sony, Microsoft's biggest focus this year is all about software--specifically, software to support the Kinect sensor that was released half a year ago. Although the peripheral sold a world-record amount of units since launch, the amount of games and applicat ... More >>

[UPDATED with Charges:] Trevor Harwell, Computer Tech, Accused of Using Spyware to Get Images of Naked Female Customers

​UPDATE, JUNE 10, 1:11 P.M.: The Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) has announced the charges filed against Trevor Timothy Harwell, the 20-year-old computer technician accused of secretly installing spyware on female customers' hard drives to capture images of them naked.The Fullerton ... More >>

iPad-Equipped Restaurant Opens Tomorrow in Torrance; Cerritos in the Fall

​Our sister blog Squid Ink and other LA food sites have been writing about Stacked for months. The hook of the restaurant is that each table is equipped with an iPad from which you order and customize your burgers, pizzas and salads via dragging the ingredients on Apple's tablet computer. You pay ... More >>

Newport Beach Film Festival: Programmers' Picks!

A dozen of the finest the fest has to offer

WeedMaps Owner Expanding OC Headquarters

​No, General Cannabis isn't a Jamaican dancehall singer. It's a Nevada-based technology company that owns Weedmaps.com, CannaCare.com and other medical marijuana related concerns. The company is currently headquartered in Costa Mesa, but according to a press release today, it just moved into new o ... More >>

New iPhone App Counts Calories in Your Food Photos

​Usually, when we snap a cell phone pic of our meal, we're proclaiming to the world (or at least our Facebook followers), "This mac and cheese is scrumptious!"--not, "I just consumed 1,623 calories!" But alas, technology wins again.  Meal Snap, a new iPhone app by DailyBurn, automat ... More >>

Controversy Over Smartphone Apps That List DUI Checkpoints

The Checkpointer iPhone App ​Accidentally drank too many brewskies and now need to bypass the cops on the dangerous drive home?   There's an app for that. Several of them, actually, including the $4.99 iPhone "Checkpointer" by Baron Zweber, which lists DUI checkpoints in OC. According to ... More >>

Me Arlene Settle Could Get Stiff Prison Sentence for Role in International Phishing Ring

​When federal indictments were announced in the fall of 2009 as part of Operation "Phish Phry," a multinational investigation conducted in the United States and Egypt that led to charges against 100 people, it was hailed as the largest number of defendants ever charged in a cybercrime case. Fiv ... More >>

Forget The App, It's A Playable Angry Birds Cake!

There's SweetSpot Baker's Workshop, where they encourage fun Color-Me-Mine-ing your own cupcake. The gang at Blackmarket Bakery will even get you started with flames or waves, but the finishing touches are at your discretion. And you'll remember Michelle's post on the Angry Birds gingerbread hous ... More >>

UCI Presentation Explores Designing, Sharing and Customizing Video Games in Your Browser

​An academic from Switzerland will be at UC Irvine this afternoon advocating a web-based game-design program aimed at the general public.Navid Ahmadi, who is on the faculty of Informatics at the University of Lugano, Switzerland, will present AgentWeb, a first-of-its-kind web-based game design and ... More >>

Introducing the New Disqus Commenting System

​Don't know about you, but we got pretty attached to the Captcha commenting system. What started out as merely a utilitarian tool to make you prove that you weren't some bot trying to sell us UGG boots actually kind of grew on us.But now, Captcha--otherwise known as the Wavy Band Name Generator (" ... More >>

Introducing the New Disqus Commenting System

​Don't know about you, but we got pretty attached to the Captcha commenting system. What started out as merely a utilitarian tool to make you prove that you weren't some bot trying to sell us UGG boots actually kind of grew on us.But now, Captcha--otherwise known as the Wavy Band Name Generator (" ... More >>

Introducing the New Disqus Commenting System

​Don't know about you, but we got pretty attached to the Captcha commenting system.  What started out as merely a utilitarian tool to make you prove that you aren't some bot trying to sell us UGG boots actually kind of grew on us.But now, Captcha--otherwise known as the Wavy Band Name Generat ... More >>

[UPDATE] Three Things You Didn't Know About the 'Tron: Legacy' Soundtrack

​The whole interview is up on KCRW.com. Listen to it here. "Solar Sailer," an instrumental track, will be offered today only as a free download.Last Saturday in Santa Monica, California, Disney unveiled parts of the Tron: Legacy soundtrack. Five of the 22 tracks were previewed, and director Jose ... More >>

Miguel Antonio Mendoza Accused of Sexually Assaulting Boy and Distributing Porn to Minors

​Do you know this man?More importantly, do your boys know Miguel Antonio Mendoza, 20, of Orange?The former part-time aide in Villa Park Elementary School's afterschool program is accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy and using a cell phone application to distribute pornography to ot ... More >>

Video Game Lecture Wades Into Walden Pond

Walden, a game about the experience of author Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond, helps demonstrate experimental video game design at a UC Irvine presentation this afternoon.

Letters From OC Weekly Readers

Letters From OC Weekly Readers

Dance Music Pick of the Week: Joris Voorn at Code

Krijin van Noordwijk​Once every few years a game-changing album will accelerate the evolution of electronic dance music. The Prodigy added punk rock aggression to the scene in 1992 (Experience), the Chemical Brothers became the Beatles of club-land in 1995 (Exit Planet Dust) and Moby introduced th ... More >>

[Trendzilla] Laptops of Luxury

Welcome to Agrestic, errrrr, Orange County

 When did Showtime's Weeds, which is set in Valencia or Calabasas or Santa Clarita or Stevenson Ranch or Gorman or wherever the hell it is, spring up in Orange County? It's sure seeming very Agrestic-like based on two police incidents mere hours apart Wednesday.First, cops started going door-to ... More >>

Pardon Our Digital Dust

So our website has changed quite a bit. Many of the differences are intentional. Some of the others are, um, not. If you're having problems using our online article archive search feature, or if you click through on a link and it takes you nowhere, it's not you. It's us. Our crack development team ... More >>

Aural Reports

Debutante Squall: Millionaires' naughty intentions and catchy electro pay dividends

Earth to Sol-T

Listen, buddy. Nominating yourself for "best local hip-hop artist" on our online poll DOZENS of times ain't gonna get you a place in print. So quit spamming my inbox. Besides, aren't you from...Los Angeles? Which makes the nomination, y'know, moot. UPDATE: Sol-T's people tell us that page was outd ... More >>

Beach Break: Send in the Clowns - Eventually

On the corner of Pine Avenue and Shoreline Drive in downtown Long Beach hangs a banner. It says "COMING SOON." and it's been hanging for years from what is supposed to be the newest Laugh Factory at the Pike at Rainbow Harbor. A November 2003 article in the Long Beach Press Telegram celebrated th ... More >>

Theyre My friends and Im a Swinger!

OC businessman allegedly sold fake computers during the day, call girls at night

Fire Bomb

Ford limps and wheezes through his latest action thriller, Firewall

Insta-Feedback to the New Website

The names have been withheld to protect our incense. Your Favorite Time-Waster's answers--not that anyone asked for them--appear in groovy italics: Where did the link to the personals.ocweekly go on the home page? http://personals.ocweekly.com With the new website format instituted today, WHAT ... More >>

The Danger of Google History in a Time of War

Or Dennis Prager called me a liar

Mad-Scientist Rock!

By Any Means Necessary

Finding new, free music without Napster

Burning Sensation

Making Copies

The menace threatening the global entertainment industry? Linux users!?

Bombay Breakdown

Millennium Plan Madness