If you travel with a laptop often, do yourself a favor and install Prey, it’s free theft tracking and recovery software that really works. Prey is basically a tiny daemon that runs in the background on your Mac (or Windows or Linux PC) that does nothing until it receives a signal indicating the hardware is missing or stolen via the Prey website or an SMS… then the magic happens.

Once Prey is activated, it starts gathering the following information and enables these features:

• Current hardware location via GPS or WiFi triangulation, shown on Google Maps
• Force connections to nearby WiFi to transmit data
• Pictures of the thief via the laptops built-in camera
• Network information and IP addresses
• Screen shots of the desktop and application usage, to find out what the thief is doing on your computer
• Hardware status
• Remotely lock down the hardware, requiring a password and displaying a “STOLEN” message
• Remotely clear your saved passwords
• Remotely sound an alarm (think car alarm for your laptop)

All of this data is silently gathered unbeknownst to the perpetrator, allowing you to collect information to help law enforcement (or yourself) track down your stolen goods and return them to the rightful owner.

You can download Prey for free at PreyProject.com (Mac, Windows, Linux, Android compatible)

Installation is simple and there is practically no overhead, it just runs quietly in the background waiting to be activated. In addition to being free, the app is also open source so if you can check out the source code yourself if you’re into that sort of thing.

Here’s the most important part, Prey actually works to recover stolen hardware. You may have read about this recently when a popular tech authors MacBook Pro was stolen and he successfully tracked the machine down in and recovered it using Prey.

Check out this video of Prey in action, and then go install it yourself. It’s free, it works, there’s no reason not to install this if you have a laptop you care about:

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If you haven’t had a chance to poke around Lion yourself yet, check out these six videos from the latest Lion Developer Preview 3. There’s a general overview of changes in DP3, a video showing the new boot login screen and animation, Mission Control, Safari’s new Download manager and Reading List, and another video showing off the new login screen when waking from sleep.

An overview of changes in Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3:

New Mac OS X Lion boot and login screens:

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You can access two unusual debugging options in the Mac OS X System Preferences for Desktops and Screen Savers panel by using a keystroke while accessing the panel.

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Knowing how to clear browser history, cookies, and cache are absolutely essential for all web users, and this is no different for anyone using an iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. This is particularly true when you’re using a someone elses hardware or when you’re testing out iterative changes on websites.

Keeping this in mind, here’s how to delete all your browsing records, history, data, caches, and otherwise from the default web browser Safari on iOS:

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After posting the Lion wallpaper pack we got several requests for the two pictuers missing from that wallpaper pack; the pink lotus flower you see above and that was also the wallpaper in the first public demonstration of Lion, and the blue sky moon wallpaper which is below.

Both of these are from Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3.

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Mac OS X Lion is set to include a wide variety of new high quality text-to-speech voices in a multitude of languages, thanks to a long suspected partnership between Apple and Nuance, a speech technology company. The new voices are of surprisingly good quality and speak in major world languages including English, Mandarin, German, Japanese, French, Spanish, Thai, Bahasa, Portuguese, Hindi, Russian, and many more.

Want to hear some voice samples? Here’s a few different voices in WAV format, these are confirmed to be the same voices as what is in Lion DP3:

• English American Accent – Samantha
• English British Accent – Serena
• French Canadian – Felix
• Spanish – Monica
• Finnish – Mikko (seen in screenshot)
• German – Yannick (seen in screenshot)
• Mandarin Chinese – Mei Ling

You can listen to more voices at the NextUp Nuance Sample page, but even that contains only a fraction of what is listed in Lion’s new Speech preferences. As you can hear, they are significantly improved from the current voices in Mac OS X text-to-speech, some of which are comically drone-like (Cellos anyone?).

The new voices exist as downloadable content in developer preview 3 of Lion, and were originally discovered by NetPuting and brought to light by 9to5mac (screenshot source). 9to5Mac mentions that each voice independently costs $45, suggesting Apple has reached an agreement with Nuance to license the voice technology, and they also suggest that these voices and text-to-speech technology will be a component of iOS 5.

I’ll go ahead and remind everyone that until Lion ships this summer, we don’t know for 100% certainty that these voices will be included in Mac OS X, but the evidence certainly points that way.

Looking to play some new games? Both Civilization V and Portal 2 are on sale for $29.99 this weekend, one is through MacUpdate and the other is from Amazon:

Civilization V for $29.99 (40% off via MacUpdate Promo)

Portal 2 for PC & Mac for $29.99 (40% off via Amazon)

Civilization V from MacUpdate is a digital delivery, but you’ll have to wait for the Amazon Portal 2 bundle to arrive via free shipping. These are two of the hottest games that are playable on the Mac platform right now, so if you’re a gamer and you’ve been holding out, get on it at a great price!

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Lion Developer Preview 3 brings some nice new UI changes to the lock and login screens. Now when you lock your Mac screen in Lion with Control+Shift+Eject, you’ll see a small login window over the current background wallpaper like the screenshot up top. What you can’t make out in the screenshot is a small HUD in the upper right corner showing the current time, battery life, and wireless signal strength.

There’s also a new login screen on system boot. The login screen is pretty plain, it’s all grey with a few controls and the same HUD in the upper right corner, as you can see in the following picture:

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This Mac setup features a 27″ iMac and a 13″ MacBook Air. What’s worth pointing out is that this setup replaced the users previous machines: a Mac Pro connected to a 30″ Apple Cinema Display, and a MacBook Pro 15″. If you’re thinking it’s silly to replace a Mac Pro with an iMac as a powerhouse desktop, check out the new iMac benchmarks and you might change your mind.

If it was mine, I’d throw a stand under the MacBook Air and I’d use a mouse because I just can’t get used to the inaccuracy of a trackpad, but to each their own. If you were wanting the cool wood wallpaper too, it can be downloaded here from InterfaceLift at a variety of high res sizes.

Image from Flickr

Mac OS X Lion Dev Preview 3 was just released to developers and along with it came a new bunch of beautiful high-res wallpapers at 3200×2000 resolution.

You can download all 14 wallpapers in a zip bundle from Mediafire

Here’s a few to see, but you’ll need to use the above download link to get them:

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Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3 is now available for developers to download. The release is labeled as another update to Developer Preview 2, but MacStories notes that Apple’s Mac Developer Center indicates the release is in fact Lion Developer Preview 3.

The update is available through Software Update and weighs in between 1GB and 1.2GB depending on the Mac you are installing it on. As usual with Lion Dev Preview updates, the installation notes are brief, nothing simply that it is recommended for all users of Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 2.

Along with the Dev Preview 3 comes the release of XCode 4.1 Dev Preview 5, which is necessary to install after updating Lion if you plan on using the XCode development suite.

Lion is due for a release this summer, with WWDC 2011 looking like a prime date for announcement. Check out our Mac OS X 10.7 Lion archives for more.

The next gen iPhone will be called “iPhone 4S” and will be released in September with an A5 dual-core CPU and improved cameras, according to an industry analyst cited by Forbes:

“According to our industry checks, the device should be called iPhone 4S and include minor cosmetic changes, better cameras, A5 dual-core processor, and HSPA+ support,”

Most of this information is nothing new, but this is the first time the device has been called “iPhone 4S” rather than iPhone 5. These claims also back up several rumors from earlier in the year that the next iPhone would be an incremental hardware upgrade and not feature any dramatic cosmetic changes.

Other interesting news out of the Forbes piece is that the iPhone will pick up some new carriers, notably Sprint and T-Mobile in the USA, in addition to the largest cell provider in the world, China Mobile.

“industry checks indicate Apple will likely announce Sprint, T-Mobile, and China Mobile as new carriers.”

Gaining access to China Mobile’s 600 million strong subscriber base could be a significant gain for Apple. China Mobile has a substantial offering of prepaid phones and SIM cards, and past reports indicate that Apple is interested in the prepaid market, although there is no certainty that these items are related.

For those wondering about LTE service in the new iPhone, the report indicates this won’t be happening this year due to issues with the required chipset. Instead, MacRumors notes that LTE likely won’t make it to the iPhone until 2012.

The top command is a great way to get a quick overview of how your system is performing and how apps are using your resources. If you are unfamiliar with it, it’s basically a command line task manager like Activity Monitor and it shows processor usage, memory usage, disk activity, load average, and other helpful system resource details. A common complaint with top is that by default the apps settings don’t sort processes by CPU use, which for many of us is one of the most useful ways to detect an errant process or to keep track of system resources. Fortunately, thanks to a few easy customizations to the top command, you can quickly run top to monitor all processes from the command line and sort them by CPU use from top to bottom.

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If you’re an Apple fan and you’re looking to geek out your front porch in a fun way, grab one of these iOS inspired “Slide to Unlock” doormats for your front door! Or the back door, or the office, or anywhere, that’s OK too. It’s just like the screen you’ll find on a locked iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, except, of course, it’s a door.

There’s a few variations of this thing snazzy doormat floating around, the two of the nicest ones are black or brown and made of natural fibers like a traditional doormat, the other is black and a bit hardier made from rubber. Like most great things online, you can get your hands on one of these great Slide to Unlock doormats right now from none other than Amazon and have it shipped to you ASAP.

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Just like you can drag your own folders into the sidebar, you can also drags apps into Finder window sidebars for quick access.

Once apps are in the sidebar, if you click on them they will launch, which makes desktop windows serve a dual purpose as both file manager and a quick application launcher.

An upcoming iteration of iOS may include further abilities to respond and react to environmental stimuli, according to a patent granted to Apple. The patent describes sensors that make a device aware of its speed, direction, temperature, and orientation on Earth, in addition to utilizing a microphone and camera to detect changes in the surrounding environment, and more importantly, adjust items on display based on these factors.

The patent was discovered by PatentlyApple, who describes the feature as “Chameleon-like” and suggests these adjustments could be geared towards fashion, of all things:

Apple’s patent covers systems, methods and computer-readable media for displaying dynamic tags or screen savers that change based on detected characteristics of the user’s environment. In particular, the patent covers dynamic tags that could serve as a fashion accessory by changing based on characteristics of the user’s environment.

PatentlyApple then elaborates on how the camera could detect colors and then adjust items on the screen accordingly:

…the electronic device could dynamically change the appearance of the tag based on the evolution of the sensor outputs. For example, if the electronic device determines from the camera that the color schemes of the user’s room have changed, the displayed tag could adjust to reflect the new detected colors.

The patent goes on to provide a description of the technology in use, describing a raindrops screensaver that adjusts its behavior based on environmental factors. The patent drawings clearly show a device that looks like an iPod nano (on a side note, this indicates that future iPod nanos may include cameras) but PatentlyApple says that other devices are clearly specified (emphasis mine):

It should be noted that while Apple’s patent illustrations are all related to a future version of an iPod nano, the fact is that the patent states that their invention will also apply to the iPhone, iPod Touch (PDA), iPad (tablet) and other devices which includes a laptop, gaming device and even medical equipment.

Can you imagine these kind of reactive features being used in future screen savers, apps, and games across Apple’s entire portable lineup? Some apps already take limited cues from things like the microphone, and many apps use the built-in accelerometers to adjust behavior on screen, but this looks like it has the potential to expand on these reactive concepts dramatically.

PatentlyApple is on a roll today, first finding a patent for futuristic virtual Apple keyboards that puff air to emulate the feel of pressing buttons, and now with this. Pretty impressive stuff, assuming Apple ever implements this technology in upcoming products.

Head on over to PatentlyApple to see more drawings and to read more about this, it’s a good read as always.

Apple has patented a very unique keyboard design that uses micro-perforations to shoot air at the users fingers upon touch, providing tactile feedback to whoever is typing. What makes this patent even more interesting is that not only could it apply to standard keyboards, but also virtual keyboards on iOS devices, as PatentlyApple elaborates:

flowing of air could also be implemented in a virtual keyboard, wherein each key location is merely a defined region on a solid surface, where contact with that surface region will generate a defined input signal.

Such virtual keyboards may have no moveable surfaces. In such configurations, notwithstanding the absence of a moveable surface, the flowing of air through apertures in the surface may be used to provide a tactile resistance to a user’s actuation motion and/or to absorb at least a portion of the actuation force.

In other words, typing on future Apple touch screens may actually provide a sensation of typing on a real keyboard, thanks to little puffs of air hitting your fingers as you touch the display. Other interesting aspects of the patent indicate that the tiny perforations could also be used to illuminate the keyboard with LED backlighting, and that the entire system could also apply to deformable, flexible keyboards and surfaces (future mouses?).

How amazing is this, even as a concept? One of the biggest gripes about virtual keyboards are the lack of tactile feedback, making it much harder to touch-type at any speed with much accuracy. This patent looks to be trying to solve that problem.

As always with Apple patents, don’t get your hopes up, this could be a long ways out if it ever makes an appearance at all.

Check out PatentlyApple for more schematics and analysis of the patent.

Twitter developers have a compelling new reason to update to Twitter 2.1 for Mac: the developer console!

You can enable the developer features through Preferences > Developer tab > “Show Developer Menu”. Unfortunately for tinkerers and those just looking to casually poke around, you’ll need Twitter apps API keys to actually use and access the dev console.

Other notable changes in Twitter 2.1 are some significant UI tweaks, font size adjusting, AppleScript support, the ability to spin tweets off into new windows, and of course various bug fixes. It’s a worthwhile upgrade, even if you aren’t a developer. You can download Twitter for Mac directly from the Mac App Store, it’s free.

Screenshot and tip via Twitter @rsms