Twitter announced Wednesday that it is offering a form of two-step authentication for security-conscious users who want to make sure that their accounts are protected from unauthorized use. The new feature is described in a post made by Jim O'Leary of Twitter's product security team on the official Twitter blog.

Twitter's two-step authentication process adds a verification code validation that's sent to a mobile phone number by SMS each time you sign in to Twitter. Enter the six-digit code and you're on your way.

This news comes on the heels of high-profile Twitter account hackings of newspapers, news television programs and news services. Victims have included the Financial Times, 60 Minutes, and perhaps most infamously, the Associated Press. The hacked AP account produced a phony tweet saying the White House had been bombed, which set off a brief stock market drop, caused by a reaction from automated stock trading systems that track news keywords.

Many of the recent high-profile Twitter hijackings have been credited to the "Syrian Electronic Army," an anonymous group of hackers loyal to the regime of Syrian president Bashar al Assad.

Comparing the best online photo storage options from Flickr, Google+, 500px, Dropbox, Amazon, Instagram, Facebook, and more!

We've talked on numerous occasions about how great of camera you have included with your iPhone and have taken a look at some great photography apps to accompany it, but once you take all those photos and edit them to perfection, where are you going to store them? You can store them locally on various devices and hard drives, but what about in the cloud? Other than Photo Stream, what are other cloud storage options for all those memories you're accumulating?

Facebook, Instagram, Twitpic, and other non-options

Before we jump into the various great options out there, let's first discuss the fact that posting to Facebook, Instagram, Twipic, and any other little photo sharing service is not good enough. It may be easy to think "oh, I posted that to Facebook, so if anything happens, I know I can always retrieve my photo from there." Well, yes, as long as you don't cancel your account or do something that gets you banned, your photos are there, but even though Facebook has a "high resolution" option, it's not actually full resolution. The max size Facebook will save your photos is 2048px along the longest side. A photo taken with an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 is larger than this.

The quality of your images saved on services such as Instagram, Twitpic, and other "little" sharing services is even worse. You should not consider these as good options for storing photos.

So if Facebook and Instagram aren't good choices, then what are? Between Flickr, 500px, Dropbox, Google+, and Amazon Cloud Drive, you're sure to find a great option to meet your needs.

Flickr

Flickr just updated with an enticing new overhaul that includes 1TB of free storage. Yes, 1 terabyte. For free. Flickr also features a gorgeous new interface and an established community of users. In addition to just storing your photos, you can also publicly share them and join groups and discussions. If you're serious about photography or simply just looking for a place to save your images, Flickr is an excellent option and completely free (with upgrade options).

• Flickr
• Flickr for iPhone - Download now

500px

500px is a unique choice in that, in addition to being a place to store photos, you also have the option to sell your photos in the 500px market. It's also a social network where you can follow specific users and like and comment on their work. 500px does have more of a "professional" vibe that markets towards quality photography, so if you identify yourself as a photographer, 500px will likely be a great fit.

A free account allows 20 uploads per week, and accounts with unlimited uploading begin at $25/year.

• 500px
• 500px for iPhone and iPad - Download now

Google+

Although Google+ is primarily a social network, it also offers a solid option for photo storage. With the Google+ app, you can even choose to automatically upload your photos from your iPhone to Google+ so that you don't even have to remember to do it yourself. However, when uploading from your iPhone, Google+ will store them at "Standard size" which is a max of 2048 pixels on the longest side. If you want to store full size images, you must upload from your desktop.

Full size uploads count against your Google Drive storage quota which starts at 15 GB with a free account. Paid accounts begin at $2.49/mo for 25 GB, but may be changing in the coming weeks.

• Google+
• Google Drive
• Google+ for iPhone and iPad - Download now

Dropbox

If you're not into the social integration associated with Flickr, 500px, and Google+, Dropbox is another excellent choice for storing your photos. It's not a social network, but strictly a storage service; however, if you do wish to share your photos, you can share a link to your folders and Dropbox will nicely display them for you. You can also set up the iPhone and iPad app to automatically upload your photos when you launch the Dropbox app.

A free Dropbox account includes 2 GB (with the ability to reach 18 GB), and "Pro" accounts start at $9.99/mo for 100 GB.

• Dropbox
• Dropbox for iPhone and iPad - Download now

Amazon Cloud Drive

Amazon Cloud Drive is a storage service that's similar to Dropbox, and with the Amazon Cloud Drive Photos companion app for iPhone, you can easily upload and view your saved photos.

A free Amazon Cloud Drive account includes 5 GB of storage with paid plans starting at $10/year for 20 GB.

• Amazon Cloud Drive
• Amazon Cloud Drive Photos for iPhone - Download now

Your favorite way to store photos?

These are just a few of the different options available for storing your precious photographs, and if we missed any good ones, we want to know. Do you use a different service that you believe to be superior to these? Or do you not trust your memories in the hands of a 3rd party and back up onto external hard drives, instead? We want to know your system!

Personally, I'm going to start using Flickr to store everything that's important to me and 500px for photos I'm particularly proud of and value as art.

What about you?

Ahead of the All Star game in New York in July, MLB has released a new game into the App Store; MLB Home Run Derby. I love Baseball, despite being British, so as soon as I saw this in the App Store I had to take a look. It's a free download, and bases itself solely around one of the fun-to-watch extras of the All Star weekend, the Home Run Derby. So, a perfect casual game for the Baseball fan? Let's find out.

I'll start with the best part. The graphics are really good. My first thought was that it looks very similar to the gameday view in the main MLB At Bat application. There's only one stadium to play in, Citi Field the host for the All Star game, and it looks fantastic.

With this being the Home Run Derby, you only have to worry about one thing -- hitting it out of the park. There are two different control methods, a drag and release to aim and swing, or aim with your left hand and tap to swing with your right.

Home Run Derby has two different game modes, arcade and The Derby. Arcade mode is playable as many times as you like, and is done against a one minute time limit. You have a series of targets around the ground to aim for to increase your score, and the further you hit the ball the more points you get. Simple. Points means prizes, in the form of coins that are useable in the game to buy certain things with.

The Derby follows the run of the real thing, so 10 outs and you're done. There's no time limit, you just keep going until you're all out of chances. To win, you have to progress through two rounds to get to the final.

That's the good stuff. It's a fun little game to play, and if you hit a bigger home run that 457ft, then you've topped my best so far. The bad stuff is the in-app purchases. Sadly, the overriding feeling is that the game is designed around the purchases, and not the other way around.

The first example; you get three 'tickets' to play the Home Run Derby. Once these are gone, it's a matter of hours before the next ticket arrives. You can make this quicker, and get more tickets, by paying. The in-game currency can be won, but you have to do well in the Home Run Derby several times before you have enough to really buy anything. The green notes aren't won in the arcade mode.

Another example; You start out with one batter. More batters means more tickets to The Derby, and that means paying for them. Again, you either have to play and do well a lot over some time, or stump up the cash. You can improve your batters performance by way of a purchase, but you have to also purchase an additional slot to add this performance boost too. So, a double purchase.

Whether it's your real money or your in-game currency, there is far too much emphasis on having to buy things to progress and ultimately get more out of the game. I'm happy enough slugging away in arcade mode personally, but it's sad that a fun little game feels so held back by the freemium model.

More worrying too is that the App Store listing says "download free for a limited time only." If you think you might want this, I strongly recommend grabbing it right now while it's free. As a paid download I think I'd have a hard time recommending this. If the in-app purchases are overhauled, then it could be a different story.

The Good

• Excellent graphics
• Simple, easy to pick up controls
• Authentic players, stadium and rules

The Bad

• Too much emphasis on in-app purchases tarnishes the experience
• Glitches from time to time where menus stay visible over gameplay
• Apparent limited time offer on free download considering the level of in-app purchases

The Bottom Line

MLB Home Run Derby is a freemium game done wrong. Instead of building a game where in-app purchases boost progress, too often it feels like not paying up hurts. Three goes at the main Derby mode just isn't enough when it takes so long for another ticket to appear to play again. Thankfully, the Arcade mode isn't so constrained and is plenty of fun on its own to play. I like it though, really I do. I just don't like the way the in-app purchases have been implemented.

• Free - Download Now

Apple continues its streak as the most valuable brand in the world, outperforming Google, IBM, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola, with Google surpassing IBM to become the second most valuable brand. The BrandZ report, which names the 100 most valuable companies in the world across several categories, says that Apple’s brand value increased 1% as the entire technology sector remained declined slightly from last year, lacking a surge of growth from both Apple and Facebook.

Without the surge in Apple and Facebook brand value that helped drive category growth, Technology declined 1 percent in the BrandZ™ 2013 ranking, after five years averaging 8 percent annual category growth.

Other notable placements include Microsoft, which fell from number 5 to number 7, and Yahoo, three years absent from the list, returned at 92. Samsung, Apple’s chief mobile hardware rival, which jumped from 55 to 30, experiencing a surge in growth. Apple remains at the top, however, well ahead of the rest of the list, in both technology and overall. Their growth may have slowed over the last year, but if the exciting new products on their way later this year make a splash, there’s little doubt that Apple will remain on top for a long time to come.

Source: Millward Brown