Software & Apps News - Page 156

Popular GPU overclocking tool, MSI Afterburner, has hit version 2.2.0 Beta 14 and is now available for download. It includes a fair amount of updated features, listed below.

The main updated features of MSI Afterburner 2.2.0 Beta 14

* Fixed sub-zero temperatures reading on certain custom design MSI graphics cards with LM96163 and NCT7718W dedicated thermal sensors.

Sony's official US launch for the PlayStation Vita sported LiveTweeting, Wi-Fi-only Netflix access, and Flickr's photo-based networking but missed out on Facebook and Foursquare apps. Well, today that is changed, my friends.

Sony have announced that Facebook is now available for the PS Vita in the form of a 12MB free download from the PlayStation Store. If you've got a PS Vita, first off, how do you find it? Secondly, you should be grabbing the Facebook app and posting your thoughts as a comment on our Facebook page, that would be, in the words of Beavis and Butthead, "cool".

I walked past my local JB Hi-Fi store yesterday (electronics retailer for you non-Australians) and was a bit too busy with my 11-month-old 'dada-ing' and pointing to everything to stop in and see the Australian launch stuff for it. I'm tempted, and I have a few friends who have said good things about it. But, it still needs a kick-arse killer-app in my opinion, for me to justify purchasing something I would only use every now and again.

Samsung has just put their school shorts on once again, you know those pressed, private-school, grey-in-color shorts that would be a complete stereotype? Well, yeah. Samsung are introducing something called 'Learning Hub', where they'll offer educational content including 6,000 textbooks and video titles from 30 different education service providers.

Learning Hub will hit Samsung's Android-powered Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9, and at the moment, Samsung have only teased us all with some screenshots, but with Mobile World Congress in a little over a weeks time, we should have some more information then.

The Learning Hub is set to offer an interactive learning experience and to encourage self-learning where it features an automatic scoring system as motivation. Note correction is included, as well as the ability to annotate documents. Samsung are obviously hoping this Learning Hub will give them a foot in the door to education-based institutions such as schools, universities, and more.

NVIDIA have just release some very special drivers in the form of the GeForce 295.73 WHQL Drivers. NVIDIA say they are essential for Skyrim, Diablo III and Mass Effect 3, and once you see these numbers, you'll probably agree.

The drivers sport numerous "game-changing", NVIDIA-exclusive improvements that have been baked into previous beta downloads, as well as a few other treats, all wrapped up in a nice WHQL-certified package. Skyrim gets a serious punch in frame rates with these new drivers, with performance on the GeForce GTX 560 receiving an amazing 44.5-percent increase in performance, and GTX 560 SLI performance seeing a boost of 44.1-percent. The GTX 580 sees a nice 36-percent bump, with GTX 580 SLI only receiving 17.3-percent. All of this testing is done at 1920x1080 with Indoor Scenes, Ultra Detail, 8xMSAA, 16xAF.

Diablo III Beta doesn't miss out from these new drivers, where the immersive Ambient Occlusion shadowing now featuring in Diablo III, which looks quite good. Instructions on how to enable this feature are available on NVIDIA's website.

BGR have gotten their dirty mits on "what is said to be" Apple's iOS 5.1 GM, which should hit users over-the-air (OTA) around March 9th or so, and BGR have thus confirmed two changes that have been baked into iOS 5.1.

First off, we have the lock screen for iOS 5.1 sporting a fixed camera button which is found next to the slide-to-unlock button, and instead of tapping on said button to launch the camera, in iOS 5.1 all you do is drag the entire unlock section up to reveal the camera finder - nifty.

Siri has also taken a trip to learn a new language: Japanese. BGR have confirmed this in the picture below where you can clearly see Siri now sports Japanese. BGR have learnt that there "are no roadblocks" and this is a release candidate that should hit in a few weeks time.

Just a few minutes ago we reported of the AMD Catalyst 12.1 pre-certified drivers, but the good news didn't stop there. AMD were also kind enough to release the Catalyst Application Profiles 12.1 CAP 3 which includes a bunch of profiles for some newly-released games.

First up we have Alan Wake, which gets "improves CrossFire performance", Syndicate which receives both single-GPU and CrossFire performance improvements, Darkness 2 gets just improved CrossFire performance. Lastly, we have Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which gets improved CrossFire performance for the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series to avoid negative scaling at low resolution and finally, Natural Selection 2, where the 12.1 CAP 3 fixes shadow map flickering issues that are seen when CrossFire is enabled.

You can get all dirty with the Catalyst Application Profiles 12.1 CAP 3, here.

For those of you who don't want to dilly-dally waiting for the WHQL-certified drivers from AMD, you can jump on these newly-released drivers. They come in the form of the Catalyst 12.1 pre-certified drivers, and support the Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000, HD 5000, HD 6000, and HD 7000 Series cards.

They include quite the handful of support, features and enhancements, as listed below:

Windows 7 and Windows Vista support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series

Android 4.0 arrived with quite the hard thud late last year, whilst it looks pretty cool, the Android-based smartphones and tablets just did not adapt quick enough. Most smartphone and tablet makers really dragged their feet, with even flagship products such as the phone that rocks along in my pocket, the Samsung Galaxy S II, not receiving it yet.

But, this could all [hopefully] change with the release of Android 5.0 "Jelly Bean". Google know that 2012 spells stronger competition in the OS market, with Microsoft releasing Windows 8 this year, and Apple will surely announce iOS 6 with the iPhone 5 (that's my guess, anyway). All of this is "according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers", thanks, DigiTimes.

Android 5.0 is said to be further optimized for tablet PCs, as well as having Chrome integration system functions to push dual-operating system designs. What does sound amazing, is that brand vendors can choose to adopt just Android 5.0 or add Android 5.0 to Windows 8 devices, allowing the ability to switch between the two OSes without the need to shut the device down. Take that, Apple.

Apple have just announced they've released a developer preview of their upcoming OS, Mountain Lion. Touted as the ninth major release of the 'world's most advanced operating system', Mountain Lion will introduce popular apps from the iPad to the Mac, such as Messages, Notes, Reminders and Game Center, as well as Notification Center, Share Sheets, Twitter integration and AirPlay Mirroring.

On top of these iPad-related features, OS X Mountain Lion will sport iCloud, which allows for easy setup and integration with said apps. The developer preview of Mountain Lion also intros Gatekeeper. What is Gatekeeper? It's a 'revolutionary' security feature that helps keep you safe from malicious software by giving you complete control over what apps are allowed to be installed on your Mac.

Because Mountain View includes Messages, this means that iChat is now gone. Messages will continue to support services such as AIM, Jabber, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk. If you want to try it out on your Lion-based Mac, you can download the beta of Messages, here.

Leaked images have floated onto the surface of the waves of the Internet in the past 24 or so hours of Research in Motion's next-generation BlackBerry 10 Operating System, and boy do they look nice. BlackBerry 10 OS will sport home screen "widgets" which will allow you to call up apps and mini-apps, video chat capability, improvements to the e-mail clients design, just to name a few.

CrackBerry.com are behind the images, where they've reported they received a 14-page presentation featuring BlackBerry 10-powered BlackBerry's from "a tipster". Of course, we have to question whether these images are indeed legit, but they do seem to be. BB 10 OS is shaping up to look quite swish, and it seems RIM have worked hard at this latest OS.

RIM aren't just dressing to impress, either, it seems they are baking in some useful features such as a clock icon that continues to show the time of the day, but also what time the alarm will go off. It is the detail in the little things that make it stand out. Another feature showed off in a screenshot is RIM's Universal Inbox, which is thanks to The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) which RIM acquired back in 2010.