Software & Apps News - Page 102

If you've been using AirDroid: great, if not, you might want to check it out. AirDroid 3 is now out, a piece of software that allows you to access, and use your Android-powered devices from your desktop.

Sand Studio has announced that it has released AirDroid 3, its latest and greatest update to AirDroid that has one very big new trick up its sleeve: a native app. AirDroid can still be used from your web browser, but with a native application out now, you have a big choice. There are some features that you should know about, which might swing your decision-making process:

Lyft's co-founder John Zimmer has appeared in an interview with Bloomberg TV today, covering issues based around privacy questions on user data, their main competitor 'Uber' and plans for expansion throughout the new year.

As we see ride-share applications begin to hit the mainstream market, there have been reports on the downturn in the traditional Taxi business alongside some reasoning for people making the change to this new-age format.Ride-share services currently have the general reputation for being more timely and neat, this is coupled with reported issues in the past of Taxi drivers being unsafe and potentially harmful toward their customers - sparking of public outrage here in Australia and throughout other parts of the Western world.

Zimmer defended Lyft's privacy options today, stating that "We (Lyft) do not share, currently share information like this with any third party. So that's definitely something that we can talk about." He went on to mention that Lyft's user-base has skyrocketed, seeing their year-over-year rides rise by 6 times, alongside their year-to-days rides reaching a 5 times increase - which is mirrored by their revenue increase.

Windows 8 hidden features and Easter eggs are still being discovered, recent reports have claimed to find a hidden Explorer shell option in Windows 8 and 8.1 - allowing users to automatically organize and open programs alongside exiting the shell if needed.

Reports also claim that no additional programs, tweaks or registry settings are required to use these features.Interested in utilizing this for yourself? Follow these simple steps:

This will effectively remove your Taskbar and Smart Screen from your system. If you want it back, you can follow a few different methods - firstly you must open your Task Manager.

Microsoft is ready to help consumers forget about Windows 8 and 8.1, and is rumored to begin promoting its upcoming Windows 10 operating system starting next January. The company took the wraps off Windows 10 during a relatively low-key event that was hosted in September.

Windows 10 for Business preview was released earlier in the year, as testers continue to provide feedback, Microsoft wanted to wait until later to begin discussing "significant" new features to the successor to Windows 8/8.1.

Even with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) happening in early January, Microsoft will host a dedicated a press event in late January to discuss Windows 10. The company previously said consumer features would be unveiled in "early 2015," as the company wants to move ahead with the latest Windows OS.

Valve has just updated their rules for trade of Steam gifts, said to hinder key reseller businesses looking to on-sell keys in the form of gifts. New game purchases as a gift will be stored in the buyer's inventory for 30 days before it can be sold or traded - meaning that if you're looking to buy a new game and sell it on, or maybe lend a helping hand to a mate, maybe you should forget about it.

Tony Paloma from Valve has just announced this new ruling, stating: "All new games purchased as a gift and placed in the purchaser's inventory will be untradable for 30 days. The gift may still be gifted at any time. The only change is to trading. All new games purchased as a gift and placed in the purchaser's inventory will be untradable for 30 days. The gift may still be gifted at any time. The only change is to trading."

This is a bold move by Valve, basically barring any re-seller websites looking to make a living out of key trading - but on the other hand it's a nice move in the fact that many people get burned year after year, purchasing dodgy keys only to have them revoked without refund. Major websites like G2a or Kinguin have not commented on the change as of yet, but they are expected to be hit hardest by these changes.

Adobe has alerted the public of an urgent update that has just been pushed - designed to patch a major vulnerability that is being exploited by hackers. This isn't the first time that we've seen reports like this issued in 2014, we're happy to see Adobe quickly on the ball to neutralize these threats.

The issue comes through arbitrary code execution due to a but in how a de-referenced pointer to memory is handled and has been rated as a critical issue. Adobe's new update covers Windows, Linux and OS X platforms, claiming that they are now provided with "additional hardening" against the flaw known as CVE-2014-8439 which was uncovered and patched in the past.

Exploit kits are designed to deliver Malware to website visitors through methods of deception or taking advantage of vulnerabilities. Kafeine discovered this Flash flaw in October this year, with this method becoming implemented in two more exploit kits named Astrum and Nuclear. Microsoft users have received an automatic patch update, through security advisory 2755801 and Chrome has applied this update personally. OS X users should update their Flash Player to version 15.0.0.239.

Encryption and security was a big part of the push toward Android 5.0 Lollipop, with the first version of Android that enables Full Disk Encryption (FDE) by default on new devices.

AnandTech has now discovered that this forced security actually kills read/write performance on some devices, testing a Nexus 6 with some benchmark numbers to prove it. The benchmarks, below, are using AndEBench, where FDE has a really bad hit on performance. When FDE is enabled on AnandTech's Nexus 6 smartphone, random read performance drops by 62.9%, while random write speeds slump by 50.5%. That's not the worse of it, where sequential read speeds are hit by a huge 80.7% drop in speeds.

FDE is only enabled by default with devices that ship with Android 5.0 Lollipop, so if you're upgrading to Lollipop, FDE isn't enabled by default, thus you're not affected by these slowdowns. When FDE is enabled, all writes to the flash are encrypted before before being saved, and then decrypted when they're being read and sent to RAM. Worse yet, are those who enable FDE with it requiring a key to decrypt, which is protected by a lockscreen password. This means people who opt out of the passcode on the lockscreen, still experience the performance hit on their Lollipop-powered device, without the benefits of FDE's encryption.

Mozilla and Yahoo have announced a new "strategic five-year partnership that makes Yahoo the default search experience for Firefox in the United States on mobile and desktop", with the companies adding they will explore other potential "future product integrations and distribution opportunities to other markets".

Until now, Google was the default search engine in Firefox, Mozilla's popular web browser, which will be replaced with Yahoo. There was a time when Firefox was the biggest competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but now Google is the competitor with Chrome. Firefox has around 16% of the browser market in the US according to StatCounter.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer took to the company blog, talking about the new partnership: "At Yahoo, we believe deeply in search - it's an area of investment and opportunity for us. It's also a key growth area for us - we've now seen 11 consecutive quarters of growth in our search revenue on an ex-TAC basis. This partnership helps to expand our reach in search and gives us an opportunity to work even more closely with Mozilla to find ways to innovate in search, communications, and digital content. I'm also excited about the long-term framework we developed with Mozilla for future product integrations and expansion into international markets".

It would appear some Google Android 5.0 Lollipop early adopters are having trouble with their update, with Google Nexus 7 tablets running slowly and crashing. Apps built by Adobe Air are being automatically uninstalled and users cannot reinstall the missing apps - Adobe has escalated the problem with Google, trying to find a solution as quickly as possible.

Google has promoted Android 5.0 as a "quantum leap forward" and demand for the mobile OS has accelerated. However, user problems might have other Android supporters rethinking updating their smartphones and tablets until these problems are resolved.

Google Nexus, LG Electronics, NVIDIA and Motorola have rolled out Android Lollipop updates for their mobile devices, but with apps crashing or freezing, it's possible to hear even more user complaints in the near future. If nothing else, Google is likely working quickly to ensure these problems are fixed as more devices are expected to receive the update.

WhatsApp for Android is currently being updated, with the latest version providing end-to-end encryption. Previously, WhatsApp couldn't decrypt user messages, even if they wanted to for legal reasons. Most have said that it is the strongest encryption on any major text service.

The company has teamed up with Open Whisper Systems in order to usher in the secure feature, with Open Whisper responsible for multiple apps, but mostly TextSecure that had WhatsApp noticing them. This forces forward security to keep messages encrypted, even if the key is compromised in the future.

Open Whisper Systems spent around six months preparing TextSecure for WhatsApp, but at the moment it's locked to Android only. There's no word on when the iOS version will be updated, but it should roll out in the future at some point.