Software & Apps - Page 102

In a move that is sure to upset people who purchased Rock Band on iOS, EA has started an in-app announcement alerting players that "on May 31, Rock Band will no longer be playable on your device. Thanks for rocking out with us!" It's not clear whether just the multiplayer is being shut down or if they are going to disable the app.

Even better is the fact that the app is still available for purchase without any sort of warning about the May 31 date. Makers of apps are able to remove their apps at anytime from the app store, but the software often remains playable on devices which have it installed. If EA fully disables the software come May 31, there could be bad publicity.

EA has shut down games before. Just last month they announced the shutdown of nearly a dozen titles. "As games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles to a level -- fewer than 1 percent of all peak online players across all EA titles -- where it's no longer feasible to continue the behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these games up and running," the company said at the time.

Microsoft have unleashed upon the world, the DirectX 11.1 specifications. There's a massive list of things that are being included, so don your thinking cap and get directly into it! We shouldn't expect too much to change until consoles are updated with next-gen GPUs, which should hopefully happen next year.

Until then, it's a nice list and we should expect some small changes to the way games are made, look and react. Nonetheless, the specifications are neat, and as a tech junkie, this is just another fix for me, and hopefully you. Check out the latest DirectX 11.1 specifications below:

Shader Tracing and Compiler Enhancements

As demonstrated with the Flashback Trojan, most of the Macs around the world are generally unprotected from viruses and malware. I've been saying it for a while now: Macs need anti-virus software. An official in the actual field of anti-virus and security has come out and said that Macs are 10 years behind Windows in terms of security.

Someone must have been listening to me as avast! Free Antivirus for Mac is now available to protect your OSX based computer from viruses and malware. The makers of the capable Windows anti-virus software have ported it over to Mac so as to protect them from cyber criminals, just as cyber criminals are finding that they can beat Mac security.

"avast! users have been fully protected from malware like the Flashback Trojan - even when our app was just in the beta stage," said Vince Steckler, CEO of AVAST Software. "The popularity of Apple computers have made Macs an interesting - and wide open - target for the bad guys. With avast! Free Antivirus for Mac, we are ready to help close this window of vulnerability."

Angry Birds Space, a follow-up to the Angry Birds series of games, has been immensely popular since its release back on March 22. We reported how it rocketed past 10 million downloads in 3 days, and later 20 million downloads in 7 days. Now the company has tweeted that they have flown past 50 million downloads in just 35 days.

If my math is correct, and it usually is, the pace of downloads is slowing down, but 50 million in 35 days isn't something to scoff about. The company behind Angry Birds believes that the speed of downloads makes this game the fastest growing mobile game available today. Told you it isn't something to scoff about.

"50 Million downloads in 35 days! Proud to have #angrybirdsspace as one of the fastest growing games ever! rov.io/50MILL" the company's tweet said. Along with this announcement comes the teasing of something bigger. The company said the following in a blog post, "There's only one conclusion to draw: something even bigger is on its way."

Apple may have quite a bit of power in the smartphone and tablet sector, but we all know that all kingdom's eventually collapse. Before that, the King's make big speeches and Apple is no different. Apple CEO Tim Cook took time out from yesterday's earnings call to take a swipe at Microsoft's plans for WIndows 8, where he likening them to combining a toaster to a fridge.

Cook had a question-and-answer session that followed the earnings call, and was asked if Apple had any plans to merge their tablet and laptop efforts, as Microsoft are doing with their upcoming Window 8 OS. Cook replied with:

AMD has released the new AMD Catalyst 12.4 driver today for download. With it comes several performance increases along with the promised Windows XP support for the full line of HD 7000 series GPUs. Along with performance increases, several bugs have been fixed:

Full release notes are available here and the download is available here.

The highlights are as follows:

Quite honestly, I had completely forgotten about Norton. I mean, who still uses their anti-virus software when there are free alternatives such as AVG or Avast? Perhaps this new cloud-based password manager will help bring users back. Identity Safe is the new password manager and is compatible with Windows, iOS, and Android.

A startling statistic says that 70% of web surfers have forgotten a password in the last month. Wow. Norton hopes to gain users to the service by putting an end to it. By doing so, they are going head-to-head with LastPast and others who are already in the market place for this type of software.

Identity Safe can manage and generate new passwords for the user as well as use its pedigree of anti-virus software to warn you of malicious sites. The service will remember your passwords and other login credentials and automatically fill them in when you visit a site you have saved them for. It will additionally act like RoboForm and remember non-login data like addresses, credit card numbers, frequent flyer numbers and more.

Microsoft have confirmed that a near-final "release preview" of Windows 8 is expected to drop in early-June, says Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky, where he made the announcement at at Windows Developer Days event held in Japan earlier this week.

This should mean the release could arrive at the time of Computex, which would be a perfectly timed show off period for the Redmond-based company. All eyes will be on the releases as they hit as Microsoft push Windows in a new direction.

Windows 8 should be quite the all-in for Microsoft, as they're not only trying to keep desktop-based customers happy, but notebooks, newly-arrived Ultrabooks, and then tablets and smartphones. Microsoft want to combat Apple's iPad, but right now have nothing to even compete with. Windows 8 will change all of this.

AMD are planning on dropping support for a bunch of their older GPUs when they release their Catalyst 12.7 drivers, which will be a considerable amount of GPUs no longer supported.

AMD plan to conclude driver updates for pre-Evergreen, and even pre-Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000 and HD 5000 series GPUs, starting this summer. The change should go into effect with the Catalyst 12.7 drivers which should pop up sometime in July.

Owners of these older GPUs would then have to use the latest driver made available to them, Catalyst 12.6, to run their older DirectX 10/10.1 GPUs. The culling of these pre-Evergreen GPUs from AMD's Catalyst driver package is a bit strange, but most likely a push for users to upgrade their ageing GPUs.

Apple are today seeding registered members of the Mac Developer Program the latest, third developer preview of OS X Mountain Lion. The new version is Build 12A178q, which is up from the previous 12A154q version.

There are various changes baked in which have yet to be discovered, but the lucky ones with access to the Developer Preview will surely swim through the sea of changes to find out just how Mountain Lion ticks, or roars. Apple has a list of known issues with the latest build:

- On systems with FileVault enabled, canceling the restart to the Mountain Lion Developer Preview 3 Installer may leave your system unable to present a password dialog at boot time. You can repair the problem by holding down command-R to boot to the Recovery OS and then using Disk Utility to unlock and Repair your volume.

Popular social drawing game Draw Something, has been updated. I woke up this morning and on the drive to my day job, pulled over as I was early and checked my e-mail, Facebook, etc. The first thing I noticed is that I had multiple friends talking about an update to Draw Something. Well, it's quite the update indeed.

The new update sports some more social elements that feel perfectly suited to the game, first up when you finish drawing or guessing you can send a comment to your partner. This will be a perfect feature for giving people a little clue to your drawing. Some people will use this to say what the drawing itself is, but people already write the word as the drawing, like my Mom and Sister do to collect coins - cheats.

Before the update, if you wanted to share your drawing you had to screenshot and then upload through Facebook or Twitter, now the sharing is made much easier, where it allows you to upload directly to Facebook or Twitter, and is accompanied by a https://drawso.me URL leading to the Draw Something app download page. Filling out the new features is the ability to pull down on your current games screen to refresh and see if its your turn to draw yet, and let you undo the last line your drew.

Microsoft Evangelist Nuno Silva was involved in a video interview that has been posted by Portugese site Zwame, where it's been suggested that ALL Windows Phone devices, even those from the first-generation will get an upgrade to the next-gen OS.

Outside of this interview, Microsoft have barely whispered about the future of Windows Phone, whether its even in development or not. It's believed that Windows Phone 8/Apollo could break the mould on how Windows Phone 7 behaves. There could be enough code compatibility with the desktop that its apps could run on Windows 8 with minimal porting. Wouldn't that be nice?

Of course, we should expect new features in the next-gen OS that would require next-gen hardware. But the underlying OS should work on lower-end devices, but would most likely include restrictions. Apple does this on their devices with iOS versions, same with Google's Android OS.

Until today, music streaming services in Australia have been quite lacklustre, if existant at all. Yes, you could use a VPN or other methods, but its not the same and most people don't know how to do it, which means the masses are left without anything like Spotify, etc. Until today.

Telstra has announced a deal with subscription music service, MOG, where they will soon offer unlimited, on-demand access to more than 15 million songs, streamed to their smart device (mobile, tablets, etc), computer, or certain Smart TVs. The service will be ad-free, and offer unlimited music on connected devices for less than the price of a CD each month.

On top of the unlimited music, the service offers:

We all know Windows 8 is baking very nicely in Microsoft's ovens right now, and they're just some more information surface now in the form of the editions we should expect. Microsoft are going to release Windows 8 in three editions: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 RT.

The differences? Well, the first two edition's are for x86-based systems, both in 32- and 64-bit. Windows 8 will be the OS for most people, as it includes most of the features you need, plus an updated Windows Explorer, Task Manager, better multi-monitor support as well as the ability to switch languages on the fly, which was previously an exclusive feature to the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows.

Next up is Windows 8 Pro, which is designed for tech enthusiasts and business/technical professionals. It includes all of the features of Windows 8 as well as encryption, virtualization, PC management and domain connectivity. Windows Media Center is now considered an economical "media pack" add-on for Windows 8 Pro. Finally, we have Windows 8 RT. This is the newest member of the Windows family, which is something Microsoft have been calling Windows on Arm, or WOA.

Autodesk have been tinkering with their video editing and post-shot visual effects tool, Smoke, and will release it later in the fall. Smoke 2013 brings a bunch of new features, such as a unified interface that mixes the traditional, editorial track-based editing with Autodesk's own interface elements.

A node-based compositing tool, ConnectFX, allows editors to insert advanced effects without having to jump to a separate interface. New specific tools make the jump to the 2013 edition of Smoke, including a Color Warper for pro color adjustment, a Master Keyer for faster chromakey editing for green screens and stereoscopic 3D editing, and a 3D visual effects workflow with real 3D effects for elements like logos and titles.

All media is also put into a central area, called the MediaHub. Hardware requirements have been actually lowered, and not increased for Smoke 2013, where users can also now take advantage of Thunderbolt-based external drives and video peripherals to get the same kind of editing one would receive from the high-end Mac Pro.

If you haven't already heard, Mac-based users have been hit by quite the virus scandal over the last few days in the form of "Flashback". In case you're wondering if you're infected, F-Secure are now offering an AppleScript that you can download, and run.

The tiny bit of software checks your Mac for Flashback, and if it finds it, removes it. Apple reportedly has a tool on its way too, but that's not here yet and F-Secure's is. If you want to check your system and feel a bit more secure, you can grab it here.

I just ran it on my MacBook Pro, and I'm clean. I didn't think I'd be infected, I was pretty confident, but I'm the kind of person who would rather be safe than sorry. Run it even if you don't think you're infected, and pass this news onto any of your Mac-based friends and family. Your enemies, well, I'll leave that devious decision to you.

Sticking it to the man or sticking up for the consumer? I'll let you be the judge. Nicholas Merrill is creating a new non-profit ISP which he describes as a "non-profit telecommunications provider dedicated to privacy, using ubiquitous encryption." His goal is to create a system that is so encrypted that not even the ISP itself can snoop on its customers.

The system, theoretically, could make it impossible for the ISP to respond to copyright infringement requests or authority requests. You may ask how is this legal. Well, according to Merrill, it depends on a provision in a 1994 federal law called CALEA. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act makes sure that ISPs are not held responsible for decrypting data if they don't have the information to do so.

If Mr. Merrill creates the service properly, not even the ISP would know what's going on in the system. This would allow them to operate directly under the protection of the CALEA law. Merrill dealt with the government and FBI in a legal battle for 6 years over his NYC ISP. That caused him to come up with this plan to protect himself and his users. He is attempting to raise $2 million in the next couple of weeks before the service launches.

OnLive Desktop, that popular app that gives you a hosted Windows 7 environment and full Office 2010 support, will no longer be giving you a Windows 7 environment. Instead, you will now be receiving a Windows Server 2008 environment. The App that was first shown to the world back at CES 2012 in Las Vegas immediately sparked a debate about licensing terms.

Microsoft had remained silent about whether or not the app was breaking their license terms. In March, however, the software giant spoke out saying that they didn't believe that the app was operating inside licensing terms. They said that they were in talks with OnLive to reach an acceptable license agreement.

"We're pleased to have been told that the OnLive Desktop application is now accessing our software by hosting it on Windows Server, an important step in delivering any Microsoft-licensed desktop-like service to the public. Based on this information, we will work with OnLive to take a closer look at its service and ensure it is operating according to its license like thousands of other partners and utilizing our standing pricing and licensing terms," Microsoft said in a statement to The Register.

Google's Chrome OS has been in development for quite a while now, and has since late-2010 had the same system interface, until now. The latest developer version of the operating system sports a major redesign in its UI, and it is not only looking great, it's looking more and more like Windows, which isn't a bad thing.

The first thing people are going to do with Chrome is think "is it Windows?" and once they realise its not, they're going to attempt to use it. If they've never used the Chrome browser before, it'll feel very alien, much like OS X does the first time you use it after using Windows for X amount of years. Chrome OS now looks like a traditional OS, with a full-blown desktop and window manager instead of just a browser and tabs.

Chrome's next-generation use interface framework, known as "Aura", makes its public debut with the new developer version of Chrome OS. This is a huge change, as previous iterations of Chrome OS were just an operating system, within a browser that very closely resembled Google's popular web browser. This is a great move, something that I applaud Google for doing. You can sometimes think outside of the square, but sometimes floating outside of that square makes you think you require a triangle to be 'better' or 'evolved', a simplistic UI will go a long way to ensure that Chrome OS is a serious contender for the OS wars to come.

NVIDIA have posted some new 300-series GeForce drivers, with the release of GeForce 301.24 beta. These new drivers are actually compatible with "all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs". Previous 300-series drivers only worked on the new GEFORCE GTX 680 GPU. These new drivers add support for features with the GEFORCE GTX 680, including Adaptive Vsync, NVIDIA's Frame Rate Target scheme, and an option to enable FXAA through the control panel.

The new GeForce 301.24 beta driver also offers performance improvements for single- and multi-GPU setups. Also on offer are new features for NVIDIA Surround Vision setups:

The 301.24 beta also adds a bunch of new SLI and 3D Vision profiles. SLI support has been baked in for Alan Wake, and Valve's upcoming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.