Software & Apps - Page 103

Google, Bing, and many other start up mapping companies have offered indoor maps for a while now. But these maps suffer from some issues that outdoor maps don't: accuracy. When outdoors, a user's GPS is remarkably accurate and if that fails, a user can use cell tower triangulation to at least get close.

Inside, however, GPS doesn't work very well and cell tower triangulation isn't accurate enough for the smaller scale that is indoors. Also, neither of these technologies are able to accurately tell you which floor you are on when inside a massive venue such as an airport. This is a key detail so that Google knows which floor's map to show you.

Google has a solution now, though. They have uploaded an Android app that will allow a venue owner who has uploaded maps of the venue to walk around with that app. The app will collect data such as WiFi access points as well as data about nearby cell towers to be able to later use this information to better locate a user inside.

While Internet Explorer may not be winning any awards for being the most feature-filled or quickest browser around, it is winning accolade from one user for giving his aging desktop replacement notebook the best battery life. User Ciprian Adrian Rusen put IE9, IE10, Chrome 18, Firefox 11 and Opera 11.62 to the test and found that both IEs lasted longer.

His machine is a two and a half year old HP Pavilion dv7 2185dx with a 2GHz Core 2 Quad Q9000, a Radeon HD 4650 and 6GB of DDR2 RAM. Not exactly a power friendly configuration! Many like to use Chrome for its minimalist design--I'm using it right now--but it is pretty clear that it likes to use power in exchange for its snappiness.

Chrome was 126% faster than IE10 but yielded only 85 minutes of run time whereas IE10 ran for 108 minutes. However, since IE10 had to be ran on Windows 8, some of these power savings could be attributed to Windows 8. Microsoft has been touting that Windows 8 is more energy efficient. If you're going for battery life, it looks like the best choice is IE10.

SwiftKey is something I simply can't live without on my Samsung GALAXY S II, it's an amazing piece of kit, and the developers behind it have just let loose SwiftKey 3 Beta. The latest version of their multi-award winning Android keyboard that they've been working "flat-out" on for the last six months.

The new version includes a larger spacebar with an improved typing UI, but they've touting that "SwiftKey 3 is also the most advanced touchscreen keyboard the world has to offer". Them be fighting words. They reckon they've cracked one of the hardest problems that exist in text entry: how to correctly determine when a user has missed spaces.

SwiftKey 3 sports the developers new "Smart Space" technology, where SwiftKey 3 can figure out when you've missed a space, or accidentally hit a letter across long strings of sloppy text. The software is smart enough to work out if you accidentally type "Lleasexqllme", it knows that you meant "Please call me". There's a video above that even shows this off, and it seems to work impressively well.

Two of Apple's university partners both reached some huge milestones this week using Apple's free education service, iTunes U. Stanford and Open University reached 50 million downloads of their respective content. Brent Izutsu, the senior program manager for Stanford on iTunes U said:

Stanford includes over 100 collections of course lectures in a variety of subjects ranging from entrepreneurship to clinical anatomy. iTunes U launched back in January, with subscriptions to Stanford's channel hitting 300,000. Open University did even better than this. Open University is the first school in Europe to reach one million active subscriptions through iTunes U. They also see more than 40,000 new downloads each day.

Samsung's GALAXY Note may have kicked arse in ad campaigns, beating out Doritos and M&Ms, and its reward may just be Ice Cream Sandwich. No really, thanks to Samsung and RootzWiki, you can now enjoy ICS on your 5.3-inch GALAXY Note smartphone.

RootzWiki have intensely tested the ROM before releasing it, so that the user ends up with a great experience rather than a slightly beautiful paperweight. RootzWiki's internal build tester provided them with the following rundown of working features:

If you're used to the Samsung tools in the Gingerbread-based GALAXY Note, there are a few changes that RootzWiki's tester noticed:

Over the weekend Sony detailed their Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update plans for their Xperia lineup of smartphones, where we should see the ICS updates rolling out to no less than 11 Xperia handsets by mid-June. The update will be pushed out to some phones in mid-April, with these phones being the Xperia Arc S, Xperia Neo V, and Xperia Ray.

The late-May, early-June should see ICS-based updates for Xperia Arc, Play, Neo, Mini, Mini Pro, Pro, Active, and the Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman as well. There is a problem with these updates though, is that none of them will be over-the-air (OTA), and will require that owners of these handsets who want to upgrade have to tether their handsets.

This is because Sony wants users to make a "conscious and informed decision to upgrade". All this means is that while Sony are pushing out ICS updates for 11 handsets, those who don't know about ICS will have to wait until Sony push them OTA, if they even bother doing so. I would expect a notification from Sony saying "your phone is compatible for an update, if you would like to do so, visit this site", and that site explains what ICS is, and how you upgrade.

Video cameras are everywhere! From the smallest cell phone all the way up to the professional camera, more and more people are taking video. But wading through hours upon hours of video is both a boring and time consuming task. Enter Highlight Hunter. This free piece of software was created by Noah Spitzer-Williams and team cuts down editing time by up to 80 percent.

Noah spent 5 years at Microsoft at different posts and finally decided to start his company. The way the software works is like this. As one records an adventure, game, or the like, a user simply covers the lens for one second after a highlight to bookmark it. One then downloads the data onto a Mac or PC and uses the free app. It takes a couple of minutes and pulls together all of the highlights that were bookmarked.

The software is compatible with most video cameras and data files. You can choose how much time to record before the highlight bookmark in the settings. The app can take hours of video and cut it down to the highlights in an average of 3 to 4 minutes according to Spitzer-Williams. The team has plans to integrate with video editing software, but they aren't there yet.

Google have just pushed out Google Maps for Android 6.5, and with it, brings a few new features for Ice Cream Sandwich-powered devices, as well as some stats which should raise eyebrows on some people.

Google Maps for Android has guided people through more than 50 billion kilometers of turn-by-turn directions, which is the equivalent to 130,000 trips to the moon, 334 trips to the sun, 10 trips to Neptune, or 0.005 light years. Absolutely mind-blowing when its put that way, really.

Google Maps 6.5 for Android sports a redesigned Navigation home screen for Android 4.0+, which makes it easier to enter a new destination or select from recent and favorite locations by swiping left or right (as seen in the picture above). If your smartphone sports a high pixel density screen, such as the GALAXY Nexus, GALAXY S II, Droid Razr, and others, you'll now be greeted with higher resolution map tiles that take better advantage of the pixels-per-inch on your screen.

Note-taking super-app Evernote, has been updated for Android and now includes a few new features that might either entice you to try it, or excite you to update it. First up we have the integrated speech-to-text transcription to sit side-by-side Evernote's already-in-place audio notes feature.

The original audio is attached to each note, and the new tool can be disabled for sound-only reminders. This feature is OS specific though, where it's limited to Android 4.0 technology and "certain other devices", so be careful with that one.

The standard widgets have also received a new splash of paint, where an update to the Evernote Widget is now in play. The updated widget allows you to customize color, buttons and exactly which notes appear in the large widget. We also have a single function widget which sits on the home screen like the regular app does. And lastly, we have Quick Snapshot, which lets you take fast captures that are added to your account and automatically titled.

Adobe are wanting to hit the gaming scene with some punches, where they've announced Flash Player 11.2 as well as AIR 3.2. Adobe's goal: to enable "console quality" games like Shadowgun to run within your browser.

Flash Player 11.2 sports the ability to support mouse-lock, relative mouse coordinates, right/middle click events, multi-threaded video decoding, and the capability for hardware accelerated 2D and 3D graphics for gameplay at up to 60 frames per second. Not bad for your browser, isn't it.

AIR 3.2 (which is Adobe's platform for building cross-platform web apps) now comes with Stage3D for mobile, which is a technology Adobe released back in October for desktops, that is now used in graphically intensive titles such as Spaced Away and ApexVJ. Adobe also used the announcement to let us all know that they are collaborating with Unity to allow Unity customers to publish 3D games to Flash Player.

AMD has released the new AMD Catalyst 12.3 driver today for download. It's mainly a support upgrade where is features full support for Windows 7 64-bit/32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit/32-bit for the 7000 series. Windows XP support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series will be made available in AMD Catalyst 12.4

Additionally, the drivers have fixed the following issues:

• AMD Catalyst Control Center startup issues/delays have been resolved

Now, it's none of my business how many bits you process at a time. That's between you and your software vendor. But, if you want to continue using Adobe Photoshop on your Mac, you better jump on the upgrade train and grab a new multi-core Mac that has a 64-bit os, Snow Leopard or later. Windows retains 32-bit support, but only for Windows XP.

Part of this change in support structure is Adobe dropping support for Windows Vista. The logic behind retaining support for Windows XP is simple: many Photoshop users are still on Windows XP based system. With this update, any existing 32-bit Photoshop plugins will need to be updated for 64-bit. The requirements for the current beta are:

Mac OS

The latest iPhone app to hit is 'Black SMS'. What does it do? Well, it can keep your text messages covered in a black shroud, until you're ready to read them. Everyone has secrets. Think of it, I know you do. I do. I'm secretly a lady. What? You can't see what I typed there, it has a black shroud over it.

Black SMS is not expensive, either, at just $0.99. The app sends blacked-out messages through Apple's iMessage service, so when you receive a black SMS, you then copy the message from your Messages folder, and paste it into the Black SMS app to reveal what it says. Kind of like a next-gen scratchy.

Even if your iPhone is stolen, Black SMS requires a password to decode the black shroud-laden message. HAHA, pranksters. The app makes a person questionable, though, as if the situation arose that you had secret SMS messages, one would ask what is so secret? But, what if you just didn't want people knowing what you're talking about?

Popular HTPC software suite, XMBC, has hit version 11.0 and is now available for download. The new version sports, according to XMBC's website:

Just a little bit of an upgrade, wouldn't you say? On top of that, the team have also increased the hardware support of XBMC, too. Eden now marks the first in-sync stable release for the Apple TV2, iPad, and other iOS-based devices. The team have also said to have improved the method they use for input, including "heavily upgrading JSON-RPC support" which makes remote control support much simpler in Windows, reportedly.

Over the weekend, Instagram opened up a sign-up page for the much-anticipated Android app. At the moment, it's not known what the sign-up page actually does, whether it gives you an early entry into the app, as users are encouraged to supply an e-mail address to be the "first in line".

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom has hinted previously that the Android-based version of the popular camera app would be just weeks away, and has also teased that it might be more feature-rich than its iOS competition.

Instagram saw a surge in users when the iPhone 4S was released, and now sits at a very respectable 27 million users. As soon as Instagram for Android drops, you can be sure that we'll let you know.

NVIDIA released their latest Kepler-based GEFORCE GTX 680 only hours ago now, with TweakTown super star and VGA Editor, Shane Baxtor being the first in the world to release a review on the new card. I heard NVIDIA weren't really mad and started making blue-colored cocktails to match the TweakTown colors, in celebration that they knew it really amplified the buzz for the card (kidding).

Anyway, NVIDIA have released the new GeForce 301.10 WHQL-certified drivers designed for use with the newly-released GEFORCE GTX 680 GPU. The new driver throws in some new features, and enhancements, but are are GTX 680-exclusive.

I'll skim over some of the new features, and let you read the rest at the source. First up we have NVIDIA Control Panel FXAA, which is a high-speed, shader-based anti-aliasing technique that can be enabled directly through the NVIDIA control panel. Called FXAA, this new technique is up to 60-percent faster than 4xMSAA, and can produce results equal to MSAA at minimum, and in some cases, provide better-than MSAA quality.

Adobe haven't released a new version of Photoshop for nearly two years now, which means Adobe's engineers have been knuckling down for a very long time, without anyone seeing the goodies they're working on, until now. Adobe are now ready to show off their latest beta version of Photoshop CS6.

Adobe have added no less than 65 new features, which are said to be from a tonne of user feedback ideas, including a new crop tool, expanded video editing options, auto recovery and the ability to search for specific layers. Fans of the dotted lines in Illustrator will be in love with Photoshop, which now receives the same vector tools.

Every slider for the Camera Raw 7.0 plug-in, including exposure, contrast and more, now has a tweaked algorithm. One of the stand-out features is the ability for Photoshop to save projects in the background, whilst you work on other things. In the words of Borat, "very nice!"

We should be expecting Microsoft to release their next-generation Windows 8 OS in October, where we could see both the x86 and ARM-based versions dropping simultaneously. This would give Microsoft a head start for the holiday season, letting tablet, notebook and other device makers ample time to get products ready for holiday consumption.

Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft want to claw back some of the lost sales they've experienced because of the iPad, and reinvigorate the sluggish PC market. Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Garter Inc. has said:

Mozilla used to be the browser, until Chrome came and pushed them to the side and stole their lunch money. Mozilla had a plan for version 11 of Firefox, which they wanted it to be "lighter and faster", where this theme will continue through 2012 with something the team calls "Project Snappy".

Other than sounding like a lobster thats still alive trying to snap at your fingers, Mozilla has discussed its success throughout 2011, and what 2012 will hold for the company. Mozilla have been fighting for the #2 browser spot over Chrome for the past six months, where Chrome pushed past Firefox for the first time in December last year. Mozilla thinks that branding could have a big deal of how they'll keep strong this year, where version numbers might take a back seat for once:

Microsoft is continuing to show off their latest features in its upcoming Interent Explorer web browser, where they've displayed the touch-friendly Metro interface, as well as the web browsers enhanced security. The trend of Google's Chrome browser, is to reduce the browsers interface so that it takes up less and less of the screen, which frees up more space for the Web content itself, which personally, I love.

Windows 8's Metro design does the same thing, where it puts much more focus on the content itself. Metro Internet Explorer 10 is a continuation of this train of thought, where there's no visible interface at all, which leaves only the Web page itself visible. The app bar, is displayed by swiping from the top or bottom of the screen, or right-clicking the mouse, contains the tabs, address bar, and more.

The Metro-infused version of Internet Explorer, according to Ars Technica, feels "slick" and comfortable using both touch and mouse and keyboard interaction. The tile-based favorites view and tab thumbnails are both said to be good, too. Security-wise, Internet Explorer 10 will sport a new Enhanced Protected Mode. Protected Mode is the name that Microsoft gives to its sandboxing technique. It was introduced into Internet Explorer 7 on Vista, where it creates a separate, low-privilege process for running JavaScript and rendering HTML.