Software & Apps - Page 107

Sony's PlayStation Suite SDK was shown off at the Tokyo Game Show in September, but Sony have just opened up the SDK application process for a closed beta test. This allows Windows XP and Windows 7 users in the US, UK and Japan to submit their credentials for early access.

For those who get approval from Sony will have the ability to develop apps for use on the PS Vista when it drops in February, 2012, along with the PS Suite - that "hardware-neutral" framework that will allow access from non-PlayStation branded products, including the Xperia Play, Tablet S and Tablet P, with the potential for third-party devices to come too.

The PlayStation Suite SDK uses the C# programming language, and doesn't require developers to have access to actual Sony hardware. You can apply to be a Sony developer by clicking the following link.

Opera Software have just rolled out a small update to their mobile browsers which includes some new features as well as the usual optimizations such as improved network performance and lower memory usage. Opera Mini 6.5 and Opera Mobile 11.5 now sport enhanced bookmarking functionality with a small star in the address field that lets you quickly save those links you want to keep and add them to your Speed Dial.

Opera have also added in a built-in data counter, found in the "Help" menu, the counter lets you monitor your data consumption, which could be very useful for data conscious users. Tracking your data consumption on your mobile plan is usually hard, requiring that you sign into your providers website or use an app to monitor it, but having it built into Opera (which is where a majority of your browsing will be done) is very handy indeed.

On top of this, it will gel well with Opera Turbo. Opera Turbo compresses web data by up to 90-percent before sending it to your phone. This is great for those on low data plans, mixed in with the data counter, you could keep a tab on your consumption very easily.

Google+ has added Instagram-like controls to its photo section. The section has always had basic editing, because Google+ shares its photo albums with Picasa, so any edits made there would bounce back. But now they're stepped it up a few notches and built it directly in. The new controls only work in the desktop version, and can be accessed by clicking the edit button when you're in the fullscreen light-box view and selecting "Creative Kit".

From there, you're launched into an editor which is powered by PicNik (my niece Alisha will love that). From here, you can crop and tweak photos, but also included is an Instagram-like filter where you can perform some powerful edits. Included is a "Sunless Tan" tool, which can do exactly what it says... you use a brush to apply the tan and somehow it works out where the edges are and turns anyone into a reality TV star ready for the Jersey Shore, b*tch.

Right now there is a seasonal toolkit: Halloween. This allows you to add blood spatter, gravestones, "Dracula Dermis", and other fun stuff to your pictures. The Creative Kit is Flash-powered, so if you were thinking you might hit it up by signing into the non-mobile version of Google+ from an iPad, you're completely out of luck.

AMD have invested an undisclosed amount of money into BlueStacks, a "venture-back firm" whose software allows Android apps to run "fast and full-screen" on Windows 7. I posted about BlueStacks earlier this month, and now we have AMD helping them. AMD aren't just helping them financially, either:

Manju Hegde, corporate vice president of AMD's Fusion Experience Program says:

My, my, how time has flown by. I still remember triple-booting my PC with Windows 98SE, Windows 2K and Windows XP, how has ten years gone by? Microsoft include the infographic below, which is not only cool, but it shows just how long ago 2001 was with all of the old technology (or lack thereof).

For example, in 2001 we have in-person meetings, now we have video conferencing. Working at the office, can now be done anywhere (such as me posting this news out to the world, I can do so in my boxer shorts and you wouldn't even know it - begin dreams, now). Chat rooms have been swapped for social networking, dial-up for broadband/Wi-Fi, and hard drives for "the cloud".

Microsoft also try to get people to upgrade by saying that batteries in smoke detectors, oil in your car, tires on your car, toothbrushes, and cell phones all require replacing at some point. I guess this is a push to "why haven't you upgraded to Windows 7 yet?". Going back to 2001, or Windows XP feels like a step into a time machine. Isn't it funny that at the time, it was so "magic" and "revolutionary", and now it feels like a bad hair-do, or those really embarrassing clothes that you wouldn't want to be caught dead in*.

Linux Kernel version 3.1 has popped its head up and offers support for a range of technologies such as Intel's Ivy Bridge and Cedar Trail chips, NFC and drivers for Wiimotes. It also has improved power management. It's available to download right now, but of course you may want to wait for the distro of your choice for an official update or release.

Its own summary sums it up quite well:

The Android Market has been maintaining exponential growth lately, but still lags behind Apple's App Store. In Q3, 2011 the number of active mobile applications in the Android Market was 319,161. Not bad, but considering Apple have 459,589 in the App Store, that's quite the stab in the chest.

But, looking deeper, research2guidance have said that Android developers are much more productive when compared to Apple's. They noticed that the averageAndroid-based publisher has placed more than 6 applications in the Market since launch, compared to just 4 apps on average for the iOS-based developers.

The actual total number of applications published on the Android Market was over 500,000 in September 2011. Where as Apple saw just over 600,000 successful submissions to their App Store: just 20-percent more. The problem here is that 37-percent of the applications published were later removed from the Android Market for various reasons; where Apple's App Store removed only 24-percent of published apps.

Razer introed Synapse five years ago now, which let gamers store macros, key binds, and profiles directly into their Razer devices' onboard memory. Today, they've taken this one step further by introducing Razer Synapse 2.0, which allows your personalised peripheral settings to sit in the cloud.

While this won't help everyone, it will be a great thing for users such as tournament gamers, or those who use more than one computer for gaming. The problem is with this, is that people still have to take around their mouse and keyboard, with Razer hardware storing it inside the peripheral itself, cloud-based peripheral settings don't really have a need, but as I said, there are still uses for it.

Synapse 2.0 does however make the process that much easier, saving time on re-binding keys, etc and takes it all down to a simple login and sync process. The software will also automatically download drivers, game add-ons, and firmware updates to ensure your Razer hardware is always up-to-date.

In a new posting on Microsoft's MSDN Blog pages we can get a better idea of how the search function available in the start menu will work, and it is indeed quite different to what we're used to with the likes of Windows 7.

While the start search in Windows 8 takes up a lot more space, it is a lot easier (and quicker) to make use of when it comes to looking for a program, file(s), or settings windows. As there will inevitably be a ton of apps included with Windows 8, which would only grow a lot more once all the 3rd party stuff starts getting installed, Microsoft has made the decision to split the search feature into three sections.

One section will focus solely on all the apps and programs installed; another will be dedicated to listing settings and Control Panel items, while the third will display files and gives a range of filters to trim down the search.

Well, its not everyday your smartphone can be a superhero, but for some poor fello in NYC, it seems the latest iPhone incarnation has. The MacRumors forum is buzzing from a story that this man found out that his wife was lying to him. The man is actually already filing for divorce, and you can find all of the details in the below quote and picture:

Of course, this news does raise some serious concerns. Privacy for one... yes this woman may (I can't prove this) have been cheating, but it was only through an Apple device that she was found out. Her husband had to enable an app in her phone to do this, so if she was not in fact cheating, that is a breach of her privacy from her husbands paranoia. Second, this now creates buzz across the world, thousands if not, millions of people who had never heard of Find My Friends will now be using this application.

Right from the get go Windows 7 was looking strong out the gate and allowed Microsoft to take a quick U-turn away from the rocky road they travelled down with Vista, but it's been Windows XP that has retained the biggest impact in the OS world for MS all this time.

However, if the latest consolidation of data from StatCounter is accurate, the first half of this October has seen Windows 7 actually overtake XP in becoming the primary operating system of choice worldwide. The data was collected from over 3 million sites in total and it was discovered that Windows 7 now has a market share of over 40%, which is up from 39.04% last month.

Windows XP is still going super strong, though, with a 38.62% market share. Meanwhile, Vista continues to dwindle in third place at a far distant 11.18% market share. Trailing behind Vista in fourth is Apple with Mac OS X at 7.3%, then in fifth sits iOS at 1.1%.

Jailbreak iOS 5 on iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad and iPod Touch using Redsn0w 0.9.9b5 is now available and for those of you who wanted to upgrade to the fresh-out-of-the-oven iOS 5, but not lose your jailbroken app goodness, as well as all of those hacks and tweaks you've fallen in love with, today is your day.

There were rumors that iOS 5 would stop any of these types of hacked upgrades, but people still want their stolen apps and games, right? Maybe it's just tweaks and hacks to the original iOS 5 that you're after, but everyone is different. Of course, there are some jailbreak apps that just don't work with iOS's default software. SBSettings for example, bringing control of your iDevice's vital features using a simple activation method.

The iPhone Dev-Team has released a tether-jailbreak (which means you'll require it to be connected to a computer when the phone turns on, every time) which is explained below:

Windows 8's UI has undergone some changes as Microsoft received a bunch of feedback due to its developer preview of the upcoming OS last month, where they pledged to respond with a number of changes. Firstly, the app displayed within the Windows 8 App Screen can now be organised into groups, rather than the alphabetical arrangements (as shown in the image below).

Apps can now be displayed at a higher density, which means cramming more content into the same space. Enterprise users will have the ability to customize their companies' Start screens and unify them across the networks, which is pretty darn cool if you ask me. There's still no word on whether administrators have the ability to opt out of Windows 8's Metro Ui tile-based interface, in favor of the "old-school", Windows 7-esque Desktop app, which is a highly requested feature.

There are many changes Microsoft are baking into Windows 8 and its great to see them so open with their users and implementing them so quickly. Take a look at the Building Windows 8 blog for an absolutely mammoth read, its very detailed and very awesome.

Start-up company BlueStacks has rubbed their hands together and produced some magical app that allows Android apps to run on all Windows PC, as it is ready to start publicly testing its software. BlueStacks is making an alpha of its software available to the public. But their long-term goals are to have both a free and a paid version of its software and to have it loaded onto new PCs. The alpha version of the software allows most (not all) Android apps to be loaded onto a PC, but prohibits some games such as Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja - which will be left for the paid version of the app.

BlueStacks VP, John Garguilo said in an interview "We're very happy with the degree to which apps work, not every app will work perfectly." That I agree with, we can't expect every app to work perfectly, but for just an app to appear [for what seems] out of nowhere, this is a magic day indeed. BlueStack's app will actually ship with several Android apps already preloaded and users will have the ability to push programs from their phone or tablet to the PC from a program that will be on the Android market.

I'm sure you have taken many photos that have been blurry, but Adobe is looking at erasing this problem with a new feature that they demoed at the company's MAX 2011 event. It had the crowd gasping from amazement as before their eyes they had a blurred photo, retouched and perfected in seconds. Advanced algorithms calculate the movement of the camera at the time the image was taken, enabling the user to 'fix' the image by unblurring it - saving what would usually be a photo that would end up in your recycling bin.

The video shown below (which ironically, is shakey itself) demonstrates the process can be used on a photo captured on a mobile device to sharpen the quality, and in some cases with text-based images, reveal more data. There is no official release date for the anti-blur feature, but it will definitely be a favorite for millions worldwide when it becomes available.

Microsoft have set the goal of reducing the overall runtime memory requirements of the core system, this is a benefit to everyone and will allow people to run more and more apps, or many apps simultaneously on systems with only 1 or 2GB of RAM. Microsoft are wanting to reduce Windows 8's memory footprint as it will be pumping away on SoC-based devices which will have not only limited specs compared to a full blown desktop, but they also have batteries that don't last forever.

As Microsoft say "If an OS uses a lot of memory, it can force device manufacturers to include more physical RAM. The more RAM you have on board, the more power it uses, the less battery life you get. Having additional RAM on a tablet device can, in some instances, shave days off the amount of time the tablet can sit on your coffee table looking off but staying fresh and up to date." This is very true, so reducing the memory footprint is a very, very important move.

Microsoft's goal with Windows 8 was to ship with the same system requirements as Windows 7, and Microsoft thinks they've reached that point, as well as exceeded it. Microsoft ran a test with Windows 7 vs Windows 8 to see what its memory usage was like in a system with 1GB of RAM (the minimum OS RAM requirement) and compared them by rebooting multiple times, and then idled a few times. They used a 3+ year old netbook (the same one used at the //build/ keynote) and below we have a screenshot of Windows 7 SP1 and under that, Windows 8.

Do you overclock your graphics card via software? Chances are these days you're most likely using MSI's own Afterburner for it, seeing as it's one of the most complete, useful tools around these days for not only GPU overclocking, but other various things like video capturing, temp monitoring, setting profiles for different scenarios etc.

With that said, you may like to know that the folks over at the Guru of 3D have released a new updated version of it to the public, albeit in beta form. The changelog is quite extensive, though, with a ton of fixes, tweaks and additions that should have you quickly wishing to update to this 2.2.0 Beta 8 build.

The full change list can be read below :-

Wishing you could retain more of a Windows 7 oriented look with your install of Microsoft's Windows 8 developer release? You'd certainly be one of many who just can't get used to the vastly different interface at this stage, in which case you'll be impressed to know there is now a way to get more of a Windows 7 look from Windows 8 thanks to the "Metro UI Tweaker" from The Windows Club.

Using this tweaking tool (after first installing .NET Framework 3.5.1), disabling the Metro start menu and Explorer Ribbon is just the start of what it can do. Other tweaks on tap include :-

Google have released Chrome 15 and 16 to beta and dev channels respectively. Just a week after the first stable build of Chrome 14 hits the sticky webs of the Internet, Google throw more versions into the mix. Available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux, Chrome 15 beta brings a redesigned New Tab page that makes it easier to manage your apps, bookmarks and most visited sites. Chrome 15 includes the ability to drag and drop apps to rearrange them, create new sections with custom names and delete apps by dragging them into a trash can on the bottom right of a page.

Navigation between various sections such as Most Visited, Apps and Bookmarks is easier and Chrome will now remember your selection the next time you open up a new tab. On top of the new whiz bang additions, Chrome Web Store items can now be installed inline by their verified site, Omnibox History can now be synced alongside your other browser data with Google Sync and the Javascript Fullscreen API is enabled by default.

Chrome 16 on the other hand (only available on Windows and Mac OS) enabled the long-awaited multi-user feature by default. This allows you to switch between various in-browser user profiles. The pre-release beta also consists of an updated V8 engine (3.6.4.0) and various bug fixes.

I'm sure you dear readers don't like the old-school, 80s style boot-up sequence that has plagued Windows since, well, forever. This is all set to change with the old BIOS system being replaced by a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) which gives users a high-resolution logo and graphical menu to look at whilst booting up their PCs. Not only does it look pretty, but the menu will allow booting to a different disc, OS or USB drive with pictures and words as prompts.

The command prompt will still be there if you would like to get your black and white, text thrashing on. For everyone else, they get the super-pretty, super-fast boot up sequences we've all been dreaming of for a very, very long time. Microsoft will continue to support the legacy BIOS interface, but systems using the UEFI interface will have "significantly richer capabilities". Other nifty things built-in is ease of use for performing troubleshooting in Windows RE.

Microsoft have gone as far as included a soft keyboard available from the command prompt in Windows RE, they cited an example as a field repair on a device that doesn't have a keyboard. This is a great step, and a large one in the right direction for Microsoft.