Software & Apps News - Page 164

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 :-

1 Disable Metro Start menu: Disables only Metro Start menu screen. This function requires editing a system file. It does not remove the file

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.

An announcement from Adobe today lets us know that significant new versions of its Flash Player and AIR platform are on the verge of release, Flash Player 11 and AIR 3; these both scheduled to become available to the masses early next month.

The new browser plug-in of Adobe Flash promises massive performance improvements over the 10 release using full hardware acceleration. Adobe also rolls in full, native 64-bit web browser support which should make the switch over to 64-bit web browsing less of a problem with there already being HTML5 and Java 64-bit plugins available.

Here's a detailed rundown on all the new goodies coming with the new versions :-