Software & Apps - Page 185

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.

Instagram is huge, I have so many friends who post their picture of the day on my Facebook wall, and to be 'cool', I've always wanted to get in on this, but, I have an Android phone. Instagram's co-creator, Kevin Systrom, used a presentation at South by Southwest's technology conference to showcase the Android-based version of Instagram.

The version shown was a closed beta, but should support multiple screen resolutions and should 'run very quickly'. Systrom did hint that there could be some features that the iOS version doesn't include, where he said to the audience "in some ways, it's better than our iPhone app".

Systrom didn't give a timeframe for when the app will hit Android, other than it is coming "really soon". Systrom also reiterated his view that Instagram had kept an iOS-exclusive app since launch its launch in 2010 in order to focus on the basics of scaling the platform, as well as coping with the insane number of users.

Apple's just-released iTunes 10.6 sports the ability for users to option higher quality audio conversion bitrates when syncing songs to iOS-based devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod. Before iTunes 10.6, users were given the option to down-convert higher bitrate songs to a crappy 128kbps level.

This allowed more songs to be synced to devices, but some users would rather higher quality audio, than savings to their device's storage capacity. With iTunes 10.6, users now have two options: to down-convert audio to quality levels of 192, or 256kbps, giving users three options of bitrate when syncing music to their mobile device.

iTunes purchases are encoded at 256kbps, but CD rips are at 320kbps, this means that the new setting allows people the option to reduce the quality slightly down to 256kbps when syncing to a mobile device, whilst keeping the higher quality 320kbps rip stored on their main desktop or notebook.

Google is my browser of choice. Everytime I use it, I feel like a cowboy in the western era, pulling my gun out of my holster and swinging it around my finger and then shooting some tin can at 100-feet. More exciting news, though: Google have confirmed they're working on a version of Chrome that will run in the Metro environment found within Windows 8, says Mashable.

The Google spokesperson told Mashable that the new version of Chrome would be based on the desktop browser, as opposed to the Android-based version. The representative has been quoted: