Software & Apps - Page 191

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.