Software & Apps - Page 59

Microsoft is ready to unleash a new Ultimate Performance mode to Windows 10, something that will give beefier desktop PCs additional performance, while laptops and tablets will receive more performance soon.

This new Ultimate Performance mode is something Windows 10 users can turn on when High Performance mode isn't enough, where the new mode will disable all power management. With ultimate performance unleashed, it will eliminate "micro-latencies" and provide 100% performance.

Microsoft will be letting PC makers provides the option of shipping out systems with Ultimate Performance enabled out of the box.

VLC is one of the most-loved open-source pieces of software that transcends space and time, and has been the most anti-bloat, anti-BS super-lightweight software in Windows' history. Well, the new v3.0 "Vetinari" update has some massive changes in store.

We're looking at HDR10 support, and hardware-accelerated 4K/8K video on everything from smartphones, to PCs. VLC 3.0 works with Blu-ray's Java-based menus, and is even optimized for the notch on the new iPhone X. There's also Chromecast support for all devices and even in formats "not supported natively", while audio passthrough for HD audio codecs is featured in VLC 3.0 as well.

VLC 3.0 even supports 360-degree video and 3D Audio, while the new Vetinari update provides hardware decoding by default in order to hit that 4K and 8K playback, while 10-bit color and HDR are welcomed.

Ubisoft has release a new trailer on Far Cry 5 showcasing some characters that will be guns for hire in Far Cry 5.

The released video shows players the options of who can join the resistance and each of their individual perks and abilities. The video details a selection between Nick Rye, Grace Armstrong, Boomer, Jess Black, Hurk, Adelaide Drubman, and Sharkey Boshaw and Boomer.

Originally, Ubisoft has released six videos each individually detailing the 'gun for hire' characters and even naming a video 'Fang for Hire' to equate for Boomer. The character spotlights will give players a better understanding of who they will choose to join their resistance, as each gun for hire is quite different from each-other when it comes to combat.

Microsoft is steady and strong with Windows 10 updates, and now we're hearing the name of the 2018 update to Windows 10: Spring Creators Update.

The company started their February Bug Bush and had some Quests to Insiders in order to find some bugs, with references of the Spring Creators Update found by @WildDreamer95 on Twitter, and found by Richard Hay. Hay tweeted: "Is Windows 10 Redstone 4 the Springs Creators Update? This Windows Defender Application Guard Quest for this months Bug Bash seems to like that name! Thanks to @WildDreamer95 for the tip."

After the Spring Creators Update reference was found, Microsoft were quick to replace the text with 'R4 update'.

Microsoft has made some big changes to their next version of Office, with the company announcing that Office 2019 will be released later this year, but only Windows 10 users will be able to enjoy it.

Office 2019 will only work on select Microsoft operating systems, including:

Now that we know Office 2019 will only work with Windows 10, what happens with Office 2020 when it's released? Well, Microsoft are doing this so that both Windows and Office are tied to each other for the very latest updates, especially in the wake of security bugs in Meltdown and Spectre.

Rainway is an upcoming app that can provide a service that will allow gamers to stream games on-the-fly from their PC to their Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and of course smartphones and tablets.

Rainway confirmed that they are bringing the streaming service on January 20th, they announced it by releasing a brand new trailer which we've embedded above. The video confirmed that Rainway would be granting gamers a completely free of charge streaming service that will allow them to play their PC games on a virtually anything, regardless of brand.

Rainway has claimed that the streaming service will not slow down the connection speed with Rainway being "tuned to avoid impacting the performance of your game. Enjoy 60FPS streams with super low-latency gameplay." To achieve this 'no latency connection,' the developer has recommended a 12Mbps of upload, as it can be assumed that if gamers do not have a substantial internet connection the game will lag, rendering the whole streaming experience pointless.

Litterati is a recently launched unique app, the goal of the app is to clean the planet, to create more motivation for people to participate the app is also a fun game.

Literrati is the brain child of Oakland entrepreneur Jeff Kirschner, a father that had a light bulb moment when hiking with his daughter and came across litter that had been dumped in a creek. Kirschner's four-year-old daughter said "Daddy, that doesn't go there", and with that innocent remark, Kirschner was inspired to create what would eventually become Litterrati.

Kirschner explained his story with CNN last year, where he said: "It was an innocent but insightful comment and it got me thinking. It reminded me of when I was a kid at summer camp, and before visiting day everybody would go pick up five pieces of litter -- it didn't take long to clean up the whole camp".

Opera has just pushed out a new browser update, with v50 of its popular browser coming out in the next few hours that will stop sites from hijacking your CPU to mine cryptocurrency.

There are already extensions released for both Chrome and Firefox that block hijacking scripts, but Opera is the first to block cryptomining within its built-in ad blocker. Impressive stuff, especially as Opera is my browser of choice (I'm all-in with Google for everything else).

Ripple (XRP) sets a new all-time record price of $3.17

Just over a week ago now, Instagram rolled out a new update that allowed for its users easily comment on videos/photos throughout their main feed. To accompany this update, Instagram has decided to implement their 'recommended' posts into users' main feeds in hopes of attracting a more widespread option of what you might like.

The 'recommended' section into Instagram's main feed will show posts of accounts that users do not follow but instead show accounts/posts that Instagram thinks you might like. It has been made explicit that this section will be different from that of the typical main feed, by doing this, it gives users the visual option of disregarding these posts.

Unfortunately for those that desire to remove this option entirely this is not going to be possible but instead when users come across one of these 'recommended' posts they can locate the three dots and choose the 'hide' option. 'Hiding' the posts will not permanently remove them from the main feed but it will hide them until the user has gone through all of the posts from accounts they are actually following.

It's not just Facebook that want to show you what you've done over the course of 2017, but now social media powerhouse Snapchat has their own 'Your 2017 Story'.

Snapchat being one of the largest social media platforms on the planet has a very wide-spread audience, most users utilizing and enjoying the predominantly visual platform will now be rewarded through what is called "Your 2017 Story."

Snapchat has given its users the option of viewing a story which ranges the entirety of 2017's best moments. Snapchat has done this by accessing saved memories across users phones and uploaded them into one video that summarizes the 'best moments' of 2017.

Apple has announced today that they have revised the old guidelines of the App Store and have amended the policy of not being able to post template created apps. Earlier this year the company changed their guidelines to not allowing template created apps on the App store, soon after Apple realized that their effort of trying to prevent low-quality apps and spam affected more people than intended.

Apple's policy change of not allowing template based apps on the App Store meant that custom apps would have to be made to fit the companies guidelines. Small businesses, restaurants, nonprofits, organizations and clubs suffered from this new rule as most people don't have the funds to create custom apps or don't have any prior knowledge in app development.

Apple has revised the previous guidelines and reversed the standard to allow for templates to be used it but it has come with a catch. Instead of having middleman app developers publishing small businesses Apple requires "Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app's content."

Google is set out to rid the annoying ads from its web service, upgrading Google Chrome with a new built-in ad blocker which will be designed to remove any annoying ads that ruin Chrome's web experience.

This new built-in ad blocker will not be blocking all ads across the internet but will instead mainly concentrate on the ones that are super-annoying which is any that are influencing the users experience. What is good to know though is that if the website has a intrusive amount of ads the new ad blocker will instead of blocking just a few, it will remove all ads on the site even if the other ones meet the required standard.

Google assures owners of websites that it has been working very closely with publishers to ensure that the new feature is agreed upon before going live. Google also hopes that since Chrome will have it's own built-in ad blocker that people will stop using third-party software to block ads.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has announced at an AI event that Reddit will be partnering with Microsoft to create AI tools which will integrate Reddit's content into searches on Bing.

This new integration is a combined goal to develop a feature that is called Intelligent Search, the feature is designed to make the user of Bing feel more at home with the browser by answering questions quickly and promptly.

Intelligent Search will take the comprehensive information regarding your search question and compile all information into one refined answer, the source name for a answer is labeled "Consolidated from multiple sources."

Amazon has officially launched a Alexa skill that will allow for users of Alexa to control Twitch using their voice. This new Alexa skill has numerous uses such as asking for specific channel activity and a list of popular game being viewed.

This is not a surprise for Amazon to integrate Twitch into their Alexa skills as Amazon own Twitch, buying the streaming giant back in 2014 for $1 billion. The Twitch Alexa skill is designed to complement gamers that use Twitch regularly, Twitch has done this by giving users the option to enable notifications of their favorite channels going live.

Twitch has provided a full list of the features that their Alexa skill will include, they can be found below.

Amazon have been planning on their full release in Australia for quite some time now and while local retailers have been preparing for the American retailer super-giant their time has run out, Amazon is fully open and operational. The plan of becoming open for business just before Christmas seems to of gone right ahead as Amazon have already been selling Kindle e-reader devices and audio books.

Now that the American retailer has been fully activated in Australia there is suspicion to what Amazon's game plan might be, known for sacrificing profits on sales through extremely low prices just to greater it's presence is something that would put local retailers under a huge threat. Australia is already home to many technology retail giants such as Harvey Norman, JB Hi Fi and The Good Guys, all of which are expected to take a considerable hit to their profits once Amazon becomes the social norm for purchasing technology upgrades or gifts.

Morgan Stanely analysts have warned that Kmart and Targets parent company Wesfarmers could take a huge loss of $400m in annual earnings by 2026. Wesfarmers may be afraid of the huge American retailer but Harvey Norman owner and director Gerry Harvey is quite the opposite, saying that him and his company are here and ready to take Amazon on if they have fair pricing.

It was only earlier this year that Microsoft boasted that there were over 500 million devices powered by Windows 10, but six months later the Redmond-based giant has added another 100 million users bringing the total to a whopping 600 million.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the new figures during Microsoft's annual shareholders meeting today, missing the mark that they planned on reaching by 2018. Originally, Microsoft expected to have Windows 10 running on 1 billion devices, but is now 400 million - or 40%, short of that number.

The Verge report that Microsoft revised its numbers for Windows 10 installations, targeting 550 million active Windows 10 devices by the end of June, and 575 million by the end of September. This means reaching 600 million by the end of November is falling into line, but will there ever be 1 billion Windows 10 devices? If so, it won't be in 2018 at this rate.

Discord have recently announce that their free VoIP application will include Verified Servers. Verified Servers allows for game developers and publishers to help promote their product, distrubtion of official news, showcase their server in-game, custom branding for discord.gg link and other methods of expanding the game's community.

Discord Verified Servers will be indicated via a checkbox next to the game server name, similar to how Twitch indicate their verified accounts. The verification process is fairly straight forward- a server must be owned and moderated by the game developer or publisher that meets Discord's requirements, and follow Discord's community guidelines that includes enabling explicit content filter to remove illegal or malicious content.

The advantages of Discord's Verified Servers is obvious but it remains to be seen how many developers will take advantage of the program other than for social interaction.

We all know Windows 10 sucks all of our data and sends it to the Illuminati, but now Microsoft is facing a growing threat from the Netherlands' Data Protection Authority, where Windows 10 violates the country's data protection law.

This is even after the changes Microsoft made to Windows 10 with the Creators Update, but Microsoft doesn't "clearly inform" users of the type of data that they're collecting, and the reason why they need it. Officials think that Windows' default settings stop users from truly consenting to the data collection, which is a really big problem.

The DPA has said that during the installation process, Windows 10 defaults to full data sharing, encouraging you to accept those terms. Accepting these terms doesn't mean you gave permission, says the Data Protection Authority. The regulator has also said that the Creators Update didn't honor some users' previous privacy settings, and that Microsoft doesn't make it clear that their Edge browser is continuously sucking down all of your app and browsing data when you've got the default privacy settings enabled.

AMD have today released released Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition 17.10.1 drivers. These beta drivers add optimizations for upcoming releases such Middle-Earth: Shadows of War and The Evil Within 2, including Radeon Chill support for both releases.

The drivers also include fixes for some common issues including where bezel compensation in mixed-mode cannot be applied using Eyefinity setups and rare flickering for DiRT 4 with certain multi-GPU configurations. AMD have updated the common issues to include two new concerns- freeze/crash when using Windows 7 and upgrading Radeon Software with multi-GPU Vega configurations and corrupted graphics on certain HDR displays in Forza Motorsport 7 when HDR is enabled in-game.

You can view the official release notes here and upgrade your drivers here

Remember when you'd log on to the internet with your 56k modem, wait patiently for AIM start-up and log in? There's probably some people who do (hopefully without the 56k modem). Unfortunately Verizon, owner of AOL, have announced that on December 15, the long-running instant messenger service will be shut down.

"AIM tapped into new digital technologies and ignited a cultural shift, but the way in which we communicate with each other has profoundly changed," writes Michael Albers, communications products VP at Oath.

AIM is one of the last 90's IM services to shut down, with MSN Messenger shutting down in 2014 and Yahoo Messenger pulling the plug last year. The social landscape has changed towards social media and social apps over the past 15 years, with the introduction of Smartphones we've seen Facebook, Snapchat and Skype revolutionising the digital social scene.