Software & Apps - Page 61

Inside the latest Windows 10 build, we are starting to see Microsoft provide mixed reality developers with support for MR headsets, inside of Windows 10 build 15048.

The latest build provides Mixed Reality developer kit owners to check out a simulation of the demo, but not an actual mixed reality experience. It's also not available easily, as you'll need to enable "Developers Mode" on Windows 10 that will enabled the "Mixed Reality Portal" that includes the demo.

If you've got the latest Windows 10 build, you can run the simulation - but without a mixed reality headset, it's kind of useless right now. Interestingly enough, the new "Windows Mixed Reality" portal app removes any reference to HoloLens.

So YouTube has just made a major announcement, with a new streaming TV service called YouTube TV with a monthly cost of $35 - offering broadcast TV channels, some cable channels, and of course the near unlimited library of videos on YouTube.

YouTube is aiming at AT&T's DirecTV Now service, and Hulu and Sling - but there will be iOS and Android apps, as well as support for set-top products like Chromecast. Google won't be providing a massive lineup of channels, but YouTube TV will be offering up Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as a bunch of cable channels like ESPN, Fox News, and Bravo.

YouTube TV will have an unlimited cloud-based DVR, a spiffy Google-powered recommendation system, and more. The question is: will you pay $35 for YouTube TV?

WhatsApp has introduced two-step verification feature for its Android, iOS, and Windows Phone users. The feature was initially available only to beta users, but now is officially available to everyone.

The feature is optional, and it allows you to create a six-digit passcode which you will have to enter when your phone number is being verified on the app.

To enable two-step verification, open WhatsApp > Settings > Account > Two-step verification > Enable.

Microsoft is working on a new all-cloud operating system, something unearthed by Brad Sams on Thurrott, with the new OS referred to as Windows Cloud.

Windows Cloud looks identical to Windows 10, except that it works completely differently - as it is capable of running UWP apps only. This means that non-UWP apps do not work at all, and an error message will display that says 'The app you're trying to run isn't designed for this version of Windows'.

Inside, the new all-cloud OS is going to be an interesting future for Microsoft - as it will be exclusive to UWP applications. Sams got Windows Cloud from a "third-party and not directly from Microsoft" - adding that it "is possible that this is a hacked together build but we won't know until we get our hands-on an official release".

The push into the cloud is taking more shape, with Google teasing the future with their announcement of the testing of Instant Apps - a feature that will run select Android apps, without needing to install them.

Google makes Instant Apps work by being a smaller version of their native Android apps that run as soon as you tap their URL, without an installation. Once you've closed the app, it will disappear from your phone with no memory of icons on your desktop, but stays in your phone cache for a few hours if you open the link again.

A few applications work with Instant Apps, including Buzzfeed, Wish, Periscope, and Viki. Google Play software engineer Aurash Mahbod explains: "By collecting user feedback and iterating on the product, we'll be able to expand the experience to more apps and more users".

Microsoft has been making some very stupid changes to Windows 10, with their latest update breaking triple-monitor gaming for both AMD and NVIDIA gamers.

Their latest update doesn't sound so bad, with the latest builds of Windows 10 including something the company called Dynamic Lock - which Microsoft reportedly refers to as "Windows Goodbye" internally, reports Windows Central. Microsoft uses special Windows Hello-capable cameras that let Windows 10 owners log into their PCs with facial recognition.

Instead of quickly locking your PC with pressing the Windows key and 'L' at the same time, the new Dynamic Lock will do it automatically - at least for some users. We don't yet know how Microsoft will know that users have walked away from their PCs, but they could leverage their Windows Hello feature - by using the camera to constantly detect your face in front of the PC, and when you walk away it would lock it.

Microsoft has just released its new Cumulative Update for Windows 10 (KB3213986) which has broken multi-screen gaming, with the company noting that there are "known issues".

This means gamers that are running triple-display setups with AMD EyeFinity and NVIDIA Surround Sound will experiencing stuttering or clipped screens when running a game, but it should be fine in 2D applications. There's a workaround for this issue, with Microsoft adding that gamers can run their 3D apps in non-fullscreen mode - either in window-maximized, or just windowed modes.

But it gets better. Microsoft suggests that gamers disconnect their other displays, leaving just a single display connected to the PC for the game to work. Because, you know - that's why you spend thousands of dollars for the bleeding edge of high-end gaming, to disconnect those expensive LCDs.

CyanogenMod is shutting down, bringing an end to an era of Android operating system goodness. For those who don't know what or who CyanogenMod is, it's an aftermarket custom ROM that had everything Android had to offer, but some great improvements and tweaks.

Unfortunately, the company has been going through troubles - with its CEO being booted, its original founder leaving, and different choices that have led CyanogenMod to close down on December 31, 2016. The company explains: "As part of the ongoing consolidation of Cyanogen, all services and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds will be discontinued no later than 12/31/16. The open source project and source code will remain available for anyone who wants to build CyanogenMod personally".

Keeping the OS in open source is a nice touch, so developers can grab the latest version of CyanogenMod code, and keep developing it personally if they wanted to. Nothing much from there, which is sad to see over the holidays.

Just last week, Facebook introduced a new camera feature in their Messenger that lets you add special effects and art on your photos and videos. Now, they have launched another feature - Group Video Chat in Messenger.

Group Video Chat is rolling out to Android and iOS devices and the desktop version of Messenger, worldwide.

You can see up to six people at a time, but up to 50 people can join in and choose just to listen in and join via voice, or be on camera. Once more than six people are on the call, just the dominant speaker is shown to all participants.

Your music preference is your thing; there is no reason to debate the music taste. So, whether you like it or not - Drake made history with his song 'One Dance'.

Billboard announced that Drake became the first artist to reach one billion plays on Spotify for a single track with his song 'One Dance'. The Canadian singer also dominated Apple Music's year-end charts.

The 'One Dance' track was released in April, and it became the most streamed song ever on Spotify.

Instagram recently added a new feature Stories, which is a clear copy of Snapchat. Now, Facebook introduced a new camera feature in their Messenger that lets you add special effects and art on your photos and videos. Sounds familiar?

On their official blog, Facebook says that users send over 2.5 billion emojis, photos, stickers and videos every day on Messenger, and they expressed hope that this new feature will enable even more visual messaging.

Back in October, Facebook launched a standalone app for events. Initially, the app was available only for iOS users, but Facebook has now released it for Android users as well and you can get it on Play Store.

Facebook events app is perfect for users who like to have a better overview of their upcoming events, but Facebook doesn't require you to download the app to be able to use Events in your Facebook app, at least not for now.

When you open Events, you can see the events your Facebook friends are interested in, recently-announced events by the pages you like, and updates from events you're already connected to. You can also browse events based on your interests or location. Events app features an interactive map that will help you browse trough the events easier, something that the Events feature in Facebook's main app doesn't have. Facebook also added a calendar in the app so you can keep track of the events you are attending.

Apple's iOS 10, launched back in September, was mainly praised, but with the recent release of the 10.1.1 update, many users reported issues with battery life. The main point of the 10.1.1 update was to fix some of the camera issues that users were experiencing with the new iPhone 7 Plus dual camera.

The iPhone users who installed 10.1.1 update are reporting that the battery life of their devices lasts much shorter and even that their phones are shutting down with at least 30-50% charge left.

Some users have tried going back to 10.1 version, but according to the reports, that doesn't fix the problem.

Google Play Music receives an overhaul today, complete with personalized music, a new home screen, and an auto generated offline playlist.

The new version of the app exploits machine learning to curate song lists for you based on what you like, where you are, what you're doing, and the weather, among other things. So whether you're chilling at home or about to work out, it has the soundtrack for you (or claims to, anyway).

The reworked home screen also takes advantage of Google's machine learning and is designed to always present you with the music you care about most at any given moment, whether it's your favourite new album or the after work playlist you listen to regularly, or whatever else.

For five months or more, the Spotify software on Windows, Mac, and Linux has been writing a gigantic amount of data to storage devices, potentially taking years off their lifespan. Tens, hundreds, or even thousands of gigabytes written within an hour have been reported, and occur when the software is idle and is not storing any songs locally.

The problem -- which was reproduced easily by Ars Technica -- is said to be tied to one or more database files with the Mercury.db string. It is of course particularly burdensome to solid state drives (SSDs), which have limited write capacity.

"We've seen some questions in our community around the amount of written data using the Spotify client on desktop," a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement. "These have been reviewed and any potential concerns have now been addressed in version 1.0.42, currently rolling out to all users."

A recent report showed that Android phones hold 88% of the market. Global shipments hit 375 million units in the third quarter of 2016, and 328.6 million of them were Android phones.

The first commercially available smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream, released on October 22th, 2008. However, the history of Android OS started much earlier.

The Android OS was initially developed by Android Inc., which Google bought in 2005 for at least $50 million. Not much was known about Android Inc. at the time, but many assumed that Google was planning to enter the mobile phone market with this move.

Google Chrome has received some performance improvements applied, with help from Microsoft and its PGO technology that makes Chrome's startup time around 17% faster. Chrome now loads web pages 6% faster and is 15% faster with new tab loading times.

Microsoft's PGO technology is 'Profile Guided Optimization', which measures just how users use the application, and then with this data in-hand it will re-compile an application that focuses on optimizing the most-used functions. Another feature of PGO is that it speeds apps up by keeping the most-used functions inside of the CPU's fast instruction cache.

Google took to the Chromium Blog, explaining in a new article called 'Making Chrome on Windows faster with PGO'. The team added: "To gather this data, the nightly build process now produces a special version of Chrome that tracks how often functions are used. PGO then optimizes those high-use functions for speed, in some cases increasing the binary size of those functions. To balance out that increase, PGO also optimizes less-used functions with smaller, though slightly slower code. These trade-offs result in higher overall performance, and a smaller overall code footprint".

The scariest night of the year is here! Although Halloween isn't celebrated in every part of the world, why not join the fun with some scary apps that will turn you into a fictional character or something from your wildest dreams?

We tested some apps that might help you celebrate the scariest night of the year. There is a wide range of different Halloween apps, from stickers, fun games to masks, etc., so here are few chosen one that caught my eye. All the apps I tested are free.

YouCam Fun lets you create fun real-time videos and photos in seconds with live filters and camera effects. The app lets you add stickers, live filters, photo effects and more to your face, all in real-time. If you have ever used Snapchat, you will know what I'm talking about.

Google is celebrating Halloween with a special Doodle - an amusing browser game.

The game seems simple - a player controls a cat that needs to defeat ghosts by drawing the symbol hovering over their heads. But, as the game progresses, the ghosts appear faster, in more numbers and the symbols get more complicated to draw.

The game includes five levels set in school environments: the library, cafeteria, classroom, gym, and the building's rooftop, each with their own boss.

Twitter is going through troubles of its own, but now the social media giant has announced it will be shutting down the Vine app in the next few months.

Vine wrote in a blog post: "Since 2013, millions of people have turned to Vine to laugh at loops and see creativity unfold. Today, we are sharing the news that in the coming months we'll be discontinuing the mobile app".

Twitter announced it is restructuring itself, laying off 9% of their global workforce, and working on other methods to reduce cost. Vine users won't feel the pinch immediately, with their Vines still accessible, with Vine adding it will continue working with creators on answering any questions.