Software & Apps - Page 76

Adobe has finally made Lightroom available on Android Smartphone platforms, months after adding iOS support for the program. This photo-editing program requires your device to be running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean or newer and needs a minimum of a 1.7GHz quad-core CPU and at least 8GB of free storage space.

This is one of the first times that we've seen smartphone applications specifically contain system requirements, but it's acceptable given the computing power needed for tasks that this software can perform. This app is also free to download, as long as you've created a Creative Cloud account and features slightly less features than the desktop edition - giving you full reign of the basic panel and cropping tools.

Unfortunately this release is limited only to your smartphones, with tablets being excluded from operation. You would think that tablets are far superior, given their viewing surface greatly outweighing that of a smartphone.

Furthering their anti-spam legislation, Canada have made a move today to ensure that users must give their direct consent when installing any software on their devices. Effective immediately, any business operating in Canada that wishes to bypass these laws will see their software installation being classed as illegal and have a C$10 million fine on their hands.

This change to the law is apparently focused toward fighting malware, helping protect consumers and create a greater awareness around problems involving malicious software installations. However legal experts have expressed concern, stating that this amendment to the legislation isn't specific enough and may target legitimate businesses trying to conduct their work.

A further addition includes that businesses wanting to install software on a users device must also make them aware if any personal information is collected by the program, or if the coding will interfere with any standard computer operations.

Microsoft's head of the Windows Insider program recently extolled the virtues of 32-bit Windows on Twitter and announced that Microsoft will be providing 32-bit versions of Windows 10. This is surprising considering that 92.8% of new Windows computers utilize 64-bit operating systems.

32-bit operating systems pigeonhole users to 4GB of user addressable memory, not just RAM. Many GPU's feature much more than 1GB of RAM, and this drains the user addressable memory pool, so subtract a portion of video memory (it's not a direct 1:1 ratio) from the total RAM you can actually use. Add in PCI and ACPI and the pool starts to get pretty shallow, so why oh why is Microsoft still moving forward with 32-bit?

Of course Microsoft has to consider all of the existing computers that run 32-bit versions of the operating system, which are estimated to be roughly 71 million. This is based off of computers that are currently receiving patches, but it could expand into the hundreds of millions. Considering that Windows is deployed into over a billion computers this still seems like a small fraction of the user base, and with the vast majority of systems being 64-bit compatible it is interesting that Microsoft will still develop 32-bit versions.

Ever been frustrated at your power nap that's turned sour? Sometimes you'll lie down for a quick 15 minute snooze and end up waking 3 hours later feeling much worse than you did previously. We've been contacted by Phase4 Mobile and they claim to have a solution.

Their Power Nap HQ iOS application can be used on Apple iPhone and iPod Touch systems and is designed to prevent you from napping for too long - said to ensure you always wake up fresh and alert. According to their latest information release, the Power Nap HQ works by using "proprietary algorithms to monitor and track your sleep, waking you up at just the right moment." There's some other cool features mentioned, like "after your nap you can view your nap profile on a graph and even compare it to your previous naps."

If you're worried about screeching alarms, this app claims to capture "the loudest sound during your nap and wakes you gently with beautiful natural sounds from around the world."

The number 13 is bad luck, again, as Microsoft is ending free support for Windows 7 today, the 13th of January. Speaking of bad luck, Microsoft is hoping the end of free support for Windows 7 will speed the transition to Windows 8, which has been rejected by discerning users worldwide. Thankfully for Microsoft, Windows 10 is on the horizon. Windows 10 is slated to be released later this year.

The end of free support also means that no new features will be added, so dont expect any further service packs in the future. Windows 7 sold over 100 million units in the initial six months of availability in 2009, largely due to customer dissatisfaction with the notoriously buggy Vista. Many are speculating that sales of Windows 10 will also be propelled by user distaste with Windows 8. Windows 7 has been truly successful for Microsoft, and it powers roughly half of the world's computers.

Microsoft continues to experience boom/bust cycles, with every other operating system revision appearing to be the one to buy. Microsoft's failed bid to create one operating system for all devices created a confusing environment for the majority of users. With many of the previously successful features reappearing in Windows 10, such as the start button and menus, it should be well received. Microsoft has also been offering the latest operating systems at much more reasonable price points, which should help foster widespread adoption of Windows 10.

The Red Star operating system made in North Korea, a sloppy clone of Apple Mac OS X, was leaked online - and it didn't take long before vulnerabilities were discovered in the modified Linux operating system. The North Korean-made OS allows backdoors for remote command injection into both the PC and server OS editions, along with weak file permissions.

It's possible the North Korean government aimed towards spying on its users - or the OS coders are just inexperienced - but western security experts are analyzing methods to compromise Red Star-based PCs.

"The security of the Red Star OS inherits advantages from using peer-reviewed Linux platforms as a base but everything added or extended by North Korea that I looked at shows a low security proficiency and a lack of good programming practices," said Matthew Hickey, a cybersecurity researcher in the UK, in an interview with Forbes. "They use insecure functions as opposed to secure ones and often make mistakes that could result in security vulnerabilities."

For over ten years, Microsoft has run an advance notification service (ANS), notifying customers what is to be expected of their monthly security update, allowing for IT teams to prepare their systems and prioritize what needs to be installed in which order.

In a recent announcement by Microsoft's Chris Betz from their security response center (MSRC), this company is focusing on 'optimizing' the notices for their biggest customers only, no longer providing them for free to all.

Betz commented in the MSRC blog that "moving forward, we will provide ANS information directly to Premier customers and current organizations involved in our security programs, and will no longer make this information broadly available through a blog post and web page." He went on to mention that "more and more customers today are seeking to cut through the clutter and obtain security information tailored to their organizations. Rather than using ANS to help plan security update deployments, customers are increasingly turning to Microsoft Update and security update management tools such as Windows Server Update Service to help organize and prioritize deployment. Customers are also moving to cloud-based systems, which provide continuous updating."

Microsoft Windows 10 is scheduled for release before the end of 2015, and it has made OEMs hopeful that consumers will show support for the operating system. Lenovo, the No. 1 PC manufacturer in the world, has seen increased consumer interest in Windows 10 - a trend that other hardware manufacturers and analysts have seen.

"I think customers are anxious to breathe some life into that product," said Peter Hortensius, chief technology officer of Lenovo, in an interview with PC World at CES. "We're obviously very bullish and hopeful on Windows 10."

Windows 8.1 was a good OS, Hortensius noted, but Windows 10 will resolve the problems that consumers saw with the operating system. Furthermore, Windows 10 will be integrated across a number of different platforms, instead of the chaotic mess Microsoft left users and developers with during its Windows 8/Windows Phone effort.

CES 2015 - Smartphone, smartwatch, smartring, smartpen - everything is smart these days. Giving users the ability to share, store and create information like never before. Smartpen manufacturer Livescribe inc. has just announced they will be supporting Android OS as of this Autumn, using their new Livescribe 3 product as the launching platform.

The Livescribe+ app was designed with Android in mind, supporting Android KitKat 4.4 and above and Bluetooth Low Energy capable devices. Gilles Bouchard, Livescribe's CEO, explained in their recent press release about the partnerships and lead-up to this release, stating that "since launch, we've been adding new features to Livescribe+ for iOS and also introducing expanded functionality through partnerships with Moleskine, Evernote, Microsoft and Fluid Touch. Now we can start to bring those innovations to Android devices this spring and combine the physical world of pen and paper with Android smartphones and tablets."

The Android edition will feature the key points included within the iOS version of this app, including handy features such as the ability to transfer notes from Livescribe 3 pens and search your handwriting and convert it to digital text.

A new app is hitting the market, with Strings capable of un-sending those messages that you didn't want to send in the first place. Maybe you were drunk, maybe you didn't mean to send them, Strings will un-send those items for you.

Strings works like any other messaging app, such as WhatsApp, except it allows you to take back messages after you've sent them. It will work with multiple formats, including text messages, e-mails, photos and videos of unlimited length, and more. The sender also has control of whether or not the recipient has the ability to save, and download the sent content.

The offending material is deleted from the recipients' smartphone, and Strings' servers permanently, as soon as the request is put into the app. The biggest thing here, is that both sides need to be using the app, which will surely cut down on the usefulness of Strings. But, at least it's here, and available for people to use. Strings is available from the App Store for iDevices, with an update arriving in a week or so. Android devices should get it in the future, but there's no word on that yet.

The outside world doesn't know what type of computer hardware and software is used in North Korea, but there have been recent glimpses of what the reclusive government utilizes. Former Google executive Will Scott visited the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, and purchased a copy of the "Red Star 3" desktop operating system.

North Korea previously relied on Microsoft Windows for desktop PCs, but developed its own Red Star 3 OS. The OS looks strikingly similar to the Apple Mac OS X operating system - past versions of North Korean-made software closely mimicked Windows.

As the world begins to learn more about Bureau 121, the elite North Korean cyber hacking unit, there is still very little known about technology usage in the country. Internet use is heavily restricted, and is aimed towards military and government use - and for the elite of the country.

A group of Polish security researchers have been rewarded with $50,000 from Google, thanks to their investigation and findings of 30 flaws within the Google App Engine developer platform - said to give hackers possible access beyond their own virtual machines.

This flaw was further explained as allowing intruders the ability to bypass the Oracle Java security sandbox.

While in operation, Google detected this research team conducting their tests and locked them out of their Google App Engine account - meaning no more progress could me made. After two weeks Google allowed this team to continue their research, complete their exploration of the GAE flaws and produce a report on the findings. There was one clear-cut rule however, the researchers must limit their work to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) layer and steer clear from the next sandboxing layer.

According to the latest rumors, Microsoft might be finally replacing Internet Explorer with something by the codename of "Spartan." Spartan would feature things we all know and love in browsers like Google CHrome, such as support for extensions, and much more. ZDNet is going as far as saying Spartan could be an entirely new browser, which is something I'd love to see from Microsoft.

ZDNey's Mary Jo Foley, who is usually spot on with Microsoft rumors, has said that the underlying structure of Spartan or whatever it will arrive as, won't change that much. The new browser will arrive with Windows 10, and will be a super-light client like Chrome and Firefox, rocking extension support when it arrives. We don't know if Spartan will be supported on non-Windows operating systems, such as Android, iOS and OS X, but that's something we should find out in the New Year.

Foley says that Windows 10 should include both the new Spartan browser, and IE11, with IE11 sitting there for backwards compatibility only. For keen-eyed readers, you might notice "Spartan" refers to Halo, just like Cortana does. Replacing Internet Explorer is going to be a hard task for Microsoft, but if they can do it right, they can kill the bad word that IE has stuck to it, hopefully doing things right going into Windows 10 and 2015.

The ever-evolving world of storage has created an issue in the Windows 10 Technical Preview. Microsoft has incorporated a new feature into Windows 10 that enhances performance with SSHD's, but this has unfortunately led to widespread problems with all types of boot devices. Microsoft has added a new command to the drivers, Power-Up in Standby (PUIS), that allows SSHDs to remain idle when the system is powered up. The system saves power by only powering-up the SSHD when it receives a specific command from the BIOS.

The new driver isn't fully compatible with all BIOS revisions and the driver is also sending the SSHD-specific command to all types of drives. Non-SSHD drives do not recognize the command upon boot up or resumption from standby, which results in the computer freezing. Microsoft is aware of the problem, which is specific to Build 9879, and a new update is already available to resolve the issue. There is also a workaround available that allows users to simply disable the PUIS command, which resolves the issue.

Teething problems are expected in the Beta stage, and the Technical Preview system has worked by allowing Microsoft to identify and correct a problem before release. Windows 10 is slated for release in late summer/early fall of this year. Users can utilize hdparm to disable PUIS by following these steps:

NVIDIA was one of the first companies to roll-out Android's 5.0.1 Lollipop Operating System to their devices, seeing this widely-acclaimed update work flawlessly on NVIDIA's tablet offering.

Said to focus on adding new features to the Android platform, with NVIDIA adding in a few extra's of their own to increase the updates potency, as per their usual practice.

Seeing their Camera Awesome App updated to include new FX features said to take advantage of the Tegra K1 chip on offer (for acceleration of live and preview recording), NVIDIA also brought back their acclaimed SHIELD power control menu. The feature is designed to help you pick your processor modes, including things such as Custom Battery Saver, Optimized and Max Performance, alongside giving you the ability to enable an auto-shutdown of your device.

WhatsApp is a near unstoppable messaging client, so I'm sure most people will still balk at the fact Facebook dished out an enormous $22 billion to acquire them earlier this year. The company is now set to launch its new feature, a voice calling function, to its app in the coming weeks or months.

Some new leaked photos are showing us what the latest update to WhatsApp will deliver, where we won't only get voice calling but image files and text support, too. The new details were yanked from the latest version of WhatsApp by Android World, where we can see the new features in all their glory.

We don't know when the voice calling function is coming to WhatsApp, but judging from this information being pulled from the latest version, I'm sure it can't be long now.

Have you ever used ChatOn to chat to your friends? We haven't either. Samsung's unpopular messenger service has been marked for closure on the first day of February, 2015.

Unfortunately this messenger app didn't really gain traction in the wider market, which is currently heavily saturated. If you're wanting to chat to a friend there is a seemingly endless list of ways to contact them in this day and age through your mobile. Off the top of my head I can immediately rattle off: Steam, Skype, Facebook Messenger, Xfire, WhatsApp, Line - amongst many others.

Announced in 2011, Samsung were said to have big plans for ChatOn's development - setting it up for pre-installation on Samsung devices to try and push it into the market. This claimed by many to be a good move as Samsung was just gaining massive market share in the smartphone sector, however its three-year service will be coming to an end in two months time.

It almost seems like vulnerabilities in hardware and software is all that's hitting the news in the past few days. We've reported on multiple issues ranging from the "Grinch" Linux flaw to the vulnerability in SS7's mobile network towers rendering our text messages and phone calls open for all prying eyes.

In recent news, a vulnerability in router software has opened up millions of devices to hacking. This is apparently achieved by the hacker "sending a specially crafted request to RomPager, an embedded Web server running on them" as according to PC World.

Once access has been gained, the hacker then has full control over any in-home security, systems or devices connected to the network - meaning they can steal your data, alter your information or utilize your technology to launch attacks against other systems. It gives them the ability to strip SSL from secure connections and also hijack your DNS settings, listing dodgy websites as 'safe' for your personal computers - opening you up to more malicious attacks.

Alert Logic has recently informed the public of a "grinch" Linux vulnerability, but according to Red Hat - it's a perfectly normal thing.

The official reply noted that "this report incorrectly classifies expected behavior as a security issue," through a Red Hat Bulletin released on Wednesday just one day after the report being made public. This was in response to Alert Logic claiming that this Grinch issue may be as large as the previously seen Heartbleed bug, noting that they believe it is a serious design flaw in how Linux handles user permissions.

The flaw is said to enable hackers the ability to gain root access to machines, with Alert Logic further claiming that this Grinch can be exploited through third-party Linux software framework such as Policy Kit. This Red Hat self-made software is listed as an open-source program, and set in place to allow users to install software easily - something that requires root access. If the hackers can take this program over for their own use, that's where much if the problem lies. However Linux doesn't think this is an issue, claiming that root access is how these programs are designed to work.

Due to gaps in the deployment policies produced by engineers, Microsoft's Azure cloud service was taken offline during a period of time throughout November 2014. This information has been discovered thanks to a detailed mea culpa analysis by Microsoft themselves.

Jason Zander, Azure team member, conducted a final root cause analysis (RCA) and published it recently, claiming that the engineers intended to push software changes to improve performance and reduce processor load of the services' front-end system. However an outage was caused, meaning customers being unable to connect to Azure's storage, virtual machine, website, Active Directory or management portal functions.

The coding succeeded well in improving performance in the testing phases, however the full roll-out was discovered to encounter two main issues. Usually Microsoft deploys these updates in waves, slowly increasing the updated infrastructures bit by bit rather than a full roll-out. However an engineer saw this update as a low risk exercise after a small testing phase and pushed it to everyone in one hit. Thanks to this blunder and subsequent outage, Microsoft are heavily enforcing staged deployments from now on.