Software & Apps - Page 81

Microsoft has been talking about the upcoming Windows 8.1 Update 1 for months now, and today the Redmond, Washington-based giant has finally released the update to the public. Windows 8.1 users can head over to Windows Update and install Update 1 to their system now, or you can wait and let Windows run the update for you when your automatic updates are scheduled to run.

"Windows 8.1 Update and Windows RT 8.1 Update include improvements to make Windows more familiar and convenient for devices that use touch and mouse input and to make Windows available on a wider variety of devices, so you have more to choose from. Windows 8.1 Update and Windows RT 8.1 Update also include security and performance updates, and they must be installed for your PC to receive any future security updates for Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1," Microsoft said in a release.

Below is a list of the changes Windows 8.1 Update 1 brings to the table.

When Microsoft first unveiled Windows 8, the entire tech world began complaining about the lack of a Start menu in the next-gen operating system. Microsoft's vision was that everyone would switch over to touch-screen based devices and Windows 8 would be the new standard that all other operating systems strive to reach. Unfortunately, as with Windows Vista, Windows 8 was for the most part a flop with anything other than casual PC users.

The enterprise and business world failed to adopt Windows 8 or its later 8.1 update, and many attribute that to the lack of a true desktop interface that featured the Start menu that everyone was familiar with. During this weeks Build Conference, Microsoft said that it will be bringing back the Start menu, but it will still feature a live tile interface off to the right. There is a major update to Windows 8.1 scheduled to drop this month, but the Start menu will not come with it. Microsoft says that it will issue an update later this year that will include the reborn Start menu.

Companies like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google have the task of operating and maintaining some of the biggest websites on the internet, and due to not only the amount of content they host, but the massive number of user accounts they must keep up and online at all times requires a massive database. These three companies have teamed up to create the perfect database designed to scale to massive proportions.

Facebook along host one of the largest MySQL database deployments ever built and as the service continues to grow, a vanilla distribution of Oracle's MySQL was just not cutting it, so Facebook teamed up with Google, LinkedIn and Twitter to develop a MySQL alternative, WebScaleSQL, that was both scalable and robust enough to keep the social networking empires running for the foreseeable future. WsSQL is built with collaboration in mind and speed in mind, and allows database engineers from different companies to work together to create the best database possible.

"Our goal in launching WebScaleSQL is to enable the scale-oriented members of the MySQL community to work more closely together in order to prioritize the aspects that are most important to us. We aim to create a more integrated system of knowledge-sharing to help companies leverage the great features already found in MySQL 5.6, while building and adding more features that are specific to deployments in large scale environments," Facebook said in the company's developers blog. "In the last few months, engineers from all four companies have contributed code and provided feedback to each other to develop a new, more unified, and more collaborative branch of MySQL."

Microsoft has the most popular operating system in the world, granted a lot of people hate it. If you look back at the history of the computer world, Microsoft has been around almost as long as the PC has been around. Before Windows, Microsoft had MS-DOS.

If you were around in the early days of computing, you might have even spent time using that OS. Microsoft has announced that it has put the source code for MS DOS 1.1 and 2.0 online for the first time. The source code is being offered in cooperation with the Computer History Museum in an effort "to help future generations of technologists better understand the roots of personal computing."

Along with the source code for MS-DOS, Microsoft is also putting the code for Word for Windows 1.1a online. That was one of the first word processing programs that Microsoft offered. Microsoft announced that the code was going on line via a blog post written by Roy Levin.

Many banks and ATM operators are making plans to migrate its ATM systems to Linux as Windows XP's support will no longer be provided from April 8th. The report indicated that this will allow companies and operators to have more control over the hardware and software of the machines.

As pointed out earlier, many companies were either planning to shift to newer Windows operating system or purchasing extended support for Windows XP until they've completed migration for all of its machines. As of now, about 95% of the world's ATMs are using Windows XP. It is expected that 60% of 400,000 ATMs in the United States will still be using Windows XP post its end-of-support deadline.

But operators would like to sync their hardware and software upgrade cycles, which is difficult to do with Microsoft's upgrade schedule. Because of this, the operators are looking towards open source.

After more than a year of steady development, Google has finally added its Google Now service to the stable channel of Google Chrome for Mac and PC. Today Google announced that it has finally refined Google Now for the desktop enough to include it in the next stable release of its Chrome browser for Windows and Mac, and says it will begin rolling out in the next few days.

Once the feature has been added to the Chrome browser on your device, you can turn it on by signing into the same Google account you use on your Android or iOS device. This will sync your Google Now cards, searches, and other relevant data to your PC or Mac. If you use Google Now on multiple devices, you will need to manage location settings for each PC, Mac device, and mobile device you use the service on to ensure accurate results.

Google Now will display cards featuring traffic, weather, shipping, movies, events, and more right on your desktop. Most of this data will come from the user's smartphone, and will provide the same up-to-date information that Google Now users have become accustomed to over the last year.

During Game Developer's Conference, Microsoft was showing off DirectX 12. One of the notable features is the low-level access which will help to efficiently utilize the processing power of the end-user's CPU.

What's now being revealed is that certain features of the upcoming graphics API will require the new generation of video cards. Previously it was mentioned in NVIDIA's press release that slightly older and current generation video cards will work with DX 12.

Currently, its unknown how game developers plan to implement DX 12. Tony Tamasi clarified that though DX 12 will use low-level abstraction, its not a mandatory feature as there will be backwards compatibility with DX11. He also pointed out that Microsoft only teased some of the implementations of DirectX 12, and that the coming time we will more information.

To try and woo users to abandon Microsoft Windows XP, which reaches end of support in early April, Microsoft is giving consumers $100 to upgrade to a new PC or Surface tablet.

The deal is good for Surface Pro 2 tablets, select notebooks, all-in-one desktops, and 2-in-1 products.

The upgrades must be made through the Microsoft Store, and includes 90 days of free support along with free data transfer. Microsoft is keeping the promotion going through June 15, and customers will be required to show an XP-based device in-store or place an order in the store using an XP device.

GDC 2014 - Microsoft has announced DirectX 12 with some of its closest partners, NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Qualcomm, showing off the new DirectX gaming API at the 2014 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today.

DirectX 12 will deliver some major improvements for developers to all of Microsoft's platforms: Xbox One, Windows Mobile, and of course, PC. The new gaming API will enhance graphics efficiency for modern games as it allows developers to spread tasks across multi-core CPUs, all the while reducing CPU bottlenecks that usually reduce performance, even sucking performance away from what a powerful GPU would usually deliver.

We will see "closer to the metal" access to developers, something that AMD's Mantle technology does, and to showcase this, the Redmond-based software giant teamed up with Forza Motorsport 5 developer Turn 10 Studios to show off a version of the game running on DirectX 12. The demo used a PC powered by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Black, running at 1080p and a silky smooth locked 60FPS.

Until now, developing with Unreal Engine was an expensive affair, easily costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for some developers. Well, Epic Games has announced that Unreal Engine 4 is taking a very different approach.

The maker of Unreal has introduced a new model that costs just $19 per month, and a 5% cut of any gross revenue made from a commercial product. What this means for most, is that anyone can get into working with Unreal Engine 4 because of the low costs, but if you make money with your game, you'll owe Epic Games a 5% cut of it.

Tim Sweeney, Epic Games' founder, when showing off a demo called Tappy Chicken, said: "It's not a shooter engine anymore, it's for whatever you want to build."

A little over 10 years ago, Microsoft released its revolutionary note-taking program, OneNote, and today the service is hitting a new mile stone. Today Microsoft announced that it has released the Mac version of OneNote and is offering it to all Mac users for free. OneNote for Mac features the same interface and functionality as its Windows counterpart, but the programs UI design is just a little different to better align with other Microsoft programs featured on Mac.

Microsoft has also released the Windows, Web, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone versions of the application for free as well in hopes of becoming the number one note taking app in the world. There will be a premium version that offers integration with SharePoint and Outlook though, but all of the software's core features are free. Additionally, Microsoft has released a new cloud API that will enable developers to integrate OneNote into their apps easily.

Microsoft has already put this new API to use and created a feature called OneNote Clipper, a feature that is similar to Evernote's clipper that lets users save webpages to OneNote from all major browsers. Perhaps the biggest new feature is the integration of Microsoft's new Office Lens for Windows Phone app that lets users take snapshots of notes on whiteboards and optimizes them for viewing. OneNote can now recognize the text in the photo and create entries from the image.

One of the biggest events in college sports is the NCAA March Madness tournament that is played each year. This tournament has 67 games and a total of about 150 hours of live TV coverage before the winner is announced. If you are a fan of March Madness that has a Kindle Fire tablet, you will have a new way to enjoy the games this year.

The NCAA March Madness Live app has been around for platforms like Android and iOS for a while. The app lets the users watch live games wherever they are via a web connection. This year the app will be offered on another platform, the Amazon Kindle Fire. That means Kindle Fire owners with a cable subscription to a participating provider can watch games on the go.

Users do have to log into the app using the username and password from their cable or satellite provider. If you are wondering, the selection for the teams that will play in the tournament will start on March 16. The games start on March 18 and will continue until the winner is announced on April 5-7.

WhatsApp has been one of the biggest news stories of the year after Facebook spent $16 billion in cash to acquire the app. Earlier this week WhatsApp was in the news for something that no software firm wants to be associated with- security issues.

A tech consultant earlier this week issued a repot outlining a method that would allow nefarious apps to gain access to the WhatsApp message logs stored on the memory card of the device. The consultant, Bas Bosschert, even offered up code that could be included in an app that would upload the chat logs to a remote server as a game loaded.

WhatsApp has now stepped up to address the issue. A spokesperson for WhatsApp says reports on the issue are "overstated." The company also says that a new version of the app on Google Play now has added security features. Bosschert says that his exploit code still works on the latest version of the app.

NASA is always working on some sort of project to get the masses interested in science and space. About a year and a half ago, NASA rolled out an app for iPad users called NASA Visualization Explorer. The app was designed to share articles, images, and visualizations of satellite data with users.

The problem for users on iOS devices other than the iPad was that the app didn't support other devices. NASA has now announced that the app is available for all iOS devices. That means that iPhone and iPod touch users can now check out the app and its cool images and content.

Users will be able to access the 274 stories that have been published on the app and are in the archives. New stores will be added on Tuesday and Thursday. NASA says that the original app had about a million unique downloads.

Unreal Engine 4 is quite a beautiful engine, requiring some heavy hardware to get it running, but running it within a browser? Well, Mozilla has done just that with its Firefox browser.

Mozilla released a video showing Unreal Engine 4 running from its Firefox web browser to demonstrate "the power of the Web as a platform for gaming." The video above shows off Epic Games' "Soul" and "Swing Ninja" demos powered by Unreal Engine 4. These videos mark the first time we've seen UE4 running within a web browser without plugins, and according to the post, the engine is being designed to scale between everything: consoles, mobile devices, PC and of course, the web.

Mozilla's CTO and Senior Vice President of Engineering, Brendan Eich, said: "This technology has reached a point where games users can jump into via a Web link are now almost indistinguishable from ones they might have had to wait to download and install." Epic Games' Tim Sweeney joined in, where he said: "We were blown away by what this Mozilla-pioneered technology achieved with Unreal Engine 3 on the Web, so we had no hesitation in working with Mozilla to port Unreal Engine 4. We believe the Web has a crucial part to play in the future of game development and deployment, and Mozilla has proven it is the catalyst to make this happen."

The Microsoft Windows XP operating system reaches end of support in less than one month, and utility companies face possible security problems. Security experts are most worried about potential service disruptions if cybercriminals successfully compromise XP-based PCs and control centers - and to make matters even more pressing, XP is a major OS used in almost all U.S. gas and electric utilities.

To help offer an additional layer of support, Microsoft will provide "Antimalware signatures and engine for Windows XP users through July 14, 2015." However, cybercriminals are still anxiously awaiting the deadline, when they know home consumers and business users will be susceptible to malware, virus attacks, and other cybercrimes to steal information.

Of reported incidents, the energy sector made up more than half of the Department of Homeland Security industrial control systems cyber emergency response team (ICS-CERT) complaints, with a focus on trying to test network limitations - and steal trade secrets.

A security expert from Double Think has discovered a major security flaw in the way WhatsApp backs up and saves your data that could lead to nefarious users accessing your chat history. Bas Bosschert says that the hole in security lies in the way WhatsApp saves user data when it is manually backed up by the user.

All of the data is stored in the WhatsApp database which is encrypted, but unfortunately the popular messaging service decided to use the same encryption key for every user. This means that a hacker could in theory develop an app that has a hidden side that's sole purpose is to sneak into your Android or iOS file system and copy the data base. Since the same encryption code is used for all WhatsApp users, decryption is quite easy and anyone with a small amount of knowledge on the subject could access your chats.

Bosschert actually developed an app to do exactly what was described above that used a loading screen mask the apps malicious activity. The app was able to acquire and decrypt the encrypted WhatsApp database without fail. WhatsApp did receive an update yesterday, but Bosschert says that this flaw was not fixed. We have reached out to WhatsApp for a comment but a response has yet to be received.

Samsung has announced a new streaming music service is has dubbed Milk, something the company worked with Slacker to develop, with the service launching with around 200 radio stations, and over 13 million songs available.

It's quite unique, with a circular dial that is similar to analog radio dials, where you just slide your finger around the dial to "tune in" to various genres of music. Once you've found a station that you like, simply run your finger along the inside of the dial to choose difference channels within that genre.

Competing streaming music services aren't all that intuitive, so it's refreshing to see Samsung thinking outside of the box with Milk Music. Samsung's Ryan Bidan has said that there is a group of consumers that haven't dived into the mobile music market because current services are simply too hard to understand, with people not liking advertising with what consumers have used so far.

As with anything on the internet, Porn always finds a way to infiltrate it, and Twitter is apparently fed up with pornographic material making its way onto its Vine video app. Today Twitter changed Vine's Terms of Service to explicitly ban the uploading of pornographic material or any nudity what-so-ever if it is not classified as artistic or as part of a documentary.

"As we've watched the community and your creativity grow and evolve, we've found that there's a very small percentage of videos that are not a good fit for our community. So we're making an update to our Rules and Terms of Service to prohibit explicit sexual content," the company said in a blog post. "For more than 99 percent of our users, this doesn't really change anything. For the rest: we don't have a problem with explicit sexual content on the Internet -- we just prefer not to be the source of it."

The new rules are inline with several popular apps and social media site's policies on nudity and pornography, but some industry analyst are suggesting that Twitter updated Vine's ToS to appease some of Apple's App Police from making a push to ban the app from the app store. It's still unclear weather or not this change will also effect Twitter itself as the social network has thousands of active accounts from the porn industry.

Users will now be able to get their hands-on the first public release of VLC media player for Windows 8 via the Windows store on March 10th, coming this Monday. The announcement was made by VideoLAN via its Twitter account.

Earlier in 2012, VLC started a Kickstarter campaign which ended as a success in raising the necessary funds. Along the way, VideoLAN showed off their work-in-progress media app player. Some time ago, it was reported that VLC received approval and will be placed in the Microsoft app store. Now that the team was able to take care of last minute bug fixes, it was two days away for its release.

The Windows 8 app version would lack in some features on its first release, such as subtitle support. But the app will have support for snap view and content streaming. Seeing that VideoLAN team has prepped the app after a very long time, its just a matter of time VLC media player becomes the good old favourite player for Windows 8 and 8.1.