Software & Apps - Page 83

While Facebook might be acquiring WhatsApp for a hefty $16 billion, it looks like the messaging application company might not be too good with encrypting its messages. With over 450 million active users, this becomes quite the user base for government spies, hackers, and more.

WhatsApp's use of secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption is meant to support version 2 of the protocol, which is capable of being hacked into, and monitored by a third-party. The messages being flown back and forth between WhatsApp users can even be manipulated. WhatsApp has failed to use a technique known as certificate pinning, which is designed to block attacks using forged certificates to bypass Web encryption.

Pinning allows an app to work only when communicating with a server using a specific certificate, and because this certificate is hardwired into the app, it will simply reject connections with any other attempts of a false certificate. Security consultancy firm Praetorian, has chimed in, with Paul Jauregui writing: "This is the kind of stuff the NSA would love. It basically allows them-or an attacker-to man-in-the-middle the connection and then downgrade the encryption so they can break it and sniff the traffic. These security issues put WhatsApp user information and communications at risk".

Mobile video editing company muvee recently announced its muvee Action Studio app for Google Android users looking to edit GoPro videos.

The app allows users to enjoy Fast Mode, Automatic Mode, and Pro Mode editing settings to quickly and easily edit videos from their mobile device. Fast Mode edits videos without decoding them, allowing users to trim and splice videos together; Automatic Mode has a unique setting that allows the app to cut videos to music tracks; and Pro Mode allows shots to be refocused, reframed, with a wider selection of editing tools available.

"I was snowboarding in Lake Tahoe with my GoPro and wanted to quickly put some highlight clips together to music and post on YouTube," said Terence Swee, muvee founder and CEO, in a press statement. "I did not want to bring a PC along with all the other equipment I was already lugging. I then realized that there must be a ton of GoPro users who are out mountain biking, diving, surfing or kayaking... in places where you don't want to bring a PC. But we always have our phones with us. I thought: 'I should be able to edit my GoPro videos on my phone immediately!' Now we can."

VideoLAN crew worked on Windows 8, RT and phone app version of VLC player with the help of Kickstarter fundraiser. After a year's time, the group's hardwork paid off as its player has finally received approval, and soon will be listed in Windows app Store.

The VLC player will be released for Windows 8, 8.1 and RT. After the release, the company will be starting to work on the windows mobile version of the app. The BETA version had several audio issues, along with other development issues for the Windows OS.

Earlier, VideoLAN said that it will first release VLC player for Windows 8/8.1 x86 first and then RT, though the next comment said that VLC player for Windows RT will be submitted 'soon'.

To appease OEM hardware manufacturers upset with disappointing Windows 8 sales, Microsoft reportedly will slash 8.1 prices it charges to OEMs by 70 percent. Instead of paying a license fee of $50 for mobile products that cost $250 or less, OEMs will now only have to pay $15 per unit.

Microsoft said it did 1.24 billion hours of Windows 8 testing during development, hearing about user displeasure of the Metro interface. New CEO Satya Nadella must try and determine if Microsoft will move on to the next version of Windows, or put full effort into trying to raise adoption as quickly as possible.

Using market-development funds and other incentives, larger hardware OEMs were paying around $30 per unit, according to a report published by Bloomberg Technology. Microsoft offers MDF money, similar to other companies, based on sales, revenue generated, using a tier system with its partners.

Microsoft's Office Web Apps was meant to take on Google's Drive / Docs services, unfortunately it seems like the masses never took hold of Office Web Apps the way we all adopted to using Google Drive. Microsoft seems to think that the issue lies within the service's branding, and this week made a major move to rebrand Office Web Apps to something that makes a little more sense.

The service is now called Office Online, something many feel that it should have always been named. Microsoft says that the new name more closely reflects what the actual product is, and is free to use for OneDrive users. The rebrand also includes a new URL, Office.com, which should go a long way in introducing new users to the service. Office Online is made up of Word, Outlook, OneNote, PowerPoint,Excel and more, and even includes Google Drive-like co-editing features. Microsoft has also refreshed the service with a wealth of new templates, and given the UI a handy drop-down toolbar to make life easier.

You might remember that Microsoft also rebranded its SkyDrive cloud storage service to the new name of OneDrive earlier this week. The renaming stemmed from a lost trademark battle with British Sky Broadcasting last year. OneDrive and Office Online sync up together just like Google Drive and Google Docs do, and users are given 7GB of storage space for free upon signing up. Additional space can be purchased, and 500MB of free storage is given with each user referral.

Don't you just hate it when you are out somewhere and you want to connect to a public Wi-Fi network, but you need the login details and all that? It can get annoying when you need your e-mail or Facebook fix.

Well, it looks like the folks over at Google might have a fix for that, in the form of a new app that would "automatically authenticate and connect to its free hotspots inside Starbucks stores or wherever they are available". Google has started this already, moving itself into Starbucks franchises across the United States, replacing AT&T as the official Wi-Fi partner.

Still, logging into a Google hotspot still requires authentication. This new app that Google is working on, would retain your Google account information, logging you in automatically as soon as your phone is near the hotspot. We might not see the app released, ever, but it would be nice of Google to maybe bake this into the next release of Android.

The tech world is still shocked this morning at yesterday's news that Facebook is buying WhatsApp for $16 billion, and now new details have emerged that suggest that Facebook was not the only one looking to buy the worlds largest instant messaging service. A new report from Fortune says that WhatsApp turned down an offer of $10 billion from Google when the offer did not include a seat on Google's board of directors.

The report also says that Facebook's CEO, Mark Zukerberg, made the $16 billion offer to WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum on the 9th of February and the pair finalized the deal just five days later. The deal was reportedly sealed on Valentines day, when Koum arrived at the Zuckerberg home and interrupted a dinner between Mark and his wife. After finalizing things over chocolate covered strawberries, Koum walked away with a seat on Facebook's board and a few billion dollars richer.

The WhatsApp saga is one of success and triumph as well. As a kid Koum emigrated from the Ukraine to the US where his family relied on welfare to make ends meet for years until they got on their feet. With the $16 billion acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook, Koum will go down in history as one of the great emigrant rags to riches success stories. More importantly though is that Facebook says that will stay true to WhatsApp's philosophy of not collecting user information like gender, addresses or ages for use in targeted advertising.

WhatsApp is the largest messaging service in the world and today the biggest social network in the world took notice. Today Facebook filed a document with the SEC that confirms the massive acquisition which was valued at $16 billion in cash and stock. Facebook says that WhatsApp will remain independent from Facebook and its competing messenger app, and the acquisition is part of Facebook's ongoing plan to connect the world with each other.

Jan Koum, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO, said, "WhatsApp's extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide. We're excited and honored to partner with Mark and Facebook as we continue to bring our product to more people around the world."

"WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "I've known Jan for a long time and I'm excited to partner with him and his team to make the world more open and connected."

If you are a big fan of the Google Chromecast device, it will be getting a new trick soon. The Chromecast was designed to shoot content like photos, music, and video form the Android device to your big screen in the living room. Soon the Chromecast will get the ability to mirror screen content.

That should mean that anything seen on the screen of the Android device could be seen on your big screen. That means everything from your home page to your favorite game app presumably. The ability to mirror the screen will be coming via the AllCast app.

There will be a bit of lag, as you would get with other screen mirroring solutions like Miracast. The lag isn't expected to affect the ability for users to watch videos. There are a few things that we don't know just yet about the screen mirroring experience.

Penn Manor High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania will embrace the open source Linux platform, installing it on more than 1,700 laptops. Every student at Penn Manor HS received an Acer TravelMate laptop powered by the Ubuntu 13.10 OS - and the student body was encouraged to explore the OS and push its limits.

"We encourage our students to install software and lift the hood of the system to better understand what makes it tick," said Charlie Reisinger, Penn Manor district technology director, in a statement to Linux.com. "I hope our students run local webservers, toy with Python or simply explore graphics programs such as GIMP. Linux offers so many opportunities to explore computing, programming, and the arts."

Desktop Linux market share, at just 1.60 percent, is dwarfed by the Microsoft Windows operating systems - but still plays an important role in our everyday lives. Google Android, for example, got its successful starting using Linux, while set-top boxes, supercomputers, researchers use open source technology, and many cloud-based services rely on Linux in one its software layers.

Image sharing websites such as Flickr, Imgur, and Photobucket have all grown in popularity over the last year as camera's on mobile devices get better with every revision, but popular photo sharing service 500px has up until now, refused to allow mobile images to be uploaded to its servers. This ban on mobile images is mainly because the website takes pride in offering high-quality images, something many smartphones still lack.

That all changes today! This morning, 500px announced that it has updated its iOS app and now allows the uploading of images from iPhone and iPad devices. The company says that users should not worry about an influx of low-quality images, and instead should remember the way 500px thrives based on its community. The company says that the new upload feature only allows quick uploading of images taken from a stand-alone camera via an SD to iPhone and iPad adapter. This means that images taken with the iPhone and iPad can not be uploaded directly from the app, thus keeping low-quality images out of the system.

No word was given on when this feature may be released on Android, but with the recent influx of Dual USB Drives for PC and Mobile popping up, I am sure it wont take long before the Android version of the app gets updated. As an ex-professional photographer, and someone who still shoots professionally on the side, I feel this is a good choice for 500px. Opening the service up to allow images from mobile devices themselves would simply inundate the system with very few good photos, and would flood it mediocre to poor images.

The Verge is reporting from unnamed sources that Microsoft is "seriously considering" adding support for Android apps to its Windows and Windows Phone operating systems.

Tom Warren, reporting with The Verge, says that the move could see Microsoft position itself better in the market with Android apps, as a "Band-Aid" for its Windows Phone apps, or lack thereof. We've seen this before, with BlackBerry providing compatibility for Android apps on BlackBerry 10 devices.

The one stopping block for Android apps on Windows would be the lack of Google Play Services, so we won't see the same APIs as an "official" Google Android device. We are seeing more and more love for Windows + Android love, but would this be enough?

Today, Mozilla announced that it will soon begin selling ads within Firefox, its internet browser. This announcement serves as a followup on an earlier announcement made by the company last year when it said that its browser would begin blocking third-party advertising software automatically by default, something that sent the online advertising industry ablaze with chatter on the topic.

Mozilla says that the ads will appear within Firefox's "New Tabs Page," and will feature both locally targeted as well as mass market ads via a new initiative called "Directory Tiles." Mozilla unveiled a beta version of the Directory Tile system last year for users who opted in to receiving tailored content delivered to them based on their browsing history, and the company says that from its testing, it now sees more than 100 billion "tile impressions" annually. This opens up a big advertising niche that Mozilla hopes to capitalize on.

"Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla's pursuit of our mission," Mozilla said in a blog post. "The sponsored tiles will be clearly labeled as such, while still leading to content we think users will enjoy." A spokes person for Mozilla followed up by saying: "We are looking to partner with like-minded content owners and creators, such as leading publishers and curators as well as innovative advertising agencies."

This morning we are getting some insight into why one of the most popular apps in recent months was abruptly pulled from the market despite it earning its creator more than $50,000 per day. In an interview with Forbes, Flappy Bird creator Dong Ngueyen, said that he made the decision to pull the game from the Apple App Store and Google Play because it has became addictive for so many players.

"Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed," said Nguyen. "But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it's best to take down Flappy Bird. It's gone forever." He went on to say that he could not sleep due to the pressure and the stress that the games success was causing him, and that even though it is gone, the game has given him new found confidence. Unfortunately the decision to pull the game has given profiteers new confidence as well with several knock offs popping up as well as iPhone 5S models with Flappy Bird installed popping up on eBay for tens of thousands of dollars.

Ngueyen is not a one hit wonder developer though, at the moment he has several other top games in both the Apple App Store and on Google Play. Super Ball Juggling, and Shruiken Block rank number 6 and 18 respectively in the App Store and he has no plans to remove them. However, he did say that if they became addicting to users, he would not hesitate to remove them. When asked if he now felt that pulling Flappy Bird was a mistake, Ngueyen said; "I don't think it's a mistake," he says. "I have thought it through."

While Flappy Bird may be gone from the App Store, its still available on thousands of iPhones around the world. With Flappy Birds quick rise in popularity combined with its abrupt end, there is no doubt that there are those who are willing to pay handsomely for a copy of the game they never got to download.

After the game was pulled from both marketplaces yesterday, iPhone's began popping up on eBay with the game installed. Surprisingly many of these phones quickly sold for anywhere between $400 to upwards of $2000, but the biggest surprise came when one phone quickly climbed to $10,000 and continued to rise from there. At the time of this writing, the price is sitting at $99,000 with 74 bids in total and over six days left on its auction clock.

I have bid on some crazy stupid stuff on eBay before, but spending $100,000 on an iPhone to be able to play a simple game that amounts to noting more than a rip-off of a rip-off takes the cake. In my town, $100k will buy you a fairly new 1500 square foot home, with enough left over for an economy-class car. On a side note, if anyone is looking for a slightly used HTC One with Flappy Bird installed, I know where one might be for sale for a cool $98,000.

In less than two months, Microsoft will officially pull the plug on Windows XP after more than 12 years of general availability of the popular OS. XP served as a dependable OS that already surpassed Microsoft's expectations, though the software company is anxious to migrate users to the still struggling Windows 8/8.1 operating system.

Microsoft will officially end support for XP on April 8, and is now urging home users, small and midsize-businesses, and corporations to finally migrate. Consumers that might be more interested in Windows 7 will be discouraged that Microsoft pulled the OS from its retail stores, and stopped selling to OEMs long ago - though many e-tailers still have Windows 7 OS copies - and Windows 7-powered PCs and laptops available.

Despite 8/8.1 frustrating some users, the OS is significantly more secure than XP - and has modern support from hardware and software makers - but XP still controls around 29 percent of the desktop OS market.

Apple has laid down its final judgement on Bitcoins, and things are not looking good for iOS users who dabble in the crypto-currency. Today Apple removed the final Bitcoin wallet app from the App Store. The app was named Blockchain which was not the largest to get removed,but Apple axed it without warning.

This caused a major uproar with iOS users who was using Blockchain as their Bitcoin wallet. The uproar has been so great that one Reddit user, u/round-peg, posted an offer to give a new Nexus 5 to the first five people who smashed their iPhones in rage over the Blockchain app being removed from the app store. As you would expect, smashed iPhone images soon began showing up. Blockchain says that Apple banned Bitcoin wallet apps because they felt that the crypto-currency threatened their own payment system, causing Apple to do what it does best, restrict its users. "The only thing that has changed is that bitcoin has become competitive to Apple's own payment system," said Blockchain.

Newly appointed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella plans to focus on mobile solutions and cloud computing during the early part of his reign as leader.

Nadella takes over for former CEO Steve Ballmer, as Ballmer leaves behind a 14-year-reign that has left many consumers and analysts disappointed. Nadella has served as the executive vice president behind Microsoft's cloud efforts, which doubled its growth last quarter.

The software giant has embraced cloud computing with success, as its Office 365 service is popular among businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions. However, disappointment with Windows 8/8.1 on the desktop and Windows RT and Windows Phone on mobile devices continues to frustrate users.

After returning from its mission to the sun (satire), North Korea appears to have kicked its development of Red Star Linux into high gear. New screen shots have surfaced of the OS and they tell two very big tales. First off, the screen shots are square, so North Korea has yet to adopt widescreen technology. Secondly, Kim Jong Un must be a huge fan of Apple's OS X operating system.

Former iterations of the Linux-based OS took on a more Windows 7 desktop appearance, but these new screen captures are clearly a direct rip-off of Apple's OS X. Red Star Linux has been in development in the isolated country for more than a decade now, and this new OS X style version marks the third revision in the OS' history. The screen captures came from, Will Scott, a university professor who spent a semester teaching in Pyongyang at its University of Science.

The operating system does include a Mozilla-based web browser even though Internet access is restricted to most North Korean citizens. The browser is used to access a country-wide intranet that serves up websites for North Korean educational institutions, and government propaganda sites. The OS also features a copy of Wine so that some programs coded for Windows can be run. With such a blatant rip-off of OS X's theme, one is left wondering when we will see the first North Korean knock off iPhone or iPad arrive.

Facebook has just launched a new iPhone app called Paper, a new standalone app for the social network that is more like a news reading app than purely a social network. Paper uses the traditional Facebook News Feed, but recreates it in a more immersive, full-sized experience.

The new app does away with nearly all of usual buttons, and UI styles for a much cleaner, bigger status update, photos, and news stories. If you tilt your iPhone, Facebook will adjust themselves, something the team calls the "Ken turns" effect. UI elements simply face away, with news stories displayed in a much different manner. Facebook has pumped over nine months into the new iPhone exclusive app, which is also locked to the US market for now. No one outside of the US market will have access to it, for now.

Paper brings forth a new venture for Facebook, where the main screen now displays completely different content. It will feel more like Flipboard infused with Facebook, made for the iPhone. A new compose screen is bought into play, where you can view the exact end product before making it live. Facebook says: "it's a publishing tool, a way of publishing great content, and a way of viewing great content".