Software & Apps - Page 87

I've been using Android 4.x Jelly Bean since day one, and I'm in love with it. But, it has seen a slow adoption rate, but thanks great selling smartphones like the Galaxy S4, HTC One and Xperia Z, Jelly Bean has finally become the dominant version of Android.

The numbers speak for themselves, with the digits posted on the Android Developers website. As it stands right now, Android 4.1 and 4.1 are found on 40.5% of all Android devices, up from 38% of devices last month. This news means that Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" users are upgrading, with Android 2.3 numbers down to 33%, just 1% lower than June's numbers of 34%.

I haven't updated my Nexus 4 to Android 4.3 just yet, but it looks like those that have are finding issues with the latest update. Some users are reporting overheating, rapid battery drain, frequent crashing while in use and a perpetual loop during boot which renders their Nexus 4 unusable.

Other users are reporting that their Nexus 4 has become too slow to be usable. There are other reports from users that state passwords not being requested, which prevents their Nexus 4 from being unlocked. Whereas some users are reporting that there is no multitouch capability, reception issues, data disappearing, and applications that have gone missing.

The bad news for Android 4.3 on the Nexus 4 doesn't end there, with other users reporting that a device erase and factory reset fix the issues, but users shouldn't have to resort to formatting their phone to resolve an OS update problem.

Google released Android 4.3 into the wild last week, but the latest iteration in their mobile OS includes some improvements to Photo Sphere. Photo Sphere is used to take 360-degree photos, and is quite a nice ability of Android.

The latest software improvements to Photo Sphere in Android 4.3 make it easier to upload and share pictures on Google Maps. Google have taken the how-to a step further by providing a couple of handy tips:

Finally. The day has arrived: Google have unleashed Android 4.3 to the world, keeping the "Jelly Bean" codename intact. What exactly does Android 4.3 bring to the tablet versus Android 4.2?

Well, we have a bunch of multi-user settings, which includes the ability to restrict profiles for younger people. This is a great feature to keep your content, or the ability to access adult content, from children. You can restrict app content at the user level, with a user enjoying the ability of restricting a number of puzzles within a game to a specific profile.

On top of this, you can prevent kids from going crazy and racking up huge bills with the in-app purchases. This is a must-have for all parents, in my opinion. Apple, where are you?

It is safe to bet that any video professional, enthusiast, or even home theater junkie has heard of and most certainly used the H.264 codec which has become the de facto standard for compressing high-definition video. H.264 uses very complicated algorithms that help accelerate the decoding process, which in turn reduces energy consumption and allows for higher bit rates. Yesterday, we participated in a briefing on the new X265 and HEVC encoder project that is being tackled by a company called MulticoreWare.

The X264 encoder remains one of the leading H.264 encoders on the market and it resides under both the open source GNU GPL license as well as a commercial license which is designed for companies that wish to inject their own proprietary code without having to release it into the open source community. With Ultra HD Video beginning to flow in, H.264 was just not delivering the performance needed for high bit rate, high quality output. This is where H.265 comes in the play along with MulticoreWare.

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), aka H.265, is being designed to replace H.264 and the official standard was released just over a month ago. And today, MulticoreWare announced its commercial open source project around the x265 encoder. The company has released the source code for x265 and it is available for download at Source #1 below. The x265 encoder is already highly parallel and supports all of the big instruction sets including FMA3/FMA4, AVX, and AVX2.

Late last week, Google CEO Larry Page revealed that over 1.5 million Android devices are activated each and every day. This is up from last September's numbers of around 1.3 million each day.

Google are inching closer to having one billion Android-based devices on the market, with Page stating that it is "pretty amazing given the first Android phone launched less than five years ago." Moving onto the Google Play Store, the Google CEO revealed that over 50 billion apps have been downloaded from the Google Play Store.

This number should astound people, myself included, because last September this number was just 25 billion. This represents a 100% increase in under a year, which is an amazing number no matter which way you look at it. Google Chrome received a mention, too, with the web browser from Google now enjoying 750 million users, one of those being me.

Today, Evernote updated its app for iOS and added some new features that are sure to make its users happy. The update mostly includes features that make organization much easier including things like Shortcuts, Related Notes, and Skitch integration. This new support for Skitch allows users to have the app annotate their images and notes with Skitch and they will show up at Evernote.

As you would expect, the newly integrated Shortcuts feature allows users to "shortcut" important notes, notebooks, and even tags so they are easily accessed for quick use. Additionally, your shortcuts will sync across all devices and versions of Evernote which makes cross-platform organization much easier. The new shortcuts feature is similar to the old "Favorites" section which only allowed the pinning of notes.

Don't worry premium users of Evernote, you are not left out in this update as you now have the ability to annotate PDF documents using Skitch. Another new feature called Related Notes will search when a new note is started and recommend additional posts that may be helpful or related. Evernote for iOS is available for free in the App Store with a premium version costing users $4.99 a month or $44.99 per year.

A new app has just hit the smartphone markets and it aims to serve up audio news much in the same way the Pandora handles music. Swell actually launched back in June and featured content from NPR, American Public Media, ABC news, the BBC, Ted talks, and many others. Today, the company announced that they have raised $5.4 million in Series A funding.

This round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and included investors like Google Ventures, InterWest Partners, and Correlation Ventures among others. This tops the company's seed funding round by almost $3 million, which was led by Google Ventures, Charles River Ventures, DFJ, Andreessen Horowitz, and other angel investors.

Swell works much like Pandora and once you start the app, you just let it run. In the event you don't like what it's playing, simply swipe to skip it. You're also able to choose topics that appeal better to you such as technology, world news, health and wellness, and many more. With it being out in the wild for over a month, it appears that the app is a success with the company saying that users listen for 30 minutes on average their first time using the app and returning users spending more than 110 minutes per week using the app.

WhatsApp has been quickly making its way to the top of the list for the world's most popular messaging platforms. Just a few months ago, its owners claimed that its servers see more than 10 billion messages pass through each day; that's more than Twitter or even iMessenge. The app is free on Android for the first year and then costs one dollar per year thereafter. Unfortunately for iOS users, until now they had to pay that dollar upfront.

Today, the company announced that it is finally going to bring the iOS version of the app in line with Android and BlackBerry and offer the application free for the first year and then require a one dollar per year subscription thereafter. This move has been planned for quite some time and everyone knew it was coming; we just did not know when.

Existing iOS users should be ecstatic to hear that since they've already paid for the app, their subscription to the service will be free for life and they will not be required to pay the one dollar subscription fee each year. I use WhatsApp on a daily basis as it appears to be much faster than my carrier's text messaging service, is quite convenient, and is a free way for me to communicate with my brother and sister who live overseas. While none of us are iOS users, I know a few friends will be happy to hear of this announcement.

Today, Google released a complete refresh of its Google Maps for Android app. The company says that the new app brings forth an entirely new mapping experience that makes exploring the world and getting to the places that matter to you a lot faster and easier.

Google says that the new Google maps for mobile builds on the design that was released last year for iPhone and improves on it with new search and navigation features. Additionally, this is the very first dedicated Google Maps for Android tablets and iPads.

The new app brings forth an explore feature that the company says is a fast and easy way to visually browse and discover new places without even typing. Users must simply tap the search box and you'll see cards that show great places to eat, drink, sleep, and shop.

Kim Dotcom's secure cloud storage MEGA, has been available for a while, but not on mobile. Today, it has launched on Android, and is available for download from the Google Play Store. We can expect MEGA for Android to include the following features:

MEGA for Android works on all Android devices, so you're not just limited to your Android-powered smartphone. You can grab MEGA for Android from the Google Play Store right here.

Well, DirectX 11.2 is coming folks, and it will be exclusive to Windows 8.1 and Xbox One. Microsoft have confirmed the news, with the new iteration of Microsoft's software including tiles resources, which will allow developers to cram more detail into our games, and much more.

DirectX 11.2 is built to use both system RAM and graphics RAM to store textures, with Microsoft's Antoine Leblond saying that the tiled resources will see DirectX 11.2-based games have much better resolution of textures displayed in-game. Leblond used a live example, showing off a demo that used 9GB of texture data that was held in system RAM compared to graphics RAM.

This is great for PC gamers, but it also means gamers will be looking at a new OS once again. Microsoft are doing it strangely, too, as they won't be offering DirectX 11.2 to Windows 8 - so it looks like Windows 8 is done and dusted for if you're a gamer. Glad I haven't made the switch yet.

Facebook's Android app is usually hit and miss on whether an update will be amazing and fix tons of issues or will just inject more bugs into the user experience. It appears that Facebook realizes this and has now opened a new beta testing program that all Android users are invited to join.

Facebook says that the creation of this beta tester pool is because of the sheer vastness and diversity of hardware and OS software in the Android ecosystem. This makes it very difficult for the software developers to find every bug and every issue that only appears on a specific device or version. This new program is organized by Google's new "Group for Beta Testers" service that was announced at Google I/O earlier this month.

To join the group, all you have to do is click the link at source #2 below, join the group, except the permissions, and head to the Android market and re-download the Facebook app. Facebook has created its own group (source #3) in which users can join and leave feedback, but that is not a requirement. Reporting bugs found in the application is as easy as clicking a new "report bug" button icon in the settings menu.

I'm a huge fan of Google Now, using it on the daily, but the app has just been updated with some fresh features. Google have introduced a live TV feature and Google Offers to Google Now.

The TV cards work with Internet-connected TV's, where they'll display more information about what is currently playing on your TV. Users need to connect their Android-powered device to the same network that the TV is on, and then tap "Listen for a TV Show" in Google Now. This feature will show things like factoids about the show and profiles of the actors within the show.

The second feature Google Now received was Google Offers, which will keep track of your saved offers. If you're near a store where you've got an offer available, the Offers Card will pop up with a notification alerting you of the nearby savings to be had.

NVIDIA have released the GeForce 320.49 Beta drivers, which are perfect for the just-released GeForce GTX 760 GPU. The new beta drivers not only include support for NVIDIA's latest mid-range GPU, but they include a bunch of fixes that were reported with previous drivers.

These fixes include problems with image corruption and artifacting Eve Online: Retribution, Assassin's Creed III, Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. The GeForce 320.49 Beta drivers also include, or add SLI support for a number of titles: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Natural Selection 2, Trackmania 2: Canyon and GRID 2.

You can download the drivers right here.

It looks as though it could still be a long time before Instagram finds its way onto the Windows Phone and BlackBerry platforms. This fact comes courtesy of Instagram's CEO, who noted during an interview that Google Glass is towards the bottom of their list for new platforms. This is because Instagram considers where its users are and where the growth is.

Shortly after explaining that a Glass app is towards the bottom of their list, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom warned that BlackBerry and Windows Phone apps may not be coming anytime soon. "I'm just saying that in order of priority, the way we evaluate where to expand to is really simply where our users are, and where the growth is," the executive explained. "It took us a very long time to get to Android."

We're actually quite surprised that Instagram hasn't brought an app to the other mobile platforms as of yet. Instagram is owned by Facebook, a massive company that could easily afford to port the application to the other platforms. If you're planning on using Instagram on Google Glass just be warned that it could be a very long time until an app is released for the platform.

When Square launched a few years ago, they changed the mobile payments market overnight with their little white plastic device that you to plug in your smartphone or tablet. Now Square is setting its sights on the online marketplace as well and is attempting to compete with Etsy, Amazon, and eBay by launching its own online marketplace called Square Market.

While the step from a mobile payment gateway to a online marketplace may seem a bit odd to some, this is actually part of Square's push for the company to deliver a product that answers each aspect of online commerce. At the moment, the company has a mobile wallet for consumers, a payment app for businesses, a $300 stand that turns your iPad into a point-of-sale system and it even has a project in the works that will compete with PayPal known as Square Cash.

"Creating an online marketplace is our next step in making commerce easy for everyone," said Ajit Varma, Square's director of discovery, in a statement. "The idea behind Square Market is to make local businesses accessible to Square users nationwide. Creating a storefront on Square Market is free, and sellers can manage list items, add product photos, manage inventory and create an online profile for their businesses that the company hopes will essentially eliminate the need for sellers to have standalone websites."

Razer has just announced a new software package targeted at gamers that will allow them to turn their boring old normal headphones into a 7.1 channel surround beast. Razer Surround, according to the company, goes above and beyond existing multi-channel simulation packages by giving users a calibration system that tunes the effect for individual listeners.

The software is designed as an add-on for the Razer Synapse 2.0 software package and the company has plans to offer it for sale in 2014 for $19.99, but the company is offering a pretty sweet deal to early adopters. Anyone wishing to purchase Razer Surround before January 1, 2014 will receive an unprecedented 100-percent discount.

Razer simply asked that if you find the software useful that you donate some cash to the Child's Play charity (source #2). The software is compatible with Windows Vista and higher and provides preconfigured calibrations for all razor audio products. Custom configurations can be built to calibrate for third-party headsets and users will need to register for Razer Synapse 2.0, so an online connection is needed.

Apple has made numerous changes in iOS 7, many of which are under the hood. One of the new features that Apple has added to iOS 7 could foreshadow future features that the iPhone will offer, much like these changes have done in the past. Specifically, iOS 7 now allows developers to detect blinking and smiles in pictures, making it easier for photo app developers to detect good or bad pictures.

In iOS 5, Apple added the ability to detect faces in pictures. This was then used by the iPhone's camera app to help with smarter autofocus and better white balance settings. It's possible that the iPhone 5S could wait until everyone is smiling or not blinking before taking a picture. It's worth noting that some Android phones already have a similar feature: they take several pictures in quick succession and select the "best" one.

iOS 7 has also brought the ability to shoot 60 FPS video, albeit at 720p video quality. The new API calls could allow app developers to create better slow-motion videos without losing some of the illusion of motion.

Google are stepping in a new direction with their latest announcement, in that they're accepting submissions for their Google Play for Education platform which will provide education- and age-appropriate applications to schools.

Google Play for Education will fall under the Play Store, but will allow bulk purchasing and content curation for apps, books and movies for K-12 schools. If a developer has an age-appropriate application, they can now mark it for inclusion, which will see a third-party group of educators review it.

This third-party of educators will review each and every app, reviewing its subject, grade level and whether or not it meets a set of development guidelines that have been set in place for the education system. Part of these guidelines see that the app must not collect personally identifiable information or use student data for noneducational use.