Category listing for

Software

Twitter for Windows Phone 7 App Review

One of the key aspects to any modern smartphone OS is how it handles social networking and considering Twitter integration in the Windows Phone 7 OS is simply non-existant as yet, it could be considered vital to the initial success of the platform that the Twitter application is up to scratch. So, I set about downloading and installing the free official app which took no more than a few seconds and I was itching to check it out.

If you are someone who bases opinions a lot on first impressions, then you may not have even made it into the main part of the app. I had a few gripes from the very beginning with this app and firstly, and perhaps you might consider it trivial, but the start screen icon is coloured with the same shade of blue used for the default blue theme for the OS.

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Browser+ Windows Phone 7 App Appears on Marketplace (Third Party Web Browser)

Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 7 isn’t particularly bad, but it is not the perfect web browsing experience out there right now and does, for some, lack some key features. Enter the Browser+ Windows Phone 7 app, the new third-party browser app that has at some point in the last day or two sprung up on the Marketplace.

Whilst still based on Internet Explorer code, the browser offers a couple of extra features well worth considering…

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Official Google Voice iPhone App iPhone Launched – Now Roll-Out The Service Outside US Please?

We’ve had the likes of Skype on Android and a variety of other platforms for quite some time now and obviously Google Voice on Android as you would expect (at least in the US), but on the iPhone it has proven rather evasive for US users requiring the use of third party apps or use through the Safari browser. Until now.

Third-party apps for the service have been re-appearing all over the app store for a number of months now (after being removed some time ago), so it was only a matter of time before Google decided to spread its wings into the Apple Store, seeing as it insists on providing its software and services on rival platforms.

Which in itself is a curious strategy in all honesty, surely you’d think they’d want keep some of your best mobile features for their own Android mobile platform and give people more reason to move to it? Or at least roll out the Google Voice service to your existing Android users outside of the US first before that of users who have chosen a different mobile platform?

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Google Docs Now Editable From Android 2.2 And iOS Devices

Google Docs has become incredibly popular since its release; not only is it a free alternative to Microsoft Office, but it also allows users to access their content wherever they are via the net.

The one short fall to this service before now, though, has been the inability to edit your Google Docs from your phone or iPad. Until now. Google has announced that as of today, you can edit any of your Google documents not only from your Android based phone, but also your iOS based devices, too.

The update will be rolling out over the next few days, so if you’re using an iOS or Android device, you will be able to edit your documents on the fly, without having to wait until you have access to a desktop machine.

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Dell Streak Getting Android 2.2 (Froyo) Update This Month?

Remember the Dell Streak? I wasn’t too convinced when I reviewed this mini tablet / large mobile phone back in September, as I thought it was having somewhat of an identity crisis, but I know many people who have used, and like it.

If you’re one of those users, and you happen to live in the UK, then you are in luck! Dell has confirmed via their UK Facebook page that the device will be getting a nice little software update to Android 2.2 (Froyo) before the end of this month.

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Apple To Contribute On The OpenJDK Project, Keeps Java Supported On OS X

Having developed on Java myself in the past, I was pretty horrified to see that with Apple’s latest Java update came a description that warned users of its impending demise. Java has always been a cross-platform environment, with the capability to execute code on any operating system you turn to, be it Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.

If Java was about to go the way of Adobe on OS X, then it spelt trouble for Mac users who not only used, but also developed on the platform; needless to say there was quite a few people getting worried about the situation.

This leads us to today’s news, which consists of somewhat of a u-turn from the folks up at Cupertino, as they have announced plans to work with Oracle on the OpenJDK project for Mac OS X. This follows an announcement last month that IBM were joining the project, so don’t worry! Java is dying just yet!

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Boxee 1.0 Coming To PCs “Early Next Year”, UK On-Demand Services May Follow

The Boxee team has been getting quite a bit more attention that it’s used to lately, with the release of the Boxee box in the USA at the start of this week, and the UK release now just a day away.

We gave you all the juicy details about the Boxee Box yesterday, with a look at both the hardware and the software. I noted that the Boxee box ships with a brand new version of Boxee, 1.0, which has seen a number of changes made to the user interface to tailor it better for the big screen. With these changes already present in the box, I was wondering when we’d see the same hardware hit the PC and Mac. Fortunately, we have a few answers and a few surprises to share too!

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New iOS 4.2 Gold Master Released, iPad Users Collectively Pray For Working Wi-Fi

Just as we thought we were about to see a general release of iOS 4.2 this week, a serious bug popped up that prevented the software from being released to the world just yet.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and iPad users can look forward to a host of new features, including multitasking, support for folders and some other minor tweaks such as a brightness slider in the multitasking bar.

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Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Update Plans To Be Interrupted By Mobile Networks?

If you caught the Windows Phone 7 announcement event, have followed its progress up to the launch and read our full review published earlier in the week, then you will probably be impressed at Microsofts plans to simultaneously push updates to each device as and when they are ready and stable.

I certainly was, and even commented in the Windows Phone 7 review on the hard work that Microsoft had put in to ensure that the software updating procedures for all hardware is as smooth as possible and doesn’t quite cause the stress and anxiety that comes with owning an Android mobile phone awaiting a delayed Froyo update.

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Boxee Box Now Shipping In USA With Boxee v1.0 Software, UK Release Date Is 14th November

In case you forgot, the Boxee Box is now officially shipping in the USA following the launch event in New York last night.

There were many speakers at the event from both the Boxee team, and third parties with whom Boxee had been working. The big news of the night, though, was the introduction of a major update to the Boxee software, with it officially coming out of beta and hitting the big 1.0.

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iTunes’ Ping and Twitter Get At Least Some Degree of Integration

Remember when Steve Jobs brought us the iTunes 10 update with Ping functionality at Apple’s music event this year? Well during the keynote the shots clearly showed us Facebook integration of some sort and basically sharing your friends across the two social networks. Well, once it actually launched it was nowhere to be seen and to be honest, it annoyed a lot of people.

So, who’s come along, but Twitter, and stolen the whole social network partnership thing from right under Zuckerberg’s nose, providing he was actually sniffing it out in the first place.

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A Short Tale Of One Blogger’s Frustrations With Linux

Ah, Linux. The operating system that all love to hate has taken big strides into the home of the average consumer in the past few years, with many distributions used on early versions of many netbooks. We even did a ‘week with Linux‘ series of posts ourselves back in February of this year.

Despite these advancements, however, there are still some major hoops that users must jump through to reach the same levels of productivity as one comes to expect from a mainstream operating system, such as Windows 7 or Mac OS X. What is it, therefore, that Linux is still missing? What can’t it quite get right? Let’s take a look at an example of mine, and we’ll figure it out.

I recently installed Ubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat, on to my home theatre PC as a replacement for Windows 7. Why? I’m not quite sure, I was bored of Windows 7 after using it for over a year, and fancied something a little different. Besides, I was curious about the new version of Ubuntu and wanted to check it out.

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Mac OS X 10.6.5 Now Available To Download (Snow Leopard Update)

Right on cue! Apple has released Mac OS X 10.6.5 today, and it is now available to download for Snow Leopard users across the globe.

Many had presumed that 10.6.5 would include support for using AirPrint over shared printers for iOS 4.2 updated devices, which is rumoured to hit iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches before the end of the week, however, this doesn’t appear to be the case.

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MakeMKV Beta Review (Rip DVD/Blu-Ray to MKV on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux)

I’ve always hated clutter, but always loved technology, and the media that comes along with it. Quite often these ideals can be somewhat conflicting; after all, we all have nightmares about the spaghetti junctions in and around our desks, and that’s before we even get to the rest of our media. CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays. They all take up space. You have to question why we still have them around though, with terabytes and terabytes of available hard drive storage the necessity for these kinds of media is dwindling.

The one reason that I’ve kept the CDs and movies that I own is because when I watch a film, I like it to be in the best quality that it possibly can be. If you transfer a DVD or Blu-Ray disc to your hard drive, you’re often going to have to re-encode it, compress it, put it in a container such as .AVI or .MP4, and this all loses quality.

MakeMKV promises to change this, because it will allow you to take the content off a DVD or Blu-Ray disc, and put it on your hard drive with no major compression or re-encoding, meaning that you keep the vast majority of quality from the source. If you aren’t short on storage (and trust me, you won’t want to be short on storage), then this could be a viable way to finally get all that content on your hard drive and take it off your shelves.

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My Living Desktop Review (Animated/Video Wallpaper For Mac OS X)

Despite being able to use a screen saver as a wallpaper relatively easily if you’re using Windows, things aren’t quite as simple for users of Mac OS X. My Living Desktop aims not only to make this process simpler, but also give you an array of stunning videos to use as your background on the Mac. From development company Amuse inc, it costs just shy of $35 USD for a license, but is it worth it, or is it overrated compared to other applications?

Once you’ve downloaded My Living Desktop, you’ll have to go through an installation process as unfortunately it isn’t as simple as drag and drop for installation. Despite this, installation shouldn’t take too long to complete, and you’ll be up and running in under a minute.

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*Spark Beta Android App Review (Home Screen Skin/Theme)

There are more custom skins out in the wild for Android than I care to count. From HTC’s Sense to Samsung’s TouchWiz, consumers have an absolutely massive amount of choice. The only problem? All of these custom interfaces are only available with certain phones. If you’re running stock TouchWiz, you can’t simply switch to HTC Sense, as this is only available on HTC devices such as the HTC Desire. What do you do, therefore, when you want a change of scenery?

*Spark for Android will run on most Android devices, and offers a completely different home screen option for users who want a change. It’s free to download from the market, and has certainly tempted me, so let’s take a look at it and see if it offers a better experience, or whether the grass is simply greener when something brand new is introduced.

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Windows Phone 7 Review

This time of year always throws up a wealth of new gadgets for us to drool over in the months prior to the Christmas season, and with nearly every manufacturer placing a lot of emphasis on mobile devices this year, it was hardly surprising there would be a lot of new smart phones. With the iPhone 4 and the new iOS 4 update being launched over the course of the summer and a new version of Android on the way before year’s end, there sure is a lot to be excited about, but for me nothing has made the past few months more exciting than the introduction of Windows Phone 7.

Around this time of year it is always natural to want a new gadget or two as manufacturers launch their devices ahead of the busiest shopping season of the year, so it wasn’t surprising that I was after a new phone. After a freak trampolining accident towards the back end of the summer, though, it became all the more necessary to take the plunge and fork out for a new handset. But what do I do? Go with what was at the time the best Android handset around, the HTC Desire, or perhaps the annoyingly familiar iPhone, perhaps I should wait for the HTC Desire HD or stick with a Samsung Galaxy S, the choice is almost impossible. In the end though, it seemed it would come down to iOS vs Android, and I was sorely tempted to go with the latter.

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Android 2.3 ‘Gingerbread’ Update Onto Nexus One In “The Next Few Days”

Android fans, prepare to be incredibly excited. Nexus One owners, prepare to be super excited. Alvaro Fuentes Vasquez, an Open Handset Alliance team member, has let it slip on Twitter today that Gingerbread, version 2.3 of Android, will be hitting the Nexus One in the next few days!

It was originally thought that Google wanted to launch Gingerbread with the rumoured Nexus Two, which was supposedly going to be produced by Samsung, but the rumoured announcement date of today has so far gone by without incident, so one can only presume that the Nexus Two project has been held up, with a release planned for later this year, or maybe into 2011?

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GarageBand ’11 Review (iLife ’11 for Mac OS X)

Geeky musicians all over the world have been waiting for this one. GarageBand ’11 was the third app announced at the recent ‘Back to the Mac’ event to have received the star treatment in the upgrade from iLife ’09 to iLife ’11, and it comes with some features that people probably won’t want to do without after using.

Of course GarageBand has always been insanely popular with musicians who use Mac OS X, as it makes it so simple to do things that would normally require a room full of equipment and very expensive software. Does the new version improve upon this, or pack too many features at the cost of usability? Let’s check it out and see for ourselves!

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iMovie ’11 Review (iLife ’11 for Mac OS X)

iMovie ’11 was one of the three applications that got a major update with the new iLife ’11 suite that was released at Apple’s Back to the Mac event last month, and the new version comes with some interesting new features for users to sink their teeth in to. There’s quite a few things to cover, so lets dispense with the introduction and get straight to it!

Movie Trailers

Apple showed off their new movie trailers in iMovie ’11 for what seemed like forever at the Back to the Mac event. It’s clear what audience they’re pitching to with this feature, although I personally don’t quite get the idea. A lot of their examples include people’s holiday clips being compiled with movie style introductions and credits, but I just don’t see a lot of people showing off their holiday trailer to friends and family. What’s wrong with still images and the odd video clip thrown in without any of the trailer business?

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