Google Nexus 4 Toolkit is available for modding enthusiasts
Last week Google launched its new flagship smartphone -- the Nexus 4. Shortly after, Android developers bestowed the LG-made device with root, but for hassle-free modding there is an all-in-one toolkit available as well.
Manual modding operations offer more control over the process, but take more time to perform. The Nexus 4 Toolkit is designed to automate a considerable number of tasks ranging from rooting Android 4.2 Jelly Bean to setting file permissions on Google's flagship smartphone. Users can also lock/unlock the bootloader, perform a full-system backup using ADB, install BusyBox, download the factory image, flash a custom or stock recovery and much more.
Panorama9 adds Mac patch management to new cloud IT service
Cloud IT management platform Panorama9 on Tuesday introduced Mac patch management to its pay-as-you-go solution, unifying Windows and Mac OS patch deployment in its IT dashboard.
We first looked at Panorama9 in October when the company added Mac and Linux support to its contract-free asset and compliance management platform. The service itself is still very new, and is rapidly growing its functionality in the interest of providing small and medium sized businesses affordable cloud IT services.
WinMaximumize expands desktop windows to fill available space
When you’ve several applications open on your PC desktop, organizing their windows efficiently can take a moment. You might move one window over here, drag a border over there, and so it goes on.
If you’d rather just automate the process, though, you might preferWinMaximumize, which can instantly expand your selected window to fill whatever desktop space is available.
Microsoft announces online and in-person Windows 8 developer camps
Like it or not, Windows 8 is here to stay and Microsoft wants to make sure developers are ready to provide users with all the apps they desire. To that end, the company has announced a series of online and in-person developer camps in an effort to increase the population of the Windows Store.
In an email sent out recently by Microsoft, the company brags that its new OS allows developers to "code once and have a great app experience that scales across devices from tablets to all-in-one PCs". The company attempts to further entice coders with the fact that the new Windows Store offers a "higher profit potential" than other app stores, which amounts to an 80% revenue share if you reach $25,000 USD or more in total sales. Indie software developers who oppose the new centralized Windows software distribution ecosystem are unlikely to take much comfort in that fact. Analytics firm VisionMobile recently did a survey which found the average monthly take for a centrally-distributed app was between $1,200 and $3,900 per month, depending on the platform. The new Windows Store, however, is a new frontier for this type of app store.
Ahead of the Winter Holidays, Skype introduces Gift Cards
Thanksgiving Day rapidly approaches, and the Winter Holidays are just around the corner. For the long-distance conversations usually associated with those events, popular VoIP and Video chat company Skype has introduced Skype Gift Cards.
With Skype Gift Cards, users of the popular VoIP and video chat service can access a number of premium features such as worldwide calling to landlines and mobile phones, text messaging, or Skype Wi-Fi hotspots. Starting at $10, Gift Cards are available through Skype Shop and the company's Facebook page, as well as at a number of retail locations such as Microsoft Store, Target and OfficeMax.
HP says Autonomy cooked the books, takes $8.8 billion charge
Today, HP stunned Wall Street and investors by announcing an unexpected $8.8 billion charge. The computing giant dropped the bombshell ahead of the market's opening concurrently with fiscal fourth quarter results. The amount isn't so stunning as the reason.
Official statement: "The majority of this impairment charge is linked to serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations at Autonomy Corporation plc that occurred prior to HP's acquisition of Autonomy and the associated impact of those improprieties, failures and misrepresentations on the expected future financial performance of the Autonomy business over the long-term. The balance of the impairment charge is linked to the recent trading value of HP stock".
Sysinternals Contig lets you choose which files or folders to defrag
If you’d like to optimize the performance of a game (or any other disk-intensive application) then defragmenting its key files before you start can sometimes help -- but of course that’s not usually a very practical idea. Most defrag tools will want to process your entire partition, which could take a while, and may not touch the files you’re really interested in anyway (defraggers often leave a few fragmented files behind when they’re done).
Fortunately there’s a simple alternative in the shape of Sysinternals Contig, a tiny command-line tool that defrags only the files you specify, and doesn’t “forget” any of them. Give the program a file, and it will be defragmented.
Microsoft, ditch OEM knuckleheads and make more hardware like Surface
Dell earnings announcement set off some concerns that the PC industry may not recover and as a result some are predicting Windows 8 sales may not be quite satisfying to Microsoft. Could the software giant have seen this coming a mile away?
A mobile future means that traditional PC hardware like laptops and ultrabooks will yield sales to a new generation of PC form factors like hybrids and tablets that are highly mobile, yet just as capable as laptops and ultrabooks, tablets like the Surface. Microsoft knew mobile was the future and prepped for it, here’s why.
Your mobile is no 'match' for Windows Phone
Microsoft's Ben Rudolph caused a stir during the Consumer Electronics Show back in January. He showed up with his Windows Phone and challenged speed tests -- to show people with other devices how fast the Microsoft mobile OS was. With that humble beginning the "Smoked by Windows Phone" phenomena was born.
That whole concept certainly paid off in media attention with Rudolph going on mini tours of Microsoft stores, exportation to Nokia stores in other parts of the world and a whole advertising campaign launch. In fact, Rudolph states that the company, along with Nokia, ran "over 250,000 challenges in 54 countries".
What the world's poorer nations can teach YOU about technology
In the last few weeks we’ve been bombarded with a series of really important new hardware or software announcements. Take your pick: iPad mini, Nexus 4 and Surface among many, many, many more. Commentary is relentless from so-called official pundits and overly excited users --what in the days of paper would have deforested an area of the planet the size of Brazil.
You know what? None of it really matters. For all the noise about what these multi-billion dollar companies make, none of them has produced anything really new. We’ve seen no paradigm shifts. No Big Ideas. Nothing that will really change our lives in any way at all. It’s all been like putting racing wheels on the family car. Looks great, but doesn’t actually achieve anything real. Absolutely, our daily lives in the West have changed in extraordinary ways by this technology as compared to, say, 1990. But not 2012. Has the tide reached its high point? Does IT innovation really matter any more?
Passwords Plus cross-platform password manager finally comes to Android
DataViz Inc. on Monday launched Passwords Plus on the Android Platform, making Android the fourth platform for the password management software behind Windows, Mac OS, and iOS.
The functionality of this app should be quite clear from its name. Over in our Fileforum, we have literally hundreds of this type of application for Windows, Mac, and Linux-based platforms, and they all conveniently have "Password" in the name. There should be no surprises.
Passwords Plus is available for smartphones running Android 2.1 and up, and it stores PINs, passwords and "other sensitive information" in 256-bit AES encryption, syncing between multiple devices and platforms. Data is synced via DataViz's secure cloud storage and SamePage technology.
Cisco buys 'Networking-as-a-Service' pioneer Meraki for mid-market growth
Networking leader Cisco announced on Sunday evening its intent to acquire San Francisco-based cloud networking company Meraki Inc. Cisco will pay approximately $1.2 billion in cash and incentives to acquire Meraki, and the deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013.
Meraki's portfolio of technologies includes a broad range of networking solutions, including mesh Wi-Fi, switching, security, and cloud-based mobile device management which currently target midmarket companies. In other words, companies with annual revenues between $100 million and $1 billion. In the United States, this market segment is made up of approximately 200,000 companies, and it is looked at as a growth market for tech infrastructure providers.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini will retire in May
Paul Otellini joined Intel way back in 1974 when he was fresh out of University of California, Berkeley. He eventually rose to the position of president and CEO in 2005, but now plans to step down after seven years leading the company.
His May 2013 may seem a long ways off, certainly this is a bit more than a standard two-weeks notice, but Otellini picked the date for a very specific reason. May is when Intel holds its annual stockholders' meeting.
The world’s first digital bottle top
There have been some great technical innovations in recent years. The iPod, the iPhone, Wi-Fi, TiVo, Kinect… the list goes on and on. But surely they all pale into insignificance compared to the mighty, life-changing invention that is the digital bottle top.
Yes, it’s a real thing. Created by British cider brand Strongbow and marketing agency Work Club, the StartCap is a bottle top with built-in RFID. When you pop the top, exposing the tag, a signal is sent to a reader somewhere in the room (at a bar or club) causing some kind of action to occur.
Turn Windows 8 into a powerful tool
Windows 8 is the least intuitive and the most controversial operating system released by Microsoft in years. In my review I said that Windows 8 is "more suited for early adopters rather than everyone" because of usability issues encountered during my time with it. However as with most problems there is a convenient solution and it involves the classic keyboard and mouse.
Windows 8 is still designed to be operated the old fashioned way, even though the focus is now on touch devices. Microsoft tried to please both desktop and tablet users, but the former are actually disadvantaged because of it. Instead of using a crippled operating system by always going to the desktop tile or shutting down via the power plug, I will present how to use some of the newly introduced features using the keyboard and mouse.
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