Google has released Chrome 27 for Windows, Mac and Linux. And while the previous build was less than exciting, this one delivers multiple improvements which see the browser’s page display time improve by 5 percent.

Much of this acceleration is down to smarter scheduling, with Chrome 27 making more intelligent decisions about what it loads, and when. Previously, for instance, the browser might tie up bandwidth downloading a vast number of images in parallel. Now it focuses on visible images, and limits parallel downloads to a maximum of 10, so the details you need should be displayed noticeably faster.

Another significant enhancement comes from moving Chrome’s resource scheduler into the browser process, which means it has much more knowledge about your system state. In particular, it can spot and take better advantage of network idle time, preloading images just as soon as it has the opportunity.

Elsewhere, the official release blog post talks about "improved spell correction, and numerous fundamental improvements for Omnibox predictions". We’ve yet to confirm these in practice, but anything Google can do here will be welcome.

Developers will appreciate the new chrome.syncFileSystem API, which helps them create apps which can save and synchronize data on Google Drive. (Although as the API notes point out, this is about app-specific syncable storage, not some general API which will access whatever files happen to be on your Google Drive.)

And of course there’s the usual selection of security fixes, 13 this time. 10 of these, all rated "High", were "Use-after-free" issues, memory corruption flaws which at their worst may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. (Chrome isn’t alone, though -- similar issues were uncovered in IE recently, and it seems that the area is a hot topic for security researchers right now.)

On balance, then, while Chrome 27 may look exactly the same, it has some very welcome changes under the hood. The browser is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The Microsoft partner network (MPN) is Microsoft’s ‘official’body for channel partners. A Microsoft partner is one of the 640,000 companies worldwide that build, sell, or consult with Microsoft products. Most of these companies operate in the small-medium enterprise (SME) space, selling services related to Azure, .NET and SQL, Office 365, and SharePoint.

The MPN isn’t a revenue earner for Microsoft in itself, but the reason for its being is pretty clear. A successful partner ecosystem means lots of lovely license sales for Microsoft. With Office 365 subscriptions to push (and Windows likely following this model sooner rather than later) the MPN is a pretty important area for Redmond guys right now.

Offline there is a lot of support (marketing, financial, networking) available to partners, but online is where things are much more interesting. There are a number of private portal sites for partners, offering access to useful digital assets. But the only public tool is something called PinPoint -- a searchable directory of partners.

The site seems to be moving away from a straight directory service, towards more of an online store. As the releases of Office and SharePoint 2013 (and of course Windows 8) show, apps are very important to the future of many of Microsoft biggest products. The jury is still out on apps in Office and SharePoint, but any success will in part depend on the process of downloading, installing, and maintaining them. PinPoint seems to be an almost ready made solution.

This leaves a bit of a gap for people wanting to find a Microsoft partner to work with, a gap that a new site called PartnerPulse hopes to fill. PartnerPulse is new way for potential customers to find, review, and compare Microsoft channel partners. Partners can join for free, create a profile, and use social tools to market themselves.

More than this though, PartnerPulse is a social marketing platform, one that is as much about what customers say about partners as what partners say about themselves. Sites like PartnerPulse, as well as those catering for non Microsoft vendors (VendorStack being a good example), are part of a wider trend in the enterprise world for peer reviews and social analysis.

So what does this mean? Well PartnerPulse gives every partner a profile. Every profile hosts any number of Pulses, which are short messages posted by anyone. Pulses can consist of text, images, URLs, or ratings. But Pulses can also be summed, and calculated. Text can be analysed for sentiment (are the contents generally positive or negative). Ultimately partners can be scored based on their Pulses. Who has the most Pulses, who has the most positive Pulses?

This is a new way for companies to think about marketing online, to think about reviews and ratings. Klout and Kred have made great strides in this area for individuals. Sites like PartnerPulse now want to do it for companies as well. If 640,000 members of the Microsoft Partner Network want to differentiate themselves, they need to sit up and take notice. Online marketing isn’t just about Google adverts, or sponsored blog posts. It is about people, reputations, scores, and reviews. PartnerPulse is trying to give Microsoft partners a platform, it will be interesting to see how they use it.

Photo Credit: nopporn/Shutterstock

Open-source multi-messaging client Instantbird 1.4 has been released for Windows, Mac and Linux. The latest version of Instantbird, which provides a central location for accessing multiple IM accounts including AIM, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Google Talk, strengthens its Twitter integration by updating to the Twitter API v1.1, a necessary step to ensure it’s able to communicate with Twitter after June 11.

Other Twitter changes include the timeline being updated to include all people the user is currently following in the Participants list, while the character counter has also been improved to take into account automatic link shortening, making retweets easier.

Other changes in version 1.4 include improvements to the IRC authentication process, which now handles bouncers such as ZNC much better than previously. Users can now also easily override self-signed, invalid or out-of-date certificates for IRC servers.

The log viewer has also been updated so conversations are now grouped by date, while each account now keeps debug logs that are easily accessible via the Account Manager -- right-click the account in question, choose Copy Debug Logs and then paste the contents into a text window such as that of an email or a plain text editor.

Instantbird is built upon the Firefox core, and version 1.4 is now built on Mozilla 20.0.1, and uses libpurple 2.10.7. One side-effect of this change is that it is no longer compatible with Macs running OS X 10.5 or earlier.

The update is rounded off by a large number of bug fixes, which are detailed in the program’s change logs for interested parties. Instantbird 1.4 is available now as a free, open-source download.

Most PC users could benefit from working at the command line occasionally, but the rather basic interface is enough to put most people off. You don’t have to live with the standard Windows setup, though. There are plenty of tools which claim they can help, and one of the latest, ConsoleHoster, improves on the default command window in several ways.

Getting started with the program is certainly very easy. Download, unzip and launch it (there’s no installation required), click "Project 1" and your first command session appears. The blue text on a green background is a little distracting, but otherwise it’s straightforward enough. The main part of the window is split into two panes; you enter your commands in the lower, and any output appears above it.

One immediate benefit of this arrangement is that you can resize the ConsoleHoster window, and unlike a regular command line window, the text reformats itself to fit. Which means you’re not wasting time with horizontal scrolling just because you want to review what you did earlier.

In addition, an Explorer-type pane on the right side of ConsoleHoster provides an easier way to view files and folders. If you change to a new drive -- just enter D:\ , say -- then the Explorer view updates accordingly, so you can check out files and folders without needing to enter DIR and browse through any response.

ConsoleHoster provides various other tools to assist with navigation. You can change the current directory in a command line session by shift+clicking a folder in the Explorer view, for instance. And you’re able to add files or folders to a Favorites list, allowing you to return to that location later in a single click.

The program also has "Global Command" buttons, shortcuts to frequently used commands. Some very basic examples are included ("DIR", "CD \", "CD .."), but you can easily add more, then recall them at will with a click.

And, perhaps most usefully, none of these settings are global. Instead they’re assigned to "Projects", individual command line sessions which can have their own color scheme, starting folder, favorite locations, global commands and so one. As a result, you’re able to create different command line sessions for different purposes. And then you can run as many of these command windows as you need at the same time, switching between them via a simple tabbed interface.

Despite all this apparent functionality, ConsoleHoster has various problems, particularly with the Explorer view. This can be horribly slow when expanding large folder trees, for instance. It doesn’t consistently synchronize with your command session. Right-clicking files and folders gets you ConsoleHoster options only, nothing else (not even a "Properties"). And sometimes right-clicking got us nothing whatsoever, although we could never figure out why.

Still, ConsoleHoster is free, extremely lightweight (0.5MB unzipped) and with no unwanted extras. Its ability to run multiple command line sessions in a single tabbed interface may already be useful, to some. The program is being updated every few days, so we’d guess any technical issues will be resolved soon. And we’ll be interested to see where the project goes next.

Today's show in Redmond, Wash. features a short video-taped appearance by commissioner Roger Goodell to talk of the new features that Xbox One customers can expect. However, it is only half of the story. Later in the day, the Surface team announces that the NFL will also be available to customers of the Microsoft tablet.

"The NFL is a great stage for Surface because Surface has the chance to help change the game -- including how medical staff take care of players, coaches strategize, players learn, and referees, um, referee. This is a partnership that we’re excited to embark on" the Surface team tells us.

"The NFL is a great stage for Surface because Surface has the chance to help change the game – including how medical staff take care of players, coaches strategize, players learn, and referees, um, referee. This is a partnership that we’re excited to embark on" the company points out.

Now, of course, it is up to the league to make this work, and it has failed in the past to show that it has much knowledge of the web. Perhaps a new page has been turned.

As a test, I wiped all data from my device and rebooted. Amazingly, the device ran as well as the day I bought it. Unfortunately, the solution raised a much bigger problem -- I could not use all of the storage space that I had paid for. Was this a case of false advertising? Did Google lie to me about the available storage? I decided to contact Google for confirmation.

I called the tech support line and was connected to a CSR. I explained the situation to her. She confirmed that it was a known issue. I appreciated her honesty but was disappointed that Google was aware of the issue and was doing nothing. I explained that the device only had 13GB usable out of the box, since Android OS took up about 3GB. By keeping an additional 3GB free, I really only had 10GB available. I explained it seemed to be false advertising and that Google was essentially lying about the storage space.

What happened next was shocking. She told me that, if I knew I was going to be using that much storage, I should have bought the 32GB Nexus 7. Unfortunately, there was no Nexus 7 32GB available at the time, but even if there was, that is a pretty poor answer. You shouldn't have to buy more storage than you need in anticipation of you using the full amount of storage that you paid for. I asked for a supervisor and was hung up on. I called back and got a supervisor who seemed sympathetic. He also confirmed that Android devices will run slow with most or all of the storage being used.

So, is Google lying to consumers about the advertised storage space? I sure think so. In my opinion, this is false advertising. Consumers are not getting what they paid for. If Google's Android OS needs a percentage of free space dedicated to it, then it should be inaccessible to the user, and deducted from the advertised storage space. This way, the user knows the true available storage.

Have you encountered this issue? Which device do you own? Do you think it is false advertising?

Tell me in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Ron Leishman/Shutterstock

Don Mattrick, President of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, kicked off the event unveiling the Xbox One, a name that dispelled many myths about Infinity, 720 and 8.

The console packs in 8 gigabytes of RAM, USB 3.0 and a Blu-ray player. All solid hardware inclusions to be sure, but hardly the most impressive part of the event. That was the TV pass-through and incredibly fast voice control, which was shown off in great detail during the course of the show.

TV pass-through works similar to Google TV: customers can plug their cable or satellite box into the Xbox One and out to the TV, eliminating the need for switching inputs. Changing is controlled by simply speaking a command -- "Xbox go to guide", for instance, shows the guide info for your service. Movies, games, music, and live TV can all be controlled with simple spoken commands.

ESPN will now include player tracking, enabling users to easily call up their fantasy team roster and check real time stats to keep track of how players are are faring for your team.

The new Xbox One will also feature trending statistics for games, TV and movies; allow for gesture control; and feature four new sports games from EA -- UFC, Madden, NBA and FIFA. Microsoft Studios also plans to release 15 games within the first year, eight of which will be new franchises, and will kick off with Forza Motorsport 5 available at launch.

Microsoft also unveiled an exclusive TV series, bringing it into direct competition with services such as Netflix and Amazon. The Halo TV show will be directed by Steven Spielberg.

Perhaps the biggest announcement comes in conjunction with Roger Goodell, as Microsoft announces the NFL on Xbox -- an exclusive partnership that will include a range of content.

The new console will arrive "later this year" and pricing was not revealed, but the show did wrap up with a debut of the next Call of Duty, called COD: Ghosts, which will be another exclusive game for the next-generation Microsoft box.

It will be interesting to see what Microsoft has planned for us. In recent times it’s focused on making the Xbox more of an entertainment hub than a games console, and we’ll likely see the next-gen device continuing to head in that direction, while still delivering enough gaming power to see off the PS4.

According to a blog post from Major Nelson, Microsoft will give us a "real taste of the future", which sounds rather exciting. He goes on to add, "19-days later at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, we’ll continue the conversation and showcase our full lineup of blockbuster games".

Right, enough talk -- on with the show!

My oldest email address, circa 1996, is with Yahoo -- just three letters. I joined Flickr in October 2005 and Tumblr in May 2008. Three years ago, I stopped paying for Yahoo Mail, mostly abandoned the photo-sharing site and essentially stopped blogging at the social network. But I'm psyched now. Maybe former Googler Marissa Mayer can save the grandpa dot-com after all.

Today colleague Wayne Williams asks: "What will it take for people to care about Yahoo again?" "May 20th" is my answer. On the same day that Yahoo bought Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion cash, the rickety dot-com gave Flickr the biggest makeover ever. Subscribers get 1TB of storage, on a site suddenly beautifully modern and supported by a hot, Android app. Google CEO Larry Page, Mayer just thumbed her nose at you.

Cloud before Many

No one should underestimate Yahoo, which was cloud before anyone used the term to describe the kind of services the dot-com delivers. Like Google, college buddies founded Yahoo -- in 1994. The company grew up with the World Wide Web. Mosaic Netscape, in beta, debuted the same year. The browser is gone, but the early web destination that David Filo and Jerry Yang founded remains.

Yahoo is a survivor, long lacking leadership worthy of it. Perhaps Mayer is better answer to Wayne's question. She assumed CEO responsibilities in mid July 2012. Days later, Wayne listed "8 things Marissa Mayer needs to do at Yahoo NOW". So far, she has done nearly all, fulfilling "launch, or better yet buy, a great new product" and "make Flickr awesome again", yesterday.

I care about Yahoo again, and you should, too.

• Yahoo is an iconic brand. The dot-com's services are tenacious, popping up in the strangest places. My AT&T U-verse uses Yahoo for email and serves up Flickr on the big screen.
• Yahoo is infrastructure -- vast server farms, and experience running them going back decades. Few cloud companies today can make such a claim.
• Yahoo is nostalgia. That's a brand quality both nurtured and innate -- the latter because of connotations associated with the name -- and one remembered; many oldsters took Internet baby steps on Yahoo (no one admits to starting on AOL).

What Yahoo isn't: A clear digital lifestyle alternative to Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung or Sony, among others. But Yahoo can be, as it once was, the glue for many other companies needing cloud services to offer customers. That means making more Yahoo co-branded services available everywhere. The company could easily be the service uniting many digital lifestyle brands, while spreading its own far and wide. There is newfound opportunity, too.

Google is increasingly a silo -- that's the real takeaway from last week's developer conference. Rather than release a new Android version, the search and information giant upgraded its apps and services. The approach tackles the fragmentation problem, by essentially upgrading Android's core without revving another version that won't reach the market for many months. But Google also steps back from so-called openness, by making more closed products (meaning not open source) the centerpiece of the Android experience.

Yahoo is the quintessential horizontal company, even if its services aren't necessarily open (by the purist definition). As Google goes vertical, space opens for a competitor to fill the gap. Yahoo has the chops and infrastructure, whether technical or logistical (including branding and marketing).

Old Dog Learns New Tricks

The massive Flickr makeover and Tumblr acquisition put fresh paint on the Yahoo brand. Big as they are, Mayer and her team face a daunting task. Yahoo needs a better mobile strategy and must cross-integrate more services, starting with the photo-sharing site and social network. The portal sucks and reminds everyone of the Yahoo we all grew to loathe. The same applies to Messenger. Every property must look as good as the new Flickr and offer as many benefits.

Most importantly, Mayer must recover search from Microsoft. Four years ago, I called Yahoo's search deal with Microsoft a gift to Google and accused the dot-com of giving up its crown jewels. Yahoo must take them back and reinvigorate the business model Google perfected, but did not pioneer. Yahoo was a search leader long before there was a Google and in 2003 acquired Overture, which pioneered the keyword search business that Page and Company imitated.

But search separation must be surgical, done over time. Fracturing Bing and Yahoo could create more opportunities for Google, and during the transition lead to even greater market share gains. Perhaps a new partnership is workable, where Yahoo regains its crown jewels but works with Microsoft on co-branded search.

Mayer clicks the right boxes, particularly the acquisitions that fill in gaps Yahoo desperately needs to fill. The stake in Dailymotion made sense (too bad about those French regulators). But there are nearly a dozen other acquisitions, since she assumed her duties. Be sure that she's only just started shopping.

Somebody likes what Mayer is doing. Since August 31 through mid-day trading today, Yahoo shares are up 85 percent. Flickr and Tumblr are reasons to get really excited. Something to think about: Flickr is as much social network as photo-sharing site. Long before Facebook opened to the public or Google waved the Plus flag, there was Flickr -- one of the oldest, thriving social networks. Tumblr makes Yahoo social all the better.

Yesterday, I uploaded a bunch of photos to my Flickr, about which I am really excited after long hiatus. My Tumblr will get a fresh makeover and postings sometime this week. Suddenly, I care about Yahoo again. You should, too.

Hey, Marissa. Make us proud and buy Vimeo. You need a web browser, too. But mostly you need to stay the course started.

Pandora founder Tim Westergram announces the debut of Pandora Premieres, a new station that brings unreleased music to customers a week in advance.

"Pandora Premieres is a new kind of station for us that lets listeners enjoy on-demand access to early album releases from a variety of artists before they go on-sale," Westergram tells us. The station debuts with upcoming releases from former CCR singer John Fogerty and also English folk musician Laura Marling.

Once you add the Pandora Premieres station you will be able to choose any track on the featured albums, and play them in any order and as many times as you wish. The company promises new albums each week and also additional exclusive content like video interviews.

Pandora Premieres works with both free and One accounts. One is $3.99 per month, but allows for unlimited streaming and blocks all ads during streaming. The company plans to feature both established and emerging artists.

Despite what some folks would lead you to believe, sheer numbers are actually meaningless when it comes to app stores. That's just a marketing ploy. It's the quality that matters and not the quantity. After all, if you can't get the software that you need, does it really matter if there are 100,000 more apps out there? I'm inclined to believe that the answer is a resounding "No".

Windows Phone has this very same problem -- 145,000 apps available but major titles are still avoiding its Store (no, I'm not going to mention Instagram). Microsoft tried to fix this issue a couple of times before, including paying developers to beef up the ecosystem. Late-yesterday, the software giant has decided to step in again with the new Porting Challenge.

The idea is quite simple -- Microsoft wants developers to port their existing PhoneGap apps from other platforms, like Android, BlackBerry and iOS to name a few, to the Windows Phone Store (like with Untappd). This way, hopefully, some attractive ones will make their way to its smartphone operating system.

To make this a competition worth signing up for, Microsoft also announced 17 "first prizes" and three "grand prizes". The former gets each winner a Windows Phone 8 handset (likely a Nokia Lumia 920), while the lucky contestants on the podium also get a Surface Pro tablet.

Microsoft says that developers must release apps which are "original, innovative, easy to use, engaging and visually appealing to the user" in order to win. Even though I'm not a developer, that doesn't seem like a particularly difficult feat to achieve for at least 20 talented folks.

Undoubtedly the Porting Challenge is a step in the right direction, but can it bring a much-needed dose of appiness to Windows Phone users? Judging by the PhoneGap featured apps catalog, that doesn't appear to be the case for those seeking major titles like Dropbox, Google Drive, Google Maps, Instagram (I couldn't help myself) or even the latest Temple Run game in the series.

Photo Credit: sellingpix/Shutterstock

Install Reboot-To, though, and you’ll have another option. When you need to restart your PC, just choose one of your installed operating systems from the Reboot-To menu -- Window Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Ubuntu (wubi) and Ubuntu Server (wubi) are supported -- and it’ll reboot directly into that OS, without you ever seeing the boot menu at all.

Reboot-To is straightforward to install, and by default sets itself up to run when Windows starts, adding a Windows service and an icon to your system tray. This is a little more intrusive than we were expecting, but presumably is just to ensure that you can reboot your system as quickly as possible. Fortunately the background processes are extremely lightweight, generally consuming less than 2MB RAM on our test PC, and you can turn them off if you prefer (select "Options", clear "Start with Windows").

Once setup is complete, though, the program is straightforward enough to use. When you want to restart your system, right-click the Reboot-To icon, select Reboot > Operating System, choose one of your installed operating systems, and it’ll reboot directly into that OS -- no need to worry about the boot menu.

The change is just temporary, of course. If you install and run Reboot-To on Windows 7, for instance, and reboot it to Windows 8, then the boot menu will only disappear for that one time. If you reboot from Windows 8 then the boot menu will return. (Unless you install and use Reboot-To from there, anyway.)

Allowing a program to play around with our system’s BCD (Boot Configuration Data) files in this way makes us just a little nervous. It’s carrying out a very simple and defined task, and there shouldn’t be any problems, ever, but we’d still recommend that you have a Windows recovery disc to hand, just in case.

That aside, though, in our tests Reboot-To worked very well, and if you’re regularly booting between various Windows installations then it could save you some time and hassle.

It's important to note that just creating an app isn't going to make you money, research by Canalys in 2012 showed that some two-thirds of apps received fewer than 1,000 downloads in their first year. The store pages have many thousands of "zombie apps" which still appear on the websites but never get downloaded.

Having a quality app that performs a useful function is therefore essential to success. If your app is good it's more likely to stick on people's devices. It's reckoned that on average people only keep 20 or so apps on their phones at any one time so if your app doesn't do something useful, or it doesn't work properly, it will quickly be uninstalled. Plus you’re likely to get negative comments on the app store and elsewhere which will damage your reputation when it comes to any future releases you might make.

There are so many apps that you may think all the best ideas have already been done. It's true that the world probably doesn't need another email app or Web browser. But if you can come up with something different -- a novel way of using a hardware feature like the camera or GPS for example, or a way of presenting information in a friendlier format -- then you can still find a market for new apps. A good example of this is the British Gas app for taking meter readings which uses the phone's built-in flash as a torch so that you can see the meter's digits clearly. For an app to succeed it really needs to solve a problem. Plus it’s best to focus on one thing and do it well rather than try to pack in too many functions and over complicate the software as a result.

If you're developing an app to complement an existing business, think about how it can improve the customer experience. We've already mentioned the meter reading app, another example might be an app for a lettings agency that uses the phone's geo location feature to show details of properties available in the area.

Once you've had the idea you need to familiarize yourself with the design principles of the OS you're going to use. Apple, Android and other operating system suppliers like you to conform to their vision for how apps should look and how easy they are to use. Your app is more likely to succeed if you follow these guidelines. It also pays to stick with the look of the operating system. Windows, Android and Apple all have different visual styles and you should try to echo these wherever possible. This is where apps that have been developed for one system often fall down when they're exported to others as they fail to adapt to the different appearance of the operating system. You don’t have to slavishly copy the look of the OS but you should at least try to make your app look at home on the device.

Within the constraints imposed by the operating system you need to think about how design affects the way your app will work. Remember that in most cases you’re dealing with a small screen so it pays to keep things as simple and clean as possible. Packing in too many options will make the screen look cluttered and only serve to confuse the user. Try to decide which are the most important functions and make these the easiest to access. A good example here would be the pause button on a music player. Functions that are used less often -- like changing the app's settings -- still need to be accessible but don't have to be as prominent. Using keyboards on touchscreen phones can be fiddly so you should try to keep keyed input to a minimum.

You need to ensure that it's clear what all of the buttons and functions do. Many mobile users don't get the best from their devices because they're not sure how all of the functions work. Where possible use standard or easily understood symbols for functions. Examples would be an envelope for sending email, a handset for phone calls or a "hamburger button" (three short horizontal lines) for accessing program settings. If necessary you should think about including a help page in your app to explain what all of the functions are and how to access them. You can always link to a help page on the Internet rather than bulking out the app itself with this information.

When you’re planning how the app looks, designing buttons and logos and so on, do think carefully about colour and contrast. The screens on modern mobile devices are capable of very subtle color variations, but remember that your app will often be used in bright sunlight or other difficult conditions. Using a high-contrast color scheme will make the screen easier to read in all circumstances. For the same reason it's also good to define buttons with solid blocks of color rather than subtle shaded outlines.

Consider The User

The size of the buttons you need people to press is important too. It's unrealistic to expect people to tap accurately on a tiny area of the screen -- especially if they're using the app on the move. Take account of the fact that your app has to be usable by those with fat fingers as well as people with more delicate digits. The same applies to the fonts used on screen, don't be tempted to pack in more information by making the font so small that people will struggle to read it.

Many development tools take a template-based path to creating the interface of your app. This makes it easier to ensure that everything looks as it should and that all of the elements of the app are in the correct places. The downside is that template-based apps can tend to look similar and it can be hard to find a distinctive touch in order to make your offering stand out.

All of this may seem daunting. However, the key message is that design is important and it pays to take your time over it. The best apps are those where the developer has made an effort to understand both the style of the operating system and the needs of the users such that the finished result not only looks good but is also intuitive and easy to use.

This article is adapted from The Instant Guide to Creating an App available now from the Amazon Kindle Store priced $3.06.

Photo credit: Digital Storm/Shutterstock

Yahoo is a media and technology giant. It is claimed that around 700 million people still visit Yahoo websites every month, and yet I personally can’t remember the last time I went to a Yahoo site, and I don’t know anyone who uses Yahoo for search, email, or news -- or visits the fabled Yahoo home page.

To me Yahoo mostly exists in the past, largely forgotten and gathering dust. I have photos stored on Flickr, but I haven’t uploaded anything there for ages. The last time I tried Yahoo -- following a lackluster revamp of the site -- I stumbled across broken link after broken link and gave up.

The firm had a disastrous decade in which it lost a fortune for investors, turned down a $40 billion takeover bid from Microsoft, fumbled promising acquisitions (GeoCities and Del.icio.us to name just two), ignored mobile, alienated users, and employed CEOs who didn’t just take their eyes off the ball, they turned their backs on the ball altogether.

Current CEO Marissa Mayer is doing her best to reverse the company’s slide into irrelevancy, and doing a pretty fine job of trying to repair the damage a decade of complacency and incompetency has caused Yahoo.

In a year she’s overseen various acquisitions (such as MileWise, GoPollGo, Loki Studios, Summly, and Astrid), and under her stewardship Yahoo has launched a Summly-powered Android app, a weather app for iOS, and an improved Flickr app. The company has overhauled its mail service and rolled out new mobile apps for it, introduced tweets into Yahoo’s homepage newsfeed, and gained the rights to distribute the entire 38-year archive of Saturday Night Live.

And yesterday of course Yahoo purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion (with the promise not to screw it up) and made Flickr attractive once again with a fresh redesign and the offer of 1TB of free space.

These last two moves are Yahoo’s most ambitious by far to date and lift the company back into the public consciousness. How long it will stay there is another matter. Can Yahoo make itself cool again? That remains to be seen.

When Google acquired YouTube it purchased a rising star with a problem -- the video site’s meteoric rise was fuelled by illegal content. Google’s greatest triumph was shifting YouTube’s focus to legal, user generated uploads.

Tumblr, as good as it could be for Yahoo, is a sputtering star with falling page views and (according to web measurement company SimilarGroup) a major porn problem -- 11.4 percent of Tumblr’s top 200,000 domains contain pornography. Yahoo has vowed to keep Tumblr independent, but it will be interesting to see how it addresses this issue. Mainstream advertisers aren’t keen on being associated with adult content.

So What Next?

Yahoo has taken the first steps to get back in the game, but it’s what happens from now that really counts.

The media giant still has an identity problem (or should that be the tech giant still has an identity problem), it can’t seem to properly monetize its own web pages (and monetizing Tumblr sites will be even harder), there’s still a slapdash half-finished approach to many of its products, and a brief stroll around Yahoo this morning reveals many of its properties feel about 15 years old.

I admire what Marissa Mayer has done with Yahoo, or is attempting to do with it at least, and later on today I’ll actually upload some new photos to Flickr, and maybe even update my thingsthatlooklikehitler Tumblr for the first time in a while.

But I still can’t see how Yahoo intends to shake off its dusty old threads and come charging into the modern age. Where’s the innovation, the products that no one else offers? And where are the products everyone else offers? Being able to use Dropbox in Yahoo Mail is great, but where’s Yahoo Drive?

It took a $1.1 billion purchase to get Yahoo back in the news. What will the company need to do next to keep people talking about it, to get people excited about it once more? Getting back to the question I asked initially: What do you think it will take for people to care about Yahoo again?

The growth is being driven by demand for ultrabooks and other slimline systems which need powerful, compact drives. Sales should also be helped by the falling price of flash memory and the faster performance and lower power requirements of SSDs. Increasing numbers of systems being launched with convertible and touch screen formats is likely to push things further too.

IHS’s Fang Zhang reckons that conventional hard drives will still dominate due to their lower price and higher capacities. He says, “HDD shipments also will gradually pick up in the second half this year as Windows 8 and Ultrabooks gain traction among consumers, after failing to perform as expected upon launch last year.”

New technologies are starting to become affordable too with hybrid drives that combine a small SSD for fast boot speeds and caching along with a larger hard disk for general storage. Overall though despite the rise of the SSD it looks like the conventional electro-mechanical hard drive will be with us for quite a while yet.

Opera for Android, among other new features, emphasizes content discovery by allowing its users to find (and read) various articles straight from the browser's homescreen. Folks simply have to select their areas of interest, such as arts or technology, and Opera displays a number of stories from "relevant global and regional sources". This is similar to what Flipboard and other apps deliver.

"Most people just see a fraction of what the web has to offer", says the company's executive vice president Rikard Gillemyr. "We check out the same sites every day, and you can get through with the latest news after just a short bus ride. We wanted to give people a relaxed way of discovering interesting articles and checking them out without any extra effort".

Opera for Android now sports the compression algorithms from its Mini sibling, available through the new Off-Road mode. The feature is designed to reduce cellular data usage and ensure faster loading times, depending on the scenario (data caps or poor connection, respectively).

The app comes with a redesigned interface which is "built to the native specifications of the Android platform", forgoing the design quirks of the older versions. There is a new combined address and search bar which can be had at either the top or the bottom of the app, easy history access as well as improvements to tabbed browsing and Speed Dial (bookmarks are "fused together" with entries). Users can also save webpages for offline reading, similar to Pocket and other apps.

Opera for Android is available to download from Google Play.

IntelliBreeze Software has released Gmail Notifier Pro 5.0, a major update of its Windows tool for monitoring various online accounts via the Taskbar Notification area. The tool, which allows personal users to monitor up to two supported accounts without registration, offers more than simple Google Mail notifications, and version 5.0 extends this support further by adding Microsoft Exchange and SkyDrive notifications to its feature list.

Version 5.0 also adds a built-in local RSS feed server, allowing users to pipe notifications from the program into RSS readers on other platforms, including smartphones as well as computers.

Gmail Notifier Pro 5.0 also promises better customization options, allowing users to define Notification themes using rules, so context-sensitive notifications can be sent depending on the content of the message. Also supported in this new build is the ability to define custom actions for message operations where multiple operations can be combined.

Other improvements in Gmail Notifier Pro 5.0 include the ability of the program to monitor the user’s Facebook message inbox as part of their wider Facebook profile, a switch to the new Google Drive SPI and better folder support for IMAP.

Users also get to choose their own custom encryption key for securing their Gmail Notifier Pro accounts, additional settings appearing in the Options dialogue box and a number of bug fixes, including one that boosts overall IMAP stability.

Users are also warned about the loss of the Google Reader service from July 1, but the option to use Google Reader accounts remains in the new release.

Gmail Notifier Pro 5.0 is available now as a free download for PCs running Windows XP or later with the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 or later installed in XP or Vista. The free, unregistered version is limited to personal use and supports just two accounts; users can purchase single-user Personal Licenses for $12.95+VAT and single-user Commercial Licenses for $19.95 plus VAT.

You don't have to think back all that far to remember a time when simply being online seemed like a fairly alien concept -- never mind actually working online. When the concept of Active Desktop was added to Windows 9x the notion of staying online throughout the day just to see the desktop update with the latest weather forecast, news, stock prices or other data was unimaginable.

These were the days of dialup connections; every minute online cost money and downloading files of almost any size was a somewhat painful experience.

For home users, the thought of using software that was not installed locally seemed incredibly futuristic.

Software as a service was very much in its infancy and few people could imagine that in just a few short years internet connections would have become fast enough and stable enough to be used to deliver not just downloadable files, but also streaming videos and music, on-demand television shows and even online word processors, image editors and much, much more.

But all of these things are now available to virtually everyone -- and for the most part they are available completely free of charge. In some instances the concept of working online has become so commonplace that it's easy to take some services for granted.

It's likely the only time you really think about Gmail consciously is when you find yourself somewhere remote enough to be devoid of wifi networks and data connections.

The prevalence of online tools -- particularly those from Google -- means that it is very easy to take them for granted, but also become blinkered and forget just what is possible. Spend a moment thinking about Google Drive.

Put aside any anti-Google prejudices you may have and just consider what an astonishing piece of technology it is. Anyone with an internet connected computer can create a free account and then create, edit, store and share documents online.

The only software that's needed is a web browser, everything else is taken care of by Google's servers. How cool is that? Never forget to be astonished by the web.

With an online word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing tool -- and your inbox not far behind -- Google is a great starting point for anyone looking to start working in the cloud. Of course, it is far from being the end of the story, and there are certainly better tools available in each of these categories, but they are a great first point of entry.

These are not just online versions of applications you need to use every day, the fact that they are online tools means that it is possible to introduce features such as collaborative working and much more.

Need an image editor? There are plenty to choose from, Aviary is a great example, but even Adobe has got in on the act and made a version of Photoshop available online.

Received a file that is in a format you don't have the software to open? Rather than seeking out the program you need, you could instead turn to any of a number of online conversion tools which will quickly and painlessly provide you with a file you can open up online or using your preferred application.

Comet Docs is one such online conversion service, but there are plenty of others to choose from.

Working online using the tools and services is a great solution when you're on the move or if you're looking to keep software costs to a minimum.

Of course there will be some tools you use that do not have online cousins. This does not mean that you need to find a new way of working as remote access is always an option.

Even this does not mean that you need to have a great deal of traditional software installed on your laptop. If you have Chrome as your web browser you can use a handy extension to remotely tap into your desktop computer at home or in the office -- a decent alternative to the likes of VNC. And Microsoft's SkyDrive has remote access baked in too.

So, could you work solely with cloud based tools? In theory, there is no reason why many day to day tasks could not be performed in this way. Could I do it? To be honest, I'm not sure. I do spend a great deal of time with Google products in general, but whenever I have tried to switch to using Google Docs as my primary office suite, I always find something that makes me switch back to using Microsoft Office.

At a very basic level this could be because of a simple difference between the way online and offline programs work. Integration with cloud storage services is outrageously useful for anyone working on multiple computers, but one issue that I tend to run into time and time again is when switching between tasks.

Having used Windows for approaching two decades, Alt-tabbing between apps is something I do without a second thought. This is slightly different to working in a browser tab. When I'm researching something online and making notes in a Google document, I frequently find that I will try Alt-tabbing from the website I'm reading to try to reach my word processor.

Of course, there's nothing to stop me from pulling out a tab of my browser so I can then switch between two windows, but this has yet to become second nature. Memory muscle can be hard to re-train.

But working in the cloud does not just mean finding online, browser-friendly tools that you can use to replace familiar desktop software, there are advantages to be found in tools that make use of cloud-based, shared information.

System optimization tool Soluto makes great use of shared information to help provide a better experience for all of its users. Much like an antivirus tool uses a definitions database to cross-check finding, so this tool uses information gathered from computers all over the world to help provide the best system security and optimization advice.

Speaking of security, Panda Cloud Antivirus (like a growing number of similar tools) takes its definitions online. Rather than requiring users to download updates, the most recent definitions can always be accessed from Panda's servers.

This takes the onus of being up to date away from the end user, thereby helping to increase overall security levels; in theory at least.

So... what do you think? Is there additional value to be found in tools and services that make use of 'the cloud'? Are there any programs you have dropped in favor of online alternatives? Is the 'cloud' tag nothing more than a faddish label? Could you ditch traditional software entirely? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

Photo Credit: olly/Shutterstock

Flickr is the service Yahoo forgot about between its latest Mail and homepage redesigns. It's boring, outdated, bland, ugly and uninviting and these are just a couple of the words that cross my mind right now. Thankfully, Flickr wants to change all that with the latest revamped version, announced late-yesterday. You know, maybe the cool kids will want to hang out again.

The biggest change comes from the new website, which drops the old design. It's now fresh, simple and modern and gives the cloud service character. Big photos in the stream, menu bar on top and the usual suspects on the right -- Explore, Flickr Blog and a list of people you may (want to) know -- dominate the uncluttered experience. Friends get a similarly-styled profile page which emphasizes shared content.

The other biggest change is that users now get 1 TB of cloud storage, for free, in order to upload content with "no limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat". That is a nice feature considering that modern mobile devices and dedicated cameras churn out pretty large photos compared to the days of old.

Flickr, however, does not allow users to upload 1080p videos longer than three minutes. That is a pretty annoying limitation which may keep some folks away. After all, what good is 1 TB of free storage if users can't fill it up with content?

To complete its renaissance, Flickr also announced a new Android app which comes with a redesigned interface. It is available to download from Google Play.

However, if you can not wait for the news stories to break then there is good news if you should happen to be a Windows Phone 8 user. The software giant announces a special app for its smartphone operating system that enables users to watch the event live right from wherever they happen to be -- which will be the workplace for many. Sorry employers.

"If you have a @WindowsPhone 8 device, download this special app to watch the #XboxReveal event tomorrow", announces Xbox Live chief Larry Hryb on Twitter.

The app, so far, is successful, with a five-star rating and positive comments such as Jeremy's -- "glorious idea! You should evolve this to be a standard live stream app that you can use for all of Microsoft's various events in the future". For the sake of the company, let us hope it is still this popular after the event.

So what do all of you expect to see tomorrow? Will it truly be an "always-on" device? What will Microsoft call its new entry into the gaming console market? When will the company release it? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

Image Credit: Christos Georghiou/Shutterstock