Latest Technology News

A week after the last build that introduced Kangerator, the Android Open Kang Project team announced Jelly Bean Milestone 1. It's a stepping stone for the custom Android distribution, and the last one users will see ahead of the version of Android.

Google released Android 4.2 Jelly Bean yesterday, and until it gets pushed to AOSP the team behind the popular project decided not to release further builds. The idea is to incorporate the latest version of the green robot into the AOKP source, which will bring the newly introduced features. Jelly Bean Milestone 1 touts a more bug-free operation, as every bug report received via RootzWiki and Twitter in the last weeks has been closed. As usual of late, a new build doesn't come without new features and changes in the list of supported devices, so let's get to it.

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If you haven't been to Amazon for a day or so, do visit and check out the guerrilla marketing before it's gone. The online retail giant has revamped its ever-changing home page to directly take on iPad mini. A graphic compares iPad mini with Kindle Fire HD -- highlighting differences such as display resolution, HD playback and stereo instead of mono. Of course, the glaring difference is the price -- $329 versus $199, Apple's device being the more expensive.

Last week, Amazon boasted that the day after Apple announced iPad mini, $199 Kindle Fire HD had its biggest sales day ever, implying that many people waited to see the competition and then went for the Amazon product instead.

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Damn, and I had so expected to upgrade.

Surely there's a metaphor here somewhere. Hurricane Sandy blew out Google's Android event, but the news came anyway like a storm raining down on Windows Phone 8's launch. Today, Google debuted the long-rumored Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet, added a 3G Nexus 7 to the product family and took the wraps off Android 4.2. But in looking over the news, I'm not nearly excited as I expected to be. The new handset is HSPA+, in a LTE world. The larger tablet lacks the design charm that makes Nexus 7 so appealing; Samsung produces what in the photos looks like a stuffed Galaxy Tab with super duper high-resolution display. Maybe I'll warm up before sales start November 13. How unlucky a number is that?

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In a statement announcing an executive reorganization, Apple on Monday announced that its senior vice president of iOS software, Scott Forstall, and its head of retail, John Browett will both be leaving the company.

The executive shuffle is being done to "encourage even more collaboration between the Company’s…hardware, software and services teams," according to Apple.

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Phillips Electronics on Monday announced a new home automation accessory called Hue, which lets its users control home light fixtures wirelessly from a smartphone application.

Hue pairs a ZigBee LightLink local communications network with your home Wi-Fi network and mobile app. The LED bulbs communicate with the "bridge" device via ZigBee LightLink, and the bridge communicates with your router, which in turn communicates with your Wi-Fi enabled smart devices. From the application, users can control the color of their Hue lights in any of 16 million shades, program timers, and schedule settings for optimal light and energy management. A single bridge can control up to 50 individual lightbulbs.

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Hurricane Sandy may have dampened Google's plans for a big New York City Android event, but even with that cancelled the company pushed out the news anyway: Android 4.2 and new Nexus devices. That isn't the only mobile news today, though. Microsoft, with an event in San Francisco and safely out of the storm path, launched Windows Phone 8. T-Mobile USA was front and center for both rollouts.

The carrier will be among the first to carry the new devices, including the "Nokia Lumia 810 and the Windows Phone 8X by HTC; the Google Nexus 4 with T-Mobile as a premier launch partner; and the Samsung Galaxy Note II". That's a pretty big lineup for a company that has struggled to compete with giants like Verizon and AT&T.

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Yesterday, when reporting about Nexus 7 32GB showing up on Office Depot shelves, I asked: "Why wait?" Google may have cancelled today's Android event because of Hurricane Sandy, but there are many good reasons to announce anyway -- and stealing thunder from Windows Phone 8's launch is one of them.

Google went ahead, today announcing the long rumored Nexus 4 smartphone, Nexus 10 tablet and Android 4.2. It's no Key Lime Pie but more Jelly Bean. Make no mistake, despite the point-one update and nomenclature, this is a big upgrade.

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Just in case you were thinking it was all about the iPad mini and Surface tablets at the moment, along comes Google with a new Nexus range. The company had planned to make a big announcement in New York today, stealing some of the thunder from Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 launch, but Hurricane Sandy decided to put the kibosh on that (how ironic), so instead the search giant has had to make do with a blog post instead.

There are actually three Nexus devices being announced today, the Nexus 4 smartphone, the new Nexus 7 tablet (which my colleague Joe Wilcox talked about here) and the bigger Nexus 10 -- Google’s 10.1-inch answer to the Apple iPad.

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Editing lots of digital photos in a single session is generally a tedious and time-consuming business, as most image editors still assume you’ll only ever want to carry out actions on one picture at a time.

Fortunately there are plenty of third-party batch processing tools around who are trying to fill this functionality gap, and COOLTWEAK is the latest, allowing you to resize, watermark or share multiple images (on Facebook, Picasa and Twitter) directly from the right-click Explorer menu.

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Napier & Son was the most successful British manufacturer of aircraft engines in the 1920s and 30s with their 12-cylinder Napier Lion powering 163 different types of aircraft between 1918 and 1935. Over that 17 year period the Lion grew from 450 to 1350 horsepower and was, for awhile, the most powerful aircraft, boat and car engine in the world, holding world speed records in all three venues at the same time. And then the Napier Lion was suddenly gone -- a lesson from  which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer could benefit if he and his company don’t repeat it.

Napier perfected the Lion engine over those 17 years, improving it in every way until it was the best and most efficient engine of its class in the world. Then, seemingly overnight, the class changed as air forces and record setters alike suddenly needed more than the 1,350 horsepower a finely-tuned Lion could deliver. Napier’s Lion gave way to Rolls-Royce’s larger and innately more powerful Merlin and Griffon engines and Napier, for all intents and purposes, was gone.

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Eight might just be a lucky number for Microsoft. The company launched Windows 8 in New York just before a crippling hurricane arrived and took out a competing Google Android launch event; and today, it launches Windows Phone 8 in a San Francisco still reeling from the Giants winning the World Series.

Today at 10am Pacific, Microsoft will be hosting the live launch event of Windows Phone 8, which we have been expecting since late June, when it was first revealed.

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It’s fair to say Valve’s boss Gabe Newell isn’t a fan of Windows 8. In fact, the ex-Microsoft man called the new OS a "catastrophe for everyone in the PC space" and, just in case that doesn't make his views clear enough, Valve announced shortly afterwards that it would be working on bringing Steam, its hugely popular games distribution platform, to Linux. A move that prompted me to ask the seemingly unthinkable: Will Windows 8 make Linux the new gaming OS?

I guess we’ll find out the answer to that question soon enough because Windows 8 is now here and, it seems, the Linux version of Steam won’t be too far behind it.

Last Friday, Valve put out an open request for experienced Linux users to apply for the chance to install and test its new Steam for Linux client, stating that it would be notifying successful participants this week, and kicking off the limited beta shortly afterwards.

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Hours ahead of Windows Phone 8's big launch, Microsoft released an app to the Windows Store.

So what does it actually do? Like the name suggests Windows Phone is designed to sync music, photos, videos as well as other types of files between computers running Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 smartphones. Through the app users can also access programs available on the Windows Phone Store. But there's a problem, which has been signaled by a great number of users.

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O&O Software has announced the availability of the Migration Kit for Windows 8, a bundle of two packages which aims to simplify the process of upgrading to the new operating system. At the heart of the Migration Kit is Laplink PCmover Professional, which can transfer your data, applications and settings from a Windows XP, Vista or 7 PC to Windows 8 (either on a separate PC, or in place).

The other major kit component is a copy of O&O DiskImage Professional 6.8.1, ideal for creating a backup image of your original system configuration before you start.

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There are many circumstances in which you may need to capture an image of what is happening on your screen at any given moment. Hitting Prt Scr will do the job, but apart from the option of pressing Alt at the same time to capture just a single window, there are few options available to you. Ashampoo Snap has been updated to make image capturing easier and more flexible than ever before, even introducing video capture as a new feature.

The latest version of the app includes a new minimalistic capture bar that resides at the top of your screen at all times. If you’re the sort of person who does not get on with keyboard shortcuts, although these are still available, this bar provides you with access to all of the various capturing modes supported by Snap 6, ranging from simple full screen captures and individual windows to scrolling windows and freeform shapes.

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