If YouTube isn't the best place to watch the Olympic games, it should be
If you are living in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Bhutan, Cambodia, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Iran, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, or Vietnam and want to watch the London Olympics today I’m told your only choice is YouTube. Ten events are available at any time through the International Olympic Committee (IOC) YouTube channel.
Of course 60 live channels are available in the USA through youtube.com/nbcolympics, but I think the international story is more compelling by far because it brings live competition to places where it was never available before.
Mountain Lion downloaded 3 million times in 4 days: what it means for market share
Apple released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on July 25, and based on that small sliver of time, data analysis company Chitika released a statistic forecasting Mountain Lion's adoption rate, claiming a 3.21 percent OS X market share in just 48 hours. Five days after the release, Apple has announced Mountain Lion downloads exceeded 3 million in just four days. What does all of this mean?
Apple responded rather quickly last year after OS X Lion’s release, claiming 1 million downloads in the first 24 hours. Yet, with Mountain Lion, 3 million downloads in the first four days averages out to 750,000 downloads per day. Granted that's an estimate, but it would actually place Mountain Lion behind Lion based on first day downloads.
Olympics fans asked not to tweet during events
London 2012 has been described as the first true “social media games”, with sports fans tweeting, texting and sending photos and videos live from events. But on Sunday it became clear that all this activity placed a strain on the networks when a deluge of messages sent by fans lining the streets to watch the men’s cycling road race prevented TV commentators from telling how far ahead the leaders were.
The problem, apparently with one so-far unidentified provider, stopped data from the cyclists’ GPS satellite navigation system getting through to the studios, leading to confusion. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was forced to ask enthusiastic tweeters to limit the sending of non-vital messages -- at least until more network capacity could be arranged.
Microsoft debuts Wedge Touch Mouse and Mobile Keyboard for Windows 8
Microsoft's Surface tablet has received praise and only light criticism since its introduction a month ago. The innovative tablet addresses one of the biggest issues that computer professionals have when it comes to touch-based devices: the lack of a physical keyboard.
But Surface is not the only product that Microsoft will be making available to accommodate the launch of much-anticipated Windows 8. The company just announced the availability of four hardware peripherals that have been specifically designed for the next version of Windows.
Upgrade Windows 8 with an awesome Metro-themed Explorer
Whether you love or hate Metro (and BetaNews readers certainly seem to be divided on the topic), it’s an integral part of Windows 8 and something we’re all going to have to learn to get along with. Although I personally find using the interface with a keyboard and mouse a rather clumsy experience, I do appreciate Metro’s aesthetics and think it's a bit annoying (not to mention odd) that Microsoft hasn’t extended its design to Windows Explorer.
Unsurprisingly, I’m not alone in this viewpoint but while I’m happy to just complain about it Julien Manici decided to do something and has come up with a very early, but brilliant application called Immersive Explorer.
Freehand Painter gives your Windows tablet the right touch
Launch the average painting tool and you’re generally confronted with a stack of options covering brushes and color, outlines, fills and more. Which is fine, sometimes, but if you just want to be creative then all this functionality can get in your way.
Freehand Painter is, well, simpler. Much simpler. Launch the program and you can start drawing right away, with your finger if you like (you can use a mouse as well, but it’s designed for a touch-sensitive screen). And any other tweaks you might want to make will only take a moment.
Makeover OS X 10.8 with Mountain Tweaks 1.0.1
There are no operating systems that are free from irritations and, despite its largely warm receptions, Apple’s latest OS X release, Mountain Lion is no exception. When Lion released Lion Tweaks was on hand to allow users to tweak and customize the OS and there is now an updated version available in the form of Mountain Tweaks. This is a free tool that enables you to change numerous settings to tailor OS X to suite your needs.
Tweaking tools have always been incredibly popular, but it is usually Windows users that reap the benefits of utilities designed to allow for easy changes to regular and hidden changes to the operating system. Lion Tweaks was an impressive tweaker made available for OS X Lion, and this latest release sees the app updates to add support for Mountain Lion. Mountain Tweaks can in fact be used under both Lion and Mountain Lion, but there are some settings specific to the latter.
Let’s not blindly give every latest tech marketing prophet his profit
Another day, another tech product launch, and all those numbers that go with it. We just love numbers, don’t we? And generally the bigger the better. (Except in cases where they’re supposed to be small, obviously.)
The numbers in hardware and software specs are useful tools, and it’s true that bigger numbers are often better. But those same numbers carry hidden dangers, too, and, like a burger that’s too big to be good for you, that extra dollop of cream on your cake -- or the Italian town of San Gimignano, where each family just had to build a tower taller than all the others - we can become addicted to the figures without thinking about what they all really means. So let’s not blindly give every latest marketing prophet his profit, but consider our own health first.
AT&T slashes HTC One X price in half
Have you considered the HTC One X but found the price to be too high? The phone now is a whole lot cheaper. AT&T slashed the price in half -- by $100 from $199.99 to $99.99 on a two-year contract.
The One X comes with Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, but the Taiwanese company is working on delivering the latest, Jelly Bean, and confirms to BetaNews that they will upgrade the One X (One XL internationally) as well as other devices such as the One S to Android 4.1. It's great news for HTC owners as well as future buyers. Jelly Bean is a very attractive offering with welcomed improvements and nice new features. The catch: HTC offers no upgrade timeline for when the phones will receive the newest Android version.
Cool the summer heat with one of these 24 software downloads
It’s the end of another month and the end of another busy week of software releases. If you’ve been too caught up with other things to keep an eye on the titles that have been hitting the download servers over the past seven days, this roundup will bring you up to speed.
Tomahawk 0.5.5 is a social media player that enables you to play your local music collection as well as tracks from the web, and also enables you to browse through the collections of your friends. If you’re keen to share your musical taste with your friends, look no further than ON AIR 4.0.0.834, which will automatically update your Skype status with the track you are currently listening to.
Apple’s debut at Black Hat started off on the wrong foot
Apple recently made its first ever presentation at the Black Hat security conference, and despite being one of the most expected and highly anticipated moments of the event, the Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation hasn’t made the best possible initial impression. The audience was left somewhat disappointed, only to have Apple follow up a major security acquisition.
The keynote was presented by the manager of Apple’s platform security team, Dallas De Atley, who reiterated the iOS security paper that Apple released two months ago. The problem stems from the fact there were higher expectations for Apple's debut: updated information on steps the Cuppertino, Calif.-based corporation is taking to resolve their security issues and concerns would have been of far greater interest, and it would have shown how seriously Apple takes security.
Modders rejoice: Google posts Jelly Bean factory images
Google has posted Jelly Bean 4.1.1 factory images for the Nexus lineup on their developers website. It's reason for modders needing to restore the factory default image to rejoice. Unlike other Android devices, the Nexus lineup benefits from Google's direct support and timely updates as well -- Galaxy Nexus received Jelly Bean 4.1 about two weeks ago.
Jelly Bean factory images are available for all Nexus devices, starting with the Nexus S up to the latest released, the Nexus 7. It just shows that Google is committed to updating its lineup of branded smartphones, even after almost two years since the release of the Samsung-made Google Nexus S.
Come fly the insecure skies, a lesson in IT deployment at one of the largest US airports
In July of 2011, Bryan Halfpap waited for his return flight home to Maryland. A network systems security professional working for a natural resource refiner and energy provider, he had just finished up the week of events at the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas.
Slumped in his waiting chair, tired, bored, and with time to kill, he popped open his laptop. Audio and visual confirmations of open wireless networks lit up his computer. McCarran International Airport, the gateway to the neon-colored pleasure island that is Las Vegas, had free Wi-Fi. For whatever reason, Halfpap wanted to kill some time by getting to know the airport he was sitting in.
Google admits breaching UK data privacy agreement
In May 2010, Google hit the headlines when it was revealed that street mapping cars had accidentally collected around 600GB of payload data from unsecured wireless networks around the globe.
The news caused a privacy storm and led to legal actions in numerous countries. In the United Kingdom, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) took a lenient approach, saying that while the activity “constituted a significant breach of the first principle of the Data Protection Act” it accepted Google’s explanation as to how collection had occurred. The agency was willing to take no action, provided the search giant deleted the data it had captured.
Face to face meetings keep getting better, despite long-distance communications tech
Even though communication and information technologies have made constant communication
between clients, coworkers, and supervisors even easier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month said remote work and telecommuting has actually remained flat since the mid 1990's, and that only around 24 percent of employed Americans said they work from home even just a few hours a week.
The U.S. Department of Education, meanwhile, found comparable statistics for students engaged in distance learning and Web-based education. In 2009, twenty percent of undergrad students took an online or distance learning course of some sort.
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