Nokia unveils Music+ premium service
In a move that aims to consolidate the company's branded app selection on Lumia Windows Phones, Nokia has unveiled a new, subscription-based premium service dubbed Nokia Music+, that builds atop of the established Nokia Music platform. A "+" sign can make quite the difference.
Music+ is not designed to replace currently available free services such as Mix Radio, but rather to offer Lumia owners the paid option for "unlimited music discovery". The Finnish manufacturer says that Music+ is aimed at "people who care enough about music to pay something for more quality and choice" and, depending on the user's location, will run for around EUR3.99 or $3.99 per month. But what are the advantages?
Apple allows a MAME emulator into the App Store -- it just doesn’t know it
Gridlee for iOS is a fairly average arcade game, certainly nothing to get excited about. You wouldn’t want to play it more than once, and, to be honest, you probably wouldn’t want to download it in the first place, even though it’s free. Except there’s more to Gridlee than meets the eye.
The game, which was developed by Videa Inc. in 1982, isn’t a remake for iOS. It’s the actual original ROM image running on an up-to-date full version of the MAME4iOS Reloaded Project by Seleuco, an excellent arcade emulator banned by Apple. And if you know how, you can use Gridlee to play a wealth of classic arcade games on your iOS device for free. No jailbreak required.
My Apple boycott is over
Suddenly, I feel sorry for the folks over at Apple. Chicken Little bloggers and Wall Street analysts run round crying "The sky is falling!" Strangely, they are believed. Apple shares are down 38 percent from September's all-time high. On Friday, the company's market cap fell below Exxon's. Suddenly, the world's most valuable company isn't. I just don't feel right kicking fruit as it falls down, so as a gesture of goodwill my boycott ends today.
That's not to say I have plans to buy any Apple products. I'm more than satisfied with Chromebook and my three Nexus devices. That said, as an act of solidarity, I let Apple auto-charge my credit card for iTunes Match renewal today. I don't own a single device that supports the service, but, hey, what's $24.95 between friends? I was a loyal OS X and iOS user until my boycott started in June 2012, protesting aggressive patent lawsuits -- unaffectionately called innovation by litigation.
Put your friends on Avatar, Iron Man or Lord of the Rings posters with Funny Photo Maker
Transforming a standard portrait photo into something which stands out from the crowd, a shot you’d genuinely like to share with others, usually takes a great deal of time and expertise. But if you don’t have much of either, you might want to consider Funny Photo Maker, an excellent tool which produces great results with the absolute minimum of hassle.
As you might guess from the program name, this isn’t a regular photo editor and won’t be for everyone. But if you’d like to take a friend’s face and place it on an ape, a magazine cover, movie poster or something similar, then you really need to take a closer look.
BitTorrent gets bold, moves into the PC sync business
BitTorrent has a bad reputation. While it is largely considered a haven for people sharing and downloading illegal files from movies to music to software, it is also a legitimate service. Many Linux distros, for instance, are made available through the network thanks to the easy peer-to-peer sharing methods utilized.
Now BitTorrent is looking to get into the PC-to-PC syncing business, an area Microsoft just left when it killed off Live Mesh. In a post earlier today the company announced a "pre-alpha" version of BitTorrent Sync is available through the Labs service. However, the release comes with a rather important caveat -- "If you’re comfortable using early, incomplete software, and if you’re committed to helping us figure out a better way to sync, we want to hear from you".
Best Windows 8 apps this week
Thirteenth in a series. Microsoft released the company's fiscal second-quarter results on January 24 and to the surprise of many the company's Windows division did well despite PC shipments being down during the same period.
Windows Store has recovered from last week's low number of new store apps. This week, 928 new apps were listed in the operating system's US store, an increase of more than 31 percent over last week. Free apps, on the other hand, only increased by 136 this week while paid apps made a huge jump to 5,801 from 5,011 the week before.
Can we blame Best Buy's big MacBook Air sale on Chromebook?
If you ever wanted Apple's tiny laptop, cash in your savings or dig out the credit card. Best Buy has a short sale going, discounting MacBook Air by $200. That means price starting at $799.99 today and tomorrow for an 11.6-inch model with Intel Core i5 processor and 64GB SSD. Double the storage for another 100 bucks.
The promotion, part of Winter Doorbuster Days, is Friday and Saturday. Best Buy discounts other goodies, but MacBook Air stands out for the price, which lowers the entry cost to joining the Mac Fan Club. But Best Buy also sells the Samsung ARM Chromebook, for $249.99, also with 11.6-inch panel, similar size and weight and comparable (if not better) ergonomics. And Best Buy can't stock Chromebooks fast enough. While the company doesn't release sales data, social network chatter reveals bounty hard to get. So can we just blame Chromebook for Best Buy's sale?
Get Android ICS natively on Windows 7 and 8
Running Android on Windows is not a new concept. It has been possible for sometime now, but it required the use of something like Virtual Box, or rival virtual machines. Now version 4.0.3, known more familiarly as Ice Cream Sandwich, has been ported to both Windows 7 and Windows 8. It runs natively, no virtual anything needed.
This is not exactly for everyone. For one thing, there is no Google Play Store, although the developers are working to add this rather important feature. For now you can side-load apps using the APK file.
Apple has a really BIG iPhone problem
Sales growth comes from the wrong places: iPhone 4 and China.
IDC and Strategy Analytics have released fourth-quarter phone shipments, which at first glance look good for Apple. While competitively behind Samsung, the fruit-logo company continues to gain smartphone market share -- in fourth quarter, respectively, 29 percent and 21.8 percent, according to IDC. But gains largely come from older models, particularly iPhone 4, despite the newest handset shipping in volume during the quarter. This demand says much about iPhone's perceived value, its successor's appeal and future carrier subsidies and the margins Apple gets from them.
Manage all of your downloads with EagleGet
Downloading is such a fundamental part of the online experience that you might expect every browser to include a quality download manager by default. The standard offerings are usually a little more basic, though, so if you’d like some help in, say, downloading online videos more easily, then you’ll need to install a specialist download manager like the new EagleGet.
This kind of tool is notorious for trying to drown your PC in adware during installation, but EagleGet is much more straightforward, for the moment at least: it’ll install itself, and nothing else at all. This might be because the program is still in beta, of course, but at the moment it’s safe to try.
Sony Entertainment Network launches with movies, games and TV shows
If you are looking to cut the cord to your cable or satellite provider, you have an ever-increasing number of options to fill that sudden void. There's Hulu, Netflix and the recent Redbox Instant, and that's just a few of the big players. And now there's another option. Sony, still a giant in the entertainment business despite lagging profits, has launched its Entertainment Network in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.
Sony has previously made some of its content available via its Crackle service, which can be accessed both online and through a mobile app. However, that service has a pretty limited amount of material, especially when compared to the new Sony Entertainment Network.
CCleaner 3.27 adds support for Internet Explorer Metro in Windows 8
Piriform has released CCleaner 3.27, a minor update for its popular Windows free cleaning tool. CCleaner 3.27, also available in portable form, basically adds updates for major new browser releases, including support for Internet Explorer Metro in Windows 8.
The release is joined by Speccy 1.20, a minor update of Piriform’s system information tool, which adds version number detection for a number of major apps.
Virgin Media to begin charging for Wi-Fi on the London Underground
Introduced in time for last year’s Olympics, Virgin Media’s free Wi-Fi service has proven to be a big hit with people travelling on the tube, but all good things come to an end, and this particular gravy train is about to terminate. Well, for some people at least.
Although Virgin will be ending its free-to-all Wi-Fi service from Tuesday (29 January), the good news is if you’re a Virgin Media broadband or mobile customer, or are with EE (Orange and T-Mobile), or Vodafone, you’ll be able to continue to use it for gratis. So that’s bad news for O2 and 3 subscribers in particular.
Verizon rolls out a flashy red Nokia Lumia 822 for lovers. And people who just like red
Valentine’s Day is coming and since nothing says "I love you" more than a Windows Phone, Verizon has decided to mark the occasion by debuting a red edition of Nokia's mid-range Lumia 822 smartphone. The choice of color will certainly help the handset stand out, seeing as the 822 is otherwise only available in sober shades -- black, white, and grey.
The small red is available to buy from Big Red now, either online, or from a Verizon Wireless retail store, and can be picked up for free on a new two-year contract.
The Windows Phone 8 model features 4G LTE connectivity, a 4.3-inch display with an 800 by 480 resolution, and a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. It also has an 8MP back-facing camera (capable of 1080p video recording at 30 frames per second) and a 1.2MP front-facing camera.
Why are Windows 8 sales so good when PC shipments are so bad?
All signs pointed to another disappointing quarter for Microsoft's Windows division. But, instead, with fiscal second-quarter results announced today, revenue rose 24 percent year over year. Meanwhile, PC shipments are down 6.4 percent during same time period, according to IDC, which doesn't seemingly reconcile with Windows OEM revenue rising 17 percent. What's up with that?
There is sense behind the numbers, which forebode potential trouble ahead the next couple quarters, unless PC shipments pick up or Microsoft hits a big home run with Surface Pro, which goes on sale February 9. Simply stated: The company got big lift by selling cheap Windows Pro upgrades, something that ends January 31. OEM increase is byproduct of PC makers stocking the shelves with new models. Neither is sustainable, raising question: Will Windows 8 be a one-hit wonder? Meaning: One quarter of sales greatness?
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