Wayne Williams

Twentieth in a series. Missed out on Weed Firm? Don't worry, Apple may have pulled that particular game from the App Store, but there are plenty of smoking new apps available to devote your time to.

New releases this week include an app that offers a fun way to find your missing iOS device, an HD remake of a Nintendo DS classic, a picture sharing app with a twist (you add songs to your shots), a construction game for kids, an app to help you catalog your favorite wines, a swarm-based game, and a GPS app for golfers.

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Microsoft has created a new website to showcase the best photography from around the world… of Microsoft. It’s an arty look into life in and around the tech giant’s Redmond, Wash. Campus, and highlights just some of the people who work there.

Shots include employees playing cricket, having lunch, and a photo of Satya Nadella on his first day as Microsoft CEO.

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Weed Firm is one of those games, like Flappy Bird before it, that took the App Store by storm, reaching the number one spot purely through word of mouth. The trouble for Apple is the game follows the "vicious and lawless career of Mr. Ted Growing", an expelled botany sophomore, and is essentially a marijuana growing sim in which you produce and sell different types of weed, and interact with various shady characters including cops, gangsters, druggies and dancers. Not exactly the sort of game Apple really wants to see at the top of its charts.

It was perhaps a surprise that the Breaking Bad inspired app made it through Apple’s rigorous, and at times prudish approvals process in the first place, but having flourished far too well at the top, it was only a matter of time before it was hacked down. The game, inevitably, is no longer available in the App Store.

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After Edward Snowden’s many (and on-going) revelations, it’s easy to think there’s not much you can really do to avoid being spied upon or prevent your communications potentially being monitored. Of course you probably don’t have much to hide, and therefore what you say isn’t likely to be of major interest to the NSA or other snoopers, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least try to maintain a degree of privacy where possible.

SRD Wireless has today announced the launch of PQChat, a free app for iOS based on SRD’s own Never-The-Same (NTS) encryption which protects data using the McEliece cryptosystem, the strongest currently known, and which has never been broken (as far as anyone is aware, at least).

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You probably already know, but Microsoft is set to announce a new Surface product today at an event in New York City. The initial rumors suggested we would be seeing a mini version of the company’s flagship Windows slate (a conclusion jumped to because the invites mentioned a "small gathering"), but latest rumblings suggest the exact opposite -- with a 12-inch Surface Pro 3 now tipped to be the product revealed on stage.

While I personally would like to see a Surface Mini, a larger Surface Pro makes a lot of sense, and will appeal to power users. At the moment no one outside of Microsoft knows for definite what to expect, but it should be very interesting nonetheless.

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I’ve met and/or spent time with some famous icons over the years -- including drinking beer with the Sex Pistols in LA -- but oddly I’m most pleased to have met Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, and Ernő Rubik, the man who invented the Rubik’s Cube (I didn’t meet them both at the same time, sadly -- that really would be a story).

Rubik’s most famous invention is forty years old today, and as clever and as frustratingly difficult to master as ever. When I was a kid, the only way I could crack it was by actually cracking it open. Popping the corners out, dismantling the cube and then reassembling it. Or cheating, as some people might say.

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Nineteenth in a series. iTunes was updated to version 11.2 this week. As my colleague Brian Fagioli reports, it's not the most exciting release with most changes relating to improvements to podcasts. It also fixes an annoying issue whereby iTunes could become unresponsive when updating Genius.

New and updated releases this week include an iOS port of classic indie PC game Thomas Was Alone, the official app of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, a social network app that wants to be like a party, an arcade shooter, and a new app from FourSquare. RockMyRun has been updated too, and can now automatically adjust the speed of the music you're listening to so it matches how fast (or slow) you're running. There's a great travel app featured this week too.

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Removing the traditional Start button and menu from Windows 8 was a bold move for Microsoft. Unfortunately the tech giant underestimated just how attached to it users were. Rather than embracing the (slightly clumsy) full screen Modern UI, vast numbers of early adopters simply opted to install one of the many Start menus made available by third-party developers.

While most of these programs are straight copies of the Windows 7 Start menu, ReviverSoft has chosen to go down a different route with its product. Start Menu Reviver is a Modern-UI styled touchscreen-friendly Start menu that’s been designed to look as if it’s part of Microsoft’s OS. The recently released Start Menu Reviver 2 improves on the first edition by offering a sleeker design, greater customization, and a Windows 7 mode. I spoke to Davide De Vellis, co-founder of ReviverSoft, about Start Menu Reviver and what he thinks about Microsoft’s plans to introduce a Start menu of its own in a future Windows 8.x.update.

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Transferring files between an iPhone and iPad is easy. If you’re running iOS 7 on both devices you can use the AirDrop feature. Transferring files from an Apple device to a PC (and vice versa) is trickier though, and often involves emailing them, or using a cloud drive.

iStick is a clever solution that functions as a USB flash drive, but comes with a Lightning connector on the opposite end, allowing it to be used with iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. As well as transferring files between devices, you can play music or watch movies directly from the iStick.

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Did you know the average person spends 23 full days a year using their mobile phone? That is around ninety minutes every day. Smartphones have become lifelines for many. What if you were to drop your phone in a toilet and lose everything on it? This nightmare will occur for nearly 100,000 cell phone users in the US every day who will damage their phone just by dropping it in water.

An American inventor has created a cost effective solution. DryBox Rescue is a machine designed to completely dry your phone of all moisture in 30 minutes even 2-3 days after getting it wet. I spoke to David Naumann, Partner/Managing Partner at DryBox to find out more about how it works, and what’s next for the company.

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Despite the presence of iWorks and numerous other productivity suites on iPad, many users were hoping Microsoft would eventually roll out a version of Office for Apple’s tablet. The biggest sticking point was Surface -- Microsoft’s suite is, after all, one of that tablet’s biggest selling points, and providing Office for rival devices could prove risky.

At the end of March, Microsoft responded to the demand by releasing free iPad apps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint and tackled the Surface issue beautifully. The apps are excellent, fully touch optimized, and designed from the ground up to run on an iPad. But they require you to have Office 365 to create or edit documents, which isn’t a restriction Surface users have to worry about.

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Windows 8.1 Update makes the tiled operating system more mouse and keyboard friendly, and while it takes a little getting used to at first, the changes are mostly for the better -- in my opinion anyway.

Microsoft has made the update mandatory, and in an effort to ensure people install it swiftly (thus avoiding the situation where there are customers out there running Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update) made it even more essential by stating that all future security patches, starting with those released tomorrow as part of Microsoft's monthly "Patch Tuesday", will require Update to be installed. In other words, if you haven’t installed the Update, your system could be at risk.

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Although a lot of people don’t really like Gmail’s web interface, I’ve never had a problem with it. Once you’ve learned your way around, the UI is functional and you can customize the look with themes, and even your own images.

However, according to Geek.com Google is testing a redesigned interface for its web-based Gmail service. As with all tests, it’s possible the new look won’t see the light of day, but the design appears very polished, and barring a few cosmetic tweaks I think there’s a very good chance it will replace the current UI at some point in the future.

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Eighteenth in a series. New and updated releases this week include a Vine-style video sharing app with filters, an animated story creator from Adobe, new games set in the Warhammer 40k and Soulcalibur worlds, a social network for dog owners, a fitness app that promises to "lift your butt" and an endless runner that gives you the chance to watch your friends being trampled by bulls.

As always, if I miss an app that you think should definitely have been included, let me know in the comments below, or drop me an email.

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Once a month I report on the desktop operating system market share using data from NetMarketShare. The changes in fortune between the different flavors of Windows is usually fairly minimal -- a percentage point gained here, a percentage point lost there. And usually the rise or fall is a lot less than one percent, although as a month is quite a small time scale to measure market share changes over, and we’re talking about millions and millions of Windows users, that’s to be expected.

I decided, out of curiosity, to take a look at what a year’s worth of market share variations would look like, using StatCounter’s Global Stats, and the results were less than thrilling, with the different operating systems showing very little change. In May 2013, Windows 7 had 56.27 percent. 12 months later it is on 55.03 percent. A drop of just 1.24 percent. Windows XP fell 6.73 percent, while Windows 8.x grew 8.16 percent. The pattern is clear -- Windows 8.x sales look to be coming from upgrades (mainly XP) but people are mostly sticking with their older operating systems. Open up the time scale however, and a more dramatic -- and damning -- picture emerges.

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