Xbox One set to receive its first update on February 11th
The Xbox One hit the market late last year, just in time for the big holiday shopping season, and only one week behind rival Sony’s PS4. Now, only a few scant weeks after the big launch, the company is announcing the first update to the system.
The news is released through Xbox Live chief Larry Hryb, who many know better as Major Nelson. Today Hryb stated "on February 11, the first update will be delivered to customers who sign into their Xbox One. It features many new improvements -- including lots of behind-the-scenes updates for developers building apps and games for Xbox One, several new features we believe Xbox fans will love, stability and product updates to improve the customer experience, and continuous improvements to the quality of Kinect voice so commands become more fluid and responsive over time".
37signals becomes Basecamp and drops all but its eponymous product
The name 37signals may not mean much to people outside of tech and business circles. This is a company that produces something that is better known than its own name: Basecamp. The very fact that 37signals is primarily, or even solely, associated with Basecamp seems as good a reason as any to consider a rebrand, and this is precisely what the company is doing. While some people content themselves with blowing out candles on a cake, 37signals celebrates its tenth birthday by renaming itself Basecamp.
But it does not end there. In addition to taking a new name from its popular online collaboration and project management tool, the company is switching its focus so that Basecamp is its only product. The announcement appears on the company's website, explaining that the decision will allow all energies to be channeled into the tool that gained greatest success:
VirusTotal adds AegisLab as a file scanning engine
VirusTotal has announced the addition of AegisLab as a new file scanning engine. The Taiwanese company was already working with VirusTotal on its URL scanner, but this should raise its profile significantly.
The good news continued in AV Test’s latest Android Security report, where AegisLab’s Antivirus Premium 1.1 and AhnLan’s V3 Mobile 2.1 were the only packages to score maximum marks for protection.
VLC Media Player increases stability, fixes bugs and regressions
VideoLAN has released VLC Media Player 2.1.3, the latest minor release of its open-source, cross-platform media player for Windows, Mac and Linux. Version 2.1.3 comes with the promise of fixing multiple bugs and regressions introduced in previous 2.1.x releases.
Important fixes involve improving audio and video output management across most platforms, and also include decoder and dexmuxer improvements too.
Geo-Tag Mapper plots geotagged photos on an interactive globe
Geotagging photographs sounds great, at least in theory. You buy a camera with GPS, and it records exactly where you take every picture, very useful when you’d like to return there later (or just if you’ve just forgotten where you saw that amazing sunset).
This isn’t quite as easy as it should be, because most image viewers and graphics tools don’t recognize or use positional data. There are some exceptions, though, and the latest, Geo-Tag Mapper, provides a very easy way to visualize your photos by their location.
DirecTV joins the HBO GO party on Roku
HBO GO for Roku set-top boxes launched back in late 2011, but, like many streaming networks, users are required to prove they subscribe to the channel through a participating cable or satellite provider. It's a frustrating problem that hopefully will slowly go away -- the Super Bowl was just streamed by Fox Sports without this restriction.
One major provider that wasn’t part of the Roku family was DirecTV, but that is now changing. The device maker and TV service have reached an agreement to make HBO GO available to those who enter DirecTV as their television service.
Verizon Motorola Moto G gets Android 4.4 KitKat
The Motorola Moto G is one of the most interesting smartphones launched in 2013. It comes with a powerful processor, large screen and, most importantly, a very attractive price. The base 8 GB model costs a mere $179 off-contract, while the 16 GB version can be had for $20 more. Users also get 50 GB of free Google Drive storage for two years.
But, there is another reason why the Moto G is interesting -- KitKat. Motorola has promised to update its entry-level smartphone to the latest version of Android, quickly rolling it out for the international version. Now, those who have the Verizon model can also experience what KitKat has to offer.
Why performance testing matters in the mobile world
The success of a mobile app is closely related to its performance, including stability, responsiveness and load times. This is one of the key findings of a report released by mobile performance specialist Appurify, alongside the launch of a new performance optimization and testing tool.
According to the report over 90 percent of developers see a direct correlation between the performance of their apps and the reviews they receive in app stores. But it also warns that developers have become too reliant on user reviews to spot quality issues with 60 percent saying they check their reviews daily.
Evernote for Mac adds descriptive search feature, aims to make finding information quicker and easier
Evernote Corporation has released Evernote for Mac 5.5, a minor refresh of the cloud-based note-taking service’s desktop tool. Version 5.5 contains one major new feature of note: support for descriptive search.
The feature, currently only available to English-language users, is accompanied by a number of minor bug fixes and tweaks. It follows on from the recent updates to both Evernote for iOS 7.3 and Evernote for Android 5.7
Jelly Bean surpasses 60 percent Android distribution
It is that time of the month again when we take a look at the latest Android distribution data. Google has released a new chart, based on the number of devices accessing the Play store in the seven days ending February 4, placing Jelly Bean as the most popular sweet with over 60 percent share in the green droid realm.
In early-February, the most popular Jelly Bean iteration is once again Android 4.1, thanks to a strong 35.5 percent distribution. It is also the most popular version of the mobile operating system, a title that it's relished since July 2013 when it finally topped the outdated Gingerbread. In the Jelly Bean branch, Android 4.1 is followed, in this order, by Android 4.2 and Android 4.3, with 16.3 percent and 8.9 percent distribution, respectively.
Google starts checking YouTube views to ensure they're real
There was once a time when the popularity of a webpage was measured by the hit counter that was featured prominently on it. Thankfully these days are long gone, but there is a new type of counter.
There are few sites that don’t try to take full advantage of social networks, and many online articles -- including here at BetaNews -- include links to share content on the likes of Facebook and Twitter. It's easy for all to see how many times something has been shared, but this reveals little about the number of actual views this has translated into. But there is one place where the hit counter lives on: YouTube.
Yahoo ramps up security but Tumblr users have to do it themselves
Following last month's announcement that Yahoo Mail connections would be getting default HTTPS encryption, the company has gone a stage further, enabling HTTPS access to Yahoo Contacts and Profile APIs.
In a post on its developer blog Yahoo advises that API settings will need to be changed by February 27.
PassMark Software reveals best-performing 2014 security software
PassMark Software has released its 2014 Consumer Security Products Performance Benchmarks report, the results of in-depth testing on the speed and impact on your system of 16 leading security packages.
First place in the security suite test went to Norton Internet Security 2014 for its excellent scan times, fast launch, and minimal effect on other applications and PC tasks. Kaspersky and Bitdefender Internet Security 2014 were second and third, while products from Avast, G Data, McAfee, Panda and Trend Micro trailed behind.
KeePass introduces new auto-key sending engine, improves entry attachment handling
Dominik Reichl has released KeePass 2.25 for Windows. The open-source password management tool allows users to manage both offline and online passwords via a secure, encrypted container, and is also available in portable form.
Version 2.25 is a minor update, but introduces a new auto-type key sending engine that improves support for sending Unicode characters as well as sending keypresses into virtual machine and emulator windows.
Opera Next delivers a lightweight network installer, enhanced bookmarking
Opera Software has announced Opera 20′s debut in the Next stream. There’s no revolution this time, perhaps fortunately, but the new build does bring some small but welcome improvements.
A tiny 804KB network installer for Windows grabs the latest version from Opera’s servers, retries the download as required, looks for security issues and starts the installation. The regular offline installer will also remain available, though, and that’s what you’ll see if you download Opera 20 right now.
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