Sound Valley adds audio scene composer
Last November we took a look at Sound Valley, a fun program which plays the sounds of nature -- birdsong, rain, wind in the trees and more -- in the background, while you just sit back and relax.
We suggested at the time that it really needed a way to customize the existing scenes, perhaps create new ones, and it appears that the developer was listening: an update has just appeared with the beta of a new Scene Composer tool.
Microsoft quietly upgrades the Surface Pro 2
Computers are constantly being upgraded at a furious pace. It seems like as soon as you buy one, a new model is ready to make your purchase obsolete. Quite frankly, you may almost prefer not to know about the new models and upgrades -- in other words, ignorance is bliss.
If only there was a company that would upgrade its product, but not tell anyone, then no one would get that bad feeling. Guess what? That company is Microsoft, the time is now and the product is the Surface Pro 2.
Seven unbelievable 2014 tech predictions
I'm not big on making year-ahead predictions -- common as the stories are at the turn of the year. But it's a slow news week, with the holiday and Consumer Electronics Show still ahead, so I thought: "Why not look into the crystal ball?"
If any of these come to be, something is seriously wrong with the space-time continuum.
Surface had a good Christmas, appears to be selling well
Three days ago I wrote about Flurry’s findings regarding tablet activations on Christmas day. As was expected, Amazon enjoyed a massive 24x bump, and Apple and Samsung activations, while far less spectacular, both doubled. Flurry only covered those three firms and Acer, so there was no way of knowing how well other manufacturers had fared.
Today online advertising network Chitika releases its report, the result of examining post-Christmas changes in North American web traffic share, and this shows usage gains from Amazon, a minor drop from Apple, and -- perhaps most surprisingly -- strong gains for Microsoft’s Surface range.
Surface RT is $299 at Best Buy -- now is the time to pull the trigger
Since the release of the first iPad, consumers have been trying to use tablets as PC replacements. They retrofit them with keyboards trying to make them laptop-like. It's hard to blame them -- after all, the battery life of most tablets is very attractive.
Sadly, most tablets have proven to be companion devices to the PC, rather than a replacement. Luckily, Microsoft released the Surface line of tablets, which melds fun and productivity into a true PC replacement. This is because, well...it sort of is a PC. Today, the 32GB RT variant is being sold for a super-low $299 -- will you buy it?
Microsoft under attack -- Syrian Electronic Army hack Skype's blog, Twitter and Facebook
The Syrian Electronic Army is no stranger to the headlines, and the group's latest exploits have gained it further attention. This time the target is Microsoft, specifically Skype. The SEA target the Skype Twitter stream, as well as Facebook page and blog in what may be the first high-profile hack attack of the New Year.
The group defaced the blog with a message to Microsoft that read "Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.. Stop Spying!". A message posted on the Skype Facebook page read "Don't use Microsoft emails (hotmail,outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments."
How can other makers challenge Nokia's Windows Phone dominance?
A quick look at the Windows Phone market portrays an interesting picture, a landscape that is dominated by a single maker, Nokia. Competition is practically non-existent, as the Finnish company takes the lion's share for both sales and usage. How can other vendors challenge it?
Nokia's market share for Windows Phone usage exceeds 90 percent and dwarfs that of HTC, Samsung and Huawei which struggle to overcome their near-anonymity on the platform. Sales reveal a similar tale. And, as soon as Microsoft takes control of Nokia's phone-making arm, this problem will grow even larger. Consumers will suffer and so will Microsoft, which will find itself in a very difficult spot trying to convince manufacturers that it's OK to play and, despite its role as the sole developer and main vendor, there will be no backfire. That is a tough sell. So what can be done?
Opera TV Store comes to Samsung Blu-ray players, brings hundreds of apps
You may only think of Opera as a web browser, an alternative to the bigger players like Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer, but the company does a lot more. In fact, the Norwegian browser maker is invested heavily in the entertainment market.
Today Opera announces it has reached a deal to bring its TV Store to select Samsung Blu-ray players, adding hundreds of apps to the living room.
Check your PC's RAM for errors with MemTest86+
If your PC is very unstable -- perhaps with blue-screen crashes or regular file corruption -- and all your usual troubleshooting tricks have failed, then it’s often a good idea to check for RAM issues. The Windows Memory Diagnostic tool does a reasonable job of identifying these, but you’ll probably get better results from a specialist third-party tool, like the open source MemTest86+.
Now almost ten years old, this fork of Chris Brady’s original MemTest86 has been regularly updated to support new hardware, and the most recent version saw some major additions (handles up to 2TB RAM, SMT support for up to 32 cores). It’s still ridiculously small, though, arriving as a 58KB download which unpacks a tiny 1.75MB ISO file.
Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2013 enables document saves in latest Word and Excel formats
Kingsoft Software has seen in the New Year with major updates to its range of free and paid-for office suites for Windows. Despite minor version number changes, Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2013 users gain the ability to save documents in the later Word (.docx) and Excel (.xlsx) formats, a feature previously restricted to Kingsoft Office Suite Pro 2013 users.
Other new features across both builds include improved encryption options, a slew of new and improved features for Writer and Spreadsheet components and better stability.
iPhone 6 can challenge Android dominance in 2014 -- if Apple makes these changes
Today is the second day of 2014, so everything from last year is now obsolete (I kid, I kid). While only a few months removed from the iPhone 5s and 5c launch, it is never too early to begin dreaming about the next iteration of Apple's smartphone.
2013 was the year of Android from a market-share perspective, but its ongoing dominance isn't entirely assured. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Blackberry led the smartphone market. Google's Android isn't likely to lose market share any time soon (there are too many manufacturers and models for that to happen) but I do think there's a chance for Apple to win big this year. Though I am an Android user, I am not opposed to switching to the iPhone 6 or iPhone Air (or whatever Apple calls it) and I think other Android users could feel the same way -- if Apple makes the following changes.
Moto X starts New Year right -- $399, off contract
Motorola's New Year's resolution gives notice to Apple and other Android phone manufacturers: We don't need stinking subsidies. Today, the Google subsidiary cut Moto X's off-contract to $399, even personalized, on all carriers. The permanent discount is $50 more than Motorola's glitchy Black Friday sale.
Google has a long history of selling unlocked, off-contract phones, starting with Nexus One four years ago. But in 2012, Nexus 4 brought the price down to something mere mortals could afford: $299. The Android's successor costs more, starting at $349.
Winamp finds a buyer -- and it’s not Microsoft
Winamp was a massively popular media player in the nineties, but it withered under AOL’s ownership, and failed to move with the times. Few people were surprised when a month ago AOL finally decided to cut its losses, announcing that, starting December 20 2013, the site and associated cloud services, including Shoutcast, would no longer be available to the public.
A petition to save the media player garnered close to 50,000 signatures, and Spotify created a fun tribute called Spotiamp, but the writing looked to be firmly on the wall for Winamp, despite rumors that Microsoft was interested in saving the service. Today it appears that Winamp has indeed found a savior, but it’s not one that anyone was expecting.
HypedMusic closes down, the latest victim of the RIAA
While services like Grooveshark and Torch Music manage to survive, the Recording Industry Association of America is on a more or less constant attack of similar streaming sites. Now it seems the RIAA has managed to pull off a victory, strong-arming one service out of business.
HypedMusic calls it quits as a result of the cease and desist threats it has received. "I am not in any way condemning the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for what they did or claiming that in some way they 'wronged' me; they had the right to send me a cease-and-desist and I immediately complied", the developer laments.
Windows 8.x claims 10% market share, but Windows 7’s massive gain is the real story
Great news for fans of Windows 8 and 8.1, Microsoft’s divisive operating system has finally claimed 10 percent of the desktop market. According to NetMarketShare, which monitors such things, in December Windows 8 lost 0.01 percent share, but Windows 8.1 grew by 0.86 percent. Windows 8 now has 6.65 percent of the market and Windows 8.1 is sitting on 3.5 percent, bringing the OS’s combined share to 10.15 percent. Great job Windows 8.x.
However, as seems to regularly be the case, the new operating system’s gain was dwarfed by that of its elder sibling. Windows 7 put on a growth spurt that’s nothing short of stunning.
BetaNews, your source for breaking tech news, reviews, and in-depth reporting since 1998.
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. About Us - Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy - Sitemap.