Google rolls out revamped Groups
Google announces it is giving Google Groups an overhaul, retiring the old version and replacing it with a modern update with improved options for managing your groups as well as new moderation tools, and a mobile site.
Groups also now lets you create an inbox for collaboratively sharing, distributing, and tracking responsibilities with others.
Has Microsoft made WebGL Secure? How?
Microsoft has dropped strong clues, without saying it explicitly, that Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 8.1 will support WebGL, a DirectX-like standard for fast gaming on the web. The biggest clue came in a video posted on Vine. Others have found direct evidence in leaked builds.
It's not hard to see why Microsoft would want to support WebGL. Everyone else does. However, the company spelled out the reasons it hadn’t so far in a Security, Research and Defense blog post two years ago.
Lync Online: A professional, cheap GoToMeeting and Webex alternative [review]
Online meetings have been synonymous for nearly the last decade with well known platforms like GoToMeeting and Webex. And rightfully so. Both cloud collaboration suites are fairly mature offerings, with expanded feature sets that replicate (nearly) every aspect of a face to face meeting. As an IT professional by day, I'm frequently involved in client meetings over both platforms and have helped countless others leverage these products for their own businesses.
Yet there are numerous things which irk me about the status quo from these two offerings. The biggest happens to be the substantial cost attached to each. It's hard to believe that two platforms with such maturity have not been able to bring their price levels down considerably with as much engineering and prevalent, cost-effective cloud technology as exists today.
GIMP update introduces multiple fixes, improves single-window mode
Open-source image editor GIMP 2.8.6 FINAL has been released for Windows and Linux. This popular -- and powerful -- image manipulation tool, which is also available for Mac, is primarily a maintenance release, but does include some interesting feature tweaks, many of which improve the program’s single-window mode that was introduced in version 2.8.
Chief among these changes is the increase in the supported maximum size of clipboard brushes and patterns to 1,024×1,024 pixels. Also improved is how users switch focus back to the canvas screen in single-window mode, with the [Escape] key now used for that task.
Earth Alerts lets you track extreme weather all over the world
While there are plenty of weather monitoring apps around, most of them are, well, just a little dull. They’ll tell you it might be windy later, and that there’s a chance of rain tomorrow, but that’s about as exciting as it gets.
Earth Alerts is different. It can give you details on the locations you define -- current conditions, maps, forecasts and so on -- but what it’s really about is tracking more severe events. Earthquakes alerts, tsunami warnings, forest fires, landslides, cyclones, they’re all detailed here.
Nextgen Reader for Windows Phone 8 gets Feedly-fied
There's more to the rapidly-approaching Google Reader shutdown than the demise of a popular RSS feed aggregator. The service is used by numerous mobile apps on all major platforms, which will soon be unable to deliver the latest news to insatiable users unless developers embrace an alternative (that, hopefully, will not burst into flames due to a growing following).
For Nextgen Reader -- one of the most popular RSS feed delivery apps on Windows Phone 8, Windows 8 and Windows RT -- the alternative is Feedly. Its maker, Next Matters, announced the move in early-June, and, yesterday, launched an update that adds support for the service in the Windows Phone 8 app.
Do Not Track standards do not coalesce
The advertising industry is in a huff over Mozilla’s plans to support "The Cookie Clearinghouse" at the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School. The Cookie Clearinghouse starts with some browser behavior changes and adds what Mozilla’s Brendan Eich describes as both block and allow-lists of sites and a mechanism for managing exceptions to them. What would be blocked? Third-party tracking cookies.
The advertising industry is displeased, as it has been in the past when its abilities to track users are impeded.
UK government launches cyber security awareness campaign
As part of its National Cyber Security Programme the UK government has announced the first stage in a new £4 million awareness campaign. The campaign due to be launched in the autumn draws on expertise from various government departments and is led by the Home Office.
Bids are currently being invited from media, PR and creative agencies to produce a communications strategy to educate consumers and small businesses on the risks presented by cyber crime.
PeaZip extends file type support, cleans up interface
Giorgio Tani has revealed PeaZip 5.0, the latest version of his popular and powerful file archive tool, which he says "brings a major code and design cleanup".
In practical terms this means a stack of interface enhancements, making the program even easier to use. A new History menu lists recently used paths and archives, for instance; the Bookmarks section now opens maximized by default, with useful system locations helping you get started right away; and the Settings dialog has been completely reorganized and simplified.
I sold my Nexus 7 and I don't miss it
Over the weekend, I sold my beloved Nexus 7. As BetaNews readers may be aware, the tablet has given me some trouble over the last year. I had complaints with the pre-order process and the tablet's performance. However, despite these complaints, I enjoyed the tablet very much. I definitely got my use out of it -- I used it to watch TV, read magazines and access social media like Twitter and Google+.
However, while I loved the Nexus 7, I heard rumors that a next-generation Nexus 7 was soon to be announced. And so, I sold my cherished tablet on Craigslist while it still had value -- there will likely be a fire sale once the successor is announced. I expected to take the money from the sale and put it towards a new tablet. I really wanted a Galaxy Note 8.0 but decided to wait for Google’s next Nexus tablet announcement. Waiting proved to be the right choice.
Panolapse adds pans and zooms to time-lapse videos
Time-lapse images can be a great way to capture movement in the sky, countryside, cities and more. But if they have a small issue, it’s that your usual viewpoint is always entirely static: the camera is fixed, while the world moves around it.
Panolapse is a free (for personal use) tool which can change all this, by adding motion through custom panning and zoom effects. This isn’t the simple flat movement you might get with a video editor, either: Panolapse uses perspective correction to produce far more realistic results, so that it actually looks as though your camera is moving around within the scene.
Ahh, about that second Ouya controller you ordered...
By now, those of you who care, likely know my Ouya plight. I pre-ordered the Android box last November. I have done the same with Xbox One, but unlike Microsoft, Ouya charged me in full on the day I made the move. I added a second controller so that I could take on my son head-to-head.
As one of the people who pre-ordered on opening day, I stood at the front of the line -- well, behind Kickstarter backers, but still a promising position. Ouya declared I would still be among the first to receive a box.
Did Amazon leak the Xbox One release date?
If nothing else, Microsoft's forthcoming gaming console has received more than its fair share of attention, and plenty of it on the wrong side of what the company would hope for. There was controversy before the official announcement even came, there was double-talk at the announcement, and of course some major backtracking later.
Although we know a lot about the console now, the one thing Microsoft has so far failed to announce is an official release date. Despite a vague promise of "later this year", most of us likely expected the holiday shopping season. It turns out, if Amazon is correct, the device will only just make it in time for that.
Microsoft launches Network Speed Test for Windows Phone 8
Microsoft steps in once again to beef up the Windows Phone 8 ecosystem. The software giant just released Network Speed Test, an app which allows users of the tiled mobile operating system to verify cellular data and Wi-Fi connection speeds.
Network Speed Test is one of the most striking to look at apps available on Windows Phone 8. The app features an elegant and minimal design, using only a couple of colors throughout the interface. From a personal point of view, it portrays how other platform offerings should look. Let's go through the features.
AOL takes the wraps off its own Google Reader replacement -- launches Monday
For years technology blogs have trumpeted the death of RSS, but it took Google shutting down Reader to reveal just how alive and well the platform truly is.
When my colleague Alan Buckingham expressed his dislike of Feedly, Google Reader’s heir apparent, he was bombarded with emails from other feed reading services requesting he give them a shot. Other firms, like Digg, are rolling out new services, and now AOL has announced its own Reader replacement.
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