Latest Technology News

Although New York City manages to pack a huge number of people into Times Square every New Year's Eve to watch the famous ball drop, most of us have to settle for watching it on TV. That is not necessarily a bad thing -- if you have ever talked to someone who has actually been there then you may conclude that you never want to be among the crowd, given the requirements and the hassle that attendees go through.

Thanks to the Times Square Official Ball App you don’t have to be in front of a TV at midnight this December 31st, to follow all of the action. You just need to have your Android or iOS smartphone or tablet at hand -- sorry Windows Phone users.

The app is not new this year, but has been updated with support for tablets and larger screen phones. According to the app’s website, it not only provides the live video feed of the big event, but also includes extras like the ability to submit your own New Year's Eve photos. The best shots will be displayed on the big screen right in Times Square. It also contains "everything you need to know about the Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration, including the history, news, weather, photos, relevant maps and LIVE Show schedule".

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For those used to cutting the rope or drawing "something", Microsoft Surface Pro is not going to be the tablet for you. Microsoft’s latest attempt to conquer the business end of the tablet market has left many puzzled as to why the software giant has priced a basically untested product right at the $900 mark, when the latest generation iPad starts at $499. They assume, perhaps understandably, that Surface Pro competes with Apple's pride and joy, yet they are wrong. Surface Pro is actually a miniaturized laptop trapped inside a tablet's shell.

For professionals and power users it doesn’t take long to realize that Surface Pro is as far away as possible from a basic consumer-oriented tablet. The dead giveaway is the processor and graphics card combination -- a third generation Core i5 CPU paired with an HD Graphics 4000 GPU, both made by Intel. Together they really shout from the top of their silicons: "We really come from PC technology!" The naysayers should therefore understand where Microsoft is actually going with Surface Pro -- towards professionals and power users, not the Cut The Rope or Draw Something crowd (although it can be used for that too).

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It’s no secret that the Windows clipboard is, well, just a little limited. Copy a snippet of text from your web browser, say, and you’ve already reached the clipboard’s capacity: copy another and the first will be removed, lost forever, a real annoyance if you need it later.

There are plenty of clipboard extenders around to try and address this problem, of course. Basic examples might save clipboard text. Most will save text and images. But Save.Me is rather more ambitious, with the program aiming to save absolutely everything: text, images, URLs, files, folders, it’s all preserved for speedy access at a later date.

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Have you kept an eye on our amazing software giveaways this year? Hot on the heels of our first two amazing deals comes this, a free and fully functional copy of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6. This universally acclaimed design tool runs on Windows PCs and is capable of photo-editing, drawing, graphics design and even desktop publishing, all rolled into one super program.

And the best news of all? For a 48-hour period from midday GMT, Saturday December 29, you’ll be able to download this amazing app, worth $89, for free thanks to Downloadcrew Giveaway.

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Ninth in a series. The world did not end last week, so here we are with this weeks installment of our weekly look at the greatest Windows 8 apps that got released or updated this week.

The store recently crossed the 35,000 apps mark worldwide according to MetroStore Scanner, and while you won't find that many apps in your local store -- the US app store has 22,876 currently -- it is remarkable after two months of release; 18,618 of those apps in the US store are free to download and use, while 4,249 are paid apps. That is a ratio of more than four to one, and while some free apps may include advertisement or in-game purchase options, it's still a healthy ratio for the store.

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Yesterday my colleague Wayne Williams posted hist list of must-have iPad apps. Of course I did not want Android fans to be left out, so I sat down and thought about the apps I use most on my Galaxy Nexus. This was a tough decision because there are many. Of course, it is also purely driven by personal opinion and tastes, but many of these types of lists are.

So, if you found a new phone or tablet under your tree on December 25th and you are wondering what you should install then here is a top-10 list of my personal recommendations.

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If your PC’s performance is currently suffering because of a few memory hogs, then a few minutes spent with Process Explorer,Process Hacker, or even just Task Manager will probably be enough to tell you what’s going on.

Those tools can be a little intimidating, though, so if you’d like something simpler – or would just like to monitor your system’s RAM usage all the time -- then you may prefer Cathargo Software’s free and extremely lightweight MemInfo.

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If there's one word that best describes my personal tech use for 2012, change is definitely it. For the most part of the year I "cheated" one platform with another, with no particular personal favorite to get me through (almost) 365 days. Each piece of software and hardware is used for a particular scenario, something that I find rather soothing for my personal early adopter endeavors as well as my sanity. I just can't stand tinkering with the same bit of tech for longer periods of time, although there still is a dear old friend in my life...

My colleagues Alan Buckingham and Wayne Williams already wrote about their personal tech choices in 2012, and now it's my turn. Without further ado here is what I used most throughout the year, starting with my trusty dear old friend.

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To paraphrase Ferris Bueller, "Technology moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it". Smartphones and tablets are being updated, iterated and replaced so quickly these days. Take the iPad. Apple rolled out a new version in March, and then replaced it with a faster model in November. You’re never at the cutting edge for long, so you need to enjoy that moment while you can (not that it really matters if your tech devices are a generation or two behind, of course -- so long as they work and do what you need them to).

My colleague Alan Buckingham wrote the first of the BetaNews team’s personal tech retrospectives yesterday. Now it’s my turn.

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Malwarebytes Corporation has released Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.70. And while (as usual with this particular program) the upgrade isn’t particularly revolutionary, it does contain some important tweaks and additions.

The new build sees Anti-Malware finally get up-to-date with Windows 8, for instance. Not only does the program now properly identify Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10 in scan logs, but it can also use the Windows 8 Start Screen to show notifications.

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Setting up a new PC can be a tedious experience, as you have to spend an age browsing the web, finding and downloading all your usual tools: Flash, Adobe Reader, CCleaner, Paint.NET, Dropbox, whatever you might use. DDownloads aims to simplify the process, though, by providing download links to more than 200 popular free applications, allowing you to perhaps grab everything you need without ever seeing a browser window.

Small and portable, the program launches with a simple home page which points you at a series of application groups. Click “Windows Starter Kit”, for instance, and you’ll see a list of apps which will come in very useful on most new systems: Adobe Reader, Flash, Java, DirectX, the Visual C++ 2010 redistributable package, .NET 4.5 and the Windows Essentials Codec Pack.

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The year has almost passed and that makes it a great time for reflection. Of course, I have thought most about my family -- what we did in 2012 and our plans for 2013. I have thought of household repairs and projects planned for the coming year, goals I would like to attain, but I also considered what technology I used the most and the changes I made.

My colleagues and I plan personal tech retrospectives. I'm first up.

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Twenty-six days ago I asked "Will you buy Microsoft Surface Pro?" after pricing released and pundits gripe it is too high. They compared to iPad, which I argued then (and still maintain) isn't right: Microsoft smartly prices Surface Pro against MacBook Air and Ultrabooks. But do you agree? Based on responses to the poll, yes.

Quick recap: Microsoft plans to release the second Surface tablet, running Windows 8 Pro, next month. The model available since October 26 runs Windows RT and is priced against iPad. Surface RT starts at $499. Pro is either $899 or $999 for 64GB or 128GB storage, respectively. Users can't install legacy apps on RT but they can on Surface Pro, which Microsoft positions more for business users and anyone needing access to the more traditional Windows desktop. The company also expects Pro buyers to pay up for Office 2013; the Home version ships free on Surface RT.

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If you’ve just spent an age downloading a huge MKV file, then eventually discovering that it won’t play properly is always going to be, well, a little frustrating. To put it politely.

It’s best to resist your immediate urge to shout a lot and break things, though, because there may still be hope. Grab a copy of the free Meteorite and it’s just possible that the program will be able to restore your movie to its full working order.

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There is a lot of recent chatter about malware on Android devices, but much of it is overblown. Microsoft recently learned a lesson when its #DroidRage campaign when down in flames. Honestly, while there is malware out there, it is not as prevalent as you are being led to believe. Still, being careful is always the best advice.

To that end, there are a number of steps you can take to make sure that brand new tablet or phone is as safe as possible. The mobile operating system is not the minefield that was past versions of Internet Explorer and Windows, but does have its share of flaws that can lead to compromise.

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