Creating mobile sites for small businesses is now as simple as buying an iPhone app
Mobile app stores and in-app purchasing functionality have revolutionized the video game industry by shrinking content into tiny doses and making their purchase and consumption effortless. Today, UK-based company Telnames announced it has taken that idea and applied it to mobile website design. With a mobile application, small businesses can buy domain names and build a mobile website in a matter of minutes without having to worry about registrars and hosting agreements. It might sound crazy at first, but it's kind of brilliant.
The idea behind Telnames Mobile Website Builder app is that it strips out all the steps that make website creation a hassle for businesses that don't have a Web developer on staff. Telnames says this is more common than you might think. More than half of all small businesses in the United States don't even have a website to speak of, much less one that is optimized for mobile devices.
Windows 8 Start Screen Customizer review
The Windows 8 Start screen is without doubt one of the prominent new features of the operating system. It is the first screen of the operating system that new users see when logging in and also the screen that the majority see every time they do so. While there are ways to bypass the Start screen to go straight to the desktop, it is unlikely that the majority of people will make use of those.
It may feel like an oversight to some users that Microsoft decided to lock down the available Start screen customization options. Instead of giving users the option to select any background image they want, the company limits the Start screen backgrounds to 20. While Windows 8 users are still free to select custom pictures as desktop backgrounds, they do not have the same option when it comes to this important part of the operating system.
Microsoft shareholders react to Steven Sinofsky departure
Microsoft's stock is off to a rocky start this morning, down 3.2 percent as I post, on news that Steven Sinofsky is out. Shares opened at $27.02, down from yesterday's $27.99 close. The stock immediately fell, to $26.75, in early trading.
Sinofsky's departure came suddenly late last night, in an announcement from the company. The high-profile divisional president is credited with salvaging Windows after the disastrous Vista release in early 2007. Successor Windows 7 launched in autumn 2009 and received reasonable reception. Team Sinofsky followed up with Windows 8, RT and Surface tablets less than three weeks ago. The suddenness of his departure, right at the start of such a big product launch, is uncharacteristic of Microsoft.
FlicFlac reduces audio conversion to the click of a button
Converting audio files from one format to another can sometimes feel like rather a complicated process, where you need to browse device profiles and codecs, bit rates, encoding methods, sample rates and more. If you’re more interested in simplicity, though, you might prefer FlicFlac, which reduces most conversion processes to the click of a button and a quick drag and drop.
The program is portable, for instance, so easy to use anywhere. Just download the 896KB archive and unzip it where required. Next, choose your preferred output by clicking one of five buttons: FLAC, WAV, MP3, OGG or APE.
Android 4.2 rolls out to Galaxy Nexus, update file available for Nexus 7
The wait is finally over! Google launches Android 4.2 Jelly Bean today alongside the new Nexus lineup with a treat in store for current Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 owners as well. The latest version of Android is rolling out over the air (OTA) for the year-old smartphone, with a manual update available for the ASUS-made tablet as well.
The Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OTA update, build number JOP40C, is available for the Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ sold via Google Play (codename "takju"). The point oner comes in at a rather small 74.3MB and, besides the announced improvements, at a first glance the update delivers a new baseband (I9250XXLH1 from the previous I9250XXLF1) and kernel (dated November 2) as well.
Google Play starts selling new Nexus 4, 7 and 10 devices
Today Google released Android 4.2 and new devices -- Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 -- running the software. The Nexuses (Should I say Nexi?) are available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom and United States. Unconfirmed user reports on blogs and social networks claim sell-outs in Asia-Pacific and Europe. Sales in North America commence at 9 am PT, from Google Play, representatives confirm.
LG makes the 4.7-inch smartphone and Samsung the 10.1-inch tablet, which join the ASUS-manufactured Nexus 7. The cloud services company announced the new products on October 29.
Google updates Play Music app, announces European availability
Google Play Music launched last year, beginning its life known simply as Google Music, growing up quickly since its humble private beta beginning. The app and web service officially launched in late 2011 and have grown quickly since then. Now the latest update has just been pushed out today to Google Play. The search giant also recently announced availability of the store and also Nexus devices in Europe and Australia as well as in the United States directly from Google and T-Mobile.
First, as for the brand new Play Music update, Google has added several features that should enhance the user experience. The update rolled out quietly without any official press release or even a post to their Android blog where these announcements frequently appear. So what is new in version 4.4.811H you ask?
Steven Sinofsky is OUT at Microsoft!
Microsoft has a longstanding tradition of promoting executives responsible for Windows soon after a new version releases. But in a stunning turnabout, Windows & Windows Live president Steven Sinofsky is finished, gone effective immediately, according to a late-evening announcement by Microsoft. To say I'm stunned is an understatement.
Sinofsky is the architect responsible for Windows 8 and RT, which launched on October 26. The backstory here must be something. Consider the timing, less than three weeks later. There's no transition. It's typical for Microsoft senior executives to go gracefully over X number of months following an announcement like this. Yet he's gone, as if fired or departed following a power play. I have no inside scoop at the moment, but will seek answers to the question many people will ask: "What now?" Sinofsky's departure forebodes during a crucial product launch.
Who will buy Google Nexus 4?
Tomorrow, Google Nexus 4 goes on sale, along with the new Nexus 10 tablet. The question: Who will buy? I've got answers.
Six days ago, I posted poll "Will you buy Nexus 4?" Early responses are quite surprising. Exactly 53 percent of respondents say they will buy the smartphone "as soon as available", with another 15.4 percent planning to do so "within 3 months of release". Say, what? Yes, that's my reaction, too. But the phone has received rave reviews from those publications receiving one (we're on the wait list). The results contrast strikingly with our iPhone 5 buying poll. More than 70 percent plan to buy Nexus 4 vs 33 percent the Apple mobile.
WebMon checks webpage updates, so you don't have to
Endlessly revisiting a particular website as you wait for updates has to be one of the more tedious ways to spend your time online. And so, if you really want to know when your favorite sites have something new to offer, it’s generally a better idea to look for news on their Twitter account or RSS feed.
If your target sites don’t have either, though, you might benefit from WebMon, a tiny, free Windows tool that checks the webpages you specify and lets you know whenever they’ve been changed.
I was wrong about Google Nexus tablet
In December 2011, I asserted: "Google Nexus tablet in six months is a year too late". The search and information giant proved me wrong. After failing to quickly respond to iPad and leaving Android leaderless, Google has recovered with a bang-up Nexus device strategy. Damn, this is my second tablet mea culpa -- the first about iPad nearly 18 months ago.
Tomorrow, Google expands the number of available Nexus screens to three, all running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean: 4.7-inch smartphone that replaces Galaxy Nexus as flagship; 7-inch tablet updated with more storage for purchase price and new 3G model added; 10.1-inch slate with higher screen resolution than iPad 4. The devices are "pure Google" and produced by LG, ASUS and Samsung, respectively. The original Nexus 7 released in July, receiving rave reviews and generating, ASUS asserts, about 1 million sales per month.
Microsoft releases Skype for Windows Phone 8 preview
Microsoft's premier VoIP, chat, and video call software Skype has received updates across the board for the new generation of Windows products. Monday, Microsoft released a new preview build of Skype for Windows Phone 8, following up on the app's announcement two weeks ago.
The new preview build includes all of the basic Skype functionality: free Skype-to-Skype voice calls over 3G and Wi-Fi, group instant messaging, free video calls to other Skype Users, and outbound Skype dialing.
Caveat from Microsoft: “Some capabilities listed…are work-in-progress and may not function consistently. This includes, but is not limited to: call reliability and the ability to receive incoming calls and chat notifications when outside of the app.”
UpTo social calendar app quietly debuts on Android
Detroit-based social calendar app startup UpTo quietly launched in Google Play, slipping slightly under the public radar onto the Android Platform.
The application was designed to pull information from user calendars and present it in a way that is useful to shaping plans. That means it begins at the present and looks forward at what's coming up, rather than at what's already happened. It's sort of like Plancast, but less focused on events and more focused on individuals and groups.
If you thought $249 was too much to pay for Chromebook, how's $199?
Just when everyone (including me) thought Google and Samsung offered the killer price on Chromebook, along comes Acer. Starting tomorrow, from Google Play and major retailers, Acer's newest Chromebook goes on sale for a cool $199. That's right, 50 bucks less than Samsung's no-brainer "I got to buy it" bargain-basement model. Why not just give it away? In the esteemed words of Crazy Eddie: These "prices are insane!"
But low cost brings hidden costs, and the Acer C7 Chromebook is full of compromise for $50 dollars savings. For starters, it's a heftier beast, both in size and weight, coming in about a half pound heavier (1.4 kilograms). The newest Samsung comes with super-fast ARM Cortex A15 processor, while the Acer is Intel Celeron. In a big departure from all previous Chromebooks, the C7 swaps SSD for a standard hard drive. That means more capacity (320GB), but more moving parts and presumably greater performance overhead. I got to ask: Who needs all that storage on a device primarily running Web apps? The clincher: 3.5 hours battery life, compared to the ARM model's 6.5 hours.
Microsoft kicks off SharePoint 2012 conference in Sin City
Microsoft has certainly been busy on both the consumer and enterprise sides of its business. Consumers now have access to Windows 8 and Surface tablets, while IT folks are still digesting all of the news from the recent Build Conference. The company, however, continues to press forward and today it kicked off yet another IT-centric show -- this time it's the SharePoint 2012 Conference, which is underway in Las Vegas.
Ironically, despite the "2012" part of the name, the conference actually surrounds SharePoint 2013. Microsoft claims this latest version will add significant improvements to "social, cloud and mobile capabilities". Those are some big claims, so what are we truly looking at here?
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