Latest Technology News

The end of July and the beginning of August have seen the release of a number of important apps and updates. If you’ve found it hard to keep to speed with what has been going on in the world of software, this roundup is here to help. SoftMaker FreeOffice 1.0.3340 is a free alternative to Microsoft’s office suite that is capable of producing Office compatible documents as well as PDFs. The news that Windows 8 has been released to manufacturers has rekindled interest in all things Metro, and Immersive Explorer 0.1.1 Alpha extends the look and feel of the Windows 8 Start menu into a fledgling replacement for Windows Explorer. If you’re more interested in storing your documents in the cloud, Google Drive 1.3.3209 has been updated, providing you with access to several gigabytes of free online storage and the ability to sync with your computer. While you’re online, you may well visit Facebook from time to time, and Facebook Messenger for Windows 2.1.4590.0 is a handy free tool that can be used to chat with contacts, monitor status updates and more all from a neat sidebar on your desktop.

Regardless of whether you have a Netgear router or not NETGEAR Genie 2.2.26.50 can be used to take care of it. NETGEAR Genie 2.0.25 (mobile version) is always available so you can use your Android or iOS mobile to perform tasks such as controlling your media and running speed tests. To make your life online easier, you need a decent web browser, and Opera 12.01 FINAL and Opera 12.01 FINAL 64-bit have both been released, with improved performance and better HTML5 support. If you’re more of a Google fans, Google Chrome 21 FINAL and Google Chrome 21 Portable provide you with everything you need including an all-new API for high-quality video and audio communication.

Continue reading →

Gestures are where it's at these days, with the Kinect add-on for Xbox 360 and the motion controls of the Wii allowing for direct interaction with games and other software. Even mobile devices such as Android and iOS phones and tablets are making greater use of gestures rather than just for menus and buttons. Touchscreen displays for Mac and PC make gesture interfaces possible in Windows and OS X, but Flutter enables you to use your webcam to interact using gestures.

As you can tell from the version number (currently 0.1.185), this is a very early version of the software and things are a little limited at the moment – but that’s not to say that it is not still worth taking a look at. At the moment, Flutter can be used to control your media player, enabling you to use basic hand gestures to start and pause music or video playback.

Continue reading →

Apple's divorce from Google is nearly complete: say goodbye to the native YouTube app. The change came within iOS 6 Beta 4 which released to testers on Monday. The reasons for the move are unclear: little was said other than the license to carry YouTube in iOS had expired.

Monday's news follows Apple's decision to dump Google Maps in favor of its own in-house solution. As competition heated up in the smartphone sector and Google's Android gained more market share, the two companies have begun to distance themselves from one another.

Continue reading →

While the focus on Apple's next big thing has surrounded the likely release of the iPhone 5 next month, the Cupertino, Calif. company's decision to change the dock connector may affect its entire product line, a new report claims.

Rene Ritchie at iMore says sources told the publication that the entire iOS device lineup will receive a refresh when the iPhone 5 launches, rumored to occur on September 12. The report claims that date will see a refreshed iPad, new iPod nano and iPod touches, the iPhone 5, and even the debut of the 7-inch iPad.

Continue reading →

We've heard a handful of complaints about Google's Nexus 7 screen dimming and flickering, but they pale in comparison to this story from New York tech industry professional Ed Zitron, who is currently dwelling in Nexus 7 support hell.

I was really excited about the Nexus 7, for just two hundred dollars I could get a device that I could sling in my bag, play with, enjoy mindlessly and then put away --a nicety, a frivolity, something enjoyable and cheap that I wouldn’t worry about.

Continue reading →

Nuance Communications, Inc., the company known for Dragon Naturally Speaking dictation software, the Swype virtual keyboard, and T9 text completion has just announced its very own digital mobile assistant platform named Nina.

Nuance, who also contributed behind the scenes to Apple's Siri, is taking a different approach with Nina. Nina will be released as a global speech-based virtual assistant for both iOS and Android mobile apps, and will also come with a Virtual Assistant SDK.

Continue reading →

If there is one thing that’s typical of Twitter, it's the long, long, long list of tweets that shows each of your Twitter friends' er…tweets. Slices for Twitter by OneLouder Apps is designed to make your Twitter experience better by adding "Twitter Content Discovery." Simply put, it provides improved functionality over the official Twitter app.

Slices for Twitter comes with five major features: Twitter Directory, Live Events, Timeline Slicer, Bookmarks and Mobile-to-Web.

Continue reading →

Back in July, Microsoft engineer Aaron Stebner released a new version of his .NET Framework Setup Verification tool, a handy troubleshooting utility which can quickly tell you whether a particular .NET edition is installed and set up correctly.

And Stebner has followed up this up with an upgrade of his companion program, the .NET Framework Cleanup Tool. As the name suggests, this can fully remove a specified edition of .NET from your PC – files, folders, Registry entries, everything – and the new edition works with both .NET Framework 4.5 and Windows 8.

Continue reading →

According to Google's recent earnings report, the Mountain View search company has $43 billion in cash reserves. I'm no business expert, but that number seems unreasonably high and I think Google should use some of that money. Some have said that Google has run out of ideas, so to alleviate the situation here are a few ideas:

Sprint Nextel Corporation, Cost: $13 Billion
Sprint isn't the smallest of the four main carriers in the U.S. but it would still be a great way for Google to get its foot in the door. Just imagine what Google could do with a carrier, Android phones could be subsidized into oblivion, phones would at last be updated, no more bloatware, full Google Voice integration, and if Google really wanted to do no evil then every phone they sold would be unlocked. There is also this to consider, Sprint carries the iPhone, so Google and Apple would be in an interesting situation, but Google could play this to their advantage, as they say “know thine enemy.”

Continue reading →

When I set up my first Windows 8 system back when Microsoft released the Developer Preview, I was somewhat irritated by the removal of core operating system features like the Start menu that I had been using for over a decade in different versions of Windows. Even more alien was the new startpage that Microsoft had added to the operating system which felt like a new interface that had nothing to do with the desktop and the way Windows used to be.

I too believed at this point that Microsoft was making a huge mistake, that it was betting big on touch and that touch-enabled devices would become the de facto standard in computing. While I believed that they got it right for the mobile computing market, I could not see myself using a touchscreen on my desktop PC. Sure, the startpage and Charms menu did support mouse and keyboard as well, but it somehow felt like something that Microsoft added on top of the native controls.

Continue reading →

What you're looking at is the Nexus D, a concept design created by patent-holding mechanical engineer and BetaNews reader Dorian Lust.

Lust is a Galaxy Nexus user and fan, and instead of idly talking about the features he'd want in the next version of the Galaxy Nexus, he designed it for himself...while watching the Olympics on television.

Continue reading →

Thursday it was announced that an unofficial port of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean CyanogenMod 10 custom ROM was available for the discontinued webOS powered HP TouchPad, with a big early thanks to XDA-Developers forum member and Android developer James Sullins, aka jcsullins.

Though it's discontinued, and mostly a niche device, the HP TouchPad is no slouch in the hardware world. It sports a 9.7 inch, 1024 x 768 pixel display, a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor, has 1GB of RAM, and 16GB to 32GB of storage. It is still a very solid tablet.

Continue reading →

At the moment, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the only Android smartphone that can be experienced the way Google wants. Of course, there were previous Nexus iterations like the Nexus S and Nexus One, but with the Galaxy Nexus, Google got it right. Well, right enough that I recently bought one.

Your first days with any new device are the honeymoon. There’s the initial joy of opening the package and peeling off the plastic sheets on both sides and looking inside the box for accessories. Then, the battery is in its rightful place, the back cover is on, and at a touch of the power button the SAMOLED displays "Google." Things get interesting, the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich animation pops up, I run through the initial set up and bang, I am now using my new shiny Galaxy Nexus.

Continue reading →

National wireless carrier AT&T plans to move completely past 2G wireless connectivity by 2017, a recent 10-Q filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission revealed.

Due to the impending 'spectrum crisis' that has been slowly edging toward wireless providers for the last three years, AT&T plans to eventually shutter its 2G network, and redeploy it for use on next-gen mobile broadband networks.

Continue reading →

CodeAcademy, the free site for learning how to code, has just added the Python programming language to its tutorial platform.

CodeAcademy made a big impression on the Web back in August of 2011 when its cofounders, two graduates of the y-combinator startup training camp, Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski, announced the service on the ycombinator Hacker News forum. Since then, the site has seen extensive growth, and it currently offers a few hundred exercises in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery.

Continue reading →