Evernote has released the first public beta of version 5.0 of the Mac version of its cross-platform, note-sharing and taking tool. Evernote for Mac 5.0 Beta 1 comes with over 100 new features and boasts a redesigned user interface aimed at streamlining and simplifying the process of creating, organizing and sharing notes.

The update is currently only available to those who install the program directly from our download link and then follow the instructions given for updating to the latest beta version. Because of the way the Mac App Store version works, Evernote was forced to remove the direct download link as the process of installing a new non-App Store version of Evernote led to server issues due to masses of users re-sychronizing all their data with a separate build of the program. Evernote hopes to make the beta available to App Store users prior to its final release.

First in a series. Welcome to this new series here on BetaNews where I'll take a weekly look at some of the exciting new apps released for Windows 8. The overview does not include games and will be limited to around 10 apps per week to keep things manageable.

Microsoft launched Windows 8 on October 26, introducing the new Modern UI. To get supporting apps, you need go no further than the built-in Windows Store, which also is the only place you can get them. To start off the series, here are 10 apps that were recently published to the Windows Store.

As ordered by the UK courts, Apple has finally posted the statement regarding the outcome of its case with Samsung on the front page of its website. Except it hasn’t posted the statement as such, but rather a link to it, and as you’d probably expect by now, there’s much more to the posting than a simple apology.

Go to Apple UK and at first glance it will seem as if the apology has yet to be posted. However, scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll find this statement:

If you find that Windows Explorer does not meet your requirements for browsing and managing your files, you have no doubt taken a look at some of the many replacement utilities that exist. Many such tools improve on the idea of Explorer but few offer anything particularly new. The sane accusation cannot be leveled at FileMind which provides a traditional means of accessing files and folders as well as something a little more interesting.

A cursory glance reveals nothing especially out of the ordinary, but spend a few minutes investigating and you’ll find that there’s plenty o get excited about. FileMind is not dissimilar to a web browser, and tags the idea of hyperlinks and tag clouds in a new direction. To make it easier to access the files you access most frequently, an enlarging of label and color coding make such files easier to identify.

Microsoft's BUILD 2012 conference began October 30th and ran through yesterday, November 2nd. While the event is mainly for developers and IT professionals, there is always some exciting news trickling out that matters to the end-user. This year we saw a lot of news surrounding the company's Azure cloud platform, as well as Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Microsoft even held a "Hackathon" with prizes for developers present at the show.

In all, this was one of the more exciting and busier developer conferences that Microsoft has held in years. Perhaps that was due to the newly designed operating system that breaks the mold set way back with Windows 95 and the new ethos that everything should be capable of moving to the cloud.  So, what did we learn?

Joe Wilcox is wrong. My colleague and I both own the Samsung-made Galaxy Nexus. So in theory he should see the light --  Nexus 4 is so many times better than its predecessor. For the first time in a few years Google has the brass to release a smartphone that will no longer be left for dead in a month or two by fellow Android smartphones.

Before you go all out and say that I might be insane for dismissing 4G LTE, let me be clear -- not many need it. US-hung journalists like to boast about the capability in reviews praising the high speeds. But that does not reflect the reality around the globe, where fast data speeds are not the norm nor will they be in the next year or so. Nexus 4 is so much more than missing LTE cellular connectivity, and that's rather obvious when comparing it with its predecessor. I love the Galaxy Nexus, but even I have to admit that it's rather outdated for the end of 2012.

A week after Windows 8 launched, today Microsoft announced a new ebook designed to help IT Professionals to integrate the new operating system into their environments. The 147-page tome covers all aspects of the operating system, but is sure to be less-comprehensive than books that will be available from major publishers. On the other hand, this one is free.

The new book covers such essentials as the new hardware innovations, customization and configuration tips, networking enhancements, deployment of the new operating system, apps, recovery, management, Internet Explorer 10, security and several other subjects. In all it encompasses 11 chapters. As part of their announcement Microsoft's Keith Mayer states: "Now that Windows 8 is generally available, this book is a great way to get quickly up-to-speed on all the new improvements in this latest Windows release".

Japan's third-largest wireless carrier Softbank announced on Friday that it is donating $500,000 to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund to support the relief efforts in East Coast areas seriously affected by Hurricane Sandy.

"Our thoughts are with the millions of people in the Northeastern United States who have been impacted by Hurricane Sandy," said Softbank Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son in a statement on Friday. "With homes destroyed and families displaced, we hope that our donation can lend some needed assistance to those in the U.S. as they rebuild and recover."

Security researcher and software vendor Kaspersky Lab on Friday released its quarterly malware report for the third quarter of 2012, and for the first time in the history of the report, not a single Microsoft product had a vulnerability in the top ten vulnerabilities list.

Kaspersky says the automatic updates mechanism in recent versions of Windows has prevented exploits from getting out of hand by patching vulnerabilities quickly and quietly.

Associate Professor Devavrat Shah and his student Stanislav Nikolov will unveil a new algorithm in November at the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Information and Decision in Social Networks. With a 95 percent accuracy it is reported to predict which topics will trend on Twitter by an average of an hour-and-a-half advance. MIT says that the social network could make use of the algorithim and even charge extra for ads that are linked to the future popular topic. At the same time, it can be implemented to determine ticket sales for movies, duration of bus rides and possibly stock prices.

The latter might gather some interest from Wall Street, but judging by the presentation that MIT made so far it is not at the top of the list. The idea behind the algorithm is to find meaningful patterns from a sample set, which in Twitter's case is represented by topics that were not popular as well as previously trending ones.

It's an itch you'll want to scratch this holiday. Just give into it.

Preliminary results from our poll "Will you buy Google Nexus 10?" are in, and I'm not satisfied enough with the numbers, being well below 1,000 responses (hence, poll is reposted here). But at this juncture, 36.82 percent say they will buy as soon as the tablet is available -- and that's November 13 in some regions. Another 18.32 percent plan to buy within 3 months. So more than 55 percent plan to get the Nexus 10 before Valentine's Day. Hey, that's two holidays for you to ask for one, with Christmas obviously in-between. Ten percent of respondents are unsure, while 25.86 percent say they won't buy.

Windows 8, Windows RT, Surface, and Windows Phone 8 may have received all of the public's attention recently, their comrade Windows Server Essentials 2012 has officially become available with almost no fanfare.

Windows Server Essentials 2012 is a lower-end consolidation of the next-generation versions of Windows Small Business Server (Essentials and Standard), Windows Home Server, and Windows Storage Server Essentials in a single product. It also comes with some rather important new features for the home office and small business (supporting up to 25 users).

If you’ve been following the story, you’ll know Apple was ordered to post a notice on its UK website and in several newspapers, stating that Samsung did not copy the iPad. After losing its appeal, Apple complied, sort of, by posting a statement as directed on its site. Only instead of it taking the form of an apology, it dwelt on how uncool Samsung products are, and how the UK court is out of step with the rest of the world.

Yesterday, the UK court told Apple to take down the "incorrect" statement and put up a proper apology (and on the front page of the site, rather than on a linked page), giving it 48 hours to do so. Today Apple has complied with the first part of the order -- removing the notice -- but the replacement is unlikely to make an appearance until just before the deadline expires. However, the new statement has appeared in newspapers today, and while it follows the court’s request, it’s the sort of thing that will have the already annoyed judges wanting to punch walls.

The phablet is catching on. Two months ago Samsung announced the Galaxy Note II and in the meantime the South Korean corporation managed to sell three million units in 37 days since its release. That's right, and it barely touched US carriers.

The first iteration of the popular and controversial device sold 5 million units over a five month period. "Sales of Galaxy Note II are growing three times faster than that of the previous Galaxy Note", Samsung says in a statement. The success is rather impressive for what is basically a niche smartphone, with what may be considered limited reach due to its intimidating size. By comparison its smaller brother, the Galaxy S II, sold 20 million units in the first 100 days but, unlike the Note II the former appeals to a larger market audience.

Earlier this week, as Hurricane Sandy beat the crap out of the Eastern seaboard, I received an email message from lower Manhattan. You may have received this message, too, or one just like it. It felt to me like getting a radiogram from the sinking Titanic. An Internet company was running out of diesel fuel for its generator and would shortly drop off the net. The identity of the company doesn’t matter. What matters is what we can learn from the experience.

The company had weathered power outages before and had four days of diesel fuel stored onsite. Managers felt ready for Sandy. But most of their fuel wasn’t at the generator, it was stored in tanks in the building basement -- a basement that was soon flooded, the transfer pumps destroyed by incoming seawater. It was like a miniature Fukushima Daiichi, not far from Wall Street.