Rev up this week's 20 exciting software downloads
There are a number of worthy highlights this week, including the long awaited Opera 12 release, iTunes support for iOS 6 devices and a relatively major update to Skype for Windows and Mac.
The major release this week must be Opera 12. After months of beta-testing, the browser is finally available, along with an interesting twist, in the form of the first native 64-bit build. Whether a 64-bit version of a web browser makes a huge difference is another matter entirely. Opera 12 ships with numerous speed improvements, including basic support for hardware acceleration. It’s not all good news though as gone are the widgets and other features such as Opera Voice. Download Opera 12, Opera 12 (64-bit) and the separate Opera Portable 12, which you can take on the road.
That Facebook account verification email in your inbox is a scam
If the scary email or app notification, and subsequent webpage, is to be believed, you have only a few days to verify your Facebook account or you’ll be out of luck. But don’t worry, a few days later you will magically get a few more days to verify, and so the scam goes.
A Twitter follower with the handle of @chasapple sent us a tip on an app message they received, here’s a screenshot of what happens if you clicked the link.
Ethiopian government outlaws VOIP, 15-year prison sentences possible
Troubling news is coming out of East Africa this week. International media site Al Jazeera has just picked up that on May 24th 2012, Ethiopia ratified new legislation called the 'Ethiopian Telecom Service Infringement Law'. The Legislation criminalizes any third-party Internet services not run by the state controlled telecom monopoly, Ethio Telecom, with Skype being a focus. However, the ban affects other services, such as Google Talk.
The new telecom law is meant to impede Internet telephony, with reported punishments of heavy fines and 8 to 15 years in prison if caught. The legislation prohibits all network telephony traffic, along with audio and video data traffic via social media, reports the The Africa Review.
Microsoft, Symantec team on future disaster recovery solutions for Azure
Customers of Microsoft's Windows Azure platform will gain disaster recovery features thanks to a partnership with Symantec announced this week. The offering is the first such service for the Azure platform, the two companies say.
While the effort was announced this week during Microsoft's annual TechEd conference in Orlando, Microsoft says the actual service itself will not be available until sometime next year, and is a move that makes sense for Symantec at this point.
Nokia layoffs = Benefit for US, Sweden. Problem?
Last year, when Microsoft announced it was partnering with Nokia in Windows Phone development, it was widely expected to result in significant staff cutbacks in Nokia's research and development department. In fact, it was part of the agreement. Both Nokia and Microsoft said there would be an R&D handoff. Finland's Minister for Economic Affairs, Mauri Pekkarinen went so far as to say it would result in the biggest structural change that Finland has ever seen in the new technology sector.
Yesterday, Nokia CEO Steven Elop announced major R&D cutbacks...these 10,000 layoffs should have surprised no one.
Will Microsoft's mystery product be 'clap on, clap off' for mobile?
Cue up the rumormill for anyone's guess what Microsoft will announce at 6:30 pm EDT on Monday. I'll throw out one, inspired by software developer Robert Johnson, who occasionally writes for BetaNews (and we wish it was more often).
"If Mashable is correct and Microsoft really is gonna announce a self-manufactured tablet then it could possibly be a further refinement of the laptop that was rumored a few months ago", he speculated. "Remember how there were reports of people who had seen a device made by Asus that contained Kinect cameras?" Yes I do, and replied: "Kinect mobile has limited applications, but they're big for key enterprise markets, such as healthcare. Otherwise what have you got? 'Clap on, clap off' for PCs".
We can’t expect regulators to become our crowdfunding coaches
Last in a series. In part one, we learned how important crowd funding can be for helping tech startups and the economy. In part two, we worried about how criminals and con men might game the eventual crowdfunding system when it starts in earnest next January. And in this final part I suggest a strategy for crowdfunding success that essentially comes down to carpe diem– seize the day!
Crowdfunding done right will have a huge positive impact on any economy it touches. But by done right I mean done in a manner that maximizes impact and minimizes both corruption and unnecessary complexity. This is not something that must be accomplished specifically through strict regulation, either. I’m not opposed to regulation, just suspicious of it. I’m suspicious of any government policy that purports to be so elegant as to accomplish economic wonders at little or no cost. That just hasn’t happened in my fairly long lifetime so I see no reason to expect things to change.
Rapid Environment Editor makes useful a Windows relic
Long ago, in the days of DOS, there was no Registry where key system settings could be stored. And so variables such as, say, the location of the operating system Temporary folder were saved instead to the Environment, where they could be freely accessed by all your programs.
These days the Environment is largely a relic of the past, but it can be useful to check its contents occasionally, if only as a part of cleaning up your system. And while you can do this within Windows (right-click Computer, click Properties > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables), it’s generally much easier to use the free Rapid Environment Editor.
Apple cofounder calls Siri 'poo-poo'
It's another dress-down Friday here at BetaNews, and how could I resist dressing down Apple's Siri when cofounder Steve Wozniak makes doing so easy? Besides, I've already asserted "Siri sucks", then there is that lawsuit about the voice assistant. Speaking of Apple legal wranglings, who needs enemies when you've got friends like Woz. Surely the lawyers behind that lawsuit are drooling all over the Times Union, where the comments appeared.
Apple's misfortune: Wozniak used Siri before the iPhone maker bought the company, and he really liked the technology. He called it "pretty incredible". But no longer. "A lot of people say Siri. I say poo-poo". He gives an example. Before Apple bought Siri: "I would ask 'What are the prime numbers greater than 87?' and they would come up all in a row". Afterwards: "I'd say 'What are the prime numbers greater than 87?' And I'd get prime rib".
Polyglot 3000 is a universal translator for text
I you have some text that you’d like to get translated then there’s usually no need to know its language. Plenty of online services will do their best to automatically detect the language for you, then translate it to whatever you need. If your preferred service can’t recognize the language, though, it might be useful to have a desktop alternative like Polyglot 3000 to hand.
The program’s design is very straightforward, and works exactly as you’d expect. Just paste your sample text into Polyglot (or enter it manually, or open it in a plain text file), click the “Recognize language” button, and the program will deliver its report. Which usually means naming the most likely language for this sample (currently 474 are supported), and providing a Recognition Accuracy estimate to let you know how reliable this verdict might be.
Western Digital branches out into routers with new My Net products
Western Digital has been around for decades, and is known primarily for its storage solutions. Thursday, WD unveiled a new line of home networking products that show the company's continued interest in personal media management and entertainment, a relatively small segment of their product line that currently includes the the WDTV product line and My Passport AV line.
The new My Net line includes five differently-equipped dual-band routers and an 8-port network switch which range from $79 to $350 in cost.
IDC will finally count Windows tablets with iPads and Androids
Hopefully, Gartner and other analyst firms will show as much sense.
Windows tablets have gotten the shaft from IDC and other analyst firms for far too long. They count the devices as PCs, not tablets. Last year, after Gartner's tablet forecast failed to include Windows, several prominent bloggers fanned the flames of misinformation, wrongly concluding Microsoft's OS would have no share by 2015. Today, IDC issued a new forecast that still ignores Windows tablets, but changes are promised.
Amazon improves customer support options for AWS customers
Amazon has expanded its support options for its Amazon Web Services cloud offering, giving better free support to all customers and reducing the pricing of paid support tiers. The company is also renaming the paid tiers to better represent its target customers.
These tiers had been named Bronze, Gold and Platinum -- they are now referred to as Developer, Business, and Enterprise. Amazon expanded its paid support options back in January, and added third-party support and Trusted Advisor services in beta to its Gold and Platinum support levels. Thursday's moves take these offerings out of beta, and makes the higher-level support options affordable to a wider range of AWS customers.
Broken trust: Nation-state malware has a negative impact on GDP
The slow drip of revelations about Flame have kept this piece of malware in the news for more than two weeks so it is worth reminding people that most antivirus programs now protect against Flame (ESET products detect it as Win32/Flamer.A). The coverage of Flame was boosted last week by a conveniently-timed assist from leaks that put Stuxnet back in the headlines.
Frankly, many antivirus experts were underwhelmed by reports that anonymous officials in the US. government were asserting that the industrial-sabotage malware known as Stuxnet was developed as part of attacks on Iran's industrial infractructure sanctioned by the President of the United States (a lot of us already assumed that was the case). There has also been a longstanding presumption of Israeli involvement in Stuxnet and so it was no surprise to hear "Stuxnet is our baby; Obama disclosed it for his reelection campaign" coming from Mossad agents. The third unsurprising revelation is that part of the Flame code is nearly identical to code found in Stuxnet.
Get ready for Microsoft mystery Monday
Say, it must be vacation time. The folks from Redmond, Wash. will trek to Los Angeles for a mysterious June 18 event. It's the right month to soak up Southern California sun. Timing surely isn't coincidental -- a week following Apple's swaggering MacBook Pro with Retina Display, iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion announcements and 9 days before Google's developer conference commences. Apple and Google chose San Francisco venues, while Microsoft will get its people out of the clouds into some blue skies (well, once the Marine layer blows off). I'm all for LA, since it's driving distance from San Diego. Not that I received an invitation.
But others who got one have shared the details, of which there are none. Microsoft is being uncharacteristically cagey, a corporate cultural quality that is in too short supply up North. Nothing builds buzz like mystery. With Apple's announcements behind, and Google I/O too far away, Microsoft has given bloggers, commenters, reporters and other pundits something to speculate about. Oh, what could it be?
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