MAGIX Music Maker 17 -- Silver edition is free
When it comes to creating music with your computer, it can be difficult to know where to start. There is certainly no shortage of titles to choose from, but for anyone that isn't already an accomplished musician, the complexity of much of the music creation software that is available can be off-putting -- hefty price tags can often be an issue as well. MAGIX Music Maker Silver 17 is a little different, in as much as it is not only incredibly easy to use, it is available completely free of charge.
The Silver release of MAGIX music creation software is a somewhat cutdown version of the title's big brother. The number of audio channels you have available to work with has been reduced to four, and the number of samples included has also shrunk somewhat. In the free version of the program, there are only three musical styles to choose from when it comes to samples, and the range of instruments is far more restricted.
Thunderbird 5 is live -- grab it now!
Mozilla has placed the final code for Thunderbird 5.0 on its download servers. Version 5.0 represents the first major upgrade of Thunderbird for 18 months, although the number of headline features is relatively small: an improved email account wizard, better and more versatile tab handling, and a brand new Add-ons Manager and extensions management API.
There's also a new troubleshooting information page (accessible from the Help menu) that contains key information about your individual Thunderbird setup to aid fixing problems that may occur, as well as the fact attachments are now displayed with the file size next to them.
Google responds to Office 365: Help us compile 365 reasons Apps is better
Yesterday in the cleverly titled "365 reasons to consider Google Apps" blog post, Shan Sinha, Google Apps product manager, gave just four why his company's cloud suite is better than Microsoft. Motivation: Today's global launch of Office 365.
I observed that four is a long way from 365. Apparently someone at Google was listening. Last night the GoogleAtWork Twitter account tweeted: "Help us to 365! Many asked for all 365 reasons to consider GoogleApps. Add yours here http://t.co/DTjLZZu or tweet #apps365". About three hours ago, Google issued the "Final call! Many asked for 365 reasons to consider GoogleApps".
Google activates 500,000 Android devices daily
Android's march towards smartphone market dominance continued on Tuesday, as Google's Android chief Andy Rubin disclosed that activations continued to grow at a torrid pace. "There are now over 500,000 Android devices activated every day, and it's growing at 4.4% [week over week]," he tweeted early Tuesday morning.
Putting that in perspective, it was only at the Google I/O conference in May that Google reported surpassing 400,000 daily activations. Before that, in December Android surpassed 300,000 activations per day, and at that point was the first time it was surpassing total iOS daily activations on a regular basis.
Google+ is much more than a Facebook killer
Google on Tuesday unveiled a large-scale social sharing project it's calling Google+. Not to be confused with the +1 button it introduced in March, Google+ is a five-pronged, post-Facebook approach to social networking and collaboration.
The Five Prongs of Google+
Mozilla to start thinking about enterprise needs
Firefox is an [in]famously difficult product for IT to deploy and manage in large organizations. They may be dragged kicking and screaming into it, but Mozilla will now begin to at least consider the needs of enterprises.
The first version of Firefox was released on Nov. 9, 2004. Its usage share worldwide seems to be in the neighborhood of 27 percent, but in some countries, like Germany, it's much higher, even a majority of all users. That's actually quite an accomplishment for a product which pointedly ignores the needs of enterprises.
Want to pay three times more than Google Apps? Office 365 is for you
When Microsoft's Office group formed in the early 1980s, something was missing from the DNA. Simplicity. Today's Office 365 plans -- seven of them -- are anything but simple. While Microsoft offers a stunning range of hosted apps capabilities, Office 365 pricing, or its feature set, is nowhere as straightforward as Google Apps. Nor as cheap.
Little more than two months after opening the public beta, Microsoft's hosted productivity apps service debuted today in 40 countries. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced Office 365 during a live New York event late this morning.
10x faster than LTE, Ericsson shows off what 5G could be like in 2013
The speed of 4G LTE makes our 3G mobile broadband networks feel like stone age technology, but on Tuesday Swedish telecommunications leader Ericsson blew them all away with the next-gen network technology that's 10 times faster than LTE.
3GPP Release 10, also known as LTE Advanced, was first submitted to the ITU in 2009 and included "high mobility" and "low mobility" peak data rates which could be either 100Mbps or 1Gbps. Tuesday, Ericsson utilized 60MHz of aggregated bandwidth that was temporarily "on loan" from the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) to demonstrate the kind of speeds it could attain with current commercial radio equipment and the nascent LTE Advanced technology.
HTC puts an end to crappy Android cameras with the T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide
If there's one department where Android absolutely cannot compete with Apple's iOS, it's in the camera. The iPhone 4 has completely shattered any previously held beliefs about low-quality CMOS photography, and is now beating DSLR cameras in popularity. It recently beat the Nikon D90 as the most popular camera on Flickr with 4,841 registered users.
Meanwhile, the most popular Android phone on Flickr, the HTC Evo 4G, has only got 523 users. That isn't even in the same league as the iPhone 4, despite the fact that it has an 8 megapixel sensor against the iPhone's five. The reason should be clear to anyone who's used a variety of Android-powered smartphones. From shooting to sharing to editing, the camera experience is always less streamlined on Android than it is on iOS.
Uh-oh, Google Apps, Office 365 launches in 40 countries
Today, Microsoft made official its most important push into the cloud, ever, with release of Office 365. The software giant took off the beta moniker and released final pricing ahead of a New York launch event with CEO Steve Ballmer.
Office 365 combines Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online into a single cloud-based package that is scalable from small businesses to large enterprises, with a per-user license cost depending upon the volume of users. The new service is available immediately in 40 countries.
Opera 11.50 released -- get it now!
Opera has released the final version of its popular alternative web browser for Windows, Mac and Linux, Opera 11.50. Codenamed "Swordfish", this latest release actually debuted yesterday as Release Candidate 5, but was quickly updated to become a final release.
The most notable change in Opera 11.50: it features major improvements to the program's Speed Dial page, making it possible to get all the information you need from a Speed Dial without having to open the web page itself.
When was the last time you heard about customers turning against Apple? How about today?
Last week, I reported first about buyers dissing Final Cut Pro X. Then comedian Conan O`Brien turned negative reaction into a punchline. Now there's a petition against the product -- and demands. My, God, they're making demands of their holy leader Steve Jobs. Well, they don't directly mention the CEO, just Apple. But aren't they one in the same?
When I started writing this post, there were 1,300 petitioners claiming "Final Cut Pro X is not a professional application". As I post, the number is more than 1,650.
Maybe the Web isn't making us stupider: TED talks hit 500 million views
Nonprofit organization TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) is famous for the annual conferences it has held for over 20 years, which concentrate on promoting and sharing interesting ideas in the arts and sciences. For the last five years, the group has been posting videos of its famous "TEDTalks" freely on its site, to help spread its ideas even further.
The library of videos started with just six presentations and has grown to just under 1,000 today, On Monday, along with the first non-English TEDTalk, the group announced some of its most impressive statistics: its talks have been viewed more than 500 million times across TED.com, iTunes embedded and downloaded, Hulu, and more. Just one year ago, TED's video count was at 290 million across 700 available videos.
With LulzSec gone, Anonymous ramps up attacks
LulzSec may have faded off into the hacking annals of history, but Anonymous isn't resting. The group on Monday released a file of what appears to be a cyberterrorism training manual. It is not clear how the group obtained the document.
"Little teaser while we work on the actual release: Ever interested in anti-cyberterrorism training?" a tweet from a Twitter account associated with the group reads. The manual appears to come from FEMA's Counter Terrorism Defense Initiative and is dated from 2009.
If a college graduate, older than 30, wealthy and Hispanic, you probably own an e-reader
OK, probably is a stretch, but more likely. :)
The ebook reader market is beginning to pick up -- and why not with Amazon and Barnes & Nobile offering good devices and marketing the Holy Hell about them. You have to be vacationing on Mars not to know what Kindle and Nook e-readers are.
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