Articles about Digital Lifestyle

Synium Software has released MacFamilyTree 7.0 and MobileFamilyTree 7.0, brand new versions of its acclaimed family history software for Mac, iPhone and iPad. Both MacFamilyTree and MobileFamilyTree are built from the same architecture, sharing the majority of features as well as a practically identical user interface.

Both versions gain significant new features and improvements in version 7.0, including redesigned user interface, improved source management tools and iCloud integration for keeping research backed up and in sync between computers and mobiles. In addition, MacFamilyTree 7.0 gains high-definition maps for the first time with an improved Virtual Globe chart.

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After ten years with Yahoo as its mail and news provider, UK internet company BT is switching to a different service. Starting in June it will begin migrating its customers to a new service named BT Mail which will be run by California-based Critical Path.

Nick Wong, director of online for BT's consumer division says, "We will be switching customers' email over to BT Mail, which will include the features and functions they expect from a modern email service. We will be keeping our customers fully informed about what changes to expect and when they will be able to enjoy the new services."

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Facebook has announced that it's introducing verified pages to help users find the authentic accounts of celebrities, businesses and other high profile subjects. Verified pages will have a blue check mark next to the name both at the top of the page and in search results.

Given that Facebook has long been plagued by fake pages and that Twitter has had verified accounts -- marked by a blue tick, funnily enough -- since 2009, it's perhaps surprising that the social network has taken so long to make this step. On its official blog announcing the news the company says, "Facebook proactively verifies authentic Pages and profiles, but if you believe that you're being impersonated you can always report a fake account."

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A few years ago, if you wanted to join a website you had to create a brand new account, enter your email address and come up with yet another password to try and remember. That’s all changed of course and now you can log into a vast amount of sites using existing credentials for services like Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

Today, Amazon adds itself to the list of services you can use to gain access to other sites with the introduction of Login with Amazon.

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Although Microsoft has yet to officially reveal the price of its next generation games console, Amazon has decided to set the figure at £599.99 on its pre-order page.

This is considerably higher than most people would have expected -- closer to £400 would have been a reasonable guess -- and dwarfs the launch price of the Xbox 360 which cost gamers £209.99 for the core system back in December 2005.

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We all know that the internet is home to illegal software, music, movies and much more. It may seem like an impossible task to put figures to piracy levels, but a report by Ofcom, the independent regulator for the communications industries in the UK, has done just that. The Online Copyright Infringement Tracker report found that a staggering 30 percent of regular downloaders of media did so illegally.

The report looked at the period from November 2012 to January 2013 and analyzed UK consumption of online music, film, TV programmes, books, games and software. Compared to the previous three months, the percentage of web users accessing any of this type of content increased from 57 percent to 60 percent.

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Google is all about searching. Well… not "all" about, but it's what the company is known for. Any firm that logs information about how customers are using its services are usually berated, but Google Trends can provide a fascinating insight into how the rest of the world is using the internet. This tool has been available for a while but there's now a sexy new full screen mode available -- and you can turn it into a screensaver.

If you've ever been curious about what people in other parts of the world are searching for, head over to the full screen visualization tool and you can find out. At the bottom of the screen you can choose from one of several countries, or opt to see an overview of global searches.

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The Android web browser market is a packed one, and users are almost spoiled for choice. If you're a fan of Firefox, Chrome or Opera on your main computer, there's an accompanying mobile version for you to work with, and there are plenty of others as well.

The GO Launcher Dev Team is best known -- it should go without saying -- for the Android launcher GO Launcher EX, but it has now branched out and is bringing its stylish looks to a web browser -- Next Browser.

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A week ago BBC iPlayer finally made its debut on Windows Phone 8, but the existing Android version has been far from forgotten about. BBC iPlayer 1.7 has hit Google Play and now boasts support for 10 inch tablets.

While owners of larger tablets previously had to pay a visit to the iPlayer website, UK viewers can now enjoy their favorite programmes directly in the app. If you're nursing a smaller 7-incher, there's no need to feel left out. The UI for more diminutive tablet and phones has been updated with a few tweaks as well.

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We’re used to the somewhat spooky way that websites track our every move. Notice how the adverts on various sites reflect the products you’ve been viewing elsewhere? You only have to look at a CD on Play and Amazon will be trying to sell it to you within hours. We’re used to the GPS tracker on our smartphones monitoring where we are all the time and pointing us towards local attractions too.

Well now this technology is starting to spread to other devices too. The BBC has used the Thinking Digital conference to trial a perceptive radio. Developed by the BBC's Future Media North Laboratory, the radio uses information about where you live to change the listening experience by referencing local places or weather conditions. It also monitors the background noise at your location so it can decide whether to boost certain sounds to enhance the listening experience. The idea is to provide an "immersive" broadcast that can reconfigure the content for each listener.

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Do you say "gif"or "jif"? I’ve always been in the gif camp but Steve Wilhite the inventor of the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) says it should be pronounced "jif". Speaking to the New York Times in the run up to being honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Webby Awards he said he was "annoyed" that there was still debate about how the acronym should be pronounced.

The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations, but there’s long been debate about which one is correct, there’s even a Gif Pronunciation Page dedicated to the argument. It suggests that the reason for the "jif" sound is to associate it with the popular brand of peanut butter -- a staple of programmer diets. Of course this only works in the US, here in the UK we think of Jif as a brand of lemon juice or a defunct product for cleaning the sink.

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Despite Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's promise not to "screw up" Tumblr following its recent acquisition, the move has caused some disquiet in the user community.

Posting on Tumblr, of course, many users are worried about the impact advertising may have on the Tumblsphere, others that Yahoo will change the ethos of the site. There was disquiet about rumors Yahoo would push to make it more family friendly by filtering content too -- around 1 in 6 Tumblr pages is reckoned to contain porn. Despite assurances, and the fact that the circulating message about the clean up has been exposed as fake, there's a lot of distrust out there.

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Cloud, cloud, cloud, cloud, cloud. This fairly innocuous word has become one that is bandied around with abandon, often with the misplaced notion that it adds an element of 'cool' that was not previously present. But is working in the cloud all it's cracked up to be? Is it necessary? Should you care about it?

You don't have to think back all that far to remember a time when simply being online seemed like a fairly alien concept -- never mind actually working online. When the concept of Active Desktop was added to Windows 9x the notion of staying online throughout the day just to see the desktop update with the latest weather forecast, news, stock prices or other data was unimaginable.

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As has been widely rumored over the last few days, Yahoo has paid $1.1 billion for blogging platform Tumblr. In recent times this is the most paid for an Internet acquisition since Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion last year.

Founded by David Karp in 2007 from a bedroom of his mother's New York apartment, the attraction of Tumblr has always been its clean interface and ease of use, which allows people to be up and blogging within minutes. The service has around 217 million users worldwide and is the 24th most popular site in the US according to research company Quantcast.  The company employs 175 people and claims to have more than 100 million blogs.

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Twenty-ninth in a series. The US Windows 8 apps store crossed the 50,000 apps mark for the first time today; a total of 50,156 apps are listed in the store, with the majority of them free to download and use.

That's an increase of 1,639 apps in the past seven days, a sharp drop over last week's increase of nearly 2400 apps.

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