Articles about Web App

Sign up for an account with a website and you’ll usually see them promising not to share your details with others. “We hate spam as much as you do”, they might claim, although none of this seems to prevent the endless torrent of junk which pours into our inboxes on a daily basis.

It could be a better idea to simply never give out your main email address in the first place, then. And MaskMe is an excellent Chrome extension that can help.

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WeVideo on Tuesday unveiled an all-new mode for its video editing Web app geared toward the casual video shooter with little editing experience who needs to do quick and simple edits and share them on social media sites.

We first looked at WeVideo's freemium Web app when it launched last year. That app is still around in mostly the same form, only now it's known as "Timeline Mode." It lets users edit video and audio clips with stills, titles, and effects like one might expect from a free video editor.

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Prismatic, the six-month old app that builds custom newsfeeds based upon your social network interests and behavior, released a major design update to its web-based interface on Thursday.

After Prismatic determines the information most relevant to your interests, it presents you with a feed of stories. Each entry contains three kinds of information: The actual story, the story's "meta information" (topic, publisher, author, origin of recommendation) and the related social information (shares, likes, and the ability to share the story to Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.) In today's update, Prismatic has consolidated all meta information and social information into a single, smaller bar, and devoted more time to the story itself.

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Endlessly revisiting a particular website as you wait for updates has to be one of the more tedious ways to spend your time online. And so, if you really want to know when your favorite sites have something new to offer, it’s generally a better idea to look for news on their Twitter account or RSS feed.

If your target sites don’t have either, though, you might benefit from WebMon, a tiny, free Windows tool that checks the webpages you specify and lets you know whenever they’ve been changed.

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Following an earlier tweet from Omar Shahine, Group Program Manager on SkyDrive at Microsoft, the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced the availability of the new Office Web Apps across Outlook and SkyDrive which sport a refreshed look and feel in line with Microsoft's modern design language deployed across its various services.

It also features expanded device support with touch-friendly editing from tablets, co-authoring and collaboration support across the Web apps, as well as more editing and formatting controls. The latest version promises general improvements to the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Web apps.

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In the late 90's and early 2000's, American music video channel VH1 aired a program called Pop-Up Video, which took existing music videos and augmented them with additional information about the performers, the videos, the music, and so forth. This information "popped" on screen at relevant times with an audible bubble popping noise.

The show turned out to be so popular that it ran for six years, and came back to VH1 nine years later. Right now, it's in its second year as a revival.

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Ubuntu fans, be prepared to upgrade! Canonical, parent company of one of the most popular Linux distros available on Thursday released Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" in desktop and server variants. It's labeled as a suitable alternative to Windows 8, coincidentally just before the October 26 launch of the latest consumer-oriented operating system from Microsoft.

On the desktop forefront, Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" brings integration between cloud and desktop environments and integration with popular web-based applications, which Canonical claims is the next evolutionary step in the transition towards a cloud-based, multi-device world. The server variant includes the Folsom release of OpenStack, as well as deployment and management tools touted as a time-saving solution for developer teams that deploy distributed applications.

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Cloud storage service Box is changing with a fresh, new look and introduction of document editing and connections. Editing capabilities follow a recent trend, as Google and Microsoft add similar functionality to their online "Drive" services.

The cloud storage service has reached 14 million users and 140,000 businesses, and with the latest update promises a completely new experience with emphasis on collaborations and content.

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"Bad Piggies", a mobile game that was quietly launched by software company Rovio Mobile, is one of the most popular games to be launched in the late period. Unfortunately, it's also a security risk if installed via third-party, free, extensions from the Chrome Web Store that claim to be the original app.

Security experts from Barracuda Networks have analyzed the number of free apps that turn up after searching for the popular game title in the Chrome Web Store. The company has found that these extensions, while obviously being a far cry from the actual Bad Piggies game, require elevated permissions. To profit from misleading the user, they also install a plug-in that delivers advertisements on popular websites. The severity of this security risk might be overlooked by users seeking to play the popular title.

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This morning, Apple posted an apology from the CEO about iOS 6 maps, which replaced the mature Google product available in the five previous versions of the operating system. Complaints about misidentifications and misdirections flooded the web, starting with the software's release on September 19.

The letter, posted on Apple's website and signed by Tim Cook, is a rare mea culpa. Ironically, Cook's temporary remedy: Use map apps like Bing or do what colleague Wayne Williams suggested yesterday -- create a shortcut to Google Maps web app. Wayne's Apple Maps review shows exactly what's wrong with the experience he describes as a downgrade.

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Microsoft on Tuesday announced it has added recycle bin functionality to its SkyDrive cloud storage and collaboration suite, adding yet another layer of redundancy to the service to make sure the unthinkable doesn't happen and you actually delete a document.

I've "accidentally installed" plenty of things that have made me want to punch my own teeth out, and plenty of my work files have become corrupted, or have crashed before I could save changes…but I can say with some degree of confidence that I've never accidentally deleted a file. Maybe I'm some kind of keystroke wizard or something, because Microsoft likes to make extra sure people don't mistakenly delete something they need.

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Cloud-based customer service startup Freshdesk on Tuesday announced the availability of the HTML5-based mobile app version of its helpdesk solution called FreshMobile. Like Salesforce's recently launched Desk.com mobile support solution, FreshMobile hooks up with the Freshdesk CRM system and lets agents resolve customer queries from any mobile device.

The idea behind FreshMobile is that it makes mobile support possible while working within the constraints of a mobile device. Freshdesk agents can create, save and reuse canned response templates for replying to tickets from their mobile device. The application also introduces a feature called "Solution Suggest," which uses previous activity to learn the most likely course of action on a given support ticket.

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One of the new features of Office 2010 (yep that’s 2010) was the Outlook Social Connector. This addon brought with it the ability to display social network information within Outlook itself. It took a little while for developers to get on board but last time I checked you could download "providers" to integrate Facebook, LinkedIn, Windows Live and Xing data.

Well, Office 2013 is now with us, and the social connector has been improved further. You no longer need to download a specific "provider" for Facebook or LinkedIn. Simply sign in with your existing credentials and Outlook 2013 will pull through the relevant data.

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For just about three years, we've had Microsoft's browser-based suite of free Office tools alongside the desktop Office software. In that time, we've composed and edited loads of Word documents, created Powerpoint presentations, and manipulated Excel spreadsheets. But when these types of Web apps debuted, there were three great islands: the standalone desktop software, the Web-based service, and the mobile application. Each was meant to be used in a different context, and each was equipped with different capabilities to suit those contexts.

For Microsoft in 2010, the PC was still the reigning king, so the Office Web apps were meant to get Office documents off the hard drive and out where they could be easily shared and passed between PCs.

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Torrents come in for a great deal of bad press due to the fact that they have become associated with piracy, but from the point of view of both the downloader and the provider of the download, things work out well in terms of improved download speeds and reduced bandwidth requirements. Downloading files in this way is easy enough, but by installing OneClick for Chrome you can make things even easier.

Once you have this Chrome extension installed, there is no need to use a torrent client to handle you downloads, and the torrents you choose to download are treated in much the same way as regular downloads. Using the extension means that Chrome can be used to handle your torrents, and there is no need to use a third party torrent client. This helps to keep things simple and speeds up the whole downloading process.

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