Bing and Facebook up in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g
Way back in 2007, Microsoft purchased a fraction of Facebook. The social network returned the favor in February by buying Atlas. The two tech goliaths are still smitten with one another, and today we learn that Microsoft search engine Bing gets closer to your friends.
Now the search engine is integrating Facebook comments directly into the sidebar that appears to the right side of search results. "Starting today, you will see comments on a relevant Facebook post within sidebar, as well as the ability add your own, all without having to leave Bing. You can also Like a post directly from Bing. Now you can see what your friends might know about what you’re searching for and engage with them directly without leaving the search page", Nektarios Ioannides, program manager for Bing, explains.
Financial Times comes to Flipboard [Q&A]
May 9 was a big day for Flipboard. The personal news app launched a new version on Android, bringing feature parity with iOS, and the Financial Times debuted as a content provider. FT is unique among magazine news publications, by making people pay. Free rides are short lived; the newspaper lets registered users view a limited number of stories per month. More than that, requires a subscription.
Many people look at Flipboard as a pretty news aggregator -- a smorgasbord of valuable content served up for free; eat as much as you like. Financial Times brings the pay model with it. You still need a FT account. Registered users are limited to blogs and video, while subscribers get access to everything. I wonder if personal paper apps like Flipboard aren't the future news, with some -- even more -- content behind the paywall.
Best Windows 8 apps this week
Twenty-eighth in a series. Several popular apps received updates this week. A new version of the ESPN app was uploaded to the store adding tennis coverage to it and fixing a couple of bugs related to the live scoring tile feature and the display of select sports when they are snapped on to the side of the screen.
Toolbox, an app offering access to custom tools that you can display next to each other on the screen received its first commercial in-app upgrade. Users can add a Twitter client to the app for a one-time payment of $4.99.
Meet Nokia Lumia 928 Windows Phone
On Friday, Nokia ended days of teases, officially taking the wraps off the Lumia 928 Windows Phone 8 smartphone. The handset, which will be available exclusively at US mobile operator Verizon, showcases a departure in design from current flagship, Lumia 920, while delivering similar hardware and software specifications.
The Lumia 928 packs a 4.5-inch OLED display with a resolution of 768 by 1280 and 334 pixels per inch, protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass. The screen can be operated using gloves or long fingernails (women should love this). Power comes from a 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 2000 mAh battery. The 32 GB internal storage is non-expandable.
Adobe security failure of the DAY: 160K SSNs exposed
Yesterday I wrote about Adobe's latest security nightmare, this time involving web development environment ColdFusion. I also stressed that while aware of the problem, the company didn't plan a fix until May 14, during its next monthly patch release. For the Washington state court, this is not soon enough.
A ColdFusion vulnerability exposed 160,000 Social Security numbers and the driver’s license numbers and names of a million people. Before hitting the panic button, realize that if you have had no legal issues then you are likely safe.
Samsung Galaxy S4 32GB arrives at AT&T
Today, another Galaxy S4 variant goes on sale at AT&T -- 32GB and yours for $249.99 with two-year contract. Buyers looking for commitment-freedom pay $669.99. The S4 joins HTC One as hottest smartphone of the season. Both pack gorgeous 1080p displays. The One is my choice for design; other benefits include booming front-facing speakers and low-light photography. Samsung packs in larger screen and loads more software capabilities.
For the US carrier selling more iPhones than any other, AT&T makes Galaxy S4 quite the priority, jumping ahead of competitors selling the 16GB model and carrying its larger-capacity cousin. Preorders started April 16, with the 16GB phone in stores two weeks later.
LinkedIn and Twitter apps come with new features on BlackBerry 10
Late yesterday, Canadian manufacturer BlackBerry announced yet another range of updates for the LinkedIn and Twitter apps on BlackBerry 10. The latest iterations are designed to bring the social networking apps on par with their Android, iOS and Windows Phone counterparts and, according to BlackBerry, to "make it easier than ever to stay connected and do more with your social and professional contacts, while on the go".
Twitter is on its third noteworthy update in the past couple of months -- the first one arrived in early-March while the second released weeks later. The latest iteration sports two major improvements, the first of which is the ability to display more content while searching. Users can view photos, relevant profiles and searches as well as tweets and top tweets on the same page.
Vikings invade Britain, again
Vikings is proving to be a hot TV show this season, since March 3rd premiere on the History channel. It has finished its nine episode season one run, but remains in demand. Now Amazon, through its LOVEFiLM service brings the famed barbarians back to jolly old England, where the Vikings landed near the end of the eighth century.
The drama portrays the world of these Dark Age raiders, traders and explorers -- not from an outsider's view, but, through the eyes of Viking society.
Nokia releases Play To DLNA app for Windows Phone 8
On Friday, Finnish handset maker Nokia announced that the Play To app for Windows Phone 8 made the grade from experimental to stable version and is now publicly available to download from the Store. Previously, the DLNA app could only be installed through Nokia' Beta Labs.
According to the company, Play To brings DLNA to all of Nokia's Windows Phone 8 handsets available today like Lumia 920, 720 and 520, among others. Compared to the experimental version that I detailed little over two weeks ago, the stable Play To app ships with a number of bug fixes but without any new features onboard.
Quickly turn JPGs into PDFs
When you need to distribute a particular set of images – or perhaps reconstruct some scanned pages into a digital version of the original document – then being able to combine those JPGs into a single PDF can be very useful. There are commercial tools which will handle this for you, but if your needs are simple then there’s no need to spend big money; the free (for personal use) JPGasPDF could provide everything you need.
The program is compact (a single 572KB executable), with a basic straightforward interface. If you’re in a hurry you could just click the Add button to select your images, the Create button to save the finished PDF, and, well, that’s it -- your document will be saved right away.
Acronis True Image Lite 2013 for local and cloud backup
Acronis International has added a new, cut-down backup tool to its roster with the release of True Image Lite 2013 by Acronis. Roughly six months after debuting the beta version, True Image Lite 2013 gets a final release, providing users with a simple tool for protecting specified folders through regular “non-stop” backups.
True Image Lite 2013 offers users two locations for backing up: a local storage device, such as external or network hard drive, and online through the Acronis Cloud, an optional add-on providing 250GB of internet storage for an additional outlay.
Use Google Fonts offline
Google Fonts is an excellent resource for web designers, with hundreds of top quality open source fonts freely available for anyone to use.
Now, though, you can also easily access and use the same fonts on the desktop, Windows or Mac, just by installing the SkyFonts client. The program requires you to first create a fonts.com account. But with that out the way, SkyFonts adds an icon to your system tray and is ready for use.
About those Windows 8 ads...
There’s more than one way to advertise a product and while I am a big fan of the approach that specifically focuses on features, I understand there is a need for other approaches. Sometimes you just need to go for the pure emotional response. In the case of the ads released by Microsoft today which focus on the Asian market that seems to be what they were going for. Take a look.
Better late than never -- Microsoft to fix Pwn2Own flaw
Patch Tuesday approaches quickly. That time of the month when Microsoft deems it appropriate to fix the myriad security flaws that rear their ugly heads during the preceding time frame. As is custom, the company gives advance notice of what to expect, but no details regarding actual flaws -- a nod to not allowing (more) hackers to take advantage of the issues discovered.
May 14th is the next scheduled update of your Windows computer, and it will carry along 10 bulletins with it. A couple of these patch much publicized holes in Internet Explorer, one of which the company just released a "Fix it" tool designed to temporarily mend.
The YouTube free ride is OVER
YouTube opened to the public in November 2005, and Google paid $1.6 billion for the service 11 months later. The video-sharing site is the quintessential freebee. No longer. Today Google announced the launch of the first pay-for channels, which is rather strange coming from the company which business model is about profiting from valuable content given away free wrapped with search keywords and advertising. Welcome to the new Internet, with paywalls rising everywhere. To play, you must pay.
In a statement Google says there are "1 million channels generating revenue on YouTube, and one of the most frequent requests we hear from these creators behind them is for more flexibility in monetizing and distributing content". That revenue largely comes from the in-video advertisements. Now you'll pay, too -- as little as 99 cents per month. Here's something: From the sampling I made today, subscription liberates you from advertising, which is something to cheer about.
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