What is Facebook's new Home on Android?
It's the question many people have asked since the social network announced its April 4 event one week ago. This live blog answers the question.
Today's "new Home on Android" follows by nearly a month, a massive user interface redesign, as Facebook unifies the look and feel across devices and puts more emphasis on mobile. Obviously Android is part of that. Paragraphs are reverse order, with newest up top. All times EDT.
Get notified about Windows 8 updates
It’s no secret that Windows 8 has seen some controversial changes, in particular the removal of the Start menu. But with all the focus on these larger issues, you might have missed some smaller, but also significant design decisions. Like, for example, that there’s no longer any desktop alert when Windows updates are available.
There is a new alert on the logon screen, of course. And you can always set up Windows to install updates automatically. But, if you don’t reboot often (or you bypass the logon screen), and you want to keep tighter control over your updates, then you’ll need to look elsewhere for a little extra assistance. And Windows Update Notifier is the perfect candidate.
Gartner says the PC has no future
Today, Gartner offers grim prognostications for the PC's future, which is not surprising. That the analyst firm took so long disturbs and reveals much about how all these consultants seek to preserve client contracts before anything else. I've warned for years that connected-devices would diminish the personal computer's relevance, much like the mainframe's decline three decades ago. The PC era is over, as I asserted here 26 months ago. On Halloween 2008, I asked in a Microsoft Watch post: "Will your next PC be a smartphone?" What took Gartner so long? The "new device religion" analysis still misses the mark, too.
Following IDC's lead, Gartner now combines PCs, smartphones and tablets into a single forecast. By that measure, in 2012, Android worldwide device shipments (497 million) exceeded Windows (346.5 million) and will more than double (to 1.07 billion) by 2014. Analysts warn the operating system that defined the PC era will struggle with Apple iOS and OS X to be the second dominant platform. By many measures, the circumstance looks grim for Microsoft and Windows, and that's already the popular sentiment today among blog posts and news stories about Gartner's forecast. Don't believe them.
Backupify launches additional cloud-to-cloud backup tools for Google Apps
Backupify is introducing an enhanced set of backup and recovery features designed to support its core offering for enterprise-level organizations on Google Apps. The "Spring Release for Google Apps" includes tools built to offer more efficient ways for administrators and end-users to manage their backups within larger organizations.
The update, which builds on the Winter Release launched last December, adds the following advanced data recovery and admin controls:
LG's Optimus G Pro lands in Japan at NTT DOCOMO
On Thursday, LG announced that the Optimus G Pro, the company's Android flagship smartphone, is now available at Japanese carrier NTT DOCOMO. In mid-January, NTT DOCOMO was the first to reveal the handset, a number of important specifications and its release date -- April 2013.
Unlike its international sibling which sports a 5.5-inch panel, the NTT DOCOMO variant of the Optimus G Pro comes with a smaller 5.0-inch IPS display. The resolution is the same -- 1080 by 1920 but the density is higher -- 440 ppi (pixels per inch). NTT DOCOMO originally revealed that the Optimus G Pro will ship with a 1.7 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, but today LG said that in fact the newer and faster, still Qualcomm-made, 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragn 600 processor is used instead.
URL Snooper lets you download streaming media files
If you’d like to download a YouTube video then there are plenty of options available, from web services like KeepVid to dedicated tools like Free YouTube Download.
Capturing streaming videos from other sites can be a challenge, though, as their URLs are often concealed by scripts and similar tricks. Examining the page source will sometimes give you clues, but URL Snooper could be a simpler option: the program just watches your internet activity, and displays a list of any streaming URLs it finds.
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean comes to ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity
One month after the company updated the Transformer Pad TF300 to Android 4.2, ASUS has announced that the Transformer Pad Infinity is also poised to receive the second Jelly Bean iteration.
On its Facebook page, ASUS posted a picture which lists the Android 4.2 update as coming to the Infinity, with the roll-out started yesterday. So what do you get from the upgrade?
Build Retina-compatible websites with Xara Web Designer 9 Premium
Established UK developer Xara has released Xara Web Designer 9 and Xara Web Designer Premium 9, the latest builds of its popular web design package for Windows. Version 9 automatically supports the creation of HiDPi/Retina-compatible websites (Premium only), updates support for HTML5 and CSS3 standards and adds a dedicated 64-bit build for 64-bit systems with more than 4GB RAM installed.
Improved HTML5 and CSS3 compatibility has a number of benefits for Xara developers, most notably more efficient and faster loading websites. This is due to the fact many page elements that were previously converted into images can now be rendered natively in HTML5. These include rectangles -- simple, rounded and skewed, box shadows, text with drop shadows and various page backgrounds.
Malwarebytes Secure Backup saves to the cloud
Malwarebytes has unveiled its new Secure Backup product, an online service created in conjunction with SOS Online Backup, which automatically scans your files before they’re uploaded to the cloud. This ensures that, if you’re ever hit by a virus, you’ll know you can restore a backup without any danger of reinfection. And if you want to share a file with others, then, again, you can all be confident that it’s clean.
The current Secure Backup download is a beta offering 5GB of online storage, which will expire after 14 days. If you like the idea and decide to upgrade, though, there are 100GB ($59.95 per year), 200GB ($119.95) or 500GB ($299.95) packages available.
NetConnectChoose lives up to its name
NirSoft’s prolific Nir Sofer has announced his latest release,NetConnectChoose. And it’s a tiny tool which displays all your active internet connections, and allows you to choose one that Windows should use by default.
But if that doesn’t sound relevant to you, don’t worry: despite the program being as compact as ever (a 60.6KB download, including the Help file), Softer has still managed to cram in some useful extra functionality, and NetConnectChoose will also display a host of statistics on every connection it finds.
One year later, nearly half of Instagrammers use Android
Kids. They grow up so fast. It seems like just yesterday that my Android phone finally became a member of the Instagram generation, only just "slightly" behind all of those iPhones out there. Now the social photo sharing service is celebrating its one year anniversary on the Google-based mobile operating system.
Philip McAllister, of the Instagram Android team, announces that "One year ago today we launched Instagram for Android. In less than a day, over a million people downloaded the app, and now nearly half of all Instagrammers use the Android app to share photos with friends, family and the world".
SkyDrive app is Microsoft's 'new normal'
Microsoft continues to match development pace with Google, releasing today yet another app update. SkyDrive 3.0 for iOS follows many other recent releases, including Outlook.com Calendar (this week), Windows 8/RT Mail, Calendar and People apps (last week) and SkyDrive (mid-March), among others.
In my news analysis about the new Windows 8/RT core apps, I asserted: "It's a new Microsoft", explaining how the company has greatly picked up the pace of new product development -- something also seen in Windows Blue, which I expect to ship less than a year after the great 8. A day following my analysis, Frank Shaw, Microsoft corporate communications chief, said that "continuous development cycle is the new normal across Microsoft", which is consistent with reinvention as the "devices and services" company that CEO Steve Ballmer described last year.
Windows Phone users can now be puzzled by Amazing Alex
When saying I have played Rovio's Amazing Alex game on my Android phone for some time, I don't mean a cheap shot at the app launching today on Windows Phone. To be truthful, it is more a challenge, and one that comes with sincere sympathy, because folks on the Microsoft mobile platform now have the opportunity to be just as baffled as me.
The physics-based puzzle game from the Finnish company debuted for Windows Phone 8. According to Microsoft's Michael Stroh, "The game has more than 100 levels, 35 interactive objects, and four locations to keep things interesting. But one of my favorite features of Amazing Alex is this: the game lets you design and share your own levels -- and download the best fan-created levels engineered by other players".
Mozilla and Samsung team up to kill Chrome mobile
Say, Google, do you feel a sharp burning sensation in your back? That's the knife Samsung just plunged in. Ouch! The twisting motion must really hurt.
Mozilla and Samsung are collaborating on a new mobile web browsing engine, Servo, which success would offer huge benefits to both companies. Apple and Google dominate mobile devices with their respective WebKit browsers, largely shutting out Firefox from the most important device category since the PC. Incumbency is an advantage, with browsers preinstalled on Android and iOS. Users must download rival products, and many don't. Meanwhile the South Korean electronics giant accounted for nearly 43 percent of all Android smarthphone sales in fourth quarter, according to Gartner. The company controls the broader user experience via TouchWiz UI, but Google controls the browser.
Microsoft releases SkyDrive 3 for iOS
There’s certainly no shortage of cloud storage services to choose from these days and Microsoft’s SkyDrive provides a fairly generous 7GB of space free of charge. The latest version of the iOS app sees compatibility extending to include not only the iPhone 5, but also the iPad Mini, and there are also a few new features to explore.
The latest release comes after Apple blocked updates to the app following Microsoft’s launch of a subscription model. This could be one of the reasons that it is now not possible to sign up for a SkyDrive account from within the SkyDrive app -- if you have an account already you’ll be able to sign in straight away, but if you need to create one, you will have to head over to the website to do so.
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