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BetaNews.Com (5 non lus)

MAGIX Music Maker 17 Silver is yours, free download just for a day

Publié: janvier 2, 2012, 11:34pm CET par Mark Wilson

You may well have entertained the thought of using your computer to create music, but knowing just where to start can be a serious stumbling block. Unless you are already a musician, the majority of the music creation titles that are available are pretty complicated to use and can be very off-putting to anybody looking to get started. To help make things a little easier for you, we’re giving away a free copy of MAGIX Music Maker 17 Silver, worth $19.95, which can be used to create impressive musical works with loops, samples and more.

As anyone who has used MAGIX software will be aware, Music Maker 17 Silver is a delightfully easy to use program, but this does not make it any the less powerful. You are provided with a computer-based four track recording studio to work with, and while four tracks may not sound like much this is a versatile tool that lends itself to experimentation, and you will find that you are able to create something truly impressive quickly and easily.

There is a selection of loops and samples for you to work with, with examples from a number of music genres and the option of using a range of different instruments. These form the building block of your musical creations, and creating your first track is a simple matter of dropping these samples into place on the timeline and arranging them however you like. You can then start experimenting with the special effects and filters in a bid to create something truly unique.

If you are a musician, MAGIX Music Maker 17 Silver can be used to compliment your instrument. You can use the application to record yourself playing, giving you the ability to create your own loops and samples that can be used in future projects. Whatever sort of creation you come up with, you can export the results to an MP3 file which can be easily burned to disc or shared online with others.

Once you have the program downloaded and installed, you will need to register the software in order to use it free of charge. The first time you launch the MAGIX Music Maker 17 Silver, click the registration link and either sign into or create a new MAGIX online account. Once you have provided a valid email address, you will be provided with a serial number that can be pasted into the registration screen of the application.

To take advantage of this special giveaway, go to the Downloadcrew Giveaway site, grab your copy of the program and get a free serial code – but act fast, the offer goes live for 24 hours, between January 2 at 23:59 and January 3 at 23:59, Central European Time.

Photo Credit: Pavel K/Shutterstock
As many as 55 Million users abandoned Internet Explorer in December

Publié: janvier 2, 2012, 9:03pm CET par Tim Conneally

Last Friday, Microsoft published its year-end Internet Explorer statistics based on Net Applications usage tallies, and concluded that Internet Explorer 9 would have claim a 25 percent share of the Windows 7 browser market. This trend was illustrated by IE8 users upgrading to the new browser.

However, the final statistics from StatCounter and NetApplications for the month of December show that not all IE8 users are upgrading, and Internet Explorer (all versions) continues to drop as Google's Chrome browser continues to rise in large jumps across the world.

StatCounter's global statistics suggest that it's not just Chrome that users are switching to. Their statistics show all of the top five browsers except Internet Explorer were up incrementally in December.

Chrome enjoyed the largest increase, going from 25.69 percent to 27.27 percent. Firefox went up just a hair, from 25.23 percent to 25.27 percent. Apple's Safari went up from 5.92 percent in November to 6.08 percent, and Opera went from 1.82 percent to 1.98 percent. Internet Explorer, meanwhile, dropped from 40.63 percent to 38.65 percent.

Internet Explorer experienced a 1.98 percent drop, which is equal to Opera's total share of the market.

In other words, Internet Explorer lost as many users in December as Opera has altogether. Opera estimates it has over 220 million users worldwide, but this figure includes the desktop versions as well as popular mobile and mini versions. In April, Opera Turbo product analyst Lawrence Eng estimated that there were approximately 54 million total users of Opera Desktop.

It should be noted that StatCounter isn't a scientific representation of the entire Web, but it does base its market share statistics on very large samples. Its global monthly sample set includes more than 15 billion hits on over 3 million of StatCounter's member sites.

For the month of December, NetApplications showed that Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari all lost market share while Chrome and Opera both gained. Internet Explorer went from 52.64 percent to 51.87 (.77 down); Firefox went from 22.14 to 21.83 percent (.31 down); Chrome went from 18.18 percent to 19.11 percent (.93 up); Safari went from 5 percent to 4.97 percent (.03 down); and Opera went from 1.55 percent to 1.66 percent (up .11).

Though the results are slightly different from StatCounter, the increase of Chrome use and decrease of Internet Explorer use was the same in both.

Photo: InnerVisionArt/Shutterstock
CoolNovo: Chrome with benefits

Publié: janvier 2, 2012, 5:01pm CET par Mike Williams

Chrome is an excellent browser, one of the best around, with plenty of essential functions and features.

Could it be better, though? Maple Studio says yes, offering their own version, CoolNovo (the browser formerly known as ChromePlus) as evidence. It’s based on the same source code, so you’ll feel at home right away and can use all your favourite Chrome extensions, but the company has then taken things further by adding new features of its own.

CoolNovo can render awkward web pages as though it were Internet Explorer, as well as Chrome, for instance. So if you’ve come across an annoying page that really needs IE, just click the mode button in the address bar and all should be well.

Comprehensive mouse gesture support allows you to control just about every aspect of browsing -- scrolling through pages, moving around tabs, browsing your web history and more, 18 functions in total – with a wave of the mouse.

A Privacy Plus section provides some useful privacy tools. In particular, you can choose to delete your history, cookies, cache, download history, passwords or form data when CoolNovo is closed.

If you’d rather others didn’t know you were using a browser at all, then you might appreciate CoolNovo’s Boss Key; press your preferred hotkey and the program will be minimized to the system tray, safely out of sight.

And other additions range from the small and simple (double-click a tab to close it) to the far more involved (extended bookmarking features, extra download tools, Adblock support and more).

CoolNovo has plenty to explore, then. But it also has its share of problems.

The program makes itself the default browser on installation without explicitly telling you, for instance, never a good start. (You can avoid that by clicking Customize and clearing the relevant option, but it shouldn’t be necessary.)

IE Mode worked just fine when we switched an existing tab, but if we manually opened a new IE tab then that refused to display anything at all.

The documentation is minimal, and what you get has some dubious translations, so understanding the new features can take a while.

And there are assorted other issues that make the product look rather less than professional. The developers have just proudly announced that the browser is now called CoolNovo, for instance, but unfortunately they’ve not yet got around to changing the installer, as every reference on your system -- the program’s Start menu entry, say -- uses the old name, ChromePlus.

If you’ve no particular interest in Chrome, then, CoolNovo probably isn’t going to win you over. And if you haven’t the patience to dig around, trying to figure out how everything works, then this isn’t the browser for you, either.

If you’re a Chrome fan, though, CoolNovo can be fun to explore, at least for a while. Sure, there are problems, but these aren’t critical (they’ll be fixed over time), most of the new features work well, and the program will happily co-exist with an existing Chrome installation. Give it a try, see what you think.
Backup to most cloud services with Duplicati

Publié: janvier 2, 2012, 4:04pm CET par Mike Williams

While cloud storage may have taken off in a big way, most backup tools are yet to catch up: if you can save your target files to anything more than an FTP server then you’re probably very lucky.

Some backup utilities are now giving you more options, though, and Duplicati is a great example, with the program supporting backups to Amazon S3, Windows Live SkyDrive, Google Docs, Rackspace Cloud Files, WebDAV and FTP servers, as well as local and network drives. And that’s just the start of the program’s many configuration options.

You’re able to specify common backup sources with a click, for instance, or choose whatever individual files and folders you need. Custom Include and Exclude filters help to define exactly what you’re backing up, and AES-256 encryption helps keep your archive safe (which is good news if it’s held on a remote server).

You get complete control over your backup strategy. So you can run full backups all the time; use just incremental backups to improve backup speeds; or run a mix of the two, maybe running incrementals most days, but applying a full backup once a week (or month, or whatever interval you like).

Handy performance controls allow you to throttle Duplicati’s upload or download speeds, so it won’t tie up all your system resources. A capable scheduler automatically runs each backup job at the appointed time. And restoring files is just as straightforward: you can recover an entire backup, or just the files you need, in a very few clicks.

Duplicati is about saving files and folders, rather than full partitions, so if you’re looking for something that will create an image of your system drive then this isn’t the program for you. (And it doesn’t include a bootable disc to restore your backup, anyway -- you can only recover files by running the program first, so it’s not going to save you if your operating system won’t launch for some reason.)

Still, if file backups are enough for you then there’s a lot to like about Duplicati: it’s fast, has plenty of features yet remains generally easy to use. Note that there is a separate 64-bit version available.
Kuvva gives your PC a fresh new look every day

Publié: janvier 2, 2012, 3:33pm CET par Mark Wilson

Your desktop wallpaper may be something you don’t give much thought to, but whether you have chosen to stick with a stock image, or have adorned your desktop with a photograph of loved ones or a favorite place, this is an image you are going to be seeing on a daily basis. It is easy to become bored of constantly seeing the same image, and being bored is not a mood that is conducive to being productive, whatever you are meant to be doing. Kuvva is a free app that helps to alleviate the boredom by providing you with a new wallpaper every day.

This is not exactly a new idea as there are numerous wallpaper changing applications available; but Kuvva is a little different. Rather than relying on your providing a series of images that can be rotated as your desktop wallpaper, Kuvva gets its images from an online repository that is constantly updated by artists, designers and photographers. The app takes care of changing your wallpaper for you, so when you switch on your computer in the morning you can be greeted by a new and inspiring work of art.

The app requires you to set up an online account at the Kuvva website, and this means that it is possible to configure various preferences. Desktop wallpapers you are keen on can be favorited so you can easily activate them again if you decide you want to see a particular image again. It is also possible to create sets comprising images you would like to group together -- based on theme, color scheme or anything else you feel appropriate.

Kuvva is available for both Mac and PC and is a great way to give your machine a fresh new look each day. While there are a limited number of artists and pictures to browse through at the moment, as Kuvva gains momentum it looks like it is going to grow into something impressive. And if you are a budding artist or photographer, you could use this as a platform for you work -- check it out to see how it could help you.

You can find out more and download a free copy of the app by paying a visit to the Kuvva review page.