We told you the software was coming, and it's here and available to download right now. In fact, Microsoft dropped Windows 8 Release Preview earlier than promised. That makes the final public test build a sudden surprise to close out May and foreshadows that gold code will drop this summer in time for a splashy autumn launch. Welcome Windows 8.
Release Preview is Microsoft's fancy consumer-friendly name for release candidate, and it wasn't the only one dropped today: .NET 4.5, Visual Studio 2012 and Windows Server 2012 are also available. But for sure the immediate excitement is Windows 8, which is one reason we'd like your review. Sure we could review the Release Preview and likely will. But your contribution has special meaning, and will more reflect the kind of computer enthusiasts, IT admins or software developers that will evaluate Windows 8 Release Preview.
You can participate one of two ways. You can comment to this post, or, better, send your review to joe at betanews dot com. Please also include your photo, bio and any screenshots you collected while testing Windows 8 Release Preview. I'll contact you regarding any particulars. Most of our best reviews this year came from BetaNews readers.
"Our next milestone is traditionally called RTM, Release to Manufacturing, and from today until RTM, we will still be changing Windows 8, as we have done in past releases of Windows", Steven Sinofsky, Windows & Windows Live president, says. "The path to RTM is well defined and critical to the careful and high quality landing of Windows 8 for our PC manufacturing partners. The changes we make to the product from RP to RTM are all carefully considered and deliberate, including some specific feature changes we plan on making to the user experience".
I'm quite surprised by Sinofsky's statement and what it foreshadows about Windows 8 possibly still being a work in progress this late in the development cycle. Typically Microsoft changes as little as possible from RC to RTM, which might also explain "Preview" and not "Candidate" in the name.
"RTM itself is a product development phase, rather than a moment in time", Sinofsky asserts, which is fine if you're not a developer or OEM qualifying images based on what you think is final code. "If the feedback and telemetry on Windows 8 and Windows RT match our expectations, then we will enter the final phases of the RTM process in about 2 months. If we are successful in that, then we are tracking to our shared goal of having PCs with Windows 8 and Windows RT available for the holidays".
At this phase, with changes still coming, your feedback will help determine what Microsoft eventually ships. The company monitors many different sources to gather reaction. Your review here could be one of those valuable resources helping to shape Microsoft's development process and encouraging others to download Windows 8 Release Preview -- generating additional feedback.
Again, please comment below. But to see your comprehensive review published and prominently promoted, please email joe at betanews dot com.
There they sit: a large group of photos you need to process for one reason or another. Perhaps you simply want to rename them to something more descriptive than the choice made by your digital camera. Perhaps they need resizing to share with someone else. Whatever the reason, wading through that little lot by hand is going to take you some time.
The need to prioritize emails is an idea that has been around for some time, starting with spam filtering that aimed to reduce the amount of junk reaching your inbox. Google and other email providers have made further advances by highlighting emails believed to be more important than others you receive based on content, sender and previous correspondence. 
The standard Windows screen capture tools have always been a little on the basic side, so if the PrtSc key doesn’t satisfy your needs then you’ve probably looked into extending it with a third-party alternative.
Think what you want about Larry Ellison personally, but Oracle's bombastic CEO is never one to be shown up. That's why when he took the the stage at the D: All Things Digital conference near Los Angeles Wednesday night, he had an announcement to make: his company is wholeheartedly embracing the cloud.
If you feel you’d like to be a little more anonymous online then installing a free VPN client is generally a good place to start. But there’s a snag: even though the VPN service know you’re concerned about your internet privacy, they’ll often still ask you to create an account, provide your email address and maybe other details, too.
Microsoft is making a play for the lucrative government sector, releasing 
Yesterday, during the annual D conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company is "
Voice is Your Bond
Taipei, Taiwan-based CyberLink has issued updates for its flagship media viewing and editing products, including 
NirSoft has released 
Security researchers are warning of what they call one of the most sophisticated worms to date, and believe that this time, the worm may be the work of a nation-state rather than hackers. Called "Flame", the Trojan has hit Middle Eastern countries particularly hard, most notably Iran.
Mike Feibus is principal analyst at 
If you’ve played a few PC-based recreations of Space Invaders then you’ll know they can be, well, more than a little basic. And that’s a shame. Sure, we know the 1978 arcade original wasn’t exactly a visual feast, but that’s no excuse for the basic graphics and dull soundtrack you so often see in more modern versions.
You started off with good intentions, creating a neat image library where all your digital photos are properly organized in sensibly-named folders. But the organization probably didn’t last. It’s all too easy to drag and drop images to other folders, resave them in other formats or resolutions, maybe rework them with minor edits, and before you know it your hard drive is cluttered with a host of duplicate (or very similar) images.
If you’ve tried a few Notepad replacements before then you’ll know they’re usually aimed at a fairly technical audience. And so top-of-the-features-list will be items like “code folding” or “syntax highlighting”, which is fine if you’re a developer, but not quite as interesting for everybody else.
May is coming to a close, and as June beckons there are still countless software releases to keep track of. If you’ve had trouble keeping up with everything, this handy roundup is here to bring you up to speed.
When it comes to the cloud and Amazon Web Services, IT administrators often buy far more than they need and fail to adjust to realities once they have a good understanding of their deployment's needs. These are the findings of 
Serif is a name long associated with powerful yet easy-to-use software, and these are both terms that applyto 
Second in a series. In 
Chris Doig has personally seen the problems caused by poor technology purchasing in multiple companies. He co-founded 
A couple of weeks ago we wrote about 
This is my sixth column about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that started last year in Japan following the tsunami. But unlike those previous columns (
Google is the go-to search engine for most people, so the existence of a dedicated mobile app should come as no surprise. There has been a tool available for iOS for some time but the release of 
Piriform Ltd has updated two of its flagship free products for Windows users with the release of 
Well, perhaps I should qualify that with "almost", depending on what matters more to you as a user. On Wednesday, 15 days after 
What's Google+ 2.6 Like?
Inline editing is a "Doh?" feature that Google should have included from day one. Who wants to post while mobile if making a typing mistake he or she can't fix later on?
Enterprise cloud-based file sharing service Box strengthened its offering on Thursday, announcing new features that will simplify management for IT administrators. The new functionality allows for greater control over security, and the ability to enable enterprise-wide search.
In beta since September 2011, Ghisler Software has finally announced the release of the plainly very thoroughly tested 
While there are still Mac users who will proclaim that their systems are immune to viruses and malware, recent high-profile virus infections show that this is simply not the case. Even for anyone still convinced that their computer is immune to viruses, if a Mac is on the same network as a PC, it can easily be used to pass a virus to a Windows-based machine. This is just one of the reasons that Mac virus protection is much more important than many people believe, and Symantec’s newly released 
ESET has released 
HP released better than expected results after the close of the markets Wednesday, and the company overall shows signs of a long-awaited turnaround. But the big story tonight surrounds the 27,000 workers who will lose their jobs as part of a "multi-year" restructuring plan announced by 
Looking for an impressive way to show off your digital photos? 
It’s easily done. You’ve finished working on a friend’s PC, close it down and walk away, completely forgetting about the USB key you plugged in a little earlier. Or maybe you’re at home, closing down your own PC, even though there’s a CD or DVD in the drive that you’ll need later. And then, once you realize, you’re perhaps forced to restart the system before you can eject it.
American storage company Seagate announced on Wednesday its intention to become majority owner of French storage company 
We all now communicate with people through so many channels that it is often difficult to put names to faces. You may know someone on Twitter and Facebook but when you receive an email from them you do not necessary make a connection between the two. This is where 
When you need to carry sensitive data on a USB key then it’s easy to find an encryption tool which will help to keep it safe. But life gets a little more complicated when you need to transfer your files from a PC to a Mac, or maybe a Linux system: now you’ll need a cross-platform solution, and we have the perfect candidate in mind.
When you’re manually hunting for malware on a PC then you might start by launching Task Manager, 
SAP made a major play for the cloud Tuesday as its American arm announced acquisition of Ariba, a German cloud computing applications maker. The transaction is worth some $4.3 billion, and is expected to close this summer.
Equipping your PC for professional graphics work normally involves buying several different applications, learning their various interfaces and hoping they’ll somehow all work together.
Photo Work
The program’s illustration abilities are even better, with some very powerful vector drawing tools. You’re able to draw lines, curves and shapes freehand, or use the QuickShape tools to draw assorted pre-set shapes in moments. And if something doesn’t look quite right, just drag and pull on lines to adjust or smooth them, then resize or rotate your design until it’s as you intended.
The ever-present need for security means that every account that you have online, and probably on your computer as well, needs to be protected with a username and password. If you have taken the wise step of ensuring that all of your passwords are different, this will undoubtedly mean that you have an incredible number of passwords to remember.
More than half of all software acquired by IT in the next five years will be open source, according to a new study, and open source software (OSS) leads in the areas of cloud, big data, mobile apps and enterprise mobility.
Halfway through May and the software release schedule shows no sign of abating, and beta releases stand out over the past week. Some of the biggest releases come from security experts Norton, which updated 2013 public betas. 
Today is Facebook Day, the day when the most-successful-social-network-so-far opened up to public investment and outshone all other American IPOs up to this point. 
ESET has released 
LastPass.com, developer of the 
Plain, ordinary text files aren’t normally the most interesting ways to convey information, but if you’d like to change that then 
Earthlink this week strengthened its cloud services offerings, debuting a hosted desktop solution that allows customers access regardless of device and via both the Internet and secure MPLS connections. Over 250 applications are supported, and customers may also install their own custom applications.
It’s a strange day when some of the biggest news about the latest release of an application is a feature's removal, but this is the case with the latest version of 
iOS app 
Australian software developer Auslogics has released major updates for two of its Windows performance tools. 
When browsing the Internet you may well have noticed that some of sites you visit are secure, while others are not. While HTTPS is most often used for secure shopping and banking web sites, there is no reason that connections to other pages should not be encrypted to help improve privacy and security. If this is something that has concerned you, 
If you used PCs back in the 1980s then you’ll probably remember that file management was, well, a little basic. To put it politely. But that all changed in 1985 with the arrival of XTree, a powerful file manager that came packed with functionality: the geeks of the day loved its feature set, speed and extensive list of keyboard shortcuts.
Today, Gartner put to end weeks of cellular handset debate. Apple apologists disputed Samsung's smartphone success over iPhone -- the presumption that the South Korean electronics giant benefits from greater shipments vs actual sales. Make no mistake: Samsung is the global leader overall and in the smartphone category, based on actual sales. Apologist arguments be damned. 
Anyone who’s tapped into Microsoft Word’s autotext and autocorrect features will know how useful they can be, but what happens when you need that kind of automation in another program? The answer lies with a free-for-personal-use tool called 
You've heard of Platform-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service; maybe even Gaming-as-a-Service, too, from 
When you need to know more about a web domain, then your first instinct will probably be to visit your favorite WHOIS site. But while that’s quick and easy, there could be an even more convenient solution in NirSoft’s 
At first glance, 
Red Hat celebrated the 10th anniversary of its flagship Enterprise Linux product, but reaffirmed the decision to shift focus to cloud computing, pledging that open-source roots would be key to success in the new business venture.
Less than a week after announcing a 
Google just pumped out another stable release of its web browser as 
VMware is known for its work in virtualization. The company aims to change that, and announced on Tuesday a new product to assist in the automation, deployment and management of complex applications on its cloud infrastructure. vFabric Suite 5.1 is a new product that takes code acquired through VMware's acquisition of SpringSource and adds additional functionality to make it more attractive to developers.
What timing. I posted my iPad for sale on Craigslist over the weekend -- and two people are jockeying to get ahead of the other to buy it today. But I'm suddenly unsure about selling, after seeing a 
Troubleshooting, security, performance, there are lots of different reasons why you might want to change your PC’s DNS settings. But Windows doesn’t exactly make this easy. And even when you’ve figured out where you need to be (Network and Sharing Center > click the Internet connection > Properties > TCP/IP > Properties) you’ll still need to look up the address of whatever alternative Domain Name Service you’d prefer to use.
Austrian anti-malware vendor Emsisoft has announced the release of version 2 beta of its free portable malware removal and repair kit.
Xara unveiled the latest versions of the Designer family, 
The second week of May has passed, and it was as busy as ever in the world of software. If you haven’t kept your finger on the pulse, we have put together this roundup to bring you back up to speed.
I never expected my 70 year-old mother to ride the cutting edge of technology, but she's there, living in the cloud, which she embraces enthusiastically. What's that saying about not teaching old dogs new tricks? Perhaps you can.
Sometimes it is the smallest of things that makes the biggest differences -- it can be little touches that matter the most. Users of OS X and many flavors of Linux will be used to the appearance of a desktop icon when an external drive is plugged in or an optical disc is inserted. This little feature may seem minor, but it is also immensely useful. By installing 
Acronis has released Update 2 for its complete backup tool for Windows PCs, 
In the three months ending on March 31, 2012, there were more than 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook every single day. Not only is it a staggering amount of content to organize, but it is also a huge stockpile of graphical data that can actually be put to use.
Does reputation matter to you? Are you concerned what people say about you when you're not around? Perhaps you want to know what crap anonymous commenters post about you across the InterWebs? If the answer is "Yes" to any of these, you might be vulnerable to this tweet: "Hey some person is saying horrible things about you". Resist the temptation.
When you’re not around to monitor a PC then it’s often useful to get notifications of its key events. And so you might like to know when a particular program starts or ends, perhaps, or when the system closes down or restarts.
Dell continued to expand outside of its traditional PC-based business this week, making two separate announcements that symbolize a larger emphasis on services -- especially for the cloud. The Allen, Texas based company has introduced a Desktop-as-a-Service offering through a partnership with Desktone, as well as a new offering aimed at moving their SAP solutions to the cloud.
The issue with the soon-to-come generation of Windows mobile computers (tablets) of performance versus productivity, when it comes to software development, looms on all of us programmers who desire to write software for Windows 8. As a longtime Windows API programmer I appear to be in the minority, but I just can't help but ask the question: "Do programmers just not get it?"
Chris Boss is an advanced Windows API programmer and developer of 10 year-old 
May 9 is, in a way, a watershed day for Android -- and that's not necessarily a good thing. Many developers I communicate with repeatedly say they confront the same quandary: Android or iOS first? Maybe they choose to develop for iOS, only to ask: Android or iPad next? Google is a software developer, too, and this day put its priorities in order with a stunning iOS-first update. The new iPhone app for social network Google+ is stunning, breathtaking, immersive and makes the already great experience on Ice Cream Sandwich seem outdated -- although some of the best visuals migrate to iOS.
A Fool and His Android
Robert Leshner spent five years in finance and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He now runs a tech startup, Safe Shepherd, part of 500 Startups, which is infinitely more difficult. Follow him 
McAfee says that Android malware is taking a worrisome turn, with cybercriminals mimicking popular strategies used against Windows. The latest attacks tap IRC bots, where the malware gets further operating instructions from an Internet chatroom.
If, like us, you’ve tried more than your share of image editors, then you’ll know many of them are depressingly similar. Especially when it comes to filters. All too many developers seem to think they can get by with a simple sharpen, blur, emboss and so on, when most users now expect far, far more.
The jump to version x.1 of a program may not seem like particularly big news, but with the release of 
The Apache Software Foundation announced the release of 
Once OpenOffice 3.4.1 is released, developers plan to start work on version 4, helped in part by code donated from IBM’s discontinued 
If you’re looking for a gorgeous, easy-to-use solution to the problem of sharing and streaming media from your PC or Mac, then Plex will appeal. And with the release of 
Capturing an image of a small webpage is easy. Open it in a browser, press Alt+PrtSc, paste the results into your graphics tool of choice, edit and save the results: it’s all over in a moment. Of course, if the page is too large to view on your display then all that scrolling means capturing it all becomes a little more challenging. But 
Chengdu, China software developer EaseUS has updated its Windows all-in-one backup tool, 
Is your business getting good value from customer relationship initiatives, or are you even able to quantity it? Gartner says unlikely. Only half of all Fortune 1000 companies are expected to see a positive return on investments in social CRM through the end of the year. The findings call into question the effectiveness of using the social web to further business objectives, or whether companies even have the capability to measure success.
These is two related capabilities would make tech headlines everywhere, if introduced by Steve Jobs. They also add the kind of human responsiveness that once set iPhone apart from every other handset.
Siamak Masnavi received his PhD in computer science (from University of London) in 1992. Since then, he has worked as a research scientist and technical author for IBM and Canon, respectively, and as a software developer for Symbian, JPMorgan Chase and PricewaterhouseCoopers. He has also done some work as a freelance journalist for publications in United Kingdom and Russia. Since January 2009, he has been writing apps for iOS, webOS and Android.
Leading Android smartphone maker Samsung on Thursday announced the latest installment in its 
About 13 million Facebook users in the United States either do not use or do not know about the social network's privacy controls, sharing private information they would not have otherwise. This amounts to one out of every 10 users in the country.
In a blog post on Wednesday, President of Microsoft's Windows division Steven Sinofsky 
Yesterday, colleague Ed Oswald gave 
The PDF format is commonly used to deliver documents online, and people increasingly discover that there is no need to use a bloated piece of software such as Adobe Reader to open them. 
Check Point Software Technologies has released 
Working with multiple monitors is a great way to improve productivity, but it is a completely different way of working that can take a little getting used to. 
Whether your PC is slow, unstable, or perhaps infected by malware, checking your system’s kernel mode drivers is often a good place to begin diagnosing your problems. And you don’t have to install any third-party software to get started: just running MSINFO32 and browsing to Software Environment > System Drivers will give you a basic view of what’s currently installed.
Fans of Spotify need no longer endure a blown up app designed for the smaller screen of the iPhone, thanks to the release of a dedicate iPad version of the app, today. 
At first glance 
If you ever viewed a document on Dropbox, LinkedIn, or Yammer, you have already used 
I don't know how cellular carriers or device makers could move any slower serving Ice Cream Sandwich to their customers. Still, someone is making progress, seven months after Google formally unveiled the OS and six after the first device with it shipped. Android 4.0 share jumped dramatically from mid March to mid April, granted from a small base. It's about time.
What seemingly started as a fluke, suddenly is a trend. In April, Internet Explorer gained usage share for the fourth consecutive month, reversing a long, steady decline. That's the view presented by April browser usage data Net Applications released today. IE share rose to 54.09 percent -- that's up from 53.83 percent in March and 51.87 percent in December. The question: Are these gains sustainable? Can IE rise up, after loosing more than 40 points of share over 7 years?
Just how secure is the data you’ve backed up online? Most cloud-based backup providers promise to encrypt your data before it’s uploaded to their servers, but a handful perform the encryption after the data’s been uploaded, which means they possess the key required to unlock your data and potentially hand it over to anyone who comes asking (backed with the right warrant).
The attackers behind the 
New iPad tipped the mobile web browsing balance, according to April data Net Applications released today. Apple's tablet now exceeds iPhone for browser usage share among mobile devices. That's 33.7 percent to 27.4 percent, after being neck and neck for the previous three months. iPad had nudged in front during February and March, but in April leapt ahead of iPhone.
iOS users now have an updated VoIP app to work with following the release of 
There's something really troubling about CISPA. While the Internet rallied against 