Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » septembre 20, 2012

BetaNews.Com (11 non lus)

Google gets a break in the US, a warning in Europe

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 11:01pm CEST par Paul Weber
Trustbusters and other regulators still have their eyes on Google, which in response has maintained high lobbying presence in Washington. Is that effort paying off?

This week is surprisingly chock full of happenings -- good or bad, you be the judge -- for Google in the areas of lobbying and antitrust. Governments changed their positions on antitrust, rivals combined efforts and Google shifted strategy. All-in-all, it must be busy at the Washington, DC offices.

Some recent events worth highlighting:
- Joshua Wright, Barack Obama's Federal Trade Commission nominee, is a critic of the agency's antitrust probe into Google.
- Joaquin Almunia, European Union Competition Commissioner, says that Google’s window of opportunity to settle is not open forever.
- Google is reevaluating lobbying contracts, reportedly giving some of its 21 lobbying firms a 30-day notice on their contracts.
- Google, Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, and others are launching a new lobbying organization. Perhaps this is the reason behind Google reevaluating lobbying contracts.
- Anti-Google lobbying group Fair Search, headed by Microsoft, adds three new members: Allegro Group (a Polish auction site), Nokia (the phone maker) and Oracle (the software giant that lost a high profile case to Google).
That is a lot to take in at once.

Both the FTC and the European Commission are currently looking into Google, on the grounds of anticompetitive practices. Google has 67-percent search share in the United States and about 90 percent in Europe. Obama’s nominee is a boon for Google.

Google’s US lobbying must be paying off, after all the company spent $9 million in the first two quarters of this year. Then we hear Almunia suggesting that if Google doesn’t settle soon, the EU will take further action in the antitrust suit against Google. A win in the United States and a warning in Europe.

Google is also cutting back on the lobbying firms it hires, the $9 million Google spent in the last two quarters is in fact more than Apple, Microsoft and Facebook spent combined. But Google is also trying a new approach to lobbying, a new association between other giants with similar goals: Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Zynga, and eight others. Notably these companies all opposed the unpopular Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act.

Finally, there are the new members of Fair Search. For those of you who don’t know Fair Search is a coalition of companies that believe Google is anticompetitive (read: making more money than they are) and lobby against it. Allegro is a Polish auction site, which likely joined because Google is switching to a paid model for Google Shopping, or because Allegro wishes it had better search rankings. Nokia likely joined because it makes smartphones that compete with Android smartphones and because the Finnish company has a close relationship with Microsoft. Oracle's lost Java case against Google is reason enough to join.

I have a question for you. Google says that "You can make money without doing evil". Is lobbying evil?

Photo Credit: meneame comunicacions, sl
Windows 8 tablets are the right post-PC response

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 9:36pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Microsoft is taking a considerable risk with the Windows 8 ecosystem and major push into the post-PC era. There is no room for error and to get it right all the parts must work in perfect harmony. Windows 8 faces stiff competition and must dismount all preconceptions it's a weak tablet operating system.

Microsoft enters the market fully prepared to take its opponents head-on. Instead of copying adversaries, the company takes the more mature approach of offering a different user experience. Every competitor should fear Windows 8 tablets, and I've got five reasons why.

1. Viable PC alternative. Windows 8 Pro tablets have two major benefits, the first of which is the processing power that exceeds that of a common tablet (Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 Pro and Samsung Series 7 both run desktop hardware) and the second is the ability to run desktop Windows applications. What this means is that it can act as a post-PC device that is not hindered by mobile applications, and can just as well run Adobe Photoshop or Autodesk AutoCAD both of which are professional-grade programs -- just like a PC, but in a mobile, easy to carry form factor.

2. Value. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hinted at $300-$800 price-range for Microsoft Surface, which is similar to the leaked ASUS pricing and coincidentally or not (latter seems plausible) covers Apple’s new iPad pricing top to bottom. But Windows RT tablets come with Microsoft Office, which sets them apart from competing devices by offering the most comprehensive productivity suite available on the market today, adding more value to the equation.

Windows 8 Pro tablets take a different approach by offering powerful hardware instead of added software, at the detriment of a lower price. While the battery life may not be as good as on a Windows RT tablet, the benefit of increased performance and relatively low weight make them a suitable laptop substituent.

3. Control over software. I previously wrote "Microsoft makes its own hardware and software rules, and that’s a good thing", and it holds true for Windows 8 tablets. The major advantage in having Microsoft dictate the rules is a consistent experience throughout all Windows 8 tablets, a la Windows Phone where manufacturers can add their own applications (think Nokia Maps) but will not be allowed to alter the operating system, unlike Android. One of the benefits will be timely updates, that are decided by the Redmond, Wash.-based software corporation instead of the hardware manufacturers.

4. Familiarity. Windows 8 is designed to work in similar fashion on both tablets and computers, which gives it the element of familiarity when transitioning between the two. And on top of it, Windows 8 is also similar to previous desktop operating systems designed by Microsoft, again benefiting PC owners that want to purchase a tablet.

5. Choice. When Microsoft initially announced Surface there was doubt as to where its OEM partners would fit into the equation, but as it was recently witnessed the very same OEM partners started to announce their own Windows RT-based offerings.

Microsoft Surface(s) are the two de-facto Windows 8 devices, but the other Windows 8/RT tablets differentiate themselves by offering different designs, additional applications and obviously different hardware configurations -- a Windows 8 tablet for everyone. The keyword here is “choice” -- which is a key factor for any consumer that wants to stand out from the crowd, yet still sport a capable tablet that is running Windows 8.

Photo Credit: olly/Shutterstock
Dell's new Windows 8 tablet and ultrabook: general purpose, but not for consumers

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 8:22pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The traditional personal computer is returning to the niche from whence it sprang at the dawn of the Internet age, but general purpose computing isn't dead yet.

With consumer desktop and notebook computer sales in decline, and lower-powered, general purpose devices such as the iPad encroaching on resource-light communications and data management tasks in the workplace, the PC business is gearing down. Former consumer PC market leader Dell has all but exited the consumer hardware business and has been on an enterprise software and services buying spree.

Its focus squarely on the enterprise, Dell yesterday unveiled a 10-inch Windows 8 Pro tablet, and what the company called the "first enterprise-class Ultrabook," both under the Latitude brand.

The tablet is simply called the Dell Latitude 10, and it has a 10.1" (1366 x 768) LED display with 10-finger capacitive touch, an optional Wacom Active Stylus, and a Corning Gorilla Glass surface. It's powered by an Intel Atom SoC with integrated graphics, but Dell did not announce the speed or SKU of the processor. It has 2GB of 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and has eMMC storage up to 128GB. Like most mobile tablets, it has a front-facing 720p webcam and an 8 megapixel autofocus flash camera on the back.

The new ultrabook is known as the Latitude 6430u, and it offers a 14" (1366 x 768) display, a mobile Intel QM77 Express chipset with 3rd-gen Core i3, i5, or i7 processors, two slots for 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM, supporting DIMMs up to 8GB each. Storage is self-encrypting SSD, and the drive configurations come as small as 64GB or as large as 256GB. For IT management, it offers Intel vPro management features, Dell Data Protection/Access and Data Protection/Encryption software, an optional Smart Card reader, fingerprint reader, and Trusted Platform Module (TPM).

Both the Latitude 10 tablet and the Latitude 6430u ultrabooks will go on sale "with the launch of Windows 8," (i.e. October 26) with details on global pricing to follow.
TuneUp Utilities 2013 review

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 8:19pm CEST par Mike Williams

Is your PC slower than it used to be, less stable, more prone to behaving in odd and unexpected ways? Then you’re not alone, but there are many potential causes, and figuring out exactly which ones apply in your situation may require considerable time, effort and expertise.

Or, alternatively, you could just install a copy of the TuneUp Utilities 2013, which aims to clean, repair, defragment, troubleshoot and generally optimise your PC until it’s running at the best possible performance.

And the program doesn’t waste any time, launching its “1-Click Maintenance” wizard to run an initial health check on your system just as soon as the installation process is complete. This runs a far more in-depth analysis of your PC than the previous release, covering a lot of different issues -- Registry problems, junk files, startup and shutdown problems, broken shortcuts, hard drive defragmentation and more -- yet still completes reasonably quickly at only 162 seconds on our test PC (CCleaner took 18 seconds longer to run its own analysis on the same system).

If you’re the hands-on type then you can review everything the program has found, and decide for each item whether you’d like it to be fixed, or not.

Or, if you’re happy to trust the program, you can always just click the “Run maintenance” button and allow it to fix everything in a single operation.

Either way, once the process is over you’ll be presented with a tabbed interface which organises TuneUp Utilities functionality into 5 areas: “Optimize computer”, “Clean up computer”, “Fix problems”, “Customize Windows”, and “Status & recommendations”. The latter being the most important as it highlights any current issues and provides links to modules with solutions.

While this is all reasonably clear, there’s a degree of overlap between the tabs and we occasionally had problems finding some features. But fortunately TuneUp Utilities also has an “Overview” tab, which displays every key function on the same screen, and can be an easier way to locate the module you need.

System Cleanup

We began our performance testing with the new TuneUp Disk Cleaner 2013, which can remove assorted logs and leftovers from 28 areas of Windows and more than 150 common applications.

And the results were impressive. When we ran CCleaner on a test PC, it found 497MB of data we could remove; running Disk Cleaner 2013 on the same system located 872MB which we could free up at a click.

An “advanced users only” option displayed even more data we could delete, including old system restore points and Windows Update backups (this may not always be wise, but if you know what you’re doing it’s at least good to have the option).

That’s just the start, though, because these figures didn’t include any Internet leftovers. To find and remove those we had to launch the separate Browser Cleaner 2013 (also new in this release), which is able to clean more than 60 areas in all the main browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and various spinoffs, 25 in total). This located a further 545MB of data we could wipe, although there are also options to be more selective: you can protect cookies from particular websites, for instance, or avoid deleting anything less than a week old.

Elsewhere, an enhanced Registry cleaner will scan your system to locate and delete invalid entries. And the Broken Shortcut detector now does an even better of locating faulty shortcuts on your system, with the module locating an amazing 1,681 on our test PC.

There are some interface issues here, in particular if you want to delete only some files within a category. Right now you have to manually clear a checkbox next to every item you want to keep, a major issue when there can be thousands: the program really needs “select all”/ “deselect all” buttons at a minimum.

In the main, though, TuneUp Utilities 2013 delivers excellent system cleaning capabilities which effortlessly outpace most of the competition.

Optimizing Applications

With the junk out of the way, your next step should be to properly optimize your installed applications, and TuneUp Utilities 2013 provides several ways to make this happen.

The 1-Click Maintenance Wizard, for instance, suggested a few startup programs we could remove, mostly sensible choices such as iTunesHelper.

It also recommended we run the Java and Adobe updates weekly via Task Scheduler, though, rather than every time we boot. The core principle is a good one -- if you boot several times a day, using a scheduled task could make more sense -- but we’re less keen on the idea of waiting for a week to get security updates. (You don’t have to follow their advice, of course, but some users may not think of the security issue.)

TuneUp Utilities 2013 also provides a complete StartUp Manager, which lists all your startup programs, advises you on what’s necessary and what isn’t, and allows you to disable surplus software with a click.

This generally works well, but we noticed a few issues. Although the StartUp Manager should display a user-based “Usefulness” rating for each program to help you decide what to keep, for instance, this remained stubbornly blank on our PC.

And the program’s own ratings can’t always be trusted. It recognized our F-Secure AntiVirus “Settings and Statistics” process as necessary, for example, but incorrectly decided that F-Secure’s Host Process was “optional”. So you need to pay close attention to what the program is doing.

Another enhancement in this release, TuneUp’s Live Optimization 2.0 technology, reportedly does a better job of intelligently prioritizing running processes to deliver the best possible performance. We’re unsure how much improvement it really delivers, but this release does at least make it easier to tame resource hogs at a click.

Our favorite tool, though, is the TuneUp Program Deactivator. This lists all your installed applications, highlighting those which cause particular system load, and allows you to temporarily disable anything you won’t be using for a while with a click.

This quickly frees up resources by disabling background processes, surplus Windows services and so on. But if you want to use a deactivated program, you can -- just launch it as normal, TuneUp Utilities 2013 will reactivate any necessary components and it’ll fire up just as it always did. It’s a simple and effective way to optimise your PC, and a technology which the competition still haven’t even begun to match.

More Features

If your PC is still performing poorly then you can help a little by turning on Turbo Mode, which postpones scheduled maintenance tasks, reduces visual effects, sets your PC to use the High Performance power plan and applies a few other tweaks, delivering small but worthwhile results.

Or, on a laptop, you might prefer Economy Mode, which extends battery life by disabling unwanted services, turning off your screen and hard drive more quickly when the system is idle, and so on.

An “Increase Performance” tool offers some useful advice on how to speed up your system. It suggested we should install an ad-blocker, for instance, and optimised several key browser settings for us to enhance online speeds.

The suite’s Disk Space Explorer produces detailed reports to help you properly understand where all your hard drive real estate has gone.

There are more modules to solve common PC problems, undelete files, defrag drives, detect disk errors, carry out useful Windows tweaks, or just give your system a new look (you can replace your logon screen, customise icons, select new visual styles, and more).

And even the smallest tools have value. TuneUp Registry Editor isn’t some pointless Regedit clone, for instance: it extends the program with a powerful search tool, a History pane, optional Registry write-protection, and more.

Results

There’s no shortage of power here, then. But what can all this functionality achieve?

To find out, we installed the program on a Windows 7 PC, then used the 1-Click Maintenance Wizard, defrag tool, hard drive cleaner and Program DeActivator to fully optimise the system.

And our benchmarks revealed some impressive results.

Boot time dropped by 15 percent, for instance. Shutdown time was reduced by 21%, and application launch times were significantly improved, with for instance Firefox loading around 25-percent faster than before.

Resource usage saw major gains. Free RAM at boot time was 550MB higher; active processes fell from 94 to 71, threads from 1257 to 1068, handles from 27,960 to 21,801.

And our entire test system seemed snappier and more responsive, as a result.

Every system is different, of course, and there’s no way to be sure how the suite will behave on your PC. But what we can say is that TuneUp Utilities 2013 is a very capable tool which offers far more PC cleanup power than any of the competition. And if you need a little help with your system maintenance then it needs to be at the very top of your shopping list.

TuneUp Utilities 2013 is available for Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 -- both 32 and 64-bit editions -- and lists for $49.95.

Photo Credit: studio online/Shutterstock
Apple iOS 6 Maps -- headed in the wrong direction [review]

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 8:06pm CEST par Wayne Williams

I upgraded one of my Apple devices to iOS6 last night and the first thing I did, once finished setting it up, was to launch the new Maps component. This, as you’ll no doubt be aware, replaces the aging Google Maps app. I knew from other articles I’d read previously that Apple’s own mapping service wasn’t going to be as good as the old Google one. After all, Apple is new to this mapping lark, and the search giant has years of experience in the field. But I was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, and forgive any minor problems. After all, how bad could it be?

I started, as I am sure most people do, by typing in my address. Well, actually as I live in the United Kingdom I typed in my post code. Apple found my road, Prince’s Drive, but decided it was called Princess Drive. Not the most auspicious of starts.

Since my wife suggested it might be nice for us to take a drive to the seaside town of Blackpool to see the famous Illuminations later in the year, I decided to get the route for there. Apple Maps offers a new turn-by-turn direction system that guides you along the route. This is quite nice, with each step shown in a box at the top of the screen (including the distance to travel and the action to take) and where you currently are displayed on the map below. I cheerfully drove along the virtual route, thinking "Hey, this is all pretty well done, I like this", when I noticed something odd. Blackpool is on the northwest coast of England. Apple Maps directed me to the South -- a four-and-a-half hour, 248-mile, detour in the wrong direction.

I explored the map further and found other errors. Incorrectly named places and cities in the wrong location. Not just in the United Kingdom, but around the world. I then spent an entertaining hour just typing in place names and watching as the pin stabbed down on the map in what seemed increasingly like the work of a blindfolded drunk having a good old guess.

Actually, that’s slightly unfair. Apple did correctly identify most of the places I searched for, but when the errors I encountered reached double-figures I decided the app was not to be trusted and went onto Twitter, which was, naturally, all abuzz with complaints and humorous observations about the shonky new app. I was particularly thrilled to discover this Tumblr highlighting some of the better finds.

It’s not just incorrect names and locations that mar the new app. Apple’s maps are just so much poorer than Google’s. There’s less clarity and fewer details, fuzzier satellite imagery, and of course nothing to compare to Google Street view. It is, in a nutshell, a huge downgrade.

And the problem is it’s so far behind what Google offers that I just can’t see it ever getting good enough to compete. Apple is supposedly all about the user experience, but here it’s replaced a great experience with a poor one. Like swapping the old YouTube app with Tim Cook’s VHS collection or giving users MySpace in place of Facebook.
Major takeaways from the first days of Salesforce's Dreamforce '12

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 5:20pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Maybe it wasn't drool-worthy enough for heaps of fanboys to liveblog, but Leading Cloud CRM provider Salesforce has already rolled out a host of big news at its week-long Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Some of the news has been in the form of new product unveilings and new partnerships that focus primarily upon expanding Salesforce's social CRM functionality, and growing its business into newer, less-trodden territory.

Some of the news has taken the form of progress updates on Salesforce as a company, and on the state of enterprise cloud business as a whole. Those who are acutely aware of bubble-like investment opportunities where growth is fast but returns on investment are uncertain will want to take note.

First to three billion -- Salesforce expects to be the first enterprise cloud company of any sort to reach $3 billion in revenue in fiscal 2013. By huge multinational corporate standards, Salesforce is tiny. But in the software industry last year, it was one of the top 25 largest software companies because of its $1.62 billion in total revenue and rapid 30 percent growth rate. Using its current revenue run rate, the company expects to exceed $3 billion this year. There aren't many other software companies performing that well.

Over 70% of businesses use social media, but...-- In his keynote yesterday morning, Salesforce Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff cited an MGI study from July which said 72 percent of businesses are utilizing social media in some way, and followed it up with IDC data that said social is the fastest-growing area in IT. What Benioff did not mention was that there is no clear route to realizing this growth potential. In the same study, MGI also said "the most powerful applications of social technologies in the global economy are largely untapped," and that companies will continue to try new ways to engage with consumers and gather intelligence for product development, marketing, and customer service, but it's currently unclear which is the right way to go.

With this fact in mind, let's look at the new things Salesforce announced yesterday to try to realize this social growth potential, and continue its rapid overall business growth:

Salesforce Marketing Cloud-- Yesterday, Salesforce unveiled a new product for marketers that unifies social listening, content management, engagement tracking, advertising, workflow, automation and measurement in a single cloud-based suite. The Marketing Cloud utilizes social media monitoring tech from Radian6 and customer insight from Buddy Media to build a comprehensive social marketing management offering.

Work.com-- As IBM showed with the acquisition of Kenexa in August, cloud-based Human Resource Management, Talent Management, and Time Tracking are more areas of potential growth. As such, Salesforce yesterday announced Work.com, a social performance management platform that helps companies measure and drive employee performance. Today, Salesforce announced a partnership with Workday that integrates Workday HCM into Work.com. This takes workplace connection data and integrates it into Work.com to help managers create social goals, and improve employee motivation.

Chatterbox-- In both the consumer and enterprise space, cloud-based file lockers and document collaboration services are wildly popular, and companies are still trying to become Dropbox for the Enterprise Space. Salesforce has unveiled its version of a secure, managed Dropbox-like application that allows enterprises to connect, collaborate and share files across different devices. Salesforce, like everyone else who has debuted a similar offering, has called it "The Dropbox for the Enterprise." Salesforce Chatterbox is scheduled to go into pilot deployments in the first half of 2013, and pricing will be announced at the time of general availability.

Salesforce Identity-- Similar to your Facebook login, Salesforce Identity is a single, verified login that is used across all Salesforce apps. Administrators can centrally manage identities, and under the new login, apps across multiple platforms can push important information to the user's Chatter feed.

Salesforce Touch-- Like the Freshdesk vs. Zendesk rivalry, Salesforce has shown that cross-device compatibility is of paramount importance in CRM interfaces. Yesterday, it debuted the HTML5-powered mobile Salesforce app for touchscreen tablets and smartphones. The app is available today on iOS devices, and included in all editions of Salesforce.

Chatter Communities for Partners-- Chatter, the Salesforce social networking platform, now can be customized to let companies create multiple private, branded social communities under the larger umbrella of their company. It takes social communities, and weaves them together with a unified social contact center, based on a common knowledge base, joining disparate channels. This will be pushed out in limited pilot deployments in Fall 2012, and will reach general availability in the second half of 2013, with pricing announcements preceding launch.

Data.com Social Key-- This takes public social information and weaves it into a company's business data. Social Key combs the social data on sites like Facebook, Klout, Twitter and YouTube for information relevant to a company's business. It harvests this information to develop a view into what customers are interested in and combines it with traditional contact data to give a deeper, creepier look at customers. Data.com Social Key will be available in the second half of 2013.

All of these things add up to the different ways in which Salesforce is attempting to capitalize on the potential growth of social customer engagement, which in many cases includes the closer observation of social data both within and outside of a company, of both a company's employees and its customers. Salesforce is a cloud software company indeed, but with the collection of so many streams of consumer and employee data, it's easy to see the progress it is making toward "Big Data."
HDClone 4.2 Free supports Windows 8

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 4:27pm CEST par Mark Wilson

The release of a new operating system often means that there is renewed interest in migration and backup tools and this is certainly the case with the imminent release of Windows 8. Hard drive cloning tool HDClone 4.2 Free is the latest app to be updated with support for the latest version of Microsoft’s OS, and there are a number of other improvements that have been made to this utility.

While the free version of the program is more limited than its big brothers -- there are also Basic, Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions available for anyone whose needs are a little more demanding -- there’s still enough here to cater for most people’s requirements.

Speed improvements that allows for data to be copied at up to 30 MB/sec mean that cloning can be achieve faster than in previous versions of the program. There are also two important new additions that help to ensure support for as wide a range of hard drive technologies as possible. The first new feature of the free version of HDClone is full support for GPT.

There is also the added option of booting from UEFI BIOSes for anyone working with hardware that support this technology. Despite these changes and additions, you’re still limited to working with ATA, SATA or USB drives as there is no support for SCSI, Fireware or even USB 3.0 drives.

You can find out more and download a free copy of the program by paying a visit to the HDClone 4.2 Free review page.

Photo Credit: Sergey Mironov/Shutterstock
Nitro Pro 8 review

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 3:15pm CEST par Nick Peers

These days, free PDF tools do a heck of a lot more than simply display and print PDF files. Pick up a tool like Nitro Reader, for example, and you can create PDFs from within any application, plus sign, annotate and fill in PDF forms.

What you can’t do with free tools is edit, convert, split or combine PDF files, so if your needs are greater than the basic options provided by free tools, you’ll need to invest in a dedicated PDF editor. And when it comes to getting more bang for your buck, Nitro Pro has always delivered exceptional value in a package one third the price of Adobe’s entry-level Acrobat Standard.

Now version 8 has been released, with Nitro promising a number of major new features, an integrated OCR engine and better performance to boot. The question is, does it deliver on its promise? Read on to find out.

The Basics

The first major plus in Nitro’s favor is its user interface. By employing the now-familiar ribbon interface found in other Microsoft products, including later versions of Office, you’re immediately drawn into the program, with all the key tools clearly labeled and within easy reach. It certainly lowers the learning curve, allowing you to dive in and start using the program without having to reach for a complicated user manual or help system. Speaking of which, despite the continued lack of context-sensitive help, there is at least a Search tab now available via the main Help menu to help you find what you’re looking for.

While creating PDFs is no longer the exclusive preserve of paid-for products, Nitro Pro 8’s PDF creation tools offer a myriad of different ways of converting your documents into PDF format. There’s the ubiquitous printer driver that works within any application, but you can also drag documents directly into the Nitro window, and publish instantly from within Word, Excel and PowerPoint -- if you’re running the 32-bit versions of Office 2003 or later.

Nitro 8 also makes it easy to combine multiple documents into a single PDF file: click the Combine button, pick your files, set the running order, choose a quality setting and output folder, and off you go.

Nitro 8 bundles a basic OCR engine based on Readiris, enabling you to scan paper documents and convert them into editable, searchable text. Version 8 now automatically detects scanned and image-based documents and will prompt you to apply OCR to it in order to generate an editable or searchable text layer.

One thing we noticed on using this feature is that Nitro’s default conversion settings, medium, don’t produce particularly accurate results. Make sure you click Advanced and choose High (Slow) next to OCR Quality before you begin, otherwise you could find yourself disappointed with Nitro’s accuracy (or otherwise) at generating editable text. Sadly, there’s no option for reviewing, and correcting if necessary, the results.

Nitro’s OCR tools are definitely the weakest part of the overall package, but despite the fact you can no longer purchase the product without them, they’re a useful extra, so long as your expectations aren’t too high.

Become a PDF Editor

One of the biggest draws of Nitro Pro is its editing tools. Version 7 introduced us to the block paragraph editing tool, making it easier to edit the text in a document, paragraph by paragraph. Click once to select, move and resize the paragraph, click twice to edit the actual text within it, with the text reflowing perfectly within the selected paragraph. It’s a major improvement on the rather limited line-by-line editing tool found in Adobe Acrobat.

One thing you will need to be careful about here are fonts, if the original font isn’t embedded or present, Nitro will attempt to pick the closest match, but don’t expect miracles. You’ll also find it less effective with multi-columned documents scanned in using OCR -- it’s definitely a tool for PDFs created from other electronic documents.

You can perform similar tweaks to images -- click one to select it, then use the Format and Alignment tabs on the ribbon to make changes such as brightness, contrast and colour. You can also extract individual images from the document in this way, or crop unwanted elements from view.

You can also insert new images, add headers, footers and watermarks, plus automatically create bookmarks and links for easier navigation. There are also tools for inserting, deleting, extracting, replacing, rotating, splitting and cropping entire pages.

Used judiciously, you can perform quite a radical edit of your document, and a possible lifesaver if someone’s dumped a PDF on your lap with no access to the original document.

Convert and Share

One area Nitro Pro 8 excels over its predecessor is in the realm of document conversion from PDF back to another editable format. While version 7 is capable of converting PDFs containing editable text back into Word, Excel and other formats, it can’t handle image-based documents. Our test scan was reproduced as a bitmap image in a Word document in Nitro 7; by contast, Nitro 8 utilised its OCR engine to generate a Word document containing the original text, ready for editing. It wasn’t a perfect conversion -- the layout was preserved as per our instructions, but there were no images ported across. It’s another example of the limited nature of Nitro’s OCR engine -- if you want more sophisticated conversion, including the ability to select portions of the scan to retain as images, you’ll need to invest in a dedicated OCR package.

Nitro 8 also adds more flexibility when exporting PDF tables to an Excel spreadsheet; version 7 automatically places each table on its own worksheet, but Nitro 8 gives you the option of lumping them all together on a single worksheet if you prefer.

Version 8 also claims to produce much smaller file sizes than its predecessor. We tested this by outputting a series of complex PDFs to Word documents and Nitro 8 delivered on its promise, consistently churning out files significantly smaller than its predecessor, including one a mere third of the size produced by Nitro 7.

Nitro 8 promises significantly faster conversion times from PDF to Word too, but sadly we found no evidence of this with the files we converted. It may be more evident with larger files, but with relatively small documents of around four pages we discerned no difference between this version and the last.

Collaborate and Protect

Nitro Pro also features all the document review, collaboration and annotation tools you could ever need. There’s a large degree of overlap, but it allows you to choose exactly how you comment or review a document, whether it’s through tiny notes, markup text, freehand scribbling or even a selection of user-defined stamps.

All commenting is attributable, allowing multiple users to comment on the same document without causing confusion. One handy feature unique to Nitro Pro is its comprehensive redaction tools -- found in the Protect section -- that allows you to first mark content for striking out, then applying it. You’ll also find the usual password-protection, digital signature and encryption tools here for sensitive documents.

Nitro 8 also makes it easy to fill in forms, whether scanned or created electronically. There’s full support for industry standards like AcroForms, but version 8 adds a handy new smart alignment tool for non-interactive and scanned documents, which makes it easier to type on the form neatly, with your text lined up using invisible guides to give it a more professional look.

Throw in Nitro’s existing QuickSign tool -- a handy feature that makes it easy to manage and input a digital image of your signature -- and form filling is both quick and straightforward in Nitro Pro, whatever its origin.

Document recovery

There’s one other major new feature of note in Nitro Pro 8, and that’s the overdue implementation of an auto-save feature to help prevent data loss. By default it’s set to save opened documents every 10 minutes, but you can easily tweak this setting via the program’s Preferences menu.

Other new features include support for Autonomy Worksite implementations in its Document Management Service integration tool – this will appeal to businesses rather than individuals, while improved language support for Japanese, Simplified Chinese and right-to-left scripts including Arabic will also appeal to the commercial user with a global audience.

In Summary

There’s little doubt that Nitro Pro 8 is a compelling package. With a price tag just one third of Acrobat Standard, it’s little wonder that Nitro is grabbing an ever increasing slice of the business market. Its accessible user interface, targeted feature set that covers most people’s needs and stellar performance makes it a great choice for both individuals and businesses looking for a versatile, but non-technical way to manage and work with PDFs.

Version 8 had a difficult act to follow after all the great new features added in the previous release, and its upgrade price -- a mere $49.95 for existing users -- reflects that Nitro Pro 8 doesn’t pull up many trees in this regard. Nevertheless, the improvements it does offer do make it hard to resist, although we’d like to have seen it push the boat out further with its OCR implementation, particularly now there’s no longer any option to avoid using it. This gripe aside, the smaller file sizes, auto-save tool and what new OCR features there are all do help maintain Nitro Pro as a worthy alternative to Adobe Acrobat, particularly at this bargain price point.

Photo Credit: photobank.ch/Shutterstock
Get the address right with Email Checker Basic

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 2:02pm CEST par Mike Williams

You’ve found what you think is an email address for a friend, or colleague -- but is it really valid? If you don’t want to send an email to find out (or you’re checking so many addresses that simply isn’t practical), then another option is to use a tool such as Email Checker Basic to verify the address directly with the server.

The program is small, portable and adware-free, so is very simple to try: just download the 198KB archive, unzip it and you’re ready to go.

In operation it’s not exactly any more difficult. Enter the email address you’d like to validate, click “Check Now”, and the verdict will be returned in a moment.

And if you’d like to understand how Email Checker Basic came to that conclusion, then reading the Interaction box will detail its conversation with the server.

In our tests this usually all worked just fine, with the program correctly identifying real addresses and picking out any which didn’t exist. But there are occasional exceptions. In particular, with some servers it would always confirm an address as valid. Even if we’d just made it up.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the program is entirely useless, of course – you just have to keep the problem in mind, and try to confirm that it can pick out fictional addresses for any given server.

If you’re trying to verify ruth.brown@somesite.com, for instance, try a couple of nonsense addresses for that domain, first: dragonfrosties@somesite.com, cheesemonkey@somesite.com or whatever. As soon as you can get the program to tell you that a given address isn’t valid, you’ll know that verification works for that particular server. And you can then try as many addresses as you like for that domain, and have reasonable trust in whatever verdict Email Checker Basic might return.

Photo Credit: Archipoch/Shutterstock
You CAN root Amazon Kindle Fire HD

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 1:52pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Almost two weeks after Amazon unveiled new tablets, the $199 7-inch Kindle Fire HD tablet gets "a new lease on life" through rooting.

Gaining elevated privileges (popularly known as "root") is facilitated by an exploit found in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich that Amazon didn't fix before shipping the tablet. The fairly uncomplicated process gives the Kindle Fire HD a new trick up its sleeve -- using the Google Play Store, which provides access to all apps available there.

By making two software alterations, Kindle Fire HD 7 inch transforms from a standard Amazon device into a fully fledged Android tablet with Amazon software. It might not be the best of both worlds, but one thing is certain -- it's better than before. It's also one step closer towards an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean custom ROM.
Is patent peace possible in our lifetime?

Publié: septembre 20, 2012, 3:05am CEST par Joe Wilcox

Late this afternoon, in response to Motorola's requested, massive Apple product ban, Dan Gillmore posts to Google+: Come on, Google, don't abuse the patent system the way Apple does. Sheesh". I've seen similar sentiments expressed elsewhere. Gillmore and others are wrong. Google isn't playing Apple's game, but trying to end it. If Apple won't negotiate willingly, a show of force may be the only way to achieve patent peace.

Motorola Mobility is now a Google subsidiary, so legal demand from the one really comes from the other. From one perspective, the request is so sweeping as to dwarf any of the claims Apple makes against competitors like HTC and Samsung. Moto seeks a ban on virtually every Apple device -- iOS or OS X -- sold in the United States. It's reasonable to look at Google and to question whether the tactics are heavy-handed. They are not.

US International Trade Commission received the complaint in late August. Yesterday, the organization agreed to open an investigation. According to ITC:

The complaint alleges violations of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 in the importation into the United States and sale of certain wireless communication devices, portable music and data processing devices, computers, and components thereof that infringe patents asserted by the complainants. The complainants request that the USITC issue an exclusion order and a cease and desist order...Within 45 days after institution of the investigation, the USITC will set a target date for completing the investigation. USITC remedial orders in section 337 cases are effective when issued and become final 60 days after issuance unless disapproved for policy reasons by the US Trade Representative within that 60-day period.

Motorola alleges that Apple violates seven patents, and one of those -- granted about six years ago -- applies to OS X devices, too. An adverse ruling, and worse product ban, would be devastating to Apple without some reasonable workaround. ITC isn't reluctant, either. In May, US Customs seized incoming shipments of HTC's then newly-released One X handset, complying with a patent ruling in Apple's favor. That said, opening an investigation is far from blocking iPads, iPhones and MacBook Airs.

But the threat gives Apple reason to question its patent bullying ways and whether or not an end to hostilities is in order. Motorola's patent attack isn't abuse but attempt to end it. Google wants to bring an end to the patent war by putting reluctant Apple into a position where it must accept cross-licensing agreements. Think rationally. Google doesn't want to stop these products, which people use to consume its services, from shipping. The search giant hugely benefits when consumers use its services on hundreds of millions of iOS or OS X devices.

Mutually-Assured Destruction

Google announced the $12.5 billion Motorola Mobility acquisition in August 2011, and it wasn't rocket science then (or now) to see the huge and valuable patent portfolio as major impetuous. As I explained then, Google seeks intellectual property benefits, among others, by:

1. Building up a portfolio that eventually will lead to cross-licensing deals with heavy-hitters Apple and Microsoft, thus ending the most distracting and potentially debilitating claims against Android licensees.

2. Increasing Android licensees' confidence in the platform. As I've stated before, Apple's patent and other intellectual property claims again HTC, Samsung or other Android licensees is about deterrence -- stalling for time.

Two days later, I asked: "Can Google-Motorola Mobility bring stability to the force?". Explaining: "It's not unusual for patent claims to be prelude to cross-licensing deals. Big companies use these to strengthen their intellectual-property portfolios and to fight off patent-troll lawsuits".

Microsoft is the model of cross-licensing deals, which the company uses to protect customers as much as its own interests. Apple has resisted them and only came to the negotiating table with Nokia (and reaching a cross-licensing deal) after being sued. Nokia had the patent chops, the appropriate portfolio, to compel Apple to deal.

Motorola has a well-deserved reputation for being overly aggressive -- yes, trolling -- in its patent pursuits. Google already has started to reign in the beast, meaning: The ITC complaint is not business as usual.

The search giant seeks through its subsidiary to compel Apple to negotiate. Is the threat enough, or will it take an adverse ruling to bring CEO Tim Cook and company to end hostilities affecting Android? We will see. But I don't doubt Google's objectives, meeting force with force to achieve through cross-licensing agreements patent peace in our time.