Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » février 8, 2013

BetaNews.Com (13 non lus)

Microsoft cancels Surface Pro launch

Publié: février 8, 2013, 9:17pm CET par Joe Wilcox

I should say the big launch event planned for New York City. Can you say bad weather? In October Hurricane Sandy sandbagged (absolutely no pun intended) Google's Nexus device unveiling, also in the Big Apple. The search giant announced products anyway. Likewise, Surface Pro sales will go on, in stores around Canada and the United States and online.

"Surface Pro launch activities in NYC have been cancelled due to weather; our best wishes for everyone impacted by the blizzard," a Microsoft spokesperson tells BetaNews. Surely there's a metaphor here somewhere. What Microsoft's top brass must want -- desperately hope for on knees with hands clasped high -- is a blizzard of Surface Pro sales. A storm of people rushing into stores or pounding keys online to buy one of the two models, 64GB ($899) and 128GB ($999). If we were all characters in a novel, the blizzard would foreshadow future events -- or so Microsofties can only hope.

In the Shakespearean tragedy version, however, the blizzard symbolizes the gods' wrath. CEO Steve Ballmer's flaw is ego, and he fires Windows 8 head honcho Steven Sinofsky only to have Surface go all to hell in the end sans his leadership. Ballmer is lost in a whiteout -- having gone to the City for the launch event -- and isn't seen again until 2087, when construction unearths his remains.

In the real world, the product has a leader, Panos Panay, corporate vice president, who says that the "launch of Surface Pro marks a pivotal moment". That's an understatement, because Microsoft has so much hinging on the touchscreen tablet's success. I agree with company executives whining about the lineup of Windows 8 PCs for the holidays. Few really excited (honestly, none for me).

Surface Pro is a new beast -- a little of this and a little of that, tablet, laptop and sketchpad. The tablet could be the defining Windows 8 device, although I struggle to comprehend why cold, wet or snowy February is the right month to launch in this hemisphere.

Surface Pro shouldn't be confused with sibling RT, which price starts at $499. "Surface family, customers will be able to choose a combination of devices that best suit their needs: Surface Pro, which provides the power and performance of a laptop in a tablet package, or Surface RT, which offers the convenience of a tablet with some laptop capabilities so you can get things done", Panay says.

The tablet coming February 9 competes with Windows ultrabooks and MacBook Air, and runs Windows 8 Pro on an Intel Core i5 processor. The other uses ARM architecture, starts at much lower price ($499) and competes with tablets like iPad and Nexus 10.

Americans and Canadians can buy Surface Pro from one of Microsoft's nearly 70 permanent and pop-up company stores or Best Buy. Also: Future Shop north of the border and Staples south of it. Just in time to swoon sweethearts, Surface RT sales expand to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland on Valentine's Day.

Three limited-edition Touch Covers go on sale as well, in cyan, magenta and red, for $129.99 each. A Surface wedge mouse sells for $69.95. Additionally, Microsoft adds a new Windows RT SKU, 64GB for $599 without keyboard cover.

If you haven't read my Surface Pro first-impressions review, please do -- and watch for a follow-up story today about who should (or shouldn't) buy the tablet.

As for that pesky blizzard, I've seen several weathermen compare this one to the colossus of February 1978. I remember that one well. The university closed for the first time in seven years, for weather. Guys jumped out from my dorm's second-story windows into snow banks. Buddy and I hitched rides on slow driving cars, hanging off back bumpers and sliding our shoes on the snowy road. I got a reprieve on two exams because of that storm.

Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox
Accidental Empires Part 4 -- The Demo-God (Chapter 1a)

Publié: février 8, 2013, 7:26pm CET par Robert X. Cringely

Fourth in a series. Editor, with one, two, three introductions behind, Robert X. Cringely's serialized version of 1991 classic Accidental Empires begins.

Years ago, when you were a kid and I was a kid, something changed in America. One moment we were players of baseball, voters, readers of books, makers of dinner, arguers. And a second later, and for every other second since then, we were all just shoppers.

Shopping is what we do; it’s entertainment. Consumers are what we are; we go shopping for fun. Nearly all of our energy goes into buying --- thinking about what we would like to buy or earning money to pay for what we have already bought.

We invented credit cards, suburban shopping malls, and day care just to make our consumerism more efficient. We sent our wives, husbands, children, and grandparents out to work, just to pay for all the stuff we wanted -- needed -- to buy. We invented a thousand colors of eye shadow and more than 400 different models of automobiles, and forced every garage band in America to make a recording of "Louie Louie", just so we’d have enough goods to choose between to fill what free time remained. And when, as Americans are wont to do, we surprised ourselves by coming up with a few extra dollars and a few extra hours to spare, we invented entirely new classes of consumer products to satisfy our addiction. Why else would anyone spend $19.95 to buy an Abdomenizer exercise machine?

I blame it all on the personal computer.

Think about it for a moment. Personal computers came along in the late 1970s and by the mid-1980s had invaded every office and infected many homes. In addition to being the ultimate item of conspicuous consumption for those of us who don’t collect fine art, PCs killed the office typewriter, made most secretaries obsolete, and made it possible for a 27-year-old M.B.A. with a PC, a spreadsheet program and three pieces of questionable data to talk his bosses into looting the company pension plan and doing a leveraged buy-out.

Without personal computers, there would have been -- could have been -- no Michael Milkens or Ivan Boeskys. Without personal computers, there would have been no supply-side economics. But, with the development of personal computers, for the first time in history, a single person could gather together and get a shaky handle on enough data to cure a disease or destroy a career. Personal computers made it possible for businesses to move further and faster than they ever had before, creating untold wealth that we had to spend on something, so we all became shoppers.

Personal computers both created the longest continuous peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history and ended it.

Along the way, personal computers themselves turned into a very big business. In 1990, $70 billion worth of personal computer hardware and software were sold worldwide. After automobiles, energy production, and illegal drugs, personal computers are the largest manufacturing industry in the world and one of the great success stories for American business.

And I’m here to tell you three things:

1. It all happened more or less by accident.

2. The people who made it happen were amateurs.

3. And for the most part they still are.

Reprinted with permission

Photo Credit: Robert Hope
Amazon picks up the slack -- attacks Apple in new TV commerical

Publié: février 8, 2013, 6:57pm CET par Alan Buckingham

The past few months have been a bit rough for Apple. Samsung attacked the company in a series of amusing ads that portrayed a line of people waiting to buy iPhone as losers. While the ads never specifically mentioned Apple, the implications were certainly clear enough. Combine those attacks with declining stock prices and other nagging battles, such as those in court, and you have a recipe for tough times.

While Samsung largely lets its rival be in the latest ads, Amazon picks up the slack -- and, unlike Samsung, is quite clear. The 30-second second clip compares the new Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch against Apple iPad with Retina Display and lets the viewer know that, while both devices show "stunning HD", there is a major difference. Then it proceeds to place the devices side-by-side and let you know that, while you may not be able to tell the difference in the screens, "your wallet definitely can".

The last part of the ad continues to display the devices in split-screen, but with the prices -- $499 versus $299. Amazon clearly hopes this is the lasting image for viewers as the commercial ends.

The question: Is it enough to sway the Apple lover? The two devices are clearly comparable, but the operating systems are vastly different, as are the prices. Likely this may help those on the fence make up their minds, but the battle will rage on and come down to the platform each individual is more comfortable with using. What do you think?
Best Windows 8 apps this week

Publié: février 8, 2013, 6:32pm CET par Martin Brinkmann

Fifteenth in a series. Several important applications received updates in the past seven days. Adobe updated its Reader application for Windows 8 and even changed the name of the application to Adobe Reader Touch. Microosft, too, released updates for several of its applications, including the Bing, which now includes video search results.

In another interesting turn of events, WinZip decided to remove the price tag from the company's Windows 8 app of the same name. The application, previously available for $7.99 is now available free.

The total application count in the US Windows 8 Store is 28,055 divided into 21,745 free apps and 6,310 paid applications. That's an increase of 537 free apps and 236 paid apps this week.

The increase is consistent and has not changed at all in recent weeks. Each week, about 800 to 1,000 new apps are listed in Windows Store.

XKCD Essentials

XKCD webcomics are part of today's geek culture on the Internet. They get released regularly on schedule and are free to look at on the creator's website.

The application for Windows 8 provides you with access to all comics released -- and future ones -- that you can browse in full screen on a computer running Microsoft's operating system.

Probably the main advantage here is that you can browse comics faster than on the site. What's not so good is that the original sizes are displayed in the app so that you end up with lots of blank background texture when you use the app to read the comics.

You can switch between comics either with the left and right cursor keys, touch gestures or by clicking on the comic stream at the bottom of the interface.

Radio Paradise

The Internet radio application offers an interesting selection of hand picked music mixes and background images that change every couple of seconds.

The application adds community interaction and lyrics to the music. You can open up the music info box to display user comments, leave a comment or rating of your own, and display the song lyrics. Here you also find links to buy the CD or MP3.

The quality of the music stream is set to high by default, which you can change to medium or low if you need the bandwidth for other activities. Note that the music continues to play in the background.

5-O Radio

Provides you with access to police scanners and radio stations at the same time. You can browse scanners by location, all 50 US states are available here as well as scanners from countries such as Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Canada or Australia, by popularity or recency.

Depending on your selection, you may be taken to a list of places and cities in that state or country, browse a top list of scanners, or listen to countrywide stations.

The selection of radio stations is excellent as well. You can select a music genre you are interested in, Electronic, Country, Pop or Sports for example, and then the listing of radio stations filled in that category.

Metrogram Live

Another Instagram app for Windows 8 displays a selection of popular photos taken by members of the community on start. You do need to sign in to an Instagram account before you can use the remaining functionality the app makes available.

This includes searching for photos shared on the site, commenting or liking photos, browsing your user feed or pinning favorite photos to the start screen. You can furthermore view public profiles of any user, follow or unfollow users, or browse recent photos of a selected user.

Valentine Cards

Valentine's Day is coming up and if you need a last minute card you may be interested in the Valentine's Card application for Windows 8. You can load a photo into the application or create one using a connected webcam or camera.

Once done you can add hearts, candy, stamps or other clipart that is usually associated with love or Valentine's Day to the card.

A right-click opens a toolbar menu that you can use to add text and additional clipart to the photo, crop, rename or flip it, and save it to the local system or share it directly using the sharing options of the operating system.

MediaMonkey

MediaMonkey is one of the best music management programs for the Windows operating system. The Windows 8 application is a standalone app that you can use to play music on the operating system.

You can sync the library with systems that run the desktop client. Wi-Fi syncing is available as an in-app purchase.

The app plays common music file types like mp3, m4a, ogg, flac or wma among others, comes with an equalizer and options to navigate the music collection by artist, album, genre or playlist.

Di.fm (no link yet)

This is the official Digitally Import app for Windows 8. If you like electronic music, Di.fm is the app to get your fix. You can browse the available radio stations on the front page and tune into one right away with a single click.

The application looks fantastic and is without doubt one of the best looking apps for Windows 8 right now. You can favorite stations to access them faster and keep on listening to music after you switch to another application or the desktop.

CloudMagic

CloudMagic makes available a single search box to search across multiple web accounts and services. If you connect the accounts, you can search Twitter, Gmail, Google Docs, Office 365, Exchange, Facebook, Dropbox or Evernote at the same time from a single search form the app makes available.

You do not necessarily have to use the application for this as you can also use browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox or Safari for similar functionality.

Skulls of the Shogun ($9.99, trial available)

While I do not cover games usually here each week I would like to make an exception for this game as it not only has received an incredible amount of positive ratings since its release a couple of days ago (more than 263 and counting) but is also one of the first high quality games released for Windows 8.

The ratings are even more impressive if you consider that the game is not free but costs $9.99.

It is a turn based strategy game that gives you control of samurai units to defeat enemy units you encounter in story driven levels. The game features a single player campaign and asynchronous multiplayer to play against human players that play the game on their Xbox 360 or Windows Phone.
It's free! WinZip for Windows 8

Publié: février 8, 2013, 6:15pm CET par Mike Williams

WinZip Computing has announced that its WinZip for Windows 8 app is now available for free.

This represents a fairly swift change of direction, as it’s not even three months since the app first appeared in the Windows Store with a price tag of $7.99.

Still, given the number of other quality free archiving tools around, the move probably isn’t a great surprise.

Is the app now worth considering? It depends what you want to do. One potential problem here is that the app only handles ZIP and ZIPX files, which is fine when you only need to create and manage your own archives, but could be an issue if you regularly download or are sent other formats.

Otherwise, though, the interface looks good and works well, allowing you to browse files and folders with a clean and touch-friendly tile-based interface.

It runs on Windows RT, as well as Windows 8.

And the app also provides access to the ZipSend service for sending archives to others, while allowing you to securely share your files via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive and more.

You could of course achieve much of this by combining a few other appropriate apps, but WinZip for Windows 8 does still provide some very useful functionality, and if you’re yet to explore the world of modern UI archive management then it’s not a bad place to start. Especially now the price tag has been removed.

Photo Credit: Arkady/Shutterstock
Microsoft touts SkyDrive numbers, announces new features

Publié: février 8, 2013, 5:39pm CET par Alan Buckingham

Microsoft announced the new Office 2013 / Office 365 release on January 29th and the new suite, no matter which version of it you choose, comes with tight integration with the company's cloud storage service, SkyDrive. You do not have to use it -- you can still store your files locally, but it makes for easier work when a document can easily be accessed from everywhere and shared with co-workers.

However, apparently a lot of people are taking advantage of the feature, because today Microsoft's Sarah Filman, lead program manager for SkyDrive, announces that the service now stores a lot of files -- "Recently we reached a big milestone; our customers are now storing over a billion Office documents on SkyDrive".

While the number sounds impressive, it was not the thrust of Filman's announcement. She wants to alert everyone that SkyDrive adds some new features to make sharing and collaborating on those documents a bit easier.

The cloud service has added the ability to edit and share documents without being required to sign in. "One piece of feedback we’ve consistently heard, especially from students, is that our current SkyDrive edit links can be frustrating for recipients when they find that they need to sign in or sign up for a Microsoft account just to make a quick edit to the document".

The new feature will certainly make plenty of users happy and, no doubt, come in handy. As for the "billion" part of the announcement I am less impressed. As I said prior, it sounds good, but many of us create multiple documents per day and many of us have been storing those documents in SkyDrive since the service was introduced -- long before the latest Office came along.

Photo Credit: NinaMalyna/Shutterstock
LastPass improves security and launches new Windows 8 app

Publié: février 8, 2013, 3:27pm CET par Nick Peers

Browser password manager LastPass 2.0.20 has been released for all major web browsers. The new release, also available for 64-bit versions of Windows is accompanied by the LastPass for Windows 8 app, which gives users access to their LastPass account directly from the Modern UI interface in Windows 8.

Version 2.0.20 now automatically calculates the user’s security score and displays it next to the Security Challenge link in the user’s vault. It also extends support -- albeit in beta -- to the Maxthon web browser.

The new build also adds a new preference that permits users to clear login credentials filled in automatically by LastPass on logging out of the service. Also added is faster login through performing hashes through binary components of the app, while password iterations are now recommended to be at 5000 for greater security.

Also improved is accessibility to the Generate Secure Password tool from the LastPass toolbar, while the LastPass Sentry online test now offers an option for checking usernames to see if they’ve been used as part of browser hacks. There’s also a fix for NTLM authentication in Internet Explorer.

A number of new Enterprise features have been added, including the extension of SAML Support to include Box.com, Zendesk and SalesForce among others. Enterprise users can now see security scores for all users in the organization to see which ones aren’t following the best practices.

The new Windows 8 app works in much the same way as the standalone LastPass Tab Browser app for iPhone and iPad, providing users with full access to their vault, plus bundling a built-in browser for quickly accessing websites on the go. Users can also opt to copy passwords to the clipboard for manually logging into other web browsers.

LastPass 2.0.20 is a free download for all major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. Also available are standalone tools, LastPass for Windows 8, LastPass for Android and LastPass Tab Browser for iPhone and iPad. Users can upgrade for additional tools, including the ability to access their LastPass vaults from mobile devices.

Photo credit: Gunnar Pippel/Shutterstock
Sony details the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean upgrade for Xperia smartphones

Publié: février 8, 2013, 12:46pm CET par Mihaita Bamburic

Sony's Android 4.1 Jelly Bean upgrade for 2012 Xperia smartphones is a long time coming. The Japanese manufacturer announced its plans in mid-October last year, and followed it up with a brief update two months later. Finally, as planned, deployment is set to kick off "this week".

The first smartphones to receive the coveted upgrade to the original Jelly Bean iteration are the Xperia T and Xperia, with Xperia TX owners having to wait until next month for the same software treatment. In an attempt to appease impatient users and to drum up some interest, Sony has decided to spill the beans on what Android 4.1 Jelly Bean entails for Xperia users by providing a list of significant changes included in the upgrade.

One of the most important improvements, carried over from the stock version of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, is Google Now. The personal assistant delivers contextual cards based on search queries, location or upcoming events and provides Gmail integration as well for flight and hotel confirmations, event and restaurant bookings and packages, among others.

Sony has revamped the camera interface, which now touts "a more intuitive viewfinder" with auto-scene setting and the option to switch between the two on-board cameras with a single press of a button. Users can search within the application tray to find specific apps, use up to seven homescreens, or take advantage of resizable widgets and expandable notifications. The Japanese manufacturer also includes updated versions of Album and Movies, as well as WALKMAN.
Get Aero back in Windows 8

Publié: février 8, 2013, 11:08am CET par Mihaita Bamburic

Windows 8 fans didn't take Microsoft's decision to dump the familiar Aero Glass interface lightly. Even though the software corporation has very good reasons for doing so, there are users who are willing to put up with the apparent disadvantages and want to bring the transparency back.

Microsoft is known for its stance on the matter and it is unlikely that the software giant will be persuaded to bring Aero Glass back in Windows 8 and, therefore, eat its own words about the advantages of the new interface. For this reason, and likely others as well, a developer decided to take matters into his own hands and release a hack that brings back Aero Glass into the Windows 8 Desktop Window Manager.

The developer, who goes by the userhandle bigmuscle, explains how the simply titled Aero Glass for Win8 works. He says:

"I have developed DLL library in C++ which is injected into dwm.exe process (no system files replacement is required). Then, the functions used for window border drawing are hooked with my own implementation. This ensures that anytime DWM wants to draw the window border, the code is redirected into my library where I can change the parameters of vertex buffer, blend state and other stuff. Then I redirect back to the original drawing function. Transparent window border is drawn!"

The implementation used by Aero Glass for Win8 comes with some caveats, as bigmuscle explains:

"Currently, I implemented only blur effect using Direct2D. My plan is to return glow effect to the window caption, better shadow around the windows, and, if anyone is interested, try to reimplement Flip3D functionality."

That said, the hack works and does indeed bring the transparency effects back into Windows 8. Users must extract the provided 7z file into a "DWM" folder within the root of the drive where the operating system is installed, for instance "C:\DWM", open the "DWMLoader.exe" file and validate any UAC or security software prompts.

A command prompt window will then open, informing the user that Aero Glass is now enabled. In order to go back to the default Windows 8 interface, the user only has to close the command prompt window. Keep in mind that the hack is currently labeled as a preview build and it may "feature" the occasional bug associated with the early stages of development.
Microsoft’s attacks on Google are sad and embarrassing

Publié: février 8, 2013, 10:29am CET par Wayne Williams

After I left school I went into sales. And one of the first things I was taught was this: never disparage the competition. Never say bad things about them -- even if what you’re saying is true, or you believe it to be at least -- because it makes the firm you’re representing seem petty and small.

Clearly this is a lesson Microsoft needs to learn. The firm’s marketing department, in particular whoever came up with the Scroogled campaign, is doing its best to turn the Redmond, Wash.-based technology giant into a petty, whining child, complaining about a rival rather than championing its own products. Instead of shouting triumphantly, "Use Outlook.com because it’s great and has all these benefits", Microsoft is reduced to grumbling, "Don’t use Gmail because it reads your emails". It’s not an aggressive information campaign as some people have described it. It’s a sad and frankly pathetic strategy.

I like Microsoft as a company, I like (many of) its products and to see it engaging in these sort of low-level scrappy tactics makes me a little sad. Microsoft is better than that. Or it should be.

The original Scroogled campaign attacked Google Shopping. Microsoft called out its rival for using a "pay-to-rank" practice that presented users with search results that were neither honest nor fair. The latest Scroogled crusade says people shouldn’t use Gmail because Google goes through users' personal emails to sell them ads. When I read that I cringed. It was an old, old issue dredged up in an act that surely resulted in the barrel scraper responsible for it getting a handful of splinters in the process. Sarah Perez at TechCrunch summed it up best for me when she reported the campaign with this opening line: "Hey Microsoft, 2004 called. It wants its privacy outrage debate back".

Microsoft’s The Browser You Loved To Hate campaign for Internet Explorer is the opposite of the Scroogled one. It’s clever, funny, pokes fun at the veteran browser and sells the product in the process. It makes you respect Microsoft for acknowledging how people feel about IE, and uses goodwill and positivity to attempt to change public opinion.

Scroogled is mean-spirited and in the case of the Gmail attack, comes across as desperate.

What future delights does the Scroogled campaign hold for us I wonder? "Don’t use Android because its ideas and technology are stolen from the iPhone!", "Don’t use Street View because it’s encouraging Google to look through your living room curtains and leach private data from your Wi-Fi"… Perhaps Microsoft will launch an ad campaign aimed at warning Safari users that Google might have tracked them without their permission and promising Bing won’t do the same thing (oh wait, Microsoft already did that last one).

Of course Google does bad things from time to time, but Microsoft -- hardly the most trustworthy of moral crusaders anyway -- isn’t the firm to call them out for it. Leave that to the privacy advocates.

Instead of attacking Google, Microsoft should finally try to learn from it. Google built (or acquired and polished) products that consumers wanted to use. People switched from AltaVista and other search engines to Google because its site produced the best results. Those same people switched from Hotmail to Gmail because Google had the better email service (and didn’t bombard users with flashing adverts and spam). Consumers use YouTube because it’s fantastic, and Google Maps, Chrome, Reader, Calendar etc. for the same reasons.

Sure, Google produces a fair amount of duds, but when it scores a success it’s usually because the product it’s offering is superior to what’s out there and people flock to it.

I won’t switch to Bing, or Outlook.com full time because they aren’t as good as what I’m getting from Google (I briefly moved to DuckDuckGo for search, but got drawn back to Google as we all are eventually). Scaremongering and the unholy trinity of fear, uncertainty and doubt are unlikely to ever make me switch my search engine or email provider.

But the promise of a genuinely superior product might.

Photo Credit: eurobanks/Shutterstock
Need a truly useful dictionary? Try TheSage

Publié: février 8, 2013, 7:26am CET par Mike Williams

When you need to use a dictionary then the quickest solution is usually to head off online. There are plenty of excellent free services available, and if you’re just looking for a quick definition then they’ll probably do a very good job.

If you need more, though – more frequent lookups, better searching features, more options and control -- then there’s still a case for installing a dictionary application. And TheSage is the perfect example.

The program is extremely comprehensive, for instance, with 210,000+ definitions (and a thesaurus detailing 1,400,000 relationships between them). It’s free, and unrestricted. And installation is straightforward (there’s even a portable option, if you need it).

It won’t exactly take long to get started with TheSage, either. Enter a word in the box, click “LookUp” and you’ll get a definition right away. This will include a guide to how the word is pronounced (click this and you’ll hear it spoken out loud), and many of the definitions will also have examples showing you how they’re used.

Knowing how to spell the word you’re after is often a problem with dictionaries, of course, but TheSage provides multiple tools to help.

You can just give it a try with your best guess, and the program will intelligently suggest matches (type “dicshunary”, for instance, and it knows that “dictionary” is probably what you meant).

You can opt to “search as you type”, which is rather like flicking through the pages of a paper dictionary. So as you type each letter, TheSage will display what it thinks is the most likely match, and once you spot what you need then double-clicking it will bring up the definition.

And you can even use a variety of wildcard searches, very helpful if you’re confident of the spelling in all but one or two places.

Elsewhere, there’s another handy extra in the Anagram feature. Enter an appropriate word, click Anagram, and you’ll see a list of all the full and partial anagrams it can make.

And while all this happens locally, no need to be online, the program also recognizes that sometimes the web is the best place to go. So if you enter a word or phrase, and click “Go online”, within a few seconds the program’s internal browser will display tabs with results from Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Google’s Define service, and a regular Google search.

If there’s a problem here it’s that TheSage tries perhaps too hard to hide most of its functionality. Launch the program and you’ll see only a few basic search options, for instance. To find the Web search you’ll have to spot a tiny arrow in the extreme left of the program window, click it, select “Other Searches”, and click the Internet icon. Which isn’t exactly obvious.

Take the time to explore everything it has to offer, though, and you’ll find TheSage is an excellent tool, one of the most capable dictionaries around (free or otherwise). And if online equivalents aren’t quite providing the power you need then you really should give the program a try.

Photo Credit: NinaMalyna/Shutterstock
iPhone cracks against the Great Wall of China

Publié: février 8, 2013, 4:31am CET par Joe Wilcox

The Chinese smartphone market is dominated by five top manufacturers, none of them Apple, Canalys reveals. As I've warned a couple times recently, despite CEO Tim Cook's prognostications about China's importance or his company boasting 2 million first-weekend iPhone 5 sales, competitors rapidly close out the market for costly fruit-logos.

China is the biggest market for mobiles, largely dominated by smartphones -- 73 percent of the total in fourth quarter, up from 40 percent a year earlier. Shipments soared 113 percent to 64.7 million units, or 30 percent of all smartphones globally. Samsung captured the top spot, followed by Lenovo, Yulong, Huawei and ZTE.

Losing China

"China is a massive growth prospect, but Apple is not making the market share impact there that it is in other markets", Nicole Peng, Canalys China research director, says. "The lack of a device on the China Mobile network is a big drawback, combined with high price points. Addressing these issues with the combination of a TD-SCDMA device and a cheaper model would open the flood-gates".

China accounted for 13 percent of all Apple revenues during calendar fourth quarter. Referring to sales following iPhone 5's release, "we saw our highest growth in China and it was into the triple digits, which was higher than the market there", Cook says (during last month's earnings call). More broadly: "It’s clear that China it’s already our second largest region as you can see from the data that we have given you and it’s clear, there is a lot of potential there".

Yes, but iPhone is the big revenue generator, and the handset faces increased -- and fast-growing -- competition mainly from Chinese phone manufacturers, many of which ship Android devices.

Lenovo was the quarter's big gainer. Shipments grew 216 percent year over year, but mostly to the one country. "China made up 98 percent of Lenovo’s shipments with a handful of emerging markets making up the rest", Jessica Kwee, Canalys analyst, says. "Its struggle to gain a foothold in markets outside of China means that it may be forced down the acquisition route -- as it was with its PC business -- hence the speculation about BlackBerry".

Holding the World

Globally, Asian manufacturers, mainly from China, dominated the top-5 during Q4. But there, Apple made strong showing, lifted mainly by more mature markets like the United States where smartphone saturation slows sales compared to many other geographies. Samsung led, followed by the fruit-logo company, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo. Samsung's lead is solid but tenuous, with 29 percent share to Apple's 22.1 percent. But the Others category, which includes white-box makers shipping Androids to China and other emerging markets, was larger, with 34.5 percent share.

Smartphones accounted for 49.4 percent of all handset shipments -- 216.5 million and 438.1 million, respectively.

Android shipped on 34 percent of all handsets during fourth quarter, according to Canalys, compared to 11 percent for iOS. The number is greater for smartphones (69.2 percent). However, the green robot lost share sequentially, from 74 percent, largely due to iPhone 5's strong first-full quarter of sales. Share of Apple's mobile operating system rose to 22.1 percent from 15 percent quarter on quarter.

"When we look at the whole of 2012, Nokia remained the number three smartphone vendor, shipping 35 million units, but Apple in second place shipped 101 million more handsets", Pete Cunningham, Canalys principal analyst, says. "First-placed Samsung shipped 74 million more than Apple -- the gaps are colossal. But there is still a big opportunity as smartphone penetration increases around the world".

He emphasizes: "Vendors left in the wake of the top vendors must at the very least improve their portfolios, time-to-market and marketing, as well as communicate their differentiators. Microsoft, BlackBerry and other new OS entrants, such as Mozilla, must make the OS switch as simple as possible and drive and localize their respective app and content ecosystems".

Photo Credit: Alex Wolf/Shutterstock
Don't expect too much from Rootkit Remover

Publié: février 8, 2013, 1:46am CET par Mike Williams

Bitdefender Labs has released Bitdefender Rootkit Remover, a free stand-alone tool for dealing with known rootkits.

The company report that Rootkit Remover can remove infections from a wide range of threats, including Mebroot, all TDL families (TDL/SST/Pihar), Mayachok, Mybios, Plite, XPaj, Whistler, Alipop, Cpd, Fengd, Fips, Guntior, MBR Locker, Mebratix, Niwa, Ponreb, Ramnit, Stoned, Yoddos, Yurn, Zegost and Necurs, amongst others.

The program’s emphasis is very much on simplicity. There’s no installation required, no need to worry about compatibility with other security products, and no lengthy running times, either. Just click “Start Scan” and Rootkit Remover checks for specific signs of infection by known rootkits. If anything is found, it’ll be removed; and if your system is clean, the scan could be over in less than a second.

You shouldn’t expect too much from Rootkit Remover, then. It doesn’t perform any kind of general analysis to help you detect and remove brand new threats, and of course it can’t stop you from being infected in the first place (so is no substitute for a regular antivirus engine). This is really just about providing a single dedicated tool to quickly remove malware which Bitdefender knows about already.

Still, this isn’t in itself a bad thing. If you think you might be infected by a rootkit and your current antivirus engine hasn’t raised an alert, then there’s no doubt that this new tool provides a very quick and easy way to get a second opinion, and perhaps solve the problem entirely. Especially as the official Bitdefender Labs blog post on the release suggests it’s going to be regularly updated, with support for tackling “new rootkit families… added as they become known”.

But if you’d like to try it yourself, there are now two downloads available: Bitdefender Rootkit Remover x86, and Bitdefender Rootkit Remover x64.

Photo Credits: maraga/Shutterstock