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BetaNews.Com (7 non lus)

Flipboard magazines flip to web browsers

Publié: juillet 23, 2013, 9:06pm CEST par Brian Fagioli

If you are unfamiliar with Flipboard, it is a service which aggregates your favorite online news sources and social media accounts. It then displays the data in a magazine-like layout, including page-turning animations. In addition to personal use, Flipboard also allows users to create "magazines" which can be shared publicly with the world. These are an aggregate of various sources on a specific topic (skiing, cats, technology, and more). Unfortunately, people with whom you shared your magazines were required to have a Flipboard account and access the mobile app -- until today.

Flipboard announces that magazines can now be shared with anyone using a modern browser (an account is not required). "The Web magazines are supported in desktop browsers IE9+, Safari, Chrome and Firefox in 11 languages, including English, Japanese, Chinese, French and German", according to the company. Is this worth flipping out over?

Absolutely. In my testing, the magazines work brilliantly in both Chrome and Firefox. I was able to navigate the publications using my keyboard and mouse. The navigation keys allowed me to change pages one by one. Using the number keys, Flipboard jumped to the corresponding page number -- a nice touch. However, I much preferred using the scroll wheel on my mouse, which allowed me to comfortably sit back in my chair and fluidly glide through pages.

I was extremely happy to see that it also works on my Nokia Lumia 928, which uses Internet Explorer. There is no official Flipboard app for Windows Phone 8 at the moment, however, one is coming "soon". Navigating magazines in the mobile browser proved to be fast and flawless, including animations.

Sadly, creating a magazine (curating) is still an app-only affair -- users will need an iOS or Android-based device to do so. Still, this is a great first step. The creative possibilities are endless.

I would love to read magazines created by BetaNews readers. Please share your links in the comments.
Apache releases OpenOffice 4

Publié: juillet 23, 2013, 5:12pm CEST par Mike Williams

The Apache Software Foundation has announced the release of Apache OpenOffice 4.0, a major update with plenty of interesting new features and enhancements.

The most obvious interface addition is the sidebar, a Lotus Symphony-sourced panel which provides quick access to options most relevant to the current editing task (setting fonts, text style and alignment in a text box, tweaking brightness, colors and contrast for an image, and more).

A host of "Interoperability Improvements" further improves the suite’s compatibility with Microsoft Office documents.

The Draw Gallery gains a lengthy list of new themes (Arrows, Computers, Diagrams, Environment, Finance, People, School & University, Symbols, Textshapes, Transport). It can also use SVG files for the best quality vector results. And if the new graphics aren’t enough, then you can even add your own.

Enhanced conversion to bitmap graphics now properly applies transparencies and antialiasing. This comes in particularly useful whenever you’re exporting objects, so for example copying a chart to the clipboard should now deliver the original, high quality, fully antialiased image.

This improved graphics handling is the power behind a new Bitmap FillType, which allows you to fill the backgrounds of pages, chart bars and more with vector graphics.

Elsewhere, full antialiasing means the Print Preview dialog gives you a more accurate view of your printed page.

And you also get redesigned selection handles and styles, new drag and drop options to set graphic or fill styles, SVG import/ export improvements, PNG transparency support, some new Calc functions (including XOR), various rendering performance increases and a wide range of bug fixes.

This may not be enough to win over many new converts, then, but if you’re already a fan then the new release looks like an essential upgrade.

OpenOffice 4.0 is available now as a free, open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
PlanForCloud helps forecast more than $1 billion in cloud spending

Publié: juillet 23, 2013, 5:02pm CEST par Ian Barker

Forecasting enterprise cloud costs can be hard to do well but is essential to businesses who want to implement cloud solutions effectively. RightScale announces today that its PlanForCloud product has helped companies forecast $1 billion in cloud spending since its launch last year.

By analyzing data from more than 9,500 cloud deployments, PlanForCloud has revealed a number of interesting trends. For example 70 percent of cloud spending goes on servers, 18 percent on storage and only 6 percent on data transfer, with a further 6 percent accounted for by other costs such as transaction charges and support.

It also reveals that on Amazon Web Services some 54 percent of spending is on Reserved Instances of one year or more. This is where companies sign up to a contract for a specific resource up front in order to obtain a discounted hourly rate.

The majority of users opting for Reserved Instances, 62 percent, go for the highest level of utilization, under which the service will be charged as though it's running 24/7 for the duration of the contract. This shows that companies are prepared to adopt a long term commitment to the cloud rather than signing up on an ad-hoc basis.

You can read more about the findings on the RightScale blog and access the free cloud cost calculator to help with your own business decisions on the PlanForCloud website.

Photo Credit: Rrraum/Shutterstock
Scale the heights of Mount Fuji with Google

Publié: juillet 23, 2013, 4:05pm CEST par Alan Buckingham

Google has previously sent its Maps team beneath the waves around the Great Barrier Reef, up the tallest mountain in the world, and into the mile deep depths of the Grand Canyon. Most recently the team scaled the heights of iconic Japanese landmark Mount Fuji, with the familiar Street View cameras firmly strapped to their backs.

Today the search giant rolls out images of Japan's volcano for those who either cannot get there or do not wish to climb the 3,776 meters to reach the summit. "The currently dormant volcano has inspired countless haiku and woodblock prints over many centuries, and around the world, its perfect conical shape has become one of Japan’s most iconic symbols", says Setsuo Murai, Head of Geo Partnerships for Google Japan.

Earlier this year UNESCO granted Mount Fuji, Japan’s tallest mountain, official status as a World Heritage Site because of the cultural influence it has given the nation and the world. "If you can’t get over to Mt. Fuji this summer for the big hike, you can use Street View to take a virtual trek up its peak and enjoy the views of the world below", Google announces.

So what are you waiting for? You will not even need your hiking boots or water bottle. Just sit back in your desk chair and enjoy what relatively few will ever see.
Microsoft's Fresh Paint makes a splash on (some) Windows Phone 8 devices

Publié: juillet 23, 2013, 12:58pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Following Photo Editor by Aviary, that was released earlier this month, yet another picture editing app is now available on Windows Phone 8 -- the Microsoft-developed FreshPaint. The new offering arrives on the tiled smartphone operating system six months after the launch of its Windows 8/RT sibling.

According to Microsoft, FreshPaint for Windows Phone 8 "lets you make original works of art, or turn your photos into beautiful paintings with just a few taps". The app is quite easy to use, allowing users to snap pictures, add filters on-the-fly (users can choose between three distinct ones when taking a photo) and create new digital paintings, as the main highlights.

FreshPaint can be used as a camera lens, by tapping on the adjacent icon and selecting the app, or simply by launching it from the Windows Phone 8 app list. The former is optimized for quick snapping of filtered photos (like previously mentioned, users can choose between three filters), while when going with the latter route all the available functionality is available right after powering it up.

Users can also import existing pictures, in order to edit them. More talented (or inspired) folks can create digital drawings (that mimic oil paintings) by using the provided brushes (colors, type of brush, line thickness and other options can be altered). As you might expect, the usual sharing options -- email, social networks, etc. -- are also available.

FreshPaint can only be installed on Windows Phone 8 handsets that ship with 1 GB of RAM, which excludes lesser devices like the Nokia Lumia 520/521, Lumia 620, Lumia 720 and HTC Windows Phone 8S, among others.

FreshPaint is available to download from Windows Phone Store.
The Ask Toolbar is another reason to avoid Java

Publié: juillet 23, 2013, 12:36pm CEST par Wayne Williams

I love free software but I’m not a huge fan of all the junk that often gets bundled with programs -- toolbars and the like -- or the changes that the software sometimes wants or tries to make to my search provider. The order, as far as I’m concerned, should always go like this -- Google first, Bing second, Ask never. But so long as the extras are clearly labeled, can be deselected without problem, and easily uninstalled afterwards if I accidentally miss one, I don’t have a real issue with this bundling. It provides a way to get the software for free and funds future development.

However, I’m a savvy computer user and as part of my job I install and uninstall a lot of free software, so I know what to look out for. For the less technically astute, it’s easy to get caught out and end up installing a lot of crap you don’t want. Which takes me to the point of this article -- Oracle and the Ask Toolbar.

The only reason anyone uses Ask now is because a piece of software installed the search toolbar on their computers and they haven’t realized, or don’t know how to get rid of it. A lot of software comes with the Ask Toolbar bundled, but according to Soluto in a new blog post, 40 percent of all Ask installations come from a Java install or update.

Soluto says Java is installed on 70 percent of all browsers and because the software is so notoriously insecure, critical security fixes come thick and fast. Every time it’s updated, users have to pay careful attention to make sure they don’t end up with the Ask Toolbar.

Soluto claims 30 percent of all its users have had the toolbar installed on their computers at some point, and according to the company "The fact 59 percent of Soluto users choose to disable Ask.com toolbar for their customers shows how hated a piece of software this is. We believe most of the remaining 41 percent simply haven’t gotten to it yet". A survey asking Oracle to stop bundling the Ask Toolbar with the Java installer has to date garnered 16,702 signatures.

Soluto's blog post is timely for me, as at the weekend I removed Ask Toolbar from my in-laws computers (it was on two of them) and both came from Java updates at some point in the past. I removed Java at the same time as the toolbar.

The Ask addition is a nuisance. As Soluto explains "The toolbar takes over the browser’s default search provider and replaces it with the Ask.com search engine. Ask’s search is clearly inferior to Google’s search, giving users lower-grade search results and bombarding the user with banner ads, video ads, and in general a poor experience. It also tries to hijack the default homepage and depending on the browser -- it often succeeds".

When you install or update Java, if you forget to untick the Ask Toolbar option you won't be able to uninstall it immediately because the crapware idles around for ten minutes or so, pretending not to exist before installing silently in the background.

I think out of all the unwanted programs I’ve had to remove from friends and family’s PCs, it’s this which is now at the top of the list.

Have you had similar problems with the Ask Toolbar, or is there a worse example you’ve found (Conduit, Babylon, etc.) feel free to vent about crapware in the comments below.
Microsoft explains how SkyDrive keeps bandwidth usage to a minimum

Publié: juillet 23, 2013, 12:11pm CEST par Mark Wilson

The release of Windows 8.1, complete with the more tightly interwoven SkyDrive, brings Microsoft's cloud storage service to the fore. In a new blog post, Mona Akmal from the SkyDrive team explains how the service is able to make files available on all of your devices without eating up too much bandwidth. How is this done? It's largely down to "placeholder" files.

The obvious solution to making all SkyDrive files available on all of your devices would be to simply sync everything. But when it comes to tablets and phones, it is entirely possible that the amount of available local storage is far lower than the amount of cloud storage space that has been used. Placeholders are essentially "ghost" files that take up a fraction of the space of the original.

These placeholders can be moved, renamed and deleted, the contents of folders can be browsed -- all without having to download the contents in their entirety. When a file is open it has to be completely downloaded, but this is not done until necessary to help speed things up. Mona's blog entry shows an example in which a 5.8GB file stored on SkyDrive occupies just 185MB locally.

But this is not the only new technique employed by SkyDrive. Cloud storage services are often used to store digital photos, and these are files that rarely have meaningful names -- you really need to be able to see what you are working with. Rather than fully downloading images just in case they may be needed, thumbnail pre-fetching is used to give a sneak peak of what images look like.

As with other files, images can be moved, renamed and deleted, and they are only downloaded when viewed at full size or when edited. The claim is that the combination of placeholders and the new smart thumbnail means that access to all files can be provided to your cloud content even though locally synced content takes up just 5 percent of the space of the equivalent files on SkyDrive.

This, coupled with well implemented offline access, demonstrates just how seriously Microsoft now is taking the move to the cloud. You can read the post in full at the Windows blog.