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First developer preview of Mac OS X Lion shows new gestures and animations [Video]

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Yesterday was a big day for Apple. Not only did they announce the newly refreshed MacBook Pro laptops, but they also released the first developer preview of Mac OS X Lion. As you may remember, we covered some of its main features in a our blog last year.

Now, though, more exciting features that make advantage of various gestures have been added. Apple has even made a video demo showing some of them.

Update 27 Feb: We also heard the new Mac OS Lion finally supports TRIM for greatly improved SSD drives day-to-day management. Whoa! Read more »

MobileMe has reached end of its life, Apple may relaunch it as a free service

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MobileMe is dead, long live MobileMe? Apple has put their online service on the End of Life list, discontinuing both online and in-store purchases. And of course, rumors about the MobileMe service going free started churning in the Internet rumor mill.

Perhaps Apple’s new data center might have something to do with all this… Read more »

The full Android 3.0 Honeycomb SDK is now officially out

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The full SDK for Android 3.0 is available to developers and now they can start making apps for the tablet-oriented OS. The new APIs are ready and integrated and the SDK Tools are now at version r13.

This is great news for future owners of the slew of Honeycomb tablets released this year at the MWC, running Honeycomb. It means that pretty soon the new Android version will be getting specific apps in the Android Market.

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Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 is now available, go get it

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Microsoft has released the service pack for Windows 7 right on schedule. SP1 include all important updates to date plus some new ones, but nothing major.

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Lenovo refreshes the laptop ThinkPad T, L and W series

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Lenovo is keen to impress with these three updated laptop series. All of them pack some serious punch, some more than others. We’re talking specs like the new i5 and i7 Intel processors, 1GB video RAM and even a 30-hour battery life. No, really!

To break it down here’s the first three from the T series – the Lenovo ThinkPad T420, T420s (14-inch) and T520 (15.6-inch). Read more »

Beta of Windows 8 a.k.a. Next could be ready by September, RTM in mid-2012?

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What do you know, it turns out that Windows 8 may be surprisingly close – a leaked roadmap has led to speculation that Windows 8 (codenamed Windows Next) could turn up in beta form at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in September.

Which is just in time, if the rumors about the Dell Peju tablet coming out in Q1 2012 are right… Read more »

Chrome 10 beta boosts JavaScript performance by 66%, Opera releases v11.10 Barracuda developer snapshot

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Hot on the heels of yesterdays tease about Firefox 5, Chrome and Opera web browsers are venturing bravely into double-digit version numbers – Chrome 10 is finally available as a beta, and Opera is showing off version 11.10. Opera already has v11.01 as stable so the update is fairly minor.

Chrome on the other hand is getting much faster JavaScript, GPU-accelerated video and some UI polish… Read more »

Acer Iconia tablets at the MWC 2011: A for Android, W for Windows 7

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Tablets are on fire today with 3 new entries by Acer. While the A100 and A500 pretty much fit the standard tablet profile, the W500 leads the pack with intuitive design and top-end features.

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Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are RTM, we’ll get them on 22 February

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Microsoft announced it’s ready with the first service packs for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Both SPs are already handed to Microsoft’s OEM partners and we can download them on 22 February.

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Voice Search extension for Google Chrome does some Android magic on your computer

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Guess what, the voice search functionality has just arrived to the Chrome web browser and similarly to the Android voice search functionality you can input text in the search box and even text fields. Thanks to the Voice Search extension you are now capable of voice input on every search box in the web. Just click on the mic icon and speak in your microphone.

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The Top 10 video games to watch out for in 2011

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It’s that time of the year that I like to take a look back at the past year and set my hopes for the next. So as a second part of a gaming mini-series I intend to do this holiday season I plan to point you to some of the best video games to look out for in the upcoming 2011.

I already took you through the Top 10 video games of 2010 and you can tell it was a good year for gamers like me. But when I look at the upcoming games, I’m sure 2011 will be THE year.

We are going to see the ending of a few trilogies, reboots of popular and fundamental classics, and if we are lucky “forever” will be equal to 14.

Let’s take a look…

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The Top 10 video games in 2010 as I saw them

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It’s that time of the year that I like to take a look back at the past year and set my hopes for the next. So as part of a small mini-series I intend to do this holiday season I plan to take you through the best video games this year and the best video games to look out for in the upcoming 2011.

Year 2010 offered us lots of gaming titles, but most of them were sequels of popular and best-selling games. That way the publishers didn’t take any risks with new franchises and bet on safe ones instead. This is not a bad thing, but aren’t we tired of seeing 2,3,4…13 in the game titles? Of course there were some exceptions like Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, Vanquish and Red Dead Redemption, but generally most of the games I played throughout 2010 were sequels.

Anyway, it was a good gaming year and I definitely can’t complain of what I got to play with in 2010.

It’s always hard to tell which game is best so I won’t put any ratings to the titles I’ve chosen to pinpoint. The ten games below surely made quite an impression and deserved equal places in my heart. I know everyone has a personal favorite (mine is Mass Effect 2), but let’s admit – when a game is good enough, nothing else matters. And the good games of 2010 are:

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Opera 11 final version now available for download

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Today opera released the final version of their latest Opera 11 desktop web browser. Despite introducing lots of cool new features such as tab stacking, extensions and visual mouse gestures it took this version less than a month to graduate from beta.

The key feature brought by Opera 11 is tab stacking allowing better management of your open tabs. All you need to do is drag one tab on top of another to create a new stack. Read more »

BBC iPlayer goes international, lands first on the iPad

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BBC is already running the iPlayer service in UK, allowing its viewers to catch up with all TV and radio shows aired in the past seven days. Its first international landing will be on the iPad, where all users will be able to watch on demand their favorite shows from the past week.

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Flash 10.2 beta is out, promises 1080p video playback at 0% CPU usage

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HD video, 0% CPU utilization and Flash – that has to be a joke, right? But Adobe isn’t laughing and promises just that with Flash 10.2 beta. This is achieved by letting the graphics card do all the heavy-lifting.

Other goodies like improved multi-monitor support and faster overall rendering (not just video) have been added to the new version… Read more »