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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 »

Opera 11 first beta released, adds extensions and tab stacking

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The first beta of the new Opera 11 computer browser has just been released for public download. It adds several cool new features so it might be worth checking it out. The hottest new addition is tab stacking, a better way to organize your open tabs. Instead of opening tabs side-by-side, Opera 11 allows you to group them by site or by theme.

Also with its 11th version Opera joins the list of browsers that support extensions. Read more »

Facebook announces Messages, promises to change the way we text forever

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Today Facebook went live with its Messages service that promises to gather all your correspondence together. That includes email, Facebook messages, SMS and even some other IM clients. Sound like a real time-saver if you are using all those services.

While you are indeed getting a @facebook.com email address, Facebook Messages actually doesn’t quite try to replace your regular email provider. It lacks features like CC and BCC fields and groups all your correspondence with one person in one huge thread. Read more »

Firefox 4 beta 7 adds graphics acceleration, new Javascript engine

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A new release of Firefox 4 beta (7th if have lost track) has just been made available for download. It’s probably the release to bring the biggest performance improvement as it’s the first one to pack hardware graphics acceleration and the JagerMonkey just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler.

Those helped Firefox 4 beta 7 to achieve three to five times better results on some of the most popular browser benchmarks (like Kraken, Sunspider, and V8). In real life that means faster start-up time, improved page-load speed and better performance of Web apps and games. Read more »

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 release candidate available for download

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In software development terms, Release Candidate is the final stretch. The first Service Pack for Windows 7 is pretty much all the updates released so far collected in a single package, plus improvements to virtualization and remote desktop use…

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RIM offers BlackBerry Tables OS simulator and SDK, gets the devs ready for the PlayBook

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It’s all about Adobe MAX conference now, but RIM managed to push an announcement, which caught my attention. I’m talking about the availability of Adobe AIR SDK for the BlackBerry Tables OS and the PlayBook Simulator.

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Opera 11 Alpha out now, finally brings extension support

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The reason why many people still prefer Mozzila’s Firefox over Chrome or Opera is the huge variety of add-ons that ad or change features on the browser. Google has already launched the Chrome’s extensions, but it’s just today that Opera adopts the long awaited in-browser apps.

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Skype 5 final version out now, brings Facebook integration

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The Skype 5 beta has been available for quite some time now, but only today it reaches its golden status. And the best part is it’s already available for download.

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Internet Explorer 9 Beta coming out in an hour or so (Update – it’s out)

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Tonight Microsoft is taking a press-conference to present its latest version of Internet Explorer. IE9 beta will become available to the public right after that. The conference will begin in an hour (06:30pm London time – you can do your own math).


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Voice calls through Gmail are now official, and cheap

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Yesterday I told you that Google is about to integrate a web-based VoIP client in Gmail. Well, the new service was launched later on following my yesterday’s blog post about the rumors of it. So, if you have a Gmail account both voice and video calls are only a web browser plug-in and a few clicks away from you.

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StarCraft II rushes console games, becomes best selling game in July

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People have waited for years for the StarCraft II to come up and now that it’s finally out – it is flying off the shelves. In July, it outsold every console game even if you combine the numbers from across the different platforms…

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Firefox 4 Beta 3 shows off multitouch powers, if only I had something to use it on

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Firefox 4 Beta 3 came out yesterday and it can do some really cool stuff. Here’s something you probably didn’t expect – it can do multitouch…

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Windows XP is still king of the desktop computers, Windows 7 passes Vista

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Linux may be going strong in the mobile phone world but the desktop is another matter. It’s a Windows world out there and Linux is struggling to break 1%…

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Jolicloud hits v1.0, tries to find a place on netbooks, end Windows rule

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Windows still dominates the netbook market despite various attempts by Linux distributions to push it out. But just because you didn’t succeed at first, doesn’t mean you should give up. MeeGo for netbooks, for example, sounds great , but it’s not ready yet. So Jolicloud will try to use its hesitation in its favor and find its place under the sun. The OS that tries to appeal to users and manufacturers alike with out-of-the-box thinking just reached version 1.0.

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