The Skype video messaging service is finally out of beta and is now available to all Skype users. It is available on the desktop in Skype for Windows desktop, Windows 8, OS X and on the mobile for Skype for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry. The service is currently not available on Windows Phone.
For those who don’t know, Skype video messaging lets you send short video messages over Skype. Unlike your regular video calls, the recipient of these messages need not be online when you send them and can view them whenever they log into Skype. Basically, video messaging is to video calls what SMS is to voice calls. Read more »
This Monday Apple announced the new MacBook Air and two short days later it has already been torn down by the iFixit team. What they found was that the new 13″ model is almost identical to the old one. even the model number was the same, which might make things confusing and the only external difference is the new microphone grill. Apple has added a second microphone on the new Air.
Things on the inside looked pretty similar, but with newer components obviously. The big bump in battery life comes from Mac OS X Mavericks enhancements, Intel’s new Haswell CPU and a slightly bigger battery – 7.6V and 7,150mAh (up from 7.3V, 6,700mAh). Read more »
Opera has a very popular browser on both desktop and mobile platforms alike but unlike its biggest rival Google’s Gmail, Opera Mail hasn’t really taken off the ground.
Today Opera announce Opera Mail, which isn’t the mail-providing service but a desktop mail client designed to bring you your emails in a clean and efficient fashion. Read more »
Apple showed off the new Mac Pro at the WWDC 2013 floor. This is the first update in quite some time and comes in with a lot of oomph under the hood.
It features the new Thunderbolt 2 port (6 of them), new dual GPUs built by AMD, next-gen Intel XEON processors and is one-eighth of the size of the previous-gen Mac Pro. It will debut this fall with the pricing still to be confirmed. Read more »
Apple just announced a brand new version of its Mac OS X operating system and the biggest challenge the dev team had to overcome was that they ran out of felines to name the OS versions. So, meet Mac OS Mavericks (new versions will be named after places in California).
The new version focuses on extending battery life and UI responsiveness. Part of that is moving to OpenGL 4 to optimize graphic drawing, but also other tricks like compressed memory and more. With optimizations Apple promises up to 72% lower CPU usage. Read more »
Adobe has released Lightroom 5, the next major version of its photo editing software for Windows and OS X. A beta was released back in April and since then Adobe has fixed more than 400 bugs to bring you this final version.
The latest version brings along several new features, such as advanced healing brush, upright function to adjust tilted subjects, smart previews, video slideshows, highlight and shadow recovery, improved photo book creation, location based organization and much more. Read more »
Apple has released an update for OS X, which brings the version number to 10.8.4. The latest update brings quite a few bug fixes, particularly to the Messages app and also a new version of Safari.
One of the key fixes in this update is to iMessage. The Messages app on OS X has a horrible habit of occasionally showing messages out of order, especially when communicating across multiple devices. Suddenly in the middle of the conversation, it would start showing previous messages, which stayed until you restarted the app. The new update aims to fix that problem. Read more »
The Humble Bundle is back and this time they have a great collection of indie games for Windows, Mac and Linux. As usual, you get to choose the amount that you want to pay and for that money you get Little Inferno, Awesomenauts, Capsized, Thomas Was Alone and Dear Esther along with their soundtracks.
If you choose to pay above the average amount (which is currently $5.69), you also get Miami Hotline and Proteus, along with the soundtrack for Proteus. Read more »
Opera has released the beta version of the next major iteration of their desktop browser, Opera Next 15. By far the biggest change in this update is a switch from Opera’s longstanding rendering engine Presto to the more ubiquitous WebKit based rendering engine.
Other major changes in this version include a completely revamped interface. You’ll notice that the address bar and the search bar have finally been combined into one. The speed dial screen has a new look with support for folders and there are two more tabs for Stash and Discover. Read more »
Apple has released a new version of iTunes for OS X and Windows. Among the chief new features is an updated mini player. The mini player got a refresh in v11 but 11.0.3 makes it a bit more usable. There is now a progress bar so you don’t have to switch to the full mode to scroll through the track. Also, clicking on the album art thumbnail expands it.
Other changes include improved Songs view, where you can now view the album art even in the Songs view and multi-disc albums now show as one album in the Album view. There is also a new Update tab for the Apps section where you can view updates for your downloaded iOS apps. Lastly, there are some performance improvements while searching and sorting large libraries. Read more »
Yesterday, we reported that Apple had implemented a two-step verification process for Apple IDs to add another layer of protection against unauthorized access to your account.
Shortly after that, however, a major security hole was discovered on the iForgot website (which allows users to reset their password) where you could reset the password for any Apple ID even if you have just the email and date of birth. This left anyone who hadn’t enabled the two-step verification vulnerable. Read more »
Apple has introduced a new two-step verification process for accounts that use the Apple ID. This will help protect your account from being accessed from a new device by an unauthorized person.
What this does is whenever you or someone else tries to access your Apple ID from a new device, along with the usual username and password, the device will also ask for a verification key. This verification key will be sent to one of the devices that you have registered. You will then have to enter the verification key into the new device to complete the log in process. This way, if someone gets access to your Apple ID, they won’t be able to log in until they also get access to the verification key. Read more »
A new trojan virus by the name of Trojan.Yontoo.1 has been discovered and has been confirmed to be harmful to both OS X and Windows machines. The virus prompts you to install an adware plugin on Mac, which injects unwanted ads into Safari, Firefox and Chrome.
Symantec also found the Yontoo virus to be effective on Windows machines targeting pretty much every version of the Microsoft OS, except for Windows 8. The virus issues ads on Windows which pretend to be coming from Facebook. Read more »
According to a survey by Strategy Analytics which was gathered by data collected last fall Apple’s iCloud is the most popular cloud service in the US.
27% of those surveyed who use a cloud service have tried iCloud in US with Dropbox and Amazon Cloud Drive in second and third with 17& and 15% respectively. Read more »
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