Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
Sunday, November 18th, 2007 |
The fall air certainly seems to have put a spring in the step of OS devs everywhere, and Microsoft’s getting in the fun too, releasing the first release candidate of Vista SP1 to beta testers today.
 Although there don’t appear to be many new features on top of what we’ve already seen, SP1 appears to be well-received, with testers reporting better laptop battery life, faster networking, and improved wake-from-sleep speeds. There’s still no word on when the final release of SP1 will hit, but if you’re in Microsoft’s tester program, SP1 RC1 is available online now.
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Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 |
Entrenching its Nseries devices just a little deeper in the wide world of multimedia, Nokia’s Beta Labs group has released its Audiobooks application which — you guessed it — plays audio books. The phone app itself works on pretty much any S60 3rd Edition device and reads books encoded using AMR-WB (read: optimized for the spoken word and very well compressed). A matching Windows-based app comes with the setup, too, enabling users to convert files to the AMR-WB format and compile ‘em all into individual chapters. It’s available now from the Beta Labs site; of course, you’ll want to be careful on account of the whole “beta” thing, but it looks pretty solid so far.
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Monday, November 12th, 2007 |
The kind folks at Conceited Software / TouchFree have just dropped their 1.1.2 jailbreak GUI on the freedom-lovin’ iPhone world. According to Erica at TUAW, the OS X software siphons data from your downgraded (or pre-existing) 1.1.1 iPod touch or iPhone, upgrades it with the Jailbreak, installs Installer.app and SSH.app, and then ups the whole shebang to your device. As mentioned, you’ll need to have 1.1.1 on your system (if you’ve upgraded or purchased a device with 1.1.2 installed), and this won’t fly on units that have been “hactivated” (i.e., it only works with iTunes-activated devices). Hit the read link and learn all about sticking it to Apple… proper-like.
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Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 |
Opera has just launched the latest version of its mobile browser, Opera Mini 4.0. The browser boasts the ability to bring the web to your handset almost exactly as you would experience it on a PC by way of a zoom function (Opera Zoom) that allows you to home in on the section of the page you are looking at; much like the iPhone’s Safari browser.
Much cleverer than that however is the small screen rendering tech that reduces the size of the page automatically to fit your handset so that pages load more quickly thus costing you less time and money online. Not such a concern in the age of unlimited data plans for mobile browsing but cool nonetheless.
There is of course full support for Opera’s recently launched Opera Link function too, allowing you to synch and organize your bookmarks between the various online devices you use. The new version is available now free from the Opera site or via an over the air download.
(Via Opera)
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Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 |
Realistically we’re still a good half year (at least) before we see any S60 Touch-based devices from Nokia or its software partners on store shelves, but in the meantime, Nokia’s made it just a little easier for us all to fool ourselves into believing we’re living on the bleeding edge of Espoo tech. Their Touch-inspired theme for S60 3rd Edition handsets is now freely available — and while we wouldn’t count on it magically adding a touchscreen to your N81 or N95, you can blur your eyes just a little bit here and play make-believe while you wait for the real thing. Actually doesn’t look half bad, if we do say so ourselves.
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