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Skype debuts group video calls for Windows

Posted by Harshad

Skype debuts group video calls for Windows


Skype debuts group video calls for Windows

Posted: 13 May 2010 03:23 PM PDT

Skype 5.0 beta

If you've got a Web cam, you can now add video to Skype's party line.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Skype's new beta with added conference calling features could be just what the doctor ordered for low-cost international meetings and planning sessions among family and friends. On Thursday, Skype 5.0 beta for Windows became available as a free download.

Instead of initiating video calls to just one other recipient, as in the stable version of Skype, you can host video chats for up to five people. Unfortunately, each of them has to have a Web cam and Skype 5.0 beta installed on a Windows PC in order for video conferencing to work. This limitation could get in testers' ways.

We got word about the update last week when Skype announced a new set of calling plans to benefit those calling mobile phones. We haven't had time to stage an elaborate overseas calling conference yet, but our plans are in the works, so watch this space for our hands-on evaluation.

Skype certainly isn't the first to bring video conferencing to everyday users. The free Skype competitor VoxOx offers video conferencing for up to three callers; the freemium ooVoo can support up to six.

If you do try out Skype's beta video party line, let us know in the comments what you think. Remember that beta software is neither as polished nor as stable as final software, so keep that in mind if you try out Skype 5.0 beta for Windows. Mac users can expect to see a version of Skype's group video calls for that computing platform later this year.

Get a 'Keyboard Upgrade' for your iPad

Posted: 13 May 2010 12:42 PM PDT

The iPad's onscreen keyboard hasn't won many fans. In portrait mode, it's a bit too narrow for touch-typing. Landscape mode is more accommodating, but if you're holding the iPad in your hands, the keyboard's actually a bit too wide for thumb-typing.

Enter Keyboard Upgrade, a data-entry alternative. It's a split, two-piece keyboard, one you can size and position to your liking:

Keyboard Upgrade lets you do wild and wacky things to the keyboard, but for the moment it's too buggy and limited to be practical.

(Credit: Rick Broida)

For example, suppose you want to type with your thumbs. You can drag the two halves of the keyboard (which by default is smaller than the standard landscape keyboard) to either corner of the screen. Although this leaves some weird-looking white space in the middle, it cuts down on thumb travel.

Likewise, if you want to touch-type, you can rotate each piece to a more ergonomic position, at the same time increasing the size of the keys.

Sounds good in theory, right? In practice, Keyboard Upgrade is somewhat of a disaster. For starters, the space bar on the right half of the keyboard flat-out doesn't work. The developer knows about this bug and has already submitted an update, but for now the app is just about useless.

Other usability problems abound. Every time you drag, rotate, or resize a keyboard half, you end up with unwanted keystrokes. You can't lock the halves in their current positions, so an errant swipe easily knocks them out of place. In fact, just rotating your iPad restores the keyboard to its default, sandwiched position, undoing whatever setup you previously had. Maddening.

Keyboard Upgrade has the potential to be a handy solution for thumb typists.

(Credit: Gp Imports, Inc.)

What's more, Keyboard Upgrade doesn't remember your positioning from one session to the next. Every time you run it, you have to set up your desired configuration again. This isn't hard to do--in fact, it's kind of fun--but the app really should offer some kind of layout recall. It would be simple to add, say, "ergonomic" and "thumb" buttons to the toolbar. One tap and you've got the layouts you use most often.

All these issues are easily corrected with a few programming updates. The real obstacle here is that Keyboard Upgrade doesn't actually upgrade the iPad's keyboard. Instead, all your typing must take place inside the app. When you're done, one tap copies the text to the clipboard, where it can be pasted in whatever app you like. Easy, but inconvenient.

The good news is that there's also an e-mail button, which copies your typed text straight into the body of a new message. So for e-mail at least, you don't have to go through the chore of copying, exiting the app, loading a different app, and then pasting.

As much as I like the idea behind Keyboard Upgrade--and its very reasonable 99-cent price tag--I can't recommend it in its current state. (I didn't even get into its lack of support for basic autocorrect features.) Hopefully the developer will turn this great idea into the great app it should be. For now, it's more of a keyboard downgrade.

Originally posted at iPad Atlas

Adobe update tests Photoshop CS5 lens correction

Posted: 13 May 2010 11:06 AM PDT

Photoshop CS5 is getting the ability to automatically correct lens flaws.

Photoshop CS5 is getting the ability to automatically correct lens flaws.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Adobe on Thursday released a beta version of an update to its new Photoshop CS5 software that adds the ability to automatically correct lens problems.

The Camera Raw 6.1 update beta uses profiles of several cameras and lenses to automatically fix color problems called chromatic aberration, geometric problems called distortion, and darkened corners called vignetting. In addition, photographers can manually change the perspective of a photo somewhat, for example making the converging lines of a building parallel in a shot taken from the ground looking up.

The update also adds support for raw file formats from several cameras already supported in Photoshop Lightroom 2.7, a sibling product geared specifically for editing and cataloging photos. Those cameras include the Canon Rebel T2i, aka the 550D, the Olympus E-600, the Panasonic G2 and G10, and the Sony Alpha A450. Those cameras, except the Olympus model, were supported in Camera Raw 5.7, but Adobe couldn't build that into Photoshop CS5 because of product release timing matters.

Also in the update are improvements to the raw-image plug-in performance and a fix for a crash that could happen on Macs.

The update ships with only a "handful" of supported lenses, but people can create and share their own using Adobe's Lens Profile Creator utility.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Free programs find and remove duplicate files

Posted: 13 May 2010 10:01 AM PDT

It doesn't take long for a computer to collect duplicate copies of all sorts of files. When my year-old laptop started running low on disk space, I knew one of the fastest ways to recover some lost hard-disk storage was to give the machine's duplicate files the boot. If you rely on the file-management tools in Windows to root out unnecessary, space-clogging files, you're in for a long day of folder hopping.

Several free utilities promise to hasten the file-cleanup process. The two I tried — Duplicate File Finder from Auslogics and Digital Volcano's Duplicate Cleaner — take very different approaches to dupe removal. Duplicate File Finder features a clear interface and speedy operation, while Duplicate Finder identifies more types of doubled-up files but is trickier to use, which means you're more likely to delete a file your system needs.

Fast and friendly way to spot file copies
There's a lot to like about simple software — especially simple utilities such as Auslogics' Duplicate File Finder. The program presents a sequence of dialogs for choosing the folders to scan for duplicates and the categories of files to include (such as images, video, audio, or everything). Unfortunately, you can't limit the search to specific file types. Other matching criteria include file name, date, size, and contents.

Auslogics Duplicate File Finder matching criteria

Auslogics' Duplicate File Finder lets you search for copies by name, date, size, and contents.

(Credit: Auslogics)

The program's default is set to ignore files smaller than 1MB. When I used the default settings to search for duplicate files on a complete 50GB Windows 7 setup installed on an 80GB disk partition, fewer than 50MB of dupes were identified. On an 80GB Vista installation (on a 180GB partition) with the file-size limit disabled, Duplicate File Finder reported many more file multiples, but only 97MB of storage space would be recovered. All the scans were completed in about a minute, and searches for specific categories of dupes were completed in seconds. Note that I didn't test the content-search option, which promises to be slower.

Taking a closer look at your file duplicates
Digital Volcano's Duplicate Cleaner has many more rough edges than Auslogics' dupe IDer, but the program turns up more duplicate files — including DLLs and other system files. Unfortunately, you aren't given much guidance on the files that are safe to remove and those whose absence would be noticed.

The first of the four tabs across the top of the program's main window is used to select the folders and file criteria to search for. Like the Auslogic product, you can't choose specific file types to scan, but its search categories include images, music, movies, and Office documents.

Four tabs across the top, two Explorer-like windows, and selection criteria

Duplicate Cleaner from Digital Volcano features a tabbed interface for fine-tuning your searches for duplicate files.

(Credit: Digital Volcano)

You can use Duplicate Cleaner's Selection Assistant to search for a single file type or specific file paths, along with such search criteria as oldest or newest, largest or smallest, or all but one in each group. A nice option is the ability to select a single folder path and remove all copies of that folder's files in all other locations.

After making your selections, click the Go button to begin the scan. It took several minutes to scan the 80GB Vista installation, but hundreds more duplicate files were discovered, and they were using up nearly 500MB of memory. The duplicates included dozens of system files, executable files, and log files.

Duplicate Cleaner scan-results screen

The duplicate files reported by Duplicate Cleaner include executable files and system files.

(Credit: Digital Volcano)

I'm generally cautious when it comes to deleting files that Windows or some program or device may need. I was satisfied with the space I saved sticking to program's options for spotting duplicate media and other data files.

While I preferred Duplicate File Finder's straightforward and relatively safe approach to finding and removing duplicate files, the more-thorough scans conducted by Duplicate Cleaner promise to recover more lost storage. If you're looking to squeeze a little more life out of an overcrowded hard drive, those extra megabytes could make the difference.

Originally posted at Workers' Edge

Mozilla expands plug-in check to other browsers

Posted: 13 May 2010 09:44 AM PDT

Mozilla designed its plug-in check page so Firefox users could see if they're running the latest versions of their plug-ins. Now the company has invited the other major browsers to the party.

In addition to handling Firefox 3.6 and higher, the plug-in check page now supports Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Google Chrome 4, Opera 10.5, and Apple's Safari 4. All the browsers are compatible with the plug-in check. But Mozilla cautions in its official blog that IE 7 and 8 need specific code written for each plug-in, so full support of Microsoft's browser will take a bit longer.

The plug-in check page looks at all the plug-ins currently installed in your browser and alerts you to their status. If the plug-in is the latest version, you'll get a thumbs up that it's up to date. If not, the page offers you an update link that takes you to the plug-in vendor's Web site where you can download the newest edition.

Plugins are sometimes blamed as a source of stability and security issues for Web browers, so Mozilla designed the plug-in check to help reduce those risks. Since debuting the plug-in check page last October, Mozilla believes it's making a difference. The blog noted that Mozilla is now seeing 60 percent of its users with the latest version of Adobe's Flash plug-in and believes that's due to the new page.

I tried the plug-in page on the five major browsers. The results were similar in each. The page found some plug-ins that were up to date and one or two that needed to be updated. But it also found several that it couldn't detect and told me I'd need to research those myself.

In the blog, Mozilla does acknowledge that its Plug-in Directory, its database of plug-ins, is still in alpha stage, just one step beyond beta. The company is looking for help from developers to update this directory as new versions of their plug-ins are released and older versions become too risky to run.

Originally posted at News - Digital Media

Google coding tool advances cloud computing

Posted: 13 May 2010 06:01 AM PDT

Google has released a programming tool to help move its Native Client project--and more broadly, its cloud-computing ambitions--from abstract idea to practical reality.

The new Native Client software developer kit, though only a developer preview version, is designed to make it easier for programmers to use the Net giant's browser-boosting Native Client technology.

"The Native Client SDK preview...includes just the basics you need to get started writing an app in minutes," Google programmer David Springer said Wednesday in a blog post announcing the SDK, a week before the developer-oriented Google I/O conference. "We'll be updating the SDK rapidly in the next few months."

Henry Bridge, Google product manager for Native Client

Henry Bridge, Google product manager for Native Client

(Credit: Google)

Native Client, or NaCl, is designed to let browsers run programs at nearly the speeds of those compiled to run natively on a computer system. It's fast enough to handle tasks such as video decompression and first-person shooter video games, and it's designed to handle adjusted versions of existing software, not just programs written from scratch.

Native Client is one of several efforts at Google to weave the Web deeply into the fabric of computing. That mission will be on center stage at the company's I/O conference, set for May 19 and 20 in San Francisco.

The conference will feature a host of related projects embodying Google's fervent belief in cloud computing: its Chrome browser, its Chrome browser-based operating system, its App Engine foundation for Python and Java programs on the Net, its higher-level Google Apps services for word processing and the like--even things as nitty-gritty as the Google Web Toolkit and Closure Tools for Web-based JavaScript programming. Another Google I/O centerpiece, the Android operating system, is designed to make mobile phones first-class citizens on the Net. NaCl has been re-engineered to support the ARM processors used widely in smartphones, although the SDK can't take advantage of that support yet.

To let people download Native Client modules from Web pages without security problems, NaCl prohibits various operations and confines NaCl program modules to a sandbox with restricted privileges. NaCl lets programmers write in a variety of languages, and a special compiler converts their work into the NaCl modules.

The ultimate promise of NaCl is that Web-based applications could run much faster than those of today that typically use JavaScript or Adobe Systems' Flash. If Google can attract developers, the Web and cloud computing could become a much more powerful foundation for programs.

Google argues that it profits by increased use of the Web, since that drives more search traffic and therefore search-ad revenue. But Google also has a growing Google Apps subscription business to support--a service that CEO Eric Schmidt calls Google's next billion-dollar opportunity. More powerful tools for Web-based word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, image editing, and the like could help that business grow.

Google has been working hard on fleshing out the NaCl promise. One step has been expanding from 32-bit modules for x86 chips only; NaCl now supports ARM processors and NaCl modules also can take advantage of 64-bit x86 processors. Some of this work has been through a project called PNaCl, or Portable Native Client.

Another move was adding NaCl support for OpenGL ES 2.0, a standard interface for tapping into hardware-accelerated graphics. That could help modules such as games that use 3D graphics.

A software developer kit could help NaCl become more useful, but only if there's a way to run the modules. Google early on released a Native Client browser plug-in, but potentially more interesting is its work to build Native Client into Chrome and into the browser-based Chrome OS it plans to release later this year on Netbooks.

Indeed, projects like NaCl illustrate why Google is so interested in Chrome. With its own browser, it can push its agenda much faster, even if it's only through projects such as Gears or O3D that didn't live beyond the experimental stage.

To use the NaCl developer kit, programmers need a browser with a new plug-in technology called NPAPI Pepper. (Nomenclature nuts will note that NaCl is the chemical symbol for sodium chloride, or salt. NPAPI stands for Netscape Plug-in Application Programming Interface.) Guess which browser is the only one to support Pepper? Chrome, of course, though Adobe and Mozilla are backing the project, too.

The NPAPI Pepper project and NaCl SDK show one of Google's biggest challenges in bringing its cloud-computing vision to reality, though: getting others to come along for the ride.

To make NaCl real, it must convince programmers to use the software, convince browser makers to include it or at least support it as a plug-in, and convince the general public to upgrade their browsers to use it.

With Chrome and Google Apps, Google can ensure its technology is used in the real world. But especially as Google's dominance brings it into competition with more computing companies, extending its ideas beyond its own products and services can become tougher.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

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