First Look video: Trend Micro Titanium |
- First Look video: Trend Micro Titanium
- Mac-ify your Windows desktop
- Skyfire previews its Flash video-streaming iPhone browser
- Five frighteningly good Halloween apps
- Apple Aperture 3.1 gets fixes, iPhoto '11 features
- Extensions raise the volume in Opera 11
First Look video: Trend Micro Titanium Posted: 21 Oct 2010 01:02 PM PDT A new name heralds some big changes for Trend Micro's Titanium suites. The overhaul to Titanium Maximum Security 2011 brings users a faster suite with a smaller system impact. There's a lot of top-shelf extras to like here, too, but is that enough to sell security on? Check out our First Look video above for a quick take on the suite, or read our in-depth reviews for Maximum Security 2011 and its sibling suites, Titanium Internet Security 2011 and Titanium Antivirus+ 2011. |
Posted: 21 Oct 2010 10:59 AM PDT (Credit: Screenshot by Jasmine France) If you like the interface of the Mac OS but are stuck using a Windows machine, this little app from Stardock can help--if only very slightly. The premise behind ObjectDock is very simple: it adds an animated, Mac-inspired dock to your desktop that provides easy access to useful shortcuts and can serve to replace your taskbar. |
Skyfire previews its Flash video-streaming iPhone browser Posted: 21 Oct 2010 10:00 AM PDT (Credit: Skyfire) It isn't in the App Store yet, but we got a peek at Skyfire for iPhone and iPod Touch, which the mobile browser company submitted to Apple in September. Skyfire for iPhone looks and operates much like its Android sibling. It's built on the WebKit browser and uses the Skyfire servers to push down the Flash video that has for so long been forbidden on the iPhone. The workaround isn't and has never been perfect, but it does work. When you get to a site that plays video, Skyfire will display the usual error message or symbol and then pop up a thumbnail with a "Play" button on it. That's what you press to launch the video playback. Not all videos will play in Skyfire. We're getting together a list of the video types that are accepted, so stay tuned. In addition, Hulu blocks access from mobile phones, even if you're set to Desktop mode. As with most video-streaming apps and services, bandwidth strength defines the experience. Our experience was sluggish, and weaker Wi-Fi strength and load on AT&T's 3G service--notorious in San Francisco--most likely contributed to the plodding loading times. We'll be able to say for certain when we've spent a little more time with Skyfire. Other than video, Skyfire differentiates itself with a fun, upbeat interface and a social networking bent. New to iPhone, you can check in with your Facebook account. The app also includes search functionality that shows you tweets, images, headline news, and so on around your topic of choice. Unfortunately, there's no history functionality, so you'll need to retype your search query anew every time. There's the usual bookmarking and sharing. One nice touch is that Skyfire will set the user agent to Desktop mode, so that you'll be able to see full Web pages, like CNET.com and ESPN.com, instead of the mobile-optimized sites. Although Skyfire has been around for years in several guises (it underwent multiple face-lifts and identity changes beginning as a Windows Mobile browser start-up), the current construction debuted last April with Skyfire for Android. That version brought Flash video playback to Android, albeit a month before the first Android phones were to receive it. Although Apple relented early last month on certain restrictions against Flash-derived apps, the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad do not natively display Flash video. Stick around for even more hands-on impressions to come. Originally posted at iPhone Atlas |
Five frighteningly good Halloween apps Posted: 21 Oct 2010 08:36 AM PDT
(Credit: Steve Glinberg) With only 10 days left until Halloween, it's the perfect time to stock your iPhone, iPod, or iPad with fun, spooky, and spooky-fun apps. I've rounded up five of my favorites--some for kids, some for grown-ups. Take a look: 123 Glow HD Coloring Book, Halloween Edition A killer coloring book with 14 Halloween-themed pages (out of 48 total--others include autumn and dinosaurs). It's educational, too, teaching things like numbers, letters, and colors in your choice of four languages. It's best on iPad, but also works on iPhones. Price: $1.99. All-In-1 Zombiebox "Tis the season for zombie-whompin!" This 99-cent app serves up 10 zombie-themed games, including Zombie Pizza, Zombie Karts, and the impossible-to-resist DefCon Z. Carve It! Pumpkin Carving Gutting a real pumpkin is so messy. This app lets little kids "carve" one of three different-size pumpkins, light the pumpkin when it's done, save and/or share the results, and even play a game of Pumpkin Bungee. Price: 99 cents. The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin The popular children's story comes to life in this interactive e-book, which offers both autoplay and read-to-me/read-it-myself modes. The $2.99 app comes from Oceanhouse Media, makers of the popular Berenstain Bears and Dr. Seuss e-books. SpookyTones Want to hear a scream when you get e-mail from the boss? How about the sound of bats for mail from your crazy uncle? SpookyTones (99 cents) lets you assign custom Halloween-themed "ringtones" to specific senders. If that sounds familiar, you might be thinking of its more generic predecessor, MailTones. Either way, it's cute and clever fun--though you have to be willing (and able) to forward copies of your mail to the MailTones server. Have you found any other must-have Halloween apps? If so, haunt the comments with your picks. Late addition: Don't miss Angry Birds Halloween! Originally posted at iPhone Atlas |
Apple Aperture 3.1 gets fixes, iPhoto '11 features Posted: 21 Oct 2010 08:01 AM PDT (Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET) Riding on the coattails of yesterday's MacBook Air and iLife '11 announcements, Apple also updated its high-end Aperture photo editing and management software with bug fixes, performance improvements, and updates to match features in iPhoto '11. iPhoto is geared for consumers, while Aperture is aimed at photo enthusiasts and professionals who want more sophisticated controls for editing and cataloging. There's a lot of overlap, though, and one is the ability to create themed slideshows. All six of the new iPhoto '11 slideshow themes also arrive in Aperture 3.1 That includes the new Places theme that's specifically geared for people whose photos have been geotagged with location information. iPhoto '11 and Aperture 3.1 can create slideshows that interleave the photos with views of a map with automatically generated labels to show where the next photos in the sequence were taken. Geotagging can be a hassle, but features such as this can help turn the data into something useful. Speaking of slideshows, the upgrade also lets people export them for Apple TV devices and, more important for photographers pitching prospective clients, iPads. Also matching iLife '11, Aperture 3.1 can export photos better to Facebook and Flickr. For example, photos can be published directly to the Facebook wall, not just to its photo albums. And the software can retrieve Facebook comments on published photos. Performance is better in a number of areas, too, Apple said. Among tasks that got speedier are core editing controls for curves, levels, and highlights and shadows; importing large libraries of photos; repairing photo library databases; exporting images that have been heavily edited; straightening and cropping edited images; and zooming images to a 100 percent view. Apple also fixed a lot of bugs, including one that bothered me, halos that could appear around high-contrast edges in photos. Here's the full list of changes described in the release notes: Aperture 3.1 Release Notes Library Fixes an issue that could prevent thumbnails from being properly rendered when reprocessing masters. Addresses reliability and performance issues when running Repair Database and Rebuild Database operations in Aperture Library First Aid. Improves reliability of upgrading libraries with images containing Spot & Patch adjustments. Improves accuracy of the progress bars displayed when updating Vaults. Adjustments Addresses performance when using Core Image filters such as Curves, Levels, and Highlights & Shadows. Eliminates black "halos" that could appear in areas of extreme luminance in scaled images in the Viewer. Addresses quality issues with Red Eye correction. Fixes an issue in the Adjustment Presets editor that could cause the names of adjustments within a preset to temporarily appear blank. Addresses performance issues with using the Straighten tool on adjusted images. Straighten grid now appears correctly after applying and resetting a crop. Fixes issues that could cause Aperture to stop responding or quit unexpectedly when processing an image with Sharpen applied. Addresses an issue that could reduce image quality on straightened photos. Fixes an issue that could prevent data from being properly entered into numeric fields in the Adjustments HUD. Addresses an issue that sometimes prevented the correct cursor from appearing after choosing a Quick Brush Fixes a problem that caused the Master Aspect Ratio setting to fail if used in combination with the "create new versions when making adjustments" preference. Fixes an issue that could cause Aperture to stop responding when making adjustments to images in a stack if the "create new versions when making adjustments" option was chosen. Thumbnails and previews now display correctly for images that are flipped and rotated. When reprocessing masters, Aperture now displays a progress bar with a count indicating the number of images remaining to be processed. Addresses performances issues when zooming images to 100%. Faces Addresses performance issues when loading thumbnails in Faces view. Improves reliability of face detection and naming when working with RAW+JPEG pairs. Addresses an issue that could result in "blank" face thumbnails in Faces view. When in Confirm Faces mode, the contextual menu now correctly includes the "Not a face" option. The Confirm Faces mode can now be updated and refreshed by holding down the Option key while clicking the Done button. Dragging multiple snapshots on the Faces corkboard now correctly moves all the selected snapshots. The "include face info in exported photos" option now exports Face names as keywords when exporting masters, writing IPTC to masters, or exporting metadata. Printing Addresses an issue that could cause a thin black line to appear on the top edge of some prints. Slideshows When exporting a slideshow, the Custom option now includes a Quality pop-up menu in order to control compression quality/size of resulting H.264 or MPEG-4 files. Fixes a problem that could cause the audio browser to display improperly when creating a slideshow. Slideshows can now be exported using presets for compatibility with Apple TV and iPad. Fixes an issue that could produce incorrect results when the start and end positions of a Ken Burns setting were swapped in the slideshow editor. Adding an inset to a photo in a Classic and Ken Burns slideshow no longer changes the width of a border applied to the same photo. Choosing "Fit Selected Slides to Main Audio Track" no longer unnecessarily reduces the length of video clips contained within the slideshow. Deselecting the custom duration set for a select slide by deselecting the "Play slide for" checkbox now correctly returns the slide's duration to its default value. Places Metadata Inspector can now display GPS Direction if this data is available in geotagged photos. Addresses an issue that could prevent imported track paths from appearing in the Tracks & Waypoints menu after restarting the application. Metadata Fixes an issue that could cause duplicate keywords to appear after merging a library. Fixes an issue that could prevent photos with an IPTC Subject Code to export correctly when exporting masters with the "Create IPTC4XMP Sidecar File" option enabled. Fixes an issue that caused Longitude data to export incorrectly when using the Export > Metadata command. The Date Created field in IPTC Core can now be activated and set by simply clicking in the field. Auto-complete of contact info in IPTC Contact fields can now be enabled or disabled in Preferences. Metadata Inspector now includes a Sharing view which logs when each photo is published to MobileMe, Facebook, or Flickr. General Fixes an issue that disabled browser scrolling when in Split View with sort and filter controls hidden. Addresses quality issues in connection with rendering of images scaled to below 100% in the Viewer. Fixes an issue that could cause the "Loading" indicator in the Viewer to disappear before images were actually loaded. Activity window can now be opened by pressing Command-Shift-0 (zero). Photos displayed in the iLife Media Browser on Mac OS X v10.6.x Snow Leopard now retain their sort order from Aperture. Photos synced to iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV are now sorted in date order by default. Search File Type query now correctly supports search for RAW+JPEG. Import Duplicate detection now correctly works with imported audio and video files. Images in BMP format can now be imported. Aperture now correctly rotates square images cropped in-camera from Olympus E-P1 and E-P2 models when imported. Tethering Fixes an issue that caused a "Missing" badge to temporarily appear on some images imported via tethering. Addresses an issue that disabled tethered capture via FireWire on Snow Leopard. iPhoto Import Smart Albums created using Faces in an iPhoto 8 library are now correctly displayed when imported into Aperture. Portrait-oriented photos contained in an iPhoto 8 library are now correctly rotated when the library is imported into Aperture. Photos marked as "hidden" in an iPhoto 8 library are now imported with a "rejected" tag when the library is imported into Aperture. Export Addresses issues that could slow performance when exporting a large number of projects as a new library. Fixes an issue that could cause the "Consolidate masters into exported library" option to not complete when exporting projects to a new library. Exported libraries now correctly include all pre-defined Library Smart Albums such as "* * * * *" and "* or better." Web sharing Supports multiple MobileMe, Facebook, and Flickr accounts for compatibility with iLife '11. Enables publishing to Facebook Wall and Flickr Photostream. MobileMe, Facebook, and Flickr accounts can now be individually enabled or disabled in each Aperture Library. Photos downloaded from MobileMe albums are now copied when imported into Aperture projects. Video Fixes an issue that could cause videos to flicker when multiple videos were selected in the Viewer. Books Plug-ins Originally posted at Deep Tech |
Extensions raise the volume in Opera 11 Posted: 21 Oct 2010 02:24 AM PDT Opera, the longtime underdog browser favorite, released a rough alpha version of its next-generation browser today. Opera 11 alpha for Windows, Mac, and Linux is notable at this point for bringing extensions to the closed-source browser, a feature not in earlier versions of Opera that has been a key selling point for Google Chrome. Extensions, which add extra functions to browsers, have recently come to Apple Safari, too.
(Credit: Opera) Opera 11 alpha's extensions are also a further indication of the standardization of extension coding. WebKit-based Chrome and Safari use extension formats that are nearly-identical combinations of JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS, and Mozilla's new JetPack framework promises to introduce the formula to Firefox, too. Plug-ins for Internet Explorer 9 beta use a proprietary add-on system, as does Mozilla's older open-source format. Standardizing add-on coding could easily lead to significantly less work for extension publishers Given that Opera has long offered a synchronization service called Opera Link, it wouldn't be surprising to see Opera 11 incorporate extension synchronization before the upgrade is finished. Another new feature in Opera 11 is a new open API for Opera Link that has been provided to developers to further the uses of the synchronization service. The company also provided for developers guidelines for writing extensions and a Web site for uploading completed extensions. Opera promised in a press release that the company will check all extensions to ensure that malware and defects don't creep in. This is a similar claim to those made by other browser publishers that support add-ons, although there has been malware that occasionally slips through. |
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