iTunes 10.5 comes with support for iCloud.

A day ahead of Apple's big release for iOS 5, the new version of iTunes lays the groundwork for the desktop hooks to the next version of the mobile operating system. The big new feature in iTunes 10.5, which you can download for Windows and Mac, is support for iCloud, Apple's service for syncing data wirelessly.

The iCloud change is significant. The free service enables you to store music and video purchases in Apple's cloud service, and make them available across your iOS devices or computers with iTunes installed. Automatic downloads are also supported in this version, which means that when you buy music through the iTunes Store, you can automatically download a copy to any of your other devices or computers. Previous purchases are finally downloadable without any additional cost, as long as they're still available in the iTunes Store.

The new Wi-Fi-syncing feature enables you to sync devices connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Apple has released a troubleshooting guide for people who encounter difficulties setting it up.

One feature that was active in the iTunes 10.5 beta, the iTunes Match service, has been disabled for now. The service, costing $24.99 per year, lets... [Read more]

OSLO, Norway--Opera Software is a browser company, but its chief technology officer believes the modern Web still could learn a thing or two from publishing technology that's hundreds of years old.

At the company's Up North Web press event here, CTO Haakon Wium Lie showed off a new standard he proposed that could give Web pages more of the feel of printed pages. A document too big for a single screen, instead of getting a scroll bar, would be split across several pages, and people can navigate among them with gestures--swiping left and right to go forward and backward or swiping up to return to an earlier page.

"Doing pages on a screen I think will be very important, especially for tablets," he said.

He demonstrated the idea with Web pages revamped to use the technology, swiping his way with gestures from one page to the next. In one demo on a tablet, a newspaper site was easily mapped to use three columns, with a graphic pinned to the upper-right corner and the layout adjusting as the tablet was pivoted from portrait to landscape orientation. In another demo, a Web version of "Alice in Wonderland" was formatted with the book-like layout

CSS has become a hotbed of activity as the Web takes on a more polished look. Apple has been active, working on animated CSS transitions and transformations, while more recently Adobe Systems has joined the fray with ... [Read more]

(Credit: Lance Whitney/CNET)

Those of you who want to check out an Android app without an Android device can now run that app on your PC thanks to a program from the folks at BlueStacks (download).

The software, dubbed the BlueStacks App Player, has just hit the alpha stage, meaning a test version of it is now available for anyone to download. The basic player lets you run several preloaded apps, install up to 26 others, and sync apps from an Android phone to your PC.

Related stories: • BlueStacks marries Android to Windows • Windows and Android, sitting in a tree • BlueStacks puts Android apps on Windows

I installed the App Player on a PC running Windows 7. The installation failed the first time around, but a second attempt proved successful. The app places an Android gadget in the upper right corner of your screen. Clicking on the gadget opens a menu from which you can launch any of the preloaded Android apps, including Bloomberg News, Bubble Buster, Words Free, and Drag Racing, along with six others.

The apps themselves launch in a full-screen virtualize... [Read more]

Opera's mobile browsers now tell people how much data the proxy-server approach is cutting out of their data plans.

OSLO, Norway--Opera Software today released new versions of its mobile browsers, Opera Mini 6.5 and Opera Mobile 11.5, which show users exactly how much of a data-plan diet the software is enabling.

One of the top selling points of Opera Mobile and Mini is that when a person loads a Web page, Opera's servers fetch the data, boil it down, and send a smaller version to the mobile phones or tablets on which the browsers are running. That can save a lot of data, which is a big deal both for mobile operators whose networks are afflicted with exploding data traffic and for and subscribers with data caps.

Opera Mobile and Mini now can show exactly how many megabytes Opera servers retrieved with the original Web site, then the amount sent to the mobile browser.

"How many gigabytes you use may not be important at home, but it is important at a hotel, or with tablets and mobile device with a SIM card, or, God forbid, if you're traveling abroad and don't have a cheap roaming feature," said Christian Krogh, Opera's chief development officer, at the company's Up North Web event here.

The new versions are due to arrive today starting at 5 a.m. PT. for Android phones. Other versions will arrive in the coming days and weeks, Krogh said.

Opera showed this WebGL demonstration of a walking 3D figure at its Up North Web event. Opera 12 will support the WebGL technology for 3D graphics among other hardware-accelerated features.

OSLO--The next version of Opera Software's browser will get a major graphics-hardware boost, an approach that's been spreading to browsers keen to increase battery life, improve performance, and enable new features.

"Everything is accelerated," said Jan Standal, Opera's vice president of desktop products, in an interview today at the company's Up North Web press event here about Opera 12. "The whole user interface."

Specifically, that means hardware acceleration for Cascading Style Sheets transitions and animations, for Canvas 2D drawing, and for text, he said. And Opera 12 gets support for the WebGL 3D graphics technology--also hardware-acclerated.

The shift overall will lead to a more lively Web, predicted Haakon Wium Lie, Opera's chief technology officer and the founder of CSS. "With 3D, with the hardware acceleration, we will welcome a whole range of new types of content," he said. "Games, I think, will be foremost there."

Christian Krogh, Opera's chief development officer

An alpha version of Opera 12 is due to arrive Thursday. And Christian Kr... [Read more]

Everyone loves explosions, massive damages, and score counters. The wonderful combination of dazzling particle effects, insane combo numbers, and simple gameplay is been a tried-and-true formula that slot casinos swear by. Scoregasm, by Charlie's Games, appeals to players by drawing on these ingredients to keep engagements fresh and execution hot.

Scoregasm treats players to frantic, detailed visuals.

For those who are new to the shoot-'em-up scene, the rules are simple: destroy everything and do not get hit. Enemies will throw enough onscreen bullets at you to make your eyes water and you'll score numbers that will only matter to the most hard-core players. Lately, there's been a transition to more multidirectional shooting, popularized by such games as PewPew and Geometry Wars, taking full advantage of the dual analog/mouse-and-keyboard setups players use today.

In the full version, there are many worlds, each with its own additional challenges.

In th... [Read more]