Items tagged with Download
It's downright incredible just how quickly things change in the technological world. It feels like an eon ago that netbooks were all of the rage, but in truth, it was just 3-4 years back. Those tiny notebooks were selling for well under $400, offering mobile computing at a price that had not been seen before at that time. They were a bit slow, thick, and underpowered, but they offered the basics and they sold quite well for a time. In fact, they were so popular that Intel itself planned on launching an app market specifically tailored for netbooks, called AppUp. That was MWC 2010, and just weeks before MWC 2014, AppUp is being shuttered. Granted, four years is a pretty long run in this space,...
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The RIAA isn't an entity that's looked fondly upon by many consumers, given that they've been pretty bent on making it difficult for consumers looking to purchase music legally in the digital age. Granted, we're (mostly) out of the DRM era, but those memories remain for many. Despite that, the RIAA is still an important association in the grand scheme of the music universe, particularly when it comes to counting sales and pointing to albums and artists having the broadest impact. In a move that shows the association becoming more at peace with the digital shift, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced the integration of streams to its historic Gold & Platinum...
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These days, retail companies are moving in all sorts of interesting new directions in a bid to remain interesting. Just look at Toys R Us, which is not only offering a tablet this holiday season, but will also be launching a new family-friendly digital entertainment service. The program is called Toys R Us Movies, which will be accessible at Toysrusmovies.com. All told, it will feature over 4,000 titles, specially selected to supply hours of entertainment and fun for parents and children. In addition, the service is equipped with customizable parental controls to help moms and dads choose the most appropriate content for their family's viewing. The backend is provided by Rovi, which knows a thing...
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Eager to make your iPhone 4 or 4S seem just a little bit more like the iPhone 5? You now can. Apple has officially begun the rollout of iOS 6, pushing the update to older devices over-the-air and through iTunes. It'll work on any iPhone newer than the 3GS, the last two generations of iPads and 4th/5th-generation iPod touches. It's the same OS that was touted back at WWDC, refined and ready for mass release. It brings Passbook (but not to the iPad), a Do Not Disturb function, new sharing options, integrated Facebook, additional Privacy functions and FaceTime over Cellular, just to name a few things. Sadly, you'll need to download the 1+GB file a few times over if you have different iOS devices...
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How exactly do you measure success? And how do you do so when you're a company as large as Microsoft? With a monumental market share lead in the desktop OS market, it's not like a major competitor will be jumping up and stealing their crown tomorrow, but there's no doubt that Windows 8 has a lot riding on it. Windows Vista wasn't viewed positively, and while Windows 7 was praised, there is a lot of changing going on in Windows 8 that the jury is still out on. Still, a whopping one million people downloaded Microsoft's Windows 8 Consumer Preview edition in the 24 hours following the company's announcement, and that's no small feat. One million is a ton of people in just a single day, and while...
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Wondering if this whole "consumer electronics" thing is just some fading trend? Wonder no more. It's been fairly obvious to us, following the industry over the past decade and change, that technology is only growing more and more important. What was once a luxury reserved for a few, is now making an impact nearly everywhere. Hospitals, geriatrics, teens, infants -- you name it, and technology's there. According to the Q2 2011 Games Industry: Total Consumer Spend report from leading market research company, The NPD Group, in addition to the $1.44 billion spent in the U.S. by consumers on new physical video and PC game software in the second quarter of 2011, the total consumer spend on content...
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Remote access is a beautiful thing, and Splashtop has been enabling it for a long time. Today, the company has announced the release of its Splashtop Remote Desktop for Windows that will enable PC-to-PC and PC-to-Mac remote access from a private network or across the Internet, free of charge. SplashTop currently enables millions of iOS and Android mobile devices to remotely access PCs and Macs with true HD video and full audio, and with the addition of Windows PC support, will largely have this market on a string. Splashtop Remote Desktop eliminates the need to transfer, convert or sync files and multimedia among devices. Important work files and office applications, such as Outlook, PowerPoint,...
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Not too long after Apple started to ship their newest MacBook Pro models (the ones with Intel's Thunderbolt I/O port), forums began to populate with comments stating that their screens were having flickering issues. There were reports shortly thereafter noting that Apple was looking into the matter, and that this was an issue that would eventually see resolution. And now, resolution is upon us. Apple has just released the newest update for OS X, pushing the build to 10.6.7. This update provides a number of stability and compatibility updates, but the most notable is the improved graphics stability and external display compatibility for Thunderbolt-equipped machines. Reports are flooding out from...
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RoxioNow really is everywhere these days. As the year draws to a close, Sonic Solutions has announced that their RoxioNow platform licensee Sears and Kmart have started their own online movie download service by the name of Alphaline Entertainment. The world probably doesn't need another movie download service at the moment, but with the winners and losers still being sorted out, Sears is hoping to branch out and find revenue from a very unlikely source. The new service enables Sears and Kmart customers to download entertainment online, including new movies on the same day they are released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Sonic is working with Sears on a multi-phase rollout that includes making the...
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PNY has partnered with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to offer customers a free movie download. When you purchase a specially marked PNY product, you'll get a full-length movie download from Sony Pictures. Some of the specially marked products include HDMI cables, 8GB and higher SDHC memory cards, USB flash drives, DDR1/DDR2/DDR3 memory kits, and graphics cards. The promotion codes are located inside of the package and are redeemable online. Over 35 movie titles are available. If you download and install the PNY Movies app, the titles can be played on your smartphone as well. PNY and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Extend Partnership to Deliver Bonus Movie Downloads to Consumers Parsippany,...
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It's only been four days since Skype launched a new version of their Web app for the iPhone platform, and already it has been downloaded nearly 5 million times. The latest release allows iPhone owners to make and receive Skype-to-Skype calls over their 3G data connection, as well as call mobile and landlines at low rates. According to Reuters, demand for the updated app has been spread around three main regions, including Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific region. Despite the immense popularity, however, Skype's long-term plans haven't been sitting well with uses. At the time of the app's release, Skype said it would explore pricing options, details of which will be announced in the...
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The music industry as we know it is undergoing serious turmoil. Technology has advanced far more quickly than music labels have, and it feels like they're still grasping for a new business model. A lot of things are moving in various directions; there's iTunes, there's the various subscription services, there's the CD business and there's the mobile music business. iTunes has obviously done well for itself, overtaking Wal-Mart as the largest seller of music in the United States. Rhapsody and Zune subscription services also have great value, but one area that's struggling mightily is the mobile download avenue. It's odd to think that a mobile service would be struggling given the explosion in...
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Sony and Amazon have an interesting relationship. On one hand, they're enemies. The Kindle rivals the Sony Reader, and vice-versa. On the other, they're best of friends, with Sony now being able to sell digital downloads codes for its PlayStation wares through the online mega-retailer's website. A newly formed agreement between the two enables it to distribute another 200 videogame downloads for Sony's PS consoles, which is pegged as a move to adjust to demands to get games on-demand and online versus in a store on a disc. Furthermore, Sony's newest PSP doesn't even accept discs, so the plan makes even more sense for Sony to construct. The deal will allow Amazon.com to offer "tokens" that are...
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As the legendary Bob Dylan would attest, the times are a changin' in the music industry. In fact, they've already changed. Ever since the original Napster took the Internet by storm back in 1999, physical record sales have been slipping while music consumption has been growing. The RIAA has put up a vicious fight over the years to stop what it calls rampant online piracy, while artists at large seem to be benefiting from a larger audience and more expensive live shows. Today, a full decade since Napster's birth, things are quite a bit different. The labels have finally learned that DRM simply isn't the way to do business, and even the online megastore that is iTunes has decided to sell music...
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Ever wanted to stay in a Hard Rock Hotel? Holding off just got a touch more difficult. Starting this week, guests who visit one of the company's many hotel locations will receive a complimentary playlist of tunes to accompany their stay, giving them a piece of Hard Rock to take back to the real world once the joy ride is over. The program, which is aptly called 'The Sound of Your Stay,' is available at all of the company's hotel locations. It was designed in collaboration with BMF Media Group, and it works like this. Upon check-in, guests will receive a pass to download ten free, specially selected songs on iTunes. Users will get to pick from three playlists: SUN, which has songs that mesh well...
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Qtrax - the legal, ad-supported free music download site - will begin its worldwide launch in October, starting with the Asia-Pacific region.For starters, it will operate in China (including Hong Kong), Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. The official date is Oct. 29, a Thursday. By year's end, it will officially launch in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, though it already has been available as a 1.0 "preview" download in the U.S.It appears to be available only for Windows users who have Windows Media Player 11, Microsoft .Net 2.0 and DRM security update.Qtrax was announced last year and has deals with all the major music companies...
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You know what we haven't heard much about lately? Piracy. It used to be all the rage, but after iTunes (and pretty much every other online music store) went DRM-free, it seems those stormy waters have calmed. Or, on second thought, maybe no one was talking about it. New research from the University of Hertfordshire over in the UK has found that an alarming amount of 14 to 24 years olds are still pirating an insane amount of music. How insane? Try 8,000 tracks for each person that puts on their eye patch and heads out to the digital sea. Now, we should warn you that these numbers can't be taken as 100% true. The research involved a survey, which was commissioned by none other than UK Music, so...
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The quirk affecting Intel's 34nm SSDs is one that's likely to trouble just a small minority of users, but it was big enough for the outfit to temporarily halt shipments a few weeks back until a firmware fix was published.Today, that very fix is being made available to the public, and it fixes the bug that caused corruption in the drive is a password was set in the system BIOS and then changed or disabled at a later date. If you happened to get in early on the 34nm fun, you should probably give this download a go just in case. Here's exactly what Intel has to say about the update: This firmware will enable your SSD to deliver the best performance in your PC. Use this update to get the latest production...
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It's the signs of a changing world. Changing demands. Changing norms. And a changing face of gaming. It's the digital era, and it's officially being ushered in at GameStop. While many tied to the brick-and-mortar gaming industry have wondered just how they'd cope with the increasing demand from gamers to have new titles "on-demand," GameStop is staying one step ahead of the curve. Of course, when you see just how far Blockbuster has fallen now that Netflix has entered the picture, you can better understand the company's desire to keep up with the times.The self-proclaimed "world’s largest video game and entertainment software retailer" has today chosen Chris Petrovic to fill a newly created role...
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One billion. That's the amount of dollars that the Cash For Clunkers program devoured in just a week. That's also the amount of dollars you likely wish you had. And believe it or not, that's the amount of times Mozilla's Firefox browser has been downloaded since its inception in 2004. Just as July drew to a close, the one billionth download of what's likely the web's most soaring browser in terms of popularity took place. As we detailed in our review of Safari 4, Firefox holds a special place in the hearts of Web browsers (people, not software) because of the massive library of add-ons and plug-ins available. Everything from in-browser blog tools to performance meters can be downloaded gratis,...
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DRM, or Digital Rights Management, never did go over well in the court of public opinion. To the music industry at large, DRM was a mostly futile attempt to lock music down to certain players or systems, thus making it something harder--in theory, anyway--to freely distribute. In reality, however, those who were circumventing the rules in the first place just kept doing what they were doing: circumventing the rules. Meanwhile, honest music buyers were saddled with tracks that had all sorts of limitations, from where they could be played to how many times they could be burned onto a blank CD.Slowly but surely, music outlets began to turn their back on the RIAA's favorite technology, and while...
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Can you say "unprecedented growth?" We had to pick our jaws up off of the floor just 1.5 months ago when Apple announced that it had surpassed one billion downloads in its heralded (and oft copied) App Store, and now--just days after this very store celebrated its first birthday--the California-based company is dusting off the party hats once more. Merely hours after the App Store turned 1, Apple announced that a whopping 1.5 billion App Store downloads had taken place. Let's do a little math here. It took around 11 months to notch 1 billion, and just 1.5 months to snag the next half billion. At this rate, Apple will double up that 1 billion in no time flat, and by the time the store turns 2,...
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