Items tagged with Software
Everyone has birthdays and anniversaries, but not everyone considers them to be that significant. However, an occasion that is hard to argue as being anything but notable is the anniversary of the first webpage going live on the World Wide Web (remember when we used to call it that?). This weekend marks the 25th year for the first publicly-accessible webpage. To say we've come a long way since that day on August 6th, 1991 would be an incredible understatement. By the mid-90s, many school computer labs began to gain internet access, and at around the same time, or not long after, home users began picking it up, too. Since then, we've moved away from our phone lines and into our broadband connections....
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Researchers from Purdue University have developed a software tool for Android smartphones that purportedly slows down battery drain when handsets enter a sleep state. With the software tool installed, the researchers claim that smartphone battery life can be extended by nearly 16 percent.Called "HUSH," the software solution was developed in response to what the researchers say is the first large-scale study of smartphone energy drain occurring from everyday use by consumers. The researchers conducted the study in collaboration with Intel and startup mobile company Mobile Enerlytics, who together examined the use of 2,000 Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4 phones from 191 mobile operators in 61 countries.What...
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Apple announced a handful of products yesterday, including a new iPhone, a 12.9-inch iPad Pro that's better suited for productivity than its other iPad tablets, and a refreshed Apple TV set-top box. However, there's one thing that kind of flew under the radar, and that's the impending release of Mac OS X 10.11, otherwise known as El Capitan.The successor to OS X Yosemite was officially unveiled earlier this summer with a developer preview made available to Mac Developer Program members. At the time, Apple said the OS would release sometime "this fall," but didn't offer up a specific date. Now we have one.Apple slyly tipped September 30, 2015 as El Capitan's release date while previewing an email...
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I'm a sucker for nostalgia, especially as it relates to technology and gaming, so I particularly enjoyed the latest Forza 6 Motorsport TV commercial. It's filled with sights and sounds from several decades of racing games dating all the way back to 1974 with a nod towards Gran Trak 10, a single-player racing title released by Atari. That's far from the only racing reference in the 1-minute 47-second ad spot. Forza 6 developer Turn 10 Studios and publisher Microsoft Studios paid homage to several other racing classics, including R.C. Pro-Am (1987), Pole Position (1982), Outrun (1986), Chase H.Q. (1988), and Ridge Racer (1993). Throughout the ad, the new model Ford GT zips through racing scenes...
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As you might expect following a flurry of positive reviews, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is off to a fast start. It released to Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One less than a week ago on September 1, 2015, and like its predecessor, has shipped over 3 million copies worldwide. That figure comes from an advertisement with Japanese lettering. It was first spotted by a NeoGAF forum user who screen captured the ad and uploaded it to Imgur, a free image hosting service. There's reason to believe the figure is accurate. Not only did Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots sell just as many copies during its first week on the market, but Phantom Pain is currently...
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Hundreds of Atari 2600 cartridges of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial that were excavated last year from a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico collectively raked in nearly $108,000 through eBay auctions. Some $65,000 of that will go to the city of Alamogordo, while the Tularosa Basin Historical Society will receive over $16,000. Over $26,600 went to shipping fees and other expenses. A team of excavators led by operational consultant Joe Lewandowski unearthed the E.T. cartridges in front of a film crew. The high profile (among gaming historians) dig was the basis a documentary called Atari: Game Over, which is available for free through the Microsoft Store or you can find it on Amazon Prime Instant and...
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A new version of Microsoft's popular productivity suite is nearing release for Windows users. Yes, we're talking about Office 2016, which incidentally was released to the Mac OS X platform early last month, ending a nearly five-year drought (prior to Office 2016, the last Office release for Mac was in 2011).Citing a source "close to Microsoft," German-language website WinFuture.de says that Office 2016 is scheduled to launch for Windows exactly four weeks from today on September 22. The forthcoming launch will cover home and professional users, with a SKU for enterprise users coming at a later date."On September 22, 2015, we'll release Office 2016 -- with updates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint,...
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Do you remember what you were doing two decades ago? Depending on your age, you might have been waiting in a long line for Windows 95. Yes, there were lines to purchase Windows 95, the revolutionary operating system that launched at midnight on August 24, 1995, 20 years ago to the day. Codenamed Chicago, Windows 95 was a big upgrade over Windows 3.1. It was a 32-bit OS with a customized version of MS-DOS baked in to serve as a boot loader and a compatibility layer for legacy 16-bit device drivers. Enhanced multimedia features accompanied the dressed up graphical user interface, and so did built-in Internet support, a critical component as the Internet was just beginning to bloom.To run Windows...
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One of the first things we all do when firing up a new smartphone for the first time is to see which unwanted apps we're allowed to uninstall. It's not just wireless carriers and smartphone manufactures that are guilty of pre-loading their software on our phones, but also Google, which doesn't let phone makers cherry pick its apps. The good news is, Google's trimming the selection of apps that are required.At this point you might be wondering, "Isn't Android open source and free?" True and true, and any manufacturer or individual can do pretty much anything they please with the platform. That's why some OSes based off of Android look nothing like what you're used to seeing on smartphones, such...
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The wait for Windows 10 is finally over, and has been since July 29, the day Microsoft released what it says will be the last version of Windows. So too is the wait for official support from Apple's awesome Boot Camp tool, which allows users to install Windows on compatible Mac desktops and laptops. What's neat about Boot Camp is that it offers native access to Windows via a dedicated partition -- Boot Camp is not virtualization software.Apple's latest Boot Camp build supports 64-bit flavors of Windows 10 on several Macs, including MacBook Air models from mid 2012, MacBoo Pros from mid 2012, MacBook Pro with Retina display models from mid 2012, iMacs from late 2012, Mac mini systems from late...
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Somewhere out there Jimmy Hoffa's body is buried. Right next to him is a classified document detailing what really goes on at Area 51, and on top of that is a piece of paper with an official count of Windows 10 installs to date. That's to say, we simply don't know how many devices are running Windows 10, though there are a few figures floating around the web, the latest of which pegs the number 25 million.Or it could be as high as 27 million, "sources" tell Neowin. So if going by those un-named sources, Windows 10 is installed on somewhere between 25 million and 27 million machines -- let's split the difference and call it 26 million, shall we?That's a far more conservative estimate than the...
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Microsoft's strategy to offer Windows 10 as a no-cost upgrade option to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users is paying off. Just one day after launch, the Redmond outfit announced that Windows 10 had found its way onto more than 14 million devices. By Friday morning, that number unofficially ballooned to 67 million devices.An anonymous Microsoft employee revealed the updated statistic to Windows Central. According to the employee, the 67 million figure was accurate as of 8 AM on Friday, meaning that 53 million more Windows 10 installs took place since Microsoft's announcement on Thursday.This is a sign that the phased upgraded plan is going smoothly. In addition to revealing 67 million Windows 10...
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How do you top the release of Windows 10, the last version of Windows ever, which by the way Microsoft is giving away for free to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users? Quite frankly, you don't, though there's another freebie that ties into that. If you already own Minecraft for PC or Mac -- and 20 million of you do -- then you can get the new version for Windows 10 at no cost.Called Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta, the new edition of Minecraft that was announced at Minecon 2015 a few weeks ago is now rolling out. To grab your copy, just log into your Mojang account and click the "Redeem" button on your account page. From there, sign into your Microsoft account and follow the instructions. Easy,...
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One of the reasons Windows 8 never resonated with the public is because there were too many jarring changes, both in appearance and functionality. To make matters worse, Microsoft dismissed the criticisms by taking a 'father knows best' approach -- you'll use it and you'll like it! But users didn't like it, and even one of Windows 8's designers eventually admitted that the Metro UI "is the antithesis of a power user." Well, that's all water under the bridge, old news, yesterday's events. Windows 10 is here, finally. And unlike Windows 8, early impressions are mostly positive. Make no mistake, Windows 10 isn't Windows 8/8.1 with a Start menu, it's much more, and perhaps Microsoft was spot on to...
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