After a public face plant regarding the release of its operating system update to developers, Microsoft announced that applications built for Windows 8.1 will be approved no more than five days following their submission, once the new build of Windows becomes generally available.
The big, still-in-Beta Google Maps overhaul brought a bunch of new shiny stuff, from its new fullscreen interface to drastically improved public transportation integration. It also lost some features, though – and when you take away things that people have been using for years, those people get sad. One of the features that got washed away in the refresh: multi-destination trips.
Mozilla released Firefox OS 1.1 on Wednesday, filling in a large number of missing features and improving the performance of the browser-based operating system for mobile phones. Firefox 1.0 debuted with the first generation of mobile phones earlier this year, generally low-end models targeted at feature-phone owners who wanted to take the smartphone plunge but not have to spend as much money as required for higher-end Android or iOS devices. Like many first-version operating systems, though there were a lot of missing pieces.
In case it wasn't clear before, a Google decision has shown the writing is on the wall for plug-ins such as Java and Silverlight that for years have been used to extend what browsers can do. Starting in January 2014, Google will ban all but the most widely used browser plug-ins in favor of programming methods that use standards built directly into the Web, Chrome security engineer Justin Schuh announced in a blog post Monday.
Adobe on Monday released its latest version of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, lower-cost version of the company's photo- and video-editing suites geared toward hobbyists. Photoshop Elements 12 and Premiere Elements 12 have been overhauled to incorporate new mobile capabilities and a revamped editing experience, the company said in a statement.
When it comes to voice search, Google still runs circles around its competitors. Today’s update to Chrome for iOS adds a new layer of intelligence to this feature and now lets you use pronouns. The company previously introduced this capability a few months ago and already uses it on the desktop and Android. Thanks to this, you can now ask it “Who is the president of the United States?” and you can then use the pronoun in the next question instead of Barack Obama’s full name.
Get your motor running, head out on the highway – and download some software. Apple’s big iOS 7 update is now available to all, or at least to anyone with an iPhone 4 or higher, iPad 2 or above, iPad mini or 5th generation iPod touch. The big question will be whether people are as quick to update to iOS 7 as they have generally been with less extreme mobile OS changes from Apple.
It’s turning into a busy week for Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) providers, and the tech companies that love them — particularly Google. On Monday, Udacity co-founder and CEO Sebastian Thrun and California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom announced the Open Education Alliance, a consortium of online organizations dedicated to closing the skills gap, developing standards for career readiness and providing the content that will help get students ready for the workforce.
Adobe launched the latest update for Photoshop CC yesterday. Besides numerous smaller feature additions, this new version adds a tool called “Adobe Generator” that is, among other things, deeply integrated with Edge Reflow, the company’s tools for creating responsive web designs. Using Generator, which is also available as an open source tool, designers can now easily take assets from Photoshop – and even complete websites they mocked up in Adobe’s flagship tool – and turn them into responsive sites. Any changes in Photoshop are automatically synced to Reflow in real-time.
Apple made waves yesterday when it announced its oft-rumored September 10 event, but Google isn’t giving up the day’s limelight without a fight — according to a post on Sundar Pichai’s Google+ page, more than 1 billion Android devices have been activated to date. That’s not exactly a shock considering the sort of momentum we’ve seen in activations over the past few months. CEO Larry Page said there were 1.5 million Android activations a day back in July and Android device activations hit the 900 million mark earlier this year.