Νέα και φήμες για το PC/Mac Software

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Microsoft: No plans for Windows 7 Service Pack 2
When a new operating system comes around, most people eagerly wait for the release. Once it’s in the wild, lots of us go with the early adoption approach and use the OS from day one. In the case of Windows, a lot of businesses are reluctant to adopt until the first service pack (SP).



But now it seems like Windows 7’s first SP is to be it’s only one, with sources close to Microsoft’s sustained engineering team (the guys and gals that build and release SPs) saying there are no plans for a second Windows 7 SP.

This breaks Microsoft’s normal product update cycle as SP2 for Windows 7 has had no mention, even in rumour. Not that Microsoft won’t support and patch Windows 7; Patch Tuesday and zero day vulnerabilities will be actioned as normal for the OS, at least until support for Windows 7 SP1 ends in February 2013, 24 months after its release. Windows 7 as an OS will still be supported until 2020.

But all a SP is, is a compilation of all the individual Patch Tuesday updates in one handy package, up to a certain date. But they have proved to be a pain for Microsoft as they take up engineers’ time and budget away from building new versions of the Windows OS. Not that the SP isn’t without merit. Aaron Suzuki chief executive of desktop management and deployment specialist SmartDeploy, gives his take on the SP:

"The usefulness of a service pack is it lets you roll up that [updates and fixes] into a build for an operating system, so you can flip a switch and not worry about performing 50 to 80 updates that take up hundreds of megabytes."

With Windows 8 launching on Friday, it’s to be expected that Microsoft will focus all their efforts in convincing Windows 7 users that Windows 8 is the right way to go, rather than using an older OS, no matter how established it is. But look at it this way; even Windows Vista got a SP2.

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Stolen Ideas: Apple Didn’t Build That [INFOGRAPHIC]
http://mashable.com/2012/10/27/apple-stolen-ideas/

http://9.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/apple-infographic.jpg

The Internet Archive is now home to 10 petabytes of data
The Internet Archive is now storing 10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of "cultural material." That equates to ten petabytes, or ten million gigabytes of information. The archive is tasked with preserving the internet for posterity, and hosts over a million public videos and almost 1.5 million audio files. It's also home to the Wayback Machine, which lets you see what sites were like back in 1997 (or what theverge.com pointed in 2003).

While ten petabytes may pale in comparison to the data held by internet giants like Facebook (which stores more than 100 petabytes of photo and video alone), it's still a significant milestone for the archive. Recent months have seen the non-profit expand its cataloguing efforts to more traditional media, and embrace BitTorrent links for faster downloads. It also announced that it's offering up 80 terabytes of data from a crawl that covered 2.7 billion pages to worthy research teams.

Create a local server in C#
http://www.codeproject.com/Tips/485182/Create-a-local-server-in-Csharp

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The 11 Best VNC Apps for Your Mac
http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/internet-roundup/top-10-vnc-apps-for-os-x/

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Google Earth 7 gets tour guide and 3D imagery features
Earlier this year, Google released tour guide and 3D imagery for Google Earth mobile. The features allow users to view cities in 3D, and to go on guided tours of over 11,000 faraway places from the comfort of their handheld. As of today, those features are now available on the Google Earth 7 desktop application.



The tour guide feature works as, well, a tour guide. You can go on a virtual tour through various locations, getting suggestions for local places that you might be interested in. A flyover will take you over historical landmarks, famous places, and other points of interest. Tidbits of information about items and locations are provided via Wikipedia.

The second feature, 3D imagery, has been enjoyed by Android and iOS users for a while now. With this feature, desktop users can now see detailed three-dimensional flyovers of many of the world’s biggest cities, including Rome, Munich, Mannheim, Portland, Seattle, Austin, Long Beach, Denver, and more. Says the announcement, “The experience of flying through these areas and seeing the buildings, terrain and even the trees rendered in 3D is now consistent across both mobile and desktop devices – making all of your virtual travels more realistic than ever.”

Using these features on your laptop or desktop is much nicer than using a mobile. In particular, the 3D city imagery, when viewed on a large monitor or HDTV, are pretty phenomenal, with crisp details and definition. You can get the new features by updating your current installation, or by downloading Google Earth 7 from the Google Earth website.

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OS and browser market shares for October 2012



NetMarketShare’s desktop Operating System Market Share metrics for October 2012 show another basicly sideways month in terms of market share, with Windows dropping infinitesimally, the Mac stayng exactly the same as in September at 7.16%, and Linux edging up ever so slightly. September share standings, are shown in parentheses for comparison.

Windows – 91.67% (91.73%)
Mac – 7.16% (7.16%)
Linux – 1.17% (1.11%)

Over in the Mobile/Tablet category, the iOS took another steep drop in share in October, roughly commensurate to a sharp increase in share for Android. The downturn was mostly attributable to Android’s continued advance, with Java ME and Blackberry and Symbian also down, while Windows Phone and Bada made small gains. Will the iPad mini and Microsoft’s Surface tablet PC shift the picture significantly? There should be some early indications by the end of November.

iOS – 59.87% (63.48%)
Android - 27.35% (22.10%)
JavaME - 8.04% (9.34% )
BlackBerry – 1.67% (1.83%)
Symbian – 1.51% (1.78%)
Windows Phone – 0.81% (0.70%)
Kindle – 0.41% (0.44%)
Bada – 0.11% (0.09%)
Samsung – 0.09% (0.08%)
Windows Mobile – 0.08% (0.08%)

Desktop OS Versions

In terms of OS specific versions, Windows 7—having finally passed 11-year-old Windows XP for the first time in August—further consolidated its first-place status, while XP faded more (now just a hair over 40 percent) and Vista eased substantially.

On the Mac, Apple’s OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, OS X 10.7 Lion, and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion are now in a three-way dead heat for first place on the Mac platform, while Linux made another small advance.

Windows:

Windows 7 – 44.69% (44.04%)
Windows XP – 40.66% (41.23%)
Windows Vista – 5.80% (6.05%)
Windows 8 – 0.41% (0.30%)

Macintosh:

MacOS X 10.6 – 2.25% 2.34%)
Mac OS X 10.7 – 2.34% (2.45%)
Mac OS X 10.8 – 2.24% (1.60% )
Mac OS X 10.5 – 0.64% (0.69%)
Mac OS X 10.4 – 0.15% (0.16%)

Linux - 1.17% (1.11)
Mobile/Tablet OS Versions

In the mobile/tablet category, Apple’s iOS remains on top, but took another big dip in October. Over on Android, versions 4.0 and 4.1 remain ascendent. Windows Phone remains a distant also-ran, but making progress, and it will be interesting to see if that changes now that Windows 8 is out.

iOS – 59.87% (63.48%)

iPad – 33.13% (36.71%)
iPhone – 25.36% (25.28%)
iPod – 1.39% (1.49%)

JavaME – 8.04% (9.34%)

Android – 27.35% (22.10%)

Android 2.3 13.43% (10.94%)
Android 4.0 8.94% (6.48%)
Android 2.2 2.26% (2.15%)
Android 4.1 0.77% (0.43%)
Android 3.2 0.68% 0.79%)
Android 2.1 0.42% (0.42%)
Android 3.1 0.33% (0.37%)

Symbian – 1.51% (1.83%)

BlackBerry – 1.67% (1.78%)

Kindle Fire – 0.42% (0.44%)

Windows

Windows Phone OS 7.5 – 0.79% (0.67%)
Windows CE – 0.07% (0.06%)

For more information, visit netmarketshare.com.
Browser Share

In desktop Web browsers, Internet Explorer gained a bit more, Firefox dropped below 20%, Chrome droppeed for the second month in a row, Safari desktop eased as well, and Opera was sideways.

In the Mobile/Tablet browser category, top dog Safari for iOS suffered another major hit, commensurate with the general iOS slump, while Android logged a five point gain.

Desktop Browser Market Share

Microsoft Internet Explorer – 54.13% (53.63%)
Firefox – 19.99% (20.08%)
Chrome – 18.55% (18.86%)
Safari – 5.21% (5.26%)
Opera – 1.63% (1.62%)

Mobile/Tablet Market Share

Safari – 60.31% (64.01%)
Android Browser – 25.95% (20.94%)
Opera Mini – 8.24% (9.55% )
BlackBerry – 1.32% (1.38%)
Symbian – 0.89% (1.08%)
Microsoft Internet Explorer – 0.86% (0.75%)
Chrome – 0.85% (0.67%)
Opera Mobile – 0.50% (0.46%)
Firefox – 0.01% (0.01%)

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Ενα πολύ ωραίο infographic που αξίζει να δείτε για τις πληροφορίες του...

https://mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Mashable_Infographic_Al-Greene.jpg

και άλλο ένα...

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Tweetbot v1.0.1 For Mac Released, Adds Support For Safari Reading List And More
Tweetbot for OS X has been one of the more notable releases to hit the Mac App Store in recent times with the 1.0 release eventually landing on the store last month for public purchase after a lengthy public alpha and beta testing period. The iPhone and iPad apps of the same name have benefitted from multiple updates over their lives to bring additional functionality to the user and now it’s the turn of Tweetbot for Mac to get the 1.0.1 update from Tapbots.

Mac OS X users could be forgiven for thinking that a point update of this nature would contain nothing of any note, but it seems that the engineers at Tapbots have managed to include a few powerful and handy new features into the first official Mac App Store release. As part of the update a number of fixes and improvements have been added to the popular Twitter client including a solution for a reported issue that would cause the timeline to automatically scroll and revisit tweets that have already been read.



A number of streaming issues have also been fixed in version 1.0.1, along with a number of other bugs and crashes that have been reported by concerned users. In addition to the obligatory bug fixes and code enhancements, Tapbots have also added native support for Apple’s own Reading List feature. Users running OS X 10.8 or above can now choose to save content directly to Apple’s read it later service that is accessible through Safari on multiple devices.

The final major addition to the Mac App Store’s popular Twitter app is the addition of what the team are calling "j/k navigation". It may seem like an entirely fabricated feature but it actually allows users to scroll up and down through their timelines using the J and K keys on the keyboard. Other applications such as Google Reader have already implemented this with great success so it should prove to be a great addition for OS X Tweetbot users.



The update should be live in the Mac App Store right now as a free of charge download for those who already own the app. New users can grab Tweetbot for $19.99.

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Skype hack steals accounts with nothing more than your email
A Skype security flaw could allow rogue users to seize control of your account using nothing more than your email address, thanks to subpar recovery policies that can be easily gamed. The exploit depends on Skype’s policy of reminding new sign-ups of any existing usernames they have previously registered, when they attempt to re-register using the same email address. According to The Next Web, with a minor amount of tinkering, it’s possible to reset another user’s password and thus grab hold of their account.



Although a signed-in user will be able to see when somebody else attempts the hack, they would need to react fast in order to actually prevent themselves from being locked out. If they were not logged in at the time, or not paying sufficient attention, then they could have their Skype credentials usurped – along with any credit on that account – without them even realizing it had happened.

Skype is apparently conducting an “internal investigation” into the loophole, though for now there’s no official comment on when it might be closed off. The hack was first reported on a Russian forum roughly two months ago, it’s said, with the person responsible for discovering the exploit claiming to have told Skype about it with no apparent change in recovery security.

For the moment, the best advice is to change your registered email in the Skype settings to something that might not be associated with your account. That reduces the likelihood, though we’ll need to see a change in how accounts are handled by Skype itself before the hack is closed down for good.

Update: More complete instructions for the workaround can be found here, courtesy of Reddit:

Log in on skype.com
Go to the profile, click Edit and add an email address an attacker won’t guess. (Or your-email+something@gmail.com if you’re using Gmail)
Click Save
Click Edit again, set the new address as Primary
Click Save, enter the password and click the Enter button
Delete the old email

Update 2: Skype has given us the following statement:

“We have had reports of a new security vulnerability issue. As a precautionary step we have temporarily disabled password reset as we continue to investigate the issue further. We apologise for the inconvenience but user experience and safety is our first priority”

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How Much Is the Internet’s Electric Bill? [INFOGRAPHIC]
https://mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Growing-Power-Hungry-Internet.jpg

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Windows XP support from Microsoft ends in 500 days



Microsoft has made a point to send out reminders to large businesses that still use Windows XP that extended support for the OS will end soon. The company has also tried to offer advice to businesses who want to make the move to Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Today, it was a third party, UK-based IT company Camwood, which sent out the latest reminder of Windows XP and its ultimate fate. In a press release, Camwood noted that just 500 days are now left before Microsoft's official support for Windows XP will end on April 8th, 2014.

Camwood, naturally, is using this milestone to help promote its own services. However, its press release does make a point. There are estimates that as many as 50 percent of PC desktops in the enterprise market are still running Windows XP, although other numbers put that percentage as much lower.

Camwood went on to add:

Whatever the true number, there is still a huge number of companies that need to migrate. The end of XP support is a potential time bomb, and the clock is ticking. With all the potential compatibility and security issues looming from legacy systems, businesses need to understand migration is a necessary step to secure their valuable data.

It will be interesting to see what the percentage of enterprise PC users is that is still running Windows XP a year from now, and how many made the move to Windows 7 and Windows 8.