Software posts

Adobe has (at last) introduced a version of Flash it swears is suitable for mobile devices, Flash Player 10.1, and in an attempt to prove it isn’t sitting alone whistling its multimedia software’s song, claims HBO, Sony Pictures, Turner, USA Network, Viacom, Warner Brothers and others are already creating Flash Content for MObile. Adobe promises the software — which we all know has been heavily-criticized by Apple CEO Steve Jobs — offers performance and mobile specific features. If you’re on a Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm or Research In Motion smartphone, I’m afraid you’ll…

Got a world class newspaper you want to keep publishing as tastes go digital? The LA Times has, and so it has introduced its rather marvelous and all brand new Los Angeles Times News Reader iPhone app. A $1.99 app which delivers a nice and easy route into all the influential newspaper’s editorial content. There’s no half measures here, no attempt to give readers a tiny morsel of the content to hook them into expensive monthly subscription fees. Not from the LA Times — instead you get news, commentary and photography. Oh, and it has an offline mode so you can read it on the subway. Better yet, the…

I used to be so good at Guitar Hero. Back in my day we were scoring our own tracks for GH2 to run on a hacked Playstation 2 and rewiring our controllers with extra strum buttons on the fretboards for wicked awesome two-handed solos. This is the most interested I’ve been in a Guitar Hero clone since then. Having little if anything to do with guitars (nor heroism), Street Orchestra is an app developed by Swedish devs HiQ in a tag team with equally-Swedish ad agency SCP, in an attempt to get the younger generation interested in classical music. Says SCP’s interactive producer Russel Clark: “The mission…

Depending on your level of geekism, editing Wikipedia is a lot of fun, and to those that do, the temptation to slip something funny under the radar can be great. As such, this news should not disinterest you: Wikipedia has announced that they’ll be unlocking all sorts of pages traditionally the targets of malicious edits. Instead, it will focus on severely tightening its editorial control in what it calls Pending Changes. Admittedly, I once changed the president of Burma to ‘M. Bison’, but that change lasted all of about 20 minutes. This new policy isn’t exactly trained on the casual prankster;…

A new partnership between Yelp and OpenTable will allow the US public to browse restaurant reviews written by users and quickly make reservations within a few clicks without having to jump between websites or pick up the phone. The social review site Yelp, which offers itself as a platform for people to make known their grievances or praises about anything from technology to nightclubs, has partnered up with OpenTable to allow users to make reservations at restaurants without having the need for lengthy searches through the phonebook. Users will now be able to read a review and then use an OpenTable…

While I am not sure how “cool” the content is but this new website is offering a very insightful look into how huge the oil spill issue in the Gulf Of Mexico really is by allowing you to super impose it over your home and surrounding area. The software for the website IfItWasMyHome.com uses a combination of Google Maps and freely available government data available via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It places the parameters of the BP oil spill over any area in the world. You can move the spill to center on any location by simply typing in your address or any address as you would…

The entertainment industry has embarked in an all-out war against piracy around the globe, with the hopes of scaring would-be pirates from illegally obtaining digital media. But if the likes of the MPAA and RIAA plans on sinking the ship that millions sail throughout the Internet, they should think again. The primary target for the entertainment industry, as it would seem, has been The Pirate Bay. It is far more than a website that enables users to acquire digital content of both legal and illegal variety. It is a symbol. It is a powerful message that the entertainment industry hates but many people,…

Well, I guess it would be only a matter of time before Hollywood got their hands dirty in the virtual world; as if the “real-life” Hollywood world wasn’t fake and scripted enough already. Virtual 3D Hollywood is the new project by GBK, a luxury lifestyle gifting and special events company. The premise is to allow players, that’s you, into the world of glitz and glamor as only Hollywood can deliver. The whole thing looks pretty similar to Second Life, which was fun for like a day if you ask me (call me old-fashioned but I would rather have conversations and deal with drama face to face and not…

The irony of this situation is not lost on me. The founders of Skype, your favourite instant messaging alternative, have decided to jump on the music streaming/subscription bandwagon with Rdio. The irony here is that said founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, are also the founders of Kazaa, one of the early applications that crippled the music industry. The confusingly-titled Rdio (AR-dee-oh (R-D-O)) is their attempt to help resuscitate it. As with all things these days, Rdio of course is cloud-based, meaning you can play your library on any device, anywhere – for a fee, of course. Ten…

Looks like Google’s mythic operating system Chrome OS will be out this fall. “It’s something which we are very excited by … We expect it to reach millions of users on day one,” says Google’s vice president of product management, Sundar Pichai. Hey, Sundar, anything with the Google logo on it and available for free is gonna be big – no need to be modest or anything, now. Questions are flying around such as what devices will feature Chrome OS, or whether the OS even poses a minor threat to Windows, but I’m not sure the latter is even a question – while it’s shaping up to look like a great little OS, hardcore…