October, 2010 - Softonic English

Useful keyboard shortcuts for the new Twitter

As I write these words, you should all be enjoying the new Twitter design. According to the app’s official blog, 100% of their 160 million users have now access to the new Twitter, whether they’ve been using the tool for years or signed up for it only yesterday.

Either way – and whether you like the new design or not – I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of the most useful shortcuts for using the new Twitter without taking your hands off the keyboard. It makes the web app even easier to use. Who knows, maybe it’ll help you to learn to love it, if you’re reluctant to accept change. So, here we go:

To tweet a new message, press the N key.

To see your Favorite tweets, press G and then F.

To see your mentions, press G and then R.

To scroll down the timeline, press the spacebar.

To reply to a message, press the R key after selecting the message.

To retweet a message, press the T key. Remember that first you must select the message you want to share with your followers.

To visit someone’s profile, press G and then U, and start entering the user’s name in the floating window. Twitter will complete the text as you type.

Skype 5.0 for Windows released.

After a short time in beta, free voice, video and chat app Skype 5.0 has arrived. This is the kind of update you’ll want all your friends to get, as if they all have this new version, you can test group video calls.

The other big development is the introduction of Facebook integration. This is pretty big thing, as not only does it give you your news feed in app – anyone can do that – but adds call and sms buttons to any of your friends who share their contact numbers. If you’ve paid for Skype minutes, you can call your Facebook friends, and if they’re also signed in to Skype you can call them for free. My favorite new feature is the automatic call recovery – drop a call and it’s put in pause. Restarting it is now really easy.

Skype 5.0 is a big improvement, so head over to our review and download it now!

Apple to announce OS X 10.7 “Lion” on October 20th?

The net is currently buzzing with breaking news that Apple may announce the release of OS X 10.7 “Lion” on October 20th. Apple have today sent invitations to media inviting them to an event on October 20th. The invite simply reads “Back to the Mac” and shows the image of a lion behind a metallic Apple logo.

Speculation is rife over the cryptic invite but Electronista suggests that a “revolutionary” new OS X 10.7 could be the big news. It points out that in July, Apple announced that:

We are looking for a senior software engineer to help us create a revolutionary new feature in the very foundations of Mac OS X. We have something truly revolutionary and really exciting in progress and it is going to require your most creative and focused efforts ever.

Although it doesn’t seem long enough since July to develop a revolutionary OS X, most people are betting that OS X 10.7 is the big event. More news will surely emerge over the next few days, so watch this space…

Windows Phone 7 syncs with Macs via new Zune software

Good news for Mac users that own a Zune and plan to get their hands on a Windows 7 phone. Microsoft have confirmed that not only are they finally releasing Zune software for Macs later this year, and that it will sync Macs with Windows 7 phones.

Engadget were the first to get hold of a statement from Microsoft which simply read:

Later in 2010 Microsoft will make a public beta available of a tool that allows Windows Phone 7 to sync select content with Mac computers.

The news is certainly a surprise for Mac users since they’re usually bottom of the pile when it comes to support for Microsoft products. Maybe it’s a sign that Microsoft are finally taking the ever increasing numbers of people switching from Windows to Macs seriously.

However, it remains to be seen whether the Zune software for Macs will be as comprehensive as it is for Windows. It also poses the question – are there actually any Mac users out there that have a Zune or plan to get a Windows 7 phone?

Amazon launches Kindle Singles, a new ebook format

Despite the odd name, Kindle Singles is not a new dating service on Amazon’s ebook reader. It’s a new format released by the popular online store, which has been especially created for shorter ebooks.

Kindle Singles is aimed at books between 10,000 and 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages, or a few chapters of a standard book). It’s perfect for those stories that were too long to be published as a featured article on a newspaper, but also maybe too short to be worth the costs of a typical book marketing and distribution campaign.

According to Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content:

Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format. With Kindle Singles, we’re reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we’re excited to see what they create.

This new ebook format will have its own section in the Kindle Store on Amazon, and will also benefit from the “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” feature that characterizes all Kindle content. Once you buy your Kindle Singles, they’ll be available for download on your Kindle, as well as any other device where you have installed the Kindle application. They’ll be also automatically synced across all your devices, and archived online for future download. One difference though is that they’ll be much cheaper than regular books.

Is Chromium OS launching next month?

Only 11 months after its official presentation, rumor has it that the first final version of Chromium OS (also known as Chrome OS) will be launched next month. The news was unveiled by TechCrunch, after spotting references to the project reaching the Release Candidate development stage – usually the final debugging and beta-testing phase, right before the official final release.

According to these references, included in bug comments on the Google Code site, Chromium’s most recent build is 0.9.78.1, so we can expect the first final version of Google’s operating system as soon as that version hits “1”.

Is Chromium OS launching next month?

There are several possible dates for this release. Some blogs bet on November 11th, mainly due to a Google employee mentioning this date in a thread over at Google Code site. ‘We will push this after November 11’, he replies to a request about a certain feature. Another possible release date, on the other hand, would be November 19th – the first anniversary of their presentation event last year.

Whatever the final launch date is, Google Chromium OS will be one of the most important software events of the year, and I’m sure the hype will keep on growing until we can finally lay our hands on it.

Free Browser Game: Feign

Feign is an abstract 3D exploration game, that mixes minimalist graphics with eerie ambient music to create quite an unusual experience. Your task is to collect nine bodies, the first of which is right in front of you. Why you should do this is unclear, but once you start, it’s hard to stop looking.

Controls are simple, but the visual puzzles get quite tricky – the monochrome world can really mess with your head, and it’s easy to get disoriented. Check out Feign here.

Windows Phone 7: Wonderfully yours?

With an alleged 400 million dollar marketing budget, Microsoft has jumped back into the smartphone business aggressively with Windows Phone 7. While you might think Apple and Google have everything sewn up, Microsoft’s mobile operating system is an interesting proposal, backed by a massive company. Just because Windows Mobile has been eclipsed over the past couple of years doesn’t mean Windows Phone 7’s fate is sealed.

Windows Phone 7 is being marketed as something different, and it certainly looks it. It’s moved away from the icon-apps that Apple have seemingly standardized for smart phones, giving Windows Phone a sleek and unique appearance made of customizable dynamic tiles. It has all the features you’d expect, like internet browsing, email, gaming and media playback, but presents them differently. Games are integrated into Xbox Live, which gives it good brand recognition, the media player is Zune (they won’t give up on it!), documents are handled by Office, and so on.

Steve Balmer presented 9 devices that will be available at launch, from HTC, LG, Samsung, Dell and others. This variety looks like a strength, but we’ll have to wait until after the New Year to see whether they pull enough customers from iOS and Android devices. Balmer said he wanted the customers to feel the phones were ‘wonderfully yours’, and that it was customization and flexibility that would achieve that. Can it create the kind of obsessive fans the iPhone did?

John Lennon albums now on Spotify

Spotify have announced that as of today, users can finally listen to John Lennon albums on the service. The music service has published a selection of remastered albums including classic releases such as Double Fantasy Stripped Down, Milk And Honey, Plastic Ono Band and Sometime In New York City.

All the albums were remastered and reissued in honor of what would have been Lennon’s 70th birthday a few days ago on October 9th. Previously on Spotify, the only tracks available to Lennon fans were cover versions of his tracks and an interview album.

Although the majority of Lennon’s back catalog is still missing from Spotify, you can also listen to his greatest hits on a remastered version of Power To The People – The Hits.

The move marks a significant softening by Yoko Ono who is notoriously guarded over publishing rights to her late husband’s work. Beatles fans will hope that this move might pave they way for Beatles music to be added to Spotify which remains one of the service’s gaping absences.

How to: Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

When I first learned about MobileMe, I wondered who would be willing to pay $99 a year for services (email, photo gallery, online storage) that you could get cheaper elsewhere, if not totally free. But now that I have an iPhone 4, I see a powerful reason to sign up for MobileMe: the Find My iPhone utility.

Besides its most common usage as backup and syncing tool, MobileMe has an incredible added value – at least for me: it includes the so called Find My iPhone, a feature that enables you to locate a missing or stolen iPhone, display messages on its screen and what’s more, even lock it or wipe its contents remotely. This awesome feature needs a bit of set-up, but nothing you can’t do by yourself if you follow these easy steps:

1. First of all, you obviously need to sign up for MobileMe. If the $99/year fee is still too much for you, don’t worry: you’ve got a 2-month trial period before the first payment is due.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

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