TechnoBB – Page 44

Hyper for Windows 8 Offers The Full YouTube Experience

The native YouTube app for Windows 8 is the latest casualty of the battle between Microsoft and Google but that doesn’t mean there are no options for YouTube viewing. Hyper is the newest app on the Windows Store to offer up the full YouTube experience and it does a spectacular job.

When you start Hyper, the main view is similar to what you’d find if visiting YouTube via a web browser with the latest “Most popular” and “Top Favorites” videos dominating the screen. As with other YouTube apps or the site, you can login to your YouTube account to view your subscriptions and favorite channels. If you’re logged in, these will appear when the app starts and there are options to further customize how your favorite channels are organized.

Searching for videos is simple and fast with auto-completed results giving the most relevant search terms before you’re even done typing. Once you’ve entered your search words, the most relevant videos appear laid out in an easily accessible group. As with the YouTube site, you can adjust search for relevance, most popular, time frame, category, etc.

Playing a video is as simple as tapping the appropriate tile and the video will begin playing in fullscreen mode. During playback you can add the video to a playlist, adjust the quality and resolution, zoom, adjust volume, and view more details about the video. There are even a couple of features beyond the standard YouTube experience to set the video to repeat or download it directly for later and repeated viewings.

The Settings and Player menus let you control viewing history, rating info, and default video appearance and quality with adjustments to buttons or fullscreen playback.

The Snap views in Windows 8 are great for watching a video on the side while browsing the net or using another app. The experience might sound a lot like what you’d expect from just visiting YouTube on a browser but the added features make it a cut above and worth a try.

Source: Hyper YouTube App for Windows Phone

[Image Credit: Windows Phone Store]

Language Learning App Duolingo Now Available on Android

Have you ever wanted to learn another language? Well, if one of them happens to be Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, or English, the newly released (and free) Android version of Duolingo might be of help. Duolingo provides a series of language lessons and mini-games with scaled difficulty as you gain proficiency.

To begin, you must create a Duolingo account which is super easy (muy fácil) if using a Google or Facebook login. Next, you simply choose the language you’d like to learn and you’re ready to delve into the tools Duolingo offers. The app holds your hand in the beginning, teaching you the essentials of vocabulary and grammar before challenging you with full sentences or phrases.

The app makes learning more play than work and you can unlock achievements by doing well in the lessons. Lessons take the form of various mini-games and you are given four hearts at the start of each series of lessons. If you fail a lesson, you lose one heart and you must complete a series with at least one heart remaining for it to count.

The games (die spiele) are all fun and more important, genuinely helpful in learning the language. They range from fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice and translation to actually entering in the text of a spoken audio clip. The audio exercises even provide the ability to slow the speed of the spoken clip to make it easier to follow. Overall, the variety of exercises is very good (molto buono).

With all of the tools available online to learn a new language, it’s never been easier or more fun to try. Duolingo provides a great service for free and is fun to boot. They’re reportedly working on providing Chinese lessons in the future as well, but in the meantime why not pick up one of the many currently on offer? Of course it will take a lot of practice but c’est la vie.

Source: Duolingo: Learn Languages App for Android

[Image Credit: Google Play Store]

Windows 8.1 Features Revealed

Microsoft has finally taken the wraps off the newest features in Windows 8.1, the forthcoming update to Windows 8. Windows 8.1 seeks to address most of the complaints from casual and power users as well as provide several brand new improvements to streamline the overall experience.

blue-start

One of the biggest changes is the return of the much beloved Start button familiar to all Windows users which was removed from Windows 8. Another help to users of previous incarnations of Windows is the added ability to boot directly to desktop mode without having to go through the tablet style interface. One more nod to PC users is a series of improvements in navigating Windows using a keyboard and mouse.

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Beyond these widely desired changes, Microsoft has added several personalization features. These include the ability to customize backgrounds so that they are shared between both Desktop and Start screens to provide a more seamless transition between the two. A new digital photo display mode has been added which allows a Windows 8.1 device to function like a digital frame while in lock mode.

Microsoft has also tweaked several native apps, including Music, Photos and Windows Store, allowing more integration between the different apps as well as visual and speed upgrades. Search has been given a boost with Bing results being combined into a more complete whole across files on the device, SkyDrive, and of course the internet. Speaking of the internet, Windows 8.1 will be home to the latest Internet Explorer, IE11 which will have several improvements of its own.

Snap views have received a major upgrade and now allow running three apps simultaneously next to one another. Apps can be resized at will (fullscreen 50:50 for example) instead of being forced to occupy only a quadrant of the screen. More than one instance of the same app can also be run at the same time and put into Snap views.

When Windows 8.1 is released later this year, look forward to these improvements and more. It appears that Microsoft has listened to the recommendations of Windows 8 users and is making an effort to woo those reluctant to upgrade from older versions.

Samsung expects Galaxy S4 sales more than 80 million in 2013

When Samsung announced flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone sales had reached 10 million units in one month. But now according to RBC Capital Market analyst, Samsung Galaxy S4 sales will reach 80 million units in 2013.

“Galaxy S-4 demand in the first month of availability has been incrementally better than our estimate of 10M units,” Sue wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. “In comparison, the S-III took nearly 2 months (50 days) to achieve the 10M units mark. Our broad-based channel checks at U.S. stores indicate that demand for the 16G S-4 devices remains strong with 32G Black devices mostly sold-out and 32G White devices yet to make it to the stores.”

Mr. Sue said that Samsung future looks great and it will be a major achievement for the company. However, recently Samsung has unveiled the rumored Galaxy S4 Mini Smartphone. The Galaxy S4 is the stripped down version of flagship Galaxy S4 smart phone. No doubt Korean Smartphone manufacturer Samsung has found the winning formula in the smart phone industry.

CamSpeed App for Windows Phone

CamSpeed is revolutionizing the way we see, literally, the camera and imaging capabilities on our smart phones. It’s no surprise that with a great quality camera strapped into every single phone hitting the market that there is a ton of competition and claims getting thrown around about which cameras are best. The marketers can claim anything they want but the true tests come from the pictures and the users. CamSpeed is basically a testing app for your phone. Although this doesn’t sound like loads of fun, it actually surprisingly is. CamSpeed runs your device through a battery of tests and then lets you view the results and then compare it to other devices.

While allowing you to compare lighting, speed, low light imaging compared to other cameras on other phones you can get a really great idea of how your camera really matches up and if those commercials touting the ability to take pictures in near darkness are based on any truth.

While this isn’t a huge app the information it provides is really great. Especially considering that these phones on the Windows 8 market have huge marketing campaigns based in how great the Nokia line of Windows phone’s cameras are. This really will put them to the test to put their money, or pictures, where there mouths, or advertising is.

This isn’t your Temple Run or Angry Birds, but to see how your camera measures up it is a fun and interesting app to use.

Source: CamSpeed for Windows Phone

[Image Credit: Windows Phone Store]

Recordium: Highlight, Annotate, and Edit Voice Recordings

Recording lectures, interviews, or just people talking for sound bites has become another vital function of iOS devices. Their portability has rendered capturing speech incredibly easy. Although the stock app for this is good, there was a lot of room for improvement. This was seen and implemented by Recordium, an app that allows recording to be edited, annotated and even highlighted. It improves in almost every area that there were holes in the stock app and does so in a very user friendly way.

It’s always a tough line to walk where the simplicity of one app turns into gaudy and unnecessary features on the next. It seems Recordium has found a great balance while allowing and introducing new features into the voice recording app while keeping the interface very simple and easy to use. Without the ability to edit these recordings the only choice was to listen through minutes or hours of sound to find out the section you wanted. With the ability to go through and edit, cut, and shorten specific areas of the recording this is no longer a problem. You can now splice out areas of silence, or parts that you don’t need. This not only makes the file shorter, but allows the recording to only consist of what you want and need.

The ability to include annotations is another amazing aspect of Recordium. You can add as many little notes or even pictures to the recording along the parts that you need them to show exactly where relevant areas are and what you might need to remember about them. If you no longer need one, a simple, single tap will remove the tag and you can forget all about it.

The best part of the app is the recording quality control. You can choose which quality you want the recording to be done in which allows massive recordings to only take up miniscule amounts of space. You can also choose to compress the files in MP4 which can make an hour long recording as small as 30 MB.

All of these amazing features coupled with great file sharing to online cloud services makes this app just as useful as it is expansive with features. You can easily transport these to email services or anywhere else you want as well directly from the Recordium app. Right now this app is free, but it will almost surely not stay this way. Try it out for free and start exploring the wonderful world of Recordium for yourself.

Source: Recordium for iPhone

[Image Credit: iTunes Store]