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2016-07-27T00:04:00.119-07:00

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2015-01-26T04:34:00.004-08:00

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Microsoft Launches New Ad to Promote the New Windows Experience

2013-06-15T19:54:00.001-07:00

Published: June 15, 2013

Microsoft released this week an ad to promote the different Windows versions for the different kinds of devices. In the ad all the versions are grouped under the label "the new Windows".

Here you can see the video:

Facebook Releases New Mobile App Called Home

2013-04-08T16:24:00.002-07:00

Published: April 8, 2013

Since next April 12 the Google Play Store will have a new mobile app, Facebook Home.

The main idea behind Home is to give priority to your relationship with your Facebook Friends over the other apps in your mobile device. As the official introduction puts it, "Home isn't a phone or operating system, and it's also more than just an app."

To be more specific, Facebook's Home will be both the lock screen and home screen of the mobiles in which it is installed, and the icons to open the other apps will be accessible from it.

In this way, for example, users will be able to chat through Facebook while using other mobile apps, which will be the background of the chat.

Users of this software will also be able to see a feed containing information from their Facebook contacts just as they pick their phones.

Twitter Celebrates Its Seventh Birthday with a Video

2013-03-22T01:19:00.002-07:00

Published: March 22, 2013

Yesterday seven years have passed since March 21 2006, the day in which Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent the first tweet in history. The words chosen for that occasion, "just setting up my twttr."

As can be observed in that message, the original purpose of Twitter was to share with our acquaintances what we were doing. Lately users started publishing all kinds of texts, always inside the 140 characters restriction, and nowadays Twitter is Internet's standard for sending short messages and the favorite social network of celebrities all over the world.

To celebrate its seventh birthday, Twitter launched this video:

Facebook Changes Its News Feed Design

2013-03-07T13:23:00.000-08:00

Published: March 7, 2013

Facebook announced today a new version of its News Feed in which users can choose topics, described by Mark Zuckerberg as "the best personalized newspaper in the world." The announcement states that users will see the same stories as before the change, but with a new look.

From now on, besides being able to see the News Feed they had until this moment, users will also be able to select and view any of these feeds:

All Friends: a feed that shows a user everything their friends are sharing.
Photos: a feed with nothing but photos from friends and the Pages a user likes.
Music: a feed with posts about the music a user listens to.
Following: a feed with the latest news from the Pages a user likes and the people that he or she follows.

One interesting aspect of the new design is that it will be the same whether users are viewing it with a mobile, a tablet, or a PC.

Although the upgrade will be rolled out gradually over the coming weeks, Facebook offers users that want to get it early the possibility to visit www.facebook.com/newsfeed and add themselves to a waiting list.

The new design can be seen in this video released by Facebook:

Article by ROM Cartridge. This article was updated on March 8th 2013.

YouTube User Interface Dances the Harlem Shake

2013-03-06T10:31:00.002-08:00

Published: March 6, 2013

YouTube users typing in its search box the phrase "do the harlem shake" and pressing Enter will see that the YouTube logo will start dancing and then the whole page will do the same, all this with a background music.

This is a reference to the Harlem Shake, a kind of video in which one person starts dancing among the indifference of other people, which after a cut in the video are also dancing. In many occasions the dancers are using costumes.

There are several YouTube videos from around the world showing this dance in different environments, and even compilations of these videos.

PC Units Sales Are Expected to Fall 1.3% in 2013

2013-03-05T13:22:00.000-08:00

Published: March 5, 2013

According to the market research company IDC, after a 3.7% fall in 2012, the shipment of PC units worldwide is expected to drop 1.3% during the current year.

In a press release IDC states that the reasons for this prediction are a continued pressure from tablets and an apathetic reception to Windows 8, which is designed to be used with touchscreen components that are not yet widely available in the market.

The research recognizes that "Windows 8 and a more varied and less expensive offering of ultrathin notebooks" have revived the demand of PC Units, but this was not enough to prevent the global falling in sales.

By ROM Cartridge. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Amid a Shrinking Market, Groupon Fires Its Founder and CEO

2013-03-04T11:39:00.001-08:00

Published: March 4, 2013

Last Thursday the 31-year-old founder of Groupon Andrew Mason was fired as CEO of the company.

The board took this decision in a moment when things aren't going well for the deal-of-the-day website.

Changes in the leadership of the company have been a rumor since last November, when Mason addressed this issue at a Business Insider conference saying, "Our stock is down about 80%, it would be weird if the board wasn't discussing whether I'm the right guy to do the job, it's their chief responsibility to ask that question."

Many analysts agree that the underlying problem causing the fall of the company is that people got tired of the kind of service it provides.

By ROM Cartridge. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Yahoo Will Shut Down Unpopular Products

2013-03-03T05:50:00.000-08:00

Published: March 3, 2013

In order to focus resources in its most popular products, Yahoo decided to shut down the services that did not become a daily habit among users.

Effective next April 1, the company will stop these products:

Yahoo! Avatars
Yahoo! app for BlackBerry
Yahoo! Clues (beta)
Yahoo! App Search
Yahoo! Sports IQ
Yahoo! Message Boards website

Furthermore, on April 16, 2013, Yahoo! Updates API will be no longer supported by the company.

As these were described by Yahoo as "the closures we’re announcing today," there may be more in the near future.

By ROM Cartridge. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Pope Benedict XVI Joins Twitter

2012-12-03T10:57:00.001-08:00

Published: December 3, 2012

The Vatican announced today that Pope Benedict XVI has an official Twitter account in English with the handle @pontifex. There are also other seven accounts of the Pope for worldwide popular languages, these being Arabic, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish.

According to the Vatican, next week there will be in the account tweets approved by the Pope and the first ones will be answers to questions sent to him on matters of faith. For the moment all of Benedict's accounts only follow his own accounts in the other seven languages.

The Vatican stated that "the Pope's presence on Twitter is a concrete expression of his conviction that the Church must be present in the digital arena."

Microsoft Sets the Price for Its New Tablets with Windows 8 Pro

2012-11-30T12:38:00.000-08:00

Published: November 30, 2012

A month after the release of its tablet Surface with Windows RT, Microsoft announced the price for its new tablets with Window 8 Pro.

There will be two versions of this new kind of tablets according to their storage capacity. These are:

64GB version at $899
128GB version at $999

The difference between these new tablets and the previous ones resides in their operating system. Although Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro look alike, the first of them is meant only for tablets and only runs programs available at the new online Windows Store. The second one, on the other hand, is meant both for tablets and desktop PCs, and therefore users can install in it the same programs that they used in Windows 7.

As Microsoft announced, these new tablets Surface with Windows 8 Pro will be available in January 2013.

By ROM Cartridge. Image courtesy of methodshop.com via Flickr.

Marissa Mayer Speaks About Her Career and About the Future of Yahoo

2012-11-29T10:14:00.001-08:00

Published: November 29, 2012

In her first interview since becoming Yahoo's CEO last July 16, Marissa Mayer spoke last Tuesday about her career and about her plans for the company.

Among other things she said that having her first baby was easy, that working in Yahoo is fun, and that the company she is managing won't do maps because "it's very expensive" and "hard to do well," adding that "Apple is finding that out." Instead, as Mayer said, the company will focus on making it easier for mobile users to access the services and the information that Yahoo already provides.

The next three videos show parts of the interview: the first one is the part where she talks about her baby; the second one, about her mobile strategy for Yahoo, and the third video is the complete 30 minutes interview for those who want to see it.

The meeting, which took place in Silicon Valley, was organized by Fortune magazine.

During Its First Month in the Market, 40 Million Licenses of Windows 8 Were Sold

2012-11-28T14:37:00.000-08:00

Published: November 28, 2012

Surpassing Windows 7's market performance, 40 Million Licenses of Windows 8 were sold in the first month after its launching. This data was provided by the new responsible for Windows 8 business area Tami Reller at the Credit Suisse 2012 Annual Technology Conference.

The announcement of this news in Windows' blog remarks that, together with the arrival the new operating system, by the end of October there was also a "grand opening" of the Windows Store, which since then has doubled its number of available apps. Developers that sell an app in Windows Store keep 70% of its price until they cross a $25,000 revenue mark, in which case they start keeping an 80%.

The great performance of Windows 8 in the market until now is in part due to Microsoft's decision to provide Windows XP, Vista, and 7 users with an upgrade to the new operating system for $39.99, available only as a download from Windows.com.

Record Usage of Instagram Due to Thanksgiving Day

2012-11-23T18:46:00.001-08:00

Published: November 23, 2012

Instagram informed today in its blog that yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, there was a record usage of the application.

The statement says that there were more than 10 million photos mentioning Thanksgiving-themed words in their captions, with more than 200 of those photos being posted every second during several hours. The number of shared photos was more than the double from the day before.

Instagram is a tool by which users can take photos, apply a filter to them, and then share those images in multiple social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and many others. The filters are predefined processes by which the looks of the photos are changed, automatically setting aspects such as its color or texture. With Instagram's filters users can, for example, make a photo look as if it was taken by a Polaroid camera.

Facebook bought Instagram in an agreement made last April 9.

By ROM Cartridge. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Latest Tech News

2012-11-23T12:12:00.001-08:00

Intel CEO Decides to Leave the Company

2012-11-20T09:16:00.000-08:00

Published: November 20, 2012

Intel Corp. announced yesterday that Paul Otellini decided to retire as chief executive by next month of May.

The decision was a surprise to the board of the Silicon Valley company, which expected the 62-year-old CEO to leave his position at the Intel's mandatory age of retirement which is 65. As spokesman Paul Bergevin said, "The decision was entirely Paul's, the board accepted his decision with regret."

“I’ve been privileged to lead one of the world’s greatest companies,” Otellini said. “After almost four decades with the company and eight years as CEO, it’s time to move on and transfer Intel’s helm to a new generation of leadership. I look forward to working with Andy, the board and the management team during the six-month transition period, and to being available as an advisor to management after retiring as CEO.”

Paul Otellini is the fifth CEO in the 45 years of history of the semiconductor chip maker company.

By ROM Cartridge. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Nintendo Launches Its New Video Game Console Called Wii U

2012-11-18T14:26:00.003-08:00

Published: November 18, 2012

With a launch event at the Nintendo World Store in New York, the japanese gaming company released yesterday night Wii U, the successor of its video game console Wii.

Wii U consists of a console and a portable GamePad with a screen on it. This way users will be able to see the games they are playing either on the small touch screen of their GamePad or on the big screen of their TV sets, which will be connected to the console.

Besides the small touch screen, the GamePad has also a great variety of buttons and controls to play games, including an accelerometer and a gyroscope to detect movements of the whole device. The GamePad contains also features such as stereo speakers, an infrared transceiver, a built-in set of camera and microphone, and the rumble feature, by which some situations in a game can make the GamePad vibrate in the hands of the player.

As we have seen, the most interesting features of the Wii U are in the GamePad, and this is a video made by Nintendo to introduce them:

UPDATE (November 20, 2012):

In the next CNN interview the President of Nintendo of America Inc. answers questions about the new product:

Related link:

Nintendo page for Wii U

Lytro Adds Filters and Perspective Effects to Their Cameras

2012-11-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

Published: November 16, 2012

Lytro, the maker of the camera that allows users to change the focus of a picture after it is taken, announced yesterday two new functions in their system to be available since next December 4th: Perspective Shift and Living Filters.

Living Filters will let users change the way a picture looks with filters, which are predefined processes by which aspects of a photo such as its color or texture are automatically set. With filters users can, for example, convert a photo to black and white, and Lytro will offer nine different filters.

The other new feature is Perspective Shift, that will allow Lytro photographers to make a slight change in the point of view of a picture after it has been taken. With this function, viewers will also be able to change the point of view by dragging the photo in any direction, being it left, right, up, down or all around.

Both functions will be available as an update for Lytro Desktop and will be free to all owners of this kind of cameras.

To end this article, both new features can be tested in the next Lytro picture:

By ROM Cartridge. First image courtesy of Wikipedia. Second image courtesy of Lytro.com

Celebrities Explain How They Use Their Windows Phones in New Microsoft Commercials

2012-11-15T10:59:00.002-08:00

Published: November 15, 2012

Gwen Stefani, Jessica Alba and Steve Ballmer tell us how they use their Windows Phones in these three short commercials that were released lately by Microsoft:

The campaign also includes two pages in which you can see in more detail how Gwen and Jessica use their phones:

Windows President Leaves Microsoft

2012-11-13T07:38:00.001-08:00

Published: November 13, 2012

Microsoft Corp. announced yesterday that Windows and Windows Live President Steven Sinofsky left the company. To replace him, Julie Larson-Green will be promoted to lead all Windows software and hardware engineering and Tami Reller, besides retaining her current roles as financial and marketing chief officer, will assume responsibility for the business area of the operating system.

Although according to an article on CNET the company stated that the decision was mutual, Steven Sinofsky sent an internal e-mail to employees, also available on CNET, in which he stated that his departure was a personal and private choice.

The decision is taking place few days after the release of Windows 8, a fact that Sinofsky addressed in his e-mail with these words: "Some might notice a bit of chatter speculating about this decision or timing. I can assure you that none could be true as this was a personal and private choice that in no way reflects any speculation or theories one might read--about me, opportunity, the company or its leadership."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer also addressed this departure. “I am grateful for the many years of work that Steven has contributed to the company,” Ballmer said. “The products and services we have delivered to the market in the past few months mark the launch of a new era at Microsoft. We’ve built an incredible foundation with new releases of Microsoft Office, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Microsoft Surface, Windows Server 2012 and ‘Halo 4,’ and great integration of services such as Bing, Skype and Xbox across all our products. To continue this success it is imperative that we continue to drive alignment across all Microsoft teams, and have more integrated and rapid development cycles for our offerings.”

According to the company the changes are effective immediately and both executives replacing Sinofsky will report directly to Steve Ballmer.

By ROM Cartridge. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

1995 Video About Internet Becomes Prophetic

2012-11-12T09:19:00.001-08:00

Published: November 12, 2012

The next video, made as a public service announcement in 1995, would win a local ADDY Award in 1996. The creator was Cindy Gaffney and the cast was composed by 5th grade students at Ray Bjork school in Helena Montana. All the Internet possibilities mentioned in the script are a reality today:

Young Bill Gates Explains the Bad Consequences of Software Piracy

2012-11-11T10:24:00.001-08:00

Published: November 11, 2012

Nowadays if you didn't buy a legitimate copy of a software in most cases you wouldn't be able to validate it through the Internet and therefore it wouldn't work. It wasn't that way during the first days of the software industry, when copying disks was easy and there was no such thing as Internet at home. At that time software piracy was seen as a big threat for the future of an industry that was just being created.

It was in that context that a journalist wondered what would happen if nobody bought legitimate software copies, and this is the question that Bill Gates answered in this video from 1977:

How to See a Friendship Page on Facebook

2012-11-11T05:56:00.001-08:00

Want to see a friendship page on Facebook? This guide will show you how to do it.

Once you have logged in to Facebook, go to the Timeline or Profile of the person with whom you have a friendship that you want to see. You can do this by looking for the name of that user in the search box at the top of your page. Keep in mind that you can only see friendships between you and one of your confirmed friends.

Once you are in this person’s Timeline or Profile, click on the gear icon that is located at the right hand extreme below his cover picture and then, in the appearing menu, click on the “See Friendship” option.

This way you will see the page of the friendship between you and that person.

How to Use Facebook >> Friends and Users >> How to See a Friendship Page on Facebook

How to Use Facebook >> Friends and Users >> How to See a Friendship Page on Facebook

Facebook Friendship Pages Get a Timeline Layout

2012-11-10T18:57:00.002-08:00

Published: November 10, 2012

Facebook announced last Thursday that, just as happened with the profiles, all the friendship pages will have a new layout that will organize their content in a timeline. The announcement also introduced the page facebook.com/us, that will show the friendship page between a user and the person with whom he shares a relationship.

According to Facebook's Help Center, "[f]riendship pages show a collection of stories and interactions between two people connected on Facebook. For example, your friendship page with your best friend will show things like the timeline posts you’ve exchanged, your mutual friends, events you both attended, the photos you’re both tagged in, and the things you like on Facebook."

This kind of pages have been available on Facebook since October 2010, and to see them, users have to go to some of their friends' timeline, click on the gear icon, and then select the option "See Friendship."

As the change is being implemented gradually and automatically since last Thursday, some users will have to wait some time in order to have it.

By ROM Cartridge. Image courtesy of Facebook Newsroom.