When it comes to professional image editing, few companies offer a more varied, powerful and revered tool set than Adobe. Accompanying the world famous Photoshop is Lightroom, which offers its users a novel way to organize and manage digital images, and today, Adobe has released a free public beta of Photoshop Lightroom 5.0.
The Facebook social network ensures that, whether you haven't seen a person within the last ten years or ten minutes, everybody can remain connected. Billions of messages are shared through Facebook on any given day, but while we are often only directing our correspondence with one or a small group of people, it's often the case that everybody can read it. In these instances, a private inbox message may be necessary, but if you want to have some fun with it, you could try a new Chrome extension allowing you to secretly hide messages within images. While perhaps not an immediately reassuring mode of obscuring a message from prying eyes of others, the extension, developed by a computer science student at Oxford University, does have an element of mischievousness to it, and will have your Facebook friends scratching their heads as to why you're consistently posting plain images of your food. (Oh, wait..)
Firefox has been one browser that has improved a lot over time, and while Internet Explorer continues to receive the negative feedback from users across the globe, Mozilla’s offering has actually grown into a worthy contender against almost any internet browser, most notably Google Chrome. Mozilla’s focus towards bringing the best of the best to its users continues, and with the release of Firefox 20, they’ve brought some much needed (and appreciated) enhancements to their already popular browser. The new Firefox 20 has not only been released for desktop systems – including Windows, OS X and Linux – but also for Android, albeit with a slightly different change log. Let’s take a look at what’s new and improved just past the fold.
With Google having confirmed its intention to cease operation of Google Reader (in spite of hundreds of thousands of petition signatories pleading them to reconsider), Reeder has found itself looking a little bit lost. The app's creator Silvio Rizzi has spent the past couple of weeks trying to assure users of the popular app that it wouldn't "die with Google Reader," but with Rizzi himself lining up one or two projects in the same field, many still suspect the service is about to be culled, the outlook is bleak. On a brighter note, as of today, Reeder for Mac and iPad is free of charge, and we've got the details and download links coming right up after the break.
The long-awaited release of iTunes 11 ran fairly smoothly for Apple towards the close of last year, and although the completely overhauled UI does take a bit of getting used to, it would seem as though the vast majority of users have now managed to adapt. Following on from the hurried release of iTunes 11.0.1 to alleviate a bunch of teething issues back in December, Apple has just released iTunes 11.0.2 which, among a bunch of bug fixes, also adds a new Composer view, and improves playlist responses.
Apple produces some of the best keyboards on the market. It's something I have discussed at length with others whom spend much of their lives typing, and in terms of key spacing and layout, pressure of keys, adjustable backlight, and general efficiency, even hardcore PC evangelists have conceded that the keyboard is something the Cupertino company has worked down to a fine art. It would stand to reason, then, that we'd want to utilize this keyboard wherever possible, and software developer Eyal Weiner has clearly taken this on board with the development of 1Keyboard, which allows you to use your Mac's keyboard (and mouse / trackpad) with any Bluetooth device.
If you have been a loyal user of Skype, you have likely run into the hurdle of reaching a user when they are offline. While sending SMS messages often does the trick, sometimes a video message is just more convenient. The good news is that Skype has begun rolling out this feature in the form of an update for its Mac, iPhone and Android client, with support for other platforms such as Windows coming very soon.
While gaming on Apple's OS X platform may not nearly be as prevalent as it is on Windows, there are still plenty of Mac users out their looking to get their fill of some of the world's most popular titles. Half-Life certainly fits into that category, and thanks to Steam, those on a MacBook, iMac or Mac Pro can enjoy the original first-person shooter on their machines.
If you own a Mac and an Apple TV, you likely spend a great deal of time streaming content from your computer to your TV, through Apple’s set-top box. Apple has made this quite easy, starting with Mac OS X 10.8, with AirPlay Mirroring. Yet this can be glitch when streaming long-form content, such as movies, and is not the most practical solution; in addition, you might still be rocking Mac OS X 10.7 or lower.
Mozilla has delivered the latest of its ongoing, sixth-weekly updates to Firefox, pushing the browser up to version 18.0. As you may expect, the company has packed in a whole bunch of new features, and while most concern the overall running and general performance of the app (read: under the hood housekeeping), there are one or two which many will notice from the get-go. Details, and info on where you can grab the new Firefox, are available after the break!
