We should all be used to the fact that whenever a large scale sporting event happens somewhere in the world, a string of companies strike deals with the organizers to to be able to call themselves 'official sponsors' of the event, or name one of their products as the official drink or chewing gum.
The research and development teams over at Microsoft Labs can pride themselves on being the people who managed to come up with the fantastic Kinect motion-sensing hardware, a handy piece of kit that uses a built-in camera to detect and interpret motion. Since release, the Kinect has been super successful, both with owners of the Xbox gaming console and those technology enthusiasts who have sought to produce open-source software for the hardware.
Popular photo altering/sharing social app Instagram has enjoyed a pretty decent last few months by all accounts, and soon after releasing its long-awaited Android app, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook came along and purchased it for an unbelievable $1 billion.
Flipboard is a prime example of how an app should look, perform and function. It's clean, it's crisp, and everything just works, and it is truly unmatched on both the iPhone, and primarily, the iPad.
Within our phone books and contact lists, there'll always be those few people we only make short, uninteresting, mundane small-talk with, and most of us absolutely detest those conversations which scarcely deviate from "how are you?" "what are you doing?" or, "oh really, how is that going?"
The native Music app on the iPhone does the job, and does it well, but let's face it, it doesn't set the world alight, and for those who like their music to dominate the interface rather than the other way around, LeechTunes for iOS might be the answer to your prayers.
So, what has been foreshadowed and rumored over the past couple of months was recently officially announced by Microsoft in yet another fairly lengthy post on the Building Windows 8 blog: The company will be ditching the Windows Live brand. The products will continue to exist, of course, but they will no longer be under the umbrella of the Windows Live branding; instead, everything will be unified through what is called a Microsoft Account, formerly known as a Windows Live ID. We'll have SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Messenger as services, which will be accessible on Windows 8 via the SkyDrive, Mail, and Messaging apps, respectively (this begs the question; is the future bleak for the actual Windows Live Messenger client?)
Thanks primarily to the popularity of Instagram and similar services, it's now a case of, "another day, another image-manipulation app," and 8mm Vintage Camera by Nexvio Inc., enables you to create some fantastic, retro-looking videos.
The constant squabbles and patent-based conflict between Apple and Samsung is a well-documented debacle, and while both companies have agreed to drop several claims each, Apple does feel as though Samsung's recent rise as the number one smartphone vendor is mainly due to plagiarism of its products.
Apple works pretty darned hard to ensure iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users cannot downgrade their devices. Gone are the days when a downgrade could be achieved by simply downloading the older firmware and overwriting, but thanks to the Dev Team and its Redsn0w tool, one can quickly restore to an older version of iOS 5 with minimal fuss.
