Although Windows 8 is supposed to be a OS that suits most Intel machines, this is not the case for the Atom based Netbooks or NetPcs. An dual core Atom 1.6GHz powered by Nvidia ION is able to run the developer preview happily. When it comes to the release preview, the installation couldn’t continue due to an underpowered system.

Looks like it still takes some fine tuning by Microsoft to allow low power systems to run this new OS happily.

CyberLink Optimizes Flagship Products for the New Second-Generation AMD A-Series APUs

Offering Free Updates for Users on PowerDirector 10, PowerDVD 12, MediaShow 6 and MediaExpresso 6.5

TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 22, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — CyberLink Corp. (5203.TW) today released new updates for PowerDirector 10, PowerDVD 12, MediaShow 6 and MediaEspresso 6.5. The products optimized for the new Second-Generation AMD A-Series APUs benefit users from hardware-accelerated HD playback, enhanced video editing, maximum rendering and improved transcoding performance.

PowerDirector 10 — The World’s Fastest Video Editor Optimized for the new 2nd Gen AMD A-Series APUs, CyberLink PowerDirector 10 now offers up to 3.6 times faster video production speed(*1) and allows users to produce professional quality home videos and 3D movies(*2), by harnessing the power of the system’s GPU to greatly improve the speed of the editing process. PowerDirector 10 provides a highly parallel scalable pipeline for many HD tasks with AMD’s new Video Codec Engine (VCE) to accelerate the encoding or transcoding of videos.

PowerDVD 12 — No. 1 Blu-ray & Media Player CyberLink PowerDVD 12′s DLNA Media Server (DMS) can stream videos on-the-fly to portable devices with AMD’s VCE transcoding technology. Intelligently converting videos to the right format, PowerDVD 12 allows users to browse, stream and enjoy high quality videos, in real time, on portable devices connected within the home network.

MediaShow 6 — Fast & Easy Photo/Video Organizer CyberLink MediaShow 6 offers a rich set of features to help users rapidly import, organize and share SD, HD and 3D media content. With the optimization for the 2nd Gen AMD A-Series APUs, users can now create stylish slideshow videos with incredible speed.

MediaEspresso 6.5 — Ultra Fast Universal Media Converter CyberLink MediaEspresso 6.5 accelerates the conversion of standard and HD videos into multiple formats for use on various consumer electronics devices. In conjunction with AMD’s VCE, MediaEspresso 6.5 provides quick output of video content for playback on new iPad, iPhone 4S, iPod and PSP devices in blazing speed.

“CyberLink is committed to provide premium user experiences,” said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink Corp. “By optimizing CyberLink’s complete product lineup for AMD’s 2nd Gen APUs, our users can enjoy enhanced and accelerated performance in media creation.”

“We are excited to work closely with CyberLink, an industry leader for multimedia software,” said John Taylor, Director of Client Product and Software Marketing at AMD /quotes/zigman/216580/quotes/nls/amd AMD -1.59% . “With the launch of the 2nd Gen AMD A-Series APUs, we look forward to providing a whole new digital dimension to our customers.”

Free updates will be available from June. Please check CyberLink Website or Product Updates for more details.

*1: Testing was performed on AMD A10-4600M. With AMD UVD, VCE and OpenCL enabled, the production time of a single video applied with “beating” effect is 3.6 times faster than it is done in software mode. *2: Side-by-side 3D format up to 1920X1080 Resolution +AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

All companies and product names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the sole property of their respective owners. Copyright (C) 2012 CyberLink Corp. All rights reserved.

SOURCE: CyberLink Corp.

Windows 8 is the official product name for the next x86/64 editions of Windows.

For PCs and tablets powered by x86 processors (both 32 and 64 bit), we will have two editions: Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro. For many consumers, Windows 8 will be the right choice. It will include all the features above plus an updated Windows Explorer, Task Manager, better multi-monitor support and the ability to switch languages on the fly,which was previously only available in Enterprise/Ultimate editions of Windows. For China and a small set of select emerging markets, we will offer a local language-only edition of Windows 8.

Windows 8 Pro is designed to help tech enthusiasts and business/technical professionals obtain a broader set of Windows 8 technologies. It includes all the features in Windows 8 plus features for encryption, virtualization, PC management and domain connectivity. Windows Media Center will be available as an economical “media pack” add-on to Windows 8 Pro. If you are an enthusiast or you want to use your PC in a business environment, you will want Windows 8 Pro.

Windows RT is the newest member of the Windows family – also known as Windows on ARM or WOA, as we’ve referred to it previously. This single edition will only be available pre-installed on PCs and tablets powered by ARM processors and will help enable new thin and lightweight form factors with impressive battery life. Windows RT will include touch-optimized desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. For new apps, the focus for Windows RT is development on the new Windows runtime, or WinRT, which we unveiled in September and forms the foundation of a new generation of cloud-enabled, touch-enabled, web-connected apps of all kinds. For more details on WOA, we suggest reading this blog post which shares more detail on how we have been building Windows 8 to run on the ARM architecture.

Source

If you are excited by the new Windows 8, the more you should download the Consumer Preview from Microsoft to have a test run. Experience the Windows Phone 7.5 “Metro” ease of use interface.

You can Swipe, slide, and zoom – Touch a full-powered PC. It’s fast and it’s fluid. Take natural, direct, hands-on control.
Apps, front and center – Apps in Windows 8 work together to get things done faster. Get them from the Windows Store.
Your Windows, everywhere – Windows 8 can connect you to your files, photos, people, and settings, wherever you sign in.

Download from the link below and post your comments about this preview below this post.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-SG/windows-8/download

Microsoft has been revamping it’s Operating System to make it look alike the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. Months ago, we have also tried out the Developer Preview of the new OS and was pleasantly surprised by the speed and ease of use.

Today, Microsoft will announce it’s Windows 8 beta, a more touch up compared to it’s previous Developer release at the Mobile World  Congress at Barcelona.

The system also is expected to enable users to easily back up their pictures, movies, music and other files on a Microsoft storage service called SkyDrive, which will compete against Apple’s iCloud.

In anticipation for the launch of Windows 8,  MSFT closing at $US31.35 on Monday in the US. The stock has gained about 21 per cent so far this year. By comparison, Apple’s stock has surged 30 per cent during the same period, while Google’s shares have dropped 6 per cent.

Here is our first look of the Developer Preview some 5 months ago. We expect the beta to bug fix the earlier version and should be ready for launch later this year.

Promise SmartStor NS2600, NS4600, NS4700, NS6700 and Pegasus DAS with Thunderbolt connectivity
bluetooth 7 Nov 2011

NAS might not be the solution for an individual but it is not the case for a SOHO or enterprise. This is exceptionally important when you are dealing with large amounts of data and you need a simple elegant way of managing it and keep backups of the important data on the HDD.

The Promise SmartStor series can help you to achieve that. With it’s web based visualized management console, you can have access to the device and volume information. You can also check the temperature too.

Unlike other brands, Promise provides a comprehensive backup solution and they include windows bcakup centre, RSYNC over the internet, volume snapshot and backup to the cloud using amazon web services.

The SmartStor comes with Acronis Backup & Recovery version 10 which can be used to do schedule backups. Moreover the license is unlimited and supports Windows Server and Workstation. QNAP, Synology do not provide such a bundle solution. Thecus only provides a solution with limited license for Windows Workstation only.

The 2nd most important feature is backup to cloud. You can now share your documents from the cloud in amazon web services or Dropbox. Using dropbox, you can also view your documents on Apple iPhone, iPad, Android devices.

You can also backup a copy to another server through the internet.

In terms of speed, the benchmark iSCSI write shows that throughput is around 110MB/s average of all the various RAID modes.

It is also easy to configure the NAS. Just insert the HDD, power on, Once the LED initialisation turned on , it is ready for operation.

Another feature is Promise OPAS. When there is no internet access, you can plug in a USB stick to it. The software “USB Retrieval” will export the system log in HTML to the pen drive automatically.

NS2600, NS4600 are suitable for Home/SOHO while the NS4700 and NS6700 are for SMB.

The NAS is also DNLA certified. You can now stream your audio and videos to your DLNA certified TVs. There is also an app for iPhone and Android, allownig you to control the steraming media on the NAS.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) opened at $27.25. So far today, the stock has hit a low of $26.81 and a high of $27.34. MSFT is now trading at $26.83, down $.30 (-1.11%). Over the last 52 weeks the stock has ranged from a low of $23.65 to a high of $29.46. The stock is lower today ahead of the company’s earnings report after market close this afternoon. Analysts expect EPS of 0.68 on revenue of 17.25 billion. Microsoft is also in the news today for reportedly working with private equity firm Silver Lake Partners on a deal to acquire Yahoo (YHOO). Technical indicators for the stock are bullish and S&P gives MSFT a positive 4 STARS (out of 5) buy ranking. If you are looking for a hedged play on MSFT the stock seems like it could be a candidate for a January out-of-the-money bear-call credit spread above the 30 range.

Source

Windows 8 Developer Preview
Bluetooth 14 Sept 2011

This morning, Microsoft just released the Developer preview of Windows 8 (x86/x64). We have heard a lot about this upcoming OS. Being a tablet oriented OS, it has similarities with the Windows Phone 7 interface.

We took a while to download the 32 bits version of the developer preview from MSDN site. The file is an ISO file which you would need to burn it into a DVD ROM. It took us a while to get it installed into a Dual Core Atom Net Top.

As we did not boot up from DVD ROM but installed it as an upgrade from Windows 7, the screens were not the usual screen shots we see when installing Windows 7. In a seperate install on another EeePC 900, the procedure and screen shots looks identical to a Windows 7 installation.

Installation

The system detected that the nettop has a WiFi built in and asked user to setup which AP to connect to.

In settings, we chose express settings to speed up installation. It will take the default settings in configuring the system.

For Logon, we have to supply a Windows Live email address.

Futuremark just released an update to 3DMark11.

There are no major new features in the update and scores are not affected. However, the update improves compatibility with the latest hardware and we recommend that everyone updates to the latest version.

3DMark 11 will prompt you to apply the update when it is next run, or you can download the update from our website:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dmark11/download/update/

3DMark 11 release  notes (1.0.2)

ALL EDITIONS
- Bullet physics library updated to 2.78 to improve compatibility with future CPUs and GPUs
- Display scaling mode setting is now available in the Basic Edition
- SystemInfo component updated to version 4.0 for improved compatibility with current and future hardware
- Improved user messages when the benchmark run is interrupted

ADVANCED AND PROFESSIONAL EDITIONS
- Fixed wireframe mode for the Combined test with NVIDIA hardware
- Load/Save result dialog remembers the last used folder

PROFESSIONAL EDITION
- Correct watermark is always displayed when benchmark is launched from command line
- Command line loop switch with single test now loops without reloading

Mac OS X Lion With 250 New Features Available in July From Mac App Store

SINGAPORE, Singapore— June 7, 2011—Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X Lion, the eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system with more than 250 new features and 3,000 new developer APIs, will be available to customers in July as a download from the Mac® App Store™ for US$29.99. Some of the amazing features in Lion include: new Multi-Touch® gestures; system-wide support for full screen apps; Mission Control, an innovative view of everything running on your Mac; the Mac App Store, the best place to find and explore great software, built right into the OS; Launchpad, a new home for all your apps; and a completely redesigned Mail app.

“The Mac has outpaced the PC industry every quarter for five years running and with OS X Lion we plan to keep extending our lead,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The best version of OS X yet, Lion is packed with innovative features such as new Multi-Touch gestures, system-wide support for full screen apps, and Mission Control for instantly accessing everything running on your Mac.”

New Multi-Touch gestures and fluid animations built into Lion let you interact directly with content on the screen for a more intuitive way to use your Mac. New gestures include momentum scrolling, tapping or pinching your fingers to zoom in on a web page or image, and swiping left or right to turn a page or switch between full screen apps. All Mac notebooks ship with Multi-Touch trackpads and desktop Macs can use Apple’s Magic Trackpad.

Full screen apps take advantage of the entire display and are perfect for reading email, surfing the web or browsing photos, especially on a MacBook Air® or MacBook® Pro. With a single click your app fills the display and you can swipe from one window to another, between full screen apps, or back to your Desktop, Dashboard or Spaces® without ever leaving full screen. iWork® and iLife® apps, as well as Safari®, iTunes®, Mail, FaceTime® and others, all take advantage of Lion’s system-wide support for full screen apps.

Mission Control combines Exposé®, full screen apps, Dashboard and Spaces into one unified experience for a bird’s eye view of every app and window running on your Mac. With a simple swipe, your desktop zooms out to display your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full screen apps and your Dashboard, and allows you to instantly navigate anywhere with a tap.

The Mac App Store is built into Lion and is the best place to discover great new Mac apps, buy them with your iTunes account, download and install them. Apps automatically install directly to Launchpad, and with Lion’s release, the Mac App Store will be able to deliver smaller “delta” app updates and new apps that can take advantage of features like In-App Purchase and Push Notifications.

Launchpad makes it easier than ever to find and launch any app. With a single Multi-Touch gesture, all your Mac apps are displayed in a stunning full screen layout. You can organise apps in any order or into folders and swipe through unlimited pages of apps to find the one you want.

Lion includes a completely redesigned Mail app with an elegant widescreen layout. The new Conversations feature groups related messages into an easily scrollable timeline, intelligently hiding repeated text so the conversation is easy to follow, and retaining graphics and attachments as they were originally sent. An incredibly powerful new search feature allows you to refine your search and suggests matches by person, subject and label as you type. Mail includes built-in support for Microsoft Exchange 2010.

Additional new features in Lion include:

• Resume, which conveniently brings your apps back exactly how you left them when you restart your Mac or quit and relaunch an app;
• Auto Save, which automatically and continuously saves your documents as you work;
• Versions, which automatically records the history of your document as you create it, and gives you an easy way to browse, revert and even copy and paste from previous versions; and
• AirDrop, which finds nearby Macs and automatically sets up a peer-to-peer wireless connection to make transferring files quick and easy.

Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X Lion will be available in July as an upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard® from the Mac App Store for US$29.99. Lion will be the easiest OS X upgrade and at about 4GB, it is the size of an HD movie from the iTunes Store®. Mac OS X Lion Server requires Lion and will be available in July from the Mac App Store for US$49.99.

Lion requires an Intel-based Mac with a Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7 or Xeon processor and 2GB of RAM. The Lion upgrade can be installed on all your authorised personal Macs.

The Mac OS X Lion Up-To-Date upgrade is available at no additional charge via the Mac App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an Apple Authorised Reseller on or after June 6, 2011. Users must request their Up-To-Date upgrade within 30 days of purchase of their Mac computer. Customers who purchase a qualifying Mac between June 6, 2011 and the date when Lion is available in the Mac App Store will have 30 days from Lion’s official release date to make a request.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

A little while ago, Microsoft has revealed their newest operating system codenamed “Windows 8.” Unlike it’s predecessor Windows 7, Win 8 is built with a touchscreen in mind. As you can see in the image below, the new windows 8 interface is much like the windows 7 mobile interface, the Metro UI.

Even though there are big changes, Windows 8 will still cater those desktop type applications. You can still, of course, use your mouse and keyboard but it will be a slightly different experience. Other than that, mobile applications that are built on HTML5 and Javascript environment will also be able to run on this new windows.

Microsoft also told Engadget that the new OS will run on laptops, tablets, and desktops. This is good news because there won’t be a huge hardware requirement to run the OS. But it is too early to tell right now.

There is no pricing yet and the date of the OS launch is not yet mentioned as well but there are demo units on their stage in Computex right now. More information is said to be revealed at the Windows developer conference this September.

Source

We are releasing another update for SP1, version SP1x (17.47).

– SP1x updates –

- Fix: Incorrect CPU frequency for Power Management Efficiency (ALU/FPU) benchmark causing Ranker to fail.

- Change: System model name instead of Hostname sent to the Ranker.

- Update: GPGPU/GPCPU Crypt benchmark performance improvements.

- Change: Simplified installer, use Options in Sandra to enable/configure features.

– SP1 updates –

- Fix: Incorrect CPU frequency displayed on Sandy Bridge in Turbo Mode; benchmark scores are not affected. The displayed speed was updated twice.

- Fix: Incorrect CPU frequency displayed on Phenom II/Fusion in Turbo Mode*; IMC and Memory speed were also affected: benchmark scores are not affected. The displayed speed was not updated at all.*

- Improvement: Multi-threaded Memory Bandwidth on Fusion*; score has doubled (~3.3GB/s) though short of what AMD “suggests”. No better solution has been found yet.

- Update: Large memory pages support re-added to the Memory Bandwidth, Cache & Memory Bandwidth and Multi-Core Efficiency benchmarks: please use Options to disable “Use Large Memory Pages” to use native memory pages.

- Update: GUI reference list colour-matched to the graphs which finally allows you to identify which result corresponds to which value in the graph.

- External Fix: GPGPU Crypto benchmarks work with the latest 266.xx nVidia drivers even in older Sandra versions.

- Fix: Minor various fixes for Windows 7/2008 R2 SP1 RTM. Again SP1 is *required* for AVX support, and no still no idea whether Vista or XP will also be updated.

Although IE 9 is released with much fan fare, a lot of users are feeding back on social media that it has a lot of websites doesn’t work as before.
Even for our CMS, some of the functions do not work as before, e.g. visual editor doesn’t allow us to cut and paste HTML.

Microsoft has posted solutions to it. Do try it out and see if it works.

Enable Compatibility View in Internet Explorer

Method 1: Enable Compatibility View for specific Web sites by using Internet Explorer

To enable Compatibility View for specific Web sites that are not displayed correctly or that are not working correctly, follow these steps:

1. Open the Web site that is not displayed correctly or that does not work correctly in Internet Explorer 8 or in Internet Explorer 9.
2. Click the Compatibility View button that is located directly to the right side of the address bar next to the Refresh button.
   Collapse this imageExpand this image

   

   Or, on the Tools menu, click to select the option Compatibility View.

   Collapse this imageExpand this image

   

   Note You may experience one of the following issues:

   • In Internet Explorer 8, if the Compatibility View button does not appear on the right side of the address bar, or if the command is not available under the Tools menu, you cannot use this method. You may be experiencing a different problem, or the network administrator may have used a Group Policy setting to configure the Compatibility View settings on your computer.
     • If you are using a home computer, see the “Similar problems and solutions and support information” section for alternative steps.
     • If you are using a computer in an enterprise environment, contact your administrator or the help desk.
   • In Internet Explorer 9, both the Compatibility View icon and the Tools menu are not displayed next to the Address bar. To enable Compatibility View in Internet Explorer 9, press Alt, and then click to select the Compatibility View under the Tools menu.

If this method worked, you may have to repeat this method for each Web site that experiences these problems.

Note When you use this method to fix a Web site, Internet Explorer saves your Compatibility View setting for that Web site. Every time that you visit that site, Compatibility View will be used. To stop a Web site from running in Compatibility View, follow these steps:

1. Click Tools, and then click to select option Compatibility View.
   Collapse this imageExpand this image

   

2. You can also add or remove specific Web sites from Compatibility View without actually visiting each Web site.

If this method did not work, you are experiencing a different problem. See the “Similar problems and solutions and support information” section for alternative steps.

Method 2: Enable Compatibility View for all Web sites by using Internet Explorer

You have tried Method 1 on some of these Web sites, and that method worked. However, you may want to enable Compatibility View for all Web sites. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start Internet Explorer 8 or Internet Explorer 9.
2. On the Tools menu, click Compatibility View Settings.
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   If Compatibility View Settings is not available, the network administrator may have used a Group Policy setting to configure the options for you. Contact your administrator or the help desk.

3. Click to select the Display all websites in Compatibility View check box, and then click Close.
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Visit several Web sites that were not displayed correctly or that were not working to see whether the problem is now resolved.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956197#2

Microsoft has released the latest version of its Internet Explorer Web browsing software free online, hoping to fend off recent challenges by Firefox and Google Chrome.

“IE9 has just released around the world,” a booming voice told a cheering crowd at 11:00 pm Monday (0400 GMT Tuesday) in the Austin City Limits Live concert hall where a launch party was being held.

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) was available for download in 30 languages at beautyoftheweb.com.

“Things are about to change,” Microsoft corporate vice president Dean Hachamovitch said just hours earlier at a press conference at the South By Southwest Interactive technology festival here.

“We took a dramatically different tack,” he continued. “It’s a really good day for the Web.”

IE9 is built to make the most of Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 7, as well as graphics processing chips that can power videos, games and graphics.

The long list of partners that have adapted websites to IE9 includes Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, Hulu, and Yahoo!, according to Microsoft.

“We have worked with partners reaching a billion active Internet users,” Hachamovitch said. “All of these partners are using IE9 to make a more beautiful Web, starting today.”

More than 40 million copies of IE9 have already been downloaded as part of the process leading up to its official release, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft showed off a lean, muscular new Internet Explorer crafted to spotlight slick websites and beat back competition from Firefox and Google.

Microsoft director of web services strategy Ari Bixhorn booted up an Apple MacBook Pro laptop running the latest version of Firefox for a side-by-side comparison.

A laptop powered by Windows and using IE9 smoothly zipped through cascading images illustrating top tunes at a radio station website while the competition appeared to be much slower.

Once a website is reached, the IE9 browser seems to almost vanish to spotlight the content.

“The browser is the stage and the websites are the stars of the show,” Hachamovitch told AFP during an earlier demonstration.

The browser is included in Windows software, and the operating system remains at a core of Microsoft’s software empire. The Redmond, Washington-based technology colossus claims more than one billion Windows customers.

IE9 promised to be another hit release for Microsoft, which has had market success with the Windows 7 operating system and the Kinect motion-sensing controller accessory for Xbox 360 video game consoles.

Source

MSI Releases Afterburner V2.1.0 Graphic Card Overclocking SoftwareNew Predator Feature Enables In-Game Video Capture at Any Time

[Taipei – Taiwan] MSI, the leading motherboard and graphics card manufacturer in the world, announced today that its Afterburner V2.1.0 overclocking utility is now available for all gamers to download worldwide. The new version of Afterburner not only supports the latest NVIDIA GeForce 500 and AMD Radeon HD 6000 series of graphics cards* but also adds the Predator in-game video capture function. Gamers can now capture all of their most classic moments in their favorite games and share them online using sites like YouTube. Third-party software is now also supported so that gamers can develop their own interface for adjusting their graphic card settings through Afterburner! In addition, Version 2.0.0 of the popular graphics card testing utility Kombustor is also being released alongside this major update. Gamers can use the new KMark mode to measure a graphic card’s true performance using several different display effects. Results can even be uploaded and compared with the graphic cards of other users around the world! Download the latest versions of the MSI Afterburner V2.1.0 and Kombustor V2.0.0 to experience for yourself the fun and power of these two overclocking and testing utilities!  
MSI Afterburner V2.1.0
 
Kombustor V2.0.0
*NVIDIA GeForce 500 series includes GTX 580/570/560 Ti; the AMD Radeon HD 6000 series includes HD 6970/6950/6870/6850.

Apple’s Mac App Store Opens for Business

CUPERTINO, California—January 6, 2011—Apple® today announced that the Mac® App Store℠ is now open for business with more than 1,000 free and paid apps. The Mac App Store brings the revolutionary App Store experience to the Mac, so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes® account, download and install them in just one step. The Mac App Store is available for Snow Leopard® users through Software Update as part of Mac OS® X v10.6.6.

“With more than 1,000 apps, the Mac App Store is off to a great start,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think users are going to love this innovative new way to discover and buy their favorite apps.”

The Mac App Store offers apps in Education, Games, Graphics & Design, Lifestyle, Productivity, Utilities and other categories. Users can browse new and noteworthy apps, find out what’s hot, see staff favorites, search categories and look up top charts for paid and free apps, as well as user ratings and reviews.

Entirely new apps, as well as current Mac favorites, are available from developers such as Autodesk, Ancestry.com and Boinx. iPhoto®, iMovie® and GarageBand® apps from Apple’s popular iLife® ‘11 suite are available individually in the Mac App Store for $14.99 each, and Pages®, Keynote® and Numbers® apps from iWork® are available for $19.99 each. Aperture® 3, Apple’s powerful photo editing and management software, is available for $79.99.

“We’re delighted to bring our professional-grade paint and drawing app, Autodesk SketchBook Pro, to the Mac App Store on its first day of launch,” said Carl Bass, Autodesk’s CEO. “We’ve seen tremendous success on the Mac, iPhone and iPad with multiple apps. We’re excited to offer SketchBook Pro on the Mac App Store so artists can easily create everything from quick sketches to high-quality artwork right on their Macs.”

“By offering the Ancestry.com Family Tree Maker app on the Mac App Store, we’re making it even easier for people to discover and access their family history,” said Tim Sullivan, Ancestry.com’s CEO. “The Mac App Store will drive a new generation of innovation on the Mac platform.”

“We’re thrilled to have our award-winning animation, video production and photography software available on the new Mac App Store,” said Oliver Breidenbach, Boinx Software’s CEO. “The Mac App Store makes it easier than ever for consumers to access all the innovative software designed for the Mac.”

To get the Mac App Store, download the Mac OS X v10.6.6 Software Update or visit apple.com/mac/app-store. To find out more about developing for the Mac App Store visit developer.apple.com/programs/mac.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple is reinventing the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

At the CES Live Keynote, Microsoft demonstrates future version of the WIndows Operating System running on SoC designs based on ARM architecture. Three machines were shown to run Microsoft Word and it can even print.

This is one step forward for Microsoft to make it’s platform not only on the X86 but also on the lower powered ARM architecture. The 3 SoC demonstrated are from Texas Instrument OMAP, QUalcomm Snapdragon and Nvidia Tegra2.

Microsoft Corp. released a new version of its Internet Explorer Web browser today, aiming to stem market-share losses to Firefox, Google Inc.’s Chrome and Apple Inc.’s Safari.

Hardware-accelerated text, video, and graphics

The new graphic capabilities and improved performance in Internet Explorer 9 set the stage for immersive and rich experiences. Hardware-accelerated text, video, and graphics mean your websites perform like the programs that are installed on your computer. High-definition videos are smooth, graphics are clear and responsive, colors are true, and websites are interactive like never before. With sub-system enhancements like Chakra, the new JavaScript engine, websites and applications load faster and are more responsive. Combine Internet Explorer 9 with the powerful graphics capabilities that Windows 7 has to offer, and you’ll get the best web experience on Windows yet. See it in action at beautyoftheweb.com.

The shorter, streamlined installation of Internet Explorer 9 is faster than previous versions. It requires fewer decisions on your part, takes less time to load pages, and doesn’t require that you install updates separately. Once it’s installed, you’re ready to start browsing.

Other features include new tab page, notification bar, pinned sites, tab enhancements, web focused browsing and Windows 8 integration.

Firebox 4.0 beta 4 is now available for download

Firefox 4 Beta 4 is available in 39 languages.
Firefox Sync is now included by default.
A new feature gives users a visual overview of all open tabs, allowing them to be sorted and grouped.
An experimental API is included to provide more efficient Javascript animations.
Firefox now supports the HTML5 video “buffered” property.
See the complete changelist from the previous beta.

As well as these features from previous Firefox 4 Betas:

Tabs are now on top by default on Windows and OSX – Linux will be changing when the theme has been modified to support the change.
You can turn any tab into an “App Tab” by right-clicking on it and selecting “Make into App Tab” from the context menu.
Web developers can animate content using CSS Transitions.
Responsiveness and scrolling improvements from the new retained layers layout system.
JavaScript speed improvements due to engine optimizations.
Changes to how XPCOM components are registered in order to help startup time and process separation.
You can search for and switch to already open tabs in the Smart Location Bar.
New Addons Manager and extension management API (UI will be changed before final release).
Significant API improvements are available for JS-ctypes, a foreign function interface for extensions.
The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac and Linux.
The Bookmarks Toolbar has been replaced with a Bookmarks Button by default (you can switch it back if you’d like).
Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.
CSS Transitions are partially supported.
Full WebGL support is included but disabled by default at this time.
Core Animation rendering model for plugins on Mac OS X. Plugins which also support this rendering model can now draw faster and more efficiently.
Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format.
An experimental Direct2D rendering backend is available on Windows, turned off by default.
Web developers can use Websockets for a low complexity, low latency, bidirectional communications API.
Web developers can update the URL field without reloading the page using HTML History APIs.
More responsive page rendering using lazy frame construction.
Link history lookup is done asynchronously to provide better responsiveness during pageload.
CSS :visited selectors have been changed to block websites from being able to check a user’s browsing history.
New HTML5 parser.
Support for more HTML5 form controls.
Web authors can now get touch events from Firefox users on Windows 7 machines.
A new way of representing values in JavaScript that allows Firefox to execute heavy, numeric code (used for things like graphics and animations) more efficiently.

Developers can find out about all the changes and new features at the Mozilla Developer Center.

If you’ve enjoyed mucking around with the beta builds of Firefox 4, you might want to pay close attention to the next release. Slated to drop on Monday, Firefox 4 beta 4 will enable hardware-accelerated graphics for some Windows users. As CNET explains, “Hardware acceleration is designed to shift some tasks from a computer’s main processor to its graphics processor. One way Firefox is tackling the technology is by using Windows’ Direct2D interface, which can speed up the display of text and graphics on newer versions of Windows.” The feature will be off by default, but you can enable it by:

1.Entering about:config in the Firefox Awesome Bar
2.Accept warning asking you to “be careful.”
3.Search for mozilla.widget.render-mode and set its value to 6
4.Search for gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled and set its value to true.
The ability to group tabs into “tab sets” is also scheduled to be available in beta 4. Anyone out there using Firefox 4 beta as their primary browser?