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Software RSS FeedsComcast ditches data caps, but charges heavy users overage fees - Comcast said Thursday it plans to make changes to its pricing structure to start billing for the amount of data customers use, versus the capped method in place today. The cable company will test two different pricing structures in some markets, while hard enforcement of the 250GB cap put into place in 2008 would end. Both piloted pricing structures give users 300GB of data at a flat rate. Where they differ is in how this allotment is treated: one solution places this cap across all of Comcast's tiers, while the other carries the 300GB allotment for the Internet Essentials, Economy,… [Continue Reading]...Feed Source: feeds.betanews.com Windows Phone reaches for the bottom - Sometimes, BetaNews readers really amaze me. Three days ago I posted "The measure of Windows Phone failure is " based on comScore US smartphone OS market share data. To me, it was a trivial story, because I was days late writing about the numbers and posted it more as filler, being short writers (because of holidays and emergencies). More than 220 comments later, Windows Phone is hot-topic of debate among you. Yesterday, Gartner released first-quarter global phone sales data that puts to end any real debate about Windows Phone's present: Combined smartphone OS share with Windows Mobile was 1.9 percent, down… [Continue Reading]... Trackerbird launches, lets you collect user analytics in your .NET apps - Cloud-based desktop software analytics platform Trackerbird completed its beta phase and launched to general availability on Thursday. The platform lets .NET software developers and vendors embed tracking mechanisms in their software to watch installations, trends in feature usage, user behaviour, demographics, and license conversions. It's similar in concept to Concerity Analytics, which we launched here on BetaNews two years ago. By integrating Trackerbird's SDK into a desktop application, developers can collect anonymized reports and detailed conversion funnel analysis in real time. All software usage metrics collected by Trackerbird are totally anonymous and no IP addresses are stored. Developers can make… [Continue Reading]... 4G LTE: 1 billion served by 2017 - Unsurprisingly, 4G LTE is the fastest growing cellular network technology, in part for what it delivers and deployment's timing. Strategy Analytics forecasts that 4G LTE will reach 1 billion connections, or 15 percent of all, by 2017. That compares to 12 years for GSM and about 11 years for WCDMA to reach as many. But LTE isn't gain without pain. In the United States, Verizon by far and large has the most expansive 4G network, reaching 250 metro areas and 200 million Americans compared to 38 metros and 75 million people for AT&T. Adoption still is fairly low, perhaps because… [Continue Reading]... Earthlink debuts hosted desktop services, adds cloud expert to executive team - Earthlink this week strengthened its cloud services offerings, debuting a hosted desktop solution that allows customers access regardless of device and via both the Internet and secure MPLS connections. Over 250 applications are supported, and customers may also install their own custom applications. Since the middle of last year, EarthLink has been transforming its business from an ISP to cloud services provider. In July, the company promoted Brian Fink to executive vice president of managed and cloud services. Fink brought with him two decades of experience in managed services. Since then, the company has continued to make some high profile… [Continue Reading]... FeedDemon 4.1 drops Google Reader sharing features - It?s a strange day when some of the biggest news about the latest release of an application is a feature's removal, but this is the case with the latest version of FeedDemon. Some months ago, Google announced plans to make changes to its Reader service and this has ultimately led to FeedDemon removing the sharing features that relied on this particular service, but Google+ mostly been picks up the slack. The most recent version of FeedDemon also has a number of other changes and additions that are worth mentioning. The program has long featured a recommendation engine that can point you… [Continue Reading]... Blackbaud CRM for nonprofits gets major feature upgrade, Web interface - Catering to the special marketing needs of nonprofit organizations, Blackbaud Inc. on Thursday released a new version of its Blackbaud CRM software which expands the software's functionality with a new browser-based dashboard, new fundraising and membership management functionality, and improved overall data management. The major addition to Blackbaud CRM 2.93 is its Web dashboard. Previously, the software was only available as a Windows application, but now it can be accessed through Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Safari for iOS, and Android. The dashboard features a new, streamlined user interface and new batch commit functionality. The membership processing functionality has… [Continue Reading]... Flipboard 1.9 for iOS lets you listen while you look - iOS app Flipboard has already earned itself something of a name as a great way to aggregate multiple social networks and news media into a single, more easily managed stream. The latest version of the iPhone and iPad app sees the introduction of support for audio as well as the more usual text and image based content. Audio content can be scanned through just as you would the rest of your feeds, but it can also be played in the background while you continue with your browsing. There is support for SoundCloud, NPR (National Public Radio) and PRI (Public Radio International), which… [Continue Reading]... Auslogic BoostSpeed 5.3 and Disk Defrag 3.4.3 are big upgrades - Australian software developer Auslogics has released major updates for two of its Windows performance tools. Auslogics BoostSpeed 5.3.0.0 is the company?s flagship tool, an all-in-one performance manager, whileAuslogics Disk Defrag 3.4.3.0 - whose functionality is included in BoostSpeed -- provides a free (for personal use) hard drive optimization tool. The latest build includes numerous feature additions, performance improvements and bug fixes, plus introduces ?partial? compatibility with Windows 8, with full compatibility promised for version 5.4. Both BoostSpeed and Disk Defrag introduce a new free space availability check before the user creates a Rescue Center backup, allowing them to either abort the entire operation… [Continue Reading]... Secure your connections with HTTPS Everywhere - When browsing the Internet you may well have noticed that some of sites you visit are secure, while others are not. While HTTPS is most often used for secure shopping and banking web sites, there is no reason that connections to other pages should not be encrypted to help improve privacy and security. If this is something that has concerned you, HTTPS Everywhere could be just what you have been looking for. This free browser extension can be used to ensure that a secure connection is used whenever available. There are a huge number of websites that offer support for encrypted HTTPS… [Continue Reading]... Ditch Windows Explorer, go retro with XFile - If you used PCs back in the 1980s then you?ll probably remember that file management was, well, a little basic. To put it politely. But that all changed in 1985 with the arrival of XTree, a powerful file manager that came packed with functionality: the geeks of the day loved its feature set, speed and extensive list of keyboard shortcuts. It didn?t last, of course -- the program was essentially killed off by the arrival of Windows Explorer. Which, while nothing like as powerful as XTree, was free and included with every PC. But if you still have fond memories… [Continue Reading]... Samsung accounts for 40% of Android smartphone sales - The figure is so important, I'm breaking it out from the long analysis posted mid-afternoon about the smartphone market consolidating around Apple and Samsung. The South Korean electronics giant is doing to Android on smartphones what Amazon does on tablets: Hugely fragment the market around a forked operating system. I warned about this three weeks ago in post "Google has lost control of Android". Now there is sales data to back it up. Earlier today, Gartner released first quarter sales data for global handsets. Not shipments into the channel, but actual sales to end users. Market leader Samsung accounted for… [Continue Reading]... LG actually did some cool stuff with its new Android UI - There are many manufacturer-created user interfaces for Android, and sadly, most of them are unpleasant. Some are polluted with unremovable bloatware, some are sluggish performers, and some are just badly designed. For as many different versions of the Android user experience as there are, there are very few major builds that add remarkable innovations on top of the Android platform. Wednesday, South Korean consumer electronics maker LG officially launched its new Android UI built on the Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) framework called LG Optimus UI 3.0. Though LG has not yet established itself as a power player in the… [Continue Reading]... Enterprise IT turns to cloud storage to fight data loss - If you're worried about data loss, turn to the cloud. That's what a new survey commissioned by CA suggests. Fifty-five percent of all US businesses expect usage of the cloud to increase to meet continuity objectives. That's an important statistic considering every one of the 300 businesses participating in the study experienced some type of data loss event in the past year. Among the most common reasons for data loss are IT system failures (76 percent); human error (41 percent); and external threats and attacks (35 percent). An earlier CA study suggests that data loss events cost companies an average… [Continue Reading]... Smartphone market consolidates around Apple and Samsung - Today, Gartner put to end weeks of cellular handset debate. Apple apologists disputed Samsung's smartphone success over iPhone -- the presumption that the South Korean electronics giant benefits from greater shipments vs actual sales. Make no mistake: Samsung is the global leader overall and in the smartphone category, based on actual sales. Apologist arguments be damned. That said, Apple's position is solid. Together, Apple and Samsung combined smartphone sales market share approaches 50 percent. Contrary to speculation that Windows Phone might appear as a third dominant mobile OS, the market is set to largely split between two vendors. As I… [Continue Reading]... Get autotext and autocorrect in any app - Anyone who?s tapped into Microsoft Word?s autotext and autocorrect features will know how useful they can be, but what happens when you need that kind of automation in another program? The answer lies with a free-for-personal-use tool called PhraseExpress 8.0151. This clever and powerful text replacement tool, also available as a portable build, gives you Autotext and Autocorrect functionality ? plus a heck of a lot more ? across your entire desktop, letting you speed up the way you enter and manipulate text in any program you have installed on your computer, not just Microsoft Word. PhraseExpress?s Autotext feature ? the Text… [Continue Reading]... Apple patents block HTC One X and EVO 4G LTE from U.S. market - "The US availability of the HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE has been delayed due to a standard U.S. Customs review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order," a boilerplate statement from Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC said on Wednesday. The company's flagship smartphones are being held up in customs as a result of patent litigation with Apple, and their availability to consumers is currently on hold. Though it only launched on May 6, AT&T currently lists the One X as "sold out," and Sprint's EVO 4G LTE which was slated to launch on Friday, May… [Continue Reading]... Get ready for Commerce-as-a-Service: NetSuite takes selling to the cloud - You've heard of Platform-as-a-Service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service; maybe even Gaming-as-a-Service, too, from BetaNews' reporting on Tuesday. Get ready for the latest X-as-a-Service, thanks to a new Commerce-as-a-Service (CaaS) initiative from NetSuite. The company debuted the initiative on Wednesday, saying CaaS will help partners manage both business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions regardless of device. CaaS uses NetSuite's Enterprise Resource Planning as its backbone, built upon a new platform called SuiteCommerce. SuiteCommerce manages all aspects of the sales process from developing the e-commerce site itself to process management. The platform can even run the POS systems in retail stores themselves, which may explain why… [Continue Reading]... When WHOIS isn't enough, there's DomainHostingView - When you need to know more about a web domain, then your first instinct will probably be to visit your favorite WHOIS site. But while that?s quick and easy, there could be an even more convenient solution in NirSoft?s DomainHostingView. As ever with NirSoft tools, the program is portable and extremely small (just 219KB including documentation), and it?s very straightforward to use: just type the name in question in the Domain box, click Go, then wait as DomainHostingView uses a variety of DNS and WHOIS queries to assemble the data you need. The report starts with a detailed summary which covers… [Continue Reading]... MiTeC InfoBar is one of the most versatile, useful desktop tools we?ve ever seen - At first glance, MiTeC InfoBar looks much like a host of other desktop tools. There?s a display of your CPU utilization here, your free RAM there -- not exactly the most interesting or essential of applications. But wait. There?s much more here than you might think, and on closer exploration, InfoBar just might be one of the most versatile and feature-packed desktop accessories we?ve ever seen. Launch the program, for instance, and a small horizontal toolbar will appear at the top of your screen, displaying the date, time, free memory, CPU utilization, power status (mains/ on battery, if applicable), system up time, current… [Continue Reading]... Copyright © 2012, Donna's List. All Rights Reserved. |