PressReader will bring you the news on your iOS device

PressReader has a unique take on the news. They've partnered with thousands of newspapers to bring you daily newspapers in a format the mimics the dead-tree version of the publications.

It also adds some neat features, such as translating any newspaper into other languages, printing articles, and letting a computer voice read the news to you. A SmartFlow feature lets you follow the story that improves on just the plain newspaper layout. Fonts can be resized and the typestyle can be changed to taste.

While the app is free, downloading any particular newspaper will cost US $0.99, or you can subscribe to everything for $33.99 monthly. That's not a bad deal considering the amount of news you can take in.

My only gripe about this app is that it is very newspaper centric. By that, I mean the layouts try to preserve the look and feel of a daily paper. In this electronic age, I'd like to see the news formatted for the device, rather than trying to bend the device around to the old newspaper style. There is a lot of flipping and tapping to get through an article, and I just don't think it is necessary. Some people will like the preservation of newspaper design, and I must say it is very complete. You can even read the classifieds or the obituaries. but there is no search facility, which in some ways makes this app not much better than the daily paper you hold in your hand. Even on a fast connection, the app is slower than I would like, but I understand there is a lot of rendering going on.

The app gets generally good reviews, and it is a nice piece of software if you buy the premise of wanting to duplicate the newspaper on an electronic device, along with all the ads.

[Source: TUAW]

Get more performance on your MAC with Painter 12.2 Service Pack One

Today, the Corel Painter team released a free service pack available through its notification system, and at www.corel.com/updates. This patch includes several documented bug fixes and performance optimisations for both MAC and Windows. The patch includes a specific performance optimisation option for 64-bit MAC systems that have traditional SATA hard drives.

For more information, please visit the Corel Blog at www.corel.com/blog

BlackBerry: 70,000 Launch Apps, Including Skype, Twitter and Facebook

BlackBerry is listing off apps leading the charge on its new platform, with Skype, Whatsapp, Angry Birds, Twitter, and others all on board. The company said there will be 70,000 launch apps—a pretty impressive launch figure, showing that developers are committed to ushering BlackBerry onto the same plane as iOS and Android as far as selection goes.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Foursquare gives business owners their own app to manage specials, track customer visits Mobile

Foursquare just recently tweaked its privacy policy to share more user information with local businesses, and it looks like it's already putting some of that data to use in a new app now that the policy has gone into effect. Launched today for the iPhone and iPod touch, Foursquare for Business is just that -- an app designed for business owners instead of customers. In addition to letting managers upload new photos and refresh their specials regularly, it'll also give them a peek into customer activity at their business (or businesses), including information on check-ins and the ability to keep an eye on their top customers. As Foursquare notes in its privacy policy, though, you can opt out of having that check-in information visible to businesses in the app's privacy settings.

[Source: Engadget]

Nokia Music+ downloads playlists to your Lumia, for a fee

Nokia has a new music streaming service aimed at giving Lumia owners happier ears, while fighting services like Spotify or Last.fm.

The Nokia Music+ app is an extension of Nokia's Mix Radio app, which streams a list of tunes hand-chosen by Nokia, depending on which playlist you choose.

Mix Radio is free, but is rather limited in what it offers. Coughing up an extra €3.99 per month however gets you Music+, which brings treats like the ability to skip tracks as many times as you like, as well as downloading entire playlists for offline listening.

You can't hoard as much music as you want -- Nokia explains on its blog that you're limited to four "mixes", each of which contains a tonne of tracks. Signing up to the service also nabs you downloads at "eight times" the quality, as well as scrolling lyrics for impromptu blasts of karaoke and desktop mode, which lets you stream music through a Web app or smart TV.

The service is due in a few weeks. There's no confirmed UK pricing, but £4 is a good bet. Those in the US will be forking over one cent shy of $4.

Downloading and unlimited skips are tempting features, but I'd wager many smart phone owners considering paying for a music service would rather have the opportunity to search for songs and craft their own playlists, rather than jigging about to whatever Nokia prescribes.

Incredibly, despite being present on Windows Phone 7, Spotify is still to bring its own streaming service to Windows Phone 8. If you're desperate for streaming music and are sick of waiting for Spotify (which costs £10 per month) to gets its rear in gear, Nokia's new service could tide you over.

[Source: CNET]

Skype update adds portrait calling on tablets, rest of the app locked in landscape

The latest update to Skype improved the UI and added a much asked for feature in portrait calling, but unfortunately the rest of the app is locked in landscape. The portrait calling seemed like a no-brainer fix, especially considering many smaller tablets -- like the Nexus 7 -- have camera setups meant for portrait orientation. The unfortunate bug (or at least we hope it's a bug) is that for now the rest of the UI is locked into landscape orientation. This means that browsing your contacts and initiating calls is all in landscape, then you have to rotate the tablet to hold the call.

Overall the new UI is great and pretty well mirrors the styling of the phone UI, but the perpetual landscape really puts a damper on things. Let's hope Skype pushes out a new update to add back in the portrait support, and in the meantime we can at least enjoy portrait video calls.

[Source: AndroidCentral]

Significant Wii U Updates Announced by Nintendo

Nintendo promised this morning in their Nintendo Direct presentation that they plan to produce two system updates this spring and summer.

As you can see in the image above, these updates will bring quicker speed to the Wii U user-interface. Users have complained about this one for a while.

The spring update will also bring the Virtual Console to the Wii U. While the full VC catalogue will not be available at launch, they will come to the Wii U in batches. The bad news? You’ll need to re-buy your old games. The good news, however, is that they’ll come at a reduced price. Re-buy NES games for $1.00 and SNES games for $1.50.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Mozilla reveals Firefox OS Developer Preview Phone

Mozilla said it won't be launching its own hardware to run the in-development Firefox OS when it's finished, but the company has just announced a "Developer Preview Phone" for putting the OS through its paces. It's not quite the same as the mystery device we saw sporting Firefox OS at CES, but its specs seem almost as basic. The handset will feature a 3.5-inch HVGA touchscreen and 3-megapixel camera on the outside, with a 1GHz Snapdragon S1 CPU, half a gig of RAM, 4GB of microSD-expandable storage and WiFi, 2G and 3G antennae inside. Sure, that processor isn't a beast, but an 800MHz S1 does just fine in the Lumia 610. A 1580mAh battery will keep the carrier-unlocked phone running, and Mozilla is promising OTA updates to Firefox OS to keep devs, well, up to date. At the moment, we have no idea how much the phone will cost, but the first units are expected to be available next month.

The developer handset is called the Keon, according to creator Geekphone's website, and while not mentioned in the Mozilla Hacks blog post, it appears to have a more powerful cousin called the Peak. It's got a 4.3-inch qHD screen, 8-megapixel back-facing camera (with flash) and 2-megapixel shooter round the front. A 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 CPU and larger 1800mAh battery are within, but storage, RAM and connectivity specs are the same as the smaller Keon. Mozilla may not be formally promoting this as its own dev handset, but it was still included in the picture which accompanied the announcement (see above: the Keon is in orange, the Peak in white). We're getting in contact with Mozilla to clarify, and will update you when we hear back.

[Source: Engadget]

Blackberry App World store makes early switch to Blackberry World, but no music or video yet

We're still a few days away from BB10's genuine debut, but RIM's decided to press on early with its app store changes. Starting with the webstore front (which is rolling out in the next 24 hours, depending on your territory) then moving on to the PlayBook and existing BlackBerry phones, the renamed BlackBerry World store will also offer up access to videos and music -- RIM reckons it'll be your "one-stop shop" for mobile entertainment, but those channels aren't live just yet. Test out the store's new offerings at the source link to the right.

[Source: Engadget]

Sky Go Extra saves movies on your iPad to watch on the go

The latest blockbusters are coming to your phone or tablet, as Sky lets you save movies and TV and watch them wherever you are, without Wi-Fi.

Sky is launching Sky Go Extra, an expansion of the Sky Go catch-up and on-demand service for Sky customers, the Telegraph reports. That means you can save new episodes of Girls, blockbusters like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, or classic James Bond films on your smart device to watch on the train, on holiday, or anywhere you haven't got Wi-Fi.

For £5 per month extra, up to four users can download stuff per account, and you can download as many movies and TV shows as you want. Each download sticks around for a month. So it's not so much of a download as it is a downloan.

Get it? Downloan! I done made up a word.

Previously, you needed a Wi-Fi connection to stream movies and TV to your computer or portable device. With movies cached on your phone or tablet, you can watch anywhere without having to pay for Wi-Fi or cut into your data allowance.

It's not clear if this will be a standalone app, or just an update to the Sky Go app, which has angered Android fans by only supporting a few Android devices.

Sky has the best line-up of new films and the pick of the latest TV shows, especially from the US on Sky Atlantic. Rivals Netflix and Lovefilm don't do downloads (although Lovefilm does do those old-school downloads you used to get, the ones that take ages to download. What were they called? Oh yeah, DVDs.)

Availability of new releases is a real sticking point for online streaming services: last week it was revealed that to watch a decent selection of recent films you need to pay for both Lovefilm and Netflix.

Sky Go Extra is coming in the next few weeks. If you want to watch the latest blockbusters, but don't want to fork out for a dish and a Sky subscription, you can get films from Sky Movies channels on a pay-as-you-go basis with Now TV, Sky's spin-off app and online streaming service.

[Source: CNET]

Microsoft hikes up price of Windows 8 by 500%

Bad news if you want to upgrade to Windows 8 but are yet to do so. Microsoft has announced its introductory offer will end on 1 February. From then on, in the US, instead of costing $40 to upgrade to Windows 8, it'll set you back $120, or $200 for Windows 8 Pro.

There's no word on what the new UK price will be, but I'm expecting a similar hike.

In fact, getting my calculator out, if Microsoft raises it by the same amount for us Brits, Windows 8 Pro will jump from £24.99 to about £125. Ouch.

So if you haven't upgraded yet but intend to do so, better get downloading.

Windows 8 brings with it a whole new interface that uses 'tiles', known as the Metro UI. It's a world away from previous versions of Windows, with quicker log-in and boot-up times, and the ability to sync between your PC and tablet. However, sales have so far failed to set the world alight, according to reports.

Sales of Windows 8 PCs are "well below Microsoft's internal projections" one report says. Fujitsu has suffered a slump in sales of computers running the operating system, too, andblames it on the fact Microsoft's OS is "weak". One study showed just 39 percent of people were planning on upgrading to the latest version.

Acer has also joined in the Microsoft-bashing, saying it doesn't stand a chance against Apple. So it's not really been a swinging start for Windows 8.

Still though, Microsoft says it's sold 4 million copies of the operating system, while sales of its Surface tablet -- which runs Windows RT -- have been "modest". I can't see a spike in sales after this price hike though.

[Source: CNET]

Chrome Beta update fixes issues, has a new icon

Since a proper Chrome Beta channel app came into the Play Store, we knew we'd be in for some frequent updates. Alongside a new icon that has a black/white "BETA" tag on it, rather than the angled grey/white one before, this update brings many small fixes:

• 165783 - Enable compositing scrollable frames on Android
• 168368 - Chrome progress bar should be displayed as soon as the user clicks a link
• 165244 - Text handler jumps or disappears when moving
• 162486 - iframe scrolling broken

There are still some glaring bugs, as is the case with Beta releases, such as yahoo.com page links not working and some intense graphical glitches on certain devices. This is all part of the fun though, and we know what we're getting into when moving to the Beta channel of a browser.

[Source: AndroidCentral]