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Latest Gear Live Videos
Google shows off Android 3.0
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: CES, CES 2011, Google, Software, Videos,
We've been hearing about Android 3.0 Honeycomb for a while now, the build of Android that would be designed with tablets in mind. Now, Google shows off it's latest version during CES, and it does appear that the UI has been redesigned in some major ways--it now fits especially well on the larger screen. Google posted a video showcasing some of the new design, which looks very different from what we've grown used to in the Android world.
Gallery: Google shows off Android 3.0
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Mac App Store opens with 1,000 apps, 1 million downloads on first day
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Apple, Corporate News, Software,
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Yesterday, the Mac App Store, the new portal for Mac users to download application, opened up to the public as part of the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update. After installing the update, a new icon will appear, giving you access to the new store. In it, you'll find the familiar interface shown on iOS devices, and even in iTunes itself. Apps are categorized by type, like business, education, and finance. There's also a "Top Free" and "Top Paid" list. Once bought, downloading and installing an app is straight forward. You can also redownload the app if you delete it, and once you buy it, you can install it on all your other Macs. Another benefit of the App Store is the update process. Like on iOS, all the updates can be found on the App Store, and you can update all your applications in a single click. Some of the early users did report a few issues, like an "Error 100" that keeps popping up, which can be resolved by signing in and out of your account and restarting your computer.
This morning, Apple announced that they've surpassed one million downloads from the Mac App Store in just the first 24 hours. “We’re amazed at the incredible response the Mac App Store is getting,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. They've definitely hit the ground running.
Read More 
| Apple
Gallery: Mac App Store opens with 1,000 apps, 1 million downloads on first day
Top 10 Gear Live stories of 2010
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Accessories, Apple, Smartphones, Editorial, Features, Software,
We've come to the end of another year, and as we wave goodbye to 2010, we figured it was only fitting that we share the most popular stories published on Gear Live in 2010, as determined by our readers (we've also got the top ten most read stories regardless of publish date!) These are the ten stories that were read the most, and when you consider that fact, it's pretty surprising to see what made the list. Let's kick it off with our most read story of the year:
Fring App Brings Skype Video Calling to iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi and 3G:
Sure, Skype just formally announced video calling in the Skype 3.0 iOS app, but Fring brought us Skype video calls months ago! The thing is, Skype pulled that feature from Fring with the quickness, but that didn't stop this from being the most read story we published in 2010!
Click to continue reading Top 10 Gear Live stories of 2010
Gallery: Top 10 Gear Live stories of 2010
Top 10 most read Gear Live stories of 2010
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Wearables, Features, Internet, Mods / Hacks, Software,
Sure, we've given you a list of our top 10 most read stories of 2010, but we figured we'd go a bit more broad than that. We also thought it would be interesting to give you a look at the top ten most read stories on this site this year, period, regardless of what year they were posted. We must say, we're just as surprised as you are at what did (and didn't) make the list! Click on through to check out the full list!
Click to continue reading Top 10 most read Gear Live stories of 2010
Gallery: Top 10 most read Gear Live stories of 2010
Skype, other VoIP, may be illegal in China
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Internet, Software,
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According to a story in China's major newspaper, People's Daily, it appears that the Chinese government has declared all VoIP solutions not provided by the government's own China Telecom and China Unicorn to be illegal. This would make Skype, the most popular VoIP service, illegal as well. So far, Skype denies that it has been banned, and users in China keep using the service, but if the government were to apply this new rule, this would be a major drawback for Chinese users, and westerners traveling to the country.
Read More | People's Daily
Gallery: Skype, other VoIP, may be illegal in China
A week after the biggest Skype outage in recent memory (it lasted around 24 hours,) the company CIO posted an interesting rundown of how and why the failure occurred, giving a glimpse as to how Skype works behind the scenes. On Wednesday, December 22, a Skype server handling offline messaging became overloaded, resulting in delayed messages. Due to a bug, a version of Skype for Windows did not process those delayed messages correctly, which made them crash. This led to around 25% of the total Skype supernodes, the clients directing connections and logins in the Skype network, to crash. Since Skype clients have protections built in so that they do not overload the systems they run on, the large amount of crashed clients being restarted caused a massive load on the network, causing more supernodes to shut down to protect themselves. Almost the whole Skype network was thus brought to a halt. Check out the post to view more details, and how the Skype team brought everything back online.
Read More | Skype
Gallery: Why Skype went down for 24 hours
100 most searched terms on BitTorrent
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Internet, Movies, Software,
At the end of the year, search engines publish their lists of most search terms, indicating what the trend online is. From a more underground source however, TorrentFreak has compiled their list of top 100 search terms on BitTorrent for 2010. They got their search data from KickassTorrents, one of the top 10 BitTorrent sites, with a few hundred of million searches per year. The top search term ended up being "Inception", followed by "Iron Man 2", "2010" and "xxx". All 100 top terms are shown on their site, but it's clear what people go to BitTorrent sites for. Most of the words are movie titles, followed by porn keywords. Notably, Microsoft Windows 7 picked up the 20th spot.
Read More | TorrentFreak
Gallery: 100 most searched terms on BitTorrent
Verizon, RIM, ATT looking to protect your smartphone from malicious attacks
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Smartphones, Corporate News, Software,
Many people take the security of their smartphones for granted. As the amount of private data communicated through smartphones increases, so does the threat of attacks from viruses and hackers. Choosing to act now rather than wait for a security fiasco, phone companies such as AT&T, are hiring security researchers to focus on strengthening the security of mobile phones from attacks. Since security has previously not been a major concern on mobile devices it will take some time (years) for these security measures to fully implement.
"Everyone is realizing that this is an uncontrolled environment," said Edward G. Amoroso, chief security officer of AT&T Inc. "We don't want to have the same problems that we had with PCs."
Read More | Wall Street Journal
Gallery: Verizon, RIM, ATT looking to protect your smartphone from malicious attacks
Many of us eager Palm Pre users - and yes, even you Pixi users - have been twiddling our thumbs (read "breaking stuff") waiting for the webOS 2.0 OTA update to hit our phones. Much to our dismay, Palm has only offered solace in saying that "the coming months" will roll out webOS 2.0 to the dedicated Palm smartphone users. However, a ray of light has shined through, in the form of a beta OS running on the original Palm Pre showcasing additional features.
The beta, labeled "HP webOS Nova-Barley," is marked as version 2.0.1 and features voice dialing and new preferences for Exhibition View. True to beta form there are some perfomance kinks to be ironed out, and a final OTA update is rumored (very likely) to be the 2.1 version of webOS. We'll see whether or not this news will be enough to keep Pre die-hards from jumping the webOS ship into the iOS, Android, or even WP7 waters. As for me, I'm still hanging on to my Pre, but it's not getting any lighter, HP!
Read More | Engadget
Gallery: WebOS 2.1 for existing Pre users?
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It's been two months now since Apple announced some of the upcoming features that the Mac platform will be getting. One of the most interesting ones is bringing an App Store to the desktop. Apple promised it would be out within 90 days, and now we know it will open its doors on January 6. This means that if you own a Mac, on that date you'll be able to buy and download applications directly from the Mac App Store. The store will be available in 90 countries for both paid and free apps, and feature everything from games, productivity, lifestyle and education software. Mac developers have already been at work in integrating their applications with the new App Store, and they will get to keep 70% of the selling price while Apple gets 30%. The new store will be available to Snow Leopard users through a free download.
Read More | Apple
