Software : Blinkbox movie rentals coming to Xbox 360 |
- Blinkbox movie rentals coming to Xbox 360
- Apple launches Siri – voice controlled assistant app
- In Depth: Best RSS reader for Mac: 6 reviewed and rated
| Blinkbox movie rentals coming to Xbox 360 Posted:  The Blinkbox movie and TV rental service is to get a dedicated app for the Xbox 360 console. The video-on-demand company, which is majority owned by Tesco, will land on Microsoft's console later this year and give Xbox LIVE subscribers access to a massive library of new and classic titles. It will also be compatible with the Kinect gesture control technology, allowing you to use a series of gestures and movements to navigate to the content of your choice. You'll also be able to utilise Bing voice search to easily find what you want to watch. Growing number of devicesThe app will offer access to over 10,000 films, including new releases on the same day the DVD is out, and a host of TV shows from both sides of the Atlantic. Blinkbox comes to the Xbox 360 in the absence of a LOVEFiLM app and will instead rival Microsoft's own VOD offering. The service is now available on a growing number of devices with a Samsung Smart TV app announced just last month. You can also watch on Mac, PC, tablets and PlayStation 3. Michael Comish, CEO and co-founder of Blinkbox said: "The launch of Blinkbox on Xbox 360 means that we can bring our huge library of blockbuster movies to even more people across the UK, giving them yet another way access their favourite entertainment. "Whether on PC, connected TV or console, our customers are now even closer to an amazing entertainment experience." |
| Apple launches Siri – voice controlled assistant app Posted:  Apple has unveiled a voice-controlled organiser app dubbed Siri which is one of the headline features of the iPhone 4S. Launching in beta with the new iPhone, after firing up Siri you can just ask the iPhone questions and it will answer them on-screen. Apple's Phil Schiller and Tim Cook took to the stage to demonstrate Siri at the iPhone 4S launch in California. Talk to meThey asked, "What is the weather like today?" and instead of looking out of the window, they looked at the iPhone 4S, on which Siri had pulled up a weather report. More examples included Schiller telling the iPhone to set an alarm for 6.30am the next day, to find a Greek restaurant in Palo Alto, to check his calendar and to set up appointments.
What's nice is that it understands context – you might ask it to make an appointment for you at a time when something is already scheduled, in which case it will tell you and ask if you want to move the existing appointment. Siri is integrated with apps like Maps, Calendar and text messaging, so you can now dictate messages and emails, as well as any other text – whenever you see a keyboard on the iPhone 4S, you'll also see a microphone icon. Let's get siri-usThe demo, which lasted a fair amount of time, also revealed a hook up with Wolfram Alpha, which means you can ask all manner of trivia questions and get the answers from Siri instead of Google. Apple reckons you should be able to simply use your natural language – although we'd like to see it try and cope with a thick Glasweigan accent – and there's support for English, French and German. Working over 3G and Wi-Fi, you'll see the Siri beta on the iPhone 4S when it launches on 14 October. |
| In Depth: Best RSS reader for Mac: 6 reviewed and rated Posted:  Best RSS reader for OS XRSS enables you to choose what news you're interested in and have it delivered directly to your Mac as it happens. No need to trawl through countless sites looking for interesting stuff; it will come to you. To get started, find a source of news you want to read, add its RSS feed in your app of choice (a process known as subscribing), and hey presto, the news rolls in. Nearly all news sites have RSS feeds (also called newsfeeds), as do the major blogging services and Twitter, so you can effectively manage your entire news intake through an RSS reader, given the right subscriptions. Safari and Mail enable you to subscribe to RSS feeds, but their handling of them is very basic - we wouldn't recommend using either for RSS, since there are so many great bespoke apps that do a better job. What we're looking for in these apps is ease of adding and managing lots of feeds and an elegant, easy-to-use layout that makes reading the news a pleasure. One other important factor to consider is Google Reader integration. There are two types of app here: the first type displays newsfeeds in columns and lists (NetNewsWire, Reeder, Socialite and NewsRack), whereas Pulp and Mixtab are more visual. Which you choose will depend on the kind of experience you want: if you subscribe to loads of different feeds, go for list-based, because it's the best way to work through lots of information nice and quickly. If you're after a more visually appealing look, go for one of the others. RSS readers on testMixtab - Free Test one: Adding RSS feedsHow simple is it to add your favourite RSS feeds?
The four that sync to your Google Reader account - NetNewsWire, NewsRack, Socialite and Reeder - are a snip to set up. But only Reeder and NewsRack keep the feeds and folders in the same order they are on the Google account, and rearranging them is particularly irksome in Socialite, since it can hang as you move things. Pulp will link to Google Reader, but only to pull in individual feeds - it won't bring in your whole list, nor will it keep read/unread items in sync. But to add feeds manually, you can often just type in the site's URL, rather than the specific feed one, and it'll soon find the feed. NetNewsWire, Socialite and NewsRack also allow this; Reeder goes one better by enabling you to search by keyword and finding the feed for you. Irritatingly, Reeder and Socialite don't let you rename feeds. You have to add them manually to Mixtab, but the process is a bit long-winded and it struggles with some URLs that other apps handle fine. Test results
Test two: Design and feelIt's all about the looks bettering the reading experience
Of the list-based apps, NetNewsWire, NewsRack and Socialite look and feel like old-school Mac software: buttons, folder icons and so on are similar to native Snow Leopard apps including Mail. Reeder takes a refreshing, iOS-inspired approach. With bigger icons, buttons and toolbars, we love how it works so smoothly, new content and feeds fading in and out of view. It makes the other three feel rather antiquated. Pulp is like a print newspaper with headlines on the front pages, which fold away like paper to read a story. We thoroughly enjoyed adding selected feeds to it and spending time reading over breakfast; it feels less like you're reading on a computer. But the interface isn't great for adding lots of feeds you want to skim through quickly. Mixtab displays each feed on a tile with a customisable logo or an image from the top article. But because of the odd behaviour of the images, making it look good can present a challenge. Test results
Navigation and extra featuresTest three: NavigationHow easy is it to move between your various feeds?
The simplest way to move between feeds is using just a mouse or trackpad, clicking through the news items one after the other, or going back and forth between the main pages and the articles in Pulp or Mixtab. But it's often easier to use a keyboard, and all the apps here allow at least some form of keyboard navigation - with shortcuts available if you want them. We found one of Reeder's few flaws here: when you're moving around using the arrow keys, it can be hard to know which column's selected. NewsRack, Socialite, Reeder and Pulp also let you navigate using multi-touch gestures, which makes moving from one story to the next an absolute joy. Socialite and Pulp bounce you to Safari to view an item in its original form, but we preferred the other four apps, which let you remain in the interface. Special kudos here to NetNewsWire and NewsRack for allowing multiple browsing tabs to be opened concurrently. Test results
Test four: Extra featuresWe pick out a few of the best hidden features
As far as further features go, Socialite's got the most going for it, given it's more than just an RSS reader - it can be your entire social networking hub, pulling together Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Digg. If you use even some of these services, having everything in one place is excellent. But in trying to be all things, it falls short as an RSS reader overall, so we can't recommend it for this purpose. Reeder's big extra feature is its built-in Readability viewer, which is truly amazing. Because many RSS feeds only contain the first few lines of the actual article, you often need to click through to the source website to read the full thing. But with the Readability viewer, you click a button (or unpinch on your trackpad) and Reeder attempts to pull through the full text into the app. No ads, no clutter, just what you want to read. Once you get used to using it, you'll wonder how you ever managed without. Pulp uses a similar system called Magic Reader. Test results
The best RSS reader for OS X: Reeder
NetNewsWire and NewsRack are solid, business-like ways to keep on top of lots of feeds, Pulp is pure elegance, and an honourable mention goes to Mixtab, since it's the only free one here. But then along comes Reeder and quite simply blows the rest out of the water. Originally designed for the iPhone and iPad, it genuinely feels like part of a new generation of Mac apps in terms of its look, feel and ease of use. It's wonderfully elegant in the way its columns and articles glide in and out of view. It lets you use multi-touch gestures which are becoming so central to how the Mac works. And its built-in Readability viewer means you rarely have to view the full web page where the article came from. Overall, it's pure class. Final results
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