Software : Week in Tech: After Reader, can we trust Google to keep its stuff going? |
- Week in Tech: After Reader, can we trust Google to keep its stuff going?
- In Depth: Best free DTP software: 6 programs to help you create top-quality documents
- For and against SaaS and installed applications
- Microsoft's improved Bing Voice app has word-by-word streaming
| Week in Tech: After Reader, can we trust Google to keep its stuff going? Posted:  If you're launching a new service that you want people to rely upon, it's not the best idea to get everybody excited by, er, killing off a service that lots of people rely upon. That's exactly what Google has done, though: no sooner had it rubbed out Google Reader than it introduced Google Keep. "Keep" is of course short for "We'll keep this running forever, unless we change our mind like we did with Google Reader and Google Notebook". According to Google engineer Katherine Kuan, Keep is for people who "often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn't such a clever place" to leave things they want to remember. Better, surely, to rely on something more permanent. Like Google Reader. Ho ho! Phone it inLast week was dominated by the Samsung Galaxy S4 launch and the associated "world's best smartphone" chat, but are we looking at the wrong phone? Could HTC's confusingly named HTC One - not to be confused with the One X, One X+, One SV or defunct pop magazine Number One - be the best Android device money can buy? Gareth Beavis is on the case, giving the One four and a half out of a possible five stars. It's "the best HTC phone ever, without a doubt," he says - and "it's the best phone on the market full stop." Not only that, but it managed to launch without offending anyone. That's more than you can say about the Galaxy S4, whose launch made Joe Hanlon wonder whether the tech industry is still too sexist. The S4 has also been a bit of a let-down this week in the UK as it was discovered the nation wouldn't be getting the octa-core version of the phone. Instead the handset will be powered by a still-mighty quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon. As John McCann explains, it's all for 4G.
Pictures and tweetsWhile McCann pondered the big picture, we were pondering big picture takers: Canon's 100D, a tiny SLR, and the high-end Canon 700D, which is an upgrade to the current 650D. Our early verdicts on both cameras? We think Canon has a pair of winners on its hands. Fuji also revealed the hardy XP200. Another winner is Twitter, which is celebrating its seventh birthday this week. Author Michael Marshall calls it "a punch in the face for modern friendship" while TechRadar's own Gary Marshall reckons that if it served beer, it'd be the world's best pub. They're both right, of course: Twitter is as good or as bad as the people using it. As Smith says, tech is "bringing thousands of people we don't actually know into our new-tech caves. And disappointingly few are bringing hostess gifts, or bottles of fine wine."
Next week Twitter's going to be full of games chat, because the annual Games Developers Conference, or GDC for short, kicks off on March 25. We've been polishing our crystal balls to predict the highlights, which should include PS4 playtime, Xbox 720 details and a glimpse of gaming's future. And then a few weeks later it's E3 time again, a spectacle of sound and fury where we'll see the games we'll be playing later this year and next. Apparently at E3 2013 we'll even see Unreal Engine 4 "really rip the seams of reality". That sounds rather like the beginning of Doom to us, but it's not the only odd thing happening in tech right now: as Hugh Langley reports, Apple has been reverse engineering cats to create phones that land on their feet, or something. Apple's patented invention "essentially shifts the insides of a device when it's falling in order to reduce chances of damage." That'd be handy to have in an iPhone, but it'd be even better in toast. |
| In Depth: Best free DTP software: 6 programs to help you create top-quality documents Posted:  Word processors are great for letters, reports, and other basic documents, but if you need to create something more complicated - a newsletter, say - then you'll soon run into problems. And that's where desktop publishing (DTP) software comes in: its extra text options, graphics features, page layout control and more will all help you to deliver far more professional results. Paying big money for a commercial DTP package may not appeal too much, of course, especially if you only intend to use it for one or two projects - but there are alternatives. We've found six excellent free DTP tools, and whether you just want to create a single birthday card, a newspaper or an entire book, there's something here that can help. 1. ScribusIf you're after real desktop publishing power, free of charge, then nothing can compete with Scribus. The program is packed with professional features - CMYK and spot colours, ICC colour management, direct editing of vector drawings, extensive PDF support and more - and provides everything you need to produce flyers, brochures, newspapers, books and more.
All this power does take quite some time to master, though, and while the developers have tried to help (and there is plenty of documentation to point you in the right direction) you'll need to be patient: the sheer volume of features means there's still a significant learning curve. 2. Adobe Project ROMEAdobe Project ROME was a very interesting Adobe AIR-based tool which could help you create and publish all sorts of content: brochures, flyers, letterheads, certificates, business cards, even animations and complete websites.
While the program was "retired" in November 2010, and hasn't seen any developments since then, you can still download and use the commercial version for free. This doesn't work exactly as it did - there are now only one or two templates available, for instance - but if you're willing to take the time to master the basics then the program still offers plenty of publishing power. 3. Serif PagePlus Starter EditionWhile other desktop publishing tools can take some time to master, PagePlus encourages you to jump in immediately. There are several templates (forms, brochures, calendars, CVs, templates and more), customising them is easy, and you get plenty of control over layout, object alignment, colours, text flow and more.
Serif has also left out plenty of features, though, and imposed some restrictions, hoping you'll be persuaded to upgrade to the commercial version. In particular, the Starter Edition only supports documents of up to nine pages, and it can't export files as PDF, so essentially the program is only suitable for small projects which you'll print yourself. 4. Photo Pos ProIf your publishing project is relatively simple and straightforward then you may not always need a full DTP package. Sometimes a good image editor may provide everything you need - and Photo Pos Pro is a perfect example. The program comes with templates to help you quickly create business cards, photo collages and greetings cards, for instance. They're fairly basic, but are an easy way to get started, and should give you some ideas of your own.
Photo Pos Pro has plenty of useful graphics editing options, too. Good layer support helps you to produce some impressive effects; advanced tools like "text on a path" add a professional touch; and if you're in a hurry, there are plenty of pre-built objects (clipart, icons, banners, picture boxes and more) which you can insert and customise in seconds. 5. LyXMost publishing tools take a "what you see is what you get" approach to document creation - but LyX is rather different. It uses LaTeX commands to format text, insert objects and so on, and if you're new to the idea then at first it will look horribly complicated. Start to explore, though, and it won't seem quite so bad. You can carry out quite a few actions from the LyX menus, for instance, without having to remember any complicated syntax.
There are advanced tools to help you work with mathematical formulae, references, indexes, tables of contents, and more. And your finished documents can be exported to PDF, HTML, OpenDocument, Word and more. LyX still isn't much use at all if you want to create something small and simple, like a single page flyer. But if you'd like to produce a book, or some other large document with consistent formatting, then it's well worth considering. 6. HP Photo CreationsA good DTP package doesn't always need a lengthy feature list, or advanced layout controls. If your needs are simple then having a wide selection of pre-built templates might be good enough - and that's why you might want to try HP Photo Creations. The program's simple browser-like interface organises its projects into a lengthy list of categories: greetings cards, newsletters, postcards, photo books, and calendars, amongst others.
Each of these is then divided again (there are greetings cards for birthdays, Easter, Christmas and so on), and finally you get to the templates. There may only be a few of these, but they're generally high quality and you're sure to find something you like. Photo Creations has some useful tools to help you customise these with your own text and images, and when you're happy they can be printed in a click or two. |
| For and against SaaS and installed applications Posted:  The mounting cost of installed applications and the complexity of their management has led many IT managers to move more of their applications to the cloud. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has evolved rapidly over the past few years to deliver reliable and secure platforms that businesses can exploit. But SaaS is not a panacea, as installed applications can still be the best choice in some scenarios. Gartner recently reported that 71% of organisations in 10 countries have been using SaaS for less than three years. According to its survey, investments in SaaS are expected to increase across all regions: 77% of respondents expected to increase spending, while 17% planned to keep it stable. 71% of European respondents intend to increase spending on SaaS. But there has not been a wholesale move to SaaS based systems, as installed applications still have a lot to offer, not least of which is the perception that they are more secure than the cloud for sensitive data sets. Making choicesFor IT managers it is important to complete an evaluation process, which should reveal which of their systems would benefit from moving to a SaaS platform, and which should remain as installed applications. SaaS platforms can provide a number of benefits, which include:
Short subscription options are the norm, which means businesses are not locked into long term contracts for software upgrades they may not need. Disadvantages of SaaS platforms include:
On the other hand, installed applications can provide a number of advantages:
However, there are potential downsides to installed applications:
There are clearly advantages to moving some processes to the cloud. General office applications provide a good example: Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365 are showing businesses how these applications can benefit their companies if they are moved to a hosted environment. Security concerns persist. For highly sensitive data the cloud offers too great a risk for many enterprises. Here, for example, installed applications one which IT managers can keep a close eye are still popular in the financial sector. But the lines between these two approaches are becoming blurred. Many businesses are taking the best that both approaches can offer and developing hybrid systems for their enterprises, especially when legacy platforms and systems have to be taken into account. Charles Eschinger, research vice president at Gartner concluded: "The decision to deploy SaaS based applications within an enterprise is dependent on the business criticality of the solution, as well as geography, business agility, usage scenario and IT architecture. "Few organisations will completely migrate to SaaS. These organisations will live with a mix of SaaS and traditional on-premises application deployment models with a focus on integration and migration between different deployment models." |
| Microsoft's improved Bing Voice app has word-by-word streaming Posted:  Voice recognition is one of those mobile services that has been on the cusp of brilliance for quite a while, yet no-one seems to have it down to a fine art. Apple's Siri and Google's Voice Search do an ample, if not always reliable, job, but Microsoft has demonstrated how it intends to leapfrog them both with its improved Bing Voice app for Windows Phone. The company's research department has shown-off a prototype version of a faster, more accurate and more intelligent version of the app, scheduled for launch at a later date. According to the video demonstration, the new Bing Voice app processes speech so fast, it will stream utterances word-by-word, as they are spoken, rather than wait until the sentence is complete. Better, faster, smarterEven in the presence of background noise, so often the bain of voice recognition apps, the new Bing Voice service showed considerable speed and accuracy improvements in Microsoft's tests. The demonstation showed the phrase "Starbucks in Washington" was recognised by the improved tech in 0.52 seconds, whereas the current version called it "sky in washing machine," and took 1.19 seconds. Error rates are also down by between 12 and 15 per cent on the new version and, according to the researchers, there's potential for that to improve by another 15 per cent by the time the tech rolls out. This extra speed and accuracy, along with the word by word streaming, will allow the app to deliver Bing Search results faster than ever before, the company said. When's it coming?The MSFTKitchen demonstration video made no mention of when it might be arriving on the mobile operating system, but Windows Phone 9 sure sounds like a good time, huh? Until then, or whenever Microsoft decides to grace Windows Phone fans with the tech, check it out for yourself in the video below. |
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