Software : Microsoft bringing 'beautiful' calendar app to Windows 10 and Office 365 |
- Microsoft bringing 'beautiful' calendar app to Windows 10 and Office 365
- Download of the day: GIMP
- Downloads: The best free apps for your gaming PC
- Google's new Apple Pay rival may be the simplest payment option yet
| Microsoft bringing 'beautiful' calendar app to Windows 10 and Office 365 Posted:  Microsoft's cross-platform Office 365 suite and Windows 10 have received another shot in the arm following the acquisition of Sunrise, a next-generation calendar app for touch screen devices. The plan is that Microsoft will incorporate Sunrise into Office 365 for its touch-optimised version of Windows 10 as part of the company's vision to "create more meaningful, beautiful experiences in mobile email and calendaring across all platforms." Sunrise, which began life as a newsletter providing calendar information by email, changed its spots to become a mobile-facing calendar that brings together information from all facets of your digital life. Anyone familiar with the Apple desktop calendar that comes as part of Yosemite will be familiar with the layout of Sunrise when it eventually appears in Windows 10, which itself should be released to manufacturers in June.
Sunrise will remain freeThe developers of Sunrise, in a separate release, have promised that the app will continue to be free for all desktop users as well as those on the wealth of other platforms that it is offered. The deal mirrors the one it made last year for Accompli, a mobile email client that eventually morphed into Outlook for iOS and Android, and it's expected that Microsoft will have much the same attitude when it comes to Sunrise. |
| Posted:  There are so many brilliant features and powerful tools available for free with GIMP that you'll wonder why anyone pays for Photoshop any more. Why you need itIt may be the most famous image editor on the market, but Photoshop certainly comes with a hefty price tag. But that shouldn't mean you have to go without powerful imaging software, and that certainly seems to be a sentiment shared by the creators of GIMP. GIMP (short for GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free alternative to Photoshop that more than holds its own. But don't think that the lack of a price tag means GIMP is lacking in features; it packs enough punch to genuinely rival Adobe's imaging behemoth. It comes with impressive selection and montage features, various ways to retouch your images, cropping, noise reduction and colour adjustment tools, customisable brushes, gradients and so much more. There's plenty for the more advanced user, too, including layer masks, bezier curves, filters and even an animation package. The interface is highly customisable, and the GIMP community has produced a ton of excellent plugins that are all free to download. The program is loaded with tutorials and there's plenty of assistance to be found in the active and helpful community, so don't worry if you get stuck – help is always at hand. We don't have space to even begin to scratch the surface here, so download GIMP and find out exactly why it's such a popular free alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Key features
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| Downloads: The best free apps for your gaming PC Posted:  Gaming on the PC is still a thriving business, despite the success of consoles such as the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. However, the 3D graphics used in the latest games can put a real strain on your PC. Fortunately, we've got some great free apps that can help you fine-tune your PC's gaming performance. We've also found some useful apps that can help you find the best games on sale, and even record and upload your own gaming videos onto sites like YouTube or Twitch. 1) SteamIt isn't the only online store for buying and downloading PC games, but Steam is far and away the biggest. It offers a vast library of games, both old and new, and is now responsible for more than 60% of global sales of PC games. As well as selling new games, the Steam app lets you download free demos and runs special offers on older games too.
There's also a Community section where you can join discussions with other gamers, or check out the workshop where fans develop their own 'mods' – modifications – that add new content or features to your favourite games. 2) Game BoosterEven when your PC looks as though it's sitting idle, it's actually running many different processes – programs or other Windows features that run in the background and take up processor power and memory. Game Booster allows you to turn off these processes in order to devote maximum power and memory to your games.
It also includes a Tweaking option that lets you fine-tune other Windows settings, plus a diagnostic tool that can help you analyse crashes or other problems on your PC. It's not a tool for beginners, though, as you'll need a bit of technical know-how to understand some of the techno-jargon that it throws at you. 3) MSI AfterburnerAfterburner was originally designed for MSI's own range of graphics cards, but it will work with most graphics cards that use Nvidia's GeForce processors or Radeon processors from AMD.
The app allows you to adjust a variety of settings in order to improve the performance of your graphics card. The two key options are for increasing the clock speed of your main graphics processor, and the video memory attached to it (hence the term 'overclocking'). Fiddling with these settings can cause your PC to overheat if you're not careful, so the app also monitors the temperature of your graphics card and even allows you to speed up the internal fan to help keep things cool. 4) Nvidia GeForce ExperienceYou should always keep up to date with the latest drivers for your graphics card, but Nvidia's GeForce Experience does a lot more than just check for driver updates. Now installed on more than 35 million desktop and laptop PCs that use nVidia graphics cards, GeForce Experience can analyse your PC system and then automatically adjust the graphics and other settings on your games in order to achieve the best performance.
It also includes a feature called ShadowPlay that allows you to make video recordings of your games sessions so that you can upload them to sites such as YouTube or Twitch and become an online gaming superstar. 5) FrapsSpeed is crucial in action games, and a few extra frames per second can make the difference between winning or being blown to smithereens. Fraps can help you fine-tune the performance of your PC by displaying the frame rate up in one corner of the screen while you are running any of your favourite games.
This allows you to experiment with different graphics settings so that you can get the right balance between speed and eye-popping graphics effects. There are a number of different options available, including the ability to record minimum, maximum and average frame rates, so you can analyse the performance of your PC in great detail. 6) Voice-chat appsWhether you're playing a co-op game with just three or four people, or taking part in a World Of Warcraft raid with hundreds of your guildmates, you'll need a good voice-chat app to let you communicate effectively in the heat of battle.
There are three main voice-chat apps that dominate the gaming scene – Teamspeak, Mumble and Ventrilo – and each one has its own strengths. Mumble is technically very slick, but Ventrilo is widely used on massively multiplayer games like World Of Warcraft, while Teamspeak also runs on Macs, Android and iOS devices too. Ultimately, though, your choice will probably depend on which one your guild or team is already using. 7) HWiNFOHWiNFO is a bit like a souped-up version of the Device Manager that is included as part of Windows. However, it provides much more detailed technical info than Device Manager so that you can keep your PC running smoothly for games and other tasks.
If you want to experiment with overclocking, HWiNFO can monitor the temperature of each individual core within a dual- or quad-core processor. It can display a graph of memory usage so that you can see if there are any programs taking up memory that you need for your games. You can also monitor the performance of your network so that you get good upload and download speeds for online gaming. 8) OBSIf you want to show your gaming videos to the world then you'll need some software to help you stream your videos online. There are a number of broadcasting programs available, including XSplit and WireCast, but one of the most popular on gaming sites like Twitch is OBS – Open Broadcaster Software.
Although it's completely free, OBS provides lots of useful features, including support for both H.264 video compression and Intel's rival Quick Sync format. As well as simply broadcasting video footage from your games, OBS also allows you to create 'scenes' that combine video with other types of files, such as a voiceover recording or a webcam insert that shows you talking alongside your game footage. |
| Google's new Apple Pay rival may be the simplest payment option yet Posted: -470-75.JPG) Rumors of Google's new "Plaso" service prove two things: that the mobile payment war is just getting started, and that tech companies are running out of good code names. With Google Wallet being overshadowed by Apple Pay, Google is working on the new mobile payment service to steal some of the spotlight back, reports The Information.
Plaso reportedly activates when a user with the service enabled on their phone (and Bluetooth turned on) enters a store with the tech installed. It then lets users pay without even having to take their phones out of their pockets, according to the site's sources. Store employees would be able to access users' payment options by simply asking them their initials, which raises a lot of privacy and security questions. First and foremost: what if two people in one store have the same initials? Luckily Google can take its time to iron out this type of kink before announcing the Plaso service officially - assuming this rumor pans out to begin with.
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