Nokia Removes Here Maps from App Store, Cites iOS 7 Issues

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Lenovo plans to install Pokki's Start Menu replacement and app store on PCs

While Microsoft may have thought that it had overcome the negative reactions that accompanied Windows 8, the world's top PC manufacturer isn’t necessarily convinced.

Lenovo said Thursday that it will ship Sweetlabs’ Pokki, a utility that adds a replacement Start button plus a number of apps and discovery tools, on a number of Lenovo machines. Those will include IdeaPad laptops, ThinkPad laptops, and IdeaCentre desktops, within multiple regions across the world, the company said.

Acer made Pokki available on its own PCs in June, meaning that two of the top five OEMs will ship with the Pokki software preinstalled.

Lenovo’s choice to include Pokki on its machines doesn’t necessarily mean that users will be forced into using Sweetlabs’ Start Page alternative. But the Pokki Start button has a look and feel reminiscent of Microsoft’s earlier Windows OSes, which still appeal to a vast number of users. Microsoft reworked Windows 8.1—which is available in preview, and in final form in October—to allow more customization in the Start Screen, and to allow users to boot into the desktop if they so choose.

Microsoft did not imediately respond to requests for comment. Lenovo could not be reached for comment.

While Lenovo’s decision represents a vote of no confidence in Microsoft’s Windows 8 UI, the more interesting consequence is that Lenovo is now adding an alternative to the Windows Store. Although Microsoft recently topped 100,000 Windows 8 apps, it retooled its app store in the Windows 8.1 preview to make them more discoverable. Pokki’s store provides traditional Windows apps like Dropbox, and Windows Store apps like Skype. But it also has customized apps like a version of Instagram, dubbed Instagrille, which can provide its own revenue stream with in-app ads. (We’ve picked five Pokki apps that bring the best of the mobile environment to your desktop.)

SweetLabsPokki’s alternative to Windows 8 places apps in a familiar context. “We started SweetLabs to create the world’s largest app distribution platform for developers, and today’s announcement with the #1 PC maker on the planet, Lenovo, is a massive step in the right direction,” said Darrius Thompson, co-founder and chief executive at SweetLabs, in a statement. “We’re proud that Lenovo has chosen to enhance the out-of-box Windows 8 experience with Pokki, complementing Lenovo’s innovative devices with a better way for users to access and discover apps.”

One could argue, actually, that the addition of Pokki is a plus overall; though it cuts into an incremental source of revenue for Microosft, it boosts the Windows platform as a whole. Simply increasing the number of apps available to the platform, and making them more easily discoverable, should be a goal Microsoft can get behind. At this point, Microsoft should shrug off third-party Start alternatives—which will continue to thrive, even in the wake of Windows 8.1—and simply focus on selling more Windows licenses.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Rumor: Google Play Store Getting Redesigned

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Store Charges $125 To Downgrade Windows 8 Machines to Windows 7

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God Game From Dust Lives Again as Chrome Web Store Centerpiece

PC fans of God games had plenty to be excited about when publisher Ubisoft announced From Dust for PC last year. The game's designer, Eric Chani, is well known for his abstract early 90's masterpiece Another World, so the project seemed in capable hands. Moreover, he cited Peter Molyneux's classics Populous and Black & White as his primary influences, so the provenance couldn't be better. After a successful console release, it seemed little could go wrong. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. The PC port was badly botched with low framerates, no anti-aliasing support, video card compatibility issues and an overzealous DRM system riddled with bugs that plague users to this day. There's an alternative to the console version if you want to play frustration-free, however. Just fire up Chrome and play right in your browser, courtesy of From Dust in Chrome's Web Store ($10).

With these totems taken care of, things are looking green and leafy around this From Dust village.From Dust is the second high-profile game title ported to Chrome using Google's Native Client technology; the first was Bastion. Native Client allows legacy software to run inside the highly secure browser framework at near-native speeds with virtually no porting required. With support for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, mouse capture, fullscreen modes and more, it's a natural fit for resource-intensive games which see little performance degradation compared to their native, traditionally installed counterparts. What's more, the nature of this cloud-based gaming model eliminates issues arising from Ubisoft's disastrous UPlay DRM scheme. There is no need to install special software or make players jump through verification hoops. You just fire it up and play. It even works on both Linux and Mac OSX.

The game itself is a slickly executed take on the genre's classics. You play a god-like presence guiding a race of people to success and happiness via environmental manipulation, using a ball-shaped manifestation of force called "the breath." Using that ball as a cursor, you raise and lower land, redirect the flow of rivers and lakes, create paths for your people to follow to safety and more. The action is smooth, satisfying and easy to pick up. As your power grows, so do the effects you can create, which include the ability to manipulate lava, smother fires and redirect deadly floods to help your villagers thrive. Be careful, however, as performing miracles is tricky work. An imprecise wiggle of the mouse can wind up incinerating or drowning your villagers instead of saving them. When you're a god, there's a fine line between saving and smiting.

Ubisoft's From Dust for Chrome has pretty spiffy visuals for a browser-based game.Since From Dust's code has been transported largely intact, some of the original's problems remain. Foremost of these is the absence of an actual sandbox mode, a baffling omission given the near-requirement of such an option for this type of game. Related to this is a creeping feeling of pointlessness as each stage's goal becomes the reason for play, rather than the simple, open-ended enjoyment of developing your people to their full potential. The various level challenges play out like RTS puzzles, and while this is fun at first, it's easy to become detached enough from the proceedings that they start feeling like busywork. Populous had the novelty of a new idea and Black & White had its giant avatars to provide personality and a sense of occasion. From Dust is devoid of such flourishes, and while this doesn't ruin gameplay, it does prevent an otherwise good game from becoming a great one. On a more mundane note, anti-aliasing is also absent in this version and remains implementable only via FXAA injection tricks with Nvidia graphics cards .

RTS and God-game fans will nevertheless find plenty to like here, as titles of this flavor and quality don't come along very often. The best part is the price. At $10, Chrome's version of From Dust is the cheapest you'll find short of a holiday fire sale, and the browser-based delivery method is akin to getting a bugfix update for free. There are updated keyboard controls, new tutorials and much needed screen controls all absent in the PC version. There's even a fully playable three-level demo. Check it out, even just to see what Google's Native Client and Chrome are capable of pulling off.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Chrome Web store, where you can install the latest version directly into your Chrome browser.

—Jim Norris

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Amazon vs. Google Play: Which Store Offers the Most Content?

Number of Apps: 50,000 (Amazon Appstore), 600,000 (Google Play)

Number of Songs: 20 million (Amazon Appstore), Millions (Google Play)

Number of Movies: 100,000 (Amazon Appstore), Thousands (Google Play)

Number of Books: 850,000 (Amazon Appstore), 4 million (Google Play)

Searching for some of the most popular Android games, we found what we were looking for (“Angry Birds Space,” “Dead Space,” “Fruit Ninja” and “Triple Town”) on both Amazon’s Appstore and Google Play.

We had equal success (for the most part) when searching for the latest movies. Both the Amazon Instant Video Store and Google Play featured “The Hunger Games,” “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.” Inexplicably, however, Google Play didn’t carry the summer’s biggest box office-busting blockbuster, “The Avengers.”

Unfortunately, Google Play falls far behind the curve in its selection of older movies and television shows. When we searched for obscure 80's fantasy flick “Legend,” the closest title Google Play found was “Halo Legends,” a series of sci-fi shorts inspired by the video game of the same name. The service even drew a blank when we searched for classics like “Terminator 2,” “Aliens” and “The Longest Day.” Amazon’s video store, on the other hand, had all four movies ready to download.

Likewise, venerable sci-fi shows like “The X-Files” and “Twin Peaks” can be found on Amazon, but are missing from Google Play’s catalog. Even immensely popular series like “Friends” (and cult classics like “Arrested Development”) are absent on Google Play.

While Google Play may boast a selection of songs in the millions, it will be hard pressed to compete with Amazon’s robust store. When we searched for some of the most popular heavy metal bands from the 70's and 80's — including Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin — Amazon featured nearly a complete catalog for each band while Google Play offered merely cover albums.

 We found Google Play’s selection of magazines somewhat shallow as well. While you can subscribe to “PC Gamer” through both Google Play and Amazon, only the Appstore features digital subscriptions to popular magazines like “Martha Stewart Living” and “Time Magazine.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, less mainstream publications like “Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine” can only be found on Amazon.

Clearly, Google has a lot of catching up to do — and many licenses to acquire — before Google Play can truly compete with Amazon’s offerings. In the meantime, if content is your most important consideration when purchasing a tablet, go with the Kindle Fire.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

God Game From Dust Lives Again as Chrome Web Store Centerpiece

PC fans of God games had plenty to be excited about when publisher Ubisoft announced From Dust for PC last year. The game's designer, Eric Chani, is well known for his abstract early 90's masterpiece Another World, so the project seemed in capable hands. Moreover, he cited Peter Molyneux's classics Populous and Black & White as his primary influences, so the provenance couldn't be better. After a successful console release, it seemed little could go wrong. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. The PC port was badly botched with low framerates, no anti-aliasing support, video card compatibility issues and an overzealous DRM system riddled with bugs that plague users to this day. There's an alternative to the console version if you want to play frustration-free, however. Just fire up Chrome and play right in your browser, courtesy of From Dust in Chrome's Web Store ($10).

With these totems taken care of, things are looking green and leafy around this From Dust village.From Dust is the second high-profile game title ported to Chrome using Google's Native Client technology; the first was Bastion. Native Client allows legacy software to run inside the highly secure browser framework at near-native speeds with virtually no porting required. With support for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, mouse capture, fullscreen modes and more, it's a natural fit for resource-intensive games which see little performance degradation compared to their native, traditionally installed counterparts. What's more, the nature of this cloud-based gaming model eliminates issues arising from Ubisoft's disastrous UPlay DRM scheme. There is no need to install special software or make players jump through verification hoops. You just fire it up and play. It even works on both Linux and Mac OSX.

The game itself is a slickly executed take on the genre's classics. You play a god-like presence guiding a race of people to success and happiness via environmental manipulation, using a ball-shaped manifestation of force called "the breath." Using that ball as a cursor, you raise and lower land, redirect the flow of rivers and lakes, create paths for your people to follow to safety and more. The action is smooth, satisfying and easy to pick up. As your power grows, so do the effects you can create, which include the ability to manipulate lava, smother fires and redirect deadly floods to help your villagers thrive. Be careful, however, as performing miracles is tricky work. An imprecise wiggle of the mouse can wind up incinerating or drowning your villagers instead of saving them. When you're a god, there's a fine line between saving and smiting.

Ubisoft's From Dust for Chrome has pretty spiffy visuals for a browser-based game.Since From Dust's code has been transported largely intact, some of the original's problems remain. Foremost of these is the absence of an actual sandbox mode, a baffling omission given the near-requirement of such an option for this type of game. Related to this is a creeping feeling of pointlessness as each stage's goal becomes the reason for play, rather than the simple, open-ended enjoyment of developing your people to their full potential. The various level challenges play out like RTS puzzles, and while this is fun at first, it's easy to become detached enough from the proceedings that they start feeling like busywork. Populous had the novelty of a new idea and Black & White had its giant avatars to provide personality and a sense of occasion. From Dust is devoid of such flourishes, and while this doesn't ruin gameplay, it does prevent an otherwise good game from becoming a great one. On a more mundane note, anti-aliasing is also absent in this version and remains implementable only via FXAA injection tricks with Nvidia graphics cards .

RTS and God-game fans will nevertheless find plenty to like here, as titles of this flavor and quality don't come along very often. The best part is the price. At $10, Chrome's version of From Dust is the cheapest you'll find short of a holiday fire sale, and the browser-based delivery method is akin to getting a bugfix update for free. There are updated keyboard controls, new tutorials and much needed screen controls all absent in the PC version. There's even a fully playable three-level demo. Check it out, even just to see what Google's Native Client and Chrome are capable of pulling off.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Chrome Web store, where you can install the latest version directly into your Chrome browser.

—Jim Norris

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Store Your Logins in Norton Identity Safe

Users of Symantec's Norton line of security products have long had access to its password management tools. But you no longer need to be a paying Norton user to get access to Norton Identity Safe, a standalone product that makes password management a (relatively) easy task.

Norton Identity Safe automatically captures your logins as your surf the Web.Once you install Norton Identity Safe, you'll need to set up an online Norton account, or link Identity Safe to your existing account. You'll also need to set a master password for access to your Vault, which stores all of your login information. That's it: setup is simple. And then you're good to go: You simply surf the Web as you normally would. Norton's Identity Safe installs as a toolbar on your browser, and it works in the background, capturing your passwords as you go. Anytime you enter a password, Identity Safe saves your login details to your Norton Vault, notifying you of the activity via a small bar that appears on the top of your browser screen. The next time you visit that site, Identity Safe automatically logs you in. Rival product LastPass offers users slightly more control for users, as it asks you each time it saves a password. But if you want your password manager to save absolutely everything, Norton's approach will save time.

Identity Safe also captures personal details that you can use to fill in forms, and saves these profiles as Identity Cards, so you can speed up the process next time you need to enter the info. To manage your logins and Identity Cards, you click the Vault icon that Norton installs on your browser. This lets you bring up Identity Safe's organization tools, which are neatly arranged, making it easy to handle tasks like creating sub-categories of logins.

Identity Safe also evaluates the strength of your passwords and offers tips on creating stronger passwords, but its built-in password generator is a bit clunky. You have to visit Identity Safe's Web site to generate a password, which you then copy and paste back to the site where you'd like to use it. LastPass, meanwhile, generates a password for you seamlessly, without making you leave the original Web page. It's a much more elegant solution.

Still, Norton Identity Safe is a handy password manager with a slick interface. It's available as a free download until October 17, 2012 (Norton has not said what, if anything, it will charge for it after then).

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

—Liane Cassavoy

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

WIMM One Watch App Store Hands-On: Install Software On Your Wrist

To access the Micro App Store, users simply log in to wimm.com and click on the Micro App Store Beta link in the left nav. The current app store homepage loads containing a complete list of all the micro apps — 25 as of this writing — sorted into categories such as gaming, productivity and travel. For each app, there’s a thumbnail which matches its shortcut icon and a gray “Add” button next to it that’s clickable only if the app has not already been installed on your device.

If you hover over the thumbnail for a given app, a small description of it will appear. If you want to install one of the apps, you can click the Add button next to it and then wait until the next time your watch syncs with WIMM’s servers. You can set your watches to sync as frequently as once per hour or as infrequently as once a day, but you can also manually force an immediate sync by tapping the sync button in the settings menu on the device itself.

At present, all of the Micro Apps are available for free, but in the future, the Micro App Store will likely also be able to accept payments. If you want to remove an app from your device you can go to the Micro Apps control panel page on wimm.com which shows a list of all the apps on your device and lets you reorder their shortcuts or get rid of them by toggling the “visible” checkbox. After unchecking the visible box next to an app, that app’s shortcut will disappear from your watch at the next sync, though we’re not sure whether that means it is truly erased or just hidden.

To test out the app store, we installed a few of the available apps, including TwitUpdate, News Reader, Searchlight, and aFlashlight.

One of our favorite micro apps, TwitUpdate allows you to follow up to five users and / or search strings on twitter. The app shows five different screens, one for each Twitter feed.

You configure the feed by tapping on the blue title bar at the top of the screen and then entering either a user to follow, text to search for, or both. If you enter only the username, you see the latest three updates from that user on that screen. If you enter only a search string such as “laptops” or “#ces2012? that screen shows the latest three tweets from all of Twitter that contain that text. Of course, if you enter both “@laptopmag” and “smartphone” you can see the latest three tweets from the @laptopmag twitter account that contain the word “smartphone.”

Useful as it is, TwitUpdate has its share of limitations. First, you must use WIMM’s slow-moving on-screen keyboard, which makes you swipe through the whole alphabet to select each letter, to change TwitUpdate’s query stings. Second, it is limited to only the latest three tweets per screen and only five screens in total. Finally, there’s no way to view pictures or click on links that appear in the tweets. Still, it’s great to be able to see a friend’s latest tweets at a glance and we hope to see the functionality expand on this app as it evolves.

News Reader sets the gold standard for what is possible on a WIMM One watch. Using a Google Reader account, you can set the app to receive RSS news updates from all your favorite sites. If you’re too lazy to set up a Google Reader account, the app has built-in feeds from leading tech news sites like Engadget, Tech Crunch and Boy Genius Report.

Within the app, each screen contains a list of the latest headlines from a different news source. You can scroll side to side between screens to switch news sources or tap on an individual headline to read that article. The articles even have lead images that appear in full color. We used an earlier version of this app before the app store launched, but the latest version has improved formatting within the articles (paragraph breaks work now) and seems smoother than before.

As its name suggests, aFlashlight lights up the screen so you can use the watch to light your way in a dark room. The only neat feature here is that you can select the color of the light using a color wheel so, if you want a pink flashlight, you’ve got one.

Inferior to aFlashlight, Searchlight just shows a white circle on the screen to emulate a flashlight.

Long-time WIMM users will notice a small, but important change to the application menu which appears when you slide upward on the watch’s face. Where the old menu had an image of a large neverending cube behind the shortcut icons, the new menu has a simple but tasteful royal blue wallpaper and what appear to be larger shortcut icons.  

With the update, the screen also appears to have become a bit more responsive, sometimes seemingly too responsive. When shooting a video demo of the new UI and apps, we found ourselves accidentally pulling down the watch face when we were trying to rotate through shortcuts. However, when we put the watch on our wrist — rather than holding it in it in our hands — and were careful not to swipe upward — we had no trouble moving side to side in the apps menu or between screens within apps.

As you scroll between the icons, you’ll notice a small white bar at the top of the screen which shows you where you are in the row of apps. If you’re on the first shortcut, the white bar is all the way on the left and it moves further left or right as you swipe through the apps. If you want to swipe through apps more quickly, you can press and hold on left or right side of the blue wallpaper and the system will quickly scroll through the apps until you lift your finger.

WIMM says another key feature of the version 1.03 firmware update is improved Bluetooth power efficiency. We haven’t had a chance to test this feature out yet, but we’re hopeful that battery life with Bluetooth enabled will improve as our watch was dead after just 8 or 9 hours when we tethered it to our phone in the past.

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Microsoft Office Spotted on the iPad, Expected to Drop into the App Store Soon (Updated)

There are already other ways to get Microsoft Office on your iPad, but who can argue with an official version? Today, a report from The Daily claims that an iPad version of the Microsoft Office suite exists–and a staffer’s brief hands-on time with the product showed that it is a polished and capable app.

It comes as no surprise that Microsoft has developed the app; after all, the company has already shown willingness to develop for Apple’s slate, which is becoming a staple productivity tool among students and businessmen. On the Office for iPad app, you’ll supposedly be able to create Word, Excel and PowerPoint files and edit them both locally and online.

Just like Microsoft’s other dedicated apps, Microsoft Office for iPad flaunts details of the Metro UI. A leaked picture of the app running on an iPad reveals a button to create a new document, as well as separate tiles for Word, Excel and Powerpoint docs. In this sense, design-wise, the app doesn’t stray too far from Microsoft’s other iPad creations, including Bing and MSN. The Daily also notes that the app’s user interface is strikingly similar to the already-released OneNote app.

The first rumors of an official iPad app for Microsoft Office sprouted up last November. If The Daily’s sources are to be believed, the app is in its final stages and will soon be submitted to Apple for approval. Allegedly, there are no plans for an Android version.

Update: A Microsoft representative contacted The Verge this afternoon, saying, “The Daily story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation.” Additionally, the company reached out to ZDNet’s Microsoft watcher, Mary Jo Foley, and told her that The Daily‘s photo of Office for iPad “is not a real picture of a Microsoft software product.”

While it may very well be that this photo is fake, MS Office could still be coming to the iPad–but for now, we’ll have to work with a much vaguer timeframe.

via The Daily and The Verge

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FileTrek Lets You Collaborate, Store Projects, Track Changes...For Free

Sure, FileTrek offers 5GB of online storage for nada, zilch, zippo, aka no cash. That's a great deal in this day and age, when most online storage vendors are backing away from the free model. However, FileTrek is far more. It's a collaborative workflow manager and file revision tracking tool that may just change the way you work, as well as the way businesses manage their data and intellectual property.

FileTrek would be worth the download for the 5GB free storage, but the workflow and productivity tools make it intriguing.FileTrek consists of an online storage repository, local clients to track file usage (this is completely optional), and some very clever software. It's the latter two that make the service so interesting. Any file service could keep track of what's uploaded and downloaded from an account, even a shared one. But the FileTrek local client works in real time at a very granular level, tracking when a document changes, and even when parts of a document are copied to another.

FileTrek also works with multiple users within a workgroup that you define online. First you create a project, then you add users to it. Currently, project users have full access to any documents in the project. Once you've added files, you can either track their usage online or using the local client software. It's quite interesting to see "the fan" as File Trek calls it, or visual display of revisions, users, etc.

All versions of File Trek offer storage and syncing. The free version of File Trek only tracks users, while the $20 per month per user version tracks file revisions, and offers more granular management features. There's also an Enterprise version with more reporting and other features, though you must call for a quote.

At the moment, there's no locking of FileTrek documents. Users are on their own to check when someone else is editing a document and not work on it simultaneously. This freedom will work for some situations, in others it could lead to chaos. But this feature is in the works.

FileTrek is fascinating as a work in progress, though it's already very useful. All the applications for this level of revision tracking probably haven't even been thought out yet. Get it for the free storage, but definitely kick the tires on the collaboration and other features.

--Jon L. Jacobi

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Deal of the Day: Buy the Gateway ID Series ID47H02u and Get $200 Microsoft Store Credit

Shopping on a budget for a stylish laptop with good performance? Gateway’s ID47H02u may be the pick for you, with its ultra-thin aluminum design and fast processor. Already at a low price of $699, the ID47H02u comes with $200 worth of Microsoft Store credit and free shipping with a deal through LogicBUY.

When we reviewed the Gateway ID47H02u, we questioned whether it was the best 14-inch notebook out. And scoring four stars on our five-star rating, the laptop left a pretty good impression. We especially liked its thin, sleek design, long battery life and Dolby-powered speakers. This is an especially good pick for students and families who need a portable laptop but want a touch of style.

Base specs: 2.3-GHz Core i5-2410M, Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), 4GB RAM, SATA Hard Drive, 14.1 display, 1366×768 resolution, Intel HD Graphics 3000, 64MB video memory, Ethernet, HDMI, Kensington Lock, USB 3.0, VGA, 5-1 card reader

Gateway ID Series ID47H02u 14-inch 2nd Gen Core i5 Laptop + $200 MS Store credit for $699 through LogicBUY

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