Valve releases Steam for Linux beta

We have reported in the past on Valve’s plans for releasing the Steam client for the Linux platform. Keeping true to that promise, the company has released the first beta that can be installed on systems running Ubuntu 12.04 and above.

To start off, you will be able to play Valve’s highly popular, online multiplayer, free-to-play game Team Fortress 2. If that’s not enough, there are a whole bunch of other games as well, including Amnesia: The Dark Descent, World of Goo, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Serious Sam 3: BFE and many more.

The client is fully featured and also includes the recently released Big Picture mode that is designed for use with a TV and controller.

Valve is currently working on bringing the platform to other Linux distros and bring more games to the service.

In other news, if you have an NVIDIA GPU in your PC, you should also be glad to know that NVIDIA has released a new GeForce R310 drivers for Linux, which promise up to double the performance over the previous drivers.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Microsoft killing Windows Live Messenger, will replace it with Skype

Microsoft is reportedly putting Windows Live Messenger to rest, and replacing the messaging client with Skype.

We got a first glimpse of Microsoft’s plans for their $8.5 billion purchase of Skype late last month when Microsoft enabled Facebook, Hotmail, and Windows Live logins through Skype. Now The Verge has caught wind from his sources that Microsoft may be taking this a step further by replacing Windows Live Messenger with Skype altogether.

The announcement that Windows Live Messenger will be put to rest after thirteen years since its founding, first introduced as MSN Messenger in 1999, may come as early as this week. The report adds that Windows Live Messenger’s backend is slowly being integrated into Skype, which means that the only change for existing Windows Live users is that they’ll have to login through Skype’s client.

Skype has already been married into Windows 8 as a default native app to the Microsoft operating system, and Microsoft is free to do with Skype as it wishes — so the decision makes sense. The news of Windows Live Messenger’s retirement however isn’t official just yet and users have yet to be notified of Microsoft’s intentions, so as for the answer to how tightly integrated Skype will be with Microsoft’s products, we’ll have to update you once we hear back from a spokesperson.

Windows Live Messenger has been in use by 300 million users per month in 2010, although we suspect that number has dwindled due to new competition Google Talk and Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, and of course the many mobile messaging apps on the market today. Skype’s CEO, Tony Bates revealed the latest figures show it had 250 million monthly users in May of this year.

Skype has been subject to a number of face lifts as of late. We’ve been content with the majority of the updates, but there have been just a couple of caveats. For instance all of the cross-platform integration means the Skype contact list is consequently flooded with friends, so users are either left to clean up with lists, deal with it, or forego using the new login integrations altogether. 

But the pros outweigh the cons. Messaging Facebook and Live Messenger friends on the Skype client is admittedly a far better experience. Skype acts as a prompt to video call friends you otherwise might not using Facebook. 

Pushing Windows Live Messenger clearly wasn’t in the forefront of Microsoft’s mind with the service since it’s Skype acquisition. With a robust messaging and video calling service like Skype, Microsoft has room to offer more comprehensive monetization strategies, like its conversation ads rolled out in June, as it doubles up Skype’s user base with existing Messenger users.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Letterpress, a new game for iOS from the creator of Tweetie

If you’ve used the Twitter client Tweetie or the official Twitter apps for iOS, Android and OS X, you have one person to thank for them: Loren Brichter. Brichter rose to fame with his excellent Twitter app, Tweetie, for iOS and Android. These apps were so good that Twitter acquired him and his apps and since then he made the Twitter apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and OS X.

Last year, Brichter left Twitter to continue working for his own company, Atebits. He has been secretly working on his own app since then and yesterday it was finally released on iOS. Say hello to Letterpress.

Letterpress is a two player, online multiplayer game similar to Scrabble, where you have a grid of 5×5 tiles consisting of letters. Your goal is to form words using these letters. The word should have at least two characters and you cannot repeat words. Once you select your letters, they get assigned by your team color. The opponent then has to do the same.

If you choose from the white tiles, that is those that have not been used, you get one point per tile. If you steal tiles from your opponent, you get one point and the opponent loses one point per tile. Once stolen, the tiles turn the color of your side. If you use your own previously used tiles, you don’t get any points. Eventually, you have to use up all the tiles on the board and the one with the highest score wins.

The premise is pretty simple but despite that the game is fun to play. What I really like about this game is how well made it is. From the UI design to the slick animations, everything is top-notch and shows that a great deal of care went into making the game.

Now here’s the best part: Letterpress is completely free for download. There is an upgrade option for which you have to pay $0.99. which lets you use various themes for the board and you can also play multiple games at the same time but even without upgrading the game feels complete.

Click here to download the game on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. You’ll need a Game Center ID to play the game.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

TweetDeck cleans up its act with design overhaul

TweetDeck has received a major redesign, with font size choices, and a new all-white look. All its missing is a single-column view.

Popular Twitter client TweetDeck received a major design overhaul today, which gives users more options to tweak the look and feel to their liking.

The most obvious new design aspect you’ll notice is the font change, which is far easier on the eyes than in the previous version. Moreover, users can now choose between three different font sizes: small (13pt), medium (14pt), and large (15pt). While this might not seem like that big of a switch, it is an instantly noticeable improvement over the previous design, which now seems almost unreadable by comparison.

An arguably bigger design change is the addition of a white theme, which can be turned on with the click of a toggle switch located on near the top-left corner of the app. The classic dark theme is still available, of course, for those of you who dislike the brightness of the new look.

To update to the new version, just follow these instructions, via TweetDeck:

The update is live now on web.tweetdeck.com. If you use the Windows app, just restart to trigger an auto-update. Chrome app users should restart Chrome to update the app and the updated Mac app is available now in the Mac App Store.

While TweetDeck, which is owned by Twitter, does not explicitly say so, the update appears to have fixed some of the window re-sizing issues that plagued the previous version — at least, re-sizing works far better for me now than it did before the update. As a TweetDeck user, my only remaining complaint is that the application no longer has a single-column view, as it did before Twitter scooped up the client and made it its own. In fact, you still cannot adjust the size of the app’s window to make it smaller than three-columns wide.

Why this is the case, I’ve yet to find an answer. But if you’re listening, TweetDeck, please, for the love of the microblogging gods, bring back the single-column view. Your heavy users will thank you. And if you don’t, we may be forced to switch over to Tweetbot, which does a great single-column view. That is, if Twitter doesn’t kill it off before we have a chance.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Skype app update for iOS adds photo sharing ability

The Skype application for iOS has been updated and now boasts the ability to let you send images to your contacts, something that you could only do through the desktop client before. There is no size limit on the images you upload so you can upload as big an image as you want, provided you have a suitable data plan.

Other changes include performance improvements, updated privacy settings, minor visual improvements and bug fixes.

You can download the Skype app for iOS from here.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Mixed messages: After API lockdowns, Twitter announces Bootstrap 2.1

After a tense announcement and even tenser silence from Twitter regarding stricter API regulations, developers were told last week what exactly would be happening. To summarize, apps seen as Twitter client alternatives are being targeted; they can only grow to so many users, they can only make so many API calls, and they can only know so much. The biggest take away from the announcement was that Twitter is erring toward the vague, keeping its cards as close to the chest as possible, and that developers will have to play a bit of a guessing game to keep the company happy.

The sentiments from third-party Twitter developers about all this range from slighted to outraged. Which is why, in light of the recent changes and Twitter’s tsk-tsk tone, its latest announcement is a bit of a surprise. Yesterday Twitter unveiled Bootstrap 2.1, its open source framework for Web developers.

“With Bootstrap 2.1, we focused on simplicity. We completely overhauled the documentation to make it easier for people just getting to know Bootstrap and Web development,” Twitter explains via blog post. “We placed more emphasis on live examples and succinct, thorough text to walk people through each aspect. And, as is the case with every release, we’ve added a handful of new features and made existing ones even better. But that just brushes the surface: we’ve closed over 100 issues in Bootstrap 2.1 – issues all reported and documented by the very folks who use it.”

There are a lot of very pro-developer messages Twitter’s sending with this post. From talking about how “amazed” the team is by what Boostrap has been used to do (mentioning this NASA project, the Rdio powered SoundReady, and the Digital Government initiative from the White House) and pointing out how much the Bootstrap community means to its growth, this is a well-timed announcement on Twitter’s part.

In reality, Bootstrap was built by two head Twitter developers, but it’s a development tool for the open Web – not for Twitter. It has GitHub to thank for much of its popularity and growth as well. It’s affiliated by Twitter, which gave its developers the resources they needed to build it. There’s no mistaking that Bootstrap has become a very important platform, and that Twitter’s to thank for its origins. But don’t confuse what’s happening here as a change of heart for its own platform’s outside devs.

The details surrounding the API changes remain fuzzy, though decidedly far more strict than when the site first launched. Twitter remains incredibly active regarding the open source Web movement, however, and it’s quite possible there are conflicting ideas about how to run the platform within the company – engineers and board members aren’t always going to see eye-to-eye, and making money and making a platform aren’t always going to line up. 

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Next version of uTorrent to include “featured torrents” as a form of advertising

The makers of popular BitTorrent client µTorrent have announced some changes that they will be making in the upcoming version of the application and how they plan on monetizing it.

So far, the free version of µTorrent offered to install toolbars during installation and that was the only source of revenue for the developers from the free version. The next version of µTorrent, however, will include something called “featured torrents”.

Featured torrents will be sponsored torrents that will appear at the top of your torrent list. These will usually be to content such as movies, music, games, software, etc. Of course, all of this will be genuine and offered directly by their respective owners. This is supposed to help encourage people to download genuine content and at the same time act as a source of income for µTorrent developers.

The featured torrents will only appear in the free version of the client and not in the Pro version.

For more information, click on the source link below.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com