Author: Dr. Bill

They are ramping up on the number of available Windows 8 apps, and many, actually most, are free!

Windows 8 store adds 7,000 apps in two weeks to pass 20,000 mark, almost 18,000 are free

“The Windows Store in Windows 8 has passed 20,000 apps. It’s not clear exactly when it happened, but Win App Update, which keeps track of the totals, posted on Thursday that the milestone was likely reached on Tuesday.

The last time we covered Windows 8’s store, it was at 12,895 apps on November 5. This means some 7,715 apps were added in the last 17 days. That’s more than 453 apps per day, which means the store’s growth is once again accelerating (Windows 8 was sucking down a firm 500 apps daily after its launch, but it had dropped to the 300s more recently).

At this rate, the Windows 8 store will easily pass the 30,000 mark before the end of the year, and may even near 40,000 apps. This is to be expected as the holiday season nears and developers start preparing to ride the Windows 8 wave. There will be millions of Windows 8 devices sold this month and next, so it makes sense app creators want to take advantage.

It looks like Microsoft is doing just fine on the quantity side of things. 20,000 apps is pretty damn good for a new store to achieve so quickly. Quality, on the other hand, is a different story, and will take much longer to improve.”

Now THIS is cool! Dreamworks animation tool was used to great effect in the new “Rise of the Guardians” movie! Now they are giving the code away! This is a great addition to the Open Source community!

DreamWorks makes ‘Rise of the Guardians’ special effects tool open source

“Yesterday DreamWorks released its latest animated feature with the holiday-themed Rise of the Guardians. But for animators who watch the film and wish they could do something similar, there’s good news — one of the tools used on the project is free and open source. Called OpenVDB, the tool is used to create volumetric 3D effects like smoke, and DreamWorks previously used it on both Puss in Boots and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. The studio’s hope is that by making OpenVDB free, it will eventually become an industry standard. ‘That ends up benefiting us,’ DreamWorks’ David Prescott told the Wall Street Journal.

The plan to go open source was originally announced this summer, and according to DreamWorks’ David Lipton, OpenVDB allows special effects teams to ‘overcome the memory limitations to which other data formats are subject.’ Just don’t expect animation house to start making all of its tools so readily available. ‘There’s other stuff that we’ve developed in house that we’re like, ‘No, you’re not getting that,” Prescott told the WSJ. You can learn more about OpenVDB at its official site.”

From the Dreamworks Press Release:

DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. (Nasdaq: DWA) today announced the launch of OpenVDB (openvdb.org), a previously proprietary sparse volume data format, to the Open Source community. OpenVDB enables a dramatic increase in the scale of achievable volumetric effects.

‘DreamWorks Animation’s technology in the hands of our artists has created our rich, iconic characters and worlds. Our OpenVDB technology in particular has been the focus of intense industry interest,’ said Dr. Lincoln Wallen, Head of Animation Technology at DreamWorks Animation. ‘We have benefitted from using Open Source, and we are pleased to contribute back into the Open Source community in sharing OpenVDB.'”

Microsoft’s DropBox alternative, SkyDrive, is ramping up. I hooked up mine in my Windows 8 build on my laptop, but I still, personally use DropBox!

By the way, if you would like to connect with DropBox, do me a favor (to give me space credit) and do it by clicking here: https://db.tt/vRTI68D

SkyDrive usage has doubled in the last 6 months, now you can select what to sync

“About 6 months ago, we released the first sync apps for SkyDrive making it easy to view and manage your personal SkyDrive from the File Explorer in Windows and Finder in OS X. We’re excited to announce that since then, you have put more and more of your files into your own SkyDrive and in the last 6 months, you’ve doubled the amount of SkyDrive storage being used.

We’re both humbled and excited by this pace of growth. While many of you have told us that you love being able to have everything in one place and access it from anywhere, you’ve also said that sometimes you want to be more selective with the files you sync to each device. So today, we’re releasing an update to our sync apps that includes the ability to select what you sync along with the ability to share files and folders right from the Windows File Explorer. In addition, we’ve just released a few updates to the SkyDrive apps for Windows Phone and Android improving how you access your SkyDrive across different devices. Between these updates and the way SkyDrive comes with Windows 8 and the new Office, we’re excited to see how fast your SkyDrive storage usage will grow in the next 6 months.

Select what to sync

With today’s release, you can now select which folders from SkyDrive are synced – making it easier to use SkyDrive with laptops or tablets with small drives. You’re in control. If you’d like to keep all your photos and documents in SkyDrive but only sync a folder of your most important documents to your laptop, you can do that – even if your desktop is syncing the full set. You can choose specific sub-folders to sync as well; you aren’t limited to your primary SkyDrive folders.”

Go NC State! Researchers there have come up with a cool way to increase WiFi speed in existing routers via a software upgrade! As much as 700%! How cool is that?

The end of slow public WiFi? Researchers develop new protocol that boosts WiFi performance by 700%

“Conferences, airports, cafes – they might offer free WiFi to visitors, but they are often sluggish in their operation because everyone else is hogging the connection.

This issue might become a thing of the past, after a team of engineers at NC State University (NCSU) announced the development of WiFox (via ExtremeTech), a new software protocol that could theoretically be added to existing Internet routers and is capable of boosting WiFi performance by 700 percent.

Traditionally, routers offer a single channel of data to users. When the access point receives an increased number of data requests, it becomes harder for it to send back the data it has requested. The access point could be programmed to give all pieces of data a high priority to clear its backlog, but then users have issues submitting new requests.

Data backs up, and the router has issues dishing out the necessary information to users. You may have experienced this when you turn up early to a conference, enjoy the public WiFi connection, and then get kicked off when the venue starts to fill up and you have to share it with everyone else.

NCSU engineers position WiFox as the software equivalent of a traffic policeman, ensuring that the data traffic moves smoothly in both directions. WiFox works by monitoring the traffic on a WiFi channel, intelligently detecting load issues and granting access to priority data when it detects a backlog of information passing backwards and forwards.

The team says that when they tested the software on a router in their labs capable of handling 45 users, it saw improvements of between 400 and 700 percent when it reached the maximum number of users. On average, the router was able to respond to data requests four times faster than a router that didn’t utilize the protocol.

Purely software based, WiFox has the potential to change the way heavily-trafficked routers operate around the world.

The NCSU team intends to present its research paper at the ACM CoNEXT 2012 conference held in Nice, France in December – from a purely selfish point of view, we hope it makes it into the access points offered by various technology companies at their product launches.”

My favorite office suite has a brand spanking new release!

LibreOffice

“The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.6.3, for Windows, MacOS and Linux. This new release is another step forward in the process of improving the overall quality and stability for any kind of deployment, on personal desktops or inside organizations and companies of any size.

LibreOffice has quickly become the de facto standard for migrations to free office suites, thanks to the growing feature set and the improved interoperability with proprietary software. Instrumental for the overall progress is the growing developer base, which has just reached the number of 550 since the launch of the project, making LibreOffice one of the fastest growing free software projects of the decade.

After the City of Munich and the French Government, which are migrating from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice, it is now the turn of several provinces in Italy, including the largest one in term of inhabitants. In addition, there are many private companies switching to LO, like the largest furniture manufacturer and retailer in Romania, with 1,000 Windows and GNU/Linux desktops.”