YouTube has unveiled its own standalone video recording and editing app called YouTube Capture, which we found offered rudimentary editing tools, but was dead simple to use.

Today, YouTube introduced its first standalone mobile app, a point-and-shoot video recording and light editing app exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch called “YouTube Capture.” Now just about anyone can easily record a YouTube video without the expensive gear that amateur and professional videographers tend to carry around.

Since video editing programs like Final Cut Pro or Adobe’s Premiere Pro are expensive, complicated beasts to master, YouTube Capture has added some perks to the app to help make your iPhone videos into something that’s presentable, like image stabilization and basic color correction.

We checked out the app and found it to be no fuss way to record, quickly edit, and share videos to YouTube, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. When you open up the app, there isn’t a traditional landing page that you can access. Instead, it immediately opens up the camera with a red button centered at the bottom of the screen. To the left and right of the record button is the navigation. The gear button in the bottom left corner accesses your settings, while the bottom right button with the iconic YouTube play button opens up all your YouTube videos, those uploaded both before and after downloading Capture.

Citing ”Vertical Video Syndrome,” YouTube notes that Capture doesn’t actually allow you to begin recording a video until you tilt your phone horizontally, putting it into “landscape” mode, which prevents your recorded videos from having large black bars on either side of the picture. (You can turn this reminder off in the settings page.) Once you’ve recorded a video, the app opens up a new page where you can add a title, select the social networks you’d like to share your video to, or “enhance” (edit, stabilize, and color-correct ) the video.

If you’re editing a video, Capture enables users to correct the video’s colors automatically, and auto stabilizes the video for those of us with shaky hands. Sections of the video can be “trimmed” at the very ends of the clip. Capture doesn’t allow for full editing capabilities, but it does allow you to clean up your clip.

There’s also an option to add default music to your video from an assortment of “soundtracks,” including Dreams, Electronic, Happy, Melancholic, and many others. These are all free. There isn’t an option to add songs from your iTunes library, likely due to music licensing reasons. Based on our tests, we’d recommend that you add music to a video that has no sound, or else you’re in for a cacophonic mess. The music will overlap with the video’s sound, and right now there’s no way to edit the volume of the video only, although you can edit the volume of the soundtrack.

Video often takes a long time to upload, but you won’t have to worry about the upload process canceling should you navigate outside of the app; Capture will continue uploading behind the scenes.

Capture’s features are quick and dirty, and even simpler to navigate than competing apps, like Givit and Six3. But despite having fewer features than these apps, YouTube Capture is undoubtedly a very real threat in this sector.

Check out YouTube’s promo video for the app below:

Double Fine, the studio behind Psychonauts, Costume Quest, Iron Brigade and others, has largely been a console game developer for the past decade, but the high cost of releasing digital games on Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo's machines may push it to PC.

When Tim Schafer founded Double Fine more than ten years ago, it was with the intent of breaking into the video game console market. The iconic developer made a name for himself with PC games like Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, but the success of Sony’s PlayStation at the turn of the century indicated that the real money would be in living room game development. So Double Fine focused on consoles and delivered two cultishly adored commercial failures, Psychonauts and Brutal Legend, before turning to downloadable games. Now, with game consoles shrinking in market influence and becoming increasingly PC-like, Double Fine is wondering if it’s going to stay in the console business at all.

“We’d still like to be active in that space, we care about consoles, but unless they open things up a lot more like what we have on Steam… if they opened things up more it would be a more friendly place from our perspective,” Schafer told Polygon, “We’ve talking to them about this stuff, and you know, they hear us. They’re big companies and they can’t make changes overnight, but I think they’re taking that stuff into consideration. We’ll have to see what happens.”

For a perfect example of how Double Fine has fared better on PCs than on consoles, look at Psychonauts. Microsoft funded the game for development on the original Xbox, but after multiple delays, the game was dropped. Majesco later picked up the game and released it in 2005, but even with a PlayStation 2 port released, the game languished in obscurity. More recently it was released on Steam. “We’ve looked at the numbers on stuff like Steam. We made more on Psychonauts this year than we ever have before,” said Schafer.

He thinks that games like Psychonauts may thrive better on the next round of consoles, though. “Our fear was that the next generation was going to be only big AAA games. It was only going to be a place for Call of Duty and Halo. But we’ve talked to [console makers], and told people what things would be hard for teams our size with regards to consoles.”

Schafer points to costs like patches and certification as the sort of console-specific expenses that hamper a small team like Double Fine. The high cost of Microsoft’s patch process on Xbox Live Arcade has forced some developers to forego fixing games altogether. Fez creator Phil Fish said earlier this year that no patch would be released for his game because Microsoft wanted thousands of dollars to release the patch via Xbox Live, an expense that would have been free had Fish released it himself for PCs.

Ruben Fleischer has one simple reason for wanting to direct the game-to-film adaptation of Spy Hunter: He doesn't think they'd ever let him tackle a James Bond movie.

If you’re in the habit of following video game to movie adaptations (morbid curiosity perhaps?) you’re likely well aware that Spy Hunter is one of the most infamous projects in history. The movie has been in some form of production for at least the past decade, and names attached to the film include Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Vin Diesel and John Woo. How it hasn’t accidentally been made by now is anyone’s guess, but with new director Ruben Fleischer on board, it seems that this film has a real shot at actually hitting theaters.

Fleischer is a director you’d know best from the brilliant horror spoof Zombieland — the Bill Murray cameo alone earns Fleischer endless praise — but he’s apparently got a thing for fast cars and cool secret agents. In explaining why he would ever want to take on a seemingly cursed project like Spy Hunter, Fleischer states simply that he’s always wanted to do a James Bond movie but he doesn’t believe that the British rightsholders (EON Productions) would ever let him. Spy Hunter then serves as his fall back: A film that is close enough to the Bond style that Fleischer can fill it with all the ideas he would have otherwise used in bringing Ian Fleming’s famous spy to the silver screen.

“If I can make any movie, it would be a James Bond movie,” Fleischer told ComingSoon.net. “I’ve always loved the genre but I don’t think they’ll hire an American to direct a James Bond movie, I’ve been told, so for me, Spy Hunter is an opportunity to create a new spy franchise.”

“It sounds silly but that was my favorite video game when I was a kid and it had a great title and a great theme song, but there’s no real other associations that people have with it other than a cool car, so I feel like there’s a lot of room for us to invent a new character and a new series,” Fleischer added. “I think just the Spy Hunter that is the most bad-ass spy who hunts down rogue spies is a really cool launch pad for an idea and I hope that we can bring it to life.”

While we are obviously cynical about the project as a whole, one can’t deny that Fleischer certainly has a passionate interest in the project. Plus, you’ll notice that he mentions the game’s theme? Ask anyone who played the game either in the arcades or on a home console what the most memorable part of the game was and they’ll instantly say it’s the intensely-hip-for-1989 Peter Gunn title track. Yes, that’s a small element to focus on, but it does indicate that Fleischer is actually a legitimate fan of the video game source material. Given the number of directors who churn out video game films despite having an obvious lack of familiarity with the game their flick is based on, we’d like to see this as a positive indicator.

Or maybe we’re just giving Fleischer too much credit for that Bill Murray cameo scene.

While the Nokia Lumia 920 is a solid phone overall, its biggest draw is the PureView rear camera capability.

That said, the camera is amazing at image-stabilization and low light, but has been receiving complaints about daylight photos being blurry. The good news is that a fix is in sight. It is being reported that Nokia will be changing the camera software for the Lumia 920 and will hopefully resolve some of the issues in an upcoming update.

Some sample shots from the new software have shown noted improvements with the issue so far.  It is refreshing for a manufacturer to take note of feedback and work to quickly resolve the shortcomings.  The update is set to be released later this month. Other improvements will include a fix for the random reboots reported and Wi-Fi stability fixes.

Are you a 920 owner and have you experienced these issues? Looking forward to this new update?

NASDAQ has issued its annual NASDAQ-100 Index and games publisher EA is no longer a member.

Each year the NASDAQ stock market compiles a list of the top 100 non-financial companies in the world based on criteria not limited to, but heavily dependent on, a company’s fiscal performance over the preceding 12 months. Last year both EA and Activision were on the list. This year only Activision made the cut. The reason?

Where does one start?

Perhaps it was the 40-percent drop experienced by EA shares since December of 2011. Or maybe it was the perceived failure of BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, a big-budget MMO that was supposed to supplant World of Warcraft as the king of the genre, before the publisher changed course and decided the game should instead adopt the free-to-play business model only a few months after its debut. Then again, maybe the NASDAQ officials are just huge basketball fans miffed that EA canceled NBA Live ’13.

Whatever the reason, at least EA can take solace in the fact that it’s among good company. Other notable firms dropped from the NASDAQ-100 include Netflix and RIM (the company behind the archaic yet surprisingly ubiquitous Blackberry).

Though NASDAQ isn’t in the habit of explaining each of its ranking decisions directly, NASDAQ executive vice president NASDAQ John L. Jacobs did offer a catch-all statement to explain the rationale behind this year’s Index. Most of it is congratulatory toward those companies new to the list, but it does include the following:

Our objective re-ranking process ensures the NASDAQ-100 remains a relevant investable index that is the underlying benchmark for about 7,100 products in 22 countries with a notional value of about $1 trillion.

Further, Jacobs claims that all companies on the list must comply with NASDAQ’s established guidelines for the NASDAQ-100 Index (and that those not on the list are not in compliance). A full list of those guidelines can be found on NASDAQ’s website, though it does little to explain specifically why EA fell from grace. 

What does this mean for EA? Well, the NASDAQ-100 is a list designed to highlight the 100 best companies to invest in in any given year. If you slip from the list, your firm is less likely to receive crucial investment money. While we doubt EA is going to face bankruptcy as a result of this decision, it’s certainly not great news for the publisher. Hopefully it can use this black spot as motivation to do better during the course of 2013.

Excitement has been stirring in Europe since the announcement of the the 5 inch 1080p HTC Butterfly. So much so that UK Expansys started offering up the Butterfly for preorder in the UK. One site, Coolsmartphone, decided to get in on the preorder action.

While Coolsmartphone was not told a date of availability or even a price for that matter, it was a shot in the dark that the site was willing to take.  This last weekend they received an email from Expansys explaining they would not be receiving the device in the UK:

Thank you for your recent interest and preorder of the HTC Butterfly. Unfortunately, we have now been informed by HTC that this device will not be available in European markets, and as such we have had to remove it from our website and cancel your preorder.

It certainly seems like a strange move to leave the Butterfly out of the European market when they brought it to the US already as the HTC Droid DNA.

At this point, all Europe can do is hope that it is still coming perhaps using yet another different name. Did you have your sights set on the Butterfly?  What phone will you get instead?

Frontier, the developer behind the long-awaited reboot of the Elite series, laid off 14 people last Friday, claiming their roles at the company were "redundant."

When UK-based games developer Frontier announced plans to revisit the long-dormant, fan favorite Elite series, people lined up to donate to the firm’s Kickstarter. As of this moment, the fundraiser for Elite: Dangerous has raised £784,850 (a little over $1.27 million USD), and has 18 days left to pull in the remainder of its £1,250,000 goal. You’d think that at a time like this the company would be gearing up to put all that money toward the development of the game; investing in better technology, hiring new staff, that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, you’d be completely wrong. Instead, Frontier is laying people off.

As of 6PM on Friday, December 14, roughly 6 percent of Frontier’s staff received notice that they were no longer employed with the company. This morning, Frontier managing director David Walsh confirmed the layoffs to Eurogamer, saying that the roles occupied by these 14 people were redundant, and that the company plans to hire other people to better balance its developmental skill set.

“Frontier regretfully has given a total of 14 people (from a staff of 233) notice that their roles are redundant, across art (9), animation (3) and audio (2) disciplines,” Walsh stated. “This is due to the changing mix of skills requirements for our current and future projects — it is not a reflection on the company’s prospects, which remain healthy.”

Okay, that’s understandable, but isn’t it still a bit Dickensian to lay anyone off 11 days before Christmas? Walsh claims the dismissals were an effort to ensure that these employees would be able to find new employment as quickly as possible.

“Once we took the decision to make the roles redundant, we felt it was better that the affected people knew ASAP so they can plan any further expenditure over the Christmas period accordingly and focus on their search for new roles as soon as possible,” Walsh said.

Whether you believe Walsh or are currently hoping that he’s visited by a trio of spirits on Christmas Eve is a matter of personal opinion, but it does seem inarguably odd that the company would only realize and act on these redundancies once it neared its Kickstarter goal. Whether they will have any impact on the eventual quality of Elite: Dangerous is anyone’s guess at this point, but that’s really beside the point. 14 people are now out of a job in what is supposed to be the most jolly time of the year. We wish them luck.

Valve has added another studio to its stable of developers. Star Filled Studio, co-founded by two of the minds behind Diablo 3 and Plants Vs. Zombies, was acquired by Valve just weeks after the studio opened for business.

Most independent studios need to finish and release a successful game before they become an acquisition target, but not every studio has the pedigree that Star Filled Studios has. That’s likely why the company was snapped up by Half-Life creator and Steam overlord Valve well before the studio had even finished a project.

Star Filled Studios co-founder Tod Semple revealed that the studio had been purchased by Valve like so many professionals do these days: By updating his LinkedIn profile. “My recent startup was acquired by Valve and we are opening a new office on the San Francisco peninsula,” wrote Semple.

Semple indicated in September that he and Jeff Gates, his partner at Star Filled Studios, were meeting with Gabe Newell at the headquarters of his growing empire. “Jeff and I are flying up to Seattle today,” wrote Semple on his blog, “We are going to go visit Valve and check out all the cool stuff they are working on and see if there are any business opportunities. I’m pretty excited about this trip!” It turned out the opportunities available were more substantive than he expected.

Both Semple and Gates have impressive track records in the video game industry. Gates was one of the people responsible for starting up Paypal back at the turn of the century. He also created the unicellular introductory mode in Maxis’ divisive Spore, worked on Diablo III during its prolonged production at Blizzard, and was one of the minds behind PopCap’s Plants Vs. Zombies.

Semple worked alongside Gates on Diablo III during the middle of last decade. After working on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed at LucasArts, he reunited with Gates, working as the programmer on Plants Vs. Zombies.

The enormous success of Plants Vs. Zombies is no doubt the source of Valve’s interest in the duo. Their game helped PopCap Games’ revenue break $100 million for the first time back in 2010, which in turn made that studio an acquisition target for Electronic Arts. EA paid a reported $1.3 billion for the company in 2011, and Semple stayed at EA through the transition before founding Star Filled Studios in September.

Prior to the Valve buyout, Semple and Gates were looking to hire an artist for their studio. Now they will be able to avail themselves of one of gaming’s most creatively potent talent pools around. It will be very interesting to see what they produce.

Soure: GamesIndustry International

LittleBigPlanet 2, NHL 13 and Rayman Origins are just three of the games seeing massive discounts as Sony celebrates the holidays by slashing prices on 40-plus games.

It’s December 17, barely a week before Christmas, and you’ve finished all your shopping, wrapping and baking duties. You plop down on your couch, exhausted, and think that it’s high time you did something nice for yourself. Maybe pick up a new game. Fortunately, if you own either a PlayStation 3 or a Vita Sony just made indulging yourself a whole lot easier.

In an effort to highlight the best the PlayStation Network Store has to offer (and, presumably, to drive up end of the year sales figures), Sony has revealed plans for an ongoing sale lasting from now until the end of the year. Discounts start at 30 percent off, though PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to pick up any of the games available at half price. While the sale itself technically doesn’t end until December 31st, Sony plans to change the list of titles on offer each week, so if you don’t see something you like one week, the company urges you to come back seven days later to see if it’s marked down something you would be interested in.

Have a look at the games Sony’s offering from now until December 24, courtesy the official PlayStation.blog:

• Catherine (Sale: $27.99, PS Plus: $19.60, Regular: $39.99)
• Counter Strike Global Offensive (Sale: $10.49, PS Plus: $7.35, Regular: $14.99)
• Dyad (Sale: $10.49, PS Plus: $7.35, Regular: $14.99)
• Escape Plan (Sale: $10.49, PS Plus: $7.35, Regular: $14.99)
• I Am Alive (Sale: $10.49, PS Plus: $7.35, Regular: $14.99)
• LittleBigPlanet 2 (Sale: $13.99, PS Plus: Free, Regular: $19.99)
• LittleBigPlanet PS Vita (Sale: $24.99, PS Plus: $17.49, Regular: $35.99)
• Magic: The Gathering – Dules of the Planeswalkers 2013 (Sale: $6.99, PS Plus: $4.90, Regular: $9.99)
• NHL 13 (Sale: $41.99, PS Plus: $29.40, Regular: $59.99)
• Rayman Origins (Sale: $13.99, PS Plus: $9.80, Regular: $19.99)
• Rayman Origins PS Vita (Sale: $20.99, PS Plus: $14.70, Regular: $29.99)
• Resident Evil 4 (Sale: $13.99, PS Plus: $9.80, Regular: $19.99)
• Retro/Grade (Sale: $6.99, PS Plus: $4.90, Regular: $9.99)
• Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition (Sale: $10.49, PS Plus: $7.35, Regular: $14.99)

Mega Man's been throwing fireballs since the early '90s, but today marks the first time he can ever thrown down with Ryu. Street Fighter X Mega Man hits the web as Capcom announces a new slate of re-releases, but the series remains in limbo.

As promised, Capcom extended an olive branch to fans of its quarter-century old action series Mega Man on Monday morning, giving an official publisher-release release for the fan made Street Fighter X Mega Man. Seo Zong Hui, the man behind the new downloadable, wanted to make a fitting tribute for both of Capcom’s series that turned 25-years-old in 2012, pitting the diminutive Mega Man (or Rockman for Japanophile purists) against eight world warriors from Street Fighter. Each fighter, including the original fireball thrower Ryu and relative newcomers like Street Fighter IV’s C.Viper, wait at the end of platforming stages styled after the original NES Mega Man games, much like the last Capcom-developed Mega Man game, 2010’s PSN/XBLA/PC/Wii release Mega Man 10. The game is free of charge.

Capcom also announced that it would be offering fans of the series some additional downloadable titles, albeit for tidy sums of cash. Starting Dec. 27, Capcom will start releasing the Mega Man 1 through 6 on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in the US. The NES games have already hit the eShop in Japan and Europe, but now Americans will be able to slowly enjoy those games over the next year. Mega Man 2 will follow on Feb. 7 and the others will be released bimonthly throughout the year under the guise of a prolonged 25^th anniversary celebration for the series.

There is a pattern within these releases: Each of them cost Capcom nothing to distribute or develop. Hui actually developed Street Fighter X Mega Man for his own edification. “I wanted some practice with game programming, so I decided to make something for practice,” Hui told Kotaku recently, “I managed to find some images online for Mega Man, and made something from it just for programming practice. At the that time, 8-bit pictures were popular so I made some gifs of Street Fighter in the same style to test the response from the community and used Ryu as a test on the game engine I was building on. The results were great so I decided to continue working on it.” Ultimately Capcom didn’t need to put any effort or resources into the game’s creation. A low risk way to keep the brand around.

Capcom Japan’s unwillingness to recommit to one of its most famous series persists in the wake of series creator Keiji Inafune’s abrupt departure from the company in 2010. Multiple Mega Man projects, including the ambitious free-to-play, community based MMO Mega Man Universe where people could create their own Mega Man levels and characters, were unceremoniously cancelled following his resignation. Pride, not profits, seems to be keeping the series down.

Facebook will reportedly release its own version of Snapchat, the "sexting" app known for its ability to create and send self-destructing mobile photos. Facebook's app is expected to launch before the end of the year.

It might not really matter that Snapchat has been getting a negative rep from the press as of late as a “sexting” app. Sources tell AllThingsD that Facebook has recognized the potential of such a service, plans to release its own adaptation of the popular timed photo and messaging app before the end of the year.

Snapchat, if you’re not familiar with the app, sends messages, photos, and now videos between users that expire after one to 10 seconds. The amount of time that the sent message is on the other person’s phone is entirely up to the sender. It’s become a popular way for teenagers and college students to send “secure” messages. However, if you really wanted to save a specific message, there’s always the option to do a screen grab on your smartphone.

Whatever the case may be, Facebook wants to grab a piece of self-destruct messaging pie. Facebook’s version of Snapchat will live outside of Facebook’s native mobile app as a standalone app much like what the social network has done with Facebook Messenger, Facebook Camera, and others. And the app will reportedly mimic Snapchat’s core features, meaning that users can send timed messages through an interface that’s said to be inherently familiar to existing Snapchat users. Whether video messaging will be supported hasn’t been confirmed. We’ve reached out to Facebook for a comment, and will update this space with any response.

Facebook already has its fair share of mobile messaging products that have been upgraded to reflect the market’s current features in messaging. For example, Facebook has been coming to grips with its potential to compete with SMS text messages, and recognized that to dominate mobile, the social network needs to face off with apps like Whatsapp. To do this, Facebook responded by updating its Android app so users wouldn’t be forced to sign up with a Facebook account. Instead new users can sign up with just a name and a phone number. And then, of course, there’s Instagram, the Facebook-acquired ppp that currently dominates the mobile photo-sharing space.

What do you think of Facebook’s plans to release a Snapchat clone? Is this a good move for the social network, or is one “sexting” already too many?

IBM's vhief innovation officer predicts computers and humans could start to share more similarities in the near future.

Bernard Meyerson, the chief innovation officer at IBM, wrote a blog post Monday offering his forecast for the five biggest inventions that will change the world over the next five years. The company is throwing its weight behind the concept of cognitive computing, or machines that can learn from the people using them and “help us think.” As part of the Next Five in Five post, five IBM scientists have given their thoughts on how, within the next five years, technology will be able to more closely mimic the five senses.

For touch, they’ve predicted that you may be able to feel objects through a smartphone. Computers could also be taught to see rather than just display images by seeking out patterns in pixels. Giving computers the ability to hear could provide benefits from canceling out background noise on a conference call to better communication with animals. IBM has predicted that analyzing taste could help combat public health issues such as obesity and malnutrition. Finally, a sense of smell would allow you to check your blood alcohol level on your phone, or have your computer tell you when you are getting a cold. 

The IBM Next 5 in 5 is related to the company’s bigger project called Smarter Planet. The goal of that agenda is to obtain better, more efficient management of our existing systems through interconnectivity, instrumentation, and computing intelligence. Having smarter, nimbler machines is a big step toward that goal. Meyerson gives the example of a robotic track inspector in a railroad tunnel that can not only identify problems, but can respond to its surroundings and thus get out of the way before a train crashes into it. 

Lest you fear that IBM secretly wants computers to take over the world, Meyerson offers a more symbiotic and collaborative outlook. “In the era of cognitive systems, humans and machines will collaborate to produce better results – each bringing their own superior skills to the partnership,” he said. In Meyerson’s view, better machines can help overcome the problems posed by complexity and limited expertise while offering purely objective answers. Adding the capability of senses to a computer would mean people could collect and process even more information about sights, tastes, touches, sounds, and smells. 

It’s a compelling and very exciting view about the future of computing. If you want to get in on the conversation, IBM is using the hashtag #ibm5in5 on Twitter and is collecting votes on which of the five predictions is the coolest. 

Tired of living in a tech world dominated by Apple, DT contributor Andrew Kalinchuk is taking a huge leap. Armed with a Yoga 13 and a Lumia 920, he's signing up for an all-Microsoft life and his journey begins here.

I’m a university student. Every day, the first thing I see when entering a lecture is someone surfing Facebook behind that iconic, glowing apple. The second is usually a casual flick through Twitter on a gorgeous black iPhone that’s cruelly hidden beneath an ugly, bulky case. At times like these, I’m embarrassed by the MacBook Pro stowed away in my bag. It weighs me down emotionally and physically as I choose a seat. After lecture, on the train home, I’m surrounded by e-books opened on iPads and white cords snaking out of barely concealed iPods. I see Apple everywhere. Apple, Apple, Apple. The worst thing is, I’m guilty of it too; I contribute to my own madness. Until a week ago, I was shackled to a MacBook Pro; there’s an iPad in my nightstand; and an old iPhone hides in my desk.

To put it simply, I’m tired of Apple. I’m tired of product refreshes bringing nothing new to the table. I’m tired of endless pages of rounded icons. I’m tired of coffee shops full of shiny Apples. I’m tired of apps trying to look like physical objects. I’m tired of iPhone mania. I’m tired of OS X. I’m tired of “magic.” I’m tired of that annoying Launchpad. But most of all, I’m tired of watching a company I once admired for being a bold, risk-taker let its product line become – dare I say it? – pedestrian. Feel free to disagree with me. You won’t change my mind. 

This Apple-exhaustion has been building for a long time. First, I left my iPhone and tried Android for a while, though that only left a different, equally bitter taste in my mouth. I needed something more substantial, a replacement for Apple’s tightly integrated hardware ecosystem. With Android lacking the PC factor (I refuse to use a Chromebook), I only had one place left to turn: Microsoft.

Once the reigning king of personal computing, Microsoft has had a rough few years spent getting trampled by the competition, but lately all of that has changed. Microsoft is following in Apple’s footsteps, creating its own hardware, app ecosystem, and uniting Windows Phone with its desktop equivalent. Its long-awaited transformation is a tremendous achievement and I am ready to hide the coat tails, if only for the sheer thrill of it all. As of right now, I’ve decided to commit one hundred percent to Microsoft and all it has to offer. I’m retiring my current smartphone, tablet, and laptop to make room for a new Windows 8 hybrid and Windows Phone 8 device. And that’s not all, I’m also giving up my most beloved applications and web services to replace them with Microsoft alternatives. 

It all boils down to this – Microsoft is the crazy one now. Microsoft is the one that believes it has the power to change the world (and the way we use computers). The software is information-packed, touch-friendly, and introduces a new design to a flat lined market. The hardware, though it may be half-baked in the first round, is boldly attempting to marry the mobility of a tablet with the productivity found in a laptop. The Surface RT is closest to successfully fusing the two dynamics but needs more time in the oven before it will be ready for the big time. Rather than attempting to placate its consumers, Microsoft is showing us something different, a new way of computing we will learn to appreciate. Its pushing us out of our comfort zones and I am ready to be pushed.

I know going all in on Microsoft will mean losing the devices and applications I’ve grown to love. I also know it’s going to be a huge change and maybe I will hate it, but I have to try. Microsoft represents everything I want out of a technology company: it’s daring, visually appealing, fast, and cohesive. I’m not ashamed to say that I want to stand out; I want to take risks; and I want to buy into innovation not stagnation. 

I’m no stranger to switching operating systems. I’ve tried Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, webOS, Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 7, but I have never changed my technological habits this radically before. I mean it when I say that I’m starting fresh with Microsoft. It’s all or nothing. MacBook Pro? Gone. iPhone? Locked up. iPad? Left to die. Outlook will replace my Gmail account. Skype will take over instant messaging. Google+ is off-limits. I’ll be on SkyDrive not Google Drive. And Bing is my new preferred search engine. Feel free to alert me if I missed something! I want to be thorough.

I am sure you are all wondering what Windows devices will facilitate my transition from one walled garden to another. For that delicate task I have chosen Lenovo’s Yoga 13 for its inventive form factor, support of legacy apps, and integrated touchscreen. I’m using it to write this article and I can say that the last week with it has been equal amounts frustration and enjoyment. The first few days in particular were – to put it lightly – a nightmare, but I will get to that later. The Nokia Lumia 920 is my smartphone of choice. It has its share of problems, some more bothersome than others. However, I was immediately drawn to its laundry list of features, snappy performance, beautiful screen, and aggressive design. 

As I dive headfirst into the uncharted waters of Windows 8 and attempt to recreate the life I left behind, I will bring you along for the ride in this weekly series of articles aptly named “The Life and Tiles of a Windows 8 Convert.” Through my personal trials, you will see what it is really like to make the switch to Windows. I’ll start with my first impressions of Windows Phone 8 before moving right into my first and very painful experience with the Yoga. The road may be rough, but there’s no turning back now. 

Bring it on, Microsoft. I’m ready.     

Raspberry Pi's new app store could help encourage programmers, young and old, to keep learning and experimenting.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just launched a store for programmers to sell software, games, tools, and applications designed for the foundation’s tiny computers. For those unfamiliar, Raspberry Pi is a computer the size of a credit card that the founders want to use for teaching kids programming. The computer is little more than a USB port, RAM chip, and ports for video, audio, and HDMI. Just hook up a keyboard, mouse, and montior and you’re off.

The founders of the foundation, members of the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, realized that compared with the dot-com age of the 1990s, students in the 2000s were unlikely to have serious programming knowledge as computers got more advanced and more expensive. They wanted to create an inexpensive PC that could boot into a programming environment easily and wouldn’t break the bank. Raspberry Pi now has two models, one that costs just $25 and one that costs $35. 

According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, ”the Pi Store will, we hope, become a one-stop shop for all your Raspberry Pi needs; it’s also an easier way into the Raspberry Pi experience for total beginners, who will find everything they need to get going in one place, for free.” IndiCity and Velocix assisted with the Pi Store, which is offering 23 free titles at launch. 

There is an active programmer community that has grown up around Raspberry Pi, and the charity’s leaders said they hope the Pi Store will offer a place for those people to share their creations with a broad audience. In fact, they are encouraging the winners of the Summer Programming Contest to put their creations up on the store to earn a little pocket change. Developers can put their work up for free or as paid downloads, but even the free works will have a tip jar where fans of a particular piece can give a donation to the creator. The store could also make it easier for new programmers to dive into using the pint-sized computer. 

Image via Gijsbert Peijs

Planning a vacation? Don't start without a look at some of these helpful websites and apps designed to help relieve the stresses of travel.

Whether it’s the holidays or summer vacation, traveling can be a huge hassle if you aren’t prepared. Thankfully, there are some helpful pieces of technology to help ease everything you hate about going away, from checking in at the airport to finding the last minute best hotels. Here are some tips and advice on how to digitize travel.

Buying tickets

There’s a reason few people buy vacation packages from travel agencies anymore. Why bother waiting on quotes from agents when you can look up your own on a myriad of apps and site? Our favorite flight search algorithms include Bing Travel, which gives you a graph of price fluctuations so you can decide whether to wait for prices to go down or buy immediately, and Hipmunk, which presents available flights on a timetable, when the departure and arrival times are, and of course, prices. You can also use both sites to determine whether you want layovers, preferred time of travel, and overall flight duration. Bing Travel will also tell you estimates for other combinations of travel dates with lower prices – if you’re flexible.

Before the airport

Once you have your flight, hotel, rental car, and all other miscellaneous itineraries ready to go, you’ll need a place to put these all in. You could go with the folder or binder route, or use TripIt – a travel organizer app designed to hold all your confirmation numbers at the tip of your fingers. TripIt will also alert you if there are flight delays, and offer alternate flight options if yours get cancelled. You can also use the app to get airport location, your plane’s seating chart, and terminal maps for an idea of where the bathrooms and restaurants are.

Additionally, you should download apps from the airline you’re flying with so you can check-in before the airport and get an e-ticket right on your phone. That way, when you arrive, you can waltz right up to the baggage drop off and security check without waiting for a paper ticket to print.

After landing

You could pay for a tour guide to take you around a new city, or be your own and not worry about time restraints. There are tons of travel apps designed to help you explore major cities. Mtrip, for example, offers travel information, offline maps, and sightseeing directories. You can also input the number of days on your trip and preferred activity level and the app will design a custom itinerary so you don’t miss the highlights. Of course, other travel tips apps include the classic Frommer’s and Lonely Planet guides – for those who don’t want to carry around a book and look like a total tourist.

If you decide to take spontaneous trips and need last minute hotels, you can also look to the apps Hotel Tonight, Priceline, or Kayak for hotel deals in your area. Kayak and Priceline will offer more options and various range of star qualities, while Hotel Tonight offers curated selections of “Basic,” “Hip,” “Charming,” or “Luxe” hotels based on city neighborhoods. The apps will also tell you if the hotel has an on-site restaurant, fitness center, or Wi-Fi in each room.

For more apps and travel tips, check out our essential apps to take abroad and how to pack for travel guides.

Most may see this plastic toy as a piece of their technology past, but the gaming system was the glue that kept my family together in light of immigration, assimilation, and cancer.

Standing in the middle of the airport, I couldn’t understand why my cousins were sobbing uncontrollably. They didn’t do this when I visited Tokyo a few months earlier, or Hong Kong the year before. What was so terrifying about me taking a trip to America?

It was a month into my “visit to New York City” when my mother enrolled me in a local public school and I realized I wasn’t going home any time soon.

I moved to America from Bangkok in 1999; I was nine years old and it was two and a half years since my father had passed away from lung and liver cancer. We came here because my dad always dreamed my older brother and I would get an American education and become more than retailers in a Thai mall like he and my mom were. At the time, my English skills didn’t go beyond “Hello, my name is,” so when it came to finding friends, it was a matter of whoever liked playing cards the most (spoiler alert: fourth graders were too cool for cards – and foreign languages).

After my first five months in public school, my brother and I were placed in private school in order to extend our student visas. I began seeing much less of my mom, who had to work 19 hours a day to pay tuition and provide for us. The only time I saw her was between 6 and 7 in the evening, when she came home from her day job at a Fifth Avenue jeweler and made us dinner before heading to her night job as a waitress at a Thai restaurant. Because I was young and didn’t understand the sacrifice she was making, and because she never explained anything to us, I began to resent her when she wouldn’t walk me to school or take me to the mall on the weekend. What could be more important than spending time with me?

By Christmas, I was assimilated enough to know that I had to have a Nintendo 64. Everyone in school talked about how awesome GoldenEye was, and how Super Mario was the shit. I might not have been able to gossip about our math teacher, but I was desperate for something – anything – to have in common with my classmates. I remember the look in my mother’s eyes when she told us she couldn’t afford a Nintendo, as if she’d let us down yet again.

Two months later, she managed to find us hand-me-down system from one of her coworkers, whose kid had already moved on from the 64 to the Sega Dreamcast. My mom got the kid a new game, and she got a hand-me-down Nintendo in return. Dear Dreamcast kid, I hope you’re still playing Seaman because your dad made the worst mistake of his life. My mom did the opposite.

The Nintendo 64 provided a sort of solace I never knew I wanted. When I was stupidly hating my mom for denying time with me, I sought comfort in a round of Super Smash Bros. I practiced my English on Hey You, Pikachu! and considered it successful when that little yellow rat picked up the objects I told it to, or moved left and right as I directed. Paper Mario was the main reason I rushed to do all my homework – so I had time to finish the newest level before bed. When I got to school, I had something to chat about with my newfound American friends. I no longer felt like an outsider; they no longer looked at me as the alien.

The last game I bought for my Nintendo 64 was Pokemon Puzzle League. My mom is a huge puzzle gamer (to this day, she’ll still kick anyone’s butt at Tetris), so I thought we might spend time playing it together. Still, her job schedule didn’t allow it. I was used to her rejections at this point and learned to be content with entertaining myself.

Things seemed to be normal as new normal can be until the summer of 2003. I went into Elmhurst Hospital for a yearly checkup, and by then I knew how it went: The doctor places a funny circle with ear pieces attach to it on your chest and asks you to take a deep breath; you tell him you have no food allergies, he sticks some funny lights in your ears, and you leave with a lollipop. Instead, the doctor pressed his hands against the left side of my stomach and scrunched his eyebrows, asking if my diet changed recently. Then he referred me to the ultrasound department.

Three hours, one ultrasound, and one CAT scan later, I was strapped to a bed and rolled into an ambulance. The blaring van took off as my mom and brother watched and I was whisked away to the pediatric oncology department at Mount Sinai Hospital. I soon learned I had stage 2B pancreatic cancer, and that I would need surgery to remove the five-pound tumor attached to my pancreas and other lymph nodes.

Heartbroken and in fear of losing another family member to cancer, my mom quit her job to be by my bedside for the two-week recovery period. Every time she felt like crying, she walked out of the room to make phone calls to my aunts and uncles. She couldn’t stand to cry in front of me, her 13-year-old daughter, because she thought I would be scared. I wasn’t. When you’re a kid and don’t know the value of life and all that’s ahead, you’re fearless.

When I woke from surgery, to my surprise, a Nintendo 64 system had been wheeled into my room. I was the oldest kid in that department, and Mount Sinai let me keep the system until I was ready to go home. Naturally, my brother brought in all my favorite games from home, including Pokemon Puzzle League.

In the early days following surgery, I drifted in and out of a painkiller-induced haze. But I remember seeing my mom punching buttons, trying figure out the Nintendo controller so she could complete the Hard level of Pokemon Puzzle. When a nurse came in and laughed at a grown woman working so diligently on a Nintendo game, she responded that she needed to learn the game so she could play it with me during my recovery.

And we did. For two hours straight, we’d watch those little colorful gems twitch, turn, and disappear, and challenge each other to get better scores than the last game. When it came time for me to go home, my mom apologized for not being there as much as she’d like and promised to find time when things got better financially.

In 2005, I sold my Nintendo 64. By then, it had done nothing but collect dust because I was always at my friend’s house playing her brand new Playstation 2. I still regret the moment I packed the set and sold it at my local GameStop, walking away with a mere $100 dollars in credit. I remember returning to that GameStop to find my exact cartridge of Pokemon Puzzle League on display in the window, and I knew it was mine because the high score was always “NattG” or “Mom.”

Although the system and those games are no longer available for visitation, the fond memories will always remind me that gadgets can sometimes bring people together. In New York these days, it seems like we’re increasingly plugged in and removed from the world around us, but that Nintendo 64 connected me to a whole new country. More importantly, it connected my mother to me.

As expected, Instagram and Facebook will begin sharing the data they collect about users with each other. Some changes have already been made to Instagram's privacy policy, but the real updates will take effect one month from today.

Instagram will soon begin sharing your personal data with Facebook, according to an update on the photo-sharing service’s privacy policy. While you won’t have a choice whether Facebook has access to the information about you gathered by Instagram (or vice versa), the company assures users that your photo-sharing settings will remain in your control.

“We’re updating our Privacy Policy to highlight this new collaboration, but we want to make sure you understand that you still have control over who sees your photos,” writes Instagram. “You still get to choose who can see your Instagram photos, and you still get to choose whether you post your photos on Facebook.”

In a blog post about the policy change, Instagram reiterates this point, saying, “Nothing has changed about your photos’ ownership or who can see them.” The company says greater sharing of data between Facebook and Instagram “means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used.”

Instagram has already updated the “Parties with whom we may share your information” portion of its privacy policy to read:

We may share User Content and your information (including but not limited to, information from cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data, and usage data) with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that Instagram is part of, or that become part of that group (‘Affiliates’). Affiliates may use this information to help provide, understand, and improve the Service (including by providing analytics) and Affiliates’ own services (including by providing you with better and more relevant experiences). But these Affiliates will honor the choices you make about who can see your photos.

“Affiliates,” of course, refers to Facebook. Also note the “better and more relevant experiences” line. This type of vague, subjective language in a legal document (i.e. the privacy policy) may give cautious users pause, as it is impossible to decipher whether “better” means better for you, or better for Instagram and Facebook, or both. Point is, we just don’t know what that means. We have reached out to Instagram for clarification, and will update this space with any response we receive.

These changes to Instagram’s privacy policy should come as no surprise; Facebook effectively announced that it planned to share and collect more data from Instagram when it put its own policy changes up for a vote in November. Facebook users who voted on the changes overwhelmingly opposed them. Because less than 1 percent of Facebook users voted on the policy changes, however, Facebook still put them into effect.

Thought some changes are already in place, the full versions of Instagram’s new privacy policy and terms of service will go into effect January 16, 2013.

Remember the Sony Xperia Yuga? It’s been mentioned a few times in the past as a possible 1080p smartphone from Sony. It’s been spotted in FCC filings and more. But now we also have an alleged photo of the device.

In the past we’ve had similar “leaks” only to discover that they were photoshopped images. This image could certainly turn out the same way, so take this all with a grain of salt. Based on what we (think) we know, the phone might have a somewhat minimalistic design but has a fancy glass backing that is similar to the LG Nexus 4.

We don’t know everything about Sony’s big-screened beast, but we do believe we know it will feature a 5-inch display and will be powered by a Qulacomm chipset, most likely the S4 Pro.
When are we going to see the phone show up? More than likely at CES 2013, if we had to take a bet.

If this all proves legit, would you be interested in a 5-inch Sony handset or not?

Need to keep tabs on the location of a cellphone of any kind? Consult this guide for tips and tricks on how to do it.

If you need to track down a cell phone, you’ve come to the right place. Whether you’re simply trying to track the location of your lost phone, or you’re a secret agent and you need to gain intel on the day-to-day whereabouts of a crooked diplomat, we’re here to give you the information you need to get the job done. It’ll be easier if you’re tying to track a smartphone, but there are ways to locate older phones as well, so don’t give up hope if you’re still rocking a first-gen Motorola RAZR or a Samsung Juke – we’ve still got your back.

Tracking your phone before you lose it

If you’re here just to prepare for the day that you lose your phone (which is inevitable, really), then  you’re ahead of the game. If you’ve got a smartphone, consider installing the apps listed below

For smartphones of any kind, we recommend Prey. It’s a free and open-source anti-theft application that can be used for both computers and mobile phones. After you sign up for the service, you simply sync your devices with it, sit back, and relax. The day that your phone goes missing, all you’ll have to do is find a computer, log into your account, and start tracking. It runs discreetly in the background and won’t track your phone’s location until you tell it to, so there’s no need to worry about your privacy while the phone is in your possession. We recommend this for any Android or iOS device, as well as any Mac, Windows, or Linux PC.

For non-smartphones that can’t run apps or connect to the web, we recommend using Google Latitude. It’s a free service that uses your phones built-in GPS to track the location of your phone. Most modern cellphones are GPS enabled, so as long as your phone isn’t over eight years old, you should be fine. When the day comes that you can’t locate your phone, just log in to Latitude from any computer and it’ll immediately show you the location of your phone.

Tracking your phone after you lose it 

If you didn’t have the foresight to install a device recovery app on your phone before you lost it, don’t worry. There are still some easy ways to get it back. 

Android users can download an application called Plan B. Even though your phone is gone, you can log into your Google account on any computer install the app from Google Play. When you click install, the app will begin downloading to your missing phone, and when the download is complete it will send your phone’s location info to your Gmail account. To retrieve the phone’s whereabouts again when you’re away from a computer, just text the word “locate” from a friend’s phone and you’ll receive a text with location info.

iPhone users can download the infamous Find My iPhone application. If you’re rocking a phone with iOS 5 or later, then this app will come preinstalled on your device. If not, just borrow a friends iDevice, install Find My iPhone on it, and log in with your Apple ID. Once you’re all logged in, the app will display your phone’s location on a map. You can even remotely trigger your phone to make a loud noise for two minutes, which makes pinpointing it a snap when it’s nearby.

Non-smartphone users are a bit out of luck in this case. If you didn’t register your phone with Google Latitude or any other service, you don’t have many options other than calling your service provider and hoping they can help. Most providers offer GPS location services for a fee, and if your phone is GPS-enabled, finding it is sometimes just a matter of activating the GPS chip.

Tracking someone else’s phone with their permission  

If you want to track somebody’s phone with their permission, there’s always the option of calling them and asking where they are. No fancy GPS apps are necessary if the person doesn’t mind you knowing where they are. Then again, if you do it this way there’s always a chance that they could lie to you. So if you can’t always trust the word of the person you’re trying to locate, then we recommend using Google Latitude. After you’ve installed the app, just add your friends’ phone numbers and Google will send them an invitation to start using the service. They have to approve the request first, but once they do you’ll have complete access to their whereabouts on Google Maps. This option is especially useful for parents who need to keep an eye on their kids.

Tracking someones phone without their permission

It’s best to be upfront about tracking somebody and respect their right to privacy, but if you absolutely must track a phone without the owner’s consent or knowledge (if you’re a parent), here are a few tips how to do it.

Tracking a smartphone user is relatively simple. The easiest method is to install a tracking app on the person’s phone whenever you get a chance to do so discreetly. Do it when they’re sleeping or they leave to go somewhere – and don’t forget to hide the icon of whatever app you install. You can place it in an obscure folder and hope they don’t notice it too soon, or you can also install an app hider program (like Poof for example) to make the icon disappear entirely.

Non-smartphone tracking can be a bit more difficult. If the phone is GPS-enabled, it’s the same drill as above – just wait until the person leaves their phone unattended for an extended period of time, and send them an invite to use Google Latitude from your phone. Approve the request on their phone, and hide the evidence as best you can.

If the phone you’re trying to track isn’t GPS-enabled, however, you’ll have to pull a James Bond maneuver and install a GPS chip on the phone before you can pinpoint its location. This might be a bit of an arduous task, as you’ll have to figure out which particular archaic model of phone they have, find and purchase a GPS chip that’s compatible with the device, and then successfully install the chip without their knowledge. Try going to a specialty electronics shop or spy gear retailer to find the right hardware. The other option is locating the phone in question via triangulation, but doing it this way means gaining access to cell phone tower data – and the feds probably wouldn’t approve of that.

In conclusion, we know that there are tons of other great tracking apps we didn’t mention here, so we invite you to share your favorites with us in the comments.