5.1

Facebook hopes to make it easier to for users to chat and upload multiple photos on their mobile devices through a new iOS app released today.

In addition, the camera feature lets users add different filters to their photos, a la Instagram -- owned by Facebook. Twitter is also moving to add photo filters to its mobile app in a bid to stay competitive.

For messaging, you can swipe to the left anywhere in the app to see who's available for messaging, and mark friends you message the most in your Favorites. Facebook says the new Camera upload process … Read more

You might think developing technology standards is plodding, bureaucratic tedium compared to something like the frenzy of smartphone innovation.

But you'd be wrong, at least in the case of Paul Cotton, who leads Microsoft's involvement in the important and often fractious world of Web standards. Web standards are hot -- and hotly contested.

Cotton, an even-keeled Canadian, discovered a passion for standards more than 20 years ago when figuring out how to digitize airplane maintenance manuals. He's comfortable with the contradictory motives of standards groups: fierce competition one moment and gentlemanly cooperation the next.

It's a … Read more

Calcmadeeasy Free is the free version of a paid scientific calculator app ($2.99) for Mac OS X. Calcmadeeasy Free is designed to provide you with general math and scientific calculations, although there's not a great deal of true scientific functionality available in the free app compared to the full version.

Calcmadeeasy Free installs quickly and the interface is attractive. The screen is divided into two panes, one for scientific functions on the left and more traditional numeric and math functions on the right. A single line of output at the top completes the interface. The buttons are large … Read more

According to the description on the App Store, Motorbike Lite is "full of action and real physics." The truth is not very close to that, unfortunately, as Motorbike Lite attempts to bring a motocross simulation to your Mac device. Motorbike Lite installs easily, and while there is an upgrade to a full version, the free Motorbike Lite does offer 10 complete tracks for you. Graphically, the game is attractive in a cartoonish style, and you can customize your rider and bike a little (much more so in the full version), then tackle any of the included tracks.

The … Read more

Safari is Apple's stylish, easy-to-use Web browser for its Mac OS. Safari for Windows lets PC users try Safari for themselves. Safari is a great way for Windows users to take a bite of the Apple since, as a Web browser, it can only be so different from the Big Three; IE, Firefox, and Chrome. We tried Safari 5 in Windows 7. Its new features include the Reading List, which collects Web links and bookmarks that you want to check later.

Safari's page layout shows how much Web browser functionality dictates form these days. Safari for Windows is … Read more

Atomi's ActivePresenter captures and saves onscreen video and images and audio narration, but that's just the start of what it does. Another way to describe it is as a free tool for creating e-learning materials, manuals, presentations, screencasts, and demonstrations for training, education, business presentations, customer support, and similar applications. It's compatible with SCORM and handles a wide range of file types. ActivePresenter's free version is fully functional. It's also available in Standard and Pro editions that add features such as export capability, definable events, and Office compatibility. We tried the free edition.

ActivePresenter's … Read more

One annoyance of the Apple TV has always been the inability to move the icons around to fit your use habits. Whatever order Apple placed the icons in is what you were stuck using. As of Apple TV OS version 5.1, users can now rearrange the icons into an order better suited for them.

Well, there's one exception. You can't move any of the icons on the top row, only the bottom three rows. For whatever reason, Apple would rather you not hide the Movies or TV Shows icons (among others) down in the bottom row.

To … Read more

Google Maps seems to have found its way onto iOS 6 with help from a hacker, though it's not quite ready for its public debut.

Self-proclaimed iOS hacker and engineer Ryan Petrich tweeted yesterday that he was able to coax Google Maps to work on iOS 6 "with a little trickery." Though mum about his methods, he said that he was able to port the iOS 5.1 version of Google's app to run on an iPhone 3GS that had been updated to iOS 6. Petrich also included a short video clip showing Google Maps in action … Read more

Paper documents are still around, but with iOS apps like TurboScan, you'll find it easier to go paperless.

The app launches ready for action with simple controls at the top to take pictures or start scanning. With the Camera option, you snap a picture and that app will guide you to the editing phase, just like any other scanner. The SureScan 3x option takes three pictures and combines them into one single document. Although the app doesn't always detect the edges of a document very well, it does a decent-enough job overall, and we liked the fact that … Read more