Facebook Home for Android and Smartphones!

Facebook unveils Home, "which is not a phone or operating system, but is an application", explains the social network. It is an overlay for Android that puts in the heart of the social network phone. The outline of Home had leaked in recent days. This overlay for Android & Smartphone built by HTC is not a surprise. Facebook Home will be available on Google Play, from April 12, as a single application. Once installed, Facebook Home strongly modifies the Android user experience, replacing the lock screen and home screen. In place of these items are listed "cover feed," a single window that displays the latest activities of your friends on the network. Like the new News Feed presented a month ago, the focus is on the photos with images that fill the entire screen. You can scroll to see the feed cover various activities and if you want to "Like" an item, just do double tap it. For larger notifications, as a message from one of your friends on your timeline, the message is displayed with the profile photo of your friend messaged.

A tap on the photo opens the notification; it is also possible to hide. Facebook Home provides access to instant messaging wherever you are. When receiving a message on Facebook, the photo of the friend behind the message over the application in use. Applications other than those signed by Facebook are of course available from a launcher. Facebook Home will be compatible at its output with a handful of high-end devices: HTC One, HTC One X, HTC One X +, Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note II.


The social network announced that other Smartphones will support the overlay in the coming months. Mark Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook Home Program, a program for mobile manufacturers to support the overlay social network. HTC of course subscribe to this program, and there are also Samsung, Sony, ZTE, Lenovo, Huawei and Alcatel One Touch as manufacturers. It is not clear at this time whether these companies will release a Smartphone with Facebook Home preinstalled or allow the installation of the software on their products.

Advance interface of VLC for Windows 8 / RT is ready!

VideoLan gives some news of the progress of the development of its application VLC for Windows 8 / RT, including the interface that now seems to be consistent with Microsoft prerequisites. This is the project via Kick starter who helped raise the funds necessary to develop its interface with VLC Modern UI Jean- Baptiste Kempf, president of the VideoLan, talks about a few changes made to the famous multimedia player. First of all, the interface buttons have been fully adapted to prerequisites imposed by Microsoft as 90% of those commonly used by VLC did not comply.

In addition, libraries relied on by software like gcc and Mingw-w64 were reviewed passage. In addition, some non-functional code with the Microsoft API (MSVCRT 11.0) has been disabled or extensively revised in order to take advantage of. Many bugs present in there were fixed now and added support for ARM platforms for Windows RT. Finally, it is stated that Windows Phone 8 will be the next stage of development. For the moment, no date was given for the release of VLC in the Windows Store.

Firefox version 20 with full of innovations!

Mozilla has finally released version 20 of its browser Firefox. A version number of iconic, the browser offers significant improvements. We note in particular the movement of downloads in an integrated list and the ability to use the private browsing mode in a separate window. Firefox 20 is a relatively large milling Mozilla browser. Unlike many other versions, it provides several significant new functions in the field, in addition to traditional improvements under the hood. In fact, Firefox offers 20 well increase overall performance (Page loading, downloads, zip, etc.).


One of the main innovations is clearly the new Private Browsing mode. As a reminder, it can navigate in a special session experiencing no trace. This is valid for the complete history, identifiers, downloads, cookies and all data can generate browser. However, until now, the private browsing mode (MNP) was exclusive: it replaced the conventional navigation, and it was therefore close the window to return to normal mode, but this is no longer the case. The NPM can now be launched from the Firefox menu, opening an additional window. The user can have both at the same time. Note that Firefox, unlike Internet Explorer or Chrome, does not use a separate process for each tab. It is this lack that originally made the exclusive MNP. Even if the separation process is still not ready, the work was sufficient to separate the classical and private bodies. Download list is no longer in a separate window, but directly in the main window itself. Simply click on the button to see the latest downloads made, but it is still possible to open the dedicated window. It is also merged with the history and bookmarks. Mac users should note that this is exactly the presentation in Safari for several years. Another important feature is the management of plug-ins. Work on the MNP was coupled to reinforced insulation third party modules. Mozilla says so in case of a crash because of one of the plug-ins, Firefox behavior is affected.

Other improvements are more under the hood and / or dedicated developers:

The implementation of the ECMAScript standard 6 continues

 A new JavaScript profiler appeared

 Many improvements around the audio and video tags HTML5 Support modes "blend" for canvas elements

 Implementation of the method get User Media for access to micro and webcam (with user permission)

 In addition, several bugs have been fixed and several security vulnerabilities, including three critical. Of particular note is a breach exploitable WebGL for graphics and video drivers crash Mesa on Linux.


 Firefox 20 is also available for Android. Improvements are not quite the same, but there are improvements Commons. For example, the mobile browser also manages the new private browsing mode, but in a new tab. Two other improvements are in the game. On the one hand, the area finally became Top Sites customizable. So users can move, delete, and add their own particular sites. On the other hand, Gingerbread and Honeycomb versions of Andoid are now supported for hardware decoding of H.264, AAC and MP3. This is an improvement that wills undoubtedly significant difference for users. Please note a few other changes and improvements. For example, the Exit menu has been removed to follow the conventions of Android versions from Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) and later. Mozilla said that once you are finished browsing, simply use the buttons Home or Back to exit the browser. In addition, the requirements memory for Firefox is so much reduced. Now, 384 MB of RAM is required instead of 512, and the minimum supported resolution is QVGA (320 x 240). The update is already available in the Play Store last night.

6 Ways Toolbars are Hurting Your User Experience

Got toolbar-overload? Toolbars can be incredibly useful—but also a gigantic pain that slows down your browser and causes total frustration. The worst toolbars are those that you never actually wanted to install, but unknowingly accepted as an add-on for a purchase or app download. If you’re not careful, you could end up with multiplying toolbars that are totally clogging up your browser—and possibly stealing your identity.

1. Toolbars can multiply over time. When you install a new version of your browser, you’re usually asked to automatically install a new version of the toolbar as well. But that doesn’t mean the old version disappeared. If you go through this process several times, you could end up with half a dozen versions of the same toolbar clogging up your browser without even realizing it. The more toolbars you have installed, the longer your search results and pages will take to load.

1. Toolbars can be spyware. Some toolbars are designed to track your habits across the web or target unwanted advertisements. But these toolbars can cause major frustrations. In addition to crowding your browser, you may be getting pornographic pop-up windows out of nowhere and your search results could be wonky.

In some cases, these toolbars can cause a slew of ads and pop-ups to appear when you’re trying to access a legitimate site, causing you to have to close half a dozen or more spam windows before you’re able to view the content you’re trying to access. Few things are more frustrating than being inundated with pop-up windows that prevent you from accessing the legitimate search results you’re trying to click on.

1. You might be running toolbars you don’t even know you have. Many spyware and adware toolbars slyly install themselves without your knowledge. If you’re getting strange pop-up windows, you could have an incognito toolbar that’s messing with your user experience.

There are tools you can use to remove some of the better-known malicious toolbars, such as Utorrent, Toolbar Buddy and Facemoods.  If you suspect you have unapproved toolbars running in the background slowing down your browser speed, you can check to see which toolbars are installed in your browser’s settings.

1. Toolbars could be stealing your identity.  Some of the more advanced spyware toolbars act as key-loggers, tracking both your web activity and your usernames and passwords. Armed with this information, hackers can obtain valuable personal data, including financial information, to steal your identity, use your credit cards and much worse.

1. Toolbars can trick you into thinking you’ve removed them. When you’re trying to remove a toolbar, make sure you’re following the right protocol. Otherwise, you might think you’ve successfully removed it by right-clicking and selecting “remove.” But in reality, all you’ve probably accomplished is hiding it from view—allowing it to continue doing its dirty work behind the scenes, without your knowledge. For how to remove toolbars.

1. Toolbars can act as portals for viruses and malware. Even toolbars that appear safe on the surface take up additional resources to run in your browser. Because they’re installed, they have a higher level of access to your machine than a stand-alone website would have. If you have one of these toolbars installed and you’re taken to an advertisement that contains malicious files, the toolbar could be the very thing that creates an access channel for the code to enter your browser, machine and even your entire network.

If you’re being inundated with strange pop-ups and advertisements or if your browser seems to be running unusually slow, you might have some shady toolbars installed. Removing these pesky add-ons will not only improve your user experience, but it might just save you from identity theft.

Katelyn is a freelance writer who frequently creates content on behalf of Guardi.us, an Internet security blog with a particular focus on providing resources to help users learn how to remove toolbars and other unwanted software and plugins.

YouTube wants to integrate streaming features in video games!

YouTube's reputation is more to do for video distribution, but there is one point on which Google platform is late, that is in live content, especially for the players. However, the side of Mountain View, it seems to rectify the situation.At the Games Developers Conference held in San Francisco, Google announced a new set of APIs would soon be available to allow game developers to more easily integrate the functions of "live streaming" in their titles. This feature has already been tested in blockbusters like Call of Duty Black Ops 2, but may in the future go with many others. The principle is rather simple API allows developers to send a video stream from a game for the YouTube broadcast live on its platform. Google is clearly talking about come cut the grass under the feet of Sony and its PlayStation 4, which offer a similar service. We can also ask how the cohabitation between the service console Japanese Ustream and YouTube will be, when a game has to go through YouTube. Other platforms already well established and Twitch TV could also suffer from the competition of the Mountain View Company. It will be interesting to see if popular PC games like League of Legends or Starcraft II will take advantage of this opportunity to increase the audience of their tournaments. These are followed by a large crowd public already, but they could reach a wider target by leveraging the exposure of YouTube and its billion users.