Windows software

The first Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview for Windows 7 has arrived, gifting many of its improvements to the older OS as Microsoft prepares to keep IE current beyond the gates of Windows 8.

"There's a long alphabet soup of new abilities that we've built into Internet Explorer 10" for Windows 7, Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's general manager for IE, said during an interview last week at CNET's San Francisco office. In addition to porting over the new IE10 Chakra and JavaScript engines, IE 10 on Windows 7 also gets the Touch API innovations that … Read more

Privacy online sounds a lot like an oxymoron these days, but it's still worth trying to protect it the best you can, right? So what kind of tracking is "Do Not Track" trying to protect against, and what will this option do to help stop it?

Tracking is basically the way that Webmasters and advertisers learn about your Web browsing habits. This is where "related ads" come from, despite them not being entirely accurate the majority of the time. Turning on this feature for Firefox will send a request to avoid tracking … Read more

Just bought a shiny new Surface tablet? Have some time to kill? Are you feeling rather war hungry? Then look no further. Armed is a futuristic turn-based war game available for Windows Phone and Windows 8.

To win each battle, players must build armies to take over enemy structures and defend their own. At the start of each battle, users are given funds to build factories or defensive turrets to fight off ground and air units. Each building is upgradeable; investing in a factory, for example, lets you get upgrades for your armies and even build more advanced units later … Read more

I was going through the app listings the other day and came across LocalScope, a unique local search tool that helps you find things near your current location. Obviously, many people already use Google Maps (no current version for iOS) for this purpose, and the Yelp-powered Apple Maps gets better every day, but after looking at LocalScope (reviewed below), I went on a search for other apps that tailor their results just for what is right around your area.

This week's collection of apps is all about searching for services around your location. The first gives you tons of listings and a surprising bonus feature for finding your destination. The second offers a slick radial interface and tons of categories to pick from. The third is LocalScope, and uses social data to find places, videos, and images from people around your location.… Read more

A test version of Adobe Systems' Lightroom 4.3 has added partial support for Apple's Retina displays and other high-resolution screens.

The Lightroom 4.3 release candidate, available on Adobe Labs, shows photos in the develop module so that one pixel in the original photo occupies one pixel on the screen. That means a much sharper and detailed image than with the older Lightroom 4.2, which scales images so that one pixel on the photo occupies four pixels on the screen.

I was worried that Adobe would Retina support for Lightroom 5, which presumably will be a paid … Read more

Whether you're a long-time PC gamer or new to the club, (in which case, welcome!) you should check out JogoBox, a game client/downloader similar to the likes of Steam and Desura. What makes JogoBox stands out is that its entire collection is totally free. "Choose from a selection of thousands of free games and play for as long as you like!" -- boasts JogoBox.com.

The JogoBox team essentially went out into the Internet and collected as many abandonware and browser games as they could find and stuck it all in once place -- a simple … Read more

Many Web sites collect data about you on each visit. This data is used for serving ads that meet your interests, or finding out which demographic is frequenting a specific type of content. In an effort to help you protect your online privacy, Google has added a new feature to Chrome: Do Not Track.

It's important to remember that this option is not going to protect you from Web sites that ignore the Do Not Track request, but it is a small step in the direction of protecting your personal details online. Read on to find … Read more

A nascent Web standard called WebRTC just got a notable boost from TokBox, a provider of online chat services for companies such as Ford Motor and Coca-Cola that need a mechanism to communicate with customers.

WebRTC is designed to enable real-time video and audio chat with a Web browser, enabling Skype-like services on the Web. TokBox released a version of its software that adds WebRTC support, a move timed to coincide with today's release of Chrome 23, which includes WebRTC.

Having browser support for a standard is crucial to its success, obviously. But developers wanting want to use it … Read more

Browsium's business is your business' browsers, and its new Catalyst program looks to solve the problem of corporate intranets requiring older, rickety version of Internet Explorer while the rest of the Web has moved on with its life toward HTML5.

Currently available for free in public beta, Catalyst allows corporate IT departments to force certain sites to open in different browsers. It works in three browsers, Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, and installs a Catalyst add-on in each. That add-on runs in conjunction with a management program that the IT department uses to set rules that tell specific sites … Read more