3 IT Tools You Can't Live Without

As the economy continues to improve, allowing us to feel a sense of hope that the worst is behind us, it's still critical for business owners to make sure they're making smart decisions about technology. After all, if the recession taught us anything, it's that we must be cognizant of cash flow, and make sure that our purchases are really worth the money.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/71695.html

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Nuance opens Dragon Mobile SDK to app developers, we see end to embarrassing dictation

There are some messages that are just too embarrassing to dictate to a human being. Lucky for us and the retired circus contortionist we hired to type up our missives, Nuance is expanding the reach of its transcription software by making its Dragon Mobile SDK available to developers for use in iOS and Android applications. The SDK, which is free to members of the Nuance Mobile Developer Program, sports speech-to-text capabilities in eight languages and text-to-speech in 35. There are already apps out there that can do the job, including Nuance's own Dragon Dictation, but we welcome new advances in automated transcription. You know, it's not exactly a walk in the park dictating an entire Clay Aiken Fan Club newsletter to a guy named Sid the Human Pretzel.

Nuance opens Dragon Mobile SDK to app developers, we see end to embarrassing dictation originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Jan 2011 07:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/4UOlmy3ZKAE/

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Call of Duty 4 hits Mac App Store at overpriced $50, a sign of things to come?

CoD4 on the Mac App StoreAnd so the Apple-related price gouging hilarity begins: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, originally released in 2008, and available for $32 on Amazon, is now available from the Mac App Store for $50.

CoD4 is perhaps the first example of a 'killer app' for the Mac App Store, and exactly the injection of big-name awesomeness that it will need to attract other games publishers, and software giants like Adobe and Microsoft. CoD4 might be a little old, but given the awful Cold War-era graphics cards available in most Macs, it's probably a good idea that Modern Warfare 2 wasn't released first.

It should also be noted that this isn't the first time that a digitally-distributed game is more expensive than a boxed version from Amazon. Steam is regularly more expensive than Amazon (though not usually by such a margin), and World of Warcraft bought directly from Blizzard as a digital download is more expensive than buying a box from Amazon, or your local games shop.

What remains to be seen, though, is whether software on the Mac App Store will be aggressively discounted like on Steam. The whole point of digital distribution is that you can sell something for almost-free, and still turn a profit. Let's just hope that the Mac App Store doesn't become another place for Apple to gouge its users for more money -- digital downloads are convenient, but they really should be cheaper than their real world counterparts.

Call of Duty 4 hits Mac App Store at overpriced $50, a sign of things to come? originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 14 Jan 2011 05:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/14/call-of-duty-4-now-in-the-mac-app-store-massively-overpriced-at-50/

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Video: The Crunchies Song!

Those of you who attended the Crunchies last night or watched the live stream were lucky enough to see Jonathan Mann perform a new song that he wrote specifically for the event. "The Crunchies Song" sums up the event pretty nicely. Find both Mann's live performance and his official video for the song below. You'll note that this is actually Mann's 750th song on YouTube. Yes, he has created a song everyday for over two years now. You might recall some of them, as we've posted a number of them ? like the one he wrote about me, the one he wrote about Steve Jobs, the one he wrote about the iPhone 4 antenna (which Apple even played at their press conference), the Steven Slater song, and, the one that first put him on our radar, the Bing Jingle (and the follow-up). Mann even wrote a song to congratulate us on the AOL deal.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/R-FsClrhWo0/

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Desert Moon is an impressive tower defense Time Waster

Desert Moon
If you look at the type of time wasters I normally cover, you'll mostly find physics games, a platformer here and there, and maybe a puzzle or two.

One genre I almost never cover is tower defense games. I guess I normally don't enjoy them all that much - it's purely subjective. But this is one thing that makes Desert Moon all the more remarkable: It's a tower defense game, but I actually had fun playing it.

You're commanding a troop of soldiers stranded on an alien planet for five days. Each day, multiple waves of incoming beasts are going to run at you, and try to get past your defenses. Your job is to place your soldiers before each wave so that their fire pattern (and weapons) effectively cover the surface, and keep the beasts from getting past them.

Once a beast touches one of your soldiers, the soldier dies and there's a gap in your defenses. When enough beasts manage to make it through, you die. Later on in the game, beasts don't have to touch the soldiers - they explode when they're near enough, so you need to start using longer-range weapons to keep the beasts away.

There are six different types of weapons, as well as four types of power-ups you can use during each wave. It's Flash, but it still took a couple of minutes to load on my DSL connection. This is one game you may find yourself spending quite some time with.

Desert Moon is an impressive tower defense Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/11/desert-moon-is-an-impressive-tower-defense-time-waster/

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Leak: Tegra 2 3D Processor for Mobile Devices Ships This Spring [3D]

A leaked slide from Nvidia's Mobile World Congress presentation has revealed that the 1.2Ghz Tegra 2 3D processor, meant for mobiles featuring 3D screens, wil launch sometime this quarter. Mobile 3D computing for everyone! More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/L1koV3Y83c4/leak-tegra-2-3d-processor-for-mobile-devices-ships-this-year

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Apple hacker digs up Qualcomm baseband proof by decompiling iTunes?

We're a little short-staffed on Qualcomm chipset engineers at the moment, so forgive us if we can't immediately confirm this tale, but we're hearing iPhone hacker Zibri has discovered proof of the Apple / Qualcomm collaboration in his very own build of iTunes. Zibri claims that by tearing apart the latest version, he found the chunk of code above, which contains files that are allegedly the exclusive "building blocks" of Qualcomm radio firmware. That doesn't tell us anything about a supposed iPhone 5 or iPad 2, unfortunately, as it's probably just referring to that CDMA chipset in the Verizon iPhone 4... but with the right building blocks, one can craft any number of wonders.

Apple hacker digs up Qualcomm baseband proof by decompiling iTunes? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Jan 2011 13:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/o8B_hBY0M3U/

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