Three handy (but often-overlooked) Google Chrome features

We are all of us creatures of habit, and those habits can easily extend to our Web browsers, where we're so focused on our usual daily routines, we often overlook certain capabilities that can save us time or improve our productivity.

In Google Chrome, for example, there are three features so neatly tucked away that I suspect many users have never noticed them.

Luckily for you, I have:

Don't overlook these three options in Google Chrome.
1. Other devices

One of Chrome's most powerful capabilities is synchronization--not just your bookmarks and passwords, but also your open tabs. (You can enable this via Settings, Advanced sync settings.)

For example, if you have Chrome installed on, say, another PC, a smartphone, and a tablet, you can use your desktop browser to access the open tabs on all those devices.

To do, so simply open a new tab, then click the Other devices menu in the lower-right corner of that tab. You'll see a categorized list of open tabs from all other instances of your Chrome browser. Easy to overlook, but insanely handy.

2. Recently closed

As you may know, if you accidentally close a tab, you can immediately reopen it by pressing Ctrl-Shift-T. However, what if you need to recall a tab you closed a while back? Or a tab that wasn't the very last one you closed?

What you need is a list of closed tabs, which Chrome quietly provides: While you're down in that lower-right corner, look at the option right next to Other Devices: the Recently closed menu. Click it and you'll see links to your 10 most recently closed tabs.

3. Web Store

Newcomers to Chrome simply may not be aware that Google offers a fairly massive library of apps for the browser, and that it's accessible via the Chrome Web Store.

As you've no doubt spotted, the link resides in that same corner, right alongside Recently Closed. Click Web Store to open the app aisles in a new tab, then browse or search to your heart's content.

Switch to Mac: How to find your favorite Windows features in OS X

I made the jump from Windows 8 to Mac OS X a few months back, when I started carrying a Macbook Pro for work. Let me tell you, the scariest part of moving from a Windows PC to a Mac is the prospect of losing access to the tools and utilities you use on a daily basis. What I realized, though, is that many of the features and tools I relied on in Windows are also available in OS X. You just have to know where to look.

Surface RT, now starting at $349 at Microsoft Store Canada As I discovered, software is rarely an issue: The lion’s share of your favorite programs have Mac analogues, and the growing popularity of subscription services like Office 365 and Adobe’s Creative Cloud make it easy to seamlessly transition your software licenses from a Windows PC to a Mac. You can also bring most of your Windows peripherals with you, though you might have more fun exploring the wonderful world of Apple accessories.

For me, the real struggle was trying to translate all the everyday tasks I found so simple in Windows but so confusing in OS X. When you don’t know where to go to adjust volume levels or capture screenshots, every day can be an exercise in frustration. (Unconsciously reaching for the Start menu every five minutes certainly made me feel like a huge rube.) So I did what any good tech geek would do: I ventured out into the unknown and made myself a translation guide for all my basic tools, shortcuts, and gestures. And now I want to share them with you.

This short video walks you through some of the most common Windows tasks—including changing your settings, taking out the trash, and jotting down notes—on OS X so you can translate your Windows skills to a new Mac with minimal hassle. Becoming an expert in anything takes time—but hopefully this will help you feel a little more confident when navigating the waters of OS X. 

BlackBerry turns to 7 OS with social networking features for new 9720 smartphone

BlackBerry has launched the 9720 smartphone running the 7 OS in a bid to stay relevant in the growing low end of the smartphone market.

The launch of the new device comes as BlackBerry on Monday formed a committee to explore strategic alternatives for its future that could include joint ventures or a sale of the company.

As its new BlackBerry 10 operating system struggles to get off the ground, the company is still depending on the old version 7. During its last fiscal quarter BlackBerry shipped 6.8 million smartphones, but only 2.7 million phones running the new OS.

The launch of the BlackBerry 9720, which runs a refreshed version of the BlackBerry 7 OS, may play to the company's dwindling strength. The smartphone has a re-engineered physical QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated BBM key, a trackpad and a a 2.8-inch touchscreen with 480 x 360 pixel resolution.


The smartphone also has a 5-megapixel camera and an FM radio. Connectivity options include HSPA, 802.11n and A-GPS.

On the software side, BlackBerry has focused on social networking features. Users can write a message once and post it simultaneously to their friends on BBM, Twitter and Facebook, for example.

The updated interface also lets users swipe to unlock the phone or access the camera from the lock screen, among other enhancements.

The company didn't provide pricing, but beginning in the coming weeks, the BlackBerry 9720 smartphone will be available in select markets from retailers and carriers in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. BlackBerry didn't disclose plans for U.S. availability.

Hands-on: Corel graces Painter X3 with new visual, brush, and painting features

There’s image editing and then there’s fine art—and Corel has always positioned Painter, its flagship professional painting program, on the creative end of the spectrum. With the release of Painter X3 (the 13th version of the famed natural-media software) for Mac and Windows, Corel seeks to augment Painter’s position as a leading inspirational tool for creatives working in photographic and traditional art, illustration, Manga and comic art, conceptual art, and design. Even though it emerged roughly around the same time as its image-editing contemporary, Adobe Photoshop, Painter holds a unique place in the art world for its drawing and painting prowess.

Painter X3 offers an enhanced user experience, workflow optimization, and new technologies for brush characteristics and controls, painting and visual aids, and inspirational details and customization options. With this release, digital paint grows ever closer to actual paint in look and behavior. At the same time, Painter’s major features are now easier to find and use. The following hands-on overview illustrates some of what Painter X3 brings to the drawing table.

The Painter X3 interface with the new Search Brushes bar. It’s easy to type in a search term, quickly find the brush you want, and then view it in the Live Stroke Preview. Here, I searched for X3’s new brushes.
Painter X3’s new Jitter brush enhancements introduce increased elements of randomness to strokes either by adding universal Jitter properties to any available brush or through one of the 25 new Jitter brushes. Jitter introduces randomness to a brushstroke—you let the program change a certain brush characteristic on its own.

Artist mixers let you choose and mix colors on palettes inspired by fine artists working with Corel.
A new Brush Search Engine lets you quickly find the exact brush you’re looking for simply by typing search terms, such as names or properties, in the search bar. An enhanced Live Stroke Preview visually ensures that you’ve found the brush you’re after. It offers a more detailed preview of the brushstroke that will appear on the canvas. The preview now visually represents brush parameters such as mixing, erasing, blending, and jitter. The brush preview displays in the Brush Library panel, the Brush Search panel, and the Live Stroke Preview panel. Painter X3 offers close to 1000 brushes in 30 categories.

Smart Brush Controls help you change brush properties more easily by providing a context sensitive intuitive way of modifying a selected brush’s advanced controls: The panel displays only the settings you can tweak for that brush.

Perspective Guide presets include one, two, or three vanishing points that help set the direction of the perspective.
Painter X3 offers enhanced cloning assistance. With crosshair cloning, you not only get to clone from an original source image and view your strokes from the crosshair reference point, you can actually change the source image and continue to clone in real time from the edited version, or switch back and forth between the original and the edited source image for cloning.

This Canadian Goose was not born with psychedelic feathers, but Corel's enhanced cloning technique lets you switch back and forth between the source and the cloned image, clone variations to the source image on the fly, and choose which version to clone.
New Perspective Guides allow you to accurately draw in one-, two-, or three-point perspective using preset guides. Perspective-Guided Strokes constrain strokes by snapping them toward the vanishing points set by the artist. This function replaces the old Perspective Grid feature.

The Reference Image panel lets you open an image so that it appears inset in the image you’re currently working in; that way, you can keep it in sight without having to toggle between two windows. You can zoom, pan, and sample colors from the reference image while maintaining focus on your current painting. You can now apply a transformation to a selection across multiple layers.

Inspirational Mixer Pads lets you sample, choose, and mix colors from a collection of original mixer pads created by expert Painter artists.

Reference images let you see an inset of your main picture as you paint on a larger main image.
Flow Maps are designed to mimic the way that real-life watercolor and oil brushes apply paint across a literal canvas or other nonflat surface—producing less saturation at the peaks of the surface’s texture and more saturation in the valleys.

In a free update coming soon, Painter X3 will introduce motion gestures with Painter Freestyle Gesture Control so that you can use your touchpad or Wacom tablet and fingers to control your painting.

The new Brush Search Engine lets you choose which brushes to look for.
With this release, Corel is initiating more interaction with Painter artists via online Paint Jam sessions, giving users the opportunity to learn from Painter Masters. Each month, the Paint Jam sessions will focus on a different style of art, hosted by professional artists who share their processes and techniques. The first series, hosted by Jeremy Sutton, Claudia Salguero, and Heather Michelle, will take place on August 14 from 3 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and will focus on fine-art photos.

Corel Painter X3 is available in English and can be downloaded now from Corel’s website. Box versions will ship in two weeks. In North America, the full version of Painter X3 is $429; upgrades for Painter 11 and 12 cost $229. Commercial and education volume licenses are also available. The program runs on Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.8, or Windows 7 or 8 with the latest service packs.

Watch for Macworld’s upcoming full review of Painter X3.

Hands-on: LittleSnapper becomes Ember, with powerful collection features

The word “scrapbooking” may conjure visions of arts-and-crafts sessions for children with paper, scissors, and glue. But if you’ve ever done research for a project that required you to save data like images, videos, and webpages from different sources, you’re already familiar with the adult version of this activity.

To that end, Realmac Software on Tuesday released Ember (Mac App Store link), a $50 app aimed squarely at professional users who need to build a library with all sorts of digital information.

Ember is the successor to LittleSnapper, which has been around for many years and developed quite a following; true to its past, the app continues to allow you to take screenshots and annotate them with drawings or text; you can also rotate and crop the screenshots you take to make sure that the information you actually want to highlight is front and center.

In addition, the app also allows you to capture and store entire webpages, either directly through a built-in Web browser, or by subscribing to a site’s RSS feed. Once inside the app, the pages are treated like every other image, and can be manipulated by the same means. If you’ve ever done any kind of Web design work, the ability to just scribble and type some text on a document is going to be of great use—particularly when coupled with the app’s sharing features, which allow you to send any piece of data to a friend or colleague using a variety of methods.

Speaking of the Web, Ember also ships with a set of extensions that can be installed directly in your browser—both Safari and Google’s Chrome are supported—which allow you to dynamically capture webpages.

Ember sports a slick interface whose every little detail has been thought out with almost fanatical attention
Given the amount of information that you are likely to collect in an app like Ember, I was curious to find out how good its search capabilities are.

For starters, you can attach an arbitrary number of tags to each piece of information that you add to a collection; these are displayed in a convenient utility window to help ensure that you do not inadvertently duplicate a tag and make your data harder to search on.

The app also supports full-text search against all your collections and scraps, using a convenient “live-fill” mechanism that shows you the results visually while you type your search query.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the contents of a webpage are included in the search database; this would be a nice addition for the future.

The app's scrabooking capabilities extend to entire web pages—which can be manipulated and annotate just like every other image.
Ember is an extremely slick app whose developers have paid fanatical attention to every detail of the user experience. As a result, you can find little touches all over the interface, from the way the software remembers the URL of a captured Web document, to its ability to automatically detect and categorize screenshots from an iPhone or iPad.

As I mentioned, the app is designed for professionals, and priced accordingly—particularly when you consider that owners of LittleSnapper don’t get any breaks in the form of a upgrade discounts. If you work in a visual field like Web development or graphics design, however, Ember seems well poised to pay for itself in no time, and make your life much easier.

Review: Logic Pro X loses none of its power, gains great new features

Apple’s music division has been anything but idle the past several years, but it has focused largely on the GarageBand products for consumers and mobile users. The professional crowd has seen some updates (and a reduced price) to 2009’s Logic Pro 9, but very little else. Today that changes with the release of Logic Pro X, Logic Remote (a companion app for iPad), and MainStage 3 (Apple's live-performance tool, sold separately).

Those who’ve seen the Roman numeral X slapped onto Final Cut Pro may approach this release with some initial trepidation. Has Logic Pro been stripped of vital features to make it more accessible to GarageBand users? Is Apple abandoning professional audio engineers and musicians to cater to the prosumer user?

No and no. While Logic Pro has indeed adopted some of the look of Final Cut Pro X—with its dark visage and panes that can be invoked or dismissed as the mood strikes—Apple’s digital audio workstation (DAW) has lost none of its power and gained valuable features on just about every front.

Logic Pro X is available only through the Mac App Store and costs $200. This is for both new and existing users of Logic—no upgrade pricing applies. Your Mac must be running OS X 10.8.4 or later, and you’ll want at least 35GB of storage if you plan to install all of the optional content (you can get by with 5GB for the default Logic Pro X installation). You should also make sure that any plug-ins you wish to use are 64-bit: With this version of Logic Pro, Apple has bid farewell to 32-bit plug-ins. There’s no bridging utility to allow those older plug-ins to work, so they are entirely incompatible with the application. But the new version hasn’t entirely abandoned the past. Projects created as far back as Logic 5 can be opened with Logic Pro X.

Logic has long had the reputation of being one of the deepest, but most challenging DAWs to use. Since Apple acquired Emagic (the German company that developed it), it’s set about making Logic easier to use. Logic Pro X takes a major leap in that direction.

Apple has rethought the placement of elements you routinely use. For instance, the transport controls have moved to the top of the window to join the buttons that represent common commands, whereas in the past these controls and buttons were split between the top and bottom of the interface. The Library pane is now on the left, as many of us tend to work from left to right, and can quickly be exposed or hidden with the click of a button. As in GarageBand, each track now has volume and pan controls within the track list, thus allowing you to make changes there rather than moving to the Channel Strip or Mixer. Overall, elements are slightly bigger than they were in Logic Pro 9, so that finding just the tool you want is easier.

Logic Pro X's interface (click to enlarge)
This doesn’t mean that Logic Pro has lost its command-rich menus within the application’s various panes. When you need to dig deep, they and the menu bar menus are still your avenue for doing so. But when you want to do something quickly—sketch out a new tune or perform a quick edit—the new layout makes it easier to get to the task at hand.

It also presents GarageBand users with a more familiar environment. Musicians who’ve grown beyond GarageBand’s capabilities often come to Logic and sit, stupefied, wondering where to begin. I have little doubt that part of the purpose behind Logic Pro’s redesign was to make these users feel more welcome. Close enough panes, and you find a Logic Pro that performs a darned fine imitation of the GarageBand interface. As those users become more confident with the application, it’s a simple matter to expand the interface to place more advanced tools before them.

Other adjustments make Logic more logical. Elements in a channel strip and mixer—a group of effects, for example—reflect their position in the signal path. To change their position in that path, just drag them up or down to a new position. And you can now engage a Quick Help feature that, in a small window, provides tidbits of information about any item your cursor hovers over. You can easily move arrangement markers to change the order of sections in your song. The Score editor now behaves more like a notation application. And the arpeggiator, plucked from its obscure location, is now within the software instrument tracks’ Edit pane.

Logic Pro’s interface changes are about more than accommodating GarageBand users—in the past, pros could be overwhelmed as well. For example, suppose you’re working on a project that contains half-a-hundred tracks. Regardless of how large your monitor is, you’re going to perform a fair measure of scrolling as you access your tracks. But suppose you could group some of those tracks—all the acoustic drum tracks, for example—into a folder-like arrangement in the track list and then show or hide the tracks it contains with the click of a triangle icon? That’s one of the ideas behind the new Track Stacks feature—specifically, the folder stack. In this view, you consolidate tracks you’ve selected into a single group (thus getting them out of the way). Once you’ve created the folder stack, you can mute and solo the stack as well as control its volume with a single fader.

You can play all the instruments in this summing stack as a single instrument (click to enlarge).
The other idea is the summing stack. Again, you consolidate the selected tracks, but in this case you’re submixing them into an auxiliary channel.

If this track contains software instruments, it can be used and saved as a patch so that it behaves like a single instrument rather than a group of instruments. For example, you’ve created seven tracks, all of which are analog synthesizer tracks, with Logic’s instruments. Not only can you group and hide them as well as control their mute, solo, and volume settings, but you can additionally use your MIDI keyboard to play all of them at once as a single instrument. And if you’ve configured the ranges for each track—so the Growly Synth plays only the first two octaves, the Crunch Synth plays every note thrown at it, and the Lead Synth plays just the top two octaves—different instruments play, depending on which key you press. Press a low key, and you hear the Growly Synth and Crunch Synth mixed. Play something in the top octaves, and you hear no Crunch Synth, as it’s not mapped to play in this range. You can then save this patch and call it up for any project you work with in the future. This is a powerful method for creating layered (and fat) instruments.

Another way Apple makes Logic more accessible is through new Smart Controls. If, in the past, you created a software instrument track or applied an effect to a track and wanted to change some of that track’s parameters—give a little more brightness to an instrument or adjust a compressor effect’s setting—you were thrown into what could be a complicated interface with scads of controls. Smart Controls allow you to avoid this by providing a subset of simple controls for accessing that instrument's or recording’s most common settings.

Smart Controls gives you access to settings you must want to adjust (click to enlarge).
For example, call up the Classic Electric Piano instrument, double-click on its icon in the track list, and its Smart Controls appear at the bottom of the Logic window. Here are eight simple knobs for exactly the kind of tweaks you’d want to perform on a Fender Rhodes electric piano—Bell, Drive, Treble, Bass, Tremolo, Ambience, Chorus, and Reverb. No sampler fiddling required.

You don't have to live with a track’s Smart Controls, however. Click an Info button, and a pane appears where you can choose what a particular control will do. For instance, on my Fender Rhodes I can assign a Phaser control to what is, by default, the Bell control knob. I can then store those settings as part of a patch so that they come up every time I use it. And like other Logic controls you can assign a hardware controller to them (a slider or wheel on your MIDI keyboard, for example) and manipulate them while you play. As you do that, you can record your manipulation so that it plays back with the track.

Logic Pro 9 was a boon for guitar players in that it included stompbox, amp, and speaker effects. With Logic Pro X, Apple turns to bass players and drummers. Bass players will be happy to know that they can now build their own rigs as well. Included are three amp models—Modern Amp, Classic Amp, and Flip-Top Amp—as well as a Direct Box setting. You can additionally choose from six cabinet settings—Modern Cabinet 15”, Modern Cabinet 10”, Modern Cabinet 6”, Modern Cabinet Distant, Classic Cabinet 8*10”, and Flip Top Cabinet 1*15”. There are two direct box-out settings as well. And, as with the guitar rig, you can choose a mic and its position—a Condenser 87, Dynamic 20, or Dynamic 421. While bass tracks are designed primarily for those jacking a real bass into an audio interface, as with guitar effects, you can apply your bass rig to software instruments and MIDI tracks too.

Bass players now get a configurable rig of their own (click to enlarge).
New drum features run deeper still. I’ll start with the new Drummer track. Drum loops can help you sketch out a tune, but because they’re loops, they tend to be pretty static. You can tweak them and insert fills but they still don’t sound like the real thing.

So Apple came up with the Drummer track. These are 15 virtual drummers—sampled from some of the world’s best studio cats—who live inside Logic. Create one of these tracks and choose from four styles—Rock, Alternative, Songwriter, or R&B (sorry, no Country, Jazz, or Latin). Then choose the drummer you’d like to use (and yes, they all have names). For example, Max is a punk drummer who bangs on a punchy kit. Logan is an older dude who prefers retro rock and plays a just-as-retro kit.

This may sound like just a cute way to add personality to loops, but it’s far more than that. Next to your drummer are some helpful controls. From a Presets menu you can choose a substyle in that drummer’s roundhouse. For example, with Logan I can choose AM Gold, Stonehenge, or Firebird (licensing issues may prevent Apple from calling it “Freebird”). Next, you can employ an X-Y pad and move a controller between Simple and Complex on one axis and Soft and Loud on the other. Drag the control around, and the pattern changes to match your desires. For example, if you place the control in the bottom left corner (Simple and Soft), you may hear a rudimentary kick drum on beats one and three and high-hat clicks on beats one through four. Drag the control to the top right corner (the Complex and Loud corner of the X-Y controller), and the pattern gets far more interesting.

Opera 15 mixes classic features, mobile-inspired enhancements

Opera 15 moved out of beta Tuesday, with Opera declaring that the latest version of its browser is ready as a stable release for Windows and Mac.

The latest version of the much-loved browser is the first official release powered by Blink, the new rendering engine the Chromium project develops for Google’s Chrome browser after forking from WebKit in April. Opera said in April it would switch to Blink after previously announcing it was giving up its own engine, Presto, for WebKit.

Opera’s new Discover feature shows you news articles based on location and interest.

Opera 15 offers a number of enhancements that first appeared on the mobile version of Opera as well as come classic features. Turbo has been renamed Off-Road mode similar to Opera for Mobile. This feature compresses Web page sizes through Opera’s servers before hitting your browser, allowing for faster Web page delivery and a more manageable browsing experience if you’re on a slow connection. Discover, another mobile crossover, shows you a stream of news articles based on location and interest categories such as travel, arts, business, sports, and technology.

Stash creates a visual and searchable set of bookmarks.

Opera 15 also sports a new take on bookmarking called Stash. Whenever you hit the heart icon in the upper right side of the address bar, the page you’re viewing is saved in the Stash, which is accessible from Opera’s start page. Stashed pages are displayed as Web page thumbnails, the size of which can be adjusted using a slider to the right. Stash also has a search function that lets you search for pages by keyword—a handy feature when your stash collection gets to be a little big.

Opera 15’s history page

Although Opera 15 now shares some underpinnings with Chrome and Chromium, Opera still maintains its own distinctive look and feel. Power users will find that Opera still offers mouse gestures for navigation in this new version, though restore and minimize didn’t work in my tests. Also, link gestures were not working properly while trying out Opera 15 on Windows 8. M2, Opera’s built-in email client is now a separate download, as previously announced.

Despite having some of that old Opera feel, there are some decidedly Chrome-like features in the Opera 15 such as the Omnibar that lets you enter a URL or search directly from the address bar. Downloads and Settings pages also feel a little Chrome-ish; however, Opera has done a nice job in adding its own stylistic touches to these pages.

After spending a little time with Opera 15, I found it to be a nice-looking, speedy release that most fans of the browser should enjoy using. The new Blink-based compatibility may also help Opera win over anyone tired of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari and looking to try something new.

12 missing features we'd still love to see in Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1 is Microsoft's chance to regain the goodwill lost in the contentious release of the new-look Windows 8 operating system—and by and large, the feature-packed re-do smooths out the OS's more onerous rough edges. (Boot to desktop, and a better Windows Store? Yes, please!) Sure, Windows 8.1's improvements are more about refinement than revolution, but this is an update, not a whole new OS.

 

While Windows 8.1's new apps and hidden features should leave you mostly sated if you've already bought into Microsoft's modern-style vision of the future, the update still isn't…quite…perfect. In fact, after spending more than a day tinkering with Windows 8.1, we can think of a dozen additions we'd love to see.

 

With the official release of Windows 8.1 likely still months off, Microsoft has time to add these features to the update. Fingers crossed!

 

The simple return of the Start button, even in its bastardized "drop you on the Start screen" form, fixes one of the major interface woes found in the original Windows 8.0 release, especially when paired with the new All Apps button. But Microsoft shouldn't stop there.

 

Windows 8.1 is still chock-full of hidden menus that appear only if you know the secret handshake—which corner to touch or gesture to make. Many of the most crucial system functions are buried in those elusive screens. Give us subtle visual clues for hot corners! Give us the ability to pin the Charms menu open! Drag those crucial elements into the light!

These valuable options shouldn't be buried in an obscure submenu.

Windows 8.1 goes a long way toward making Microsoft's revamped OS more palatable to the desktop fanatics (like me!), but it does so grudgingly. Sure, you can shut down your PC from the new Start button, but only if you think to right-click on it and sift through a long list of administrative options. Likewise, helpful additions like the ability to boot to the desktop or have the Start button bring you to the All Apps screen are buried under a submenu found only by right-clicking on the taskbar. Really, Windows?

 

It'd be great to see these options highlighted in the Settings charm's Personalize options, or maybe even offered as part of the initial installation process. Don't hold your breath, though: Since Microsoft has clearly tied its future to the modern UI, the desktop will be lucky if it receives benign neglect, as opposed to being eliminated entirely.

 

Speaking of which, the Personalize section really should have many, many more options for users. You'll find only preset Start screen backgrounds and background/accent color options in Windows 8.1's Personalize screen. Microsoft should seize the opportunity to make it a one-stop DIY shop.

 

Toss in the aforementioned desktop personalization options, screensaver and lock-screen choices (including the ability to set app notifications), the ability to swap out your profile picture, and heck, maybe even the Personalization syncing options found in the new SkyDrive submenu in the modern PC Settings. Not only would it make sense, it would make me happy.

Reading List is an awesome feature, but it'd be more awesome if it supported the desktop version of IE 11. (Click to enlarge.)

You know what's awesome? Read-it-later apps that let you save an online article to, well, read it later. You know what's even more awesome? Windows 8.1 includes a read-it-later app dubbed Reading List, which is populated by articles sent using the Share charm in Internet Explorer 11. You know what's not so awesome? That Share function works only in the modern version of IE 11—not its desktop counterpart. I can haz bookmarklet?



In Windows 8.1, as with plain-Jane Windows 8 before it, you can't use the modern-style version of Internet Explorer 11 whatsoever if you have a non-IE browser (like Chrome or Firefox) set as your default. That's just heavy-handed crap. I love the modern IE browser on touchscreen devices, but since Chrome is my desktop default I can't use modern IE whatsoever. How does this help, Microsoft?

 

I get it, Microsoft. You want SkyDrive to serve as the beating, cloud-connected heart of the Windows 8.1 experience: "Windows everywhere" and all that. But the world's not quite ready to spend all its time in the sky—especially in the wake of the NSA scandal. A modern-style file explorer app would save touchscreen Windows users, including all Windows RT users, from having to suffer the tedium of pecking through the desktop file explorer.

 

Windows 8.1's overhauled modern PC Settings bake in more finger-friendliness for the people who have bought into Microsoft's touchscreen future. A modern file explorer would be the cherry on top.

 

Though Windows 8.1 Preview ships with the optional $10 Media Center pack (and its DVD-playing capabilities) installed, Microsoft has still given no indication that the release version will restore the ability to play DVDs. And you can't even install the Media Center pack unless you're running the $200 Windows 8 Pro, which costs $80 more than the vanilla version of Windows 8.



That's a steep price for optical-disc support. Unfortunately, the odds of Microsoft's restoring default DVD playback to Windows 8 are pretty slim, as the company would have to shell out a few bucks for every single Windows license if it wanted to include that functionality. But hey, here's hoping anyway. (Pssst! Try out the completely free VLC media player. A modern VLC app is on the way, too.)

 

The Windows 8.1 preview available Wednesday didn't include Mail or Calendar updates, so we can't be sure what's in store for those apps, which still need some work before they're up to snuff with top-tier communications options. I'm holding out for two big additions: POP mail support in the Mail app, and CalDAV support in the Calendar app so that it plays nice with Google Calendar again. Alas, I'm not optimistic about seeing either.

 

The new super-big and super-small sizes for Start screen tiles is a small tweak that makes a big difference to Windows 8.1's feel, but again, why stop there? The Start screen still feels so locked down. I'd love to be able to rename tiles, or change their icon and background color. Judging by the emails some of you have sent me, I'm not the only one.

 

Another helpful feature would be the ability to group tiles into "stacks" that fan out at a touch or click. Think of them as modern-style folders. You have the ability to name groups of tiles as-is, but these so-called stacks would really help make the Start screen more efficient—and more personal.

A demo of the Natural ID touchscreen fingerprint recognition technology.

DO IT.

 

Now I'm just getting a bit ridiculous, to be honest. But hey—Windows 8.1 already gave Microsoft's native biometric support a big shot in the arm, and technology that can read your fingerprint on a touchscreen is out there. It'd be an awesome feature on such a touch-focused OS. Just sayin'.

Stardock's ModernMix software in action.

If Stardock's superb ModernMix program can run modern apps in desktop Windows, why can't Windows 8.1? There would be no better way to coax diehard desktop fanatics out of their shells than to add this low-pressure functionality that would enable the best of both worlds.

 

Because I'm just not going to shut up about it until there's a native way to see the date and time on the Start screen at a glance without having to do anything extra. I loathe having to open the Charms bar to see the time if I'm on the Start screen. No, seriously: Loathe.

 

Microsoft had the perfect opportunity to introduce a clock to the start screen with Windows 8.1's new Alarms app. Just make its live tile show the time! Did that happen? Nope. Could it happen? Yup, and probably pretty easily—maybe even "In time for the official Windows 8.1 release" easily. Just sayin'. (You can do it, Microsoft!)

 

But for all my griping, Windows 8.1 truly does a decent job of paving over Windows 8's worst flaws. Will it convince haters to stop worrying and love the Live Tiles? Not at all. But it does make the experience far less jarring than the initial Windows 8 release.

 

Don't take my word for it, though. While the release date for a final version of the update has yet to be announced, you—yes, you—can try out the preview version of Windows 8.1 today, assuming you're the adventurous type who doesn't mind giving prelaunch operating system builds a whirl. Check out our guide to installing the Windows 8.1 preview—but prepare your PC for that OS-level tinkering first.

 

 

Review: Canon Pixma MX922 has great small-office features and pricey ink

Canon Pixma MX922 $129.00(Lowest Price) For a moderate-volume small or home office the Pixma MX922 has good features and performance, but inks are a little pricier than average.

 

 

A moderately busy small or home office is the target audience for the Canon Pixma MX922, a $200 (as of 06/28/2013) color inkjet multifunction that can handle every office chore from automatic two-sided scanning and printing, to faxing and printing optical media. Output quality and speed are good, too. But the party ends with the ink costs: The MX922 ships with low-capacity starter cartridges, and the regular and larger cartridges are no great bargain.

 

The Canon Pixma MX922 is a well-rounded multifunction inkjet printer, literally as well as feature-wise. It has Canon's signature rounded corners, a beveled top and bottom, and the same wrap-around front panel and small flip-open ink access lid as its Pixma MG6320 cousin. However, it retains Canon's dodgy, last-generation controls, with the three action buttons and separate four-way cursor. The issue with these is that some functions are available only via the action buttons, and some only via the contextually lit cursor/okay buttons. It's confusing, inefficient, and—if you use the panel often enough—aggravating. On the plus side, the button grid transforms into a keypad when you need to use the unit's fax capabilities.

 

Installing is MX922 is easy, if a wee bit tedious. There are quite a few dialogs to click through, but the install routine found the printer on the network quickly and there were no other glitches. We used Wi-Fi, but you may also connect directly to a PC via the unit's USB 2.0 port, or wire it to your network via ethernet. The software is the usual efficient Canon bundle, with its veteran scanning utility, Image Garden for organizing and editing photos, and a solid driver. There are also the usual remote and email printing features.

 

As mentioned, the MX922 automatically prints and scans in duplex. Paper capacity is good for a small office multifunction: 250 sheets, which reside in a bottom-mounted cassette that extends to handle legal-sized paper. Directly above the cassette and revealed when the front panel drops are a 20-sheet tray for 4-by-6-inch photo media and a feed for printable optical media. As with most Canon printers, the front panel drops automatically, so you can keep it closed for appearances yet not have to worry about a paper catastrophe if you print without checking the machine first.

 

The pages emerging from the MX922 have the typical Canon look. That means sharp text, decent plain-paper graphics, and very nice photos. By default, the latter tend to look a tad light compared to the competition, but the color palette is essentially accurate, gradients are smooth, and details in dark areas are nicely defined. They photos are not quite up to what you'll see from high-end photo printers, but for a $200 MFP they're excellent.

 

Speed-wise, the MX922 fell in the middle of the pack, but it's certainly fast enough for a small or home office. Text and monochrome newsletters with mixed graphics print at 8.6 pages per minute on the PC and 8.1 ppm on the Mac. Full color photos print about one every two minutes to glossy stock, but nearly 3 a minute to plain paper. Copies arrived at about 6.1 per minute, a very good pace.

 

When we reviewed this printer’s predecessor, the Pixma MX892, we complained about the lack of high-yield inks to cut printing costs. Canon apparently listened—this new model has them—but the costs didn’t improve much. Color isn't bad, but black is high. With the standard size cartridges (the PGI-250 black and CLI-250 colors including a photo black), black pages cost around 5 cents and four-color pages, 16.6 cent per sheet. Using the XL cartridges drops a black page only to 4.6 cents, and four-color pages, 12.8 cents. There's an XXL black, but it only drops the price of pages another 0.2 cents. We also noticed that while the new inks have lower prices compared to the MX892's they also have lower page lives.

 

Canon's warranty for the Pixma MX922 lasts a single year—better than the 90 days you get with entry-level MFPs, but not as nice as the three years you'll get with business-class inkjet MFPs such as the HP OfficeJet Pro 276dw. Canon did not provide a recommended or real-world monthly duty cycles, but judging from the quality of the construction, 250 to 500 pages might not be out of line. If you're printing or copying any more than that, you should be looking for something with cheaper inks.

 

The Canon Pixma MX922 is a good MFP for the small office with moderate-volume copying and printing needs. The duplexing and output are sweet, and the fax is a bonus for those that need it. But we're not fans of the control panel. At the time of this writing, the MX922 was available for considerably less than the retail price we list here. It's a lot more appealing at around $150 than at $200, where it has to compete with the likes of the faster, more economical HP Photosmart 7520 e-All-in-One and the Epson WorkForce 845.

 

 

Deep inside Windows 8.1's hidden new features

After months of teasing and torture, the Windows 8.1 Developer Preview is finally here, ready to deliver us from many of Windows 8’s glaring flaws. You’ve no doubt already heard about Windows 8.1’s biggest new features: The Start button is back, Bing owns the Search charm, the split-screen Snap feature is customizable, yada yada yada. You know the drill.

 

What hasn’t been talked about much are the subtler changes—the hidden secrets tucked away in the dark corners of Windows 8.1, whispering and waiting for a turn to shine rather than shouting their proverbial presence from the proverbial rooftops.

 

No, these gems aren’t as flashy as Windows 8’s newfound ability to sync apps and Internet Explorer 11 tabs across multiple devices, but they’re arguably just as (if not more) handy. And there’s no way you’ll find them unless you dig deep...or read this enlightening guide.



Let’s start with something basic, but far from obvious.

 

Yes, the Start button is back...but the Start menu isn’t. So you still need to swipe through a multiclick process involving the charm bar if you want to shut down your PC—if you don’t know about the Start button’s secret menu, that is.

 

Right-clicking the Start button that appears when you hover your mouse cursor in the lower-left corner of the screen brings up a bevy of powerful options, including quick links to deep stuff like Disk Management and Command Prompt tools.

 

Now, the menu itself isn’t new to Windows 8.1. What is new is the addition of a Shut Down option to said menu. Hovering over it for a second gives you options to shut down or restart your PC right then and there, no fiddling with hidden menus required.



The Taskbar Properties option is another old friend with a subtle new look—and a crucial one for desktop diehards. Did you hear that Windows 8.1 lets you boot directly to the desktop on start up? It does, but Microsoft clearly doesn’t really want you to do it, since the option is buried in this obscure corner of the OS.

 

Head to the desktop, right-click the taskbar, select Properties, and then open the brand-spankin’-new Navigation tab. There, you’ll find new options for disabling the uppermost hot corners. Those options are also available in the modern-style PC Settings, but many Start screen options can only be found here.

 

And how handy-dandy they are! Want to boot directly to the desktop or the All Apps screen? Here’s your chance, and the other selections are just as useful. (Show the desktop background on the Start screen? Yessssssss.)



While you’re busy taking advantage of all the hot resizable Snap size action in Windows 8.1, don’t forget that you can now have a single app open in multiple Snapped windows—something you couldn’t do in the original Windows 8 release.

 

Well, kinda.

 

Despite a lot of effort, I haven’t been very successful in getting that feature to function in the Windows 8.1 Developer Preview. Trying to open an app twice—or Snapping an app to one side of the screen and attempting to open a second instance—simply doesn’t work.

(Click to enlarge.)

You can open multiple instances of the modern version of Internet Explorer 11, though. If you have multiple tabs open, you can long-press one of them and select Open tab in new window in the resulting pop-up box. Alternatively, long-pressing a link on a webpage brings up several options at the bottom of the screen, including that ‘Open tab in a new window’ dialog.

 

Selecting that option causes the page to appear in another IE 11 window, and Windows 8.1 helpfully Snaps both windows into a 50/50 split.

 

SkyDrive takes on a much bigger role in Windows 8.1, driving Microsoft’s vision of a seamless, cloud-connected world even further.

 

In fact, SkyDrive is so vital an underpinning to Windows 8.1 that Microsoft dedicates an entire section to it in the modern-style PC Settings. A vast number of settings now sync and follow you from device to device by default—including modern apps, woohoo! But if you really want to live in the cloud, you’ll need to enable some options buried three or four levels down.

(Click to enlarge.)

Open the charm bar, and select Settings > Change PC Settings. From there, open the SkyDrive options and select Files in the left-hand menu bar.

 

Here you can acquire the ability to save documents and snapshots from your Camera Roll folder to SkyDrive by default, a downright awesome new option if you want to be able to sit down at virtually any Windows 8 computer and have it feel like your own.



Relaxing ain’t easy if your gadget blasts alarms throughout the day. Windows 8 has joined Apple and Android in embracing notifications, which make sounds and light up your lock screen even if you’re not holding your tablet in your hand. Fortunately, Windows 8.1 lets you silence the cacophony with its new Quiet Hours setting.

 

This one’s buried, too. Open the Settings charm, and navigate to Change PC Settings > Search and apps > Notifications. Scroll down the page a bit until you reach Quiet Hours. By default, Windows 8.1 is set to go silent from midnight to 6 a.m., but you can change the window to any time frame you desire.

(Click to enlarge.)

Something really irked me about the modern apps in the vanilla version of Windows 8. No, I’m not talking about their seas of wasted space (Windows 8.1 didn’t fix that!). I mean the fact that they were incredibly pesky to manage from anywhere except the Start screen. Modern apps don’t show up anywhere obvious in the desktop File Explorer’s folder structure, and you can’t eliminate them from the Control Panel’s Programs & Features interface, either. Bleh.

 

Windows 8.1 changes that. Huzzah!

 

Navigate to the Search & Apps section once again, and select App sizes in the left-hand menu. The screen populates with a full listing of all your installed modern apps, complete with the file size of each app. If you’re looking to free up some hard drive space, you can click an app to bring up an uninstall option.

 

People don’t likes wires, and neither does Windows 8.1. Like Android 4.2, Microsoft’s OS update includes full support for the fledgling Miracast wireless display standard, which basically acts like Apple’s AirPlay technology. It’s your PC screen, beamed to your TV or monitor as if by telecommunications magic!



Miracast is so new that you might have trouble finding compatible television sets at stores near you, but you can pick up Miracast receiver dongles that transform any TV with an HDMI port into a Miracast-compatible display. Even better, when Microsoft’s Xbox One console lands in time for the holidays, it’ll be a fully capable Miracast receiver, further deepening the synergies between Windows 8 and Xbox.

 

If you want to connect your Windows 8.1 device to a Miracast receiver, you can dig deep into the modern-style PC Settings. But the easier option is to open the Devices charm and select Project > Add a display. If there’s a Miracast display nearby, Windows 8 should find it.

 

Windows 8.1 brings a bevy of improvements to the way it handles the more exotic printers popping up these days. For one thing, Windows 8.1 packs 3D printer support in the form of a driver and a native API, and hopefully—hopefully—that will make the 3D printing process as simple as the traditional 2D printing process, rather than the complicated export-filled mess that it is now.

 

The idea is to allow you to kick 3D printers to life using the Print option under the Devices charm, so you can print from directly within that oh-so-fresh modern interface—assuming the printer’s software takes advantage of Microsoft’s support. Check out the image below to see Windows 8.1 printing to a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer.

Geekwire

But the cutting-edge printing action doesn’t stop there. Windows 8.1 also includes support for NFC printers. If both your Windows device and your printer are members of the (currently rare) NFC-enabled breed, simply tapping one against the other can automatically pair the two devices for hassle-free printing action.

 

And if NFC or 3D printers are just a bit too adventurous for you, you’ll be happy to hear that Windows 8.1 also includes Wi-Fi Direct printing capabilities. What does that mean? Simple: You can connect directly to a Wi-Fi Direct-enabled printer without having to jump on a Wi-Fi network or fuss with installing software, though the exact method will depend on your printer and device.

 

We’ve only just started to dig into Windows 8.1’s nooks and crannies. Did you find any particularly interesting gems hidden in Microsoft’s OS preview? Share ’em with your fellow geeks in the comments below!

 

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