At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Steve Ballmer announced Microsoft would ship the Kinect for Windows on February 1st. The company has delivered on its promise and on Wednesday, version 1.0 of the Kinect for Windows SDK and runtime were made available for download. The software giant’s distribution partners across the globe have also begun to ship Kinect for Windows hardware. The device will retail for $249, with a special discounted academic price of $149 for “Qualified Educational ...

Apple’s Mac App Store hasn’t changed the industry quite like its iOS App Store did three years ago, but the Cupertino-based company on Monday announced that it has now served more than 100 million downloads from its desktop software store. ”In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement. &#...

Apple on Wednesday made good on its promise to push out the release build of iOS 5 to consumers around the world. The new software is available for download immediately, and iTunes 10.5 is required in order to install the update. Owners of Apple’s iPhone 4 (GSM and CDMA), iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad and third and fourth-generation iPod touch handhelds have access to the new build, while owners of earlier devices will not be able to install the update. iOS 5 includes more than 200 new features such as a rev...

Mozilla on Tuesday pushed out a new version of its popular Firefox web browser for Windows and Mac computers. Mozilla released Firefox 6 on August 16th, just over one month ago, and version 7 is already upon us, reaffirming Mozilla’s commitment to the world’s second most popular web browser. Firefox 7 brings with it a host of changes, the most notable of which is perhaps “drastically improved memory handling” and other speed related improvements. As of August, Net Applications shows F...

When Apple originally announced its new iTunes Match service, which was launched to developers yesterday inside iTunes 10.5 beta 6.1, the Cupertino-based company said the service would allow users to download previously purchased music. At the time, it appeared the benefit for iTunes Match was that it would allow users to pull down any track from iCloud to an iOS device without being near a computer. The setback to downloading tracks, however, is that your iOS device storage will still likely be clogged with ...

On Wednesday, Walmart subsidiary VUDU launched a new iPad-accessible web app that allows iPad users to stream more than 20,000 movies and television shows directly from the Web. iPad owners don’t have to use iTunes and simply need to navigate to http://VUDU.com for access to rentals and purchases. “VUDU’s launch on the iPad plays into that vision as we’re committed to offering the VUDU experience on as many devices as possible so customers can shop for and access their favorite movies ...

GameFly announced on Wednesday it will soon offer a new service called “Unlimited PC Play” that will allow gamers to download an unlimited amount of games to their Windows or Mac computer. Much like Netflix’s business model, GameFly will provide instant access to more than 8,000 rental discs or more than 1,500 instant downloads for a monthly fee. The service will require a desktop client that will include news, a feed of HD trailers and screen shots of the latest games. GameFly also said the...

Apple made Lion, its eighth major OS X release, available to Mac computer users on July 20th, and the Cupertino-based tech giant noted in the first sentence of its press release that Lion includes “more than 250 new features.” Unfortunately for a seemingly large group of users — this editor included — the only new features that really mattered were the numerous annoyances that came to light after just a few minutes of usage. The new autocorrect, the annoying new event behavior in iCal, the lac...

Apple’s upcoming “iTunes Replay” service is indeed in the works, but the company has yet to sign “cloud agreements” with at least four of the top-six film studios in Hollywood that are necessary in order to launch the service, CNET News reports. As such, the site calls earlier reports that suggested an imminent launch premature. Apple is reportedly working on a service that will allow iTunes users to stream and re-download movies purchased through iTunes. Such a service would re...

Apple is preparing to launch a new service that will allow iTunes users to re-download previously purchased music, movies and TV shows for free, AppAdvice reports. The service may also support some streaming functionality according to the report, though such functionality may be limited. In the past, iTunes users who lose content from their libraries were forced to either purchase the content again or essentially beg and plead with Apple customer service until they agreed to assist with free content restorati...

Research In Motion on Tuesday announced a major milestone for its on-device software portal BlackBerry App World: 1 billion downloads served. ”The BlackBerry App World storefront launched a little over two years ago, and over that time, we’ve made many feature improvements, enhanced the look and feel, and added a ton of compelling apps,” RIM’s Alex Kinsella wrote on the company’s blog. “BlackBerry App World is now in over 100 countries, seeing an average of 3 million downloads...

We were one of the first publications with a dedicated iPhone app years back, but since then the app has become a little… stale. Well, we’re back with a brand new BGR app for the iPhone and it’s completely redone from the ground up. For starters, you’re able to view the most important stories right on the first tab, in addition to all recent articles as well. We have full gallery viewing built-in, along with the ability to just view your favorite category so you only see the news you w...

According to a new report from research firm IDC, annual mobile app downloads are expected to jump from just 10.7 billion in 2010 to 182.7 billion in 2015. The company noted that that developers should keep a close eye on in-app purchases as the primary focus for monetizing applications – a far different approach than the standard method of relying on the initial app purchase. “This shift is most evident in the free app category, where in-app purchases allow users to buy a more functional version of t...

Mozilla on Tuesday finally issued the new public release version of its wildly popular Web browser, Firefox. Version 5 of Firefox wasn’t met with quite the same fanfare as Firefox 4, but the update is a major one nonetheless. Mozilla bills its new browser as being faster than ever with “even more awesomeness,” and we can’t say we disagree. Firefox 5 has received massive improvements aimed at providing speedier performance, and the UI has been redesigned and improved as well. Firefox&#...