It’s Sunday so that means it’s time for Adi’s Week in Tech News.
to celebrate the 20th birthday of Wolfenstein 3D, Bethesda have developed a special web-based version of the game which you can play through your web browser for free. You can play it and try your hand at some old-school FPS action by clicking here . This is not some demo version of the game or just a 1-level teaser, this is the full thing. Go forth shoot them bad guys down.
A lot of you may know of DropBox(a cloud storage service). Dropbox has started their second ever DropQuest scavenger hunt. It’s harder and even has a story. They recommend that you download the DropBox software and install it on your PC as it would make your life easier. If you finish the challenge, then you will get a gigabyte of extra storage for free.
Apple released a software update for Macs running OSX Lion. Version 10.7.4 of this operating system fixes the security flaw, where the password to log into your mac is stored in plain text for anyone to read, whilst keeping the older FileVault encryption system enabled. In addition to that, Apple also released version 5.1.7 of their Safari web browser which also includes some security patches. For example if Safari detects that you have an older version of Flash Player that is not able to be updated by itself, then Safari will automatically disable Flash Player.
Virgin Atlantic has become the first airline here in Britain to offer mobile phone calls during a flight. The service will initially be available on Virgin’s new Airbus A330 planes flying from London to New York but will be available on 17 planes on at least 10 routes by the end of the year. In-flight mobile access will be provided by AeroMobile, which is part-owned by Panasonic. Virgin will charge passengers approximately the same as normal roaming charges.
Microsoft has announced that Internet Explorer(their web browser) will be the only browser that will work on Windows RT(Windows 8 for ARM devices). Following up from this statement, Google has decided that they share the concerns of Mozilla “regarding the Windows 8 environment restricting user choice and innovation”. In light of this, both Mozilla and Google have called for Microsoft to allow other web browsers to be installed.
On the lighter side of tech news, there is a media player for your desktop computer known as VLC Media Player(a free, open-source media player). During this week, VLC Media Player has hit one billion downloads(and that’s not including Linux downloads). Congrats to the VideoLAN organization for reaching this epic milestone.