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How to install iOS 8 beta 2 without a developer account

Apple on Tuesday released iOS 8 beta 2, which is available to any iOS user who has a compatible device and access to a developer account. However, people with devices that aren’t enlisted in Apple’s developer program can still install iOS 8 beta 2 thanks to a trick, though it’s definitely not a hassle-free process.

Just like iOS 8 beta 1, which can be installed without a dev account, iOS 8 beta 2 has a similar security flaw that allows users to bypass Apple’s checks. BestTechInfo tells us the company has blocked the previous method used to install iOS 8 beta 1, but the new beta can still be installed on supported devices.

However, interested users should know that once iOS 8 beta 2 is installed, users won’t be able to retrieve data back from previous iOS 7 backups, and they also won’t be able to connect to iTunes as long as the device’s UDID isn’t registered with a developer account.

Furthermore, once the beta is installed, activation errors may occur, and devices may have issues running the new beta.

Finally, those iOS users who are on iOS 8 beta 1 without a developer account won’t be able to simply upgrade to iOS 8 beta 2. Instead, they’ll have to revert back to iOS 7.1.1 and then install the new beta.

The video below shows how this procedure works, although it doesn’t actually provide links to the iOS 8 beta 2 file required during the installation process, which can be legally obtained only by having access to a developer account.

Just like before, BGR advises against installing iOS 8 betas on devices that aren’t legally allowed to run betas, as such procedures can come with unwanted side effects.

New Apple iWatch Will Be Revolutionary

What is the iWatch?

While Apple announces new products every year like clockwork, Apple CEO Tim Cook has promised products in entirely new categories this year. This promise has led to ongoing speculation, but most investors seem to agree that this new category will be fetching the wearable market, with a device will be a smartwatchcalled the iWatch.

What The Rumors Say

Broadly, rumors suggest the smartwatch will be available in two display sizes, 1.3-inch and 1.5-inch. One of the key selling points for the iWatch is likely to be its biometrics sensors, similar to the sensors in devices like the Fitbit.

Ecosystem Of Health Apps

Further, Apple allegedly plans to tap into its massive third-party developer relationships to build an ecosystem of health related apps that may help provide the backbone of user health data that will be stored in a new Apple-branded app the rumor mill is referring to as Healthbook.

When The iWatch Will Be Out

Ming-Chi Kuo is a well-connected longtime Apple analyst from KGI Securities, and he predicts that theiWatch will hit the market in the third calendar quarter of this year, right around the expected time for theiPhone 6 launch.

Future Plans

Apple, as always, remains mostly mute on its plans for future products. But Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that the wearable market is definitely an area the company is interested in. Cook even called it a “very key branch of the tree” about a year ago at the All Things Digital D11 conference.

Apple iPhone 6 -- Rumors Continue

All set to release in the fall of 2014, the Apple iPhone 6 has been the talk of town for almost a year now. With hundreds of rumors and abstractions continuously coming out, it’s hard to just choose one for your imagination and stick with it.

Here is a concept for the iPhone 6 by designer Sam Beckett that seems closest to what the real deal may look like. At least that’s what we want to believe. Titled iPhone Air, the concept was released in the form of a rather fascinating animation video on YouTube by Beckett.

Specifications Of The iPhone Air

According to the impression, the next-gen iPhone is shown to have a 4.7 inch screen with a display resolution of 1920 x 1080p (468ppi) in full HD. In comparison with the iPhone 5S, this concept is 8% larger in size, has a 17% larger display and 68% more pixels. It is 7mm wide, which means theSmartphone is 0.6mm thinner than the 5S.

Incredible Features

The iPhone Air is made of sapphire crystal instead of the Corning Gorilla Glass used in the earlier iPhones. A 10-megapixel camera is fitted into the Smartphone which has an aperture of f/1.8. The iPhone Air runs on a revamped A8 chip.

Sam’s concept also shows the Heathbook app among the apps on the iPhone Air’s display, giving off a subtle hint about the Apple iWatch that will accompany it. A fingerprint sensor has also been portrayed in the video.

Why Sam Beckett’s Concept Stands Out

The iPhone Air seems to be very evocative of the iPhone 5S, and is not a far-fetched concept showcasing out-of-the-ordinary features. This is the primary reason why the entire notion is pretty believable and may be the course Apple would take in its design and functionality.

Windows XP finally put to sleep by Microsoft – but it will still haunt us for years to come

Introduced way back in 2001, Windows XP (short for eXPerience) was an important release that made good on the abomination that was Windows Me. Windows Me was originally meant to ship with Microsoft’s NT kernel, but instead was rushed out the door with the older, less stable, BSOD-loving monolithic Windows 9x kernel. A year later, Windows XP was released with an updated version of Windows 2000′s NT kernel, and a few other neat, modern features (Windows Firewall, IE6 (yes, it was modern once), Remote Desktop, etc.)Fair citizens of the interwebs, I bring sad tidings: Windows XP is officially dead. As of this morning, April 8, Microsoft has officially end-of-lifed (EOL) Windows XP. If you’re still running Windows XP, no further patches or security updates are coming your way, and you should upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8 immediately. Of course, in reality, some 30% of the world’s 1.5 billion PCs still run Windows XP — and that’s only counting internet-connected PCs, too. If you factor in computers that are hiding behind governmental and institutional firewalls, and non-PCs (such as ATMs and other embedded systems), there could be billions of computers still running Windows XP today.

Desktop operating system market share, as of March 2014. Windows XP still sits at around 28% — and that’s only online computers. The real figure, including offline/firewalled PCs, is likely much higher. [Image credit: Net Market Share]

As we all know, Windows XP went on to become the world’s most popular operating system by some margin. Microsoft has never released any exact figures, but my educated guess is that Microsoft has sold over 1 billion Windows XP licenses over the last 13 years. The true number of computers that have had XP installed on them, due to prolific piracy in China and elsewhere, is probably even higher — 2 billion or more, perhaps. (Read: The story behind Windows XP’s ‘Bliss,’ the most iconic wallpaper of all time.)

Now, after a few stays of execution, and after mainstream support ended in 2009, Microsoft is finally terminating extended support as well. RIP Windows XP. It’s time to say a prayer and pull the plug… or is it? Weirdly, numerous governments and institutions — including the Netherlands and United Kingdom — have arranged for “Custom Support” plans, where Microsoft will continue to provide Windows XP updates at great expense (~$9.2 million for one year, in the case of the UK government). There are many large institutions that are still using Windows XP — simply pulling the plug on security updates is irresponsible and potentially dangerous, if a zero-day vulnerability goes unfixed.

Millions of ATMs worldwide still run Windows XP, and will do for years to come.

And therein lies the crux of the matter: When there are still hundreds of millions of PCs and embedded systems running Windows XP, it’s very, very hard to stop supporting them. It is infinitely better for the world (and the world wide web) if we stop using Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6, but it’s just not that simple. This is a grim reminder of how monopolies can hamstring an entire industry, and in cases as significant as XP, society as a whole. Windows XP, combined with Office 2003 and IE6, was really the only viable option for almost a decade. It isn’t a surprise that Windows XP was popular, but it certainly wasn’t helped by some of Microsoft’s more shady monopolistic practices, and a lack of competition (which Microsoft did a pretty good job of stamping out).

Fortunately, we live in a different world today. Windows 7 is certainly popular, but thanks to the distribution of power caused by the emergence of smartphones, tablets, and cloud computing, it will never become the monolithic juggernaut that Windows XP once was. There is the risk that, much like Windows Vista forced people to stick with XP, Windows 7 will remain popular well past its shelf life — but with PC sales declining, and computing shifting towards mobile platforms, I don’t think we need to worry too much.

Now, Smartphone App Can Create The Perfect Dream

A Smartphone app known as 'Dream:ON'  can now help individuals create their perfect dream and so wake up feeling happy and refreshed.

It monitors the sleep and plays a carefully crafted 'soundscape' while a person starts dreaming.  Each soundscape is carefully designed to evoke a pleasant scenario, such as a walk in the woods, or lying on a beach and more. These sounds in fact influence people's dreams.

Richard Wiseman, Professor of Hertfordshire University teamed-up with app developers YUZA to create 'Dream:ON' in 2010. Wiseman used the app to conduct a two-year study into dream control. The users at the end of a dream had to submit a description of their dream through the app. This app was downloaded over 500,000 times and the researchers collected millions of dream reports. After studying the data, Wiseman discovered that the soundscapes did indeed influence people's dreams. 

"If someone chose the nature landscape, then they were more likely to have a dream about greenery and flowers. In contrast, if they selected the beach soundscape, then they were more likely to dream about the sun beating down on their skin," said Wiseman. The researchers discovered that people's dreams were especially bizarre around the time of a full moon.     

"Having positive dreams helps people wake-up in a good mood, and boosts their productivity. We have now discovered a way of giving people sweet dreams, and this may also form the basis for a new type of therapy to help those suffering from certain psychological problems, such as depression,"  highlighted Wiseman.     

Samsung Galaxy S5 launched in India - Features And Price

Samsung India has unveiled the flagship smartphone - Galaxy S5 for India at Rs.51,000. Samsung Galaxy S5 is company's first flagship smartphone to feature water resistance capability and fingerprint sensor. Samsung has packed 5.1-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display and powered the device with quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 mobile chipset.

The Galaxy S5 features a new perforated back panel design and measures 8.1 mm thick bearing total weight of 140 grams. The Galaxy S5 features a 5.1-inch full HD Super AMOLED touchscreen display with 1920x1080 native resolution. This display has been made using Corning Gorilla Glass 3 technology for strength and resistance against usual wear-tear. Samsung has powered it with a quad-core 2.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 mobile processor coupling Adreno 330 GPU graphics and 2 GB RAM. Samsung added the new TouchWiz User Interface over the Android 4.4 KitKat.

Samsuns has placed a 16 megapixel camera with LED flash that can record full HD videos and even Ultra HD 4k resolution videos. The rear camera measures 1/2.6-inch size and features Phase Detection autofocus with quick 0.3 second speed. Samsung has placed a 2 megapixel camera in the front of the phone for HD quality video calls.

The Galaxy S5 supports 4G LTE networks to offer speeds of up to 150 Mbps theoretically and dual-band Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac) support includes the new Download Booster feature for faster downloads at up to 400 Mbps. Samsung has also added the Wi-Fi Direct feature to connect with supporting devices. Bunch of sensors ont he smartphone includes Accelerometer, Gyro, Proximity, Compass, Barometer, Hall, RGB ambient light, Gesture, Fingerprint and Heart Rate Sensor.

Other features of the Samsung Galaxy S5 include Bluetooth 4.0, ANT+, Infrared LED, Near Field Communcation and GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS support.
Samsung Galaxy S5 will be offered with 16 GB on-board storage and a memory slot to hold up to 128 GB MicroSD card. Supporting micro USB 3.0, the Galaxy S5 packs a 2800 mAh battery to offer talk time of about 21 hours on WCDMA network.

How to download and install Windows 8.1 Update 1 for free (right now)

The official Windows 8.1 Update 1 files are yet again available from the Windows Update servers. These update files appear to be identical to the files that were originally made available a couple of weeks ago; Microsoft hasn’t made any further changes. The links are included below.

If you want to download Windows 8.1 Update 1 for free, ahead of its official launch on April 8, you’re in luck! Just follow these simple instructions…

Yesterday, it emerged that Microsoft had already placed the final version of Windows 8.1 Update 1 on the public Windows Update servers. Normally, because these files have cryptic, unguessable file names, they would’ve remained hidden April 8 — but, as luck would have it, Microsoft made another mistake: By adding a new key to your registry, you could fool Windows Update into thinking you were a Microsoft employee, at which point it would grab the files and begin the update. (This technique of testing products internally is known asdogfooding. It’s a fairly common practice.)

Sadly, as you’d expect, Microsoft has since plugged the registry hack — but not before a lot of people downloaded the updates… and then uploaded the updates to digital file lockers, like Mega. If you know where to look, you can now download and install Windows 8.1 Update 1.

How to download and install Windows 8.1 Update 1

As always, we have to preface this with the usual disclaimer: Downloading Windows updates from anyone other than Microsoft is risky. At the very least, you should ensure that the SHA hash of the downloaded file matches by using the Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier (a free tool). If you have any important documents on your computer, you should back them up, too (this should be an unnecessary precaution, though; Update 1 is just a bunch of patches, rather than a complete reinstallation).

So, there are two routes to obtaining Windows 8.1 Update 1. First, you can try the official download links from Microsoft, harvested by enterprising Neowin forum member FaiKee. At the time of publishing they work, but if they don’t, use the Mega download links instead.

Official Windows Update download links:

• 64-bit: KB2919442 / KB2919355 / KB2932046 / KB2937592 / KB2938439 / KB2939087
• 32-bit: KB2919442 / KB2919355 / KB2932046 / KB2937592 / KB2938439 / KB2939087
• ARM: KB2919442 / KB2919355 / KB2932046 / KB2937592 / KB2938439 / KB2939087

Mega download links:

• 64-bit:
  https://mega.co.nz/#!TQpwWZqL!iNE8vjG4xrqASpDv_wyADTxkbzH2xZG9I5o8lg35Nyw
• 32-bit:
  https://mega.co.nz/#!nRAWFIqJ!h_frDQca2_Uds8_Dqt5wZoZN48OqDgO4PJ3K8LnOAkE
• ARM:
  https://mega.co.nz/#!mF5CkIZS!fXPXoCbK3PhKG6O42nzw1w0bWwahboCWM4YHXvhmIT8

If those links go down (unlikely), the files are almost certainly available from other file lockers, or from your favorite torrent index.

Once you’ve downloaded Update 1, you will have six separate patches that need to be installed in a very specific order. Your computer will need to reboot a few times during the process.

1. KB2919442
2. KB2939087
3. KB2932046
4. KB2919355
5. KB2938439
6. KB2937592

Windows 8.1 Update 1 Desktop. Note how Metro apps can now be minimized to the taskbar. There’s no sign of ‘Update 1′ in the system info window, interestingly.

And that should be it! If you’re a mouse-and-keyboard user, you will find that Windows 8.1 Update 1 makes the Metro interface a lot more palatable. Whether this will move you to actually use the new Start screen, I’m not so sure. Unless there’s a Metro-style app that you really want to use, you will probably still find yourself on the Desktop, using a third-party app to bring back the Windows 7-style Start menu. Still, on the rare occasion that you find yourself thrust into the new Metro interface, Update 1 makes the whole experience feel a little less you’re being brutally plucked out of one operating system and unceremoniously dumped in another. So that’s good.

On the Desktop side of things, Update 1 doesn’t do a whole lot. I’m sure there will be some small, useful tweaks, but the main changes appear to be better support for high-PPI displays, and audio/video files will now be opened in Photo Viewer and Media Player respectively, rather than bouncing you into Metro. For the 23 people using Windows 8.1 on a tablet, Update 1 adds a Search button to the Start screen, and some of the stock Metro apps have been updated/improved. Thrilling stuff. Microsoft’s hunt for Windows 8 market share continues.

The mystery of flight MH370: How on earth, with all our technology, do we lose a giant plane? (Updated)

Updated @ 19:20 March 16:Somewhat unbelievably, more than a week after Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared, we still have absolutely no idea where the plane is. We are, however, starting to work out what happened. Basically, the Malaysian military have now admitted that they were tracking an unidentified contact across the country, and did nothing about it. It has now been confirmed that the unidentified contact was flight MH370. It seems, shortly after it completed its climb out of Kuala Lumpur airport, that the plane’s ACARS tracking system was manually disabled by someone on the Boeing 777 — presumably one of the pilots. (Disabling the system would be impossible to do without both pilots knowing, however.) Malaysian military radar tracked the plane to the Strait of Malacca at 2:15am local time, and then the plane vanished. It has also emerged that the plane continued to send data to an Inmarsat satellite for five hours after last contact. 25 countries are now searching for the plane, across a huge swath of Asia (pictured below). At this point, hijacking is by far the most likely cause of this utterly insane scenario.

Flight MH370, possible routes, if it carried on flying for a further five hours. [Image credit: BBC]

Updated @ 08:05 March 14: It’s now been almost a week since flight MH370 disappeared without trace. From official Malaysian sources, there is still no news to report. According to an exclusive report by Reuters, however, some investigators are now fairly certain that the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 did in fact fly on for another four hours. Apparently, shortly after the last time it appeared on civilian radar (around 1:30am local time), MH370 turned west and started following navigational waypoints (Vampi, Gival, Igrex) usually used by flights towards the Middle East and Europe. According to two sources speaking to Reuters, the fact that the airplane simply vanished from air traffic control and civilian radar would suggest that someone on board the plane disabled its communication systems. If this new information is correct, MH370 actually disappeared somewhere in the Indian Ocean, near the Andaman Islands. Reuters says Malaysian authorities are now asking for radar data from Thailand, Indonesia, and India — all of which may have picked up flight MH370 after it vanished.

Malaysian Airlines MH370′s flight path after it vanished, according to the Reuters report. [Image credit: Daily Mail]

Updated @ 09:40 March 13: The farcical hunt for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 continues. US investigators believe the plane may have continued for four further hours after its last sighting — a claim that Malaysian authorities have strongly denied. Malaysian authorities say they have spoken to both Boeing and Rolls-Royce, and they both confirmed that the plane’s last ACARS transmission was at 1:07am, and at that time the plane was completely healthy. The radar blips at 2:15am (near the Strait of Malacca) and again at 2:30am, after being confirmed and then denied, are being investigated yet again. China released satellite images of the purported wreck of MH370 (below), but Malaysia’s transport minister said they were released by mistake and ”did not show any debris from MH370.” Read on for previous updates and the original story.

Updated @ 14:10 March 12: As darkness falls over south-east Asia, the fifth day of the MH370 search-and-rescue mission draws to a close. There’s still absolutely no indication of what happened to flight MH370, nor where it landed. The Malaysian authorities continue to flail embarrassingly. Crazy theories continue to be proposed. The search-and-rescue efforts now comprise of 42 ships and 39 aircraft from 12 different countries. DigitalGlobe is providing high-res satellite imagery of the search area, with analysis of the imagery then being crowdsourced by Tomnod — and apparently there’s now a third possible location where the plane might’ve disappeared. So far, though, all of these efforts have turned up absolutely nothing.

Satellite photos released by China, which it claims shows the wreck of flight MH370

Updated @ 08:25 March 12: This morning, as the search for flight MH370 heads into its fifth day, Malaysian authorities held a press conference in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the latest developments. Sadly, there wasn’t really much to report. The Malaysian military are now denying that MH370 was tracked to the Strait of Malacca. The search area now covers 27,000 square nautical miles, 12,000+ in the Strait of Malacca and 14,000+ in the South China Sea (the plane’s last known location). Rolls-Royce, which made the Boeing 777′s Trent 800 engines says it received two batches of engine diagnostic data from the plane after takeoff and during the cruise, as part of the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) – but there’s nothing unusual about that. It does imply, however, that Malaysian Airlines — which received the full ACARS report — would know by now if the plane was suffering from any issues. As the airline hasn’t said anything about the ACARS report, it’s probably fairly safe to assume that all systems were functioning normally.

Updated @ 16:35 March 11: The fourth day of the MH370 search-and-rescue mission has come to a close, and we’re still no closer to finding the missing plane. The search area has been expanded from 50 nautical miles (57 miles; 93km) to 100 nautical miles. It has also come to light that MH370′s co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, was extremely unprofessional during a flight in 2011. On a flight from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur, Hamid invited two South African teenagers into the cockpit, where they remained for the entirety of the flight, while he and the pilot smoked cigarettes while flying the plane. Whether this new finding has any bearing on the fate of MH370, we’ll have to wait and see.

Updated @ 08:40 March 11: As the Malaysia Airlines MH370 search-and-rescue mission enters its fourth day, we still know almost nothing about the fate of the plane and the 239 people on board. Two passengers were travelling with stolen passports, but Interpol says they weren’t terrorist threats. According to Malaysian military radar, it now seems likely that MH370 turned back after its last contact with air traffic control, possibly crashing into the Strait of Malacca. We still have no idea why it turned back, or where the plane ended up.

Updated @ 19:30 March 10: Very little new information has come to light since this story was first published this morning. Despite some oil slicks and debris being found in the South China Sea, authorities have confirmed that they didn’t originate from the MH370. Numerous experts have attested to the Boeing 777′s excellent reliability and safety record, and puzzlement at how it could vanish from the skies. We still have no idea how or why the plane disappeared, nor where it crashed. There are very, very few reasons for a modern plane to suddenly disappear. Read on for the original story.

Three days ago, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished from radar off the south coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea. 239 people were on board — and at this point, it is presumed that they have all perished in some kind of disaster. A massive search and rescue effort involving 40 ships and 34 aircraft from nine different nations has yet to discover any sign of the missing aircraft. For me, this is almost incomprehensible: Despite all of the awesome technology that mankind has developed, it’s still possible for a Boeing 777-200 with 239 people on board to vanish. For me, it’s mind blowing that all we have to go on is the plane’s radar signature — and even then, that last radar reading was so poor that the search area is thousands of square miles of open water. Surely, given the fact that we can track a damn smartphone anywhere on Earth down to a few meters, there’s a better way of keeping track of missing aircraft?

In the words of Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, the fate of MH370 is “a mystery.” The Boeing 777 took off from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia en route to Beijing, was cruising normally at 35,000 feet… and then disappeared. There was no distress call. The weather was fine. The plane’s last known position, via radar, was just south of Vietnam in the South China Sea — which is where search efforts have been focused so far — but one theory suggests that the plane turned back just after the last radar ping, meaning the plane could be hundreds of miles away in the Strait of Malacca. In the absence of any other information, there is speculation that the plane was target of a terrorist attack.

Flight MH370′s known route, and suspected route to the last confirmed radar reading [Image credit: BBC]

For me, the most shocking aspect of the MH370 disaster is that we won’t know what fate befell those 239 souls until we find MH370′s Flight Data Recorder (FDR), aka the black box. Except for that last radar reading, we have absolutely no knowledge of the flight at all until we find that FDR. We have no clue what was said in the cockpit by the captain and first officer — though, seemingly, if something did go wrong, they didn’t even have time to send a mayday message. We have no clue if the plane hit a patch of bad weather, or whether it was hijacked. It really will be one huge mystery until the FDR is recovered — and there’s a good chance, if MH370 did crash into the ocean, that the FDR will never be recovered. In the case of Air France flight AF447, which disappeared off the coast of Brazil, it took two months to locate the wreckage, and almost two years to find the the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and FDR.

The FDR has an underwater locator beacon (ULB) that will ping for at least 30 days, and can be detected up to around two miles away, but when you’re talking about a search area consisting of thousands of square miles, and waters that are almost a mile deep on average, finding the black box will be no mean feat.

Do we live in the stone age or something?

Inside a modern, solid-state Cockpit Voice Recorder. The Flight Data Recorder is very similar.

So, think about this for a moment. We live in a day and age where GPS (and other radio triangulation methods) can track your smartphone to within a few meters, almost anywhere on Earth. With dedicated, land-based tracking networks, vehicles and devices can be tracked to within a few centimeters. Even in the absence of GPS or radio tracking, inertial guidance (dead reckoning) has been accurate enough since the ’60s to accurately land a nuclear ICBM on the other side of the planet, or put the Apollo mission into space.

And then there’s connectivity. On land, there are networks (both commercial and governmental) that provide data connectivity almost everywhere. Over water is definitely harder, but satellites do provide pretty good coverage — and yes, that particular region of Asia is very well covered by communications satellites. Finally, even if an aircraft is out of satellite/radio coverage, there is absolutely nothing preventing the airplane from transmitting a really juicy low-frequency radio signal that could be picked up thousands of miles away. This is how they communicate with air traffic control, after all.

Why, then, does a plane like the MH370 keep all of its secrets locked up in a black box? Why don’t planes constantly transmit all of their black box data, so that we know their exact location, bearing, altitude, and other important factors, at all times?

The short answer is, there’s no good reason.