mysms SMS application seems to be very promising, brings many useful features over Whatsapp.

A few days ago I've presented you Whatsapp (here), a great messaging app available for a lot of mobile platforms which gives you the possibility to send free messages over the internet to all the users who have Whatsapp installed on their device. One of the disadvantages of Whatsapp is that you must be on your phone to send the messages, so you can't register on your phone and then send the messages from your computer or anything like that.

However, with mysms SMS application, it becomes possible to send messages from your computer to all of your friends from all the other platforms, using the mobile phone number you register with before. Moreover, mysms comes also as a standard SMS client, having the ability to handle all the SMS functionality of your phone's default SMS application. More specifically, you can send and receive standard SMS messages directly through mysms, without having to open the stock application separately (you'll have the option to send messages via mobile carrier or via mysms, in case your friends have it). I don't know whether this works or not on iOS because of Apple's restrictions, but on Android it works quite well.

One problem which I found is that I can't send messages through mysms from the browser (Chrome), maybe this functionality is currently unavailable, but it's still a great product. At 700 messages a month from my carrier contract, I think that it's still worth using it, considering that I don't even need to access my phone in order to view or send messages. And the ICS/JB design is a big plus over Whatsapp.

Visit the official website for more information http://www.mysms.com/, or search directly in App Store/ Google Play for "mysms".

Chrome dev version fixes most of the problems.

You probably read my article about that stupid bug from Chrome, which keeps aleatory some windows unmaximized even if they are maximized, right? (more here). And you probably seen (or not) Andrew's comment from WebUpd8, who recommended me today to try the latest unstable version of Chrome, which is an Alpha one.

It seems that this version fixes this the bug that I had. It adds some updates to the interface. That loading signs from the tabs have changed colors, and the interface at tabs and at the buttons under them seems to be a little redesigned. Loading speed of webpages has been improved. However, remember that this is an Alpha version and it can crash when you need it more, so this version is more recommended for testing purposes.

If you want to install it and you already had a version of Chrome installed, I recommend you doing it via Synaptic Package Manager, in order to avoid any conflicts that might occur from installing the latest version over the previous one. If you didn't have Chrome yet, go on SoftPedia here and download the latest version corresponding to your OS. Please note that the latest version on Linux is 6.0.453.1 dev, so try to search the same version for your platform.

Google Chrome speeds up on V8 JavaScript engine.

Google uploaded an interesting video a few days ago, showing that their browser is faster than anything else. They've tested its speed against a potato which.."explodes", against sound waves, and against lighting, and the results are quite impressive. Google developed a new JavaScript engine, named V8, which is written in C++, and makes Google Chrome incontestably the fastest browser on earth. Here is the video.

The tests were done using a MacBook Pro with a Windows installed on it, connected on a Asus 24" monitor, and it was filmed using a Phantom v640 High Speed camera at 1920 x 1080 camera capable of filming up to 2700 fps, on a 15Mbps Internet connection. You see the color of the screen changing gradually, because this is the actual speed of pixels on the monitor which has been used.

The latest Chrome version on all platforms is 5.0.375.29 beta. Download it from the official site at http://www.google.com/landing/chrome/beta/.

Opera 10.50 Alpha for Mac is here.

The Alpha version of Opera 10.50 is available for Mac, and Opera promised that they're working for the Beta version (which is already available for Windows). Their motto for 10.50, "The fastest browser on Earth", seems to be completely real. I've downloaded the Alpha version for my Mac, and it loads any webpage definitely faster than any other browser (Chrome 5.0.322.2, Firefox 3.6 and Safari 4.0.4).

Being a Alpha version, it is nothing special about the large number of bugs present. So, some of the known bugs are here:

• No video support (?! I don't know what is Opera referring at by this)
• Impossible to post on Blogspot (not found, error 404 - this is weird)
• No SilverLight plugins
• No printing of forms and frames
• No Java
• Incorrect window behavior for some pop-ups
• Flash is incorrect displayed (videos are still playing)
• HTML 5 (from YouTube) loads forever (can't be started)

But that's not all. It might have many other (severe) bugs, which even may cause crashes or data loss.Consider using Opera 10.50 Alpha at your own risk.

More details here: http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2010/02/11/windows-beta-released-and-more

Download link:

http://www.4shared.com/file/224744894/f322843f/Opera_1050_8249_Intel.html

View YouTube videos into a dark environment, like in a cinema.

Another good extension for Chrome is, again, made for YouTube. It will make the white area from the browser darken, so you will have the sensation that you're in a cinema. I really like the feature. Try it by searching "Turn Off the Lights" in extensions (extensions homepage is here) and selecting the second result (Mac users goes here). It has a button, on the right part of the address bar.

Here's a screenshot of how it looks like:

Skyfire. The best browser for Windows Mobile.

I ever wanted to have the ability to run different content/scripts on my Windows Mobile based HP iPAQ 111 PDA, including Flash Player. For YouTube I got a little program, but there are many other good sites for music/videos that are using Adobe's Flash Player. But I never got Flash working natively on any browser for Windows Mobile. As Internet Explorer can't display almost anything as it should, I tried browsing the internet with Opera, but due to reduced RAM memory of the PDA (64 MB), it remained frequently without memory and crashed. And there was still no Flash Player...


But recently, I discovered SkyFire. It has, so far, any scripts that I needed. My blogs are both displayed perfectly, and so any other site. Flash Player works without any problems, on all the sites I navigated through until now. If you are viewing a page exactly like in a computer/laptop browser, it's quality will be reduced in order to keep the device running fine. While zooming in, page quality will increase, because the power needed to display the page decreases as the area that needs to be displayed is getting smaller. The only problem I found is that the browser hits for desktop version on pages, and if you try to view a mobile version of a site it will generally turn you to its desktop version.


So, if you're satisfied with Opera, you'll love SkyFire. Available for download from the official site here (Symbian version also available): http://get.skyfire.com/

Opera 10.05 pre-alpha is available for download.

Opera 10.05 pre-alpha is now available. The new version has a nicer changed interface, and moves faster than the previous one. It seems that opera is again the leader when we are talking about the load time of the webpages, but I personally couldn't prove that. I will soon make some tests on the latest versions of browsers, and then I will tell you this version of Opera is the fastest browser available. As it is a pre-alpha, it is still recommended for testing purposes only. It might have problems displaying some websites, as it's not the final version. I can't actually post from it to my blog, because when I'm trying to do that, it gives me a 404 error and says that the page is not found (that's a strange error, Opera!). But I like it so far, so I think that the final version will be a real success.

Download link (Windows): http://www.4shared.com/file/186494407/f3251093/Opera_1050_3172_en.html

Download link (Mac): http://www.4shared.com/file/186516659/3b4b4d50/Opera_1050_8166_Intel.html