Hasta La Gadget!

In an effort to modernize the city of Chicago’s digital infrastructure, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced today that he has signed a four-year deal with Microsoft to help improve the city’s office operations while saving over $400,000 per year. The newly adopted “cloud strategy” includes email and desktop applications, and over 30,000 employees across the city’s departments are expected to use them. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Facebook Adds Voice Messages to Messenger App; VoIP Calls Being Tested In Canada, eBay Tests Services To Help Sell Your Stuff By Picking It Up,

While iOS gamers are probably enjoying the remake of Baldur’s Gate, it looks like Android users will still have to wait for their copy. According to a Twitter post by Beamdog’s Trent Oster, he revealed that they have hit a snag in the Android development of the game, stating that “We’ve hit a snag with BG resource handling and ship panel APK files. We’re going to be a while yet on Android.” Unfortunately when asked as to when Android users would be able to expect the game, no specific date was given meaning that Android users are in for wait, although hopefully not for too long (fingers crossed!) In the meantime it looks like if you’ve already completed Baldurs Gate: Enhanced Edition and you’re looking forward to the sequel, Oster revealed that the team is already working on it but unfortunately did not provide a time frame for its release. We can only assume that Baldur’s Gate 2: Enhanced Edition will likely release for iOS first while Beamdog works on porting the first title to Android. It should also be noted that Beamdog has considered bringing the Enhanced Edition of Baldur’s Gate onto the PlayStation 3 console.

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Before Windows Phone started making a splash, the smartphone platform wars was mostly between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, although in all fairness Google did roll out several official iOS apps that were pretty good, such as the recent Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube and etc. However it looks like the war between Android and Windows Phone is starting to heat up and according to a recent accusation by Microsoft, they claim that Google executives forced YouTube to not create an app for the Windows Phone platform, thus making the YouTube experience on Windows Phone devices less than stellar.

Microsoft is also claiming that Google has prevented them from creating their own YouTube app that would offer the same features that iOS and Android users are enjoying, although it should be noted that this is not a new allegation, but it is now supposedly backed up by evidence which Microsoft claims was garnered from YouTube employees. This incident with YouTube is an add-on to the series of problems that Microsoft is having with Google, such as Google’s decision to end support for Exchange ActiveSync, and the announcement by Google that they had no plans for native apps for the Windows Phone platform which led to Windows Phone users petitioning Google for it.

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Just a couple days ago, we received the news that that popular pirate app store for iOS, Installous, shut down along with the entire Hackulous team. Hackulous is regarded as one of the biggest names in the iOS jailbreak community, so seeing their doors close is certainly a huge victory for anti-piracy advocates, but that hasn’t stopped from other iOS piracy sources from taking Installous’ place.

No one knows why the immensely-popular pirate app store shut down without warning, but Hackulous claims that “stagnant” forums and the difficulty in moderating them eventually led to the team quietly shutting it all down. However, we have to assume that there were other factors involved in the shutdown, since we have a hard time believing that the forums for such a popular service were “stagnant” by any means. If anything, the forums could’ve been booming, and moderators had a hard time keeping up with duties.

Unfortunately, for those who currently have Installous installed on their jailbroken iOS device will no longer be able to access the app at all — it immediately prompts you with a “Installous will now terminate” message, and simply goes back to the iOS home screen, deeming the app completely useless. It’s even been removed in the Cydia store, where it will still show up in search results, but will fail to install

SlashGear isn’t responsible for users jailbreaking their devices, and you do so at your own risk.

Jailbreakers will no doubt miss Hackulous, and the team’s one-stop shop for “cracked” or pirated apps and games on iOS was one of the main reasons that users jailbroke their iOS devices in the first place, but it looks like users will have to pony up that $0.99 for an app or game they would’ve gotten for free otherwise. Or they can resort to other sources, like Zuesmos and Kuaiyong, both of which don’t even require jailbreaking in the first place. But we’re guessing that it’ll be a long time before we see another pirate app store show up that will impact the iOS jailbreak community the way that Installous did.

Installous is dead, it’s not just you is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple most likely sighed a huge sigh of relief when they found out that Installous, the popular jailbroken pirating app for iOS, shut down a couple days ago. However, it looks like there’s another threat to replace Installous. A new hack allows users to bypass Apple DRM and install pirated apps without the need to jailbreak.

Zeusmos and Kuaiyong are two alternatives to Installous, and both have been gaining significance since the exit of Installous. The former has been around for a few months now, while the latter has appeared almost from nowhere over the past couple of weeks. Both of these services offer simple, one-tap installs of pirated apps and don’t require that devices be jailbroken.

Obviously, this opens up the arena for more even more users to install cracked ups, instead of just the relatively small fraction of users with jailbroken devices, and it’s now easier than ever to pirate iOS apps. While Zeusmos is available for free on jailbroken devices, it charges a fee for non-jailbroken users. However, the creator of Zeusmos says that the service is intended to solely code sign applications, and he doesn’t encourage any form of piracy — it’s merely a way to “try before you buy”.

The Chinese service Kuaiyong also offers a similar service: allowing you to install apps for free from your device without paying for them. It seems the service offers enterprise-licensed apps, which allow them to be installed on multiple devices. Both Kuaiyong and Zeusmos are terribly easy to use, and it makes pirating apps that much easier. And while these services aren’t as popular as Installous, there are bound to be new services emerging that will get everyone’s attention sooner or later.

[via The Next Web]

New services lets users install pirated iOS apps without jailbreaking is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.