Opera 12 Released

After nearly a year in development, the final build of Opera 12 has just been released with numerous changes focusing mostly on performance, stability and faster browsing. To improve performance, several steps were taken such as plugins are now handled as separate processes, which means even if a plugin such as Flash behaves errantly, it won’t take the whole browser down. Underused features such as Unite and Voice are removed. Opera 12 also received a significant speed boost with faster page loading, faster start up and faster HTML5 rendering, hardware acceleration and a new skinning engine similar to Google Chrome and Firefox persona.

In brief here are the new features in Opera 12.

Support for hardware acceleration has been implemented, which means you can use the computer’s graphics processor to render pages, animations and even the UI of the browser itself, faster and more smoothly. Hardware acceleration is disabled by default, however. You can enable this feature by setting opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableHardwareAcceleration to 1, then saving and restarting Opera.

Web-GL support: Opera 12 allows users to switch to WebGL engine instead of Opera’s default Presto rendering engine. This means that pages that doesn’t play well with Opera but renders correctly in Chrome will now open without problems in Opera 12. This optional WebGL is also disabled by default and can be enabled by setting opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableWebGL to 1, then saving and restarting Opera.

Separate process for plugins: The other important change in Opera 12 is that plug-ins like Flash and QuickTime now run in separate process. As already explained, this improves browser stability.

New Themes: Opera 12 brings a new theming engine to the browser, offering a simple way to change the look and feel of the software. Traditional Opera skins are still supported.

Webcam support: Opera 12 now supports capturing webcam images directly through the browser using HTML5. Several photo applications like Photo Booth, Polaroid and Facekat has been integrated within the browser for hilarity and awesomeness.

64-bit Opera: Opera 12 also debuts 64-bit version of the browser for Mac and Windows.

Opera 12 also added support for five new languages - Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hebrew and Kazakh — now bringing the total number to 60 for the browser. The ability to add right-to-left reading for Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Hebrew throws the door open for potentially millions of Internet users.

Unfortunately, Opera did let go two add-on platforms Widgets and Unite in favor of Extensions. Also phased out were speech recognition, text-to-speech and VoiceXML. This is disappointing for those users who have grown used to these tools.

Ybuy.com Lets You Try Gadgets for 30 Days Before you Buy

Want to try a new gadget that you can’t afford? Well, if you can spare $25 the new iPad or Xbox 360 can be yours for a full month. If that sounds good, head over to Ybuy.com and signup for a membership. Ybuy which launched early this year brings subscription services back in style.

YBuy.com allows members to try out a product, such as an iPad, a Jawbone headset, a Keurig coffee maker, a Wi-Fi scale or an iRobot Roomba vacuum, for 30 days before deciding whether they want to keep it. Members must pay $25 for the service. If they decide to keep the product, the fee applies toward the item’s purchase price, so they pay for the item minus the $25 already paid. If members decide not to purchase, they can simply return the product. YBuy pays for shipping both ways, and if they choose to skip a month, they don’t have to pay.

The concept is based on the theory that product returns are already costing the consumer electronics industry a lot of money. In 2011, YBuy estimates that 68 percent of products were returned because they did not meet customer’s expectations, costing the industry $16.7 billion.

Thus, if users get the chance to use the product before they buy it, the number of returns will drop. YBuy says it offers new products, but will also refurbish unwanted products before sending them to another customer. Unlike other online retailers such as Amazon where customers have a huge selection to choose from, YBuy will offer only a handful of products picked by its staff.

The company says it will also discount items under regular retail prices to make buying through YBUY more attractive. Not all the gadgets are cheaper though.

At the moment membership to YBuy is invitation-only and is available only for residents of the US.

$35 Computer RasberryPi Launched. Available For Purchase

Raspberry Pi, the teeny-weeny microcomputer that was announced late last year, and the one that has amassed a huge fan following even before it was released, is finally available for orders.

The Raspberry Pi is available at either Premier Farnell or RS Components. Search for Raspberry Pi, and then follow the normal shopping and checkout process. Apparently, the announcement has caused a huge rush of buyers and both the retailer's websites are down at the time of this writing.

Update: Both sites have sold out within minutes.

Those who have tuned in late, the Raspberry Pi is a small computer, no bigger than a credit card, running on 700MHz ARM11 processor with 256MB of RAM and with all essential connectivity options such as VGA ports, HDMI, USB, Wi-Fi and Ethernet ports.

The tech world is pretty excited about Raspberry Pi. For $25 or $35 you can get a fully functional ARM-based computer running a special version of Fedora Linux; all you need to do is plugin a monitor, keyboard and mouse. The HDMI output supports 1080p playback, and we have already seen videos of games being played on it. Raspberry Pi will be an impressive media center.

The whole things is also pretty damn small. Although you can’t use it without a monitor and keyboard/mouse hooked up, it’s still nice that you can carry it around and hook it up at home, at work, or in conference rooms.

All of the first units that are on sale are the $35 Raspberry Pi Model B. These are the more fully featured versions of the Raspberry Pi that include an Ethernet port, and 2 USB ports. The $25 Model A has been reworked to include 256MB of RAM – double than what were originally planned to offer – and will be going into production immediately.

This first launch is aimed at software and hardware enthusiasts, makers, teachers and others who want to build exciting things with the Raspberry Pi before the official educational launch, which will happen later in 2012.

The developers expects that when Raspberry Pi is launched into the educational market, there will be an experienced community of people using and making things with the Raspberry Pi. Software will be more mature and free of obvious bugs, and easier for children and educators to use.