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On Wednesday Stardock announced an update to their Windows style and theme customization app, WindowBlinds. This update brings it to version 8 and comes with a handful of new changes, including a much more intuitive user interface, updated skin styles, and an improved preview window to see your adjustments before applying a new skin. WindowBlinds also comes with SkinStudio, a built-in tool that lets you customize specific parts of the Windows interface.

WindowBlinds is available at Download.com. Follow the link and grab the product here.

Windows 8 and RT users can now check out their favorite artists and music videos via the new Vevo app.

Debuting in the Windows Store on Wednesday, Vevo lets you view music videos and watch live concerts from an array of artists. The app offers access to more than 75,000 high-definition music videos, according to Vevo.

Tapping into the Windows 8 Search charm, you can track down your favorite songs by title to find related music videos. You can also hunt for your favorite artists and bands, and in return, Vevo displays links to their music videos, shows you … Read more

Adobe's Photoshop Express is a basic photo-editing app for your mobile device. With Photoshop Express, you can correct photo properties like contrast, exposure, and white balance, or use the autofix feature to let Photoshop try to fix everything for you. You can also crop your photos, apply creative filters, and share them to Facebook directly from the app.

Previously only available for iOS and Android devices, it's now ready to be downloaded for free to your Windows 8 tablet or hybrid device from the Windows Store. Here's how to get started with Adobe Photoshop Express for Windows 8:… Read more

Keeping a clean computer is akin to keeping a clean house. It takes a bit of elbow grease and time to tidy up. Having MaxiDisk from Uniblue (developer of PowerSuite) is like having a personal housekeeper for your PC. You may know what needs cleaning but it's always easier to have someone else do it for you. MaxiDisk helps save time by analyzing your hard drive for unnecessary junk files to be deleted, getting rid of outdated backups, and compressing large files to reclaim valuable storage space. If you're worried about what should and shouldn't be discarded, … Read more

To peck away at the vast lead that rivals Google and Apple have in the mobile phone market, Microsoft is tapping its vast research unit to help improve speech recognition for folks who speak their text messages or use their voice to search the Web.

Microsoft researchers say they have come up with a novel approach to boost the accuracy of speech recognition and rev up the speed in which it's rendered by creating a computation model that mimics the way the brain works. By applying so-called deep neural networks to speech recognition, Microsoft researchers claim that users in … Read more

Sorry for the confusion with yesterday's OBi100 deal. First there was a link boo-boo, then the product sold out. But don't worry: even at the usual price of $39.99, that's a great landline alternative. And it'll be back in stock before long, I'm sure.

Much as I'm loving ultrathin, ultralight ultrabooks these days, there's still a place in the world for a laptop with a roomy screen, DVD drive, and other desktop-friendly features. (That DVD drive in particular will prove important when you read about the sweet deal I'm writing for Marketplace … Read more

TweetDeck has revamped its desktop application for Windows to put it on the same page as its app for the Web.

Version 3.0.2 of TweetDeck for Windows sports the same design as its Web app, offering a simpler and cleaner look.

The most notable change is the new toolbar. Moved from the top to the left side of the screen, the bar offers a lineup of icons for commonly-used commands. A button to post a new tweet appears at the top of the bar with a Search icon directly underneath.

Icons for all of the currently-displayed columns also … Read more

Microsoft has cut a deal to open Windows stores within 500 Best Buy locations in the United States and 100 more Best Buy and Future Shop locations in Canada.

The store-within-a-store sites, which will be 1,500 square feet to 2,200 square feet, will offer a wide selection of Windows tablets and PCs, Windows Phones, Microsoft Office, and Xbox consoles. There will also be space set aside specifically for Microsoft's Surface tablet computers.

The deal, announced Thursday, also calls for more than 1,200 Best Buy sales staff to receive Microsoft training, in addition to the Microsoft specialists … Read more

It may look the same outside, but the MacBook Air got overhauled on the inside.

In the case of the solid-state drive (SSD) and graphics, it's a major overhaul.

SSD: Apple appears to be one of the first to stick a PCI Express (PCIe) SSD in a thin laptop. And that makes a huge difference, according to Anand Shimpi of Anandtech.

"This is a huge deal, totally the future. And pretty much all other notebooks announced at Computex still use [Serial ATA]. Apple did the right thing here," Anand said in response to an e-mail query.

Running … Read more