Believe it or not, the actors in a movie or TV program don’t just make up their dialog on the spot (well, sometimes). Nor do the director or producers just make up the story as they go along (well, not very often).

In most cases, a person (or more than one) has to write a screenplay so the rest of the team can get together and make something. That person is called a writer. And most writers in Hollywood use a program called Final Draft to work their magic.

And now the makers of Final Draft have released a new version, Final Draft 9, and it’s got over 30 new and improved features to help writers (and the rest of the team) take care of the business of show.

Here’s some of them:

• New look and feel for both Mac and Windows users
• Navigator feature now offers story development tools for Scenes, ScriptNotes, and Characters
• Watermarks for PDFs and printing
• Improved Spell Checkers
• Mac specific features like retina display compatibility, dictation support and full screen mode

For more, check out the website right here.

As fans of Apple and its products, we love things like this. Sure, these kinds of results should be taken with a grain (or three) of salt, but still, it’s kinda cool to see and makes us love Apple stuff even more.

What are we talking about? Well, this week ZDNet reports that based on a new study from Soluto, which uses “data from its massive online database of PC crashes, hangs, and performance metrics to identify the 10 most reliable Windows PCs you can buy today”, the most reliable Windows PC in the world is a 13″ Retina MacBook Pro running Windows via Boot Camp.

How abou that? According to the study, the MacBook Pro is “at the top of the list” with other hardware like the Acer Aspire E1-571, the Dell XPS 13, the Dell Vostro 3560, the Acer Aspire V3-771 and Apple’s 15-inch Retina-equipped MacBook Pro taking the next spots.

What about other vendors like Toshiba, Lenovo or market leader HP? Yeah, they don’t even crack the top ten. Sad, but true.

So, if you need to run Windows and are looking for the best, most reliable hardware out there to run it on, guess you should get a Mac. We’re not really surprised. We could have told you that.

Great news for those of you using a PS3 or a PC to play Call of Duty: Black Ops II. That’s right, the Revolution DLC is here!

Check out the full press release below:

Just a quick note to let you know that Call of Duty®: Black Ops II players on PlayStation®3 and Windows PC now have access to the game’s first DLC Map Pack – Revolution. Revolution delivers an unparalleled amount of variety and content for all types of Call of Duty: Black Ops II players, featuring four all-new multiplayer maps set around the globe:

• Grind: Set in a skate park in Venice Beach (the birthplace of skateboarding!), quarter-pipes and curved surfaces drive players away from easy cover and into intense firefights.

If you’re tired of using that old version of Windows like XP or Windows 7, you’re in luck because Microsoft announced on Monday that its next-generation Windows 8 operating system will launch this October. The company confirmed during an event on Monday that the new OS is on track to be released to developers in August with a final release to eager consumers in October.

In addition, Microsoft will also release new devices, including the Surface, to coincide with the OS’ release. The company also promised that users who purchase Windows 7 PCs before the release of the new OS will be able to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro following its release for just $14.99.

Darn nice of them, don’t you think?

Even though people still cling to using older versions of Windows like XP and even, in some cases, Windows 2000 or are just getting used to the idea of Windows 7, Microsoft is moving forward with the next version of its desktop OS known as Windows 8. To help get you used to the idea of a new version of Windows, the company has this week unveiled Windows 8 Release Preview.

This version of Windows 8 is a “near-final” version for users to download and try before the OS is sent to Microsoft’s manufacturing partners. The Preview includes Internet Explorer 10, support for Adobe Flash and new Windows 8 apps for connecting to Hotmail, SkyDrive and Messenger.

“Since our first preview release last September, millions of people now use the pre-release product on a daily basis and millions more have been taking it through its paces, totaling hundreds of millions of hours of testing,” the company said on its official blog. “We genuinely appreciate the effort that so many have put into pre-release testing, and of course, we appreciate the feedback too. Direct feedback and feedback through usage contributed to hundreds of visible changes in the product and tens of thousands of under-the-hood changes.”

Nice to hear Microsoft is responding to user requests and addressing their issues. The real question, though, is if those responses and the rest of the work that went into Windows 8 actually pay off in a usable and stable new OS. I guess we’ll find out soon enough as the OS is officially released in October.

Say what you will about the Angry Birds franchise of games and its relative merits, it looks like it’s here to stay. How do we know?

Well, the company that produces the series of games, Rovio, announced on Monday that the company’s latest Angry Birds installment, Angry Birds Space, has been downloaded 50 Million times in just 35 days, making it the fastest growing mobile game of all time. In the same announcement the company also hinted that “something even bigger is on its way.” What that is, we can’t imagine. The Pigs strike back perhaps? We’ll see.

If you haven’t had a chance to play Angry Birds Space yet, you should. It was released on March 22 for iOS, Android, Mac OS X and Windows so you should have no trouble finding a platform to enjoy it on. Besides, it’s quite fun to play.

In fact, we would go so far to say it’s probably the most fun of the Angry Birds franchise since the original. For more on the game, check out the video after the break.

Much like you can pretty much count on things like death and taxes, you can also count on new versions of Microsoft’s Windows OS to come along. You can also count on their being some confusion regarding the different versions of the OS and what the can or can’t do.

Fortunately, it seems Microsoft has learned a lesson from the release of Windows Vista and Windows 7 and has simplified things a bit for their upcoming new OS: Windows 8. This week the company announced there will be three editions of its next-generation Windows 8 operating system: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT.

Microsoft made the announcement on its blog and further promised “all editions of Windows 8 offer a no-compromise experience.” Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro will support PCs and tablets powered by x86 processors, while Windows RT works with ARM-powered devices. Windows 8 is aimed at the average consumer, while Windows 8 Pro is designed for tech enthusiasts, business people and tech professionals. The RT edition is intended for lighter-duty devices.

Going for the Pro edition of Windows 8 gets you premium features such as encryption, virtualization, PC management and domain connectivity. “If you are an enthusiast or you want to use your PC in a business environment, you will want Windows 8 Pro.”

Windows RT (the OS formerly known as Windows on ARM) will only be available pre-installed on PCs and tablets powered by ARM processors. It will include touch-optimized desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

Microsoft is set to finish Windows 8 this Summer with PCs and tablets powered by the new platform following in October. Windows 8 looks pretty good, and we’ve payed with it a bit, so we’re very interested in seeing the final version when its released.

When it comes to image manipulation tools, the granddaddy of them all has to be Adobe Photoshop. Go to pretty much any company that spends any time manipulating images and they will have Photoshop. It is, to all intents and purposes, the standard against which all others are measured.

It’s been quite some time since Adobe launched a new version of its Photoshop software but finally, that time has come. Well, at least in the form of a new Beta.

Late yesterday, the company released Photoshop CS6 beta into the wild. It features a new, faster and more modern user interface, re-engineered design tools and content-aware patching.

“Photoshop CS6 will be a milestone release that pushes the boundaries of imaging innovation with incredible speed and performance,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president products, Creative Media Solutions, Adobe. “We couldn’t wait to share this beta of Photoshop CS6 with our customers and are looking forward to hearing from them and seeing the ways they are incorporating the beta into their daily creative workflows.”

If you want to check out the new beta it would help to have fast internet. The file weighs in at about 1GB. PC users need to have a 2GHz or faster processor with at least 1GB of RAM and be running Windows XP SP3 or Windows 7. Mac users need multicore Intel processor, 1GB of RAM and OS X 10.6.8 or newer.

The Photoshop CS6 beta is available now from Adobe’s website. Expect the final version sometime in 2012.

If you want to know more, click through for the full press release from Adobe.

As we first told you a few weeks ago, Microsoft has today released the first “Consumer Preview” of the latest version of its Windows software. The new software has been dubbed Windows 8 and is, according to Micsosoft, is “Windows reimagined and reinvented from a solid core of Windows 7 speed and reliability.”

According to the company, here’s what you can expect from the Windows 8 Consumer Preview:

Windows 8 Consumer Preview is a prerelease version of Windows 8 that focuses on people and apps and gives you powerful new ways to use social technologies to connect with the people who are important to you. Windows 8 Consumer Preview is built on the rock-solid foundation of Windows 7 and has the security and reliability features you expect from Windows, but we’ve made it even better. It’s fast, and it’s made to work on a variety of form factors—especially the new generation of touch devices.

Well, there you go. You can go to Microsoft’s website and download Windows 8 to try for yourself. Although, unless you have a touch monitor you won’t be able to experience it exactly as it was intended.

One of the most useful applications I use every day on the Mac has now arrived for Windows. That’s right Windows-using writers Scrivener is now available to you.

No matter if you’re writing the next great American novel (something for National Novel Writing Month perhaps?), research paper, script or any long-form text document that involves more than hammering away at the keys until you’re done, Scrivener, made by the fine folks at Literature & Latte, can help you get your work done. The multi-featured program excels at helping you collect research, bring order to fragmented ideas and avoid shuffling index cards in search of that elusive structure.

Scrivener can help you from the moment an idea comes into your imagination until the final finished pages are output. In short, it pretty much does everything for you except the actual writing.

Unfortunately, that will still be up to you. The rest you can leave to Scrivener.

As someone who uses this app daily (the Mac version) I can safely say it really helps me get my work done. Without it, I would be back to posting index cards to cork boards and trying to make things work that way. I like the 21st Century’s technological advancements and I like Scrivener.

Scrivener requires Windows XP, Vista, or 7 (32 or 64 bit). 1GB RAM; 1ghz Processor; 100mb disk space; 1064 x 786 screen.

With all the news and hype surrounding Apple’s iPhone and Google Android-powered smartphones we sometimes forget the Microsoft has smartphones powered by its Windows Phone OS too. In fact, Microsoft just had a big even yesterday to talk all about the coming update to their phone OS.

The next generation, dubbed Windows Phone 7.1 “Mango” has a host of new features and enhancements that I hate to say look pretty darn good. Mango goes a long way to bring the platform up to date, and Microsoft has named HTC, LG, Samsung, Dell, Acer, Fujitsu Limited, ZTE Corporation and of course Nokia as partners moving forward.

Mango will add more robust multitasking support, messaging threads, deeper social integration, a unified email inbox, voice-to-text and text-to-voice support, and about 500 other enhancements to the Windows Phone platform when it launches this fall.

Click through for the full press release from Microsoft as well as a video of some of the new features of Mango.

Since last week I’ve been testing out the new Wi-Fi Finder App from Boingo. It’s been particularly handy the last day or so when, due to severe storms in LA and the apparently highly vulnerable Timer Warner infrastructure, my Internet went out and I was forced to seek alternative methods to connect and get my work done.

So, an application that’s purpose is to find and connect you to more than 325,000 hotspots (or more) should come in pretty handy in this situation. Not surprisingly, it did. The app was able to find several open Wi-Fi networks clost to my home that, if I wanted to, I could have connected to and used. It was also able to connect me quickly to a hotspot at a local Starbucks so I could get back online. All by launching one app and letting it do its thing.

But connecting you to hotspots isn’t the only thing this app does. It also boast these features:

• Connects to more than 325,000 hotspots from more than 125 network operators in 105 countries (I know, we covered that already, but its really cool)
• Connects to any open, free network that you may encounter
• Can determine the best available open network if more than one are present
• Can be configured to auto-connect to free networks