Google announced that Chrome 28, which is currently available in the beta channel, speeds up the browser with a new threaded HTML parser. What does that mean? Google says that Chrome 28 will load DOM content about 10 percent faster, and reduces the the maximum stop time by 40 percent. In other words, you’re going to see pages load much faster.

For users of Chrome for Android, you’re going to find that WebGL has been added as an experimental feature in the beta alongside Web Audio and WebRTC. WebGL and Web Audio can be combined to create web apps and games that run natively across any browser on any device.

Chrome for Android is also getting the Fullscreen API with this latest beta. When enabled, the browser UI and OS status bar will be hidden in favor of a full screen experience. You can test Chrome for Android’s Fullscreen API with this Chrome Experiment.

Google also details two major deprecated features that users and developers will need to be aware of. First, the Content Security Policy HTTP head is no more. Second, Chrome Extensions have been ditched in favor of the Rich Notifications Chrome API. Many see as a sign that Google Now is about to come to Chrome.

If you want to play around with the above beta features, be sure to download the Chrome Beta here.

Adobe announced that Lightroom 5, the successor to its popular Lightroom 4 photo editing software, will be available through a free public beta starting today. Fans of Lightroom will be able to test all the new features in the latest version of Lightroom before it becomes commercially available later this year.

“Lightroom is the essential tool for busy professional and discerning amateur photographers, who are uncompromising in the pursuit for image quality or searching for artistic expression,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president of digital imaging products, Adobe. “The Lightroom 5 beta is highly valuable in ensuring the new features support and address the needs of our customers and we look forward to hearing feedback.”

Lightroom 5 has a number of new features and enhancements that promise to make the photo editing process easier than ever:

The Lightroom 5 beta will be available on machines running Windows 7 SP1/8 and Mac OSX 10.7/10.8. You can grab the free beta here.

Unity announced that Unity 4.2 is now available to Windows 8 developers as part of a Windows Store apps early access program. Developers can use the new tools available in Unity 4.2 to create games for both x86 and ARM-based systems. It also supports DirectX 11 so games can take advantage of all the newest technologies available to developers.

“With the beta of the Unity 4 game engine for Windows 8, the entire Unity community of 1.5 million developers can get started quickly building games for Windows 8,” said John Richards, Senior Director of Windows Apps Marketing for Microsoft. “The number of high quality Unity-based games already created for PC, Xbox and mobile devices is impressive, and we’re excited to see the amazing games the community brings to Windows 8 with Unity.”

As part of the early access program, developers will be able to port games to the Windows Store platform using the Unity 4.2 beta builds. All registered participants in the beta will receive a two month trial license that will unlock Windows Store app platform support in the Unity toolset.

It should be noted that any games created for Windows 8 using this beta will not be available for commercial release. It’s meant to help developers get a feel for developing with Unity on the Windows 8 platform. Those who wish to commercially release their games on Windows 8 using Unity 4.2 will want to buy a full license when the public commercial release of Unity comes out. If you can’t wait for that, you can contact the Unity Sales team to work out a deal to publish a game using the Unity 4.2 beta.

The beta includes two different team-based multiplayer modes – Hunter and Crash-Site. Hunter mode sees two players don a nanosuit and team up to hunt down the other players using stealth tactics. Players killed by the hunters become hunters themselves, similar to the “zombie” modes seen in other shooters. Crash-Site sees players working in teams to attack and defend control points on a map. Both modes support up to 12 players on consoles and 16 on the PC.

Both modes are introduced in a new trailer for the beta test that was released today. The beta lasts for two weeks, ending on February 12, just one week before the launch of Crysis 3 in the U.S.

The beta will give fans of the SimCity a chance to play “a one hour slice” of the game. Maxis will, of course, be monitoring the beta, looking for bugs to squash as well as collecting player feedback on the game and its design.

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The #SimCity Beta is taking place Jan 25-28. Be the first to play a one hour slice of the game: http://t.co/dxadwXpb RT if you’re excited!

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Registration for the beta is currently open over at the SimCity website. Registration closes on January 20, so fans would be well advised not to put it off. Though some gamers have reported technical issues when trying to sign up for the beta, Maxis has stated it is aware of the issues and is working to fix them.

The registration for the beta takes place through EA’s Origin platform. SimCity will represent a preview of EA‘s digital rights management ideas for the PC. For those who haven’t heard SimCity will have a single-player mode, though it will still require an (almost) always-on internet connection to play.

Today, Sony announced that gamers will get a chance to try out Ascension‘s multiplayer action in a beta that begins on January 8. The beta will be open to PlayStation Plus subscribers, and European subscribers will get access to the beta starting January 9. Gamers who have been participating (and winning) in the Rise of the Warrior social media game tie-in will get earlier access to the beta, some as early as today.

The beta will contain the “Team Favor of the Gods” and “Favor of the Gods” modes, which pit player against one another to earn “favor points.” Points are earned from kills, brutal kills, opening chests, capturing domination points, or performing an execution with the “Spear of Olympus.” Players will get a chance during the beta to play on the Desert of Lost Souls map, seen in the multiplayer trailer released back in June, as well as several other maps, including one inspired by the Hercules Arena from God of War III.

To celebrate the announcement, Sony has released a new and extremely bloody Ascension multiplayer trailer.

Adobe announced today that Flash Player 11.5 Beta and AIR 3.5 Beta are available to developers and consumers starting today. The releases, however, are more intended for developers who want to implement the latest features before the stable releases are pushed out.

First up, the AIR 3.5 beta adds support for Jelly Bean, and enhances iOS apps. The other major features are as follows:

The Flash Player 11.5 beta is a bit more interesting. Adobe announced that Flash Player is now going into a rapid beta release cycle. Those who are subscribed to the new background update option will get the latest beta versions of Flash Player without having to life a finger. Here’s the major additions:

You can grab the latest beta releases of Flash Player and AIR at their respective portals. It’s nice to see Adobe quickening the pace of development for Flash Player and AIR. HTML5 is quickly catching up to the kinds of tricks that Flash has had for years, and Adobe needs to stay ahead of the game to stay relevant. WIth continued releases and the additions of new features, Flash Player is going to be just fine.

Facebook announced yesterday afternoon that Facebook SDK 3.0 for iOS is now available for all to use. If you develop apps for iOS and are already using the new features in iOS 6 beta 4, then you owe it to yourself to get familiarized with the new Facebook SDK.

Unfortunately, support for iOS 6 is not included in the final release because iOS 6 is still in beta. If you want to start testing the Facebook SDK for iOS 6, you can grab the beta right now. Facebook will hopefully have a full release up by the time iOS 6 launches.

If you’ve been using the Facebook SDK 3.0 beta, you’re also in for a few surprises. The release version includes a number of new features including “ready-to-use native UI controls, better session management, improved support for calling Facebook APIs, and support for modern Objective-C language features.”

Alongside those features, the Facebook SDK aims to make your life as a developer much easier by providing pre-built UI components for functions like Login, Friend Picker and Place Picker. You are more than welcome to build your own custom UI components for these features, but it’s a nice gesture for those apps that don’t have the resources or the knowhow to build their own custom Login screen.

At this point in time, Facebook will be maintaining two versions of the new iOS SDK. The current release version is the master version. The other is the aforementioned iOS 6 beta. It’s assumed that Facebook will merge the two SDKs once the iOS 6 version leaves beta.

For now, you can download the new Facebook SDK for iOS at GitHub. If you need help with development, check out all the great tutorials and documentation over at the Facebook developer’s site.

The closed beta is going on right now but the open beta starts on June 29th. They are still accepting applications for the open beta1 just go here to sign up! Players will be chosen at random for the first Beta event of the summer for the PS3.

Also coming is the DUST 514 Home Space! Its a War Barge cantina in the EVE Universe, you can learn about the history of New Eden, hang out, earn awesome stuff like companions and armor for Home, play multiplayer Slay – the incredible strategic board game – and much more. In addition, we’re very excited to let you know that we are making available a wave of 10,000 “All Access” Closed Beta invites that visitors to the DUST 514 Home Space can earn by completing all the activities inside, with access to all the DUST 514 Beta events over the summer.

The game will roll out with a companion app for the PS Vita called DUST 514: Neocom. The app brings the feel and functionality from DUST 514 on PS3 to Vita, focusing on customization, communication and trade. Every character you use can be customized via DUST 514: Neocom, so you can create and edit customized fittings (load-outs) with a ton of different dropsuits, weapons, vehicles, items and more. You’ll also be able to use Neocom to access the in-game Mail system and Friends List, as well as use the Market to get new stuff for your character from the DUST 514 Marketplace using either ISK (in-game earned currency) or Aurum (purchased currency).

The first beta weekend was held back at the end of April and saw hundreds of thousands of players taking part in testing Guild Wars 2. The team is back with another beta weekend that will start on Friday, June 8 at noon PDT and conclude on Sunday, June 10 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. It’s another chance for those who pre-ordered the game to see what’s changed since the last beta event.

The good news is that players who participated in April’s event will not have to create a new character. Existing player characters will be able to continue from they left off before. Players who were able to reach level 35 or higher during the last beta will be able to take on and explore the Ascalonian Catacombs.

If you didn’t take part in the last beta event, you may want to consider doing so this time around. Participating in these events directly influence the direction the game will be heading in as ArenaNet starts to enter the final months of development. Some of the feedback they have received thus far has resulted in changes to chat functionality, key bindings, server stability and general performance.

Unfortunately, the only way to get into the weekend beta is to pre-order the game which takes the kind of commitment that some players may not be up for yet. If you want to try out the beta without pre-ordering the game, ArenaNet will be handing out beta keys through contests and other means.

If you want to talk with other Guild Wars 2 players about the upcoming beta weekend or just the game in general, check out our Guild Wars 2 forums.