Rival smartphone makers are no longer afraid of Apple
There was a time when Apple was the undisputed king of mobile. Since the release of the first iPhone in a barnstorming speech by Steve Jobs, the company went from strength to strength, dropping better models every year, and absolutely dominating the high-end mobile market.
Apple sold out of the launch shipments of the brand-new iPhone 5s in under two days, and sales of the iPhone have maintained Apple's profits despite a recent drop in iPad sales. But since Steve Jobs' death, Apple's competitors have been getting bolder. With the launch of the upcoming iPhone 6 coming in September, a number of high profile rivals have been snapping at Apple's heels with aggressive marketing, attack ads and a general lack of respect for the venerable giant of mobile technology. Here are a couple of hints that Apple's competitors are sensing a weakening of the giant.
China investigates Microsoft for being a monopoly -- is the company guilty?
Thanks to technology, the business world is shrinking. Compared to prior decades, it is becoming far easier for businesses to operate in multiple countries. While this has the potential of being great, it also can be bad. After all, economies are not puzzle pieces that fit together nicely. No, sometimes there is an oil and water situation, where things don't mix.
Ultimately, communism and capitalism will never work together hand in hand. In other words, for an American company to operate in a communist republic, such as China, there will be pains. Today, it is revealed that China is investigating Microsoft for being a monopoly and has raided its offices.
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Millions of Android devices could be at risk from Fake ID flaw
A newly uncovered flaw in Google's Android OS could leave large numbers of mobile devices at risk from malicious apps that appear to be from trusted developers.
Named 'Fake ID' by Bluebox Security who uncovered it and notified Google of its presence, the vulnerability lets malicious applications impersonate specially recognized trusted applications without any user notification. Although a patch was issued in April it's likely that many devices are still at risk.
Pale Moon resolves rendering performance issues, among other tweaks and fixes
Moonchild Productions has released a minor update to its Firefox browser variant for Windows with the release of Pale Moon 24.7 and Pale Moon x64 24.7.
Version 24.7 is primarily a bug fix release, and also includes the latest security fixes recently incorporated into the main Firefox build.
Post Target many retailers continue to leave data at risk
More than six months on from the Target breach hitting the headlines retailers are still not properly protecting their data according to risk management specialist BitSight.
Writing on the company's blog CTO and co-founder Stephen Boyer says, "BitSight has continued to observe evidence of system compromise inside hundreds of retailers over the course of the year. Based on our data and analysis, we observed that there were many retailers with poor performance and that this downward trend has continued into the second half of 2014".
Better use of data can avoid the impact of a bad sales experience
We've all had bad sales experiences at some time or another and they inevitably have a negative impact on our view on the company concerned.
A new study by mobile sales enablement specialist Showpad reveals that it can take years to recover from the damage caused to the customer relationship by a bad sales experience.
No BYOD policy? Now is the time to prioritize user-oriented IT
Halfway through 2014 and the use of personal devices in the workplace is very much common practice across most workforces in the US and UK. However, whilst many people are still talking about the effect the "bring your own device" policies (BYOD) are having on staff productivity, the cost-saving discussions have remained on the side-lines.
According to recent research, having the latest consumer device to use in the boardroom or replacing a notepad for a tablet is proving to be so popular with employees that 39 percent not only purchase their own device for work purposes but also spend more of their own money on devices than on tea and coffee.
InPowered helps marketers use the power of expert opinion
Independent reviews and opinions are a valuable commodity for marketers as they can often be key to purchasing decisions. Now content management specialist InPowered is launching a new product to help companies find out what experts are saying about them.
Called Expert Ranking it identifies the top experts on any topic and allows brands to discover what these experts are writing about them. It then lets the brand promote those opinions via their web, social and mobile channels.
Session Manager automatically saves and restores your Firefox windows
Get engrossed in your latest web research project and you’ll soon be navigating an array of browser tabs, each one with some vital piece of information -- it’s very easy to lose track.
Firefox offers a few very basic options to help you maintain control. Clicking History > Restore Previous Session will reopen whatever you were viewing last time, for instance, or you can bookmark all open tabs for reference later.
Microsoft offers affordable Nokia Lumia 635 and Fitbit Flex bundle
Now that Windows Phone 8.1 has scored a huge win by receiving support for Fitbit wearables, Microsoft is giving prospective Nokia Lumia 635 buyers the option to purchase a bundle that also includes a Fitbit Flex activity tracker.
The bundle, that starts at $148.95, is good for both the AT&T and T-Mobile versions of Lumia 635, that cost $99 and $129, respectively, on Microsoft Store when purchased individually. Flex goes for $99.95 alone on Fitbit's site. That equates to savings of $50 when buying the two devices as a bundle on Microsoft's online and brick and mortar shops.
Dating site OkCupid freely admits lying to its customers
There was widespread condemnation of Facebook when it was revealed that the social network had been manipulating users' newsfeeds as part of a social experiment. Official complaints may have been made but it doesn’t seem to have served as a lesson for other websites. Now it transpires that OkCupid -- the dating website whose slogan is "We use math to get you dates" -- has been fiddling the figures in a series of experiments on its users. The weird thing is, the site is openly bragging about it.
In a blog post unashamedly titled "We Experiment On Human Beings!", founder Christian Rudder writes that "OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing". Seems like something of an odd admission. The blog post details three experiments the dating site conducted on its subscribers. There must have been more because the post is prefaced with the words "Here are a few of the more interesting experiments OkCupid has run". Does "interesting" just mean "less controversial"? Who knows?
Apple launches faster MacBook Pro with Retina display lineup
Apple has updated its MacBook Pro with Retina display lineup with faster processors across the board and more RAM in the base 13.3-inch and 15.4-inch models, that kick off at $1,299 and $1,999, respectively. The new processors are 200 MHz faster than before.
Both the entry-level and mid-range 13.3-inch Retina MacBook Pros come with a 2.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (with Turbo Boost up to 3.1 GHz), while the high-end model packs an even faster 2.8 GHz processor (with Turbo Boost up to 3.3 GHz). The base model gains 8 GB of RAM in the new generation, twice as much as its predecessor offered, but retains its 128 GB of internal storage.
Formula One websites do battle once more during the Hungarian Grand Prix
Last week web performance specialist Keynote monitored and compared 11 Formula One constructor team web pages during the German Grand Prix to see how they fared under pressure. The results made for interesting reading.
The Hungarian Grand Prix, staged a couple of days ago, was a classic race, packed with excitement, and topped with a surprise win by Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo. Keynote monitored the same F1 websites again to see how they did second time around, and as you might expect changing race fortunes did have a noticeable impact on site performance.
Tech startups working to protect your privacy
Addressing the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference over the weekend of 18 July, Edward Snowden entreated hackers, engineers and activists to fight surveillance by building a new generation of privacy tools for everyone to use. In fact, privacy startups are already hard at work building tools to help web users protect their privacy in areas such as analytics, encryption and search.
However, there is still much work to do to put these tools into the hands of the ordinary web user.
Russia offers a $112,000 bounty to anyone who can crack Tor
Russia's government has issued a 4 million rubles (about $112,000) bounty to anyone who cracks the Tor anonymity network's encryption protocols.
Tor, which began as a secret project from the US Naval Research Laboratory, works by piling up layers of encryption over data, nested like the layers of an onion, which gave the network its original name, The Onion Router (TOR).