Xiaomi brings its Mi 4 flagship smartphone to India
Half a year after it unveiled Mi 4, Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi is bringing its "fastest & most gorgeous Mi Phone ever" to India. Starting February 10, local consumers will be able to get their hands on the flagship device through retailer Flipkart.
Mi 4 is one of the most interesting smartphones unveiled in 2014, in no small part thanks to its $320 starting price. Handsets from rival makers such as Samsung have price-tags twice as high, so it is easy to understand what makes it such an appealing option in the flagship segment. Fortunately for those wanting to get their hands on Mi 4 in India, its price-tag is still as attractive as ever.
Flash is DEAD! YouTube goes all-in with HTML5
YouTube introduced the HTML5 player back in early-2010. I remember it quite well. At the time, it was made available through the Try something new! page, only as an experimental feature. I was excited to get rid of Flash, so I flicked the switch. I had high hopes. I thought I would be able to play all videos using the HTML5 player, but, as it turned out, that was years away from happening -- YouTube's HTML5 player was not yet ready for prime time, and Flash would get a few more years to reign supreme.
Fast forward to early-2015 and YouTube finally announces that HTML5 is the default player. Flash might as well be considered officially dead on YouTube. It's a huge step forward for those of us waiting for the day when sites we visit are no longer asking or forcing us to install Flash.
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Simplifying enterprise mobility management
Mobile device strategy, especially if it involves BYOD, can mean having to manage a wide range of devices and operating systems. That makes it difficult for IT departments to find a single solution to do the job.
Now though secure mobility specialist Good Technology is launching its Good Management Suite, a comprehensive cross-platform solution for organizations getting started with mobile business initiatives.
Ex-Opera CEO reveals new Vivaldi browser
Ex-Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner has revealed a technical preview of Vivaldi, a new Chromium-based browser for Windows, Mac and Linux.
As this is a first release, the big features are mostly "coming soon". There will be extensions support, a built-in mail client, syncing across your devices, but they’re not here yet.
What Back to the Future II's vision of 2015 got wrong
To celebrate the fact we are now in the year Marty McFly was teleported to, yesterday we had a look back at what Back to the Future II creator Robert Zemeckis got right in his look forward to the year 2015 where he envisaged everything from smart homes and wearables to hoverboards.
There was, of course, also a whole lot he got wrong about the future, and here’s a rundown of the things that didn’t go according to his vision.
How many iPhones did Apple REALLY sell?
The official number for calendar Q4 2014 (fiscal Q1 2015), ending December 27, is 74.688 million. Got to admit, that sure looks like a rather large number of iPhones. But how big is it? Really? Apple sold in the one quarter more iPhones than during fiscal years 2007-10 (73.946 million) combined, or twice as many as sold (37.044 million) during the same three months in 2012.
On its own, iPhone generated more revenue, $51.182 billion, than all of Apple in any quarter in fiscal 2012 and, singly, three of the four quarters in each of FY 2013 and 2014. The amount also exceeds every fiscal year through 2009, which revenue was $42.905 billion.
Warning! Linux is being haunted by a G-G-G-GHOST vulnerability -- are you at risk?
Recently, I declared that the Linux Desktop was dead, something that I stand by. However, Linux still dominates in the mobile device and server categories. And yes, a relatively minuscule number of people -- including myself -- will still continue to use Linux on the desktop. Why? People trust Linux-based operating systems to be safe and secure.
Because of Linux's popularity for servers and smart phones, it is imperative that it remains safe, and free from malware and vulnerabilities. Sadly, we learn today that Linux is being haunted by a g-g-g-ghost -- a ghost vulnerability, that is. Qualys explains that it is calling the vulnerability a "GHOST" because "it can be triggered by the GetHOST functions". In other words, Linux isn't as safe as we thought.
Dell Precision M3800 Mobile Workstation gains 4K, Thunderbolt 2 and Ubuntu Linux options
Dell makes damn good consumer computers, but the company really shines in the enterprise. Along with HP and Lenovo, the firm makes very solidly built and dependable workstations. Of all my years working in the corporate world, Dell has often been the brand of computers offered by the companies for which I have worked. Having dropped and abused many business-issued Dell laptops during travel, I have yet to have any issues beyond scuffs and dents -- impressive.
One of Dell's sexiest business machines is the Precision M3800 Mobile Workstation. Today, the company announces that the "thinnest and Lightest 15-Inch True Mobile Workstation" is getting some great new options that will make many professionals happy. You can now get a 4K display, Thunderbolt 2 and Ubuntu Linux to go with the Haswell Core i7 and NVIDIA Quadro K1100M.
Stop jumping to conclusions! Lizard Squad didn't take down Facebook
Despite many reports to the contrary, there is nothing to suggest that downtime experienced by Facebook, Instagram and Tinder was anything to do with Lizard Squad. Earlier today, the three services were inaccessible for a short while and Lizard Squad took to Twitter to announce the outages.
The tweet, which read "Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, AIM, Hipchat #offline #LizardSquad" was taken as an admission of guilt and reported as such by many, many websites. Even when Facebook announced that the downtime came as a result of a system change by Facebook, site after site continued to report that Lizard Squad was to blame.
New ransomware is making the rounds via email
The "pay or lose your files" concept of ransomware seems to have taken off with hackers and crime syndicates, becoming the modern cyber equivalent of the mob shakedown. Sort of like paying "protection money".
Now a new ransomware variant has been spotted in the wild, spreading via email, just as previous ones had. The latest is being referred to by the catchy name of Trojan.DownLoad3.35539, and appears in a message as a ZIP file with hopes that unsuspecting recipients will launch it.
Delivering enterprise solutions faster via the cloud
Shifting to mobile and cloud solutions has led to expectations that software projects should be delivered faster and more efficiently.
However, according to a recent Mendix survey 71 percent of development teams are unable to keep up with demand.
Enterprise app store streamlines BYOD adoption
Businesses are turning increasingly to mobile devices as means of boosting productivity, but if employees are allowed to use their own devices for work it can be difficult to ensure they use approved apps.
Licensing and compliance specialist Flexera Software has a solution in the form of its App Portal. This is a universal enterprise app store which allows self-service delivery across platforms.
5 reasons your company won't incorporate BYOD
The debate on both sides continues: the pros and cons of incorporating the BYOD concept into the workplace. BYOD has, indeed, become a hot topic where debates on both ends of the discussion-spectrum range from 'lower business costs and happier employees' to 'security hazards and added burdens on IT departments'. Even though proponents would argue that the benefits of incorporating BYOD into business environments outweigh any risks, one only has to examine those very risks to realize their potential for harm is too concerning and cannot just be swept under the proverbial rug.
Here are five reasons your company would want to think twice before adopting a BYOD strategy:
Let's talk about SaaS
It's hard to track down the exact origins of the phrase "Software as a Service" (SaaS), although it seems that it dates as far back as 2001.
When most people think of SaaS, they think of web-enabled applications like Gmail and Salesforce, which is not surprising. The public cloud and advancing web technologies created a popular trend of building web-apps hosted by a particular vendor and delivered (streamed?) over the Internet. Subscriptions make logical sense since you never really download the software, and instead access it on demand. So instead of buying a perpetual license to *Version X* of the software, you buy a monthly/yearly/etc subscription and in exchange get an always up to date version of the software and support.
Opera 27 restores tab preview, fine-tunes navigation bar
Norwegian browser developer Opera has released Opera FINAL 27 for Windows, Mac and Linux. It’s a relatively minor first release for 2015, with just two notable new features to excite users.
These see the navigation bar tweaked for make it easier to switch between major sections of the browser, while the tab preview feature has been restored alongside a new tab-expansion button.