Latest Technology News

Jelly Bean continues its dominance streak in the green droid distribution charts, with Android 4.1 alone surpassing the former ruler, Gingerbread, based on the number of devices visiting Google Play during the 14 days ending August 1.

In the latest charts, combined, the first two Jelly Bean iterations, Android 4.1 (34 percent) and Android 4.2 (6.5 percent), reached a 40.5 percent distribution level, which represents a 2.6 percentage points increase (from 37.9 percent) over the previous data set from early-July. By contrast, Gingerbread (versions 2.3 to 2.3.7), accounted for a lesser 33.1 percent share, which is one percent lower compared to the numbers -- 34.1 percent -- released a month ago.

Continue reading →

You’ve come up with an important business proposal, and want to share your ideas with someone else. You could just mail them a PDF document with the details, but if the deal falls through, there’s no way to control what happens to the file later.

Protect that document with the free SmartRM, though, and it’s a very different story. You can decide who opens it, when, how many times, whether they can print it, and more. And if there are problems, then you can restrict or block access in just a few seconds -- even after you’ve sent them the file.

Continue reading →

It may not be an update that will set the world on fire, but it's one that will be welcomed by anyone who manages a personal and a work Twitter account. The Window 8 version of the app now includes support for multiple accounts, so there's no need to keep signing in and out.

This is good news not only for tweeters who use Twitter for business and pleasure, but also those who just like to maintain more than one persona online. Other additions to the app include list support for easier management of the accounts you follow.

Continue reading →

Goversoft’s excellent privacy and system cleanup tool PrivaZer has today been updated to version 2.0.0, with a range of additions and improvements making it now more thorough than ever.

Enhanced Chrome cleanup sees the program now wipe the browser’s omnibox history, for instance, along with its stored passwords, download history and journals.

Continue reading →

Internet Explorer might no longer hold 96 percent of the browser market like it did back in 2002, but Microsoft’s browser still remains hugely popular. Firefox and Chrome took large bites out of IE’s dominance, but they have yet to topple it, and don’t look set to do so any time soon.

According to new figures from Net Applications, Internet Explorer 8 is the most popular browser on the desktop with 23.52 percent global market share. And it’s not the only incarnation of IE in the top five either.

Continue reading →

I've long been a believer that a judgement gap, influenced largely by negative media coverage, is what continues to hold back cloud adoption among small organizations. And judging from the results of a recent study completed by comScore, my intuition has been fairly on track. The biggest issue surrounding cloud uptake, at least for small businesses worldwide, seems to be none other than an issue of perception.

How so? The study, which surveyed companies with between 25 to 499 computers in the USA, Germany, France, and the UK, found that 42 percent of small businesses which had yet to adopt cloud technologies were concerned about reliability/uptime. Likewise, a full 60 percent had cited issues with data security as reasoning for staying cloud-free.

Continue reading →

When Google bought Motorola, the Android community was abuzz with excitement. Motorola is a world renowned class-leader in quality. With that in mind, the world waited for a mythical and epic smartphone to be released as a result of the marriage. Unfortunately, while Motorola did release great phones such as the Droid Razr HD, these were not the Droids we were looking for. Today, Google and Motorola announce the Moto X, hoping to deliver on the high expectations.

The tagline for this new smartphone is "All Yours" -- this is because you can customize the phone to your liking. According to Motorola, the smartphone "...is truly yours, because you design it. Through our online studio, Moto Maker, you choose the colors, and decide on the details: front, back, accents, memory, wallpapers, even add a name or a short message. When you are done, we assemble your Moto X right here in the USA and ship it to you for free in four days or less. Choose from more than 2,000 possible combinations, with more to come. We’ll be constantly exploring new offerings, such as real wood backs, starting later in the year".

Continue reading →

Microsoft is slowly attempting to wean customers away from software and over to the services side of things. Office 2013 was a small first step, debuting in both Office 2013 and Office 365 Home Premium formats -- purchase and subscription options. Office 365 was previously a web service, and still exists in that form, with enhancements coming at a steady pace. Today this is illustrated with the latest release to the Access web app.

Jeff Conrad announces "it used to be a 3-year wait for new features in Office. However, because we are increasing the speed of our ship cycles, we are proud to announce that as of now, Cascading Controls are available to all of our Access 2013 Office 365 customers". The new update adds cascading controls -- essentially a drop-down list for all of your controls, including project name, company, contact information, data and more.

Continue reading →

The standard Windows "uninstall a program" applet may not exactly be packed with features, but it’s fine for occasional use. Find and select your program, click Uninstall, and follow the instructions -- it’s all very straightforward.

You can only uninstall one program at a time, though, so if you’re intending to do a serious cleanup then this can quickly become tedious. Which is why you might want to try a little third-party help, in the shape of Macecraft Software’s Decrap.

Continue reading →

When I built my newest computer, I was excited to get a motherboard with native USB 3.0 ports -- I was finally at the forefront of USB speed. I bought a USB 3.0 flash drive, hard drive enclosure and hub. All the devices worked great and life was good.

However, yesterday my world was rocked when the USB 3.1 specification was announced as complete. While we are likely years away from actual affordable USB 3.1 devices, it still leaves me feeling that my newly-bought hardware is already on the way to obsolescence. You see, this is not a minor update it is doubling the speed of USB 3.0 to 10Gbps!

Continue reading →

It is the same old story in households consisting of more than one member. The Netflix account is a family thing, but not all members have the same tastes and can sometimes post vastly different reviews of the same flick. This is what Netflix describes as "Honey, you ruined my Netflix". Now the company aims to right this problem.

Eddy Wu, of Netflix tells us "many of you have had similar experiences, where you sat down to find something great to watch on Netflix, but it looks like your spouse has been binging on those teenage supernatural dramas you can’t stand, or your kids have filled your viewing history with animated sheep".

Continue reading →

jAlbum AB has released jAlbum 11.4, a minor update of its cross-platform web album building tool. The software, available for personal use as a free, ad-supported program, resolves an issue that saw the red-eye reduction tool get broken, plus comes with the promise of faster loading times for larger projects.

This performance improvement claims "significantly faster (around 10 times)" loading of large album projects with sub-folders.

Continue reading →

Cloud-based analytics supplier Tidemark has announced its latest set of results which show 250 percent year-on-year growth. This is driven by businesses moving away from legacy suppliers as they seek to unlock the power of their data.

Christian Gheorghe, Founder and CEO of Tidemark says, "Legacy vendors, such as Oracle Hyperion, SAP and IBM Cognos are suffocating customers with archaic technology that prohibits getting the right people involved in actively managing the performance of the company. The velocity of business and increasing importance of data outside a company's walls have created new challenges that can't be solved by focusing on a few power users who act as the gatekeepers to information".

Continue reading →

In late-January, Google revealed that, after July 31, Windows Phone handsets will be unable to establish new Exchange ActiveSync connections to Gmail. The controversial move would leave said devices without the ability to sync calendar and contacts entries with the search giant's consumer-oriented email service, after the passing of the deadline. However, that is no longer the case, as Google just gave Windows Phone users another reprieve.

"We've reached an agreement to extend support for new Windows Phone connections to the Google Sync service through December 31, 2013", says Google in a statement that was issued to me earlier today. The agreement, as you can probably tell, was made with Microsoft, likely to give the software giant and its partners more time to deploy CalDAV and CardDAV support, which is needed for Gmail calendar and contacts sync, in Windows Phone.

Continue reading →

I use Soluto to manage my PCs and iOS devices, as well as hardware belonging to a select group of less technically literate friends and family. It’s a handy service that makes it easy to view hardware details of the devices you’re monitoring, as well as cut boot times, manage and update apps, remove unwanted browser extensions, and more.

The firm has just introduced a new feature called Soluto for Servers which adds Windows servers to the list of devices available to manage. You just need to download an installer and run it on each of your servers.

Continue reading →