Latest Technology News

NirSoft has announced the availability of NetworkLatencyView, a handy network monitoring tool.

The program detects new TCP connections on your PC, calculating and displaying their network latency. As NirSoft points out, "the latency value calculated by NetworkLatencyView is very similar to the result you get from pinging to the same IP address".

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Android users have been patiently waiting for a new version of their favorite mobile operating system for some time. Many were disappointed that a new update was not unveiled at the Google I/O conference. But finally the wait is over as today Google announces Android 4.3, which the company calls "a sweeter version of Jelly Bean". Diabetics need not worry; it will not increase glucose levels, only new features!

Unfortunately, those of you who watched today’s Google Event, will already know that the announcement was slightly lackluster. Many of the new features are developer focused -- actual users don't gain very much to be excited about.

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In what may have been one of the poorer kept secrets in tech, Google today took the wraps off the brand new Nexus 7. Unfortunately for the search giant, Best Buy won the race, by placing the new tablet up for pre-order early this morning. The device became official shortly thereafter, as Google held its breakfast event with Android chief Sundar Pichai.

"Together with ASUS, we took what you loved about the original Nexus 7 and made it even better," the company states in its official announcement. "The first thing you’ll notice is the sharpness of the screen: the 323 pixels packed into every inch of the screen makes it the world's highest-resolution 7-inch tablet. It’s lighter than ever, with more than nine hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of web browsing or reading. Nexus 7 now features stereo speakers and virtual surround sound from Fraunhofer (the inventors of the MP3 format), giving you rich and immersive audio".

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In the classic children’s story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", the protagonist encounters a family of three bears. The three are distinctly different and are described as a father, mother and baby. Yesterday, Motorola and Verizon followed in Goldilocks’ shoes and announced a family of new Android phones for the famous "Droid" line  -- Droid Maxx (father), Droid Ultra (mother) and Droid Mini (baby).

By offering three different devices, Motorola hopes that much like Goldilocks, the consumer will find one that is "just right".

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Roku, a set-top box in a vastly competitive market that includes products from Apple and Google, has made a fair amount of noise, locking in many deals to bring content to its growing base of customers. The tiny living room computer can offer much to the home entertainment experience, and now that offering grows by one.

Today the entertainment company announces Sky News is making its way to more shores via the Roku box. The British news service not only will be on UK-based boxes, but also launch for customers in the United States, Canada and Ireland.

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Google is making an announcement regarding a new device today. No one outside of the giant tech corporation has any clue what it might be. No one I tell you. Not a single solitary person anywhere. Except maybe Best Buy.

Of course that leak might just be a total co-incidence. Google could in fact be preparing to announce Hat -- a mind reading/recording device for the head. Or something entirely different.

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Security specialist Symantec is reporting the first malicious use of the Android 'Master Key' vulnerability that allows hackers to inject malicious code into apps without invalidating the digital signature.

The vulnerability was discovered earlier this month but Norton Mobile Insight has now detected its first use in the wild. Mobile Insight harvests and analyzes Android apps from marketplaces around the world and has discovered the infection labelled Android.Skullkey in two applications from China. These are legitimate apps used to make appointments with doctors.

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Despite being one of the main means of downloading pirated content and, therefore, a threat to Microsoft's profits (and that of many other big companies), the software giant just accepted a BitTorrent client on Windows Phone Store. Surely, popular service providers Netflix, Pandora, Spotify and the like are not too pleased about this decision, especially after releasing apps for the tiled smartphone operating system.

The BitTorrent client in question is called wpTorrent, and, judging by the number of features it touts, all the basics are covered. Users can discover and find files via RSS feeds and search engines and download content straight to their handsets (even when the device is locked).

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Whether you’ve been overclocking your PC, are worried about a specific device, or just wondering why your system has been so unstable recently, getting a better understanding of your computer’s inner workings can be very useful. And grabbing a copy of the Open Hardware Monitor is a great place to start.

The program is free, open source, and surprisingly easy to use. Unzip and launch it, and a simple tree view immediately displays temperatures, fan speeds, voltages, CPU load and more.

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Security and management in the mobility space, at least since the dawn of  the iPhone, has always had a "figuring it out as we go along" quality to it. So far we’ve gotten away with it; even though the potential for significant security breaches via mobile devices has always been there, and even though compliance with best practices in mobility is a rare thing, I’ve seen no evidence that they are a significant source of actual breaches. The real problems are what they always have been: SQL injection, weak passwords, social engineering, and so on.

In the meantime, the market for products to manage and secure mobile devices has been maturing. Of course management and security should be closely-intertwined, if not run by the same products. That can be difficult when the major products don’t include more than trivial management capabilities and very little is compatible cross-platform.

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A new report by security research firm NSS Labs looks at the comparative performance of popular browsers when it comes to blocking phishing attacks. Over a 12-day test period the average phishing catch rate ranged from 96 percent for Firefox 19 to only 83 percent for Internet Explorer 10.

Of the other big three, Chrome 25 scored 92 percent, Safari 5 managed 95 percent, and Opera 12 scored 89 percent. Chrome, Firefox and Safari all make use of Google's Safe Browsing API so it's unsurprising that they scored within a few points of each other. Microsoft uses its own SmartScreen technology in IE, whereas Opera uses a combination of blacklists from Netcraft, PhishTank and TRUSTe.

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Google has updated its Cloud Print service, adding full support for Windows (XP, Vista and 7, anyway) and making it easier to share printers.

Cloud Print was first made available in 2011, and essentially allows you to access your printers from phones, tablets, PCs and more, wherever you happen to be. The service has previously been accessible via Chrome, but this new release makes it available to any Windows desktop application.

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The next-generation Google Nexus 7 surfaced at Best Buy, with complete specifications, price and photos. Interested buyers can pre-order the new tablet, which is available in both 16 GB and 32 GB storage trims, and, presumably, receive it after the search giant officially unveils its latest slate (which should not be too far away).

According to the details revealed by the US retailer, the new Nexus 7 arrives with some pretty impressive hardware under its dark-colored shell, and runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean (which, like the slate, has yet to be officially announced by Google). The price? Well, the 16 GB version runs for $229.99, while its 32 GB counterpart goes for $269.99.

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Typing is just so passé; swiping is very much where it's at these days. SwiftKey's latest Android beta adds interesting new cloud features that can be tested for free during the beta phase. What’s new? Backup and sync options mean that dictionaries can be synchronized between multiple devices, and upgrading your phone need not result in having to start from scratch.

But perhaps the most interesting feature is the introduction of trending phrases. Whether you're writing in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese, SwiftKey analyzes trending topics on the likes of Twitter to help bolster its dictionary and provide better suggestions.

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The PC world is packed with audio players of every type, which makes it difficult for smaller contenders to stand out from the crowd. Andreas Argirakis has done better than most with his BZR Player, though, thanks to a very simple strategy: he’s implemented support for just about every audio format you’ve ever heard of, and many more you haven’t, meaning the player now supports more than 480 file types in total.

The program doesn’t just open the regular formats, then: MP3, WMA, FLAC, OGG and so on. It also handles all kinds of game and hardware-specific formats, with the supported list including "Baldur’s Gate -- Dark Alliance", "Bio Hazard 2", "Conflict -- Desert Storm 1 & 2", EA formats, Nintendo GBS, NSF and NSFE files, and the list goes on.

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