Latest Technology News

Microsoft shows no signs of slowing down. After unveiling a major update to Office Web Apps, today the software giant releases the stable version of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7. The latest iteration of the popular browser debuted alongside Windows 8.1 in mid-October and like its predecessor it forgoes supporting older versions of the operating system.

And because Windows 8.1 is being offered as a free upgrade to Windows 8 users, and Microsoft expects everyone to take this step, Internet Explorer 11 is not officially available for the latter OS either. It is a Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 affair only, which speaks volumes of Microsoft's ongoing efforts to drastically reduce Windows XP's market share and push the two Internet Explorer 11-supported operating systems to the forefront.

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The cloud backup and data recovery sector has grown fast over recent years and is estimated to be worth some $5.3 billion in 2013. Specialist in this area Intronis has announced the Fall '13 release of its product and declared that it’s on track to exceed its sales growth targets.

The new release introduces support for clustered environments and allows channel partners to produce scalable recovery as a service offerings. Enhancements include improved VMware support allowing faster backups and user defined destination hosts, the ability to create virtual recovery hosts, and improved user interface and web portal, as well as general enhancements to usability and reliability.

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Cray is a business best known for its supercomputers, though 10 percent of its revenue in 2012 came from providing storage. But in the world of big data there's often a requirement to match high performance computing with an effective archiving solution and the company is after a slice of that pie.

With Cray's new Tiered Adaptive Storage (TAS) product it offers a complete solution that includes all of the software and hardware, and eliminates the complexities associated with planning, designing and building large-scale storage archives.

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When it comes to entertainment, I am mostly all-digital (although I still collect vinyl). However, like many people, I have abandoned optical media (CD, DVD and Blu-Ray) and instead choose to stream my movies and music over the Internet. This streaming-media trend has spawned a plethora of hardware devices such as Roku, Chromecast and "smart" televisions. I often find myself overwhelmed by the sheer number of devices with duplicate streaming functionality.

Today, Sony announces that the PlayStation 4 will also be adding this feature. "We know you’ve been waiting anxiously for PS4 to finally arrive and we have exciting news to share with you today. Starting Day One, a number of your favorite digital entertainment services like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video will be available with more coming soon", says Phil Rosenberg, SVP at SCEA.

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When reporting on PC shipments, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be bad news these days. However, the latest PC shipment news from Gartner can’t really be described as bad, more like out and out disastrous.

Shipments in Western Europe totaled 11.9 million units in the third quarter of 2013, a decline of 12.8 percent from the same period in 2012. The drop relates to all PC segments. Mobile and desktop shipments fell by 14.5 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively. PC shipments in the professional PC market shrank by 8.3 percent, and the consumer PC market plummeted by 17.1 percent. Tablets, naturally, are to blame, although Windows 8 and 8.1 have a part to play in the collapse too.

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Microsoft has introduced a major update for Office Web Apps, meant to improve collaboration on documents. At the same time, the latest update also allows the service to better compete against its arch-rival, Google Docs.

The Excel, PowerPoint and Word cloud apps are getting real-time co-authoring, a feature that has been available for quite some time in Google Docs. Put simply, this means that users can perform simultaneous edits, with the said cloud apps also informing folks whenever someone else is altering a certain part of the document. The real-time co-authoring is augmented by the ability to see text and formatting changes in files as they are being made.

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The biggest threat to any operating system is malicious code gaining access to it. Whilst the User Account Control (UAC) introduced in Vista went some way towards guarding against this, many people found it so annoying that they turned it off.

Since most attacks arrive via the browser, Microsoft's introduction of SmartScreen Application Reputation technology in IE9 was a much more significant step. App Rep is a form of content agnostic malware protection (CAMP) and aims to prevent the execution of malware by barring any applications that aren't explicitly trusted. With the launch of Windows 8 SmartScreen App Rep was extended beyond IE to protect the operating system as a whole.

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Cloud storage service Mega arrived with a bang early this year, after its controversial founder Kim Dotcom revealed that users will get a whopping 50 GB of storage at no cost. The man's involvement with the defunct Megaupload certainly piqued people's interest, with more than three million users trying or relying on the service within the first month.

More than nine months after its launch, Mega has announced, via its official blog, the end of the beta stage. The cloud storage service now touts "significant improvements and optimizations" as well as a refreshed look for the site. Let's take a look at what's new.

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The Internet Bug Bounty program is the latest initiative that can be used by hackers, security experts and anyone with time on their hands to reap rewards by uncovering security problems.

This time, however, it is not an individual app or website that's the subject of the program, but the entire Internet. It is a wide-reaching program which has the backing of Facebook and Microsoft; both companies with a vested interested in making the Internet safer.

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Today Twitter makes its debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In typical Twitter style, the company announced its share price via tweet, ending weeks of speculation about the price point that would be decided upon.

Rather than the anticipated $15 to $20, the IPO (Initial Public Offering) of 70 million shares are up for grabs priced at $26 each -- effectively valuing the company at $18.2 billion.

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Amazon Web Services quietly released on Tuesday a pair of new instances on its EC2 cloud computing service. Not just new instances but a whole new type of instance aimed at 2D and 3D graphical computing. For the first time from AWS in a generally available instance, developers and users will have access to virtual machines with GPUs.

It’s like putting a PC in the cloud. More properly it is like putting your PC in the cloud. I think this has great disruptive potential. And that means we’ll see similar services coming soon from other cloud providers.

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Amazon Prime, at least the video arm of it, has been rolling along and seemingly gaining momentum recently. New original content has debuted, with some shows picked up for a season run, and more are currently in the pipeline. However, finding this menu of new videos has not always been easy, save when the company displays links on its homepage.

Rather than relying on a fortunate link or a search of the content, Amazon is giving viewers an option to fast-forward straight to what's new, and do so ahead of your friends.

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jAlbum AB has released jAlbum 11.6, a performance-oriented update of its cross-platform web album builder that’s free for personal use. In addition to improving performance, version 11.6 adds a few minor changes and includes a number of notable bug fixes.

The main highlight of version 11.6 comes with vastly improved performance when editing videos, both when selecting a representing thumbnail and starting or stopping editing. Also notable is an improvement to the user interface, which is now more responsive when managing images that lack cached thumbnails.

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People celebrate birthdays every year but the celebrations have expanded beyond humans. A search of YouTube reveals people baking birthday cakes and having celebrations for their pets. However, birthdays can be celebrated for anything, including Linux distributions.

Today, The Fedora Project (which is owned by Red Hat Inc.) celebrates 10 years of bringing open-source joy to the Linux Community. It is hard to believe that the operating system choice of the controversial Linus Torvalds is now 10 years old. That's like...a really long time in internet-years.

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Inori Aizawa, the official mascot for Internet Explorer (in Singapore at least) is an Anime heroine who spends her time fighting against the dark side of the web.

On her official Facebook page she describes herself as a personification of Internet Explorer, and the parallels between her life and the browser are clear. "When I was younger", she says, "I used to be a clumsy, slow and awkward girl. However, just like the story of ugly duckling, people told me that I have really matured and changed over the years. I feel confident in my abilities now, and I'm eager to show you what I can do. Why don't you get to know me a little better?"

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