Latest Technology News

One of the (many) complaints people had about Windows 8, was how unnecessarily awkward it was to shut it down. Windows 8.1 makes that aspect of things much easier. You can still go through the Charms bar, but you can also now right-click the new Start button and shut down, or sign out there.

There is another method though, and that’s to use the "Slide to shut down your PC" option. This isn’t activated by default, but it’s easy to summon, and you can create shortcuts for it.

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Google Glass has caused a bit of a stir, whether it's for the ability to turn us all into government spies or for causing the slightly distracted Google gaze. But there's been relatively little discussion of how smartglasses might be useful for business.

Until now that is, because a new report by Gartner says that smartglasses have the potential to boost worker efficiency in areas like healthcare, manufacturing and field service.

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Prefetching is an excellent Windows Vista/ 7/ 8 performance-boosting technology where the system monitors applications as they start, detects any dependent files they might need, and preloads them when the program next starts. This can drastically cut down disk access times as an application switches from one file to another, making a real difference to your system boot and application launch times.

There’s more to prefetching than PC optimization, though. You can also use this data to monitor which programs are being launched on your system, and when. And you can view the files a program accesses when it first starts, which could be useful when troubleshooting. All you need is a forensics tool like Sanderson Forensic’s Prefetcher to interpret the data for you.

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With the increasing trend towards using mobile devices in the workplace, IT departments sometimes struggle to keep up with demand from their users. As we've seen elsewhere, this can lead to employees using unauthorized software.

Companies interested in speeding up the build time for mobile apps will want to take a look at San Francisco-based raw engineering’s built.io product which comes out of beta and is generally available from today.

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While the Nexus 5 is relatively inexpensive (in smartphone terms) at $349, you should still protect your investment. Android fans will likely want the official bumper case, but that costs $35 -- a bit expensive at 10 percent the cost of the device itself.

I decided to purchase an alternative, third-party case, so that I can compare the two. The Cruzerlite series of cases are quite popular on Amazon -- they are inexpensive, look good and get great reviews. And so, I chose the Cruzerlite Bugdroid Circuit Case which is almost a third cheaper at $12.95. The question becomes, which deserves your hard-earned money?

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When Nokia unveiled the Lumia 1520, the Finnish maker did not provide an exact launch date for its new Windows Phone 8 phablet. However, the device was announced to be available in a limited number of markets, including US.

Ahead of the official launch, Microsoft decided to shed some light regarding the US availability of the Lumia 1520 on AT&T. On the software giant's online store, the phablet is now listed as available to pre-order, with the release date set for November 15.

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It's becoming a familiar story. A big name company decides to reveal figures about the number of requests for data that have been received from the government, apologizing straight away for the lack of detail it can provide. Microsoft has already done it, as has LinkedIn and Google. The latest figures come from Apple, and they make for interesting reading.

The report starts off by stating that Apple is revealing as much information as it is legally allowed to, and then immediately goes on the defensive:

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Google is going to start displaying Google+ Photos as caller ID images from early 2014. The new feature will be enabled by default for anyone who has a verified phone number associated with their Google account.

This means that should you get a call from someone you have circled on Google+, but have not added to your phone's address book, you will still be able to see who they are -- or at least be able to see whatever their most recent Google+ profile image is.

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In keeping up with tradition, Microsoft has launched Windows 8.1 in both digital and physical form. Users can install the new operating system by using either a downloaded ISO file or the provided DVD. But what happens when neither option is right for you? You can use a USB drive.

There are a number of major benefits to using a USB drive for this process. It's compatible with virtually every device that is meant to run Windows, forgoes the need to have a spare DVD and the burner around and is much easier to store and carry with you wherever you may go. A USB drive can also be faster than any DVD, shortening the time needed for the install, and, chances are, you probably already have one lying around. Also, compared to ISO files which can only be leveraged from Windows, USB drives can be used with no software installed on the device.

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The increasing popularity of BYOD brings a number of challenges for IT departments, not least of which is ensuring that files are handled in an approved and secure way. The problem is that users don’t often see things the same way. A new survey by Workshare shows that 65 percent of mobile users at financial institutions are using file sharing apps that aren't approved by their IT departments.

Only 55 percent were using unauthorized apps to work on documents outside the office in 2012, but the figures are even more worrying when you take into account that 89 percent of financial professionals are now using their own devices for work -- up a mere 3 percent from last year. The report also shows that 78 percent of these workers are using free file sharing services like Dropbox and SkyDrive to access and store corporate documents.

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Berlin-based utilities developer O&O Software has released version 8 of its flagship backup and recovery tool, O&O DiskImage.

One very convenient new feature sees the program able to directly create VHD files. You’ll need to enable this first (Edit > Imaging Options > select "VHD File"), but once that’s done your future images will be saved in VHD, rather than O&O’s own OMG format.

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Microsoft, while not innovating at Mozilla-Google rate, has been stepping up development of Internet Explorer -- thankfully moving on from the dim, dark days of IE6. Windows 8.1 comes with the shiny new Internet Explorer 11, and with that release Google implements plans to begin phasing out version 9 of the browser.

Don't panic yet -- this move is for Google Apps, a service used more in the business realm than the home. It really should not come as a surprise, as the search giant holds firm to a policy of support for current and previous browser versions -- in other words IE 10 and 11 now.

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Digg once ranked as a top site on the web when it came to finding the latest and biggest stories. Things went a bit downhill in recent times, but the company has been working on a phoenix-like resurrection, pulling itself from the ashes. The social news site has launched its Google Reader-replacement, in the form of Digg Reader, fresh on the heels of the shuttering of the once-popular RSS web app.

Now Digg goes all-in on video, stating "we're proud to announce that we've launched Digg Video, a section of Digg solely dedicated to collecting and promoting the best and most interesting video content on the Internet. It’s the Digg you already know and love, just in video form".

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Microsoft is no stranger to trying to stick the knife into the competition, and the company's latest campaign, Keep Your Email Private, is no different. This is not just an ad campaign, but rather an entire microsite that has been set up to demonstrate how much better Outlook.com is than Gmail. The reason? There is only really one put forward for consideration -- Google's scanning of emails.

This in itself is nothing new. We have known for a long time that Google scans the content of emails with a view to delivering targeted ads. It’s not something that everyone is happy with, but we know all about it, and if you don’t like it, you're free to move away from Gmail. But Microsoft is now exploiting this fact in a bid to attract people to Outlook.com.

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Four months ago, I embarked on a grand adventure. I boarded train Google+ and departed from station RSS. I left behind Feedly and my list of carefully curated subscriptions. Google Reader's demise set this new travel plan into motion. The search and information giant's social network would be my major -- really only -- source of news. Hey, other people rely on Twitter! I put Plus first.

I live the Google lifestyle, as many of us do everyday, but more than most people, by using Androids and Chromebook Pixel as my computing devices. But strange thing happened during my travels. Rather than find a broad, eclectic group of people, I increasingly encountered Google fanboys, which I am not. Rather than expand my horizons, Google+ shrinks them.

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