Latest Technology News

In a long, thoughtful post today, Mark Rogowsky writes for Forbes: "No, Apple Is Not Like Microsoft". He responds to arguments put forth by Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes, which Steven Russolillo summarizes in Wall Street Journal post "Four Reasons Apple is the New Microsoft".

I disagree with the original argument and its rebuttal. I encourage you to read both posts. The answer to why one stock soars while another sunders has little to do with market caps, P/E ratios, and other math metrics analysts crunch like gerbils with a new stick. People generally make decisions for emotional reasons -- what feels right to them. As I so often say, in business perception is everything.

Continue reading →

Another week, another spate of security related news. In the latest of a recent run of high-profile hacks, Kickstarter announced that it had been hacked, and it was discovered that ASUS routers could be sharing files with more people than users intended. Google is looking to bolster online security with its latest acquisition -- audio-based authentication outfit SlickLogin, while Microsoft's latest partnership with DocuSign looks set to make digital signatures in Office simpler and more secure. If you were under the impression that app security was generally increasing, think again; a new study shows that an almost unbelievable 96 percent of applications have security issues.

Brian got his hands on the Lenovo Miix 2 and was reasonably impressed by what he saw. He also unboxed the much touted Nokia Lumia Icon and found it to be not dissimilar to the 928 -- no bad thing. Anyone looking for an entry-level 4G smartphone now has the Android-based Samsung Galaxy Core LTE to look forward to, complete with "Jelly Bean Plus".

Continue reading →

Health and technology is not a new relationship. For years, exercise equipment such as an elliptical or stationary bike has been fitted with computers to track progress and heart-rate. Hell, many medical discoveries were made in space thanks to NASA. However, having dongles communicate with a smartphone is still a relatively new market. The existence of this market underscores people's increasing interest in positive health and well-being.

Ironically, one such device aimed at positive health is causing a negative -- a rash (yuck!). Yes, the Fitbit Force, a device worn on the wrist, is causing some users to get a nasty rash. As a result, the company announces it's issuing a recall.

Continue reading →

Bing continues to expand its search options, as Microsoft takes on Google. It's an uphill battle, but not one that is completely out of the question. The search engine has many features to earn it recommendations, including a clean interface and easy access to locations and simple glance for local events.

Now the company is rolling out timelines, a way to get more information on your people searches. "We now show you important events in the timeline of influential or famous people’s lives. In the case of Henry Ford, we highlight several events of Henry’s life including his marriage and early career of farming and running a saw-mill in 1888, incorporating the Ford Motor Company in 1903, and his retirement from the company in 1918", Bing's Richard Qian states.

Continue reading →

While the gold-standard of office suites remains Microsoft's Office, many competitors are trying to catch up. While Libreoffice is a nice alternative, it has failed to truly take off beyond Linux users and people who don't want to spend money or cant afford to buy Microsoft's solution.

However, the biggest competitor lately has been Google. The search giant has been making a push with both web apps (like Google Docs) and Chrome OS. Education institutions have been high on Google's web philosophy as it is cheaper. Today, the search giant announces that it will be providing Google Apps for Education to students in the Brazilian city of São Paulo.

Continue reading →

Google has updated its cross-platform browser with the release of Google Chrome 33 FINAL. The new release proves controversial as Google tightens control over the browser to the anger of some users.

In terms of new features, version 33 is rather disappointing -- despite debuting in the beta channel a few weeks ago, Google Now notifications have yet to make their way across to the stable channel. In fact, version 33 is little more than a bug-fix release, with 28 security fixes the only notable highlight.

Continue reading →

Windows XP launched in October of 2001, and so has passed its 12th birthday. Customers using an operating system this old should understand the risks associated with it. Yes, Microsoft is still updating it, and will do so up to April 7th of this year, but that is small compensation for the lack of modern features included in this decade old system.

The company has been through three iterations of Windows since the aging OS hit the market. XP has had a great run, but all things must come to an end. My colleague Brian Fagioli suggested users move to Linux, which I have nothing against, but calling it an alternative to the changes in Windows 8.x is ridiculous -- it’s still a completely foreign operating system with a stiff learning curve.

Continue reading →

Sixty-nine in a series. The last six weeks have not seen any movement in regards to the total number of applications available in the US Windows Store.

Six weeks ago, 105,216 apps were listed in the store, which is about 150 less than this week's 105,379 application count.

Continue reading →

Research firm Gartner places BlackBerry's smartphone market share for all of 2013 at just 1.9 percent, as only 18.6 million units of the company's branded handsets got in the buyer's hands in the past year. Meanwhile, the most popular mobile OS, Android, raked in a whopping 758.7 million unit sales, giving it a market share of 78.4 percent. Why not make the best out of a bad situation by launching BlackBerry 10 OS firmwares for Android smartphones, to slow down the fast-decreasing market share and, maybe, recoup a small part of the one the OS has lost so far?

BlackBerry is basically in a hole it cannot crawl out of right now, as people just do not buy its smartphones as much as they used to. Giving them an option to try its latest mobile OS, BlackBerry 10, will theoretically increase the company's chances of getting back into the game, without allocating lots of resources to the development of new devices, which may or may not (the latter is more likely) be better received compared to the current lineup. And here is how BlackBerry could do it.

Continue reading →

Seventh in a series. There was no round-up of iOS apps last week, not because there weren’t any worthy releases -- this is iOS, there are always great apps to cover -- but because I was away. I’m back now though, and so normal service is resumed.

This week there were some great new apps and games released, including a stunning adventure set inside a pop-up book, a 3D tour through some of nature's wonders, and a game that aims to improve your listening skills (something my wife says I need to do -- or at least I think that's what she says).

Continue reading →

Saving a document as a PDF has several advantages, in particular that it’ll be accessible on just about every device and platform around.

If you need to control exactly who can access your file, though, and what they can do with it, then you might be interested in Free PDF Protector.

Continue reading →

New players in the smartphone market are finding it increasingly difficult to get the mobile operator support they need to expand their reach into new territories as Android and iOS form a duopoly responsible for more than 90 percent share of the market. Even Windows Phone, an established competitor, is struggling as it goes against the tide.

Jolla, being a new player, is no exception. The Finnish company says it is now ready to ship its smartphones across the globe, as it officially announced Sailfish OS 1.0, but the mobile operator support and international availability are not what you may call stellar at this point.

Continue reading →

Scalable Vector Graphics is a powerful image format with support for scripting, filters, animation, interactivity and more. But it’s also XML-based, and not exactly efficient: SVG file sizes can be much larger than you expect, an issue if you’re putting them online.

SVG Cleaner is an open source tool which optimizes SVG images, stripping out unnecessary elements and attributes, compressing whatever’s left, and usually making a real difference to their file size.

Continue reading →

Taking advantage of the availability of 5 TB Seagate HDDs, LaCie has introduced the new drives in three of its NAS devices, that now tout a maximum capacity ranging from 5 TB to 25 TB. The biggest of the bunch has a five-bay layout, which makes it the largest solution in its class that is available on the market today, according to the company.

The smallest of the three is the d2, which can now be had with 5 TB of storage. There are also 3 TB and 4 TB configurations, but those are older. The 2big can offer twice as much at 10 TB. Like its smaller brother, it too can be had with less storage (4 TB, 6 TB and 8 TB), but again those configurations are older. The one that is the most interesting is called 5big, and is the one LaCie calls the largest five-bay solution available now.

Continue reading →

Google has been busy with its Maps service the past couple of days, including a new desktop version, announced yesterday, that will be rolling out soon. But the company has not been too busy for a little vacation, this time traveling to India.

The country is known for many sights, though the most prominent is likely the Taj Mahal, a white marble building that has become a top tourist destination. That wasn't the only place that Google visited, though. 29 more monuments were also included in the new Street View of the country.

Continue reading →