Latest Technology News

Unless you have been living under a rock for many months, you couldn't help but be aware of the activities of the NSA. They certainly knew what you were up to, even when you were hiding under that rock. Campaigners have been calling for reform ever since Edward Snowden blew the lid off previously secret surveillance of telephone calls and web activity of millions of users in America and around the world. In an address at the Justice Department, President Obama gave details of some reforms to surveillance, but at the same time remained defensive of the National Security Agency.

Referring to surveillance (or spying, if you will) carried out in the 1960s, Obama said: "In the long twilight struggle against communism, we had been reminded that the very liberties that we sought to preserve could not be sacrificed at the altar of national security". The speech continued, making the obligatory nods to terrorism, "weapons of mass destruction" and September 11th; all very emotive stuff. This heartstring tugging was cited as the reason the intelligence community in general -- including the NSA -- needed to up its game. They "suddenly needed to do far more than the traditional mission of monitoring hostile powers and gathering information for policymakers."

Continue reading →

Now that CES 2014 is completely out of the way (although there was still time for me to pick my favorite tech from the show), it's back to business as usual. For many a company, business as usual means security issues, and Microsoft suffered at the hands of The Syrian Electronic Army. Again. The earlier security issues at Target were found to be far worse than first thought, affecting an estimated 100 million customers, and a potential security flaw was identified in Starbucks' mobile apps. For the antivirus side of protection, Kaspersky's Internet Security was named product of the year by AV-Comparatives.

Hoping against hope that new tech isn’t embraced for the sake of embracing new tech, I pondered the need for curved screens. In the mobile world, KitKat started to roll out to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and also announced the company somewhat deceptively named Galaxy Tab3 Lite, which is in fact no lighter than the non Lite version, other than in terms of hardware specs.

Continue reading →

Google has released a brand new version of its experimental Chrome browser with the arrival of Google Chrome Canary 34. The main new highlight in this release is supported for Google Now cards.

Google Now is Google’s card-based service that delivers useful information throughout the day -- it’s available as part of the Google Search app for Android and iOS, and is now being rolled out on the desktop too.

Continue reading →

These days, our PCs are shipping with ever increasing amounts of RAM. The idea is that more RAM helps boost performance, but the fact is that if you have 8GB or more of RAM then it’s likely there will be numerous times when that memory isn’t being utilized to the full.

One way to make maximum mileage from systems with larger amounts of memory is with a RAM disk, and the free-for-personal-use SoftPerfect RAM Disk handles the job perfectly.

Continue reading →

Sixty-fourth in a series. A total of 1,107 new apps were released to the US Windows Store this week, which is more than double last week's abysmal performance of 476 apps.

The growth is even higher than that -- without options to find out exactly how high -- as Microsoft removed apps from the Food & Dining, and Travel category this week.

Continue reading →

When it comes to sports, I am a born loser. As much as I love my favorite New York teams, they aren't exactly winners -- Mets, Knicks, Jets and Islanders. Following these teams is a quick path to depression. As bad as I am at picking teams to root for, I am probably worse at picking things to invest in.

A good example is Bitcoin -- I thought about buying some bitcoins as an investment a few years back, but convinced myself it was foolish. After all, it was risky and lacked legitimacy. While hindsight is 20/20, had I bought some, I would have made a substantial profit. Not only that, more and more legitimate businesses are accepting the virtual currency as a payment option. Today, the NBA franchise Sacramento Kings announces that it too will soon begin accepting it.

Continue reading →

It's a rare business package these days that doesn't claim to offer some form of social capability.

With the launch of Saleslogix 8.1, marketing and CRM specialist Swiftpage has added a number of features to help sales staff interact with their customers by displaying their social networking activity within the package.

Continue reading →

Third in a series. The holiday season is well and truly behind us now and there's lots of big and important new releases and updates in the App Store this week. One of the most significant is a new app from Google which sees the search giant challenging Apple’s own iTunes Store (albeit with some very important Apple-appeasing limitations).

Elsewhere, cloud storage service Box announced that it has rewritten its app to make it "super-fast, simpler to use and more immersive", and as an incentive for users to try it out the app now comes with 50 GB of storage for free, which definitely makes it worth the download. You can read more about the update here.

Continue reading →

Streaming the music you want continues to become easier, with more choice of services and increasingly better pricing. But prices can’t get any better than free, and that seems to be where this market is now headed.

Today Rdio joins Spotify in announcing it will now host free streaming on the web. "That means you can listen to 20 million songs plus all the albums, playlists, and stations you love anywhere there’s a computer. Absolutely free", the service announces.

Continue reading →

Almost 3.5 million British children under the age of eight have tablets and nearly 4 million learned to use a smartphone or tablet before they were three.

New research from price comparison and switching service uSwitch reveals a growing nation of cyber tots with 29 percent learning to use a touch screen device before the age of three and 11 percent before they were two.

Continue reading →

For a long time, dedicated websites and apps have been able to separate the audio content in YouTube videos, in order for users to download it for offline playback. Even the full-blown YouTube app that was developed by Microsoft for Windows Phone offered a similar feature, which allowed users to grab the whole video instead and store it on their smartphone.

Ripping the audio from YouTube videos can come in handy for those who want to enjoy their favorite tracks, but may find themselves in areas without good-enough cellular coverage for YouTube streaming. I have experienced this scenario first-hand while traveling. For Windows Phone users, there are a couple of apps that can get this job done, with MusicTube being one of the most appealing choices.

Continue reading →

The PlayStation 4 might be outselling the Xbox One globally, but last month in the US Microsoft was the undisputed king of the games console.

Research firm NPD Group released sales figures for consoles in December (which Microsoft shared), that showed the Xbox One sold 908,000 units during December, making it the number ones games console in the US. And that’s not the only good news for Microsoft.

Continue reading →

Microsoft's Office 365 has been rolling along as of late, scoring wins with both corporations and local governments. Now the service is visiting overseas locales, looking for even more market entry. This time around, it lands in Italy, but not for a gondola ride in Venice.

Instead, Office 365 has been adopted by RCS Group, a leading multimedia company within the European nation. "With the benefits of a consistent approach for the end user, complete transparency for the delivery and the availability of Office applications, there will be more and more opportunities for our employees to continue to deliver new, innovative ideas", said Umberto Tonelli, chief information officer of RCS MediaGroup.

Continue reading →

Some coffee aficionados might dislike my taste in coffee. I consume trendy drinks like Skinny Vanilla Lattes from Starbucks when on the go and Keurig coffee pods at home -- hardly a French press. While the Starbucks drinks are expensive, this is my only vice -- I do not drink alcohol or smoke, so I justify the cost that way.

Whenever I am at the famous coffee chain, I see a lot of people using Apple devices. One of the coolest things about this, is that Starbucks offers an iPhone app which makes it possible to make purchases using the smartphone. Sadly though, it has come to light that there is a vulnerability in the software. While security weaknesses in the Java programming language are nothing new, one regarding java the drink is.

Continue reading →

It's starting to feel as though the myriad of social networks that exist are homogenizing. As one site introduces a feature, it is not long before the rest follow suit. Now it is Facebook's turn. Occasional leader, but often a follower, Facebook now boasts a trending topics feature. Simply known as Trending, the new feature borrows the idea used by Twitter and countless news websites to provide a constantly updating list of topics that people around the world are talking about.

In fact, Trending acts as a sort of blend between Twitter's Trends feature coupled with content suggestions. This is not a straight list of the subjects that are proving most popular around the world, but, theoretically, the list should be personalized with content that you have an interest in. That’s the theory at least.

Continue reading →