Latest Technology News

Samsung Galaxy Note 5 vs Apple iPhone 6 Plus: Which is best?

Samsung has officially announced the Galaxy Note 5, the newest phablet on the market. With a few new changes, can the Galaxy Note 5 stand up to the extremely popular iPhone 6 Plus?

Samsung and Apple are arguably pushing out the most well designed smartphones in the industry. After a slump for a few years, Samsung has found its stride with the dual-glass design and metallic frame.

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New video ads highlight Apple Music's superior 'Discovery'

It can be quite the polarizing topic, but make no mistake -- streaming is both the present and future of listening to music. You can desperately cling to your shiny compact discs and backups of digital music downloads, but eventually, you will be no different than a person still using floppy disks. It's time to evolve with the rest of us.

Selecting a streaming music service can be an ordeal, as there are many quality offerings from which to choose. Spotify, Google Play Music All Access and Groove are all solid, but Apple Music, the newest of the bunch, is already the best. What it offers beyond its competitors, is superior discovery. Without a way to discover new music, you will end up never leaving your comfort zone. Apple's service helps you to expand your artistic horizons. Today, the company unveils three new advertisements to highlight this.

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Two decades in the making... was Microsoft Edge worth the wait?

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the launch of Internet Explorer. First making an appearance in the Windows 95 era via the Microsoft Plus! Add-on pack which featured the excitingly-named Internet Jumpstart Kit and version 1.0 of the browser people love to hate and hate to love.

Two full decades later we have slowly but surely worked up to Internet Explorer 11 -- Chrome, for comparison has hit the 40s in less than half the time -- and now IE has been all but retired. With the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft Edge is the new kid on the block. Twenty years is a long gestation period. Was it worth the wait?

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KaOS 2015.08 Linux distribution available now

Whether or not you are a KDE desktop environment user, you should have an interest in the project. In other words, whether you prefer GNOME, Xfce or something else, KDE's success is good for the overall Linux community.

While Kubuntu is probably the most popular distro based on KDE, there are many others. One of the he most exciting such operating systems, KaOS, announces a new 2015.08 ISO that is available now. If you haven't tried the OS before, I suggest you give it a try -- you may come away impressed.

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AdwCleaner 5.0 ships with new engine, Windows repair tools

Popular adware hunter AdwCleaner has hit version 5 with the addition of a new and improved generic detections engine.

The program can optionally reset a range of Windows settings -- proxies, winsock, TCP/IP, firewall, IPsec, the BITS queue -- as well as IE and Chrome policies.

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Samsung shows us what's new in Android Marshmallow [Infographic]

OK... for now it's still Android M, but there have been sufficient rumors and hints for us to safely guess that the follow up to Lollipop will be called Marshmallow*. Google has started to tease us with videos, and Samsung has unveiled its Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+ which will be in line for an Android M update in due course.

But it's not just handsets that Samsung has produced. The company has also put together a handy infographic that highlights some of the new features of Android. Just what is in store? Quite a lot, actually.

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Apple Watch welcomes fat wrists... for a price

Not everyone has svelte wrists -- some hand hinges are as thick as thighs. Apple has decided that those with chunkier wrists no longer need to develop anorexia to be able to strap on an Apple Watch, releasing larger bands for the larger customer.

As well as a Sport band that comes in that all-important L/XL sizing, there's also an extender kit available for the metal bracelet. If you over-estimated the size of the Link Bracelet, or under-estimated the size of your wrist, you can slip in a few extra links to up the size to 245mm.

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New Snowden documents show AT&T helped the NSA spy on internet traffic

The NSA has been helped by AT&T for decades in spying on huge quantities of internet traffic new-disclosed documents reveal. The astonishing relationship between the National Security Agency and the telecoms company goes far beyond any sort of arrangement or co-operation that came from other firms.

Evidence published by the New York Times shows that the NSA had arrangements in place with AT&T and Verizon, but the partnership with AT&T proved particularly lucrative. The communications giant added surveillance equipment to at least 17 of its web centers and was used as a testing ground for new spying technologies and techniques. All this is revealed in a new batch of documents provided by Edward Snowden.

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Why would Dell sell a business Chromebook that competes with Office and Windows 10?

The strangest, and largely overlooked news, coming out of the tech sector this week is Dell's Microsoft betrayal. This isn't the first time that the PC maker strayed. Linux joined the product stable long ago, and last year an educational Chromebook debuted. But this newer and larger model, which will be available September 17, raises question: WTF?

Dell's core PC market is business—small, large, and everything between. Windows, and that smattering of Linux, is core, and longstanding loyalty to Microsoft's application stack. But the Chromebook 13 announcement, as positioned by the OEM and Google, is all about the competing cloud app stack. Interestingly, selling prices rival Windows laptops, which is another head scratcher: $399 to $899, depending on configuration.

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Microsoft stands accused of deleting Windows 10 Insider feedback it doesn't like

With Windows 10, Microsoft asked for an unprecedented level of feedback. The Windows Insider program not only provided keen users with access to preview builds of the operating system, but also gave a direct line to Microsoft to point out problems, make suggestions, request features, and so on.

In fact, the Windows Insider program is still running as Microsoft continues to ask for feedback. But the company faces accusations of not only failing to listen to the feedback it asks for, but deleting from the Feedback app and forums any suggestions it does not like. Highlighted for particular attention are suggestions about tabs in File Explorer, and requests to remove email addresses from Windows 10's lock screen. We decided to take a look and find out what is going on.

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President Obama arrives on Spotify and creates playlists for everyone

Do you want to hear music chosen by President Barrack Obama? If you use Spotify then you'll be in luck. The company is one of the leading music streaming services in the increasingly competitive market. Now it has scored a big win, landing one of the world's most well known leaders.

Spotify announces the arrival of POTUS and seems quite excited about the arrival. You can't really blame them, it's not everyday that the President adopts your service.

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Firefox stealthily loads webpages when you hover over links -- here's how to stop it

Pre-fetching or caching of web pages is a technique used by many web browsers to improve perceived performance -- it's nothing new. But Firefox takes a slightly sinister and stealthy approach. Simply hover your mouse over a link and the browser fires off requests to the associated website in the background.

While this sounds potentially helpful, it is also something of a privacy and security concern -- not to mention a waste of bandwidth. You might hover over a link simply to check out the destination in the status bar; if there is a link to a malicious or unsavory website, you probably don’t want these stealthy connections being made in the background. If you're worried about your security or privacy, or just want to be back in control of your web connection, there are steps you can take.

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Verizon stops throttling unlimited 3G data

If you are a Verizon Wireless subscriber and use its 3G data plan, there's some good news for you. You know how Verizon Wireless loves to throttle speed on its 3G data plans. Well, the subsidiary of Verizon Communications, has stopped doing it. And it has actually been a while.

The company quietly updated its “video optimization” page to note the following: "Beginning in 2011", it notes, "to optimize our network, we managed data connection speeds for a small subset of customers — those who are in the top 5% of data users and have 3G devices on unlimited data plans — and only in places and at times when the network was experiencing high demand. We discontinued this practice in June, 2015".

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Microsoft improves Windows 10 with new cumulative update

Windows 10 is a good operating system, but it does suffer from annoying inconstancies, and frustrating bugs. Microsoft is slowly addressing the latter by rolling out updates designed to make the OS run more smoothly.

The latest update, KB3081438, resolves various issues and, in Microsoft’s own words, includes "improvements to enhance the functionality of Windows 10".

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How I (and you?) am hurting the PC industry

Starting in 1977 I bought a new personal computer every three years. This changed after 2010 when I was 33 years and eleven computers into the trend. That’s when I bought my current machine, a mid-2010 13-inch MacBook Pro. Five years later I have no immediate plans to replace the MacBook Pro and I think that goes a long way to explain why the PC industry is having sales problems.

My rationale for changing computers over the years came down to Moore’s Law. I theorized that if computer performance was going to double every 18 months, I couldn’t afford to be more than one generation behind the state-of-the-art if I wanted to be taken seriously writing about this stuff. That meant buying a new PC every three years. And since you and I have a lot in common and there are millions of people like us, the PC industry thrived.

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