Katy Perry is the queen of Twitter -- first person to hit 90 million followers
Katy Perry is one of my favorite pop artists. Why? Longevity. Many such singers have very short shelf lives. Having just one hit song is rarified air, but Perry keeps them coming. Her long string of hits is quite remarkable, actually.
Not only is she wildly popular with music sales and YouTube views, but social media too. You see, Katy Perry is the first ever person to achieve 90 million Twitter followers. In other words, her Tweets can reach more people than the entire population of the UK!
More than half of Android phones are vulnerable to encryption bypass
A newly revealed vulnerability on Android phones is able to bypass the full disk encryption on over half of devices.
The attack, demonstrated by Israeli security researcher Gal Beniamini, can allow an attacker to break through the levels of trust and privileges that are intended to ensure only legitimate code can access secret material, such as DRM keys or disk encryption keys.
Straighten text in scanned documents with Deskew
Deskew is an open source package which can detect skewed text in scanned text documents, and output a straightened version. It’s a command line tool, which is, well, inconvenient, but don’t let that put you off entirely -- it’s still probably easier than you’d expect.
The program doesn’t force you to install Tesseract or any other bulky components, for instance. The single 4MB includes Windows, OS X and Linux binaries and you can run any of them right away.
Apple iOS 10 playing catch-up with Android
Apple held its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 13 in San Francisco, where Tim Cook and his team announced a wide array of new features and functionality across Apple platforms, including a major update to iOS, the renaming of mac OS X to macOS (the new version will be named Sierra) and updates to watchOS, and tvOS were also announced.
After reading about it though, I can’t help but think that we already have a lot of the features talked about in a number of Android devices and personally feel that Apple is merely playing catch-up to Android. That said, I will leave you to make up your own mind.
Syncplify Notepad! is a polished plain text editor
Notepad! is a nicely balanced Notepad replacement, accessible to just about everyone but with plenty of bonus extra features when you need them.
The interface is an immediate plus, its Office-like ribbon organising the program’s main features across three tabs.
Apple should buy Tidal
As a Tidal subscriber, I welcome Apple acquisition—assuming lossless tracks are made available through the fruit-logo company's music services. Not that anyone should seriously believe the rumors. But one can hope.
Merger talks are typically silent affairs. When they're serious, you don't hear about them until there is a deal. Reasons are many, with regulatory being among them when public companies are involved. Acquisition rumors often mean something else: Principal party leaks information about preliminary or ongoing discussions to gauge customer and shareholder reaction; one side or the other is dissatisfied with progress/terms and seeks to apply pressure.
Facebook hits back at Israeli complaints about sabotaging police work
Facebook has responded to complaints from Israel's Minister of Internal Security saying that it does remove abusive content from the site. On Saturday, Israeli cabinet minister Gilad Erdan referred to Facebook as a 'monster' adding that it "does not cooperate" with requests from the police.
Tensions between Palestine and Israel have seen an increase in posts inciting violence and terrorism. While Erdan accuses Facebook of failing to step in as well as "set[ting] a very high bar for removing inciteful content", the social network says it work closely with numerous countries, including Israel, to stem the flow of hate speech.
Google Play now allows app and game sharing with new Family Library feature
Earlier this year Google announced that Family Library -- previously only available in Google Play Music -- was making its way to the Play Store. Now the rollout is underway, meaning that it is now possible to share your purchased apps and games with members of your family.
This new feature means that a family need only buy one copy of an app rather than several if they all want to use it. It also means that there is no longer a need to create a shared 'family account' through which to download apps and games that need to be shared.
Google adds a native Cast option to Chrome on the desktop
If you've been using a browser extension to add a casting option to Chrome, you could think about uninstalling it. Google is currently rolling out an update to the desktop version of its web browser.
The feature is making its way to Chrome 51 and can be accessed by right clicking either an open tab or the browser's hamburger menu. Should you ditch the extension, though? It really depends on your needs...
Track your web traffic around the world with Open Visual Traceroute
Open Visual Traceroute is a Java-based, cross-platform networking toolkit which displays the path of your web traffic on 3D world map.
Despite the "Traceroute" name, that's not all. Bonus features include a Whois tool, and a WinPcap-powered packet sniffer which shows exactly what your traffic contains.
Hillary Clinton questioned by FBI about personal email server
It's the issue that just won't go away for Hillary Clinton -- her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. Today the Democratic presidential hopeful has been questioned by the FBI about her emails.
The Justice Department's investigation aims to determine if Clinton used the email account to send communication relating to national security, and whether this is illegal. She says the account was created for convenience and has denied using it to send classified information.
Windows 10 Anniversary Update makes great strides for accessibility
Accessibility options are not a new feature for Windows, but the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update includes even more than before. This week it was confirmed that the update will launch on 2 August, just days after the free upgrade period ends (although it's worth noting that people with accessibility needs will still qualify for a free upgrade after this date).
If you've been testing out the insider builds of Windows 10, you may well have noticed accessibility improvements, but now it is only a matter of weeks before they are made available to everyone. In a blog post rounding up what's been added over the last year, Microsoft also reveals the latest additions.
Facebook's new multilingual composer will let you post status updates in multiple languages
Facebook has announced a new tool that aims to break down language barriers. Previously available for Pages on the social network, the multilingual composer is set to make its way to individuals' accounts as well.
Previously anyone who wanted to post bi-, tri- or multilingual status updates would have to either type out each language as a separate post, or post a lengthy status featuring multiple translations. The latest change means that you can write in, say, French, and only friends and followers with their language set to French will see it.
Most organizations don't have an IT security expert
With cyber attacks on the rise, organizations are facing pressure to beef up their security to avoid falling victim to such an attack. However, a recent IT security report from Spiceworks shows that 80 percent of organizations were affected by at least one security incident during 2015.
To compile its report, the company surveyed over 600 IT professionals from the US and UK. Shockingly, Spiceworks discovered that few organizations have either an in-house or third-party cyber security expert on call.
UK's mobile networks have the highest speeds but lack 4G LTE coverage
The UK has the fastest mobile internet in the world, according to Akamai’s new State of the Internet report. The report found that during the first quarter of 2016, mobile users in the UK experienced average speeds of 27.9 Mbps. Of all the countries surveyed by Akamai, the UK has the highest average speeds.
The UK's speed is far higher than the rest of Europe by about 10 Mpbs. It is also significantly higher than the US which has a recorded average speed of only 5.1 Mbps when tested through Akamai’s platform.
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