Latest Technology News

Don't fall for the secret hack to add a headphone jack to the iPhone 7

As you're probably well aware, with the launch of the iPhone 7 Apple ditched the familiar headphone jack in favour of a wireless audio option. Many people have questioned the sense in this 'courageous' decision which has led some owners to take drastic steps to allow them to use their favorite set of wired headphones.

Some have been spurred on by a YouTube video that reveals a 'secret hack' for returning the headphone jack to the iPhone 7. YouTuber TechRax has created a tutorial for uncovering the hidden jack that Apple left inside the new phone. Except, of course, it is complete nonsense.

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Snapchat rebrands as Snap Inc and announces Google Glass competitor called Spectacles

Snapchat today makes two big announcements, the first of which is that it is no longer called Snapchat. The company is starting to branch out into products and services beyond the Snapchat app and therefore decided it is time to drop 'chat' from the name. Snap Inc is the new company name.

The second announcement is a new product called Spectacles. These are sunglasses with an integrated video camera offering a 115-degree field of view. There's no word on exactly when it will be released, but the marketing machine is already in motion, building up momentum and drumming up interest.

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Most employees don't want to share passwords

For many people, both business owners and employees, remote working is the future of business. It’s at the very heart of business transformation, together with cloud computing, automation and artificial intelligence. However, a new poll by OneLogin seems to suggest that certain workers aren’t really fond of the idea of remote working.

Half of full-time workers believe employees below mid-manager level shouldn’t be allowed remote access to the corporate network. This remote access refers to both work-owned devices (47 percent) and private devices (54 percent).

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BT to offer customers Microsoft Azure services

British telecommunications company BT has announced  a new offering, expanding the cloud choice for its customers. BT Computer for Microsoft Azure allows BT’s customers to order Microsoft Azure together with BT’s cloud.

With the new offering, according to BT, customers will be able to create hybrid cloud infrastructure with a single service wrap, on a single bill.

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Knowing your unknowns

On a daily basis, the news is filled with stories about things that "should never have happened".  Last weekend’s headline, "Improvised Explosive Device Explodes in New York City’s Chelsea Neighborhood", is one tragic example. No one could have anticipated the attack, but through the use of cameras placed throughout the area, law enforcement was able to identify a suspect and track his movements within hours.

In the real world, no one can know every single threat that could exist in the future, or when it might happen. You can make educated guesses with the right intelligence and data, but you can’t predict with certainty. This is why New York, London, and other metropolitan areas have installed surveillance cameras. They’ve done this so that if a situation does unfold, they can quickly triage and provide authorities with immediate and accurate information to inform response and investigation.

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TunnelBear 3.0 brings faster, more secure VPN connections

Canadian VPN provider TunnelBear has updated its Windows and Mac clients to version 3.0. The Windows release features a simplified, stripped-back interface and connects and reconnects up to 60 percent faster than before.

There’s a new option to mark networks as "Trusted". TunnelBear then connects to trusted networks rather than others, whenever there’s a choice.

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Benchmark report reveals effectiveness of marketing emails

Email magic

Email is still among the most popular ways of delivering marketing messages to customers, but it can be hard to measure how well it works.

A new study from delivery platform SendGrid measures the engagement numbers for the average percentage of male and female recipients, the percentage of emails that are opened on mobile and non-mobile devices, open rates, click rate, click-to-open rates and monthly send rates across 10 industries.

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Office workers want the latest technology, or else they'll quit

Business owners, pay attention. If you don't step up your technology game, your employees might leave you. This is according to a new global report from Dell and Intel, entitled Future Workforce.

Based on a poll of 4,000 full-time employees all over the world, it tried to understand how modern technologies are shaping the office world.

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9 best practices for accepting payments via mobile device and mPOS

Is your business accepting payments on mobile devices, or considering it? If so, you are in good company. Large retailers, such as Nordstrom’s, have seen increased sales after integrating an mPOS (mobile point of sale) solution. Major restaurant chains, including McDonald’s and Olive Garden, are using it, too. In fact, a report by 451 Research projected that by 2019, the global mPOS installed base will reach 54 million units, which is quadruple the number from 2015.

According to a Juniper Research report, by 2021, more than one in three POS systems will be mobile. It’s no wonder mPOS solutions are catching on. They are not only convenient, but also provide tangible benefits to both merchants and customers. Shortened transaction time, elimination of lines, scalability capability, and less reliance on cash all increase sales and heighten customer satisfaction. But any data transfer comes with risk. To ensure a safe and secure mPOS experience, follow these best practices:

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Most US Samsung Galaxy Note7 users choose replacements over refunds

Another day, another development in the Galaxy Note7 recall. This time, Samsung indicates that it is making good progress getting US customers to turn in their affected units, after a report by Apteligent released earlier this month revealed consistent usage rates following the recall program's introduction.

Samsung says that it has exchanged "about half" of the Galaxy Note7 units that it has sold in the US. The company has already shipped 500,000 safe devices in the country, and is believed to have sold around one million units before the recall news broke.

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MathMagic Lite is a versatile equation editor

Math is hard to avoid, even if you’re a total mathphobe, and anyone might find they occasionally need to use an equation in a document.

High-end packages like Microsoft Word have equation editors built-in, but if you’re not so lucky then MathMagic Lite is a convenient free-for-personal-use alternative.

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Best Windows apps this week

One-hundred and ninety-nine in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days.

This week saw the release of a first batch of converted win32 applications like Kodi, Tweeten or PhotoScape X Pro  in Store.

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Leaked credentials affect the largest 1,000 organizations worldwide

credential hacker

Data breaches have become the norm in recent years with 2014 earning the nickname the "year of the data breach" and 2015 being known as the "year of the breach". So far in 2016, even more data breaches have been made public, including LinkedIn, MySpace and Dropbox and we will likely see more before the year comes to a close.

For companies, being the victim of a breach is unnerving enough, but there also implications to their reputation, brand and finances. However, breaches also have an indirect impact on organizations and some end up facing the "collateral damage" of such an attack for some time after the initial breach.

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Facebook massively miscalculated video viewing figures for two years

The social networking giant has managed to attract the ire of advertisers after it revealed that it overestimated video viewing figures for two years. A flaw in the tool used to measure the number of views meant that figures relating to video viewing times were inflated by between 60 and 80 percent.

Just how long people spend watching videos is important information for advertisers, but Facebook managed to miscalculate average viewing times by ignoring views lasting under three seconds. With so much of Facebook's incoming revenue derived from advertising, and the importance the company places on video, the snafu is an embarrassing one that advertisers will take some time to forget.

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YouTube Heroes program rewards people who report videos

Google has launched a new reward scheme that offers incentives for users to report videos that violate the site's guidelines. YouTube Heroes program also enables YouTubers to earn points for doing things like adding subtitles to a video and responding to questions in the help forums.

While the promise of rewards for helping to "create the best possible YouTube experience for everyone" is appealing, critics are not happy with the fact that users will now have an added incentive to report videos.

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