Wayne Williams

Last summer, industry website Music Business Worldwide ran a story claiming that Spotify was bulking up its platform with 'fake artists' created by producers under untraceable pseudonyms.

Culture publication Vulture brought the story to a wider audience a few days ago, prompting Spotify to finally release a statement vehemently denying the allegations, but here’s where it gets interesting.

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It’s a great time to be a Windows Insider at the moment, as the past two Windows 10 builds -- Build 16226 and 16232 -- are jam packed with new features and major improvements.

Build 16237 arrives today in time for the weekend, and like its predecessors, it offers a lot of changes, fixes, and additions.

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Running is a great way to get fit and lose weight, but it’s rarely fun. London-based developer Six to Start has changed all that with Zombies, Run!, the most popular smartphone fitness game in the world, which transforms a boring run into an action-packed journey through the zombie apocalypse.

I’m a big fan, having used it since the early days, as well as other Six to Start apps, including The Walk, and Racelink. I spoke with Adrian Hon, CEO of Six to Start, and he told me about the app’s early days, and what’s next for the company.

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Kodi is a very flexible media center that you can use to watch local media, or stream content via third-party add-ons.

If you share Kodi with other family members you can set up user profiles for each person who uses the software. This will let you all keep what you watch separate and you can control what content your children have access to.

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Microsoft has made a change to its cloud synchronization and storage service OneDrive that requires users to use NTFS formatted drives.

The change came out of the blue, with no announcement from Microsoft, meaning that anyone using a non-NTFS drive, such as an SD card, suddenly found themselves unable to use their OneDrive shares, and as you might expect they aren’t too happy about that.

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Over on Ghacks, Martin Brinkmann posted his thoughts on Microsoft’s Windows 10 feature updates schedule. The software giant is committed to rolling out two major updates to Windows 10 every year. In April we had the Creators Update, and in a few months' time the Fall Creators Update will begin to roll out.

Martin asks if this rapid release schedule is such a wise idea, and he has a good point.

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Matroska Multimedia Container -- or MKV as it’s more commonly known -- is a great format that supports most codecs and offers a lot of features. It can store numerous video, audio and subtitle tracks, in addition to any metadata.

If you have an MKV video with (non-hardcoded) subtitles, turning them on or off can be quite simple, if you’re watching the video in an app like VLC Media Player (just go into the Subtitle menu and access the options there). But these subtitles may play by default if viewed on a TV, for example, with no way of disabling them. Fortunately, there is an easy way to strip out these subtitles.

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One of the most hotly anticipated new features in the forthcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is Timeline.

Similar to how Apple's continuity feature works with macOS and iOS, Timeline will allow users to switch between Windows 10 devices and pick up where they left off. Perhaps most excitingly, it should even work on some Microsoft apps running on iOS and Android. Unfortunately, if you’re one of the many Windows 10 users eagerly awaiting its arrival, we’ve some bad news.

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Microsoft says that in order for Windows 10 users to remain secure, "your device should be updated to the latest feature update."

The problem with this is that not everyone has been offered the latest feature update. Two months after it launched, the Creators Update continues to roll out at a glacial pace, meaning the majority of people running Windows 10 are still on the Anniversary Update, and that includes users of Microsoft’s own Surface range of devices.

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According to NetMarketShare’s figures, Windows 10’s share of the desktop operating system market remains pretty uninspiring, with growth much slower than you’d expect.

In fact in a year, the new OS has grown by just over 5 percent. In comparison, Windows 7 grew by 2 percent in the same time frame.

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Much like Apple’s Handoff feature, Samsung’s Flow app lets you switch between different devices seamlessly. It originally only worked on Samsung phones and tablets, including the Windows 10-based Galaxy TabPro S, but an update means you can now use your smartphone to unlock any PC running the Windows 10 Creators Update.

You can also use Flow to perform other useful tasks, such as checking notifications across devices, and replying to messages directly.

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Microsoft came very close to launching a smaller version of its Surface slate three years ago. The Surface Mini, as it was rumored to be called, was expected to see the light of day alongside the Surface Pro 3, but mysteriously there was no sign of it at the software giant’s launch event in New York.

During the company's earnings report a few months after the launch event, Microsoft admitted it had been working on the diminutive device, but had decided "to not ship a new form factor" after all, although it didn’t give a reason. Due to the late cancellation, we never got to see what a Surface Mini would have looked like, but today details and images of it have finally surfaced (pun intended).

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Ransomware is barely out of the news these days. We had WannaCry wreaking havoc not so long ago, and now it’s the turn of Petya/NotPetya. And those are just two of the better-known threats; there are plenty more forms of ransomware out there which, while maybe not as prevalent, can have just as devastating an effect.

If you’re concerned about the threat of ransomware, which is easily one of the nastiest forms of malware out there, we have a selection of ebooks and whitepapers you can download for free which will give you all the knowledge you need to avoid becoming a victim, and which can help you recover from an infection.

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It may seem strange now, but when the iPhone originally launched (10 years today, as if you didn’t already know by now), it wasn’t viewed as a smartphone in some quarters because of restrictions placed on the device by Apple.

Wireless industry analyst firm ABI Research’s definition of a smartphone was "a cellular handset using an open, commercial operating system that supports third-party applications", but Apple at that time was blocking third-party apps from the iPhone.

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On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at the Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. It was the usual quality presentation from Apple’s sorely missed boss, with some great moments of humor. Our first glimpse of the phone was in fact actually a mock-up of an iPod with a rotary dial in place of the usual click wheel. The audience clapped and hooted. Jobs then went on to show the real device, and it was pretty mind-blowing.

Here was a phone that looked nothing like a phone. It looked nothing like an iPod, for that matter either. It was pretty much all screen, controlled by touch using your finger -- or fingers, thanks to the power of multi-touch -- and was, according to Jobs, powered by OS X. The device could tell if you were holding it portrait or landscape, and knew when you were holding it up to your ear, and so prevent you prematurely ending a call with the side of your face. It came with a 620MHz processor, 128MB of memory and a 2MP camera. It was a magical device. This was the future, being shown right here. A device to be coveted by all. But I didn’t want one.

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