Wayne Williams

If you’re running Windows 7 or 8.x you should by now see a small Windows 10 icon in the system tray. Click this and you can reserve your free Windows 10 upgrade in advance of the operating system’s launch on July 29.

Once you’ve reserved the upgrade, Windows 10 will download as soon as available and you’ll be able to install it at your convenience. However, for some reason this icon isn’t appearing on all systems. It wasn’t on mine for example. If you want to summon the upgrade icon, this is what you’ll need to do.

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If you’re certain you don’t want to upgrade to Windows 10, or you want to do so at your own pace without being nagged into it, the upgrade notification that appears in Windows 7 and 8.x can be viewed as an unwanted annoyance.

There are plenty of reasons why you might not want to upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as it becomes available -- you might be more than happy with your existing OS, or you may wish to wait until Windows 10 has been out for a while and all of the big issues have been patched. After all, you have a year to upgrade for free. If you want to remove the upgrade notification, there’s a simple tool for the job.

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Microsoft’s past attempts at protecting Windows users from malware have been patchy at best. However, with Windows 10 the company is offering a new way to help protect its customers from dynamic script-based malware and other forms of cyberattack.

AMSI (Antimalware Scan Interface) is an interface standard that allows applications and services to integrate with any existing antimalware product on your PC. Those apps can call the new Windows AMSI APIs at any time to scan for malware.

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Apple’s WWDC keynote was noteworthy for a lot of reasons, but one of those was the fact it featured women presenting on stage for the first time. Usually at such events it’s a male-only affair. The tech industry is still dominated by (mostly white) men, and when women make an appearance it generates headlines -- which is both sad and a little crazy.

On Saturday (June 13) an all-female group of IT experts, engineers and scientists will take over the Google Campus at the heart of London’s Tech City in a bid to not only break a Guinness World Record, but also to challenge preconceptions.

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At the WWDC keynote on Monday, Apple demoed iOS 9. New features include updates to Apple Pay, a News app, improved Notes, a more intelligent Siri, updated keyboard, split screen on iPad, and a new low power mode that promises to deliver up to three more hours of battery life.

If you’re an iOS user, it looks like a great update, and you’ll be able to try out the public beta when it is released in July (the finished version will be released in the fall). But hold on, you don’t want to wait that long? Well the good news is there’s a developer preview already available, and it’s possible to install this with or without a dev account. A word of warning though, don't skip the backup step as according to Apple, "Devices updated to iOS 9 beta cannot be restored to earlier versions of iOS".

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During yesterday’s WWDC keynote, Apple showed off new versions of OS X, iOS, and watchOS, as well as taking the wraps off of its new streaming music service and radio station.

While the event was going on, people were tweeting about it, and Oxford University's TheySay linguistics tool monitored Twitter from just before the keynote started to just after it ended, and then used the data from 94,528 Apple-related tweets to work out the overall sentiment, including what people thought about each of the products and services Apple covered. The result was overwhelmingly positive.

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Part of the reason why smartphone owners stay with their current choice of mobile operating system is they don’t want to have to mess around transferring personal data between devices. If you have an iPhone, upgrading to a newer model is very straightforward, and if you have an Android device, upgrading to a newer or different one is just as easy. Switching operating systems is, however, a real pain.

Apple wants to make it easy to go from Android to iOS and is introducing a new app called 'Move to iOS'.

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I own an Apple Watch, and I like it, but like so many Watch owners I appreciate that this is a device whose future is coming, but isn’t quite here yet. In my first impressions review I said "What it can do right now is great, but what it will be able to do in the future will be amazing", and it seems as if the future might be coming sooner than I expected.

At the WWDC 2015 keynote Apple revealed watchOS 2, and to say it’s impressive is an understatement. With the upgrade Apple is seriously improving the usefulness of its wearable.

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The App Store is unquestionably one of the main reasons for Apple’s continuing success. It certainly revolutionized the smartphone, and despite a serious challenge from Android it remains the top store for apps across the world.

At WWDC 2015, CEO Tim Cook revealed a couple of major numbers -- the biggest being that over 100 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store since it opened.

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As expected at this year’s WWDC, Apple has revealed that the Apple Pay payment system is coming to the UK in July. As revealed by Jennifer Bailey, Apple Pay chief (and a woman!), it will be accepted at over 250,000 UK merchant locations including Marks and Spender, Costa, Waitrose, Boots, and MacDonald’s.

That’s quite a bit shy of the million plus locations now accepted in the US, but it’s still a good start.

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All sorts of reversible USB Type-C devices are beginning to arrive now, and Kingston Digital has just announced the launch of its DataTraveler microDuo 3C USB Flash drive.

This device has a dual interface that works with both standard USB Type-A (3.1, 3.0, 2.0) and USB Type-C ports and comes in three capacities -- 16GB, 32GB and 64GB.

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MaxCDN, a content delivery network based in Los Angeles, has launched a new partner program for web hosting providers, digital agencies, and other companies that create and/or deliver web content on behalf of their customers.

The highlight of this new program is the redesigned CDN management system for resellers. According to a MaxCDN announcement, the new reseller platform offers:

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Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference kicks off today, Monday 8 June, in San Francisco, with the big keynote speech scheduled for 10am PST/6pm BST.

As WWDC is for software developers, Apple doesn’t usually reveal major new hardware -- typically it’s just updated versions of existing products. You can certainly expect news on iOS 9 and OS X 10.11, as well as Apple Watch.

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Microsoft has just released ISO files for Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 10130. This build is currently only available to Insiders on the Fast ring due to the presence of a couple of major bugs that Microsoft is looking to squash before making the release available to testers on the Slow ring. The ISOs have been released to allow people who are having problems upgrading through the usual Windows Update route to install the build.

As with the previous releases, Build 10130 is still an early version of the OS, so you wouldn’t be advised to run it as your main operating system, especially with those unresolved bugs, and while you could set it to dual boot, running it in a virtualized environment is a much more sensible idea.

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The web-based version of Skype first debuted last year, but as an invite-only service. Today however, Skype is opening it up to new and existing users in the US and UK.

To use the service just go to web.skype.com and sign in (or sign up) and you can send instant messages, and make Skype or video calls directly in your browser.

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