• Article
• Review

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Doogee seems to be on fire; the outfit, which is several orders of magnitude smaller than bigger names like Lenovo, Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi, has been pushing out new models like there’s no tomorrow. The vendor embraced a niche approach with the S-series (for secure), the BL series, the Mix (bezel-less), the Shoot series (for photography aficionados) and a few more.

After the Doogee Mix and the Doogee T5 and just before we review the S60 rugged smartphone, we’re taking a look at the BL7000 with the first two letters meaning "Battery Life" and 7000 representing the battery capacity (in mAh).

Continue reading →

The war against copyright infringement has always been a difficult one for rights holders. Aside from the scale of the problem, there are multiple platforms that make illegal downloads, streams, and sharing possible. For many years, the main target for anti-piracy bodies was BitTorrent, but in recent months a new number one enemy has surfaced in the form of Kodi, and in particular various companies and addons associated with the media center software.

While in Europe and the UK, sellers of "fully loaded" media center boxes seem to be the primary focus for Kodi-related lawsuits, in Canada and the US, it’s hosting site TVAddons and the ZemTV Kodi addon that are in the firing line. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was setup to "defend civil liberties in the digital world" and it has now weighed in on the Kodi situation, pointing out the shaky legal grounds these cases rest on.

Continue reading →

Blockchain technology is a key disruption enabler of established and, most importantly, trusted broker industries -- financial services being the biggest and most lucrative trusted broker service in the world. Trillions of pounds are moved around the archaic global financial system every day and billions of businesses and private individuals are serviced by companies that make up the vast industry. Still heavily reliant on manual processes, though dressed in a digital façade, finance system productivity is anchored with process delays, ever-rising expenses and is a relentless target for crime and fraud.

In an attempt to solve these ever-growing issues, blockchain, originally developed as the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, has been heavily invested in over the last few years. Investment to date has been primarily targeted at finance-focused blockchain start-ups and this focus of investment has lured many into the belief that the technology only has real potential in the world of finance.

Continue reading →

Mozilla has announced an update to Firefox's Privacy Notice which aims to better inform users about what data is collected and why.

As well as making its privacy policies more understandable, Mozilla is also trying to ensure that more people actually see them. For new installations, the Privacy Notice is automatically displayed in a tab. But it's the layout and accessibility of the updated document that's the real change.

Continue reading →

Rumors of BlackBerry's death may have been somewhat premature. The company just revealed its latest financial results, showing significant profits.

The former smartphone giant posted a stronger-than-expected second quarter, after, according to BlackBerry, its "complete transformation to a software company."

Continue reading →

As Android is based on Linux, the existing two-year lifecycle for Long Term Support (LTS) kernels is restrictively short. But, during a presentation about Android's Project Treble, Google's Iliyan Malchev announced that this is going to -- appropriately -- treble to six years.

This will address what has become a serious issue for chip-makers. During the production process, they need to pick the most recent LTS kernel to work with to ensure longevity, but the length of time it takes to design and produce chips means that much of the two years of support is used up by the time of release.

Continue reading →

Skype is an important communication service thanks to its cross-compatibility. There are clients for Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, and even desktop Linux. It may not offer the best user experience, but it is passable, making it a solid choice for those that need to keep in touch across long distances.

Today, Microsoft releases a refreshed preview of Skype for Linux. There are both DEB and RPM packages available, making it easy to install on, say, Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora. In fact, I successfully installed it on Pop!_OS earlier today. Believe it or not, the new interface is quite nice, making it something I could possibly enjoy using on my Linux machine.

Continue reading →

In the wake of big storms recently, the National Association of Broadcasters and the FCC has piled the pressure on Apple to enable the FM radio in iPhones so they might be used for emergency broadcasts.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai went as far as issuing a statement saying that "Apple is the one major phone manufacturer that has resisted" enabling FM chips in its phones. There's just one problem, as Apple points out. The iPhone simply doesn't have an FM chip to enable.

Continue reading →

IT teams are increasingly moving to the public cloud for its supposed low cost and high agility. However, once implemented in their environments, people are finding public cloud to be expensive and fairly complex to manage.

We spoke to Andrew Hillier, CTO of cloud optimization analytics service provider Densify, who is all too familiar with the struggles that IT organizations face as their public cloud costs rise through the roof. Read on for his insights into strategies that organizations can implement when looking to reduce cost, risk and complexity in the public cloud.

Continue reading →

Synology has expanded the DS418 line with the introduction of the new DS418play. The NAS, which joins the DS418 and DS418j in the consumer-oriented four-bay range, is optimized for multimedia content.

The claim to fame of the DS418play is that it can transcode up to two channels of H.265 or H.264 4K content at the same time, which basically means that you will be able to stream two 4K videos at the same time on a smartphone and tablet using the NAS' processing power.

Continue reading →

The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) has steadily replaced BIOS in recent years as means of booting and controlling hardware devices.

Mac systems have used EFI since 2006 but an analysis by Duo Labs, the research arm of Duo Security, of more than 73,000 Mac systems finds that in many cases the EFI is not receiving security updates, leaving users vulnerable to attacks.

Continue reading →

For people who have invested in a large screen TV with a view to enjoying a home cinema experience, one of the most common complaints is the quality of the built-in speakers.

The latest flat-screen TVs lack the big wooden cabinets of old for sound to resonate around in and so the audio quality from their on-board speakers tends to be a bit weedy. Most therefore look to add a soundbar or external speaker system to improve the experience.

Continue reading →

Paramount Software (UK) Ltd has released Macrium Reflect Free Edition 7.1, a major new release of its disk imaging backup tool for Windows.

Macrium Reflect 7.1 adds three headline features: integrated viBoot2 providing instant virtualization of Macrium backup images, Task Scheduler 2.0 API use for compatibility with the latest versions of Windows 10, and finally a license for use in a business as well as a non-commercial environment.

Continue reading →

Fall is officially here, and while some people get excited for pumpkin spice lattes and falling leaves, other folks get excited about something far nerdier -- Ubuntu. Yes, every October a new version of the Linux-based operating system is released. This year in particular is very significant, as with Ubuntu 17.10, GNOME is replacing Unity as the default desktop environment.

Today, Beta 2 of Ubuntu Linux 17.10, code-named "Artful Aardvark," becomes available to download. This second beta is the final beta as well, which signals that the operating system is almost ready for primetime.

Continue reading →

Businesses are embracing the Internet of Things (IoT) faster than ever before, with 2017 marking a landmark year in terms of adoption.

That’s according to the fifth annual Vodafone IoT Barometer Report, which reveals a huge uptake in terms of IoT projects being undertaken across the world.

Continue reading →