The time has rolled around once again for Facebook to release its twice-yearly report about government data requests. It will perhaps come as little surprise that in the current atmosphere of surveillance and privacy concerns that in the first half of 2015 Facebook received more government data requests than ever before.

The latest figures show that the number of data requests has jumped by 18 percent to 41,214. There was also a massive increase in the number of pieces of content that were taken down or 'restricted' for violating local laws -- a rise of 112 percent. Facebook reiterated previous assertions that it does not provide backdoor access to governments, and reveals that the US is by far the leading requester of data.

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Noise-canceling headphones do a great job of filtering out unwanted background sounds, such as the rumble of traffic or the chatter of crowds. It’s a clever technology, and one that Ford is set to implement in its vehicles, starting with the all-new Ford Mondeo Vignale.

The car giant’s Active Noise Control tech emits sound waves that cancel out engine, transmission, and wind noise, resulting in a much quieter journey. No need to crank up your music to drown out unwanted external sounds.

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Adobe today announced Audience Marketplace, a new data exchange in Adobe Audience Manager, the company’s data management platform (DMP).

Audience Marketplace is a private data marketplace that connects advertisers and content publishers to buy and sell second and third-party data faster and with more simplicity. The data exchange also enables companies to scale their high-value audience segments for personalized and targeted content across marketing channels.

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There’s no question that Microsoft’s new Surface Book laptop/tablet hybrid has divided opinion. Some people love it, while others remain unconvinced, especially with regard to the high price and unconventional hinge. It’s very much designed as a rival to the MacBook Pro, and during its launch Microsoft made this clear by declaring its new device to be twice as fast as Apple’s offering.

So is Apple worried about the competition? Not so much. The company’s CEO Tim Cook took a swipe at the device earlier today while talking to students at Trinity College, in Dublin.

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The number of "serious" cyber-attacks against the UK has doubled in just a year, BizTek Mojo reported on Tuesday, saying the company responded by forming a cyber-security academy to tackle the issue.

According to the report, GCHQ says there are, in average, seven serious threats faced by the country each day, and just last month it recorded 200 attacks, including state-sponsored assaults.

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Cloud adoption is continuing to grow amongst enterprises and small businesses alike and, as competition in the technology industry becomes ever-more intense, it has never been more important to be able to respond to network outages and unplanned downtime.

This is where disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) comes in, providing a failsafe in the event of man-made or natural catastrophes through the replication and hosting of physical or virtual servers by a third-party.

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The arms of the NSA may be long, but there are some parts of the world in which it holds no sway. Conscious of European concerns about US government web surveillance, Microsoft today announces German datacenter options for Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online.

Starting in the second half of 2016, customers in Europe will be able to opt to have their data stored in Germany. The datacenters will be controlled by German data trustee, Deutsche Telekom who will oversee all access to customer data. With Microsoft’s "mobile first, cloud-first" philosophy, this is a move to try to rebuild trust in cloud services which the company clearly feels has been lost.

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Qualcomm has officially unveiled its new flagship mobile processor, Snapdragon 820. The new chip promises major improvements in performance across the board, like 40 percent faster graphics compared to Snapdragon 810, and supports new technologies, such as Wi-Fi 802.11 ad.

The CPU inside Snapdragon 820 has four cores running at up to 2.2 GHz, and is touted to offer twice the performance and efficiency of Snapdragon 810's CPU. This leads to a decrease of up to 30 percent in energy consumption compared to its predecessor, which has been reported to run a bit too hot.

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This year’s Black Friday, a growing UK shopping phenomenon imported from the US, is happening later this month and is predicted to be the biggest one yet. With retail analysts suggesting that online UK sales could hit £1bn on that day alone, UK sellers are preparing for consumer spending like they’ve not seen before.

Last year in the UK, online spending hit an estimated £810m on Black Friday as consumers were successfully lured in by retailers that significantly discounted their products. This unexpected purchasing shift caught many retailers off-guard and exposed those that were unprepared. The event highlighted nationally that online merchants should devote just as much time to optimizing their digital commerce experience as they do their brick-and-mortar stores. The companies most likely to come out on top started planning many months ago. As consumers put the finishing touches on their shopping lists this year, they can expect more -- and will get more -- from their shopping experiences this Black Friday:

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A lot can be said about Amazon's Echo product. People either love it or don't trust it. After all, what you say goes through Amazon's servers to answer the questions and requests, and it works almost instantly.

Now Amazon has a deal for those who want to try it out, but you'll need to act fast because the deal is good for today only. The device normally retails for $179, but today you can get $30 knocked off that price, lowering the product to $149.

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Work management software company Clarizen is announcing its latest release which delivers new options for viewing work and integration with the JIRA development workflow package.

Major features include an interactive Gantt view gives users visual representation of the workplan, on which they can take action, such as rescheduling work by dragging and dropping or creating dependencies by linking tasks. Users can also display key attributes -- for example percentage complete or dates -- on the Gantt bars, and share the Gantt as a widget with internal and external stakeholders.

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Websites often go through redesigns to keep them looking "fresh", changing colors, backgrounds, layouts and more. Which is fine, if you wanted something new -- but not so great if you were happier before.

Stylish is a free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari which uses custom CSS code to restyle websites, changing colors, replacing fonts, dropping content and generally improving their look and feel.

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Convincing smartphone users to try a different operating system is no easy task as it typically means they have to get a new smartphone that runs it. But Mozilla has gotten around this by making Firefox OS 2.5 Developer Preview available to those rocking an Android device as a launcher.

Android users who want to give the developer preview of Firefox OS 2.5 a go basically have to download the app from Mozilla, install it and then select the appropriate launcher. Unlike a typical Android launcher, Mozilla's offering changes pretty much everything to match the upcoming Firefox OS 2.5, including the settings menu and notifications panel.

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Online ads are a major bugbear for web users, hence the existence of ad blocking software. Tools such as AdBlock Plus have long been popular, but despite efforts by publishers to discourage their use, more and more people rely on ad blockers to improve their online experience.

The Internet Advertising Bureau reports that ad blocking is on the rise. In the UK, 18 percent of people use software to prevent the appearance of ads -- up from 15 percent just five months ago. Not everyone, however, is looking to block every single ad they might encounter.

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Many people cite performance issues as a reason why they're reluctant to run or end up uninstalling internet security products.

Independent testing organization AV-Comparatives has released the results of its latest studies on a range of security products, focussing on how they impact system performance.

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