Insert special characters into any document with WinCompose
Numbers, letters, basic symbols and punctuation -- your keyboard covers all the typing basics. But what if you need to enter accented characters, math symbols, superscripts, or anything else a little less standard?
WinCompose is an open source tool for Windows which can insert special characters and symbols into just about any document or application.
Turn your smartphone's camera into a 3D scanner with Microsoft's Mobile Fusion app
Microsoft has been really busy lately, and now it has shown one of the things it has been working on -- a 3D scanner inside a regular smartphone.
The app, called MobileFusion, turns your average smartphone camera into a high-tech 3D scanner, allowing you to scan objects and turn them into 3D models for viewing, sharing and 3D printing, right in front of your very eyes.
Translate website text by pointing at it with TransOver
If you need to translate website text then there are plenty of services and apps available, most of which have piled on the features as they try to stand out from the crowd. But while that sounds great in theory, in practice it can mean wasting time navigating a bulky interface to get what you need.
TransOver is a Chrome extension with more of a back-to-basics approach. There’s no copying URLs, no opening new tabs or panes -- you’re able to translate text by selecting, clicking or just pointing at it.
Just hover your mouse over a word, for instance, and by default a tooltip appears with appropriate definitions.
Facebook is now working on its own digital assistant called M
Sounding like a character from a James Bond movie, M is Facebook's personal digital assistant. Ready to compete with the likes of Cortana, M will live inside Facebook Messenger and take artificial intelligence a step further. Rather than just helping you to find information or create calendar entries, M will actually perform tasks on your behalf.
Once up and running, M will be able to book restaurants for you, purchase shopping, and more. It will also be possible to use the service to ask for advice -- such as looking for somewhere to visit nearby, or gift suggestions -- and Facebook says the AI behind M is "trained and supervised by people".
Apple: iPhones thriving in China
Even though China’s smartphone market is saturated, and now relies only on people replacing their devices instead of buying their first one, Apple still bets a lot on that market.
In its third quarter earnings the iPhone business grew by more than half, to $31bn (£19.64bn) on 47.5 million shipments. According to a report by the IB Times, sales in China more than doubled to $13bn (£8.24bn), over a quarter of Apple’s revenue. The company did not say exactly how many iPhones it sold in China last quarter, but it was an 87 percent increase on a year earlier.
Amazon Underground offers a way to get over $10,000 worth of Android apps and games entirely free
Why pay for something when you can get it for free? Provided free, really is free of course (so many "free" things these days come with hidden costs). If you’re an Android user you’ll want to sit up and pay attention to a new app from Amazon which provides a way to get your hands on all of the apps and games that are actually available for free throughout the Amazon Appstore.
Better still, while the apps and games offered might include in-app purchases in other stores, in Amazon Underground, everything is entirely free. Find an app you like and you'll pay nothing for it, ever.
Many workers are not familiar with the cloud, VoIP, fiber broadband
A pretty staggering amount of folks in the UK still don’t have a clue what some basic technology terms mean, such as the cloud, according to a new survey.
This research comes from telecoms outfit Daisy Group, which questioned British employees to find out how clued up they were on the subject of connectivity, and also subsequently surveyed some 1100 SME owners and managers in the UK.
Don't blame Samsung; it's your own stupid fault if you break your Galaxy Note 5
Samsung is undoubtedly pleased that its new Galaxy Note 5 is in the headline, but the company would almost certainly prefer that it was for different reasons than it breaking. Not that there is a problem with the Note 5 -- despite countless websites and blogs claiming that Samsung has released a handset with a design flaw -- but if you insert the S Pen the wrong way round, you could well break it.
Of course, when one makes a mistake -- like shoving a stylus backwards into its housing -- it's easy to try to blame someone else. Samsung's response to the situation has been advising people to "follow the instructions in the user guide", which is entirely reasonable. How much hand-holding is really required? Do knife manufacturers need to tell you not to hold onto the pointy end?
Security education saves companies millions of dollars a year
Successful phishing attacks can lead to costs from loss of employee productivity and credential compromise, among other factors, which together may cost an average sized company $3.77 million per year.
New research released by Wombat Security Technologies and the Ponemon Institute finds that the phishing email click rate improved an average of 64 percent following security training.
Windows 10 now on 75 million devices according to Microsoft
It's been a wild month for Microsoft, given the roll out of the operating system many had been waiting for. For those who were perturbed with Windows 8 and those who skipped it all together, Windows 10 is a definite step up. It's a bit of a hybrid and it came out quickly -- much faster than past versions.
Now after much rather useless speculation, we have numbers that are actually attributed to Microsoft. The information comes via Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Marketing for Windows and Devices, who shared the facts on his Twitter account.
One percent of employees account for 75 percent of cloud risk
Cloud security specialist CloudLock has released a new report looking at the risks of user behavior to businesses using cloud systems.
It reaches the startling conclusion that just one percent of users account for 75 percent of the security risk. The top one percent of users are responsible for 57 percent of file ownership, 81 percent of files shared, 73 percent of excessively exposed files and 62 percent of app installations.
Most developers don't build mobile apps
Even though the world is increasingly mobile, more than half of developers have never built a mobile app, a new survey, called Telerik State of Mobile Development, shows.
Telerik, the company who conducted the survey, asked 3,000 IT professionals about mobile development. Among the biggest issues developers have with building mobile apps is the fact that a lot of them are still new to mobile development or have never built a mobile app (57 percent), while others develop just one functional mobile app a year (47 percent).
The impact of big data on IT operations analytics
Decision makers at Fortune 1000 companies are increasingly seeking to make use of big data to help their IT strategy.
Analytics specialist ExtraHop has released the results of a survey conducted by research firm TechValidate which shows how organizations are evolving their IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) practices.
First Windows 10 Mobile device from Archos targets entry-level shoppers, disillusioned Android users
Windows 10 Mobile is not even ready for prime time, as Microsoft is still working on it, but some vendors have already announced smartphones that will debut with the upcoming operating system on board. The latest is 50 Cesium, an entry-level device from French electronics company Archos, which is also its first Windows 10 Mobile device.
50 Cesium is the Windows 10 Mobile counterpart to the newly-announced 50e Helium (shown on the left), which is "almost identical" in terms of hardware design. The only noteworthy difference is that the latter runs Android 5.1 Lollipop out-of-the-box. According to the company, this was done in order to "allow the customer to focus on what they like on the inside: the user interface". This is not a new idea, having previously seen HTC, for instance, announce a variant of its Android flagship from last year, One (M8), running Windows Phone instead of Android.
Some people are fine with using a phone in church, but not walking down the street
The thing with a mobile phone is, thanks to the fact it is mobile, it can be used -- just about - anywhere. But just because something is possible, it doesn’t mean that it should be done. PewResearch conducted a survey into phone etiquette, and the findings show that people are somewhat divided about where and when it is OK to use a phone.
Some of the results are not exactly surprising. A huge majority of those questioned were not cool with the idea of using a phone in a movie theater or during a meeting (95 and 94 percent respectively). But there are also some interesting quirks in attitudes to mobiles -- 4 percent of people, for instance, see no problem with using a cellphone in the middle of a church service.
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