Microsoft Lumia 735 now available to buy in Verizon Wireless stores

VZWLUMIA_900

The Lumia 735 was added to Verizon Wireless’s line up last month, but was only available to purchase online. Today, that changes and you can now pick up the smartphone from any of Big Red’s brick and mortar stores.

If you’ve had your eye on the phone for a while, there are some incentives being offered to help push you into making the move.

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Swiss Post testing drone deliveries

Drohnenflugtest der Post. (Yoshiko Kusano)

Switzerland’s postal service started testing drone parcel deliveries, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

The testing, done together with Swiss WorldCargo and Matternet, will investigate the technology and determine the cost-effectiveness of such a business idea, although flying postmen are not expected to be widely used for the next five years.

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Google's now testing self-driving car in Texas

Google's self-driving car cars fleet Lexus

This week has been a particularly exciting week for Google, as the company has started testing its self-driving car in Austin, Texas. The car in question is a specially equipped Lexus prototype, and with the new change of scenery the company is hoping that with it will learn more about the car’s performance in a different environment and road conditions, and how it reacts.

They have been testing self-driving cars since 2009, but most of the testing was done within Silicon Valley. Outside of Silicon Valley, Mountain View in California has been the primary testing ground, but with the ramping up of testing Google hopes that the self-driving technology should be ready for commercial use by 2020.

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Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 10166 now available on the Fast ring

Windows 10 Insider Preview build 10166 Fast Ring desktop

Last week, Windows Insiders on the Fast ring were treated to three new builds of Windows 10. As you’d expect, with the launch date getting ever nearer, things are seriously accelerating. New ISOs of the latest build, 10162, were pushed out soon after, followed by the same build becoming available to Insiders on the Slow ring.

Today, after a short wait, the new releases continue, with Windows 10 Build 10166 arriving on the Fast ring. As you’d expect, there are no major changes. It is, as Microsoft describes it, all about "bug fixing and fit-and-finish" from here on. One big change is that the Xbox Music app has been rebranded, and now appears as Groove Music.

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Microsoft Band and Health get Web Tiles and Cloud API Previews with developer focus

FEATBand-Exploded

When I bought my Microsoft Band, I had very lofty goals of losing weight and getting in shape. The reality, however, is that such a device is not magic -- you still have to put in the work. While I am still a fat guy, Band has certainly been a motivator and useful companion -- I am still determined to have my body Speedo-ready eventually.

Unfortunately, besides fitness, its usefulness is a bit limited; I use it for alerts and Starbucks payments, but not much else. Luckily, Microsoft seems to be committed to the platform and making it better over time. Today, Microsoft announces new Web Tiles and Cloud APIs. How will this improve Band? By wisely focusing on -- allow me to quote the beloved Steve Ballmer -- "developers, developers, developers, developers". Yes, developers are the key.

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Microsoft releases Office 2016 for Mac for Office 365 subscribers; standalone version releases in September

Office 2016 for Mac

After testing its productivity suite for more than four months and pushing seven updates to it, Microsoft today announces that it is releasing Office 2016 for Mac users. Available in 139 countries and in 16 languages, the productivity suite is now ready for Office 365 subscribers to snag. Those who want a standalone version of it will have to wait till September, however.

In its latest version of Office, the company is betting on the cloud power and integration. It says that with Office 2016, users will be able to access their documents "anytime, anywhere, and on any device". Office 2016 integrates with a number of popular services including Office 365, of course, as well as OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint.

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Enterprise-class Wi-Fi for the SMB: 15 best practices from the field

Wi-Fi

Pitiful Wi-Fi implementation is so prevalent these days that people take it for granted. From the hotels we visit, to the cafes we frequent, down to the offices we call home 9-5 daily. And that's unfortunate, because when done right, Wi-Fi is an enabler for connecting us wherever, whenever.

Why can't most organizations get Wi-Fi right?

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How personal devices are changing the American workplace

BYOD

We're all familiar with the idea of BYOD and allowing employees to use their own devices for work. But how much impact is it having out in the real world workplace?

Workspace as a service provider Workspot has produced an infographic based on a survey of 500 US workers sheds some interesting light on things. High numbers of Americans are using their own devices for work, with 64 percent admitting that they sometimes do so. Those that do use their own devices do so for between 10 and 30 percent of the work day.

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Windows 2003 gets a proper send-off, launching into space

Time Goodbye

In a tribute to Windows Server 2003, which reaches its end of life on July 14, disaster recovery provider Databarracks, together with the University of Surrey’s Electronics and Amateur Radio Society, launched a Windows 2003 disk into space.

Based on mass and the weather conditions on the day, the team predicts the balloon carrying the disk reached an altitude of 100,000 feet -- compared to the altitude of 30,000 to 40,000 feet for most commercial aircrafts -- before bursting and traveling back down to Earth.

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ImmersED: not just another Notepad replacement

ImmersED

ImmersED is an interesting plain text editor for Windows XP+. It’s not another feature-heavy developer-oriented Notepad replacement -- in fact, its core editor is very basic -- but the program has nice extra touches which could appeal to a wide range of users.

It’s designed to run full-screen, for instance, giving you a minimal chrome, distraction-free interface. But you can also run it in a window, and either environment can be customized by adding a word count, session target, a clock, and more.

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The pain of outages, for companies and customers

Be Right Back Service Down

I remember working on an IT helpdesk, responsible for managing technical and administrative issues for multiple large-scale sites. The particular network I worked on was especially large, with desktops, Exchange servers, etc., and the resources to potentially maintain the work flow of sites and keep our clients satisfied. The keyword here is 'potentially', as sites experienced network outages at a rate well beyond reasonable.

When receiving call after call and listening to every voice, no matter how stoic or exasperated, I quickly picked up on a common tone. I heard dissatisfaction, disappointment, a loss of trust and confidence. Not only was I realizing the failure of a system, but also the permanent damage to the reputation of the IT firm that I represented, its purpose to be keeping our clients working.

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Prioritize your news feed with updated Facebook controls

facebook_newsfeed_priority

Add a few friend on Facebook, join a few groups, and follow a few people you know and your Facebook feed can collapse into a jumbled mess. The way Facebook's algorithm works means it's all too easy to see too much stuff you're not really interested in, and miss what you want to see most.

Today the social network is rolling out a new set of options that can be used to gain better control of what you see. The latest update gives prioritization options so you can be certain that you'll always see posts from a particular friend. Will it be enough to please those who are critical of how things work at the moment?

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Download a full movie or TV show on your mobile device in minutes using Digiboo Zones

AIrport mobile movie

If you do a lot of traveling -- especially when covering long distances -- taking some form of entertainment with you to help while away the hours is a must. You can load a laptop, tablet or smartphone with movies and TV episodes, but if you want to download or stream additional media while away from home, you’ll find yourself at the mercy of whatever connections are available to you.

Location-based retail entertainment download service Digiboo is aiming to make it much easier -- and faster -- to download movies and TV shows when on the go. Announced today, Digiboo Zones, is a speedy download service that will allow travelers to download content to mobile devices in around a minute.

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Fleksy keyboard goes free for Android, iOS

Fleksy free

There are many third-party keyboards available for Android and iOS, but few of them stand out. Fleksy is certainly among the best that you can get today, alongside the likes of SwiftKey and Swype, and, to make it even more appealing, the company behind it has decided to make it available for free.

Fleksy is actually following in SwiftKey's footsteps, which took the freemium route more than a year ago on Android and stuck to this strategy for its iOS launch. Fleksy used to sell for $0.99; it is not much for a quality app by any means, but it is a barrier of entry nonetheless. Users could have picked something else, that is just as good for their needs, without spending a dime. And this is a problem for a startup, which prioritizes growth.

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Canonical partners with Lenovo to launch Ubuntu-powered ThinkPad L450 laptops in India

Lenovo Canonical Ubuntu Laptop India

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, has partnered with computer OEM Lenovo to launch the ThinkPad L450 series running the Linux distro in India. Starting at Rs 40,000, the laptops will be available to purchase from selected commercial resellers and distributors.

As for the specs of the ThinkPad L450 series, users have the choice of Intel Core i3 and i5 processors, paired with AMD Radeon R5 M240 2GB VRAM Intel HD 5500 GPU, 4GB of RAM, and 500GB hard drives. The laptops sport a 14-inch display with HD (1,280 x 720) screen resolution.

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