When it comes to geeky stuff, space exploration is definitely on the top of the list. I am sure many of you dreamed of becoming astronauts as kids; representing your country by working for NASA. Of course, life is unpredictable and we rarely realize our dreams; only a small percentage of humans get to become astronauts with NASA.

Do you know what else is super-geeky and awesome? Virtual reality. Microsoft's implementation with HoloLens takes this to an entirely different level -- beyond just strapping a screen to the user's face. Microsoft has truly captured the imaginations of many. NASA has certainly taken notice, as today it announces a partnership with the Windows-making company to bring HoloLens to space, with a new project called Sidekick.

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Following the Charleston shootings in which nine people were killed, debate has raged about whether it is reasonable to display the Confederate flag. A symbol of the South for some, a racist throwback for far more, the flag has already been ditched by the likes of eBay and WalMart. Now Apple has started to clear the App Store of apps that feature the rebel flag.

Developers have been contacted by Apple with a warning that their apps are being dropped "because it includes images of the confederate flag used in offensive and mean-spirited ways". While this is clearly the case in some instances, the new policy has also affected Civil War games that include the flag for historical reasons.

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Like transparency reports, diversity reports have become quite the fashion at the moment. Companies such as Google, Apple, and Amazon are keen to demonstrate that they are not dominated by white, middle-class men, and that they are open to the full gamut of gender identities and sexualities. Today Facebook released its second diversity report showing that at Mark Zuckerberg's company things haven’t really improved over the last year.

More than half of the workforce (55 percent) is white, and at senior leadership level this jumps all the way up to nearly three quarters (73 percent). The percentage of black workers at the social network is incredibly low -- just 2 percent. The gender balance is largely skewed as we have come to expect. Across the company 68 percent of employees are male, although in 'non-tech' roles women make up 52 percent of the team. For those striving for equality, the numbers make for somewhat depressing reading.

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While some businesses saw an increase in revenue of more than £6 million, others struggle mining big data archives, a new study has shown.

The landmark study Mining for Insight: Rediscovering the Data Archive is an IDC white paper, just announced and published by Iron Mountain.

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A couple of days ago, Google took Gmail's Undo Send feature out of its six year beta period, and brought the option to a wider audience. Although the feature has been widely welcomed, there has also been criticism, particularly about the measly 30 second time limit users are given to change their mind and recall an email. Today Fasetto launched Messaging 2.0 which includes the ability to recall or edit messages or files that have been sent, with no time limits.

Fasetto is a cloud storage platform that offers security features that will appeal to the enterprise, as well as home users. Available for Windows, Android, iOS, OS X, and even Windows Phone, the platform has a focus on security that extends to being completely free of tracking and log files, but it also has a thing or two to teach Google.

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Chinese firm OnePlus made a splash last year with its One flagship smartphone. At $299 (now available for $249) off-contract price point, the OnePlus One smartphone offers top-of-the-line hardware specs, which helped it earn the title of "flagship killer of 2014" from critics and users alike. The company announces today that it will be launching a new flagship smartphone called the OnePlus Two next month.

The company says that it will be hosting an unusual VR event on July 27 at 10PM ET to launch the OnePlus Two. "In our industry, product launches tend to be the same. An auditorium, a keynote, and a seated audience. For the OnePlus 2 launch, we didn’t want that barrier between us and you," OnePlus wrote in a blog post today.

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After spending 7 days with Apple Watch Sport -- and largely enjoying it -- time comes to test the next pricier model. When trying to compare the two, I find very little useful from Internet searches. So a primer is in order for other folks also wondering: Which one is right for me? Ultimately, the best answer will come from going into an Apple Store (if there is one nearby) and putting the timepieces on your wrist.

Last week, I compared Android Wear and Apple Watch platforms, starting from the different design ethics behind them. Obviously, timepieces from the bitten-fruit logo company are more alike, with the main differences being materials, pricing, and target customers. Interestingly, the combinations offer subtle changes in benefits that will matter much to some shoppers. Henceforth, I will refer to the devices as Sport, for the aluminum model, and Apple Watch for the stainless steel sibling.

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Tabbed interfaces are the design of choice for just about any application which needs to open multiple documents simultaneously, and it’s easy to see why: they’re simple, straightforward, easy to manage and use.

PolyBrowser is a Firefox-based web browser which does things a little differently, ditching the tabs in favor of "panoramic navigation". Instead of hosting browsing sessions in isolated tabs, PolyBrowser stitches them together, side by side. You can scroll freely from one page to another by dragging the horizontal scrollbar, or right-clicking and dragging horizontally with the mouse.

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Piriform has unveiled the latest monthly update to its Windows cleaning tool with the release of CCleaner 5.07 FINAL. The new release is also available as a portable build.

The headline new feature is the ability for users to manage their Web Apps in the Firefox web browser. This feature is accompanied by a number of new improvements, including better support for Windows 10 ahead of its official release.

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Some people’s archiving needs are simple: right-click to extract zips, combine a few files into a zip of their own occasionally, and that’s about it. Nothing that can’t be handled by Explorer on its own.

If you’re, well, a little more demanding, you might be interested in Explzh, a free archive manager for Windows with a host of features you won’t always find elsewhere.

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As someone who was one of the chosen to buy the Amazon Echo early (now available to all), I have had extensive time playing with the technological oddity. While it is a welcome addition to my home -- my family uses it for weather, traffic, spelling and math -- I have been a bit underwhelmed by the overall usefulness.

I've been hesitant to truly embrace Amazon's assistant, as I wasn't sure it had a future. The reason? The lack of a clear plan or path for developers made me wonder if it could truly compete with more open and focused technologies. Today, my hesitation is quelled, as Amazon lays out an impressive plan for developers. This is much bigger than Echo, however.

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If there’s one thing that Edward Snowden left us with, it’s the notion that our digital data isn’t all that safe and that the government knows what we did last summer. But in essence, that only applies to that data being created and used using standard tools -- emails, browsers, etc.

However, if you really want to keep your data private, including browsing history and email, there are ways to do it. They’re simple to use, accessible and close to impossible to crack.

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Bing and Google have very different philosophies when it comes to search interface design. Google is famously minimal -- for the most part, it's a white page, the company logo and a search box. Conversely, Bing is loud and proud -- beautiful pictures, videos and colors, creating a welcoming portal to the web.

Today, Microsoft is taking its search page to a new level. Besides seeing the beautiful scenes, you can now hear them too.

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Marketing departments today operate across multiple channels from traditional routes to digital campaigns and social media. That means they're dealing with more data than ever before.

But being data rich isn't an answer in itself as the information can be fragmented and difficult to analyze. Big data insights specialist Datameer is launching its Multi-Channel Marketing Analytics App which offers an end-to-end view of the marketing process from lead-to-customer.

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With mobile devices becoming increasingly popular there's ever increasing demand for apps, but that can prove a bottleneck for businesses.

With the launch of a new version of its RhoMobile developer platform, Illinois-based Zebra Technologies Corporation is aiming to make multi-platform development easier.

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