Seven days ago, CEO of the most valuable, publicly-traded technology company on the planet unveiled a potentially category-changing online streaming service. In 15 more, you will be able to subscribe -- three months for free. Pundits wave the Spotify flag and spit out diatribes of disgust, much as they did when Apple launched iPhone eight years ago or iPad in 2010. Wrong again is their destiny. Will they ever learn?

Many of the doomsayers forget, or maybe just ignore, the fruit-logo company's success disrupting category after category. They also start out from a misguided premise: That Apple is a latecomer who cannot catch up with competitors like Spotify. How ridiculous. iTunes debuted in January 2001, iPod nine months later, and iTunes Music Store in April 2003. By longevity and reach, which includes exclusives (like The Beatles) and large catalog, Apple is the status quo. On June 30, the giant awakes, and the smidgens shake as it walks.

Continue reading →

It has been a few months since we first heard about HoloLens, Microsoft's foray into holographic virtual reality. We've already been told that the platform will be able to run Windows apps in 3D, but -- let's be honest -- what people are really looking forward to is the potential for games. Today at E3, Mojang demoed the upcoming HoloLens version of Minecraft.

This is a game that has proved phenomenally successful, and the preview showed off today looks nothing short of incredible. This is a game that is all about the third dimension, and truly takes advantage of what HoloLens has to offer in this department.

Continue reading →

A lot of people trust LastPass to keep their passwords safe, which is why news that the company has been hacked and its user data compromised is seriously worrying.

LastPass discovered and blocked some suspicious activity on its network last Friday and immediately launched an investigation. Today it reports its findings, and they're very concerning indeed.

Continue reading →

Microsoft’s press event has finished, and revealed a lot of great gaming news, including that the Xbox One will soon be able to play selected Xbox 360 games. Huge news.

Next up it’s the turn of Sony. The company will have lots of gaming news of its own, and it won’t only be content relating to the PlayStation 4. Expect to find out more about Morpheus, the company’s VR headset that’s set to rival Oculus Rift.

Continue reading →

If you own an Xbox One gaming console and wanted to play Xbox 360 titles on it, Microsoft is granting your wish. At gaming conference E3, Xbox chief Phil Spencer announced that backwards compatibility is coming to the current-gen console.

At the event, the company demonstrated Mass Effect by Mike Ybarra, one of the most popular Xbox 360 titles, on the Xbox One console. The company notes that it is bringing “native” support for the old titles on the Xbox One. It will be bringing more than 100 such titles including Gears of War, Super Meat Boy, Halo Reach, Halo 3, and Borderlands, this holiday.

Continue reading →

Companies worldwide are equipping their workforce with the latest mobile technology. Many company-provided mobile devices allow for personal use so employees aren’t inconvenienced by being required to carry multiple devices.

This is commonly referred to as Corporate Owned Personally Enabled or COPE. With an ever-evolving mobile ecosystem, IT leaders are forced to continually adjust the rules and devise new approaches, and that’s likely to continue as complexity increases.

Continue reading →

In a post-Edward Snowden world, privacy and security are huge concerns. While many people call him a traitor to his country, many others -- myself included -- consider him a hero. Snowden shone a light on government programs that were arguably illegal and unconstitutional. The ultimate win from his actions is that people that were ignorant to privacy issues before, are now interested in them. He planted a seed of curiosity and concern.

As a result of this new interest in privacy, many companies have been reacting to show customers that they are safe and secure. One of the most vocal of these companies is Microsoft. Today, the company announces that it will soon start encrypting all Bing web searches. Whoa. This is huge.

Continue reading →

Skype is one of the most recognizable communication services in the world. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not yet perfected it; there is plenty of room for improvement. The company is arguably mishandling Skype, by killing the much maligned Modern UI version rather than fixing it.

Not all news about Skype is bad, however; last week, Microsoft announced that it was opening the web beta to all in the US and UK -- awesome news. Today, the company makes this announcement even better, by expanding it globally, including Linux distributions and Chrome OS (which is technically a Linux distro) for instant messaging.

Continue reading →

Another day, another media story about a public sector data breach. Whether it’s a filing cabinet containing confidential prison documents unwittingly sold at auction, private employee data accidentally posted online, or papers sent to the wrong person by mistake, invariably, the end result is that the media has a field day and the Information Commissioner issues yet another reprimand or fine.

Are things really this bad when it comes to information protection in the public sector? Well, yes and no. We recently completed a study of how public sector bodies across the UK manage their information. The findings reveal that one in four (23 percent) public sector organizations aren’t confident in their approach and recognize they are putting data at risk. Six in every ten (61 percent) say poor information handling has resulted in important documents being lost internally, and 40 percent have suffered an external data breach.

Continue reading →

The annual E3 video game conference gets underway properly from tomorrow, but Microsoft’s press keynote takes place today, and you’ll be able to tune into it right here as it happens.

The company’s focus will, naturally, be on the Xbox One and Windows 10, but there will also be plenty of games announcements too -- Microsoft says we can expect to see "the greatest games lineup in Xbox history" this year.

Continue reading →

A couple of days ago, ASUS formally revealed that it has considered snapping up fellow Taiwanese maker HTC. An acquisition would make sense for both players, and the timing is right seeing as HTC's shares have been falling like rocks in the past couple of months, losing more than half their value in such a short period of time.

However, HTC, while not in a position of strength at the moment, claims that "it will not [even] consider" a sale to ASUS, likely because it does not want to admit it is in deep trouble and has no idea how to get out of this situation.

Continue reading →

When Sony Pictures was hacked last year, one of the primary concerns for the company was the leaking of a number of unreleased movies. But in the UK, there were other consequences, including the daytime broadcast of the movie The Verdict complete with a smattering of four-letter expletives.

Sony Pictures Entertainment's subsidiary company Media Mix Limited owns the TV station Movie Mix, and on 14 December the channel broadcast an edit of the movie peppered with f-bombs. In the middle of the afternoon. The channel's excuse? That the "safe for daytime" broadcast version of the movie had been deleted by hackers.

Continue reading →

The blurring of technology and sport is something that I have written about several times before and now have another perfect example to add to the list, this time in motorbike racing.

To celebrate the final day of the Isle of Man TT races, EMC Corporation is announcing the results of a data analysis competition designed to reveal exactly what makes one of the riders so fast.

Continue reading →

With technologies like cloud systems and big data increasingly in demand the role of the chief information officer (CIO) is evolving and throwing up new problems all the time.

Enterprise search company Lucidworks has produced an infographic looking at the changes most affecting CIOs and what can be done to embrace them.

Continue reading →

The humble PIN is a common way to secure access to accounts, but it has one major problem -- it is, usually, limited to using the digits 0-9. A UK firm thinks it may have come up with a better solution: emoji-based PINs.

Intelligent Environments' Emoji Passcode system can be used to secure accounts with ideograms. The company argues that Emoji passcodes are not only easier to remember than number-based alternatives, but also more secure. This is thanks to the fact that there is a pool of 44 Emoji to choose from, and research also suggests people find it easier to remember images.

Continue reading →