While the phrase "patent troll" is not technically correct, it has become synonymous with a business model that is almost universally loathed. Companies that are created as a front and used to buy up patents and then extort, for lack of a better word, money from smaller businesses -- typically ones they feel they can push around for an easy and quick profit. Unfortunately the tactic works in many cases as those facing litigation can't afford to fight and end up settling to save money.

This practice has brought about a cry for reform of the patent system, which many feel is irrevocably broken. Now Congress is listening and today the Electronic Frontier Foundation will take center stage to plead its side of the argument.

Developers often find themselves repeatedly going over the same ground when it comes to adding functionality like forms or product pages.

California-based Cloudward is aiming to make life easier for web app developers with the launch of Cloud Snippets. These are cloud-hosted scripts, powered by Google Cloud Services, that allow anyone to instantly add forms, surveys, landing pages, ecommerce product listings, and more using the simplicity of Google Docs, Sheets, and Drive.

Corel Corporation has unveiled VideoStudio Pro X8 ($79.99) and VideoStudio Ultimate X8 ($99.99), the latest versions of its versatile consumer video editor.

Both editions add a new Freeze Frame effect (just select a frame and set the duration), while the bundled NewBlue Video Essentials II brings 10 plugins, including Chroma Key, Lens Correction, Picture-in-Picture and Vignette.

Starting a tech business in today’s rapidly evolving landscape presents a real challenge: how do you conceptualize an idea, develop it, and push it to market before the idea becomes obsolete in the face of new technology?

Firepype was first conceptualized in 2011­­ -- eons ago by tech standards. Amazingly, there is still no other product that offers automated media distribution the same way this does. The basic prototype came together pretty quickly for the first client, in a matter of weeks. Then it became time to refine the idea into an elegant, marketable package, and the forward momentum slowed to a crawl as I searched for the right team to help turn my vision into a reality.

Developers put a lot of time and resources into the technical aspects of their apps. But when it comes to selling them in other markets there's often little left for localization.

Now OHT-Mobile, part of One Hour Translation, has a solution with the launch of Lingui, a low-cost way to localize apps quickly without the need for extra manpower, complicated processes or even the requirement to send updates to the App Store or Google Play.

Android apps aren’t just for your phone and tablet. Install Droid4X and you can run Android on your PC, too, taking full advantage of the extra screen resolution and more easily sharing files and data.

As with many similar applications, Droid4X is essentially a wrapper around VirtualBox, with Android 4.2.2 provided on a custom virtual machine. But you don’t need to know any of the low-level details, as the program manages all of those itself.

The average smartwatch relies on a smartphone to show relevant information. Those notifications, emails, messages, directions and the like are not pulled from thin air, after all. Making such devices pretty much useless when, for instance, the smartphone runs out of juice or is not within pairing distance. This is where having a cellular radio inside can make a huge difference.

LG is among the few vendors that sees just how useful cellular radios can be for smartwatches, as today it announces a 4G LTE version of its recently-unveiled Watch Urbane Android Wear smartwatch. Unlike the original, the new Watch Urbane LTE -- which rivals Samsung's Gear S -- runs LG's own Wearable Platform. The South Korean company is touting it as "the world’s first LTE-enabled smartwatch".

Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev is a Russian hacker who could make you rich in a couple of different ways. He is the gentleman who is thought to be the architect behind the Zeus botnet as well as the infamous CryptoLocker scam that holds data hostage for a ransom. Those are two of the largest problems facing today's computer users and each still persists while Bogachev remains elusive.

He has twice been indicted in US courts, once in Nebraska and, more recently, in Pennsylvania. The array of charges is quite long, including conspiracy, money laundering, computer fraud, identity theft and more. These indictments mean little as long as he remains on the run.

Companies are increasingly tuning into the importance of understanding their customers in order to make their marketing more effective and big data has a key role to play in providing them with the information to do so.

A new infographic produced by big data analytics platform Datameer looks at how companies are using big data to build their brands and boost revenue.

A few months ago Twitter was criticized for teaming up with suicide prevention charity Samaritans to automatically monitor for key words and phrases that could indicate that someone was struggling to cope with life. Despite the privacy concerns that surrounded Samaritans Radar, Facebook has decided that it is going to launch a similar venture for Compassion Research Day in a bid to prevent suicides.

Working with mental health organizations including mental health organizations Forefront, Now Matters Now, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Save.org, Facebook aims to provide greater help and support for anyone considering suicide or self-harm.

Google Play is supposed to be the safe place to download Android apps from, but that’s increasingly not the case. Three weeks ago security firm Avast detailed how it had found three popular Android apps riddled with Adware in Google’s store.

Today Bitdefender reports that it has found ten Google Play apps that are packed with aggressive adware that can do all sorts of nasty things.

Even with significant security solution spend, program maturity and external third-party certification efforts, organizations continue to struggle to adapt and protect themselves from attackers employing new and innovative approaches that take advantage of the very systems put in place to thwart them.

Today’s attackers are very sophisticated, well-funded and patient. They act more like detectives and scientists as they follow a systematic approach to understand their targets’ environments, their nuances and day-to-day operations even better than you do. They know that security point solutions have an important role to play in protecting your environment but that they also have their limitations. Attackers test these to understand exactly when an organization reacts and when it does not. But it doesn’t end there.

Can’t find your Windows 7 disc but need it to do a fresh install or run a copy of Windows in a virtualized environment? The obvious solution is to download a copy of the operating system in ISO format.

Oddly though, Microsoft has avoided offering Windows 7 ISOs for download -- the only solution previously was to grab a copy from Digital River, Microsoft’s official content delivery partner for Windows 7. That’s all changed now though, as a new Microsoft Software Recovery center lets you download Windows 7 directly from the software giant itself.

Samsung has announced that it has started mass-production of 128 GB ultra-fast embedded memory. Described as an industry first, the memory is based on the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard and is 2.7 times faster than the commonly used eMMC 5.0.

With performance of 19,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second), the memory offers sequential read and write speeds comparable to SSDs. Despite this, the memory draws half the level of power of existing mobile memory.

China has decided to remove some of the world’s leading technology brands from its state approved purchase lists and replace them with thousands of locally built products.

Some say this move comes as a response to revelations of widespread cyber-surveillance conducted by the West, while others believe this is more of a way for China to protect domestic technology industry from fierce competition.