Three quarters of UK businesses are now officially "in the cloud" in one form or another. The universal, horizontal benefits of agility and utility are undeniable and compelling, but businesses still need to be able to translate these into competitive advantage.

Getting the most from your cloud investment can be a challenge. The fact is that not all clouds are created equal, and depending on your drivers, required outcomes and preferences, some will be a far better fit than others.

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We’re big fans of the Raspberry Pi here at BetaNews. The popular (not to mention super-affordable) credit card-sized ARM GNU/Linux computer was designed to bring programming back into schools but has quickly found an audience way beyond that.

The Pi is available in two variations -- the $25 Model A, which comes with just the one USB port and no Ethernet, and the more advanced $35 Model B with Ethernet and two USB ports. Today, however, there’s a third choice -- the Model B+.

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When we talk about surveillance online, it is almost always with reference to the NSA and activities in the US. But US citizens are far from being the only web users affected by surveillance. The NSA has long arms, but there are also similar activities going on in plenty of other countries. This week in the UK, the government is pushing through legislation that requires phone and internet companies to store information about customers' communication, and to hand it over to authorities on request. What made this particularly unusual was the fact that this was classed as emergency surveillance legislation with little to no debate and, more importantly, no public consultation whatsoever. Edward Snowden has plenty say on the matter, likening the British government to the NSA.

The legislation covers not only UK-based companies, but also those based in other countries who have gathered data about UK customers. It is in direct opposition to a recent European court ruling that said retention of data was a violation of European law. This in itself would be reason for any surveillance-related laws to be debated, but the government chose instead to use emergency measures -- usually reserved for times of war or disaster -- to push through laws it knows will prove unpopular. As we are now used to hearing, the surveillance is not about recording phone calls, or storing individual emails and text messages, but about retaining the related metadata -- who contacted who, when, for how long, from where, and so on.

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Cloud backup provider Dropbox has released a new stable build for desktop with the launch of Dropbox 2.10.1 FINAL for Windows and Mac.

The highlight is the introduction of streaming sync. Large files now start to be synced with your clients while they’re still being uploaded, keeping any initial delays to an absolute minimum and notably improving performance.

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This past Wednesday CBS science fiction series Extant debuted, coming amid much hype from anxious viewers. The TV network has also reached an exclusive agreement with Amazon Prime, which already has a similar deal with shows such as Stephen King's Under the Dome.

Episode one will be debuting this weekend, becoming officially available to viewers on July 13th. For those who have not heard of the new show, Amazon describes "Extant is a thrilling sci-fi drama starring Oscar-winner Halle Berry as an astronaut, Molly Woods, who returns home from a year in space and tries to reconnect with her husband and son. The events following Woods’ return home will ultimately change the course of human history with dramatic consequences for the entire planet".

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Firefox’s tabs are normally an easy and convenient way to work online, neatly organising your open sites into separate, isolated views.

There may still be times when you need to view two or more tabs at the same time, though -- and that’s where Tile Tabs can help, instantly organizing your chosen Firefox tabs into a single tiled window.

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My colleague Joe Wilcox is currently entrenched in an all-Microsoft lifestyle and I am enjoying reading about it. I too have been using Microsoft's products lately, including the wonderful Surface Pro 3 and Nokia Lumia Icon. The combination of that tablet and smartphone create quite the awesome experience.

One of my favorite things about Microsoft's desktop and mobile operating systems is Bing Apps. It keeps me in touch with things like news, weather and sports to name a few. While that is nothing unique, it is the overall fluid design that makes it a treat to use. Today, Microsoft announces that it is updating Bing Apps for Windows Phone, but there is a catch -- it is an 8.1 affair only.

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At first glance, the untrained eye may see very little difference between Samsung's newest SSD, the 850 Pro, and its predecessor, the widely lauded 840 Pro. A black shell that clings on to the same dimensions of the previous model, the 850's only obvious distinguishing feature is an understated red square occupying the space where the 840's orange one once sat.

The differences between the two, however, are colossal. Under the hood, Samsung has spent the last year prepping its revolutionary 3D V-NAND technology that aims to alleviate the frustrating constraints associated with shrinking NAND lithography down to ever-smaller process nodes. Until now, most manufacturers would shrink the die, thus increasing bit densities, in a bid to reduce cost and offer higher capacity. However this was limited by 2D planar architecture, and Samsung with its 3D V-NAND technology has come up with a new approach of stacking cells instead of shrinking them.

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Google has slowly brought YouTube around to being a fully legal service, and made agreements with music labels and TV networks. Granted, some content still gets taken down -- that can't be unexpected when the users are providing much of the content.

Now the video streaming service is bringing a weekly hour-long new music show to satellite music provider SiriusXM. The new show kicks off today at 6pm Eastern Time, and can be found on the Hits 1 station for those who subscribe to the radio service.

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SonicoMobile has launched iTranslate for Mac 1.0, a new addition to its stable of translation tools that includes iOS and Windows 8.

iTranslate allows users to quickly and easily translate words, sentences and phrases between 80 different languages, offering both written and spoken translations for text entered.

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It used to be very basic, but Windows 7 saw Calculator evolve into a capable tool, with the addition of statistics, programmer, unit conversion and date calculation modes, amongst others.

The Calculator interface isn’t always the easiest to navigate, though, and if you’re more interested in speed and convenience then you might prefer Numculator.

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Mobile security specialist Lacoon has released details of a new vulnerability in the Gmail app for iOS that may allow hackers to view or modify encrypted communications.

It allows attackers to use a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) technique to impersonate a legitimate server using a spoofed SSL certificate.

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Let's face it: there are only two major app stores in the mobile space. One is Apple App Store and the other is Google Play. That is due to their huge app selection, which was long passed the one billion apps mark in each case, and the quality of the available offerings, which often tops that of other app stores.

On the iOS side of things, there is virtually no competition due to the platform's closed nature. On Android, however, Google Play's success stems from the popularity of Google-vetted devices, which tops that of handsets running forked versions of the operating system (that are not approved by Google). Still, one vendor had the potential to give Google Play a run for its money -- Samsung.

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After months of waiting, Nokia Lumia 930 is finally available. That is, of course, unless you are living in US, where Microsoft will not make the Windows Phone 8.1 flagship officially available. Sure, you can buy Lumia Icon instead, as it offers pretty much the same specs, but what if you are not, or not do want to be, a Verizon customer?

The first option is to import Lumia 930 from Europe, where it is sold by major retailers, some of which offer international shipping. Clove, which is based in UK, carries the smartphones, in black, orange and white, at a price of £362.5 (which is about $621) without any local taxes. Or, you can head over to Expansys US, which sells Lumia 930 for not much more.

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As a test, Avast purchased 20 used and supposedly wiped Android phones and discovered that it was able to recover vast amounts of personal user data. My colleague Brian Fagioli reported the story here.

Google responded to the news, stating "This research looks to be based on old devices and versions (pre-Android 3.0) and does not reflect the security protections in Android versions that are used by the vast majority of users". It went on to offer users advice on how to make sure when selling an old mobile phone you aren’t also gifting your personal data to buyers.

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