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Microsoft has created a new website to showcase the best photography from around the world… of Microsoft. It’s an arty look into life in and around the tech giant’s Redmond, Wash. Campus, and highlights just some of the people who work there.

Shots include employees playing cricket, having lunch, and a photo of Satya Nadella on his first day as Microsoft CEO.

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Police in the UK are expressing increased concern about motorists using social media at the wheel. According to the head of roads policing, drivers using mobile phones to take photos, update their profile and make video-calls are becoming more and more of an issue.

In 2012, UK roads provided the site for more than 6,000 deaths or serious injuries for people between the ages of 16 and 24. This same age group was recently surveyed by RAC, where around 10 percent of drivers admitted to using sites such as Twitter or Facebook whilst driving.

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Whether conducting an interview, enjoying the music of a live band or listening to a college lecture, having a recorder handy is a huge plus. Sure, you can try and transcribe on the fly, but that is not ideal. For one, it causes the user to not pay attention. In other words, rather than sitting back and taking it all in, the person must furiously write -- an exercise in frustration. Also, a journalist may want a recorded copy of an interview, so that the interviewee cannot deny quotes later.

Finding the right hardware for recording audio can be tricky. Sure, you can use your smartphone or buy a chintzy recorder and maybe it will meet your needs. However, if the quality of the audio is important to you, it makes sense to invest in a high-quality device. Today, such a device has been announced by Zoom North America, called the H5.

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When it comes to computer building, Asus is one of the top brands; I am speaking from experience here. Building systems is one of my favorite hobbies and when selecting a motherboard or graphics card, Asus is always one of the brands at the top of my list. Of course, with great quality sometimes comes a high cost, but while Asus hardware sometimes costs more, I respect the adage of "you get what you pay for". I am willing to pay more for reliable, well-built components, whether it is Asus or other manufacturers.

Today however, Asus turns the volume up to 11 with a new gaming brand called Strix. What does "Strix" mean? The company says "taken from the ancient Roman and Greek word for owl, Strix means the keenest hearing and sharpest eyesight. Strix means feeling your environment so that you detect and react to the slightest movement. Strix means survival on the very edge of instinct. Strix is in your blood, as it is in ours". Deep stuff, bro. What does it mean to me? Kick-ass gaming hardware! Check this stuff out.

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Privacy. It's something that we're all concerned about, particularly online. Facebook is one of many companies that comes in for scrutiny and criticism for the way it handles user privacy, and there have long been complaints about the fact that statuses and uploaded photos are made publicly accessible by default. Today that changes. After years of pestering, Facebook has listened to its user base and changed the default visibility setting to "Friends only". At least this is the case for brand new users.

Anyone signing up for a new Facebook account -- can there be many people left who do not yet have one? -- will be able to avoid accidentally sharing private photos with the world. "Going forward, when new people join Facebook, the default audience of their first post will be set to Friends. Previously, for most people, it was set to Public," says Facebook in a blog post. The first time a post is made, users will be asked whether it should be made public or limited to a smaller audience. If no selection is made, it will default to Friends.

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BMW Motorrad, the motorcycle division of the famous German company, is partnering with Netbiscuits to elevate its customers' web experience to the next level.

Netbiscuits is a cloud platform that allows companies greater insight into which of their customers are interacting with their site using mobile devices, thus driving increased performance conversion and customer engagement across the board. BMW Motorrad's decision to partner with Netbiscuits is emblematic of a growing preoccupation with mobile markets and high-quality targeted content.

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It’s that time of the month when Piriform issues another update to its popular Windows cleaning utility. This time, CCleaner 4.14 focuses on browsers -- and Mozilla browsers in particular -- with its latest release.

Version 4.14, also available in portable form, also improves Unicode support for its Startup tool amid a rash of other improvements.

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As a Long Islander, there are things that I'm almost required to like, such as eating bagels and going to the beach. However, there is something else many of us are expected to enjoy -- Howard Stern. While not everyone likes his humor or radio show, I have been a fan for as long as I can remember. I even bought a Sirius radio when he made the switch from FM to satellite.

Sadly, while I listen religiously in the car every day, I don't listen in my home. It is not convenient to tie up my phone or computer -- it can be a battery drainer. Luckily, that is changing. Today, Roku announces that Howard Stern and the rest of the SiriusXM lineup is coming to the streaming box.

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There are many important jobs in the world, such as nurses, police officers and doctors to name a few. However, firefighters are near and dear to me, as I endured losing my home to a fire. The flames and smoke are very scary, ruining everything in their path. Anything left was destroyed by the water from the hoses, but, I survived. The brave firefighters worked hard to save me and my home and are true heroes.

All firefighters are heroes, regardless of what part of the world they protect. Israel’s Fire and Rescue Commission saves many lives and homes every year, and they have a tool in their arsenal that is helping them to fight fires. No, it is not a new hose or truck, it is Google Maps.

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The tiny Roku box has become a staple in many living rooms, bringing all sorts of entertainment goodness with it. The company continues to add new content, or channels as Roku refers to them. The latest is geared towards UK customers.

Roku is announcing that BBC Sport is landing on the set-top box, adding a load of new content, including Formula 1 racing, cycling, cricket, tennis, golf and others. Customers can also zone in on region specific content for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

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The humble API has been around for a long time, enabling applications to exchange data. But in the world of mobile computing and BYOD the role of the API is under greater scrutiny.

This is one of the things that's been under discussion at the recent Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit. At the end of last year there were some 10,000 publicly listed APIs, and now it's reckoned that around 24 percent of web applications and 15 percent of mobile applications use them. But what benefits are they bringing to the enterprise?

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Reverse engineering apps is an interesting field of work. On one hand, it can be used by software engineers to determine how an app works so they can copy it. On the other, the method can be used by those with malicious intent to track down weaknesses that can then be exploited. But there's also a third hand. Reverse engineering can also be used to highlight security problems with a view to not only alerting those affected, but also addressing the problem.

Researchers at Include Security, whilst practicing their reverse engineering skills, turned their attention to the Outlook.com app for Android and discovered a potentially worrisome security issue.

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Clipboard History is a simple clipboard manager which remembers up to the last 20 text items copied to the clipboard, and makes them available for reuse later.

The program only supports text -- not images, files or anything else -- and so can seem a little basic. But don’t be fooled. There’s much more to Clipboard History than you might think.

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This week, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Pro 3 with a larger, 12 inch display and surprised some by holding off on a "Surface Mini". While Microsoft continued to harp on their "best of both worlds" mantra, it was very clear that this device was focused on productivity use cases and enterprise users. Does this signal a new era in tablet computing or is this simply a niche product?

I recently downgraded my tablet sales estimate because tablets haven't encroached upon productivity use cases as quickly as "phablets" have encroached on consumption use cases. So wouldn't the Surface Pro 3 fit with my definition of upmarket movement? Not quite. The challenge for tablets is to move upmarket into productivity use cases without compromising on their advantages over PCs -- 1) ease of use, and 2) lower price points. With the Windows 8 operating system and a price tag starting at $930 (incl. the keyboard cover), the Surface Pro 3 misses on both points.

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The FCC voted recently to approve a proposal allowing select companies the ability to pay a premium price to their ISPs in order to deliver their content with a faster service, or 'fast lane' when transiting their networks. There has been considerable discussion both for and against the proposal with respect to how it adheres to the philosophy of net neutrality and how it might impact competition among businesses, particularly small entrepreneurial ventures without the resources to afford premium delivery service.

Unfortunately, the debate’s focus on faster delivery has failed to contemplate the growing need for other types of premium offerings such as 'secure services' and some vitally important questions have been overlooked in the discussion: How will this proposal alter the security threat landscape? Has the security impact of faster delivery services been fully considered and are mitigation technologies prepared to deal with potential threats introduced by this new asymmetry? Why are customers content to pay for the delivery of DDoS attacks and cyber threats under the current unsecure delivery model, and why would they pay for them to be delivered even faster than ever before? It seems counterintuitive.

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