During the pandemic, we’ve seen examples of local authorities moving from hypothesis to a live service, that’s been tested and iterated, within a matter of days. Low-code has made that possible; a type of software that allows non-technical people to create user interfaces like online forms without needing to do any traditional computer programming or coding.

Low-code platforms are able to produce neat digital services through configuration, rather than the normal route which demands service creators have good coding skills. This has allowed councils to deploy services at impressive speed. We all know that responding at pace is important in a crisis, and with many vulnerable people needing support right now, the rapid deployment of digital services has been vital.

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A new global survey of 700 CIOs reveals IT leaders have growing concerns about their ability to keep up with digital transformation.

The study from software intelligence company Dynatrace shows 89 percent of CIOs say digital transformation has already accelerated, and 58 percent predict it will continue to speed up.

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Researchers from Avira Protection Labs have recorded a 53 percent increase in coinminer malware attacks in Q4 2020 compared to the previous quarter.

With the Bitcoin price reaching a new all-time high earlier this month, this points to a connection between the rapid price rise and increased coinminer malware activity as criminals seek to cash in.

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The arrival of Apple's M1 chips opened up the possibility of running iPhone and iPad apps under macOS. Running natively in this way is reliant on developers making the necessary changes to their creations which can then be installed via the Mac App Store.

But, of course, not all developers are willing or able to make the necessary updates and so their apps have not been available in the App Store. However, many people have been side-stepping this obstacle by sideloading unsupported apps. Having noticed this activity, Apple has intervened and blocked such sideloading.

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I’m no Trumper. This prediction has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with how social media actually works. Following the U.S. Capitol riot of January 6th, President Trump was bumped from nearly all social media, even YouTube, with many of those changes subsequently made permanent. These moves led to speculation that Trump would be hobbled without his beloved accounts, his immediate impact on public discourse muted without the ability to tweet. While this may be true in the very immediate sense, it won’t last. Even Trump, the technical luddite, will figure it out and roar back shortly with or without those accounts.

This prediction is very similar in thinking to a column I wrote last August -- President Trump thinks he can shut down WeChat: It won’t work. That column made the simple point that such bans are hard to make stick, even for a U.S. President, simply because of the international nature and foreign hosting of the WeChat service.

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There have been plenty of bugs in Windows 10 over the years. Just the other day, for instance, we wrote about one that could corrupt your hard drive. Now, details of a bug that causes Windows to crash have emerged -- and Microsoft does not seem to be in a rush to fix it.

The bug was discovered by the same security researcher who unearthed the NTFS flaw, Jonas Lykkegaard. He found that by visiting a certain path in Chrome, Windows 10 crashes with a BSoD (Blue Screen of Death). Despite Lykkegaard having gone public with details of the bug some months ago, Microsoft is still yet to produce a fix.

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While I am not a "Mac guy," I recently bought a 2020 Mac mini. Why? Well, I was quite intrigued by Apple's new M1 processor, and the $699 starting price was actually reasonably affordable. And so, I went with the base model (8GB RAM, 256GB SSD), as Apple's prices for more memory and storage are a total rip-off. For instance, to go from 8GB to 16GB RAM costs $200. Sorry, but I can't drop two bills on 8GB. Not happening, Apple.

Unfortunately, you cannot upgrade the RAM, so the 8GB decision might bite me in the ass one day, but I'll cross that bridge later. However, since the little computer has two Thunderbolt and two USB ports, I knew I could always add fast storage later on. And now, Other World Computing (aka OWC) has a new rugged drive (for macOS and Windows 10) that is perfect for this.

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For the past couple of months, the next iteration of Kodi -- 19.x 'Matrix' -- has been undergoing beta testing. Although the pre-release versions have been mostly stable and problem free, if you’ve been holding off installing it, then we’ve good news for you.

Today, the popular home theater software moves out of beta, and you can now download and install the release candidate.

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The option to "Reset this PC" has long given users a quick and easy way to restore their computer to its factory settings. But ever since the release of Windows 10 version 1607, users have been complaining that the feature is not working, with the message "There was a problem when resetting your PC. No changes were made" being displayed.

Now Microsoft has finally got round to fixing the problem. The company has released the KB4598479 update as part of the first Patch Tuesday of 2021.

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Microsoft has announced that it is rolling out an important update relating to voice data collected during speech recognition. The changes give users more control over how their data is used, and comes in response to privacy concerns about the use of private data.

The update means that users will now be able to give or deny consent for Microsoft to manually transcribe the contents of voice clips for the purposes of improving the accuracy of speech recognition.

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This is when I typically generate a list of technology predictions for the coming year. The challenge this year isn’t coming up with predictions, it’s finding a moment of calm to share them when people are most likely to read. With a pandemic rolling along and the nation in political and economic crises to boot, such a moment of clarity isn’t likely to ever arrive, so I’ve decided just to write the damned columns and see what happens.

This is the column in which I’ll review my predictions from 2020 to see how I did and whether it is even worth your while to read further. Having done this for over 20 years, historically I’m correct abut 70 percent of the time, but this year could be a disappointment given that I’m pretty sure I didn’t predict 390,000 deaths and an economy in free-fall. We’ll just have to see whether I was vague enough to get a couple right.

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A security researcher has revealed details of a strange bug that could result in an NTFS hard drive becoming corrupt in Windows 10, as well as the unsupported Windows XP. What makes the bug so serious and unusual is that it can be triggered without the user having to open a file.

The bug -- which has been shown to have been around for three years or so -- can cause a hard drive to be corrupted if a user simply views the contents of a folder that includes a specially crafted file. Although Microsoft is aware of the issue affecting the $i30 NTFS attribute, a fix has yet to be produced.

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According to a new report from mobile security specialist Wandera 52 percent of organizations experienced a malware incident on a remote device in 2020, up from 37 percent in 2019.

The report is based on captured data from Wandera's global network of 425 million sensors across both corporate-owned and BYOD assets, making it the world’s largest and most insightful mobile data set.

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After an extraordinary year, businesses around the world are anxious to embrace 2021 as a year of renewed focus and a return to normalcy. But businesses must continue to focus on best practices and investments that will enable them to navigate the path ahead.

Much uncertainty remains in the coming year as the impacts of the global pandemic linger. Many of the workplace changes we adopted in 2020 will, by necessity, continue this year.

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As its name implies, AVG Ultimate 2021 is the crème-de-la-crème of AVG’s product range, providing a suite of tools to boost security, privacy and performance across all your household’s computers and mobile devices, from Windows PCs and Macs to Android and iOS phones and tablets.

Your household’s PCs and Macs are blanket covered by four applications. Core security comes in the form of AVG Internet Security 2021 -- complete protection for your family’s PCs and Macs courtesy of antivirus with anti-ransomware, shopping and banking protection via browser tools that block unsafe or compromised websites, firewall and webcam security.

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