Sony PS4 Pro Kingdom Hearts III Limited Edition Bundle is a Gamestop exclusive

Sony is no stranger to limited edition consoles. The company has released countless versions of its PlayStation devices over the years with special colors and designs. For instance, earlier this year, the company released a really cool Spider-Man PS4 Pro.

Today, Sony announces yet another limited edition PlayStation bundle, this time a PS4 Pro featuring artwork inspired by the upcoming Square Enix game Kingdom Hearts III. Even if you aren't a fan of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, it must be admitted that the designs of both the console and included controller are quite beautiful.

Continue reading

Roku makes all home screen themes free

If you need a streaming media box, you really can't go wrong with Roku. The devices are inexpensive, chock full of features, and most importantly, have access to most of the popular media services, such as Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, and more.

If you weren't aware, the Roku interface can even be customized with special themes -- some free, some paid. To be honest, it seemed sort of greedy to charge customers for themes, but OK, at least they are optional. Well, that gripe is no longer, as starting today, Roku is making all of its themes gratis.

Continue reading

Phiaton launches CURVE BT 120 NC active noise-canceling Bluetooth earphones

Bluetooth earphones and headphones may not always sound as good as wired variants, but for many consumers, they are good enough. The convenience of not having to have your head tethered to your smartphone or tablet more than makes up for any audio deficiencies. Of course, there are audiophiles out there that will never embrace wireless for music -- that's their prerogative.

There are many such Bluetooth earphones on the market today, including the wildly popular AirPods. Personally, I find the hard plastic design of Apple's offering to be uncomfortable and painful -- I actually bought and returned them. Instead, I opt for earphones that come with multiple sizes of replaceable silicone tips -- this allows you to achieve a more comfortable fit. Today, Phiaton lunches new wireless earphones that come with small, medium, and large tips. Called "CURVE BT 120 NC," they offer active noise canceling. Also cool? You can set them to vibrate for incoming calls and notifications.

Continue reading

How to stop Windows 10 sharing your data

Stop hand signal

Earlier this week we reported on how Windows 10 could be sharing your activity data even if you had told it not to.

In response Microsoft has released a statement from Marisa Rogers, privacy officer at its Windows and Devices Group.

Continue reading

Google Maps for Android and iPhone gets Lime integration

The days of simply walking, taking the bus, or hailing a taxi to get around a city is quickly becoming unfashionable. Instead, small electric vehicles -- such as scooters and bicycles -- are being used to go from place to place. While some people own their own e-bikes or e-scooters, many just rent them instead. Yes, rent. If you aren't familiar, there is a huge trend right now where popular cities are littered with e-scooters, pedal bicycles, and e-bikes from companies like Bird, Citi Bike, and Lime. When you tire of walking, you just hop on the vehicle and use it as needed-- for an affordable price.

Google Maps is a great service for getting directions for traditional means of transportation. Not only does it help with navigating by car, walking, or biking, but it can offer mass-transit assistance too. Today, however, Google Maps gains yet another new feature that will surely delight millennials -- integration with Lime on both Android and iOS.

Continue reading

Google Assistant in the USA gets Australian and British accent options

The United States, United Kingdom, and Australia are all very different counties. Amongst those three nations, there are countless differences in culture, food, and more.

One thing the trio of nations share, however, is the English language. True, there are differences in things like the spellings of words and slang, but for the most part, communication is totally possible. For Americans, one of the most intriguing aspects of Australia and Britain is the inhabitants' accents. The folks from these counties may sound a bit weird to you and me, but I am sure to them, American accents sound a bit odd too. Starting today, English speakers in the USA can enable either British or Australian accents for Google Assistant. How bloody brilliant!

Continue reading

Email security threats that can ruin your company's holiday season

Most people understand that retail becomes a target for cybercriminals during the holidays. But even businesses not related to the retail sector will often find the holidays their most vulnerable time of year. After all, many individuals (that is, employees) are focused on wrapping up projects before the holidays truly start or are looking ahead to the coming year with the added distraction that the holidays bring.

Businesses need to protect themselves from potential cybersecurity threats during the busy holiday season -- many of which will come in the form of the world’s most commonly used utility, email. In this post, we will take a look at some of the biggest on-premises and cloud email security threats your business faces this holiday season.

Continue reading

Real-time data center monitoring will continue to be the easiest way to cut costs in 2019

Energy costs are one of the fastest-rising expenses for today’s data centers and the global energy ecosystem as a whole. Not only do energy cost make up 70 to 80 percent of ongoing operational expenses, but data centers are projected to soon amount to the largest share of global electricity production, according to Huawei Technologies’ Total Consumer Power Consumption Forecast.

As new technologies enter the data center realm at an increasing rate, expectations for advanced operational environments capable of meeting energy demands are at odds with an ever-present demand to keep costs down. In fact, studies have shown that cost savings continue to be a main motivating factor when selecting data center management tools. While introducing new processes to data center operations -- like real-time data center monitoring -- is key to modernization at a low cost, researchers have found managers need the pressure of an imminent issue or decision to overhaul legacy tech to make the step towards adopting a data center manager tool.

Continue reading

Education sector poorly prepared for cyberthreats

Education internet

Data is a vital resource in the education sector and increasingly schools and colleges store information in digital form. Digital technology is also moving into the classroom, but of course all this comes with greater risk.

Yet according to new research from security rating service SecurityScorecard, across 17 industries in the US education comes second to last in terms of total cybersecurity.

Continue reading

Get $100 off the amazing DJI Mavic 2 drone (Pro or Zoom)

If you want to shoot high quality photos and videos from up high, the DJI Mavic 2 is one of the best, most advanced drones you can buy.

The drone comes with a 4K camera and 3-axis gimbal technology for super stable and smooth shooting. The DJI Mavic 2 Zoom model is equipped with a 2 x optical zoom camera, while the DJI Mavic 2 Pro features an amazing all-new L1D-20c Hasselblad camera.

Continue reading

Samsung Notebook 9 Pen (2019) -- bigger, faster, and better battery life

Samsung is mostly known for its wildly popular Galaxy smartphones, but the massive company produces countless other products too, such as televisions, washing machines, and refrigerators to name a few. And yes, the company makes some rather nice laptops too.

Today, Samsung announces an upcoming refresh of its Notebook 9 Pen convertible notebook. The Windows 10 laptop will still come with a 13-inch screen, but now, it also gets a 15-inch option. If you opt for 15-inch variant, you will be treated to the fairly decent (better than nothing) NVIDIA GeForce MX150 GPU for faster graphics performance. As the product name implies, a pen is included like before, making these laptops good choices for artists and other creators. Road warriors will be delighted to know the Samsung Notebook 9 Pen (2019) battery life is much better at up-to 15 hours! Heck, that battery even gets fast-charging too.

Continue reading

AI: Cybersecurity friend or foe?

Artificial intelligence

AI technology has become widespread and accessible to hundreds of thousands of IT security professionals worldwide. Human researchers are no longer behind their computers crunching the data and numbers, nor should they be when AI technology is available. The increase in computing power, especially through economical cloud solutions and easy-to-use tools, has allowed a much wider range of users to apply sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to solve their problems.

At the same time, companies and security vendors have realized how difficult it is to fight cyber criminals who are constantly evolving to find new ways to infiltrate corporate networks without being spotted. For IT teams, updating and maintaining security solutions and policies to keep up with this volatile threat landscape is extremely costly and an unsustainable solution to protecting against incoming threats.

Continue reading

Google relents and hands duck.com to privacy-centric rival DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo search engine

It may well just be coincidental timing, but shortly after DuckDuckGo accused Google of personalizing search results even for people not signed into their account, Google has handed control of the Duck.com domain over to its rival.

The concession comes after years of frustration for DuckDuckGo, with Google having acquired Duck.com after buying On2 Technologies (previously The Duck Corporation) in 2010. The privacy-focused search engine has long asked Google to point the address at its website, and this has finally happened. Duck.com now redirects to DuckDuckGo.

Continue reading

The elements of cybersecurity hygiene and secure networks -- Part 1

The two fundamental building blocks in ensuring that your data is secure are physical infrastructure and network security. Understanding and protecting your information from threats and human error requires meticulously layered security protocols.

Last year, British Airways canceled over 400 flights and stranded 75,000 passengers because of an IT outage caused by an engineer who disconnected a power supply at a data center near London’s Heathrow airport. When it comes to data centers and networks, even minor human errors can have a major impact on businesses and their customers. With the exorbitant costs and human resources required to maintain an on-premise system, organizations should look to public cloud companies. These companies bring capital and expertise to the table to properly manage their data centers, which are better protected than those that most companies could put in place themselves.

Continue reading

Edge computing changes everything, including your mobile strategy

Edge computing

It’s tempting to think of edge computing or the Internet of Things (IoT) strictly as something new that you’ll be adding to your enterprise architecture in the coming years. Your company has an enterprise architecture, and now thanks to the IoT revolution you’ll be adding lots of new internet-connected devices, which, depending on your line of business, might be actuators on a factory floor, sensors in a power station cooling tower, or GPS units on a fleet of tractor trailers.

But in reality, IoT and edge computing are not capabilities that are added separately to a company’s existing IT architecture and landscape. Rather, they need to be integrated into existing architectures to deliver on the company’s desired business outcomes.

Continue reading

© 1998-2024 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.