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An increasingly common -- and frankly rather annoying -- feature of many commercial websites is the little chat box that pops up in the bottom right corner and asks if you need any help.

Security researcher Michael Gillespie has revealed that an Office 365 phishing site is using this live support technique to give its page an air of legitimacy.

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In addition to being amazing tools for communication, smartphones and tablets can play a dominant role in helping you find a job. Whether you are a recent college graduate seeking your first serious job or a 30-year professional looking to make a change leveraging the possibilities of the gig economy, harnessing the capabilities of your phone or tablet can significantly increase your odds of success.

Here are ten apps that can help you zero in on the right job, navigate the application process, and ace the interview.

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Nostalgia is a powerful thing. The 1990s are popular at the moment -- as the new 90s-set Captain Marvel movie shows -- and Windows 95 is suddenly making a comeback of sorts, partially fueled by people's interest in that decade.

If you’ve ever wondered what a modern version of the OS would look like, you can find out here, and you can now run an app version of the original Windows 95 on Windows 10, macOS and Linux. Own an iPhone? You can replace iOS 12 with iOS95 -- here's how.

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Now, finally, to my predictions for 2019. This is, I believe, my 22nd and possibly last year of looking ahead, so I want to do something different and potentially bigger. Our old format works fine but I’ve been pondering this and I really think we’re at a sea-change in technology. It’s not just that new tech is coming but we as consumers of that tech are in major transitions of our own. It has as much to do with demographics as technology. So while I’ll be looking ahead all this week, coming up with the usual 10 predictions, I want to make sure we all understand that this isn’t business as usual. This time it really IS different.

I’ve been thinking about 50 year cycles. The year 1968, which was 50 years ago when I started writing this column back in November, saw a huge social and political upheaval with student riots all over the world, the rise of the hippy movement in the USA, the Summer of Love and the founding of Intel. Most of the technical progress we have seen since 1968 has been driven by microprocessors, which were largely the work of Intel. And it took 50 years, but we’re now approaching the Internet of Things, where processors will be in everything and everything will be linked or monitored, which is either good or bad depending who you are.

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I can’t put this off any longer, so here are the tech predictions I made a year ago for 2018. We have to see how well or poorly I did before we can move on to my predictions for 2019 and beyond. These old predictions have been edited for length, but not to avoid embarrassment. I try to never avoid embarrassment.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that my predictions get longer and longer (this column, alone, is 4329 words -- my second longest, ever) as they have drifted from new products to explaining new strategies. This sometimes works against the prediction since it is often easier to claim success if your goal is vague, but I see it more as a tribute to my readers. Many of you have been with me for decades and the very fact that we are both still here has as much to do with the work as with its results. How the future fits together is just as important as where it is heading.

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Driven by the growth of mobile computing, IoT devices and the upcoming 5G rollout, edge networking is on the rise and leading businesses to take a fresh look at their networking strategies.

But going from a traditional approach to a virtualized, cloud-native, and software-driven network that connects headquarters to multiple branches and deploys new services like SD-WAN, Virtualized Customer Premises Equipment (vCPE), and IoT devices isn’t easy.

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microSD cards still blow my mind. It remains amazing to me that so much storage can be offered on a card smaller than a postage stamp. They come in very handy for devices like smartphones, tablets, and drones, to name a few.

The SD Association is continuing to push the envelope, however, making these diminutive cards even better. No, the cards are not getting physically smaller -- thank goodness. Actually, they are getting faster. Joining the existing SD Express, the micro cards are also getting the speedy "Express" treatment. Yes, microSD Express cards are on the way.

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The age of the folding phone is upon us. Gone are the days of prototypes -- now we have hardware we can actually buy... or at least will be able to very soon indeed. Both Samsung and Huawei have unveiled foldables in recent days, but how do they stack up?

The two companies have taken different approaches with the Galaxy Fold and the Mate X when it comes to the hinging, but there are also specs to consider -- and, of course, price. So how do the two flagship foldables compare?

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Google has a history of changing its mind about messaging services, launching and closing them left, right and center. The company now seems pretty invested in its Messages platform, and has been gradually adding more and more features to increase its appeal.

Google's latest move sees it bringing Assistant integration to the Messages app so you can get one-tap access to AI-powered help and information. The company also says that it remains committed to RCS (Rich Communication Service) and wants to bring the standard to more Android users.

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Late last year, in the beginning of December, Mageia 7 officially entered the beta stage. Fans of the operating system were obviously excited, but since then, all has been quiet.

Today, however, this changes — Mageia 7 Beta 2 is officially here! Unfortunately, according to the developers, a stable version is still far off.

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"Elegance" and "value." Those two words are synonymous with HUAWEI. The company is still establishing itself in the USA, but in China, HUAWEI's products are insanely popular. Its laptops, tablets, and smartphones are designed to be beautiful and functional, while also offering a great value. In some ways, it has matched or exceeded the legendary Apple in the design department.

HUAWEI's laptops in particular are top notch, putting the Windows 10 machines from other manufacturers to shame. The MateBook X Pro, for instance, offers insane performance in an affordable and attractive package. Today, the company announces a refresh to that laptop, while also unveiling a new model -- the MateBook 14. After coming away extremely impressed by the MateBook 13 earlier this month, I have very high hopes for the 14. The X Pro and 14 both have the much desired 3:2 aspect ratio, but the former has higher resolution. Another big difference between the two is that the X Pro has Thunderbolt 3, while the 14 does not. With that said, the 14 does have HDMI, so you can output video without a dongle -- a nice feature for some.

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If you balked when the price of the Samsung Galaxy Fold was revealed ($1,980, in case you missed it), the price tag attached to the newly revealed Huawei Mate X may trigger heart failure. At $2,600, the 5G folding smartphone is, the words of Huawei's Richard Yu, "very expensive", but you will get a lot of phone for your money.

The Mate X is scheduled for release in the middle of the year, and it differs from the Samsung Galaxy Fold in an important way. While Samsung's offering opens up to reveal a large screen on the inside, Huawei has instead opted to wrap the foldable screen around the front and back using the unique Falcon Wing Mechanical Hinge. In folded mode, this is a 6.6-inch smartphone; opened up, it is an 8-inch tablet. The price may be extraordinarily high, but you get some impressive hardware.

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SATA solid states are hardly exciting to tech enthusiasts and hardcore PC builders these days. After all, NVMe SSDs are much faster and getting more affordable all the time. The problem? Many consumers simply don't own a computer with the NVMe-compatible m.2 slot needed to accommodate the speedier drive. With that said, many computer users do own machines with the ubiquitous SATA. If they want to replace an aging mechanical hard drive -- or even an existing 2.5-inch solid state drive -- a SATA variant is an affordable and easy drop-in upgrade.

ADATA has a new SATA solid state drive that is designed for upgraders. Called "SU750," it is a 2.5-inch SSD that utilizes 3D TLC NAND Flash with capacities up to 1TB. Performance is exactly what you would expect from such a SATA drive, as all of them are pretty much the same speed these days. Despite being a fairly unremarkable SSD, ADATA is dubbing it "Ultimate" for some reason -- marketing, I suppose.

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Having recently started public testing of Windows 10 20H1, Microsoft has a new build for Insiders on the Skip Ahead ring to try out.

Windows 10 20H1 Build 18841 is really just a bug-fixing build but it comes with a warning from Microsoft that: "As is normal with builds early in the development cycle, these builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some". If that whets your appetite, dive in!

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Microsoft has started rolling out build 18343 of Windows 10 19H1 to Windows Insiders on the Fast Ring.

This latest build is mainly comprised of bug fixes, and there are also improvements to the Windows Sandbox feature. As we are now so close to the final release of Windows 10 19H1, Microsoft has locked down the apps -- and you may even notice that some features have gone missing.

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