• Article

The voice assistant hardware market is exploding in popularity lately, with devices running software from Amazon, Google, and to a lesser extent, Apple. We can pretty much leave Cortana out of the conversation despite a very good hardware offering from Harman Kardon.

As Apple's HomePod fails due to a still-disappointing Siri, Google and Amazon's offerings remain the cream of the crop. Which of those two you prefer is a matter of personal preference, although I prefer Alexa having tried both. Today, Alexa is getting a unique new feature that sets it apart from Google even more. Called "Alexa Skill Blueprints," you can easily create custom Skills without any programming experience.

Continue reading →

German email back-up company MailStore Software GmbH has released MailStore Home 11.0 for PCs running Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. The tool makes it easy to create archives and backups of POP3, IMAP and internet mailboxes, including Gmail and Yahoo!

The program, which also works with Outlook, Thunderbird and the now-depreciated Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail, gains a faster archive search tool with this new release. It also introduces a more robust recovery tool.

Continue reading →

A new study looking at industrial control systems (ICS) security in the energy industry reveals a majority of respondents are worried about potentially catastrophic effects from a successful cyber attack.

The study carried out for security and compliance specialist Tripwire by Dimensional Research included 151 IT and operational technology (OT) security professionals at energy and oil and gas companies.

Continue reading →

Facebook appears to be looking to design and build its own processors at some point in the future. The social networking giant has posted a job listing on its corporate website looking for a manager to help build an "end-to-end SoC/ASIC, firmware and driver development organization".

The move would see Facebook doing what Apple and Google have started to do in recent years, moving design and production in-house to reduce reliance on the likes of Intel and Qualcomm. While little is known about how its own processors would be used, it is likely that they would feature in future Oculus hardware and smart speakers.

Continue reading →

When Microsoft releases Office 2019 later this year, it will be killing off the desktop version of OneNote. At the moment there are desktop and UWP (Universal Windows Platform) versions available, but soon Microsoft will only offer OneNote for Windows 10.

While the killing off of OneNote 2016 coincides with the launch of Office 2019, OneNote for Windows 10 will also become the "default OneNote experience" for Office 365 users.  But because the desktop version of the app has a dedicated userbase, it will continue to be supported for a number of years.

Continue reading →

The CEO of TaskRabbit has informed users that "certain personally identifiable information may have been compromised" in a security incident that saw the website and app taken offline earlier in the week.

TaskRabbit -- a service that puts "taskers" in touch with people who need help with jobs around the home -- is now back online, and the company is now on a damage limitation exercise, issuing a statement in the name of "trust, openness, and transparency". Stacy Brown-Philpot says that an investigation is still underway to determine what happened, but explains that "preliminary evidence shows that an unauthorized user gained access to our systems".

Continue reading →

Solid state drives are in the future of computing, while hard disk drives are the past. With that said, despite being destined for the history books, HDDs are still a big part of the present. In other words, despite being older technology, mechanical hard drives definitely have their place these days. Why? Well, they offer huge capacities at affordable prices. True, solid state drives are dropping in price, but they still aren't financially feasible for data centers, for instance. SSDs will get there eventually, but for now, hard drives live on.

Amazingly, some manufacturers are still pushing the HDD envelope, delivering ever-increasing capacities. For instance, today, Western Digital -- one of the most respected storage companies -- announces a new 14TB HDD called "Ultrastar DC HC530." While that storage capacity has been done before, this is the first 14TB drive to use conventional magnetic recording (CMR).

Continue reading →

I have some friends who own, and regularly use, a 1920s wind up gramophone. It’s a great piece of audio equipment and there’s something very satisfying about lifting the arm and dropping the needle down on a 78 record and enjoying the tinny sound it produces.

Getting use out of a similar-era radio isn’t as easy, which is why Derek Traxler, the owner of a computer store and repair shop in Uptown Minneapolis, decided to go to rather extreme measures to breathe new life into his 1920’s battery-powered Claratone tube radio.

Continue reading →

Having a translation app on your phone is great when you're abroad and want to be able to speak in the local lingo. But if you find yourself without an internet connection, you might struggle to find the words you need.

If you're a Microsoft Translator user, however, this now changes. Microsoft has introduced free, downloadable AI-powered translation packs which the company says brings "the benefit of neural translation technology regardless of whether the device is connected to the cloud or offline".

Continue reading →

People are becoming rather wary of the security they trust, particularly after the recent bad press. With this in mind, we’ve noted that a few people are deciding to stick with Windows Defender, which is built into Windows 10.

Sadly for Mac users, if you want anti-malware software, you need to rely on a third party and one of the many brands. Or you could just download from the official Apple App Store where you know each application has been vetted before inclusion.

Continue reading →

Most businesses are seeking to automate the more tedious aspects of their operations and some new research from security analytics platform Cybereason reveals that hackers are no exception.

The company set up a honeypot system masquerading as a financial services company and introduced security flaws in several stages.

Continue reading →

Opera launched its VPN app for Android and iOS two years ago. The free app provided users with secure VPN encryption to the web (with support for spoofing one of five countries), plus the blocking of both ads and tracking cookies.

At a time when privacy is at the forefront of a lot of people’s minds, and VPNs are growing in popularity, it will perhaps come as a surprise to hear that Opera has made the decision to discontinue its app as of April 30. Yes, that’s the end of this month.

Continue reading →

Recognizing that comparatively few people are using its Edge browser, Microsoft has released a new security tool for those who have opted to use Google Chrome -- the Windows Defender Browser Protection extension.

The add-on offers real-time protection against a variety of online threats such as phishing attacks and malicious websites. As these security options are already available in Chrome, it's not clear quite who the extension is aimed at.

Continue reading →

The German federal government is moving to an open source, self-hosted cloud platform from Nextcloud for file sync and sharing and collaboration, in order to protect the data of its citizens.

The Federal Information Technology Center (ITZBund), which takes care of IT services for the entire federal government, has been running a pilot of 5000 users with Nextcloud since October 2016 and after a successful tender this will now be rolled out everywhere.

Continue reading →

More than 20 million Chrome users have been tricked into installing fake ad blockers that could see their machines recruited into a botnet, according to a new report.

A fake AdBlock Plus extension fooled many users last year. As many Chrome users discover ad blocking by browsing available extensions, so creating cloned fakes has become a popular tactic for cyber criminals according to AdGuard.

Continue reading →