Latest Technology News

PayPal has announced that it is to buy the mobile payment company iZettle. The announcement came as something of a surprise, as less than two weeks ago iZettle had said that it planned to go public.

iZettle is a Swedish fintech company whose mobile card readers have proved popular with small businesses, as has its ecommerce platform. The $2.2 billion purchase is PayPal's biggest acquisition to date.

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Later this year, Chrome will adopt a new approach to indicating site security. Starting in September, the browser will no longer use a security indicator to highlight the fact that you're visiting an HTTPS page.

Instead, Google will simply issue a warning when a website is not secure. As the company puts it, "users should expect that the web is safe by default, and they’ll be warned when there’s an issue". The change is coming in Chrome 69.

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As an American man that thinks monarchies are silly, I shouldn't be interested in the Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wedding. With that said, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited about it. I don't know why, but I find myself intrigued by the Royal Wedding. I make no apologies about it!

Unfortunately, the wedding is on a Saturday -- a day when many people are out of their homes running errands and having fun. Thankfully, you can watch the wedding online for free using your web browser or mobile device. In other words, even if you aren't in front of a TV, you can still experience the event live on YouTube.

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Two-hundred-and-eighty-three in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Windows Store in the past seven days.

The new Windows 10 update that Microsoft released on April 30, 2018 does not play well with some Intel and Toshiba Solid State Drives. Microsoft blocked the update as a consequence and started an investigation.

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YouTube TV is a really great streaming TV service that I recommend very highly. Google's offering works so well, that I was able to cancel my cable TV without any regrets. For $40 a month you get tons of channels, local sports, an unlimited cloud DVR, and multi-platform support. Never did I think I would be passionate about a television provider, but here I am.

I follow @YouTubeTV on Twitter so I can learn about suggested programming, but also, that is where the service announces channel additions. That's probably my favorite aspect of YouTube TV -- it is often gaining new channels without raising the price. Case in point, today, YouTube TV announced on Twitter the addition of two new channels -- The Young Turks and Tastemade. In addition to the tweets, YouTube TV also emailed customers about the news.

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Enforcement of the GDPR Regulation will begin this May 25. Are you ready? If not, Microsoft offers some information-protection solutions to help your organization identify, classify, and protect your data. The tools track your adherence to the regulations, ensure you’re able to identify sensitive data, and can prevent that data from escaping your organization via email, etc.

While this article focuses on GDPR policy management, the info also applies to other regulations (e.g. HIPAA).

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The Internet of Things has taken the global tech industry by storm in recent years. The idea, in its simplest form, is the mass interconnectivity of billions of devices. All of this is in the hope that it creates a massive network of devices in constant communication with each other.

Why would this network be important? Because it has the potential to completely revolutionize how we interact with tech and with the world around us. When all of the devices in the world are interlinked then we have the possibility of extracting mountains of data and synthesizing it so that we may make improvements across the board.

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Making an app is hard, but getting it noticed on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store can be an even more difficult task. Optimizing your metadata is the biggest hurdle to getting noticed and finding users.

There are many "tips and tricks" articles out there that promise to help, but very few talk about what to avoid. Fortunately, with a strong App Store Optimization (ASO) strategy, you can stand out from the crowd while keeping an eye out for ASO pitfalls. By maneuvering around these pitfalls, you’ll be one step closer to improving your app’s visibility.

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No matter the industry, ensuring the security of all our digital transactions is everyone’s biggest concern. Aside from bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, enterprise blockchain technology has the potential to overcome many current (and potentially future) hurdles digital transactions must face.

So how do organizations determine if blockchain is right for their business? How do companies know when is the best time to implement and start using blockchain? Before we answer these questions, let’s first provide some background on what blockchain is and how it works.

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Clean data is vital if analytics are to deliver useful results, but a new survey reveals that many organizations are still relying on manual and inefficient processes to clean and prepare information.

The study by data preparation company Trifacta shows these inefficiencies are draining resources and inhibiting organizations' ability to glean insights that could be crucial to their business decisions.

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It's no longer enough to just protect the perimeter in order to keep systems secure. It's now necessary to catch file-less attacks, privilege escalation and a whole range of other tactics.

The problem for smaller businesses is they often don't have the expertise in house to handle the range of threats.

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I absolutely love big powerful desktop PCs. My Windows machine, for instance, is powered by a slightly overclocked Ryzen 7 1700, and it has an RX 580 GPU. To keep it cool, I have several fans in my tower, which causes a big issue -- noise. This doesn't bother me when gaming or listening to loud music, but when working quietly, it can be a bit of an annoyance. Not to mention, it can put out a lot of heat, so in the summertime, I find myself sweating more than I should be.

If you have a need for a cool and quiet PC, ZOTAC has announced an absolutely adorable passively cooled (no fans) mini PC. Called the "ZBOX CI329 nano," the barebones (bring your own memory and storage) machine is not at all designed for gaming, but it is more than capable of doing tasks like surfing the web and enjoying media. It is compatible with Windows 10, of course, but modern Linux distributions should be fine as well.

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Ken Seddon is the CEO of the non-profit patent protection network LOT. The organization’s members include Google, Red Hat, Lenovo, Pega and other big players, as well as dozens of startups in areas such as transportation, blockchain, and software.

Startups are disproportionately impacted by patent trolls and we chatted with Ken about how a smart, assertive IP strategy can help protect their businesses.

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Google has announced a new music streaming service, YouTube Music, as well as YouTube Premium, both of which launch next week. The two services come as a result of Google splitting up YouTube Red.

YouTube Premium will be available for $11.99 per month, while YouTube Music will have free and paid-for versions. The free edition will be ad-supported, but these can be banished for $9.99 per month.

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The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, has announced the formation of a new task force to examine the fairness of the algorithms used in the city's automated systems.

The Automated Decision Systems Task Force will review algorithms that are in use to determine that they are free from bias. Representatives from the Department of Social Services, the NYC Police Department, the Department of Transportation, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, the Administration for Children's Services, and the Department of Education will be involved, and the aim is to produce a report by December 2019.

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