Latest Technology News

Two-hundred-and-thirty-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.

Windows 10's growth continued in May, but at a snail-like pace. The operating system increased its share by 0.5 percent, down from the 0.92 percent growth the month before that.

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Starting early next year, Chrome users will benefit from an ad blocker built into the web browser. As part of its work with the Coalition for Better Ads, Google is looking to clamp down on intrusive ads that web users find most irritating.

Google is a company whose business model is built largely on advertising, and it is keen for the experience of being subjected to ads to be as painless as possible for people. But rather than block all ads -- killing revenue streams for many websites -- Google wants to block only those that do not comply with Better Ads Standards.

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AUTOSET is an interesting $2 app which enables altering your Android device settings when you run an app, when an event happens, on a particular schedule, and more. This opens up all kinds of possibilities. Choose a navigation app in AUTOSET’s list, for instance, and you could increase the screen brightness and media volume.

You could use Wi-Fi more selectively by configuring your device to turn it on when you run YouTube and similar apps, and turn it off when they close.

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The world may be focused on the US withdrawal from the Paris accord, but the Trump administration is causing plenty of ripples in other areas too. Not content with trying to push through travel bans, the US government is also tightening up on visa applications.

An updated version of the supplemental visa application questionnaire asks would-be visitors for not only details of their travel and address history, but also for the names they use on social media. Applicants are required to provide details dating back five years, but officials are not saying in what circumstances the extra questions will become necessary.

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Rarely does a phone -- or even a company -- generate quite as much interest as the OnePlus 5. The upcoming flagship killer is hotly anticipated, and the mood among the almost cult-like following is reaching a fever pitch.

Of course, OnePlus is doing nothing to calm things down, having embarked on an advertising campaign that involves teasing its customers until they can take no more. The latest move finds the company tweeting an image of the OnePlus 5, while a separate leak gives a glimpse at the packaging complete with the tagline "Dual Camera. Clearer Photos."

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Password management service OneLogin has fallen victim to a serious attack. The company says that it "detected unauthorized access to OneLogin data in our US data region" -- this was blocked, but not before the attacker gained access to AWS keys and the ability to decrypt data.

The company warns that "all customers served by our US data center are affected; customer data was compromised, including the ability to decrypt encrypted data." OneLogin has provided a guide for securing data, but it's possible that it may be too late for some people.

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Yesterday, Microsoft pushed out Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16212 for PC and Mobile to users on the Fast, Slow, and Release Preview rings and the Retail version. Unfortunately the buggy build wasn’t intended to go out, causing problems for anyone who installed it.

Apologizing for the "inconvenience", Windows Insider chief Dona Sarkar explains it "happened because an inadvertent deployment to the engineering system that controls which builds/which rings to push out to insiders." While Microsoft was quick to pull the update, it was too late for some.

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The quality of your company's data can have a major effect on the software deployment, new research has claimed.

According to a report by Delphix, poor data quality is to blame for roughly 15 percent of software defects, with higher-level data a major factor in faster application development.

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Earlier today, Microsoft officially launched its Xbox Game Pass service for all users. If you aren't familiar, please know that it is essentially an all-you-can-eat-styled video game service. For a mere $9.99 per month, you can download and play 100+ Xbox One and 360 titles. It is insanely cool and a great value.

The problem? The games you download will take up a lot of space on your Xbox One's internal hard drive. Luckily, Microsoft makes it easy to expand the console's storage capacity -- just plug in a USB HDD or SSD. Today, Seagate announces an external mechanical hard drive that is designed for the console. The Game Drive for Xbox Game Pass Special Edition, as it is insanely called, can be had in either 2TB or 4TB. To sweeten the deal, you will get a complimentary Game Pass subscription!

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It’s been a while since Microsoft pushed out a new build to Windows 10 Insiders, so it was expected that we’d see one today. However, Windows Insider chief Dona Sarkar put the kibosh on that earlier, stating "newer builds have WAY too many bugs to pass our selfhost bar."

That should have been the end of things, but Build 16212 managed to escape into the wild -- hitting the Fast, Slow, Release Preview and Production rings -- and eager Insiders quickly discovered the downside of installing it.

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If there is a business area that is deeply affected by digital transformation it is customer service, which is rapidly becoming re-branded as customer experience (CX). According to a Walker study, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by 2020.

Those organizations that are able to deliver a seamless, effortless experience will improve customer loyalty and see their sales soar. This objective is often a challenge for legacy technology infrastructures and many are turning to cloud contact center platforms. However, change on this scale brings risk, and there are some key mistakes that you should try and avoid if possible.

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The battle for the title of the most powerful PC processor in the world has just become even bloodier.

Intel has announced its first 18-core processor at Computex in Taipei, officially named i9-7980XE

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Microsoft has officially launched its Xbox Game Pass service, allowing gamers to play Xbox 360 and Xbox One games in a streaming capacity, for all Xbox One users.

The service, which debuted to monthly-fee-paying Xbox Live Gold members last week, has more than 100 available titles (consisting of both Xbox One and Xbox 360 games). As soon as you subscribe, you're instantly able to play any and every title in that list. As long as you keep your subscription, you can keep playing. Microsoft says it will continue to update and add new titles to the burgeoning collection on a monthly basis.

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Last year, Microsoft released an open source project called "Cognitive Toolkit." This toolkit was designed with a focus on deep learning and artificial intelligence.

Today, after a fairly long beta period, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit is finally updated to version 2.0. Not only does this production release have new features, but bug fixes too. Unfortunately, the release isn't entirely backwards compatible due to deprecated and renamed aspects of the toolkit.

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Minecraft developer Mojang has just announced the release of the latest update to its block-stacking, world-building smash hit video game. The "Discovery" update brings the Pocket Edition and Windows 10 editions of the game from version 1.0.9 to 1.1.0.

First announced in March, the update includes a new world, called Woodland Mansions, to explore. It also adds a smattering of new achievements, and ultra exciting glazed terracotta blocks (to say nothing of the concrete and concrete powder). And that's just the beginning.

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