Latest Technology News

With the gradual evolution of the internet and e-commerce over the past 15 years, consumers have been gifted with the power of choice. With so many websites to crawl through, consumers are no longer restricted by where they purchase an item, who they get their content from or by what time they choose to do some digital "window shopping."

With this new found freedom, these consumers are now constantly evaluating your brand to determine whether it’s worth their money, support, and most importantly -- their time. Historically, companies have tried to win over and keep these consumers with traditional loyalty models of transaction first, benefits later, but that is proving to be unsuccessful today. With the creation of premium loyalty programs like Amazon Prime and the changing tastes of consumers, the status-quo loyalty program just isn’t enough to keep the modern-day customer from browsing at your competitors.

Marc Andreessen wrote his famous Wall Street Journal essay "Why Software Is Eating the World" in 2011. Today, his prediction -- that software companies would take over large parts of the economy as various industries are disrupted by software -- has largely come to pass.

Software has indeed changed the game, with software and online-based services making it possible to build companies with very little infrastructure. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the tech stack -- a new term that refers to the suite of software tools that a company uses.

Veteran dual-pane Windows file manager Saladin has recently been updated to version 1.0, its first major release since 2014.

The program opens with two independent Explorer-type views on your file system. Double-clicking, right-clicking and drag-and-drop all work as you’d expect, allowing you to start using the program right away.

Google’s Project Zero identifies bugs and security flaws in commonly used software, and gives firms 90 days to patch them before going public. This is an approach which doesn’t always go down well -- a case in point being when Google recently released details of a Windows bug after Microsoft failed to patch it in time.

Now two Project Zero security researchers claim to have found a new critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in Windows which they describe as the "worst in recent memory" and "crazy bad".

Offline web browsing is a useful feature, particularly on a smartphone, so it was little surprise when Google added website downloading to the Android version of Chrome. Today the company launches a number of improvements to make the whole process even easier.

The latest update to the app introduces a couple of new ways to download pages for offline viewing. It also provides easier access to the content you have earmarked for offline reading, encouraging more people to make use of the feature.

In the next decade or so, it’s predicted that our roads will be awash with driverless cars, with estimates that they will account for a quarter of global car sales by 2035. This will present either a huge opportunity for the insurance sector or a challenge that could lead to its downfall. Car insurance has long been a lucrative business, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue and supporting thousands of jobs. So the disruption promised by driverless cars is a genuine concern.

The primary challenge comes from the fact that 90 percent of road traffic accidents are caused by human error, a risk that driverless cars have the potential to eradicate, sparking a significant improvement in road safety. And while safer roads are always a welcome development, the knock-on effect would be to cause the need for third-party damage insurance to almost disappear. With fewer accidents and fewer claims, Forbes estimates that premiums will reduce by as much as 75 percent.

Judging by IBM's latest report on remote working, big blue seems to be a vocal advocate of the trend. However, when it comes to its very own employees it would rather they do their work in-house. How does that saying go? "Do as I say, not as I do?"

For the Making Telework, Work: Insights from SIOP 2017 report, IBM has used "perspectives from academia as well as public and private sectors" and found not only that "teleworking works" but also that "associated challenges can be managed with careful planning and communication."

Fraqtive is an open-source generator of gorgeous Mandelbrot and Julia fractals. It’s a crowded area and there are a lot of similar programs around, but Fraqtive has enough interesting extras to justify the download.

Speed is a plus. Launch the program, a familiar Mandelbrot view appears, and you can quickly zoom in and out by moving your mouse cursor to an interesting area and spinning the mouse wheel.

Anyone using Microsoft Edge to "print to PDF" is advised to double-check their files after a strange bug was detected. The problem is reminiscent of a bug that afflicted Xerox photocopiers a couple of years ago, and sees the browser displaying one set of numbers and printing another.

Microsoft has confirmed the existence of the bug which has the potential to cause serious issues with mission-critical data. The person who originally reported the problem cites an example in which Windows 10's default web browser "displays 123456 in PDF but prints 114447."

Superstring is a free tool for creating stylish and professional lyrics videos. Choose an audio file and Superstring displays its waveform vertically. To the right of the timeline is a table where you can type the lyrics you hear at the right point.

Playback starts automatically but you can pause and restart as required, or click back on the timeline if you need to hear a particular section again.

Endpoints are often the weakest links in any IT system, but protecting them effectively now means much more than simply guarding against malware.

As businesses rely more on the cloud and on web-based applications, the endpoint provides a gateway that can be vulnerable to attack.

Apple is rumored to be working on a Siri-powered alternative to Amazon Echo/Google Home, and Microsoft isn’t planning on being left out either.

Harman Kardon’s Cortana-powered speaker, called Invoke, is set to launch in the Fall. A product page for it did prematurely appear on the web before being pulled, but now Microsoft has made the announcement official.

The way we work is transforming at an extraordinary rate. Explosive progress in the technology industry, demonstrated by the fact that digital tech investment reached £6.8 billion last year, creating 1.64 million jobs as a result, is unavoidable. Despite this positive influx of job roles, there is a mismatch between the volume of positions available and the skills that are required to do them.

To be able to maintain a grasp of its competitive edge within a global marketplace, the UK must begin to tackle the ever-increasing skills gap.

Anyone who downloaded the Mac video transcoder HandBrake in the last few days stands a 50 percent change of being infected with a Trojan. The download for version 1.0.7 of HandBrake was infected after the mirror download server was compromised.

The Trojan allows for an attacker to remotely access an infected computer, and a malware-laced version of the app was made available for download between May 2 and May 6. If you downloaded the app in this window, you're advised to check the SHA1/256 sum, and if you have gone as far as installing the software, there are steps to take to determine if you're infected and remove the malware if you are.

Monitoring which apps use the most network bandwidth can help you spot resource hogs, malware and more. If you’re using Windows 10, you don’t have to install any complicated network software to make this happen. The OS tracks all this information by default, and all you have to do is view it.

To check it out, launch the Settings app, click "Network & Internet", select "Data usage" in the sidebar, then click "View usage details."