Latest Technology News

Back in October Twitter announced that it was shuttering Vine, with the promise that more details of the closure would follow. A subsequent announcement narrowed it down to the first month of 2017, and now it has been pinned down to 17 January.

The move sees Twitter morphing the app into a new Vine Camera app, and killing off the Vine website as we know it. It will still exist, but only as an archive of Vines for you to browse. If you want to download your old Vines for posterity, you'll need to do so by the 17th.

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Last year we wrote about how Windows 10 ruined a live weather broadcast with an unwanted upgrade, and killed a live pro gaming stream with a badly timed update.

A few days into 2017, and Jackie Stokes, Director of Incident Response at Intel Security, has brightened our day with this image of Windows 10 updating on a fridge, captioned "I just wanted some water…"

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During Consumer Electronics Show 2017 yesterday, in licensing partnership with MQA, music streamer Tidal announced the new audio-fidelity tier "Masters", which is available for free to existing HiFi subscribers. Early album selection is extremely limited as is access option: macOS or Windows application. Both will expand in time.

But wow! I tested skeptically, wiring up my studio cans—Audio-Technica ATH-R70x—to 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to hear the difference. Hehe, if any. I deliberately started with Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" from album "Rumors", which released 40 years ago on February 4th. Tidal claims that Masters recordings deliver "an audio experience exactly as the artist intended". The band spent nearly a year painstakingly recording and engineering the disc, making any, or all, the songs great test cases. 

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Apple users tend to spend a lot of money on apps. That much is obvious by looking at how much App Store developers earned last year. Apple puts the figure at a massive $20 billion, which, after taking into account the fact that it takes a 30 percent cut, would mean that the App Store generated -- at least -- $28.5 billion in revenue in 2016.

The actual revenue is likely to be higher -- though not by much -- because Apple also makes money in other ways, like through ads shown in the App Store's search results or Developer Program subscriptions. It just goes to show why so many major developers like it.

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Huawei has been working very hard to make an impact in the USA, and its efforts are paying off. Its products are well-received, offering elegance and power at affordable prices. Quite frankly, the company's MateBook was my favorite Windows 10 computer in 2016.

Now, the company is bringing its Mate 9 flagship to the USA -- starting tomorrow. While the previously announced 5.9-inch 1080p smartphone looks impressive, there is a software aspect that is arguably more exciting -- support for the Amazon Alexa voice assistant is coming.

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Another day, and yet another version of Linux Mint with a different desktop environment. The operating system uses Mate and Cinnamon environments by default, but also offers KDE and Xfce editions as well.

While some people -- such as yours truly -- think the project should redirect its focus by supporting fewer desktop environments, that apparently won't be happening any time soon. Case in point, today, Linux Mint 18.1 'Serena' Xfce Edition reaches Beta status. Will you download it?

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The messaging landscape has seen big changes in 2016, and its evolution is set to continue over the next 12 months. Omnichannel has been around for a while, but 2016 in particular has seen the concept truly take flight and become a key player in the growth of messaging.

With instant messaging apps making more noise, and adding larger enterprises to their commercial list, the developments in chatbots, and ever-expanding IoT, 2017 is set to see more activity in the communications ecosystem than ever before. Here are some of the things that will happen over the next 12 months, to shape omnichannel strategies of the future.

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With large scale cyber attacks constantly hitting the headlines, businesses ought to be aware of the need to protect themselves.

But a new study by Kaspersky Lab shows that 40 percent of businesses are unclear on how to protect themselves against targeted attacks and DDoS.

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Opera Software’s first release of 2017 sees Opera 44.0 Developer made available for Windows, Mac and Linux users. The Developer edition is the Alpha branch of the browser’s development cycle.

Version 44 launches with four new developmental features, not all of which are available for preview (but likely to be switched on in subsequent builds over the coming weeks).

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HashCheck is a lightweight, open-source tool for creating and verifying file hashes. The program is tiny (an 85KB download), has no frills, and as the last version came out in 2009, probably won’t be extending its feature list any time soon. And yet, it still does a worthwhile job.

Ease of use is a plus. Select and right-click a folder or a group of files, choose "Create checksum file", and the program quickly saves their hashes to a "checksums.md5" file.

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Data breaches are bad news for companies not just in terms of potential losses but in damage to reputation.

Larger enterprises are realising that they need to protect not just their central locations but also their remote and franchise locations in order to guard their brand.

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Mobile devices might be the hottest thing nowadays, but PCs are still important for many people, and Intel knows it. The company has announced new series of processors aimed at desktop computers and performance laptops.

The S series is designed for desktops. The H series is meant for high-end laptops and mobile workstations. The Y-series is for ultra-thin machines, and the U-series for ultraportables. As one might expect from new processors, these chips are expected to be faster, and consume less energy.

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MiTeC has released an updated edition of its freeware Task Manager DeLuxe with new disk and I/O charts, extra CPU stats and a memory map.

Sounds good, but does the program really have the power to tear us away from Process Explorer and Process Hacker? We grabbed a copy to find out.

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Just yesterday, Kingston announced the world's biggest capacity flash drive -- the DataTraveler Ultimate GT 2TB. While that storage device can hold a lot of files, the company did not share the drive's speed -- which could (maybe) indicate it isn't particularly fast.

If you don't need two terabytes of storage, and would rather have a flash drive that is very fast, SanDisk has a new USB drive that may excite you. The Extreme PRO USB 3.1 Solid State Flash Drive is insanely fast, although the 3.1 in its name refers to generation 1 -- not "true" USB 3.1 which is generation 2. In other words, the 256GB drive is really USB 3.0. Also, rather than leverage the more modern Type-C connector, the drive uses the older (and not reversible) Type-A.

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Chrome OS is a very polarizing Linux distribution. While some people very wrongly call the operating system nothing other than a glorified web browser, in reality, it is actually very secure and capable. Many home users do all of their computing in a web browser nowadays, making Google's desktop OS an excellent choice.

Laptops running the Linux-based OS are called "Chromebooks". For many consumers, these computers are attractive for no other reason than cost -- they incorrectly think the platform is all about being inexpensive and low quality. Unfortunately, many manufacturers perpetuate that stereotype. As Google's wildly expensive Chromebook Pixel showed, however, Chrome OS devices can be elegant. Today, Samsung is taking aim at elegance with the all-new Chromebook Pro and Plus.

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