The world is still reeling from the outcome of the US elections, where Donald Trump came out on top against Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of America.

Financial markets around the world have been affected by the shocking and unexpected news and the notoriously unpredictable digital currency Bitcoin is no exception, with prices close to hitting a 35-month high against the pound amidst investor uncertainty.

Continue reading →

Many people use Google Chrome, and rightfully so. The cross-platform web browser works brilliantly, and is super-fast. Plus, the search-giant's browser is very secure too, right? Not so fast...

Today, Sophos drops a bombshell by revealing that scammers are actively targeting Chrome users by leveraging a bug. These bad guys pose as Microsoft tech support and display an in-browser message that says the user's computer is infected with "Virus Trojan.worm! 055BCCAC9FEC". To make matters worse, Google has apparently known about the exploit for more than two years and simply failed to patch it.

Continue reading →

Google today launches a revamped version of its Safe Browsing site, bringing a number of tools and services under one roof. The tag line for the site is "Making the world's information safely accessible," and Google makes much of fact that it now keeps more than two billion devices safe online -- desktop and Android, as well as devices running Google tools such as Chrome and Gmail.

One of the main purposes of the site is to make it easier for people to report malicious sites they encounter, so other internet users can be warned and protected. But the updated site is also home to additional information from Google, such as its Transparency Reports and company policies.

Continue reading →

Facebook, like Google, is all about the ads. Not content with filling newsfeeds with advertising, Facebook Messenger -- already something of a privacy nightmare -- is about to become home to 'sponsored messages'. Ads by another name.

The new ad formats follow on from newsfeed data designed to direct Facebook users to Messenger, and from there the idea is to drive brand awareness and increase sales. But as with other advertising on Facebook, ads are targeted, meaning there is more than a slight degree of concern when it comes to privacy.

Continue reading →

We’ve already started to see the beginnings of the next big version of Windows 10 appearing in new builds for Windows Insiders. Termed the Creators Update it has a heavy focus on 3D, but there’s more to it than just that.

The previous new Insider Build, released last week, didn’t have much in terms of new features on show, but the latest offering, Build 14965, is thankfully much more exciting.

Continue reading →

Connectivity is vital for all businesses. Whether you need to communicate with customers, clients or employees, or simply rely on it to deliver your service, the importance of connectivity cannot be overstated.

What’s more, this importance is clearly growing. In the always-on, cloud-based, mobile-first digital world that we inhabit, enterprise connectivity is not merely desirable -- it is expected at all times.

Continue reading →

Google has announced that Map Maker -- the tool which can be used to make and suggest changes to Google Maps -- is to close down.

The closure is scheduled for March 2017, and Google says that the editing features will be gradually integrated into Google Maps itself as part of a streamlining process. It's not clear just how long it will take for all of the editing features to roll out to Google Maps, but some features will be missing for a while, if not permanently.

Continue reading →

Providing an open source platform for cloud computing, OpenStack allows the use of multi-vendor commodity hardware in a data center to process and store data, and deliver networking resources. It’s managed through a dashboard or an API and is used by many major companies around the world to manage their IT infrastructure.

OpenStack grew out of a joint project between NASA and Rackspace Hosting and launched in 2010. It’s currently managed by the not-for-profit OpenStack Foundation created in 2012. More than 500 companies are now members of the OpenStack project. OpenStack has a six-month release cycle with each release planned at a design summit. The software is modular with components focusing on different services.

Continue reading →

Open source software and ideology is critical to the future of technology. As more and more people demand transparency in the programs and applications they use, companies will have to take notice.

To keep the open source movement going, it must be handed down to incoming developers. In other words, the children are our future, and education is key. Google's "Code-In" contest is a great program that invites teen students to directly contribute to quality open source projects. Now, the search giant finally announces the projects that will be participating as "mentors".

Continue reading →

Businesses are moving faster towards a cashless society because it's cheaper than handling "real" money. This is according to a new report by Sage, integrated accounting, payroll and payment software provider. The company’s latest report says small and medium-sized businesses are losing £9.4bn each year through cash payments.

A quarter (24 percent) say that staff members stole some cash, a third (34 percent) believe human error had them losing money, and more than half (56 percent) claim they spend at least an hour every week counting and sending money to the bank.

Continue reading →

According to a recent report from cyber-security experts at RSA, in today’s increasingly computerized world, cyber-crime issues "comprise a threat horizon that continues to accelerate and expand with no end in sight".

Since much the same can be said about the growth of computing power in today’s vehicles -- which rely on technology for everything from 3D navigation graphics to semi-autonomous driving capabilities -- the risks for having your car or truck hacked would seem to be on the rise as well. But should current drivers be worried about the issue right now, or is it time to pump the brakes on the car-hacking panic?

Continue reading →

IBM's Watson project has been a leader in cognitive computing, enabling machines to understand the world in a similar way to humans.

Today the company is unveiling the experimental release of Project Intu, a new, system-agnostic platform designed to allow developers to embed Watson functions into various end-user device form factors, offering a next generation architecture for building cognitive-enabled experiences.

Continue reading →

The head of of the GCHQ believes that distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks could be eliminated completely if internet service providers (ISPs) were to completely rewrite their software and its code.

The technical director of GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre, Ian Levy, is already preparing to engage in talks with ISPs, such as BT, over how they could be the key to ending DDoS attacks. After the cyber attacks that occurred as a result of the Mirai malware were made public, GCHQ made it a priority to prevent further attacks that could be launched using the same measures.

Continue reading →

Many companies are realizing that traditional integration approaches no longer satisfy business requirements and are not designed for the digital age, according to a new report.

The State of Salesforce Connectivity survey from cloud integration company Jitterbit looks at integration trends and needs from 300 companies from 33 different industries running Salesforce.

Continue reading →

Building presentations often involves mastering a heavy-duty GUI: layouts here, color panels there, transition previews, animation and more.

Marp strips all that away, and enables creating presentations with just a little GitHub-flavored Markdown. This makes for a very plain, distraction-free interface: just a left-hand pane where you type your code, and a right-hand pane with a preview.

Continue reading →