Latest Technology News

Woz: Apple should pay half its income in tax

The tax arrangements of international technology companies have been in the spotlight for a little while now. Few people disagree with the idea that they should be paying their way when it comes to tax, and one of these people is Steve Wozniak. He thinks Apple should pay tax at a rate of 50 percent -- just like him.

Just like Amazon, Facebook and Google, Apple manages to avoid a great deal of tax by channeling money through a subsidiary located in the Republic of Ireland. This reduces its tax bill dramatically by avoiding the UK corporation tax of 20 percent, and instead paying the Irish rate of 12.5 percent. Apple co-founder Woz feels the company should be paying the same rate that he has to.

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Social ad spending rises by 86 percent

Spending on social media advertising has increased by 86 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2015. It's also up eight percent when compared to last year's final holiday shopping quarter.

These findings come from agile marketing specialist Kenshoo based on data managed by its platform for over 3,000 advertiser and agency accounts. It attributes the growth to the appeal of new ad types like Facebook Dynamic Product Ads and increased inventory through Instagram.

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Best Windows apps this week

One-hundred and seventy-seven in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days.

There has been a good selection of newly released applications and games this week.

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Facebook to filter out News Feed crap by timing how long you read articles

Facebook has been going a little crazy with News Feed updates of late, making constant changes in a bid to ensure that people see content they actually want to read. The real motivation may be ad revenue, but it's always pushed as surfacing (ouch... sorry... I slipped into buzzword mode...) more relevant content. The new changes are no different.

The most recent update to the feed algorithm will take into account not only which news articles people click on, but how long they spend reading them. This will help Facebook to not only determine what sort of article interest users but also help the social network to identify clickbait that doesn't deliver what it promises.

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More apps and websites leak credit card data on enterprise handsets

In its latest quarterly Mobile Data Report, Wandera has revealed a significant rise in apps leaking credit card data on enterprise mobile devices.

The company, which specializes in mobile data security and management, compiled the report by analyzing the data usage trends and traffic patterns across its global network of enterprise mobile devices. Between Q4 2015 and Q1 2016, there has been a 17 percent increase in apps and mobile websites leaking credit card data.

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Dotcom: If you're still using Mega, back up your cloud-based files right now

It seems that Mega -- the enfant terrible of the cloud storage world -- could be on the brink of closure. Founder of Mega (formerly known as Mega Upload), Kim Dotcom took to Twitter to warn people to back up their files ASAP.

Not for the first time, Mega is out of the control of Dotcom, and is currently in the hands of what he refers to as "the fifth most wanted criminal in China". For many people the idea of their cloud storage being in criminal hands would be concerning enough, but Dotcom says that Bill Liu wants to float the company in Hong Kong.

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Franz: one desktop chat app for 14 messaging services

Let’s be frank: there are too many chat services in the world, and it can take a stack of background processes and open browser tabs to manage them all.

Franz is a free Windows, Mac and Linux application which makes your life easier by supporting them all.

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It cost HOW MUCH to crack the San Bernardino iPhone?!

There are a lot of questions still to be answered about the San Bernardino iPhone that saw the FBI and Apple go head to head. After something of a battle, the FBI found someone to crack the iPhone. But who exactly did it? How did they do it? Will Apple be told how to do it in private? But one question that has also been lurking in the background is just how much it cost to hack into a single iPhone.

Now we know the answer. Not precisely, but we have a pretty good idea. Perhaps unsurprisingly, cracking the iPhone at the center of one of the most interesting technology cases in recent history, was not cheap. In a somewhat roundabout way, FBI Director James Comey revealed that the cost was more than $1.34 million.

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Evernote 6 for Windows marks evolution rather than revolution

UPDATE: Evernote has unveiled Evernote 6.0.4, a major update of its desktop client for Windows users.

The new release sees another user interface revamp, plus focuses on refining existing tools rather than introducing major new features. Version 6.0.4 opens with support for High DPI displays, and rolls out various improvements to the Assisted Search tool. This includes moving the Search bar to the top of the note list, providing more detailed descriptions of the search results and the extension of the tool to cover the user’s entire account, with options for expanding the search to include recently deleted notes as well as general refinements.

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Merchants are not security savvy

security padlock

More than a third (38.5 percent) of merchants don’t even know what type of risks new technologies such as mCommerce bring. They most likely wouldn’t recognize a fraud threat even if they were right in the middle of it.

Those are the conclusions written in the new 2016 Mobile Payments & Fraud Survey, released by Kount. The figures are quite a surprise, knowing that mobile fraud increased by 81 percent between 2011 and 2015.

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SanDisk unveils next-generation iXpand Flash Drive for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Storage for iPhone and iPad can be costly. Since you cannot realistically add more inside later, you must decide at purchase how much you will need. Then, each bump up will cost you about $100. This can make an iOS device purchase a very costly affair.

As an alternative, however, you can use flash drives on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, but there is a catch; you will need to buy a lightning to USB type A cable, or a flash drive with a lightning connector. While not usually an elegant solution, today, SanDisk unveils an intriguing such product -- the next-generation iXpand Flash Drive -- and it looks really cool.

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Google no longer lists its own site as 'partially dangerous'

According to Google’s online transparency report, Google.com had been considered a "partially dangerous" website.

In the report under the Safe Browsing section, the company listed its own website as one that could be dangerous to its visitors followed by a list of site safety details along with testing details.

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Even Microsoft's biggest fan doesn't want Windows 10 Mobile

Windows Phone has been dead for some time now. I knew it. The world knew it. Dogs knew it. The only people that were seemingly unaware were those that pledged allegiance to Microsoft. You know who they are -- those men and women that some call "fanboys".

Even the journalism community has them. Folks like Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley are unapologetic fans of Microsoft. While Thurrott has long since abandoned the horrific Windows Phone platform, Foley has been one of the few holdouts. Today, she announces that she -- Microsoft's biggest fan -- is choosing the Linux-based Android instead. If this doesn't signal the death of Windows Phone/Windows 10 Mobile, I don't know what does.

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Pre-installed Windows 10 apps begging for ratings is wrong

I don’t use the Windows Calculator very often, but occasionally I need to work something out and so fire it up. Today, upon opening the calculator, I was presented with a message asking me to rate the app in the Windows Store. If I was enjoying it. Which of course I wasn’t. It is a calculator after all, and the only time I’ve ever enjoyed using one of those was as a teenager when I typed in "5318008" and turned it upside down. Even the enjoyment of doing that was very short lived.

Now, the Windows 10 calculator begging for user ratings in the Windows Store isn’t a new phenomenon. A thread on Reddit discussed this some months ago, but this is the first time I’ve experienced it for myself, and obviously three months after it was first flagged as a nuisance, it’s still going on. Seriously who at Microsoft thought this was a good idea?

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More than a third of enterprises don't backup business data

Backup key

The results of a new survey show that many organizations continue to demonstrate a complacent, lax attitude toward backups, leaving them vulnerable to evolving threats.

The study from cloud-based backup provider CloudBerry Lab finds that almost half of respondents (49 percent) have only one copy of their business data, which could cause major operational disruption in the event that data becomes inaccessible.

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