Microsoft demolishes Bridge for Android -- yet another nail in the Windows 10 Mobile coffin
Getting developers to create apps for Windows 10 Mobile is very much a chicken and egg scenario. Developers are hesitant to dedicate resources to a platform with such few users, while users don't want to use a platform with no apps.
To try and alleviate this app problem, Microsoft came up with a scheme called "Bridges", to help developers easily port their Android and iOS apps to Windows. Today, sadly, Microsoft is killing the Windows Bridge for Android. With the iOS bridge being the final exciting "Bridge" attraction, Windows 10 Mobile consumers should probably just buy an iPhone instead. Right?
Adblock Plus comes (somewhat) clean about how Acceptable Ads work
The Acceptable Ads program from Adblock Plus has proved slightly controversial. The company behind the ad blocking tool, Eyeo, has already revealed a little about how it makes money from the program -- despite the fact that no money changes hands in most whitelisting cases -- and today it has opened up further about how it makes its money.
Whilst recognizing that people do want to block ads, Eyeo is also aware that sites do need to benefit from ad revenue -- hence Acceptable Ads, non-intrusive ads that it is hoped are less irritating and therefore easier to stomach. But Eyeo itself also wants to make money. How does it decide which company to charge for Acceptable Ads whitelisting, and what to charge? If you're expecting full transparency, you might be disappointed, but we are given a glimpse into how the financial side of things works.
Microsoft stands with Apple against the FBI
Microsoft will join Apple against the FBI and U.S. Justice Department, filing a friend-of-court—or amicus—brief in a case going to court tomorrow. The government wants Apple to create a special version of iOS, referred to by critics as FBIOS, to break into an iPhone 5c security feature. The device manufacturer argues that compliance would set a precedent that would give law enforcement carte blanche with other mobile devices.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief legal counsel, says the company "wholeheartedly supports Apple"—a statement that eradicates any potential confusion caused by cofounder Bill Gates. In an interview with Financial Times two days ago, Gates supported the government's demands. I responded, calling his position a "catastrophic occurrence that demands current chief executive Satya Nadella's official response. There needs to be clear policy about government backdoors and the position with respect to the San Bernardino shooting iPhone". The company's position is now unequivocally clear—presuming the legal filing fits with "wholeheartedly".
Spotify moves to Google's cloud
Swedish music streaming service Spotify has decided to transport its entire product onto Google’s cloud. The news was confirmed on the Spotify blog.
In the blog post, written by the company's vice-president of engineering and infrastructure, Nicholas Harteau, it was explained how Spotify decided for the move as it could no longer scale fast enough to meet the demand.
MWC 2016: The most important products announced so far
We are just past the half way point at Mobile World Congress 2016, which has so far given us smartphones, tablets and Internet of Things solutions in abundance from some of the industries biggest players.
If you haven’t been paying attention for the last couple of days, here’s a quick round up of some of the big stories you might have missed.
Philips announces 34 inch Brilliance UltraWide QHD Curved LCD Display (BDM3490UC)
Buying a monitor can be quite the daunting affair. Not only are there many styles to choose from, but various resolutions too. While 4K monitors are all the rage, some operating systems, such as Windows 10 and some Linux distros, are not optimized for higher resolutions. Text and icons will appear small, and increasing sizes in the OS can cause some programs to display blurry text. In my experience, only OS X scales well to high res monitors.
Keeping that in mind, it is understandable if you are willing to put up with those concerns, as images, movies and games can be absolutely gorgeous on high-resolution screens. Today, Philips announces a beast of a monitor -- 34 inches, curved, with a resolution of 3440 x 1440. While less than 4K, this resolution offers a very wide view.
GRE tunneling: Keeping human traffic unaffected during DDoS attacks
Picture a standard subway ride during rush hour. The car, of course, is crammed full. Some of those subway riders are pleasant commuters, and some are subway villains like pickpockets and purse-snatchers. Now imagine someone has invented a private subway that quickly and efficiently connects you and other pleasant commuters to the subway station in your neighborhood. You don’t have to deal with slowdowns, unexpected stops, or any of the risks associated with being lumped in with the aforementioned subway villains.
Now stop imagining, because someone has invented such a blissful sort of system. It’s just that instead of being a form of transportation it’s a method of directing legitimate human traffic to a website while it’s being protected from a DDoS attack. Not the best news for your commute, but great news for your website.
Ping Identity offers flexible real-time access for digital enterprises
Legacy identity management solutions can struggle to keep up with the current interconnected world where systems may be both local and in the cloud.
Security company Ping Identity is launching a new Federated Access Management product designed to offer lightweight, open and hyper-connected identity technology for the modern digital enterprise.
Baidu's browser leaks sensitive information
The browser provided by Baidu (China's answer to Google), leaks all kinds of personal data. Researchers at Canada’s Citizen Lab tested the browser and concluded it "collects and transmits a lot of personal user data back to Baidu servers that we believe goes far beyond what should be collected, and it does so either without encryption, or with easily decryptable encryption".
The Android version of the browser is even worse: "Data collected and transmitted in the Android version without any encryption includes a user’s GPS coordinates, search terms, and URLs visited. The user’s IMEI and nearby wireless networks are sent with easily decryptable encryption".
OnePlus fans rejoice -- new flagship launches by June
There is no denying that flagships like Samsung's Galaxy S7, LG's G5 and Xiaomi's Mi 5 have just raised the bar for the high-end smartphone market. Rivals need to step things up a notch, as it is going to be extremely hard to compete against the latest-generation hardware and software, especially when it is offered at price points as low as $300.
For OnePlus and its current flagship, OnePlus 2, things are not looking good. Mi 5, which competes in the same price range, is a better device on paper and cheaper too. Other similar devices will soon follow, of course. What is OnePlus' answer? Well, it is OnePlus 3 and it is coming by June.
New platform offers endpoint protection for Linux servers
Most of the internet is powered by Linux servers, so it's not surprising that they’re increasingly a target for attack. In particular recent attacks have focussed on using compromised systems to distribute malware to other systems.
Many Linux systems rely on traditional signature-based threat detection which leaves them vulnerable to zero-day attacks. Endpoint security company SentinelOne is announcing a new solution aimed at protecting enterprise data centers and cloud providers from emerging threats that target Linux servers.
Batch print documents, drawings and more with Print Conductor 5.0
If you regularly need to batch print folders of documents then you’ll know it’s a lengthy and tedious process: Ctrl+P+Enter+repeat until you die of boredom, essentially.
Print Conductor is a free-for-personal-use application which automatically lines up and dispatches your targets to their source programs for printing.
Netskope launches threat protection for enterprise cloud apps
Use of cloud apps, including unauthorised 'shadow' IT, is booming, but it leaves a gap in the protection provided by traditional perimeter security.
To plug this gap cloud access security broker Netskope is launching a threat protection solution for the cloud. Netskope Active Threat Protection combines threat intelligence, static and dynamic analysis, and machine-learning based anomaly detection to enable real-time detection, prioritized analysis, and handling of threats that may originate from cloud apps.
New platform can use any data source to gain visibility into attacks
A security breach can involve many different elements, this means that analyzing attacks can be a complex and difficult task.
Security analytics specialist Niara is launching a new version of its security analytics platform that can analyze any data source and supports the customization of behavioral analytics modules, providing organizations with complete visibility into attacks and risky behaviors inside their environments.
View all your Chrome, Firefox and IE addons with NirSoft's BrowserAddonsView
Freeware developer NirSoft has released BrowserAddonsView, a free tool which detects and displays all your installed Chrome, Firefox and IE extensions, in all user profile folders.
Every installed addon is displayed in the usual NirSoft table, with details including item ID, status (enabled/ disabled), browser, addon type (extension, plugin, browser helper, ActiveX, more), name, version, description, title and creator.
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