Latest Technology News

My knowledge of horses doesn't extend much past watching Mr. Ed on "Nick at Nite" (Hello, Wilbur) as a kid. Equestrian activities are often reserved for the wealthy and gamblers -- two things I am not. I did go to OTB (Off-track betting) a couple of years ago to bet on a horse named after Tony Danza, but I digress.

One of the most popular horse racing events is the Kentucky Derby. Microsoft's Bing is now focusing its predictability-powers on it. Bing Predicts has been quite succesful in the past -- could this help folks win some money?

Building a computer is extremely fun. In fact, for some folks -- including yours truly -- the build itself can sometimes be more enjoyable than using the computer! Getting to select the case, components, and color scheme is very rewarding.

When I say "color scheme", I am not just talking about the outward appearance. The design of the inside is important too -- sort of like art. Picking SATA cables, SSDs and RAM sticks with matching colors can create something beautiful -- especially if you have a window case. Today, one of my favorite RAM manufacturers, G.SKILL, announces five new colors for its Trident Z Series DDR4 RAM kits.

Unlike spam or phishing emails, which involve a broad and varied range of targets, spear phishing is a highly-targeted email attack against a specific group, organization, or even person.

The main aim of a spear phishing attack is either to obtain unauthorized access to sensitive data, whether this is intellectual property, financial data, trade or military intelligence, or to get the recipient of the email to act on a command, whether this is to transfer money or share confidential data.

While GoPro has not revealed much information about its upcoming drone, called Karma, the company did say that we can expect to see it in stores this year. Question is, when?

If we are to go by its latest earnings report, GoPro is not in its best possible financial shape. For the first quarter of this year it just posted $183.53 million in revenue, down by 49.5 percent year-over-year, but also $107.45 million in net income losses, down by $741.5 percent year-over-year. This affects Karma's release date, but it should still make its public debut by the end of 2016, GoPro says.

LG today announced that the US government has certified its G5 and V10 flagship Android smartphones for enterprise and military use. The testing was conducted by the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), which verifies the compliance of products with the "Common Criteria" international security standard, which is said to be recognized by 25 countries.

Although LG is only boasting about the two aforementioned handsets, NIAP's test results show that G4, its flagship from last year, is also fit for use in enterprise and military sectors, when running Android 6.0 Marshmallow. NIAP's stamp of approval was received on April 14.

Ransomware is something like the digital version of Kanye West -- everyone hates it, but its popularity just keeps on growing. And it takes your money for things you really don’t want to buy.

The news about the rising popularity of ransomware was confirmed by security firm Kaspersky Lab, which released its quarterly report into the state of malware.

You have started down the road to DevOps. You have re-structured your teams and you are experimenting with DevOps tools and processes. You now understand that DevOps is a continuum that starts with planning and development and ends with deployment into operations. So where do you start your DevOps initiative?

DevOps projects tend to start in only one part of the continuum. Often, DevOps teams start with application build automation (development) or they start with automating the deployment of apps into operations. When the driver for DevOps is in the test organization, it is called Continuous Integration. However, it is also important to work to continuously expand automation across the continuum because for DevOps to pay off, there needs to be continuous automation from development all the way through to operations.

Although HTML5 has allowed apps to work across platforms, there's still demand for companies to develop native apps for the major mobile platforms.

Progress Software is launching the latest version of NativeScript, an open source framework on the Telerik platform, enabling developers to use JavaScript to build native mobile apps running on the major mobile systems.

The moment of reckoning is on its way for companies that collect or store data on European Union citizens. Last week EU legislators signed data privacy regulations into law, creating what may be the most stringent data protection law in place today. The requirements will not be easy for many companies to meet and will demand financial and personnel resources. There is sure to be criticism that the EU stifles technology innovation. In reality, the GDPR demonstrates a progressive approach to data transactions and the digital economy. The introduction of the regulation states, "The protection of natural persons in relation to the processing of personal data is a fundamental right…".

Essentially, the law codifies the concept that data transactions come with responsibility on the part of the collector. As technology continues to advance, establishing this foundation of trust is a necessary step. Complying with the regulation may seem onerous, but think from the consumer’s perspective. Organizations gather more data than ever. Huge headaches and hardships arise when data is  stolen or lost. The regulation puts in place best practices to ensure companies offer a necessary level of security and treat personal data with the respect it deserves.

One-hundred and seventy-nine 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.

More and more full price games are coming to the Windows Store. This week alone saw the release of the long awaited Forza Motorsport 6: Apex, as well as Shadow Complex Remastered, and The Escapists: The Walking Dead.

Photon is a free PC screen capture tool for Windows Vista and later. The program’s core capture engine is basic, but good sharing support and some unusual processing options make it worth a closer look.

Install Photon, press PrtSc, and you’re prompted to draw a freehand rectangle. There’s no full screen capture type, no "active window", no ellipses or anything advanced, unfortunately (like we said, it’s basic).

World Password Day is apparently a day for “taking our passwords to the next level”, so here are five traditions the crooks and password crackers really, really don’t want us to start.

In 2007, Dinei Florencio and Cormac Herley at Microsoft Research looked into the password habits of half a million users in their large-scale study of website password habits. They found that the average user needed about 25 distinct passwords but only had about six.

When it comes to business devices, employees can often have a big impact on decision-making. In other words, they can influence IT and executives by expressing a desire for the same type of device they use at home. When Blackberry devices, for instance, fell out of favor with home users, they soon lost their luster in the enterprise too.

iPhone and iPad devices are wildly popular in the enterprise, but not only because employees love them. They are also very secure, thanks to things like touch ID and regular operating system updates. Apple has even partnered with world-class companies, such as IBM, which bolstered the positive perception for iOS. Today, Tim Cook and company announce yet another monumental partnership, this time with SAP.

In an effort to remain competitive with rival messaging platforms, BlackBerry has decided to bring video calling to its cross platform BBM messaging apps.

Last week, it was unveiled that the Android variant of BlackBerry Messenger would be receiving the ability to make video calls as a beta feature. Now the company has announced that this feature will also be appearing on Apple’s iOS.

Xiaomi Yi is among the most attractive action cameras for consumers on a budget. For just under $80, you get pretty much everything you could hope for. The only thing that is missing is 4K support, which is now starting to show up in more and more devices in this segment. Its successor, however, addresses this shortcoming.

Yi Technologies, the company behind Xiaomi Yi, has officially announced the second-generation of its action camera, called Yi 2. It packs a new chip, formally known as Ambarella A9, that enables 4K video recording at up to 30 FPS and 1080p video recording at up to 120 FPS.