Watch TV in the UK -- be it through an aerial, cable, or satellite -- and you have to pay for a TV license. The official line is that you need a TV license "if you watch or record programmes as they're being shown on TV or live on an online TV service" and this has long-meant that anyone time-shifting their viewing by watching shows on BBC iPlayer have been able to do so for free. This is set to change.

Having waxed lyrical about the threat of adblockers to the web, UK culture secretary John Whittingdale turned his attention to the BBC's streaming services. He plans to close a loophole that has permitted people without a TV license to watch non-live shows on iPlayer without paying a fee and -- more importantly -- without breaking the law. He says that this is 'wrong' and wants to bring the 'free ride' to an end.

Continue reading →

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the newest technology mega-trend, according to Goldman Sachs, and it’s easy to see why. Cisco’s IoT study suggests that the number of connected devices is expected to grow to 50 billion by 2020, leading to a global economic impact of $10 trillion.

Connected devices are set to change the very fabric of the world we live and work in. However, the buzz around gadgets such as connected fridges and smart kettles being developed by consumer goods manufacturers have been a distraction from the IoT’s true potential. Indeed, research from Embarcadero Technologies revealed that just 16% of those developing IoT solutions are targeting consumers.

Continue reading →

Is adblocking good or evil? It's a discussion that has been rumbling on for some time, and it shows no signs of going away any time soon. The reasons for blocking ads are plentiful -- privacy, speed, annoyance -- but there's no getting away from the fact that ads mean revenue, and without this income many sites simply would not exist.

The latest figure to wade into the debate is the UK culture secretary John Whittingdale. While not going as far as calling for a ban on adblockers, he says that companies such as Adblock Plus are operating "modern-day protection rackets", ultimately threatening the existence of news sites.

Continue reading →

Cloud unified communications specialist Outsourcery says that the full potential of remote working can only be achieved if strong UC tools are in place. Skype for Business, Slack or Trello, just to name a few, are proven to boost productivity and the possibility of working from virtually anywhere, anytime, has great effects on employee satisfaction.

There have been numerous studies about the benefits of remote working, and all of them came to the same conclusion -- this is something all of us should be implementing. One of those studies was recently published by Lancaster University’s Work Foundation, which suggests that by 2017, more than half of all UK businesses will have employed flexible working at some parts of their organization.

Continue reading →

The Pentagon is to run its own big bounty program, inviting white-hat hackers to test the security of its systems. It is not intended to be a free-for-all, and would-be hackers will be vetted before being given the go-ahead -- although of course there is nothing to stop anyone from trying to breach the defenses if they feel so inclined

The 'Hack the Pentagon' initiative was launched today by Defense Secretary Ash Carter. He said "I am confident that this innovative initiative will strengthen our digital defenses and ultimately enhance our national security". It is to be a carefully managed program which will only be open to US citizens, and networks relating to particularly sensitive material and weapons will be off-limits.

Continue reading →

With the introduction of Windows 10, Microsoft said goodbye to Internet Explorer, the aging Netscape killer, and hello to Edge. While the company has been increasingly vigilant about security and the nightmares of IE 6 have slowly faded away, with a new browser comes with the potential for new problems.

Security researcher Mark Yason of IBM thinks he may have found a potential path to attack. Yason plans to demonstrate the flaw at the upcoming RSA USA 2016 conference.

Continue reading →

Regardless of sex or gender, everyone deserves to be heard. Nothing is more frustrating than feeling powerless and unimportant. By having an outlet to express yourself, you can gain self esteem, and ultimately, grow as a person.

Unfortunately, one of the most oppressed groups throughout history, women, have sometimes been made to feel powerless. They often make less money than men in the workforce, and frequently have to deal with sexual harassment and 'mansplaining'. Things can get even worse than that, including violence. Luckily, services such as YouTube can give voices to women that may not be heard otherwise, and today, Google is celebrating that fact.

Continue reading →

While some people decry the use of cloud storage as unsafe, I love it. All of my important files get saved to Dropbox, so they are forever safe. With that said, I'm no dummy -- redundancy is key. I regularly mirror my online storage to a portable USB hard drive just in case. This is important for backup purposes, but it also helps me retain some control over my data.

Portable hard drives are great, as they can be connected to both desktops and laptops. Unfortunately, many of them are bulky and utilize mechanical HDDs, making them potentially slow, hot, or vulnerable to bumps and jitters. When Samsung introduced its Portable SSD T3 at CES 2016, I knew I wanted one to store my files. Today, this beautiful feat of engineering and design becomes available to consumers.

Continue reading →

Microsoft hopes that within the first two to three years of availability, Windows 10 will power one billion devices worldwide. And, so far, things are looking good, as the new operating system can be found on over 200 million devices. But whether the software giant reaches its goal on time or not is irrelevant, because the new operating system will take over the PC market eventually, one way or another.

When looking at monthly stats and even Microsoft's own status updates on adoption it is way too easy to focus your attention on the figures themselves and lose sight of the bigger picture: as long as Windows 10's user base is growing, there is no stopping it. And that is what Microsoft wants, to have its new operating system "infecting" as many PCs and tablets as possible, so that it can finally take control of this market.

Continue reading →

I’ve seen a news story doing the rounds today, about Windows 10 removing some third-party user apps following a big update. It’s understandable that people this has happened to are upset, and obviously it's not something that you want your operating system to be doing.

But it’s also not a new phenomenon -- far from it.

Continue reading →

Major data breaches continue to highlight how essential it is for businesses to secure their systems, and as a result many organizations are looking to recruit information security officers.

But what should they be looking for? What are the traits that the top information security professionals share? Data loss prevention specialist Digital Guardian has produced an infographic based on research into the CISOs and security leaders at Fortune 100 companies which throws up some interesting results.

Continue reading →

Biometrics were the talk of the town last month in Barcelona. As the world’s mobile technology companies gathered for their largest annual event, Mobile World Congress 2016, talk centered firmly around authentication and identity.

Whilst MasterCard announced it will accept selfie photographs and fingerprints as an alternative to passwords when verifying IDs for online payments, security company Vkansee was demonstrating how easy it was to create a spoof finger with clay and a pot of Play-Doh.

Continue reading →

Standard query tools can often lack the flexibility required to deliver precise results which results in the need for further processing and adds to data traffic.

To address this problem ScaleOut Software is announcing a new computational query tool that combines Microsoft's LINQ query with the company's own data-parallel computing technology to offer more powerful and flexible query tools for grid-based applications. Available with ScaleOut Software's suite of in-memory data grid products, including ScaleOut StateServer and ScaleOut ComputeServer, computational query makes it easy for .NET developers and architects to harnesses the full power of the grid's data-parallel compute engine and dramatically accelerate query processing. It's available for use with Java on both Linux and Windows systems.

Continue reading →

We forget the old days when we went everywhere on our own -- it now seems that we can't leave the house without a phone and GPS, frequently the same device. Both phones and mapping technology seem to be moving forward at an ever-increasing rate, and now TomTom is making the next big leap with its maps.

The new edition of NavKit adds real-time maps that will update incrementally. Also rolling out is additional geographies.

Continue reading →

Popular mobile and browser-based image editor Polarr Photo Editor is now available in a desktop edition for Windows 7 and later.

A Free build offers only global adjustments (no selection tools), and drops custom filters and batch export.

Continue reading →