Lara Croft GO coming to Android, iOS and Windows Phone
When Tomb Raider was released in 1996, the heroine, Lara Croft, was a sex symbol for computer nerds. While the graphics were archaic by today's standards, the well-endowed character looked real enough for gamers. Heck, Angelina Jolie eventually played her in the film.
Today, Square Enix announces that Lara Croft will be titillating mobile gamers on iOS, Android, and surprisingly, Windows Phone too. Will you buy the all-new Lara Croft GO game?
Lightning strikes four times and Google loses cloud data
They say lightning never strikes twice, but they're wrong as Google reports that it's lost some data after the power grid serving one of its European data centers suffered four consecutive lightning strikes last Thursday.
Google Compute Engine (GCE) disks in the europe-west1-b zone data center, located in Belgium, suffered I/O errors in the strikes and 0.000001 percent of disks suffered permanent data loss. GCE allows customers to run virtual machines and store data in the cloud.
Lenovo issues BIOS updates to fix security vulnerability
Lenovo has issued a BIOS fix for some of its machines, thus preventing a vulnerability which could allow potential hackers to gain control of a desktop or a laptop computer from the manufacturer.
In a press release published on the Lenovo website, the company has urged consumers to manually update their BIOS. Newer machines will have the fix by default.
Syntonic launches BYOD billing management for smaller businesses
The rise of BYOD offers businesses improved flexibility and employee productivity, but those things come at a price. BYOD can lead to extra costs such as needing to reimburse staff for air time.
Mobile platform provider Syntonic is launching DataFlex, an operator-independent split billing solution designed to cost-effectively deploy, operate, and manage BYOD usage for businesses of any size.
How to force Cortana to use Google instead of Bing in Windows 10
Microsoft is pushing Bing heavily in Windows 10. Bing is the default search engine in Microsoft Edge, and while you can change this to Google (or any other choice), the process of doing so is far from intuitive -- you can’t simply pick "Google" from a list of options.
Cortana, Microsoft’s built-in personal assistant, is powered by Bing too, which means when you ask her a question she doesn’t immediately know the answer to, she’ll open up your default browser and display a list of results sourced from Microsoft’s search engine. There is a way to get her to use Google instead though, but you won’t find this in any Settings.
Age ratings come to YouTube and VEVO music videos
Under a new program designed to protect children from seeing adult content, YouTube and VEVO have announced new age ratings for music videos in the UK.
It is the first initiative of its kind, which will block videos that show inappropriate content. Musicians like Miley Cyrus, Rihanna and Robin Thicke have irked parents with the lack of clothing and rather provocative music videos released on the web.
Google News may now speak your language
There are significantly more spoken languages than countries, but the problem is that the internet frequently doesn't speak them all, leaving many users out in the cold. There are some ways around that, as both Google and Bing will try and translate things for you.
Now Google News is expanding its language options to become accessible to more of the world. Available languages will now include Bahasa Indonesia, Bengali, Bulgarian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Thai.
Opera Max can now compress Netflix and YouTube videos, lowering data consumption
Video streaming is one of the quickest ways to max out a data plan. This is especially true for high-definition videos, which are the commonplace on websites like Netflix and YouTube and, understandably, the obvious quality choice for many mobile viewers. Since not everyone can afford or have the option to use an unlimited data plan, we often have to sacrifice how much content we watch to not pass the traffic limit.
However, an update to Opera Max for Android promises to let us watch more videos without sacrificing much in terms of quality. The app can achieve such results through compression, and the feature is now enabled for Netflix and YouTube.
Windows 10 Build 10525 breaks Chrome; here's how to fix it
Chrome users who rush to install the latest build of Windows 10 have found that their favorite browser is broken. Build 10525 of Windows 10 prevents Chrome from working properly -- launch the browser and you'll be greeted by a series of notifications saying that plugins have crashed.
Additionally, when attempting to visit any website, all that is displayed is an error message that reads "Aw, Snap! Something went wrong while displaying this webpage. Closing the apps and tabs that you don't need may help by making more memory available". The compatibility issue has been reported to Google so a patch will be forthcoming soon, but in the meantime you can use this workaround.
Ambient sound can be part of two-factor authentication
For those of you that have been living under a rock for the past few years, two-factor authentication is something that you use to re-verify your credentials to log into a particular site or service. This authentication is typically completed in the form of text message, a phone call, or a notification on your smartphone.
Although 2FA is extremely secure, it is also slightly annoying to have to open up a secondary app to authenticate yourself again. A couple of researchers from Switzerland want to make that process even easier and less annoying. So, the researchers want to get rid of the text-based bits and use ambient sound instead.
Executives lack confidence in enterprise security
A new survey of security executives at large companies in the US reveals that many don't have confidence in their enterprise security posture. Less than a third of these executives are confident in their organization's security position, and only slightly more than a quarter feel that their communications on security to senior management are effective.
The survey commissioned by Raytheon|Websense shows that many still rely on technology aimed at preventing breaches but do little after one has occurred. Yet 9 out of 10 of the organizations represented in the survey have had at least one breach involving a loss or compromise of data in the past year.
Google's Project Ara will debut in 2016
Google’s in-house modular smartphone project has been delayed until 2016. Project Ara announced the news on Twitter, claiming lots of iterations changed the course of action.
Last week, Project Ara announced a change of plans and said Puerto Rico would miss out on the modular smartphone. The original plan was to launch in Puerto Rico, offering Project Ara modules from food trucks.
SCOSCHE strikeLINE Rugged LED micro USB and Lightning cables available now
All micro USB and Apple Lightning cables are the same, right? Hell no. While they all may pretty much serve the same purpose -- to charge and/or sync data -- quality can vary. Both charging and data transfer speed can be negatively impacted by using cheap cables. Not to mention, from a durability standpoint, cheap cables can literally break and fall apart. It is worth spending money for quality.
Today, popular accessory manufacturer, SCOSCHE, announces that its 2015 CES Innovation Award-winning strikeLINE micro USB and Apple Lightning cables are available now. While the company designed the hardcore high-quality cables with outdoor-use in mind, this translates to a durable cable for all situations.
Samsung unveils a trio of gorgeous USB 3.0 flash drives
Cloud storage is certainly the future, but local storage will never disappear completely. For redundancy purposes, it is smart to store your important files both online and on a hard drive or flash drive. This way, your data is protected from a disaster at home, or if the cloud storage company goes out of business.
There are countless USB flash drives on the market for data storage and other uses (like Windows 10 installs), but they are not all created equally. Nowadays, you should only be buying USB 3.0 drives since they are faster. If your data is important, however, reliability should be more important than speed. In other words, you should target respectable brands when buying a flash drive. Today, one of those such brands, Samsung, unveils a trio of sexy flash drives. Which will you buy?
Belkin Travel Rockstar is a battery pack, charger, and surge protector in one
If you do a lot of traveling -- whether for business or pleasure -- it can be a pain in the butt to remember to pack everything. This is especially true for technology, as forgetting a charger or cable can be disastrous.
Today, Belkin announces a product that aims to make life easier for travelers. The Travel Rockstar is a Swiss Army Knife-like accessory that combines a battery pack, charger, and surge protector into one neat package. Not to mention, it is just gosh darn cute too.
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