Latest Technology News

Dating app Tinder teams up with the NHS to promote organ donation

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Tinder has long-concerned itself with affairs of the heart, but through the final couple of weeks of 2015 the dating app is switching its attention to other organs. Teaming up with NHS Blood and Transplant, Tinder is looking to raise awareness of organ donation.

The campaign aims to highlight to 18-35 year olds the importance of organ donation, and the challenging wait for a matching organ. A number of celebrities are getting involved, changing their profile pictures to a 'The Wait' logo. When users swipe right they will be invited to sign up on the NHS Organ Donor Register.

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2016 set to be the year of malware targeting Macs and iOS

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Security has long been an issue for Windows users. The sheer number of devices running Microsoft's operating system makes it a prime target for malware and virus attacks. More recently, Apple's computers have increased in popularity and security firm FireEye says that the company will find itself in the crosshairs in 2016.

It's not just Macs and MacBooks that are predicted to become more frequent targets, iOS is also expected to come under attack. FireEye warns that weaknesses have been found in Apple's walled garden, and this could spell danger for users. Symantec is issuing similar warnings, citing Apple's ever-growing user base as the reason.

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Alexa app gets new alarm tones and ratings for Skills

Amazon Echo

Amazon Echo continues to learn new tricks, with music, home automation and much more. Some of the most popular things are called "skills", which are written by third-party programmers. There's also alarms and timers, which can wake you up or tell you when your food is done cooking.

Skills are important, as they allow Alexa to do more all the time. You can find them by opening the app and clicking the menu and then tapping on Skills. To review you will simply need to scroll down after clicking a particular one. From there you can read existing reviews and write your own.

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Apple spams users to promote iPhone 6s

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Microsoft managed to irritate a lot of people with its heavy-handed pushing of Windows 10, and now Apple has taken a leaf out of the company's book. December may be the time when many people think about getting a new phone -- and Apple is likely to fare very well out of upgrades -- but some iPhone owners have been upset by the appearance of spam in the App Store.

We're not talking about a mass mail-out inviting people to upgrade to the latest iPhone, but ugly, unsolicited popup ads used to push Apple's mobile. Describing the iPhone 6s as 'ridiculously powerful' the ads have been seen by those running iOS 9.1 and 9.2. It's something that could be dismissed, but spamming is unchartered waters for Apple.

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Microsoft is in an apologetic mood right now -- what next? 'Sorry for Windows 10'?

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Sorry may be the hardest word, but it seems to be tripping off Microsoft's tongue quite freely at the moment. Maybe it's the holiday season making the company look at itself, but we've had two apologies in recent days -- first, a semi-apology for stealing OneDrive storage from people, and now it's sorry about the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4.

Recognizing that many people's experiences with the latest addition to the Surface range has been "less-than-perfect", Microsoft's Josh_F has issued an apology on behalf of the company. Thanksgiving may be little more than a memory now, but Microsoft is thankful for the "open and candid feedback" (or bitching and complaining) about the latest Surface devices. With Microsoft in an apologetic mood, what else could it say sorry for?

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Sarah Koenig's podcast comes to Sonos, this time featuring the story of Bowe Bergdahl

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Sonos, the whole home audio system, is one the darlings of today's tech world, though it doesn't come at a cheap price. However, the device can pump out high-quality home audio throughout your dwelling  and its offerings for content keep getting better.

Season two of Serial has just debuted and this season follows the story of Bowe Bergdahl, who people have mixed opinions of. If you aren't familiar with the story, Bergdahl was stationed in Afghanistan and left his post for, what he claims, was seeking help from superiors due to a lack of leadership in his platoon. There are many caveats and nuances to this tale, and listeners will form their own opinions about the events of that day.

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Ford plans to make 40 percent of its cars electric by 2020

All-New Ford GT

The green revolution has hit the auto industry and it has become time to adapt or move on. The company started by Henry Ford has always been near the front in innovation, especially under Alan Mulally. We've seen Ford Sync evolve into the platform it now is and the introduction of electric vehicles.

Now the company is laying out its plans for the next few years and a lot of that involves energy savings. The environment is in trouble and fossil fuels are part to blame.

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Microsoft OneDrive is making it rain gigabytes -- here's how to score free cloud storage

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Microsoft is doing some great things lately. Between Windows 10, Xbox One and its embrace of open source, you would think the company would be put on a pedestal by its users. Unfortunately, the company acted more like Scrooge than Santa Claus when it announced it was taking away cloud storage capacity from all of its users citing abuse by a few. Not cool.

Today, however, Microsoft is righting this wrong -- at least partially. While unlimited storage is still dead and buried, it is now possible to prevent the decrease from 15GB to 5GB. Shockingly, you can even keep your 15GB camera roll bonus too. How do you achieve this awesomeness? Just use the special link below.

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The struggle to keep up with private cloud workload demands

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Organizations are struggling with the ability to deliver infrastructure to end users to enable the demands of a DevOps environment.

Those are the results of a new global survey conducted by Qualisystems, provider of private/hybrid cloud orchestration software for DevOps and cloud sandboxing.

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Data security is key for customer retention

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Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers worldwide say they are unlikely to shop or do business again with a company that had experienced a breach where financial information was stolen, and almost half (49 percent) had the same opinion when it came to data breaches where personal information was stolen.

This is according to a recent global survey by Gemalto, titled Broken Trust: 'Tis the Season to Be Wary, which surveyed 5,750 consumers in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and United States.

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Crystal Security is a compact cloud-based malware detector

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Install any anti-malware with real-time protection and you’re generally weighing down your system with services, drivers, DLLs, background processes and more.

Crystal Security does things differently, its tiny download unpacking to a single 830KB executable which runs happily on Windows XP and later.

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How fast is Google's quantum computer compared to a PC?

A quantum leap into the future of computing

Even Google’s artificial intelligence research labs can sometimes find that they just don’t have enough computing power available to them. This is despite Google owning powerful computers that just about any country in the world.

As a result of finding some problems in the AI field too difficult to solve using conventional computers, Google has turned its interest to quantum computers. These systems can solve problems that traditional PC computers just cannot handle. This is because quantum systems tap into the mystic world of quantum mechanics.

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Best Windows apps this week

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One-hundred and fifty-eight 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.

A solid selection of apps and games has been released this week for Windows.

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Yahoo Mail app adds support for Gmail, Google Apps accounts

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If an email app doesn't support multiple providers, chances are lots of potential users will not bother with it. Or they will seek alternative offerings that do. So, unsurprisingly, major players like Microsoft and Google now welcome those who have embraced rival services to Outlook and Gmail, respectively, even though they would much rather prefer they switch to their own products.

Yahoo has followed suit, adding AOL Mail, Hotmail and Outlook.com to the list of email providers supported in its Yahoo Mail app for Android and iOS. But, as you can probably tell, there was one major service missing from the list -- Gmail. Now, there is an update that rectifies this.

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Xbox Live certificate keys exposed according to Microsoft

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A lot of Xbox customers shill out the extra money for a Live account to improve the gaming experience. With the vast amount of Xbox consoles out there, that is quite a few customers. Now Microsoft is acknowledging that the keys for some of those faithful users have been exposed.

Before you panic, this doesn't necessarily mean you've been hacked, but the possibility is there. In a new security bulletin the company claims that the SSL/TLS digital certificate keys for xboxlive.com were exposed and that this could be used by hackers for man-in-the-middle attacks.

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