Every technology company is keen to develop as diverse a workforce as possible -- even if only for appearances. Microsoft, like Google and Apple, has taken to publishing its diversity figures, and the latest report is rather mixed.

While Microsoft says that racial diversity has increased slightly, the same cannot be said of the gender balance. The overall percentage of woman at the company has dropped by 2.2 percentage points, and Microsoft has an excuse straight from the 'my dog ate my homework' school of thought: restructuring its phone hardware business meant dumping a lot of women.

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EE is looking to start a debate on a particularly sensitive topic -- online ads on mobile platforms. According to a news report by Tech Radar, the British mobile network operator and internet service provider is weighing its options on the idea of blocking advertising on a network level.

Chief executive Olaf Swantee said it’s an important debate about customer control.

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With its new Redmi Note 3 and Mi Pad 2, Xiaomi wants to convince consumers that they do not have to spend a lot of money on a smartphone or tablet to get premium features. The Chinese maker is now offering a fingerprint sensor and/or metal build on devices priced well below the $200 mark.

The new Redmi Note 3 phablet has a metal build and a fingerprint sensor, but a price tag of only $141. Those are typically found on high-end devices costing upwards of $300 or $400. Meanwhile, its second-generation slate, Mi Pad 2, has similar specs to Apple's Retina display-equipped iPad minis, which kick off at $269, but at a price starting at just $157.

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Using IP communications can save businesses a lot of money, but new research suggests that smaller businesses may be missing out.

Edgewater Networks and Metaswitch Networks have surveyed 1,250 SMB decision-makers at companies with fewer than 500 employees. The results show that IP communication adoption rates in the SMB sector are quite low, averaging just 25 percent across companies with fewer than 100 employees, and most service providers aren't doing much to change the story.

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Having the right enterprise search tool is essential if you want to get the most use of your content and databases. However, many companies have no idea what they should be looking for with these tools.

In this article, we'll be covering some of the most important capabilities that the software you choose should contain. We'll also be covering what each of these capabilities does and why it is important.

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Changing your baseline volume level in Windows is easy -- click the speaker icon, spin the mouse wheel -- but if you want to adjust the volume of some other device then it quickly gets more complicated.

You might click the "Mixer" link, for instance. Or maybe the speaker icon. And then the levels tab. And then you adjust the various levels for that device, but what if you want to tweak something else…?

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Security problems are certainly nothing new, vulnerabilities seem to crop up just about everywhere. We've seen countless ones from software makers and large store chains, however shipping new computers with one built-in is less common. But, that's exactly what Dell has been doing, unintentionally of course.

A problem has been discovered in the eDellroot certificate, described as a vulnerability that allows hackers to install malware. To be fair, the problem is more than just Dell, it also lies with the makers of web browsers.

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The UK's former defense secretary Des Browne has issued a stark warning that the country's nuclear weapons could be vulnerable to cyberattacks. The Trident program is already a highly-divisive subject, and Browne is seeking assurance from the Prime Minister that it is secured against attacks from hostile states such as China and Russia.

He has called upon the government to perform an end-to-end assessment of the system. The US had previously warned that it could not be confident that its own defenses and those of its allies would be capable of withstanding a cyberattack from a "sophisticated and well-resourced opponent".

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It's likely that this year's holiday season will mark the first time that online purchases made on mobile devices will overtake those on desktop systems.

This makes mobile payment systems a prime source of risk and a new study by mobile app security company Bluebox Security highlights poor security across consumer mobile payment apps, including some of the most popular solutions for both Android and iOS.

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Shopping for presents for the holidays, or for bargains for yourself during Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be a nightmare. A lot of people opt to shop purely online in order to avoid the hassle of fighting their way through crowded stores.

You can get the items you buy on the web delivered to various locations, including home and work, but if that’s still not convenient enough for you, how about having the deliveries made directly to your car instead?

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In the panic that followed the attacks on Paris by ISIS there have been calls for various measures to be put in place to stop similar atrocities happening in the future. As well as calls for an increase in online surveillance, politicians have also suggested that encryption should be weakened or banned entirely.

Secure email service ProtonMail found itself the subject of unwanted attention when it transpired that ISIS recommended using it to evade detection. The company has remained silent about the post-Paris backlash; until now.

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Recently, Apple announced a new subscription service whereby customers can pay a monthly recurring fee to get an annual phone (hardware) upgrade.

Similarly, all Autodesk software will only be available on a subscription basis beginning August 1, 2016. These announcements yet again signal that the dominance of perpetual licensing in the market place is on decline.

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If you’re running a great security suite, with an accurate "second opinion" scanner on hand, then installing a program called Ultra Virus Killer might not seem a high priority.

But wait: despite its name, UVK isn’t just about malware hunting. It has a pile of other PC maintenance and management tools to explore.

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About a week ago, the Netrunner team released an update to its rolling release operating system. Based on Arch/Manjaro, I advised Linux beginners to steer clear, and instead opt for the Kubuntu-based variant. There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, the Ubuntu community is arguably friendlier and better for newbies -- there are a ton of instructions and .deb files available too. More importantly, however, the rolling release could be less stable overall.

Well, the newest version of the Kubuntu-based variant, code-named 'Horizon', is now available. Whether you are a Linux expert, or just someone getting started, the beautiful KDE-focused operating system is a smart choice that I highly recommend.

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Time is the latest version of the smartwatch from Pebble and it even comes in a special round version. The wrist device works with both Android and iPhone, which covers most customers -- sorry Windows Phone users. Now Pebble is bringing more functionality to its Apple friends.

The company boasts that this is the first non-Apple smartwatch to deliver voice and text integration. There are a number of stipulations that come along with this, though.

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