Latest Technology News

In March earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it has partnered with Xiaomi to beta test Windows 10 Mobile ROM on the Chinese company’s flagship Android Mi 4 smartphone. The company has just seeded out the ROM to the phone for select beta testers.

Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive VP of operating systems, announced earlier that "a select group of Xiaomi Mi 4 power users will be invited to help test Windows 10 and contribute to its future release later this year. These power users will have the opportunity to download the Windows 10 Technical Preview - installing it and providing their feedback to Microsoft".

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My third month as a Tidal subscriber started today, but nearly not at all. Last week I prepared to cancel the pricey, streaming service after encountering a disastrous functional flaw listening on either Nexus 6 or 9. Songs skip to the next track part way through playing, which is unacceptable behavior—made more so because of expectations that higher audio fidelity and loftier monthly subscription fee set.

I would have stopped subscribing yesterday, at the billing cycle's end, if not for Tidal offering a free month of service. Whether or not our paying relationship continues depends much on the music streamer resolving an app problem. "There is a bug with Nexus and Sony phones with Android 5 unfortunately", according to a tech support specialist, "We are working on fixing this. Mostly after 26 megabytes have been streamed, it skips. So for now we do not have a solution yet",

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Have you ever dreamed about getting rich from creating and selling apps? Me too. Unfortunately, I have literally zero coding skills. In other words, even if I had a brilliant idea for an app, I could not create it, and that is just sad.

Being illiterate with programming is something that I am both ashamed of and regret. Luckily, I am not dead yet, so this is still a skill I can achieve. Thanks to Google and Udacity, I may even be able to do it for free. Yes, free training courses are now available! Check it out.

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Microsoft wants you to use Windows 10. I mean, really, really, really wants you to use it. To this end it is pulling out all the stops, and removing as many barriers to adoption as possible.

The OS will be free to users of Windows 7 and 8.1 in the first year (check out the requirements here), but the process of upgrading has also been made as easy as possible. You just need to click the icon that pops up in the system tray to reserve your upgrade. But if you’re still unsure how simple upgrading will be, Microsoft has put together a video in which a bunch of 10 year-olds explain the process.

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Microsoft has started advertising Windows 10 to Windows 7 and 8.1 users, and has revealed that the OS will be available free from July 29, but that’s not the only information that has come to light today.

While the process of reserving your free Windows 10 upgrade is as simple as clicking the Windows icon that appears in the system tray, you’ll want to make sure your device is capable of running the new OS before you do anything. Fortunately, Microsoft has revealed the system requirements for Windows 10 today, and also explained which edition of the OS users can expect to receive. There are different versions of Windows 10, and Microsoft will keep upgraders on like-for-like editions. So if, for example, you are running Windows 7 Home Premium, you’ll receive Windows 10 Home.

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At the ongoing hardware Computex 2015 conference in Taiwan, SanDisk, a company well known for designing, manufacturing and selling storage devices, announces the availability of a bunch of new external flash drives. Among many other products, the company launches Extreme 900 Portable SSD which comes with a whopping 2TB storage space (1.92TB formatted size) priced at $999.99.

The Extreme 900 Portable SSD, which also comes in 480GB ($399.99) and 960GB ($599.99) storage options, comes cased in a compact aluminum body. The company notes that all of these SSDs have a maximum performance rating of 850 MBps -- which is about 9 times faster than a traditional portable hard drive. The SSDs also come equipped with a USB 3.1 interface with Type-A and Type-C cables supplied with the unit. SanDisk is providing three-year warranties on the new SSDs.

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Many times we are required to scan a document (an image file, basically) and edit it. This could be relatively easy if it were a small document or it could be tedious and time consuming if the document were long.

Therefore, we need a software of some kind that can convert images into editable text files. This would allow us to avoid the lengthy process of having to type out the entire document and then edit it. In this article, we will discuss how to edit a scanned document. Optical Character Recognition is a technology that allows us to convert image files into Word files. This technology has been around for quite some time now and only gets better day by day. The name itself implies that the technology is used to recognize characters from a document. Let’s explore how this is done.

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If you are a hardcore PC gamer, you probably have a really nice desktop. While a tower is the smartest way to go for gaming, not everybody has the room for one. Hell, many people need a laptop and cannot afford a secondary desktop just for gaming. In recent years, gaming laptops have gained in popularity as a result.

Today, NVIDIA announces that it is bringing a feature to laptops, which was once exclusive to desktops -- G-SYNC. Yes, this technology will now allow notebook users to have smoother gameplay.

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Facebook can send out quite a lot of emails to its users in the course of an average day. Notifications can fly in thick and fast letting you know about friend requests, replies to your posts, messages from contacts, and the like, and it's possible -- nay likely -- that these will contain delicate personal information.

To help calm the fear of those with privacy concerns ("why are they using Facebook?", you might well ask) Facebook today announces the introduction of OpenPGP encryption support. This gives users the opportunity to protect communication from Facebook by encrypting it so it cannot be read by unauthorized parties.

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Developing mobile and web-based continues to present a major challenge for enterprises, especially with regard to the costs associated with infrastructure and DevOps.

A new survey of 200 technology decision makers by mobile backend-as-a-service (MBaaS) company moBack shows that 80 percent of respondents, including both large and small businesses, consider mobile app development very important and essential for their business.

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Staff at tech giant IBM are set to use Apple Mac machines following the company’s one-year partnership with Apple for the creation of business-centric apps for the iOS.

IBM employees will be given the option to choose between a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or traditional PC for their new workstations and will be part of the company’s choose your own device policy, according to the company’s recent memo.

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Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus announces today that it is slashing $50 off the retail price of its flagship One smartphone in seven global flash sales it has planned for the phone this month. The first flash sale begins today, and the rest will run through this week.

Often referred to as the flagship killer smartphone, the 16GB Silk White variant of OnePlus One will now be available for purchase at $249 (previously $299), while the top-of-the-line 64GB Sandstone Black will be available at $299.

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The excellent free Windows network monitor GlassWire is now also available in Basic ($49), Pro ($99) and Elite ($199) versions.

All three builds have extra security features. "Ask to connect" blocks new network connections until they’re approved by you; "Lock down mode" blocks everything until you turn it off; a Wi-Fi monitor lists everything on your network and alerts you when devices join or leave.

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Last August, Russian technology startup Eltechs, announced virtual machine software which could run x86 apps on ARM-based Mini PCs. It required the host device to have an ARMv7 processor, and while the list of such hardware includes Raspberry Pi 2, the emulator wasn’t optimized for it.

Fortunately, that’s all changed as Eltechs has just improved Raspberry Pi 2 support in the latest version of its ExaGear Desktop software, and also made it compatible with older Raspberry Pi models.

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ASUS announced a bunch of new devices today at the Computex 2015 trade show, held in its home market of Taiwan. The most interesting are the Transformer Book T100HA Windows 10 tablet, that could turn out to be a solid alternative to Microsoft's Surface 3, and a $299 laptop, that rivals Chromebooks. Also new, but likely more intriguing, is the second-generation ZenWatch.

ZenWatch 2, as it is called, runs Android Wear, just like its predecessor -- albeit a fresh release -- but improves upon the original formula by launching in two different sizes, three case colors, with 18 different strap materials and color options to choose from, and a more refined designed overall. Considering those key features alone, it is easy to see that ASUS is gunning for Apple Watch.

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