Huawei P8 vs Samsung Galaxy S6: Which should you choose?
Huawei has officially announced the P8, the flagship for 2015. It is the Chinese company’s attempt to compete with Apple’s iPhone 6 and Samsung’s Galaxy S6, two of the biggest devices this year.
Even though Huawei won out against Samsung last year in China and some other markets, the Galaxy S6 is a formidable smartphone and shows the South Korean giant is back in business -- but which flagship is better?
Microsoft Studios and 343 Industries release Halo: Spartan Strike for Windows and iOS
When I was a young man, I loved video games more than anything. Not only did I play the games, but I bought magazines about them and had fun discussing them with friends. Back then -- in the 80s' and 90's -- things were much simpler. You put in your cartridge, started the system and were playing in seconds. Nowadays, however, games take forever to load, are super complicated and offer in-game purchases. It can feel like a huge money-grab. Hell, sometimes you spend more time installing updates than playing the actual games!
When Microsoft Studios and 343 Industries released Halo: Spartan Assault last year, I was in heaven. The game was a throw-back to the glory days of gaming -- pick up and play. You shot stuff and tried not to die; a wonderful concept! Today, the follow-up to that game, Halo: Spartan Strike, sees release. You can download the game now for Windows, Windows Phone, iPad and iPhone. The best part? A paltry $5.99 price tag (and no in-game purchases)!
Instagram is OK with a little nudity, preferably at a distance
Photo-sharing site Instagram has updated its community guidelines to make it clear what sort of images are acceptable. If you were hoping to use your account to supply your followers with a stream of pornography pics, you're out of luck, sadly. Nudity is -- for the most part -- out (we don’t allow nudity on Instagram), including "close-ups of fully nude buttocks"; distant shot of butts are, seemingly OK, as are close-ups of partially clothed cheeks.
Whether we're talking about Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or any of the other countless social networks out there, users frequently fall foul of acceptable content guidelines. Images of nudity and violence are frequently complained about and Instagram's latest guidelines now make it abundantly clear what’s OK and what's not.
Microsoft makes mobile image searching a (nearly) typing-free experience
Microsoft thinks that typing on a mobile device is difficult. At the same time it understands that "you love to discover images" on the very same devices. To help make your mobile searches a little easier to conduct, the company is introducing a number of tweaks and changes to the iOS and Android Bing app.
Of course it is not possible to entirely eliminate the need to input words in order to conduct a search, but Microsoft has taken steps to reduce it to an absolute minimum. How has this been done? Enter simple search terms and you're provided with a couple of new ways to drill down to exactly what it is you're looking for with just a few taps.
Bing lobotomizes Yahoo Search, while Google stands by laughing
Yahoo's search deal with Microsoft just gets worse by the day. Six years ago, when announced, I called the agreement "Christmas in July" for Google. My prediction then: The combined entity would cannibalize from Y while taking little from G. Bing would be the big beneficiary, and its painful gains have been punishing.
March 2015 U.S. search share figures are out from comScore, raising a milestone that is no cause for celebration. Bing reached 20.1 percent, or about where Yahoo was in the months before announcing its deal with Microsoft, which essentially came to power Y searches. Yahoo is 12.7 percent. Combined they're at 32.8 percent, which is up from 28.6 percent five years earlier. The dent to Google is minimal, with share falling to 64.4 percent last month from 65.1 percent in March 2010. Aggregated gains came from other providers, such as AOL. not from the market leader. In fact, if not for Mozilla swapping G for Y as Firefox's default search engine, there would be no meaningful gains from Google whatsoever.
Tweet the Star Wars emojis, Luke
Yeah, it doesn’t have quite the same ring as "Use the Force", but it gets the point of the story across which is that, starting today, Twitter is rolling out new Star Wars inspired emojis.
Naturally this is in anticipation of the theatrical release of the new Star Wars movie, 'The Force Awakens' (which hopefully won’t be anywhere near as dreadful as the Star Wars prequels). Watch the new teaser trailer for that below.
ASUS Republic of Gamers GR6 desktop offers big gaming performance in a small package
Nowadays, computers seems to be trending towards more diminutive packages. It's not hard to see why -- people value having as much workspace as possible; an enormous tower taking up a desk can be an inconvenience. Just look at Apple's new MacBook; people are willing to trade performance for size while also paying a premium.
Unfortunately, this just won't do for gamers. This particular segment of consumers does not like compromise when it comes to performance. With that said, plenty of gamers also value style and size. Luckily, we are beginning to see more and more svelte gaming machines. Today, ASUS Republic of Gamers announces the GR6 desktop. If you are like me, the design alone will have you salivating. Beauty is more than skin deep here, however, as the specs are impressive too.
The Apple Watch launch is a brand-damaging botch job
It really is amateur hour at Apple. The tech giant’s first major product line launch in years has gone badly wrong, with the original in-store sales date scrapped, and no word of when the Apple Watch will actually go on sale for people to, you know, buy.
Sales predictions, and online pre-order numbers look great, but that’s about the only thing that’s good about the launch of the first new product line to come from Apple under Tim Cook’s stewardship. Frankly, everything else associated with the launch has been a balls up from start to finish.
Keep an eye on your network with EasyNetMonitor
We’ve always liked tiny single-executable utilities, the type you’ll find at NirSoft and Sysinternals. The developers don’t waste time with gimmicks, massive icons or interface themes: they just concentrate on the core functions you need to get the job done.
So it is with EasyNetMonitor, a free tool for monitoring the availability of network and web hosts. While not up to NirSoft standards, it crams a lot of functionality into its very compact file.
WildPackets becomes Savvius and switches focus to security
Internet performance specialist WildPackets is changing its name to Savvius and at the same time is also launching its first security appliance.
"This name change comes at a defining moment in our history," says Tim McCreery, CEO of Savvius. "We are deepening our commitment to network performance management solutions and expanding our focus to include support for security forensics. Our team is united in providing great solutions and world-class support to our customers and partners".
Cyanogen will bundle Microsoft apps with its Android ROM
Future Android-based builds and ROMs from Cyanogen Inc will ship with bundled Microsoft apps, as the startup has signed a deal with the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. The partnership will result in Microsoft apps and services such as Bing, Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, as well as productivity suite Office among others being prominently showcased on Cyanogen’s software.
The collaboration between the two companies doesn’t come as a surprise as many similar rumors started to crop up when a news outlet reported that Microsoft was making an investment in Cyanogen Inc. The partnership is a win-win situation for both of the companies.
IBM opens up threat intelligence data to help combat cyber attacks
With cyber attacks often being driven by organized crime rings and the tools and expertise behind them widely shared, threat intelligence is more important than ever to fend them off.
Announcing today that it's opening up more than two decades' worth of cyber threat intelligence IBM is seeking to unite, mobilize and rally the private sector to defend itself against increasingly sophisticated and organized cyber threats.
Where the money is… or was
Yesterday was Tax Day in the United States, when we file our federal income tax returns. This has been an odd tax season in America for reasons that aren’t at all clear, but I am developing a theory that cybersecurity failures may shortly bring certain aspects of the U.S. economy to its knees.
I have been writing about data security and hacking and malware and identity theft since the late 1990s. It is a raft of problems that taken together amount to tens of billions of dollars each year in lost funds, defensive IT spending, and law enforcement expenditures. Now with a 2014 U.S. Gross Domestic Product of $17.42 trillion, a few tens of billions are an annoyance at most. Say the total hit is $50 billion per year, well that’s just under three tenths of one percent. If the hit is $100 billion that’s still under one percent. These kinds of numbers are why we tolerate such crimes.
TripAdvisor 10 for iOS and Android adds Travel Guides, iPad-only optimizations
TripAdvisor has unveiled TripAdvisor for iOS 10.0 alongside TripAdvisor for Android 10.0. The app’s main highlight is the introduction of Travel Guides for selected locations.
The new release also allows users to submit up to 10 photos with each review, plus implements a number of optimizations for iPad users.
Apple Watch is coming… but when? [Update: not any time soon]
Apple’s first wearable went up for pre-order last week, with early estimates suggesting it managed to sell close to a million devices in the US in one day alone. Reuters estimates 6 percent of US adults intend to buy the device. Oddly though, Apple has so far not released any official pre-order figures, which is strange if the device is the success that it appears to be. Why isn’t Apple shouting about it from the rooftops? What is it waiting for?
Another more pertinent question is this: when will Apple start selling the device -- for real -- and in-store? 24th April you say? Well that’s what Apple originally said, but that no longer appears to be the case.
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