Latest Technology News

There are only a few days until Apple Music launches, but already there is quite a backlash against the music streaming service. It's not just smaller, independent labels that are complaining about Apple's refusal to pay artists any royalties during the initial three month free trial period. Taylor Swift has added her voice to the growing number of complainants, writing an open letter to Apple in which she says she will withhold her new album 1989 from the service.

In the letter, entitled "To Apple, Love Taylor", the singer says that the company's decision not to make royalty payments is "shocking, disappointing, and completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company". Swift is an artist who could afford to shoulder the cost of three months of not being paid by Apple, but she has chosen to make a stand and stick up for those who are less fortunate.

This week, I had opportunity to use Apple Watch, making it third of the modern smart variety that I have experienced (the others being LG Urbane and Moto 360). The differences between the platforms are quite startling and worth highlighting. They begin with diverging design ethics derived from the fruit-logo company's app-centric heritage and Google's place in the cloud.

For people who use either Android handset or iPhone, existing device really determines what watch platform you choose, if any—that is for now. Down the path you go. But where it leads is somewhere else, not the same destination. One platform is more responsive to you in varying contextual situations. The other requires more direct interaction, but gives other benefits.

A couple of weeks ago Reddit announced that it was closing down a number of subreddits with harassing subject matter. This came a few month months after a decision to ban content that included images or videos of non-consensual sex. In protest, groups of users switched allegiances and moved to the Reddit clone site Voat.co -- which prides itself on not censoring any content.

Voat.co has been around for a little while, but the site saw its membership swell as former Reddit users jumped ship. Over the last couple of weeks, the "censorship-free community platform" has battled DDoS attacks and was dealt another blow yesterday when its German hosting provider cancelled its contract. The reason given was that the server was being used to host content that is "politically incorrect". But this does not mean that the site is dead.

Throughout history, upgrading Windows versions has been a paid affair. It has been a particularly pricey prospect too; both full and upgrade licences can be the most expensive software a home user buys. This is why a Windows license has been highly valued by its users.

Luckily, because of the negative sentiment towards Windows 8.x, an upgrade to Windows 10 will be free (for the first year) as a sort of mea culpa. Not only will an upgrade be free for Windows 8.x users, but Windows 7 too. But what if you are on XP or Vista? Hell, what if you are using a non-Microsoft OS such as Ubuntu Linux, BSD or OS X? No matter what operating system you are running now, you can score a free Windows 10 license if you do this simple trick.

Bethesda Softworks' first mobile game, Fallout Shelter, was announced at E3 2015 alongside the full gameplay trailer and release date for Fallout 4. When speaking about the game, Bethesda’s game director Todd Howard said it wasn’t meant to be a microtransaction mess, but it looks like people are spending a lot of money on it anyway.

The free mobile game involves building a vault and managing the people inside the vault, assigning them tasks. Fallout Shelter generates revenue through its Lunchbox microtransactions, gifting players four cards with at least one rare.

Google is to start honouring requests to remove links to revenge porn from its search results. In a move that has echoes of the Right to Be Forgotten in Europe, today's announcement indicates that the search giant is now willing to start censoring search results if people request that explicit personal images of them be removed.

This is not supposed to be carte blanche for people to request the removal of any image they are unhappy with -- it is a move designed to target images that might be posted to sexploitation websites with a view to bribing their subjects.

Google's implementation of the PageRank algorithm was a transformational moment for the desktop web. In the pre-PageRank era, scouring search directories for relevant websites and manually typing long URLs into a browser's address bar was common. Google's use of links as a "voting" system for discovering websites changed online discovery forever. The app interaction and discovery model prevalent today bears many similarities with the pre-PageRank era of the web, with apps listed under numerous app store categories. Google's Now on Tap may usher in the very "PageRank for Apps" era we have been waiting for.

Before diving into the importance of Now on Tap, let's take a look at how Google describes the service:

The casual copying of CDs has been going on for years, but it is only relatively recently that it was made legal in the UK. It was only in the latter half of 2014 that the UK government passed legislation that permitted the copying and ripping of CDs for personal use. Today the High Court in London said that the government's earlier suggestion that ripping would not harm the music industry is incorrect.

When the legislation was passed last year, representatives of songwriters and musicians appealed. They were not unhappy with the legalization of CD ripping, but at the suggestion that financial harm would not be caused and compensation was not needed. Mr Justice Green said that "the absence of a compensation mechanism is unlawful".

2015 is proving to be a very strong year for gaming, with E3 underlining that fact. Both Sony and Microsoft had big announcements regarding their consoles, while AMD announced amazing graphics cards for PC gamers. What a great time to be a games player.

If you want to jump into the current generation of console gaming, you really have one decision to make -- PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. While it has arguably been a tossup -- both have much to offer -- Microsoft's console has now pulled ahead in one major way -- value. Not only can the console be bought with the Halo Master Chief Collection, but you now get another game included too, for free. Best of all? You get to choose the free game. Whoa.

The world is increasingly a melting pot, with all countries containing citizens not native to them. This results in a plethora of languages being spoken and heard. To deal with this, countries carry an increasing number of foreign language channels to accommodate all people.

Now Sling TV, a new kind of "cable" service, is getting into the game, introducing a package of Arabic language channels for those people who may be feeling a bit out of place away from their home lands.

Corel’s WinZip subsidiary has unveiled a major new release for the Mac edition of its renowned zip archiving tool. WinZip Mac Edition 4.0 focuses on improving its sharing tools, but also implements support for Retina displays.

The tool first updates its direct integration cloud tool to add support for Apple’s iCloud Drive as well as its own proprietary ZipShare service. This increases the number of supported tools to four, the other two being Google Drive and Dropbox.

For anyone who has been using the Windows 10 preview builds, there has been plenty of time to explore the operating system. It's now only a matter of weeks until the final version is released, and whether the gold build will be your first foray into Windows 10, or you're a seasoned tester, there are still plenty of new tricks to learn.

Whatever you use your computer for, you want to be able to get things done as a quickly as possible. In previous versions of Windows, the Control Panel was used to access all manner of options -- now things are split between the Control Panel and Settings. If there are some settings you change frequently, you can create your own shortcuts to jump to them in a couple of clicks; you can also assign keyboard shortcuts to make things even easier. Here's what you need to know...

We review -- and get asked to review -- a lot of Bluetooth speakers. While the ones we look at might be from different makers, and of varying quality, they all share one thing in common. They’re small, and portable. Not so the Sond Audio Active Bookshelf Speakers.

The twin speakers are large, and designed to sit in the one place. This could be a bookshelf, provided you have one that’s deep enough to accommodate them, or the floor. If you enjoy listening to music, and the sound quality delivered by portable speakers doesn’t cut it for you, then the 180w these speakers offer could well be what you’re looking for.

One-hundred and thirty-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows in the past seven days.

Microsoft continues to work on Windows 10 despite the operating system's pressing July release date. The latest Insider Builds improve functionality for developers by making it easier to sideload apps.

Moving from one broadband provider to another has long been something of a chore. Starting this weekend (June 20), switchers in the UK will no longer have to go through the hassle of requesting a Migration Authorisation Code (MAC) from their current supplier, as their new ISP will be able to handle the entire process from start to finish.

This should not only help to speed up the process of switching provider, but also eliminate the pestering from ISPs to stay with them. The new rules do not cover all ISPs, just those that use the Openreach network -- this includes major players such as BT, Plusnet, TalkTalk, and Sky -- but it should still make life easier for a lot of people.