Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and twenty two in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows in the past seven days.
Still no sign of a new Windows 10 Preview build but Microsoft promises that releases will be released faster to Windows Insider in the future.
Cloud Expo 2015: How the '3rd Platform' is set to disrupt industry
The rise of the "3rd platform" is set to cause huge disruption across a wide variety of industry sectors, according to the opening talk at the second day of this year’s Cloud Expo event in London.
Bernard Golden vice president of strategy at ActiveState Software, claimed that the growth of the 3rd platform is another example that the "pace of change is accelerating remorselessly".
How about a Nokia Lumia 635 Windows Phone for just $29.99?
If you want to get your hands on a new Windows Phone 8.1 smartphone without spending too much money or signing up for a two-year contract then Amazon might have just the thing for you.
Amazon is now offering Nokia Lumia 635, which is basically a low-end Windows Phone, as its Gold Box Deal of the Day, for just $29.99, which is $70 less than the usual $99.99 asking price.
Microsoft's personal assistant Cortana headed to iOS and Android
Microsoft regularly pits its personal assistant Cortana against Apple’s Siri in a series of adverts, with predictable results. Cortana is always much smarter, funnier and more helpful. She’s certainly one of the high points of Windows Phone, and is set to make her debut on the desktop when she arrives as part of Windows 10 later this year.
However, it seems Cortana isn’t just going to be confined to working on Windows devices. According to Reuters, Microsoft is also working on bringing the personal assistant to iOS and Android in the form of a standalone app.
Network monitoring: A Day in the Life of an IT Pro
Sometimes I feel a bit sorry for the network administrator.
End users who don’t really know much about technology always lay their problems at their door first -- "I can’t access my emails, is the network down?", "My Word document is typing really slowly, is the network down?" "I’ve forgotten my password, is the network down?"
The keys to a successful BYOD policy
The BYOD trend is something that often creeps up on companies as employees take the initiative in using their own kit. That can leave businesses with a BYOD environment but no proper policy.
There are many potential benefits to BYOD in terms of employee efficiency and morale, but that's of limited use if it puts the safety of commercial data at risk.
Microsoft EMET blocks 'VBScript God Mode'
Microsoft has updated its exploit blocker Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) to version 5.2 with some welcome tweaks and enhancements.
The Attack Surface Reduction mitigation has been extended to stop processes running malicious scripts via IE’s script engine. That’s good news as it’s a particularly powerful hack, and the basic "VBScript God Mode" idea has been around for quite some time.
Google Apps leaks Whois data for over 280,000 protected domains
Private information relating to more than 280,000 domains registered via Google Apps has leaked, leaving the registrants open to risk of identity theft or spear phishing.
The ability to buy domain names from one of Google's partners is a feature offered by Google Apps to allow easier access to and management of services.
Apple's App Store outage cost $25 million in lost revenue
Apple’s App Store went down for over 11 hours on Wednesday, alongside iTunes, iBooks, iCloud and even its Mac App Store.
It is the single largest outage Apple has faced, and happened due to an internal issue with its DNS [domain name system].
'Anonymous' targets Kanye West
Anonymous is a very loose collective of hackers. In the video setting the record straight on #OpISIS, it is described as a family that is as "divided and fractional as any more traditional, not so Anonymous family in any city, town, or isolated rural village in the world".
Almost anyone can claim to be in Anonymous, and launch their own attacks or operations, and proving the point, someone claiming to be from the hacktivist collective has released a video targeting Kanye West and his wife Kim Kardashian.
The 80's called and they have a smartwatch for you
For those who grew up in the 80's there are many things that stand out, and some we wish we could forget. There were Polo shirts worn with the collars up, Members Only jackets and the dreaded parachute pants -- leg warmers as well if you are female. But one thing from that era has endured -- Swatch. The company never went away, it just lost favor among the "in" crowd. But that piece of hardware on your wrist back then meant everything.
Call it retro or nostalgia, but the company is enjoying a bit of a resurgence. So much so that, apparently, the watch maker feels emboldened to jump into the smartwatch market. Swatch has a unique take on things -- a mechanical version of this latest craze.
Microsoft update KB3033929 possibly causing problems for Windows 7 users
Over the years Microsoft has managed to break computers with updates, though not intentionally of course. However, it's generally wise to wait just a bit after Patch Tuesday and keep an eye out for reports of any problems that other customers are experiencing. It's generally safe, but you can never be too cautious.
Now those who have stayed behind, clinging to Windows 7, seem to be on the receiving end of just such an incident. If users of the TechNet forums are to be believed, and there's no reason to suspect otherwise, then KB3033929 could wreak a bit of havoc with Windows 7 systems.
Apple releases a public beta of iOS 8.3 -- here's how to get it
With Microsoft we've become used to the idea of publicly available preview builds of Windows 10 for desktop and phone. Now Apple is following suit and making iOS 8.3 available as a public beta. This is the first time a public beta of iOS has been released, although Apple has tried the same tactic with betas of OS X.
The beta is in the process of rolling out at the moment, so you may not be able to grab yourself the bits just yet, but you can get yourself in line. What is there to look forward to? Not much at the moment, apart from wireless CarPlay and new emoji. Here's how to grab the beta.
WhatsApp Call rolling out to all Android users -- here's how you can get it
A year after announcing its plan to add a voice calling feature to its instant messaging client, WhatsApp began to test the feature in late January. The feature -- as we noted last week -- was rolling out to users on an invite basis. But the company is finally easing up on that as now it is allowing anyone to get the call feature provided they have an Android phone with the v2.11.561 installed on it, and a friend with the feature willing for you to call them. BetaNews is able to report and confirm that the aforementioned trick is working worldwide.
WhatsApp isn’t the first messaging client to get the internet voice calling feature. Rival apps such as Viber, Hangouts (it charges for international calls), Skype, and even Facebook’s Messenger offer a similar feature. But what makes WhatsApp triumph over competing apps is the voluminous amount of users it has attracted since its launch in 2009. WhatsApp -- which Facebook acquired last year for a whopping sum of $19 billion -- has more than 700 million users as of earlier this year, and just this week, the messaging app become the second non-Google app (after Facebook) to be downloaded 1 billion times on the Google Play Store.
Anonymous sets the record straight regarding its battle with ISIS
Hacktivist network Anonymous has been taking down ISIS related sites and Twitter accounts in a bid to prevent the terrorist organization from spreading its message online. Anonymous has declared ISIS a virus, and itself the cure.
However, cyber blog Krypt31a has described Anonymous's recent actions as Whack-a-mole without a plan, spurring a representative of the hacktivist group to issue a video reply setting the record straight.
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