Latest Technology News

Windows 10 will soon be unleashed upon consumers around the globe. So far, based on the previews, it is a damn good operating system. Fundamentally, the user interface is beautiful and should make more sense to users compared to Windows 8. While some bugs still persist, Microsoft should be able to firm everything up by the summer.

Unfortunately, there is still one glaring issue that remains -- the Windows Store is full of garbage. It is so overrun with fake apps and knockoffs, that it can be hard to find the legitimate offerings. While Microsoft has promised to clean it up in the past, the desired results never came to fruition. Today, however, the company is promising to take out the trash once again. Will this time be different?

Cloud data represents a virtual goldmine of potential evidence for forensic investigators. Together with mobile device data, cloud data sources often present critical connections investigators need to solve crimes.

However, there are a number of challenges that investigators face when it comes to data retrieval from the cloud.

Periscope from Twitter seems to get mixed reviews from users and the tech community. However, it isn't going away, at least as far as we know. The video sharing app received a lot of attention, which really is what Twitter wants from any improvement or new apps.

Periscope isn't new, but the app for Android is. It boasts the ability to replay your live broadcast to your followers, it can be private if you only want certain followers to see it, you can also share these broadcasts via Twitter, manage notifications and Hearts, which tracks how many viewers like your broadcast.

Consuming media -- music and movies -- is one of my favorite hobbies. While this used to happen with VHS, DVD and CD, I have transitioned entirely to using streaming and downloaded files. The majority of my consumption happens on Windows, where I use a USB DAC to get the best audio performance.

Today, Dolby announces that Microsoft has selected its technologies to be featured in Windows 10. This means consumers should benefit from an improved audio experience.

New figures released by the ITU (the UN agency for information and communication technologies) have shown that there will be 3.2 billion people online worldwide by the end of 2015.

The majority of those internet users -- 2 billion of them -- live in developing countries, according to the ITU’s analysts.

Piriform has unveiled its routine monthly update to CCleaner with the release of CCleaner 5.06 for Windows PCs. The new release is also available as a portable build.

There’s only one new feature of note in this latest release, and it’s currently restricted to Windows 10 users. Nevertheless, a number of other improvements make it an essential update for existing users.

AdBlock Plus has already been in court once this year proving itself to be legal. A German court heard a case brought by a group of TV companies who felt they were getting a poor deal when their ads were blocked.

The internet has something of a love/hate relationship with ad blockers. While surfers love the fact that they clean up the browsing experience, content creators have a source of income crimped. To try to keep everyone happy, AdBlock Plus came up with the idea of Acceptable Ads -- a sort of halfway house between blocking and permitting ads -- and this was something that featured in this most recent court case.

Creating Windows icons can be a challenge. Regular image editors aren’t optimized for the process -- that’s if they have ICO support at all -- while specialist icon designers are often bulky and complex.

Seanau Icon Toolkit is a free icon editor which applies a few tricks to make the process much more straightforward.

Security company Secunia has released its latest quarterly Vulnerability Update covering the period from February to April 2015.

It looks at the top 20 products with the most vulnerabilities each month and finds that there have been a total of 1,691 new vulnerabilities appearing in the top 20 over the three month period.

Home security is getting ever smarter, and Piper.nv (the more expensive night vision version of Piper) is an excellent example of this. It’s a smart camera that you access and control via your smartphone (iOS or Android). It displays 180-degree 1080p HD live video, and automatically switches to night vision when the room gets dark.

There’s much more to Piper than just a camera though. It comes packed with features to ensure your home stays safe when you’re asleep or away, and it’s very easy to set up and use.

Web developers are under pressure to deliver sites and applications faster and at the same time offer greater flexibility and a more personalized end-user experience.

Cloud application delivery provider Instart Logic is using the O'Reilly Velocity Conference to launch its latest Software-Defined Application Delivery (SDAD) platform.

Google revealed lower revenue from its Nexus devices last year, putting some pressure on the low-cost, high performance program’s future. Fortunately, it sounds like Google is planning to give the Nexus smartphone another try in 2015, according to Android Police.

Instead of having a single mobile, Google is planning two Nexus devices this year. One will feature a 5.2-inch display, the other a 5.7-inch display. LG will work on the smaller device, while Huawei will take its first role in the Nexus program with the 5.7-inch model.

Online piracy is usually associated with music, movies, and software. But the ever-growing popularity of ereaders such as the Amazon Kindle has also led to a burgeoning ebook piracy scene. The UK has been trying to clamp down on piracy recently, and the latest target is a raft of sites offering illegal downloads of ebooks.

We've already seen the government would like to restrict access to some online content such as porn, and torrent sites have been blocked at ISP level. Now a High Court ruling means that a number of big ISPs are to be forced to block access to major ebook sites.

Though Linux is often seen as being immune to malware it's still important to have protection, partly because Linux malware does exist, even if it’s rare, and partly to prevent the passing on of viruses to more vulnerable operating systems like Windows and Android.

Independent testing organization AV-Comparatives has been looking at the leading Linux anti-malware offerings to gauge their ease of installation, features and more.

It does not take sophisticated software or advanced knowledge of iOS to cause an iPhone and its Messages app to crash, as a simple text message can do the job just fine. As an iPhone 6 Plus user, this is the first time that I am feeling vulnerable for using an Apple smartphone.

And I am not alone, as an increasing number of iPhone users are taking to Twitter to complain about this bug, which can be triggered with anyone who is also using an iPhone. The text that has to be sent contains a specific sequence, which triggers the crash.