Latest Technology News

Communication is huge money. We take it for granted, as there is quite the glut of available chat solutions online. By controlling communication, you can track and control a user's behavior. A good example is Hangouts. Google makes an app that can run on Windows, but it requires the Chrome browser. As a result, Hangouts users may choose Chrome over other browsers. A consumer in the market for a smartphone may skip Windows Phone, as Google doesn't support the platform. Don't get me started on Apple; Facetime keeps users locked into Mac and iOS too.

Today, Microsoft announces in an email to users that both Google and Facebook Chat support are being removed from Outlook.com. Google Chat is not a surprise, as the search-giant is sun-setting that service in favor of the more restrictive Hangouts; Microsoft does not have a choice. Facebook Chat, however, is a shock.

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Chrome Experiments is now entering its sixth year and is home to hundreds of coding experiments that help to make the Internet a more fun and enjoyable place. Ten hundred in fact. To celebrate reaching the milestone of 1,000 experiments, Google is not only launching a new experiment that shows off all of the rest, but also rolling out a redesign.

The redesign is about more than just a new look, it's also about emphasizing the fact that Google wants to be part of every platform available. It's a Polymer-based redesign that works equally well on large-screen-desktops and small-displayed mobiles and is Google's new way to showcase the best in HTML5 and JavaScript.

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Last year, I disputed ridiculous assertions, based on widely misquoted NPD data, that 2014 would be "year of the Chromebook". It wasn't. But that designation does belong to 2015—at least in the United States. Measures: Number of new models; adoption by K-12 schools; and overall sales, which are surprisingly strong. Read carefully the next paragraph.

Through U.S. commercial channels and retail, Chromebooks accounted for 14 percent of laptop sales last year, according to NPD, which released data at my request. That's up from 8 percent in 2013. Commercial channels, largely to educational institutions, accounted for about two-thirds of 2014 Chromebook sold. Year over year, sales soared by 85 percent, and the trajectory continues to climb.

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Today Microsoft launches a new OneDrive API, opening up its cloud storage service to a wider range of developers. The API can be used to integrate OneDrive into apps running on Android, Windows, iOS and the web, and there is a focus on efficiency with minimal calls needed to keep files in sync.

The API has already started to roll out to a number of Microsoft apps, and the company is keen to ensure that all developers have access to the same set of tools. There are a number of new features to be found in the API which can be easily added to existing apps and services.

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Vulnerabilities in software are a fact of life; only a fool would say any code or method is perfect. The moment you fall into that trap of dangerous thinking, you have let your guard down.

So while vulnerabilities will happen, and must be accepted, how the developer responds to the flaw is the true test and measure of its security. In other words, if a vulnerability should always be expected, so too should a prompt patch to fix it. Sadly, McAfee Labs finds in a new study that this is not the case. Many insecure and vulnerable apps are found to not be patched, months after the flaw-discovery. Yes, months.

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It's rare these days to rely on just one service -- you find yourself using Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and more which means information and messages are coming at you from many different angles.

This can lead to information overload as well as security worries. With its new secure platform San Francisco-based Ekko is launching a way to streamline all of your communications and protect your privacy.

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Mozilla has released Firefox 36.0 FINAL for desktop, with Firefox for Android 36.0 due to follow in the coming days.

Version 36 implements one visible new feature: when users pin tiles on the New Tab page, those pins will be synced to other platforms using the Firefox Sync feature. Those using the Android version on tablets will also gain a new, tab-optimized user interface to work with when the app is updated over the coming days.

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Data center teams face one crisis after another, but at least one has remained constant over recent years. The tidal wave of data, especially related to the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data, continues to grow at phenomenal rates, threatening to overwhelm operations for many enterprises. IT teams are struggling to keep their heads above this deluge of digital information, scale storage and processing resources to handle the data, and simultaneously provide the ubiquitous connectivity required for today's Internet of Things.

Fortunately, data center equipment providers have been evolving the data center foundations. IT and facilities teams have the life vests and rafts that they need, if they know how to use them.

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Data privacy is a growing concern and a number of countries including Germany, France and Russia have recently adopted new data protection regulations to protect their citizens' information.

Add in regulations like HIPAA and FINRA in the US and it's clear that businesses need to have an infrastructure to meet the various requirements or face possible legal consequences.

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Bitdefender has announced that its stand-alone Bitdefender Adware Removal Tool has been updated to remove the Superfish root certificate, while also "disinfecting drivers or executables that have been affected by the malware".

It’s not even a week since news broke that the adware had been bundled on Lenovo systems for some time, and already bigger scares are appearing, but if you’ve not yet checked your computer for problems then the new build does at least make it very easy.

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Microsoft has been a tireless proponent of education -- the company has many schools on its operating system and Office suite, sometimes at very big discounts. But the best discount of all is always "free", which is exactly what some students will pay for Office. The software giant has even instituted a way for students to check their eligibility.

This comes on the heels of New York City announcing that its students and teachers will be running Microsoft's Office programs. The city isn't alone either, as many other educational bastions move to the platform.

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The vast majority of consumers who embrace Windows Phone buy low-end smartphones, so it should not come as a surprise to see manufacturers launching even more inexpensive devices running the tiled operating system. After all, as I said a few months back, Windows Phone is synonymous with the low-end.

The latest such offerings come from Kazam, TrekStor and Xolo, vendors which may not have established brands across the globe, but which are better known in their home markets, UK, Germany and India respectively, for their affordable solutions.

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The increase in web application use means that we're loading more code than ever into our browsers. According to httparchive, the amount of JavaScript used by the top 100 websites has almost tripled in the last three years whilst HTML has almost doubled. This has performance implications because larger page-sizes mean end users have to wait significantly longer for web pages to load.

California-based cloud delivery service Instart Logic is hoping to improve things with the launch of SmartSequence, a new technology that employs machine learning to optimize how HTML and JavaScript code is loaded in browsers.

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Google has finally begun to seed out Android Lollipop, the latest update to its mobile operating system, to Android One handsets in India. In a post on Google+, the Android maker notes that all of the three Android One handsets in the country -- Karbonn Sparkle V, Micromax Canvas A1, and Spice Dream UNO -- should be able to snag the update any time now. The update is rolling out in a gradual way so it may take a while before it hits your handset, the company notes.

Announced at the Google I/O event last year, Android One is an initiative by the Mountain View-based company wherein it makes cheap-Android smartphones with reasonably decent hardware specification for consumers living in emerging markets, starting with India. Priced at $100, the handset doesn’t require carrier’s approval and push to receive the new software release, as it directly gleans it from Google.

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The average PC user doesn’t need to pay much attention to device drivers, these days, and that’s probably a good thing. Windows supports most devices natively, locates plenty of drivers on its own, and a driver disc (or a download) should add support for everything else.

If you’re managing a lot of systems, though -- or maybe you’d like to skip the usual driver installers and their unwanted extras -- then you might want to simplify the process with the open-source DriverBackup!.

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