Latest Technology News

Even though nearly 90 percent of companies offer wellness incentives, more than two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese. Studies abound on the adverse health effects of excessive sitting; most recently, researchers from Toronto found that sitting more than eight hours per day can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by ninety-one percent, dying of cardiovascular disease by eighteen percent and dying of cancer by seventeen percent.

The silver lining to those bleak statistics is that many of the negative effects of prolonged sitting can be reduced simply by finding ways to move throughout the workday -- for example, a brisk walk around the block during lunch or a few chair squats at your desk. Given sitting’s bad rap -- not to mention longer workdays -- it’s no surprise that companies are striving for more effective ways to incentivize and reward healthy employees to reduce absenteeism and insurance costs.

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Microsoft's mobile-first, cloud-first strategy continues. In something of a surprise announcement the company reveals that it is launching a new cloud storage partner program meaning that any cloud storage provider will be able to integrate with Office for iOS and Office Online.

The news follows on from Microsoft's partnership with Dropbox in November and while it is just iOS users who will benefit from the new mobile options for now, Office for Android and Office for Windows 10 will also get the same treatment in due course. It's a recognition of the fact that integration with OneDrive is not enough so it shouldn't be long before we see iCloud and Google Drive working with Office.

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Let's face it, we're always at risk, and I speak for human kind, not just the personal risks we take each time we leave our homes. Some of these potential terrors are unavoidable -- we can't control the asteroid we find hurtling towards us or the next super volcano that may erupt as the Siberian Traps once did.

Some risks however, are well within our control, yet we continue down paths that are both exciting and potentially dangerous. In his book Demon Haunted World, the great astronomer, teacher and TV personality Carl Sagan wrote "Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves".

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There's always that tiny glimmer of hope that in some way a new year is going to be somehow different from and better than the one that went before.

Usually it's extinguished quite quickly and it seems that, in software terms at least, 2015 is no exception according to the latest vulnerability report from Secunia released today.

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Analytics can be worthless, counterproductive and even harmful when based on data that isn’t high quality. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. So when Salesforce Analytics Cloud hit the market, vendors rushed to announce plugins that would load high-quality data into the solution.

The painful truth is that without high-quality data, it doesn’t matter how fast or sophisticated the analytics capability is. You simply won’t be able to turn all that data managed by IT into effective business execution.

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Finally acknowledging the growing competition from arch rivals and emerging players in the developing regions, Samsung today slashes the price of several of its handsets in India, one of the largest and fast-growing smartphone markets. The South Korean technology conglomerate revised the retail prices of Samsung Galaxy S4, Galaxy A3, Galaxy A5 in the country. While yet to be officially announced, the company seems to have quietly slashed the price of several more handsets too.

Galaxy S4, the flagship handset from Samsung which was launched in India in 2013 for Rs 41,500 ($667) off-contract, is now available to purchase for Rs 17,999 ($290, roughly 57 percent off), with an additional Rs 1,000 ($16) Gift card to buyers.

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Google today announces the arrival of Android One in the Philippines, bringing the number of countries where the program is offered to six. The first Android One smartphones to launch in the Philippines are called Cherry One and MyPhone Uno, and they'll both come with Android 5.1 Lollipop out-of-the-box.

Google says that both smartphones will be available to local consumers in the coming weeks, featuring hardware specifications that are on par with those of other Android One devices. Let's take a look at what One and Uno have to offer.

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Your antivirus software claims to be working all the time, monitoring every file you access for any potential threats -- but is this really how it is? EICARgen can help you find out.

This tiny freebie has a single task: to generate the EICAR Anti-Virus Test File on demand. EICAR isn’t an actual virus, not even executable code (it’s just a few characters of text), so it can’t harm your system in any way. But it is something which all antivirus programs should detect as a threat, making it very useful for testing.

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Smartglasses are tricky. You have people who don't like to wear glasses. Those who do may not like their design. They can also be tiring to wear for extended periods of time, as Google Glass Explorers have confessed. Not to mention that smartglasses are also very expensive. And, at least for the time being, consumers are not taking the plunge, as they appear to be perfectly happy with using just their smartphones.

The lack of consumer interest, and Google recently killing its beloved Glass project, hasn't stopped Japanese maker Sony from coming out with its own pair of smartglasses. They're called SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1, and they're available for pre-order starting today.

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VAIO might not have the market presence it did ten years ago -- especially with the recent sale by Sony -- but it is still an exciting brand to look out for in the laptop market.

The two new hybrid laptops are the first from Japanese Industrial Partners (JIP), the new owners who acquired the VAIO brand late last year.

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Pebble was not the first smartwatch to market, but it did set the trend for today's fad in wearable technology. Now Google has joined the game and Apple has big plans to enter the arena. But for now, Pebble remains the dominant force and the company wishes to maintain its hold.

What more can Pebble do to retain its position? How about adopting Android Wear? That's exactly what the smartwatch maker is doing, announcing that "Our Android Wear compatibility goes from Beta to public release, giving Pebble the power to reply and act on notifications right from your wrist".

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The Earth is one place, where all human beings are family. True, we may use a different language or live in different countries, but we are all equal. In America, for instance, there is no official language; English is most popular, but it's not written in stone as the one true language. The USA is a melting pot, where all languages and cultures are celebrated.

China in particular, is a big contributor to the world of technology; both for hardware and software. Whether a developer is Chinese and residing in China, or an American that speaks only Chinese, Google has found a great way to show respect and support; the Chinese Google Developers YouTube channel.

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In a new twist to the on-going NSA story, security firm Kaspersky Lab has discovered that a threat actor of previously unknown complexity and sophistication has been embedding surveillance software on hard drives produced by a number of well-known manufacturers. With names such as Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba mentioned, and the reach of the spy program stretching to dozens of countries, it's not clear quite how many people may be affected.

Although Kapersky does not go as far as naming the NSA, or even specifying which country is responsible for the advanced surveillance, it seems that the spying campaign is somehow related to Stuxnet -- the tool used by the NSA to attack Iran -- and the Flame group.

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Over the holiday weekend, I started using the Moto 360, which user experience is way better than anticipated. For all the nutcases calling Apple Watch innovative and revolutionary—without there even being a device for them to test—Android Wear is, ah, timely. Google gives great utility that will be difficult for the fruit-logo company to match. Reasons are simple: Context, search, sync, UI design, and Google Now.

I resisted the smartwatch concept for having been there before. Few of the gadget geeks gushing about wearables are old enough to remember Microsoft SPOT. Mid-last decade, the company partnered with real watchmakers (Fossil, Suunto, and Swatch); the devices were as much jewelry as functional timepieces; FM radio delivered appointments, news, weather, and other alerts independent of cell phones; and battery life lasted three days or more (which wasn't enough). By these measures, SPOT watches were so much more and still failed. Hence, these are reasons why in past analyses I called the decade-later attempt dumb. But I was wrong.

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The gradual push of just about everything to the cloud means that security and privacy are of greater concern than ever before. This is true for everyone who makes use of cloud services like OneDrive and Azure, but it is of particular interest to enterprise customers.

Today Microsoft has become the first major cloud service provider to adopt ISO/IEC 27018, the world’s first international standard for cloud privacy. The idea is to ensure that there is a global standard that determines how personal data privacy is handled in the cloud. The standard equips people with a number of assurances.

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