Latest Technology News

Original content is king these days, as the online streaming services fall all over themselves trying to score the next big winner -- the House of Cards for the next awards show. While Netflix and Amazon spring to mind, Hulu is no slouch either, offering an ever-increasing amount of content to its eager audience. Now one more original series has appeared in the pipeline.

Writer and creator Jason Katims, famous for Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, among others, is on board for a new series titled The Way. Not a title that gives much of any clue about content.

With so many security breaches nowadays, it can feel a bit fatiguing. You come up with what you think is a really good password, only to have a website hack compromise your credentials. This is why it is very important that you do not use the same password -- or similar variations of it -- on multiple sites. If a hacker gets the password to one site, they may try it on others; scary stuff.

Today, Twitch, the video streaming service for video gamers, announces that it may have been hacked. Yes, may have, as in the company isn't positive. It is frustrating that the company doesn't know for sure, but since there is a possibility, it is requiring that all users change their password.

It has been a long time coming, but Microsoft has finally released the SDK for Windows 10 -- just ahead of next month's Build. Users have been playing around with various builds of Windows 10 Technical Preview, but this is the first chance developers have had to get hands on with the tools they'll need to create apps for the latest version of Microsoft's operating system.

The Windows 10 Technical Preview tools and Visual Studio 2015 CTP6 can be downloaded by Windows Insiders, and it gives developers the chance to try out the tools and provide feedback with the first technical preview. Templates are provided to make it easy to get started with the development of universal apps, and Microsoft is keen for developers to get to work.

Foursquare (remember that app?) is joining forces with Twitter to make tweets more relevant to specific locations. At the moment it is possible to tag your location in a tweet, but you're limited to mentioning the town or city you find yourself in.

With the new partnership, you'll be able to tag individual locations such as the Starbucks you're sitting in with your iPhone or Android handset. It's a feature that takes advantage of the huge cache of data Foursquare has built up over the years and something that provides yet another way for users to search for data and, importantly, for Twitter to monetize data.

Chinese technology conglomerate Xiaomi will be launching its new TV models tomorrow, the company has teased on Twitter. Xiaomi reportedly plans to launch two models in its Mi TV lineup -- one of which will be the successor to 49-inch 4K capable Mi TV 2, while the other will be a smaller-sized television set with FHD display.

Xiaomi has earned a name for itself for selling incredibly cheap-priced smartphones and other mobile accessories, and its Mi TV is no exception. The Chinese company launched the Mi TV 2 last May in China for the equivalent of $640. As for the specs, it packs in a 49-inch display with 4K screen resolution. The smart TV is powered by a quad-core MediaTek MStar 6AM918 CPU paired with Mali0450 MP4 GPU and 2GB of RAM with 8GB expandable storage. Running on Android, the TV has MIUI ROM skin on top.

Curves are en vogue these days with both monitors and TVs, though they still come at a premium price and the benefits are open to debate. Still, it seems to be the latest fad, coupling with 4K and riding on the heels of the failure to sell people on 3D. Samsung is no stranger to the market, manufacturing upper tier screens for living room and office alike.

Now the company is announcing its latest line of monitors, featuring five curved models. The latest offerings range in size from as small as 23.5 inches up to 31.5 inches, the latter approaching TV size. The specs of each are as varying as the sizes.

One of the technological highlights of 2015 so far has been the official announcement of the much anticipated Apple Watch, almost two years after Samsung’s first Galaxy Gear smartwatch. The iPhone compatible smartwatch is initially priced from $349 for the entry-level Sport model to around $17,000 for an 18-carat gold version. Some of the manufacturers, like Samsung, LG, SONY and Motorola, are already presenting the 3rd generation of their smartwatches.

While opinion is divided about how successful Apple Watch will prove to be, it’s clear that smartwatches and other wearable technologies are a great way to collect and display contextual data quickly and easily. However, because this is a technology boom that is still in its infancy, there are several questions that remain to be answered when it comes to data security and recovery. There are four things you might like to consider when protecting data accessed via a smartwatch.

Microsoft is now a services and devices company, meaning it is delivering its services and apps to all platforms -- not only its own. Heck, I bought the Microsoft Band over the weekend, and not only does it work with Windows Phone, but iOS and Android. In other words, the company is delivering on its services and devices mantra.

Having cross-platform apps is great, but you have to convince consumers to install them. With that said, it is much more preferable to have apps pre-installed on devices, which can make the consumer more likely to use them. Microsoft convinced Samsung to install some of its apps on the upcoming Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge; a major score for the company. Today, it announces that the partnership is expanding to even more of Samsung's Android devices.

As more and more transactions are carried out electronically, point of sale systems become an ever more tempting target for cyber criminals. Security researchers at networking company Cisco have identified a new strain of PoS malware that seeks to extract credit card data from memory and send it to remote servers.

Named PoSeidon it has a more sophisticated design than other PoS malware and has some resemblance to ZeuS. It's written to evade detection, can communicate directly with C&C servers, self-update to execute new code and has self-protection mechanisms to guard against reverse engineering.

The target audience of wearable tech has always been the everyday consumer. However, wearables can benefit businesses too, especially in sectors where workers need to be hands-free.

From construction and manufacturing to dining services, wearables can elevate several industries in the near future by utilizing push notification on wearable tech.

The online community has been living under the threat of ransomware for sometime now -- it feels like dwelling near Mordor. While many of you reading this are likely too savvy to fall for these tricks, there are people who do, which is why scammers stay in business. Now a new threat arises to go after people's hard earned money.

Security firm Doctor Web reports that a mass of spam emails have recently been detected. This latest threat comes in the guise of "Incoming fax report". The so-called report contains a ZIP file which disguises an SCR, or Windows executable file. It's been tagged as Trojan.DownLoader11.32458.

The hugely popular Sony PlayStation 4 gaming console has finally arrived to China, but the Chinese still have very little reason to rejoice.

There are a total of six games which can, at this moment, be played in China, and those are Knack, Dynasty Warriors 8, Trials Fusion, Rayman Legends, King of WuShu and Mr. Pumpkin’s Adventure.

Vertical-scrolling 2D space shooters have been entertaining gamers for more than 30 years, so it’s no surprise that some people see them as very dated. But the genre has some a long way since the empty repetitive arcade games of the 1980s.

The free X-Bomber for Windows doesn’t just repeat the same levels at higher speeds or with more enemies -- you get 17 missions, with multiple objectives, a back story based on the Japanese sci-fi TV series Star Fleet, and dynamic in-game dialog from the characters.

Anyone interested in technology will know that the mobile boom has brought with it new considerations for businesses in the form or BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). Despite still being a concept that many companies are yet to fully grasp, it is about to be overtaken by a new mobile trend.

WYOD (Wear Your Own Device) is hot on its heels, as wearables and smartwatches continue to gain traction. To shed some light on the growth of WYOD and what businesses need to do to stay ahead of the curve, I spoke to Paula Skokowski from mobile file sharing provider Accellion.

It's March Madness, which is an awful time of the year for those of us who no longer subscribe to cable or satellite -- at least not for TV.  The brackets are getting smaller and big games are pending, including my own team's matchup later tonight. Enter Sling TV to save the day. The service provides live TV and ample amounts of sports for any fanatic. That's why today I opted into the free seven day trial, or at least tried to.

Things didn't go smoothly, though it should, in theory, be an easy process. There was a major stumbling block and it came right in step one. I entered my Gmail address and was told I couldn't use it. A second try resulted in the same outcome. I clicked Contact, found that online chat with customer service was closed, but the phone variety was good to go.