BetaNews exclusive: Home automation beta test opportunity from Betabound by Centercode
Home automation and the "Internet of Things" are the next frontiers for the technology world. Now that Wi-Fi is ubiquitous, the landscape is set for smart homes more than ever before. What used to seem like science fiction has become a reality. You can now turn on lights with products like Belkin's WeMo switch or monitor your pets with a Dropcam Pro camera. Heck, with products like the Nest thermometer, your home can actually learn from your behaviors.
Today, Betabound by Centercode is offering BetaNews readers an exclusive opportunity to apply for a beta test of an exciting new smart home system. Will you be selected?
Spotify gets holiday happy, announces gifts for purchase
Music is important to many people, both current and the variety that brings back memories of youth or life events. While sometimes happy and occasionally tragic, it still raises emotions. Spotify has become one of the top destinations for this, and now it's getting ready for the holiday season.
If you wish to give the gift of music, then cards are available to you for purchase. The cards come in several increments, including $10, $30 and $60, netting the lucky recipient one, three or six months of streaming Spotify Premium music service.
Android Wear users can now download watch faces from Google Play
Google Play is home to apps for every occasion, books to suit every mood, and movies and music for everyone. Today Google announces that Android Wear users can also download a makeover for their wrist wear from the digital store. Watch faces can now be downloaded from Google Play direct to your chosen wearable.
From the serious to the silly, the cheap-and-cheerful to the utterly stylish, you can transform the look of your smartwatch with just a few clicks. And now that the Watch Face API is available to developers, you can expect to see more and more faces popping up over the coming weeks and months.
Bing-powered Insights for Office brings context-sensitive search to Word Online
Microsoft's current vision is mobile first, cloud first (if two things can be simultaneously first), and this is perfectly demonstrated by what is being done with Office. Office has been pushed to not only mobile devices, but also the cloud and now Word Online gains the power of Bing in the form of Insights for Office.
The new feature makes it possible to perform searches from within Word Online so you can conduct research with fewer clicks. It could be as simple as looking up a definition, or you might be inspired to look up images related to the document you are working on.
Intel IoT Platform aims to drive adoption of secure Internet of Things
The Internet of Things will see an acceleration in adoption if Intel's plans work out. The chipmaker has just unveiled its own Internet of Things platform called, inevitably, Intel IoT Platform. The aim is to create a unified system that makes it easy for manufacturers to securely connect their devices to others.
The platform is essentially a set of protocols that helps to ensure compatibility between devices. Intel has already forged a number of partnerships with a view to accelerating uptake of and interest in the Internet of Things in general, and Intel IoT specifically.
Apple Watch to kickstart wearables in 2015
Another report has emerged pointing to 2015 as being a massive year for wearables, with the gadgets expected to explode in popularity.
In particular the smartwatch is expected to finally take off, with the Apple Watch helping to drive that category forward when it’s released next spring. Thus far, fitness bands have easily topped the wearables category, but smartwatches are expected to accelerate rapidly now they’re shedding the geeky image with the likes of smart-looking Android Wear devices, as well as Apple’s effort.
Are you lactating or depressed? A doctor is only a video chat away
Health care can be very expensive. Sadly, some people must choose between going to the doctor and food, or between getting medicine and heating their homes. It is a tragedy really, that in a country like the USA, health care is not universally available to all. Even if you can afford health insurance, getting off from work to go the doctor can be an issue, not to mention, increasingly large co-pays.
Luckily, the Internet makes more of the world available to people, including health care. Yes, you can interact with medical professionals over video chat. Today, a company called Doctor On Demand announces that it is now offering video chat to lactating mothers and those in need of psychological help.
Executive ego and the Sony Pictures network hack
Readers have been asking me to write about the recent network hack at Sony Pictures Entertainment. If you run a company like Sony Pictures it has to be tough to see your company secrets stolen all at once -- salaries, scripts, and Social Security numbers all revealed along with a pre-release HD copy of Annie, not to mention an entire database of unhappy Sony employees who want to work anywhere Adam Sandler doesn’t. But frankly my dear I don’t give a damn about any of that so let’s cut to the heart of this problem which really comes down to executive privilege.
Sony was hacked because some president or vice-president or division head or maybe an honest-to-God movie star didn’t want something stupid like network security to interfere with their Facebook/YouTube/porn/whatever workplace obsession. Security at Sony Pictures wasn’t breached, it was abandoned, and this recent hack is the perfectly logical result.
Nokia brings HERE to Google Play, will launch iOS version early next year
For Nokia to get any real traction with HERE outside of Windows Phone and its former brands, the Finnish company must make its app available to as many potential new users as possible. And that means offering it on the biggest mobile app stores around today -- Apple App Store and Google Play.
Today, Nokia is taking a step in the right direction by making HERE for Android available on Google Play. The app's availability on the largest Android app store comes more than three months after the initial launch, for Galaxy smartphones. HERE still sports the beta label, but continues to offer the same lovely features we have come to expect from it.
LiveSite helps small businesses improve customer interaction on the web
According to a BIA Kelsey report for the Manta small business community, 61 percent of small businesses get the majority of their revenue from repeat clients.
This means that timely interaction and following up with customers is important. Yet many smaller businesses still manage these tasks manually and may be losing sales as a result.
Blackphone launching a privacy-focused app store next year
Blackphone, the handset that claims to be able to protect users against surveillance and other security threats, is set to launch its own app store.
The service will be available from January 2015 and will offer privacy-focused apps and software that have been selected to provide the highest level of security available.
The top threats to your business data in 2015
With OpenSSL problems, ransomware, retail security breaches and the rise of the internet of things, 2014 has been a difficult year for businesses from the security point of view.
Each year brings its own set of challenges of course and Mike Foreman SMB general manager at security company AVG has been looking ahead to the threats companies need to watch for in 2015.
View, save and restore a drive's MBR/ boot sector with HDHacker
Before a PC can access a drive, it must first read various disk structures: the boot sector, master boot record (MBR), partition table, and so on. Normally you don’t have to care about any of that, but if these structures are corrupted, and the drive becomes unreadable, then you might want to know more.
HDHacker is a tiny tool which can read, display, save and restore a drive’s master boot record, boot sector, or just a defined number of continuous sectors. This is potentially very dangerous -- choosing the wrong drive or sectors could trash your system -- but it can sometimes be helpful.
T-Mobile’s Un-carrier effort unnerving wireless competitors
As T-Mobile announces yet another offering aimed at the nation’s top wireless carriers, one thing is clear: AT&T and Verizon feel the pain.
Both companies reported this week that they are finding it more difficult to retain customers as competition heats up in the US wireless market. Verizon says increasing competition is causing churn to trend "higher both sequentially and year over year", and expects these pressures to cut into profits and margins in the fourth quarter.
AIDA64 5 adds wireless monitoring support, certificates information panel
Budapest software firm FinalWire Ltd has released a major new version of its Windows diagnostic and benchmarking tool with the release of AIDA64 Extreme Edition 5.0.
Version 5.0’s major new feature is support for remote monitoring of computer sensors using third-party smartphone and tablet apps.
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