You just gotta love Amazon. This morning, at long last, I received my invitation for Echo, the sizzlingly voice-controled streaming speaker that I raved about just two months ago. As a Prime member, I pay half-price, just $99. What a deal! Since then, I jealously waited while reading what others blogged about how much they enjoyed their Echoes. The device fits squarely where I contend is the next iteration in user interfaces: voice. Touch is just so passé.

In retail, customer impressions are everything. My first reaction was excitement, but the second turned it to dust. This thing won't ship until sometime between May and July? Seriously? It's like a bad Consumer Electronics Show joke, where the hottest tech device in this solar system debuts in January, but sales don't start until November. Don't sell me something I can't get for at least five fraking months!

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"Would you like to slow down the pace of development of your products?"

This was the question Adrian Cockcroft from Battery Ventures asked at the Nginx conference in October. The answer of course is "No". This is 2014, we see companies like Netflix can roll out changes daily and in some cases, hourly. Yet for many enterprises, it can still take weeks to add a new site or even a small new feature for the line of business. Even NASA can fly to the moon and back in less time!

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Legacy systems and the cloud. The two do sound incongruous. When we think of legacy systems, we often recall those old cartoons where a computer took up the better part of a wall and was attended by harried-looking attendants in white lab coats. Of course, it has been a while since legacy systems have been quite so physically massive. They’re often still massive enough, though, to consume a lot of hardware. Maybe that’s why it’s still hard to imagine legacy systems taking up residence in the cloud, though that’s more and more frequently exactly what they’re doing.

And they’re often doing quite well in their cloud abodes, which sometimes represent a significant savings on their old legacy hardware. In fact, moving these old applications can drastically cut the data center budget.

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The latest research indicates that Facebook is maintaining strong membership figures despite the rise of rival social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

A study of 1,597 adult Internet users by the Pew Research Centre found that 71 percent were using Facebook, the same amount as in 2013.

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Turning customer data into sales is something of a holy grail for businesses and there are an increasing number of software solutions aimed at helping find it.

One player in this field, customer retention platform Optimove, is using the National Retail Federation's Annual Convention and Expo to launch a version of its platform with real-time capabilities.

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Continuous Delivery as a methodology and tool to meet the ever-increasing demand to deliver better software faster is fast gaining the attention of businesses today. Continuous delivery, with its emphasis on keeping software in a release-ready state at all times, is a natural evolution from continuous integration and agile software development practices. However, the cultural and operational challenges to achieving continuous delivery are much greater. For most organizations, continuous delivery requires adaptation and extension of existing software release processes. The roles, relationships and responsibilities of people across the organization can also be impacted. The tools used to deliver, update and maintain software must support automation and collaboration properly, in order to minimize delays and provide tight feedback cycles across the business.

Organizations looking to transition to Continuous Delivery should consider the following seven prerequisites -- these are practical steps that will allow them to successfully execute the cultural and operational changes within the regulatory and business constraints they face.

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When a version of Windows reaches the end of its normal support, as Windows 7 has today, Microsoft continues to provide security patches for an extended time.

Google it seems prefers to take a tougher line and is not issuing patches for versions of Android prior to 4.4 KitKat, leaving millions of users of older versions out in the cold.

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50 percent more messages are now sent using WhatsApp when compared to texts, threatening to kill off SMS communications entirely. CEO of the mobile messaging app Jan Koum announced record results last week, demonstrating the platform’s continued growth.

WhatsApp now boasts 700 million monthly active users and processes 30 billion messages a day, or 347,222 every second. Meanwhile, the already sizeable gap in popularity between WhatsApp and texting is set to increase, with the latter experiencing declining usage figures since 2011.

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It's that time again -- the part of the month where Netflix rolls out its report on ISP performance. This is something that became important back during the Comcast debacle. That was when the streaming service was held hostage while negotiating a deal, all the while with its speed on the carrier steadily dropping.

Well, the top three have not changed and, despite the shakedown, Comcast still is not among them. Verizon FiOS retains its seat at the top, follow by Cablevision and Bright House. Comcast at least hasn't ceded its number four position.

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Amazon usually produces TV pilots before deciding which ones to turn into full series. Unsurprisingly, its union with critically-acclaimed writer/director Woody Allen, won’t be going through this process.

The company has already ordered a full season of the Untitled Woody Allen Project, which will premiere exclusively on Prime Instant Video.

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Apple has a system in place to deal with EU customers who are abusing its new returns policy, which it introduced in late-December to comply with local regulations. What is it? Well, those in question have to agree, upon future purchases, that they will no longer be able to return -- basically, ask refunds for -- digital content, once it is downloaded (or streamed).

Apple allows its EU customers to return digital content -- apps, music, and videos -- within 14 days after purchase, which has been interpreted by many as a green light to unlimited refunds. Mal-intended users could seemingly buy, say, games, enjoy them until right before the returns period ends, then ask for refunds, and repeat the process as they please. Such a policy could, indeed, negatively impact the bottom line of content creators, but it is, however, not the case.

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Apple’s rigorous approvals procedure means it can take quite some time for an app, or app update, to make its way into the App Store. 10-15 days is a typical approval time.

French news agency Nice-Matin created an app which allows users to show their support for controversial French magazine Charlie Hebdo, but was faced with an obvious problem. By the time the app was available in the App Store, support for the 'Je suis Charlie' campaign would have started to dwindle. So the company emailed Apple CEO Tim Cook.

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Site Monitoring is a Java-based tool which provides various ways to monitor websites and their content.

Launch the program and it opens a page in your default browser. The interface is a little basic, but conveniently it comes with a couple of example site checks to help you figure out how everything works.

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Windows 7 is by far and away the most popular operating system, and likely to remain so for many years to come. Windows 8.1 did nothing to dent the older OS’s popularity -- in fact, it helped propel it to even greater heights -- and Windows 10 will have its work cut out to unseat Windows 7 from the top of the pile.

Every Microsoft operating system comes with five years of mainstream support in which the software giant provides security and non-security updates and complimentary online and telephone support, and today, Windows 7 Service Pack 1’s mainstream support comes to an end. So what does that mean for the legions of Windows 7 users?

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Google has released an iOS version of its Chrome Remote Desktop extension.

The new release means you can now remotely access and control your computers from PCs, Macs, Linux, iOS and Android devices, even Chromebooks.

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