Who hasn't used their cell phone as a flashlight? Drop your key as you get out of the car at night and it makes sense to reach into your pocket, pull out your handset and search using the light from your screen. If you're really organized you'll have a flashlight app installed, but when you need a source of light quickly, fiddling with the menu can be a little too... er... fiddly.

Well fiddle no more. If your phone is kitted out with Android 5 Lollipop there's no need to navigate menus, or even have a dedicated flashlight app installed. Google has helpfully integrated a flashlight feature into the latest version of its mobile OS which can be activated with your voice.

Few weeks go by without Google coming under fire for some privacy-related misdemeanor or other. In Italy, however, the search giant has just agreed to comply with measures put in place by the Data Protection Authority. Moreover, the company will be subjected to regular audits to make sure that everything is in order.

Google is required to make improvements not only to privacy notices for its various services, but also obtain consent from users to use their data in research and profiling. The right-to-be forgotten also rears its head again as the authority requires Google to investigate individuals' requests for search listing removals.

The demand for Linux developers has jumped seven percent in comparison to last year, a study has shown.

The 2014 Linux Jobs Report shows that hiring managers at tech-powered companies are focusing more attention on Linux talent, and that’s reverberating in the market, with stronger than average salary increases to those working with the OS.

Lenovo is not having a good time right now, and rightfully so. Its inclusion of the Superfish adware on some of its consumer products has caused outrage and shock in the tech community. It is important to remember that Lenovo is not the super-villain in this story, Superfish is. In other words, the manufacturer was not intentionally malicious, but most likely misguided.

Today, Microsoft is a super hero -- Aquaman if you will -- and its super power is Windows Defender. Yes, Aquaman is destroying the Superfish villain, leaving Lenovo as the now-saved damsel in distress.

Dear EE,

We've known each other for a long time, you were called Orange when I first got to know you. A work colleague said we'd be good together and he was right. We've been through more than 12 years and five pay as you go mobile phones together. Then you decided to change your name to EE. What's in a name? I thought, a change to what was shown on the screen of course, but the service seemed the same as before so we carried on and I was still happy. Until I decided I needed a new phone.

If your PC network is misbehaving then you could turn to the standard Windows troubleshooting tools. But they’re mostly console-based, not exactly comfortable or convenient to use, even if you can remember all their various command line switches.

NetCrunch Tools tries to make your life a little easier by combining 11 troubleshooting and information tools into a single straightforward application.

It’s no surprise that more and more organizations are using the cloud, but the latest State of the Cloud report from RightScale throws up some interesting trends.

The company surveyed 930 technical professionals across a broad cross-section of organizations about their adoption of cloud computing.

Neptune Duo is an interesting smartwatch/smartphone concept that flips our traditional view of the wearable tech on its head. Ask yourself: What’s a smartphone, and what’s a smartwatch?

Most of us (I dare say almost everyone) thinks of a smartphone as a mobile computer, small enough to fit in your pocket, but large enough to watch videos, even movies on it, write emails, chat, talk to your friends, all that jazz.

One-hundred and nineteen in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows in the past seven days.

Our app of the week is Smash Cops Heat, an addictive fast paced arcade game in which you chase after criminals with your police car. Other apps and games of note include the promising Cody's App Academy which teaches basic programming concepts to children and the shoot'em up game Raijin Lite.

German developer Ashampoo has been producing PC cleanup tools since 1999, but now it's looking a little further. Droid Optimizer is a one-stop app for cleaning, managing and maintaining just about any Android device (2.3+).

There’s plenty of competition around, but Droid Optimizer scores immediately as it’s free, with no visible ads. The only marketing is a "More apps" button which displays some recommendations, but that’s it: leave the button alone and there’s nothing else.

Microsoft has been very busy lately. Just in the last month, the software giant has adopted an international standard for cloud privacy, released Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones, introduced an Outlook app for mobile devices, updated mobile Office to support its rivals' cloud storage services, and removed all restrictions from its OneNote app. However, Microsoft isn't done, as it just introduced two useful new features in Bing.

Bing is making it easier for users to order food and find the right hotel right from the search results. For restaurants that make deliveries, the search engine will show an Order online button; click it and you'll be taken to an ordering service to receive your favorite dishes at the door.

In mid-2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the government-backed agency NSA monitored everything happening on the Internet, including spying on individuals' phone calls, messaging, and emails to glean information and pinpoint suspicious activities in an attempt to stop the growing terrorist acts.

Since the revelations -- which changed everyone's perspective on privacy -- the leaked information from Snowden and acceptance from major technology companies have given us an understanding of how the NSA managed to get our data from the services we heavily rely on. Essentially, either providers agreed to turn over our data or the NSA found another way, a backdoor, to obtain it. But how it manage to tap our phone calls was mostly unclear. Last year, Vodafone did acknowledge that it allowed the NSA to place surveillance tools inside its data centers. But as it turns out, the agency had more ways to log our phone activities.

Uber, the taxi-hailing company from Los Angeles, has announced a food delivery service for Barcelona.

The same service is already available in Los Angeles under the name UberFresh, while in Barcelona it’s called UberEats.

Google is launching a kid-friendly version of YouTube. It's a project we first heard about a few months ago, and now YouTube Kids is about to become reality. But rather than launching as a child-friendly version of the website we've come to know and love, YouTube Kids will start its life as an Android app.

Parents will be pleased at Google's plans, where it will be possible to find carefully selected content that is suitable for a younger audience. Google will be curating videos, but there will be one question that enters the minds of mums and dads around the world: "what if my kid uses 'sex' as a search term".

China’s smartphone market is the largest in the world, but some of the country’s major players including Xiaomi and Lenovo have found that, with the domestic market reaching saturation point, they need to look internationally for further growth.

To celebrate the Chinese New Year we’ve taken a look at ten of the best handsets to emerge from the Asian country.