Latest Technology News

Google is unlikely to have a monopoly on the module smartphone market after it was announced that a Finnish company is lining up a rival to the firm’s Project Ara device.

PuzzlePhone, manufactured by Circular Devices, will grant the owner a series of customization options, but will focus on simplicity, having only three pieces.

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Apple makes some really great products. Quite frankly, you really can't go wrong with anything it makes. Sure, I prefer Windows and Linux distributions on the desktop, but OS X is a fine operating system too. The true bread and butter for the fruit-logo company, however, is not its desktop operating system, but mobile -- iOS. I own an iPad and enjoy it for what it is, but I find iOS to be a spectacularly terrible operating system, as it is too restrictive and dumb-downed. For some, the designed simplicity is a benefit, but for advanced users like myself, lack of a user-accessible file system is a non-starter.

The truly terrible crime, however, is that Apple does not allow browser engines other than its own. Google chose to offer a neutered version of Chrome for iOS, but Mozilla famously did not bring Firefox. I was rather proud of Mozilla for sticking to its beliefs and refusing to give in to Apple's policies. Yes, it sucks not having Firefox on iOS, but I supported the decision. Today, however, Mozilla concedes as it is bowing down to Apple in an effort to target more users. In other words, Mozilla is biting into a shiny red apple, but I fear that it is poisoned!

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Ads are hard to avoid at the best of times, but it has a tendency to get a little worse in the run-up to Christmas. Advertising has become increasingly prolific on social networks, and this is certainly true of Facebook. As we enter the holiday season, Facebook is providing advertisers with advice that will enable them to deliver finely-tuned ads at highly specific sets of users.

If you picked yourself up a new tablet in the Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales, Facebook makes it possible for advertisers to pick you out of the masses. The social network is not only rolling out a couple of new features to help with targeted advertising, but also providing tips for more successful campaigns.

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While Dropbox for Business is nothing new, there's no getting away from the fact that Dropbox is seen essentially as a consumer level tool. Part of the reason for this -- apart from the occasional security slip-up -- is the fact that it has not been possible to use Dropbox in conjunction with third party tools at an enterprise level. Now this changes thanks to the arrival of the Dropbox For Business API.

The API is yet to be officially announced -- although rumors have been circulating for a little while -- but internal documentation obtained by TechCrunch shows that the launch is imminent, possibly as early as tomorrow (Wednesday December 3rd). Once launched, developers will be able to use the API to produce their own secure Dropbox-based apps and services.

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Over the years Twitter has come in for a lot of flak for the level of abuse that runs rife on the social network. Now the site is taking action by making improvements to the existing blocking features as well as refining the harassment-reporting facility. With the likes of #gamergate and various other high profile cases, Twitter users have found themselves on the receiving end of vitriol, hatred and abuse.

Today's updates aim to clamp down on these activities, making it easier for users to report problematic tweets and easier for Twitter to respond quickly to problems. There is a particular focus on making life easier to users of mobile versions of Twitter, and the blocking feature is now more prominent in apps.

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On the heals of Amazon shipping its Fire Stick, a new HDMI dongle that provides similar capabilities to the previously released Fire TV, the market for streaming devices has continued to grow. And it's also getting more competitive, as each company improves its offerings.

A new study published by Parks Associates shows that a record ten percent of US households now own a streaming device. That still seems a small number, but perspective is needed. First, it's growing, and second, some people just aren't going to buy in to this technology -- my parents wouldn't know what a Roku was, nor what to do with it.

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Global law enforcement agencies and the airline, travel and credit card industries have joined forces in a major concerted action to combat online fraud.

The operation, organized via three coordination centers at Europol, in The Hague, Interpol in Singapore and Ameripol in Bogota, and involving over 60 airlines and 45 countries at more than 80 airports across the world, saw 281 suspicious transactions reported and 118 individuals arrested.

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One of the current challenges for a business IT team is supporting a variety of desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile end user devices for employees. This task can be a considerable overhead in terms of time, resource and cost. Physical desktops are not only expensive, insecure, and maintenance heavy, they are also not necessarily a good fit for an increasingly mobile and demanding workforce. The groundswell of Windows 7 migration plans, an expanding virtual workforce, the growing popularity of mobile devices, and tighter IT budgets each point to the need to re-evaluate desktop strategies.

While virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) seems like a promising alternative to managing physical desktops and mobiles, in reality, it’s too costly and complex for most companies to implement successfully. Cloud services, however, are helping to mitigate many of the challenges of traditional VDI implementations. Cloud based virtual desktops deliver benefits around centralized management and simplified deployment without the high costs, limitations, or difficulties of VDI.

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Many of us own multiple devices that charge or are powered via USB. Even though many PCs come with at least two or four USB ports these days, and USB charging adapters that plug into wall sockets are commonplace, that may not be enough. In other words, you may occasionally find yourself needing to charge something, without a spare USB port, or a cable for the task -- especially if you live in a house with teenagers. If all devices used Micro USB life would be simpler, but sadly, they do not.

This is where Hub It comes in. It's a powered sync and charging station that can power/charge up to seven items simultaneously, and includes connectors for all of your devices, including smartphones, tablets, iPhones and iPads, and digital cameras.

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TeamViewer GBMH has released TeamViewer 10, its free-for-personal-use remote control software for Windows, Mac and Linux. Also available in portable form for Windows users, the new app boasts a host of new features, improvements and a redesign for good measure.

Chief among the changes are performance optimizations designed to take full advantage of multi-core processors. These include the promise of faster login times, better HD voice transmission quality and improved performance overall.

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When you are issued a business laptop from your employer, it is often clunky and ugly. Of course, it gets the job done, but it is depressing to use a boring machine in the office, but then go home to use a nicer one. In other words, business-class laptops can be yawn-worthy, but they do not have to be.

Luckily, HP subscribes to this way of thinking. Yes, the firm also produces clunky business laptops, but today, it is announcing a machine that we have been waiting for. The all-new EliteBook Folio 1020 is both the thinnest and lightest business-class laptop in the world.

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Bare metal recovery (BMR), restoring a machine with no requirement for operating systems or software to be present beforehand, isn't always seen as a reliable technique.

To look at how successful it really is, cloud backup and disaster recovery specialist Zetta.net has released the results of a survey looking at companies’ real world experience of BMR.

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Left, or right? Chicken, or fish? Where are we going next?

Life is full of decisions. Some you’ll want to think about, carefully evaluate and discuss. But if they’re not so important -- or you’d just prefer a more surprising life -- then you could let your phone choose the outcome, with a little help from Certified True Randomizers.

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Meeting the needs of employees to access systems is an important consideration for any modern business. Now, cloud-based call enter systems provider TCN is making its technology accessible for the visually impaired.

Its Platform 3 Vocal Vision product is optimized to work with Job Access with Speech (JAWS) technology and allows visually impaired call center agents to effectively navigate TCN's cloud-based contact center suite, helping to improve agent productivity while also creating new employment opportunities for the visually impaired.

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Chinese smartphone vendor OnePlus just launched its One flagship in India, where it is available to purchase exclusively through the local arm of retailer Amazon. Prospective buyers are only able to scoop up the top-of-the-line 64 GB version of the smartphone, as the lesser 16 GB model is nowhere to be seen at this stage.

OnePlus appears to be committed to the Indian market, as it says that it has already set up a service network of 25 walk-in centers for its prospective local customers. Speaking of customers, the number of local buyers who will be able to buy One is still controlled by OnePlus, as the company is continuing to enforce its invite-only system.

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