Latest Technology News

Windows Calculator has improved a great deal in recent years. It still opens in a very basic "standard" view, but you also get Scientific, Programmer and Statistics modes, along with unit conversions, date calculations and more.

The free HiPER Calc Scientific seems a little basic by comparison, as it’s "just" a regular scientific calculator. But it’s compact, portable, and has more than enough functions and features to make it interesting.

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Two Raspberry Pi computers are going to be sent into space as part of a competition to get children inspired by coding and space exploration.

The Astro Pi project will take place from the middle of January and will see the devices sent to the International Space Station (ISS), containing code written by primary and secondary school children.

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One-hundred and nine in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8 in the last seven days.

Microsoft sent out invites yesterday for an event in January where it will talk about the next chapter of the Windows 10 operating system. Check out Wayne's post for information on the event.

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It happens all the time. You’re browsing a website, engrossed in the content, when suddenly an overlay appears and blocks your view. Annoying, even when it’s displaying useful information.

Usually clicking the "x" close button will get rid of the popup, and you can carry on as you were. But if there is no "x", or it’s been carefully hidden, then you might need a little help.

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Google Cardboard, when compared to big virtual reality names like the Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus, might seem like a bad joke. The tech giant, however, is prepared to show the world it’s serious about its cardboard-based headset.

The company has launched a new web page for the low-cost VR, one which collects the best apps for download as well as showcases new SDKs for Android and Unity devs to play around with.

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I am a huge, huge fan of SSDs. They're blazing-fast, resistant to external shocks and, let's not forget, they are also energy-efficient. What's not to love about that? They're, quite frankly, the only storage solutions I want to use in my laptops, and the only type of storage solutions I can wholeheartedly recommend. (You can probably tell just how excited I am about SSDs, right?)

But, there are two (some might say major) downsides to SSDs, which go hand in hand: cost and capacity. To get a decently-sized SSD, one has to spend considerably more than for a HDD of the same capacity. In fact, the difference is huge. For instance, a 1 TB Seagate Barracuda HDD goes for around $50 on Amazon, while an SSD of the same capacity from Samsung (840 EVO family) costs around $420, on the same site. Also, SSDs don't usually go above the 1 TB mark, which makes them a poor choice for large file storage. That's where a HDD shines. And what better HDD to use for, let's say, long-term storage of movie collections than the soon-to-ship 8 TB Seagate Archive?

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Social marketing has become an increasingly popular option for companies, but delivering it often involves using a number of different tools to handle publishing, monitoring of campaigns and more.

To streamline the process brand and audience specialist Parllay has announced some new integrated, knowledge-based tools. Parllay Studio is a complete content marketing and trend Intelligence platform powered by a semantic knowledge engine.

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Benedict Evans recently wrote an insightful piece exploring new questions for the mobile industry. Among the five questions he brought up, I believe that the evolution of interaction models and messaging will end up being the most important.

I don't have anything to add there as think Benedict's analysis here was excellent. However, I do think that three of his questions could benefit from deeper analysis. I also think that he may have missed a crucial question brought on by the scale of the mobile industry.

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Since Microsoft and Sony’s next generation consoles launched in late 2013, PlayStation 4 has been outselling the Xbox One very, very comfortably. In fact, just a month ago I reported that the PS4 had sold double that of its rival in the first year.

However, in November Microsoft’s console finally managed to claim the top spot, helped in no small part by a price cut and some decent software launches coming into the holiday season.

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Media regulator Ofcom has found that the use of social networks is on the decline across a number of countries, but most prominently in the UK.

The International Communications Market Report 2014 found that the number of UK weekly visitors to social networks fell from 65 percent to 56 percent between September 2013 and October 2014.

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If you’d like to run Android on your PC then you could install some heavyweight emulator, or maybe use a virtual machine.

But it might be easier to equip your Android device with Mobizen, a free app which allows you to view, access and control it from just about anywhere.

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As a system-builder, I take great pride in building my own machines. Quite frankly, selecting all of your components, one by one, can be very rewarding. Unfortunately, buying piece by piece can be rather costly, adding up to more than many pre-built systems. Not to mention, it can be time and labor intensive, and many people, including myself, are very busy. It is for these reasons that I am considering forgoing a new build next year, and instead, opting for a pre-built desktop.

Let's be honest though, it can be confusing to pick a manufacturer for your new PC -- there are so many companies to choose from. Today, one such company, Digital Storm, announces the ECLIPSE -- a PC that it calls "Slim Gaming Tower of Power". Not only is the computer powerful and sexy, but starts at a very low $699. Hey, this is just in time for Christmas -- this will surely make the gamer in your life happy.

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People that know me, know that I am socially awkward. I am useless at a party, and overall, face-to-face human interaction just escapes me. Suffice to say, computers give me an outlet -- I am rather suave on IRC, you see. As a result, I don't have many friends, but regarding the ones I do have, I refuse to give them my Wi-Fi password. These aren't new friends either; I have known some more than 20 years. Quite frankly, I share the password with the family members in my home under protest.

While not everyone is as odd as me, I know I am not alone. Surely there are other nerds that view friends and family with access to the network as weak-links in the security chain. In other words, I don't want some malware-infested machine touching my precious home network. Apparently, Google knows of my woes, as today, the search-giant announces guest mode for Chromecast.

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The gradual but relentless move to the cloud is about more than just making it easier to access files from multiple devices. For many people, particularly business and enterprise users, sharing and collaboration is more important. Today Google has made two small but important updates to Drive and Docs that makes file sharing easier than ever.

Now when you start to type the name of someone you would like to share a file with, you will see their profile picture alongside their name. This mimics the way things work in Gmail, and helps you to check you are selecting the right people.

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Windows 10 is very much a work in progress. While certain elements of the forthcoming OS appear close to how they will be in the finished release, much of what’s in the Technical Preview is early and very buggy. There’s been talk of the new operating system coming out in Spring 2015, but the latest rumors, based on what Kevin Turner, Chief Operating Officer at Redmond, told the Nikkei news service, a September release is looking a far more realistic prospect. That’s a smart move, as the last thing Microsoft should be doing is rushing out an unfinished OS -- as it did with Windows 8.

You won’t have to wait too long for your next big batch of Windows 10 goodness though, as Microsoft will be holding an event at its Redmond campus on January 21 to talk about the "next chapter" of the OS.

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