Latest Technology News

We've all encountered websites that are badly designed or seem to be willfully hard to use and now a new survey reveals the sites which cause the most frustration and are likely to be rapidly abandoned.

Website FAQ technology provider AnswerDash has released the results of its first website survey revealing Comcast.com, IRS.gov and CenturyLink.com as this year's most frustrating websites for US consumers.

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As a web user it's very easy to feel like just another cog in the financial machine. Visit just about any website and you'll encounter ads. These generate revenue that's needed to pay for developers, writers, servers and so on, but the likes of YouTube, which rely on user-generated content, can quickly generate large profits thanks to the costs to revenue margins. Now video streaming service Hang w/ is bucking the trend and sharing profits with its users.

The platform exists as an iOS and Android app, and enables users to broadcast to users around the world as well as conducting video chats. It has managed to earn itself celebrity endorsement from the likes of Cheech and Chong (oh, yes), 50 Cent, Soulja Boy, Timbaland, and Ultimate Poker, and has helped to drive 22 million downloads for major shareholder MEDL Mobile. Recognizing the fact that it is users creating content, Hang w/ now shares 25 percent of its advertising revenue with users.

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Since taking control of Nokia's Devices & Services business in April, Microsoft has introduced a couple of important new Windows Phones. We have the replacement of the popular entry-level Lumia 520, called Lumia 530, and the much-awaited successor of two year-old mid-ranger Lumia 820, dubbed Lumia 830, as well as two in-between offerings, Lumia 730 and Lumia 735.

Under Microsoft's leadership, there appears to be something fresh for everyone looking to be part of the Windows Phone world, except up-to-date versions of Lumia 1320 and Lumia 1520 phablets. And, next week, we will see the software giant unveiling yet another Lumia Windows Phone, this time, perhaps, even featuring its own branding, instead of Nokia's.

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Next week's round of Patch Tuesday updates from Microsoft is set to be the biggest so far this year with 16 bulletins in total, five of which are rated Critical and nine as Important.

Most of the Critical bulletins are for Windows components and affect a range of supported systems. Karl Sigler, Threat Intelligence Manager at Trustwave says, "If you are currently running a supported version of Windows, you will want to update as soon as these updates become available. These are some of the nastier vulnerabilities we've seen in Windows in a while".

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Microsoft has released major updates for its iOS apps, Word 1.2, Excel 1.2 and PowerPoint 1.2.

All three have been redesigned for smaller screens, and run on your iPhone and iPod as well as the iPad.

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Google Cloud’s long-awaited price cuts have finally been announced with various new features coming as part of the decreases that follow earlier cuts by its two main competitors in the space in Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

The search giant cut some products by almost 80 percent and added direct peering, container scheduling and a new container engine built on Google’s Kubernetes technology.

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Despite a little spat with Taylor Swift, Spotify seems to be mostly improving all the time, adding updates and content on a regular basis. The latest update aims to marry your computers to your mobile devices via new, and rather unique, remote app.

The company is announcing a new feature for Premium subscribers, allowing users to access Spotify on their computer using remote control from the phone or tablet.

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XMind has released XMind 6 (aka v3.5.0), a significant update for its popular mind mapping application.

The Free, Plus ($79) and Pro (currently on special offer at $99) editions can all now save maps to Evernote -- images, attachment and text -- making it easy to access them on different devices.

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Three months ago I reached the end of my tether. I'm lucky enough to live in one of the most beautiful and unspoilt parts of the UK (it nearly wasn’t part of the UK had the Scottish referendum on independence taken a different turn), but there's one problem: truly awful broadband. There is a 'choice' of one broadband provider who is capable of trickling sub 0.5Mbps connections into houses in the area -- and that's on a good day.

One Twitter rant later, a few emails exchanged with Satellite Internet led to the arrival of two installers to get me set up with a 20Mbps satellite connection. My initial impressions were great. The internet worked as it should for the first time in months. But my fear was that this was just a honeymoon period. So what’s the story nearly three months down the line -- what is it like to live with a satellite internet connection? Were my initial concerns about data usage well-founded?

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I so requested to buy Amazon Echo, which promises to bring Star Trek-like responsive computing to the home. The cylindrical device, announced today, is a Bluetooth- and WiFi-enabled speaker that responds to users' questions. Just say "Alexa" and ask something. "What's the weather?" "What is the largest dinosaur?" This is how search information should be, assuming Echo resounds as strongly as Amazon's product information and demo video claim.

Touchless interaction is by no means new. Apple got the jump with personal assistant Siri, which responds to requests and commands on iOS devices. Google Now, available on multiple platforms, is far superior, and Windows Phone now has Cortana. All three cloud-based touchless-response systems make your voice the primary user interface. But Echo, like the Moto X smartphone, is always listening, such that the interaction is almost completely hands-free. That's the difference.

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Public and private clouds have been rapidly adopted by businesses around the world over the past few years. However, the debate over the pros and cons of each model has led to the emergence of a new type of cloud that allows businesses to avoid making compromises. The hybrid model enables organizations to enjoy a combination of the scalability and flexibility of public offerings with the manageability and security of their private counterparts, so it's unsurprising to see them becoming so popular. Indeed, Gartner predicts that by 2017, half of large enterprises will use hybrid cloud.

So what makes this model so attractive for businesses, and what does the future hold for the hybrid cloud?

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There are a huge number of Android music players around, most of them competing for your attention with their vast and ever-extending lists of features. That’s great news if you’ll use all their functionality, but otherwise it may just get in your way.

Dub Music Player + Equalizer seems relatively simple by comparison, but it delivers the core basics most people need, and comes wrapped in a great looking, easy-to-use interface.

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I recently read a LinkedIn discussion about SaaS vs. locally installed software. There were many myths presented, mostly to suit the agendas of the vendors and their respective technologies (I know, I know -- shocking that such things would happen on LinkedIn).

The discussion spiraled towards the (incorrect) conclusion that treasurers are paranoid about cloud software's security issues. However, I've not personally encountered such paranoia. What I've instead found is that treasurers are inquisitive about any pitfalls a cloud delivery model presents -- as they should be. Most often they will engage their IT colleagues to evaluate the security, infrastructure, and technology of any proposed third party solution. Treasury is not often equipped to make this assessment, and would otherwise risk falling prey to the agenda (and technology choices) of the vendors. Security assessments typically focus on three areas:

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The basketball season is freshly underway in the US and NBA fans are waiting to see how their respective teams do. While many have a general idea of which will be good and which may just not pan out, there are always surprises.

For those NBA fans who are eying an Android TV device like the Nexus Player then Google has sweetened the offerings a bit. Folks will now get access to live basketball games on the set-top box, though a subscription is obviously required.

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Cloud adoption is booming amongst business users, but there's a big variation in what developers and IT managers want from their cloud deployments.

Developers want instant access to cloud services and true self-service capabilities, while IT managers require greater control, visibility and integration across the whole cloud spectrum.

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