Latest Technology News

The CAPTCHA is a truly annoying creation. It prevents robots and scripts from pulling content from websites, or spamming them, which is great for website owners and hosts, but irritating for site visitors because it forces them to "prove they are human" by solving a challenge. This usually involves reading and entering some distorted text into a box, although there are other variations.

I personally find them hugely irksome as sometimes they fail to recognize when you get the words right, and sometimes they let you through when you get the words wrong. More importantly, they waste your time. Thankfully, the days of the CAPTCHA are numbered, as Google has come up a human-friendly solution.

Pandora, one of the darlings of the music streaming industry, has been around for some time. But the old dog can still learn new tricks, and the service proves that by continuing to improve its offering. It's also one of the best priced services, if you care to get the premium subscription.

The latest update benefits iOS and Android users -- two of its biggest customer bases. "The design of this latest update is part of our ongoing dedication to innovate the UX and UI across platforms, and as a result, provide effortless music discovery and listening for more than 75 million listeners each month", Pandora announces.

According to figures from Grand View Research the mobile wallet market is set to reach more than 1,400 million users by 2020.

But a new report by customer engagement specialist PunchTab shows that so far mobile payments are still the preserve of the early adopter.

While the majority of people use and trust Google as their search engine, it is not the only option. Many people use alternatives such as Bing and Yahoo too. The latter in particular should see increased use, as it is the new default search engine on Firefox.

Today, Yahoo is sharing the top searches of 2014. While many of the results are to be expected, some may surprise you. For instance, Xbox One was searched for more than PlayStation 4 -- does this signal an increased consumer interest in Microsoft's console over Sony's? Possibly. Please read on for more results.

Apple will have a record quarter for iPhone sales, if analyst estimates are to be believed. The company is expected to ship more than 70 million units in the last part of the year, nearly 20 million units more than the 51 million units it moved a year ago. It wouldn't surprise anyone if these estimates turn out to be accurate, considering the successful launch of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, coupled with the high consumer demand for the two devices across the globe.

Today, research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech adds more credence to the estimates. Its latest report, on the three months ending October 2014, reveals record market share for Apple's smartphones in Britain, strong performance in continental Europe, and marginal improvements in market share in US and China.

20 years ago today, Sony’s beloved PlayStation console was released in Japan. Launched into a gaming world utterly dominated by Sega and Nintendo, the PlayStation quickly became the must-have console. I got my initial first-hand experience of it at E3, and remember it being pretty much the only thing people there were talking about. I was (and still am) a dedicated PC gamer, and the PlayStation was the first games console I ever bought.

Sony’s PlayStation was an essential purchase for gaming fans -- especially those into driving and fighting games, which the console excelled at -- and it’s fair to say the PlayStation quickly had a massive impact on the gaming world, leaving a legacy that is still very much in evidence today.

Norwegian browser developer Opera has released Opera FINAL 26 for Windows, Mac and Linux. Having finally introduced support for bookmarks in the previous update, Opera 26 allows users to both share bookmarks and migrate them across from other browsers.

Version 26 is also a landmark release for Linux users as it marks the first stable release of the new Opera browser on that platform -- note it only works with 64-bit builds.

Just like any other first iteration of a major operating system release, Android 5.0 Lollipop is not without its fair share of problems. The main issues that users are reporting are related to battery life, responsiveness and Wi-Fi. Like other 2013 Nexus 7 users, I also have problems every so often with video playback on YouTube, something which did not crop up back in the Android 4.4 KitKat days.

Naturally, most issues will go away with the first or second update. Google is actively working on squashing the reported bugs, proof being that the company just pushed Android 5.0.1 Lollipop to AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and released the accompanying factory images for a number of its devices.

The two words "app store" might seem like a fairly generic reference to some kind of outlet at which one might expect to purchase apps, but it is a term that is most associated with Apple. Back in March of last year, Apple attempted to trademark the term in Australia, but the Registrar of Trade Marks refused the application.

Never one to give up without a fight, the company lodged an appeal with the Federal Court. Rather than rethinking the original decision, the court threw out the appeal so other companies are free to use the term without fear of legal repercussions.

The IT needs of businesses are constantly evolving and technology giant HP has announced a raft of new products aimed at optimizing today's workloads whilst preparing for the future.

Offerings include new servers, faster storage, converged systems and an expanded range of services including combining HP Enterprise Services with Microsoft Office 365.

VMware Inc has released VMware Workstation 11, a major update for the powerful hypervisor, along with its companion tool VMware Player 7 Pro.

The company claims new support for Haswell CPU extensions delivers up to a 45 percent speed increase for CPU-intensive applications.

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.

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!

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.

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.