HBO GO has been in the news lately, especially when the HBO network announced that it will be discontinuing its paid cable/satellite service restriction and turn it into a stand-alone service. It's also now making inroads into the living room -- perhaps in preparation for that big move next year. To that end, the network is moving into the Xbox One ecosystem.

Larry Hryb, better known to most folks as Major Nelson, announces the release -- "HBO GO is arriving on Xbox One in the US, bringing along every episode from every season of your favorite HBO shows. With HBO GO, subscribers can watch the latest episodes from shows like 'True Detective', 'Game of Thrones' and 'Girls', along with your favorite hits like 'Entourage' and 'The Sopranos', HBO GO on Xbox One features Kinect voice and gesture control so you can easily search the entire catalog via gestures or voice commands".

Analysis of large volumes of information is increasingly used by businesses to gain an advantage. A new infographic produced by big data specialist Datameer looks at how it’s being used to gain a competitive edge.

Among the highlights are that the global Hadoop Market is projected to be worth $50.2 billion by the year 2020, a huge increase from the $1.5 billion it was worth in 2012.

Encrypting your device may make it more secure, but it also makes it slower due to the added overhead. This is not much of a problem on a fast PC or laptop, as its hardware is able to cope with the extra load. It, however, is a major reason for concern on Android 5.0 Lollipop devices, such as Google's new Nexus 6. Android 5.0 Lollipop is at fault here.

Anandtech has discovered that the difference in performance can be as high as 80.7 percent, and as low as 50.5 percent, between Nexus 6 with encryption turned on and with the feature disabled. Meanwhile, those who update to Android 5.0 Lollipop on Nexus 5 will also notice a notable difference in performance, albeit not as big, even with encryption disabled.

The definition of the Internet of Things is "intelligent interactivity between humans and things to exchange information and knowledge for new value creation". Try saying that after a glass of wine! There’s been a lot of talk about the IoT in the business world, and with good reason. It’s chock full of potential to improve performance, reduce costs, drive innovation and create new revenue streams. Of course, we’ve now reached the point where the talk is turning into action -- technology is adapting and businesses are planning IoT strategies.

Forrester Consulting say: "We are at the tipping point for broader IoT adoption with 53 percent of organizations planning to implement an IoT solution in the next 24 months. Organizations in Asia Pacific and Latin America are more aggressive with 69 and 60 percent respectively, planning to implement over the same time period".

4K displays are becoming much more common, giving buyers a far greater range of choices. The Samsung Series 5 UHD LED Monitor (U28D590D) does a good job of balancing quality with affordability -- just £419.99 from Ebuyer.com including VAT and delivery -- and takes seconds to setup.

The 28-inch LED edge-lit screen offers a native resolution of 3840×2160 pixels, and the monitor sports a black plastic casing with a glossy bezel and an aluminum T-shape stand. Putting it together is just a matter of screwing the neck to the stand (using two pre-installed screws) and then sliding the screen into the neck.

Communication service providers (CSPs) have spent the last few years investing heavily in cloud software provision to expand their business.

A new report by Israel-based Allot Communications shows that this is paying off as software as a service is now a major revenue source for CSPs.

While Republicans are seething over President Barack Obama’s executive orders on immigration, Silicon Valley headhunters and executives seem to think his plan doesn’t go far enough.

The tech sector is one of the less talked about victims of a broken immigration system: one where the United States trains and then loses some of the brightest prospects in tech. Making matters worse, those trying to stay in the country legally face long wait times as backlogs in processing for green cards get ever longer.

Let’s be realistic: presentation software can be dull. Very, very dull. Boring templates, gradient fills with text boxes, images if you’re lucky, step from one page to the next, maybe export as PPT/PPTX.

We didn’t expect much from the free presentation builder Notzy, then -- but the program turned out to be a real surprise.

Microsoft has agreed a four-year deal with Real Madrid rumored to be worth $30 million that will see the technology giant revolutionize Europe’s most successful club with a "digital transformation".

The new partnership sees Microsoft become the team’s strategic technology partner that involves building a digital platform to boost fan interaction across all devices and various other projects in the coming months.

Windows programs can crash sometimes: it’s just a fact of life. Annoying, too, although at least you'll typically see an error message with some kind of clue about the cause.

When a program locks up, it’s a different story. There's no error dialog, no system-level sign of trouble. If you don't have the application window open then you may not notice it’s stopped working at all.

You're probably well aware that Twitter features a search option at the top of the page which you can use to track down individuals or topics. Less well-known is the dedicated search page which is the Twitter version of Google (complete with advanced search parameters), albeit one that is -- obviously -- limited to searching within the confines of Twitter itself.

A couple of days ago, this search engine became slightly more useful when Twitter announced that it was indexing every single tweet that has been sent since 2006. Creating a somewhat Shakespearean internet-within-the-internet, Twitter is a valuable resource not only for information but also social commentary. Another update today makes it possible to share any interesting tweets you discover via direct message in addition to the recently added URL sharing option.

Online ads have been seen as the scourge of the web since they were first dreamed up. There are various ways you can avoid them, but they exist for a reason -- to generate revenue. Google may have come up with a solution that keeps everyone happy, website owners and visitors alike. Google Contributor is described as "an experiment in additional ways to fund the web" and it makes it possible to kill ads without killing revenue.

It's invite only at the moment, but once Google Contributor is properly up and running, web users will be invited to make a monthly "contribution". This will enable them to browse participating sites without being bothered by ads; instead you'll see a thank you message or just empty space.

Smartphone data usage will increase eightfold over the next six years as consumers continue to take advantage of the increasingly fast speeds on offer from mobile operators.

Global data produced as part of the latest Ericsson Mobility Report showed that traffic would grow from the 2.1 exabytes used per month in 2014 to approximately 17 exabytes by 2020.

Microsoft Research is home to all manner of interesting projects and experiments, and one of the latest that the team is keen to share news about is automatic image captioning. There are no prizes for guessing what this is -- it's very much what it says on the tin -- and the technology has now reached a stage where the automatically generated captions for an image are at least as good as those thought of by people.

A team of just 12 worked on the project, and the results are pretty impressive. The system analyzes an image and identifies its key components. After determining objects and characteristics, these can then be evaluated in relation to each other to help decide what is important, and what can be ignored.

Every Sunday, many Americans load up on Doritos, nachos and beer to watch something very important -- NFL football. I say "important" somewhat facetiously, as there are so many more important things in the world to focus on. With that said, watching sports can be a great distraction from life's hardships and depressing news stories. You know what? A distraction can be a good thing and there is nothing wrong with that.

Some people watch NFL football a bit differently than others. Sure, there are people like myself who are simply fans of teams like the Jets or Dolphins, and watch for enjoyment; others however, do it for financial gain and endorphins by betting on games. Today, Microsoft announces that Bing will be predicting the NFL playoffs; this may be a great tool for gamblers.