In the world of Android, there is rarely a clear-cut "best" smartphone. This is a good thing, as it signifies variety in the Android marketplace. In other words, consumers do not all have the same tastes; some like a smaller screen, some a larger screen and some even like having a stylus. However, with that said, even though people have different preferences, it is easy to identify the top flagship phones.

BetaNews has the two top Android smartphones in our lab. Yes, we have both the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and Google's Motorola-manufactured Nexus 6. For the immediate future, these will be the phones of many consumers' desires. Deciding which of these two smartphones to buy is very problematic, but hey -- it's a great problem to have, right? Please read on, to see how the phones differ and which one you should buy.

Hands up if you saw that coming? We’ve been so used to Windows 8 and 8.1 losing usage share month on month, that any kind of move in the right direction -- i.e. growth -- seems almost an anomaly. And when Windows 8.x does gain usage share, it’s usually pretty minimal.

Not in October. According to the latest usage share figures from web analytics firm NetMarketShare, Windows 8 use grew in that month, and Windows 8.1 (finally) took off like a rocket. In fact, Windows 8.1’s growth in that month is so impressive you’ve got to imagine the number crunchers at NetMarketShare spent a long time checking and re-checking their findings to make sure there wasn’t a mistake at their end.

When Gartner coined the phrase "next generation firewall", in 2003, it captured a then-nascent approach to traffic classification and control. Combining traditional packet filtering with some application control and IPS layered on top, today's 'legacy' NGFWs do pretty much what they say on the tin.

However, while NGFWs continue to be a vital part of an organization’s protection, they were designed for a time before advanced targeted threats started attacking our enterprises -- threats which often go undetected until it's too late.

Fall is my favorite season, as I get to wear a hoodie, drink pumpkin-flavored coffee and celebrate Halloween. Yes, even though that holiday is designed for kids, more and more adults are getting in on the fun. Hell, who doesn't want to dress up in a costume and eat candy? I would do that every day if I could!

Unfortunately, it can be hard to find a good haunted house nowadays, as society has become very sensitive and opposed to scary things. I mean, OK yes, having a man dress as a zombie and scaring a 5 year old child with a chainsaw is not the greatest of ideas, but hey -- that is what Halloween is about. Being traumatized is part of the allure. Today, Google releases a list of the scariest places in Europe. Not in Europe? No worries, Google Maps can take you there.

In only a handful of years, a wide range of file sharing services have popped up, from completely free services aimed at consumers (including the likes of Dropbox, Google and WeTransfer), to enterprise-focused services (such as Mimecast, EMC and Citrix).

Considering the long list of available offerings on both sides, making the right choice for your business can be difficult, so it's a good idea to do your research first...

After a long wait, Microsoft announced today that the next version of Office for Mac will finally see the light of day in 2015. Mac users will be able to get their hands on a public beta in the first half of next year, with the final version to arrive before the end of 2015. The latest official version of Office for Mac, Office for Mac 2011, launched more than four years ago.

Microsoft does not reveal what the upcoming Office for Mac will be called, but, seeing as it launches in 2015, it is possible that the software giant will stick to the current naming scheme and call it Office for Mac 2015. What we do know is that it will include Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word, which will make it less feature-rich than Office 2013, which has been available on Windows for nearly two years.

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

If you have browsed the new app and games listing this week you may have stumbled upon several irregularities again.

We're frequently being told that the use of mobile devices makes our work lives easier, but it seems that a sizable percentage of people don't share that view.

Mobile sales solution company Seismic has released the results of its Salesforce Spotlight survey showing the complex relationship between business users and mobile technology.

How many of you really understand the cloud? If you were tasked with explaining "the cloud" to a child could you manage it?

A recent discussion with top industry professionals and cloud thought leaders revealed that, for cloud solution providers, education was the biggest hurdle in cloud service adoption. Thankfully at a SAGE hosted round table, we dissected exactly what the cloud is, what it does, and how it can benefit you.

With every new breach, network security hits the news, yet many people and companies still don’t get the basics right.

UK-based wireless network specialist Exigent Networks has produced an infographic that looks at the importance of network security and offers tips and expert advice.

Samsung is slowly moving away from its oft-maligned, all-plastic smartphone designs of the past, in an attempt to convince consumers that it too can make premium-looking and feeling devices. The first smartphone to reveal what the future holds was Galaxy Alpha, announced just a few months ago. Then Galaxy Note 4 came along, stepping things up even further in the high-end segment.

And now we see how Samsung's vision will impact its less expensive Galaxy devices, as the company just took the wraps off Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A3 today, two mid-range to low-end smartphones featuring "refined full metal unibody designs" that happen to be very, very thin (for whatever reason): 6.7 and 6.9 mm, respectively.

There are days when I get absolutely swamped with email -- my work and personal inboxes are frequently filled to bursting -- and I’m not alone in struggling with the never ending deluge of demanding messages.

Unroll.me, a service which helps users keep their inboxes under control, has put together a Halloween-themed infographic detailing some of the most frightening facts about email. Did you know, for example, that the average person in the US, spends four hours a day reading, composing and replying to messages?

Berlin-based developer O&O Software GmbH has announced the release of O&O MediaRecovery 10, its media file recovery package for Windows Vista and later.

The most interesting addition appears to be the ability "to repair corrupt data prior to recovery". We’ve yet to test that -- and it’s going to be hard to benchmark anyway -- but If you’ve lost files due to hard drive corruption then it may significantly increase your chance of recovering something usable.

Following on from the success of Tesco's first generation budget tablet, it was only a matter of time until its successor was released.

Tesco sold 35,000 units of the Hudl in the first few days after it was launched last year and ended up shifting over 750,000, placing this endeavor firmly into the 'success' category for the supermarket giant. The Hudl 2 was recently released and we were given the chance to take it for a test spin to find out if Tesco has got another bargain success story on its shelves.

While some people find animated GIFs to be tacky and silly, I find them fun. Sure, many people use the images to flood social media with memes, but they also serve as a great way to show a short animation using a small file size. I often use them in things like PowerPoint presentations, as they jazz it up a bit and keep things exciting.

Searching for the perfect animated GIF can be problematic, as most images are not named as such, and unless the search engine gives an option, they may be mixed in with non-animated images too. Today, Bing gets even better, with the all-new option to filter image searches by animated GIF.