Windows Phone users who are enrolled in the Preview For Developers program can now install Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1. The major update, which was announced less than a week ago, is set to officially roll out to the masses in the comings months.

The most important user-facing changes that Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1 introduces are Live Folders, a new feature which finally enables folders on the platform, and improvements to the stock apps, privacy and security. Of course, it also makes way for Cortana's first expansion.

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If you have something to say, you can either say it to a person's face or resort to Leak, a new cloud service that lets you send anonymous emails that will likely never be traced back to you if some common sense is used. I prefer the open approach, but I sense that today quite a few people will embrace the latter.

The possibilities are endless. You can send any sort of message through the service, as long as you don't push things too far. Leak would rather you don't threaten or bully people, encourage damaging behaviors, send "graphic" images or porn, spam or share private information. Of course, based on the anonymous emails I am seeing (some sent "leaks" are publicly shared on the site), there are users who will do the obvious: abuse the service and act immaturely.

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Gigaset (previously Gigaset Siemens) is launching a range of affordable Android tablets in the UK. This is the first foray into the tablet market for the home phone specialist which will initially be offering two devices -- an 8 inch model and a 10 inch one.

The smaller tablet, the QV830, is available to buy from Curry’s now, priced at £99.99, while the larger QV1030 will be available shortly. The price for that model has yet to be confirmed.

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Backup specialist Intronis has announced that it’s integrating Bare Metal Restore into its ECHOplatform for small and medium businesses, which offers a flat-fee unlimited cloud and local storage pricing model.

The BMR functionality offers complete physical-to-physical (P2P) bare metal recovery and physical-to-virtual (P2V) BMR recovery options for greater flexibility and performance. Available at no extra charge to Intronis channel partners it allows recovery back to the original system or to a replacement machine.

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When we tried it last year, TEncoder impressed us as a powerful video conversion tool with a stack of features: file, folder and folder tree import, video trimming, 800+ output profiles, excellent subtitling support, deinterlace and crop tools, full control over output codec settings, and a whole lot more.

It was an outstanding package, but the developer had only just got started, and major updates have taken the program into whole new areas.

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The way that many enterprises use data places heavy demands on storage, both in terms of capacity and performance. Whilst SSDs can solve the performance issue they don’t always offer the capacity required.

California-based BiTMICRO is a pioneer of SSDs having been involved with them since 1999. With the launch of its new MAXio E-Series PCIe drives it's aiming to deliver capacity, performance and reliability for companies that need to support high volume application workloads.

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In the (nearly) two years since launch, Microsoft has made sweeping changes to its tiled OS. The road from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 Update, has been an interesting, not to mention bumpy one. I was never a great fan of Windows 8, but I love the operating system it’s become.

However, poor market share, and negative word of mouth has meant that Microsoft has to move on and away from 8.x as quickly as possible and, as a result, any future changes and additions -- including the reintroduction of the Start button -- will be rolled into Windows 9 instead of appearing in the next 8.x Update, as had originally been rumored.

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As many as 9 percent of Android apps are fully or partially malware, according to a new piece of research, although the majority of the blame (as ever) lies with dodgy third-party app stores particularly in Asia.

The figure comes from Cheetah Mobile's latest security report for the first half of 2014, which collected 24.4 million sample files during those six months, and found that 2.2 million were viruses.

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Users of wearable technology can have their information tracked with just $70 worth of hardware, according to a new study.

Research carried out by security firm Symantec used a simple set-up combining a Raspberry Pi computer and a Bluetooth radio module, to scan for signals. The technology was taken to parks and sporting events where it was able to record data being broadcast from gadgets close by.

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Do you really need separate applications to cover your design needs, whether photo editing, digital art or simple design tasks like producing flyers and scrapbooks? For those who want everything in one package, Xara has the answer.

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer can’t compete with the very best specialist tools like Photoshop, but it’s certainly a match for most. And that’s even after you realize that it’s effectively bundling two or three design packages in one for a very price. And for most people that will be enough.

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Flappy Bird quickly hit the level of phenomena, then just as quickly vanished as the developer pulled it from both the iTunes and Google Play stores. He apparently buckled under the weight of customers becoming addicted and sending complaints directly to him. Hard to say anyone would blame him for that.

Now the simple, but also incredibly hard, game is making a come-back, though under the name "Flappy Birds Family". Those who had already installed it on a phone or tablet never lost it, but the folks who found out too late are now in luck. That is, providing they have an Amazon Fire TV box sitting around.

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Yesterday, I received an automated call from Barclays Bank warning about suspicious purchases. The number: 877-935-2427. The message asked for the card number to proceed. This morning, my wife received a call from 800-888-8804 indicating our AT&T account had been breached and asking to provide the last four digits of her social security number. We don't have accounts with either company.

Both calls phished for personal information -- something I'm used to by email but not to our cell phones. The proximity -- less than a day apart -- and the first of them ever disturbs me. I don't recall receiving these kinds of bogus calls before. To be clear: You should never give out personal information to automated systems. When there is a legitimate security breach, the service provider will ask for verification information already on file, not request account numbers or any portion of a social security number.

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Recently my colleague Joe Wilcox wrote about how he'd cut the cord and was not turning back. I can sympathize, and have made the same move, though I can't promise I'll never go back. Football season is coming, after all, and Sunday Ticket, while costing a fortune, will still tempt me.

I have been a DirecTV subscriber for more than ten years. I truly loved the service, and I paid for that love affair. Perhaps not to the extent of other cable and satellite customers -- I settled for the middle package and didn't bother with premium channels like HBO or Showtime. I did briefly flirt with the sports package, but found it to not be worth the extra hit to my bank account.

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Downloading files is easy -- click a link, click “Save”, usually -- and if you need more features then most browsers have a range of free add-ons which can help.

But for real power there's no substitute for a stand-alone download manager like the new Download Ninja.

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XBMC has gone through many iterations over the 12 years of its existence. The program, which now powers a number of home theater computers, began life as Xbox Media Player, then morphed into Xbox Media Center, before finally settling on the shorter abbreviation of XBMC.

But the platform has moved so far off from its original Xbox beginnings that it has announced it will get away from the old name as well.

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