Latest Technology News

Hey, Amazon, reward Kindle Fire owners with lower Prime pricing

Catalog this post in the "Stories I meant to Write Dept." On February 1, when rumors circulated about Amazon price increases, I conveyed to colleague Alan Buckingham in chat: "If I were Amazon, Prime would stay same for Fire users but go up for everyone else. Reward customers and drive sales". Today's price increase announcement is reason to formally suggest what I should have six weeks ago.

Amazon tablet shipments dipped during fourth quarter -- from 5.9 million to 5.8 million units -- year over year, according to IDC. Global market share fell to 7.6 percent from 9.9 percent. The other top-5 manufacturers all posted healthy growth gains, although Apple also lost market share. Amazon should use lower Prime pricing to encourage new Kindle Fire sales and to reward existing owners. Keep the price $79 for these customers and hike the rest to $99. To be clear: Referring to Kindle Fire means all models, including HD and HDX.

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Can the Internet of Things live up to its hype?

The Internet of Things has the potential to offer significant benefits to both businesses and consumers. Realizing those benefits though relies on identifying problems that the IoT can address.

Technology research specialist IDTechEx's event in Berlin at the beginning of April is set to explore the prospects offered by the IoT and look at how it can be used to make a difference in the real world.

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VLC for Windows 8 Beta launches, early promise undermined by stability issues

Windows RT/8 users rejoice: a Modern UI version of the fan-favorite VLC Media Player tool has just surfaced in the Windows App Store. VLC for Windows 8 Beta 0.2is currently available for Intel-based processors only, so users of WinRT tablets will need to wait until VideoLan is able to successfully compile an ARM version.

As the version number attests, VLC for Windows 8 is a very early public peek at running VLC on the Modern UI platform, and sadly it shows.

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Emsisoft releases Mobile Security for Android

Emsisoft has announced the availability of Emsisoft Mobile Security 1.0, its lightweight commercial Android security solution.

Mobile Security offers a similar feature set to many competing products. A malware scanner checks your apps and files for threats; real-time protection detects and blocks malicious apps before they can be installed, while web protection prevents you accessing dangerous websites.

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Amazon Prime officially gets a price increase, customers safe for now

Rumors have abounded for weeks that Amazon would bump up the pricing of its Prime service -- the program that awards free two-day shipping on all purchases, provides a lending library to Kindle owners and a video streaming service that competes with Netflix.

Today, rumor becomes fact as existing customers awake to an email that gives the bad news. While cries of gloom over the price possibly doubling were, thankfully, not true, it is still an added fee to the annual subscription rate.

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Google Street View paddles down the Colorado River

Despite its name, which stems from the location of origin, the Colorado River is most famous for its winding path through the Grand Canyon in Arizona. From there, it makes its way on to Baja in Mexico and finally a terminus at the Gulf -- a 1,450 mile journey.

If you haven’t seen the river, or the canyon (and I highly recommend doing so) then Google Street View will now give you a sense of what it is like. The search giant teamed up with American Rivers to capture the images seen in this latest update.

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APUSB 47 restores USB drive autorun to Windows 7 and 8

At first, Windows AutoRun seemed like a very good idea. Just connect a removable drive, and as long as it’s configured correctly, a program is automatically launched to help process your files (or whatever else you want to do).

But then, of course, malware authors realized that this was a great way to infect PCs without anyone ever noticing. Individual users could turn AutoRun off, but eventually Microsoft decided this wasn’t enough, and the feature was disabled for all but optical media in Windows 7.

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Nikon beefs up its mirrorless range with new 1 V3 camera

Smartphones may be the most popular devices for taking pictures nowadays, but there is still a place for dedicated cameras, which continue to offer superior image quality. For this reason, I, like many other photography enthusiasts, have a DSLR. It may not be small, but it is a pleasure to shoot photos with. But, mirrorless cameras are slowly catching up and may soon prove to be as good as or better than their bigger siblings, with their more pocketable design playing a key part in this.

Nikon's new 1 V3 mirrorless camera, that the Japanese manufacturer unveiled today, is one of the most attractive offerings in its 1 range. Like other, similar bodies, it is quite light, coming in at just 324 grams. And it brings impressive specifications to the table, like a 171 focus point system and 20 FPS shooting rate.

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AVI ReComp supports custom target file sizes

It’s been almost two years since the last release, but the excellent AVI compression tool AVI ReComp has finally been updated to version 1.5.6.

There’s only one significant addition in this build, but it’s a good one. When choosing a target size for the output video, you’re no longer restricted to the default choices. Click "Custom sizes", add whatever new sizes you like, and in future they’ll appear along with the standard options.

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Fitbit Force recall affects 'about' 1M units

Activity trackers, also known as fitness bands, are popular wearable devices that are designed, among other purposes, to give users insights into their sleeping habits, the option to track the time and distance they walk and the number of steps they make. In the case of the Fitbit Force, however, activity trackers are also giving users rashes.

Fitbit has officially revealed 1.7 percent of Force users have reported skin irritations, which has led the company to announce a voluntary recall and issue a public apology. In two filings, with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Healthy Canadians agency, the wearables company reveals the extent of the recall -- roughly one million units in US and "about" 28,000 north of the border, in Canada, sold between October 2013 and February 2014.

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Windows XP, 2001 called and it wants you back

I admit to being utterly, utterly puzzled why some people and businesses choose to keep using Windows XP in 2014. Maybe they have not received the memo it is nearly 13 years old, and terribly outdated. If the operating system was a living being, it would be called a dinosaur. And we are not seeing those alive and kicking in living rooms, offices and ATMs, are we?

I am not going to pull out the security card and trump it as a reason to upgrade. We all know this argument does not resonate with Windows XP users. Instead, they should be looking at the real benefits an upgrade, to let's say Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, will do for them and at what could happen if they choose not to abandon the sinking ship. This is a strategy Microsoft has adopted in a new please-upgrade-from-XP-we-really-want-you-to infographic, aimed at the UK Government.

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Bitcoin is down but not out

Regular readers will know that I’ve had my doubts about Bitcoin. Recent events in the Bitcoin world, especially the failure of Mt. Gox, the biggest Bitcoin exchange, have caused further problems for the crypto currency. But I’m oddly cheered by these events and am beginning to think Bitcoin may actually have a chance of surviving as a currency.

Willy Sutton, who made his career robbing banks, once explained that he robbed them "because that’s where the money is". Well recent bad news in the world of Bitcoin follows a similar theme: yes there have been thefts, corruption, and a suicide, but all this is based not on Bitcoin’s failure but on its success. The wonder isn’t that Mt. Gox lost $460 million in Bitcoins but that it had $460 million in Bitcoins to lose.

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ARM-based robot will try to break Rubik's Cube Guinness World Record with Galaxy S4

Games do not have to be mindless. You can learn and develop skills, while having fun and playing too. Some good examples are Simon and Rubik's Cube. The latter is quite hard -- you must make each side of a cube a solid color, by rotating parts of the toy. Trust me, it is harder than it sounds.

Believe it or not, there is a way to make the Rubik's Cube even better -- robots. Yes, they can be designed to solve a Rubik's Cube faster than any human. Today, ARM announces that it has built one with components that include Lego bricks and a Galaxy S4, with the intention of breaking the Rubik's Cube speed record.

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Microsoft Zune will be back, at least in new Schwarzenegger video

"I'll be back". The line has become a classic in popular culture as the muscular movie hero so frequently uttered it, almost as if it was his calling card. Arnold Schwarzenegger has done a lot since those days, some he would be proud of, and also a bit that he likely isn't, but regardless, he made good on his promise. He's back.

A new video from the action star features a tank and lots of objects being crushed. In fact, the video is called "will it crush", perhaps playing off the popular "will it blend" series. Spoiler alert -- most objects in the path of a tank will, in fact, crush.

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OpenClonk is a free, multiplayer -- and strangely familiar -- action game

It’s now almost 20 years since Clonk first appeared, a fun multiplayer platform and real-time strategy game.

The core program gave you control over "Clonks", "small but nimble humanoid beings". You moved them around a 2D horizontally scrolling world, reworking the landscape, setting up mining operations, managing your economy and taking part in "fast and fiddly melees".

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