Latest Technology News

Google Chrome extensions are designed to improve or modify functionality that the web browser offers. Some extensions in the official Chrome Web Store have millions of users who all rely on the functionality their add-ons provides them with.

While not as powerful as Firefox add-ons, Chrome extensions are easily powerful enough to manipulate websites that you visit, or communicate with a remote server. News about extension abuse reached the mainstream press recently.

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Creating digital images is easy. Organizing them into appropriate folders takes rather more effort, though, which is probably why many people just let them pile up in the Pictures folder. But there could be a better way.

PhotoSift is small and simple tool which uses a keyboard-based workflow to sort your images. It’s basic, but can be effective, and in the right situation it’s extremely fast.

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Finnish maker Nokia has released its earnings report for Q4 2013, the first that indicates how the company, and its financial health, will look like without the Devices & Services arm that is set to be part of Microsoft's portfolio. That business is listed under "Discontinued operations".

Another effect of the sale of this business is that Nokia no longer lists the exact volume for the mobile phones and smartphones sold during the quarter. This effectively rules out any precise Lumia Windows Phone performance comparison. However, the company gives bad news as it reveals unit sales are actually lower for its Windows Phones compared to the previous quarter, when it sold 8.8 million of them.

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New analysis by security awareness training company KnowBe4 shows, perhaps not surprisingly, that training helps reduce risky online behavior in the workplace.

Carried out over a 12-month period, the study shows that whilst almost 16 percent of employees were prone to click on phishing links initially, this was reduced to 1.28 percent on average after training.

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In trial run by BT (British Telecom) and Alcatel-Lucent in London, UK, a data transfer rate of 1.4Tb/s has been achieved. This certainly sounds fast, and Alcatel-Lucent is claiming that it is the highest data transfer speed ever achieved using commercial-grade hardware.

What could you do with an internet connection of this speed? If you felt so inclined you would be able to download no less than 44 HD quality movies in a single second. One. Single. Second.

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Most consumer cloud services compete on storage space in a small way. Dropbox offers 2GB, SkyDrive starts with a free 7GB, Google Drive delivers 15GB, and so on.

If none of this gets close to what you need, though, you might prefer Yunio. Not only does it provide a chunky 1TB for free, but you’re also allocated a further gigabyte for every day you use the service.

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A couple of days ago Microsoft released a 20-page expert guide to mastering Windows 8.1, and now it announces the availability of the Windows 8.1 Business User Guide Package. This is a collection of guides and video tutorials aimed at helping business users take full advantage of the tiled OS.

In addition to the new Windows 8.1 Power User Guide, the package offers a 16-page Windows 8.1 Quick Guide for Business (in two formats -- PDF and raw files for printing) and eight short how-to video tutorials. The Quick Guide and videos have all been available previously, but Microsoft promises new support material is on the way.

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Security firm Avast Software, celebrating 25 years in the business this year, has released a second update to its avast! 2014 range of products. Avast Free Antivirus 2014, Internet Security 2014 and Premier 2014 all get updated to build number 9.0.2013.

The new build, although a minor one, contains a number of important stability and bug fixes, making it a must-have update for all existing Avast users.

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Pazera Software has announced the release of Free Audio Video Pack 2.0, a renamed update of its Pazera Video Converters Suite.

As you’ll guess from the name, the package provides tools to handle audio and video and conversions between all the main formats (AVI, MPG, MP4, MP3, WAV, FLAC, AAC, MOV, WebM, WMV, WMA, OGG, WebM, FLV, OGV, 3GP). As a bonus, there’s also a program to extract audio tracks from CD images based on the CUE sheets.

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Introduced in 2012, Google Apps Vault is designed to manage business-critical information and preserve important data.

It helps safeguard information for continuity, compliance and regulatory purposes and is used by thousands of businesses, schools, and governments. Google has now expanded Apps Vault's capabilities by introducing targeted legal holds.

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Just yesterday Beats Music sprung into life, with a plan to compete with the established giants already in the market, such as Google, Apple, Spotify and others. The launch was greeted with much fanfare, and all sorts of artists are involved in the project.

But 24 hours into the life of the new service, not everything is milk and honey. Apparently issues have arisen with service for those who already signed up, and now the Dr. Dre-sponsored music app is pulling back to address problems.

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When it comes to TV, it feels like there is nothing ever on. An easy remedy for this is to buy a media box like a Roku or Apple TV. This allows you to add streaming services to your traditional "dumb" television.

Sadly, choosing such a box can be quite the ordeal -- there are too many options and prices. Ideally, you want to get the most functionality for the lowest price. A good option is to choose one that utilizes Android, as this empowers the user with access to a great deal of software such as XBMC. Today, Satechi announces an elegant Android-based solution, called the Smart TV Box.

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You would think that the rollout of an Android update would cause mass delight. There are usually ripples of excitement as a new device receives the latest version of Google's mobile operating system, and this has certainly been the case with KitKat. But some owners of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 are finding that the update has a rather unfortunate side-effect -- third-party accessories no longer function.

There are various threads popping up on XDA with users complaining that cases, such as those from Spigen, are no longer working correctly. Specifically, the S-View feature appears to have stopped working for many people -- this is the feature that makes it possible to view a portion of the handset's screen through an aperture in the protective case so it is possible to keep an eye on notifications without having to open up the cover.

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Yesterday, Verizon reported that it activated 8.8 million smartphones in Q4 2013, a 10 percent decline from the 9.8 million it activated in Q4 2012. While it declined to break out iPhone activations, we do have some data that could help us gauge the iPhone's sales performance in the US market.

The reason for the decline in Verizon's smartphone activations should be clear enough to regular readers. As smartphones have "good enough", replacement cycles have become longer. At the same time, the basis of competition in the market has shifted towards affordability and flexibility, which explains the popularity of T-Mobile's unsubsidized plans. Now, let's make an attempt to gauge how this decline affected iPhone sales at Verizon.

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The Chromebook platform is steadily growing and one of the latest arrivals in this market comes from Toshiba. The hardware maker unveiled its offering during the recent CES 2014 show in Las Vegas, but the notebook wasn’t available at the time of the reveal.

Now the Toshiba Chromebook is up for pre-order on Amazon for $279.99. The device boasts an Intel Celeron 2955U 1.4 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, a 16 GB SSD for storage and 13.3-inch screen. The company promises nine hours of battery life.

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