Jolla's Sailfish OS 1.0 to arrive soon, but the smartphones may not
New players in the smartphone market are finding it increasingly difficult to get the mobile operator support they need to expand their reach into new territories as Android and iOS form a duopoly responsible for more than 90 percent share of the market. Even Windows Phone, an established competitor, is struggling as it goes against the tide.
Jolla, being a new player, is no exception. The Finnish company says it is now ready to ship its smartphones across the globe, as it officially announced Sailfish OS 1.0, but the mobile operator support and international availability are not what you may call stellar at this point.
Cut SVG file size by 66%+ with SVG Cleaner
Scalable Vector Graphics is a powerful image format with support for scripting, filters, animation, interactivity and more. But it’s also XML-based, and not exactly efficient: SVG file sizes can be much larger than you expect, an issue if you’re putting them online.
SVG Cleaner is an open source tool which optimizes SVG images, stripping out unnecessary elements and attributes, compressing whatever’s left, and usually making a real difference to their file size.
LaCie goes big -- reveals 25 TB NAS
Taking advantage of the availability of 5 TB Seagate HDDs, LaCie has introduced the new drives in three of its NAS devices, that now tout a maximum capacity ranging from 5 TB to 25 TB. The biggest of the bunch has a five-bay layout, which makes it the largest solution in its class that is available on the market today, according to the company.
The smallest of the three is the d2, which can now be had with 5 TB of storage. There are also 3 TB and 4 TB configurations, but those are older. The 2big can offer twice as much at 10 TB. Like its smaller brother, it too can be had with less storage (4 TB, 6 TB and 8 TB), but again those configurations are older. The one that is the most interesting is called 5big, and is the one LaCie calls the largest five-bay solution available now.
Google Maps travels to India, visits the Taj Mahal
Google has been busy with its Maps service the past couple of days, including a new desktop version, announced yesterday, that will be rolling out soon. But the company has not been too busy for a little vacation, this time traveling to India.
The country is known for many sights, though the most prominent is likely the Taj Mahal, a white marble building that has become a top tourist destination. That wasn't the only place that Google visited, though. 29 more monuments were also included in the new Street View of the country.
Companies are overlooking a new generation of security threats
We reported yesterday on businesses being unprepared for the threats presented by BYOD. But according to a new study by Dell this is just one of a range of new threats that are being overlooked.
Technologies like BYOD, mobility, cloud computing, and internet usage, as well as internal actions both accidental and malicious, introduce organizations to a multitude of new risks.
YouTube now adapts layout to larger displays
Like Google+, YouTube had a love affair with white space. This quirkiness was only noticeable to those who have large displays. On my 23-inch screen this meant the video-sharing site had only taken roughly half of it to show me relevant content. To get around this behavior, I had to resort to Google Chrome extensions which could center the page.
I said "had" because, thankfully, YouTube is now smart enough to figure out that when we are using large screens it should adapt its look accordingly. It now centers, yes. And, to my eyes, YouTube now looks more like Google+. That is not a bad thing, really, as, from my point of view, there is nothing wrong with the latter's layout.
WhatsApp is the first of several big acquisitions for Facebook
If the announcement of Facebook paying $19 billion in cash and stock for WhatsApp surprised you then maybe you’d forgotten this prediction I published on January 8th:
#6 -- Facebook transforms itself (or tries to) with a huge acquisition. I wrote long ago that we’d never see Facebook in the Dow 30 Industrials. The company is awash in users and profits but it's lost the pulse of the market if it ever had it. Trying to buy its way into the Millennial melting data market Facebook offered $3 billion for Snapchat, which turned it down then rejected a $4 billion offer from Google. Google actually calculates these things, Facebook does not, so where Google will now reverse-engineer Snapchat, Facebook will panic and go back with the BIG checkbook -- $10+ billion. If not Snapchat then some other overnight success. Facebook needs to borrow a cup of sugar somewhere.
Google returns to innovation -- reveals Android prototype, Project Tango
Android handsets are getting a bit stale. Year after year, we get faster specs and bigger screens, but what about innovation? Sure, Samsung has attempted to add features, but those have proven to be more of a gimmick than true innovation. A video pauses when the user looks away? In theory it is cool, but in practice very annoying -- sometimes you look away and want to keep listening to the audio. As an Android fan, I hate to say it, but the fingerprint reader on Apple's iPhone 5s is true quality innovation.
Sadly, even Google's Nexus line has been rather ho-hum. From the Galaxy Nexus to the Nexus 5, its all the same stuff, just minor bumps -- yawn. Today however, Google announces a prototype handset that is so revolutionary, your chest hair may stand on end -- Project Tango.
Google Maps tackles deforestation with new views of the world's woods
I haven't witnessed the devastation of the Amazon, but I've been fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to travel through the American Northwest, a place where "clear-cutting" ran rampant in the 80's. Today's laws have somewhat subsided that practice, but the Oregon and Washington areas are a small sample size on a vast, global scale.
Now Google Maps takes on the issue that faces everyone today -- we need the space, though less-so the paper, and certainly need the oxygen produced. The search giant has put together a new mapping program that is tracking the forests around the world -- or the dwindling numbers of them.
Microsoft reveals Media Remote for Xbox One
Xbox One touts its voice control, but some customers feel that isn't quite enough, and using a game controller is not much easier. Harmony supports the console, but not everyone wishes to pay for the high-end universal remote.
Now Microsoft is unveiling a new Media Remote for the gaming system. This isn't entirely unexpected. After all, last week Amazon Canada accidentally reveled the little remote control on its retail website.
Microsoft and Oprah Winfrey want you to say 'hello' on Skype, or in person
Every day, I speak with hundreds of people on social media, IRC and instant messenger. However, I rarely get to see the person face to face. The closest I get is their profile pic. Heck, even those can be faked; a hairy old man can pretend to be a 21 year old female college student -- trust me on this.
In other words, while technology has linked more people together, it has sucked the humanity out of the interaction. Video chat, such as Skype, is a great way to remedy this. Today, Microsoft announces an initiative with celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Sanjay Gupta, urging people to say "hello" to complete strangers or people you haven't talked to in a long time; on Skype or in person.
RealPlayer Cloud gives you the best of all worlds when it comes to playing video
When it comes to playing video on your PC or mobile, the choices are vast and sometimes confusing. Do you restrict yourself to access from one device, or do you manually transfer media between devices as and when it’s required? Or do you invest in some cloud-based solution that gives you access wherever you have an internet connection?
You could try and combine a number of different solutions, or you could take a closer look at RealPlayer Cloud 17 and RealPlayer Cloud for Mobile, which offers a solution to all three scenarios in one app.
Hosted virtual desktop helps businesses migrate to the cloud
One of the problems with migrating systems to the cloud is ensuring a consistent means of access for users in different locations and with different devices.
Cloud services provider dinCloud has an answer in the form of webHVD, an HTML 5 virtual desktop that’s fast secure and easy to deploy.
The value of open source
In 2006, I co-founded Four Kitchens, a web design and development consultancy that specializes in working with open-source software. As an open-source business, we are frequently asked about the benefits of open source. The way I explain it to most people is like this: The open-source business model is service-driven, and the closed-source model is product-driven.
In an open-source model, your startup costs are zero and you need to expend capital -- your time, your company’s development cycles and your money to hire outside vendors, etc. -- to get the software to do what you need. In a closed-source model, your startup costs are usually quite high because you must purchase licenses, subscriptions and proprietary hardware, but the software more or less works out of the box. In the long run, I believe the open-source model is cheaper for two reasons:
Businesses unprepared for security risks from BYOD
A majority of organizations acknowledge that they’re unprepared to deal with security breaches via their BYOD technology.
A new survey released by security awareness training specialist KnowBe4 shows that 53 percent of businesses aren't properly prepared to deal with hacked or stolen mobile devices, even though 50 percent indicated that company-owned tablets, notebooks or smartphones may have been hacked in the past year.
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