Tablet activations surge over Christmas, but it's not all good news
Unsurprisingly tablets proved to be a very popular gift this Christmas. According to mobile measurement firm Flurry, device activations were up by 63 percent on Christmas day, compared to any other average day in December.
Flurry’s activation figures cover Amazon, Apple, Acer, and Samsung and reveal an interesting trend. While all four tech firms enjoyed a major bump on the day, activations were much lower this year than in the previous two years.
My tech resolutions for 2014 [Mark]
Well, that's another year out of the way! It's customary at this time of year to make resolutions... for some people at least. It's something I've always shied away from, but this year is going to be different.
I don’t smoke anymore, I don’t need to lose weight, and I'm unlikely to take over the world in the next twelve months. But when it comes to tech, there is room for improvement, so here are my New Year's resolution that I will, truly, try to stick to.
Bring the Windows Experience Index back to Windows 8.1
Windows 8.1 delivered plenty of worthwhile improvements: extra app docking and resizing options, a "boot to desktop" option, automatic app updates, SkyDrive integration in Explorer, and a sort-of Start button, amongst many others. But it also took one feature away in the form of the Windows Experience Index (WEI), a simple tool for benchmarking your PC hardware.
If you miss the WEI, though, there's no problem -- you can easily restore the feature by installing ChrisPC Win Experience Index.
RawCopy lets you copy any NTFS file -- even if it’s locked
Copying files is normally a very straightforward process, but there are one or two potential problems waiting to trip you up. If Windows or another application has the file open, for example, you’ll probably just get a "File in Use" error. And if you don’t have the necessary permissions to access the file then you could also be blocked.
You might be able to get around some of these issues, with a little work (using Unlocker to manually close a file, say), but RawCopy offers a simpler and safer approach. It’s an open-source console-based tool which copies NTFS files using low-level disk access, bypassing all the usual restrictions. Whether the file is locked by an application, Windows, or you just don’t have the necessary permissions, there’s no problem: RawCopy will copy it regardless.
My favorite tech products of 2013 [Mark]
This past year has been incredibly busy, and a huge amount of hardware has passed through my hands. Some of it has impressed, a lot has disappointed, but a handful was great enough to make it to my list of favorites for the year.
While I've tried out a great deal of software, this has been a year in which it has been hardware that has caught my eye. So here it is: my favorite tech from 2013.
List the installed software on any network PC with Basic Software Inventory
When you’re managing a network then it’s important to keep track of the software installed on each system, and Basic Software Inventory is convenient way to help, quickly listing everything installed on your target system.
Well, maybe not quite "everything", the program can only itemize applications installed with the Windows installer, a significant restriction. Don’t let that put you off, though, because Software Inventory has other interesting aspects, including the fact that it’s an HTML Application, a plain text HTA file, so you can see how the program works and even tweak it to suit your needs.
Happy Birthday Linus Torvalds! How's that Linux thing doing?
As 2013 crawls towards the finish line, we can reflect on Christmas, the gifts we gave and received and for some people, the birth of Jesus. However, December contains another significant birthday, belonging to Linus Torvalds. Yes, the father of Linux was born this month.
His birthday is a great time to thank the man for his contributions. However, it also marks an appropriate time to reflect on the state of Linux. Was 2013 a good or bad year for the kernel?
My favorite tech products of 2013 [Alan]
The year that slowly draws to a close has been a big one in technology, but when is that not the case these days? It seems the rate of hardware and software releases grows exponentially -- it's Moore's Law on steroids. We've seen new tablets, laptops desktops, phones...you name it.
I've been fortunate enough to test more than a few of these products and I have had the usual share of hits and duds. If you asked what I liked, what I really liked, then I would give you a few answers. And that’s what we will stick with here. I’ll spare you the whining about products I didn’t care for.
The most popular stories on BetaNews this past week -- December 22 - 28
This hass been a much quieter week than usual with Christmas meaning that many companies have been on a virtual shutdown. But there has still been a bit of activity over the past seven days. We've reached the end of the year and the BetaNews team finds itself in a reflective mood. Mihaita was the first to pick his favourite tech products of the years, and Wayne wasn't far behind. Brian also got in on the action and Ian shared his thoughts as well. Bing also took a look back at the year, putting together a list of the top ten homepage images of 2013.
A delay at UPS meant that the delivery of many Christmas presents was held up, but if the delivery man did manage to make his way to your door in time to bring you a Surface 2, Brian has a guide to getting started. Alan was also on hand to help anyone who was the lucky recipient of a Kindle Fire HDX or a Google TV. Many people will have received, or bought themselves, a Windows 8.1 PC: Wayne had the info you need to get started.
Surprise, surprise! Federal judge says NSA's mass surveillance is legal
The NSA's indiscriminate collection of telephone data has been ruled as legal by a federal judge in New York. Judge William Pauley ruled that the National Security Agency's activities do not violate the constitution. Just last week, another federal judge suggested that the collection of phone records was likely to violate the US constitution and a White House review panel has already recommended that President Obama stops the NSA in its tracks.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had brought a case to court challenging the NSA program, but Judge Pauley's ruling put an end to this. It looks like there could be something of a battle ahead, and the latest ruling opens up the possibility that the matter will be settled by the US Supreme Court. Referring to the fourth amendment, Judge Pauley said that whether it "protects bulk telephony metadata is ultimately a question of reasonableness."
Rdio killed the Vdio star
Despite its success in the music streaming business, Rdio has learned that video is a different ball game when it comes to providing service. The subsidiary was launched back in April of this year, making a stab at competing with big name players like Netflix, Amazon and Redbox.
It was a tough sell, and today the company posted a brief, but to the point, message on the site -- "despite our efforts, we were not able to deliver the differentiated customer experience we had hoped for. We want to thank all customers who have tried our service".
Best Windows 8 apps this week
Sixty-first in a series. This week was not as busy as the weeks before, which can be attributed to the celebration of Christmas and other holidays in many parts of the world.
This is reflected in this week's overall application growth in the US Windows Store, as only 1,343 new apps were published to the store in that time.
Facebook? What’s that, granddad? Teenagers fall out of love with Zuckerberg's social network
Once the darling of the social networking world, it looks as though Facebook is falling out of favor. At least that seems to be the case with teenagers. An extensive and ongoing study into social media finds that huge swathes of 16 to 18 year-olds are abandoning Facebook and jumping ship to the likes of Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. In total, nine different regions are being studied over a course of 15 months.
As Professor of Material Culture at University College London, Daniel Miller says, Facebook is now uncool. Mum and Dad are now not only using the social network (which is an immediate nail in the coffin), but actively encouraging their kids to share details about what they're doing: "Parents have worked out how to use the site and see it as a way for the family to remain connected".
My favorite tech products of 2013 [Ian]
Being slightly late to the party when it comes to posting my list of favorite tech kit for this year means you'll probably have seen some of these things on other people's lists too -- blame spending Christmas in an internet free zone.
But hey, this is very much a personal thing, so these are my particular selections and the reasons why I've chosen them.
Stay safe -- flush your Windows cache to disk with Sysinternals Sync
If you regularly use removable drives on PCs then you probably already know they should be ejected (right-click in Explorer, select Eject) before you unplug them. This is because Windows normally caches disk writes for performance reasons, temporarily saving them in RAM; unplug a drive before its cache is flushed and you’re going to lose data.
It's not only removable drives which are at risk, though – Windows caches writes to regular hard drives, too. This is only for a few seconds and so unlikely to cause problems, but again, if something drastic happens before the cache is written -- a blue-screen crash, a power outage -- then data will be lost.
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