Latest Technology News

Today at the Unpacked 2014 event at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Samsung introduces the latest iteration of its flagship smartphone. The Galaxy S5 is, as you’d probably expect, evolution not revolution. The smartphone looks like a more polished update of last year’s S4 and comes with Android 4.4.2 KitKat and Samsung’s user interface and S-branded apps.

The device is slightly larger than the S4, at 5.1 inches, with a 1080p Super AMOLED panel. It sports the same plastic surround, but with a new perforated look, and is IP67-rated for water and dust resistance, and so can survive being submerged in 3 feet of water for up to 30 minutes. There's a new home key below the screen with an integrated fingerprint scanner that can be used to unlock the phone and authenticate mobile payment purchases online.

Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the Mobile World Congress today, saying that there needs to be some "pretty dramatic changes" to help to get more people online, pointing out that most people in the world simply do not have access to the internet. The Facebook founder has already launched Internet.org with a view to getting more people online around the globe and this is referred to as an "an on-ramp to the internet" -- he wants to get a billion people online in the next five years.

Zukerberg's goal is fairly simple. He feels that there are a number of basic services -- he mentions weather and messaging specifically -- that everyone should have access to, and this is what Internet.org provides. He admits that Facebook is not able to connect everyone without help, and suggested the possibility of working with more partners in the future. It seems as though this is a venture that Zuckerberg has taken a broad view with. At the moment it is a venture that is losing money, but this is not an example of martyrdom: "If we do something good for the world, eventually we'll find a way to benefit from it".

Today, at ZDNET, James Kendrick's commentary "Chromebooks and students: Long term trouble for Microsoft" adds to a growing meme. With a few schools deploying Chromebooks (emphasis few) and rumors Microsoft has slashed Windows licensing fees (remember unconfirmed), recurring theme "2014 is year of the Chromebook and Windows is in deep dodo because of it" isn't surprising. But just because bloggers say something's true often enough, doesn't make it that way. Twenty fourteen isn't year of the Chromebook, nor is its utility to the education market guaranteed.

That said, Kendrick makes some good points about why Chromebook appeals to students. I won't recap them. This isn't an aggregated synopsis. You can read his fine points. My post adds to them, from experience. I am a long-time Chromebook user.

PCs can make great home entertainment systems, at least in theory. But in practice, having to control everything from a mouse (or keyboard) is a major disadvantage.

QRemoteControl can help out by controlling your desktop (PC, Mac or Linux) from a mobile device -- Android, BlackBerry, MeeGo, Symbian or Sailfish -- via Wi-Fi. You can operate a media centre, launch programs, control the mouse, keyboard and more, even if you’re in a different room.

2014 is still young, but the tech news has been hot, and much of it surrounds the two new gaming systems on the market. Some of that news has been hype for the upcoming Titanfall, a title that is generating a lot buzz from the gaming community. Microsoft fueled that fire last week with a beta release, now it is stoking the blaze with more news.

Today Xbox Live chief Larry Hryb, better known to gamers as Major Nelson, unveils the new limited edition Titanfall bundle for Xbox One. What can you expect from this offer?

There have been a lot of interesting announcements made at MWC this year, and HP is one of several companies making it clear that business users have not been forgotten. The new HP ProPad 600 has been unveiled alongside an upgraded HP ElitePad 1000 G2, and both have been designed with mobile computing in mind.

Both tablets run Windows 8.1 and the ElitePad 1000 G2 picks up where the HP ElitePad 900 G1 left off. The hardware is impressive enough, but there is a strong focus on battery life and portability.

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There’s already been a lot of big announcements pouring out of the Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, but the really big one is still to come. Samsung is set to introduce its Galaxy S5 smartphone today, and thanks to the usual round of photo leaks we already have a good idea of what to expect.

If you can never decide whether to take the notebook or the tablet with you when you go out, HP may have the machine for you.

Its new Pavilion x360 is a convertible PC with a 360-degree hinge so you can use it as a conventional notebook, a tablet, or in what the company calls "tent mode". Sadly this means only that you can stand it up on a table not actually go camping under it.

AirPlay is, as we all know, Apple’s solution for listening to music wirelessly wherever you are. Leave your Mac in the study and stream music to a wireless speaker in your living room, or beam a TV show from your iPad to the big-screen TV through Apple TV or a HTPC running XBMC. It’s a key part of the media-friendly home.

Of course, one hole in AirPlay’s attempts to become universally adopted is a lack of PC support. Thankfully, third-party developers have come to the rescue, and one of the newest AirPlay streaming tools for Windows is TuneBlade 1.0.

Tech companies are taking advantage of the MWC conference, held in Barcelona, to showcase their latest products. So far, we covered the announcements of Nokia's X Android smartphone series, Sony's Xperia Z2 smartphone and slate, and a couple of 64-bit mobile processors, that are aimed at Android devices, from Intel and Qualcomm.

ASUS is also among the many companies present at MWC 2014. Today, the Taiwanese maker announces two new Fonepad 7 tablets, adding to the number of Android devices that were just unveiled at the conference.

Email may be a quick and convenient way to exchange messages, but it’s not exactly private. Or secure. Key details about the email are sent in plain text, your message is held on a server somewhere, and it might even be mined by your provider for useful data.

ShazzleMail is a free service which works a little differently. It transfers messages by establishing a direct, encrypted connection between the sender and the receiver. Your emails are never stored in any central server, and so the company can’t access or analyze their contents.

One of the key tasks in investigating network security breaches is being able to capture packets to allow a thorough understanding and quick resolution of the problem.

Network management specialist Emulex Corporation has used the RSA Conference to announce its Endace Fusion Connector for Sourcefire Defense Center, which allows 100 percent packet capture at speeds of up to 100Gb Ethernet.

According to reports, Microsoft is set to slash the price it charges OEMs for Windows 8.x. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to pick up a copy of the tiled OS for any cheaper, but it does mean significant savings for (some) PC builders.

At the moment, Microsoft charges all OEMs $50 per copy of Windows 8. The price cut will see this license figure reduced by 70 percent to $15 per copy. However, there is a caveat -- it will only apply to devices that will be sold for $250 or less at retail. In other words, Microsoft is hoping to kick start a run of lower-priced PCs, in an effort to compete with Chromebooks.

Comcast has had a busy couple of weeks, with a proposed acquisition of rival Time-Warner and rampant accusations of throttling bandwidth for Netflix subscribers. The former awaits approval, while the latter was illustrated by the offended service, which posts monthly reports on ISP performance.

Now the US's largest cable provider wants to kiss and make-up with Netflix, partnering with the video service with the promise of better times ahead for the couple.

If it is not obvious enough by now, 64-bit is the new black in mobile processors. Apple has the A7 that powers the iPhone 5s and latest iPads, and Qualcomm has the Snapdragon 410 and, as of today, the Snapdragon 610 and Snapdragon 615. Intel now also joins the party with its own 64-bit offering and contender, the Z3480, codenamed "Merrifield".

The Z3480 was unveiled today at the MWC conference, in Barcelona, as a 2.3 GHz quad-core solution aimed at Android smartphones and tablets. Intel says its new processor delivers "the ideal combination of fast, smart performance and long battery life", for the devices that it will power. The Z3480 competes with Qualcomm's similar Snapdragons which also target the open-source mobile OS.