Latest Technology News

NirSoft has released WebCacheImageInfo, a computer forensics tool which scans your browser caches (Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer) and displays details on any JPEGs which contain interesting metadata.

The information available can (but won’t necessarily) include the camera used to take the photo; the dates when it was taken, generated, modified or viewed in the browser; and the name of whatever editor was last used to process the image.

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November was not a good month for Microsoft’s tiled operating system. While Windows 8.1’s market share grew, Windows 8’s share dropped (to be expected as users upgrade). But the real kicker for Microsoft was Windows 7’s growth which saw the older OS easily besting Windows 8.x’s gains.

I really like Windows 8.1 and when people ask me if they should upgrade to the new operating system I say yes, and reel off a list of reasons. But I feel deep down like I’m championing a presidential candidate who no one is ever going to vote for.

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The tablet wars are reaching a boiling point. Microsoft has been releasing videos to show that Surface 2 is better than iPad Air. Then, earlier today, Amazon released a video claiming that the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 is superior to the iPad Air too. However, the company is not stopping there.

Starting this evening (a bit early), Amazon is lowering the price of the 7-inch variants of the HD and HDX Kindle tablets by $50 for Cyber Monday. This beats both the Nexus 7 and iPad Mini in pricing. In other words, Amazon is going for the jugular of both Google and Apple.

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Apple can take comfort in  the fact that its iPad Air is considered good enough competition to warrant the concern of other manufacturers, but that likely doesn't make the latest TV ads any more palatable to the company. Just recently Microsoft fired a shot with its Surface 2 comparison ads, and now Amazon is getting into the game with its tablet.

A new 30-second clip features a back and forth between the two devices, comparing screen resolution, weight and price. You likely don't need a spoiler alert to figure out which tablet comes out on top.

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More than half of Black Friday sales were conducted online this Thanksgiving according to figures collected by Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). A 10 percentage point increase means that a massive 55 percent of people who shopped for technology products on Black Friday did so online, and both online and offline, consumer electronic devices accounted for more than a third of sales. Shopping started as early as Thanksgiving Day itself with more than 39 million shoppers hitting the stores. But how many of these purchases represent good value for money?

Some 35 percent of all sales this weekend were taken up by tech devices. Of this number, tablets accounted for 29 percent of purchases, which is hardly surprising when you take into account that the likes of Microsoft are dramatically reducing the price of Surface tablets -- there are a number other outlets that have followed suit with this particular tablet as well as numerous others. In the first two days of the holiday weekend sales, 24 percent of tech sales were taken up by headphones, 21 percent by game hardware, 19 percent by smartphones and 17 percent by laptops.

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It being the week of Thanksgiving, anyone looking for a bargain will have been eagerly anticipating Black Friday. The big names did not disappoint including Microsoft who had special prices on Surfaces. If you were undecided between buying a Surface or an iPad, Microsoft compared the two devices so you don’t have to -- and there are no prizes for guessing which comes out on top! If you give or receive giftcards as presents this year, they can now be used to pay for things through PayPal checkout.

Microsoft's Scroogled campaign may not be in the spirit of the season, but it continues apace. In one advert, the services of Pawn Stars were called upon to take a pop at Google's Chromebook -- Alan was less than impressed. Brian, however was pleased to be the recipient of a surprise, unadvertised mug having placed an order via the Scroogled store, and Joe is a big fan of the campaign. Speaking of Chromebooks, Acer announced an ultra-cheap touchscreen device in the form of the C720P.

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Helsinki-based security company F-Secure has released Key, a password manager for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac.

The program has similar features to many competitors. You can enter your login details for multiple URLs; a secure password generator helps you generate new credentials, and your AES-encrypted database is protected by a single master password.

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Yesterday marked a rather unique holiday. No, not simply that it was both Thanksgiving and also the first day of Hanukkah, but it was also the first time that these two occasions have shared a day since way back in 1888. Given that, it probably shouldn't come as a major surprise that this would lead to extra traffic on social media websites.

That was exactly the case for photo-sharing service Instagram, which announced record traffic for the second straight Thanksgiving. This time the Facebook subsidiary failed to reveal actual numbers, as it did last year, when it announced more than 10 million photos shared and a staggering 200 images per second.

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Thanksgiving is in the rear-view mirror and Black Friday shopping has begun. What does this signify? The official kick-off of holiday music of course! Sure, you can listen to that genre of music year-round, but you will look like a loon. You can now officially enjoy it and appear completely sane.

While you can listen to your local holiday station on the radio, that is not very tech-savvy. Quite frankly, FM radio is reserved for Luddites since the invention of streaming music and satellite radio. Today, streaming music service Pandora invites listeners to enjoy some special holiday streaming stations.

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Windows system software developer Uniblue has released two updates to its system tools collection. Uniblue Powersuite Lite 2014 and Uniblue DriverScanner 2014 come with a handful of new and improved features to help keep Windows systems ticking over.

Powersuite 2014 comes with the promise of better in-product help, a new Scorecards feature and improved tools for speeding up PC performance, while DriverScanner 2014 adds improved restoration of previously installed drivers to its feature set.

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Several of the folks here at BetaNews have recently been enjoying the latest version of the Android mobile operating system, known as 4.4 KitKat, through both Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 devices. The new version brings a number of noticeable changes to the Google platform, the biggest of which is the new Google Experience Launcher.

However, there is another notable difference, as the search company has brought along Moto X-like capability in the form of "OK Google". It's not quite up to what Motorola does, as you do have to turn the phone on first, but once you do that then it is essentially the same.

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Fifty-seventh in a series. The new application count in the US Windows Store managed to stay above the important 1,000 apps mark for the fourth time in a row.

The total number of applications available in the store rose to 93,714, an increase of 1,515 apps in the last seven days.

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Windows Phone 8 has been available on the market since late-October, 2012. That makes it more than a year old in human time and quite a bit older in tech years. So far, I've been through two smartphones running the tiled operating system -- the HTC Windows Phone 8X (in an insanely gorgeous purple) and Nokia Lumia 920 (the boring "businessman-black" version as I like to call it). There is also a Lumia 520 nearby (in a nice shade of red), that I use from time to time to gauge how it gets along with Windows Phone 8 and various new apps.

I have been playing with three important handsets that are available under the Windows Phone 8 umbrella, in order to discover the benefits and the downsides of the platform as well as get an idea of the direction Microsoft wanted to impose for its latest attempt to make great strides in the smartphone OS market. On paper, the software giant only wants the best for Windows Phone, but in practice there are still a couple of bad points about its strategy that indicate, to a certain degree, smartphones are not really a priority for the Redmond, Wash.-based company.

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We are currently in the midst of Black Friday, the traditional kickoff for the holiday shopping season. Despite the fury unleashed on retail locations on this day, Cyber Monday, which is a more recent creation, is still ahead and aims to bring that same excitement to web-based merchants.

While Amazon is currently running numerous deals today, the retailer is already looking ahead to December 2nd. Today the merchant provides a sneak peek at some of the deals it has planned for that day.

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It’s happened to us all. You’ve found what looks like some great freeware, downloaded and installed it, only to discover that your browser has a new toolbar, home page, search engine and more. Many setup programs now include these "offers", unfortunately, and they’ll employ all kinds of tricks to fool you into installing them.

If you’re tired of this situation, though, there’s a new way to fight back. The free Unchecky monitors setup programs, checks for any attempts to install adware, toolbars and other unrelated extras, and uses a couple of strategies to ensure they don’t end up on your hard drive accidentally.

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