Latest Technology News

Create a document in Microsoft Office and you’ll usually find it includes metadata, information you might not realize was there: your name, company name, some computer details, version information, comments and more.

Windows makes it easy enough to remove metadata from individual documents (right-click > Properties > Details > Remove Properties and Personal Information), but you can also use the free Document Metadata Cleaner 3 to check and clean your entire system in a single operation.

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Network testing and security analysis firm NSS Labs has released the third part of its comparative browser vulnerability study, this time focusing on phishing protection. The previous installations, released last September, focused on general malware blocking and click fraud.

NSS Labs observed Safari 5, Chrome 21, IE10, and Firefox 15 for ten days and found that the general phishing URL catch rate was pretty good across the board. In fact, the group said there is so little difference in the average block rate between the different browsers that one must "consider other factors, such as socially engineered malware blocking capabilities for qualitative differences in the security effectiveness of the browsers."

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According to Microsoft, one-third of new Outlook.com sign-ups are from active Gmail users. While a good portion of those are likely just signing up to get an account to use with Windows 8 (I’m a Gmail devotee but use my Outlook.com address to log into the OS as it offers clear benefits), Microsoft presumes that these new users must dislike Google’s service and want to switch. To this end, the company hired a research firm to say what it wanted to hear.

"Hundreds" of Gmail users were recruited and asked to give Outlook.com a try. These test subjects moved their emails over and used the service for a brief while before being grilled on their experience. The researchers found that the group largely preferred Outlook.com’s clean design (it's possible), and the fact that the service makes sharing photos and Office documents easy (fair enough). But here’s the claim that I can’t quite believe: Apparently the users found Outlook.com "does a better job of blocking spam" than Gmail. Sorry? The only reason you could possibly think that is if you never get any spam in the first place (which would be the case with brand new Outlook.com sign ups).

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Nexus 4 is no longer "sold out" at Google Play, and I can't help but laugh at the store's idea of "ships soon". That's "8-9 weeks" for the $299 model. Exactly how is that not sold out? Basically, Google throws out hope to the hopeless. Still, from a marketing perspective, long wait is better than telling potential buyers the product is out of stock. Meanwhile, people place orders and get somewhere in the long queue.

Yesterday, Google resumed Nexus 4 sales after selling out within hours of taking orders on October 13. Like that day, the search giant struggled to take orders, with many buyers watching orders be cancelled in the shopping cart. But the persistent succeeded, often after several hours effort. Today's wait time is more about when devices ship rather than ordering them. Expect "4-5 weeks" on the 16GB model.

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Almost four months ago Microsoft relaunched Hotmail as Outlook, as the company's response to Google's Gmail. In the meantime the new service reached more than 25 million active users, a number which has steadily grown since its introduction. To expand reach into Android territory, Microsoft even launched a new app for green droid devices.

The Redmond, Wash.-based corporation says that because of conversation threading, keyboard shortcuts, quick access to search operators and tab/send the transition towards the new Outlook email service is easier. Taking the fight over to its main competitor, the company also "finds" that four out of five (that's 80 percent in pie chart talk) Gmail users would switch to Outlook after just five days of use. That's a rather bold claim, and it seems a bit far fetched. But why?

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I have two cats, Charlie and Chloe. Charlie is very talkative, especially when he’s hungry (which is most of the time), and indeed you can often have lengthy conversations with him. So when, in 2009, YouTube user Andrew Grantham (klaatu42) put out a call for clips of talking animals to appear in a new Christmas video, I filmed Charlie requesting more food and uploaded the 30-second snippet. I was very fortunate, because not only was my submission accepted but my cat was used to sing the opening lines to Deck the Halls.

It was a fun video, and clearly found an audience -- as to date over nine million people have watched it. But Charlie’s fleeting fame wasn’t to stop there. A few weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a slew of increasingly frantic messages in my YouTube inbox from the Leo Burnett advertising agency.

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Microsoft officially unveiled Windows 8 and its ARM counterpart little more than a month ago. But even today apps like Twitter are still missing from the official Store selection. However, third-party alternative, Tweetro+ should be available soon for die-hard users of the social network.

Previously available as a free app on Windows Store, Tweetro was pulled due to the 100,000 access token limit, imposed by the Twitter API. The developers announced that Tweetro+ will take its place, but as a paid app due to the associated costs. This appears to be the preferred solution instead of going the ad-supported route.

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Microsoft's search engine Bing launched an aggressive information campaign against Google on Wednesday, accusing the leading search engine of dishonesty in its shopping search functionality.

Earlier this year, Google Product Search was renamed Google Shopping. This name change was no superficial affair because Google was completely changing the business model of the service. Under Google Shopping, only retailers who paid for product listing would turn up in search results.

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BurnAware 5.5 Free and Home, are now available for Windows. Version 5.5 adds DVD-Video as an option to the file system selection when compiling ISO files, plus adds other minor features and resolves a number of issues and bugs that surfaced after version 5.4 was released 15 days earlier.

The key new feature in BurnAware 5.5 is the new DVD-Video mode option when selecting a file system for ISO compilation, allowing users to create video DVDs. It’s joined by support for BIN image files when creating boot discs.

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If you're one of the lucky few Google Nexus 4 or Nexus 10 owners around the world that prefer a third-party ROM to Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, then you're in luck. Today the team behind the popular CyanogenMod custom distribution released an official CM10.1 build for the LG-made smartphone, with another on the way for its tablet sibling.

The CyanogenMod 10.1 build for the Nexus 4 comes in response to unofficial custom distributions, that recently surfaced, built using the former's source code. The first release available to the general public is based on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, rather than the newest version issued yesterday. However a missing December in the People app is unlikely to hinder its success considering CyanogenMod's popularity among the modding community.

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Understanding a PC’s security status normally involves considering many separate factors. Does it have an antivirus program installed, for instance? A backup tool? A firewall? Are they set up correctly, and being used on a regular basis? Evaluating every possibility could take you a very long time.

Or alternatively, you could just run OPSWAT’s Security Score, a free and portable tool that will quickly report on your target PC’s security, and give advice on how it could be improved.

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It seems to have been in beta for a very long time, but, at last, HTML and CSS editor TopStyle 5 finally is released. And there’s a very lengthy list of new features to explore.

Strong CSS3 support, for instance, now makes it easy to create one stylesheet for large displays, perhaps, and another for mobile devices. A CSS Gradient Generator means you can use gradients in CSS3, no images required; you can add text shadows in a couple of clicks, and the new Prefixr handles the tricky business of converting your tidy CSS3 code into something which will work on all the main browsers.

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If you wonder why "A Google User" suddenly is the most popular review commenter at Play, he (or she) is not. Today the store started a radical change, requiring Google Profile to place stars and comments for apps and other content. The days of anonymity are over, and good riddance.

Others disagree, and the move definitely isn't popular with some writers in our newsroom. All the typical justifications are back: People need anonymity to protect their jobs. So on and so on. Blah, blah, blah. I've heard these crap excuses before. You got an opinion, stand by it with your identity -- particularly something like an app, movie or music review.

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Software developer Piriform Ltd has announced the release ofCCleaner 3.25, the latest build of its Windows freeware cleaning tool. Version 3.25, which is also available in portable form as CCleaner 3.25 Portable, adds Google Chrome Extension management to its feature roster amid a number of compatibility and cleaning improvements.

The update follows hot on the heels of Recuva 1.44, a new version of Piriform’s free data recovery tool, which offers improved recovery of large files and Outlook Express messages as well as a host of other minor tweaks and improvements.

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The LG-manufactured Nexus 4 is nearly perfect. Unless you have no other choice, perhaps because of unsupported cellular carrier and binding contractual commitment, put Google's newest smartphone at the top of your must-buy list. The device satisfies in all the right places -- battery life, call quality, display clarity, size and visibility, operating system and performance. There are other Androids with comparable or better hardware, but they typically slap on a secondary UI and ship with older OS. It's not the measure of one attribute, or even a couple, but many combined that make Nexus 4 so good.

But nearly isn't perfect. Nexus 4's flaws, while subtle, will be serious for some potential buyers. There is no 4G LTE, for example. The feature is built-in to the Snapdragon processor but not properly enabled. The phone is HSPA+ for data, which works on GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile USA. No LTE is a deal-breaker for some people, as seen in commments here and elsewhere. Something else: LG copied Apple, which put glass on the back of iPhone 4 and 4S and rightly abandoned the design with the newest handset. Double-sided glass makes the phone less durable than should be, particularly if dropped. Finally, many Galaxy Nexus users won't find its successor to be a compelling upgrade; much depends on what they use their phones for.

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