Latest Technology News

Soon after Apple replaced Google’s aging but accurate mapping solution with its own brand new, but woefully inaccurate alternative, I -- like many disgruntled iOS 6 upgraders -- switched to using the web-version of Google Maps (I briefly toyed with Nokia Here, but it’s not yet as good). The workaround was fine, but I only ever viewed it as a temporary stopgap while awaiting the triumphant return of Google Maps to the App Store, something that finally happened a couple of days ago.

Google Maps shot to the top of the free charts with indecent haste, further embarrassing Apple in the process, as users scrambled to install it. I installed it too, naturally, but held off on reviewing it immediately, as I wanted to make sure my happiness at its arrival wasn’t going to cloud my judgment. And the good news is, having now had plenty of time to play around with it, it’s great. Not perfect, but pretty damn close.

That was fast. Little short of three months ago Android 4.1 Jelly Bean made its way onto the international Samsung Galaxy S III and, starting Friday, the coveted operating system is available for the Verizon Wireless branded handset as well.

The software upgrade, bearing the "JRO03L.I535VRBLK3" moniker, comes in at a rather modest 62MB in size and upgrades the Galaxy S III to Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, build number JRO03L. Users should expect a number of new features, the most noteworthy of which include better voice search capability through Google Now, a revised notification panel, resizable widgets, and improved camera software. There's also a treat for global travelers.

Big red customers that wish to take the Galaxy S III abroad now have the ability to select a new "Global" option in "Preferred network mode". It will allow the handset to operate on international carrier networks, without resorting to modding to enable GSM compatibility.

Maximizing a window on your PC is great when you want to focus on a particular program: it allocates all available screen real estate to that application, and removes any distractions as well.

What if you want to have easy access to some other content, though? Launchers, maybe. Sticky notes. Or maybe you’d like to continue monitoring real-time information such as share prices, or eBay auctions. Maximizing other applications may hide this -- unless you get a little help from the free MaxMax.

According to Total Defense, a provider of internet security services and a former division of CA Technologies, the web is the primary vector for malware, with 85 percent of all threats originating there. More than 6,000 websites are infected every day, the company says, and the statistics don’t end there. It’s said that at least 75 percent of the world’s email is spam, and Total Defense estimates over 50 percent of malicious messages take the form of blended  attacks designed to lure recipients into visiting infected web pages.

To prevent firms falling foul of these kind of threats the company has announced what it’s calling the "industry’s first true cloud security platform", offering enterprises and small-to-medium businesses multi-layered cloud-based protection.

The original iPad didn't excite me very much. In fact, I was confused what to do with it. Over time, I ended up using the iPad 2, and recently its successor. I’ve also tried the Blackberry PlayBook, the HP TouchPad, and more recently Google Nexus 7.

But, for the first time in a long time, I was very excited to get a tablet -- the new Microsoft Surface. I think Windows RT had a lot to do with it, and the touchscreen aspect.

I won't lie and say I didn't see this coming -- after all, Microsoft's Live Mesh app has been on life support for some time. Still, it hurts to see it go.

Back in August, Microsoft began overhauling its Live services, along with other changes in its transformation to prepare for Windows 8. When it released the latest iteration with a name change from "Live Essentials" to "Windows Essentials 2012", it was a scaled back array of apps that did not include Live Mesh. The writing was on the wall.

Remember that Googlezon video from a few years ago? The one that predicted Google and Amazon would take over the world with, perhaps, apocalyptic results? Well, none of that has come to pass, but both companies continue to grow and expand. Amazon, increasingly becoming as much of a content delivery system as a product retailer, made several bold moves to get its media out to even more platforms, today.

For starters, Amazon moved to bring its Cloud Player music service to both Samsung Smart TV's and Roku set-top boxes and made its Instant Video service available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Both services are essentially cloud interfaces for your media.

Anonymity serves an essential purpose; it allows us to speak without fear of persecution. But two-way anonymous communications are inherently antisocial, and are often counterproductive when trying to establish a certain level of discourse. This is the root of the comments section dilemma, and an issue online news sites like BetaNews think about quite a bit. We want you to be able to speak freely. We hate having to censor anything, but we also want civilized conversation.

Text-only communication is viewed as an "impoverished" form of social exchange, lacking all of the nonverbal nuances that help us share information on a deeper, more human level, and anonymous text-only communications are even weaker, stripping out most of the ethos of the speaker.

It’s that time of the year where it’s a great time to pick up a software bargain. Through December and the Christmas holiday season, the Downloadcrew Software Store has various software deals that are worth some consideration. Best of all, the Downloadcrew “Giveaway” site returns this Christmas, with five superb exclusive full software giveaway offers, for everyone.

You may have picked up a brand new Windows 8 computer during the festive season. If so, the first thing you’ll want to do is pick up a security suite to keep your system secure. The Downloadcrew Software Store is packed full of security offers from Bitdefender, AVG, Kaspersky, Avira and other brands.

Piriform has updated Defraggler, its Windows defrag utility, with support for Windows Server 2012. Defraggler 2.12 also adds support for drives mounted as NTFS junction points and offers more control over scheduled defrags.

Version 2.12 also tweaks the user interface, fixes a succession of minor bugs and adds several other minor tweaks and improvements to complete the update.

People that want to try out Google's latest voice assistant on green droid devices are confined by the search giant to use either of the two Jelly Bean iterations. However, Google Now also makes its way onto Ice Cream Sandwich through third-party app GNow Handlebars.

Previous to GNow Handlebars, the process of installing Google Now onto Android 4.0 mostly involved flashing files in a custom recovery like ClockworkMod or TWRP. Now the same result can be achieved simply by opening the app and selecting the voice assistant to kick off the installation. There is also a restore option available that brings back the older Google Search, which should come in handy if something goes wrong.

Download a few files from the Internet and one problem you’ll soon notice is that they won’t exactly follow any sensible naming conventions. Some will leave out key information you need to tell what they are; others will add unnecessary extras, like dates or numeric IDs; and they’ll be in a mix of upper, lower or mixed case -- a real mess.

Renaming one or two names in Windows Explorer is easy enough, of course. But if there are any more then it all becomes just too tedious. Unless, that is, you install a batch processing tool such as the free Solid Renamer.

Ofcom’s seventh International Communications Market Report, which examines take-up, availability, price and use of broadband, landlines, mobiles, TV, radio and post across 17 major countries, has discovered that people in the United Kingdom typically spend more on online shopping, watch more TV on the web, and download more data on their mobiles and tablets than any other leading nation.

I’m British, do all my shopping online (even groceries), almost never watch live television and access the web on the go pretty much daily, so this news doesn’t come as any great surprise to me, but even so the gap between my country and other much larger nations is a bit of a revelation (and also slightly suspect in some cases).

Just over a week ago, Steve Kondik, the founder of the popular custom distribution CyanogenMod, revealed that CM10.1 builds based on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean will soon be released for US variants of the Samsung Galaxy S III. However, the highly anticipated custom ROM is already available for the international model, albeit with unofficial tags.

Galaxy S III users that want to install the unofficial builds can expect a similar functionality to the official CM10.1 releases available today. As the feature porting process is not completed, it won’t come as any surprise that some of the features included in previous CyanogenMod iterations are still missing or not yet adapted for Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Due to the unofficial nature and the infancy of the source code, users may also encounter some bugs as well.

The unofficial CyanogenMod 10.1 release can be installed just like any other by flashing the available build and the adjacent Google Apps package using a compatible custom recovery tool such as ClockworkMod or TWRP.

Working with media files generally requires a whole library of software: download tools, editors, authoring applications and more. That’s not a problem if you’ve built up your own collection of favorites over a number of years, but if you’re a PC novice then it’s not easy to know where to begin.

But that’s where Freemore Audio Video Suite comes in, as the package claims to include a host of tools to help you create, edit, convert and share your media files, and all for free.