Latest Technology News

When Microsoft released Windows 11 build 23516 a few days ago, the biggest change was billed as being improvements to screen casting. There were other changes, fixes and additions that Microsoft shouted about, but there was also a hidden feature that the company kept quiet about.

Cast your mind back a few months and you may recall that we learned of Microsoft plans to introduce the option to fix problems with Windows 11 using Windows Update. This handy feature is now available in the latest Dev build of Windows 11, but it is hidden and disabled by default. With the help of ViVeTool -- or Microsoft's own StagingTool -- however, it can be enabled.

For decades, IT departments have been viewed as a siloed part of the business, designed to offer technical support, from resetting passwords to resolving hardware issues. While dealing with technical difficulties is a key aspect of the role for many IT professionals, the rise of digitized workplaces and solutions requires businesses to both re-evaluate and reprioritize how they view IT teams and their potential.  

In our increasingly online, data-driven world, technology now facilitates almost every aspect of a business in some capacity. Effective use of these evolving systems is crucial not just for basic day-to-day functions but for communication, data analysis, and customer and employee experience, all of which are essential drivers of growth and productivity.  

The Mongolian government, as part of its ambitious Vision 2050 initiative, has pledged to furnish the next generation of school-age children with the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to prosper in a rapidly evolving world. The plan is to prioritize universal connectivity, increased accessibility to public services, and the adoption of cutting-edge technology in schools.

Recently, Mongolian Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai and his delegation visited Google's offices in Washington DC. They aimed to explore how Google's plethora of products and services could help Mongolia realize its visionary objectives. As a direct outcome of this meeting, Google has announced plans to support Mongolia's educational endeavours.

Earlier in the week, Microsoft rolled out a new Insider build for testers in the Dev Channel. Today, arriving just in time for the weekend, it delivers a new flight for those on the Canary Channel.

Windows 11 Build 25921 brings some interesting new features including HDR background support and rich thumbnail previews for cloud files on Start. It also lets users uninstall Cortana.

The second quarter of 2023 has painted a grim picture for tablet shipments, revealing a significant decline. As reported by the International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide tablet shipments declined a stark 29.9 percent year over year, amounting to just 28.3 million units in total.

The once-prosperous market seems to be gasping for air, with top vendors recording double-digit losses. Attributed to weakened consumer confidence and decreased purchasing power, these negative impacts were further compounded by high channel inventory levels. The silver lining? IDC expects this issue to gradually improve in the coming months.

Effective leadership isn’t confined to easily identifiable silos. It appears everywhere, and sometimes in the most unexpected of places.

In The Unexpected Leader: Discovering the Leader Within You, veteran leadership trainer and consultant Jacqueline M. Baker delivers an incisive and actionable discussion of how to refine, define, and elevate leadership by absorbing lessons from other leaders and actualizing the leader within. You’ll learn how to meet the demands of a rapidly changing workforce with a new approach to leadership development.

Smaller businesses are not immune from cyberattacks. In fact, because they lack the resources for the latest defenses and to train their staff to spot threats, they can be particularly vulnerable.

Education and training are key to protect any business and to help smaller companies stay up to date Avast -- now part of digital security and privacy brand Gen -- is launching a new Cybersecurity Training Quiz.

It's pretty easy to get Android games playing on your PC -- you can either make use of the Windows Subsystem for Android on Windows 11, or install a third-party emulator like Bluestacks.

Doing the reverse and playing PC games on your Android device is, naturally, a much harder proposition. However, a new emulator called Winlator means you get started playing your favorite PC games in a matter of minutes.

Five-hundred-and-fifty-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 and 11 on the Microsoft Store and elsewhere in the past seven days.

Microsoft leaked its internal staging tool for a brief period this week. It works similarly to the open source tool ViVeTool, in that it gives administrators the option to enable or disable Windows features that are not enabled for all users at the time.

Cyberattacks and data breaches come it many forms, but often at the root of them is a phishing scam.

Exploiting the fact that humans are the weakest link in the security chain, cybercriminals use phishing to trick employees into giving up credentials or other sensitive information that can be used to gain a foothold to carry out a later attack.

Starting next month, Microsoft is making some significant changes relating to Transport Layer Security (TLS) in Windows 11.

This security protocol has been one of the more controversial system requirements for the operating system, and the company has revealed plans to disable older versions -- specifically TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 -- by default from September. Microsoft has already determined that this will cause problems for a fairly lengthy list of apps, including some of its own.

Google has announced the rollout of a series of new and updated privacy tools designed to give users greater control over the removal of information about themselves from search results. A new privacy dashboard will alert users if search results start to include their contact information.

As well as making it easier to request the removal of such personal data, Google is expanding its privacy protections to give people a way to remove personal, explicit images from search results. There are also expanded controls for limiting the appearance of other explicit images in searches.

Today, TP-Link launches two new products: the Kasa KS205 and KS225 smart light switches. Both devices come with the distinction of being Matter-certified, a feature that sets them apart in the rapidly growing smart home market.

The Kasa KS205 Smart Wi-Fi Light Switch and Kasa KS225 Smart Wi-Fi Light Dimmer Switch give homeowners the ability to control their lights from anywhere via the Kasa App, using a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi connection. Thanks to their advanced scheduling and timer capabilities, these switches can automate light management, switching lights on and off based on user-defined settings, even simulating occupancy when homeowners are away.

Concerns around supply chain security, partly driven by President Biden's Executive Order on Improving the US' Cybersecurity, are leading to increased adoption of software bills of materials (SBOM).

Research from Sonatype surveyed over 200 IT directors in the US and UK at businesses with over $50 million revenue and finds 76 percent of enterprises have adopted SBOMs since the order's introduction.

Security researchers at Cofense have noticed a rise in phishing campaigns that use Google's AMP technology to gain trust and evade detection.

Google describes AMP as a "web component framework to easily create user-first experiences for the web". Broken down to its core, AMP is designed to improve the performance of webpages, mostly on mobile, by limiting elements on these pages.