Save BIG on the Neato D7 Robot Vacuum or Swellpro SplashDrone 3 Plus Waterproof Drone
If you’re not all spent out for Christmas, and fancy treating yourself to a great product with a substantial discount, then Wellbots has put together not one, but two deals especially for BetaNews readers.
As you might expect, both products will ship after Christmas now, but should arrive before the holiday period ends.
Krisp reduces background noise on conference calls
The rise of homeworking means one thing, trying to focus on work whilst the family and daily chores are going on around you. Get on a conference call and you have to try and eliminate background noise to sound professional. When you’re on a call you suddenly realize how much noise is going on around you.
Get in the car and head to a coffee shop and you'll find there are people talking around you -- it’s no better at all. You just cannot seem to get away from surrounding noise. And that’s if you can even get a fast enough internet connection and a stable enough call to make it worthwhile and professional enough to impress the other callers.
Video sensors, medical devices and security worries -- IoT predictions for 2019
More and more devices in our homes and workplaces are gaining smart capabilities as the Internet of Things starts to move from niche to mainstream.
But greater adoption also means an expanded threat surface. So what can we expect to see from the IoT in 2019? We’ve rounded up the opinions of some industry experts.
Best Windows 10 apps this week
Three-hundred-and-fourteen in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Windows Store in the past seven days.
Microsoft released the last Insider Build for the year; it introduced new features such as Windows Sandbox and Windows Defender Antivirus tampering protection.
Sign up as an Microsoft Edge beta tester to try the new Chromium-based version of the browser first
Microsoft recently confirmed that it plans to transition its Edge browser away from the EdgeHTML engine to Chromium, embracing open source, bringing Chrome extensions and more. Making such a big change obviously requires a lot of testing, and Microsoft is giving you the chance to get involved via the Microsoft Edge Insider program.
The company already has the Windows Insider program for people who want to get their hands on new builds of Windows 10 earlier than they would normally, but this is a commitment that not everyone is willing to sign up for. Now Microsoft has launched a beta program for Microsoft Edge so you can try out early builds and help to shape the future of the browser.
Lubuntu kicks 32-bit Linux users to the curb
It is the year 2018, and 2019 is right around the corner -- 64-bit processors have been mainstream for a really long time. If you are still using a computer that is 32-bit only, it is time to toss it into a dumpster. No, I’m not being an elitist; it is simply time to move on. A much superior laptop can be had new for a few hundred bucks. Hell, you could probably buy a used 64-bit machine for under $100.
With all of that said, I am proud of all Linux-based operating system maintainers that have the courage to ditch 32-bit processor support. Some misguided Linux community members will decry this, claiming that the open source kernel can breathe new life into old hardware. That’s true, but it’s time for the world to raise the bar on what the bottom is -- all hardware can’t be supported forever. The latest major operating system to drop 32-bit support? Lubuntu.
Quickly migrate your user account to a new PC with the latest PCTrans 10
Boot into your brand new PC and you find you’re welcomed by rather a vanilla operating system, perhaps with a few key default apps installed by the manufacturer.
Although it’s initially interesting to start with a blank canvas, you soon realize not only do you have your most important applications installed but the settings and preferences all need to be setup again from scratch.
Digital workplace disruption in 2019: How job roles are shifting in the professional services industry
In 2018, digital workplace transformation across the professional services market finally began to take hold. Today, applications for professionals across accounting, insurance, consulting and other industries are actually providing anywhere and anytime access, seamless collaboration, intuitive experiences and smart capabilities.
For years, those who worked in the professional services market expected these capabilities from their applications, having used consumer tools like Google, Facebook and Amazon that provide a consistent, easy-to-use experience across every device, allow for straightforward collaboration with trusted friends and family, automate tedious tasks and anticipate needs based on preferences and past behavior. After first resisting these demands and then struggling to deliver such capabilities, 2018 saw the wide-scale emergence of comprehensive technology platforms that deliver mobile, intuitive, collaborative, secure, automated and smart digital workplaces. The digital transformation of the professional services market made professionals’ day-to-day tasks easier, reducing training and other costs for firms, increasing productivity and empowering professionals to be more creative.
Rethinking browsers
With browsers often in the middle of many corporate activities, it’s no wonder that they are now subject to many of the same challenges encountered on desktops, smartphones and other hardware-based endpoints. Many IT pros wouldn’t consider browsers to be a critical network endpoint, but those pros would surely place importance on mobile devices, laptops, desktops and servers. Given the valuable role browsers play in accessing enterprise applications and information, it’s time to rethink how we classify them and, more importantly, how we manage and secure them.
Mobility and cloud computing are taking over today’s workforce, and the browser’s significance is trending. The majority of office applications -- such as Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce CRM, and the Zoho One business suite -- run in the cloud and are accessible via browser. These kinds of applications allow users to work from anywhere, at any time, using their laptops, smartphones and other browser-enabled devices.
8 key factors for an effective Internet of Things (IoT) network
Connected devices, or the Internet of Things (IoT), are exploding on the market. Securing their access has become one of the major concerns in recent years. But security is only part of the equation. What good is a secure network if you cannot access it?
As more and more devices connect together, the availability to connect becomes paramount. If your business is going to depend on an IoT infrastructure, it must be available, accessible, and safe from attack. If you cannot count on your infrastructure, you cannot depend on it. When selecting an IoT platform, these are the sort of issues that should be considered.
Infrastructure is the missing piece to an autonomous future
Though you may have not noticed their arrival, autonomous vehicles are already here. While we currently experience automation’s convenience on a smaller scale -- like self-parking and lane-keeping capabilities -- fully-autonomous vehicles are projected to offer so much more. For example, fully-autonomous vehicles offer a potential for a 90 percent decrease in traffic fatalities. When you consider a stat like that, it’s no wonder many vehicle manufacturers and government officials are pushing for fully-driverless capabilities.
But a fully-autonomous future won’t become a reality on the efforts of vehicle development and manufacturing alone. Infrastructure updates, particularly in major U.S. cities, will be needed to accommodate these vehicles. As it stands, only six percent of these cities have a long-term infrastructure plan in place for autonomous vehicles to operate efficiently and safely. To create a safer tomorrow, infrastructure design needs to be addressed today.
Faster innovation, increased competition and repatriation -- cloud predictions for 2019
Use of the cloud is now well established in many businesses. But that's not to say that it isn’t still a fast moving sector of the industry.
With greater competition than ever and the pace of innovation showing little sign of slowing down, we’ve put together some expert views on what might be in store for cloud users in 2019
Facebook, Instagram, Google, Spotify, WhatsApp and more reimagined as tech products from the 1980s
It’s a fair bet that we’d never have heard of Facebook, Instagram, Google and WhatsApp if the internet hadn’t been invented, but London-based graphic designer Thomas Ollivier has put his skills into re-imagining how some of today’s top tech brands might have looked in the pre-internet days of the 1980s.
The collection of images, which he’s titled Re:Birth, provides a fun glimpse into how technology has changed in the past 30 years. And boy has it changed.
VirtualBox 6.0 adds new file manager, revamps user interface
Oracle has released VirtualBox 6.0, a major new release of its free virtualization tool for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Version 6.0 unveils major improvements to -- and a redesign of -- the user interface, plus beefs up 3D support (including first-time support on Linux and Solaris guests). Hyper-V emulation is now also supported on Windows as a fall-back execution core helping fix problems running 64-bit guests when Windows Security’s sandboxing feature was enabled.
Microsoft announces Project Mu, an open-source release of the UEFI core
Microsoft has a new open source project -- Project Mu. This is the company's open-source release of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) core which is currently used by Surface devices and Hyper-V.
With the project, Microsoft hopes to make it easier to build scalable and serviceable firmware, and it embraces the idea of Firmware as a Service (FaaS). This allows for fast and efficient updating of firmware after release, with both security patches and performance-enhancing updates.
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