VisionTek High Power 40W Five Port USB Car Charger [Review]
Smartphone battery life has improved over the years, but it is still largely deficient. For many consumers, it is still impossible to make it through a full day without needing a charge.
Luckily, for those of us with cars, we can charge it while traveling. The problem? Most chargers will only accommodate one phone at a time. Yeah, some can handle two, or even three, but what if your family is larger than a trio? Ahh, well, that is where VisionTek's 40W Five Port USB Car Charger comes in. Yes, it offers five USB ports with simultaneous charging. Should you buy it?
Google launches Brotli, a new open source compression algorithm to speed up the web
As websites and online services become ever more demanding, the need for compression increases exponentially. Fans of Silicon Valley will be aware of the Pied Piper compression algorithm, and now Google has a more efficient one of its own.
Brotli is open source and is an entirely new data format that offers 20-26 percent greater compression than Zopfli, another compression algorithm from Google. Just like Zopfli, Brotli has been designed with the internet in mind, with the simple aim of making web pages load faster.
Mobile messaging helps businesses connect with customers
A new infographic from enterprise mobile specialist OpenMarket looks at how companies are using mobile messaging to improve marketing and awareness, and make a positive impact on customer experience.
Findings include that mobile messaging is the most frequently used communication channel on the planet and that 90 percent of texts are read within the first three minutes of opening. The millennial age group is 40 times more likely to react and respond to a business via text.
Why companies need to embrace mobile marketing
With mobile overtaking desktop as the main way of accessing the internet, brands have new opportunities to reach their customers on their preferred platform.
Mobile technology company Zumobi has produced an infographic looking at the opportunities for brands to harness the power of mobile content marketing strategies.
Microsoft shows increased interest in Android by buying Echo Notification Lockscreen
For a company with its own mobile operating system to worry about (yes, there is a new build of Windows 10 Mobile on the way soon) Microsoft shows an awful lot of interest in the competition. After making an appearance at Apple's iPad Pro and iPhone 6s launch event, Microsoft has made an Android-related acquisition.
The newly-purchased Echo Notification Lockscreen is the second Android lockscreen app that the company now has to its name; Echo Notification Lockscreen joins Microsoft Next. The company says it is about taking "productivity to the next level" and improving users' experience.
The rise of telecommuting: 45 percent of US employees work from home
The traditional 9-5 working day of driving to an office, sitting in a cubicle for hours and then forgetting all about work at the end of the day is all but extinct.
Thanks to telecommuting and the rise of millennials on the workplace, employees are now able to work from pretty much anywhere at any time of day, with little or no disruption or sacrifice in productivity.
WhatsApp Web app vCard vulnerability leaves 200 million users at risk
A security researcher at Check Point has discovered a vulnerability in the WhatsApp Web app. The app -- which allows for WhatsApp messages sent to a phone to be viewed on a desktop computer, as well as syncing data -- can be exploited if a malicious user sends a specially-crafted vCard contact to someone.
A problem with WhatsApp's filtering of the contact card means that it could be used to "trick victims into executing arbitrary code on their machines in a new and sophisticated way". What's particularly worrying about this vulnerability is the fact that all an attacker needs is the phone number associated with a WhatsApp account. With an estimated 200 million WhatsApp Web users, there are a lot of potential victims.
BlackBerry buys mobile security company Good Technology
BlackBerry has announced its purchase of Good Technology, a mobile security company. The deal was sealed with $425 million (£280 million) heading Good’s way. The Good Dynamics platform provides encryption, advanced data loss prevention and secure communication between applications.
But BlackBerry is already good at that, isn’t it? It is one of the safest, if not the safest smartphone out there, so what good can Good do (pun definitely intended)?
Fujitsu's 300GHz, 10+ Gb/s receiver could transfer 4K and 8K videos 'instantly'
Fujitsu has revealed details of a new wireless receiver capable of data transfer rates of "several tens of Gigabits per second". Operating on the terahertz band, the receiver is over 100 times faster than current devices that use the 0.8-2.0 GHz range.
Described as "the world's first 300 GHz band compact receiver", the receiver is ten times smaller than previous models, opening up the possibility of use in mobile devices. Shrinking the unit has reduced its size to under one cubic centimeter and Fujitsu says that it "enables mobile devices to instantly transfer 4K or 8K HD video".
Samsung Galaxy Note 5 launches in India starting at Rs 53,900 ($800)
At an ongoing media event in New Delhi, India, Samsung today launches the Galaxy Note 5, its latest flagship phablet device, in the country. Unlike the Note 4, and several other Galaxy smartphones and phablets, the Note 5 is comparatively well priced. The South Korean technology conglomerate announced that the Note 5 will be available for purchase starting Rs 53,900 (roughly $800), and will go on sale starting September 20.
Unveiled at an event last month, the Galaxy Note 5 is the company's latest flagship phablet device. It sports a 5.7-inch QHD Super-AMOLED display with a pixel density of 515ppi. It is powered by a 64-bit octa-core Exynos 7420 SoC with four Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 2.1GHz, and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.5GHz, coupled with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM. It comes in two storage variants: 32GB and 64GB, and doesn't support microSD card. On the software side, it runs on Android Lollipop with TouchWiz UI on top of it.
Google provides help with more health conditions than ever before
Turning to the internet for medical advice is something of a double-edged sword. On one hand, it provides access to a wealth of information previously only available to medical students, making it easy to look up symptoms and see what they might mean. On the other, hypochondriacs can very easy self-diagnose every condition under the sun.
But there's no denying that it can certainly be helpful to be able to find out a little more about different conditions from the comfort of your phone or computer. Today Google announces a swathe of updates that it hopes will help people to be better informed in terms of understanding symptoms and treatments, and conveying what they are experiencing to a doctor.
You're probably about to notice a lot more ads in Gmail
On the same day that Google unveiled its new logo, the company also slipped out some other news that didn't get quite as much attention. Considering the news means that Gmail users are likely to be inundated with more ads than ever before, it's hardly surprising that Google wasn't shouting from the rooftops, but that's what's happening.
Native Gmail ads are now rolling out to AdWords users, giving companies a new way to gain a presence in potential customers' inboxes. This is not spam. This is not a new way to start an email-based ad campaign. It's actual AdWord-triggered ads at the top of inboxes.
How mobile can improve capture and analysis of retail sales data [Q&A]
Modern organizations collect large amounts of data across multiple platforms, but they can find it hard to extract useful, actionable insights from the raw information.
San Francisco-based Zenput provides real-time data capture and analysis to retail, restaurant and consumer goods companies to help them centralize operations and support more informed decision-making. How much difference can this technology make to businesses? We talked to Zenput CEO Vladik Rikhter to find out.
Apple's iPhones and iPads will work better with Cisco enterprise networks
Apple and Cisco have, through a joint statement, announced a partnership which will see Apple’s apps and devices become more productive in enterprise networks.
The goal of the partnership is to optimize Cisco’s networks for iOS devices and apps and integrate the iPhone with Cisco enterprise environments. That will create a "fast lane" for iOS business users, Apple has said in a press release.
PayPal.Me lets you receive online payments through a custom URL
PayPal has long been a quick and easy way to send and receive money online; with the launch of PayPal.Me, things just got even simpler. This is a new platform which provides PayPal customers with their own personalized URL (such as paypal.me/markwilson) as an alternative to sending out invoices. PayPal is pushing this as a way to call in your debts, but it's far more versatile than that.
The next time someone needs to send you money, you can simply direct them to your page -- or you can include the link on social networks, your website, in emails, via SMS, and so on. Any payments that are made in this way are covered by the same PayPal Buyer Protection policies as before. Anyone visiting your PayPal.Me page is able to choose the amount of money they want to send you, but you can also customize the URL you share to make a request for a specific amount.
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