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Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 Chips Ready To Tango with Google

Chipmaker Qualcomm is expanding its support for Google’s new mobile virtual reality technology, Project Tango, with today’s announcement that the technology will be supported on its popular Snapdragon 820 processor, along with future processors in the Snapdragon 600 and 800 tier. “Tango is an excellent example of the innovative thinking that delivers valuable next-generation mobile experiences today,” Brent Sammons, senior marketing manager at Qualcomm, wrote on the […]

Millions of Health Records Reportedly Appear for Sale on Dark Web

Two days after reporting that 655,000 healthcare records were found for sale on the dark web, the site DeepDotWeb said today that another insurance database with at least 9.3 million patient records is being shopped around by an anonymous hacker. Over the weekend, a hacker using the name “thedarkoverlord” was offering for sale records taken from databases managed by three healthcare organizations in Missouri, Georgia and the […]

Latest Windows 10 Build Targets Bugs Ahead of July Release

With just weeks to go before it launches its one-year Anniversary Update of Windows 10, Microsoft has been rolling out a series of preview builds aimed at fixing various bugs. The most recent build, announced yesterday, resolves a number of issues found in the PC and mobile versions of Microsoft’s operating system. The updates come on the heels of last week’s “Bug Bash,” during which Microsoft gave […]

Will WhatsApp Win Messaging Wars? What Is WhatsApp Anyway?

Backed by the wide-scale social influence of Facebook, WhatsApp appears poised to have an even greater impact on the global communications market, including voice calling as well as text messaging services. Yesterday, the Facebook-owned mobile messaging service announced it is now supporting more than 100 million voice calls every day, a service it began offering just 18 months ago. WhatsApp also rolled out a desktop version of […]

Apple To Deactivate Flash in Next Version of Safari

Adobe’s Flash browser plug-in has been suffering a slow death by a thousand cuts, and today it learned of yet another. A blog post by a member of Apple’s Safari development team has revealed that the version of Safari due out this fall — Safari 10, set to ship with macOS Sierra — will arrive on users’ Macs with Flash deactivated by default. The aging and vulnerable […]

Why Is Microsoft Buying LinkedIn? What Next?

Google Now on Tap Adds More Text Searching and Image Smarts

Introduced with the release of Google’s Android Marshmallow operating system last year, the Now on Tap feature has just been made a bit smarter. A one-touch tool for accessing information about what’s displayed on a device’s screen, Now on Tap has just been updated to provide users with even more specific details they might find helpful. While reading an article, for example, a user can now select […]

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Microsoft back EU hate speech rules

The application icons of Facebook, Twitter and Google are displayed on an iPhone next to an earphone set in this illustration photo taken in Berlin, June 17, 2013. Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski/Files BRUSSELS – Facebook, Twitter, Google’s YouTube and Microsoft on Tuesday agreed to an EU code of conduct to tackle online hate speech within 24 hours in Europe. EU governments have been trying in recent months to get […]

Chinese users criticise Microsoft's push for Windows 10 upgrade – Xinhua

A Microsoft logo is seen on an office building in New York City in this July 28, 2015 file photo. Microsoft Corp announced more big cuts to its smartphone business on Wednesday. Reuters/Mike Segar/Files SHANGHAI Chinese users of Microsoft products are criticising the software company’s push to get them to mandatorily upgrade their Windows operating systems, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. Posts critical of […]

Acer Unveils Business Notebooks and Budget 2-in-1s

This summer, Acer will begin releasing a number of new devices aimed at different types of users, including a new series of notebooks for business users and two new 2-in-1s for students and budget-conscious buyers. Taiwan-based Acer plans to showcase its latest releases at next week’s Computex expo in Taipei. It also plans to unveil its BeingWare vision for smart city and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. […]

PayPal Deep Sixes Windows, BlackBerry and Amazon Apps

Online payment service PayPal is abandoning the apps that it created for Microsoft Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Amazon Fire OS. The company announced the move this week on its blog. The news paves the way for PayPal to steer users toward the latest versions of its app for Apple’s IOS and Google’s Android. Those two platforms have come to dominate the mobile payment space. The last day […]

Extreme sports deal with Red Bull sends GoPro flying

A GoPro Hero 3+ camera is seen at the Nasdaq Market Site before before GoPro Inc’s IPO in New York City, June 26, 2014. Reuters/Mike Segar SAN FRANCISCO Shares of GoPro Inc (GPRO.O) got a lift on Tuesday after the struggling action camera maker said it was partnering with extreme sports sponsor Red Bull in a marketing and promotion deal. Briefly a Wall Street favorite following an […]

Microsoft Grants Aid Delivery of Affordable Internet Access Worldwide

Tech giant Microsoft said today that it has awarded grants to entrepreneurs who want to expand Internet access across the world, especially in less prosperous areas that lack affordable access. The company’s Affordable Access Initiative awards grants to startup companies that are developing new technologies to improve Internet access to communities. The goal of the initiative is to “democratize access to the Internet through grants, commercial partnerships, […]

Microsoft Aims New Policy and Programs at Terrorist Content Online

Noting that “terrorism is one of the truly urgent issues of our time,” Microsoft recently said it is taking several steps to identify and combat extremist content online. Those measures include a change in its terms of use to prohibit the posting of terrorist content on Microsoft consumer services like Xbox Live, OneDrive, Skype and Outlook, according to a blog post on Friday. The company defines such […]

With HoloLens, Microsoft aims to avoid Google's mistakes

SAN FRANCISCO When Google introduced its Google Glass smart glasses four years ago, it turned to Glass-sporting sky divers buzzing a San Francisco convention center, Glass-adorned models at a glitzy fashion show and a Twitter campaign to notify early “Glass Explorers” of their luck in snagging a pair. This year, when Microsoft showed off an early edition of its HoloLens augmented-reality goggles, it took the opposite approach: […]

Microsoft to crack down on content promoting extremist acts

The logo of Dow Jones Industrial Average stock market index listed company Microsoft (MSFT) is seen in Los Angeles, California, United States, April 22, 2016. Reuters/Lucy Nicholson/Files SAN FRANCISCO With the world growing more concerned about attacks by militant groups on civilians, Microsoft Corp on Friday outlined new policies to crack down what it called “terrorist content” on some of its consumer services. In a blog post, […]

Skype Previews Business Developer Kit

To help Skype continue making inroads into the enterprise, Microsoft has launched Skype for Business SDK (software developer kit). The new product is a set of tools that lets iOS and Android developers integrate Skype’s messaging, audio and voice capabilities into their mobile applications. The goal of Microsoft’s Skype for Business SDK is to allow Skype to power the communications experience inside applications, so developers can focus […]

Firefox Cruises Past Microsoft Browsers but Chrome Still Dominates

The Firefox Web browser has overtaken both of Microsoft’s browsers put together when it comes to market share, according to a new report. That’s the good news for Mozilla, which develops Firefox. The bad news is that Google’s Chrome browser is leaving both Mozilla and Microsoft in the dust. According to the latest figures from Statcounter, 60.5 percent of worldwide users opted for Chrome as their browser […]

Warren Buffett's Berkshire takes $1 billion bite of Apple

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) revealed a more than $1 billion stake in Apple Inc (AAPL.O) in a rare foray into the technology sector, which Buffett has largely shunned apart from a poorly performing investment in IBM (IBM.N). Shares of Apple rose 3.7 percent on the news, closing up $3.36 at $93.88. Berkshire made its investment in the first quarter, before the iPhone maker in April […]

Google To Phase Out Flash Video in Chrome by the End of the Year

They hog resources, take too long to load and are often embedded with malware. That’s why Google is planning to phase out Adobe Flash videos in its Chrome Web browser by the end of this year. Google disclosed its plan to ditch the multimedia player in a proposal that was published on its Chromium-dev Google Groups page last week. Instead, Chrome will transition to HTML5 as its […]

Evernote Integrates Google Drive Content

In the latest salvo of the battle of the note-taking apps, Google and Evernote announced this week that Google Drive content will now be available in Evernote. In the world of mobile note-taking apps, Evernote is the primary competitor of Microsoft’s OneNote. Evernote had also been competing with Google’s own note-taking app, Google Keep, but Evernote said that integrating with Google Drive content is a natural next […]

Microsoft Study Shows Digital Infrastructure Overtaking Physical

A new study from Microsoft has found that organizations now rely more on digital infrastructures than they do on physical infrastructures. The findings indicate that cloud deployment models have now overtaken any other type of deployment in the technology sector, according to the company, which asked tech research firm 451 Research to conduct the study. “As organizations prepare for major business and technology changes, they will depend […]

Opera Says Browser Update Will Boost Laptop Battery Life by 50 Percent

The latest developer version of Opera Software’s browser features a power-saving mode the company said can extend a laptop’s battery life by almost 50 percent, compared to previous versions of the browser as well as Google Chrome. Opera 39 includes a feature that activates when a laptop is unplugged from a power source. When that happens, a battery icon appears next to the browser’s search and address […]

Google Launches Gboard Keyboard for iOS Devices

A long-rumored app from Google aims to make browsing with a mobile device easier than ever. The company today launched Gboard, a new application for iOS that enables Google search directly from a mobile device’s keyboard. The app makes searches simpler and also offers swipe-based typing and access to GIFs and such commonly used keyboard functions as emojis and word predictions. And the keyboard integrates directly with […]