Category: Biz Tech

Every tech magazine comes out with a "best products of the year" list at around this time. Readers love lists—and it is shopping season, after all. Plus, it's an easy story to do: Just open up a Web browser and start searching for the best of everything, then rewrite what you read online. Maybe throw in a few outliers, so the list is less generic than the countless other stories that have essentially the same products. Here at PCMag, we

American Airlines has selected IBM Cloud to be a service provider as it moves its internal applications to the public cloud.The airline has said that it was looking to move some of its customer web site

Over the years, I have often written about Silicon Valley's desire for Washington to stay out of its hair. Except for lucrative defense contracts, the tech industry would prefer to work unrestrained by politics and government regulations. That trend lasted well into the early 1990s, but when Bill Clinton was running for president, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins and then-CEO of Cisco, John Chambers, figured that if they wanted to realize their vision of the Internet and bring technology to the

Vocus Communications has said it will be investing more in data analytics and digitising its customer service processes over the next year in order to continue competing in the telecommunications landscape."This year, we have decided to

Illegal file sharing is in the news again, as a report from the Australian government finds piracy on the decline thanks to the rise of legitimate streaming services. Respondents indicate they would be glad to pay for content rather than illegally download it, provided the alternatives are reasonable. Piracy, it seems, is not simply about getting free content, but about finding content in the most convenient manner possible. The report brings me back to the days of Napster, which arrived in 1999

(Image: file photo)Nearly a million users across Europe were thrown off the internet during the weekend into Monday after criminals tried to hijack home routers as part of a coordinated cyber attack.Security researchers said that routers

Two weeks before the election, I traveled to Maine for a conference and drove through Massachusetts and New Hampshire on my way. In Silicon Valley, which was mostly Clinton country, I'd seen very few signs or bumper stickers promoting any candidates. But as I drove through the northeast, plenty of Trump signs were displayed on people's lawns, fences, and car bumpers. I did see a few Clinton signs, but Trump signs dominated the landscape. In fact, as I was driving up

The Asus ROG GT51 ($4,999) combines a powerful aesthetic with equally strong internal components, resulting in a distinctive looking and high-performing gaming desktop. Design-wise, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's definitely a conversation piece—if you want your rig to look like the gaming system it is, it'll probably work for you. With dual Pascal graphics cards, a ton of RAM, and a useful array of ports and storage, the GT51 is able to run any modern

Small to midsize businesses (SMBs) looking for a soup-to-nuts Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony system will do very well with 8x8 Virtual Office Pro. The service offers both basic and a good selection of advanced features as part of its base pricing bundle, which starts at $24.99 per user per month. There's a good selection of calling plans and, perhaps most important, a good number of integrations available with popular third-party software such as Salesforce and Sugar CRM. For this

Many Android music apps tout their ability to introduce listeners to new tunes by using secret algorithms or community input, but none of them can do what WhoSampled does. The free WhoSampled Android app, based on the popular website of the same name, helps you connect the musical present to the past by highlighting the song snippets that were used to build other songs. If you fancy yourself a musical historian, WhoSampled should find a home on your Android tablet

Okta Identity Management, an excellent identity management service that begins at $2 per user per month, is one of the big names in the Identity-Management-as-a-Service (IDaaS) space, even earning top marks in a 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant report. While kudos from an industry analyst firm can be an indicator of a strong product, most potential users are more concerned with features and pricing, areas in which Okta doesn't disappoint either. Pricing tiers range from $2 to $8 per user per

Astro Gaming's new A50 wireless gaming headset follows its predecessors as one of the most impressive, and pricey, headsets on the market. It rings in at a hefty $300, but justifies its price tag with excellent audio quality and a full feature set, including an attractive charging cradle. It's light, comfortable, sounds fantastic for both games and music, and it can work with your Sony PlayStation 4 or Microsoft Xbox One and your PC. For its mix of quality and

A weather service might not seem like the most important iPhone app, but consider how big an impact the state of the sky has on your daily life. The Weather Underground app does an excellent job of giving you the most important information about the weather right now and in the immediate future, and lets you drill down for more information, too. It remains my Editors' Choice for iPhone weather apps. Weather Aboveground Weather Underground has a markedly different appearance from Yahoo

Eventually, you're going to need extra storage—especially as modern technology enables higher-quality videos, photos, and other media. The SanDisk Extreme 900 Portable SSD ($499.99 for 960GB) is a versatile, higher-capacity solid-state drive (SSD) that can take its fair share of knocks. It's not going to turn heads in terms of style, but if you're looking for speedy transfers, the Extreme 900 should definitely be on your short list. It's not quite as affordable as the Oyen Digital MiniPro 3.1 USB-C

While some users are looking for advanced security features or ruggedized drives to take into the field, many are simply looking for a reliable and fast place to store their data for travel. The Oyen Digital MiniPro 3.1 USB-C Portable Solid-State Drive ($299 for 1TB) does exactly that with its sleek design and fast data transfer speeds. On top of that, it's one of the most affordable 1TB drives around, offering a combination of speed and value that's hard to

Many of the portable Bluetooth speakers we test are rugged and made for outdoor use, but the Harman Kardon Onyx Mini feels more like a portable speaker for the house. At $199.95 it's not cheap, but it delivers audio worth the price. You won't be getting booming subwoofer-like bass out of the Onyx Mini, but it packs a rich, full low frequency response, along with excellent higher frequency clarity. For its size, the speaker gets exceptionally loud, and does so

The Surface Phone is probably closer than most people think, at least according to a report by Chinese financial publication Commercial Times, who claims that Pegatron, a main supplier for Apple, is reportedly working with Microsoft and is already administering production trials of the enigmatic Surface Phone. Surface Phone Rumors The Surface-branded phone has enjoyed its wealth of rumors in recent months. Others predict it as a high-end offering from Microsoft geared exclusively for enterprise, meaning that Microsoft is backing away from its

Creating diagrams, such as organizational charts and network infrastructure maps, used to require either a designer or a whole lot of patience. Not anymore. Diagramming app SmartDraw intuits the shapes and objects you're going to put into a diagram based on the template you choose. It gives you buttons that quickly add the new elements, align them, and make them look professional. The program is dead simple to use, and it's available as a Windows app and as a Web

Customer relationship management (CRM) software helps you gather current and historical information about all your customer interactions, including not just past purchases, but also interests, a roadmap of the customer's eventual product needs, negotiation details from previous deals, and even customer service or helpdesk issues. All that combines to build what amounts to customer dossiers full of up-to-the-minute interaction records and demographic data that you can leverage for things like email marketing campaigns, increasing your business intelligence (BI) smarts, or

BambooHR is human resources software that should start at around $7 per employee per month, but this figure isn't available on the company's website. Instead of clicking on an easy-to-read pricing page, you'll need to fill in a web form or call BambooHR for a "custom quote." That's worth it, however, because if you take advantage of the free evaluation period, you'll find BambooHR to be a smart and feature-rich online HR software package, with a friendly, intuitive design that

The Canon Maxify iB4120 Wireless Small Office Inkjet Printer ($149.99) is one of a relatively small number of small office/home office (SOHO) inkjet printers on the market, and it is a very good one. It has terrific paper capacity, competitive running costs, and above-par output across the board. The iB4120 is an easy pick as an Editors' Choice budget SOHO color inkjet printer. Design and Features A matte-black printer with rounded corners, the iB4120 measures 11.5 by 18.3 by 18.1 inches (HWD)

A new viral dance video craze based on gospel singer Shirley Caesar's classic song "Hold My Mule" has swept the nation, with countless web users posting their own dance moves to the food driven remix sampling the track. Caesar has stated that although she's not a fan of the twerking moves that some posters are improvising to her song, she considers the movement a blessing, and sure doesn't mind the extra cash expected to fill her coffers due to the

Apple is now starting to accept orders for the LG UltraFine 5K display today. The external display accessory is selling for a discounted price of $974 in the United States. Called by Apple itself as the "ultimate docking station," the LG UltraFine 5K display was first unveiled late October alongside the new MacBook Pro models, designed to take advantage of the new lineup. Apple also partnered it with a 4K display offering, but only now has the 5K display became available for purchase,

The Trump Tower in New York, which currently serves as Donald Trump's residence in New York has just been renamed "Dump Tower" on Google Maps. The tech company has reportedly moved to fix the label immediately last Sunday, so it's now back to its old label. Dump Tower The renaming is said to have been perpetrated last Nov. 26 around the time someone or the same person translated the building's name to its Russian Cyrillic equivalent. This last is purportedly an allusion

Cyber Monday 2016 is here! As consumers gear up to snag tech devices at discounted prices, e-retailer Amazon has plenty of limited period offers to lure holiday shoppers!   Barely have people recouped from the Black Friday specials and Amazon is enticing shoppers with not-to-be-missed offers on a gamut of devices. Tech Times has curated a list of some of the best available deals from Amazon as part of its Cyber Monday celebrations for 4K TVs, drones, camera, laptops, tablets, headphones, 50-inch-plus TVs, printers, smartwatches

The latest drone flyover video on the Apple Campus 2 reveals that the facility is almost complete, and it looks like it came straight out of a science fiction movie. There have been a few other drone flyover videos on Apple's new home, but this new one gives the best look on how the Apple Campus 2 would look like once construction is done. Apple Campus 2 Almost Ready In the video taken by Sexton Videography and uploaded to YouTube, it can be seen

Android users were found to be more honest compared with iPhone users. The research, conducted in the United Kingdom, also linked the type of smartphone users with other series of descriptive demographic and psychographic criteria. The research, published online in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, is the first one to link psychological traits to typologies of phone users, instead of just demographic criteria. Smartphones And Psychological Profiles As four in five adults in the UK own a smartphone, the market is split

No Man's Sky is finally getting closer to what it was supposed to be, as the new Foundation Update finally adds some features that should've been available from day one. The Foundation Update that Hello Games announced a couple of days ago is now live and it brings a number of cool new tricks, including base building, freighters, survival mode, and stackable items. Base Building With the latest Foundation Update in No Man's Sky, you can build your own base on the planet you like

Details regarding Apple's rumored iPhone 8 have been making the rounds over the last couple of weeks. A new report claims the company is working with LG on a new 3D dual-lens camera. Ever since Apple released the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in 2014, the company has used more than just the larger 5.5-inch displays of its Plus models to differentiate it from its 4.7-inch siblings. The iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6s Plus both included OIS (optical image

Samsung has officially recalled all Galaxy Note 7 due to faulty batteries that caused many handsets to explode or catch fire. The smartphone is no more officially available in the market but its Grace UX is being rolled out to other devices. Grace UX is the updated version of TouchWiz, which is currently available in most of Samsung phones. Grace UX was first launched in Galaxy Note 7, but unfortunately it did not get a lot of attention due to the failure

Chinese electronics company Xiaomi witnessed a clear decline in its smartphone profit lately. The company, however, is not afraid of the drop, as it announced it derives its profits from other products aside from smartphones. Furthermore, company executives believe that the regression in its smartphone trade would have no significant negative impact to the company. Despite experiencing a fallback in terms of revenue as of late, Xiaomi remained unfazed as it claimed that its profit does not revolve around smartphones alone. Revenue

A team of researchers from Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) has found that chronic jet lag may result in obesity and liver diseases including liver cancer. David Moore, the lead author of the study from BCM said that the incidence of liver cancer is increasing worldwide in recent years and it is also observed lately that individuals suffering from fatty liver disease develop liver cancer directly skipping intermediate steps like cirrhosis. Jet Lag And Liver Cancer In the study conducted in mice in BCM

LG is looking to redeem itself and win over consumers with its impending LG G6, the successor of the LG G5 flagship. To ensure that the LG G6 does not meet the dismal fate of the modular LG G5 smartphone, the company is pulling out all stops for upcoming handset. LG is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the next-gen smartphone finds favor with consumers. We have already heard rumors of the company opting for a 4K display for its LG

While the latest-gen iPhone 7 may be blowing up and causing burns, Apple fans can take some respite in the fact that the older iPhone 4 is sturdy and functions even after being exposed to harsh elements. A man from Pennsylvania who misplaced his iPhone 4 has gotten lucky and reportedly had the handset returned. Not only did Michael Guntrum retrieve his iPhone 4 unexpectedly, but the fact that it was in working condition was a bonus. What's the big deal about a