Category: Biz Tech

The smart home is gaining ground, but it's still a muddle of confusing standards, competing platforms, and gadgets that don't do what you might expect. But the promise of products that can make your life a little easier is hard to resist, so I'm here to answer the inevitable questions that arise. Whether it's figuring out the best connected door lock to assembling the right recipe to wake you up with a faux sunrise at the optimal moment based on your

We live in a society where it seems like the only way to meet someone new to start a serious relationship with is through dating apps. But using these platforms leave users at risk of finding out the one they have been talking to was too good to be true after finally meeting in person. Not to mention there is always the worst case scenario: getting catfished. This means that users often do some investigating of their own to make sure

Apple typically drops the price on the previous iPhone $100 or so while other manufacturers may offer even bigger discounts. And now T-Mobile is currently offering the LG V20, Samsung Galaxy S7, and Samsung Galaxy

Right to repair is back in the news because Apple is opposing a Nebraska bill that would require electronics companies like Apple to produce repair manuals and sell replacement parts. Apple only got involved because the bill—one of eight nationwide, according to Motherboard—threatens its software licenses. We saw a similar battle between farmers and John Deere, which asserted that ownership of John Deere equipment "does not include the right to copy, modify or distribute software that is embedded in that equipment." This

Good news for Sprint subscribers in the U.S. as the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 edge are now receiving the long-awaited Android 7.0 Nougat update. Sprint users who are participating in the beta program for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge are getting a taste of Android Nougat. Even though the beta users are the only ones receiving the update for now, it may soon be available for all Sprint users of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge. The

I'm an innovation evangelist with SAP. Each year, I present at about 50 conferences around the world, talking to business and IT audiences about the impact of the latest technologies.I've been doing this for a long

Snapchat Spectacles are now available online, relieving the interested buyers from tracking down SnapBots or waiting for them to come to your city. The Snapchat Spectacles have been designed as a quite self-explanatory device. However, there are some simple tips and tricks which a spectacle user must know in order to smoothly snap and upload. Light Circle On The Spectacle The light circle on both the sides of the Spectacles indicates video being recorded at that point of time. It is better to let people

Australia's mobile networks have again risen in the global rankings to being the fifth fastest in the world with an overall speed of 26.25Mbps across 3G and 4G, according to telecommunications coverage mapping company OpenSignal's latest

Vocus Communications has announced its financial results for the first half of FY17, revealing a net profit of AU$47.2 million, up from AU$24.2 million a year previous due to its acquisitions of M2 and Nextgen.Statutory earnings

KGI Securities has always been known for accurate iPhone leaks. Last Feb. 21 it sent a missive to its clients detailing the possibility that the iPhone 8 will be featuring a revolutionary selfie camera technology. The front-facing camera module will purportedly get outfitted with 3D sensors that will naturally allow users the capability to take 3D selfies. According to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, it is unprecedented in smartphones and that it was first seen in the Kinect for Xbox. The overhaul

Last fall, we saw the biggest distibuted denial of service (DDoS) attack ever. This year we'll see even bigger ones. According to Akamai's latest State of the Internet Security report, here's what's behind them.Behind today's DDoS

UPS has announced plans for deliveries via drones, but unlike Amazon's drone delivery schtick, it's not offloading them from a distant outpost or even a blimp: it's integrating them intro delivery trucks, perched atop the vehicle, prepared to launch at various points within a route. UPS Fuses Delivery Trucks With Drones The Georgia-based package delivery company ran the initial drone delivery service tests Monday in a small town outside Tampa, Florida, claiming to have successfully launched a drone from the top of

Wholesale telecommunications and cloud services provider Inabox has announced it has successfully raised AU$4 million via a private placement that it said will be used to pay down short-term debt from its recent acquisition of Hostworks

Google recently launched Android Wear 2.0, an operating system for its smart watches. The entire OS has been refined and revamped.To help with the launch of the new OS, Google and LG collaborated and came up with two Android Wear devices: The $250 LG Watch Style and $350 LG Watch Sport.The approach is similar to the

Verizon has announced that it will buy Yahoo's core business after all, but at a $350 million discount since the internet company had two massive cyberattacks. The Verizon-Yahoo deal has been in the cards for a good while now and the companies have been negotiating the terms of the agreement. After two massive Yahoo data breaches came to light last year, however, the deal was not that certain anymore as Verizon was having second thoughts. Verizon and Yahoo have now managed to

My taxi driver in San Diego had a plan. He was moving to Laredo to get back into long-distance trucking. He'd work hard for 10 years, save a couple of hundred grand, and retire to Mexico. I did the math: that put him around 2028. He might just make it before all the trucking jobs go away. At Qualcomm last week, Cristiano Amon, president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, extolled the virtues of the upcoming "5G economy," painting a picture of autonomous

Pokémon GO is apparently working wonders for some players, as it allows them to hatch eggs without actually walking all that distance. Hatching eggs in Pokémon GO can yield new Pokémon, but it's not normally done so easily. Players have to place eggs in incubators and, depending on the type of egg, walk 2, 5, or 10 kilometers or up to 6 miles to hatch them. This means that unless players walk around town for a good while, hatching those eggs can take

Qualcomm is stepping up its Internet of things game with support for Android Things OS, integration with Amazon Web Services and two systems-on-chips that aggregate a bevy of standards.

There is no sign that the ongoing rumble among carriers are winding down. Verizon underscored this after it announced a new cheaper prepaid plan bundled with its own data bucket, making it simpler for prepaid customers to avail of the Big Red's services. New Verizon Prepaid Plan The new Verizon prepaid plan costs $40 and comes with 2 GB data cap. This has increased the company's prepaid offerings to three. Previously, customers can only choose between the $50 and $70 plans, which feature

iPad sales are in serious decline, but Apple CEO Tim Cook remain "very bullish" about the tablet. Can a March refresh turn things around? Must read: OLED iPhone 8 may finally have the feature

Horizon Zero Dawn opens to a protracted introduction of its post-apocalyptic machine-festered world. It's tedious, as regarded by one reviewer, but it's essential, because the game's open world, like all open worlds, is massive. The game is Guerrilla Games's latest handiwork after Killzone Shadow Fall, the flagship Killzone title released in 2013 for the PlayStation 3. Even before release, it has already garnered acclaim, netting Best Original Game at the Game Critics Awards in 2015 and 2016. 'Horizon Zero Dawn' Horizon Zero Dawn's

Telstra has confirmed that its enterprise voice and data outage across New South Wales was caused by a faulty piece of hardware.The outage affected only enterprise customers on Tuesday morning until 1pm AEDT, with consumer fixed-line

Samsung's standing in the United States plummeted by 42 places, a new reputation poll reveals. Considering how the whole Galaxy Note 7 fiasco — among other things — stirred up the tech world for both consumers and manufacturers alike, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the South Korean brand is taking quite a hit regarding its position in the market. Samsung's Reputation In The Eyes Of The American Consumer According to Harris Poll's 2017 Reputation Quotient Ratings, Samsung is now the

Kacific Broadband Satellites has announced that it will provide a 100Mbps satellite broadband service to under-served areas across more than 20 countries in South East Asia and the Pacific through a 702 Boeing satellite.The Kacific-1 satellite,

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has reiterated that parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal are still worth salvaging despite the United States' withdrawal last month, with Australia to continue pushing for a revised deal

Good news, JRPG fans! The latest installment for the popular Ys series is coming to the United States. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana is coming stateside on fall 2017. If you want your JRPG fix but Final Fantasy VII Remake feels like eons away, then Ys VIII can give you relief. NIS America will bring this long-running JRPG franchise, which has its own respectable fanbase. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana is the eighth game in the series' lore. It is the first one in the main storyline after

The most successful artificial intelligence (AI) systems will be those comprising an emotional intelligence almost indistinguishable from human-to-human interaction, according to Bronwyn van der Merwe, group director at Fjord Australia and New Zealand -- Accenture Interactive's

Presidents Day 2017 is this Monday, Feb. 20, and many businesses and institutions are closed for the day. Schools, banks, post offices and more are not working today, but there are still plenty of businesses and services operating normally. Pictured here are the sculptured heads of the American presidents, from left to right, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, carved into Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, as a "shrine of democracy." ( Fox Photos | Getty Images )Presidents Day

The Brazilian government is taking the first steps towards the development of a national information security policy for the public sector.According to an official note published by the Institutional Security Cabinet of the federal government on

Microsoft may have decided to nix its HoloLens 2 headset which was expected to debut in early 2017 and decided to go straight to version 3 in 2019.The

Microsoft is reportedly looking to skip the second version of the HoloLens and jump straight to version three instead. For the unfamiliar, the mixed reality HoloLens headset went on sale in March 2016 and the developer edition was priced at $3,000. However, this HoloLens headset was only intended for developers and people have been waiting with bated breath for the consumer variant to arrive. With no news of the consumer-ready version arrival, reports are now revealing that the company is working on

Salesforce added risk segmenting tools, patient targeting and lead conversion data to its Health Cloud, an effort expand the company's footprint in an industry that accounts for 17.8 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic product.That statistic, via

PCLinuxOS 2017.02 KDE Desktop